Month: March 2024

Try to imagine how different the world would be if lefties had not decided that Al Gore was not “pure” enough for them to support. (Al fucking Gore!)

The dynamic is not unfamiliar, but it’s never been more critical. Those that care about climate change need to be constantly highlighting the stark difference in candidates this November.

Distilled:

Biden has leased far less public land to oil and gas companies than any President in modern history. In the first two years of his presidency, Trump leased 2.4 million acres for oil and gas production. By comparison, Biden’s administration leased 324,000 acres in its first two years. In other words, Trump leased 7 times more land to oil and gas companies than Biden. 

Trump cleared the way for companies to build pipelines like the Keystone XL project and drill in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. When Biden took office, he killed the Keystone XL project and blocked drilling permits in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. 

For anyone who sees climate change as an existential threat or cares about the environment, there’s a lot to fear in a Trump presidency. But there’s also a lot to hope for in a Biden re-election. 

In his first term, Joe Biden has done more to address climate change than any President before him. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) alone is expected to wipe out 21 billion tons of planet-warming pollution between now and 2050. For comparison, that’s 73 times more emissions than the infamous Willow Project will emit over the same period. It’s like canceling out the emissions from the entire country of India for a decade. 

The IRA is also spurring a clean energy revolution. Solar and wind are on track to produce more electricity than coal this year for the first time. Electric vehicles’ market share is up by roughly 400% since Biden took office. (For my EV-skeptical, public transit-loving friends, it’s worth noting that the IRA invested more money—$25 billion—in public transit than any bill in U.S. history).

All of this has been good for America’s economy too. 

Trump talked a lot about bringing manufacturing back to America and creating blue-collar jobs. But under Biden, manufacturing investment has grown faster than at any time in recent history thanks largely to the IRA. During Trump’s presidency, manufacturing spending grew by 5%. Under Biden, it has grown by 279%.

Axios:

A new analysis shows how a second Trump presidency could alter the course of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions. 

Why it matters: By rolling back many of President Biden’s climate policies, a second Trump administration could lead to an estimated extra 4 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions by 2030, compared with a second Biden term. 

• These extra emissions could in turn doom the 1.5°C goal under the Paris Agreement, the study finds, especially with the former president reportedly preparing to undo many Biden initiatives.

Continue reading “What Americans Need to Know About Biden’s Environmental Record”

For Florida Republicans, Climate change creates new opportunities for cruelty.

WCJB Gainesville:

 Communities across Florida soon may not be able to create employment regulations. The Senate approved a bill Tuesday that would ban cities and counties from having heat protections in place for workers. Last summer many parts of the state saw temperatures reaching more than 100 degrees.

“We have very different climates in this state,” Sen. Tina Polsky, (D) Boca Raton, said.

The Senate approved a bill down party lines Tuesday to ban local governments from having ordinances that require shade and water breaks throughout the day.

“I don’t think we need to preempt, yet again, the local governments who are just trying to protect their workers as our climate gets hotter and hotter every year,” Sen. Polsky said.

Republicans who supported the bill say this is about getting rid of a patchwork of rules.

“We need uniform regulations. The fact the state can look to OSHA on these heat-related issues is important and will keep the bad actors at bay,” Sen. Jay Trumbull, (R) Panama City, said.

Under the bill, businesses would be subject to the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration guidelines since the state doesn’t have its own. Sen. Trumbull said getting rid of local heat protections doesn’t mean employers won’t take care of their workers.

Continue reading “Florida Turns up the Heat on Workers”

I’ve been telling people about this technology for a long time – and the batteries are now getting big enough, and long lived enough, to make it a reality.
Australian study shows potential for EV owners to realize up to 12,000 Australian dollars a year (about 8000 USD) if they allow their EVs to be accessed for Frequency Control Ancillary Services (FCAS) and grid storage.

The Driven (Australia):

A new report from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) has found that a fleet of EVs used to supply Frequency Control Ancillary Services (FCAS) to the National Energy Market (NEM) could generate revenue of up to $12,000 per vehicle in a single year.

The staggering findings are outlined in a new report Insights from the Realising Electric Vehicle-to-Grid Services Project, that looked at the charging habits of EV drivers, the probable bidding capacity, and the potential business case for fleet operators to bid into FCAS markets using V2G.

The trial looked at some of the impediments to V2G technology and how new systems, such as operating envelopes, could help accommodate high local demands when overall network capacity allows;

It also looked at how a business case could be developed in the context of fleet operators accelerating the electrification of their fleet; and quantified the potential economic value and the user experience of V2G technology.

The most astonishing finding that the average EV could have earned around $12,000 participating in the NSW FCAS “Regulation Raise” market, based on 2022 data, and use just one per cent of the EVs total charging energy.

There are 10 FCAS markets in the NEM which help stabilise both minor and major variations in grid frequency with varying response times from 1 second 5 minutes.

Using 2022 FCAS market data and the real-world charging/plugin times of the commercial EV fleet, Energeia, the company AEMO commissioned to do the analysis, was able to calculate what the revenue from V2G FCAS would have been per vehicle.

Continue reading “V2G Opportunity Vast – Get Paid for Plugging in Your EV”

New York Times:

Last year, Americans bought more than one million fully electric cars, trucks and SUVs, a record and a milestone for the country’s transition away from gas-powered vehicles.

Electric vehicles grew to 8.5 percent of new auto registrations nationwide. Hybrids, which are gaining popularity among those who still want gas as a backup, accounted for an additional 10 percent.

But enthusiasm for plugging in hasn’t spread equally across the country.

Electric vehicle registrations grew rapidly in many metro areas, including in some states like Florida and Texas that were “not on the map” just a few years ago, said Tom Libby, an analyst at S&P Global Mobility, an automotive market research firm. But the West Coast, and especially California, continued to dominate the electric vehicle market.

Below, CNBC’s resident climate denier expresses skepticism about the sector in general. Wall Street Journal expert makes fair points.

Continue reading “Where EVs are Soaring”

Or even malevolent May?

New York Times:

Canada’s emergency preparedness minister is warning that this year’s wildfire season will be worse than the record-breaking season of 2023, when thousands of fires burned tens of millions of acres and set off massive plumes of smoke that enveloped major U.S. cities, including New York and Washington.

This year’s fires could be especially bad in two of the country’s most fire-prone provinces, where nearly 150 of the blazes that started during last year’s season are still burning this winter, under snow-covered ground.

While so-called “zombie fires,” a term recently popularized in the Canadian media, are an annual phenomenon in parts of the country, never have so many fires been reported in a single winter, raising fears that many of them may flare up again above ground.

The “zombie fires” persist during winter because porous peat and moss ground cover in northern areas act as underground fuel for them.

The risk of wildfire in Canada has grown because of climate change, which increases the hot, dry and gusty conditions that have caused drought, according to research published last summer by World Weather Attribution, a group of scientists who model how climate change impacts extreme weather.

Given drought conditions in parts of Western Canada and other extreme weather effects, Harjit Sajjan, Canada’s emergency preparedness minister, said it was not surprising that the wildfire forecast was “alarming.”

Continue reading “Are Zombie Fires Augury of Awful August?”

Good catch by Texas energy analyst Doug Lewin.

Berkshire Hathaway 2023 Annual Report:

Our second and even more severe earnings disappointment last year occurred at BHE. Most of its large electric-utility businesses, as well as its extensive gas pipelines, performed about as expected. But the regulatory climate in a few states has raised the specter of zero profitability or even bankruptcy (an actual outcome at California’s largest utility and a current threat in Hawaii). In such jurisdictions, it is difficult to project both earnings and asset values in what was once regarded as among the most stable industries in America.

For more than a century, electric utilities raised huge sums to finance their growth through a state-by-state promise of a fixed return on equity (sometimes with a small bonus for superior performance). With this approach, massive investments were made for capacity that would likely be required a few years down the road. That forward-looking regulation reflected the reality that utilities build generating and transmission assets that often take many years to construct. BHE’s extensive multi-state transmission project in the West was initiated in 2006 and remains some years from completion. Eventually, it will serve 10 states comprising 30% of the acreage in the continental United States.

With this model employed by both private and public-power systems, the lights stayed on, even if population growth or industrial demand exceeded expectations. The “margin of safety” approach seemed sensible to regulators, investors and the public. Now, the fixed-but-satisfactory- return pact has been broken in a few states, and investors are becoming apprehensive that such ruptures may spread. Climate change adds to their worries. Underground transmission may be required but who, a few decades ago, wanted to pay the staggering costs for such construction?

At Berkshire, we have made a best estimate for the amount of losses that have occurred. These costs arose from forest fires, whose frequency and intensity have increased – and will likely continue to increase – if convective storms become more frequent.

Doug Lewin – Texas Energy and Power Newsletter (email):

Here’s what happened to Hawaiian Electric Industries’ share price after last year’s devastating fires on Maui:

Continue reading “Climate Burning Utility Business Models”

Weird how suddenly there are a bunch of “environmentalists” who for more than a century (we’ve been drilling offshore since 1896) couldn’t give a rat’s ass about the effect of offshore oil drilling on whales or anything else, but are now rending their garments and clutching pearls about the non-existent impacts of offshore wind turbines.
Oh, right, turns out it’s just a bunch of fascist billionaires with beach houses.

Check out this press summary of a new analysis from a senior scientist, then move on to some clips from that analysis.

Providence Journal:

“There’s absolutely zero evidence of any effect from what’s gone on so far at the wind farms and any serious impacts on whales,” said University of Rhode Island marine mammal biologist Robert Kenney. 

Kenney, an emeritus marine research scientist at the Graduate School of Oceanography who has studied whales, dolphins and other marine vertebrates for 35 years, describes the conjectures linking offshore wind to whale mortality as misinformation. 

Fed up with hearing so much on the subject over the past year as offshore wind construction has picked up off Massachusetts and Rhode Island, he wrote an article recently in Rhode Island Naturalist debunking the claims. 

The title: “Science says that wind farms are not killing whales.” 

Construction of offshore wind farms can be very loud. The piles that anchor wind turbines to the ocean floor must be driven deep into the sediments. To do that, they are essentially hammered into place. The sound from each strike can travel far underwater and has been detected by microphones at very low levels up to 60 miles away. 

But developers are required to employ marine mammal monitors to look out for whales near the construction zones. They also use acoustic sensors in the water to detect whales. If the animals stray too close, construction activities are suspended.  

Developers employ other methods to reduce impacts on marine mammals, such as bubble curtains that dampen the sound of pile driving. They also ramp up the sound of pile driving to give animals time to move away from any disturbance.  

Continue reading “Once More: No, Wind Turbines Not Killing Whales”

Most voters do not know what the IRA is, but the impacts are undeniable.
First Solar is sold out through 2026.

Solar exec is upbeat on utility scale prospects. Should probably work on his on-camera persona, and lose the hair.

Stock pickers like First Solar – interest rate cuts have helped.

Chris Gloninger became high profile a couple years ago when, as Chief Meteorologist for KCCI Des Moines, and regularly putting weather stories in climate context, he started getting death threats.
Turns out to have been yet another entitled, conspiracy driven, MAGA ignoramus – go figure.
“They were surprised that the death threat was not covered by freedom of speech.”