Ascend Elements is yet another Lithium ( and more!) recycler jumping into a very active space.
Don’t assume that the battery tech of 2020 will not be vastly improved by 2025.
I love these reports from CNBC’s Diana Olick, and I love the look on her face when her old-fart colleague starts asking if these new-fangled Electric cars are all that clean – just before she sets him straight.
Readers of this blog will no doubt be familiar with Jeff Berardelli’s reporting on climate and weather extremes as part of the CBS News team.
They may not know that he has moved on to become Chief Meteorologist for WFLA TV in Tampa – definitely a front line of climate reporting. I spoke to Jeff while working on a larger story about TV meteorologists for my next Yale Climate Connections video.
Jeff played a big role in my vid about last year’s astounding heat wave in the Pacific Northwest.
Twenty countries generated more than 10 percent of their electricity from wind in 2021, according to Ember’s 2022 Global Electricity Review. Denmark is at the top of the list, with a staggering 47.8 percent of its grid powered by wind energy.
Uruguay, No. 2 on the list, is a huge success story for renewables in Latin America. Moving at a breakneck pace, the country went from having virtually no wind generation in 2007 to emerging as a world leader in wind. By 2015, it was already generating more than 20 percent of its electricity from wind, and last year that grew to 43 percent. Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Brazil are also generating significant proportions of their power from wind, and Brazil is eighth globally in terms of total installed wind capacity.
The share of a country’s electricity generated by renewables is an important metric since it indicates the displacement of dirtier energy sources such as coal and fossil gas. “Three countries — the Netherlands, Australia and Vietnam — shifted over 8% of their total electricity demand from fossil fuels to wind and solar in just the last two years,” Ember reports.
But the addition of wind capacity still is not happening fast enough. According to the Global Wind Energy Council’s Global Wind Report 2022, released this week, “there needs to be a four-fold increase in new wind energy installations this decade to keep on track for a 1.5°C world.”
Meanwhile – In just 5 years, Australia has doubled the share of its electricity coming from renewables. From 15% to 30%.
Buoyed by a surge in investment and new projects, wind power has become Spain’s main source of electricity generation just as Europe seeks to curb its energy imports from Russia.
“We are on suitable ground here,” said Joaquin Garcia Latorre, project director at Enel Green Power Espana, pointing to gigantic masts erected on the heights of the tiny northeastern village of Villar de los Navarros.
The Spanish-Italian firm picked this spot, which is well exposed to the wind, to set up a 180-megawatt wind farm, one of the country’s biggest.
Dubbed Tico Wind, its 43 wind turbines started producing power in November, said Latorre while workers around him tended to the turbines, which are over 100 metres (328 feet) high.
“There are between 2,500 and 3,000 hours of wind here per year,” he added.
The wind farm will be able to produce 471 gigawatt hours per year — enough to meet the demands of 148,000 households — after it becomes fully operational in a month.
These types of projects have popped up across Spain in recent years, making it Europe’s second-biggest wind power producer after Germany for installed capacity and the world’s fifth biggest.
Wind power became the main source of electricity production in Spain last year, accounting for 23 percent, ahead of nuclear (21 percent) and gas (17 percent), according to national grid operator REE.
The sector “benefits from a favourable situation” although “brakes” remain on its development, such as a dependency on government auctions, said Francisco Valverde Sanchez, renewables specialist at electricity consultants Menta Energia.
Continue reading “Spain, Mexico Say “No” to Putin, “Si” to Renewables”Today, the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) released an in-depth report on the potential for clean energy development in Mexico. Mexico is replete with solar and wind resources and has remaining untapped potential in geothermal and hydropower.
The problem is not burning it, but whether significant amounts leak.
A study released on Friday by the UK government’s Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) has found that hydrogen is twice as powerful a greenhouse gas as previously thought.
The 75-page report, Atmospheric Implications of Increased Hydrogen Use, explains that H2 is an indirect greenhouse gas, which reacts with other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to increase their global warming potential (GWP).
“While hydrogen-induced changes in methane and ozone in the troposphere [the lowest layer of the atmosphere] have been considered previously, we have also considered, for the first time, previously ignored changes in stratospheric [ie, in the second-lowest layer of the atmosphere] water vapour and stratospheric ozone in our calculations of hydrogen’s GWP,” explain the authors, scientists from the National Centre for Atmospheric Sciences and the universities of Cambridge and Reading.
“We estimate the hydrogen GWP(100) [ie, over a 100-year period] to be 11 ± 5; a value more than 100% larger than previously published calculations.”
In other words, the study says the GWP figure is somewhere between six and 16, with 11 being the average — whereas the GWP of CO2 is one. A previous study from 2001, which has been frequently cited ever since, put the GWP of hydrogen at 5.8.
And perhaps more importantly for the race to net zero, it adds: “For a 20-year time horizon, we obtain a GWP(20) for H2 of 33, with an uncertainty range of 20 to 44.”
University of Cambridge, Atmospheric implications of Increased Hydrogen Use:
Hydrogen leakage will affect the concentration of methane, ozone and water vapour in the atmosphere. The changes in methane and ozone are driven by changes in the hydroxyl radical, OH, which is the major atmospheric oxidant and a key player in the chemistry of the atmosphere. hydrogen acts as a chemical sink for OH, and so increases in hydrogen concentrations lead to a reduction in tropospheric OH, which in turn results in an increase to the methane lifetime. Based on our experiments we conclude that if methane emissions remain constant, increased hydrogen emissions would result in a longer methane lifetime and a higher methane abundance.
Atmospheric chemists, weigh in.
“On average, our families lose about $100,000 in wealth after the
Lying in bed I heard the first thunderstorm of spring roll over last night. It’s the time of year when, in my area of the upper midwest, we are most likely to see the types of rain events that have become much more common in recent decades, which keep redefining which neighborhoods and homes are “safe”, and which are “at risk”.
Most Flood plain maps out of date, and people living in those areas do not realize the danger. When the water comes, they will lose value, perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars, on what is, for most folks, their single most important economic asset.
Elizabeth Rush in New York Times:
As it is now, the risk to properties is much greater across much of the United States than the federal government estimates. Nearly twice as many properties face danger from potential inundation as FEMA predicts — a 1 percent chance of flooding in a given year — according to a group of experts at the First Street Foundation in New York City. And because premiums do not fully reflect the flood risks of its insured properties, the flood insurance program owes nearly $21 billion to the U.S. Treasury. That’s us, the taxpayers.
Though FEMA may be best known for responding to disasters, it also holds substantial sway over what gets built where and how through the flood insurance program. The agency requires participating municipalities and states to meet basic land-use criteria in order for their residents to be eligible for coverage. These criteria, which set the baseline for building and zoning ordinances, haven’t been revised since 1976.
Which is why when FEMA reached out to the public about how to update its standards, I cheered. Then I watched in quiet amazement as hundreds of people across the country flooded FEMA with stories of how their lives and the lives of their neighbors were physically and financially imperiled by the agency’s out-of-date criteria and data.
“You have no idea how devastating and heartbreaking it is to deal with floodwaters mixed with sewage that are always trying to get into my home,” Jacqueline Jones wrote to FEMA on behalf of her organization Reidsville Georgia Community Floods. “I would have never purchased this home if I had known that it flooded, but based on over 10-year-old flood maps, it is assumed that it does not flood in this area.”
Continue reading ““I Didn’t Know My House was Going to Flood””April O’Leary of Horry County, S.C., testified at one of three FEMA public meetings in recent months that “close to half of the families” whose homes flood in her county live outside defined flood zones and are not required to carry flood insurance. “On average, our families lose about $100,000 in wealth after the flood,” she said. “Families constantly live in fear of flooding.”
Video will take an extra click to watch due to gruesome content. Be advised.
CNN host calls researcher out for “both siding” the issue.
Everyone loves Dolly Parton. And it turns out, Dolly loves her Mama Earth.
Turned up a really hauntingly beautiful song sung by Dolly and her sisters Stella and Cassie on the Porter Wagoner Show in 1970. (above)
Dolly Parton wants you to know the importance of climate change awareness.
The country icon recently spoke to National Geographic for an in-depth story about her native Tennessee’s Smoky Mountains, touching on the region’s colorful vegetation, wildlife, and the crucial nature of protecting it from the effects of climate change.
“We should pay more attention,” said Parton, 76. “We’re just mistreating Mother Nature—that’s like being ugly to your mama… We need to take better care of the things that God gave us freely. And that we’re so freely messing up.”
The musician and Run, Rose, Run author generally strays from speaking on controversial issues related to politics, as she told USA Today in 2020. “I don’t like to get involved in politics, because first of all, I have as many Republican fans as I do Democrats,” said Parton at the time. “I don’t want to offend anybody.”
However, Parton’s passion for her home state’s nature seems to override her often-neutral stance when it comes to climate change. “She is very active in causes that speak to her heart, and the Smoky Mountains where she grew up—that’s where her heart is” American Eagle Foundation executive director Jessica Hall — who helps run a bald eagle sanctuary at Dollywood, the “Jolene” singer’s Pigeon Forge, Tennessee amusement park — told NatGeo.
Possible that the disastrous 2016 Gatlinburg Wildfires may have raised Dolly’s consciousness on the issue.
Knoxville News – November 2016:
Dolly Parton’s Pigeon Forge Dollywood theme park was spared in the wildfires ravaging East Tennessee, but Parton says she is bereft about the destruction suffered by others in the Great Smoky Mountains.
The forest-fire emergency briefly threatened Dollywood late Monday, only one day after the National Park Service sent out a Smokey Bear-style video ad that Parton made urging her fans to help protect public lands throughout the Southeast by observing burn bans and reporting fires when they see them.
“I love these Smoky Mountains that I call home, and I know you do, too. Help protect their beauty and prevent human-caused wildfires,” Parton, 70, says in the ad.
Investigators are still examining what caused the fire but NPS spokeswoman Dana Soehn said the fire was “human caused”, according to outlet WREG, without elaborating further.
Continue reading “Dolly Parton: Everyone’s Earth Mother on Climate Change”There were fires in Georgia and North Carolina last week as the region is also experiencing a crippling drought, making it ripe for wildfires. Tennessee governor Bill Haslam said the fires were the worst the state has seen in a century.
Have we had enough of this yet?
No one fights over sunlight and wind.
As long as we are dependent on fossil fuels, autocrats like Vladimir Putin will lust for oil fields like those in Eastern Ukraine, and use fossil gas as a weapon against democracy.
The war in Ukraine has thrown the global economy into chaos — and the worst is yet to come, experts say.
The conflict has disrupted logistics, business operations and trade pipelines across the world: sea, land and air freight are taking roundabout routes to avoid no-fly zones and hazards of war; multinational companies are abandoning operations because of sanctions and pressure to sever ties; and countries are scrambling to meet near-term energy needs — in some cases doubling down on coal — in their efforts to reduce dependency on Russian exports.
“Everything is coming to roost,” said Alla Valente, senior analyst on Forrester Research’s security and risk team.
“It’s not just logistics time, it’s not just the cost of oil or how much oil is being used, it’s not just waiting to get our shipment of semiconductor chips, it’s not just the transportation labor shortage,” she said. “It’s not any one of those things, it’s all of those things.”
Dysfunction in supply chains and energy will lead to even higher costs for consumers, businesses, governments — and, ultimately, the environment, experts say.
“War is an energy-intensive business,” said Nikos Tsafos, an energy and geopolitics expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It takes energy to move things around, to move troops and equipment.”
Already, global oil prices have risen to their highest levels in nearly a decade, driving up costs for everything from food to fertilizer.
Continue reading ““Kill Them All” – Ukraine is Only the Latest Fossil Fuel War”“Steeper price increases for food and fuel may spur a greater risk of unrest in some regions,” the International Monetary Fund warned last month. “Longer term, the war may fundamentally alter the global economic and geopolitical order should energy trade shift, supply chains reconfigure, payment networks fragment, and countries rethink reserve currency holdings.”
