Month: April 2024

Two things can be true at the same time.
It is the case that the fossil fuel industry is feeding and coordinating a misinformation campaign about EVs, and the Republican Party and its messaging organs are amplifying that.
It is also true that consumers have legit concerns about the availability of charging stations. I’m sure that Secretary Buttigieg feels a sense of urgency about this, and I get it that moving something this large – and getting it right – takes time.
A third thing that is true is that China and its state supported auto makers have launched an EV price war that is shaking the global industry.

State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China:

The number of charging points for electric vehicles (EVs) in China grew at a rapid pace in 2022, new data showed Wednesday.
The country had 5.21 million charging points at the end of 2022, including over 2.59 million built in 2022, said Tian Yulong, chief engineer of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology

China Global Television Network – CGTN:

Nearly 2.46 million new private charging piles were added in 2023, bringing the total number to about 5.87 million by December, according to Cui.

China has been expanding its charging facilities for electric vehicles in recent years, placing the country in a leading position in its number of charging piles.

Washington Post:

President Biden has long vowed to build 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations in the United States by 2030. Those stations, the White House said, would help Americans feel confident purchasing and driving electric cars, and help the country cut carbon pollution.

But now, more than two years after Congress allocated $7.5 billion to help build out those stations, only 7 EV charging stations are operational across four states. And as the Biden administration rolls out its new rules for emissions from cars and trucks — which will require a lot more electric cars and hybrids on the road — the sluggish build-out could slow the transition to electric cars.

“I think a lot of people who are watching this are getting concerned about the timeline,” said Alexander Laska, deputy director for transportation and innovation at the center-left think tank Third Way.

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which Biden signed in November 2021, included $7.5 billion for EV charging. Of that, $5 billion was allocated to individual states in so-called “formula funding” to build a network of fast chargers along major highways in the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure, or NEVI, program.

But after two years, that program has only delivered seven open charging stations with a total of 38 spots where drivers can charge their vehicles,according to a spokesperson for the Federal Highway Administration. (The funding should be enough to build up to 20,000 charging spots or around 5,000 stations, according to analysis from the EV policy analyst group Atlas Public Policy.) Stations are open in Hawaii, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania and under construction in four other states.

Twelve additional states have awarded contracts for constructing the charging stations; 17 states have not yet issued proposals.

Continue reading “Two True Things About the EV Rollout”

You’d like to believe there’s a silver lining to the gradual takeover and gentrification of Miami’s “Little Haiti” neighborhood, as Billionaires fall back from the shore line.
But no, survey shows the wealthy don’t think they are vulnerable to climate change, just continuing to churn Florida’s Real Estate speculation based economy, that Rolling Stone writer Jeff Goodell described to me years ago.
Greedheads gonna greed.

Richard Grant and Han Li in The Conversation:

Miami’s Little Haiti has been an immigrant community for decades. Its streets are lined with small homes and colorful shops that cater to the neighborhood, a predominantly Afro-Caribbean population with a median household income well below Miami’s. 

But Little Haiti’s character may be changing.

A $1 billion real estate development called the Magic City Innovation District is planned in the neighborhood, with luxury high-rise apartments, high-end shops and glass office towers.

The developers emphasize their commitment to sustainability. But high-end real estate investments like this raise property values, pushing up property taxes and the cost of living for surrounding neighborhoods.

Some media and urban scholars have labeled what’s happening here “climate gentrification.”

It’s the idea that investors and homebuyers are changing their behavior and moving from coastal areas into poorer, higher-elevation neighborhoods like Little Haiti, which sits on a ridge less than a mile from the bay, in anticipation of worsening climate change risks, such as sea-level rise. Miami is often held up as an example.

But are Miami’s investors and homebuyers really motivated by climate change?

Continue reading “Miami’s “Climate Gentrification” is Just Business as Usual”

“That looks like a brick”.
“It’s too expensive.”
“Who’s going to buy that?”

Pete Buttigieg on Fox News on EVs: "Sometimes when these debates happen, I feel like it's the early 2000s and I'm talking to people who think we can just have landline phones forever." pic.twitter.com/zrJHsaxjz4

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 2, 2024

Trailer to the “Wall Street” sequel by Oliver Stone has some fun with this idea.

Cathie Wood has been a successful investor in high tech stocks over the last decade, including, prominently, Tesla, and is a huge bull on EVs in general.
Here she makes some bold statements.

Tesla is going to be the autonomous Taxi network.
Tesla epitomizes the convergence of technologies.
Robotaxis are not an if, but a when.
Robots, energy storage, artificial intelligence are the converging technologies.
Autonomous vehicles are the biggest AI play in the world.

In 5 years, 75 to 85 percent of US auto sales will be electric, and the average EV will be in the 20 to 25 thousand dollar range.

Tesla will be trading at 2000/share in 5 years.

Our World in Data:

The majority of people in every country in the world worry about climate change and support policies to tackle it. We can see this in the survey data shown on the map.

Surveys can produce unreliable — even conflicting — results depending on the population sample, what questions are asked, and the framing, so I’ve looked at several reputable sources to see how they compare. While the figures vary a bit depending on the specific question asked, the results are pretty consistent.

In a recent paper published in Science Advances, Madalina Vlasceanu and colleagues surveyed 59,000 people across 63 countries.¹ “Belief” in climate change was 86%. Here, “belief” was measured based on answers to questions about whether action was necessary to avoid a global catastrophe, whether humans were causing climate change, whether it was a serious threat to humanity, and whether it was a global emergency.

People think climate change is a serious threat, and humans are the cause. Concern was high across countries: even in the country with the lowest agreement, 73% agreed.

You can see the differences in this score across countries in the map above.

Continue reading “Support for Climate Action is International, Broad and Deep – But We Don’t Talk About It”

Ken Landsburg is a farmer in Sandusky Michigan, and a passionate advocate for soil health, and solar energy’s role in protecting and preserving farmland.

Argonne National Laboratory:

The two studied solar sites were planted with native grasses and flowering plants in early 2018. From August 2018 through August 2022, the researchers conducted 358 observational surveys for flowering vegetation and insect communities. They evaluated changes in plant and insect abundance and diversity with each visit.

“The effort to obtain these data was considerable, returning to each site four times per summer to record pollinator counts,” said Heidi Hartmann, manager of the Land Resources and Energy Policy Program in Argonne’s Environmental Sciences division, and one of the study’s co-authors. ​“Over time we saw the numbers and types of flowering plants increase as the habitat matured. Measuring the corresponding positive impact for pollinators was very gratifying.”

By the end of the field campaign, the team observed increases for all habitat and biodiversity metrics. There was an increase in native plant species diversity and flower abundance. In addition, the team observed increases in the abundance and diversity of native insect pollinators and agriculturally beneficial insects, which included honeybees, native bees, wasps, hornets, hoverflies, other flies, moths, butterflies and beetles. Flowers and flowering plant species increased as well. Total insect abundance tripled, while native bees showed a 20-fold increase in numbers. The most numerous insect groups observed were beetles, flies and moths.

In an added benefit, the researchers found that pollinators from the solar sites also visited soybean flowers in adjacent crop fields, providing additional pollination services.

Nice video produced just in time for last Thanksgiving, this is the first time I’ve seen it, and the message continues to be timely.
Yes, Uncle Bob is full of it.

I’ll be posting some clips from interviews with Solar experts conducted in January at Saginaw Valley State University.
Most relevant, because it comes up a lot – do solar farms effect home values?
Answer: No.
In fact, there is a large pool of home buyers who like the idea of a quiet, predictable neighbor for the next 30 years.

Recharge News:

Startup Nano Nuclear is betting on naval nuclear technology for portable microreactors as the key to decarbonising sectors such as shipping, mining, remote industries and isolated communities.

The company’s first two reactors, Odin, under development with scientists derived from Cambridge University, and Zeus, with scientists from University of California at Berkeley, are based on units that have operated in US and Nato naval fleets for decades.

Microreactors “can fit on the back of a truck so existing transportation infrastructure, like trucks, trains, shipping vessels can ship these things anywhere in the world,” said Nano CEO and head of reactor development James Walker, a nuclear physicist formerly with UK Ministry of Defence in its nuclear programme.

Portability and costs of microreactors after mass production would make it highly sought after to meet both energy and decarbonisation needs, Walker asserted.

“If you look at just island communities and rural communities, already that’s thousands of these things,” said Walker. “When we get up to selling 1,000 microreactors on a yearly basis, you’re looking at a trillion-dollar industry.”

Nuclear currently supplies some 18% of US power needs off 95GW of installed capacity, according to the Energy Information Agency (EIA).

The Department of Energy (DoE) forecasts the country will need around 200GW of new nuclear capacity to reach net-zero by 2050, but the domestic sector has been in decline for decades following the near-meltdown at Three-Mile Island power station in Pennsylvania in 1979.

Only a handful of nuclear power plants have been built in the US in recent decades, most of them plagued by massive cost overruns and years’-long delays.

Construction began on Georgia’s newly commissioned 1.115GW Unit 3 at the Vogtle Nuclear Power Station in 2009 with an expected 2016 commissioning that was pushed back six years. Combined costs for the reactor and its Unit 4 sibling which was grid connected 1 March this year started around $14bn but have since ballooned to more than $30bn, according to EIA.

Several factors contribute to nuclear’s skyrocketing costs, not least the high Capex for massive power plants.

Continue reading “The Nuke Next Door? If They Work, Microreactors Could be Massive Industry”

In recent years there has been a lot of talk about Americans moving to so called “Climate Havens”, areas that purportedly will not suffer heavy impacts from climate-pumped extreme events. (which btw is seeming less and less true with every passing season)
In fact, the highest growth parts of the country remain regions that are critically exposed to climate risk.
Part of me says, have at it, bro.
The other part of me knows that the rest of us are going to end up paying for this mass delusional behavior.

NBC:

Florida has had a population boom over the past several years, with more than 700,000 people moving there in 2022, and it was the second-fastest-growing state as of July 2023, according to Census Bureau data. While there are some indications that migration to the state has slowed from its pandemic highs, only Texas saw more one-way U-Haul moves into the state than Florida last year. Mortgage application data indicated there were nearly two homebuyers moving to Florida in 2023 for every one leaving, according to data analytics firm CoreLogic.

But while hundreds of thousands of new residents have flocked to the state on the promise of beautiful weather, no income tax and lower costs, nearly 500,000 left in 2022, according to the most recent census data. Contributing to their move was a perfect storm of soaring insurance costs, a hostile political environment, worsening traffic and extreme weather, according to interviews with more than a dozen recent transplants and longtime residents who left the state in the past two years.
–

While costs have been rising across the country, some areas of Florida have been hit particularly hard. In the South Florida region, which includes Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach, consumer prices in February were up nearly 5% over the prior year, compared to 3.2% nationally, according to the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Homeowners insurance rates in Florida rose 42% last year to an average of $6,000 annually, driven by hurricanes and climate change, and car insurance in Florida is more than 50% higher than the national average, according to the Insurance Information Institute. While once seen as an affordable housing market, Florida is now among the more expensive states to buy a home in, with prices up 60% since 2020 to an average of $388,500, according to Zillow.

Continue reading “Americans Moving Directly into Climate Change Grinder”