Month: April 2023

Trillions Pouring into US Energy Transition

Wall Street Journal:

Colleton County in South Carolina is a quiet rural district best known for its hunting, fishing and, recently, a sensational murder trial. 

Now it is also a player in America’s new gold rush: a scramble for $1 trillion in federal tax incentives and loans for green energy that is fueling a flood of corporate investments and reshaping local economies.

The spending is one of the biggest outlays of taxpayer-financed industrial stimulus since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. If successful, it could transform the nation’s economy by creating millions of jobs and driving up to $3 trillion in total clean-energy investments during the next decade.

The made-in-Washington initiative also demands a leap of faith from small communities around the country that are committing significant local resources to attract businesses, sometimes in unproven industries. Some have been burned before.

In December, Colleton snagged a $279 million investment from Kontrolmatik Technologies Energy and Engineering, a Turkish firm that is hoping to get nearly $1 billion in federal tax credits over the next decade by building a battery-making plant in the U.S. Kontrolmatik wants to tap into the renewable-energy sector’s need to store electricity for release onto the grid when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing.

The Colleton facility plans to produce three gigawatt-hours’ worth of batteries each year—enough to power 540,000 homes for an hour. It promises to employ 575 people at some of the highest wages around. In return, the state and county are offering land, grants and local tax breaks.

“I’ll be honest, I have no idea what a gigawatt-hour is,” Colleton County Council Chairman Steven D. Murdaugh told local leaders at a February groundbreaking ceremony. “But I do know what a $279 million investment will do for our county, and I know what impact 575 jobs will have on our community.”
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Kontrolmatik Chief Executive Sami Aslanhan traveled to the ceremony from Turkey, conspicuous with a diamond stud in one ear and long hair pulled back in a bun. Locating the facility in rural South Carolina was “a surprise for me,” he said. Kontrolmatik had considered sites in Europe and the Middle East for its second plant, he said, noting that the U.S. law that introduced the tax credits “was an important point to shift our investments to here,” he said.

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More Signs: Monster El Nino Coming Driven by Massive Ocean Heat Gain

BBC:

A recent, rapid heating of the world’s oceans has alarmed scientists concerned that it will add to global warming.

This month, the global sea surface hit a new record high temperature. It has never warmed this much, this quickly.

Scientists don’t fully understand why this has happened.

But they worry that, combined with other weather events, the world’s temperature could reach a concerning new level by the end of next year.

Experts believe that a strong El Niño weather event – a weather system that heats the ocean – will also set in over the next months.

Warmer oceans can kill off marine life, lead to more extreme weather and raise sea levels. They are also less efficient at absorbing planet-warming greenhouse gases.

An important new study, published last week with little fanfare, highlights a worrying development. 

Over the past 15 years, the Earth has accumulated almost as much heat as it did in the previous 45 years, with most of the extra energy going into the oceans. 

This is having real world consequences – not only did the overall temperature of the oceans hit a new record in April this year, in some regions the difference from the long term was enormous.

n March, sea surface temperatures off the east coast of North America were as much as 13.8C higher than the 1981-2011 average. 

“It’s not yet well established, why such a rapid change, and such a huge change is happening,” said Karina Von Schuckmann, the lead author of the new study and an oceanographer at the research group Mercator Ocean International.

“We have doubled the heat in the climate system the last 15 years, I don’t want to say this is climate change, or natural variability or a mixture of both, we don’t know yet. But we do see this change.”

One factor that could be influencing the level of heat going into the oceans is, interestingly, a reduction in pollution from shipping.

In 2020, the International Maritime Organisation put in place a regulation to reduce the sulphur content of fuel burned by ships. 

This has had a rapid impact, reducing the amount of aerosol particles released into the atmosphere. 

But aerosols that dirty the air also help reflect heat back into space – removing them may have caused more heat to enter the waters.

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GM Ends Chevy Bolt Production to Focus on Trucks

Hopefully to be replaced soon by another 30k range model.

The Verge:

General Motors plans to end production of the Chevy Bolt EV and EUV at the end of 2023, GM CEO Mary Barra announced in an earnings call Tuesday. The company plans to use the capacity at its Orion Township, Michigan, assembly plant to build electric trucks starting in 2024. 

The end of production of the Chevy Bolt EV and EUV is a huge blow to affordable EV ownership. The Bolt is one of the cheapest EVs currently on the market, with a starting price of around $24,000. The price could be even lower when applying the $7,500 EV tax credit.

But the Bolt EV and EUV were always at a disadvantage, built on GM’s older and soon-to-be-obsolete BEV2 platform. The automaker has since shifted to its Ultium battery architecture for its next-generation EVs, including the Cadillac Lyriq, Hummer EV, and GMC Sierra EV. For its part, Chevy is planning to launch a trio of Ultium-built EVs, including the Silverado EV, Blazer EV, and Equinox EV. 

“When the Chevrolet Bolt EV launched, it was a huge technical achievement and the first affordable EV, which set in motion GM’s all-electric future,” Cody Williams, senior manager, for communications at Chevy, said in a statement. “As the company continues to grow it’s EV portfolio with the Ultium platform, and as construction continues at the Orion Township, MI, assembly plant in preparation for battery electric truck production beginning in 2024, Chevrolet confirmed Bolt EV and EUV production will end late this year.”
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As the Bolt is phased out, the Chevy Equinox EV will assume the mantle of GM’s most affordable plug-in model. The automaker has said the midsize SUV will get up to 300 miles of range and will start at “around $30,000” when its released later this year. 

GM has said it plans to spend $30 billion by 2025 on the creation of 30 new plug-in models in its bid to overtake Elon Musk’s company as the leading EV company in the world. Tesla still dominates the relatively small EV market in the US, with around 66 percent market share, while GM only has around 6 percent.

Climate Driven Insurance Crisis Spreads to Texas

Some pretty big states now losing private insurers, as companies flee or go out of business – leaving taxpayers as the only backstop in an increasingly risky environment. “Small Government”, “Free Market” warriors passing regs to lay private risks on to public purse.

ClimateWire:

Florida came first. Then Louisiana.

Now an insurance crisis that has swept across the Gulf Coast is spilling into Texas, where increasingly scarce property coverage has forced tens of thousands of coastal homeowners to buy policies from a state-chartered insurance program.

The rapid growth has alarmed officials and insurers. And it’s raised concerns that if a major storm hits Texas, so many claims will be filed that the state-chartered insurer will force insurance companies and residents statewide to help pay them.

The mushrooming problems have made Texas the latest state to feel the effects of the insurance industry’s ongoing contraction in the Gulf area following huge losses from recent storms and litigation.

Many smaller insurers in the region have become insolvent in the past year or stopped covering property in hurricane-prone areas such as the Texas coast. That’s triggered unprecedented growth in the region’s state-chartered insurance programs at a time of devastating storms.

In Texas, the program’s growth poses a threat to insurance companies and policyholders throughout the state because the program has insufficient reserves to pay a deluge of claims that would be filed after a major storm.

Instead, the insurer relies on its authority to assess insurance companies in the state up to $1 billion a year to pay claims — an authority it has exercised four times since 2005.

As the number of properties covered by the Texas state-chartered insurer grows, so do the chances that it will drain its reserves and impose an assessment that insurers will pass on to policyholders.

Other Gulf Coast states foreshadow potential problems in Texas.

Florida’s state-chartered insurer — which has seen astronomical growth — warned recently that the depletion of its reserves after Hurricane Ian could force it to impose a surcharge on millions of insurance policies in the state (Climatewire, March 21).

The Louisiana Legislature in February approved spending $45 million in taxpayer money to lure property insurers to the state after major storms left 11 insurers insolvent and prompted 12 others to submit withdrawal notices. Louisiana’s state-chartered insurer also has seen huge growth — its policy count tripled in 2022 (Climatewire, Feb. 7).

Yet the increasing demands on the populace threaten to trigger a backlash.

A Texas lawmaker introduced legislation in March that would effectively abolish the state’s quasi-public insurer — a move the insurance industry says would be catastrophic. The bill is pending in a committee and has not faced a vote.

“We can’t understand how that’s possible,” said Beamon Floyd, executive director of the Texas Coalition for Affordable Insurance Solutions, an advocacy group funded by major national property insurers. “If you did that, the immediate impact of the bill would be a real availability crisis.”

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