Juice is Loose!

Robert Bryce's new must-see docuseries on the increasing fragility of the U.S. electric grid.

“The energy policies that we’re pursuing threaten what we take so for granted.” - Dr. Chris Keefer

If you are not in the utility or energy industries, you probably don’t stay up late at night reading the latest reports on the state of the U.S. electric grid. You likely have better things to do than delve into reports from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) or the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC).

Why bother reading boring government and utility industry technical matters when you could be helping your son with his college applications, or your daughter edit her English literature assignment, or just curl up in bed with the wife and watch old reruns of the Sopranos?

All of these better uses of your time depend on electricity. But there are significant threats to the U.S. electric grid’s stability and reliability, and the risks of rolling blackouts are increasing. The reasons are becoming more obvious, and harder to hide.

Fortunately, you don’t need to spend nights reading FERC or NERC reports to understand the peril facing the U.S. electric grid. Substack author Robert Bryce and Co-Creator Tyson Culver have produced a five-part documentary series called Juice, Power, Politics & The Grid nicely summarizing the grid’s history and evolution, its challenges, and a logical path forward.

Episode 1 recounts the nightmare of Texas winter storm Yuri in February 2021 to make the threat tangible and frame the issues. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT, Texas’ grid operator) was minutes away from losing the grid for weeks or longer.

As Bryce notes in the opening episode, spin doctors on the right blamed wind and solar, and those on the left blamed natural gas. These were low-resolution yet convenient political barbs by talking heads on TV. While there was some truth in both side’s accusations, the too-convenient political fodder obscures the underlying reasons.

The docuseries includes interviews with a variety of experts. Two in particular frame key issues for the docuseries in Episode 1.

Meredith Angwin is an electric utility industry veteran of over 30 years. Her book “Shorting the Grid: The Hidden Fragility of Our Electric Grid” was published in October 2020, four months before winter storm Uri. In the book, Angwin rather prophetically spells out the essential elements that led to the blackouts in Texas.

Angwin describes the “fatal trifecta” of the West’s energy transition as the root of the problem in Texas, California, Germany and elsewhere. And, as she notes in Episode 1, “too many grids are chasing it”. Angwin explains:

“The first part of the fatal trifecta: overreliance on renewables, which go on and off when they want to. The second part, overreliance on natural gas, which is delivered just in time and can be interrupted just in time through a variety of methods. And the third part is relying on a neighbor to help.”  By “neighbor” Angwin is referring to imports from neighboring grids, noting, “when you’re connected to other grids and there’s a weather crisis, those grids will not share with you, they got their own problems.”

Substack author Emmet Penney appears throughout the docuseries. As with Angwin’s critical insights above, in Episode 1 he provides viewers with a simple framework for understanding the electric grid as a physical system subject to policy and political disasters far greater than storms. As Penney explains:

“There is the physical grid, which is generators, transmission, and distribution, basically power plants, the lines and poles, and the transmission systems that get them out to houses. And then there’s the policy grid on top of that, which are the rules and regs that govern how the physical system of the grid operates. Then, I would say, on top of the policy grid there is the political grid, which is this weird agglomeration of desires, ambitions, corruption, good intentions that go into creating the policy and building the physical aspects of the grid itself.”

The “political grid” Penney describes as “building the physical aspects of the grid” can also be used to make it more fragile, unreliable and expensive.

It is through this lens that Juice provides timely, critical information about the growing risks to the U.S. electrical grid, the policies that got us to this point, and how we might avert the types of crises suffered by Texas residents in February 2021.

Episode 2 relates the history of electricity deregulation led by Enron, the “smartest guys in the room” who, after commoditizing the natural gas market set their sights on the U.S. electricity sector. California became the test case, where Enron positioned deregulation as an effective tax cut and a solution to overbuilt capacity and idle generation assets.

Then came Texas, where Enron found an enthusiastic governor (George W. Bush) and legislature.  But the same smart guys who set up the newly deregulated California and Texas electricity markets were self-dealing. By taking some of their generation plants offline and restricting supply, they drove up the marginal wholesale price for their remaining online generation assets. In short, the interests driving the policy and political grid trumped the reliability and affordability interests of the physical grid and electricity consumers.

Episode 3 documents the battle between the Osage Indian Tribe in Osage County, OK and Italian energy firm Enel. Enel acquired surface rights from some landowners and started building wind 83 turbines. But by digging foundations for each turbine base, Enel violated the Osage’s mineral rights without a permit.. The episode documents the longest running legal battle over wind energy in U.S. history, which recently concluded. (No spoiler alert forthcoming; you’ll have to watch Juice.)

Episode 4 centers around nuclear energy, beginning with the devastating tsunami in Fukushima, Japan that caused the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident. Japan’s history with energy security dating back to the 1970s gives context to its nuclear rise, the loss of trust after Fukushima, and its struggle to recover lost trust in the technology. For Japan, this is not a only matter of energy security, but national security in view of geopolitics and their neighborhood.

Episode 4 summarizes the phase shift in U.S. and European attitudes and politics over the last seventy years. General support for nuclear energy in the wake of WWII shifted to growing opposition in the late 1960s and 1970s, centered around the risk of nuclear war, accidents, and “waste”. “Renewables” entered the American political lexicon during this era, aligned with the growing environmentalist movement in western civilization.

Hundreds of nuclear reactors have operated safely and accident-free for millions of hours around the world since. But the accident at Three Mile Island (1979) and the reactor meltdown at Chernobyl (1986) effectively put new nuclear power projects off the table in western nations for over three decades.

Episode also 4 documents the incredible, against-all-odds efforts by Canadian emergency physician Dr. Chris Keefer (winner of a 2023 environMENTAL Green Jacket) and Canadians for Nuclear Energy (C4NE) that changed the game in the Canadian Province of Ontario. In the process, C4NE and Ontario seemed give additional motivation to other nations, 22 of which pledged an aspiration to triple world nuclear capacity by 2050.

The final episode begins with the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Europe’s too-late recognition that its misbegotten environmental policies (see Germany’s Energiewende) hitched its energy security to Russian natural gas. Climate change driven energy and environmental policies after 2000 doomed Europe to the “fatal trifecta” articulated by Meredith Angwin. The result was high energy prices, reliance on petrostate dictators, and Europe’s largest economy (Germany) deindustrializing. As Emmet Penney notes in Episode 5, “people who did not have a lot to do with those decisions are paying for it”.

Radiant Energy Group Founder Mark Nelson reflects on the abrupt shift in attitudes towards nuclear energy in Europe after the Ukraine invasion:

“All over Europe especially, opinion on nuclear energy has skyrocketed since the start of the Ukraine war. And it’s very simple. Other sources of energy were suddenly cut off, instead of slowly cut off. That led to an existential fear strong enough to sharply rebound public opinion. And we’ve seen no sign of this stopping…an astonishing upswing in opinion and I don’t think it will stop.”

Mark Nelson | Juice

In Nelson’s view, almost 80 years of fear over nuclear war, accidents and waste is simply not as strong as the fear of being cold in the European winter. Bryce, who lives in the Austin area, lived through this reality once already himself. Texas already proved this for themselves in under a week (though what they will do about it is an open question).

The final episode of Juice notes that saving California’s Diablo Canyon nuclear plant and three nuclear plants in Illinois in deep blue states shows a true momentum shift. We have stated from our very first post on Substack that you will be able to separate the Malthusians and EcoStatists from the serious “environmentalists” by watching who embraces nuclear energy instead of obstructing it. Those demarcation lines are now becoming clearer.

Juice is an important film, and we highly commend Bryce, Culver and an excellent cast and production for the work. We hope it helps raise Western electorate’s awareness over one of the most critical yet underappreciated resources on which their entire living standards, health and wellbeing, and that of future generations, rely.

As Meredith Angwin notes in the first episode:

“People don’t really understand what’s going on. There are choices being made about the grid and they’re not being made very publicly.

We encourage readers to view the docuseries and share it widely. The production value is high, the series flows cogently, and the information is relatable for non-experts. The work comes at an important time and is an excellent contribution to a critical conversation.

No review would be complete without finding some constructive critique, even for outstanding work. More detail on the inflection point beyond which overreliance on “alternative” energy (chiefly wind/solar) starts to have a negative effect on grid reliability would provide important additional context. More detail quantifying how passing that inflection point increases electricity cost might make the consequences more tangible for viewers.

Regular listeners to Bryce’s Power Hungry podcast know that he always ends each episode by asking guests two questions. First, “what are you reading”? And second, “what gives you hope?” 

We decided to turn the tables. After the substantial effort to research and produce Juice, as well as his three plus decades of writing about power, electricity, and the grid, we asked Bryce “what gives you hope?”  He graciously responded:

“I am insanely optimistic about the future. I agree with the late Molly Ivins, who said ‘I’m optimistic to the point of idiocy.’  With regard to energy and power, I’m optimistic because physics, economics, and reality will prevail. Yes, a lot of silly policy is gaining purchase at the moment but look at how the offshore wind silliness is being scuttled, not by pro-whale activists or sensible policy, but by simple economics.

Further, and it may sound corny, particularly to people who don’t live in the U.S., but the United States Constitution gives me hope. Yes, we have a lot of problems in this country. A LOT of problems. But the resilience of our system of government, and the fact that we are still litigating and arguing over the Bill of Rights and the Constitution 250+ years later, is just flat amazing. The British writer G.K. Chesterton said the US is the only country ever founded on a creed. That’s true. And that creed is stronger than garlic. Thus, the United States gives me hope. The American spirit, American entrepreneurship, American sports, the NBA, baseball, all of those things give me hope.”

We share Bryce’s optimism, despite the current wayward approach to U.S. energy, environmental and economic policy. Juice is a superb contribution to an urgently needed conversation.

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