Month: July 2025

Environment and Energy Leader:

Recent research from the University of Tennessee has challenged widespread concerns about the reliability of weather-dependent renewable energy systems (WD-RES). Published in Nature Energy, this comprehensive study analyzed over 2,000 blackout events across 278 U.S. cities, finding that power grids with high integration of wind and solar technologies show improved resilience during extreme weather. 

Energy operators and critics have often questioned the resilience of renewable energy reliability, particularly due to wind and solar energy‘s weather dependency. However, the University of Tennessee study provides data-driven evidence showing that regions with high renewable energy infrastructure experience fewer severe blackouts than those depending solely on traditional power sources. Notably, the research revisits the February 2021 Texas blackouts, initially attributed to renewable energy failures, and shows that these incidents were instead rooted in unrelated grid challenges.

This analysis suggests that integrating renewable energy sources into power grids may enhance—rather than weaken—overall grid resilience. The study’s statistical evaluation and deep learning models found that the influence of weather-dependent renewable systems on blackout frequency diminishes in regions with high renewable penetration, challenging past assumptions about the limitations of renewable energy reliability.

Continue reading “Texas Grid Holds Strong in Heat – Thank Clean Energy.”

Trump had another unscheduled disassembly over Wind Farms in Europe the other day. Guardian did a response, if any is needed.

Guardian:

Trump claimed: “It is the worst form of energy, the most expensive form of energy, but windmills should not be allowed.”

This is certainly not true for onshore wind, which is cheap to build and generates electricity very inexpensively. Offshore windfarms cost more to build but when it is windy produces electricity extremely cheaply. There are costs associated with wind; the energy secretary, Ed Miliband, has recently faced criticism for setting the maximum price at his upcoming renewable energy auction at £113 a megawatt-hour for offshore wind, for record-length contracts of 20 years.

By comparison, the wholesale gas price is £78/MWh at present. However, during the price spike of 2022, wholesale gas went above £170/MWh. Because Britain’s electricity grid has not been sufficiently updated, windfarms are also often paid millions to switch off when it is very windy to avoid overloading the network.

However, even with these added costs, offshore wind is less expensive than nuclear to build, has a stable price compared with gas, which is sold on international markets, and is cheaper to generate than fossil fuels.

Continue reading “Breaking: Noted Pedophile Hates Clean Energy”

Historic Heat Dome settles over Eastern US, reflecting steamy condition of the Gulf of Mexico, as the heart of Hurricane Season beckons.

John Scheve via Christina Wimpissinger on Facebook:

This is likely to be the strongest heatwave of this intensity ever recorded in the U.S.

The cause is a gigantic heat dome in the atmosphere with an intensity of four standard deviations from the average (which is practically never expected) and extremely high humidity due to sea surface temperatures of about 32 °C (90 °F) in the northern Gulf of Mexico and slightly less than the US east coast.

For the first half of the next week, heat indexes of 43 to 49 °C (110 to 120 °F) are forecast for parts of 16 states: the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, Illinois, Indiana, Tennessee and Kentucky.

This is much worse than in Death Valley. For more vulnerable people or elderly people without access to cooling, this may not be surviveable. If you know such people, reach out now.

Meteorologist John Morales for Environmental Defense Fund:

I think American lives are more at risk in 2025 than they were in 2024. It’s very, very warm out there, and warm ocean temperatures tend to fuel hurricanes. Seventeen named tropical storms are forecast, and many of them will become hurricanes.  

Continue reading “Does Record Heat Dome Herald Horrific Hurricane Season?”

The most remarkable collapse of a personal reputation that I can think of in my lifetime. (Bill Cosby comes to mind but with much lower stakes)
Elon Musk’s personal stench having a real effect on his company’s fortunes.

Below, Musk retweeted a plug for his proposed rocket powered mass transit program. What such a world looks like increasingly called into question.

Travel anywhere on Earth (that’s willing to allow loud rockets) in half an hour or so at Mach 25! https://t.co/seAD1srs5I

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 23, 2025

Phys.org:

In recent years, the night sky has filled with satellites from rapidly expanding constellations in low Earth orbit, driven by a booming space industry. While this development brings exciting opportunities, it also raises new environmental concerns.

Rocket launches and re-entering space debris release pollutants into the middle atmosphere, where they can damage the ozone layer which protects life on Earth from harmful UV radiation—a growing concern that scientists are only beginning to understand.

Research on the effects of rocket emissions on the ozone layer began over 30 years ago, but for a long time, these effects were considered small. This perception is starting to change as launch activity accelerates. In 2019, there were just 97 orbital space rocket launches globally. By 2024, that number had surged to 258, and is expected to keep rising rapidly.

Continue reading “Everything Trump Touches, Dies. Tesla Taking a Big Fall”

More from my interview with Trufant, Michigan farmer Dave Kraft.
The rot in America’s political leadership extends to the local level – as candidates who run on single issue anti clean energy platforms are being seated on local boards, without the slightest intention or interest in any kind of governance other than blocking the energy transition.
The result is chaos and paralysis at the local level, and decreased effectiveness of local governance.

‘There’s a lot of people capable of doing these jobs, …” Dave told me, ” but they wouldn’t take ’em as a gift today”, he said, referring to the abusive and threatening nature of local political campaigns.

Below, long time supervisor of nearby Winfield Township, Phyllis Larson, told me a similar story.

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness…”

Carl Sagan’s nightmare vision has arrived, with a big boost from Big Fossil.

Peter Sinclair in Midland Daily News:

In 1982, scientists at oil giants Shell and Exxon informed corporate leadership of what they called the “clear scientific consensus” that continued burning of fossil fuels would raise global temperatures, with “catastrophic” (their word) consequences.

For a brief moment, leadership in the fossil fuel industry paused to consider the consequences of their business model, even installing equipment on supertankers to monitor carbon dioxide changes over the oceans.

But then something changed.

The fossil fuel leadership made a conscious decision to destroy America’s confidence in scientific fact and data.

While the industry was hardening oil production facilities against the extreme storms and sea level rise they knew were coming, they simultaneously set out to undermine public belief in science and scientists.

Continue reading “Column: Climate Denial’s Collateral Damage”

Jesse Jenkins on X:

It is hard to get your head around how stupendously large an electricity user a 2-5 gigawatt data center represents. A 5 gigawatt data center consumes on the order of 40 million megawatt-hours of electricity per year, as much electricity as the ENTIRE STATE of Nevada or Kansas!

Financial Times (paywall):

The cost of providing electricity in America’s largest power market will hit a record high owing to soaring demand from artificial intelligence data centres and delays in building new power plants, raising energy prices for consumers.

Grid operator PJM, which covers 13 states and Washington DC, said on Tuesday it procured energy supplies for $329.17 per megawatt day, a 22 per cent increase compared with the previous year. The organisation will pay power producers $16.1bn to meet its energy needs from June 2026 to May 2027, a 10 per cent increase compared with the previous year.

Continue reading “Data Centers Massive Demand Pushes Electricity Prices Up”

A comprehensive and well thought out design plan makes Babcock Ranch, famous for being a solar powered community, resilient to flooding.