Month: May 2020
Midwest Utilities Continue Pivot to Renewables
Great River Energy (GRE) is the second largest utility in Minnesota, and typical of the large, mainstream, rust belt electric providers that are switching, rapidly, from coal fired to renewable based power, wind in this case, but solar coming on strong across the region as well.
Dave Saggau is the CEO of GRE, above, who explained the company’s experience, and early skepticism, about wind – and what won them over.
Great River Energy will shutter its big North Dakota coal-fired power plant several years early, an extraordinary move that underscores the waning cost-competitiveness of coal in electricity production.
The Maple Grove-based company Thursday announced the closure of Coal Creek Station — one of the Upper Midwest’s largest power plants — in the second half of 2022. It will be replaced to a great extent with new wind farms, including four in Minnesota.
The plant, which supplies power to hundreds of thousands of Minnesotans, has historically been a low-cost electricity producer — it’s adjacent to a coal mine, a big competitive edge. But due to dramatic changes in electricity markets in recent years, Coal Creek is losing money.about:blankabout:blankabout:blankabout:blank
“The real driver for this decision is economics,” said David Saggau, CEO of Great River, a nonprofit wholesale cooperative owned by 28 retail electricity co-ops, most of them in Minnesota.
Michael & Me
UPDATE: There is an epilogue to this, here.
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Following the release of the steaming dogpile of a movie, “Planet of the Humans,” a lot of people have been surprised to hear the details of Michael Moore’s reputational harakiri.
Have to say, I was not.
But you see, I knew Michael Moore before he was, you know, Michael Moore.
There’s been a barrage of criticism of the film, much of it simply pointing out gross factual errors, anachronisms, and boneheaded omissions.
But, perhaps especially in light of the embrace the film has gotten from the fossil fuel lobby, the climate denial media machine, and the white supremacist right wing, Moore felt he had to puff his environmental credentials in a recent op ed.
“I founded the Huron Alliance, a Flint-based anti-nuclear group. We organized massive demonstrations to block the building of the Dow Nuclear plant in Midland, Michigan. Remarkably we were successful in its cancellation.”
Well, actually, that’s something I know a bit about, since I grew up in Midland, Michigan where I still live today, about 60 miles north of Flint.
There never was a “Dow Nuclear Plant”; however there was a project begun by the state’s biggest utility, Consumers Power, back in the late 60s – for a large, dual unit-reactor, sited inside the city limits.
It was my mother, Mary Sinclair, who raised questions about that plant, followed through on the hearing process, and pursued issues of nuclear safety and economics over almost 20 years, eventually profiled by Ed Bradley on 60 Minutes in 1985. (above)
And actually, it wasn’t Moore, or any sign-carrying hippies, that got the plant cancelled, nor was it anti-nuclear efforts at all, but rather the same economic and technical contradictions that are still killing nuclear plants today.
Mom had technical chops honed as a researcher at the Library of Congress, where she had clearance to read and abstract classified Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) documents. She heard about the prospect of a new nuclear plant, knew there were issues, and started asking some questions. That lead to hearings, debates, and small town acrimony shocking in its intensity.
Ten years before Michael Moore showed up, it was my parents who got the midnight death threats, my Dad who had an attempt on his life, and his business almost destroyed, and my brothers and sisters who bore the brunt of being environmental pariahs in a small company town.
CBS got the broad outlines right.
Chart: Crossovers in Covid/Climate Denial
From Gavin Schmidt on Twitter.
Best Yet Video Takedown of Michael Moore Movie
Very impressive, thorough, and devastating while calmly, and admirably measured.
Oil’s Chaos May be Opportunity for Clean Tech
If you’re a company with expertise in drilling holes, or building big platforms offshore, you might be a bit at loose ends right now, what with oil at negative prices in some markets.
And you might be looking toward how you’ll re-enter the world after the Corona crisis abates.
Do you just say, “OK, let’s get back to work in the same business” with all the same already-existing contradictions and limitations, a business that every well informed investor knows is time-limited, and perhaps even more so now than 6 months ago – or do you brainstorm something different that you can do with the same employees, skillsets, and equipment?
Geothermal potential here, though, is enormous. The U.S. Geological Survey, in 2008, estimated that geothermal in California could provide up to 15,000 megawatts of power—about a fifth of the current capacity of the state’sexisting power plants. That capacity grows in tandem with technological breakthroughs. A 2019 study from the Department of Energy found that geothermal power has the potential to provide between 16 and 20 percent of the country’s electricity.
Tim Latimer helped found Fervo Energy in 2017 after starting his career as an engineer in the oil industry in Texas. “The skill I had developed to that point was poking deep holes in the ground,” he told me. “What I learned in researching geothermal was that I could do that for no-carbon energy.” Fervo specializes in applying technologies used in natural gas extraction—like hydraulic fracturing and distributed fiber-optic sensing—to geothermal power. “We use all the same equipment” as in natural gas fracking, he says, “but the systems we design with them are quite different.”
The collapse of oil prices in the last several weeks has been a boon to his business. Oilfield service companies, wracked by sweeping layoffs around the country, have been keen to offer Fervo equipment at lower rates than usual, now that there’s less competition from fossil fuel drillers. “As equipment is going into storage, people are really interested in putting that equipment to work,” Latimer said. “We’re getting more interest from service companies and better prices.”
Every member of Fervo’s team got their start in the oil and gas business. “It’s a seamless transition,” Latimer says. “If you’re somebody who knows how to operate that drilling rig and have spent your career learning how to make decisions on the drill site, it’s very easy. We’ll use drilling rigs that may have just come off an oil and gas well. Technically, there are things that have to be different. Our engineers have to learn different things about how the wells work, but from a workforce standpoint, it’s highly similar.”
While still tiny in terms of deployment, and facing geographic limitations, geothermal could be a major complement to renewables, since it’s available around the clock, rain or shine, wind or no wind. Some firms have also explored the possibility of recovering lithium from the superheated brine unearthed in geothermal power production before it’s reinjected underground, potentially producing a critical ingredient in the batteries that store solar power and increase reliability. That’s a serious side benefit, given the great need for lithium going forward, if society is to transition off fossil fuels.
Continue reading “Oil’s Chaos May be Opportunity for Clean Tech”Much of the technical skill needed to build offshore wind platforms is identical to that in offshore oil and gas, an industry that has constructed platforms in the North Sea and elsewhere for decades. This expertise extends to floating wind technologies, which many experts predict are the energy growth engine of the future.
The Weekend Wonk: Renewables in Coal Country
Retired coal miners struggling to keep their black lung benefits. Younger laid-off miners seeking jobs in renewable energy.
But those coal-lobbyists are “like ticks on a dog”.
Mock Meat Moment: Pandemic Pumping Plant-Based Pretend Poultry
And maybe that’s a good thing.
A combination of a looming meat shortage and empty store shelves during the coronavirus pandemic has people turning to alternative sources of protein: plant-based meat.
A new report from Nielsen indicated that substitution meat sales soared in mid-March, increasing by nearly 280% compared with the same time last year, according to NPR. Problems with agriculture in the U.S., specifically the closure of meat-processing plants and slaughterhouses due to outbreaks, are starting to affect the country’s meat supply chain, and people are taking notice, Vox reported.
The plant-based meat industry has taken notice as well, according to Vox. Ethan Brown, the founder of Beyond Meat — a plant-based meat company — says the company is beginning to sell new value packs for a competitive price to supermarkets and restaurant chains to make up for the lack of supply, Yahoo Finance reported.
“This is the industry’s moment,” Brown told Yahoo Finance. “We need to make sure that we are part of a solution.”
Nielsen data showed fresh plant-based meat sales increased by 279% during the week of March 14, and fully cooked alternative meat sales increased by 84% that same week, according to NPR. Because the demand has climbed so vastly, Beyond Meat will be lowering the price of its products in the coming months, Yahoo reported.
“We are going to use the summer as an opportunity to bring new consumers into our brand, increase the overall consumer base, so you will see us be aggressive in stores with longer discounting than we’ve done in the past,” the company said in a statement to Yahoo.
Other plant-based meat companies are following suit, Forbes reported. Tofurky, a company that sells 35 different alternative meat products, says its sales increased by 40% in the last 12 weeks, according to Forbes.
Tofurky’s plant-based ham sales increased by 631% from last year, the company told Forbes. Impossible Foods says because demand for the Impossible Burger skyrocketed during the pandemic, it will expand the burger’s retail presence at 1,700 Kroger-owned stores all over the U.S., according to Vox.
Meat alternatives have become increasingly popular, even before the pandemic set in, Forbes reported. Sales were up 158% in the last week of February this year compared with last year, according to Forbes.
The coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated that trend, as big meat processing companies including Tyson and Smithfield Foods close plants amid COVID-19 outbreaks among workers, Forbes reported.
The coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated that trend, as big meat processing companies including Tyson and Smithfield Foods close plants amid COVID-19 outbreaks among workers, Forbes reported.
Continue reading “Mock Meat Moment: Pandemic Pumping Plant-Based Pretend Poultry”In a call with Yahoo Finance on Tuesday afternoon, Beyond Meat founder Ethan Brownsounds like a man ready to get his earnings day over quickly so he could start executing on what may be a defining summer in the 11-year history of his plant-based meat outfit.
Science: Fact Checking Viral Virus Vid
Off topic, but vital for members of this community to be aware of bogus viral video that is getting a lot of play – I’ve had it sent to me by family members.
It is much like what we have seen in the climate space. “Persecuted scientist goes public, ..the establishment…revolutionary breakthrough..” yadda yadda..
Continue reading “Science: Fact Checking Viral Virus Vid”In a video that has exploded on social media in the past few days, virologist Judy Mikovits claims the new coronavirus is being wrongly blamed for many deaths. She makes head-scratching assertions about the virus—for instance, that it is “activated” by face masks.
Mikovits also accuses Anthony Fauci, head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and a prominent member of the White House’s Coronavirus Task Force, of being responsible for the deaths of millions during the early years of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The video claims Mikovits was part of the team that discovered HIV, revolutionized HIV treatment, and was jailed without charges for her scientific positions.
Science fact-checked the video. None of these claims are true. The video is an excerpt from a forthcoming movie Plandemic, which promises to “expose the scientific and political elite who run the scam that is our global health system.” YouTube, Facebook, and other platforms have taken down the video because of inaccuracies. It keeps resurfacing, including on the Plandemic website, which, in “an effort to bypass the gatekeepers of free speech,” invites people to download the video and repost it.
But first, who is Judy Mikovits?
Mikovits started her career as a lab technician at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in 1988. She became a scientist and obtained a Ph.D. in biochemistry and molecular biology from George Washington University in 1991. By 2009, she was research director at the Whittemore Peterson Institute (WPI), a private research center in Reno, Nevada, but she remained largely unknown to the scientific community. That year, however, she co-authored a paper in Science that suggested an obscure agent named xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus (XMRV) caused chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS).
The cause of CFS, also called myalgic encephalomyelitis, had long remained elusive, and the disease had been neglected by science. The study created hope that CFS might become treatable with antivirals. Some patients even began to take antiretroviral drugs used by HIV-infected people. But the paper also created worries that XMRV might spread via the blood supply.
Other researchers soon questioned the findings, and over the next 2 years, the paper’s claims fell apart. Researchers showed that XMRV was created accidentally in the lab during mouse experiments; it may never have infected any humans. The authors first retracted two figures and a table from the paper in October 2011. Around the same time, a study by several labs, including WPI itself, showed the findings couldn’t be replicated.
In Case you Missed it: Some Good News
U.S. energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions declined by 2.8% in 2019 to 5,130 million metric tons (MMmt), according to data in the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) Monthly Energy Review. CO2 emissions had increased by 2.9% in 2018, the only annual increase in the past five years. Because of continuing trends in how much energy the U.S economy uses and how much CO2 that energy use generates, energy-related CO2 emissions in 2019 fell more than energy consumption, which declined by 0.9% in 2019, and gross domestic product, which increased by 2.3% in 2019.
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Nearly all of the change in CO2 emissions in 2019 arose in the electric power sector.
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Total net electricity generation fell by 1.5% in 2019, but power sector CO2 emissions fell by even more (-8.2%), largely because of increases from renewable sources such as wind and solar. Electricity generation from coal fell, and the increase in natural gas-fired electricity generation was more limited. Because sources such as wind and solar have no fuel costs, when available, they are the first sources dispatched to meet electricity demand.
Global energy-related CO2 emissions flattened in 2019 at around 33 gigatonnes (Gt), following two years of increases. This resulted mainly from a sharp decline in CO2 emissions from the power sector in advanced economies1, thanks to the expanding role of renewable sources (mainly wind and solar PV), fuel switching from coal to natural gas, and higher nuclear power output.
