Actually, Republicans love clean energy

Energy policy at the national level is no fun. It’s highly politicized and gets sidetracked by energy-adjacent proxy battles, like whether the climate is changing.

This disconnect recently took an even harsher turn, as GOP strategists decided to attack the Green New Deal as so destructive for the economy that it would amount to an indefinite extension of the current shutdown.

“This is what a carbon-constrained world looks like,” former Trump energy aide Michael McKenna told the New York Times.

From my perch covering how clean energy actually happens, I’ve been surprised at all the compelling arguments that Democrats fail to make on its behalf. For instance, they could counter that it’s entirely possible to adopt cleaner forms of energy in a cost-conscious way.

Red states, which love clean energy because it saves money, have taught this to anyone bothering to pay attention. Federal policymakers could learn a great deal from what these states are already doing.

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Don’t get mad, get solar

An obvious way to test whether Republican-led states are enthused about clean energy is to see how they rank in the top markets for wind and solar. This doesn’t require polling or guesswork, just hard numbers.

• Four of the top five states for installed solar power voted for Trump in 2016. Top solar state California has spent lots of money supporting the solar industry. But the runners-up are North Carolina, Arizona, Texas and Florida—not exactly a bunch of commies. Come for the low or nonexistent taxes, stay for the free fuel that comes from the sky.

• Four of the top five wind states voted for Trump, too. Here, though, the Red State dominance is even more pronounced. Texas crushes at wind power, followed by Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, and then California. Texas built nearly five times more wind capacity than the Golden State.

In energy, geography beats politics. A gusher of oil under someone else’s land can make a nation do things it wouldn’t normally do. In the renewables context, the Great Plains corridor is just too good for wind, and the sunshine of the desert Southwest and Florida makes solar plants too cheap to resist.

I’m genuinely curious why Democrats have not made a bigger deal of clean energy as a cost saver rather than just a cost. If you’ve seen any examples of effective messaging on this point, let me know!

Many paths to power

The leading solar and wind states earned their top rankings differently.

Arizona’s conservative utility regulators blocked new gas plant construction. At that time, solar paired with batteries started beating everything else in competitive bidding. This prompted the state’s biggest utility, Arizona Public Service, to switch to a “solar after sunset” strategy, which would add batteries to all its major solar plants for meeting night-time demand. (For my lowdown on why you should care about energy storage, check out last week’s installment).

Florida’s biggest utility, Florida Power & Light, is extremely good at getting what it wants. It also has a sister company, NextEra Energy Resources, which quietly built up the largest clean energy empire in the country. Now FP&L is bringing that confidence back home, building gobs of solar and one of the world’s biggest batteries.

North Carolina became a solar power in part due to scrappy local developers making use of an old law called PURPA, which basically forces utilities to buy power if it meets certain cost requirements. But now lead utility Duke Energy has gotten on board in a big way.

Those were all utility-driven states, and I’ll explain in future editions of this newsletter why the biggest utilities are choosing clean energy, and how they work generally.

Texas is different. For now, I’ll just say that its power market is a massive free-for-all, where all kinds of electric merchants compete for profit. Wind and solar only work there if they can win in a highly competitive environment.

But Texas proactively laid the groundwork for its thriving renewables industry by building thousands of miles of transmission wires from the barren, windy west to the population hubs of the east; when the wind farms came, they had electrical superhighways to reach customers.

When it comes to planning ahead to maximize the job growth and economic potential of a clean energy boom, maybe don’t mess with Texas?

The Energy Stream

This week for your dose of energy-related entertainment, I’m going to give you a recipe. Maybe that undercuts the “streaming” theme, but this is our place, we make the rules.

This recipe comes from D.C. chef José Andrés and his cookbook Vegetables Unleashed (the cover photo is of him inhaling a bunch of fresh-plucked carrots). Sam and I cook all the time now, generating food scraps. But L.A. does not conduct municipal composting, and we have no yard.

Enter José’s “Compost Caldo.” Any time you produce scraps that would go into the trash—onion ends, garlic husks, leek fronds—chuck them in the freezer. When you have two gallon bags full, roast the contents at 350 degrees until they’re toasty and caramelized, then simmer in a big pot of water with your favorite herbs until the broth becomes dark and flavorful.

The broth enhances any dish that needs liquid, and makes a great base for springtime soups. And it seduces with the perverse insinuation that, on some level, you’re eating garbage and it tastes good.

Think of this as a culinary form of energy efficiency, the technical term for saving energy by not using it in the first place. You get a tasty pot of soup, no grocery run required!