Since coal’s nationwide peak in 2007, wind and solar have surpassed it in 24 states– and the pace is accelerating. Half made the switch in just the last six years, with Illinois the latest to cross over in 2024, following Arizona, Colorado, Florida and Maryland in 2023.
I’m old enough to remember when about 15 years ago, the conventional wisdom was that fossil gas (what some folks still call “natural gas”) would be the “bridge fuel” to clean technologies like solar, wind and storage.
At the time gas had become cheap enough to build widely, was outcompeting coal on price, and had in some measures a lower carbon footprint than coal.
(certainly a lighter footprint in the other air pollution measurables).
Now, times have changed.
In a recent earnings call, NextEra CEO John Ketchum advised listeners that solar and wind are now the “bridge” to what comes next in generation.
That’s because supply chains for new gas turbines are jammed up, lead times for new plant construction are now longer than ever, nuclear is a decade away at scale, but new demand is coming on like a freight train.
John Ketchum, CEO NextEra – FIRST QUARTER 2025 EARNINGS CONFERENCE CALL:
Let me explain. Energy realism is about embracing all forms of energy solutions and understanding the demand for electricity in the United States is here now and it’s not slowing down.
Frankly, it’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen since the end of World
War II.
Energy pragmatism is about recognizing some technology is ready
at scale today and other technology needs more time to get there – and
there will be significant tradeoffs with regard to the timing and cost of each.
Today, renewables and battery storage are the lowest cost form of
power generation and capacity. And we can build these projects and get
new electrons on the grid in 12 to 18 months. We should be thinking about
renewables and battery storage as a critical bridge to when other
technology is ready at scale, like new gas-fired plants.
5000 locations, 650 billion in revenue, plenty of free space, a huge profit opportunity, and a big FU to Trump Administration.
Above, long form video has details.
Happel explained that the retailer intends to install Walmart EV charging stations at “thousands of its locations by 2030” and continue installing more in the next decade. He didn’t offer any specific number of stalls per location, only that “each site stall count will depend on market conditions”. Happel said they will take into consideration the number of EVs in each specific market as well as how many other networks operate nearby.
If there aren’t any other EV charging stations in the area, Walmart will install more charging stalls than if there are other fast charging options. He also explained that Walmart will monitor utilization, and the sites will be designed to easily add more chargers when needed to prevent customer queuing.
After testing charging equipment from various vendors, Walmart has selected Alpitronic and ABB as suppliers for its initial sites, although I was told it is brand-agnostic. Customers use the Walmart app to initiate and pay for charging, and the process will be the same regardless of the brand of charger at the site.
I also asked Happel what happens to the chargers that are on the other networks that currently operate on Walmart properties. Electrify America, for instance, has many of its sites on Walmart grounds. Happel said that Walmart’s partners have been great to date, and as they continue to grow the Walmart network, they will reassess how they move forward with their partners.
Continue reading “Game Changer: Walmart Will Roll Out EV Charging”
New research showing that “climate attribution” science, which can forensically connect particular polluters to a specific climate disaster, is now reaching a critical threshold.
A reckoning is coming.
Over the last decade, scientists have rapidly developed the field of climate attribution research, teasing out the role played by global warming in individual natural disasters. Meanwhile, their ways of tracking a single emitter’s influence on temperature or sea-level rise have grown more sophisticated, as research into climate economicshas advanced.
The result is that it’s now possible to quantify the climate damages caused by each of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies, according to a paper published last week in the journal Nature. Those calculations could be brought as evidence in court.
“This has long been articulated by the legal community as a barrier to legal pursuits for liability claims” for harmful climate impacts, said co-author Justin Mankin, a climate scientist and associate professor of geography at Dartmouth College. “Scientifically, it’s not really an issue anymore.”
In the paper, Mankin and co-author Christopher Callahan, a postdoctoral researcher in Earth system science at Stanford University, say they have devised a transparent, low-cost analytical tool for interrogating a key question in liability, or tort, law. Many such cases pivot on whether a plaintiff would have suffered “but for” actions of the defendant. The new paper offers what’s described as a way to demonstrate harm that wouldn’t have occurred “but for” a company’s or companies’ greenhouse gas pollution.
Climate lawsuits have multiplied around the world in recent years. In the US, groups of citizens, cities and states have sought redress for climate impacts, with different groups testing different legal theories. The cases vary wildly in approach and many drag on for years, end up dismissed or both. Only a small fraction have succeeded globally, and none of those resulted in liability damages.
Continue reading “Carbon Criminals Closer to Courtroom Crosshairs”The sanity we are missing so desperately, like water in the desert.
Transcript here via Robert Reich (excerpt here):
In the immediate aftermath of World War II, a small group of philosophers who had escaped Hitler’s murderous regime returned to Germany and performed a kind of moral autopsy on the Third Reich. The most famous of the so-called Frankfurt School of Philosophers was a man named Jurgen Habermas – best known, I would say. But it was Habermas’ mentor, Theodor Adorno, who wrote that the first step of that nation’s descent into Hell was, and I quote, “the conversion of all questions of truth into questions of power.” He described how the Nazis, and I quote again, “attacked the very heart of the distinction between true and false.”
The Trump administration is insisting on trying to create their own preferred version of reality. They say Ukraine attacked Russia instead of the other way around, and expect us to believe it! At home, they attack heroes who have defended our nation in war and against cyberattacks as traitors.
They say the climate crisis is a “hoax” invented by the Chinese to destroy American manufacturing.
They say coal is clean.
They say wind turbines cause cancer.
They say sea level rise just creates more beachfront property.
Their allies in the oligarchic backlash to climate action argue that those who want to stop using the sky as an open sewer, for God’s sake, need to be more “realistic” and acquiesce to the huge increases in the burning of more and more fossil fuels (which is what they’re pushing), even though that is the principal cause of the climate crisis.
You may not be surprised to learn that this propagandistic notion of “climate realism” is one that the fossil fuel industry has peddled for years.
Continue reading ““The Trust Market has Crashed”: Al Gore at Climate Week”
Because if you don’t know what’s happening, it can’t hurt you, right?
President Donald Trump’s administration has dismissed all contributors to the U.S. government’s signature study that informs federal and local governments on how to prepare for climate change impacts, according to an email sent to them on Monday.
The dismissal of nearly 400 contributors to the sixth National Climate Assessment, which is mandated by Congress, leaves the future of the report in doubt since the multi-year, peer-reviewed analysis is due for publication in 2028.
“At this time, the scope of the NCA6 is being evaluated in accordance with the Global Change Research Act of 1990,” the email, seen by Reuters, said, referring to the legislation that kickstarted the assessments that was signed by Republican President George H.W. Bush.
The climate assessment had been overseen by the Global Change Research Program, which the Trump administration dismissed earlier this month, and had coordinated input from 14 federal agencies and hundreds of external scientists.
Under the Trump administration, publication of scientific reports is being frozen and some records risk being removed from public access. The White House has also moved to terminate a key contract with the firm responsible for producing the National Climate Assessment, casting doubt on the completion of the next scheduled report. Computer models and observational records Santer helped build are in the crosshairs.
Continue reading “The Dumb Leading the Blind: Trump Sabotages America’s Climate Warning System”This gang absolutely can not shoot straight. I’ve pointed out how this clown show has knee capped the Secretary of Energy’s own company , and how Oil executives are fuming about the dysfunctional, leaderless, unguided missiles that DOGE and Trump’s dopey DOE are lobbing in every direction.
Oh, and that nuclear that every Republican tells you he loves, oh, right.
Nearly 60 percent of staff at the U.S. Department of Energy’s nuclear-friendly Loan Programs Office may be lost through President Trump’s deferred resignation program, the Washington Examiner reported.
According to the news outlet, 123 of the 210 current LPO employees have opted into the retirement buyout, which would amount to a 58.5 percent staffing cut in the office that helps finance new nuclear projects among other energy proposals. There is a 45-day period for federal employees older than 40 to change their minds, which could impact the final number of exiting staff.
These potential losses prompted Thomas Hochman, director of infrastructure policy for the nonprofit Foundation for American Innovation, to organize a letter to Energy Secretary Chris Wright, cosigned by dozens of organizations, including nuclear companies, advocacy groups, and labor organizations.
As of April 11, the extended deadline for the deferred resignation program, the DOE did not have final numbers to report on how many people had opted into the retirement program, according to the Washington Examiner.
Programs that Could Directly Support Deployment of New Nuclear – Nuclear Energy Institute:
Clean Electricity Production Credit – 45Y
The Inflation Reduction Act created a new technology-neutral tax credit for all clean electricity technologies, including advanced nuclear and power uprates that are placed into service in 2025 or after. The bill does not change the existing Advanced Nuclear Production Tax Credit but precludes credits from being claimed under both programs. The value of the credit will be at least $30 per megawatt-hour, depending on inflation, for the first ten years of plant operation. The credit phases out when carbon emissions from electricity production are 75 percent below the 2022 level.
Here is a link to the statutory language.
Clean Electricity Investment Credit
As an alternative to the clean electricity PTC, the Inflation Reduction Act provided the option of claiming a clean electricity investment credit for zero-emissions facilities that is placed into service in 2025 or
thereafter. This provides a credit of 30 percent of the investment in a new zero-carbon electricity facility, including nuclear plants. Like the other credits, this investment tax credit can be monetized. The ITC phases out under the same provisions as the clean electricity PTC.
Here is a link to the Statutory Language.
Both the clean electricity PTC and ITC include a 10-percentage point bonus for facilities sited in certain energy communities such as those that have hosted coal plants.
Continue reading “How DOGE is Killing Nuclear in America”If the Chinese had wanted to build an AI designed to kill the US auto industry, they could hardly have created anything more lethal than the current administration.
Brian Deese in the New York Times:
For over a century, the auto industry has been a cornerstone of America’s industrial power: It revolutionized manufacturing with the assembly line, forged stronger forms of steel, aluminum and carbon fiber and drove technological innovation with the invention of sophisticated robotics and sensors. And because the auto industry’s influence extends far beyond the factory, supporting vast supply chains, restaurants and retail stores, it’s also been a key driver of economic opportunity in the industrial Midwest and beyond.
But today U.S. automakers are falling behind in a global race for innovation in electrification, digitization and automation. China has made huge strides in producing next-generation vehicles, backed by billions in state subsidies intended to undercut competitors and dominate global manufacturing. While Tesla specifically has led in battery and automation innovation, the scale and quality of China’s manufacturing are putting America’s entire auto industry at risk. If we lose the supply chains, workers and industrial capabilities that produce the cars we drive, we may also lose our capacity to manufacture vital technologies and military equipment.
This is not the first time the American auto industry has faced a critical challenge. In the early 1980s, an onslaught of low-priced, fuel-efficient and government-subsidized Japanese vehicles overwhelmed U.S. automakers, prompting President Ronald Reagan to negotiate temporary limits on Japanese auto imports. That gave American automakers the runway to catch up, increase their profits and innovate (including by producing the first minivans).
Continue reading ““Right Wing Woke Bullshit” Killing US Autos”Smart people are a limited resource, and they have choices.
They don’t need to come here, or stay here, if our Government makes them feel unwelcome.
Peter Sinclair in the Midland Daily News:
Weather changes and extremes have always been with us, and spring is a time when storms can be intense. But in a changed climate, the atmosphere holds more heat and moisture, the fuel that powers storms.
For the last several years, residents of Michigan have witnessed a steady stream of climate enhanced weather extremes outside their lived experience, from poisonous wildfire smog in 2023, to our first ever declared Tornado Emergency last May.
A few weeks ago, Northern Michigan was hit by a “generational” ice storm unlike any in memory.
From the UP to Grayling, and from Charlevoix to Alpena, power was out and trees snapped under the weight of ice. The Mackinac Bridge was closed as slabs of ice fell from the towers and exploded on the deck.
“I’ve never seen an event as big or as devastating as this. There are acres and acres of trees just snapped in half,” DNR Forester Lucas Merrick told Accuweather.
The storm that devastated Michigan was part of a larger “stalled” system that pounded the Midwest and lead to dozens of deaths. Such storms are getting more likely as the Jet Stream, responding to climate change, slows, meanders and gets wavier, according to recent Columbia University research.
Continue reading “Column: Forests Suffer as Climate Extremes Hammer Midwest”