Month: December 2023

Good discussion of the permitting barriers facing critical new transmission lines.
We will not meet climate goals without new transmission, and keeping the lights on in the face of deteriorating and aging infrastructure, in an age of more extreme climate events, will be impossible if NIMBYs on both sides of the political fence give some ground.
I’m especially upset by the short sightedness of purported “green” groups who are unwilling to understand the bigger picture.
We’ve seen some giant leaps in permitting reform around the midwest, related to solar, wind, and battery siting. We need to make similar progress for transmission.

The plummeting use of coal for German electricity, with a bump during 2021 and 2022 (high gas price).
Mostly thanks to renewables, producing around 60% of German electricity so far this year.

[Sure, still too much coal, should go to zero]

PS 8% of 2023 still to go 😉 pic.twitter.com/olwyp86TOR

— Kees van der Leun  (@Sustainable2050) December 2, 2023

Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis:

Despite hotter summer temperatures and increased power demand to run air conditioning in some parts of the country this summer, the use of coal has fallen. This is a result of lower prices for gas—coal’s primary fossil-fuel competitor—and a surge in utility-scale solar generation, which was up 20% in July from July 2022, and up 23% in August from a year ago.

The EIA’s current outlook suggests even more deterioration for coal power in the coming months. The energy agency not only sees coal’s November market share returning to the record-low market share in the spring, but also dropping even more in 2024, to as low as 10 to 13% in both the spring and fall. 

Continue reading “Killer Coal Continues Crashing”

The always excellent Diana Olick of CNBC gives quick snapshot as COP28, the annual UN Climate conference, gets started in the United Arab Emirates.
Obviously, having a major oil producer host a meeting that’s all about the need to end oil as an energy source, feeds a lot of well justified skepticism.
Important to recognize that these meetings are always a great deal of show, while the real work gets done elsewhere.

Canary Media:

Oil and gas companies, eager to distance themselves from the planet-warming reality of their core business, aren’t shy about touting their investments in clean energy and other low-carbon technologies. But new data shows that their effort on this front remains meager.

According to a new report by the International Energy Agency, last year oil and gas companies accounted for just 1.2 percent of the more than $1.6 trillion invested into low- and zero-carbon technologies worldwide. The industry spent $20 billion on such investments in 2022, equal to only 2.7 percent of its total capital spending for the year. More than 60 percent of that investment came from just four companies: Equinor, TotalEnergies, Shell and BP.

To be fair, fossil fuel companies have increased their climatetech spending significantly over the past three years — in 2019 they spent only $3 billion on climatetech. Most of that growth has come from a surge of investment in biofuels, which accounted for more than half of what oil and gas companies invested in low-carbon technologies last year. But the industry remains squarely at odds with the Paris Agreement targets meant to keep global warming to a manageable level. Even as the planet wraps up the hottest year on record, the industry is still investing 97 percent of its capital in maintaining and expanding fossil fuel operations. That’s a fact that needs to change, rapidly and radically, in the years to come.

Continue reading “Exxon Talks Big Game at COP. Numbers Tell Different Story”

I don’t pay a lot of attention to Peter Zeihan, but a get it that a lot of people apparently do, because he effectively projects an image a dumb person’s idea of what a smart person looks like, and I suspect occasionally he’s right about some things.

Anyway, he’s generally been a bit of a wet blanket on clean tech, and perhaps overly optimistic about things like, well, small nuclear reactors (SMRs). Had he been a regular reader here, he might not have been so shocked in coming to his latest disappointing conclusion.

Get enough engineers on a problem, and in this age of innovation, you will likely solve it.

New Scientist (Paywall):

The US has pledged that 100 per cent of its electricity will be generated from clean energy technology by 2035. Achieving that will require many of the dynamic dozen. But there are long-standing worries about their global supply and the environmental damage of their extraction. Much of the resource is in China, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which the International Energy Agency has described as “a concern from a geopolitical point of view”.

Enter Old King Coal. Coal waste (in the US at least) contains absolutely tonnes of the stuff. Coal ash alone contains an estimated 288,000 tonnes of lithium, enough to supply the US market for 130 years. It is also rich in cobalt, neodymium, dysprosium, platinum, iridium, gallium and germanium. The last two of these are needed for the semiconductors that will be used in sensors and controllers for the clean tech.

“It’s significant enough to meet some of these clean energy targets that we have,” said Wilcox in the webinar. “I’m really excited.”

There are other reasons to be excited. Not only does coal waste contain those crucial elements, some of it is rich in magnesium and calcium. These aren’t being lined up for extraction, but as a material for negative emissions tech. Coal waste containing magnesium and calcium reacts with carbon dioxide and locks it away as solid carbonates.

Coal waste is also often situated in communities blighted by the loss of jobs in mining. They need new jobs and often have the skills that will be required to develop a minerals extraction industry. Win, win, win, win.

But there is a way to go. The purity of the elements is typically modest, said Wilcox, and the separation technologies to recover and refine them are in their infancy. The cost of doing so is also unknown. But the US Department of Energy is burning the midnight coal to work out how to do it.

Continue reading “Engineering, Innovation Overcoming Rare Earth Conundrum”

Look for the headlines “Why this is bad for Biden.”

CleanTechnica:

I’ve still got one reservation for a Cybertruck. Tesla never really emails about it. In fact, aside from a confirmation email when the reservation was made, I don’t recall receiving any other emails about it. Well, I got one tonight — just a couple hours ago — and I have to admit that it comes across a bit weird.

Instead of highlighting the Cybertruck presentation that took place on X (the social media platform formerly known as Twitter), or sharing some of the key facts and specs of the Cybertruck, or even showing me anything noteworthy about the Cybertruck, the email quickly tries to get me into a non-Cybertruck Tesla.

The transition from mentioning my reservation in the email title to trying to push me into a totally different Tesla was so odd that I wasn’t even sure for a few minutes if I was understanding it correctly. “Is this link supposed to take me to the Cybertruck page? Or are they really just trying to get me to buy a Tesla Model S, Model X, Model Y, or Model 3?” (Also, note that I already have a Model 3, and the email doesn’t acknowledge that at all.)

The article title is this: “Experience Tesla Before Your Cybertruck Arrives.” (Again, I’m already experiencing Tesla — I have had a Model 3 for more than 4 years.) Here’s the body of the email that followed:

Continue reading “Cybertruck’s Weird Launch, Ford Lightning Sales Jump”

Net Electricity generation, renewable vs coal/gas in Germany for November 2023. Not bad for one of the darkest months of the year!

Breakdown below.