renewable energy – This is Not Cool

As Winter Sets in, European Emissions Keep Dropping as Renewables Soar

European wind energy production, January 2, 2024

German emissions were at their lowest point in around 70 years, as Europe’s largest economy managed to reduce its dependence on coal faster than expected, a study published Thursday showed.

Europe’s biggest economy emitted 673 million tonnes of the greenhouse gases last year, 73 million tonnes fewer than in 2022, according to the energy think tank Agora Energiewende.

The figure was at its lowest point “since the 1950s”, Agora said in a statement, while warning that Germany had work to do to further reduce its emissions.

The drop was “largely attributable to a strong decrease in coal power generation”, Agora said.

Germany resorted to the fuel in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, when Moscow cut off gas supplies to the European giant. But since then, Berlin has managed to pare back its use significantly.

Electricity generation from renewable sources was over 50 percent of the total in 2023 for the first time, while coal’s share dropped to 26 percent from 34 percent, according to figures published by the federal network agency on Wednesday.

The cut in coal use accounted for a reduction of 46 million tonnes in CO₂ emissions, the think tank estimated.

The renewables record brought Germany closer to its target to produce 80 percent of its electricity from wind and solar by 2030, Agora chief Simon Mueller said.

“When it comes to the generation of electricity, we are on a very good path,” Economy Minister Robert Habeck said in a statement.

Bloomberg:

Strong wind generation and low demand during the holiday period sent electricity prices below zero in Germany, while wholesale markets turned negative for some hours in France, Denmark and Britain.

Renewables Only Getting Started

Canary Media:

Renewable energy already beats fossil fuels on cost globally — and according to analysts, the gap is only going to grow.

By 2030, technology improvements could slash today’s prices by a quarter for wind and by half for solar, according to the authors of a recent report from clean energy think tank RMI. (Canary Media is an independent affiliate of RMI.)

These remarkable and ongoing cost declines have made clean energy so attractive that it now outcompetes fossil fuels for new investment: 62percent of global energy investment is expected to flow to clean energy technologies this year.

That cash is helping push renewables to new heights. According to estimates from the International Energy Agency, global clean energy capacity is expected to jump a jaw-dropping 107 gigawatts to more than 440 gigawatts this year — its largest increase ever.

What we’re living in “is an energy technology revolution,” said report co-author Kingsmill Bond, an energy strategist at RMI. It’s obvious from the data, yet the point is often lost in “a consistent drumbeat of counternarratives” about how difficult it is, and will be, to leave fossil fuels behind, he added.

“U.S. fossil-fuel demand peaked 15 years ago,” Bond said. “This is happening; people have just missed it.”

Renewable energy costs have fallen, and are projected to keep falling, because these technologies are riding “learning curves”: For every cumulative doubling of the deployed tech, its cost declines by a quantifiable percentage that varies by technology. Learning curves are a robust phenomenon that’s been observed for over 50 kinds of tech. Over the past 40 years, the average learning rate has been 20% for solar and 13% for wind.

Shadowy Groups Funding Clean Energy Opposition

More evidence for what we already knew. Above, local TV reporting from Iowa.
Below, new reporting from Midwest Energy News.
Shadowy tentacles of the oil/gas industry reaching into local communities to slow the development of solar energy.

Energy News:

An anonymously funded group is spreading misinformation about a rural Ohio solar project, according to project backers and others who reviewed claims made at a recent event.

Knox Smart Development was incorporated last month by Jared Yost, a Mount Vernon resident and opponent of the planned 120 megawatt Frasier Solar project. Three weeks later, on Nov. 30, the group hosted a catered “town hall meeting” at a Mount Vernon theater that included speakers with ties to fossil fuel and climate denial groups.

A company official with the solar developer, Open Road Renewables, was denied entry to the event, which was attended by approximately 500 people and featured complimentary food and drinks following the program.

It’s unclear who funded Knox Smart Development so it could pay for the event.

“There are people with concerns who are helping us, and they’ve all asked to remain anonymous,” Yost said when asked about its funding sources as people left the theater. “So we have local concerned citizens who are helping to fund this, including myself.”

A Dec. 7 filing advised developer Open Road Renewables and others that the Ohio Power Siting Board was ready to start review of the application for the Frasier Solar Project, which was filed in October. The project would be located in Clinton and Miller townships, both in Knox County. Yost and Knox Smart Development filed to participate in the case as parties on Dec. 8.

An early version of Knox Smart Development’s website included the text, “Our mission: Empowering America,” with a hyperlink to a page for an organization called The Empowerment Alliance. Research by the Energy and Policy Institute, an energy and utility watchdog group, has linked the Empowerment Alliance to the natural gas industry.

Dave Anderson, the institute’s policy and communications director, found a National Review Ideas Summit program guide that characterized The Empowerment Alliance as a project of Karen Buchwald Wright and her husband, Tom Rastin. Wright is the board chair of Ariel Corporation, which makes compressors for the natural gas industry. Its headquarters is in Mount Vernon.

The Empowerment Alliance’s highest paid contractor for the past four years, according to Internal Revenue Service filings, has been a group called Majority Strategies. Its chief strategist, Tom Whatman, emceed the Nov. 30 event for Knox Smart Development. Whatman is also the former executive director of the Ohio Republican Party.

Geothermal: They Know the Drill

Clean energy skeptic Peter Zeihan describes newest Fervo Energy geothermal project.
This is not your Grandpa’s geothermal, this is advanced geothermal, which could be theoretically available just about anywhere, using new drilling tech pioneered in the oil and gas industry, to reach hot rocks that would historically have been out of reach.

Tim Latimer is CEO of Fervo Energy, the project Zeihan is talking about.

Associated Press:

An advanced geothermal project has begun pumping carbon-free electricity onto the Nevada grid to power Google data centers there, Google announced Tuesday.

Getting electrons onto the grid for the first time is a milestone many new energy companies never reach, said Tim Latimer, CEO and co-founder of Google’s geothermal partner in the project, Houston-based Fervo Energy.

“I think it will be big and it will continue to vault geothermal into a lot more prominence than it has been,” Latimer said in an interview.

The International Energy Agency has long projected geothermal could be a serious solution to climate change. It said in a 2011 roadmap document that geothermal could reach some 3.5% of global electricity generation annually by 2050, avoiding almost 800 megatonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per year.

But that potential has been mostly unrealized up until now. Today’s announcement could mark a turning point.

Fervo is using this first pilot to launch other projects that will deliver far more carbon-free electricity to the grid. It’s currently completing initial drilling in southwest Utah for a 400-megawatt project.

Treasury Stats Show IRA Benefitting Low Income Communities

Of course, a lot of clean energy is being developed in rural communities. Rural communities almost uniformly are poor communities.
If you want to support rural communities, you support clean energy.
At bottom of the post, see how green policies make a difference in urban communities as well.

US Treasury:

In the analysis, Treasury economists observe that investments in Inflation Reduction Act-related sectors of the economy since the law passed grew especially quickly in energy communities—communities historically dependent on fossil energy jobs and tax revenues, including areas with closed coal mines or coal-fired power plants, as well as communities that have significant employment or local tax revenues from fossil fuels and higher than average unemployment. This initial data suggests the Inflation Reduction Act is achieving its goal of revitalizing communities at the forefront of fossil fuel production where potential exists, but opportunity has been scarce.

“President Biden’s Investing in America agenda and the Inflation Reduction Act are achieving their goals of revitalizing communities that have been overlooked and need public investment to unlock private capital. Treasury analysis shows that funding is going where it’s needed most across the country, not just to the coasts or to wealthy communities,” said Secretary of the Treasury Janet L. Yellen. “The American economy is more productive when communities can realize their full potential, and more than one year into implementation of the law, there is strong evidence that’s happening.”

The analysis also concluded that investments across all technologies supported by the Inflation Reduction Act have been largely landing in economically disadvantaged counties with below average wages, household incomes, employment rates, and college graduation rates. This analysis updates earlier studies from the Treasury with more granular data produced by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Rhodium Group.

81% of clean investment dollars announced since the Inflation Reduction Act passed have been for projects in counties with below-average weekly wages.
86% of clean investment dollars since the Inflation Reduction Act passed are landing in counties with below-average college graduation rates.
70% of clean investment dollars since the Inflation Reduction Act passed are in counties where a smaller share of the population is employed.
78% of clean investment dollars since the Inflation Reduction Act passed are in counties with below-average median household incomes.
The share of clean investment dollars going to low-income counties rose from 68% to 78% when the Inflation Reduction Act passed.

Nigeria’s Push Toward Solar Could be a World Leader

A do it yourself revolution in Nigeria’s largest city could create a distributed grid unique in the world.

Associated Press:

The end of the long-running fuel subsidy last month has increased interest in solar, operators say, which could accelerate progress toward mitigating climate change in Africa’s largest economy. But experts say the government needs a clear plan to make the most of this new opportunity to advance Nigeria’s climate goals, which include eliminating fossil fuel-run generators widely used to keep the lights on in homes and businesses.

Reducing fuel costs was a popular but environmentally and economically costly system.

The state petroleum company, NNPC, says Nigeria spent 4.39 trillion naira ($9.7 billion) on the subsidy last year, leaving the government struggling to finance infrastructure projects, including rail systems that could help reduce emissions from vehicles.

Gas-powered generators also contribute significantly to emissions, having proliferated under the subsidy in a country where only half the population of more than 200 million have access to grid electricity. Those who do often endure blackouts.

Solar adoption, on the other hand, has largely been hampered by relatively high upfront costs, with only 1.25% of Nigerian households installing those systems, according to a 2022 study conducted by Boston Consulting Group and All On.

If 30% of Nigerian households turned to solar by 2030, 5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide would be avoided, reducing emissions from households by 30%, the study added.

The new president has acknowledged that removing the fuel subsidy “will impose an additional burden on the masses of our people,” who have seen gasoline prices triple while struggling with high inflation and unemployment.

Drought/Heat Clobbers Texas Fossil Fuel plants. Wind Keeps on Spinning.

When the Earthquake/tsunami closed down all of Japan’s nuclear power plants, I reported that wind was one of the only remaining reliable, tsunami proof sources of power.

Now, Dallas Morning News quotes ERCOT, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the state’s electrical systems:

The Texas electrical grid operator began emergency procedures to prevent total blackout on Tuesday as the heat lead to record electricity demand, and told customers to brace for a repeat in the next few days.

The high temperatures also caused about 20 power plants to stop working, including at least one coal-fired plant and natural gas plants.

..such outages aren’t unusual in the hot summer, and Texas is getting some juice from surrounding states and from Mexico.

According to an ERCOT spokesman, conventional power plants suffer in this kind of heat.

“They can’t really efficiently condense the steam that’s used to make electricity, so that causes unit deratings that they can’t generate as much as they could if the lake were cooler.”

The American Wind Energy Association notes:

Meanwhile, some 1,800 MW of wind generation were available yesterday, more than double the 800 MW that ERCOT counts on during periods of peak summer demand for its long-term planning purposes. 1,800 MW is enough to power about 360,000 homes under the very high electricity demand seen yesterday.

Continue reading “Drought/Heat Clobbers Texas Fossil Fuel plants. Wind Keeps on Spinning.”