Thursday, February 1, 2024

"Juice: Power, Politics & The Grid..."

We visit this site's proprietor quasi-periodically and got very lucky with today's timing.

From Robert Bryce's substack, January 31:

Juice: Power, Politics & The Grid Is Out!
Our five-part docuseries on the fragilization of the electric grid is on YouTube. It’s free. And it’s terrific. 

After finishing our first documentary in 2019, I told myself I was done making films. The process of making documentaries takes too long, costs too much, and involves too much friction, particularly when it comes to distribution.

But in February 2021, Lorin and I lost power at our home here in Austin for 48 hours. My colleague, Tyson Culver, who directed our first film, Juice: How Electricity Explains The World, also lost power. That blackout and the fact that the ERCOT grid nearly collapsed, convinced us that we had to do another film. And now, three years later, we accomplished what we set out to do. Our five-part docuseries, Juice: Power, Politics & The Grid, is now available for free on YouTube.

Rather than make a feature-length film, we decided to make this content as user-friendly as possible. That’s why we broke it into five episodes, each lasting about 20 minutes.

The series features 34 interviews that we shot in Texas, Japan, Vermont, Oklahoma, Colorado, California, Washington D.C., Illinois, Egypt, and England. Our cast of characters includes many of the world’s top thought leaders on energy, including political scientist Roger Pielke Jr., Grid Brief editor Emmet Penney, civil rights leader Jennifer Hernandez, author Michael Shellenberger, Canadian nuclear activist Chris Keefer, author Meredith Angwin, former IEA director Nobuo Tanaka, World Nuclear Association director Sama Bilbao, Campaign for a Green Nuclear Deal founder Madi Hilly, and many others.

I’m super proud of Episode 3, which features the Osage tribe’s battle with Enel over a wind project the company built by violating the tribe’s sovereignty. I have been reporting on this story for more than four years. I was thrilled last month when a federal court judge in Tulsa ordered Enel to remove all 84 of the turbines it built in Osage County. As I reported here on December 23, it’s a landmark ruling and an enormous embarrassment for Big Wind and Enel, a company that has endlessly touted its “green” credentials....

....MUCH MORE, including the five videos.

Previous visits:
There are more, including going back to his time at the Houston Chronicle but right now I am going to have a strawberry.