Month: November 2023

More Data: Less Mining from Renewable Transition

New data, same story. Less mining with a renewable transition.

Hannah Ritchie in Sustainability by the Numbers:

Back in January, I published a post looking at the amount of minerals that were required for the low-carbon energy transition. This came from projections in the International Energy Agency (IEA)’s The Role of Critical Minerals in Clean Energy Transitions.

It projected that the world would need to produce between 27 million tonnes in its Sustainable Development Scenario, and 43 million tonnes in its Net-Zero scenario by 2040. Those scenarios did not include steel. But including them doesn’t change things significantly: we’re talking about tens to hundreds of millions of tonnes.

Sounds big, until you compare it to the 15 billion tonnes of fossil fuels that we dig out of the earth every year.

But we need to make another comparison – not only comparing the total amount of material that’s used, but the amount of ore that needs to be mined, or rock that needs to be moved. Some of these minerals are in rocks at very low concentrations – that means that to get 43 million tonnes, we’d need to extract a lot more than that.

In this post, I’ll take a look at several studies that do this adjustment.

A few key conclusions emerge:

  • The total quantities of rock moved for low-carbon technologies are much higher than the final amount we use. Billions, rather than tens or hundreds of millions of tonnes.
  • These quantities are still lower than current mining requirements for fossil fuels. In other words, the energy transition will reduce total material requirements.
  • The story for electricity and transport is different: material requirements for electricity will go down, but without improved recycling and more efficient material use, they’ll go up for vehicles
Continue reading “More Data: Less Mining from Renewable Transition”

New Links Between Clean Energy Foes and Jan 6 Grifters

This week, in a major win for clean energy advocates, and anyone that cares about their children – the Michigan House passed major clean energy reforms over bitter, party line opposition.
That legislation includes siting reforms that will move primary responsibility for clean energy siting permits to the Michigan Public Service Commission, which is much better positioned to evaluate highly technical projects, and much more insulated from the harassment, threats and intimidation that local township boards have been subjected to by conspiracist mobs ginned up by fossil fuel linked organizers.

To understand just what kind of intimidation farmers and local officials have faced, it’s important to review some of the typical kinds of threats we have seen over recent years.
First up, Josh Nolan, an attorney with a history of working for coal industry clients, who mysteriously shows up again and again wherever local boards are considering clean energy projects. Below, I recorded him making thinly veiled legal threats against the Isabella County Planning Commission in 2019.

Nolan frequently shows up as a collaborator or stalking horse for Kevon Martis, well known as a self described “Senior Fellow” for the fossil fuel funded E & E Legal lobbying firm, based in Washington DC.
E&E has a long history of intimidation tactics against climate scientists, which I have documented many times.

Here, Mr Martis has a facebook posting with a mob-like tone – “nice capitol building you got there, be a shame if something happened to it.” This was posted within days of an incident where heavily armed right wing activists invaded the Michigan Capitol to menace citizens and lawmakers.

Continue reading “New Links Between Clean Energy Foes and Jan 6 Grifters”

Huge Victory as Clean Energy Overcomes Fossil Fuel “Cult” in Michigan

Farmers and landowners in the midwest have come under attack from fossil fuel’s facebook disinformation machine, which has organized intimidation, harrassment and threats against farmers and local officials who wish to site clean energy.
Now, following similar initiatives in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Illinois, Michigan has set state level clean energy siting standards, and gone a way further with a 2040 goal for decarbonizing the state’s grid.
Biggest hurdle was overcome last night with an affirmative, party line vote in the Michigan State house. Senate expected to approve next week, and Governor Whitmer, who was a prime mover in this effort, will sign.
Big win for a large, ideologically diverse network of clean energy advocates. This is a big deal.

Michigan Radio NPR:

Legislation aimed at lowering Michigan’s energy-related greenhouse has emissions passed the Michigan House of Representatives late Thursday night.

After around 13 hours of meeting and voting, lawmakers approved bills that would require utilities to draw power using only “clean energy” sources by 2040.

The legislation would differentiate between renewable and clean energy. Under it, renewable energy sources like wind or solar would have to make up at least 60% of a utility’s energy portfolio.

The rest of the portfolio could be made up of “clean energy systems” that include sources like nuclear and natural gas using 90% carbon capture and storage technology.

Representative Jenn Hill (D-Marquette) said times are changing for Michigan and its energy landscape.

“If we’re powered by the sun, or powered by the wind, we are not sending money back out to Wyoming to pay for coal, or to Texas to pay for that natural gas,” Hill said in a floor speech.

Each bill in the clean energy package passed along party lines.

Fossil fuel interests were pulling out the stops to spread disinformation about the proposals, notably the fossil fuel and Koch funded Mackinac Center “Think tank”, based in Midland.

For many of the Farmers and Landowners I’ve spoken to around the midwest, this is something that should have been done from the beginning.

Sadly, Republicans voted against clean energy as a block. I believe much of the antipathy was directed toward Governor Whitmer, to keep a rising political star from getting a high profile win.
But we still saw the tired talking points of climate denial trotted out on the legislative floor.

Continue reading “Huge Victory as Clean Energy Overcomes Fossil Fuel “Cult” in Michigan”

Graph of the Week: Clean Energy Makes Germany’s Grid More Reliable

Yale Climate 360:

Myth No. 1: A grid that increasingly relies on renewable energy is an unreliable grid.

Going by the cliché, “In God we trust; all others bring data,” it’s worth looking at the statistics on grid reliability in countries with high levels of renewables. The indicator most often used to describe grid reliability is the average power outage duration experienced by each customer in a year, a metric known by the tongue-tying name of “System Average Interruption Duration Index” (SAIDI). Based on this metric, Germany — where renewables supply nearly half of the country’s electricity — boasts a grid that is one of the most reliable in Europe and the world. In 2020, SAIDI was just 0.25 hours in Germany. Only Liechtenstein (0.08 hours), and Finland and Switzerland (0.2 hours), did better in Europe, where 2020 electricity generation was 38 percent renewable (ahead of the world’s 29 percent). Countries like France (0.35 hours) and Sweden (0.61 hours) — both far more reliant on nuclear power — did worse, for various reasons.

The United States, where renewable energy and nuclear power each provide roughly 20 percent of electricity, had five times Germany’s outage rate — 1.28 hours in 2020. Since 2006, Germany’s renewable share of electricity generation has nearly quadrupled, while its power outage rate was nearly halved. Similarly, the Texas grid became more stable as its wind capacity sextupled from 2007 to 2020. Today, Texas generates more wind power — about a fifth of its total electricity — than any other state in the U.S.

Wind Cancellation is a Major Hiccup. But Don’t Overthink it.

Growing pains.
Meanwhile, onward.

New York Times:

Orsted, the Danish company that is a leading offshore wind farm developer, said on Wednesday that it would scrap plans to build two wind farms off the coast of New Jersey, forcing the company to write off as much as $5.6 billion.

The move was further evidence that offshore wind in the United States is going through a major shakeout, crimping Biden administration plans to make the industry a critical component of plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. High inflation and soaring interest rates are making planned projects that looked like winners several years ago no longer profitable.

“The world has in many ways, from a macroeconomic and industry point of view, turned upside down,” Mads Nipper, Orsted’s chief executive, said on a call with reporters on Wednesday. The two projects, known as Ocean Wind 1 and 2, were destined to provide green energy to New Jersey.

Offshore wind and other parts of the renewable industry have hit some snags in Europe, especially in Britain, but Mr. Nipper said the problems were more acute in the United States, because early contracts lacked protection from inflation and developers incurred high costs because of delays in approvals during the Trump administration.

Orsted is not alone in encountering hazards in the fledgling offshore market in the United States.

On Tuesday, BP, the London-based energy giant, said it would write down $540 million on three planned wind projects off New York, after the state authorities declined to renegotiate their terms. BP says it is assessing future plans for the schemes in light of the decision.

In its announcement, Orsted said it would move forward with a $4 billion project called Revolution Wind intended to supply power to consumers in Rhode Island. And other developers have projects under construction, like Vineyard Wind, which will eventually have 62 turbines in the waters off Martha’s Vineyard, Mass.

Offshore wind is not dead, but the industry and its backers are certainly learning some harsh lessons. The ambitions of the Biden administration and states along the East Coast like New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts to install large amounts of clean electric power generation through offshore wind in the coming decades are likely to be set back.

Context.


Environment America:

RICHMOND, Va. — The U.S. Department of the Interior approved the building of the nation’s largest wind farm on Tuesday. Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project will include up to 176 turbines, located roughly 27 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach. The project is the largest offshore wind project in the United States approved to date. Dominion says once the project is completed in 2026, it is expected to produce enough electricity to power 660,000 homes.

Continue reading “Wind Cancellation is a Major Hiccup. But Don’t Overthink it.”

Science Giants Square Off on Pace of Warming

James Hansen will probably go down in history with Isaac Newton as someone who fundamentally changed the way we think about physics and our planet.
Hansen has a new paper that makes some dramatic and sobering assertions relating to the high impact extremes we have seen in recent years, and expectations for near future.
Mike Mann has been, with some others, respectfully, pushing back.

James Hansen in Oxford Open Climate Change:

Equilibrium global warming for today’s GHG amount is 10°C, which is reduced to 8°C by today’s human-made aerosols. Equilibrium warming is not ‘committed’ warming; rapid phaseout of GHG emissions would prevent most equilibrium warming from occurring. However, decline of aerosol emissions since 2010 should increase the 1970–2010 global warming rate of 0.18°C per decade to a post-2010 rate of at least 0.27°C per decade. Thus, under the present geopolitical approach to GHG emissions, global warming will exceed 1.5°C in the 2020s and 2°C before 2050. 

Mike Mann at MichaelMann.net:

Let me preface my commentary by saying that I have nothing but the greatest respect for James Hansen. He has been a fundamental contributor to the advance of our science and a personal hero to me and many other climate scientists of my generation. I believe (and have stated) that he was wronged by the Nobel committee in not sharing in the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics awarded for fundamental contributions to climate science. 

It has always been risky to ignore his warnings and admonitions. I say as much in my profile of Jim (a short excerpt of which is shown above) from my 2015 book Dire Predictions: Understanding Climate Change. So it with no pleasure whatsoever that I find myself in a position to have to criticize his latest work.

Jim and his co-authors are very much out of the mainstream with their newly published paper in the journal Oxford Open Climate Change. That’s fine, healthy skepticism is a valuable thing in science. But the standard is high when you’re challenging the prevailing scientific understanding, and I don’t think they’ve met that standard, by a longshot, for the following reasons:

1. Let’s take the title itself, “Global Warming in the Pipeline”. The latest science on this, including state-of-the-art models that deal with the complexities of the ocean carbon cycle, conclude that the “zero emissions commitment” or “ZEC” (how much warming is expected when emissions reach zero), is ZERO degrees warming, i.e. warming stops when carbon emissions reach zero. This understanding goes back more than a decade (see e.g. Matthews and Solomon, “Irreversible Does Not Mean Unavoidable”, Science, 2013 for a review of the science) (Watch this space for significant further developments regarding ZEC in the coming weeks!)

Continue reading “Science Giants Square Off on Pace of Warming”

Weather Extremes Hit Utility Rates in Heartland

Detroit Free Press:

Jackson-based Consumers Energy reported third-quarter earnings Thursday, highlighting the cost-cutting initiatives the utility has taken after the high restoration costs associated with a near-record level of storm activity this year, it said.
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“Over the last 20 years, we’ve seen an increase in both the frequency of storms and higher wind speeds, some of the most extreme winds within the last four years,” Garrick Rochow, president and CEO of Consumers Energy, said on the call. “We’re clearly seeing the effects of climate change.”

For example, he said the design standard for its system was to withstand 40 mph winds. Now, that’s been changed to 80 mph.

He said those new realities are part of its “reliability road map” — a long-term plan to cut power outage times and shrink the number of customers facing outages simultaneously — that the utility submitted to the Michigan Public Service Commission last month.

Jackson-based Consumers Energy reported third-quarter earnings Thursday, highlighting the cost-cutting initiatives the utility has taken after the high restoration costs associated with a near-record level of storm activity this year, it said.
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“Over the last 20 years, we’ve seen an increase in both the frequency of storms and higher wind speeds, some of the most extreme winds within the last four years,” Garrick Rochow, president and CEO of Consumers Energy, said on the call. “We’re clearly seeing the effects of climate change.”

For example, he said the design standard for its system was to withstand 40 mph winds. Now, that’s been changed to 80 mph.

Rochow said on the call that Consumers Energy, as part of the rate negotiations between the utility, MPSC and other interested parties, came back with a rate increase request of $169 million and added that he “feels good about progress overall.”

He said, though, it’s important to get an underground pilot approved as part of the settlement. The utility has started work on a project to bury power lines in an area north of Grand Rapids but said that, longer term, there will be significantly more undergrounding “to ensure our system is prepared to withstand severe weather.”

Climate Central:

The number of weather-related outages varies among U.S. regions—which partly reflects the weather each region experiences, as well as relative population density and infrastructure age.

  • The Southeast had the most weather-related major outages (474).
  • The Midwest ranked second in total weather-related outages (363), but first in outages due to severe weather (295).
  • The Northeast was third in both weather-related (346) and severe weather-related (183) outages.
Continue reading “Weather Extremes Hit Utility Rates in Heartland”