Month: January 2025

If we can get one of these big AIs on line, can somebody ask it what the best energy path forward is? Inquiring minds want to know.

Above, recent interview with Matt Garman, the CEO of Amazon’s cloud-computing unit.
Big money from Big Tech going into the nuclear sector, and I wish them all the luck in the world. The record suggests they are going to need it.
We’ll know the answer in the 2030s some time, but worth bearing in mind that there is no serious scenario for decarbonization that does not involve a LOT of solar, wind, and battery storage – all things that we know how to do, quickly and economically, right now. Whether you are pro, anti, or agnostic nuclear, it should be clear that we need to get cracking.

Wall Street Journal:

Amazon.com AMZN 1.26%increase; green up pointing triangle, Google and Microsoft MSFT -0.08%decrease; red down pointing triangle each struck recent deals meant to bring more nuclear power online to satiate burgeoning energy demand tied to AI. They are betting billions of dollars that nuclear power can help curb surging carbon emissions tied to the data centers, which threaten their climate pledges. 

Some of the projects depend on unproven next-generation technology, and each is slated to take years to complete, in part because of financial and technological challenges that have stymied the growth of the U.S. nuclear industry for decades.

In the meantime, utility companies and power providers need to burn fossil fuels to supply the power tech companies need. Some have proposed new natural-gas plants, which are faster and cheaper to build than nuclear reactors, while others have contemplated extending the lives of coal plants that had been slated for closure. 

The tech giants years ago set ambitious goals to slash their carbon emissions by purchasing clean energy such as wind and solar power. The development of ChatGPT and other large language AI models, which consume enormous amounts of electricity, has upended those promises and set off a scramble among the companies to find more clean power. Large data centers can consume roughly the same amount of electricity as a midsize city.

M.V. Ramana PhD for Utility Dive:

This past November, the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems, or UAMPS, terminated what was to be “the first NuScale Power small modular reactor plant to begin operation in the United States.” This was a death foretold; the red flags have been obvious for years now. Although there were problems specific to that project, the financial challenges and cost trends witnessed in this case will afflict any small modular nuclear reactor project. In a rational world, no utility or government would invest another dime on these theoretical reactor concepts.

Continue reading “AI Power Demand Pushes Investment in New Nuclear”

Republican’s War on Science takes a dark new turn.

Sure, let’s destroy the foundation of US technological leadership over the last century. That’s a plan.

E&E News:

Every few years, the federal government publishes a comprehensive report that chronicles how climate change is transforming the United States and devastating the country with more extreme storms, wildfires and droughts.

But the next installment of the National Climate Assessment — due out in 2026 or 2027 — could dial back the usual scientific rigor in favor of an approach that would both elevate the viewpoint of climate science denialists and jettison all contributions from the Biden administration.

Scientists and climate policy experts say the proposed changes — which are being pushed by aides to President-elect Donald Trump — run the risk of undermining a foundational reference for government officials. And they say it could make it harder to craft future U.S. policies to address global warming.

The drive to reshape the National Climate Assessment is being led by one man: Russell Vought, a conservative warrior whom Trump wants to lead his Office of Management and Budget.

Vought, who ran OMB during Trump’s first term, has long sought to bury or weaken the National Climate Assessment. More recently, Vought has called for greater White House influence over the process, such as giving OMB the power to vet the scientists who will work on the next assessment.

Continue reading “Rod Serling’s Prophecy: Trump Takes Aim at Science, Scientists”

Seems notable that the CEO of the North American Electric Reliability Council would take time on New Year’s Eve to record a message of warning to all electric generators and utilities, especially in the US Southeast.
He brings up the specter of disastrous storms Uri and Elliot in the recent past, and points to predictions of record or near record cold outbreak affecting broad areas, and potentially leading to dangerous outages.
Those of us that follow energy issues should be aware that the primary concern is with the integrity of the supposedly “reliable base load” natural gas system, which is highly vulnerable to cold weather effects, like frozen gas lines.

Utility Dive:

The North American Electric Reliability Corp. rang in the New Year with a grid reliability warning ahead of an expected winter storm that officials said could last “deep into January.”

“I’m asking everyone in the electricity supply chain, from natural gas producers to pipeline operators, to system operators, to power generators and the utilities themselves, to take all appropriate actions to ensure that we can maintain an uninterrupted supply of electricity to customers,” NERC President and CEO Jim Robb said in a video message published Dec. 31.

NERC said its approach to extreme weather events includes mandatory cold weather reliability standards, guidelines on cold weather preparations, follow-up on Winter Storm Elliott recommendations, alerts, industry webinars, and the publication of seasonal assessments.

AccuWeather meteorologists say Arctic blasts of cold air are expected across much of the eastern half of the U.S. starting this weekend, “which could result in the lowest January temperatures in more than a decade in some places.”

“We’re going to be dealing with the coldest air of the season and multiple days of subzero temperatures from the northern Plains and Upper Midwest into the Tennessee Valley,” AccuWeather Chief On-Air Meteorologist Bernie Rayno said in an email.

Robb said that by taking early action, electric system stakeholders can help to avoid a repeat of widespread outages that resulted from Winter Storm Uri in 2021 in Texas and Winter Storm Elliott in 2022 across the Mid-Atlantic region.

The series of anticipated cold fronts could last two to three weeks, he said. 

Continue reading “Deep Concerns on Gas as US Girds for Polar Vortex”

If you are frustrated by the circulation of bogus EV and battery misinformation on social media, this is a good place to start myth busting. Having created a Wind101 and Sun101 myth busting sites, I am now working on a battery101, so this is a boon for me.

AFC Leaders Summit:

Dr Euan McTurk is a consultant battery electrochemist who has been working on – and driving – electric vehicles since 2009. 

Euan worked on next-generation cell chemistries at the University of Oxford, while at WMG (University of Warwick) he instrumented commercial lithium-ion cells to determine their performance limits, failure mechanisms and how to stop them failing. Through his consultancy, Plug Life Consulting Ltd,  Euan provides technical and strategic insight to projects concerning electric vehicle and energy storage technologies, such as upcoming battery chemistries, the raw material supply chain and battery recycling processes amongst other important considerations.

Powerful early Dylan, that is not heard as often as many others.

Dylan grew up on Northern Minnesota’s Iron Range, in Hibbing, which is just a few miles down the highway from Chisholm, where my Mom grew up, during the depression.
Her Dad emigrated from Slovenia, and became an iron miner. He was an early organizer of what eventually became the United Steelworkers.
During the darkest times, however, it was a dangerous business. Their home, where workers held surreptitious meetings, was firebombed, and Grandpa Joe was blackballed during the depths of the economic crisis, and could not work.
What saved the family was a sympathetic store keeper in the town, who told Joe, “As long as my family is eating, yours will eat, too.”
The stories I’ve heard from my Uncle Daryl and others about hard times on the Range rival pretty much anything you might have heard from Appalachia, just a lot colder – and Dylan’s song reflects that.

I haven’t been up there in a while. There might be a reunion next summer, I’ve heard. Chisholm was a setting for part of the movie “Field of Dreams”.

I understand The Range has become quite a hotbed for MAGA.

Canadian News report does a good job of highlighting the major areas where Arctic Warming is accelerating economic, and military, engagement in the Arctic.

No discussion here of the Idiot Elect’s recent dumbass saber rattling over Canadian and Arctic territory. Assumption seems to be that some sort of rational approach will prevail. We shall see.

Popular Mechanics:

In groundbreaking research, scientists have made a structural battery10 times better than in any previous experiment. 

What’s a structural battery, and why is it such a big deal? The term refers to an energy storage device that can also bear weight as part of a structure—like if the studs in your home were all batteries, or if an electric fence also held up a wall.

In the paper, researchers from Chalmers University of Technology and KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden reveal how their “massless” structural battery works.

The main use case is for electric cars, where a literally massive amount of batteries take up a ton of room and don’t contribute to the actual structure of the car. In fact, these cars must be specially designed to carry the mass of the batteries.

To make the structural battery, the scientists layered a buffer glass “fabric” between a positive and negative electrode, then packed it with a space-age polymer electrolyte and cured it in the oven. What results is a tough, flat battery cell that conducts well and holds up to tensile tests in all directions. 

The battery’s combined qualities (or “multifunctionality”) make it 10 times better than any previous massless battery—a project scientists have worked on since 2007.

Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden:

“We have succeeded in creating a battery made of carbon fibre composite that is as stiff as aluminium and energy-dense enough to be used commercially. Just like a human skeleton, the battery has several functions at the same time,” says Chalmers researcher Richa Chaudhary, who is the first author of a scientific article recently published in Advanced Materials.

Continue reading ““Massless” Batteries Could Boost EVs, E-Aviation”

Ignorance is its own Hockey Stick.

Michael Mann and Peter Hotez in Skeptical Inquirer:

Our newest and gravest challenge may not feel as acute as the 1980s Cold War threat of mutual assured destruction (MAD). There are no missiles with nuclear warheads crisscrossing the oceans. But it is every bit as real, posing a threat to civilization and our planet. This NextGen MAD consists of three synergistic components.  

The first component is the unprecedented warming of our planet and temperatures that one of us (Michael Mann) highlighted more than two decades ago while still a postdoctoral researcher in the form of the now-famous “hockey stick” curve. The warming of the planet and its impacts—which include coastal inundation from melting ice and intensified more deadly hurricanes, droughts, heat waves, and wildfires—is taking an increasing toll on our civilization by any measure, be it loss of life (which can be measured in millions of lives per year) or economic costs (which can be measured in trillions of dollars per year in lost GDP globally). Look no further than deadly temperatures that exceeded 50oC (122oF) this past summer. More than 2,000 Americans died from extreme heat in 2023, a tragic new record. The death and destruction will continue to accelerate as long as we fail to address the problem at its source: chiefly, our ongoing reliance on fossil fuels for energy and transportation.  

A “hockey stick” description also applies to the new pattern or cadence of pandemic threats—the second component. One of the most common questions that one of us (Peter Hotez) is asked: “Hey doc, what the heck is going on?” Why are we seeing three major coronavirus global epidemics—SARS, MERS, and now COVID-19 (caused by SARS-2), or Ebola epidemics in West Africa in 2014 or in DR Congo in 2019? These viruses all originate from bats; a part of this accelerating cadence of pandemics may be shifts in bat habitats that bring them closer to humans in concert with expanding human populations in formerly forested areas due to urbanization. Similar expansions in urbanizations, together with climate change, also explains why we’re seeing more mosquito-transmitted virus infections such as dengue or chikungunya and also parasitic infections such as malaria along the Gulf of Mexico, including in the United States (Hotez and LaBeaud 2023). This is also occurring in southern Europe and elsewhere. 

Continue reading “Happy Triple Threat New Year”

Make it make sense, you ask?

Oh, it makes perfect sense.

Anyone who thinks the President-elect’s huffing and puffing about Greenland, Panama, Canada and Mexico, is just trolling from a moron, well, they’re not wrong, but when the Moron is President of the United States, you can’t expect people not to take it seriously.
Above, although I get it that the Meidas Touch podcast is breathlessly partisan, they are taking seriously things that the mainstream media seems desperate to normalize and sane-wash.
Particularly interesting that a former Trump security advisor casually affirms an intention to control Greenland, and candidly admits the rationale is…Climate Change.

The Hill:

No one knows if Trump is serious, but the best time to kill a bad idea is in the brainstorming phase. Greenland Prime Minister Mute Egede flatly rejectedeven the idea of negotiating — “we are not for sale and will never be for sale” — just as Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen had in 2019 when Trump first proposed buying the territory. Trump appears to want Greenland badly enough that, as crazy as it sounds, he might start an economic war, or worse, to get it.

Such a war would violate the commitment that the U.S. (and dozens of other countries, including Denmark and the Soviet Union) made in the Helsinki Accords of 1975, which settled the post-World War II boundaries of Europe. That agreement obligates its signatories to refrain from “any demand for, or act of, seizure and usurpation of part or all of the territory of any participating State.”

Continue reading “Ex Trump Official: We Need to Take Greenland, Because Climate Change”