The Pomp Podcast - #1163 Robert Bryce | Russia, Ukraine, Nuclear, & Bitcoin: Energy Market Deep Dive

Episode Date: February 23, 2023

Robert Bryce is one of the foremost experts and reporters on the energy business around the world. He is also the author of a book, “A Question of Power: Electricity and the Wealth of Nations.” In this conversation, we talk about energy markets, about renewables, can the United States become energy independent? What is going on with Russia & Ukraine? Why does China have a monopoly on different metals and magnets that are necessary to actually build renewable technology? And what does Robert think about bitcoin and the energy markets? ======================= Announcing LYCEUM | Miami, a day-long event on March 4th in Miami Beach hosted by Pomp. We’re gathering an explosive group of experts to engage in a series of bold discussions, covering topics from investing, emerging tech, longevity, space exploration, entertainment and more.The speaker lineup includes names such as investing legend Cathie Wood, NYT bestselling author Vivek Ramaswamy, billionaire Christian Angermayer, master of Contrarian Thinking Codie Sanchez, Modern Wisdom host Chris Williamson plus many more. Listeners will receive an exclusive 40% discount on VIP and Insider Pass tickets with code POMP40.  General Admission tickets are free of charge. Spots are limited so head to lyceummiami.com to buy your ticket today. ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 200,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/ =======================

What's up everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. We have no advertisers on this podcast, so it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. Robert Bryce is one of the foremost experts and reporters on the energy business around the world.

He also is the author of a book, A Question of Power, Electricity and the Wealth of Nations, along with a number of other books that he's written over the years. In this conversation, we talk about energy markets, about renewables. Can the United States become energy independent? What's going on in Russia and Ukraine? Why does China have a monopoly on different metals and magnets that are necessary to actually build renewable technology? And what does Robert think about Bitcoin and the energy markets?

I really enjoyed this conversation with Robert, and I hope you guys enjoyed it as well. Once you get done listening, jump on Twitter and let us know what you liked, what you didn't like, what you agreed with, and what you didn't agree with. I always appreciate the feedback, and it helps us improve these conversations for each of you. Here is my conversation with Robert Bryce. This episode is brought to you by Accenture.

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All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Robert here with me.

Robert, you are one of the foremost experts in electricity and also other energy forms and markets. And I thought a great place to start our conversation today would simply be on this idea of electricity rich and electricity poor and how there is such a big difference in terms of access to electricity and also based on geography, what people are able to do with electricity in these various locations. How do you think through the importance of access to electricity

and what really is the defining factors for making somebody electricity rich or electricity poor. Well, thanks, Anthony. Thanks for having me on. You're right. This is the defining disparity in the world today. As you look at the world now, we're some 8 billion people. There are roughly 3 billion people,

almost 4 out of 10 people in the world today live in places where per capita consumption of electricity is less than 1,000 kilowatt hours per capita per year. So we're talking about an amount of electricity that's roughly equal to the amount that is used by an average kitchen refrigerator in the U.S. So, you know, when we look around the world, nearly all of Africa and the South Asia, these are places where people live in dire energy poverty, but in particular, dire electricity poverty. And why do we care? Well, if you care about women, if you care about girls, you care about women's rights. This is the key issue, because electricity, as I've said many times, and I talk about in my book, electricity frees women and girls from the from the stove and the wash pub and the and the pump. I mean, they you know, if you don't have electricity, you have to carry water. If you don't have it, you got to, you know, all of these chores that we take for granted that women have to do in the home if they don't have electricity, they're effectively slaves to to the home home home task.

So electricity is the most important and fastest growing form of energy in the world. And it's the biggest challenge we face globally in terms of bringing people out of the dark and into modernity. In your opinion, what are the obstacles that need to be overcome to get electricity to all seven and a half, eight billion people in the world? What are the things that we could do to kind of accelerate that adoption and make sure that people in developing nations have as much access as people in the developed nations? It's a really good question, Anthony. It's a hard one to address because you need civil society fundamentally. And in writing my new book, A Question of Power, and my new documentary, Juice, we went to Beirut and we were also in Puerto Rico. And you look around the world at where countries are wracked with corruption. The grids reflect that corruption.

You have to have a strong civil society for electricity grids to work. People have to pay for the power. You can't just give it away. I mean, you can for a while, but electricity grids run on money. You have to keep investing money. You have to buy the fuel. You have to upgrade the generators. You have to continually monitor and repair the poles and the wires. Electric grids need continuing investment. So if the society is corrupt, and we saw this after this fall of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Saddam was a bad guy, really a bad guy, but he kept the lights on. And nobody stole electricity when Saddam was in power, because if you got caught, bad things were going to happen. But once Saddam fell and the U.S., you know, we were in this kind of coalition, a power theft skyrocketed. And so today, Iraq is a basket case when it comes to its electric grid. And the same is true in Beirut. Same we saw the same in India, where people steal electricity. so creating that civil society is not easily done and it has to be done by the people in the countries that where they live and it's a very difficult task that's the key one so but then

after that if you don't have the you don't have that civil society you don't have the capital and then if you don't have the capital you can't build it build out the grid so these are tough challenges and then there's the issue of challenges of fuel nuclear power whether it's coal gas these are other issues but they the first issue is the corruption issue what have you seen in some of these areas, you mentioned Iraq being one example where they basically had electricity, there wasn't a lot of electricity theft, and then it kind of reverts backwards. But obviously, things like natural disasters, we've seen Puerto Rico specifically, but many other places around the world that have some level of development, some level of connectivity, and they kind of get

thrown backwards, sometimes decades worth of progress is erased by some sort of natural disaster. Are there any lessons that we can learn from what happens in those societies once they've kind of gotten a taste of the connectivity but then are kind of thrown backwards well you know it's good that you mentioned puerto rico because we were there and we filmed for juice we filmed in puerto rico and remember these are american citizens on american soil now they're a colony effectively of the united states they're uh what is the right word it's they're not they're obviously not a state they don't have representatives in the in the house of representatives um but they don't what we saw they got hit by two hurricanes in a row well that's difficult right

in any kind of circumstance but you need hardened infrastructure you need uh power poles there is steel power steel towers instead of wood we saw this in south louisiana where you know they're hit by hurricanes regularly there well if you use wood power poles instead of steel ones or concrete ones they're not going to last and that's a problem again that goes back to the capital issue which requires these continuing infusions of money to make sure the grid has integrity. But natural disasters are I mean, they're hard. I mean, I've seen it. I saw it in South Louisiana. People will use local, you know, small generators to get the power they need if they can't rely on the grid. Another place in the world where we've seen a huge impact is Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Now, it isn't just electricity. It's natural gas. It's oil. It's a bunch of these different forms of energy. But it seems like there's a lot of confusion because headlines will read tons of sanctions against Russia. But then if you look at the dollar denominated trade with Russia, it appears up in that same year. And a lot of that has to do with just spiking prices and things like that. How do you, as someone who pays a lot of attention to various energy markets and kind of the adoption of these fuels, evaluate what is actually happening, right? What is going on in that sector of the world when it comes to natural gas, oil and mainly electricity as well? Well, let's talk about Ukraine first, because this is a complex and multi multifaceted challenge. And what is Russia doing and what have they begun doing since really they started last October, started attacking the Ukrainian grid.

and this was a way that you if you want to if you want to kill modern society what do you do that you attack their electric grid and so the russians have been slowly degrading the ukrainian grid and there was a very good article in the wall street journal a few a few days ago talking about that you the linemen and i'm my some of my personal heroes are electric linemen i love those guys right the people who turn the wrenches who get up in those bucket trucks and all kinds of weather that these were you know they were being lauded by the ukrainians as their heroes because of what they were able to do but the russians are slowly degrading the ukrainian grid and making it harder for ordinary ukrainians to get along and to have heat in their homes and lights and this is

this is a corrosive effect on society and that will continue i think we've seen that the russians are going to continue these attacks on their on the ukrainian grid and then that becomes a problem because then you don't have the necessary transformers you don't have you run out of of wire, you run out of the poles, you run out, all of these things in the supply chain then become more difficult. And then we haven't talked yet about nuclear power and then in the Zaporizhia nuclear plant that the Russians are now claiming is their own. That plant has been shut down. It's in safe operating mode, not at no big danger of an accident there. But this is what the Russians are claiming as one of the spoils of war. And they want that plant for themselves. And so

So I'm adamantly pro-nuclear, but it, again, as I talked about before, requires civil society. You need strong governments with strong systems and people that are trained and well-trained that can run nuclear power plants, and that's no easy task. If we then bring it here to the United States, what's fascinating to me, and I know something that you've covered before, is this idea that renewable energy is meeting immense resistance in rural America. So it's an idea that is kind of received a lot of popularity and support in the coastal elite cities and inside of our academic institutions. And then when you kind of meet reality, whether it's in the plains of the Midwest, if it's kind of in the deep oil and gas sector of Texas or elsewhere, people kind of aren't as excited or they may actually be anti some of these ideas or not believe that it's actually possible to do this.

What has been your experience in trying to unpack what's going on between the ideas and the theoretical and then the reality on the ground, especially in the rural parts of America? Well, this is one of the key challenges, Anthony, is that we hear a lot of promotion of renewable energy and it polls very well. You look at any of the polling data, large majorities of Americans say, oh, we love wind and solar, but they don't want to live next to these big projects. and so the what i see is very clearly an urban rural divide in this regard um and i'm not a partisan i'm not a democrat i'm not a republican i'm disgusted right but the democrats are very much pro renewables right and they and the democrats get the majority of their votes in the big cities you can see this on any of the electoral college maps you know um but in rural america there is widespread resistance to the expansion of wind and solar projects i i maintain

the renewable rejection database. I started collecting this data in 2015. Why? Because as the famous industrial analyst, W. Edwards Deming said, in God, we trust all others bring data. So I started collecting the numbers, right? And now I've done it for now going on nine years. But here's the punchline. Last year alone in the United States were 79 rejections of solar projects, 79. And of those more than 40 of them were in the state of Ohio, where you had more than 40 townships rejecting wind or solar projects or saying they are not welcome here, either wind or solar or both. It's happening in Iowa. It's happening in Indiana, in Illinois, in all across the central part of America, but really it's from Maine to Hawaii. This is a story that was never

reported on the New York Times or big media outlets. In 2019, there were 200 people arrested on the island of Oahu protesting a wind project. 200 arrested. So this idea that wind energy and solar are clean and green yeah yeah yeah yeah but they require massive amounts of land and that's the key issue and it can't be overcome because of the low power density of wind and solar and so this is one reason why i've been reporting on it and of course the wind and solar guys don't like that i report on it they don't like they want to discount the rejection database but the numbers are the numbers not my numbers they're the numbers one other aspect of this that um I was not aware of until the United States pulled out of Afghanistan was there are these mines where minerals and metals and magnets and all these other kind of components that end up being put into various types of technologies or physical products that are supposed to be helping accelerate the adoption of renewable energy.

There are mines all over the world, obviously, throughout different African countries, Afghanistan, China, et cetera. But as I dug into Afghanistan specifically, the Taliban essentially came under control of this mine or they came into control of the mine. And as I dug deeper and deeper, I started to realize, well, China has very deep control of a lot of these mines as well. Sometimes in the country of China, other times they have partnered up or financed. They have a lot of debt on some sort of mining operation or logistics, moving the metals, minerals and other components to kind of their destination. Are we just at a point where even if everyone accepted renewable energy, it would be hard to actually build enough of the physical products because the components are either too expensive or too inaccessible for kind of the Western world and the United States of America specifically? Well, I'd restate it as saying that this idea around the energy transition, which is the phrase we hear all the time, is that the energy transition, the metals, minerals, and magnets that are required for the energy transition, China has a dominant role in nearly all of those. I spoke in Houston yesterday about this.

The Department of Energy last year released a report on neodymium iron boron magnets. These are the high-strength magnets that are doped with dysprosium and terbium to make them work better in high temperature. But these are the critical magnets used in electric vehicles and in wind turbines. China controls more than 90% of the global production of these neodymium iron boron magnets. But you look at this, there was a report that just came out in the last few days from the International Energy Agency. You look at electrolyzers to produce hydrogen. You look at wind turbine blades, the nacelles, the electric vehicle batteries, electric vehicles themselves. China, again, controls dominant market share in all of those.

And further, back to your point on the mining and the processing, the same is true for rare earth elements. I mentioned dysprosium and terbium, neodymium, lanthanum. That market is also the rare earth elements also controlled by China. And the growth areas for processing of things like cobalt, copper, lithium, nickel, again, China has the dominant position in, in not just in current production, but in the projected production of those metals. So there's nothing free, right? You know, there's no such thing as Milton Friedman said, there's no such thing as a free lunch. And this idea that, oh, we're just

going to shift away from the hydrocarbon based economy, which we've been doing now for more than 120 years, and go to something else. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is going to take a lot of time and a lot of money. And we have to be very clear about the supply chain risks and what this means in terms of the U.S. and China and our long-term relationship with China. I'm not a China basher. China is going to look after China. But we have to be very clear-eyed about this. There's another idea that you've popularized, and I've seen you talk about this idea of natural gas to nuclear as a way for the United States to address a lot of different problems. What exactly does that mean natural gas to nuclear is that just we need the full array of options from an energy

standpoint i i typify it this way anthony i say this is the no regrets policy if we're serious about decarbonization so global warming and climate change this is a real challenge and the way i put it is climate change is a concern it's not our only concern so if we're going to be rational about how we go forward and we think about what we're going to do with regard to reducing emissions what is the what are the best ways to go about that i for 13 years i've been saying the same thing end to end natural gas to nuclear why because both of those sources are low or no carbon they're abundant the technologies are well known and the and the ability to grow them in and allow them to scale up is there's real potential there they're the amount of natural gas and new

discoveries in the mediterranean just in the last few weeks are offshore egypt massive discoveries of new natural gas. Same offshore Africa. The world is awash in natural gas, but we have to drill for it. The technology of nuclear energy, well-known, well-developed, the Chinese, the Russians, the South Koreans, the United States, the French, there are a lot of countries that can deploy nuclear at scale. So if we're serious about reducing emissions, we need to be serious about natural gas and nuclear because renewables cannot, will not be able to scale up to the degree that we need to if we're going to make a serious dent in global CO2 emissions. So what fascinates me about you and why I wanted to talk to you was kind of two different

components that are related. The first is that you have been a very outspoken critic of the United States' goal to reach energy independence. You basically said that is not feasible to actually accomplish. On top of that, you, I believe, testified, but for sure have publicly criticized both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, two different sides of the aisle, for many of the energy policies that we're pursuing, specifically around using renewable energy to eventually get to a point where the United States could be energy independent and serve all of those energy needs

that we have. As you approach this, is there any path to where the United States could actually get to an energy independence, or is it just that the renewable energy path that is being pursued can't get us there? Hey guys, what's going on? I hope that you're enjoying this conversation, but I wanted to interrupt for a quick second and tell you about a brand new conference that I'm hosting on March 4th at the Miami Beach Convention Center. The event is called Lyceum Miami, and tickets are completely free for anyone who wants to come. I'm bringing together many of the most popular guests from the podcast over the last couple of years. Some of the guest speakers that we've already announced are people like Vivek Ramaswamy from Strive Asset Management, or Delian and Mike

Solana from Founders Fund, Chris Williamson from the Modern Wisdom Podcast, Cody Sanchez from Contrarian Thinking, and billionaire Christian Agermeyer, among many others. I've got a number of amazing surprise guests as well, some that you definitely will not expect, and others that come from walks of life that you will be scratching your head as to how I even got them to show up. But come check out Lyceum Miami on March 4th. The Lyceum was a public gym in Athens, Greece, where people used to come together, talk about ideas, and debate topics that were important to society. I want to meet people in person, in real life, once again, after three years of a hiatus from real-life events.

And so, I'm hosting the event, and as I mentioned, anyone from anywhere can come to this event completely for free. All you need to do is go to LyceumMiami.com, and you'll be able to pick up a free general admission ticket. Make sure you claim your ticket in order to get in through the doors. Lyceum Miami is going to be a great time, so come check it out. Come hang out with me, many of the popular guests from the podcast, and other like-minded individuals. Lyceum Miami, March 4th, Miami Beach Convention Center. I hope to see you there. All right, let's get back into this conversation.

Well, the latter, I would agree. There's no way that we can rely solely on renewable energy to get us to be independent. As I talked about China, the supply chain with China is one that is going to take decades to change. We can't suddenly begin producing these magnets and metals and minerals at the scale that the Chinese are now. We can't do it in a couple or three or four years. We can't do it in a decade. It's going to take multiple decades. But I think the issue to go back to the energy independence. This is a this is a marketing slogan. We are interdependent in the world today on all kinds of different things. We could talk about tennis rackets or shoes or beer or wine or you name it. We live in a global economy. And yet this idea of energy

independence, it goes back even back to the nineteen nineteen seventy three in the OPEC oil embargo, where, you know, politicians are saying, well, we should be independent of foreign oil. Okay, well, I get that. And now we've talked about this, this same issue now for almost 60 years. But we are still not energy independent in the US, we export a lot of crude oil, we import a lot of refined products, we export a lot of refined products. And so we live in particular when it comes to the oil and oil market. And now increasingly in the natural gas market, we are interdependent in the world, forgive me. um we're independent in the world and that's not going to change i mean and and well it shouldn't because look at the you know energy independent well if we were energy independent we wouldn't be able to send natural gas to europe right so we we you know we have the the reality of a global integrated economy is real and it's particularly real when it comes to energy and energy supply chains i recently spoke to a gentleman uh bill perkins bill perkins is a natural gas trader

pretty well known in the poker world, a number of other industries. And one of the things that he brought up was actually many of the actions of the United States in the Russia-Ukraine conflict have caused more inefficiencies. We've seen backups and storage around the world. We see places saying, I'm not going to use that pipeline, but instead I'm going to put it on a ship and then I'll just sail it around and get it there from a different geographic approach. What is the kind of measurement that you could give us in terms of how inefficient is this entire logistics and energy market becoming? Or is it actually becoming more efficient over the long run with some short term hiccups, where there's inefficiency introduced? Like is the is the

trend that is becoming more efficient? Or is the trend that is actually becoming less efficient over time? That's an interesting question. I hadn't thought about it in those terms. But I put it this way. I think that the molecules that we are producing, whether it's natural gas or particularly propane, my friend Chris Wright, his favorite hydrocarbon is propane. Why? Because it's easily transported under a standard temperature and pressure. You can use it as a cooking fuel. You can use it as a, you know, a transportation fuel, as a process of chemical, you can turn it into chemicals. I think that market, we see it in the maturation, the very fast maturation of the the global LNG market. Remember, it was only about six years ago the U.S. began exporting LNG at all,

and now the U.S. is one of the world's biggest suppliers of LNG into the global market. So I think the short answer would be that the market is becoming, the energy market is becoming more efficient because those molecules are finding homes faster than they ever have before. And the U.S. is playing a bigger role, fortunately, in this marketplace because of the shale revolution has fundamentally changed how the U.S. interacts in this global market. For those that are listening, LNG is liquefied natural gas, which is relatively new to the market. Robert, another thing that you've talked about, which I got to admit, this gave me a good chuckle because as someone who is native to the Internet, I love someone who can come up with an idea

that just probably absolutely really, really upsets their critics. And one of the things that you have criticized is this whole idea of the safety of birds or wildlife protection laws. And what you explicitly call out is that there are oil producers and electric utilities that have been charged and fined under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act for killing birds, right? It is no good. It's bad. There's rules that prevent them from doing that. And if they do it, they end up getting fined, et cetera. But you wrote this article in the Wall Street Journal, which is so important and deemed so important that it's literally on your Wikipedia page with this excerpt that says, yet there is one group of energy producers that are

not being prosecuted for killing birds, wind power companies. And wind powered turbines are killing a vast number of birds every year. A July 2008 study of the wind farm at Alamont Pass, California estimated that its turbines kill an average of 80 golden eagles per year. The study funded by the Alameda County Community Development Agency also estimated that about 10,000 birds nearly all protected by this act are being whacked every year at Alamont 10,000 birds is a big number why is it that there is such a different treatment to the different companies when it comes to just birds let alone other things well thank you this is a key issue for me I'm a longtime bird watcher I'm proudly a bird watcher I'm an outdoorsman and I you know this is something that gives me

great joy and a whole lot of other people. And the bird populations around the world, numerous studies, including a recent one by Cornell, have documented dramatic declines in the bird population around the world. And yet these wind companies are allowed to build these wind projects. And in fact, I wrote about a piece, published a piece last year in Newsweek, the biggest renewable energy company, producer of renewable energy in the world, NextEra Energy, built a wind project in the middle of known golden eagle habitat they were warned three times by the fish and wildlife service not to build the wind project where they built it they built it anyway and they got fined under the migratory bird treaty act they should have been charged

criminally under the golden eagle and balden golden balden eagle protection act they weren't but they paid a fine to the federal government that less i think it was memory serves something them less than $30 million. But they did it on purpose, Anthony. I mean, they did it on purpose. They knowingly went in an area where they knew they were going to kill eagles, and they did it anyway. And so this just grinds my gears, as my late brother John Bryce said, grills my cheese. I mean, in what other industry would be allowed to do this except this supposedly clean energy business? It's outrageous. It is totally outrageous. And the way the wind industry responds is, oh, well, it's only a few. Or, oh, cats kill birds. Cats don't kill golden eagles.

Cats don't kill bald eagles. I mean, this is a farce. And yet this industry is allowed to get away with murder. And it's not just birds, it's bats as well. And this is one of the other parts here that I think is critical because, in fact, the impact on bat populations may be ultimately, in terms of ecosystem impacts, greater than the impact that these wind turbines are having on birds. Bats are important pollinators and insectivores. And so we've seen numerous studies in Canada and all around the US, in fact, studies showing that the number of bats who are being killed by wind turbines may be greater than the number of birds being killed. And this is a real problem because bats generally have very slow reproductive rates. They're only flying mammal.

And so this impact on wildlife and this excuse that, oh, it's only a few or, well, global warming or climate change, well, damn it, no, this is not okay. We need to think about these impacts first. And it's one reason why I'm so adamantly pro-nuclear. If we're serious about reducing emissions, we need small footprints and nuclear energy has the highest power density of any form of power generation we should be doing that instead of littering the landscape with these giant wind turbines why is nuclear uh so uh toxic as a topic why is it that no one wants to approve the building of these new facilities or uh it whenever it's brought up uh by anyone who appears to be in the mainstream kind of conscious or or uh talk track they just immediately discount

it and say like that's not an option let's go back to the renewable conversation how long do we have i mean the the the demonization of nuclear energy by the left by what i would call the the these in the ngo corporate climate industrial complex and their push for renewables instead of nuclear it goes back decades and it has been the sierra club for instance and the natural resources Defense Council. The Natural Resources Defense Council, by the way, has an annual budget of over $400 million a year. They bragged about the closure, the premature and foolish closure of the Indian Point nuclear plant in New York City or just outside of New York. And what has happened since the closure of that nuclear plant, emissions in New York State have skyrocketed and so have

consumers' bills because now they're more reliant on natural gas. So this demonization of nuclear is not new. It's been part of the playbook for these NGOs. I don't call them environmental groups because I don't think they're environmental groups. I don't call them green. I don't think they're green. This has been part of their playbook now for decades, and they're not going to change. But if they're serious, in my view, if you're serious about climate change, and numerous climate scientists have made the same point, you can't be serious about reducing emissions, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and dismiss nuclear energy. In my view, if you're anti-carbon dioxide and anti-nuclear you're pro blackout well anthony i am adamantly anti-blackout

so am i um one of the industries that uh has forced people to become uh much more informed about energy is bitcoin mining i don't know if you know anything about uh the mining industry uh or have any thoughts there uh just given its intersection with so much of the energy conversation uh both in the united states and internationally sure let me just add one quick point on the nuclear thing if i may just jump back to that because anthony i think that the conversation has shifted i think that we're and i'm seeing it here in the u.s we see it in the in the extension of the diablo canyon nuclear plant in california we saw it in the extensions of the nuclear plants in illinois byron and dresden that there is a new cadre of younger

climate activists pro-nuclear people uh maddie hilly with the campaign for a green nuclear deal Mark Nelson with Radiant Energy Fund, Paris Ortiz Wines, a big group of people who are campaigning to save our existing nuclear plants and build new ones. And it's a different generation. I'm 62. It's a younger generation that is carrying this issue forward. And I think that we're seeing some momentum on Capitol Hill with a push to reform the NRC, to add federal funding and support for new nuclear power plants. So that's very hopeful, I think. And it's something I wanted to just make clear before I talked about Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining. It's clear Bitcoin mining is, you know, it's enormous power consumer. There are some miners here in Texas that are using when they're locating in West Texas. They're using low cost power when when wind energy is, you know, blowing when there's a lot of wind energy in West Texas, mining there, you know, mining Bitcoin and Ethereum and other other cryptocurrencies when they have cheap power, then shutting them off when power prices go up. So there's no doubt that this, you know, what Bitcoin mining is, essentially, you're just arbitraging the price of electricity and turning it into crypto. And so they're looking all over the world for low cost electricity because they're looking for that arbitrage. And so they're finding it some in Texas, of course, in China and, you know, different locations around the world where you have hydro or so on.

But, you know, I'm not opposed to Bitcoin. You know, I think it's interesting. I've seen, you know, crypto mines in Iceland. We visited some and featured them in our film Juice. So it's an interesting industry. Is it real? Is crypto real? Yeah, that's a longer discussion.

I mean, we don't have all the time for that today, I'm sure. Well, what's fascinating, I think, for us to discuss today, because the audience will definitely have their opinions about real or not real, is mining as a ability to stabilize the grids. Texas, for example, when there was a number of different blackouts or problems, miners basically were getting paid to shut off. They did it. All of a sudden you get the stabilized grid. And I think a lot of people in the Bitcoin community kind of hold those events up as an example as to we should have miners everywhere in the United States so they can help to stabilize these grids. Is there flawed thinking there or do you think that that has some merit? i don't necessarily agree with this word stabilize i think that it's what i how i typify it is that the miners are able to use power when power is cheap and then shut down when it's dear and that good for them i mean you know in that regard they're not any different kind of in a macro

sense than maybe other big industrial users so uh i i don't see any problem with that right you know, people, you know, people always are finding different ways to use electricity and data centers are massive, you know, Google and Amazon, they have effectively created their own grids with their own backup power generators. And they're doing it because they need five or six nines of reliability, right? 99.999% on time or online rates for their customers, make sure they don't go down. So the Bitcoin miners, you know, look, they're going to locate where they find an opportunity where they can find cheap power and then you know but they're i don't like the word stabilize i think they're they're using the grid to their best advantage and so am i yeah um i have

and i say that because i have power i have solar panels on the roof of my house right i have i have eight and a half kilowatts of solar panels so half of the year i get i don't pay anything for my electricity to austin energy so i use the grid when it's convenient for me so in some ways i'm Are you stabilizing the grid? Yeah. If the Bitcoin miners are stabilizing the grid, then so am I. Another topic that is frequently talked about in both the Bitcoin world, but I think also oil and gas, is this whole idea of the flare capture and the ability to actually monetize that energy source right there on site. What's your thoughts there?

Have you kind of seen anything that people should be aware of? Well, yeah, I think this is really something that's very positive. One of the problems, and it is a problem with the oil and gas industry, is the issue of flaring. And so people are not familiar. If a given oil well is not within proximity of a natural gas pipeline, then the producers will flare the natural gas that's coming out of the ground. And this is particularly prevalent if natural gas prices are low. And they're low now. They're about less than $3 here in the US and the latest Henry Hub prices. But that's bad because you're just wasting a valuable resource and you're emitting CO2 because you're burning this gas for no reason.

So what Bitcoin miners, particularly in West Texas that I'm familiar with, and I know some of them, they're locating in areas where there was a lot of gas that was being flared and they're saying, hey, we'll use the gas that you were going to burn. We'll run it through a turbine or reciprocating engine will produce power, and then we'll mine Bitcoin with that juice. And so I think this is great. I mean, you know, they're producing something that has value from something that has no value and was creating pollution. So I think that's a big win. For a layman like myself, who knows just enough about the energy industry to be dangerous, it feels like that is the one thing that everyone, oil and gas, politicians, entrepreneurs,

bitcoiners etc all kind of look at and say that seems like a good idea and then once you kind of get outside of that flare gas uh capture uh in use case uh there's a lot of debate right like like it there becomes much more questions and debate uh but that flare gas capture seems to be the uh the winning strategy to get a lot of different types of people groups and perspectives all to come to the table and say okay i can get on board with this is that your experience as well yeah i think it's you know it's a simple i mean this would in poker you're going to call it a lay down hand, right? Well, you know, look, we're, we're, we're preventing the waste of this resource and we're creating something of value from it and we're making money at it. And, and so I think it's

a win, win, win, win. I don't know how many wins you can claim there, but yeah, I mean, this is a really positive development. And the next step would be then for some of this other gas that's being flared. Well, could we turn it into other products or could we turn it into power and put it back on the grid? Or could we turn it into, you know, something else we haven't thought about yet but i think this is a very positive thing and it's something you know just entrepreneurship at work this is what it's what people and entrepreneurs do they look for that what my friend porter bennett calls the with a fat margin and he said then they find that fat margin and it gets squeezed as more people find that uh that opportunity and exploit it before i let you go one of my

favorite questions to ask uh reporters uh authors of books or people who uh have the uh the ambition and the heart to create documentaries is what are the stories that are most interesting to you in the world right now? Like when you think about things that you're interested in or things that are developing,

what stories are you paying attention to? I like that question. You know, on my podcast, the Power Hungry podcast, I always ask people, what are they reading and what gives them hope? Those are my closing questions.

But as a, and that's, I think of myself as a reporter, right? I don't, you know, I've written six books. I've made a documentary. I'm a podcaster. I do these other things. I do a lot of public speaking, but I think I'm just at root of reporter. And what do I respond to? I respond to people.

You know, and I think that one of the strengths of our documentary juice is that it's a people movie. And so why do I maintain the rural rejection database? Why do I care about these people in rural America? Because I love those people, you know, and I've met some of them. You know, these claims that, oh, wind energy is green. Well, talk to some of the people that have wind turbines built near their homes and they're suffering because of the noise pollution from these wind projects. And it is noise pollution. I've met these people. I've been in some of their homes. So I care about them. And I care about those human stories. And those are the ones that I want to tell. I mean, there are a lot of policy wonks and a lot of policy stuff. To me, what

really resonates and what the stories that I really respond to are people stories and humans. And I'm working on another documentary called Burning Down the Grid, in which we're really going to do some of that and talk to people who are, you know, that are on the, they're being affected by uh low quality electric grids the spread of renewables etc what has been the most surprising thing of your career when it comes to electricity in the energy markets another good question well you know i'll answer a bit in one way we went to india for when i was reporting on the book and on my latest book a question of power and when we were making juice and i think the thing that surprised me there was the absolute abject poverty that i wasn't

I thought I knew poor. I thought I knew poverty. I didn't know what that was until I saw it in India, the level of poverty. But I think that's one answer to what surprised me. I think the other is ingenuity and the thing that maybe it's a different, not surprise, but maybe it gives me faith or gives me hope that we are smart and we're figuring things out. And I'm very hopeful for nuclear. I'm very clear eyed about the challenges for nuclear power in America. But I'm also seeing a lot of opportunity and entrepreneurs who are looking at this market and saying, how can we build a better, smaller, faster, lighter, denser, cheaper reactor and deploy it at scale? And so I wouldn't necessarily say that's surprising

because I have a lot of faith in the human spirit and entrepreneurship. But that that is gratifying and one that I'm continually impressed by this entrepreneurship and this the level and the depth and the amount of people a number of people that are pursuing these different opportunities like to be talked about with the bitcoin miners locating and using flared gas for for power a question of power electricity and the wealth of nations is the book that came out in 2020 uh there it is right there there it is on your screen there you go tell your friends tell your neighbors you don't have to read it you just have to buy it you buy it on your kindle i make a better royalty so there you go amazing all right

my last question for you is after this book what's the single best piece of feedback you got from a reader i well readers are well i get a good i guess i'll answer it this way what gives me what heartens me what what motivates me what keeps me going because i i work hard you know i travel a And what keeps me going is that people respond and they say, hey, you know, I really like what you said there or, you know, I'm pleased you're covering this or people in Madison County, Iowa, saying thank you for covering the controversy in our county, in our fight against Berkshire Hathaway and Mid-American Energy and the encroachment of these wind projects. That is something that, I mean, I take to heart and keeps me motivated and, you know, what fuels my passion for this business. And I have a lot of passion for energy and power. It's my purpose. It's my focus.

It's what I plan to do for the rest of my, you know, as long as I'm able to work, that's what I'm going to do. Amazing. Well, anyone who has not read the book yet, I highly suggest they go and they check it out. robert where can we send people to find the other things you're doing the podcast and any other platforms online that you think would be helpful sure well i've moved to substack lately and had great fun there i have just a recent piece that i published there called the billionaires behind the gas bans which has gone viral i've been pleased to see that so i'm on substack robert bryce.substack.com of course the power hungry podcast is available on where all fine

podcasts are found i've written six books i'm easy to find on the interweb but i have a website robert bryce.com so but yes robert bryce.substack.com if you please awesome i i appreciate taking the time to do this i think that the work you're doing is incredibly important and i always appreciate someone who's willing to think for themselves and kind of say what they think so keep up the great work and we'll definitely do this again in the future i think i really appreciate it anthony great fun Thank you.