Solar power is growing so fast that older energy companies are trying to stop it
Brad Plumer, Vox
If you ask the people who run America’s electric utilities what keeps them up at night, a surprising number will say solar power. Specifically, rooftop solar.
That seems bizarre at first. Solar power provides just 0.4 percent of electricity in the United States — a minuscule amount. Why would anyone care?..
Gas networks attack solar policies, fearing mass defections
Giles Parkinson, Renew Economy
Gas industry calls for solar hot water rebates to remove to try to slow down mass defections from gas networks it fears will be caused by soaring gas prices.
The Australian gas industry has renewed its attack on policies that support Australia’s solar industry – solar hot water in particular – as it fears mass defections caused by soaring gas prices…
IEA: Four charts that show what a solar powered future looks like
Simon Evans, Carbon Brief
The sun could be meeting a quarter of the world’s electricity needs by 2050, the International Energy Agency (IEA) says.
Today it published two solar technology roadmaps: one for solar thermal electricity where heat from the sun is used to heat liquid and drive a turbine; and another for the more familiar solar photovoltaic cells.
The IEA says that by 2050, solar PV could be providing 16 per cent of the world’s electricity. Solar thermal could account for another 11 per cent, it thinks…
The future of energy is 100% renewable, say filmmakers
Sami Grover, Treehugger
"The question is not if we make the transition to 100% renewable. It’s when, and how." That’s how Diane Moss, a Founder of the Renewables 100 Policy Institute, describes the choice facing us in a new documentary. As activists prepare for this Saturday’s climate march, The Future of Energy—by film makers Brett Mazurek, Maximilian DeArmon, Theo Badashi and Missy Lahren—is making the rounds. Talking to business leaders, non-profit activists, energy experts and legislators, The Future of Energy makes the case that the transition to 100% renewable energy is not only possible, but in many communities it is actually underway…
‘Political will is only barrier to 100% renewables’
Paul Brown, Climate News Network
A report published ahead of tomorrow’s UN Climate Summit shows that we can meet all our energy needs from renewables, writes Paul Brown – poor nations and prosperous, tiny islands and great cities, in any part of the globe. And some are doing it already ….
The report, ‘How to Achieve 100% Renewable Energy‘, is released ahead of the UN Climate Summit in New York tomorrow (23rd September), when the UN Secretary-general, Ban Ki-Moon, will call on world leaders to make new commitments to cut fossil fuel use.
The Most Consumed Fuel by State
Robert Rapier, Energy Trends Insider
I saw a very interesting graphic several days ago that shows the most consumed fuel in every state in the US:
Image Credit: Motovo
Why Peak-Oil Predictions Haven’t Come True
Mason Inman, Wall Street Journal
Have we beaten "peak oil"?
For decades, it has been a doomsday scenario looming large in the popular imagination: The world’s oil production tops out and then starts an inexorable decline—sending costs soaring and forcing nations to lay down strict rationing programs and battle for shrinking reserves…
Saudi cuts official crude oil prices in battle for market share
Rania El Gamal and Reem Shamseddine, Reuters
Saudi Aramco sharply cut official oil prices for Asian customers in November, the state-run company said on Wednesday in the clearest sign yet the world’s largest exporter is trying to compete for crude market share. The move comes amid calls from some within the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) for action to shore up prices, as international benchmark Brent crude oil has slumped to a two-year low.
Shell, ConocoPhillips plead White House for flexibility in Arctic
Jennifer A. Dlouhy, Fuelfix
Oil companies hoping to find crude under Arctic waters north of Alaska are imploring the Obama administration to ensure new rules governing drilling in the region don’t force them to stash emergency equipment nearby or block them from using chemical dispersants to clean up any spills.
The pleas for flexibility were delivered by Shell Oil Co. and ConocoPhillips in private meetings earlier this month with the Office of Management and Budget, which is reviewing an Interior Department proposal that would set standards governing oil development in the remote Arctic frontier.
The actual proposal is under wraps during the government’s interagency review, but regulators have signaled their desire for companies operating in the region to have equipment on hand to combat a blown -out well, possibly including containment systems, cap-and-flow devices that provide a path for crude out of a damaged well in a destabilized formation and rigs that can drill a relief well…
Tide Turning Against Global Coal Industry: New Report
Chris Rose, DeSmogBlog
Coal, the fossil fuel that largely sparked the industrial revolution, may be facing the beginning of the end — at least in terms of generating electricity. There are increasing signs of the demise of the world’s dirtiest fossil fuel, from a global oversupply to plummeting prices to China starting to clean up its polluted air. Last week, the Carbon Tracker Initiative published an analysis — Carbon Supply Cost Curves: Evaluating Financial Risk to Coal Capital Expenditures — identifying major financial risks for investors in coal producers around the world…
Cutting a lot of carbon, without a lot of fuss
Motorshack, Renew Economy
(Editor’s note: We received this email from a US-based correspondent “Motorshack” in New Hampshire. It was so striking we thought we would publish as is, showing as it does how even ultra-conservative political forces can embrace concepts such as a carbon price and energy efficiency).
Here’s a link to a local article about the carbon intensity of electrical generation in New Hampshire. In particular, I thought you would find this quote interesting.
“Between 2005 and 2013, carbon emissions from PSNH’s power plant fleet in 2013 dropped 70 per cent,” said company spokesman Martin Murray in an email, quoted in an article in the local paper.
PSNH stands for Public Service Of New Hampshire, which is the biggest local power company, and the one that happens to supply my own electricity.
I should add that these numbers have been achieved with almost no political kickback or other fuss. The legislature, which happens to have a heavy Tea Party presence, put some policies in place a few years ago – including membership of the regional carbon trading scheme, renewable energy policies and energy efficiency initiatives, and everyone went along with it…
Public Pressure Forces Tar Sands Waste Operator Out Of Chicago
Kate Valentine, Climate Progress
An operator in charge of storing petroleum coke, a dirty byproduct of tar sands refining, has announced it’s leaving the city of Chicago, and taking the black, dusty piles with it.
Beemsterboer Slag Corp., which has been storing petcoke at a storage facility by the Calumet River, has closed the facility after facing increasing pressure from city officials and residents.
“The property has been sold,” company president Alan Beemsterboer said of the Calumet Transload Facility. “Doing business in the city is increasingly difficult.”…
Wildlife populations fall by half in 40 years
Al Jazeera
The world populations of fish, birds, mammals, amphibians and reptiles fell overall by 52 percent between 1970 and 2010, far faster than previously thought, according to a new study by one of the biggest environmental groups.
In a study released on Tuesday, the Swiss-based World Wildlife Fund blamed human threats to nature for the decline particularly in tropical regions like Latin America…
2°C Or Not 2°C: Why We Must Not Ditch Scientific Reality In Climate Policy
Joe Romm, Climate Progress
A new Comment piece in Nature argues we should “Ditch the 2 °C warming goal” as a basis for climate change policy. Here’s why the authors, political scientist David Victor and retired astrophysicist Charles Kennel, are wrong — and why “their prescription is a dangerous one,” as a top climatologist told me.
Their core argument, as Nature sums it up, is “Average global temperature is not a good indicator of planetary health. Track a range of vital signs instead.”
I’ll discuss below why our global temperature is a perfectly reasonable indicator of planetary health — or rather, of planetary sickness, since we have a fever. First, let’s dispense with the notion that tracking a “range of vital signs” would somehow make it easier for humanity to avoid catastrophe….
US Homeland Security moves to tackle climate change risks
Lisa Anderson, Reuters
NEW YORK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Protecting the infrastructure of American cities from the effects of climate change is rising on the agenda of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, according to a top agency official.
"Increasingly, we’ve moved not only from a security focus to a resiliency focus," said Caitlin Durkovich, assistant secretary for infrastructure protection at Homeland Security, an agency better known for its fight to curb terrorist threats…
Latest EIA Report Shows Marked Increase in U.S. CO2 Emissions
Tom Schueneman, Energy Collective
As the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) recently reported, atmospheric CO2 concentrations have risen to record levels. In line with this report is the latest Monthly Energy Review from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) finding that U.S. CO2 emissions have reversed their downward trend, showing a significant increase over the past 18 months.
According to the report, CO2 emissions for the first half of 2014 are 2.74 percent higher than for the same period in 2013 and 5.96 percent higher than for the first half of 2012. This reverses the downward trend of energy-related CO2 emissions, which account for 98 percent of the U.S. total, from 2010 through 2012…
Switching from coal to gas may not cut carbon emissions
Liz Kalaugher, Environmental Research Web
Switching US electricity generation from coal- to natural gas-fired power stations would not significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions, researchers have found, despite gas plants’ lower emissions per unit of electricity generated. That’s chiefly because the shift would delay the deployment and cost-competitiveness of renewable electricity technologies for making electricity.
"This was true across a variety of climate policies, and even if none of the gas leaked into the atmosphere during production," Christine Shearer of the University of California, Irvine told environmentalresearchweb. "We also found that, without a climate policy, abundant gas increased overall electricity use."…
Climate impact of black carbon severely overestimated, says study
Arthur Neslen, The Guardian
Global warming efforts should focus on CO2, not soot particles known as black carbon, say Norwegian team…
Drought Takes Hold as Amazon’s ‘Flying Rivers’ Dry Up
Jan Rocha, Climate News Network
The unprecedented drought now affecting São Paulo, South America’s giant metropolis, is believed to be caused by the absence of the “flying rivers” − the vapor clouds from the Amazon that normally bring rain to the center and south of Brazil.
Some Brazilian scientists say the absence of rain that has dried up rivers and reservoirs in central and southeast Brazil is not just a quirk of nature, but a change brought about by a combination of the continuing deforestation of the Amazon and global warming…
Preventing water wars: how to build bridges over river disputes
Ilmas Futehally, The Guardian
Fifty years ago, Lake Chad in Africa had a surface area of 25,000 square kilometres. Today, it has less than 2,000. The surface area of the Aral Sea in central Asia has dropped by half, from 66,000 to 33,000 square km, and the Dead Sea in the Middle East from almost 1,000 to 650 square km.
Fifty years from now, Lake Chad is at risk of disappearing altogether. Thirty years from now, the Aral Sea and the Dead Sea may become small lakes. China, the emerging superpower, may soon see Lake Poyang, its largest freshwater lake, evaporate – as many as 3,000 small lakes in the source region of the Yellow River have done so in the last two decades.
As lakes disappear, rivers are either being depleted or severely polluted. Large stretches of the Ganges, the Nile, and the Yangtze are already biologically dead. Over the next thirty years, some of the mightiest rivers in the world – including the Yellow and the Yangtze, the Ganges and the Indus, the Euphrates and the Jordan, and the Nile – will see a reduction of at least 25-30% in their flow from evaporation, desertification, climate change, and pollution…
How Carbon Is Changing the Price of Everything: An Interview With the Author of "Carbon Shock"
Shay Totten, Truthout
Unlike other books out there about climate change, Carbon Shock takes readers on a journey to the front lines of a changing world, where the same chaotic forces reshaping our weather patterns are also transforming the global economy, playing havoc with corporate calculations, shifting economic and political power and upending our understanding of the real risks, costs and possibilities of what lays ahead.
Schapiro’s journey gives us a feel for the shape of our new economy, where new powers are rising and others are falling, based on the central economic fact of our time: The rising cost of carbon…
The end of growth in the West?
Robert Peston, BBC
Depending on which central banker I bump into, or what day of the week it is, those charged with providing some kind of momentum to our economies and maintaining financial stability tell me either that the rich world is at long last at the beginning of an economic recovery strong enough to require a rise in interest rates or is doomed to decades of stagnation.
This apparent contradiction hangs on the disjunction between the resumption of growth in the US and UK, on the one hand, and the much more dour and downbeat message contained in the 25-year yield curve for government bonds of the developed economies (sorry if this sounds tediously technical but, cross-my- heart-hope-to-die, this stuff matters to you).
You can see the UK chart of the long term yield curve for British government debt or gilts here.
It is a representation of the implied cost of borrowing for the UK government for different loan maturities, or the length of time it wishes to borrow, ranging from nought to 25 years…
No, economic growth and climate stability do not go hand-in-hand
Sam Bliss, Grist
Much has been made of last week’s report from the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, led by former Mexican President Felipe Calderón and famous climate economist Lord Nicholas Stern. The report’s conclusion that we can have our cake and eat it too — that is, that we can “create lasting economic growth while also tackling the immense risks of climate change” — quickly became a popular talking point for mainstream economists and politicians.
But to think that it has anything to do with actually avoiding catastrophic climate havoc is to misinterpret the entire premise of this New Climate Economy (NCE) project…
So, yes, pouring a ton of money into solar and wind and other clean energy would create economic growth in the short term. But even so-called “green growth” comes at a cost, notes Richard Heinberg of the (aggravatingly hyphenless) Post Carbon Institute:
The rapid build-out of renewables constitutes an enormous infrastructure project that will itself consume significant amounts of fossil-fuel energy. … The faster we push the transition, the more fossil fuels we’ll use for that purpose, and this could lead to the extraction of more tar sands, fracked tight oil and shale gas, deepwater oil, and Arctic oil.
It’s not underinvestment in cleantech that’s changing the climate; it’s carbon emissions. Duh.
Can Amsterdam’s e-trikes revolutionise the city’s food system?
Mark Minkjan, The Guardian
A new Dutch scheme aims to distribute local fare more sustainably, unclog the streets and reduce Amsterdam’s 15 million annual food miles..
47 per cent of London is green space: Is it time for our capital to become a national park?
Simon Usborne, The Independent
“It’s about inspiring individuals to do small things, from the top down and the bottom up,” he says. “Imagine if Transport for London worked with the Greater London National Park and gave 5 per cent of advertising to a specific campaign each month looking at, say, song birds. Simple, strategic campaigns that could make an enormous difference to wildlife but also people’s consciousness of the benefits of green space…
Radioactive spikes from nuclear plants – a likely cause of childhood leukemia
Dr Ian Fairlie, The Ecologist
When nuclear reactors are refueled, a 12-hour spike in radioactive emissions exposes local people to levels of radioactivity up to 500 times greater than during normal operation, writes Ian Fairlie. The spikes may explain infant leukemia increases near nuclear plants – but operators provide no warnings and take no measures to reduce exposures…
Everything You Need To Know About Hong Kong’s Umbrella Revolution
Igor Volsky, Think Progress
Riot police in Hong Kong are deploying tear gas and rubber bullets against at least 13,000 protesters demanding greater democratic reforms. The movement — dubbed the “Umbrella Revolution” for the demonstrators’ use of umbrellas to protect themselves from tear gas — is capturing the world’s attention and leading some analysts to wonder if the event could escalate into a broader push for greater democracy in the region…
