2018-01-04 Energy Week (Two weeks)

Visitors Please Note: This blog is maintained to assist in developing a TV show, Energy Week with George Harvey and Tom Finnell. 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. This show covers two weeks.

Thursday, December 21:

• As this year comes to a close, 2017 is on track to set the all-time record for the most billion-dollar weather and climate disasters in any single year in US history. There were 15 in the first nine months, equal to all of 2011, which set the record. Remarkably, the five costliest billion-dollar disaster years have all been in the past 15 years. [CNN]

View from Killington Peak

• Cows are now powering one of New England’s most popular ski resorts. The green mountains of Vermont, dressed in winter white, are home to Killington Resort, visited by hundreds of thousands of skiers each season. Now, Killington is making renewable energy a priority and it all starts, not at a mountain, but on the farm. [My Fox Boston]

Friday, December 22:

• Deepwater Wind, the developer of the nation’s first offshore wind farm, proposed to the state of Massachusetts a multi-phase wind project in conjunction with the owner of Northfield Mountain Pumped Storage Project and National Grid. The state had called for companies to supply at least 400 MW of offshore wind power. [The Recorder]
• Southern Company subsidiary Georgia Power received permission to complete the first new nuclear units in the US in 30 years. A press release said the Georgia Public Service Commission has given the company unanimous approval to finish work on Vogtle 3 and 4, which are near Waynesboro, Georgia. [Investing News Network]

Saturday, December 23:

Satellite view of the Thomas Fire (Image: NASA, EPA)

• California’s Thomas fire, now the largest in the state’s history, has burned more than 1000 square kilometers, an area greater than New York City, Brussels and Paris combined. Most of California’s largest wildfires have been recorded this century. Scientists say the warming climate and spread of buildings into wilderness areas have been factors. [BBC]
• More than three months after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico and destroyed much of its rickety utility grid, a third of the island is still without electricity. The new tax plan passed by congress adds insult to that injury by making Puerto Rican companies pay a 12.5% tax on intellectual property as foreign corporations. [CleanTechnica]

Sunday, December 24:

Thomas fire, just another $1 billion weather event in 2017 (Mike Eliason | Santa Barbara County Fire Department via AP

• “Year of reckoning for climate change” • The Thomas Fire has demonstrated to Southern Californians how climate change can be consequent for us. One event is not typically attributable to climate change, but it is just the latest in a series of $1 billion weather events and climate disasters that has made 2017 the worst year on record. [Ventura County Star]

Monday, December 25:

Hayeswater micro hydro plant

• A hydro-electric plant in the UK’s Lake District finished its first year of operation. The Hayeswater micro hydro plant, which is owned by the National Trust, generated more than one million kWh of electricity, enough to meet the power needs of more than 300 properties. The plant sells power to provide income for a conservation charity. [The Westmorland Gazette]
• The Arctic saw its smallest winter sea ice coverage on record in 2017. Drawing attention to this fact, NOAA’s annual report has the interesting subtitle, “Arctic shows no sign of returning to reliably frozen region of recent past decades.” In fact, NOAA even has a new name for the area at the top of the world, which it calls “New Arctic.” [CleanTechnica]

Tuesday, December 26:

Pongo tapanuliensis, found on the Indonesian island of Sumatra (Photo: Reuters)

• “Annus mirabilis: all the things that went right in 2017” • This was a year of Trump, Twitter, terrorism, Yemen, Libya, and environmental degradation. But the big, bold headlines tell only part of the story. Away from the news hysteria, it is possible to discern progress, joy, breakthroughs and that rarest commodity of all: optimism. [The Guardian]

Wednesday, December 27:

• State-run Rural Electrification Corporation said a scheme was launched in Madhya Pradesh to provide additional electrical connections for about 45 lakh (4.5 million) families that are not now electrified. All states and Union territories of India are required to complete household electrification by March 31, 2019. [Moneycontrol.com]

Thursday, December 28:

• With cheap shale gas, petrochemical companies have invested about $186 billion in 318 new facilities to turn shale gas into feedstocks for plastics since 2010, according to the American Chemistry Council. Half have already been completed. As a result, production of plastics is set to rise 40% from today’s levels over the next 10 years. [CleanTechnica]

A scene of a village in Bihar, India. (Extra999, Wikimedia Commons)

• The Indian state of Bihar has 39,073 villages, and now all of them are electrified. Every household in the state would have a free power connection by the end of the next calendar year, its Chief Minister Nitish Kumar said. The efforts in this regard were a part of Kumar’s seven resolutions (“saat nischay”) of good governance. [Doordarshan]

Friday, December 29:

• The Vermont Public Utility Commission approved a 5% rate increase for Green Mountain Power. The approval ratified an agreement between GMP and the Department of Public Service, the state agency that represents the public interest in utility rate cases. GlobalFoundries, GMP’s largest customer, unsuccessfully disputed the increase. [vtdigger.org]

Saturday, December 30:

Power lines

• A subsidiary of National Grid is seeking a presidential permit to bring Canadian wind power into the US at a border crossing between Quebec and Norton, Vermont. The Granite State Power Link would bring 1,200 MW of electricity to southern New England through transmission lines to be built alongside existing power lines. [New Delhi Times]

Sunday, December 31:

• Around 5 billion trips were made by transit rail services in the US during 2016, according to data published by the American Public Transportation Association. The number of transit rails trips in the US in 2016 was nearly twice the number for 1992. The increase is despite the decrepit condition of US public rail systems. [CleanTechnica]

Monday, January 1:

Autumn Peltier meeting Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

• When 13-year-old Autumn Peltier came face-to-face with Justin Trudeau, she scolded him. She said, “I am very unhappy with the choices you’ve made,” referring to his support for pipeline projects. Next spring, Autumn Peltier will address the UN for the declaration of the International Decade for Action on Water for Sustainable Development. [BBC]

Tuesday, January 2:

• Shenzhen, just north of Hong Kong, has a population of a bit less than 12 million. Shenzhen also has a lot of buses, 16,359 of them, to be precise. And as of this moment, every one of them is electric. Next, the city intends to make all of its more than 17,000 taxis electric. That may not be too hard, as 12,518 of them already are. [CleanTechnica]
  (Last month, there were not quite 300 electric buses in the US.)

National Grid Transmission Proposals | National Grid

• New England is leading the East in a transition to renewable energy. Old fossil fuel plants are being retired, and in some cases are being given severance pay to retire early. A number of proposals are on the table for renewable power and energy storage coming from within New England or to be imported from other areas. [RTO Insider]

Wednesday, January 3::

• A flurry of state regulatory activity takes place this month in two companies’ request for approval of the sale of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant. On Thursday, Jan 4, the three-member Vermont Public Utility Commission will host a public hearing on the petition to allow Entergy to sell the dormant plant to NorthStar for decommissioning. [Commons]

Solving bill woes with solar power (Photo: AAP)

• The Australian microgrid market is forecast to increase to more than $20 billion annually, with around half of all Australian homes expected to have rooftop solar panels installed, by 2024. This will put the country at the forefront of movements that are transforming electric generation and transmission worldwide. [The Sydney Morning Herald]

2017-12-21 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, December 14:

Liquefied natural gas ship (Photo: donvictori0 | Adobe Stock)

• Liquified natural gas is running out of steam. Natural gas demand in Europe is 12% lower than it was 10 years ago. Chinese and Indian demand continues to grow, but the dramatic gains by solar power and wind, where costs have fallen 85% since 2009, have severely limited the prospects for natural gas as a power source. [MetalMiner]
• Southern California Gas Co is partnering with the University of California-Irvine’s Advanced Power & Energy Program to design an “Advanced Energy Community.” The community will be planned as a replicable model that optimizes a variety of energy options, including solar, wind, and renewable natural gas. [North American Windpower]
• Moody’s Investors Service is telling cities that they must prepare for increasingly worse storms due to climate change or their credit ratings could suffer. Lower credit ratings mean a city has to pay more to borrow money. The warning comes after studies showed climate change worsened damage from Hurricane Harvey. [Houston Public Media]

Friday, December 15:

Asian Hercules 3 (EOWDC image)

• Boskalis’ Asian Hercules 3 giant floating crane has arrived in its port in Peterhead ahead of foundation installation at Vattenfall’s 92.4-MW Aberdeen Bay offshore wind farm off the coast of Scotland. The 25,000-tonne crane will be used to transport and install the 77-metre-high, 1800-tonne steel suction bucket jacket foundations. [reNews]
• The former energy secretary who signed off on the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant has told Unearthed he doubts the project will ever get built. Sir Edward Davey said the lower cost of renewables today means “the economics have clearly gone away” from the project. Only a year ago, he said it was a “good deal.” [Unearthed]

Retreating glacier in Greenland (Mario Tama | Getty Images)

• Data processing machines often have algorithms judging whether data is sufficiently outside the normal range that it will contaminate a study. Because of climate change, a weather recording site in Utqiaġvik, Alaska, rejected all of the data it received for the entire month of November because it was made up of nothing but outliers. [CNN]

Saturday, December 16:

Wilson’s warbler (Photo: Amado Demesa, Wikimedia Commons)

• In a paper published Friday in Diversity and Distributions, a professional journal, researchers in the College of Forestry at Oregon State University reported that the more sensitive a bird species is to rising temperatures during the breeding season, the more likely it is to be affected positively by being near old-growth forest. [KTVZ]
• Congressional Republicans released the text of a tax proposal that includes incentives for electric vehicles and wind power, as well as a fix to the so-called BEAT provision critical to renewable energy. Nuclear tax credits, however, were excluded from the bill. The legislation combines of bills passed by the House and Senate. [Utility Dive]

Post-2008 seismicity rate change in the CUS

• The journal Science Advances released a report, “Discriminating between natural versus induced seismicity from long-term deformation history of intraplate faults,” which addresses the causes of an unnatural number of earthquakes that hit Texas in the past decade. The authors suggest activities associated with fracking as a cause. [CleanTechnica]

Sunday, December 17:

• Hundreds of US colleges and universities are taking action to combat global warming, but so far just one residential college has turned 100% to renewable energy: Hampshire College, in Amherst, Massachusetts. The college has installed a 19-acre solar farm, with 15,000 panels and a capacity of about 4.7 MW of power. [Jefferson Public Radio]

Converter Transformers

• “Tesla vs. Tesla: The Juice In Your Car Will Increasingly Come Through HVDC, Edison’s Preferred Current” • This is partially a Thomas Edison vs Nikola Tesla story. Edison was committed to direct current, but Tesla liked alternating current. Edison did some ugly things to try to win the fight, but lost. Now the world is moving his way. [CleanTechnica]
• The rate of new thyroid cancer cases in the four counties just north of New York City, which was 22% below the US rate in the late 1970s, is now 53% above the US rate, a study said. The Indian Point nuclear plant may be to blame. A study co-author said, “The only known cause of thyroid cancer is exposure to radioactivity.” [San Francisco Bay View]
• Health leaders say they are alarmed about a report that officials at the CDC are being told not to use certain terms in official budget documents, including “fetus,” ”transgender,” and “science-based.” Climate change is just one of several topics on which federal agencies have downscaled data collection since President Trump took office. [Press of Atlantic City]

Monday, December 18:

Windpark Wildpoldsried (Richard Mayer, Wikimedia Commons)

• For all the new wind parks, solar farms, and hydro plants that will help Germany generate yet another renewable energy record this year, the world’s dirtiest power fuel still sets the price for how much factories are paying for electricity. The average German day-ahead power price is expected to rise this year for the first time since 2011. [BloombergQuint]
• Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s proposal to subsidize coal and nuclear power plants to insure grid reliability got a response from the North American Electric Reliability Corp. NERC’s 2017 Long-Term Reliability Assessment said renewable power and natural gas could match conventional generators for important metrics of reliability. [Kallanish Energy]
• Venezuela awarded licences to Russian energy giant Rosneft to develop two offshore gas fields in the Caribbean Sea. The deal, which allows a subsidiary to export gas from the fields for the next 30 years, still needs final official approval before production begins. Russia is a close ally of Venezuela and seeks to expand its influence in Latin America. [BBC]

Tuesday, December 19:

Rio Tinto autonomous trucks

• One of the top mining firms in the world, Rio Tinto, has been operating a fleet of autonomous trucks in various parts of Australia. Building on these earlier and current deployments, the company is now planning a large increase of the size of the autonomous truck fleet in Australia’s Pilbara iron-ore region, as part of a cost-cutting program. [CleanTechnica]
• Solid Power, a developer of solid-state rechargeable batteries, announced that the BMW Group is partnering with it to develop its solid-state batteries for use in BMW’s future electric vehicle models. BMW will assist Solid Power to advance its technology to achieve performance levels demanded by its customers. [CleanTechnica]

Dawsonite (Photo: Modris Baum, Wikimedia Commons)

• Researchers at the University of York in the UK are putting forward an idea they say could capture almost a billion tons of carbon dioxide a year at relatively low cost and turn it into the mineral Dawsonite, which is chemically sodium aluminium carbonate hydroxide. Unfortunately, Dawsonite has no known practical uses. [CleanTechnica]

Wednesday, December 20:

• This year will almost certainly rank as one of the planet’s top five warmest years on record, according to new data from the NOAA and NASA. In fact, the top NASA climate scientist reported that 2017 is likely to be the second-warmest year on record, behind 2016, which in turn displaced 2015 from the top spot. [Mashable]

Solar system near Chattanooga (Phoenix Solar AG, Wikimedia Commons)

• “Utility regulators call for changes to PURPA” • We have seen the Clean Power Plan abandoned, a proposed coal and nuclear bailout, the tax overhaul and trade action under Section 201. Now we have to worry about reform of the Public Utilities Regulatory Power Act of 1978, a big driver of utility-scale solar in the US. [pv magazine USA]

2017-12-14 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, December 7:

Storage at the Imperial Irrigation District

• Pacific Gas & Electric submitted six energy storage contracts, totaling 165 MW, to the California Public Utilities Commission for approval as part of its efforts to meet the state-mandated goal of adding 580 MW of storage by 2020. If these contracts are approved, PG&E will have already reached 42% of its energy-storage goal. [pv magazine International]
• General Electric Co is planning to cut 12,000 jobs in its power business, with most of the cuts happening outside the US, a person familiar with the matter said. The manufacturer has been hit hard by flagging demand for electricity generated with natural gas, in part due to a shift toward power from renewable sources. [BloombergQuint]
• The Moray Council has backed a development that could transform an abandoned airfield in northern Scotland into one of Europe’s biggest solar farms. Elgin Energy wants to cover the Milltown Airfield with about 200,000 solar panels. Moray’s attraction is due to its long summer days, the result of its being so far north. [Energy Voice]

Friday, December 8:

Early morning commute in California (Rick Patrick, Twitter)

• Wildfires are raging just north of Los Angeles, destroying whole communities just a short drive from the city’s downtown area. The fires consume everything in their path and only go out when they reach the Pacific Ocean. Commuters accustomed to massive traffic jams on the Highway 101 are now forced to run a gauntlet of flames. [CleanTechnica]
• The latest confirmed initiative for power restoration in Puerto Rico is a donation of 6 MW of batteries from AES, which has suggested microgrids and large-scale solar could be the answer to long term stability issues. Other companies including Tesla, Sonnen, and Tabuchi America have made equipment and labor donations. [Energy Storage News]

Coal-fired plant in Germany (Photo: Sascha Steinbach | EPA)

• More than half of the European Union’s 619 coal-fired power stations are losing money, according to a new report from the analysts Carbon Tracker. As a result, the industry’s slow plans for shutdowns will lead to €22 billion ($25.8 billion) in losses by 2030 if the EU fulfills its pledge to tackle climate change, the report warns. [The Guardian]
• Coal accounts for nearly 80% of the power generated by PPL Corp, based in Allentown, Pennsylvania. The company has issued a climate assessment saying that coal will provide about 10% by mid-century. The decline will be caused by market forces. The company now vows to use more distributed energy and cleaner-burning fuels. [Forbes]

Saturday, December 9:

• Eighteen-year-old Ethan Novek has invented a CO2 capture technology that could capture CO2 at about $10 per metric ton – around 85% less than the industry standard. It works by reacting the exhaust gases at a fossil fuel plant with ammonia. Water and CO2 react with the ammonia to form a salt, which can the be used industrially. [Inhabitat]

Ethan Novek

• Eurelectric represents the interests of 3,500 electric companies all across the European continent on major issues. Its members create more than €200 billion in revenue each year. Its members agreed unanimously to commit to an ambitious program of making all electricity generated in Europe carbon neutral by 2050. It will save them money. [CleanTechnica]

Sunday, December 10:

Thomas fire in Ventura County (Photo: AFP | Getty Images)

• Devastating wildfires fueled by climate change are “the new normal,” California Governor Jerry Brown said. He continued, “We’re facing a new reality in this state,” and said they could happen “every year or every few years.” He made the comments after surveying damage from a 180-square mile fire in Ventura County, north of Los Angeles. [BBC News]
• Energy Secretary Rick Perry proposed subsidizing coal-fired and nuclear power plants to compensate them for the reliable energy they provide to the nation’s grid. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which Perry directed to study the issue, is scheduled to deliver a decision on the proposed rule on Monday, but asked for more time. [Financial Tribune]

Pollution (AP Photo | Andy Wong, File | for the AJC)

• The worst-case predictions regarding the effects of global warming are the most likely to be true, a new study published in Nature has warned. It said that if emissions follow a commonly used business-as-usual scenario, there is a 93% per cent chance that global warming will exceed 4°C by the end of this century. [Atlanta Journal Constitution]

Monday, December 11:

• Months after putting the project on hold, the backers of the Vermont Green Line have pulled the plug on their proposal for a power cable under Lake Champlain. The estimated $650 million project ran afoul of concerns that Vermont’s grid wasn’t prepared to handle the quantity of electricity the cable was slated to carry. [vtdigger.org]

Moraine Lake

• Canada Is Ready To Be a Global Environmental Leader Using Blockchain” • Blockchain technology could not have arrived at a better time. It can enable developing nations to leapfrog developed nations and with the recent quickly falling prices in solar and wind power, a future of renewable power grids is coming fast. [Coinsquare Discover]
• A call to action, signed by some of the world’s most prominent economists, urges wealth fund managers, professional financiers, and all investors to stop investing in businesses that extract, process, distribute, manufacture, and sell fossil fuel products, including any form of oil, gas, or coal, to generate power. [Sputnik International]

Tuesday, December 12:

Black-legged kittiwake (Photo: Ed Marshall)

• Birds are increasingly threatened. Overfishing and changing sea temperatures are pushing seabirds to the brink of extinction, new data on the world’s birds shows. Birds that are now globally threatened include the kittiwake and the Atlantic puffin. And on land, the Snowy Owl is struggling to find prey as Arctic ice melts, say conservation groups. [BBC]
• Here’s another good news item that will certainly bother EV critics. Though most people seem not to know it, the batteries that power EVs keep getting cheaper. The average price of a lithium-ion battery pack is down to $209/kWh and the prices are set to fall below $100/kWh by 2025, according to a Bloomberg New Energy Finance survey. [CleanTechnica]

Wednesday, December 13:

World’s biggest floating solar project

• The world is quickly abandoning coal. But that’s not the end of the road for coal mines. In many countries they’re coming back to life as solar farms. The world’s biggest floating solar project began operating in the eastern Chinese city of Huainan, which accounted for nearly 20% of the country’s coal reserves in a 2008 estimate. [Quartz]
• In what amounts to the largest order yet for the Tesla Semi Truck, PepsiCo has placed a pre-order for 100 units. The order is twice as exactly large as the previous largest order, in which Sysco ordered 50 units. The number of reservations taken to date, according to a tally that Reuters is maintaining, is now at least 276. [CleanTechnica]

Belshazzar’s Feast (Rembrandt, 1635)

• “A Hand Writing on the Wall for Natural Gas” • September of 2016 was the last month in which US natural gas generation exceeded what it had been for the same month of the previous year. Since September 2016, every single month has seen a decline for electricity generation from natural gas, which has dropped 10% overall. [CleanTechnica]