Month: November 2025

Trump Pushing Coal to Stay in Service. Reliability is Suffering.

Heatmap:

But … how reliable is coal, actually? According to an analysis by the Environmental Defense Fund of data from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, a nonprofit that oversees reliability standards for the grid, coal has the highest “equipment-related outage rate” — essentially, the percentage of time a generator isn’t working because of some kind of mechanical or other issue related to its physical structure — among coal, hydropower, natural gas, nuclear, and wind. Coal’s outage rate was over 12%. Wind’s was about 6.6%.

“When EDF’s team isolated just equipment-related outages, wind energy proved far more reliable than coal, which had the highest outage rate of any source NERC tracks,” EDF told me in an emailed statement.

Coal’s reliability has, in fact, been decreasing, Oliver Chapman, a research analyst at EDF, told me.

NERC has attributed this falling reliability to the changing role of coal in the energy system. Reliability “negatively correlates most strongly to capacity factor,” or how often the plant is running compared to its peak capacity. The data also “aligns with industry statements indicating that reduced investment in maintenance and abnormal cycling that are being adopted primarily in response to rapid changes in the resource mix are negatively impacting baseload coal unit performance.” In other words, coal is struggling to keep up with its changing role in the energy system. That’s due not just to the growth of solar and wind energy, which are inherently (but predictably) variable, but also to natural gas’s increasing prominence on the grid.

Continue reading “Trump Pushing Coal to Stay in Service. Reliability is Suffering.”

When You’re Right, you’re Right. Elon Musk Schools Tech Bros on Solar Power

Even fascists can be factually correct.
Main body of the tweet above:


“The sun is about 99.8% of the mass of the solar system. Jupiter’s about 0.1% and everything else is in the remaining 0.1%, and we are much less than 0.1%. So, if you burnt all of the mass of the solar system, then the total energy produced by the sun would still round up to 100%. If you just burnt Earth, the whole planet, and burnt Jupiter, which is very big and quite challenging to burn, turn Jupiter into a thermonuclear reactor, the sun is 99.8% of the mass of the solar system and everything else is in the miscellaneous category.

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Bigger Than Yellowstone. The Science of Geo-Catastrophe and Deep Time

Mind blown.

A big difference between geologists, climatologists, and ordinary mortals is the ability of the scientists to imagine vast stretches of deep time, so vividly that they can begin to discern the actual traces of events spectacularly remote in time from our own.

Brain stretching discussion of Earth’s most (thankfully) rare and spectacular geological disasters.

So glad that PBS is hanging in with invaluable science reporting, supported in large part by individual donors, so watch for the chance to pitch in, above.

PETM – glad I was not there.
Continue reading “Bigger Than Yellowstone. The Science of Geo-Catastrophe and Deep Time”

Newsom Rises to the Top on Climate

YouTuber Adam Mockler is sometimes over the top but a generally a good follow, and in this case discusses the significance of Gavin Newsom’s initiatives both in national issues, and in the global climate discussion at the COP meeting.
I think it demonstrates something about the value of stepping into a leadership vacuum, which Newsom, love or hate him, is doing.

Great Leap Forward: China Moving to Global Energy Leadership at COP

China has watched, no doubt with incredulous glee, a succession of bonehead, fossil fuel dominated Republican administrations, playing directly into its hands – whether Dubya Bush’s brutal war for Oil , to the current fossil corrupted Whitehouse’s decisive turn back to 19th century technology.
Now is their time.

New York Times:

As the United States torpedoes climate action and Europe struggles to realize its green ambitions, a surprising shift is taking hold in many large, fast-growing economies where a majority of the world’s people live.

Countries like Brazil, India, and Vietnam are rapidly expanding solar and wind power. Poorer countries like Ethiopia and Nepal are leapfrogging over gasoline-burning cars to battery-powered ones. Nigeria, a petrostate, plans to build its first solar-panel manufacturing plant. Morocco is creating a battery hub to supply European automakers. Santiago, the capital of Chile, has electrified more than half of its bus fleet in recent years.

Key to this shift is the world’s new renewable energy superpower: China.

Having saturated its own market with solar panels, wind turbines and batteries, Chinese companies are now exporting their wares to energy-hungry countries in the developing world. What’s more, they’re investing billions of dollars in factories that make things like solar panels in Vietnam and electric cars in Brazil.

In effect, Chinese industrial policy is shaping the development trajectory of some of the world’s fastest-growing economies.

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Former UN Climate Chief on Bill Gate’s Memo

Former U.N. Climate Chief Christiana Figueres, in conversation with Christian Amanpour.

“It’s very understandable that Bill Gates, who is a friend, thinks in binary terms because all of the computing world is based on binary thinking, ones and zeros. That is the basis of computing. So it’s very understandable that he does this binary thinking and binary analysis. However, the real world is not binary.

“The real world is actually interconnected and so there is no use in us exclusively dealing with health, with poverty if we don’t also protect people against the ravages of climate change. And sadly for him, he published this memo exactly in the time in which Melissa hit Jamaica.
“And so the question, you know, is let’s ask the Jamaicans whether even if they had had perfect health and perfect quality of life, would that have protected them against Melissa?

“The answer is no. We have to do both.”

China Applies Leverage to Open Canadian EV Market

MAGA opened a Pandora’s box by betraying all of our closest allies – that could end up creating even worse damage to US manufacturing.
Video above summarizes Canadian media accounts of national debate heating up rapidly – should Canada encourage Chinese EV imports?

CTV:

China will remove its tariffs on Canadian agriculture — including on canola products — if Canada scraps its levies on Chinese electric vehicles (EVs), that country’s ambassador says. 

“If Canada removes the unilateral unjustified tariffs on Chinese products, China will also reciprocate accordingly,” Wang Di said through a translator in an exclusive interview with CTV Question Period airing Sunday. “And if the EV tariffs are removed, then China will also remove the tariffs on the relevant products of Canada.” 

Canada has had 100 per cent tariffs on all EVs imported from China since last October, following the United States’ lead. It was a move aimed at protecting domestic manufacturing and national security, according to the federal government at the time. 

The previous government also said at the time that China engages in the unfair subsidization of its EV industry, which allows it to flood the market with its product. 

Canada also has 25 per cent tariffs in place on Chinese steel and aluminum. 

China has since levied tariffs of its own on Canadian agriculture, including notably on canola products, with a 100 per cent tariff on Canadian canola oil and meal and a 75.8 per cent tariff on canola seed.

“The question you have raised touches the crux of the problems in our trade relations,” Wang told CTV Question Period host Vassy Kapelos, when asked whether China’s tariffs are a direct response to Canada’s EV levies. “China’s tariffs on Canadian agricultural products are a countermeasure against the EV tariffs and the unilateral unjustified tariffs on China’s steel and aluminum products.” 

“If Canada is ready to correct this practice, China will also respond accordingly,” he also said.

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