Month: January 2024

In Detroit – Community Solar Not a Slam Dunk

An empty lot in the Grixdale neighborhood on Robinwood west of John R is potentially slated for a solar farm. Photo by Quinn Banks

Planet Detroit:

Neighborhoods east of Palmer Park could soon be transformed by a city plan to power municipal buildings with six solar fields, and neighbors are divided over the prospect.

Depending on who you ask, three projects for 140 acres of solar around the Chaldean Town, Greenfield Park, Grixdale Farms and State Fair neighborhoods are viewed as a major opportunity for residents or a risky undertaking that could drive disinvestment.

Residents have until Jan. 31 to sign a form indicating whether they approve of the projects that will be implemented in six city neighborhoods. 

John Gruchala, who lives on Parkhurst near the proposed Greenfield Park solar project, has been in the neighborhood for fifty years and thinks solar developments could hurt efforts to attract more residents.

“This is the center of the metropolitan area, and you’re taking such valuable land,” he said of the neighborhood, which is within 15 minutes of downtown Detroit and Birmingham and close to expressways.

Brenda Price, who lives on Hildale Street near the Grixdale project site, supports the plan, saying it will reduce blight and offer a rare opportunity for residents to sell their homes. 

“You can go in any direction in Detroit and find a neighborhood that looks like that, or blocks that look like that,” she said of the largely abandoned area in the solar field’s footprint. “The expectation that it’s going to change is not likely.”

The initiative, announced in June, could have profound consequences for the neighborhoods and the finances of those within its footprint if implemented.

After a series of community meetings, the city selected nine neighborhoods to consider for solar arrays, which will be narrowed to six, to assemble the 250 acres needed to power city buildings. Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan has pitched the program as a way to fight climate change and cut down on illegal dumping by fencing off abandoned areas.

Differing visions for what the solar plan will mean for residents led to a heated debate over the Grixdale Farms project at last week’s meeting at the American Community Council Youth Center on East Seven Mile, where more than 30 residents often shouted to be heard.

Some said the deal was too good to pass up for an area that has seen so much disinvestment, while others said large solar farms could hurt home values and kill future development. Some felt they didn’t have enough information to make an informed decision. 

Outcomes for residents will depend on how houses are valued in a future buy-out, the amount of community benefits proposed for each homeowner and the effect solar fields will have on neighboring property values.

Homeowners in the footprints of the proposed solar fields stand to receive twice the fair market value of their homes or $90,000, whichever is higher, while renters will get 18 months of rent to relocate. Homeowners within community benefits areas surrounding the projects will receive $15,000 to $25,000 each for energy efficiency upgrades.  

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Wilson Ricks on Next Generation Geothermal

The smartest people that I talk to have been mentioning the word Geothermal more and more frequently over the last 4 years or so.

I was lucky enough last week to interview Wilson Ricks, a Princeton PhD candidate who is working with Jesse Jenkins in a very active group that models potential clean energy futures.

Now they have a new paper, lead by Ricks, describing some of the most promising approaches for Geothermal. 

TechExplore:

Enhanced geothermal systems (EGSs) are human-made or enriched reservoirs within the Earth’s subsurface, from which heat can be extracted to produce geothermal energy. The energy produced by these reservoirs could serve as an alternative source of electricity, helping to mitigate carbon emissions.

So far, EGSs have been primarily viewed as potentially stable and reliable sources of electricity that could operate consistently over time. However, these geothermal reservoirs could potentially also store energy for longer before it is converted into electricity, rather than converting it all at a given point in time.

Researchers at Princeton University’s ZERO Lab and EGS developer Fervo Energy recently carried out a study exploring the potential impact of utilizing EGSs flexibly and storing the energy they generate on long-term ongoing efforts aimed at decarbonizing electricity generation. The findings of their project were published in Nature Energy.

“This paper was a collaboration between my research group at Princeton, the ZERO Lab, and Fervo Energy, an enhanced geothermal systems technology startup,” Wilson Ricks, co-author of the paper, told Tech Xplore. “The project was intended to explore the potential benefits of flexible operations for both EGS as an industry and for the decarbonized electricity grids in which it might participate.”

The idea that EGSs could be operated flexibly has been around for decades and was first demonstrated in the 1990s. Yet climate change and ongoing efforts aimed at decarbonizing power systems have re-awakened interest in this idea, ultimately inspiring Ricks and his collaborators to carry out their study.

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Once Again – How We Know that Humans are Causing Climate Change

New video by Sabine Hossenfelder which is, regrettably, quite germaine in the era of revived climate denial memes.
It may not move Uncle Dittohead, but could be helpful for those asking good faith questions.

Additional supporting info as always, comes from NASA.

In addition, as I’ve often pointed out, one could rightfully assert that the surest indicator that one’s physics is correct is the ability to make predictions. If you used your understanding of physics to make a prediction about the earth system, say, 40 years ago, and that prediction is now playing out – it’s a pretty good indicator that your physics has some mojo.
If you have not seen this Yale Climate Connections video, you should, and book mark it.

Can California Hold Fossil Fuel’s Feet to the (Wild)Fire?

Nice video above for anyone that needs a thumbnail reference to the criminal activity of the fossil fuel industry in misinforming about climate change, and its war on science writ large.

Video centers on the lawsuit filed by the State of California against the oil majors which seeks to hold them responsible for climate damages in the way that Tobacco Companies were held responsible for health damages. A victory against tobacco took decades and a number of failed attempts, but resulted in enormous damage awards.

We’ve seen quixotic efforts in this space, famously brought by children (kids in the State of Montana won a case that is currently under appeal) – but this isn’t a bunch of kids, this is the 5th largest economy in the world stepping up.
Could People of the State of California v. Big Oil be the breakthrough in the climate space? And if so, how does one even begin to calculate the damages that must be awarded, and how to distribute them?

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Smoking Gun – Fossil Industry Knew About Climate Change in the 1950s

I first read about the Greenhouse effect in Isaac Asimov’s “Intelligent Man’s Guide to Science”, which my parents must have bought in 1960 when it came out.
It wasn’t exotic, cutting edge research.

Guardian:

The fossil fuel industry funded some of the world’s most foundational climate science as early as 1954, newly unearthed documents have shown, including the early research of Charles Keeling, famous for the so-called “Keeling curve” that has charted the upward march of the Earth’s carbon dioxide levels.

A coalition of oil and car manufacturing interests provided $13,814 (about $158,000 in today’s money) in December 1954 to fund Keeling’s earliest work in measuring CO2 levels across the western US, the documents reveal.

Keeling would go on to establish the continuous measurement of global CO2 at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. This “Keeling curve” has tracked the steady increase of the atmospheric carbon that drives the climate crisis and has been hailed as one of the most important scientific works of modern times.

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Clean Energy is A Retirement Plan for Farmers. Fossil Fueled, Facebook-Frenzied Flashmobs are Blocking Them

New batch of Farmer interviews that I am working through right now.
I’m actually overwhelmed with new footage at the moment, at the same time my cell is blowing up as the fossil fuel industry goes ballistic on Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s new clean energy goals for my home state of Michigan.

Above, Jeff Ehlert is a multi-generational farmer in Lenawee County, in the far southeast, last stop before Ohio – who has seen anti-clean energy mob actions up close for a dozen years. What’s striking about all these interviews is the similarity of the stories that farmers tell, of intimidated local officials, underhanded tactics, and fossil fuel operatives bringing in outsiders to bully and harass local citizens.

Below, John Tuckerman, another more-than-centennial farmer just down the road, is a former County Commission chair, and expresses poignantly the emotional reactions of farmers who feel betrayed by community members, many of whom have benefitted from farmer’s generosity in the past.

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Biden’s LNG Pause – What’s at Stake

The Biden Administration paused permitting for new liquified Natural Gas facilities in the US, which has been a huge sore point for climate activists and young voters. It’s a big deal.
Texas A&M atmospheric expert Andy Dessler is spot on here.

Andrew Dessler in The Climate Brink:

The Biden administration’s decision to delay the approval of the largest natural gas export terminal in the U.S. is a critical juncture in global climate policy. This postponement, affecting possibly 17 proposed terminals, reflects concern about the long-term impact of liquefied natural gas (LNG) expansion on climate change, the economy, and national security.

Generating energy from natural gas produces around half the carbon dioxide that energy from coal produces. Thus, displacing coal with natural gas does reduce emissions of carbon dioxide. 

This coal-for-gas substitution has been occurring in the U.S. for the last 20 years and is a primary reason for the decline in U.S. emissions over that period.

Thus, in the near future, expanding LNG exports could reduce emissions, as long as it caused emitters to switch from coal to natural gas and upstream methane leakage is kept low — both big ‘ifs’.

But most scenarios for achieving the Paris Agreement’s target of “well below 2°C” have global coal use dropping to near zero in the next 15 years. The LNG infrastructure being proposed, however, will have a lifetime of 50-100 years. This means that building this infrastructure locks us into emissions extending well beyond the expected shutdown date of most coal plants.

Thus, considering the full lifespan of the infrastructure, these LNG plants will lead to higher emissions. This makes it increasingly difficult to meet the Paris Agreement goals. Perhaps we can just build the LNG infrastructure now and shut it down in 2040, when we phase coal out. That seems unlikely — once billions are invested in new pipelines, export terminals, and import facilities, the political pressure to keep operating them will be enormous. 

If we want to avoid being saddled with unnecessary emissions after coal is phased out in a few decades, the time to take action is now.

If you’re interested in a much more detailed analysis about this, read this paper.

Bad for U.S. consumers

Prior to 2016, LNG was not exported from the U.S., and domestic natural gas production basically served only the local market, keeping prices relatively low1.

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Penn Jillette: It’s Al Gore’s Fault that I was a Climate Denier

And, well, yes, I used to be a libertarian too, until I figured out that that made me an asshole.

Reposting the video above in light of new interview in, of all places, Cracked.

Cracked:

For so long, you identified as Libertarian. What changed?

I completely have not used the word Libertarian in describing myself since I got an email during lockdown where a person from a Libertarian organization wrote to me and said, “We’re doing an anti-mask demonstration in Vegas, and obviously we’d like you to head it.” I looked at that email and I went, “The fact they sent me this email is something I need to be very ashamed of, and I need to change.” Now, you can make the argument that maybe you don’t need to mandate masks — you can make the argument that maybe that shouldn’t be the government’s job — but you cannot make the argument that you shouldn’t wear masks. It is the exact reciprocal of seatbelts because if I don’t wear a seatbelt, my chances of fucking myself up increase — if I don’t wear a mask, the chance of fucking someone else up increase. 
Many times when I identified as Libertarian, people said to me, “It’s just rich white guys that don’t want to be told what to do,” and I had a zillion answers to that — and now that seems 100 percent accurate.

Climate Change Fanning Humungous Fungus Problem for Farmers

It’ll be warmer, they said.
It’ll be greener, they said.

We’ll grow more food, they said.

Bayer Crop Science:
Aflatoxin is a toxic substance produced by the fungi Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus parasiticus in agricultural crops such as corn kernels, cotton seeds, and tree nuts. Aflatoxin in corn must be monitored closely as it is highly toxic to many animals and can be fatal to livestock. Aflatoxin can infect corn across the Midwest and Southern United States, especially if corn is under insect or drought stress. Identifying the fungus that produces aflatoxin, testing grain for contamination, and managing contaminated grain can help control aflatoxin in corn.

Michigan State University:

 A toxin produced by a fungus in corn will increase over the next few years because of global warming, according to a Michigan State University study.

From 2031-40, over 89.5% of the counties in 15 states will experience a rise in aflatoxin levels, according to the study in the Environmental Research Letters.

Corn is mega-business in Michigan where the value of the 2021 crop of corn used for grain topped $1.85 billion, U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics show. 

That year, farmers in three counties planted at least 100,000 acres of corn: Sanilac (108,000), Lenawee (107,000) and Huron (100,000). Overall, farmers in the state planted 2.35 million acres, according to the department.

Aflatoxin is a toxin produced by two fungi that can cause cancer. They typically grow near food crops and enter the corn through pollen tubes or through damage caused by insects. 

Aflatoxins are the most prevalent natural liver carcinogen. Chronic levels of exposure can hinder child growth and nutrition, the study said. 

The primary culprit? Climate change. 

The two fungi that produce aflatoxins grow more readily in warm, dry climates. That’s why they’re most prevalent in Southern corn crops, the study said. 

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