Drying up rural areas for the Front Range. Plain and simple, we will need fossil fuels for the near future. And, lastly, because it's Friday, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

Mar 10, 2023

When I look at the picture attached (a dried up and abandoned farm near Crowley County), I think about that farmnear me who had sold their water to Parker.

The fact is that the Front Range is soaking up water like a sponge. They have to in order to continue to build homes there. The recent drought has only exacerbated the problem of getting enough water. Everyone in the arid Southwest is clamoring for more. Sadly, the supply hasn't grown along with demand. The supply has, in fact, drastically fallen lately.

So what now? As has happened with electrical power, if you struggle to supply, you manage demand. You don't manage demand in the urban areas, of course (though to be fair there has been some attempts to do so lately along the Front Range--the post I did earlier on Aurora recycling waste water and some fitful attempts here and there to curb the water use in lawns), you manage it largely by taking from Ag.

One of the ways this happens is by municipalities buying water from farmers in rural parts of the state.

I'm not a native to the Eastern Plains. I am a native to Colorado and grew up in a small town on the Western Slope. Even without being native out here, however, I can still see the value in keeping the water with the land. We keep the water with the land, we keep the people with the land. We keep the tradition and the community.

Without the water, the towns, the people, we run the risk of rural areas in this state drying up (literally and figuratively) like the farm in the picture above.

I would never step on the toes of a farmer or rancher who chooses to try and help their operation along by selling some of their water. I have never run a farm or ranch and have no experience in the matter.

There are also, it must be admitted, cases where selling makes sense: see, for example, the Denver Post op ed linked first below where the author describes an outfit on the Western Slope that wanted to sell their water for a few years so that the fertilizers and pesticides could leech out of the soil and then they could get certified organic.

I just believe that when municipalities along the Front Range buy water, they buy it on a temporary, voluntary, and compensatory basis (as the Colorado Demand Management program linked second below has it). They get their water for a short time and pay well for it. And when that lease expires, the water comes back. I'm heartened to see that those pushing Demand Management in Colorado seem to agree. I hope they continue to agree if the supply gets tighter.

I also believe that the use of water in this state needs to be a partnership. That means a genuine sacrifice by urban areas and not a continual (if you'll pardon the pun) "return to the well" by urban areas. We cannot honor the lives and tradition of the people in rural areas of Colorado by stuffing more houses into the Front Range and then taking water from farms and ranches.

The communities far from I-25 have just as much value as any other, and we need to remember that with our policy.

https://www.denverpost.com/2023/02/28/colorado-farmers-fallow-water-system-conservation-pilot-program/?utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_content=tw-denverpost&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social

https://cwcb.colorado.gov/focus-areas/supply/demand-management

Plain and simple: we will (repeat will) need fossil fuels for the immediate present and likely a ways into the future.

Let's start with screenshot 1. This comes from a 2022 National Renewable Lab report (linked first below).

This graph can be hard to interpret so let me help. This graph comes from a 2022 National Renewable Lab (NREL) assessment of different possible combinations of power sources for our grid in 2035 under various funding and cost regimes. The different labels across the bottom are different scenarios/estimates. The dotted horizontal line is the peak load under these different scenarios (it's much smaller in the far-left scenario because fewer people electrify in that scenario and so demand is less). The two different boxes are the different seasons. Each scenario was optimized to be the least-cost version of that scenario.

You are welcome to read through the report and get the details on all the different scenarios. The main point for us in this post is what it says in the caption: we will not be able by 2035 to meet our energy demands with renewables alone. If you need a demonstration of this, total all the colors for the renewables in the graph and see if they hit the dotted line. They won't.

We will need some form of power generation based on fossil fuels to meet demand. Plain and simple.

We could have more nuclear. We could have more and better storage technologies. We could electrify things or not. None of this negates the fact that we will still need some fossil fuels under each scenario outlined by NREL. .

We can find ways to help ameliorate the greenhouse gas emissions of these fossil-fuel generation technologies. You can retrofit combustion technology to run on hydrogen instead of methane (ignoring the problems this would have which is an entirely different post). You can find ways to capture and sequester the carbon from fossil-fuel generation.

You cannot power our country without some sort of fossil fuels in the near term. In the long term, no one knows which of the competing technologies will pan out and be able to safely, cheaply, and reliably provide power and heat to all the people currently using fossil fuels.

If things like coal and natural gas combustion can be made cleaner and less carbon-intensive (and NREL's study uses models scenarios where the carbon from natural gas combustion is captured) why on earth are we here in Colorado putting all our money on renewables and not striking forth in multiple directions.

Said another way, why are we purposefully limiting ourselves?

https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy22osti/81644.pdf

***Related:

Exxon doesn't see much promise in it anymore (they must have other ideas) but other groups MANY OF WHOM ARE FUNDED BY OIL COMPANIES still see potential in algae as a fuel source.

Another example of how we should be looking at multiple things when trying to solve a problem. We should be flexible and not rigid. Algae could pan out. It could not. Some new wonder technology that pops up tomorrow could solve all our problems. Or it could be a washout.

We never know and we shouldn't therefore be investing too heavily in one thing. I don't want Colorado ending up with tons of the metaphorical equivalent of BetaMax or 8 tracks.

https://coloradosun.com/2023/03/06/algae-biofuel-mines-nrel-exxon/

Last one of the day, you know what that means: something for fun and not related (this time to current) politics.

I have a story recommendation for you. I am not too big on spy movies (e.g. 007), but there is one that I consider a favorite. I think it's probably because it's about the Cold War.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a book by Le Carre (see the first link below) which was later made into a movie (see the second link below).

Both are very good and I'd highly recommend them. Don't expect a lot of action. This is not that kind of story. As is the case in other things I've read by Le Carre, one of the themes here is how corrosive espionage is to human relationships and the soul.

I'm not an expert, but I have read enough about the topic to get the feeling that real-deal espionage in the Cold War looked a lot like this story. Not explosions and car chases. Slow, steady work and a machine that ate up people.

Couple last tidbits:

If you're not interested in the story, check out the third link below. It's the song La Mer (The Sea) sung by Julio Iglesias that was in the movie. Good song.

I'm not 100%, but I believe that the title of the story comes from a British kid's rhyme "Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor" which is their version of eenie meenie minie moe.

Have a good Friday!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinker_Tailor_Soldier_Spy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinker_Tailor_Soldier_Spy_(film)