Energy expert, author and public speaker Robert Bryce joins The Crude Life founder Jason Spiess and The Word Merchant Stephen Heins to discuss his new docuseries Juice, nuclear energy, corporate greed and how the environment impacts energy.
Last week, Bryce released a new docuseries that highlights how bad energy policy decisions are making the United States and other countries more vulnerable to power shortages and blackouts.
Bryce and colleague Tyson Culver decided to launch the project following the Texas blackout associated with Winter Storm Uri in February 2021. Millions of people were without electricity for days, and several hundred deaths were attributed to exposure or other causes.
“That blackout and the fact that the ERCOT grid (Electric Reliability Council of Texas) nearly collapsed, convinced us that we had to do another film,” Bryce said. “And now, three years later, we accomplished what we set out to do.”
The five-part docuseries, Juice: Power, Politics & The Grid, is now available for free on YouTube. Rather than make a feature-length film, Bryce said they decided to make the content as user-friendly as possible, so broke it into five episodes, each lasting about 20 minutes.
The series features 34 interviews that were shot in Texas, Japan, Vermont, Oklahoma, Colorado, California, Washington D.C., Illinois, Egypt, and England. The 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.
Bryce said he is especially 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 covering this issue for more than four years, so 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,” Bryce said. “It’s a landmark ruling and an enormous embarrassment for Big Wind and Enel, a company that has endlessly touted its ‘green’ credentials.”
Bryce said the goal of the project was not to make a bunch of money, but rather to change the conversation.
“We want to help alert people and policymakers about the dangers facing our electric grid and the importance of what Chris Keefer calls our ‘civilizational life support system,’” Bryce said. “Our goal is to help people understand how our grid is being fragilized and why we need fission to fix it.”
Juice: Power, Politics & The Grid – the Trailer
Episode 1: Texas Blackout
Episode 2: Undermined by Enron
Episode 3: Green Dreams
Episode 4: Nuclear Renaissance
Episode 5: Industrial Cathedrals
Bryce has given over 300 invited or keynote lectures to dozens of groups including the Marine Corps War College, Sydney Institute, Jadavpur University, Northwestern University, and a wide variety of professional associations and corporations. He has also appeared on dozens of TV and radio shows including NPR, BBC, MSNBC, Fox, Al Jazeera, CNN, and PBS.
He spent 12 years as a reporter for the Austin Chronicle. From 2006 to 2010, he was the managing editor of the Houston-based Energy Tribune. From 2010 to September 2019, he was a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
He lives in Austin with his wife, Lorin.
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