Month: November 2023

I’ll be posting more on some of the real and supposed growing pains of clean energy in coming hours and days, but remember, the Covid-amped increased prices for steel, copper, labor, and interest that have hit, for instance, offshore wind, have clobbered the already shaky economics of Small Modular Reactors.
I don’t think this is the end of the Small Modular Reactor industry, there are still a lot of players, and a lot of investors that want this to happen.
But what I do say is that building nuclear plants has always been technically challenging and financially precarious. Anyone that ignores that, or ascribes nuclear difficulties to hippie protesters or pesky regulators, does not understand the issue.
We need to accelerate solar and wind right now, since that is what we have, and if someone can eventually build new nuclear that works, that is safe, does not threaten more nuclear proliferation, and competes economically, great. But assuming nuclear will save the climate at this point is pretty naive.

Nuscale, the furthest along of any SMR companies, announced the failure of their flagship project yesterday.

Nuscale:

Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS) and NuScale Power Corporation (NuScale) (NYSE: SMR) announced today that they have mutually agreed to terminate the Carbon Free Power Project (CFPP).

Despite significant efforts by both parties to advance the CFPP, it appears unlikely that the project will have enough subscription to continue toward deployment. Therefore, UAMPS and NuScale have mutually determined that ending the project is the most prudent decision for both parties.

“Through our work with UAMPS and our partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy, we have advanced our NuScale Power Modules™ to the point that utilities, governments and industrials can rely on a proven small modular reactor (SMR) technology that has regulatory approval and is in active production. Our work with CFPP over the past ten years has advanced NuScale technology to the stage of commercial deployment; reaching that milestone is a tremendous success which we will continue to build on with future customers,” said NuScale President and Chief Executive Officer John Hopkins. “NuScale will continue with our other domestic and international customers to bring our American SMR technology to market and grow the U.S. nuclear manufacturing base, creating jobs across the U.S. We thank UAMPS for the collaboration that has enabled this advancement.”

“This decision is very disappointing given the years of pioneering hard work put into the CFPP by UAMPS, CFPP LLC, NuScale, U.S. Department of Energy, and the UAMPS member communities that took the leadership role to launch the CFPP,” said UAMPS Chief Executive Officer and General Manager Mason Baker. “Yet, this decision is the best course for the UAMPS members participating in the CFPP and doing what is best for those member communities will always be the guiding light in such decisions. We have learned many invaluable lessons during the development of the CFPP that we will carry forward in future development work to meet the future energy needs of the UAMPS member communities. We look forward to continuing to provide innovative and cost-effective new resource solutions to our members, and, at the same time, we hope NuScale is successful in deploying its technology.” 

Baker concluded, “We are working closely with NuScale and the U.S. Department of Energy on next steps to wind the project down.”

Decarbonization news outlet Recharge News had this to say:

NuScale in January set a new target price for power from CFPP at $89/MWh, an increase of more than 50% on previous estimates. It noted then that the upward revision “has been influenced by external factors such as inflationary pressures and increases in the price of steel, electrical equipment and other construction commodities not seen for more than 40 years”.

Continue reading ““New” Nuclear Flagship Stumbles. Badly.”

Like a fat, sweaty, old Elvis impersonator, Steve Milloy, longtime tobacco and climate denial shill, keeps dusting off the oldies of climate denial. He did it again last night, and got a “Community notice” on Twitter/X, which pointed to the actual, contextually longer NOAA graph.
(you have to be pretty gross to get noticed on Twitter these days)

This cherry picking of graphs technique is one of the oldest scams in the book, but like Fat Elvis playing his hits, he still has an adoring audience.
Below, a closer look at how it works (and whose tried it before? you’ll never guess..).

Continue reading “Climate Denial’s Fat Elvis Keeps Playing the Oldies”

Here’s what we see.
John or Jane farmer has been steward of a chunk of farmland for generations.
Somewhere along the way, because farming is a treacherous and cyclical business, and because sometimes disasters happen, or prices drop, or someone gets sick, the farmer might have sold an acre or two along the road to be able to pay taxes.
Other farmers in the community had to do the same thing.
Gradually, little points of sprawl begin popping up in agriculturally zoned areas, with newcomers buying their little slice of heaven, second home, or rural faux farm.

Then, in the last decade, as farming continues to be as tough as ever, new opportunities arose. A farmer could get an offer from a wind developer, in exchange for a couple of acres, to put a turbine on a small patch of their land, and derive 25 or 30 years of guaranteed, drought proof, flood proof, recession proof income, while still continuing to farm over the majority of the land.

But the newcomers, in the meantime, had never really grasped that the farmers were the longtime bedrock of the community, stewards of the land, and businesspeople, who also hoped to scratch out enough of a living so they could feed a family, send a child to school, live a decent life, and maybe slow down when they got up in their 70s.
But for the Fox-News-addled ex-urbanites, the farmer is merely unskilled Labor. The Help.
Groundskeepers tasked to maintain an unchanging pastoral back drop for the second home, or country squire lifestyle.

Now consider the fetid, rotten compost of 30 years of Fox News programming, constant drumbeat of right wing radio, legions of nihilistic, meme spewing 22 year olds at keyboards in fossil funded “think tanks” around the country, and cunningly programmed bots from a host of international bad actors.
Add in a rich mix of nativist conspiracy thinking and misinformation about “wind turbine syndrome” or solar panels causing “birds to burst into flame”, Facebook algorithms targeted specifically to each individual, and you have an angry mob of easily lead, aggrieved, and volatile, sometimes armed, individuals who have been weaponized, and aimed at small township boards across the midwest.

Mlive:

“People in our township were spun into a frenzy because they were lied to by people who didn’t want their view to change. The problem is they don’t own their view,” said longtime family farm owner Clara Ostrander, of Azalia in Monroe County.

“Their view is farmland families like mine have tended, preserved, and paid taxes on for generations. They should not get to decide what we grow or what we harvest. And that includes harvesting the sun for electricity.”

Democrats on the state Senate’s energy committee voted on Tuesday to advance a pair of bills to overhaul how decisions are made across Michigan about where to build large-scale renewable energy generation. Under the legislation, the Michigan Public Service Commission would become the ultimate decision-maker for renewable energy installations with a 100-megawatt capacity or larger.

Continue reading ““They Don’t Own the View”. Farmers Voice Frustration with Anti Clean Energy Newcomers”

Continuing massive temperature anomalies continued in October.
We WILL have a new hottest year record.
Even Dr Roy Spencer’s UAH satellite record, normally a laggard indicating warming, has shown the pop.

Zeke Hausfather says “slightly less gobsmacking”.

Global temperatures in October smashed the prior monthly record by 0.4C, and were ~1.7C above preindustrial levels.

It wasn't quite as gobsmacking as September, but still comes in as the second most anomalous month in what has been an exceptionally hot year already. pic.twitter.com/uX69v0GoRl

— Zeke Hausfather (@hausfath) November 3, 2023

Guardian:

The world is set to have been hotter in 2023 than in any other year on record, scientists have declared, before a landmark climate summit this month.

“We can say with near certainty that 2023 will be the warmest year on record, and is currently 1.43C above the pre-industrial average,” said Samantha Burgess, the deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service. “The sense of urgency for ambitious climate action going into Cop28 has never been higher.”

The Copernicus scientists found last month was the hottest October on record globally, with temperatures 1.7C above what they were thought to have been during the average October in the late 1800s.

Put a hold on the super batteries and transmission lines.
They’re all happening, but not by this route, and not as soon as we’d like.

Wall Street Journal:

A physicist whose burgeoning career has been rocked by accusations of plagiarism and professional misconduct has now had his biggest discoveryinvalidated by the journal that published the research.

In March, Ranga Dias and his team made the electrifying claim that they had identified a room-temperature superconductor—a discovery that, if true, would have been a step toward revolutionizing energy grids, battery technology, computer processors and a host of other electrical systems by making them work more efficiently.

Instead, after months of public criticism from other physicists, a written requestfrom eight of the study’s 11 authors and an internal investigation of its own, the journal Nature on Tuesday retracted the paper.

“These concerns are credible, substantial and remain unresolved,” a notice now posted alongside the paper states. Dias and two other authors didn’t say whether they agree with the retraction.

Dias, who led the research at the University of Rochester, told The Wall Street Journal in September that he “never engaged in the fabrication, manipulation, or misrepresentation of data in any of my research endeavors.”

In the now-retracted paper, Dias and his team said they observed superconducting behavior in the rare-earth metal lutetium when mixed with hydrogen and nitrogen. Superconductivity—the unusual ability of some materials to pass electrical current without a loss of energy—is seen only at impractically low temperatures, and often also requires very high pressures.

Dias’s team purportedly showed superconducting behavior at about 70 degrees Fahrenheit. They named the material “reddmatter” because, they said, it transformed from bright blue to shiny red as it was pressurized. The name was also a wink at the “red matter” substance that formed black holes in the 2009 Star Trek movie.

Scientists at once raised doubts about the new work.

Continue reading “Paper Retracted: False Alarm on Room Temp SuperConductor”

Not just Florida.
A lot of wake-up-in-the middle-of night-Oh-Shit moments going on about near term financial consequences of climate extremes.
I happened to have had a mind-expanding chat with old friend and thermal science jedi John Abraham this morning, I’ve excerpted that below. John provided the graph of NOAA data above.
US Dept of Treasury has a new study focusing on this.

US Department of Treasury:

• Households can experience significant financial strain through pressures to their income and expenses. Climate hazards can cause widespread physical damage and force interruptions and closures of normal operations of businesses, governments, and other critical services. As a result, households can face financial strain from lost income and higher costs or reduced access across a range of consumer goods and services.
  • Reduced earning and access to employee benefits. Climate hazards like wildfires can lead to unsafe working conditions necessitating business closures. Households in impacted areas could face reduced income due to job loss or reduced working hours. Further, prolonged time away from work could cause workers to lose access to employer-provided benefits such as health insurance. 
  • Damage and destruction to property. Climate events like floods can cause significant damage to household property. While damage remediation is urgent, households may lack the financial resources needed for repairs or replacement.   
  • Increased spending on transportation. Households’ spending on transportation varies depending on the mode and frequency of transportation, access to public transportation, and proximity to frequently visited places. Climate events can add to households’ expenditures on transportation, including by increasing gasoline prices by causing shortages or increased demand.
  • Added healthcare costs.  Climate events and conditions can result in physical injuries, including those requiring medical care. For impacted households, climate-related hospitalization or medical services can lead to an overall increase in healthcare expenditures. 
  • Higher expenditures on utilities. As climate events and conditions continue to grow in frequency and intensity, households may face additional expenditures on utilities. For example, households exposed to heat waves and higher average temperatures are more likely to use air-conditioning, which could increase their energy consumption and associated expenses. 

ClimateWire:

Treasury’s Federal Insurance Office announced Wednesday that it will collect data from the nation’s largest property insurers to pinpoint areas vulnerable to “major disruptions” in insurance coverage.

The federal effort, which has never before been undertaken, will assess “the increasing impacts of climate change on household budgets” and help officials develop ways to make property insurance more available, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement.

Three hours after Treasury’s announcement, Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Ron Wyden of Oregon, both Democrats, said they are investigating how climate change threatens the solvency of major insurers in four disaster-ravaged states. They sent letters to 40 insurers in California, Florida, Louisiana and Texas seeking information and documents that would show how the companies are dealing with climate change and where they have pulled back coverage.

Whitehouse, chair of the Budget Committee, and Wyden said they feared that climate change and insurance scarcity will create “a widescale decline in property values.”

Continue reading “US Treasury: Climate’s Economic Impacts Hitting Families, Businesses”

Interesting that this seemingly moderate and well spoken guy, self described friend of Amory Loving, could have been elected in Wyoming, but maybe that’s something to build on.
He’s gotten in a little trouble with fellow Republicans, as one does, for acknowledging reality.
Watch this space.

Fox News:

Republican Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon is facing criticism for his recent comments pledging to reduce his state’s carbon emissions and saying there was urgency to addressing the “warming climate.”

Gordon made the comments during a talk at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics in Massachusetts Monday, promoting the “Decarbonizing the West” initiative he established in his role as chairman of the Western Governors’ Association. In 2018, Gordon ran for governor on an all-of-the-above-energy platform and has since promoted green energy development.

“It is clear that we have a warming climate,” Gordon remarked Monday, according to The Harvard Crimson. “It is clear that carbon dioxide is a major contributor to that challenge. There is an urgency to addressing this issue.

“Wyoming is the first that has said that we will be carbon negative.”

Cowboy State Daily:

he Wyoming Republican Party passed a vote of “no confidence” on Saturday against Gov. Mark Gordon for his recent comments at Harvard University that Wyoming is committed to becoming “carbon negative” and that the climate is warming.

The motion for a “no confidence” vote originated from the Park County Republican Party, which passed it at its county meeting Thursday and says Gordon “boldly turned” his back on Wyoming Republicans.

A vote of no confidence isn’t as strong a censure, but is an official statement about how the party views what Gordon said during his Harvard visit.

Continue reading “Wyoming Governor in Trouble for Acknowledging Science”

Video report above is a summary of Bloomberg piece below.

Bloomberg:

In Fort Myers Beach, many of the middle-class cottages that once dotted the Estero Island town were wiped off the map. Ian killed 21 people and swept away a third of the homes and businesses on the narrow, 6.5-mile-long strip of sand, leaving a blank canvas for affluent newcomers — and a preview of what could take hold in other coastal communities as climate change spawns more intense storms. 

Driving along the island’s white-sand beach in his Jeep Grand Wagoneer, Alex King, a real estate agent wearing Crocs and a marlin-themed shirt, points to four mansions taking shape among more recently built, bunker-like houses that survived the storm. They’re surrounded by empty lots once home to decades-old bungalows on wooden stilts, violently cleared by Ian’s 15-foot storm surge in September of last year.

King, a lifelong resident whose grandfather arrived in the area in 1958, is a key player in the island’s transformation. Just off the beach, he swings past a string of lots he’d sold since Ian. Once filled with modest homes, they are among hundreds of recently purchased properties likely to look very different than they did before the storm.

“We were thinking gentrification would take 20 years,” said King, who is 64. “Now we’re thinking of a five-year gentrification.”

cross the US, the wealthy are reshaping landscapes battered by hurricanes, fires and other disasters at a time when such calamities are expected to grow in force and frequency. About 3.6 million Americans are exposed annually to floods, and that could double by 2050 as the population grows in at-risk places, according to one study last year.

Florida depends on luxury real estate for revenue. But as the effects of climate change worsen, taxpayers will increasingly subsidize the costs of beachfront living by the rich, including sea wall construction, beach replenishment and road elevation, as well as sending rescue workers in to save lives in emergencies.

Buyers and developers with the resources to build fortress-like properties that can survive extreme weather have swooped into Fort Myers Beach, showing how hurricanes often don’t deter those who can afford the cost of adapting. This form of climate-driven gentrification — occurring near areas of natural beauty like national parks and pristine white-sand beaches — is displacing people who lived or vacationed there for generations but can’t afford to rebuild or pay rising rents.

Continue reading “Rich Buying in to Build “Fortresses” on Florida Beach, with big Taxpayer Subsidies”

Oh, right. I remember. Seems like a thousand years ago already.

Google has this refresher:

Hurricane Hilary was a large, potent Category 4 Pacific hurricane in August 2023 which brought torrential rainfall and gusty winds to the Pacific Coast of Mexico, the Baja California Peninsula and the Southwestern United States, resulting in widespread flooding and numerous mudslides.Wikipedia

Areas affected: Western Mexico, Revillagigedo Islands, Baja California peninsula, Western United States

Category: Category 4 Hurricane (SSHWS)

Date: August 16, 2023 – August 21, 2023

Damage: >$615 million (2023 USD)

Total fatalities: 2

Highest wind speed: 143 mph

Location: Baja California Peninsula