Month: November 2015

Time of day pricing is a sensible idea that renewable energy advocates have been putting forward for decades, without a lot of success.  Now, in Texas, a huge excess of power from the wind is forcing the issue.

NYTimes:

In Texas, wind farms are generating so much energy that some utilities are giving power away.

Briana Lamb, an elementary school teacher, waits until her watch strikes 9 p.m. to run her washing machine and dishwasher. It costs her nothing until 6 a.m. Kayleen Willard, a cosmetologist, unplugs appliances when she goes to work in the morning. By 9 p.m., she has them plugged back in.

And Sherri Burks, business manager of a local law firm, keeps a yellow sticker on her townhouse’s thermostat, a note to guests that says: “After 9 p.m. I don’t care what you do. You can party after 9.”

The women are just three of the thousands of TXU Energy customers who are at the vanguard of a bold attempt by the utility to change how people consume energy. TXU’s free overnight plan, which is coupled with slightly higher daytime rates, is one of dozens that have been offered by more than 50 retail electricity companies in Texas over the last three years with a simple goal: for customers to turn down the dials when wholesale prices are highest and turn them back up when prices are lowest.

It is possible because Texas has more wind power than any other state, accounting for roughly 10 percent of the state’s generation. Alone among the 48 contiguous states, Texas runs its own electricity grid that barely connects to the rest of the country, so the abundance of nightly wind power generated here must be consumed here.

Wind blows most strongly at night and the power it produces is inexpensive because of its abundance and federal tax breaks. A shift of power use away from the peak daytime periods means lower wholesale prices, and the possibility of avoiding the costly option of building more power plants.

“That is a proverbial win-win for the utility and the customer,” said Omar Siddiqui, director of energy efficiency at the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit industry group.

For utilities, the giveaway is hardly altruistic. Deregulation in Texas has spurred intense competition for customers. By encouraging energy use at night, utilities reduce some of the burdens, and costs, that the oversupply of wind energy places on the power grid.

Similar experiments are underway elsewhere.

Meanwhile, utilities like CPS in San Antonio are offering customers free solar panels in another “win-win”, helping customers with bills and the utility to meet demands in a cost effective manner.

Continue reading “The Price of Renewables? How Does “Free” Grab You?”

An important factor in bringing early public attention to the Keystone pipeline project (just cancelled by President Obama, if you’ve been offworld in recent days) – was the willingness of scientists to break with the ingrained tradition of not becoming personally or emotionally involved in the implications of their research, and put their bodies, and in some cases, their careers, on the line to make powerful statements about policy.

Jim Hansen is the most famous of those scientists who chose civil disobedience to make a statement, but there were others as well, some of whom I am proud to know.
We are now at a global inflection point where a critical mass of humanity sees climate change as a moral issue, a framing that is much easier to communicate than complex scientific or nuanced economical arguments – as this recent video points out.

In the intervening years, circumstances have changed, and one reason why the Keystone cancellation was more politically achievable at this moment has been the paradigm shifting rise of oil-shale fracking in the US, and subsequent drop in global oil prices that has made Keystone, at least for now, less economically compelling, and more of a low-hanging fruit for sending a message on climate change.  The same question mark hangs over Canadian Tar Sands mining, and every other form of “exotic” oil exploitation, in the Arctic and elsewhere.

With climate science awareness on the ascendance in every poll, un-ignorable climate related extreme events breaking out in all parts of the world,  and increasing attention to possible criminal activity of the fossil fuel industry with recent subpoenas aimed at “what Exxon knew and when they knew it” – We appear to be in a moment of paradigm shift.

Slate:

Oil companies are smart, and over the seven years the pipeline has been pending, they’ve put in place an effective mix of workarounds including oil trains, other pipelines, and a vastly different U.S. energy mix, including a substantial rise in domestic production of oil, gas, and renewables. Meanwhile, the Obama administration has made a concerted, albeit piecemeal, effort to reduce fossil fuel demand across the economy. Those trends have contributed to a sharp drop in oil prices over the last year or two.

Continue reading “Keystone Victory Brings New Focus on What’s Right, What’s Wrong, and What’s Next?”

Click for larger.

I posted a short clip from this talk by John Holdren the other day.  This was presented as part of a AAAS symposium marking 50 years since President Lyndon Johnson’s science advisory panel first warned the President of increasing risks from greenhouse warming and fossil fuel burning – in 1965.

Terrific review with great informative slides, which are available here.

I broke into three bite size parts.  Part 2 and 3 below. Continue reading “The Weekend Wonk: John Holdren on 50 Years of Climate Science”

Worth a listen. Talks about renewables, environment, starting about 3:30.

Money quote:

“America is now a global leader when comes to taking serious action to fight climate change, and frankly, approving this project, would have undercut that global leadership.  And that’s the biggest risk we face.
Not acting.
Today we’re continuing to lead by example.
Because ultimately if we’re going to prevent large parts of this earth from  becoming not only inhospitable, but uninhabitable, in our lifetimes, – we’re going to have to keep some fossil fuels in the ground rather than burn them, and release more dangerous pollution into the sky,”

Interesting 24 hours. Exxon Subpoena’d. Now this.

350.org:

In response to the news that the White House has made the decision to deny TransCanada’s application to build the Keystone XL pipeline, marking the first time in history a world leader has turned down a major infrastructure project because of its impact on the climate, 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben issued the following statement:  

“President Obama is the first world leader to reject a project because of its effect on the climate. That gives him new stature as an environmental leader, and it eloquently confirms the five years and millions of hours of work that people of every kind put into this fight. We’re still awfully sad about Keystone south and are well aware that the next president could undo all this, but this is a day of celebration.”

350.org Executive Director May Boeve added:

“This is a big win. President Obama’s decision to reject Keystone XL because of its impact on the climate is nothing short of historic — and sets an important precedent that should send shockwaves through the fossil fuel industry.

“Just a few years ago, insiders and experts wrote us off and assured the world Keystone XL would be built by the end of 2011. Together, ranchers, tribal nations, and everyday people beat this project back, reminding the world that Big Oil isn’t invincible–and that organized people can win over organized money.

Continue reading “Keystone: Just the Beginning”

Not all “breakthroughs” pan out, but as we continue to read stories like this, it does not seem farfetched to say that the battery technologies we have today will not be those we’re looking at in 2025 or 2030.

Charged: The Electric Vehicles Magazine:

Researchers from the University of Waterloo and GM’s Global Research and Development Center have developed a new silicon-based anode material that they say could enable batteries with almost 10 times more energy density than today’s state of the art.

In “Evidence of covalent synergy in silicon–sulfur–graphene yielding highly efficient and long-life lithium-ion batteries,” published in Nature Communications, the team reports that the new electrode material shows superior reversible capacity, high coulombic efficiency, and high aerial capacity.

“Graphite has long been used to build the negative electrodes in lithium-ion batteries,” said Professor Zhongwei Chen, leader of the Waterloo team. “But as batteries improve, graphite is slowly becoming a performance bottleneck because of the limited amount of energy that it can store.”

Silicon is a strong candidate to replace graphite, but it tends to undergo significant expansion and contraction with each charge cycle, which causes the material to crack. To overcome this problem, Professor Chen’s team developed a flash heat treatment for fabricated silicon-based lithium-ion electrodes that minimizes volume expansion.

“The economical flash heat treatment creates uniquely structured silicon anode materials that deliver extended cycle life to more than 2,000 cycles with increased energy capacity of the battery,” said Professor Chen.

Chen plans to commercialize this technology, and expects to see new batteries on the market within the next year.

This week the AAAS sponsored an event commemorating 50 years since administration science advisors first warned President Lyndon Johnson about the potential for greenhouse gases to affect climate. (1965)

Above, I recorded a portion of John Holdren’s excellent historical summary of climate science milestones over the succeeding years. This clip relates to the findings of the National Academy of Science’s 1979 report on the issue, chaired by Jules Charney of MIT,  – the “Charney report” is often cited as the first, most credible identification of the canonical “climate sensitivity” – 3° C plus or minus 1.5°C warming for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 – a figure not substantially different from most current estimates and observations, and significantly, identical with estimates made within oil giant Exxon.
The speech as a whole is so valuable that I hope to record the rest of it today and listen as a great review.

Daily Climate:

It is a key moment in climate change history that few remember: This week marks the 50th anniversary of the first presidential mention of the environmental risk of carbon dioxide pollution from fossil fuels.

President Lyndon Baines Johnson, in a February 8, 1965 special message to Congress warned about build-up of the invisible air pollutant that scientists recognize today as the primary contributor to global warming.

“Air pollution is no longer confined to isolated places,” said Johnson less than three weeks after his 1965 inauguration. “This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through radioactive materials and a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.”

The science on carbon dioxide as known at the time, including forecasts of warming and sea level rise, was detailed in a chapter of a report on environmental pollution issued later that year by the president’s Science Advisory Committee. Pioneering climate scientist Roger Revelle chaired the sub-committee that wrote the chapter in the November 1965 report. While citing a need for better calculations with “large computers,” Revelle’s panel delivered a forecast on growing atmospheric carbon that proved on-target. Continue reading “50 Years: John Holdren on Climate Science History”

NYTimes finally realized nobody gives a damn about Hilary Clinton’s emails, and maybe the murder of Planet Earth is a bigger story.

NYTimes:

The New York attorney general has begun a sweeping investigation of Exxon Mobil to determine whether the company lied to the public about the risks of climate change or to investors about how those risks might hurt the oil business.

According to people with knowledge of the investigation, Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman issued a subpoena Wednesday evening to Exxon Mobil, demanding extensive financial records, emails and other documents.

The focus includes the company’s activities dating to the late 1970s, including a period of at least a decade when Exxon Mobil funded groups that sought to undermine climate science. A major focus of the investigation is whether the company adequately warned investors about potential financial risks stemming from society’s need to limit fossil-fuel use.

Kenneth P. Cohen, vice president for public affairs at Exxon Mobil, said on Thursday that the company had received the subpoena and was still deciding how to respond.

“We unequivocally reject the allegations that Exxon Mobil has suppressed climate-change research,” Mr. Cohen said, adding that the company had funded mainstream climate science since the 1970s, had published dozens of scientific papers on the topic, and had disclosed climate risks to investors.

Below, NPR’s “On the Media” – somewhat testy interview with Exxon spokesman.

Meanwhile, a lot of people have been asking why this story has not, til now, gotten much mainstream media traction. NPR ombudsman asks around, and you probably won’t be surprised by what she found.

Continue reading “Boom! New York AG Subpoenas Exxon #ExxonKnew”