That giant sucking sound is cash being vacuumed out of ratepayer’s pockets and into the coffers of fossil fuel oligarchs, and oligarch wannabees like Energy Secretary Chris Wright.
As the PBS piece above explains, electricity prices in New England are high. Currently, Rhode Island, and Connecticut are among the most expensive states for electricity, relying heavily on gas and nuclear power. That combination would be, purportedly, the ideal fuel mix if you believe the blathering of Wright and others in this oil addled administration. In the real world, not so much.
Construction at a Hyundai Battery facility in Georgia was disrupted as ICE agents arrested hundreds of Korean technicians, legally in the US to train workers at the new facility. The attention-seeking wackjob who called ICE with the original complaint about illegal workers, was hoping to jumpstart her political campaign. She complains about foreigners taking American jobs, and oh, by the way, she hates solar energy, too. Predictably, she has been getting some blowback, and she’s butt-hurt about it.
The highly respected energy focused think tank Ember is out today with a slide deck and update on where we are in the energy transition. Despite the efforts of the petrostates and global oligarchy to enforce an authoritarian rule of fossil fuels, markets continue to exert their irresistible gravitational pull.
Humanity is graduating from burning fossil commodities to mastering manufactured technologies—from hunting scarce fossils to farming the inexhaustible sun, from consuming Earth’s resources to merely borrowing them.
This isn’t a marginal climate substitution. It’s an energy revolution.
The magnetic centre is the electron: we are revolutionising how we generate, use, and shift electrons. Solar and wind are conquering electricity supply. EVs, heat pumps, and AI are electrifying major new uses. Batteries and digitalisation are connecting supply and demand.
Three reinforcing shifts. One energy revolution. The electrotech revolution.
Essential viewing: This Deutsche Welle production shows something I’ve been trying to figure out how to communicate for a while.
We often hear renewable bashers mention that “we still rely on fossil fuels for 80 percent of our energy.” This video delves into a vitally important “true, but…” qualifier on that story .
It’s all about understanding energy flows – and once you’ve seen the video, you’ll understand what graphs like the one below are telling us.
Some federal meteorologist jobs cut under President Donald Trump are open again at California National Weather Service offices — but there’s a catch. Applicants are being asked to describe their support for the president’s policies and executive orders.
Four essay questions that are part of the “merit hiring plan” unveiled by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management in May are now included in the applications for new openings at the weather service. The essay questions — which have nothing to do with meteorology — are part of federal guidelines launched as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to recruit “patriotic Americans” to its workforce.
Applicants are being asked to explain how to “help advance” Trump’s priorities, answer which executive orders are “significant” to them and how they would “implement them if hired.”
Two policy experts described the questions as a Trump loyalty test. A climate scientist called them “inappropriate and misguided for a nonpartisan civil service role.” The addition of such questions goes against more than 100 years of precedent that has kept partisan politics out of civil servant hiring.
Across the country, electricity prices have jumped more than twice as fast as the overall cost of living in the last year. That’s especially painful during the dog days of summer, when air conditioners are working overtime.
In Pembroke Pines, Fla., Al Salvi’s power bill can reach $500 a month.
“There’s a lot of seniors down here that are living check to check. They can barely afford prescriptions such as myself,” says Salvi, who’s 63 and uses a wheelchair. “Now we got to decide whether we’re going to pay the electric bill or are we going to buy medication. And it’s not fair to us. You’re squeezing us between a rock and a hard place.”
Trump on Truth Social, Aug. 20: “Any State that has built and relied on WINDMILLS and SOLAR for power are seeing RECORD BREAKING INCREASES IN ELECTRICITY AND ENERGY COSTS. THE SCAM OF THE CENTURY!”
The facts: The four states where wind and solar produce the greatest share of electricity — Iowa, South Dakota, Kansas and New Mexico — are among the 20 cheapest states for electricity, according to federal data. Despite the upfront cost, wind and solar are immune from price spikes on the gas market, and the rapid drop in battery prices means pairing them with storage is increasingly competitive with fossil fuel plants.
In fact, analysis of federal data by University of Oxford scientist Hannah Ritchie showed there’s not much correlation between a state’s resource mix and prices. Most renewable-heavy states have lower rates, but California has some of the costliest electricity, in part because of utility spending on wildfire prevention.
Josh Pearce put his finger on it 5 years ago. The day of legal reckoning for the fossil fuel industry is coming.
New research continues to draw closer and closer ties between specific companies and increasing climate disasters and death tolls. Following the trajectory of a similar process that eventually caught up with the tobacco industry, resulting in enormous damage awards. Sharpen the guillotines.
Climate change increased the probability and intensity of more than 200 heat waves across the globe over the last two decades, according to a newly published study.
The study, published Sept. 10 in the journal Nature, linked carbon emissions from some of the world’s top fossil fuel producers, including companies like ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP and Shell, directly to the heat events.
“Climate change has made each of these heat waves more likely and more intense, and the situation has worsened over time,” the study’s lead author, Yann Quilcaille, said in a release. Quilcaille researches climate extremes at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology’s Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science in Zurich, Switzerland.
He, along with the study’s other authors, examined 213 heat waves from 2000 to 2023 found in the International Disaster Database, a list of global disasters reported because of casualties, economic losses, emergency declarations and calls for international assistance.
Fifty-five, or about a quarter, of those heat waves “would have been virtually impossible” without human-induced climate change, the authors found.
Among the leading contributors? The 180 largest “carbon majors” ‒ businesses and state-owned entities that produce the most greenhouse gas emissions in the world.
For a long time, although the stats on solar energy growth have been spectacular, I have not allowed myself to hope the momentum would continue, or even grow. It does seem, however. like this is happening.
A decade ago, MIT scientist Ray Kurzweil explained the plain math behind the compounding growth of solar deployment. The power of doubling every two years.
Denmark plans to buy European-made air defence systems for 58 billion Danish crowns ($9.11 billion), its largest arms purchase ever, the country’s defence minister said on Friday, citing a challenging security situation.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen in February ordered the military to “buy buy buy” equipment in preparation for potential future Russian aggression in Europe.
Denmark plans to procure eight systems, including the long-range SAMP/T platform produced by Eurosam, a consortium of MBDA France, MBDA Italy and Thales, as well as medium-range systems manufactured by Norway, Germany or France.
