Above, an editor from The Economist relates his experience at the recent CERAWeek conference in Houston – basically Burning Man for energy tycoons.
Participants, especially in the Gas industry, were “joyous” in their belief that they were big winners in the current war in the Middle East.
Meanwhile…
Below, if Alex Jones thinks it’s time for the 25th Amendment, it might be time.
Continue reading “Trump Threatens Genocide. For Fossil Fuel Barons, a “Joyous” mood”Who exactly is in charge here?
Along with another strike on one of Iran’s key natural gas processing areas, the Israelis are exacerbating the energy crunch that is pushing the global economy to the brink, and, by the way, pushing the global economic trajectory in a way that will not favor Donald Trump’s fossil fuel donors in coming years.
For the second time, Israel has attacked Iran’s South Pars natural gas and its associated petrochemical complex – an energy lifeline for Iran that both helps keep the lights on for civilians and provides a key source of export earnings.
Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz said Monday that Israel attacked a key petrochemical plant at Asaluyeh, the onshore industrial aspect of the gas field, which lies under the Persian Gulf.
Katz said the “powerful strike” hit what he called “the largest petrochemical facility in Iran … responsible for about 50% of the country’s petrochemical production.” Combined with an earlier attack, two facilities responsible for 85% of Iran’s petrochemical exports have been taken out of service, he said.
Attacks on South Pars are sufficiently provocative to Iran that an earlier Israeli attack on March 18 prompted Iran to target energy infrastructure in other Middle East countries in response, an escalation of the war that sent new shockwaves across the region and beyond.
Continue reading “Israeli Strike Another Major Blow to Hormuz LNG”Above, Automakers deliver new EV models amidst signs of new interest among price-conscious consumers.
Below, Bloomberg posting adds details.
Just weeks ago, the US electric car market looked moribund. Amid plummeting EV sales, dealers were offering discounts as Detroit automakers scrapped electric lineups to make more gas-guzzling SUVs.Then oil prices surged after the US and Israel attacked Iran.
Now, a used electric car showroom in San Francisco suggests the tide is turning again. As gasoline prices climb — hitting $6.81 a gallon at a nearby station on Wednesday — a flurry of drivers are making appointments to check out Ever’s lightly used EVs, many priced under $30,000.
“Gas prices are coming up in almost every customer conversation,” said Maximilian Quertermous, Ever’s co-founder and chief operating officer. “The momentum of the last few weeks is among the strongest we’ve seen.”
Ever is just one dealership, but signs of a shift are playing out across the world. In Southeast Asia, buyers are flocking to Chinese EV giant BYD Co.’s stores, while electric rickshaws are selling out in Pakistan. A shortage of cooking oil in India is driving a run on electric stoves. From Germany to Nigeria, interest in rooftop solar is surging. And in the UK, some homeowners are taking the plunge on expensive heat pumps.
Continue reading “Iran War Accelerates Renewables, Even in Trump’s America”If you are reading this, you are using a data center somewhere.
Likewise if you are a user of YouTube, Netflix, Google, Facebook, email, Slack, or if you share pictures of your pets on your iPhone – you’re a Data center user – so consider before you join that Zoom meeting to ban Data Centers – Zoom operates 17 of them.
The workings of markets have not been repealed.
If the graphs of power consumption projection look incredible and preposterous, well, they might be just that.
For those projects that assume unlimited ability to build “behind the meter” gas generation, there are barriers to the availability of gas.
As one of Jigar Shah’s podcast guests explains, below, building your own generation is easier said than done. Other reporting cautions on the availability of sufficient key components to meet requirements.
For those that do not know Jigar Shah, he is an engineer, an early pioneer in founding a solar company, SunEdison, in 2003. He’s been an investor and leader in the clean energy space, a tireless advocate of climate action, and for 4 years, Director of the (then) powerful Loan Programs Office at the Department of Energy under Joe Biden. So he knows the space.
I’ve posted a couple of his important takes on the the popular concept of Data center development that we are hearing so much about, the projections that Hyperscalers are going to build endless “behind the meter” gas generation that will blow up climate initiatives and ruin communities around the country.
I’m still working my way up the learning curve on these issues, but everything I’m seeing suggests panic is unwarranted, and opportunities for clean energy wins exist.
As the global AI race heats up, there is a huge rush to build data centers fast. There’s no lack of money chasing these projects, with tech giants Alphabet Inc., Amazon.com, Meta Platforms Inc. and Microsoft Corp. committed to spending more than $650 billion this year alone. Yet neither ambition nor capital is enough to materialize all the necessary components.
Almost half of the US data centers planned for this year are expected to be delayed or canceled. One big reason is the shortage of electrical equipment, such as transformers, switchgear and batteries. They are needed not just for powering AI, but also for building out the grid that is seeing increased consumption from electric cars and heat pumps. US manufacturing capacity for these devices cannot keep up with demand, and the scarcity has caused data center builders to rely on imports.
Continue reading “Take a Chill Pill on Data Centers”I wish them all the luck in the world.
Will Donald Trump turn out to be the Environmental President?
So let me take an optimism break and talk about why batteries may save the world.
The decline in battery prices has been incredible. It’s like nothing anyone has ever seen before. Big, strong men with tears in their eyes come up to me and say, “Sir, have you seen the progress in batteries?”:
Why does this matter?
First, cheap battery storage of electricity greatly mitigates the problem of intermittency — the sun doesn’t always shine, the wind doesn’t always blow. This was a major concern early in the renewable revolution. Some energy economists scolded me for my naïve optimism when I first wrote about solar technology way back in 2011. But solar + batteries provides round-the-clock power.
Here’s a graph of California’s electricity supply generated by renewables and batteries over the course of 24 hours on April 1 that illustrates my point:
See elsewhere on this page – another round of ice storms is hitting the Upper Midwest this week, following similar events from last year.
Extreme events and changes in seasons and hydrology are provoking concerns about the composition of forests, how they may be changing, and whether humans can mitigate or assist in adaptations.
As humans continue to heat the planet with greenhouse gases, potentially locking the Earth into a “hothouse” trajectory, according to new research, scientists worry that nature won’t be able to keep up with climate change.
“Forests have migrated and adapted to long-term changes in climate over thousands to millions of years; however, natural migration rates and adaptive responses of tree populations cannot match the rapid pace of current climate change,” according to a U.S. Forest Service study published in 2024. Relying on locally sourced trees for planting “may no longer be adequate.”
In Louisville, assisted migration involves planting tree species native to the area, such as the mighty bur oak, which can grow to over 100 feet tall, but sourcing them from further south and west in their North American range. Some species are different there, more suited to a hotter and harsher environment.
Assisted migration in Louisville can also mean planting tree species that are not native locally, such as the smaller but beautiful Lacey oak, with its delicate bluish-green foliage, from seed sources in Texas.
In either example, the idea is that these Southern-sourced trees from hundreds of miles away are likely to be better suited to the climate conditions anticipated in Louisville’s Ohio River Valley in 50 to 100 years.
Experts have said that Louisville by 2100 could be much more like today’s northeast Texas.
I watched weather radar as yet another ice storm raked the Upper Great Lakes Region last night. More coming this weekend.
I’ve posted about the long term impact on forests and infrastructure. Each new event underlines to increasing costs of global change, even in this “climate haven”.
Interlochen Public Radio (Michigan):
As climate change warms the Great Lakes region, one scientist thinks Michigan could be at a higher risk for more freezing rain events like the one experienced this past weekend.
“We see evidence that suggests that the Great Lakes region as a whole is in the middle of pretty fast warming,” said Richard Rood, a professor emeritus of climate and space sciences and engineering at the University of Michigan.
Rood currently has a paper in the peer-review process that analyzes freezing rain data in the Great Lakes over the past several decades.
“What we would call the average location of the freezing line is moving further and further north, which means that in places where it used to snow quite reliably, we’re now more likely to see freezing rain,” Rood said.
And in places further south, freezing rain is more often giving way to regular rain. On top of that, Rood said freezing rain is changing.
“It’s becoming very erratic,” he said. “You’re likely to see a very large freezing rain event, because there’s just more water available.”
Marty Baxter, a professor of meteorology with Central Michigan University, said the link between ice storms and climate change isn’t totally clear yet.
“In [the] future climate, you’ll have more available water vapor that could lead to more rain,” Baxter said. “But the real issue is, will you see ground temperatures cold enough to make freezing rain?”
Rood said northern Michigan’s recent ice storm checks all the boxes for a weather event that could’ve been influenced by climate change, but it’s too soon to tell.
Continue reading “Pounding Ice Storms A Sign of Change in Upper Midwest”
For the average MAGA Republican white guy, they may be “shithole Countries”.
But the most dynamic and rapidly growing markets of coming decades are in the developing world.
They’ve been watching. Taking notes.
The Trump administration’s energy policies have been shaped by gas barons like big donor Harold Hamm and his hand-picked energy secretary, fracking mogul Chris Wright.
Their whole play is to cajole, coax, threaten or force US states and the developing world to build and lock in expensive natural gas infrastructure – pipelines, LNG export and re-gasifying facilities.
They’ve also made it clear that they are untrustworthy, unreliable, and willing to brutally betray anyone that displeases them.
50 years ago there weren’t many other places to go for energy. Now, they have abundant and cost effective clean energy alternatives.
What do you think they’re going to do?
Donald Trump’s war on Iran will have many unforeseen consequences that he won’t like. One of them is likely to be an acceleration of the global shift to low-carbon energy.
As my FT colleague Gideon Rachman points out, Iran has now proven that control of the strait “gives it a stranglehold over the world economy . . . Even if the Islamic republic decides, at some point, that it has an interest in reopening the Strait of Hormuz — it will always want to retain the option of closing it again as a visible threat to ward off aggressors.”
Heavy reliance on imported oil and gas, in short, means a chronic risk of severe and unpredictable economic shocks. The Iran crisis has focused the minds of governments around the world on this problem — and on how clean energy could help them address it.
“I think we should take this opportunity to transition to renewable energy more quickly and at a large scale,” South Korean President Lee Jae-myung told a cabinet meeting as the war escalated.
On Friday last week, economic ministers from south-east Asian countries agreed at an Asean meeting to “accelerate [the] renewable energy transition” to “strengthen regional energy security and resilience”.
Continue reading “Iran War Makes Renewables the Obvious Choice for Developing World”California’s snowpack is supposed to reach its peak April 1, so today, state surveyors hold their final Sierra snow survey of the year.
But instead of peak snow, there’s almost none.
Snow across California’s Sierra Nevada measured just 18% of average Monday — among the smallest in decades. A month of record-shattering heat thawed the snow and sent runoff coursing into streams and rivers, leaving only minimal water in the mountains as the state heads into dry season.
The early melt is a symptom of global warming that scientists say is becoming more pronounced.
“This particular year is as clear an indication of the influence of climate change as anything we’ve seen,” said Peter Gleick, a leading water scientist and co-founder of the Pacific Institute. “Climate change is influencing California’s water system quickly and severely.”
This year the Sierra snowpack peaked on Feb. 25 at 73% of average.
The summerlike heat in March broke monthly records in many areas of the Western U.S., accelerating the melting of snow in the Rocky Mountains as well.
Continue reading “Farmers, Scientists Sounding Alarm on Western Snowpack”