Above, Senator Whitehouse, who is relentless in messaging on climate and clean energy, gives succinct recap of 4 objective measures that indicate how renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels.
He also puts his finger on why the Trump administration is at war with them.
In Ohio: America’s Solar Capital
Despite Ohio’s legal hostility to utility grade solar power, Greater Toledo’s First Solar is soaring because of economic trends that even anti-solar state legislators cannot impede.
First Solar stock was trading at $190 a share on April 29. One month later, on May 29, it closed at $306.79. Wall Street understands what the Ohio Statehouse cannot see: the nation needs all the electric power it can produce.
Ohio law that impedes utility grade solar projects with foolish constraints that fossil fuel projects are spared from is foolish when solar power is the cheapest and fastest source of additional electric capacity available.
With three manufacturing facilities, a research and development center in northwest Ohio, and 2,400 employees, First Solar has made Greater Toledo into the American capital of renewable power manufacturing.
Continue reading “In Ohio: America’s Solar Capital”Has Climate Change Hit a New Gear?
Have we crossed any kind of line this summer where a majority are freaked enough about climate change to actually do something about it?
Adam McKay in Current Affairs:
However, there is one type of rare, gargantuan, towering lie that makes all the other mass lies throughout human history seem like frightened, scurrying, little adorable fibs.
It is a lie told worldwide by hundreds of thousands of institutions, elected officials, many universities, legacy news, some large non-profits and eventually—as the deception entered mainstream culture—even by ourselves, to ourselves, every single moment of every day. It is a constantly growing gourd that even as a baby back in the 1970s was the size of three aircraft carriers. These days it is so massive it is almost easier to refer to what isn’t part of it (Disneyland, a BLT, that green croc by the side of the highway) than what is.
This massive lie can best be summed up as “when it comes to climate change… we have more time.”
To be clear, we are not talking about the kind of total climate denial one would find on the extremist, lunatic fringe inhabited by the likes of Alex Jones or the current U.S. President. And we’re not referring to cartoonish hucksters and “climate skeptics” like Joe Rogan or Jordan Peterson.
Polling shows only 14.8 percent of Americans deny the basic sixth grade science behind global warming. To put that in perspective, as much as 10 percent of the population still believes the Earth is flat.
Iran Holds Hormuz Cards, is Standing Pat
On Tuesday morning, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent went on CNBC to say that a deal could be announced later that day to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The stock market jumped markedly.
Alas, there was no deal. Far from it.
And on Saturday, Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, laid out the conditions for reopening the Strait. They include the U.S. permanently ending the war, lifting its naval blockade, withdrawing forces, ending all sanctions, freeing Iran’s frozen assets, the payment of war reparations and ending threats and insults, among other things.
“It shows that they believe they have the upper hand, they believe they’re winning, and they are emboldened,” former Defense Secretary Mark Espersaid Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” program.
Continue reading “Iran Holds Hormuz Cards, is Standing Pat”Trump’s Sleazy Greenland Grift Continues
President Donald Trump has told a radio host that a bet on the United States controlling Greenland before the end of his term would be a safe one, the latest sign that his push to acquire the island remains a priority.
Speaking on Real America’s Voice on July 31, Trump was reminded by host Steve Gruber of Gruber’s own earlier on-air prediction that Greenland would be under U.S. operational control before Trump left office. Asked whether the island remained vital to Western defence, Trump replied:
“You’ll be right. Greenland’s important from our standpoint. Not from their standpoint. But from our standpoint.” He added: “You should make that bet, actually.”
The following day, Trump posted an image to Truth Social depicting himself as a giant figure looming over the town of Tasiilaq, on Greenland’s east coast, captioned “Hello, Greenland!” The image is one he has shared several times since May, part of a series of Greenland-related posts dating back to the beginning of his second term.
Continue reading “Trump’s Sleazy Greenland Grift Continues”Solar Can Make Grazing More Resilient
Wake up Sheeple.
You can graze Cattle under solar panels now, too.
Silicon Ranch, which owns the 40-acre farm in Christiana, outside of Nashville, believes cattle-grazing is the next frontier in so-called agrivoltaics, which mostly has involved growing crops or grazing sheep beneath the panels.
The solar company debuted the project this week and will spend the next year working to demonstrate to farmers that much larger cattle also can thrive at solar sites. If successful, advocates say, that could jump-start new projects to meet the soaring electricity demand driven by rapidly expanding data centers — without contributing climate-warming carbon emissions — and help cattle producers hold onto their land and livelihoods.
“Beach Nourishment” is Exhibit A for Climate Gentrification
Star News Online April 18, 2024:
Dr. Martin Smith, an environmental economics professor at Duke University, and McNamara created a new economic model called the Coastal Home Ownership Model (C-HOM) to analyze the long-term evolution of coastal real estate markets.
Smith said government actions to protect and enhance coastal communities from environmental risks, such as sea-level rise and stronger and more frequent hurricanes, helps support and boost property values.
“What it signals to the market is that this is a fine place to further invest,” he said.
Paradoxically, as property values increase and coastal communities become more wealthy, it becomes easier for officials to justify additional and more expensive projects to maintain that economic value in these increasingly vulnerable areas.
“We’re shielding these markets from the underlying risks they face, and hence propping up these markets,” McNamara said.
Continue reading ““Beach Nourishment” is Exhibit A for Climate Gentrification”Fires, Smoke, and Drought Still Hammering West
CBS report recaps events in Spokane following last week’s devastating fires, and points out that the last decade has seen a number of communities that formerly felt safe, become cautionary tales of climate enhanced wildfires.
PENTICTON, British Columbia, Aug 8 (Reuters) – British Columbia declared a state of emergency on Saturday after thousands of people in the western Canadian province were ordered to flee a fast-moving wildfire that nearly doubled in size overnight.
The Bald Range wildfire was burning out of control and grew rapidly to about 9,500 hectares (23,500 acres), prompting evacuation orders in Summerland, Peachland and other districts west of Okanagan Lake in the province’s southern interior. The region produces most of B.C.’s wine and is Canada’s second-largest wine-producing area.
Premier David Eby told a news conference on Saturday that one fire official had likened the fire to “a bomb going off”.
“He described flames on 100-foot tree, flames going 200 feet above that, and the fire creating its own weather system, which creates lightning, which then feeds on itself,” Eby said.
“Homes have been lost, and properties have been destroyed. Some people became trapped as conditions changed very quickly, and needed to be rescued,” the premier said, adding it remained a very dynamic and threatening situation.
The Weekend Wonk: Base Power and the Virtual Power Plant Paradigm
Above, Fox Business interviews with Base Power founder Zach Dell, son of Michael Dell of computer fame.
Zach is CEO of Base Power, which is pioneering a Virtual Power Plant model, providing home batteries at much reduced cost, which not only provide back up power and energy security for homeowners, but form the backbone of a networked power plant system that can augment utility scale generation.
Below, Bloomberg interview.
Description:
Rising demand for electricity in the US is fueling investor interest in backing battery startups, such as Base Power, which just closed a $1 billion Series D round at a $13 billion post-money valuation. Base Power CEO and co-founder Zach Dell joins Ed Ludlow on “Bloomberg Tech.”
Below, the YouTuber Energy Viking describes the value proposition that Base Power offers homeowners.
Continue reading “The Weekend Wonk: Base Power and the Virtual Power Plant Paradigm”Clean Energy Wreaks Furious Vengeance on Fossil Fuel Shills
It helps that the more vociferous opponents of clean energy are also some of the more obnoxious and corrupt politicians imaginable.
An aggressive new political action committee backed by renewable energy supporters claimed its biggest and clearest win yet Thursday by helping unseat conservative Republican Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee despite President Donald Trump’s vocal support.
The Invest in Tomorrow Coalition PAC spent $2 million opposing Ogles and boosting Republican primary opponent Charlie Hatcher — more than both candidates combined — and the group is now poised to be a force in future contests.
Ogles was the third Republican this year to lose a race after being targeted by the super PAC, launched by solar executives wanting to get back at Republicans who actively work against renewables.
“[W]e will continue to punish members of either party who want to play politics with American jobs, energy security, and utility prices. The entire map is in play and we will take this fight across the country through November,” Tom Matzzie, CEO of solar company CleanChoice Energy and chair of Invest in Tomorrow Coalition, said in a statement.
The group’s ads did not mention clean energy, instead targeting conservative voters with advertisements that boosted Hatcher’s right-wing credentialsandchided Ogles for missing votes.
The PAC deployed a similar playbook against Texas Rep. Chip Roy in his unsuccessful attorney general bid and South Carolina Rep. Ralph Norman, who lost his campaign for governor.
Lawmakers like Ogles, Roy and Norman pushed Republican leaders in Congress last year for a quick phaseout of renewable energy incentives in what became the One Big Beautiful Bill act.
Continue reading “Clean Energy Wreaks Furious Vengeance on Fossil Fuel Shills”