Sunblock – The global Fight to save farmland from big solar – On the Energy Realities
You won’t want to miss this episode of the Energy Realities Podcast with David Blackmon, Stu Turley, Irina Slav, and Tammy Nemeth with their special guest Robert Bryce. Robert has a new mini-documentary out, and it is about the global push to save farmlands from large-scale solar development. This is one of the most significant issues imaginable.
There were lots of key points in the podcast. Green energy is not sustainable, and the key points around the solar land reclamation and what to do with the toxic solar panels. Right now they are being shipped off to landfills and toxic waste.
As subsidies fail worldwide, Robert has been monitoring the number of canceled wind and solar projects globally. Furthermore, wind and solar land reclamation projects are expected to incur significant costs.
Also, hats off to the Trump adminstration for taking up the charge to save the eagles and raptors from the wind turbine problems.
Full episode from Robert Bryce ‘s YouTube page
Highlights of the Podcast
00:01 – Introduction & New Documentary
02:15 – Scope of the Problem in Texas
06:37 – Corporate Greenwashing & Tax Incentives
11:05 – Efficiency & Scale Issues
14:29 – Ecological Impacts
21:13 – Limited Viability of Agrovoltaics & Land Reclamation Concerns
25:21 – Climatism vs. Environmentalism
32:39 – Local Opposition & Rooftop Alternatives
37:30 – Economics & Absentee Landowners
43:38 – Waste & Recycling Challenges
51:34 – Signs of Optimism
57:39 – Closing Remarks
Sunblock – The global Fight to save farmland from big solar – On the Energy Realities
Video Transcription edited for grammar. We disavow any errors unless they make us look better or smarter.
Irina Slav [00:00:11] Hello and welcome to the Energy Realities podcast with David Blackmon in Texas. Hello, David, how are you today?
David Blackmon [00:00:22] Just lovely, it’s a beautiful day in Texas.
Irina Slav [00:00:25] It’s another beautiful day in Texas, do you get any other kind?
David Blackmon [00:00:29] Never, never. As long as I’m alive and in Texas, I’m happy.
Irina Slav [00:00:34] That’s great. And we have Stu Turley, who is where today?
Stuart Turley [00:00:39] I’m in Oklahoma today, but next week I’ll be in Abilene.
Irina Slav [00:00:44] How’s the, you know, home improvement work going?
Stuart Turley [00:00:49] Rough. Backhoe is lovely. Life is good.
Irina Slav [00:00:55] And we’ve got Tammy Nemeth in the UK, I see.
Tammy Nemeth [00:00:59] Yes, I’m here in the UK today. Great to have a nice day.
Irina Slav [00:01:05] Oh, I’m hearing something about another heat wave that used to be called summer.
Tammy Nemeth [00:01:12] Yeah, I know. And they’re putting these ridiculous warnings out, like, if it’s hot out, sleep on the main floor, don’t sleep upstairs in your bedroom. Like, what are they gonna have inspectors coming around? Are you sleeping downstairs? Because you should be. It’s too odd.
Irina Slav [00:01:28] Oh God, this is horrible. And we have a special guest today. That’s Robert Bryce, energy journalist, chronicler of the failures of the energy transition, advocate for common sense and free will. Hello, Robert.
Robert Bryce [00:01:46] Hi, good morning, y’all.
Irina Slav [00:01:48] And you’re here today because you just produced a new film.
Robert Bryce [00:01:53] I did, thank you. Yes, it’s called Sunblock, the global fight to save farmland from big solar, which as you know, you’re in Europe, this is happening all over the world. But yes, happy to talk about that. Thank you, glad to be with you as always.
Irina Slav [00:02:08] We’re happy to have you. Tell us more about this film. It’s great. The only thing I wish it was longer.
Robert Bryce [00:02:15] Well, thank you. I thought I was done making documentaries. I’ve done two of them. The first one came out in 2019, Juice, How Electricity Explains the World, and then last year, a five-part docuseries, Juice Power Politics and The Grid. And I thought, oh, they take too long and they cost too much. Well, this time, I worked with my daughter, Mary. We produced this film in about two weeks. It cost maybe a couple thousand dollars, less than 10 minutes. But I’m very proud of it. We put it together to illustrate what is going on, not just here in Texas, although that was where we went. In fact, that was one of the great things. All we had to do was drive less than 100 miles from Austin here into the area around Troy, Texas. And I didn’t believe quite the scale of it until I saw it, but there’s one project we looked at called Blevins Solar. It covers three and a half square miles. And when you look in Falls, Milam, and Bell County, just those three counties alone, there have already been over 40,000 acres covered with solar panels. That’s more than 60 square miles. I mean, and this is some of the best agricultural land in the world. And so I knew that this was ongoing because I’ve maintained the Global Renewable Rejection database, but… I had no idea of the scale of what was happening and then once I started looking at it, I thought, you know, this would be just great to do a very short documentary that looks at this issue because it’s drastically under covered by NPR, New York Times, et cetera.
Irina Slav [00:03:51] This is perhaps the biggest problem with utility-scale solar. They’re putting it on productive land and in Texas, on some of the most fertile soil in the state, I learned from your movie. Because, you know, my family and I were traveling a couple of days ago from Bulgaria to Romania, and I noticed a lot, a lot of solar installations on the way. But they were not on farmland. They were in yards on you know former industrial grounds. I did not see any solar on farm land thankfully for now. Why is this happening in other places? I know in the UK they specifically instructed, you know, that they pass legislation so they can build solar on farmland. But was the situation in the US? Because these are really, really huge solar installations.
Robert Bryce [00:04:51] Yeah. Well, it’s good that you mentioned Bulgaria arena, because I think as we’ve discussed before, you have a prohibition in your country about taking prime farmland, right, to cover with alternative energy. You’ve seen now globally similar moves in Italy by the new Prime Minister there, Georgia Maloney. You seen it in the province of Alberta under Daniel Smith, an culture first policy. So there are areas, provinces, and in fact, entire countries around the world who are looking at this and saying, we need, as my new friend Robert Fleming, a rancher and farmer we interviewed in the film, he said something right on the dot. He used to, you know, there are a lot of ways to produce electricity. There’s only one way to produce food, and that’s with prime farm land. And so I just thought that was a great, you know a really great insight. But why is it happening in Texas? Well, you know, this state is more laissez-faire than others and there’s an attitude of, well, you can do whatever you like. But with limits, of course, as with everywhere. But in the Blackland Prairie, this is one of the areas that’s most fertile land in Texas and the most productive agriculture land for pasture land, for farming, for cropland. And yet, just in this small three county area, 64 square miles. And of course, who’s behind it? Big corporations, including big tech, Meta, Google, Facebook, or Meta Google, Microsoft, well, we’re green, we are clean, blah, blah, bla, bla. But this ignores this massive ecological footprint. And I have solar on the roof of my house, but let’s be clear, this is obscene what is happening really.
David Blackmon [00:06:37] Doesn’t it also? So. So you mentioned the tech companies, I’m sorry. They’re playing this shell game where they’re building these solar and wind projects. They’re funding them to burnish their green credentials. At the same time, recognizing they can’t power their data centers with wind and solar. So they’re doing it with natural gas and coal and nuclear. And so it’s all this big, huge virtue signaling exercise. Some of these solar farms that are being built in Texas will never even be hooked up into the grid. They’re being built strictly for virtue signaling by corporations and to take advantage of these insane tax cuts that were in the IRA, but that are now, you know, being phased out and going to go away at the end of 2027. So there’s been billions of dollars invested in these solar farms. I know in Texas and probably all over the country strictly to take advantage of the tax breaks and at the, and get those tax credits to apply against. These big corporations, other tax liabilities, with no guarantee that they’ll ever be hooked into the power grid. And the queues for these projects to be hooked in are three, four years in length now in ERCOT and even longer than that in some of the other regional grids. So it’s just a real racket in renewable energy these days.
Tammy Nemeth [00:08:01] It’s an indulgence. It’s like the medieval indulgences. And the corporations pay it not just because of the virtue signaling side of it, but because their investors are demanding it. So when you have these institutional investors that wanna wield the whole ESG score, they have to have the transition plans. They have to all this stuff on their books. Even though they will be investing in natural gas for the reliable power that they require for their data centers, they offset it supposedly with these indulgences, whether, you know, for the wind and solar for everybody else, but their operations will be running on the reliable power.
David Blackmon [00:08:39] That’s such a wonderful word for it, indulgences, I love it.
Robert Bryce [00:08:43] That’s funny, Tammy. You know, I’ve thought about that a lot. Martin Luther would recognize carbon credits. Absolutely, absolutely. He’d be tacking that on the door of the church saying, oh yeah, carbon credits. Yeah, we’re very familiar with this idea.
Tammy Nemeth [00:09:00] Where have I heard that before, right?
Irina Slav [00:09:01] But if they don’t even look into the grid, isn’t it just a waste of money? I mean, don’t the carbon credits start flowing once the power plant, so-called power plant starts operating?
David Blackmon [00:09:20] Well, carbon credits, yeah, but I mean, the bigger consideration for these big corporations has been the tax credits, the accelerated investment tax credit.
Irina Slav [00:09:29] We should know whether the solo installation is connected.
David Blackmon [00:09:34] All you got to do is kick off, kick off construction and that just means getting a bull out bulldozer out there to turn some dirt and the tax credits start coming in.
Robert Bryce [00:09:44] Well, I’ll add, I think that that’s true to a certain extent, David, and from what I see, you know, why are these projects going and where they’re going is because they can connect to the grid. And so I think I think they are being connected in especially in this region in Central Texas, because there’s a big high voltage transmission line that’s going right through there. But I think it’s yes, I think the tax credits, yes, I think some of the you know the carbon credits, etc. But this is all about the public-facing image of these companies as well. So, Blevins Solar, the big project that I mentioned, three and a half square miles, who are the off-takers? It’s Fujifilm and Bristol-Meyer Squibb. And in fact, on Earth Day, Fujifillm put something on Twitter saying, see, we’re gonna offset our electricity with this big project. And bragging, I mean, they had an aerial shot that we actually used in the documentary, Sunblock. And to show the scale of the project, but you know, this is corporate Their public facing greenwashing right that they are making sure that they can tell the public see we’re we’re virtuous So this is part of it back to Tammy’s point the rectangle on the right and remember that new gas is 1200 megawatts of power
Stuart Turley [00:11:05] There you go. There’s your scale drawing out of the video. I’ve got a few videos for you, Robert. You take a look at the Bridge City gas of 1,200 megawatts, 26 acres, that little dot on the paper. There’s the cellar farm.
Robert Bryce [00:11:24] Yeah, the gas plant is 88 times smaller, and the output is four times greater, and it will be dispatchable 24-7. And so it really is remarkable when you, it was something I thought, and it took a while for me to figure out how to get that image into the documentary, but I’m really pleased with how that came out. That’s amazing.
Tammy Nemeth [00:11:51] That scale is so important because people don’t understand. And when you put it into those kinds of terms, and it’s the same thing with wind, that you require all this space, all this land, all this area to produce the same amount that’s unreliable as that little square, which is so important to show. And you have to turn them off.
Stuart Turley [00:12:15] Robert, one of the things that I was actually very impressed, hey, I love all your work. And I would like to give you a shout out just for saying, hey, it’s kind of cool talking to you. But in your interview with Thomas, the farm owner here, he was also talking about changing of the runoff and everything else. I believe it was this one or it was one of others. And the water runoff change that the solar farms do Or it may have been the next group of farmers that you were talking to it’s incredible the change in water flow That’s not talked about
Robert Bryce [00:12:54] Yeah, the erosion and this gentleman, it’s on on the screen here, Thomas Daskasill. He’s a retired airplane mechanic, and he bought that property. He’s been in his family for 70 years, and he said he was never told anything about it, but his, you know, his property value has plummeted. He used to have this amazing view shed and now he’s looking out over and all around him through on three sides, nothing but, but, uh, you know, solar panels and it was Robert Fleming who you see there on the right. Who talked about the change in the water flow and the change and the velocity. And these two folks were wonderful. Lynn Fleming, she’s, these are, I love these people. I love farmers and ranchers. They’re the world’s most miserable optimists. I never met a farmer who’s ever made a dime, right? They’re all broke. It rains too much, it rains too little. Prices are not very good, but. What about catalog? Oh, they’re just pets, you know? They downplay everything, right? That they’re ever making money. But what Lynn said in this one segment about just pointing out how big the footprint of solar is and how much land is being lost to the massive footprint of the solar. And meanwhile, you bill McKibben is coming out with a new book. It’s, oh, here comes the sun and talking about, oh solar, the growth is inexorable. Okay, well, here’s the reality. Globally and in the US and according not my numbers the contribution of solar to the global energy mix the US energy mix is 1% 1% of globally
David Blackmon [00:14:29] And that’s after a massive five-year period in which it has expanded just almost exponentially across the world.
Irina Slav [00:14:38] Monstrously.
David Blackmon [00:14:40] Yeah, monstrously. That’s a great one. Exactly.
Stuart Turley [00:14:45] So green energy is not sustainable, nor is it clean. Did I hear that right?
Robert Bryce [00:14:52] Well, I’ll borrow my friend Jesse Ossobell’s line. He said, solar and wind may be renewable, but they are not green. And so I don’t use clean. I don’t use green. I don use renewable. This is alternative energy. And those other terms are, those are marketing terms. And we have to be very clear about what’s being said here and how the language is being used. But I also think it’s important. I’m glad to see this image up because… The number of solar projects that are being rejected is accelerating all over the world. And in fact, one of the points that I make in the film, if you just look at the British Isles, Tammy, I know you’re in London there, but in the UK, in England, Ireland, and Scotland, just since January 1st of this year, there have been over two dozen rejections of solar project. I mean, this backlash is happening. It is real. And I’m documenting it, and it doesn’t seem anyone else in the legacy media wants to cover it, but that’s just the reality.
Tammy Nemeth [00:15:53] I would qualify that, Robert, because the local councils might be rejecting it, but the Labor government has passed legislation that allows them to override those objections. And so there’s a case in the Midlands where the council said, no, we don’t want this, and the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero, which is an oxymoron. They’ve overwrote it and said we’re putting it through anyway because we need this energy. So I agree that the public doesn’t want it, they don’t like it, the farmers are upset, but at least in the UK, despite those objections, the government is steamrolling it through anyway.
Irina Slav [00:16:37] And they don’t care that people pose and that they will just get angrier. They don’t. They don’t care. That’s sweet.
Robert Bryce [00:16:47] No, that’s a really good point to me and when it’s well taken that and we see that in here in the us as well and The labor government, I just don’t understand it. You know, they they in theory are in favor of the working class but it’s clear that You know what is happening with the the I will say the liberal slash progressives in the uk Very similar to what you see in heavily democratic states here in. The u.s. New york, illinois Michigan and California have all done the same. Their legislatures have passed measures that allow the state bureaucracy to override the zoning of local communities. And so I actually double-checked in the Global Renewable Rejection Database. So far this year already in England, Ireland and Scotland, 29 rejections of solar, including just one at last. Uh last month in Northumberland um a project on 200 on 271 acres uh was rejected by the local council uh just uh with there had been 140 public objections so um here’s the counselor from Northumberlands Colin Horncastle said I think we can all agree with renewable energy but we cannot have renewable energy at any price this is purely wanton destruction of a rural paradise
Tammy Nemeth [00:18:10] Yay. And, you know, because in the UK, the whole walking thing is really huge. If you’ve ever seen one of the Jane Austen movies and they’re always walking and stuff like that, I never understood that till I lived here. And it was like, oh, my gosh, everybody’s out walking and they love the countryside. They love the fact that you can just cut across fields, doesn’t matter who owns them. There’s right of ways, there’s pathways and so on. And a lot of these solar installations, they immediately put fences up around. So, you know, you’ve had a byway for thousands of years, really, at least several hundred, but probably into the thousand year sort of thing where you can walk through and everything. And now they put, like, celebrities can’t put up fences across a by way. Madonna got into big trouble when she tried to do that on her estate here. But now solar panels, solar installations can put up fence and block these byways. And the British people are saying, no, we don’t want that.
Robert Bryce [00:19:09] You know, it’s interesting that you say that, Tammy, because when my daughter, Mary, I went up to Detroit, Texas, and we met the Fleming’s and the Daskasills there. And one of the first things I said, what have you noticed about these new solar projects? And they said, well, they put up these hurricane fences, right? And they’re six or eight feet tall. And so the wildlife can’t pass through them anymore. So the fields… If you had barbed wire fence, the wildlife could get through them, right? The deer and the and the foxes and the, you know, the rabbits, etc. She said now they can’t. And so that one of the the byproducts of these this these massive solar projects going into the region was a lot more roadkill because the wildlife suddenly weren’t weren’t able to travel. And so Lynn Fleming called them wildlife deserts. And I thought that was a really interesting way to think about it, that. You you’ve essentially paved I’m standing here outside the mountains Massive areas where you can’t know there’s going to be no wildlife that is that that because there’s no there’s No food. There’s you know, the the understory is going to maybe grass but there and and and they also pointed out No, uh, no vultures. No turkey vulturs. No raptors So it’s not just that they’re taking food out of production that they are disrupting the entire ecosystem around the region
Tammy Nemeth [00:20:30] That’s a great point. Because if you think of how raptors hunt, they need those open fields, you know, with the mice running around through the crops and stuff like that, or even around where the cattle are, in order to circle around and swoop down. But if you have all those solar panels there, how on earth are they going to swoop down and get their food, if the food’s even there anymore, as you point out?
Irina Slav [00:20:53] The food’s the roadkill for the ravens.
Tammy Nemeth [00:20:56] Which, and then they’ll get hit on the road too.
Irina Slav [00:20:59] Of course. But we’re trying to save the planet. This is actually really horrible because solar panel fans have been saying, oh no, you can grow something underneath the panel.
Irina Slav [00:21:13] How do you grow it if it’s walled off? I had no idea, actually, that they have these fences. You grow weeds. Okay, you grow what?
Robert Bryce [00:21:26] Yeah, they call it the word that they’re using is agrovoltaics. I know. They’re going to have the story above it and then below it. And so I don’t know. I just think that it would
Irina Slav [00:21:37] You can’t do it, you can’t. There are very few crops that can be grown in this way. And then the pastoralism of, oh, and we will have sheep grazing around the panels. Where are the sheep? You’ve walled off everything.
David Blackmon [00:21:57] Yeah. So, and, and also Robert, we get to the question at the end of the useful life of these solar farms, what’s going to happen to all that mess that’s out there on this land, are there any regulations in Texas, for example, that would require them to properly dismantle and dispose of all that?
Robert Bryce [00:22:15] That’s a good question, David, and I can’t answer it, you know, that that would be the one where the landowners would have to be very, very clear about our, where’s the bonding? Where’s the binding for this project at the end of life? And then now let’s, let’s think about just one aspect is the mass of the panels that, where is it going to go? They, they, they’re not recycling these, these panels at all. They’re going into the landfill. And there was a Harvard Business School study came out a couple of years ago that estimated by 2040 or 2050, the mass of the volume and the mass of the panels that are gonna have to be thrown away exceeds the volume that’s being produced. But one other quick point on the farming aspect of this and whether that land would go back into productive use. It’s two years ago, I was in Michigan talking with farmers in Ida Township, and their point was similar to the point that Robert Fleming made in our documentary Sunblock, which by the way is on my website, or it’s on my Substack, RobertBryce.substack.com for free. It’s also on YouTube, my page on YouTube Robert Bryce, it’s available there for free But in Ida Township, they were pointing out that once these solar projects go in, it ruins the tiling. Well, I don’t, I wasn’t familiar with that term. That’s the system of drainage that farmers work for years to perfect to make sure the water flows, but not too quickly, right? And so their point was that once you get these projects in, and this was in some very fertile soil up near Ann Arbor, Michigan, that once destroy that tiling, you’re gonna take that land out of productive use For the. For lifetimes. I don’t know, forever is a long time, but that will not be returned to Productive Ag in any time in the near term after the projects are dismantled, if they ever are.
David Blackmon [00:24:09] Yeah, what gets lost with both solar and wind is that so much of the installation, the industrial installation of the projects is underground. Yeah. But the foundation for the average wind turbine is gigantic. It’s enormous. These are huge skyscraper structures that require enormous foundations that are hidden beneath the ground. Only three feet deep is all that’s required. And so when you mess up the runoff and the erosion on otherwise fertile lands, you can have a situation where it’s completely condemned, that land is condemned, because nobody’s gonna pull those enormous foundations up out of the ground, okay? The three feet is supposedly enough to allow for farming to take place plus the towers are dismantled if they ever are. But the reality is, if you mess up the erosion cycle on farmland, a lot of that stuff is ultimately going to become exposed to the surface. And you’re never going to be able to use that farmland again. So it’s.
Robert Bryce [00:25:21] It occurs to me, David, and I’m just curious what the way I think about this is that, you know, I’m a longtime critic of the Sierra Club and these other big NGOs that climatism has supplanted environmentalism, that as a belief, as a worldview, this climate issue has superseded every other concern. And we see that, whether it’s wildlife, whether its, you know, saving farmland, etc. Oh, well, climate change, climate, change, climate change. I don’t know. Is that? How do you all think about that? I think environmentalism, that environmental, the care for the environment among the big NGOs is completely dead because it’s been swamped by climatism.
Tammy Nemeth [00:26:02] But they still go after farmers. Yeah.
Irina Slav [00:26:05] Yeah, of course.
David Blackmon [00:26:07] You know, the offshore wind, I mean, the, the animal rights groups never uttered a peep, we had over a hundred wells beached that, you know, we get beached on, on the beaches, offshore, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, as the ramping up of construction of those offshore wind.
Robert Bryce [00:26:24] And it was just coincidence.
David Blackmon [00:26:26] Was just cruel and they all just kept saying you never heard anything out of the Sierra Club
Stuart Turley [00:26:32] The outrage over the thousands of raptors and American bald eagles. In the last two days, Doug Burgum was also talking about how he’s going to make sure he’s working with Lee Zeldin on enforcing the raptor and bald eagle. Uh, stat things again and not issuing, uh, licenses for wind farms to kill.
David Blackmon [00:27:01] There you go.
Tammy Nemeth [00:27:02] Well, the thing is, the environmentalists say, or the groups anyway, that the numbers are low and they’re not keeping, you know, they don’t keep appropriate track of them and there’s, you know, who’s monitoring this? You know, if environmental groups are really concerned about the environment, they should be out there monitoring how many actually die, but they don t. And then they say, well, those numbers are, they’re quite low and it’s not a big deal. And you know with the with with the solar panels it’ll be something similar when you where you’ve walled it off you’ve taken away the place where where predators especially raptors can feed which is going to diminish stuff you’ve got they claim they are all about biodiversity Well, sure, you get a nice diverse selection of weeds growing underneath the solar panels. I’ve spoken to some farmers who say that when a field hasn’t been using proper weed control and whatnot, it takes at least six years to eradicate the weeds that proliferate in the field. So, six years of input costs and whatever else. To try to get rid of weeds if they’ve just let the field be organic or whatever. And so, like what you said, with respect to the solar panels, once you remove those, and they’ve had all those years of weeds growing and infesting it really, to get that back to nice production will be extremely difficult, very costly, and who’s going to do it? Will this land now be set aside for nature the way the EU wants? And with respect, if I can just make one last point here, I read in the Wall Street Journal today, and it was shocking, not shocking, where they’re praising this new hydro dam in Tibet. What an engineering marvel. This is amazing. This is Amazing. Where are the environmentalists to say? Is that worth it? You’re going to be diverting this massive river out of the Himalayas or whatever. You’re gonna divert water from India. And what kind of damage is this going to do to the environment? And instead we hear Engineering Marvel.
David Blackmon [00:29:16] It’s going to destroy the whole ecosystem in that region and replace it with something else.
Irina Slav [00:29:21] If I may add, Joanna had a very good point that when the raptors can’t feed because of the solar panels, mice and rats take over. That’s a trade for the crops around this place if there are still any crops remaining, which is an example of that environmental destruction, ecosystem destruction that you, Robert, mentioned. And I think there are still real environmentalists, real conservationists out there. They are the ones who have been sounding the alarms about all the birds getting killed by wind turbines. They’re the ones sounding the alarm about the whales, but they’re not getting the kind of money that
Tammy Nemeth [00:30:03] the Audubon society like really they should be
David Blackmon [00:30:06] One point about the dead birds.
Irina Slav [00:30:09] Imagine that. But there are, and that’s kind of the good news, they’re not all died out, you know, the real, the people who really care about the environment and work to protect it. They just need to be louder. If any one of you is listening, please be louder and we’ll try to amplify you. Because this is important, because ecosystem destruction is bad for everyone, including people.
David Blackmon [00:30:40] And it’s bad, regardless of which industry is doing it. 20 years ago in Colorado, 20 years ago, one bald eagle, or maybe it was a golden eagle, accidentally ended up, I don’t know how it ended up in a tank on an ExxonMobil location in Colorado and died. Okay the Sierra Club and every other environmental group in America went absolutely insane about the death of a single eagle that really wasn’t probably ExxonMobil’s fault, but the government, ultimately in the Obama administration in 2010, fined ExxonsMobil a million dollars for the death of the single eagle on one of its locations in Colorado. And now these very same environmental groups, which are really, you know, conflict groups that get a lot of funding from guess who? The wind and solar industries. Stay quiet as a hundred whales beach themselves or dead whales wash up on the beaches in New Jersey and New York. Say nothing about wind companies. One wind generator in Wyoming asks for a hundred takes a year of bald eagles, okay? Take a take is a permit from the Interior Department to kill a bald eagle. They know these things are going to kill the eagles and every other bird that tries to fly through there. And that’s why they apply for the permits. Yeah. And it’s just it’s it’s disgusting, despicable and really atrocious.
David Blackmon [00:32:26] That’s our mental groups remain silent about all.
Stuart Turley [00:32:29] Hats off to Lee Zeldin, Doug Burgum and Chris Wright for stepping up and taking a look at that and saying they’re putting an end to the tags.
Robert Bryce [00:32:39] Well, we’ll see what happens with that. If I could, just a quick shout out. I see Joanna Freebly has commented. And thanks to her, she was the one who introduced me to Robert Fleming. And she said, Bryce, you need to go up and meet this guy. He’s in your neighborhood. And so she really did prod me. And I say that, you know, with, with respect, she, you know, she’s been a real warrior in fighting a lot of these projects. And she’s another person in ag in Texas. And who has seen what is happening. She raises horses. And I didn’t come to this whole discussion. I didn’t go looking for it. It came to me. In fact, it was now 15 years ago. It was a horse trainer out of King City, Missouri contacted me after he had wind turbines built surrounding his house. His name was Charlie Porter. He later got a settlement from Ameren and a gag order that prevents him from talking about it. But So, he won’t talk, but nevertheless, these land use conflicts around alternative energy are raging all over the world. And remember, we’re focused on solar and wind projects here. There’s also batteries and local communities are also opposing battery projects and restricting and rejecting battery projects all over world. And it’s also high voltage transmission. And I wrote on my sub stack just recently about the government withdrawing its support for the Grain Belt Express high voltage project. Well, that’s 800 miles of high voltage that it was designed to carry wind energy from Kansas to the Illinois-Indiana border. So all of these are of a piece and all of this alternative energy junk has to, it requires massive footprints, whether it’s the projects themselves or the wires to get the electricity from the rural areas where the resource is to urban centers where the demand is.
Tammy Nemeth [00:34:32] Yeah, here in the UK, people have been resisting the high voltage lines and they have to connect even more. And now they’re talking about offering annual discounts on their electricity bill in order to get buy-in. Because you’re not going to have a choice. When they put them through, they’re just going to run them through. And then now they are like, Oh, well, maybe we’ll give you 200 bucks off your bill. Like, really?
Irina Slav [00:35:00] It was like 200 bucks. Going to come from.
Robert Bryce [00:35:01] And I’ll just cite two quick examples. In Colorado, within the last two months, you’ve seen XL Energy, which serves the Investor Owned Utility that serves a large portion of Colorado. They have a wind, I’m sorry, a big high voltage transmission project called Empower Color, no Power Path Colorado, I think it is. And there have been two counties, Elbert County and El Paso County, in which the county commissions in both of those counties unanimously voted to refuse permits to excel. To build this high voltage project through their counties. So again, this is happening all over the world and it’s all about it. What is energy policy about? It’s all land, land and land.
Tammy Nemeth [00:35:43] Good point. So Robert, what’s your position on, say, if people wanted to put solar panels on their roofs, if they really care about having multiple diverse sources of energy, is putting them on car parks or other places, do you see that as maybe an alternative to this?
Robert Bryce [00:36:06] Well, that’s clearly happening. And I have eight and a half kilowatts of solar on the roof of my house. And why did I do it? I got three different subsidies. Hello. I’m opposed to all, let me be clear. I’m on the record here. I’m supposed to all energy subsidies unless I’m getting them. All right, so they’re gonna give them to me. Bring it on. So yes, there are a lot of rooftops and a lot areas that where we can use solar, but. Remember the economics of solar improve as the projects get bigger and that’s there in lies the rub that Yes, my eight and a half kilowatts is not going to move the needle, right? It’s not gonna get closed coal plants in China if we’re going to have you know big increases in solar energy production It’s going to require massive massive amounts of land And these are the things that the McKibben’s in the Al Gore’s and the boosters in the Sierra Club don’t want to talk About but this is the reality And the reality is, as well, that all over the world, local communities are saying, we don’t want these. Go put them somewhere the sun doesn’t shine, the wind doesn’t blow.
Tammy Nemeth [00:37:10] Are there, like in the United States, are farmers kind of being lured into this because their land isn’t profitable enough and they have a lot of debt and they see this as a means to generate passive revenue where they don’t have to put inputs in and whatnot? Do you see that as an issue?
Robert Bryce [00:37:30] Oh sure, I mean, and farmers are doing that. Many of them are seeing this as a way to diversify their income stream or make more money from their land than they could than raising crops, than raising crop. So, you know, it’s hard to fault the landowner, but I will add just one quick point that in many rural communities where this is happening, it’s absentee landowners that are leasing their land, not people who live in the neighborhoods. And that is what I’ve seen over and over. With wind and solar projects like this is that absentee landowners or, you know, inheritors of farmland that don’t, they live in the city, they don’t care about their neighbors. They’re saying, sure, go ahead. And, but the people who live near them, you know they have a sense of community and they’re not going to lease it and betray their neighbors, so, because they live there. So again, this is a, it’s an urban-rural divide, it’s a class divide, it is an ownership divide, but ultimately I think all of this, all of it. This big push for, you know, solar and wind. It’s not about climate change, it’s about money and who and where follow the money, who benefits big companies, big business, big law firms, big NGOs, and those are the ones that make money on this. It is not about climate change.
Tammy Nemeth [00:38:44] Good point.
Stuart Turley [00:38:46] I think we also need to address, there’s two or three health issues that I think are critical. And Robert, your reporting is absolutely wonderful. And asking actually David’s point of land reclamation after these things are done. Solar farms don’t last 20 years. In Texas, they may last one season before they get the crap knocked out of them by a hail storm. What happens to those, you pointed that out, that they get put into a landfill. I’ve actually found out that we’re shipping these things to other countries to be disposed of in the ocean or other problems. So this is actually a real problem. In the United States, there’s 79,000 wind turbines. Of the 79,00 wind turbines, I have yet to find one that has land reclamation paid for. So this is a gigantic, horrific problem coming around the corner. And I found this book, uh, that is, uh Dirty Electricity by Dr. Uh, Samuel Millham and he brings up some very interesting points. I have not validated his study yet. However, this is, a clip. If I could be, uh prompt this, at least bring up the health question. Uh, if I don’t have this validated, but I do want to say there is a health issue of having this in there, so let’s go ahead and play this.
Video Speaker 1 [00:40:17] Now one rebranded in 2025. Those solar panels are very dangerous. I would highly advise if you have any solar panels to take them off of your place, not have them on your land, not anything, and have them all disconnected. And the reason I say that is because if you look at the book Dirty Electricity by Dr. Milham, he talks about how solar panels will turn your house into an inverter. So what happens is, is this. DC energy has to be converted to AC and then it goes from AC to DC and then it sends back to the power plant and then it comes back to your house and your house becomes the power plant and all of these people coming down with leukemia or blood from dirty electricity are linked to Power lines number one being one too strong power line and then also solar panels so the whole sustainable when they tell you it’s sustainable and you put solar panels on top of your house and it’s going to save you and whatever else doesn’t really do that it’s gonna cause a lot of health issues over time and then they’re gonna tell you you need a smart meter which is working like a cell phone tower that ping 16 000 times per second of microwave radiation so you can imagine the combination of a smartmeter solar panels and you can what happens to your health.
Robert Bryce [00:41:21] Robert you’re in trouble. Yeah, I don’t know. I think I’d take issue with a lot of the assertions made there, but
Stuart Turley [00:41:30] Again, I did not have the data on it, but I wanted to point out I’m not sure about the health issues.
Robert Bryce [00:41:38] Well, I would disagree with a lot of the points made there. I think the bigger concern to me is the solid waste issue and what’s going to happen with the end of the life for the panels, at the end for the wind turbines, end of life for the batteries. All of these things are creating an enormous mass and volume of material that is relatively short-lived. And So is that being accounted for? Is there bonding in place for the disposal? So I think that we’ve got to, we need a longer term look at what we’re doing and also a reassessment of this idea of sustainability.
Tammy Nemeth [00:42:18] Good point. I know that there’s different laws in the UK and the EU with respect to removing, that the producers are supposed to remove the panels afterwards as part of the e-waste laws that operate in the EU and the UK. I can’t remember, the EU has a really long name as they always do. But it’s one thing to have that law. They haven’t really started to reach their end of life yet. The proof will be in what happens when it starts to happen? Are they actually going to come after companies that don’t remove them? Who then is liable? What if that company’s gone bankrupt? Now what do you do? What is the is the homeowner or the landowner going to be then responsible the way they are with the wind installations? Which I’ve seen happen that the the land owner ends up because whoever installed it originally, that company you thought you had an agreement with, sold their stake to X who sold it to Y who sold to Z who has gone bankrupt and now who is responsible for that? So it will be interesting to see what does happen once all of this stuff with all this material. Waste has to be taken down and what are we going to do with it because the recycling isn’t there yet.
David Blackmon [00:43:38] No, it’s not. I mean, none of it’s going to be recycled, basically. And we should also point out that while, and I’m more guilty than probably anyone, we love to bash these liberal politicians for doing all this stuff. And, you know, the labor party in UK, Biden administration here in the U S this has been a bipartisan failure for 30 years. Now it’s Republicans and Democrats. We haven’t elected a statewide Democrat in Texas since 1994 folks. Every bit of this in Texas has happened on the Republican Party’s watch. And when this all becomes a disaster, everyone needs to remember this because they’ve done nothing to protect the public in terms of having proper regulatory oversight of these wind and solar farms, nothing. And I don’t know what it’s going to take to wake their asses up in Austin to get this done. You know, I’ve been, I’d been talking to everybody I know to talk to about this for many years now. And nobody wants to take responsibility for ensuring that there’s a proper legal and regulatory structure, for the proper reclamation of the land once these things have lived their useful lives. And it’s a bipartisan.
Robert Bryce [00:44:52] I’ll just add one quick point to Tammy’s point, and that is I think it’s exactly right that these leases that the landowners are signing, they’re creating an encumbrance on the property that can last for as much as 50 years. And so it actually reduces the long-term value of the property. And you’re right too, that you create an LLC that’s owned by another LLC, they can abandon those and potentially walk away. So I think this is a longer term issue. But I think the other part here that is, let’s think about the systems that are involved. And I think this is true in arena, I’d be interested in your view on this, but it’s in the UK. Remember Enron succeeded in the U.K. First with this idea of deregulating the electricity markets. And so what we’re seeing now in the US is this, and why did wind and solar expand so dramatically? It was this opening of the market, monopolies are bad, we need to allow free and fair competition and electricity is a commodity. I think a lot of the result of what we’re seeing now with regard to this alternative energy get forcing its way into the system has been a misunderstanding of the fundamental nature of the electric grid and what electricity is. And this idea that it’s a commodity instead of a critical service. And so a lot this goes back, my first book was on Enron. But a lot of it goes back to Enron, and I think it’s clear now in the US particularly, we’re running out of spare capacity. So this legislative hands-off kind of deregulatory environment worked when we had excess capacity and now we’re out and the poop is hitting the fan.
Tammy Nemeth [00:46:32] Thank you for making that point about it not being a commodity that it’s an essential service. The same thing with water. So we have the water, we have the electrical grid, and we have other key important national security infrastructure that’s being treated like it’s just some regular commodity. And I think that’s a really important distinction that people need to understand. It’s not a regular commodity and there needs to be better sort of… Understanding of what it is and how and then that can affect how we make policy and decisions in making sure everybody has access to it because it is essential.
Irina Slav [00:47:13] Yes, and it’s probably the only part of, you know, markets that needs to be regulated. To what you said, Robert, you put up solar panels on your roof because they offered you subsidies. We put solar panels in our roof to hedge against the future increase in the price of electricity when they deregulate the household electricity market in Bulgaria because The prices are going to go up.
Robert Bryce [00:47:40] Yeah, sure.
Irina Slav [00:47:41] The only thing we can choose is how high we allow them to go for our family, but they will go up. So we are trying to offset some of that by putting solar panels. We are not selling to the grid. We are going to do that ever. We are just using it for our own consumption. But more people need to realize this, that it is not a source of easy money, because the more people solar panels in the yards or wherever to sell into the grid, the higher their energy bills will become and they will never ever be able to recoup their expenses in that investment. But this is not the narrative that people are being fed in Bulgaria and I’m sure elsewhere.
Irina Slav [00:48:27] Europe in Germany actually people there was one American guy who’s lived in Germany for a very long time he said he had to put up solar panels because he was at a disadvantage compared to his neighbors his neighbors were getting subsidies for having solar panels and he was paying for these subsidies by having more expensive electricity it’s sort of like with EVs around here I pay a lot of money in taxes for my car because it is a petrol car. If I get a TV, I’m not paying any taxes. So of course people will think about it. They will not think about the trade-offs and all the disadvantages. We need a more honest conversation. We’re not going to get such a conversation from the authorities or the mainstream media.
David Blackmon [00:49:14] Boy, that’s for sure.
Tammy Nemeth [00:49:15] And then they then they put the sun taxes on right because if you’re just keeping that you’re being greedy and keeping that sun energy to yourself
Irina Slav [00:49:24] that you should be attached to them. Because suddenly there are too many people with solar panels, right? Imagine that.
Stuart Turley [00:49:31] Tammy, you, you put this in the private chat, the falling costs. This is from, uh, historic England end of life cycling of PV systems. Uh, the following cost of PV panels has made the technology more accessible, but it is important to consider recycling and disposal and environmental impacts at the end of their lives. And I, you’re, this points out a great point. It says the manufacturer is responsible for uh, the end of life of this, but there is not one manufacturer that is sending you a label saying, send it here and recycle it. This is, this is absolutely hilarious that they’re saying it is the responsibility of the manufacturer. This is almost as important as scope three emissions to an oil company.
Tammy Nemeth [00:50:24] Well, and you know what’s interesting on that one is that the last paragraph is like, but we have a law we are regulating The waste and of electrical equipment regulations of 2013. We have a lot There they have to do it and like like you said, do they have a sticker send back here or we’ll collect?
Stuart Turley [00:50:45] It ain’t gonna happen.
Robert Bryce [00:50:46] Well, and the same thing applies to battery, these battery installations. What’s going to happen with those lithium batteries? Because I know some folks have some friends who are in the battery business, lead acid manufacturers, and they refuse to take any lithium ion batteries. It’s a very dangerous and volatile thing. And they don’t want anything to do with it. And further, they’d make the point that In fact, the contents of the lithium ion battery, those commodities that you could get by extracting them from the old battery aren’t worth very much. So again, this is part of what I think is a tsunami of all to energy trash that’s gonna be coming down the pike and it’s not being discussed.
Tammy Nemeth [00:51:34] Great description. Tsunami of alt energy trash. Yeah.
Stuart Turley [00:51:39] Wow, there’s a documentary waiting to happen, Robert.
David Blackmon [00:51:43] We need a tsunami warning!
Stuart Turley [00:51:46] We are the tsunami warming
David Blackmon [00:51:48] And maybe we are the tsunami warning.
Stuart Turley [00:51:50] And Martin brings up a great point. We require security bonds for oil and gas development. Why not renewables? There are bonds for some of them, Martin, and it’s an outstanding point, but they’re a fraction, a fraction of what the land reclamation cost is for those bonds to start, it’s almost like $5 instead of the $500,000 that’s required and so yeah, they’re there. I can’t find one of them that is going to be viable.
Irina Slav [00:52:25] Because it’s different.
Tammy Nemeth [00:52:28] Yeah, Jasonia Rondeau had a good point earlier where she said, Alberta says they’re piloting a recycling program where they plan to charge developers $2 a panel. Like really? But they have no plans to build recycling facilities for 27 million panels. And yeah, and then she says Alberta’s also just passed a reclamation security regulation for solar and wind, but nothing for standalone battery storage. And it also depends on, like you pointed out, Stu, what’s the cost? How much are they actually putting out there as the bond or how they have to reclaim it? How is that going to work? Does there need to be investment in recycling facilities? Absolutely, because I can see these being shipped over to Asia. Sometimes we watch these YouTube videos of these developing nations pulling apart technology to to reclaim the gold and the other precious metals within and doing it in a really dangerous way and is this what we’re going to do? We’re just going to ship it all over there and then claim Yay, we’re recycling.
Irina Slav [00:53:41] Exactly what we’re going to do because we have not even mastered the art of plastics recycling. We can’t recycle all the plastics we use because it’s not profitable and it’s durable. You have to mix them with new plastics. If we can’t even handle our plastic waste for which there are, I assume, established recycling processes? How are we going to recycle solar panels?
Stuart Turley [00:54:11] Have you seen the videos, Irina, of all the trash trucks that have the green, the recycling truck, and then they have the recycling bin, and then the trash, and the same trash truck picks up both of them. Yeah, it all goes to the airport. All the recycling is just another trash bin.
Tammy Nemeth [00:54:34] But hey, they’ve got you. They’ve got your separating your garbage..
Irina Slav [00:54:38] And they make me feel so good about myself. It’s unbelievable. I feel very green.
David Blackmon [00:54:47] And in many cities, you’ll get fined if you don’t separate your garbage. Yeah. Even though it’s all just going to go to the landfill. You’ll get find if you.
Robert Bryce [00:54:58] Although so it’s it can I just add to some optimism here because otherwise I might just you know, go shoot myself because you all are so So cynical and pessimistic here. This is What you know amidst all of this craziness I do see and you know I have many many criticisms of the trump administration, but I will very clearly agree that their instincts on a lot of this stuff is exactly right. And what I see all around the world is really in fact heartening. I’m just adding another battery rejection that happened in Hamilton County, Indiana near the town of White River because they just rejected a big solar project. So local communities all around the world, local people and ordinary folks, and this is what I seen over and over. It’s often women of a certain age working from their kitchen table, talking to their neighbors, and not just women, but local communities and people getting together and realizing what’s at stake. And so what I see around the world is in fact very hopeful. And what I see from this administration, again, you know, they’re pushed to revitalize the nuclear sector, to cut the preferential treatment for solar and wind on federal land. I had a piece on Substack yesterday about the cancelation of the Lava Ridge project in Idaho, which I think was an excellent move. Now they need to cancel Philip Anschutz’s massive choke cherry project, the wind project in Wyoming that will kill dozens of golden eagles per year. So amidst all of this stupidness and insanity, I am, as Molly Ivins said, optimistic to the point of idiocy. We have, especially in the U.S., you know, thank God I don’t live in the UK or California, but there are reasons to be optimistic, and so I am, and I think I want to make sure that we have the right focus on this, because for all the stupidity, the U S still and maintains an incredible advantage over the rest of the world.
Tammy Nemeth [00:57:03] Yeah.
David Blackmon [00:57:04] Totally agree with all
Irina Slav [00:57:06] I think the very thing you’re keeping, sorry David, the database of opposition to wind and solar and following rejections is reason for hope and optimism and now people are
Tammy Nemeth [00:57:22] And with your work, people can see others are doing it and then feel emboldened to say, why can’t I stand up in my community too? So thank you so much for having that database to show people there is hope and there’s others out there who are trying to do the same thing.
Robert Bryce [00:57:39] Well, thank you. I appreciate that because that’s what my experience has been as well. I have people contact me, I mean, at least once a week saying, I’m fighting this project, can you help me or can you put me in touch with other people who are involved in this because they feel alone. And in many cases, they’re facing multinational corporations, British corporations, French corporations, you know, Portuguese corporations that are backed by the Chinese that are trying to steamroll them. And they’re not playing fair. And outmanned, outmoneyed, outmediated and they need to know they’re not alone. And so that’s one of the things that I appreciate that comment, Tammy, because it’s one of the thing that motivates me. I see this happening over and over again and people fighting back. And I think it’s just amazing to see that they can and have won.
David Blackmon [00:58:28] Jasona Rondeau is one of them. If you just describe me, Robert, my life for two and a half years has been helping landowners stand up to renewables developers for wind, solar, and batteries. Good for you, Jasona.
Irina Slav [00:58:42] Keep fighting.
David Blackmon [00:58:44] Well, I don’t think we’re going to get to our articles this week.
Tammy Nemeth [00:58:48] Yeah, that’s a great
Stuart Turley [00:58:51] Thank you, Robert. This was a lot of fun. We really appreciate you.
Robert Bryce [00:58:55] Well, I’m flattered to be invited. You know, it’s my purpose and my passion. This is what I do. And, you know, this has been more better than coffee this morning. It’s got me all revved up here. I know the feeling. Updating my database here as we speak here with him. We’re up to 69 battery rejections, 866 rejections in the U.S. But I appreciate all the work that you all are doing and the encouragement. And I appreciate you having me on.
David Blackmon [00:59:23] Thank you, Robert.
Irina Slav [00:59:24] Always a pleasure.
Tammy Nemeth [00:59:25] Thank you, Robert.
Irina Slav [00:59:26] Please keep doing what you’re doing. It matters.
Robert Bryce [00:59:29] Thanks, y’all.
Irina Slav [00:59:30] Thanks everyone, have a lovely week and thanks for all the comments.
Sponsorships are available or get your own corporate brand produced by Sandstone Media.
David Blackmon LinkedIn
The Crude Truth with Rey Trevino
Rey Trevino LinkedIn
Energy Transition Weekly Conversation
David Blackmon LinkedIn
Irina Slav LinkedIn
Armando Cavanha LinkedIn