The top federal official in charge of giving loans to nuclear plants had some harsh words this week for nuclear industry officials who want the government to invest more taxpayer funds into building reactors.
“At a certain point, it’s just greedy,” said Julie Kozeracki, the acting chief investment officer for President Donald Trump’s Office of Energy Dominance Financing.
Kozeracki was speaking in front of hundreds of nuclear industry CEOs and financiers on a panel at the Nuclear Energy Institute’s finance conference in New York on Tuesday. She told them the industry needs to stop asking for new funding streams from the government and start building reactors. “The tools are there, and it’s time to deliver,” she said.
Trump has called for the U.S. to start construction on 10 large nuclear reactors by 2030, to produce enough electricity to meet growing American energy demands, including the power needed by artificial intelligence data centers. That goal is likely to cost well over $100 billion, almost all of it paid by private companies.
As of yet, no reactors are under construction.
One reason that industry officials say that reactors are not being built is that developers don’t want to take the risk that the project will go way over budget and end up costing ratepayers and investors.
Illustration of how persistent and near record warmth (relative) in the Arctic – and the Greenland-Canadian Tundra block – is suppressing the Polar Vortex South, and is responsible for the generational #cold event in #Florida and expected SE Coast #blizzard This pattern… pic.twitter.com/NbKZaeLXGk
Will Westmoreland is a (God help him) Progressive farmer, consultant, and organizer in Missouri. His website, The Back Forty, is a resource for rural community organizers, and he is active across just about every media platform.
Will is well informed on issues, and is the kind of fact based community advocate we need to follow and encourage.
The Back Forty was created by Will Westmoreland with one leading concept in mind: real change starts where the pavement ends, in small towns, fields, and family farms, where neighbors know your name and all of us aren’t afraid to lend a helping hand. Our name will be familiar to some. The Back Forty, is that last stretch of land beyond the homestead, quiet, unassuming, and full of untapped potential. The Back Forty is just getting started, now we need your help as we grow into our next phase of educating, organizing, and action.
Above, Texas Governor Abbott neglects to mention what the biggest additions to the Texas grid have been since the Valentine’s Day Blackout of ’21. Solar, and batteries. Lots of batteries. Also, ERCOT knocked a few heads and got some power plants winterized.
Winter Storm Fern, which swept through the U.S. over the weekend, marked a major test of the Texas grid’s resiliency, five years after Uri devastated the state, leaving millions without power and killing hundreds. It was a test that the grid mostly passed — despite the freezing temperatures and ice that blanketed much of the state, and worries over tight power conditions.
Some of this came down to reliability upgrades.
ERCOT analysts and energy experts told Latitude Media that gas plants and wind turbines were less vulnerable to icy conditions than they were in 2021, in part due to weatherization mandates from state officials. Few plants went offline during the storm — a stark departure from when gas well heads and pipelines froze during Uri, causing rolling blackouts and skyrocketing electricity prices. Since then, Texas has also added more than 14 gigawatts of new battery storage capacity, some of which kicked in during critical windows Monday and Tuesday morning when demand spiked as residents and businesses turned on the heat.
“The gas, coal, and nuclear fleet was all significantly more reliable this time around, and then the batteries gave Texas the flexibility that those other generators don’t,” said Stephen Ryan, power market analyst at Wood Mackenzie.
Luck played another role: There was more wind and less ice than forecasters feared in the lead-up.
Trump officials have ordered national parks to remove dozens of signs and displays related to climate change, environmental protection and settlers’ mistreatment of Native Americans in a renewed push to implement President Donald Trump’s executive order on “restoring truth and sanity to American history.”
Park staff have interpreted Trump’s directive — which seeks to scrub federal institutions of what it calls “partisan ideology” and remove any content deemed to “disparage Americans past or living” — to include any references to historic racism and sexism, as well as climate change and LGBTQ+ rights. Last week, that included the removal of an exhibit at Independence National Historical Park that focused on George Washington’s ownership of enslaved people.
In a new wave of orders this month, Trump officials instructed staff to remove or edit signs and other informational materials in at least 17 additional parks in Arizona, Texas, Colorado, Utah, Montana and Wyoming, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post. The documents also listed some removals ordered in August and September.
The Interior Department said in a statement it was implementing Trump’s executive order.
A number of lawsuits are currently in process aimed at holding the fossil fuel industry responsible for climate change. The main approaches so far fall into two buckets – either that the fossil industry spread climate disinformation and created uncertainty about the issue, or those that hold the industry directly responsible for climate impacts. The newest suit by the State of Michigan takes a novel approach, one based on the industry’s anti-competitive practices, and the subsequent costs to consumers.
A new lawsuit against oil giants over their role in climate change is pursuing a novel strategy that may ring a bell. It’s focusing on high prices and affordability.
The federal antitrust lawsuit, filed Friday by Michigan’s attorney general, accuses the companies of creating a “cartel” and raising costs for people in the state by colluding to stifle renewables, such as wind and solar power, and to suppress information about the dangers of global warming.
“Michigan is facing an energy affordability crisis as our home energy costs skyrocket and consumers are left without affordable options for transportation,” Attorney General Dana Nessel said. “These out-of-control costs are not the result of natural economic inflation, but due to the greed of these corporations who prioritized their own profit and marketplace dominance over competition and consumer savings.” The lawsuit comes at a time when inflation and affordability are rising political and economic concerns in the country.
The use of antitrust law is notable. Over the past decade, roughly three dozen state and local governments have filed more straightforward lawsuits against oil companies, seeking damages for the effects of climate change or citing consumer protection laws, mostly in state courts. Only one other suit has made antitrust claims, but it took a different approach than Michigan did. (That lawsuit was dismissed and an appeal is pending.)
— There’s a nice summary of active lawsuits from a Law firm here, and I’ll excerpt two of their examples.
So far, there continues to be a strong appetite for climate change litigation. The use of litigation as a form of protest by climate activist groups, a focus on human rights violations in the context of climate change, and pressuring of fossil fuel companies to develop climate strategies continue to emerge as important trends in litigation strategies and in the types of argument being adopted by litigants.3
As at November 2020, the total number of climate change cases filed to date has reached over 1,650,4up from about 1,444 as at February this year. Cases have now been filed in all six continents and in at least 36 countries, in addition to cases brought in regional or international courts or commissions. The vast majority of these cases continue to be commenced in the United States (US), followed by Australia, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Canada, New Zealand, and Spain.
State of Minnesota v American Petroleum Institute et al
In June 2020, the Attorney General for the State of Minnesota filed a lawsuit against American Petroleum Institute, ExxonMobil, Koch Industries and Flint Hills Resources on the basis of internal documents dating back to the 1970s and 1980s which allegedly confirm that the companies “well understood the devastating effects that their products would cause to the climate”.
The Attorney General alleges, amongst other things, that the defendants have profited from “avoiding the consequences and costs of dealing with global warming” and that they deliberately undermined “the science of climate change, purposefully downplaying the role that the purchase and consumption of their products played in causing climate change”.
The lawsuit includes claims for fraud, failure to warn, and multiple separate violations of Minnesota Statutes that prohibit consumer fraud, deceptive trade practices and false statements in advertising. The Attorney General is seeking damages for alleged harms suffered by Minnesotans and orders that the companies fund a corrective public education campaign on the issue of climate change.
The case is currently the subject of jurisdictional arguments as to whether it should be heard in the Federal Court.
We can accelerate the energy transition not just by building more clean energy, but by making grids work more efficiently. Jigar Shah knows more about this ongoing process than anybody, and had a good thread discussing.
Less than half of existing grid capacity is used on average—yet we keep planning like every new MW requires new steel in the ground. That’s a trillion-dollar mistake.
We have the ability to reduce electricity rates while demand is surging (data centers, EVs, manufacturing). The default response:
Build more infrastructure Raise rates There’s a better option: use what we already have, better. While we build a smarter grid.
The core insight:
The grid is built for a few peak hours per year. If we add load when & where there’s spare capacity, fixed grid costs are shared by more customers → lower bills for everyone.
That’s system utilization.
So many analyses have shown the upside:
+10% system utilization
↓ customer rates by ~5%
↑ utility revenue by ~20%
New load connects years faster This is rare: lower bills + higher utility earnings.
I’m honored to give a free year’s access to neilyoungarchives.com to all of our friends in Greenland. I hope my Music and Music Films will ease some of the unwarranted stress and threats you are experiencing from our unpopular and hopefully temporary government. It is my sincere wish for you to be able to enjoy all of my music in your beautiful Greenland home, in its highest quality. This is an offer of Peace and Love. All the music I have made during the last 62 years is yours to hear. You can renew for free as long as you are in Greenland. We do hope other organizations will follow in the spirit of our example. LOVE EARTH Neil
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“Amazon is owned by Jeff Bezos, a billionaire backer of the president,” he wrote. “The president’s international policies and his support of ICE make it impossible for me to ignore his actions. If you feel as I do, I strongly recommend that you do not use Amazon. There are many ways to avoid Amazon and support individual Americans and American companies that supply the same products. I have done that with my music and people who are looking can find it in a lot of other places.”
“Record stores provide all my vinyl and CDs, while the digital music world has many alternative options to purchase my music if you like it,” he continued. “My music will never be available on Amazon, as long as it is owned by Bezos. My position is unfortunately harmful to my record company in the short term, but I think the message I am sending is important and clear. Thanks for buying music locally and from independent digital services.”
Growing list of lawsuits against fossil fuel companies now includes a suit by the Attorney General of Michigan. Particularly relevant in that, due in part to the propaganda from fossil fuel interests, the Detroit Auto industry is now at existential risk due to the postponement and suppression of EV technology.
The state of Michigan is suing major oil companies and an industry association, alleging that they colluded to hamper the adoption of renewable energy and electric vehicles (EVs).
In a lawsuit announced Friday, Michigan sued BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell and the American Petroleum Institute.
— I’ve documented the activities of fossil fuel trained activists across the state over several years. They have been effective in disinforming local citizens and shutting down clean energy projects.
State Attorney General Dana Nessel is suing four big oil companies under antitrust laws, alleging a decades-long conspiracy to undermine the adoption of renewable energy and electric vehicles that has led Michiganders to face higher energy costs and greater exposure to climate change.
The lawsuit against Exxon Mobil, Chevron, BP and Shell, plus their industry association the American Petroleum Institute was filed Friday morning, Jan. 23, in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan, an attorney general’s spokesperson said. The filing makes Michigan the latest Democrat-led state to go after big oil companies.
