Josh Pearce teaches new solar energy engineers at Michigan Tech University.
Events like we are seeing this week lend credence to his argument here.
Month: June 2021
Northwest Heat: The Impossible Becomes Inevitable
As Texas Blackout Gas Bills Come Due, States Consider Action
Texas’ famously “free Market” energy grid, ERCOT, may have failed to deliver light and heat during the historic Valentine’s Day freeze of 2021, but in terms of delivering billions of dollars of windfall profits to Gas Barons, it worked exactly as planned. Now, sadly, and, I’m sorry, a bit hilariously as well, reliably rock-ribbed Republicans in Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri and Arkansas are saying “wait a minute..”.
An angry backlash is building across the middle of the U.S. as states step in to help their constituents pay billions of dollars in natural-gas bills racked up during February’s freeze.
While most escaped the blackouts that occurred in Texas, states from Minnesota to Kansas are having to help local utilities, businesses and homeowners cover February bills after natural-gas prices surged from around $2 per million British thermal units to as much as $1,200 in parts of the country.
Lawmakers and regulators in Minnesota, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas and Kansas have called for investigations into market manipulation and are exploring regulatory changes. Republican and Democratic leaders in some of the states said it may be time to reconsider whether interstate gas markets, deregulated since the 1980s, need greater federal oversight to prevent a similar economic calamity from happening again.
The February storm caused wellheads and pipelines to freeze in Texas and other gas-producing states, crimping supplies just as millions of customers cranked up the heat. The effects were felt far from the Lone Star State, leaving many homeowners and businesses with monthly bills hundreds or even thousands of times as large as usual.https://tpc.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
In Oklahoma City, the Villagio senior living center received a February gas bill of $44,527—about 50 times more than the month before—from its gas marketer, Constellation, a subsidiary of Chicago-based Exelon Corp. EXC 0.88%
“It was shocking, and it has an impact on residents, on things we were going to do,” said Tyler Gable, a representative of the assisted-living facility’s owner, Blackwood, which is contesting the bill. A Constellation spokesman said it was working with Villagio and similar business customers on deferred payment plans.
Oklahoma regulators said the weeklong freeze generated as much as $5 billion in gas bills there. That has left some lawmakers in the reliably Republican state to call for further regulation of natural-gas producers, one of the most influential industries in Oklahoma.
“I cannot for the life of me understand how we saw it go from $2 to $1,200 and back down to $2 in the span of the week; that’s not real,” said Garry Mize, a Republican who is chairman of the utilities committee in Oklahoma’s House of Representatives. referring to natural-gas prices. “It’s hard on a political level because you’d like to believe that free markets work all the time.”
Mr. Mize helped draft legislation signed into law in April that will allow utility companies to stretch the impact to customers over 10 years by securitizing rate payments and selling them as bonds. Without the measure, he estimated that ratepayers who normally pay an average bill of $100 a month would have seen bills for February reach around $1,900.
Continue reading “As Texas Blackout Gas Bills Come Due, States Consider Action”A Cooling Snowpit Break from Greenland
Jason Box has been posting occasional glimpses into Greenland fieldwork – the painstaking, methodical, gruntwork measurements that are the foundation for understanding.
Can almost feel the coolness here in humid Midwest heat.
Locked Jet Stream Spreads Extremes Across North America
My colleague Jeff Berardelli points out that the same jet stream block that is holding heat in the northwest is also locking rain patterns in across the midwest.
Regular viewers/readers know that this kind of stubborn pattern is something many scientists have attributed to climate warming – more research needed.
A flood advisory for parts of southeast Michigan has expired but additional rainfall is expected through the weekend, adding to totals topping several inches, the National Weather Service said Friday evening.
“It’s going to be pretty persistent into next week,” meteorologist Trent Frey told The Detroit News.
Downpours moving east had mostly pushed out of the region by 10 p.m. but the weather service predicts more showers and thunderstorms after 3 a.m. as temperatures hover near 70.
Weather Underground map shows heat and flood conditions across the US
CBS on Western Drought
About Drought: What Science Tells us About Wet and Dry in a Warming World
As historic drought and heat settle in across the American west, people are paying attention, so I’m pulling out some of my interviews and media grabs from the last decade.
Key point: think of the atmosphere as a sponge – it likes to soak up water.
Physics tells us that warmer air can hold more moisture.
So a warmer atmosphere is like a bigger, thirstier sponge. When dry spells come, they can become more intense more quickly, as the atmosphere pulls more moisture out of rivers, lakes, streams, and the soil.
When wet spells come, there is more moisture to wring out of the sponge, so more intense precipitation – of any kind, – can come down in a shorter period.
On this page, clarification from Kevin Trenberth, Jonathan Overpeck, and others.
Below, NASA’s Benjamin Cook in a CNN interview from 2016. He mentions that the then-current conditions – a dry spell that covered from about 2011 to 2016 – were probably the worst in a thousand years, which I heard from more than one researcher at the time.
Conditions now are worse.
Continue reading “About Drought: What Science Tells us About Wet and Dry in a Warming World”Heatwave Bears Down as Drought Bores in
Climate twitter is doom posting on an onrushing climate-fueled freight train of a heat wave.
Infrastructure, Climate Plan Could be Gelling
Could it be that people are underestimating Joe Biden?
While Solar Industry Builds in Ohio, Legislature seeks to Torpedo Industry
Coal industry alive and well in Ohio Legislature.
WASHINGTON—The biggest American-owned solar-panel maker announced plans Wednesday to invest $680 million in a new Ohio factory, in one of the largest bets on domestic solar manufacturing since China began dominating the industry a decade ago.
First Solar Inc., FSLR +4.43% based in Tempe, Ariz., said it plans to begin construction after necessary permits and local incentives have been secured and is aiming to open the plant early in 2023.
The factory near Toledo, which would be the company’s third in Ohio, is expected to initially produce enough solar panels to produce 3 gigawatts of power annually, or enough to power about 570,000 homes.
Combined, the three plants by 2025 would produce panels that could generate 6 gigawatts of power annually, or a little more than half of all solar panels the company estimates will be produced annually in the U.S. by then, company’s chief executive, Mark Widmar, said.
Mr. Widmar said the investment reflected the growth of the American market and what he viewed as bipartisan government commitment to encourage domestic manufacturing in alternative energy.
The Ohio Senate passed legislation Wednesday granting new powers to county commissions to scuttle wind and solar development projects.
Senate Bill 52 would require the green energy developers — before filing a separate application with the state Power Siting Board that currently exists in law — to hold a public hearing with advance notice to local officials.
County commissions could then pass resolutions to ban wind or solar projects outright or limit them to certain “energy development districts” in the county.
The bill passed on a 20-13 vote, with five Republicans joining all eight members of the Democratic caucus in opposition.
A fellowship of unlikely allies opposed the bill, including the green energy industry and its advocates, utility companies like American Electric Power, oil drillers like BP, the Chamber of Commerce, the Ohio Farm Bureau, and the Ohio Manufacturing Association.
The bill’s critics argued the Ohio Power Siting Board already imposes a rigorous application process that spans pricey submissions, environmental reviews, public hearings, staff investigations and a decision from seven voting board members (comprised mostly of the governor’s cabinet heads).