2017-04-06 Energy Week

Visitors Please Note: This blog is maintained to assist in developing a TV show, Energy Week with George Harvey and Tom Finnell. The post is put up in incomplete form, and is updated with news until it is completed, usually on Wednesday. The source is geoharvey.wordpress.com.

Within a few days of the last update, the show may be seen, along with older shows, at this link on the BCTV website: Energy Week Series.

Thursday, March 30:

Cleadale church, Eigg (Credit: Alamy)

• In 2008, the island of Eigg became the world’s first community to launch an off-grid electric system powered by wind, water and solar. Today, Eigg continues to set an example of how societies could meet their energy needs without access to a national grid. Getting electricity without a grid is a challenge that affects nearly one-fifth of the world’s population. [BBC]
• Vermont State regulators have approved a massive Windsor County solar array that will be four times the size of any such project built in Vermont so far. The Coolidge Solar project, to be built in Ludlow and Cavendish, will have a capacity of 20 MW. The largest existing array in Vermont is just under 5 MW, state officials said. [Valley News]

Drilling on public lands (Ed Andrieski / AP)

• Energy companies could pay the US government higher royalties for oil, gas and other resources extracted from public land, under a review Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke authorized. The two-year review is designed to determine whether Americans are getting a fair return for those natural resources, he said in an interview. [Chicago Tribune]

Friday, March 31:

Gigafactory

• Just after its merger with Solar City to build a factory that will be used for the production of Tesla battery cells, now as a part of the infrastructural plan, Tesla is in plans to build world’s largest solar panel rooftop on the roof of Nevada’s Gigafactory. The construction of this green energy facility will be completed by 2018. [The Legman News]
• Italian power provider Enel announced that construction work has begun on the largest PV plant on the American continent. It is the 754-MW Villanueva project, which is in the Mexican state of Coahuila. The company is investing €650 million in the project, and it is scheduled for completion in the second half of 2018. [pv magazine]

Wind turbine technician students (Liz Martin / The Gazette)

• A new Iowa Policy Project report claims that Iowa’s electricity prices, which are appreciably lower than the national average, can be attributed to the state’s growing wind industry. The project’s lead environmental scientist said the data shows the cost gap between Iowa and other states is increasing. [The Gazette: Eastern Iowa Breaking News and Headlines]

Saturday, April 1:

• The top court in India has gone ahead and banned the sale of vehicles running on Euro III standards (and older) in a bid to reduce the country’s growing air pollution problems. The ban becomes effective as of April 1. According to one expert, there are around ₹120 billion ($1.85 billion) worth of unsold Euro III stock in the country. [CleanTechnica]

Sunset over the Ocean, off of Molokai Hawaii (Rose_Braverman, Wikimedia Commons)

• At the recent Maui Energy Conference, officials from Hawaiian Electric Company detailed a plan that would make Molokai the first island in Hawaii to completely kick the fossil fuel habit. The 2,000 power customers on Molokai are currently drawing on the 12-MW oil-fueled Palaau Power Plant, as well as 2.36 MW of solar power. [Hawaiipublicradio]
• This week, a who’s who of leading brands all publicly committed to staying the course on fighting climate change. Mars, Anheuser-Busch, Nestlé, General Mills, Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, General Electric, the Gap, and Walmart all weighed in following the announcement of Trump’s executive order to roll back the Clean Power Plan. [Forbes]
• The EPA has issued more details of a plan for laying off 25% of its employees and scrapping more than 50 programs. The lost programs include pesticide safety, water runoff control, and environmental cooperation with Mexico and Canada under NAFTA. The agency is considering a rollback in fuel efficiency standards. [Santa Fe New Mexican]

Sunday, April 2:

Australian renewable energy (Tim Phillips Photos / Getty Images)

• In Australia, Labor will abandon the renewable energy target after 2020 because an emissions intensity scheme will be sufficient to reach the goal of 50% renewable energy by 2030. The shadow assistant treasurer firmed the opposition’s plan to reach the goal while possibly ruling out extending the existing renewable energy target. [The Guardian]
• The US Energy Information Administration has published data revealing that the country’s 2016 energy production dropped over year-over-year. This is the first such drop since 2009. Most of the decline was in coal, whose output fell 18% compared to 2015. Output from other energy sources also dipped, but solar and wind power grew. [Engadget]

Monday, April 3:

Supreme court in 2006 (Steve Petteway, Wikimedia Commons)

• The Tenth Anniversary of Massachusetts v. EPA • On April 2, 2007, The Supreme Court forcefully rejected the Bush EPA’s “laundry list of reasons” not to address climate pollution. The high Court held that protection of human health and the environment from air pollution must be rooted in science, not expediency or politics. [Environmental Defense Fund]
• The Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon will deliver a snub to Donald Trump over his stance on the environment today, signing a climate change pact with one of the US President’s bitter rivals. She will pose with California Governor Jerry Brown in a show of unity against the ditching of Obama-era policies tackling global warming. [The Scottish Sun]

Tuesday, April 4:

People in line to reserve a Tesla Model 3 in 2016 (Aaron Muszalski, Wikimedia Commons)

• Tesla’s market value has overtaken that of Ford after shares in the electric car maker added more than 7%. At the close of trading Tesla had a market value of $49 billion (£38 billion), compared with Ford’s value of $46 billion. Tesla’s shares rose after the company announced record vehicle deliveries in the first three months of the year. [BBC]
• At the urging of the Sierra Club, the EPA’s scientific integrity official is reviewing Trump-appointed EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s comments to see if they violate the agency’s scientific integrity policy. The policy requires that all agency employees, including Pruitt, “communicate with honesty, integrity, and transparency.” [Mashable]

Scottish wind turbines (Stephen Wilkes | Iconica | Getty Images)

• Scottish wind turbines sent more than 1.2 million MWh of electricity to the National Grid in March, according to new analysis of data. In a news release, WWF Scotland said that turbines produced enough electricity to meet the electrical needs of 136% of Scottish households, an increase of 81% compared to March 2016. [CNBC]

Wednesday, April 5:

• Reuters surveyed 32 utilities with operations in the 26 states that sued former President Barack Obama’s administration to block its Clean Power Plan. Most of them have no plans to alter their multi-billion dollar, years-long shift away from coal, suggesting demand for the fuel will keep falling despite Trump’s efforts. [Thomson Reuters Foundation]

Hurricane Andrew in 1992 (NASA)

• A sweeping piece of legislation that aims to improve forecasts for everything from Category 5 hurricanes to El Nino has passed both houses of Congress. The Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation Act of 2017, HR 353, will become the first major weather legislation enacted since the early 1990s if signed by the president. [Washington Post]
• PacifiCorp, which now generates nearly 60% of its electricity from coal, is planning to make a big new commitment to wind power. The six-state utility released a long-range power plan that foresees building 1,100 MW of new wind power capacity while also retrofitting an additional 900 MW, all by the end of 2020. [Portland Business Journal]

2017-03-30 Energy Week

Visitors Please Note: This blog is maintained to assist in developing a TV show, Energy Week with George Harvey and Tom Finnell. The post is put up in incomplete form, and is updated with news until it is completed, usually on Wednesday. The source is geoharvey.wordpress.com.

Within a few days of the last update, the show may be seen, along with older shows, at this link on the BCTV website: Energy Week Series.

Thursday, March 23:

Sarulla geothermal plant (Toshiba photo)

• Toshiba and Ormat Technologies have commissioned the first 110-MW unit of the $1.17 billion Sarulla geothermal power plant located in North Sumatra, Indonesia. The 320.8-MW power plant uses technologies from Toshiba and Ormat to provide a high efficiency and 100% reinjection of the used geothermal fluid. [Energy Business Review]
• Fifty Massachusetts lawmakers put their support behind a bill that would transition the state’s energy system to renewable sources. All of the state’s electricity would be required to come from clean energy initiatives like solar and wind by 2035. Energy for heating and transportation would all be renewably sourced by 2050. [pvbuzz media]
• Madison, Wisconsin and Abita Springs, Louisiana are moving to 100% renewable energy following city council votes. Madison and Abita Springs are the first cities in Wisconsin and Louisiana to make this commitment. They join 23 other cities across the United States, from large ones like San Diego to small ones like Greensburg, Kansas. [EcoWatch]

Friday, March 24:

• According to 2017 Key Trends in Hydropower, published this week by the International Hydropower Association, a total of 31.5 GW of hydropower capacity was commissioned worldwide in 2016, including 6.4 GW of pumped storage, nearly twice the amount installed in 2015. Hydropower capacity is now 1,246 GW. [CleanTechnica]
• E.ON will be one of the first companies to stabilize the German electricity grid with wind power. This is made possible by the integration of a wind farm in Brandenburg into E.ON’s Virtual Power Plant. The wind farm is made part of a virtual power plant having 3,800 MW generation output from various sources. [Windtech International]

Rainbows will not keep coal alive. (Credit: Flickr user Mike Baird)

• The declining cost of wind generation has many utilities looking to add it into their portfolios, a trend that could accelerate the demise of aging coal plants. According to new analysis from Moody’s Investor Services, some 56 GW of Midwest coal-fired generation is at risk, as wind energy comes online with lower costs. [Utility Dive]

Saturday, March 25:

Pipes near Cushing, Oklahoma (Photo: Larry W Smith, EPA)

• President Donald Trump has announced that he is granting approval to the controversial Keystone XL Pipeline. Trump said the 1,900-mile pipeline, which will cross much of the Great Plains in a path from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico, will be “the first of many infrastructure projects” he believes will stimulate jobs. [National Geographic]
• Beijing and the entire surrounding province of Hebei will be planting trees and creating new greenbelts, according to reports. The idea is apparently to leverage existing rivers, wetlands, mountains, and open spaces, to create a “green necklace” that will help to reduce smog problems, the Hebei government has revealed. [CleanTechnica]
• Three European transmission system operators have signed a trilateral agreement this week that intends to develop a large renewable European electricity system in the North Sea. It is expected that the North Sea Wind Power Hub could supply as many as 70 to 100 million people in Europe with renewable energy by 2050. [CleanTechnica]

Sunday, March 26:

Sandhill Crane (Photo: Sheldon Goldstein / Audubon Photography Awards)

• After President Trump granted a permit for TransCanada Corp’s Keystone XL pipeline, the National Audubon Society issued a statement saying that the Keystone XL pipeline puts America’s birds and people in danger, and would further destabilize our changing climate. The pipeline will only make the future more uncertain. [Sierra Sun Times]

Artificial sun (DLR image)

• The German Aerospace Center just powered up a massive “artificial sun.” Using an array of 149 gigantic spotlights, it produces “synlight,” which can heat things up to 5,432°F. The effort is part of research to use sunlight to make hydrogen to use for fuel. With an artificial sun, the research can continue on rainy days. [Smithsonian]

Monday, March 27:

With rising seas, sunny day flooding in Hollywood, Florida (AP)

• “A conservative still pushing for a carbon tax” • If five years ago Bob Inglis’ optimism about building a coalition of conservatives to enact a carbon tax seemed far-fetched, today it’s a study in faith. He lost his South Carolina Congressional seat to a Tea Party candidate in 2010, but has been reborn as a conservative climate activist. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]
• President Donald Trump will sign an executive order this week scrapping Obama cuts in power plant emissions, according to Trump’s environmental chief. EPA director Scott Pruitt told ABC Television’s “This Week” broadcast that Trump believes the US needs what he calls a “pro-growth and pro-environment approach.” [Voice of America]
• A resolution passed by the Brattleboro Representative Town Meeting expressed concern that the federal government is ignoring the health and well-being of its citizens, violating the guarantees of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and violating our right to a government that represents its citizens. It seeks investigation and possibly prosecution. [Green Energy Times]

Tuesday, March 28:

Wind turbines in Edelstal, Austria (Photo: Matej Kova, National Geographic)

• In California, renewably sourced electricity has been setting production records since February 24. On March 23, renewables broke 56% of total demand. According to the daily report, solar peaked around 11:16 am. Three minutes later, the solar plus wind peaked at 49.2% of demand, and nine minutes later, total renewables peaked at 56.7%. [Electrec]
• The former head of former head of GDF Suez Australia (now Engie) says solar PV and battery storage are already cheaper than gas-fired generation. He cited an estimate given to Reach Solar, which he now heads, in late December 2016 for solar PV and energy storage at A$110/MWh to $130/MWh (US$83.64/MWh to $98.85/MWh). [CleanTechnica]

Homes in the state of Amazonas (Pic: Flickr/Monica Posada)

• Although the Amazon region is home to dozens of big hydroelectric dams, their energy is sent thousands of miles south to power the homes and factories in the big cities, or to feed electricity-intensive industries, many of them foreign-owned aluminium smelters. Local power is usually from diesel generators. But that is changing. [Climate Home]

Wednesday, March 29:

• “The 150-Year-Old Energy Giant Ready To Disrupt The World (#CleanTechnica Original)” • Engie has been acquiring top startups in the various arenas it considers to be the biggest playing fields of the future. In energy, there are 5 “tsunamis” or 5 disruptive trends they see occurring all at approximately the same time. [CleanTechnica]

Donald Trump, possibly lobbying for a new job (AFP)

• President Donald Trump has signed an executive order rolling back Obama-era rules aimed at curbing climate change. He said this would put an end to the “war on coal” and “job-killing regulations.” The Energy Independence Executive Order suspends more than half a dozen measures enacted by his predecessor, and boosts fossil fuels. [BBC News]
• Anheuser-Busch InBev, the world’s biggest beer maker, plans to get all of its electricity from renewable sources by 2025, shifting 6 TWh of electricity away from fossil-fuel plants. The company’s announcement comes the same day President Donald Trump signed an executive order undoing the Clean Power Plan. [Salt Lake Tribune]
• A coalition of 23 US states and local governments has vowed to challenge in court President Trump’s latest Executive Order reversing a raft of President Obama’s climate change regulations. The coalition includes states such as California, Massachusetts and Virginia, as well as cities including Chicago, Philadelphia and Boulder, Colorado. [RTE.ie]

 

2017-03-23 Energy Week

Visitors Please Note: This blog is maintained to assist in developing a TV show, Energy Week with George Harvey and Tom Finnell. The post is put up in incomplete form, and is updated with news until it is completed, usually on Wednesday. The source is geoharvey.wordpress.com.

Within a few days of the last update, the show may be seen, along with older shows, at this link on the BCTV website: Energy Week Series.

Thursday, March 16:

• Opinion: “Now there are air-pollution deniers, too” • There are very few people who believe air pollution – specifically “fine particulate” pollution, or PM2.5 – doesn’t cause death. But those who do are getting louder and gaining influence in conservative political circles and inside President Donald Trump’s administration. [Grist]

Howsham Mill (Picture: David Harrison)

• An 18th century watermill in North Yorkshire has generated 1,000,000 kilowatt-hours of green power through a combination of traditional and new technology. Howsham Mill, which is run by the charitable Renewable Heritage Trust, has been generating hydroelectric energy, and exporting it to the National Grid, since the mid-2000s. [Gazette & Herald]
• The Trump administration’s budget proposal would cut spending at the DOE overall by $1.7 billion, or 5.6% from current levels, to $28 billion. But the money is redistributed. The National Nuclear Security Administration budget would grow 11.3% while the rest of the Energy Department’s programs would be cut by 17.9%. [Washington Post]

Friday, March 17:

Damage after Hurricane Katrina (Photo: LSUsoccerbum, Wikimedia Commons)

• President Donald Trump released a $1.1 trillion budget outline that makes good on a series of campaign promises, including cutting EPA by about one-third. Asked about the cuts to climate change-related programs, Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said those programs are “a waste of your money.” [CNN]
• Under the president’s 2018 budget blueprint, the program that put recovery money into local hands after Hurricanes Sandy, Katrina, Rita and Wilma would be zeroed-out, raising questions about how readily the cash would be available when the next disaster strikes and what oversight would be in place to ensure it is not misused. [CNN]
• Thirty cities are responding to the dangerous Trump policies that ignore the potentials of climate change by announcing interest in a $10 billion electric vehicle purchase. Bringing joint bargaining power to the table, they have been in talks with automakers to jointly purchase approximately 114,000 electric vehicles. [CleanTechnica]

Saturday, March 18:

Firefighters near Protection, Kansas (Bo Rader / The Wichita Eagle via AP)

• Republican Senator James Inhofe is alarmed at what he accurately called the “unprecedented” wildfires which have burned more than 2 million acres in the grasslands of Oklahoma, Kansas, and the Texas panhandle. He and other climate change deniers remain eerily silent on the context: drought worsened by climate change. [Mother Jones]

Non-hydro renewable energy jobs

• “Trump’s budget sabotages America’s best chance to add millions of high-wage jobs” • President Trump’s budget slashes investment in clean energy ,  the world’s biggest new source of sustainable high-wage jobs. Meanwhile, China’s five-year energy budget invests $360 billion in renewable generation by 2020, creating 13 million jobs. [ThinkProgress]
• President Donald Trump promised in his election campaign to put American coal miners back to work. Now, he has proposed eliminating funding for economic development programs supporting laid-off coal miners and others in Appalachia, stirring fears in a region that supported him of another letdown, just as the coal industry collapses. [Reuters]

Sunday, March 19:

Power lines (indigoskies / flickr, CC BY-NC-ND)

• Opinion: “The old, dirty, creaky US electric grid would cost $5 trillion to replace. Where should infrastructure spending go?” • By the author’s analysis, the current (depreciated) value of the US electric grid, comprising power plants, wires, transformers and poles, is roughly $1.5 to $2 trillion. To replace it would cost almost $5 trillion. [Salon]
• The president’s proposed budget would eliminate funds for the Energy Star program, the Clean Power Plan, regional programs to clean up the Great Lakes, Puget Sound and Chesapeake Bay, four NASA Earth science missions, the Global Climate Change Initiative, and the UN Green Climate Fund, along with funding reductions. [Arizona Daily Sun]

Monday, March 20:

River Bend solar farm (TVA photo)

• The River Bend solar farm, the largest in Alabama history, is now online and contributing about 75 MW of clean renewable energy to the electrical grid maintained by the Tennessee Valley Authority. There are about 300,000 solar panels in the 640 acre site. The TVA service area includes 9 million customers in seven southern states. [CleanTechnica]
• A report commissioned by the German government says that stopping global warming won’t just keep the planet habitable. It would also boost the global economy by $19 trillion, as the investment in renewable power and energy efficiency to keeping warming below 2° C (3.6° F) will increase the global economy around 0.8% by 2050. [Bloomberg]

Renewable power (Kenueone/pixabay.com)

• With the Trump administration rolling back federal programs on climate change, leaders of labor six unions sent a letter to the governor of New York asking him to incorporate principles of the Climate and Community Protection Act in the 2017-2018 state budget. They want the state to have 100% renewable electric sources by 2050. [Public News Service]

Tuesday, March 21:

• Chemists from the University of Glasgow report in a new paper in Science on a new form of hydrogen production that is 30 times faster than the current state-of-the-art method. The process also solves common problems associated with generating electricity from renewable sources such as solar, wind or wave energy. [Laboratory Equipment]

Measuring the warming ocean (Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization)

• The world’s oceans are a giant heat sink, and they work to modulate the world’s air temperatures to a large degree. With that in mind, the findings of a new study from the National Center for Atmospheric Research are somewhat unsettling. The world’s oceans may be storing as much as 13% more heat than was previously estimated. [CleanTechnica]
• Google’s “Project Sunroof” tool revealed a vast untapped potential for rooftop solar installations in the US. Since 2015, the project has analysed around 60 million buildings across the US concluding that 79% are technically viable for generating solar power. Percentages range from 60% in cloudier northern states to 90% in sunnier. [Climate Action Programme]

Wednesday, March 22:

• A study says 2016 saw a “dramatic” decline in the number of coal-fired power stations in pre-construction, with a 48% fall in planned coal units, with a 62% drop in construction starts. The report, from several green campaign groups, says changing policies and economic conditions in China and India were behind the decline. [BBC News]

Wright One (Wright Electric image)

• Start-up Wright Electric intends to offer an electric-powered commercial flight from London to Paris in 10 years. Its plane would carry 150 people on journeys of less than 300 miles. By removing the need for jet fuel, the price of travel could drop dramatically. British low-cost airline Easyjet has expressed its interest in the technology. [BBC News]

2017-03-16 Energy Week

Visitors Please Note: This blog is maintained to assist in developing a TV show, Energy Week with George Harvey and Tom Finnell. The post is put up in incomplete form, and is updated with news until it is completed, usually on Wednesday. The source is geoharvey.wordpress.com.

Within a few days of the last update, the show may be seen, along with older shows, at this link on the BCTV website: Energy Week Series.

Thursday, March 9:

Block Island wind turbine (Photo: Eric Thayer / Bloomberg)

• Across Europe, the price of building an offshore wind farm has fallen 46% in the last five years, 22% percent last year alone. Costs now average $126/MWh, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. That’s below the $155/MWh price for new nuclear developments in Europe and closing in on the $88/MWh price tag on new coal plants. [Bloomberg]
• According to the energy market analysis firm RepuTex, “clean” coal technologies will not be commercially viable before 2030 without government subsidy. In Australia, the rising price of gas, coupled with the falling cost of energy storage, has made renewable energy the least expensive source of reliable power generation. [The Guardian]
• In Hawaii, the Kauai Island Utility Cooperative is now drawing energy from 272 Tesla power packs to provide electricity after dark. The Tesla’s power packs are expected to save KIUC 1.6 million gallons of diesel fuel annually, cutting costs from 15.5¢/kWh to a price fixed at 13.9¢/kWh for the next 20 years. [South China Morning Post]
• A growing crisis in the Australian electricity market led to wholesale power prices more than doubling in a year, to at least twice what they were under the much-maligned carbon price. Analysis by the University of Melbourne’s Climate and Energy College said it nearly tripled in coal-reliant Queensland and New South Wales. [Daily Advertiser]

Friday, March 10:

• The Hawaiian island of Kauai is now home to the largest integrated solar and battery facility in the world. The 52-MWh Tesla Powerpack plus SolarCity solar farm is the first utility scale solar-plus-battery storage system of its kind. It will bring Kauai Island Utility Cooperative’s renewable energy generation to more than 40%. [Thegardenisland.com]
• After a series of blackouts in South Australia, Elon Musk said Tesla can help solve the state’s power crisis within 100 days. Asked on Twitter how serious he was about the offer, Mr Musk responded, “Tesla will get the system installed and working 100 days from contract signature or it is free. That serious enough for you?” [BBC News]
• Vermont state regulators have proposed new sound limits for wind turbines. Some renewable energy proponents say they would effectively ban most new wind turbines and may preventing the state from reaching its renewable energy goals. The rules say turbines could produce no more than 35 decibels at night, measured outside nearby homes. [vtdigger.org]

Saturday, March 11:

• Climate change may be increasing the footprint of Lyme disease. Higher temperatures encourage the reproduction of mice, which are both natural reservoirs for the bacteria that cause Lyme disease and carriers of the ticks that spread the infection to humans. People also spend more time out doors, increasing exposure risks. [Huffington Post]

Chicago (Image credit: Pixabay – no attribution required)

• Analysis by the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign backs up Michael Bloomberg’s assertion that the US will meet its climate commitments: Coal retirements and new clean energy through 2025 will reduce US carbon emissions by at least 437 million metric tons. That accounts for 60% of America’s commitments under the Paris agreement. [Triple Pundit]
• At an international energy conference held in Houston last week, Trump officials disparaged climate science. But the Saudi Arabian energy minister called on his colleagues to find ways to “minimize the carbon footprint of fossil fuels.” He was not alone, as he was joined by CEOs of ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell in the position. [Houston Chronicle]

Sunday, March 12:

Lake Plastira dam (Dim Philos, Wikimedia Commons)

• The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is to provide a financial injection aimed at developing the Greek renewable energy sector. EBRD is to provide €300 million ($318 million) in funding for renewable energy projects in Greece, aimed at mobilizing investment and commercial financing. [Power Engineering International]
• Tesla’s Elon Musk may have put large scale battery storage on the national agenda with his offer to solve South Australia’s power crisis for free if he did not deliver a large system with 100 days of signing a contract. Both the Prime Minister and South Australia’s Premier are looking for more details on the offer. [The Sydney Morning Herald]

Monday, March 13:

Cover illustration of the book, Solutionary Rail

• “How we can turn railroads into a climate solution” • Railroads could drive the growth of clean energy. That is the aim of a new proposal to electrify railroads, run them on renewable energy, and use rail corridors as electricity superhighways to carry power from remote solar and wind installations to population centers.[Grist]
• On Sunday afternoon, a private conversation between Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Tesla boss Elon Musk caught Australia’s attention. The two spoke on the phone for almost an hour about energy from renewable resources and battery storage. Musk had offered to stop South Australia’s electricity outages. [BBC News]

Tuesday, March 14:

• In Chile’s last power auction, SolarReserve bid a world-record low price at just 6.3¢/kWh for dispatchable 24-hour solar. The bid is for Concentrated Solar Power, a form of solar using heat from the sun that can be stored thermally. It was made in an open auction for both fossil energy and renewables, without any subsidy. [CleanTechnica]

Mexican wind farm

• Short and medium term projections indicate that the development of wind power is likely to take an increasingly important position in Mexico’s energy landscape, particularly in light of growing uncertainty in future natural gas imports from the United States. Gas had a 54% stake in the country’s electricity production in 2015. [Global Risk Insights]
• South Australia will build Australia’s largest battery to store renewable energy along with a new 250-MW gas-fired power plant. South Australia’s premier announced the government’s plan to build, own and operate the plant. He said it was part of a plan to spend $550 million to take control of the state energy market. [Yahoo7 News]

Wednesday, March 15:

Council

• “Trump’s Business Council Is a Who’s Who of Renewable Energy Investors and Climate Champions” • If Donald Trump asked the executives sitting on his business advisory council for energy policy advice, what kind of answer would he get? Judging by what their own actions, they’d probably tell him to emphasize the clean stuff. [Greentech Media]
• Eon, Germany’s second largest energy company, unveiled a loss of €16 billion ($17 billion) in 2016, hit by a massive charge to the tune of €11 billion on its new subsidiary Uniper. Uniper combines Eon’s former coal and gas power plants, which were spun off in 2015 to separate them from the company’s healthier units. [Deutsche Welle]
• In unpublished written testimony to the Armed Services Committee, Secretary of Defense James Mattis called climate change a security threat for which United States military leaders need to prepare, ProPublica reports. He wrote, “Climate change is impacting stability in areas of the world where our troops are operating today.” [Pacific Standard]

Barn Energy’s hydro plant at Thrybergh Weir on the River Don

• The swift-flowing Yorkshire rivers and streams could help to keep lights shining for generations. One Yorkshire hydroelectric power plant is providing electricity for hundreds of homes. As part of the scheme, a fish-pass has been built that should allow for the return of salmon stocks for the first time since the First World War. [Yorkshire Post]

2017-03-09 Energy Week

Visitors Please Note: This blog is maintained to assist in developing a TV show, Energy Week with George Harvey and Tom Finnell. The post is put up in incomplete form, and is updated with news until it is completed, usually on Wednesday. The source is geoharvey.wordpress.com.

Within a few days of the last update, the show may be seen, along with older shows, at this link on the BCTV website: Energy Week Series.

Thursday, March 2:

Tiananmen Square

• Beijing has nearly 70,000 taxis. It also has an intractable problem with smog. While it has embarked on an aggressive program to encourage private citizens to buy low emissions cars, that push has not made much of an impact on its taxi fleet. Now it has announced a plan to replace all 67,000 fossil fueled taxis in the city with electric cars. [CleanTechnica]
• Energy companies are bailing on Canadian tar sands oil. The latest to pull back is Royal Dutch Shell, which just let word slip that it will probably not expand its operations in Canada. ExxonMobil and Chevron recently went a step farther and wrote down their tar sands reserves, as did Norway’s Statoil last year. [CleanTechnica]
• Lancaster, California, has been requiring builders to install solar panels on all new homes since 2014. Its policies have served as a model for other California communities. Now, the city seeks to raise the bar by requiring each new home to have a rooftop solar system large enough to meet all of its energy needs. [CleanTechnica]

Friday, March 3:

• “Note To Congress: Climate Change Is Real, And It’s Expensive” In 2016 alone there were 15 extreme weather and climate-related disasters that cost more than a billion dollars apiece. Climate change is contributing to worsening risks of loss from many of these types of events. And those risks are expensive to all of us. [Ecosystem Marketplace]
• The governor of Rhode Island, home to the first US offshore wind farm, has set forth an ambitious goal to grow renewable energy in the state. According to local coverage from Providence Business News, the goal calls for 1 GW of renewable energy by 2020 – a tenfold increase over Rhode Island’s current levels. [North American Windpower]

Mystic Generating Station, Everett, Massachusetts (Photo: Fletcher6, Wikimedia Commons)

• It’s cheaper and cleaner to replace retiring coal-fired power plants with wind and solar power and energy efficiency upgrades rather than more costly and climate-polluting natural gas plants, according to a report by the Natural Resources Defense Council. Renewable power also shields consumers from natural gas price increases. [AltEnergyMag]

Saturday, March 4:

Lake Oroville went from drought in 2014, to overflow in 2016. (California Department of Water Resources)

• “California’s Wild Climate Will Only Get More Volatile As Temperatures Rise” • The record rains soaking California this winter seemed an impossible reprieve: The state’s driest years on record was followed by a possible record amount of rain and snow. But that precipitation may just be the beginning of new water woes. [Huffington Post]
• Lexington, Massachusetts could be in line to get all its power from renewable sources in the coming years. The Board of Selectmen approved a plan to pursue a contract with energy producers allowing all of Lexington’s energy to be sourced from renewable sources under Community Choice Aggregation. [Wicked Local Lexington]

• The EIA’s Electric Power Monthly shows that the portion of electricity that the nation gets from solar grew nearly 40% in 2016, from around 1% of total generation to 1.4%. Wind is likewise growing, with the share of electricity from wind rising from 4.7% in 2015 to 5.5%. Renewable energy provided 15.3% of US electricity. [pv magazine]

Sunday, March 5:

Irish wind power

• With the Irish Government in a race against time to avoid a potential €360 million fine from the EU for failing to hit renewables targets, 2017 looks set to be a defining year for the country’s energy sector. The EU’ s fine is €120 million for each 1% the country is below target, and the clock is ticking down on a 2020 deadline. [Irish Independent]
• The seemingly insatiable appetite for natural gas at the nation’s power plants could be on the verge of an abrupt hiatus. Energy analysts are forecasting gas demand from the US power sector will at best flat-line and possibly fall off significantly over the next five years as federal energy policies and market dynamics collide. [Longview News-Journal]

Maybe Sandy would have gone away if NOAA’s GOES-13 satellite had not taken this photo. (NASA image, public domain)

• The Trump administration is seeking major cuts to NOAA, one of the government’s climate science agencies, reducing its budget by 17% overall, with a 26% reduction for its research budget. Proposed cuts include reducing the climate protection budget by almost 70% and the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative by 97%. [Normangee Star]

Monday, March 6:

Rushing water at the Oroville Dam (Dale Kolke / California Department of Water Resources / Reuters)

• Scientists are warning that super floods and aging dams in the West could be a dangerous combination. An expert paleo-hydrologist of the University of Arizona found that floods much larger than any in recorded history are routine occurrences, and the historic record, which dates back only to the late 1800s, is inadequate for understanding risks. [Yahoo News]
• Each year, environmental pollutants cost an estimated 1.7 million lives among children under 5, one in four deaths of children 1 month to 5 years old, according to World Health Organization reports released Monday. More than 90% of the world’s population is thought to breathe air that violates quality guidelines set by the WHO. [CNN]
• Blackouts were averted in South Australia after an incident that saw more than 600 MW of electricity generation capacity suddenly lost. A transformer at a power plant exploded, resulting in units at the Pelican Point Power Station tripping. The loss was taken up by power transmitted from Victoria, solar PVs, and wind generators. [Energy Matters]

Tuesday, March 7:

• Senior executives from AGL Energy have given evidence at an inquiry in Melbourne that the main issue causing problems with reliable energy supply in South Australia is “dysfunction” in the gas market, not too many windfarms making the grid unreliable. Many witnesses blame a lack of a clear policy direction from Canberra. [The Guardian]

Wind power on farms (paytonc / flickr, CC BY-SA)

• Even in the red states of the US Great Plains, local leaders of communities of all sizes are already grappling with the issue of climate change. Though their actions are not always couched in terms of addressing climate change, their strategies can provide insights into how to make progress on climate policy under a Trump administration. [CleanTechnica]

Growth of hydro power and wind power

• A number of major milestones occurred on the electric grid in 2016, almost all of them involving wind power. Now the Energy Information Administration is confirming that’s because of a big overall trend: wind power is now the largest source of renewable energy generating capacity, passing hydroelectric power in 2016. [Ars Technica UK]

Wednesday, March 8:

Permafrost collapse

• Permafrost, or frozen soil, is rapidly collapsing across a 52,000 square mile area in northwest Canada – about the size of the entire state of Alabama. New research from the Northwest Territories Geological Survey finds the permafrost thaw is intensifying, a dramatic disintegration that could speed up climate change. [Inhabitat]
• “Trump’s Sisyphean Coal Revival Requires A Battle With The Free Market” • The US coal sector was in free fall when Donald Trump was elected president. Now he’s vowing to turn it around. Unfortunately for coal, government regulations have very little to do with coal’s problems. King Coal us up against natural gas and wind power. [Forbes]
• A Bloomberg report says that, Consol Energy, a Pennsylvania-based energy producer that has billed itself as “one of the largest independent natural gas exploration, development, and production companies,” has hired advisers from Credit Suisse Group AG and Bank of America Corp in an effort to move ahead on divesting its coal business. [CleanTechnica]