Month: January 2022

.@chrislhayes on Build Back Better: "If everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority—The nature of prioritization is putting one thing over another. It's hard to do. It sucks. But it's what legislating often requires. Right now, I think the priority has to be climate." pic.twitter.com/vFjUybaTDM

— All In with Chris Hayes (@allinwithchris) January 22, 2022

When you have as much warm, moist air available in December, as we did last month, the storms that are now possible can be of a different character and scale than what we have previously seen – particularly in this winter season.
When ground that is usually covered by a foot of snow, say in the Rocky Mountain front range area, is bare, and has been bone dry for 6 months – the conditions exist for types of events that are outside of human experience.

Combining remarks from solar guru Josh Pearce PhD, with a nice succinct explanation I just came across analyzing land use for solar vs ethanol.
Ethanol is going away in any imaginable future – so if farmers need help to stay in business, making options like solar available to them as a drought-proof source of income just makes sense.

FreeingEnergy:

At $416 billion, American farm debt is at an all-time high. Since 2013, over half of all farmers have lost money each year and farm loan delinquencies are on the rise. From 2011 to 2018, the US lost more than 100,000 farms; 12,000 of which were lost between 2017 and 2018 alone. 

Many agricultural markets in the US are being artificially propped up by government subsidies and federal laws. In particular, the market for corn, the largest agricultural crop in the United States, is backed by a long history of subsidies and federal laws, including laws that require nearly all US gasoline to contain 10% ethanol, nearly all of which comes from corn.

Every year, US farmers plant around 140,000 square miles of corn, 30% of which is used to produce ethanol. Between 1978 and 2018, the ethanol industry received a variety of subsidies totaling $86 billion dollars, more than both the solar and wind industry combined. Despite all this government support, ethanol is often a money losing proposition for farmers. It is also one of the least efficient ways to generate energy. So, what if American corn farmers replaced their fields with solar farms?

If you compare the energy utility of an acre of solar panels to an acre of corn, the acre of solar wins by a landslide. 

Each year, one acre of corn produces 551 gallons of ethanol, which is the equivalent of 386 gallons of gas. Using the average miles per gallon of a US automobile, this equates to 9,691 miles driven per acre of corn per year.

In Iowa, an acre of solar panels produces 198,870 kilowatt hours each year. A typical EV drives approximately 3.6 miles per kilowatt hour. So, each year, an acre of solar panels produces enough energy for an EV to drive 710,250 miles. This is over 70 times the distance the same acre producing corn could provide.

Unlike ethanol, an acre of solar can power anything attached to the grid. The same Iowa acre, for instance, could also be used to provide 18 average US homes with electricity for the year. 

The financial utility of replacing corn with solar also promises huge gains for farmers. For example, it is not uncommon for a farmer to make two to three times more money per acre leasing to solar rather than planting corn. Solar also guarantees a steady stream of revenue, unlike corn which stands the risk of crop failure and price volatility. 

My conversation with Daniel Swain PhD of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, (as well as UCLA) took as a starting point the general topic “2021WTF”.

Dr. Swain cited the “really just astonishing” heatwave of June in the Pacific Northwest, which was the subject of a Yale Climate Connections video.

As I mentioned the other day, in continued fallout from last winter’s deadly and catastrophic Texas power grid debacle, a pipeline operator had, in the face of an oncoming winter freeze, threatened to cut off gas supplies to generators supplying power to 400,000 Texans.

The company in question, Energy Transfer, is a big contributor to Governor Greg Abbot, who was, I imagine, on the phone to his buds yesterday as the media blew up on this.

Energy Transfer has walked back their threat for now. They still claim the generators owe them money, but will continue to sell gas for now, at spot market prices, meaning, quite a bit higher than the normal rate. (gas pros weigh in here)

Texas Tribune:

After threatening to cut off fuel to roughly a third of the power plants owned by Texas’ biggest power generator, a major pipeline company said Thursday it will continue selling natural gas to the plants through the end of March. But the companies have still not resolved their underlying financial dispute stemming from last February’s deadly winter storm.

Energy Transfer LP subsidiaries walked back their threat after Luminant, a Vistra Corp. subsidiary, on Wednesday asked state regulators to prevent the pipeline company from cutting off fuel to five Vistra power plants, which produce enough electricity to power 400,000 Texas homes, businesses and critical infrastructure such as schools and hospitals.

The pipeline companies had told Vistra that gas would stop flowing to the power plants on Monday unless Vistra paid Energy Transfer $21.6 million that they claim Vistra owes them, according to Vistra’s complaint to the Railroad Commission of Texas, which regulates the state’s oil and gas industry.

The “threat to terminate service in the middle of winter is illegal and grossly irresponsible and should be prohibited by this Commission,” Vistra said in the complaint. It called the move by Energy Transfer, run by billionaire Kelcy Warren, “a form of commercial extortion.”

Energy Transfer responded Thursday in a short filing with the Railroad Commission, saying it would continue selling natural gas to Vistra on the spot market — a one-time open market transaction for immediate delivery of gas purchased “on the spot.”

That would nullify the Monday deadline imposed by Energy Transfer. Vistra has been paying those spot market prices to Energy Transfer since Dec. 1, when its long-term contract for gas expired, and Energy Transfer said it would not negotiate another contract until Vistra paid the $21.6 million.

For Vistra, paying spot prices means buying gas from Energy Transfer at between $15 and $25 per million British Thermal Units (BTUs), compared to the average national price of $3.91 per million BTUs in 2021, according to the Energy Information Administration.

GM chooses Blink (BLNK) as the vendor for charging stations at 4600 dealerships. Perhaps 10 bays per location. Do the math.

Another tidbit from Blink CEO Michael Farkas, “British Petroleum,…who own a decent amount of charging stations, says the profitability on their charging stations will outweigh the profitability on their gas pumps.”

More from my conversation with John Morales. Before he was Chief Meteorologist for NBC 6 in Miami, John worked for a time at the Spanish language channel Unavision, and knows his community well.

Polling suggests that the Hispanic community has a higher awareness and concern on climate issues than other populations in the US. John agrees, but adds some nuance.

More from my interview with John Morales, Chief Meteorologist at NBC 6 in Miami, on the half billion dollar project to keep Miami Beach from drowning in rising seas. I also include remarks from Jeff Goodell, Senior Rolling Stone writer, with whom I spent some time in Miami Beach in 2016.

Below, more from my talk with Jeff Goodell in 2016.

Waiting for Boba Fett to show up.

PV Magazine:

Dutch architectural firm MVRDV has designed and deployed a building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) system on a building owned by Taiwan’s state-owned power utility Taipower.

“We cladded the entire façade with photovoltaics, maximising the energy gains to make it not only self-sustainable, for its own usage, but also allowing the building to become a tool of energy production, exporting electricity to the rest of the grid,” said MVRDV founding partner Winy Maas.

The Sun Rock building is located at the Changhua Coastal Industrial Park, near Taichung, and its primary purpose is for the storage and maintenance of sustainable energy equipment. “The site for Taipower’s new facility receives a significant amount of solar exposure throughout the year, and so the rounded shape of Sun Rock is designed to maximise how much of that sunlight can be harnessed for energy,” MVRDV said in a statement.

The BIPV system was built with a series of pleats that support photovoltaic panels and the modules mixed in with windows, where required, on their upper surface.

“The angle of these pleats is adjusted on all parts of the façade to maximise the energy-generating potential of the solar panels,” MVRDV explained. “As a result of these measures, the building can support at least 4,000 square meters of PV panels that would generate almost 1 million kilowatt-hours of clean energy per year.”

Indicating perhaps that as long as incentives are this perverse, Texas power problems may be resist definitive solutions.

Bloomberg:

Kinder Morgan Inc. posted a record annual profit after revenue was inflated by the deadly winter storm that paralyzed Texas almost a year ago, sending natural gas prices soaring. 

The second-largest U.S. pipeline operator by market value reported adjusted earnings of $3 billion for last year, up from $2 billion in 2020, the company said in a statement Wednesday. Its fourth-quarter profit of $609 million beat the $569.7 million average of analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

Kinder Morgan, which moves about 40% of U.S. natural gas through more than 70,000 miles of pipelines, was one of the biggest winnersfrom the freeze offs that disrupted gas deliveries in Texas during a deep freeze last winter, pushing prices for the fuel available in storage to unprecedented levels. In contrast, power producers and utilities across the state incurred billions of dollars in losses amid ballooning costs.

Shares of Kinder Morgan have risen 9.9% this year, underperforming the S&P 500 Energy Index’s 16% gain. 

Kinder Morgan’s net income may reach $1.09 per share this year, up from 78 cents in 2021, following the $1.2 billion acquisition of Stagecoach Gas Services LLC and the completion of projects, the company said last month. The company plans to spend $1.3 billion in projects and as much as $750 million in opportunities including share buybacks.  

Washington Post:

After last year’s deadly storm left millions of Texans freezing in the dark for days, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, made improvements to its power grid. Now, the council said, 321 out of 324 electric generation units and transmission facilities have fully passed inspection to meet new regulations.

“The Texas electric grid is more prepared for winter operations than ever before,” interim ERCOT chief executive Brad Jones said in a statement.

But Michael Webber, an energy resources professor at the University of Texas at Austin, cautioned that although the electrical grid is better equipped for winter storms, the natural gas side of Texas’s energy system was not upgraded and could freeze in extreme conditions — which could strain the whole system. Companies that operate the natural gas systems that froze last February, cutting off supply to power plants, do not face the same regulations as those that provide power to homes and businesses.

“It’s like fixing your car, but the tank is empty,” Webber said.

Already below-normal temperatures caused some natural gas production equipment to freeze two weeks ago in the Permian Basin region of West Texas, where Bloomberg reported gas production plunged to its lowest levels since last year’s historic freeze.

On Wednesday, pipeline operator Kinder Morgan warned customers that“potential exists for supply shortfalls due to freeze‐offs” ahead of this upcoming cold onslaught.

However, this freeze, when temperatures may plunge to the teens in some areas near the southern border, will not be a repeat of last year’s winter weather, unusual for its extensive damage and duration.

“I’m not really too panicky,” Webber said. “But I will be curious to see how the gas systems perform. That’s the weak link in the system, and all eyes should be on that.”