Month: June 2022

LNG Explosion Underlines Need for Renewable Independence

Our. global economy is too dependent on fossil fuels that can be cut off in an instant.

Will Manidis on Twitter:

Freeport, one of the largest US plants exporting liquefied natural gas, exploded on Wednesday. 

Freeport represents a critical piece of infrastructure in Europe’s divestment from Russian oil. Yet this story is almost no where in the mainsteam news, so let’s dig in.

Freeport is represents over 20% of US natural gas exports. A ten billion plus+ capex project, the plant processes two billion cubic feet a day of pipeline-quality natural gas.

The plant spits off $7.4b in revenue yearly. 80% of its shipments are direct to Europe.

As Europe attempts to divest from Russian oil, it becomes increasingly reliant on the constant stream of cargo ships from ports like Freeport. 

LNG is the key to energy independence for western europe, and is crippled if we continue to lose infrastructure like freeport. 

So what exactly happened at Freeport?

We still do not know. The explosion occurred at 11:40 a.m. CT at on Quintana Island, 65 miles south of Houston. The explosion caused a fire that sent black smoke billowing into the air and could be felt from dozens of miles away.

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Is This New Battery Too Good to Be True?

Astounding if true.

PV Magazine:

Enovix, based in Fremont, California, announced that it demonstrated in electric vehicle (EV) battery cells the ability to charge from 0% to 80% state-of-charge in as little as 5.2 minutes and to achieve a greater than 98% charge capacity in under 10 minutes. The cells also surpassed 1,000 cycles while retaining 93% of their capacity.

The achievement shattered the United States Advanced Battery Consortium (USABC) goal of achieving 80% charge in 15 minutes.

Other goals for USABC at the cell level include a usable energy density of 550 Wh/L, a survival temperature range of -40 to +66 degrees C, and a cost of $75/kWh at an annual output volume of 250,000 units. A full set of USABC targets can be found here.

The company demonstrated the fast-charge ability in its 0.27 Ah EV cells in its silicon lithium-ion batteries, which it said contain a novel 3D architecture and constraint system. The cells contain a 100% active silicon anode. Enovix said the material has long been heralded as an important technology in the next generation of battery anodes. 

Silicon anodes can theoretically store more than twice as much lithium than the graphite anode that is used in nearly all Li-ion batteries today (1800mAh/cubic centimeter vs. 800mAh/cubic centimeter).

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Summer 2022 Coming on With a Bang – Just Warming Up

Extreme storm across Chicago.

Dramatic fire pics from Flagstaff.
We can look at these images and ponder our gratitude to Exxon.

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Texas Grid Rattled by Heat

Record demand on Texas grid yesterday, scattered outages today. Energy twitter following closely.

Andrew Dessler on Twitter:

ERCOT predicted seasonal maximum power (SMP, the hour of highest demand during a season) during June-July-August (JJA) of 77.3 GW. They predict an “extreme” max demand of 81.6 GW.

You can see details of ERCOT’s forecast here: ercot.com/files/docs/202…

Of particular importance, ERCOT’s forecasts are based only on historical temperatures, which we know are not good indicators of the future.

My student Jangho Lee and I have developed power forecasts that use climate models to incorporate the impact of climate change, as well as allow us to take a more statistical view of the future. Here is the probability distribution of JJA 2022 seasonal maximum power (SMP).

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Forgotten Victims: Animals Swelter, Die in Heat

Aljazeera:

Rescuers in India’s western Gujarat state are picking up dozens of exhausted and dehydrated birds dropping every day as a scorching heatwave dries out water sources in the state’s biggest city, veterinary doctors and animal rescuers say.

Large swaths of South Asia are drying up in the hottest summer in decades, prompting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to warn of rising fire risks.

Doctors in an animal hospital managed by the non-profit Jivdaya Charitable Trust in Ahmedabad said they have treated thousands of birds in the last few weeks, adding that rescuers bring dozens of high flying birds such as pigeons or kites daily.

“This year has been one of the worst in recent times. We have seen a 10 percent increase in the number of birds that need rescuing,” said Manoj Bhavsar, who works closely with the trust and has been rescuing birds for more than a decade.

Animal doctors at the trust-run hospital were seen feeding birds multi-vitamin tablets and injecting water into their mouths using syringes on Wednesday.

Health officials in Gujarat have issued advisories to hospitals to set up special wards for heat stroke and other heat-related diseases due to the rise in temperatures.

Burning fossil fuels and destroying forests have released enough greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to also boost the frequency and intensity of many floods, droughts, wildfires and tropical storms, they detailed in a state-of-science report.

“There is no doubt that climate change is a huge game changer when it comes to extreme heat,” Friederike Otto, a scientist at Imperial College London’s Grantham Institute, told AFP news agency.

Extreme hot spells such as the heatwave that gripped South Asia in March and April are already the most deadly of extreme events, she said.

“Feedback Loop”: War and Climate Intensify Crisis

Washington Post:

With temperatures spiking to 110 degrees once more, Jeetram Yadav sat in the shade on his farm outside New Delhi and cupped a handful of this season’s disappointing wheat between his calloused palms. The grains were brown and the size of cumin seeds, shriveled by heat.

“I can speak for my village: Everybody has had the same fate,” said Yadav, a 70-year-old who grows wheat and rice on his 2.6-acre plot.

Yadav’s shriveled grains are a small part of the dangerous feedback loop between climate-linked weather disasters and the war in Ukraine that have sent food prices soaring around the world and raising the risk of an epidemic of starvation.

When Russia invaded earlier this year, threatening Ukraine’s exports of grains, crop-rich India was seen as a global buffer, making up for the shortfall. But this spring’s erratic rains and scorching heat killed crops and made it dangerous for farmworkers to harvest, devastating India’s production. In response, India announced in May it would shut down all grain exports, staving off famine in the country but threatening starvation abroad.

It was yet another climate-driven shock to a global food system already in upheaval, and a sign of the hunger crisis that looms as the planet warms.

As of last week, about 750,000 people around the world were facing a food security “catastrophe” — at which “starvation, death, destitution and extremely critical acute malnutrition levels are evident” — according to the Food and Agriculture Organization, the U.N. agency tasked with fighting global hunger.

About 49 million are at risk of falling into famine conditions in the months ahead, according to a Hunger Hotspots report published last week by the FAO and the World Food Program, the United Nations’ food assistance branch.

“These are millions of people who literally don’t know where their next meal is coming from,” said Brian Lander, deputy director of WFP’s emergencies division.

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Two Hurricane Watching Satellites Lost to Launch Failure

Space.com:

An Astra rocket carrying two small hurricane-tracking satellites for NASA failed to reach orbit Sunday (June 12) after a major malfunction shortly after liftoff. 

The Astra rocket, called Launch Vehicle 0010 (LV0010), suffered a second-stage failure after lifting off from a pad at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 1:43 p.m. EDT (1743 GMT). Two NASA cubesats, the first of a six-satellite fleet to track hurricanes as part of a $30 million mission, were lost. 

“We had a nominal first stage flight; however, the upper-stage engine did shut down early and we did not deliver our payloads to orbit,” Astra’s Amanda Durk Frye, senior manager for first stage and engine production, said during live launch commentary. 

An Astra rocket carrying two small hurricane-tracking satellites for NASA failed to reach orbit Sunday (June 12) after a major malfunction shortly after liftoff. 

The Astra rocket, called Launch Vehicle 0010 (LV0010), suffered a second-stage failure after lifting off from a pad at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 1:43 p.m. EDT (1743 GMT). Two NASA cubesats, the first of a six-satellite fleet to track hurricanes as part of a $30 million mission, were lost. 

“We had a nominal first stage flight; however, the upper-stage engine did shut down early and we did not deliver our payloads to orbit,” Astra’s Amanda Durk Frye, senior manager for first stage and engine production, said during live launch commentary. 

By using three pairs of TROPICS satellites, each in a different orbit, NASA hoped to monitor hurricanes and tropical storms every hour. It’s unclear if the agency can still do that with just four satellites, or if the two lost in today’s launch failure will be replaced.

Sunday’s failed launch is the second mishap this year for Astra. In February, the California-based company failed to launch four NASA cubesats as part of the ELaNa 41 mission, a flight that was also staged from its Florida launch pad and marked Astra’s first attempt to launch payloads for a customer. An issue with the rocket’s payload fairing was to blame, with Astra implementing a fix to avoid a recurrence.

Peaceful Atom Strikes Again: Iran on Verge of Nuclear Weapon?

Trump withdrew from the Iran Nuclear Deal.

What could possibly go wrong?

Raw Story:

Former President Donald Trump is responsible for the end of the nuclear treaty between Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.

“The Iran Deal was one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into,” said Trump in 2018. 

He then reimposed sanctions on Iran. Since 2018, Iran has been working on its nuclear weapons program because Trump failed to negotiate anything else before eliminating it. 

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett warned Sunday that Iran is dangerously close to having nuclear weapons and that they’ll get there if the west doesn’t stop it.

Because they’re so close, International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi is concerned that the revelation that Iran switched off their surveillance cameras could be the final blow to establishing another agreement that would help stop the nuclearization of Iran. 

Even Fox network hosts have come forward admitting that Trump is responsible for the current state of affairs.

National security and military analyst Rebecca Grant warned on Fox News on Sunday that Iran has always wanted the bomb because they hate the United States and Israel. 

But host Arthel Neville made it clear: “It sounds like President Trump should not have withdrawn from the deal in the first place back in 2018.“

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