Month: August 2025

Africa Diverting from the Fossil Fuel Addiction

The fossil fuel industry, personified by Trump Energy Secretary Chris Wright, has been promising to address “energy poverty” by flooding Africa and the developing world with US liquified natural gas – because, in their telling, they care so deeply about the poor and underprivileged on the continent.

What we’ve actually seen is that one of the very first acts of the new administration was to cut off needed food aid to the most vulnerable Africans – preferring to let good food rot rather than be distributed to poor brown-skinned people.
Maybe no wonder that Africans, and other countries in the developing world, are looking at a different model.
Huge win for China, and another demonstration of how Trump policies are hobbling and humbling US leadership across the globe.

Electrek:

Solar is taking off across Africa in a big way. According to a new analysis of China’s solar panel exports data from energy think tank Ember, solar panel imports into the continent jumped 60% in the 12 months through June 2025, setting a record that could reshape electricity systems in many countries.

In that period, Africa imported 15,032 megawatts (MW) of solar panels, up from 9,379 MW the year before. While South Africa has dominated past surges, this wave is happening across the map: 20 countries set new import records, and 25 countries each brought in at least 100 MW, compared to just 15 a year earlier.

Nigeria overtook Egypt to become the second-largest importer with 1,721 MW, while Algeria surged into third with 1,199 MW. Growth rates in some countries were staggering: Algeria’s imports jumped 33-fold, Zambia’s eightfold, Botswana’s sevenfold, and Sudan’s sixfold. Liberia, the DRC, Benin, Angola, and Ethiopia all more than tripled their imports.

Still, import numbers don’t tell the whole story. It’s unclear how many of these panels have been installed yet. Muhammad Mustafa Amjad of Renewables First, an energy transition think tank in Pakistan, pointed out that countries risk losing valuable time and opportunities without proper tracking. “Africa’s transition will happen regardless,” he said, “but with timely data it can be more equitable, planned, and inclusive.”

Continue reading “Africa Diverting from the Fossil Fuel Addiction”

FEMA Forces Furloughed Following Protest Letter

Distress call from Emergency workers, just in time for the heart of hurricane season.

The emergency response specialists had signed a letter warning about a “Katrina level” disaster if changes were not made in FEMA management.

I’m sure things will be fine.

Washington Post:

The Trump administration placed more than a dozen Federal Emergency Management Agency employees on leave Tuesday after they signed an open letter of dissent about the agency’s leadership, according to people familiar with the situation and documents reviewed by The Washington Post.

About 180 current and former FEMA staffers sent a letter on Monday to members of Congress and other officials, arguing the current leaders’ inexperience and approach harm FEMA’s mission and could result in a disaster on the level of Hurricane Katrina.

By Tuesday evening, FEMA’s office of the administrator had sent several people letters informing them that, effective immediately, they were on an administrative leave, operating “in a non-duty status while continuing to receive pay and benefits.”

Continue reading “FEMA Forces Furloughed Following Protest Letter”

On Electricity, the Stupid is Shocking

@jerrywaynelongmire

Electric bill in the south #comedy #faulkner #electricbill #heat #airconditioning #texas #electricitybill #electricity

♬ original sound – Jerry Wayne Longmire

Bill McKibben on Substack:

Let’s go back to Trump’s first day in office. He declared an “energy emergency” because the production and “generation capacity of the United States are all far too inadequate to meet our Nation’s needs. We need a reliable, diversified, and affordable supply of energy to drive our Nation’s manufacturing, transportation, agriculture, and defense industries, and to sustain the basics of modern life and military preparedness.” If we didn’t get more electricity in particular, the White House said, we would fall behind China in the AI race, with disastrous consequences. 

You can debate whether or not we need new AI data centers (My guess is that the technology has been oversold, and that we’re actually going to see fewer of them developed than people think). But you can’t debate two things.

One, the obvious way forward for this country was to develop more sun, wind, and batteries. We know this because it’s what this country, and every other country around the world, had been doing for the last two years. More than ninety percent of new electric generation around the world last year came from clean energy, momentum that continued through the first quarter of the year. This was not because everyone in the energy business had “gone woke.” Texas, after all, installed more renewable capacity than any other state last year. It was because you could do it cheaply and quickly—we live on a planet where the cheapest way to make power is to point a sheet of glass at the sun.

Continue reading “On Electricity, the Stupid is Shocking”

Climate, Drought Drive Skyrocketing Beef Prices

I don’t eat beef. I don’t miss it.
But a lot of people do, and for a number of reasons, including climate amplified drought, prices are going thru the roof.

Washington Post:

Red meat prices are skyrocketing in the United States, the world’s largest consumer and producer of beef. Beef and veal prices surged 11.3 percent in July over the year, according to the most recent consumer price index report. That’s nearly four times the price jump of food overall during the same period.

Continue reading “Climate, Drought Drive Skyrocketing Beef Prices”

Energy Secretary Takes Lies to Podcast-verse

Energy Secretary Chris Wright continues to reveal himself as an insufferable, lying, amoral, self dealing fossil fuel shill.

Below, a few years ago when he was still at the company he founded, Liberty Energy, a fracking services firm, Wright produced a video where he and employees whipped up and drank fracking fluid.

What’s missing is that the concerns about fracking center around what happens to fluid after it goes down the hole, and then comes back up with a lot of other “produced water”, that contains a host of toxic chemicals, heavy metals, and even radioactive isotopes.
Draw your own conclusions.


EPA:

Q: Have you found scientific evidence that hydraulic fracturing can impact drinking water resources? 
A: Yes.  EPA has found scientific evidence that activities in the hydraulic fracturing water cycle can impact drinking water resources under some circumstances. Impacts can range in frequency and severity, depending on the combination of hydraulic fracturing water cycle activities and local- or regional-scale factors. The following combinations of activities and factors are more likely than others to result in more frequent or more severe impacts:

Continue reading “Energy Secretary Takes Lies to Podcast-verse”