Farming in Fancy Jackets; Or... Hugh, is That You?

Who knew The Playboy Mansion was having a yard sale to dispose of Hugh Hefner's smoking jacket costumes?  We missed out!

A recent profile in Forbes of super-rich energy executive Michael Polsky is probably the most stunning display of rich people arrogance and excess that I've ever read.

Polsky's company, Invenergy, has made huge profits off the land owned by Midwestern farmers.  I'm pretty sure none of the landowners who participated in Polsky's success have ever struck such glorious poses in fancy jackets next to Invenergy-owned infrastructure on their own properties, such as Polsky did for Forbes.

What credit does Polsky share with all the "little folks" who made his success possible?  None.  And what sacrifices to the land, environment, and lives of these "little people" does Polsky share?  Again, none.  It seems like I'm supposed to believe they're nothing but serfs enabling the success of The Great One.  Self-awareness = Zero.  Isn't that always the way?

Forbes opens it's expose with the most delightful sub-head:

Renewable energy is ready for prime time.  That is if -- like Michael Polsky -- you don't mind angering farmers and chopping up a few bald eagles.

Oh, right to the heart... sign me up!  I, too, want to chop up symbolic birds and piss off the people who grow the food I eat at my big, fancy, city house.

Well, no, actually.  That scenario sort of disgusts me at a visceral level.

Self-awareness check #2:

Back in Chicago, Polsky leads an impromptu tour of the three floors Invenergy occupies at One South Wacker Drive in the pandemic ghost town that is downtown Chicago. It’s a Friday morning. Ordinarily, there would be dozens of people in open-plan workstations and offices, but only a handful are present, including the 24/7 crew manning Invenergy’s control center—watching, and even operating, 6,774 wind turbines spread across the country.

Sharing Invenergy’s digs are the offices of Polsky’s $150 million green-tech-focused VC fund, Energize Ventures. Among its 13 portfolio investments: Drone Deploy, which inspects turbine blades using infrared beams and drones, and Volta, which is building a chain of electric vehicle charging stations.

These days, Polsky has reluctantly traded the standing desk in his office for Zoom calls from his living room and quality time with his second wife, Tanya, 47, a former banker, and their three young children. “I’ve spent a lot more time with family than before,” the compulsive dealmaker admits. He seems to be enjoying it. “I’ve discovered being home, in a way.”

Slumming with the fam during a pandemic.  Isn't that charming?  Good thing those farmers continue to do their regular jobs at their regular locations, because what if the food supply ran out?  Is there enough toilet paper for the Polsky family?  What if they ran out?  Would they use a fancy jacket or two?  Lucky guy gets to spend more "quality time" with his family.  Do they play Monopoly?  Piece bald eagles back together in jigsaw puzzle form?  Does the fam enjoy turning their living room into Daddy's office and being hushed and banned during important Zoom meetings?  My family works better at home having individual offices and a little privacy.  The co-workers appreciate that, too.  Was it just yesterday that I had to refrain from laughing loudly at someone's ineptitude because there was an important business meeting being held in the basement office?  Yes.  Yes, it was.

Once you're done reading all the platitudes in the Forbes article (and I warn you, once you click on it, you'd better settle down to read it through because Forbes will block the article after you've had your "free" look), try to harvest the "TMI" contained in the article.  Polsky's talk about Grain Belt Express was especially revealing.

Then there’s that Grain Belt Express, which would install an 800-mile high- voltage line across Kansas and Missouri into Illinois at a cost of $7 billion. It was originally the brainchild of wind-industry pioneer Michael Skelly, whose Clean Line Energy was backed by the billionaire Ziff family, among others. Skelly’s team burned through $100 million fighting NIMBys and bureaucrats in its quest for permits and approvals. “After a decade, it was hard for us to attract capital,” says Skelly, now a senior advisor at Lazard.

Polsky agreed to take over Grain Belt on the condition of Invenergy winning those approvals—in other words, all he risked upfront was the cost of lawyers and lobbyists. “It’s much more complicated than just building a wind farm,” admits Polsky, who relishes the challenge. A bill that would keep non-utility companies like Invenergy from using eminent domain to take private land passed the Missouri state assembly this year but has been bottled up in the state senate. Meanwhile, two Missouri appeals courts have upheld the state public service commission’s approval of the Grain Belt Express.

Despite ongoing appeals, farmers like Loren Sprouse, whose family owns a 480-acre tract west of Kansas City that the high-voltage line would cross, are becoming resigned to the fact that soon Invenergy will be able to negotiate with the sledgehammer of eminent domain. “Once you get eminent domain, the price may still be negotiated, but they would have the right to do it,’’ he says.

Sprouse’s land is already crossed by three buried petrochemical pipelines, which he says transport warmed crude that “runs so hot it dries out the ground and kills the crops.” (Indeed, the proposed transmission lines would run along the pipeline right-of-way.) But Sprouse prefers the pipelines to the visual blight of hulking transmission lines, and he’s concerned about the health effects of electromagnetic radiation. Polsky is encouraged by Invenergy’s legal victories in Missouri, and expects Illinois approvals to follow. “It will be built. It has to happen,” he says.

But does it?  I'm pretty sure those "NIMBYS" are still in control.  Invenergy has admitted that it needs to re-visit its permits in both Kansas and Missouri to "update" them.  Invenergy has not yet applied for a permit in Illinois, and the one Clean Line had been granted has been vacated.  GBE is currently an empty idea without an end point.

GBE was granted eminent domain in Missouri and Kansas because it was acquiring property for "public use."  But what happens when GBE is no longer a public use project?  Can it still use eminent domain to take the land of others in order to build a private highway for its own use?  Time will tell, won't it?  And, what was it Polsky said about building a new wind farm in Kansas to power his GBE?

Polsky is buying turbines from GE Power that are twice the size of those at Grand Ridge (at 700 feet, they’re taller than Trump Tower in New York) and generate up to 3 megawatts each. He intends to erect more than 1,000 of these enormous machines on 100,000 acres in Kansas, on what could become the nation’s biggest wind farm.

So Invenergy is intending to build and/or own "the nation's biggest wind farm" in Kansas, and then ship the electricity it generates 800 miles to sell it for a profit in Indiana?  How is that a public use that benefits the citizens of Kansas and Missouri who are expected to sacrifice their land and productivity to enable it?  It's no different than me using eminent domain to condemn my neighbors land for a new driveway that enables me to get my products to market.

Lesson over.  Let's get back to the fabulous disrespect for those "NIMBYs!"

YOU HAVE ONLY YOURSELF TO BLAME
One big obstacle to green energy is spelled y-o-u. Technological advances have made wind and solar power cheaper than coal, nuclear and even natural gas. So why aren’t we using more of the stuff? Quite simply because you (and your neighbors) oppose and block the construction of wind farms and new transmission lines for green power.

Oh, the shame, the shame!  I used to feel bad about using a disposable straw, now it appears that I'm a bigger problem for society than I ever imagined!

How come these sanctimonious cows never have to sacrifice anything to realize their impossible ideals?  It's not like the author is asking to have one of those wonderful green power transmission lines in his own backyard, snaking artfully between the BBQ and the designer kids' playset from the big box store.  And, dare I say it, if that was ever proposed by Michael Polsky, the author would be the first one emailing me in desperation begging for help in opposing it.

Whatever happened to the "coming together?"  The new unity?  Apparently that's nothing more than a continuation of the same old "Rules for thee, but not for me!"

Remember when we laughed at Michael Skelly's excesses and glittering social life splashed all over the social sections of the Houston papers?  Skelly is positively plebian compared to Polsky.  It seems that Polsky has yet to learn a very important lesson.  Is he doomed to repeating all of Clean Line's Top Ten Mistakes?  Funny how history repeats itself. Will we soon see Polsky at future public meetings, arriving on a tractor, chore coat replacing his smoking jacket?

This story is far from over.  Defeat is not an option for farmers.  The eagles?  Well, maybe the carcasses can become souffle for the rich?