Written by rjs, MarketWatch 666
This is a collection of interesting news articles about the environment and related topics published last week. This is usually a Tuesday evening regular post at GEI (but can be posted at other times). This week the post time is early AM Wednesday.
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Note: Because of the high volume of news regarding the coronavirus outbreak, that news has been published separately:
- 07 Mar 2021 – Coronavirus Disease Weekly News 07March 2021
- 07 Mar 2021 – Coronavirus Economic Weekly News 07March 20
The first batch is heavy on vaccine and mutant virus strain related news, whereas the “economic” collection includes an extensive play by play on the sausage making of the coronavirus relief bill, which finally passed late Saturday. It also includes financial policymaking, housing impacts, and details on Friday’s employment report.
Covid infections and deaths continue to slow, but at a less robust pace than earlier this year; new US infections over the 7 days ending March 6th were 12.8% lower than new cases from the prior 7 days, and are now only 24% of the new case pace of the 2nd week of January, even as they are still higher than the average of last summer. This week’s US Covid deaths were 8.8% lower than the prior week, and down by 47.5% from the late January peak. The number of those hospitalized with Covid again fell by more than 15% this week, and are now less than a third of the January peak.
The “disease news” includes a number of stories about new mutant strains being discovered in different states and countries, but none of them seem to portend a widespread US outbreak. The last number I saw for US cases of the highly contagious UK strain (B.1.1.7) was 2,500; that appears to be the worst of it. That doesn’t mean it can’t get worse again, though, vaccines notwithstanding; Israel has vaccinated more than half their population – double the US vaccination rate, and late this week one of their major news sites reported that the South African Covid strain, which is not controlled by current vaccines, was “spreading beyond control“, with over 450 cases.
Some of the COVID-19 graphics presented in the articles linked at the beginning of this post have been updated below.
Summary data graphics:
Below is a copy of today’s graph of new US cases from WorldOMeters so you can get a visuallization of what the growth and decline of this thing looks like (data through March 09):
New cases globally have started to decrease. (See Johns Hopkins graph below.) This graphic shows the daily global new cases since the start of the pandemic up through 09 March.
Globally deaths appear to have also started to decrease, although much more slowly than new cases. (See Johns Hopkins graph below.) This graphic shows the daily global deaths since the start of the pandemic up through 09 March.
Again this week’s environment & energy news includes a lot on the Texas grid failure, and a few items on the Ohio nuclear bribery scandal at the end. The Ohio Senate voted to repeal the nuclear subsidies that were part of the bought & paid for HB6, which they probably figure gives them cover to leave everything else in that pro-utility bill as law, including the dismantling of Ohio’s renewable energy and energy efficiency standards.
Here’s the news:
Is Your Avocado Toast and Almond Milk Harming Bees? Maybe –Turns out, bee labor is required to produce most avocados and almonds in the U.S. Honeybees pollinate most fruits and vegetables in the country, The Washington Post reported. With native bee populations in sharp decline, there aren’t enough of them to complete the job naturally or efficiently, The Post added.Enter migratory beekeeping. Farmers truck beehives full of European honeybees across the country and into their fields so that the insects can pollinate crops during important fertile periods, The Post reported. Without this practice, farmers would lose about one-third of their crops, including broccoli, blueberries, cherries, apples, melons and lettuce, according to The Post.The practice is so widespread that Tracy Reiman, a representative for PETA, said, “Average shoppers can’t avoid produce that involves migratory beekeeping, any more than they can avoid driving on asphalt,” Vegan Life reported.In 2013, Scientific American estimated that California’s booming almond industry used 31 to 80 billion migrant honeybees a year in order to achieve maximum pollination during almond trees’ two-week bloom. California produces up to 80 percent of all the world’s almonds, Scientific American noted, and could not achieve such scale without migratory beekeeping.Report Advertisement According to From the Grapevine, American avocados also fully depend on bees’ pollination to produce fruit, so farmers have turned to migratory beekeeping as well to fill the void left by wild populations. U.S. farmers have become reliant upon the practice, but migratory beekeeping has been called exploitative and harmful to bees. CNN reported that commercial beekeeping may injure or kill bees and that transporting them to pollinate crops appears to negatively affect their health and lifespan. Because the honeybees are forced to gather pollen and nectar from a single, monoculture crop – the one they’ve been brought in to pollinate – they are deprived of their normal diet, which is more diverse and nourishing as it’s comprised of a variety of pollens and nectars, Scientific American reported.Scientific American added how getting shuttled from crop to crop and field to field across the country boomerangs the bees between feast and famine, especially once the blooms they were brought in to fertilize end.Plus, the artificial mass influx of bees guarantees spreading viruses, mites and fungi between the insects as they collide in midair and crawl over each other in their hives, Scientific American reported. According to CNN, some researchers argue that this explains why so many bees die each winter, and even why entire hives suddenly die off in a phenomenon called colony collapse disorder. Adding pesticides to the picture, bees don’t stand a chance.
Western Butterflies Disappearing Due to Warmer Fall Seasons – A new study published in Science on Thursday looked at three different data sets that cover the last 40 years of butterfly populations across more than 70 locations in the Western U.S. They found that butterfly populations had fallen by 1.6 percent per year, and that this was linked to warmer weather during the fall.”That so many of our butterflies are declining is very alarming,” Dr. Tara Cornelisse, an entomologist and senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), said in response to the findings. “These declines are a wake-up call that we need to dramatically reduce greenhouse gases to save these beautiful and beloved butterflies, as well as our very way of life.”In recent years, scientists have raised the alarm about a worldwide decline in insects. A study published last spring found that the number of land-based insects was falling by about nine percent per decade. However, it has been difficult to tease out the causes of this decline, since factors like land-use change, pesticide use and climate shifts may all contribute, Gizmodo’s Earther pointed out.To investigate the role of climate change, the researchers chose to focus on the Western U.S. because it has seen general warming and drying trends covering a wide variety of ecosystems and land uses. They looked at 450 species in 11 states, from Washington to California to New Mexico to Montana, and compared population data with temperature trends.They found that butterfly populations actually increased with summer temperatures, probably because the warmth meant more nectar and larval bugs as food for butterflies and caterpillars. However, the warmer autumns caused their populations to fall again, likely because plants cannot survive the extended warmth and the population of predators increases. Because the declines occurred in a variety of ecosystems, including protected areas that are less impacted by pesticides, the researchers thought climate change was to blame. “Out there, removed from those factors, we see a shifting climate as the main driver of declining butterfly numbers,” University of Texas in Reno biologist and lead study author Matthew Forister told Earther in an email.
Locust plague persists in Ethiopia, threatening crops and livelihood – Crops and livelihoods in Ethiopia are at high risk as locust plague persists in the country, with the highest number of swarms reported in the northern and central region. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), immature swarms are currently affecting areas in Oromia and SNNP, including southern areas of the Rift Valley.The ongoing locust crisis in Ethiopia is threatening the country’s crops and livelihood, CARE Ethiopia reported, warning that high rains in March are likely to worsen the situation.”Ethiopia is currently facing a triple threat crisis with locusts, flooding from last year, and COVID-19,” said CARE Ethiopia country director, Esther Watts.”These latest swarms are a real worry and added stress on an already struggling population suffering from high levels of hunger, malnutrition, and loss of livelihoods across many areas.””Heavy rains and mild winters then contribute to the survival of the large swarms that decimate food security and sources of income,” she noted.In a statement, Watts said that the organization is “particularly worried about the impact the loss of crops and livelihoods will have on women and girls,” as forced early marriage practices often increase during times of economic crisis.The director added that CARE is working in the affected areas of Hararghe and northern Amhara, with livelihoods and resilience programs also covering locust response. More than 2 700 families are being provided with financial support for livelihood recovery.”For the near future, programming in Tigray will focus on restoring the disrupted agricultural input supply by supporting service providers, such as agro-dealers, poultry farmers, and animal feed producers, so that farmers are prepared for the coming planting season, as well as contributing to the humanitarian response.”Currently, the highest number of swarms have been reported in northern and central Ethiopia in a total number of 26 zones. According to FAO, the affected areas are East Harerghe, Arsi, Borena, and several sites in SNN, including South Omo, Konso, and southern areas of the Rift Valley where more swarms were reported.
Total Amount of Global Food Waste Remains Unclear, New UN Report Reveals – According to a global food waste index released on Thursday, some 931 million tons of food waste were generated across the world in 2019. The report, published by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), and UK charity WRAP, equates that to 17% of all food available to consumers.At 61%, the majority was created in households. The retail and food service sectors performed better, generating 13% and 26% respectively.The index does not factor in food loss, which differs from food waste in that it occurs during production, storage or processing and never reaches the consumer.”If we want to get serious about tackling climate change, nature and biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste, businesses, governments and citizens around the world have to do their part to reduce food waste.” UNEP Executive Director Inger Anderson said in a press release.Six years after the UN agreed to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), an ambitious set of targets addressing global inequality and climate change, the report focuses attention on halving per capita global food waste by 2030. With that deadline looming, the document’s 2019 data underscores the scale of the challenge in a world that saw at least 690 million people affected by hunger in 2019. And that figure is predicted to rise in the wake of the global pandemic. One key finding points to broadly similar quantities of household food waste – which includes inedible parts such as bones and peel – in high-, upper-middle- and lower-middle-income countries. The global average for lower-middle-income countries such as Pakistan and Vietnam was 91 kilograms (200 pounds) per person, as opposed to 76 kilograms in middle-income countries and 79 kilograms in high-income countries such as Ireland and the United States.This breaks with the narrative that food waste is an issue in high-income countries while food loss is more prevalent in lower income states.
Sounds of Silence: The Extinction Crisis Is Taking Away the Earth’s Music – In the past 50 years, America’s bird populations have fallen by a third, and worldwide the average mammal population has dropped 60%, writes acclaimed environmental philosopher and nature writer Kathleen Dean Moore in her new collection of essays, Earth’s Wild Music: Celebrating and Defending the Songs of the Natural World.And with all that loss comes an unsettling silence.”Unless the world acts to stop extinctions, I will write my last nature essay on a planet that is less than half as song-graced and life-drenched as the one where I began to write,” she explains in the book’s preface. “My grandchildren will tear out half the pages in their field guides. They won’t need them.”Her book uses sound as a reference point to better understand what we stand to lose as extinction rates climb higher. But the essays are also a celebration of the natural world’s chorus and the joy of learning to hear what’s still there.The essays are also being set to music in a series for Oregon State’s Spring Creek Project that will feature 20 4-minute-long concerts combining live musical performance with excerpts from Earth’s Wild Music.”I’ve never been so excited about a project in my life,” Moore tells us. “It combines everything I care about with the cause that I believe in more than anything else.”The Revelator spoke to Moore about the moral stakes of our environmental crisis, what it’s like to find a truly quiet place to listen, and what we lose as wild songs disappear.
I Know Why the Caged Songbird Goes Extinct — The straw-headed bulbul doesn’t look like much. It’s less than a foot in length, with subdued brown-and-gold plumage, a black beak and beady red eyes. If you saw one sitting on a branch in front of you, you might not give it a second glance. But this Southeast Asian native stands out in one notable way: It sings like an angel. “It’s arguably the most beautiful song of any bird,” says Chris Shepherd, executive director of Monitor Conservation Research Society and an expert on Asian songbirds. “It’s amazing,” he adds. The bird’s beautiful voice serves a vital ecological purpose: Males use it to attract mates. But the song has also come with a terrible modern cost. Humans have come to value the bulbul’s calls so much that they’ve collected the birds from almost every inch of their habitat. Captured birds, quickly caged, have been shipped to markets throughout Southeast Asia. Due to this overwhelming commercial demand, the species has disappeared from most of its range and is now critically endangered. Only a few pocket populations continue to hang on. And the straw-headed bulbul is far from alone in this decline. Practically every songbird species in Southeast Asia faces a similar predicament. Many birds face the very real risk of imminent extinction, leaving some forests in the region eerily silent. Recent research finds that several songbirds have become perilously close to vanishing – if they haven’t been lost already.
Cuttlefish Found Capable of Delayed Gratification, a First for Invertebrates —Cuttlefish, marine invertebrates related to squids and octopuses, can pass the so-called “marshmallow test,” an experiment designed to test whether human children have the self-control to wait for a better reward. To test the mechanisms behind self control, children were given a choice between having one marshmallow, or another treat, now or waiting 15 to 20 minutes to get two. The study, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B Thursday, puts cuttlefish in the ranks of larger-brained vertebrates like great apes, parrots and corvids in terms of how long they can delay gratification and makes them the first invertebrates to demonstrate self control, Live Science reported.”Self-control is thought to be the cornerstone of intelligence, as it is an important prerequisite for complex decision-making and planning for the future,” For cuttlefish, the reward had to be modified slightly. Instead of sugary sweets, the cuttlefish had a choice between a preferred meal like grass shrimp or king prawn or a less preferred meal like Asian shore crab, Live Science explained. They were presented with two drawers. One that opened immediately with the less preferred meal and one that opened after a delay with the preferred meal. If they chose the first option, the second snack would disappear. “Cuttlefish in the present study were all able to wait for the better reward and tolerated delays for up to 50-130 seconds, which is comparable to what we see in large-brained vertebrates such as chimpanzees, crows and parrots,” Schnell told the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), where the research was conducted. The researchers then also tested the cuttlefish for intelligence, and found that the cuttlefish who were able to wait longer for their favorite foods also did better on a learning test. This marks the first time that intelligence and self-control have been linked in an animal other than humans or chimpanzees.
HIGH AND DRY | Colorado in Drought: Part 1, The Past | Colorado Springs News | gazette.com In the first part of our series, we explore the history of The Dry, a Black community in southeast Colorado undone by drought. Check back Wednesday, March 3, 2021 for part 2. (Video by Skyler Ballard)
High and Dry: Colorado in Drought – Video – 5th generation El Paso County rancher hit with disaster
California Faces ‘Critically Dry Year’ –California faces another “critically dry year” according to state officials, and a destructive wildfire season looms on its horizon. But in a state that welcomes innovation, water efficacy approaches and droughtmanagement could replenish California, increasingly threatened by the climate’s new extremes.The Sierra Nevada snowpack supplies the state with 30 percent of its water supply. But on Tuesday, California’s Department of Water Resources recorded a snow depth of 56 inches and water content of 21 inches at Phillips Station – 61 percent of the average for March 2 and 54 percent of the average for April 1, when it’s at its maximum, the Los Angeles Times reported.The state’s largest reservoirs – responsible for maintaining the state’s water supply throughout the year – also experienced low levels this year, storing only about 38 percent and 68 percent of their capacity, according toThe Guardian.”With below-average precipitation across the state, California’s reservoirs are starting to see the impacts of a second consecutive dry year,” said Sean de Guzman, the department’s chief of snow surveys and water supply forecasting, according to The Guardian.These effects are being felt across the state. During the city’s wettest months of December, January and February, L.A. received just 2.44 inches of the expected 3.12 inches of rain, the Los Angeles Times reported. At the same time Northern California remains in one of the worst two-year rain deficient since the Gold Rush of 1849 – its precipitation at only 30 percent to 70 percent of a normal year, The Guardian reported.Three to five winter storms supply California’s snowpack and reservoirs with water. But the state’s dependency on these few winter storms makes it especially vulnerable when they occur less frequently, The Guardian reported.”In years where you miss out on one or two of those, you’re probably going to struggle to get close to normal,” John Abatzoglou, a climatology researcher at the University of California, Merced, told The Guardian, who added that the state is increasingly living in extremes – either experiencing abnormally heavy rain or no rain at all. “We’re banking on a miracle March or awesome April to dig out of this hole… In all likelihood, we’re going to end the water year with another dry year.”The dry winter not only invites a destructive wildfire season but comes with a heavy price tag for the state’s agricultural industry. Between 2012-2016, for example, the state experienced a drought that cost $2.7 billion in losses for the industry, and more than 18,000 lost jobs, The Guardian reported. This drought also killed about 102 million forest trees.
Fine particulate matter from wildfire smoke more harmful than pollution from other sources – Researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego examining 14 years of hospital admissions data conclude that the fine particles in wildfire smoke can be several times more harmful to human respiratory health than particulate matter from other sources such as car exhaust. While this distinction has been previously identified in laboratory experiments, the new study confirms it at the population level. This new research work, focused on Southern California, reveals the risks of tiny airborne particles with diameters of up to 2.5 microns, about one-twentieth that of a human hair. These particles – termed PM2.5 – are the main component of wildfire smoke and can penetrate the human respiratory tract, enter the bloodstream and impair vital organs. The study appears March 5 in the journal Nature Communications by researchers from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, et al. To isolate wildfire-produced PM2.5 from other sources of particulate pollution, the researchers defined exposure to wildfire PM2.5 as exposure to strong Santa Ana winds with fire upwind. A second measure of exposure involved smoke plume data from NOAA’s Hazard Mapping System. A 10 microgram-per-cubic meter increase in PM2.5 attributed to sources other than wildfire smoke was estimated to increase respiratory hospital admissions by 1 percent. The same increase, when attributed to wildfire smoke, caused between a 1.3 to 10 percent increase in respiratory admissions.As of now, there is not a consensus as to why wildfire PM2.5 is more harmful to humans than other sources of particulate pollution. If PM2.5 from wildfires is more dangerous to human lungs than that of ambient air pollution, the threshold for what are considered safe levels of PM2.5 should reflect the source of the particles, especially during the expanding wildfire season.
Kentucky Experiences Historic Flooding Following Record Rainfall – Kentucky is coping with historic flooding after a weekend of record-breaking rainfall, enduring water rescues, evacuations and emergency declarations.More than a dozen rainfall records were broken in the state on Sunday, CNN Meteorologist Michael Guy said. Many parts of Kentucky received two to four inches of rain in 72 hours, while a few received as much as 10 inches. The rainfall mixed with melting snow to produce major flooding.”We expect this to be one of the largest flash-flooding events that we’ve had,” Kentucky Emergency Management Director Michael Dossett said Monday during a press conference, CNN reported.Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear declared a statewide emergency while 29 counties and seven cities also issued emergency declarations.”We are acting swiftly to ensure the safety and security of Kentucky families and to get the needed help to our communities,” Beshear said in a statement, The Associated Press reported.Floodwaters filled downtowns and required water rescues. In the town of Beattyville, boats could be spotted on Main Street, LEX 18 reported.Lee County Judge/Executive Chuck Caudill said that water levels rose six to seven feet on most roads, prompting evacuations Sunday night. By Monday afternoon, there had been 25 evacuations and six major water rescues.”We really had to do some serious lifesaving because they were literally walking out of houses with two to three feet of water in them,” Caudill told LEX 18.In addition to the human rescues, a batch of COVID-19 vaccines were also evacuated from the Lee County Health Department in Beattyville after rain threatened the department’s power supply, CNN reported.In Wolfe County, Kentucky, the Hazel Green Volunteer Fire Department said it rescued 15 people Sunday night, including a family of five who were trapped in their car, and were only spotted thanks to their cell phone light.Additionally, ninety-one patients were evacuated from Salyersville Nursing and Rehabilitation in Salyersville, Kentucky, Sunday night, according to The Weather Channel.The rain also caused flooding in West Virginia and Tennessee. In West Virginia, flooding and m udslides closed more than 100 roads, while rising waters trapped 11 people in a church in Cross Lanes. In Tennessee, four adults and one infant were rescued after a truck slid off a flooded bridge in Dekalb County.
Heavier Precipitation Is Straining U.S. Dams and Levees The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) gave America’s infrastructure a C- grade in its quadrennial assessment issued March 3. ASCE gave the nation’s flood control infrastructure – dams and levees – a D grade. This is a highly concerning assessment, given that climate change is increasingly stressing dams and levees as increased evaporation from the oceans drives heavier precipitation events.The group’s 2021 report card gave the nation’s 91,000-plus dams a D grade, jus as they had received in each of its assessments since the first one was issued in 1998. Drawing upon the latest data from the Association of State Dam Safety Officials, ASCE estimated the cost of rehabilitating all U.S. dams at $93.6 billion, of which $27.6 billion is needed for federal dams. Over half (56.4%) of U.S. dams are privately owned. The cost to rehabilitate deficient high-hazard-potential dams, whose failure would result in loss of life, is estimated at nearly $20 billion. Over 2,300 dams in the U.S. are in this category. The average age of America’s dams is 57 years. The report identified one program that can help address existing funding needs – the High Hazard Potential Dam Rehabilitation Program authorized in the 2016 Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act. The goal of this program is to help fund the repair, removal, or rehabilitation of the nation’s non-federal, high-hazard-potential dams. In federal fiscal year 2020, Congress appropriated $10 million for the program, less than 0.1% of the state dam safety group’s needs estimate, and a quarter of the $40 million Congress had authorized for the program. A 2019 YaleEnvironment360 story by Jacques Leslie reported that “many people living on property that would be flooded if a dam fails are unaware of that possibility, in part because federal officials blocked public access to inundation maps after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. In recent years, some states have again made the maps available. California requires that prospective buyers be informed if a property is in an inundation zone, a practice that should be far more widespread.” The 2021 ASCE report card recommended initiating a public awareness campaign that would alert residents of the location and condition of dams in their area.
After nearly two weeks much of Jackson, Mississippi still without running water -Nearly half of the residents of Jackson, Mississippi have now been without water for nearly two weeks following the severe winter storm that froze pipes and burst water mains all over the city. The same storm knocked out power and water service for millions of people in Texas and impacted neighboring Louisiana. Tens of thousands of people living in Mississippi’s capital city have had no running water for drinking or washing clothes or indoor plumbing, and water distribution sites have been set up across the region. Hundreds of residents have crowd into long lines, either standing outside or waiting in their vehicles, in order to receive bottles and jugs of much needed water. Some people have even reported having to purchase bottled water for as much as $100.00 as the city’s crumbling infrastructure has resulted in massive demands and scarce resources. The poverty rate of Jackson is estimated to be around 26.9 percent. Many residents have lost work and income due to the pandemic and others have been forced out of work more recently due to the havoc caused by the winter storms. For most who have lost service, being able to afford bottled water is a significant challenge. For local chef Erika Williams, being forced to collect melting snow in order to flush the toilet, stand in line for hours with a bucket for water distribution, and paying exorbitant prices for bottled water has lead to real anger and frustration with the local government. “The thing that became frustrating was the tone of accountability just wasn’t there,” Williams told the Daily Beast. “There was no plan that we could see. The press conferences were redundant. If you don’t know when it’s coming back, what is being done to help us?” Indeed, ten days now since the first water outages, there is still no clear timetable from city officials for when safe running water will return. Many residents who have low water pressure are still under boil water advisories from over a week ago as the water that is running is not yet safe to ingest.
Mississippi city reports progress toward ending water crisis /(Reuters) – A crisis that left thousands of residents of Mississippi’s capital without running water for weeks appears to be nearing an end, a local official said on Friday, as workers continue to restore service following paralyzing winter storms. Jackson, the Southern state’s largest city with a population of more than 160,000 people, again distributed non-potable water at four sites so people could flush their toilets. Residents must still boil any faucet water to kill any disease-causing organisms before using it. Charles Williams, Jackson’s public works director, told reporters that workers should be able to start sampling water in affected areas this weekend, a necessary step before the boil advisory can be lifted. “We’re pleased with our progress,” Williams said. “Positive progress – a lot better than we were on Monday.” Williams estimated that fewer than 5,000 of the city’s 43,000 water connections – most of which serve multiple households – remain dry. The problems stemmed from the same cold snap that wreaked havoc in Texas last month, shutting down that state’s power grid and leaving millions of people without heat in sub-freezing temperatures.
Severe flooding damages roads, hundreds of houses in northern Morocco – (videos) Heavy rains triggered severe flash flooding in the city of Tetouan in northern Morocco on Monday, March 1, 2021, leaving 275 houses damaged, as well as dozens of vehicles and infrastructure. The dramatic situation in Tetouan made rounds on social media. Roads and infrastructure were damaged, as well as around 275 houses and dozens of vehicles.According to local media, many routes were closed as roads were impassable.Up to 100 mm (3.9 inches) of rain was recorded in a nine-hour period to Monday afternoon, which also caused rivers and drainage channels to burst.Prior to the severe weather, the directorate of meteorology issued a number of orange-level notices to warn citizens of heavy rains. Further rainfall warnings were issued for the provinces of Al Hoceima, Chefchaouen, Fahs-Anjra, M’Diq, and Fnideq.
Severe flooding damages hundreds of buildings, strands 14 000 people in Piura, Peru – (video) As many as 14 000 people have been cut off after flooding hit the Piura Region in northern Peru, the National Institute of Civil Defence (INDECI) reported on March 2, 2021. Up to 187 homes have been damaged, as well as public buildings and roads. Intense rains hit the districts of Tambogrande, Las Loma, Chulucanas, and Canchaque, triggering floods that damaged roads, homes, and public buildings. INDECI also reported on March 4 that parts of Mancora and San Miguel de El Faique districts have also been affected. A total of 182 homes have been damaged, five destroyed, while three health facilities have also been hit, according to INDECI figures. The worst affected area was Tambogrande, where around 14 000 people have been cut off after roads were inundated in areas around Malingas. Up to 96.1 mm (3.8 inches) of rain fell in a 24-period to March 3 in Lancones, while up to 85.4 mm (3.4 inches) was recorded in 24 hours to March 4 in El Partidor, according to the National Meteorology and Hydrology Service of Peru (SENAMHI).SENAMHI added that the Piura River has been rising, prompting a Yellow Level alert at the Puente Nacara hydrological station. “The areas potentially affected by flooding would be the populated centers of Malingas, Pachas, Solsol, and the city of Piura,” the agency stated, advising people to take corresponding precautions and avoid any activity near the river.
Deadly snowfall leaves 94 injured, hundreds of cars trapped in South Korea — One person was killed while 94 others sustained injuries as heavy snowfall engulfed South Korea’s northeast region, authorities reported Tuesday, March 2, 2021. Hundreds of vehicles were trapped on some parts of a highway along the east coast, while more than 460 accidents occurred on snow-covered roads. The snowfall began Monday morning, March 1, and continued into Tuesday. Up to 20 cm (7.9 inches) of snow fell inland while up to 77.6 cm (30.5 inches) was registered in the mountains. The snow paralyzed traffic in some parts of the country, leaving hundreds of cars trapped in a 2 km (1.2 miles) stretch between the intersections of Sokcho and Yangyang on late Monday. More than 460 car accidents were reported, resulting in 94 people injured and one fatality. The victim was hit by a car inside a tunnel on a highway linking Seoul to Yangyang. Travel services, including train, ferry, and flight, were affected by cancellations. The Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters (CDSCH) said more than 160 military personnel were deployed to help motorists out of the snow. Meanwhile, the local government of Yangyang sent food assistance for 1 530 people. Authorities also sent more than 3 000 workers and almost 2 900 pieces of equipment to clear snow from roads across the affected regions. In Gangwon alone, about 1 200 people were deployed to remove the snow.
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) at its weakest in more than 1 000 years -The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), one of the Earth’s major ocean circulation systems that underpins the Gulf Stream, is now at the weakest it has been in more than 1 000 years, a new study shows. Models suggest that this could trigger weather disruptions around the world. The Gulf Stream System works like a giant conveyor belt, explained co-author Stefan Rahmstorf in a press release, and it carries warm surface water from the equator up north, sending cold and low-salinity deep water back down south. It moves nearly 20 million cubic m of water per second (706 million cubic feet per second), which is almost a hundred times the Amazon flow. Since the mid 20th century, the speed of the conveyer belt has decreased by 15 percent. The researchers used proxy data from ocean sediments and ice cores to calculate historic Gulf Stream flow rates. “For the first time, we have combined a range of previous studies and found they provide a consistent picture of the AMOC evolution over the past 1 600 years,” said Rahmstorf. “The study results suggest that it has been relatively stable until the late 19th century. With the end of the little ice age in about 1850, the ocean currents began to decline, with a second, more drastic decline following since the mid-20th century.” While any single proxy data point may be prone to uncertainty, researchers were able to generate a more reliable portrait by compiling multiple proxy datasets across a huge timescale. “Assuming that the processes measured in proxy records reflect changes in AMOC, they provide a consistent picture, despite the different locations and time scales represented in the data,” co-author Niamh Cahill stated. “The AMOC has weakened unprecedentedly in over 1 000 years.” An abrupt slowdown of the AMOC could lead to weather disruptions worldwide, including a sudden sea-level increase, changes in the position of arid climate zones, and major rainfall, some models indicate, while its impact may be seen in extreme heatwaves in North America and severe winter storms over Europe. The researchers suggest that the slowdown is already changing a variety of climate patterns. “The northward surface flow of the AMOC leads to a deflection of water masses to the right, away from the US east coast,” said co-author Levke Caesar. “This is due to Earth’s rotation that diverts moving objects such as currents to the right in the northern hemisphere and to the left in the southern hemisphere. As the current slows down, this effect weakens and more water can pile up at the U.S. east coast, leading to an enhanced sea-level rise.”
“Space Hurricane” Spotted Above North Pole, Study Finds For the first time, a team of researchers from China, the US, Norway, and the UK, have spotted an eye-catching phenomenon above the North Pole, in what they’re calling a “space hurricane.” The new study said a 600-mile-wide swirling mass of plasma “rained” electrons down on the North Pole. It was only until now that the existence of space hurricanes has been confirmed. Mike Lockwood, a space scientist at the University of Reading in the UK and the co-author of the study titled “A space hurricane over the Earth’s polar ionosphere,” which was recently published in Nature, said observations made by satellites in August 2014 confirm the existence of “space hurricanes” above Earth. Lockwood said this particular swirling mass of plasma spun counterclockwise hundreds of miles above the North Pole before eventually fizzling.“Tropical storms are associated with huge amounts of energy, and these space hurricanes must be created by unusually large and rapid transfer of solar wind energy and charged particles into the Earth’s upper atmosphere,” Lockwood said.Because plasma and magnetic fields are typical on planets – the researchers assume this space anomaly is more widespread than previously thought. “Plasma and magnetic fields in the atmosphere of planets exist throughout the universe, so the findings suggest space hurricanes should be a widespread phenomenon,” Lockwood said.Researchers still need to study the space hurricane in more depth to see if its geomagnetic activity can disrupt GPS satellites and or land-based power grids.
First space hurricane discovered over the Earth’s polar ionosphere – Scientists have discovered a space hurricane above the North Pole for the first time, which offered an initial glimpse at a phenomenon that could also be taking place on other planets across the universe. The hurricane was raining electrons instead of water, spinning in an anticlockwise direction. Researchers led by China’s Shandong University used satellite data to analyze and identify the space hurricane, discovering that it was not a swirling pattern of air and water, but of plasma-ionized gas. The hurricane lasted about eight hours before dissipating. “Until now, it was uncertain that space plasma hurricanes even existed, so to prove this with such a striking observation is incredible,” said professor Mike Lockwood, a space scientist at the University of Reading. Lockwood noted that the space hurricane could be a universal phenomenon at planets and moons with magnetic fields and plasma. “Tropical storms are associated with huge amounts of energy, and these space hurricanes must be created by unusually large and rapid transfer of solar wind energy and charged particles into the Earth’s upper atmosphere,” he continued. “Plasma and magnetic fields in the atmosphere of planets exist throughout the universe, so the findings suggest space hurricanes should be a widespread phenomenon.” The space hurricane, which happened during a period of low geomagnetic activity, was discovered to share main features with hurricanes in the Earth’s lower atmosphere. The scientists said the process may also be significant for the interaction between interstellar winds and other solar systems throughout the universe.
Brunt Ice Shelf: Big iceberg calves near UK Antarctic base – A big iceberg approaching the size of Greater London has broken away from the Antarctic, close to Britain’s Halley research station. Surface instruments on the Brunt Ice Shelf confirmed the split early on Friday. There is currently no-one in the base, so there is no risk to human life. The British Antarctic Survey has been operating Halley in a reduced role since 2017 because of the imminent prospect of a calving. The berg has been measured to cover 1,270 sq km – nearly 490 square miles. Halley is positioned just over 20km from the line of rupture. BAS has an array of GPS devices on the Brunt. These relay information about ice movements back to the agency’s HQ in Cambridge.
7th spectacular paroxysm at Etna volcano produces heavy ashfall, Italy (videos) A sudden increase in volcanic tremor detected at Etna’s Southeast Crater at 07:44 UTC on Sunday morning, February 28, 2021, quickly led to another spectacular paroxysm — the 7th since February 16. This paroxysmal episode was characterized by a remarkable intensity and short duration, with the activity of tall lava fountains lasting about 30 minutes. The fountaining peaked at 08:25 UTC and stopped almost suddenly at 08:33 UTC, while the lava flow towards Valle del Bove remained active.Ash column rose several kilometers above the crater and spread into a large umbrella cloud. Heavy ashfall was reported ESE of the volcano, particularly in Zafferana, Milo and Fornazzo villages where 1 – 2 cm (0.4 – 0.8 inches) of ash was reported. Members of the VolcanoDiscovery Team observed the eruption from approximately 10 km (6.2 miles) distance in a location between Fornazzo and Sant’Alfio, at the very edge of the ash fallout. “Even there, black scoria of up to 3 cm (1.2 inches) in diameter were falling like hail during a storm, causing us to seek shelter under a roof,” volcanologist Tom Pfeiffer said.A significant bush fire started during the peak phase of yesterday’s activity in the Valle del Bove near or on the southern slope of Monte Rinato, Pfeiffer added. “Initially, the appearance of fumes from this area raised speculations of a possible new vent in the Valle del Bove, but soon were discarded. The cause of the fire remains speculative, but most likely, it was ignited by an exceptionally far-traveled hot volcanic bomb that landed in an area of dense, dry vegetation yesterday.”
8th paroxysm starts at Etna volcano with very strong ash emission, Italy – The 8th paroxysmal eruptive episode since February 16 has started at Etna volcano around 13:00 UTC on March 2, 2021. The Aviation Color Code was raised to Red at 12:39 UTC. In VONA released at 13:17 UTC, Etna Volcano Observatory reported very strong ash emission from the Southeast Crater. The estimated volcanic cloud height is 9 km (29 500 feet) above sea level, drifting toward the south. Unfortunately, the weather over the volcano is cloudy, preventing continuous clear observation. Heavy ashfall was reported in nearby areas. Two styles of eruptive activity typically occur at Etna. Persistent explosive eruptions, sometimes with minor lava emissions, take place from one or more of the three prominent summit craters, the Central Crater, NE Crater, and SE Crater (the latter formed in 1978). Flank vents, typically with higher effusion rates, are less frequently active and originate from fissures that open progressively downward from near the summit (usually accompanied by strombolian eruptions at the upper end). Cinder cones are commonly constructed over the vents of lower-flank lava flows. Lava flows extend to the foot of the volcano on all sides and have reached the sea over a broad area on the SE flank. (GVP)
Another eruption at Etna volcano, heavy ash up to 12 km (39 370 feet) a.s.l., Italy – Etna’s 9th paroxysmal eruptive episode since February 16 started at 02:20 UTC on March 4, 2021, followed by several hours of strong strombolian activity and renewed fountaining at 07:50 UTC. Lava fountains reached about 500 m (1 640 feet) above the edge of the crater while ash rose up to 12 km (39 370 feet) above sea level. Effusive activity remained active in the Valle del Bove after lava fountaining was over, with well-powered lava flows. The volcanic tremor and the extent of infrasonic events remained very high by 09:20 UTC when they started rapidly decreasing. The Aviation Color Code was raised to Red at 02:28 UTC and lowered back to Orange at 10:16 UTC.
Major eruption at Sinabung volcano produces large pyroclastic flows with ash up to 12.2 km (40 000 feet) a.s.l. — A major eruption started at the Indonesian Sinabung volcano at 23:42 UTC on March 1, 2021, ejecting ash up to 12.2 km (40 000 feet) above sea level. This is its first major eruption since August 2020. The eruption produced pyroclastic flows up to 5 km (3.1 miles) down the ESE slope of the volcano.Sinabung Volcano Observatory raised the Aviation Color Code from Orange to Red at 00:20 UTC and lowered it back to Orange at 02:47 UTC. Some of the people were seen panicking but there were no reports of casualties, officials said.Residents are urged to stay at least 3 km (1.8 miles) from the crater.Some of the people were seen panicking but there were no reports of casualties, officials said.Residents are urged to stay at least 3 km (1.8 miles) from the crater. Sinabung woke up in 2010 after 4 centuries of sleep. Since then, at least 23 people have been killed and more than 30 000 displaced.
Very strong M7.2 earthquake hits off the east coast of North Island, New Zealand – A very strong earthquake registered by GeoNet as M7.2 hit off the east coast of the North Island, New Zealand at 13:27 UTC on March 4, 2021 (02:27 LT, March 5). The agency is reporting a depth of 94 km (58 miles). USGS is reporting it as M6.9 at a depth of 10 km, EMSC as M7.3 at the same depth.The epicenter was located 178 km (111 miles) NE of Gisborne and 228 km (142 miles) E of Whakatane, New Zealand.There are about 200 people living within 100 km (62 miles).8 000 people are estimated to have felt moderate shaking and 89 000 light.Based on the preliminary earthquake parameters, hazardous tsunami waves are possible for coasts located within 300 km (180 miles) of the earthquake epicenter, PTWC said.A tsunami is a series of waves. The time between wave crests can vary from 5 minutes to an hour.”We are assessing whether the earthquake has created a tsunami that could affect New Zealand. We will provide an update as soon as the initial assessment has been completed,” New Zealand’s National Emergency Management Agency said.”Anyone near the coast who felt a LONG or STRONG quake should MOVE IMMEDIATELY to the nearest high ground, or as far inland as you can.” The USGS issued a Green alert for shaking-related fatalities and economic losses. There is a low likelihood of casualties and damage.Overall, the population in this region resides in structures that are highly resistant to earthquake shaking, though some vulnerable structures exist. The predominant vulnerable building types are reinforced masonry and unreinforced brick with timber floor construction.Recent earthquakes in this area have caused secondary hazards such as landslides that might have contributed to losses.
Powerful earthquakes, including M8.1, M7.4 and M6.1 hit the Kermadec Islands – Tsunami warnings issued – Powerful earthquakes are shaking the Kermadec Islands region of New Zealand on March 4, 2021, including M7.4 at 17:41 UTC, M8.1 at 19:28 (08:28 NZDT, March 5), and M6.1 at 20:25 UTC at depths between 10 and 55 km (6.2 and 34.2 miles).The epicenters are located about 960 km (600 miles) SSW of Ohonua, Tonga, and 1 030 km (640 miles) NE of Northland, New Zealand.There are no people living within 100 km (62 miles).The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) of New Zealand has issued a TSUNAMI WARNING for New Zealand coastal areas.There is a LAND and MARINE TSUNAMI THREAT.The first waves may reach New Zealand in the areas around Lottin Point at approximately 09:49 am NZDT (20:49 UTC, March 4). Tsunami activity will continue for several hours and the threat must be regarded as real until the warning is canceled, NEMA said.”Evacuation advice overrides the current COVID-19 Alert Level requirements. Listen to local Civil Defence authorities and follow any instructions. If you are told to evacuate do not stay at home. Stay 2 m [6.5 feet] away from others if you can and if it is safe to do so.” This is a Tsunami Warning for New Zealand coastal areas following the magnitude 8.1 earthquake near KERMADEC ISLANDS REGION. Coastal inundation (flooding of land areas) is expected in the following areas: The West Coast of the North Island from CAPE REINGA to AHIPARA. The East Coast of the North Island from CAPE REINGA to WHANGAREI, from MATATA to TOLAGA BAY including Whakatane and Opotiki. And GREAT BARRIER ISLAND. Strong and unusual currents and unpredictable surges near the shore are expected in the following areas. This means a threat to beach, harbour, estuary and small boat activities. The West Coast of the North Island from AHIPARA to MAKARA including the West Coast of Auckland, Manukau Harbour, New Plymouth, Whanganui and the Kapiti Coast. The East Coast of the North Island from WHANGAREI to MATATA including Whangarei, the East Coast of Auckland, Waiheke Island, Waitemata Harbour and Tauranga, from TOLAGA BAY to LAKE FERRY including Gisborne and Napier. The West and South Coasts of the South Island from FAREWELL SPIT to PUYSEGUR POINT including Westport, Greymouth and Hokitika. The top of the South Island from FAREWELL SPIT to PORT UNDERWOOD including Nelson, Picton and the Marlborough Sounds. The East and South Coasts of the South Island from the WAIPARA RIVER to the RAKAIA RIVER including Christchurch and Banks Peninsula, from the TAIERI RIVER to PUYSEGUR POINT including Invercargill. And STEWART ISLAND. And the CHATHAM ISLANDS. The first waves may reach New Zealand in the areas around Lottin Point at approximately 9:49am New Zealand Daylight Time. The severity of currents and surges will vary within a particular coastal area and over the period this warning is in effect. The first wave may not be the largest. Tsunami activity will continue for several hours and the threat must be regarded as real until this warning is cancelled.
15 000 earthquakes hit the Reykjanes Peninsula since February 24, Iceland – The Icelandic Met Office (IMO) has detected around 15 000 earthquakes in Reykjanes Peninsula since an intense earthquake swarm started on February 24, 2021. By March 1, the number rose to over 10 000 and by March 3 it’s already around 15 000, with quite a few over M4.0 and two over M5.0. Most of the activity is confined to the vicinity of Keilir and Trölladyngja, IMO said. The Scientific Council for Civil Protection met at a teleconference on March 1. The meeting was attended by representatives from the Icelandic Meteorological Office, the University of Iceland, the Environment Agency, Isavia-ANS, HS-Orka, and ÍSOR. The council reviewed satellite images (InSAR) and concluded that the most likely explanation is that magma is forming under the area where the greatest seismic activity has taken place in recent days. In light of these new data, the council made several possible scenarios involving magma intrusion under Fagradalsfjall:
- The seismic activity reduces in the next few days or weeks.
- Seismicity increases with larger quakes, up to M6 in the vicinity of Fagradalsfjall.
- An earthquake of magnitude up to 6.5 will have its source in the Sulfur Mountains.
- Magma intrusions continue in the vicinity of Fagradalsfjall: (1) Magma intrusion activity decreases and magma solidifies; (2) The activity leads to a lava flow that will probably not threaten settlements.
It is difficult to predict the exact development and whether one scenario is more likely than another, IMO said.
Fossil fuel emissions in danger of surpassing pre-Covid levels – The world has only a few months to prevent the energy industry’s carbon emissions from surpassing pre-pandemic levels this year as economies begin to rebound from Covid-19 restrictions, according to the International EnergyAgency.New figures from the global energy watchdog found that fossil fuel emissions climbed steadily over the second half of the year as major economies began to recover. By December 2020, carbon emissions were 2% higher than in the same month the year before.The return of rising emissions began only months after Covid-19 triggered the deepest slump in carbon dioxide output since the end of the second world war, and threatens to dash hopes that the world’s emissions might have peaked in 2019.Dr Fatih Birol, executive director of the IEA, said: “We are putting the historic opportunity to make 2019 the definitive peak of global emissions at risk. If in the next few months governments do not put the right clean energy policies in place, we may well be returning to our carbon-intensive business as usual. This is in stark contrast with the ambitious commitments made by several governments one after the other.” The IEA was one of many influential groups to call on global governments to put in place plans to use green energy policies as an economic stimulus in the wake of the coronavirus crisis. However, a Guardian investigation revealed that only a small number of major countries began pumping rescue funds into low-carbon efforts such as renewable power, electric vehicles and energy efficiency last year.The agency’s first ever report to record monthly carbon emissions by region found a strong correlation between countries that put in place economic stimulus packages with a net environmental benefit – such as France, Spain, the UK and Germany – and those that have kept a lid on the carbon emissions rebound.Meanwhile, the countries that had made the smallest contributions to green economic stimulus measures, such as China, India, the United States and Brazil, recorded steep carbon rebounds in the second half of last year as their economies began to reopen.
Biden Admin Sets Interim Obama-Era ‘Social Cost’ Estimates for Greenhouse Pollution The Biden administration announced it will use Obama-era calculations of the “social cost” of three greenhouse gas pollutants while an interagency working group calculates a more complete estimate, the White House announced Friday. Often described as “the most important number you’ve never heard of,” the “social cost” of greenhouse gases estimates the harms to society caused by each ton of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide emitted into the atmosphere. Those estimates are used across government in calculating the costs and benefits of proposed actions. Though the administration did not specify the exact costs, multiple outlets report the interim estimate of the social cost of carbon will be approximately $51 per ton. The interagency working group also set the social cost of methane, a far more potent heat trapping gas, at $1,500 per ton and at $18,000 for nitrous oxide, Politico reported. The Trump administration had slashed those estimates to as low as $1 per ton for carbon dioxide and $55 per ton for methane. The final estimate for the social cost of carbon produced by the interagency working group could reach as high as $125 after accounting for scientific advances and climatic damage over the past four years but the Obama-era estimates were subject to extensive scientific and agency review and public comment, making them more likely to withstand legal challenges.
White House climate czar to AP: Texas storm ‘a wake-up call’ (AP) – The deadly winter storm that caused widespread power outages in Texas and other states is a “wake-up call” for the United States to build energy systems and other infrastructure that are more reliable and resilient in the face of extreme-weather events linked to climate change, President Joe Biden’s national climate adviser says. In an interview with The Associated Press, Gina McCarthy said Friday that the storm that devastated Texas and other states “is not going to be as unusual as people had hoped. It is going to happen, and we need to be as resilient and working together as much as possible. We need systems of energy that are reliable and resilient as well.″ McCarthy said the scientific evidence is clear that more frequent and more dangerous storms are likely, “and if we really care about keeping our people working and keeping our kids healthy and giving them a future we’re proud of, then we’re not going to ignore these wake-up calls. We’re going to take action.″ McCarthy’s comments came as Biden and his wife Jill were in Texas to survey damage caused by the storm, which caused millions of homes and businesses to lose heat and running water. At least 40 people in the state died. “We need to envision a future and an optimistic way of giving people hope again – that we are building back better,″ she said, using Biden’s slogan for a plan costing at least $2 trillion to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure and create clean-energy jobs. “It is a catchy phrase, but it also is a kind of optimistic rallying cry and I think we ought to heed it,″ McCarthy said. McCarthy said she expects an “after-action” report on the Texas crisis and ways it can be avoided in the future. Many people were caught in frigid homes that lacked heat for days in subfreezing temperatures. Texas is not connected to the rest of the nation’s power grid, and McCarthy said the storm may be reason to rethink that. “You know, now’s not the time for me to be pointing fingers, but clearly the United States has always done best when it’s worked together and relied on one another,″ she said. “And I think Texas might … have a real opportunity and probably ought to think about making sure they join with their neighbors in an interstate grid system that allows them flexibility, and that helps them help their neighbors when the time comes.″
U.S. House Democratic lawmakers introduce wide-ranging climate bill (Reuters) – Three Democratic lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives unveiled a wide-ranging climate bill on Tuesday that embraces President Joe Biden’s goals to curb climate change including decarbonizing the electric grid by 2035. Introduced by Representatives Frank Pallone, Paul Tonko and Bobby Rush, and incorporating input from the Biden administration, the bill includes a federal clean electricity standard requiring a percentage of retail power sales to come from sources that produce little or no carbon emissions. The Climate Leadership and Environmental Action for our Nation’s Future Act, or CLEAN, requires 80% clean electricity by 2030 and 100% by 2035. The power could come from sources including wind, solar and existing nuclear energy. That could provide a boost to nuclear power, an industry experiencing shutdowns amid low prices for natural gas, a competing fuel. The bill also sets a goal of a fully decarbonized economy by 2050. On transportation, the largest source of carbon emissions, the bill authorizes $100 million annually from fiscal 2022 to 2031 for entities that install publicly accessible electric vehicle (EV) supply equipment. It also requires the energy secretary to establish a program to help determine where EV charging stations are needed and expands EV access in disadvantaged communities. The legislation, which needs to pass committees and then the full House and Senate and be signed by Biden before becoming law, does not include a carbon tax, a mechanism supported by some Republicans and companies. “The votes are just not there for a price on carbon,” also known as a carbon tax, Pallone told reporters. He said a carbon price had concerns from an environmental justice perspective because it could allow industries to keep polluting as long as they buy permits from entities that have cut emissions elsewhere.
ENERGY POLICY: Granholm’s DOE: What’s coming on climate, clean power — Jennifer Granholm was sworn in as the nation’s 16th secretary of Energy last night, giving her a pivotal role in President Biden’s aggressive plans to decarbonize the power sector, even as she is likely to be constrained by the limited powers of the massive agency. Granholm, a former two-term Michigan governor who embraced clean energy as a way of reviving her Rust Belt state during a staggering recession, took office after being confirmed 64-35 in the Senate yesterday afternoon. Granholm will be only the second woman to head the Energy Department, and in a video and blog post after the swearing-in, she pledged that DOE will be a central player in Biden’s bid to tackle climate change by putting into “hyperdrive” its efforts to boost alternative energy. “President Biden has tasked the department, his in-house solutions powerhouse, with delivering a cornerstone of his bold plan: the goal of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050,” she wrote. “For DOE, that means developing and deploying the technologies that will deliver a clean energy revolution.” She marked her first hours in office with an interview with MSNBC, telling the network that it’s not politics that is driving clean energy, but the market. “These companies and countries across the globe are deciding it’s too much to see a planet that has so many horrible climate events,” she said. DOE is the “solutions place,” where the national laboratories work on solutions to decarbonize fossil fuels, she said. “She’s a trailblazer,” said Nidhi Thakar, strategy director at Portland General Electric, Oregon’s largest utility. “She’s made it clear that her vision for the department, in addition to securing national security and supporting science at our national labs, is to advance American manufacturing and innovation to help battle against climate change and to support good-paying American jobs.” In addition to overseeing the department’s 17 national labs, a nuclear arsenal and Cold War-era cleanup sites, the secretary oversees a multibillion-dollar loan guarantee program that proved a lightning rod under the last Democratic president, along with various offices focused on fossil fuels, renewables, energy efficiency, research into battery storage, and efforts to both modernize and protect the electricity grid.
On Fraser’s First Day as Citi CEO, Bank Vows Net-Zero Emissions – On her first day as chief executive officer, Jane Fraser vowed Citigroup Inc. would achieve net-zero greenhouse-gas emissions in its financing activities by 2050. The bank will produce an initial plan for reaching the goal within the next year, Fraser said in a blog postMonday. It will include specific targets for carbon-intensive sectors such as energy to reduce their emissions by 2030, she said. “The climate crisis is among the top critical challenges facing our global society and economy,” Fraser said. “We are committed to bringing as many clients as we can along with us on this journey and working with them relentlessly to get it right.” Citigroup was the third-largest financier of fossil-fuel companies last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. With its latest commitment, the bank is joining competitors Bank of America Corp. andMorgan Stanley, which have also promised recently to achieve net-zero emissions in their lending and underwriting activities.
Massachusetts groups back expanded carbon tax with focus on equity –A proposal in the Massachusetts legislature would charge a carbon tax on transportation and heating fuel to fund “green dividends” and local climate projects. Massachusetts climate and justice advocates are endorsing new legislation they say would create more than half a billion dollars in annual revenue for climate action while protecting lower-income households from added energy costs.Most of the money under the Green Future Act (HD 1972) would come from closing what some advocates call a “pollution fee loophole” – extending an existing carbon fee requirement for power plants to also include transportation and heating fuels, which account for 74% of the state’s emissions.The change would generate between $500 million and $750 million per year, say supporters of the proposal. The money would be split between direct payments to lower-income households, a fund to assist displaced fossil fuel workers, and awards to cities and towns for projects that would reduce carbon emissions, either directly or indirectly.“It’s pretty comprehensive in terms of not only trying to drive the policy change but also putting a revenue source behind it,” said the bill’s sponsor, state Rep. William Driscoll Jr. “It helps to lay out the path forward to how we’re going to decarbonize.”Massachusetts is already in the midst of an intensive conversation about the state’s climate future. In December, Gov. Charlie Baker’s administration released its decarbonization roadmap, a strategic document laying out broad steps the state needs to take to achieve its goal of going carbon-neutral by 2050. The governor and the legislature are also deep in discussions about how to make a comprehensive climate bill acceptable to all parties. Against this background, Driscoll’s bill attempts to offer a concrete vision for how to fund the state’s climate priorities and goals.
A Texas city had a bold new climate plan – until a gas company got involved – When the city of Austin drafted a plan to shift away from fossil fuels, the local gas company was fast on the scene to try to scale back the ambition of the effort.Like many cities across the US, the rapidly expanding and gentrifying Texascity is looking to shrink its climate footprint. So its initial plan was to virtually eliminate gas use in new buildings by 2030 and existing ones by 2040. Homes and businesses would have to run on electricity and stop using gas for heat, hot water and stoves.The proposal, an existential threat to the gas industry, quickly caught the attention of Texas Gas Service. The company drafted line-by-line revisions to weaken the plan, asked customers to oppose it and escalated its concerns to top city officials.In its suggested edits, the company struck references to “electrification”, and replaced them with “decarbonization” – a policy that wouldn’t rule out gas. It replaced “electric vehicles” with “alternative fuel vehicles”, which could run on compressed natural gas. It offered to help the city to plant more trees to absorb climate pollution and to explore technologies to pull carbon dioxide out of the air – both of which might help it to keep burning gas. Those proposed revisions were shared with Floodlight, the Texas Observer and San Antonio Report, by the Climate Investigations Center, which obtained them through public records of communications between city officials and the company.The moves have so far proven a success for Texas Gas. The most recently published draft of the climate plan gives the company much more time to sell gas to existing customers, and it allows it to offset climate emissions instead of eliminating them. The city, however, is revisiting the plan after a backlash to the industry-secured changes.The lobbying in Austin is not unique. It echoes how an electricity and gas company spent hundreds of thousands of dollars scaling back San Antonio’s climate ambitions by funding the city’s plan-writing process, replacing academics with its preferred consultants and writing its own “Flexible Path” that would let it keep polluting.
Proposal would capture CO2 from Midwestern ethanol plants to store in North Dakota – An Iowa-based company is spearheading a project to gather carbon dioxide from at least 17 Midwestern ethanol plants and pipe it to North Dakota to store deep underground.The greenhouse gas is generated during the fermentation process and released into the atmosphere, where it contributes to climate change.Summit Carbon Solutions is leading the $2 billion effort, which it expects to be operational by 2024. At least one North Dakota ethanol plant is participating — Tharaldson Ethanol near Casselton — along with others in South Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa.The project would entail a main pipeline, smaller pipelines to each participating plant, carbon capture equipment at each facility, and new injection wells. It has the potential to capture and store up to 10 million tons of carbon dioxide per year underground, equivalent to taking 2 million cars off the road, according to Summit.The company’s announcement adds to a growing list of carbon capture and storage projects in North Dakota. Those efforts have contributed extensive research into the makeup of rocks as deep as 10,000 feet underground to find the ideal layer where carbon dioxide could stay buried forever. That’s part of what attracted the company to the state, said Bruce Rastetter, CEO of Summit Agricultural Group, the parent of Summit Carbon Solutions.“You have the geology formations,” he said.North Dakota also has something else going for it that’s attractive to companies seeking a way to stop the carbon dioxide they generate from escaping into the atmosphere. The state has authority to regulate the wells in which carbon dioxide would be injected. It became the first state in the nation in 2018 to assume that power from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.Richardton-based Red Trail Energy applied to the North Dakota Industrial Commission for a permit from the state in February, making it the first company to do so. The ethanol plant is planning to capture its carbon emissions to store in a deep rock formation near the facility.
Iowa company wants to store carbon dioxide from Midwest ethanol plants in N.D. – – An Iowa company is leading a $2 billion effort to capture carbon dioxide from Midwestern ethanol plants and pipe it to North Dakota where it would be buried deep underground. The greenhouse gas is generated during the fermentation process and contributes to climate change when it’s released into the atmosphere. Summit Carbon Solutions’ project would gather carbon dioxide from at least 17 ethanol plants and pipe it to North Dakota where it would be injected into wells and stored underground. The carbon dioxide would be compressed into liquid form at the ethanol plants where feeder pipelines would send it to a larger pipeline that would extend across the Upper Midwest to North Dakota, the Bismarck Tribune reported. The project adds to a growing list of carbon capture and storage projects in North Dakota where extensive research has been done on the makeup of rocks as deep as 10,000 feet underground to find the ideal layer where carbon dioxide could stay buried forever. That’s part of what attracted the company to the state, said Bruce Rastetter, CEO of Summit Agricultural Group, the parent of Summit Carbon Solutions. “You have the geology formations,” he said. Another factor that makes North Dakota an attractive option is the state’s authority to regulate the wells in which carbon dioxide would be injected. In 2018, it became the first state to assume that authority from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. According to Summit, the project has the potential to capture and store up to 10 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, which it said would be equivalent to taking 2 million cars off the road. Summit said construction of the project could take at least 16 months and that it would create 10,000 temporary jobs. It expects the project to be operational by 2024. Summit is also exploring other options, including injecting the gas into depleted oil fields to boost oil production, Rastetter said. A federal tax credit is helping bolster that process, known as enhanced oil recovery, as well as underground storage. Rastetter said Summit’s project wouldn’t be possible without it.
Bitcoin’s ‘Staggering’ Energy Consumption Raises Climate Concerns – As bitcoin’s fortunes and prominence rise, so do concerns about its environmental impact. The process of mining the cryptocurrency is enormously energy intensive, so much so that it consumes more electricity in a year than Argentina or the Ukraine, according to the latest data from the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index. Its energy hunger even led to a warning from Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen last week, as CNBC reported. “It’s an extremely inefficient way of conducting transactions,” Yellen said, “and the amount of energy that’s consumed in processing those transactions is staggering.” Bitcoin’s value rose past $50,000 two weeks ago, CNN Business reported at the time. It was in part buoyed by the success of Elon Musk, whose electric car company Tesla made more than $900 million after buying $1.5 billion of the currency, BBC News reported. Bitcoin mining is energy intensive by design. There are only 21 million bitcoins that can be mined, a process that involves solving complex math problems on a computer to release new coins. When bitcoin first started in 2009, it was possible to mine for bitcoin on a normal computer. However, the currency is designed so that the fewer bitcoins left to be released, the more complicated the problems become. Now that 18.5 million bitcoins have been mined, an average computer cannot handle the calculations. As the price rises, more people are motivated to get in on the action. “They want to get that revenue,” University of Chicago economics professor Gina Pieters told BBC News, “and that’s what’s going to encourage them to introduce more and more powerful machines in order to guess this random number, and therefore you will see an increase in energy consumption.” Pieters is part of the University of Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF), which runs the bitcoin electricity use index. CCAF calculates that bitcoin now uses 129.22 terawatt hours of electricity a year, according to its most recent update.
Electricity needed to mine bitcoin is more than used by ‘entire countries’ – It’s not just the value of bitcoin that has soared in the last year – so has the huge amount of energy it consumes. The cryptocurrency’s value has dipped recently after passing a high of $50,000 but the energy used to create it has continued to soar during its epic rise, climbing to the equivalent to the annual carbon footprint of Argentina, according to Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, a tool from researchers at Cambridge University that measures the currency’s energy use. “Mining” bitcoin involves solving complex math problems in order to create new bitcoins. Miners are rewarded in bitcoin. Earlier in bitcoin’s relatively short history – the currency was created in 2009 – one could mine bitcoin on an average computer. Now that over 18.5m bitcoin have been mined, the average computer can no longer mine bitcoins. Instead, mining now requires special computer equipment that can handle the intense processing power needed to get bitcoin today. And, of course, these special computers need a lot of electricity to run. The amount of electricity used to mine bitcoin “has historically been more than [electricity used by] entire countries, like Ireland”, “We’re talking about multiple terawatts, dozens of terawatts a year of electricity being used just for bitcoin … That’s a lot of electricity.” Since there is no government body or organization that officially tracks where bitcoin is being mined and what type of electricity miners are using, there is no way of knowing whether miners are using electricity that is fueled by renewable energy or fossil fuels. Mining rigs can move from place to place depending on where energy is cheapest, which makes mining particularly hard to track.“The places where you mine [bitcoin] can be moved around and, in some cases, you don’t even know where they are,” Cambridge’s Centre for Alternative Finances estimates that bitcoin’s annualised electricity consumption hovers just above 115 terawatt-hours (TWh) while Digiconomist’s closely tracked index puts it closer to 80 TWh.A single transaction of bitcoin has the same carbon footprint as 680,000 Visa transactions or 51,210 hours of watching YouTube, according to the site.A paper from 2018 from the Oak Ridge Institute in Ohio found that one dollar’s worth of bitcoin took 17 megajoules of energy, more than double the amount of energy it took to mine one dollar’s worth of copper, gold and platinum. Another study from the UK published last year said that computer power required to mine Bitcoin quadrupled in 2019 compared with the year before, and that mining has had an influence in prices in some power and utility markets.
A major Chinese bitcoin mining hub is shutting down its cryptocurrency operations – China’s Inner Mongolia region plans to ban new cryptocurrency mining projects and shut down existing activity in a bid to cut down on energy-consumption.Bitcoin is based on a decentralized network, which means it’s not issued by a single entity like a central bank. Transactions, recorded on a public ledger called the blockchain, need to be “verified” by miners.These miners run purpose-built computers to solve complex mathematical puzzles that effectively allow a bitcoin transaction to happen. The miners receive bitcoin as a reward and that is the incentive.But because the computers are high-powered, they consume a lot of energy.Bitcoin mining consumes an estimated 128.84 terrawatt-hour per year of energy – more than entire countries such as Ukraine and Argentina, according to the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, a project of the University of Cambridge.China accounts for around 65% of all bitcoin mining globally – Inner Mongolia alone accounts for about 8%, due to its cheap energy. In comparison, the United States accounts for 7.2% of global bitcoin mining.Not all cryptocurrencies work like bitcoin, however.Inner Mongolia, located in northern China, failed to meet central government assessment targets regarding energy use in 2019 and was scolded by Beijing. In response, the region’s development and reform commission laid out plans to reduce energy consumption.Part of those plans involve shutting down existing cryptocurrency mining projects by April 2021 and not approving any new ones. They also involve reassessing other energy-intensive industries like steel and coal.While the Chinese government has backed the development of bitcoin’s underlying blockchain technology, it has looked to crack down on digital currencies themselves. In 2017, Beijing banned initial coin offerings, a way to issue digital tokens and raise money. The government has also cracked down on businesses involved in cryptocurrency operations, such as exchanges. China is also pushing to become more environmentally friendly. President Xi Jinping said last year that the country is targeting peak carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and carbon neutrality by the year 2060.
Ross Conrad: Vermont and HydroQuebec at a racist crossroads – The environmental devastation caused by the flooding 308 million acres of forest land in Northern Canada by HydroQuebec results in significant amounts of greenhouse gas emissions, and poisons the flora and fauna with the resulting methylmercury. While this seriously detracts from the benefits of “clean” hydro energy, the impacts on the Indigenous people is unconscionable. The Pikogan, Lac Simon, Kitcisakik and Winneway (Anishinabe), Pessamit (Innu) and Wemotaci (Atikamekw) tribal people have been removed from their homelands and traditional hunting grounds without their consent. Nor have they been compensated in any way for the land that has been taken from them. The people themselves are dying not only from starvation resulting from the destruction of their traditional hunting and fishing grounds, but also from mythlmercury poisoning caused by the flooding of the land (their source of food and sustenance). Many of the native people don’t even have electricity so they can’t take advantage of the “benefits” of the hydro development. To say that this collateral damage should be accepted as the cost of effectively dealing with global warming is so appalling and distasteful to me that I struggle to find the words to express myself. It is the insidious nature of systemic racism that it becomes normalized and commonplace and permeates all levels of our culture and society. This is responsible for allowing otherwise intelligent, good, kind, loving and caring people to hold and promote such explicitly racist views and ideas even when they are staring them right in the face. By using HydroQuebec power, we provide our tacit approval and consent for the continued theft of land and genocidal approach to the Indigenous populations of North America. This situation is all the more egregious given that we Americans consume about 25 percent of the world’s energy while comprising only about 5 percent of the world’s population and huge amounts of this energy is simply wasted through laziness, carelessness and inefficiency.
Lawmaker wants cross border hydropower permit reconsidered (AP) – U.S. Rep. Jared Golden is asking the Biden administration to reevaluate its approval of a presidential permit for a $1 billion project aimed at bringing Canadian hydropower to the New England grid. The presidential permit issued by the Department of Energy in January provided the green light for the interconnect at the Canadian border. Other agencies had already signed off. In his letter to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm. Golden raised several concerns, including the adequacy of the environmental review and public input compared to similar-scaled projects in New England. “In an effort to ensure a transparent and thorough permitting process, I urge you to reevaluate the issuance of the presidential permit and provide Mainers with the opportunity to engage with your agency through a public comment process that is merited for the significance of this project,” Golden, a Democrat from Maine, wrote. The 145-mile (230-kilometer) New England Clean Energy Connect would provide a conduit for up to 1,200 megawatts of Canadian hydropower to reach the regional power grid. Proponents say it would stabilize energy prices and reduce carbon pollution. But critics have raised concerns about a 53-mile (85-kilometer) stretch that would be cut through the woods of western Maine. Three conservation groups are suing to require a more detailed study of the impact on the environment, and a referendum drive aims to let people have the final say on the project.
GMP to buy power from Great River Hydro | Vermont Business –Green Mountain Power (GMP) today announced a power purchase agreement with Great River Hydro to provide clean, cost-effective, local and reliable power for customers. The power purchase agreement, subject to Public Utility Commission review and approval, is for 30 years starting in 2023. The contract creates long-term stability in GMP’s power supply while also enabling opportunity for more local renewables as Vermont pushes to meet clean energy goals to combat climate change. GMP’s purchases from Great River Hydro’s local and regional facilities along the Connecticut and Deerfield rivers will increase over time, just as other GMP power supply agreements step down, but will cover a smaller portion of GMP’s load. This will create opportunity for other complementary local and regional renewables like solar and wind, especially as customers transition heating and transportation to clean electricity as a part of Vermont’s climate goals. Energy deliveries will ramp up to approximately 625,000 MWh/year by 2033. For context, the average energy volume delivered under the PPA will be roughly 40 percent less than the volume of GMP’s largest long-term resource commitment, the current long-term PPA with Hydro-Quebec. The filing with the PUC states that the price for the Peaking Hydroelectric Energy starts at approximately $45/MWh, and the price for the Firm Hydroelectric Energy starts at approximately $47/MWh, each inclusive of the associated Environmental Attributes. The starting price will be subject to a fixed escalator with no market adjustment, locking in stable pricing based on a favorable market environment and providing stability and predictability over time.
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: No more ‘charging deserts’? Utilities launch EV coalition — Wednesday, March 3, 2021 — Six major electric companies in the Southeast and Midwest have formed a coalition to boost electric vehicle charging stations throughout those regions.
Top U.S. utilities collaborate to build electric vehicle charging stations (Reuters) – Six major utilities unveiled a plan on Tuesday to add electric vehicle fast chargers to connect major highway systems across United States, as they look to cater to the burgeoning electric vehicle market. The Electric Highway Coalition – made up of American Electric Power, Dominion Energy D.N>, Duke Energy, Entergy Corp, Southern Co and Tennessee Valley Authority – is looking to provide charging stations within their service territories from the Atlantic Coast, through the Midwest and South, and into the Gulf and Central Plains regions. The initiative comes as President Joe Biden has made boosting electric vehicles a top priority and pledged to build 550,000 new EV charging stations. Automakers including Tesla Inc, BMW and General Motors plan major expansions in EV production. “The path to cleaner transportation is a robust charging infrastructure along the nation’s major highways,” said Lang Reynolds, director of Electrification Strategy for Duke Energy. “Range anxiety is a barrier to more EV adoption. This coalition can erase those obstacles and help deliver the benefits of EV ownership to consumers,” Reynolds added. American Electric Power said it is working with select customers across its service territory to help them understand the benefits of electrifying their own vehicle fleets.
To go electric, America needs more mines. Can it build them? (Reuters) – Last September, in the arid hills of northern Nevada, a cluster of flowers found nowhere else on earth died mysteriously overnight. Conservationists were quick to suspect ioneer Ltd, an Australian firm that wants to mine the lithium that lies beneath the flowers for use in electric vehicle (EV) batteries. One conservation group alleged in a lawsuit that the flowers, known as Tiehm’s buckwheat, were “dug up and destroyed.” The rare plant posed a problem for ioneer because U.S. officials may soon add it to the Endangered Species List, which could scuttle the mining project. Ioneer denies harming the flowers. Their cause of death remains hotly debated – as does the fate of the lithium mine. The clash of environmental priorities underpinning the battle over Tiehm’s buckwheat – conservation vs. green energy – is a microcosm of a much larger political quandary for the new administration of President Joe Biden, who has made big promises to environmentalists as well as labor groups and others who stand to benefit by boosting mining. To please conservationists, Biden has vowed to set aside at least 30% of U.S. federal land and coastal areas for conservation, triple current levels. But that aim could conflict with his promises to hasten the electrification of vehicles and to reduce the country’s dependence on China for rare earths, lithium and other minerals needed for EV batteries. The administration has called the reliance on China a national security threat. The administration will be forced into hard choices that anger one constituency or another.
Sacred Apache land ‘on death row’ in standoff with foreign mining titans – The rugged patch of land known as Oak Flat sits in the Tonto National Forest. To the San Carlos Apache Tribe, the 740-acre swath of oak groves and sheer cliffs is sacred ground, a place where they have gone for centuries to hold religious ceremonies and communicate with the Creator.”No different than Mount Sinai,” said Wendsler Nosie Sr., former chairman of the San Carlos Apache.But Oak Flat is on a path to destruction.The land is scheduled to be transferred to Resolution Copper, a company controlled by two foreign mining giants, and turned into one of the largest copper mines in the country. The transfer was set in motion by an eleventh-hour provision slipped into a 2014 defense bill by Arizona’s two Republican senators at the time.The poverty-stricken San Carlos Apache Tribe is fighting back in court, alleging the land belongs to the tribe and holds special religious significance. But even they worry the path to victory is slim. Resolution Copper has poured $2 billion into the project and has had the U.S. government on its side.The dispute has turned into a David-vs.-Goliath-style standoff, drawing in environmental groups and reviving centuries-old questions over land rights involving American Indians. The San Carlos Apache reservation, about 130 miles east of Phoenix, is among the poorest in the country. Four of every 5 families with children live below the federal poverty line, and the unemployment rate is 30 percent, according to a University of Arizona study.The reservation is on the outskirts of Tonto National Forest, which is named for the Tonto band of Apaches who lived in the area until the U.S. Army cavalry forcibly removed them in the 1870s.Many Apaches became prisoners of war. An untold number refused to surrender and instead jumped to their deaths at a ridge now known as Apache Leap.The Oak Flat area has been considered a holy place for thousands of years, the home of spiritual beings known as Ga’an. Apaches go there to pray, to seek personal cleansing and to hold ceremonies that connect them to their ancestors. It is also a popular campground and hiking destination. But Oak Flat has long been prized by mining companies. Beneath its surface lies a fortune – one of the largest copper deposits in the world.
A sand shortage? The world is running out of a crucial – but under-appreciated – commodity – An insatiable global appetite for sand, one of the world’s most important but least appreciated commodities, is unlikely to let up anytime soon. The problem, however, is that this resource is slipping away. Our entire society is built on sand. It is the world’s most consumed raw material after water and an essential ingredient to our everyday lives. Sand is the primary substance used in the construction of roads, bridges, high-speed trains and even land regeneration projects. Sand, gravel and rock crushed together are melted down to make the glass used in every window, computer screen and smart phone. Even the production of silicon chips uses sand. Yet, the world is facing a shortage – and climate scientists say it constitutes one of the greatest sustainability challenges of the 21st century. “Is it time for panicking? Well, that will certainly not help, but it is time to take a look and change our perception about sand,” Pascal Peduzzi, a climate scientist with the United Nations Environment Programme, said during a webinar hosted by think tank Chatham House. Peduzzi, who is the director of UNEP’s Global Resource Information Database in Geneva, Switzerland, described the global governance of sand resources as “the elephant in the room.” “We just think that sand is everywhere. We never thought we would run out of sand, but it is starting in some places. It is about anticipating what can happen in the next decade or so because if we don’t look forward, if we don’t anticipate, we will have massive problems about sand supply but also about land planning,” he added. At present, it is not possible to accurately monitor global sand use. However, Peduzzi said it could be measured indirectly, citing a “very, very good” correlation between the use of sand and cement. The UN estimates that 4.1 billion tons of cement is produced every year, driven primarily by China, which constitutes 58% of today’s sand-fueled construction boom. The global use of sand and gravels has been found to be 10 times higher than that of cement. This means that, for construction alone, the world consumes roughly 40 to 50 billion tons of sand on an annual basis. That’s enough to build a wall of 27 meters high by 27 meters wide that wraps around the planet every year.
Nationalism on natural resources is surging, and could spell danger for commodities — Countries rich in natural resources have become increasingly protectionist over the past year as Covid-19 threatened their economies, a new study has shown. A report published Thursday by risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft indicated that over the course of 2020, 34 countries had seen a “significant increase” in resource nationalism, with the pandemic exacerbating an existing trend toward government intervention. Verisk Maplecroft determined that 18 of the 34 countries are dependent on the minerals or hydrocarbons they export, and predicted that the threat of isolationism would increase in the coming years as governments attempt to plug fiscal holes in the wake of the pandemic. The mining sector will bear the brunt of new measures, according to the report, with some of the world’s top producers of copper and iron ore, particularly in Africa and South America, featuring among the top 10 countries at risk. “It is entirely understandable that governments are casting around for additional sources of revenue in these fiscally constrained times,” Verisk’s Hugo Brennan, Head of Mining Risk told CNBC on Friday. “Commodity prices have enjoyed a stellar start to 2021 and this puts the mining sector firmly on the radar of national governments.” The top 10 in Verisk Maplecroft’s Resource Nationalism Index comprised Venezuela, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Russia, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Kazakhstan, North Korea, Tanzania, Bolivia and Papua New Guinea. “These are countries most likely to resort to the bluntest instruments in the resource nationalism toolbox, such as direct expropriations with no, or inadequate, compensation,” Verisk Americas analysts Mariano Machado and Jimena Blanco noted. In recent years, North Korea has announced a new five-year plan that analysts say confirms the decision to increase self-sufficiency and further centralize control of the economy. Meanwhile, Zambia has been embroiled in a long-running legal dispute with Vedanta Resources over its attempt to liquidate the company’s Konkola Copper Mines. President Edgar Lungu’s government also threatened to suspend Glencore’s license to operate the Mopani copper mine in April 2020, amid tensions over the use of the asset as a swing producer. “The subsequent move to acquire a majority stake in Mopani underscores President Lungu’s desire to increase state control over strategic mining assets in Zambia and has done his populist credential no harm either,” Africa Analyst Aleix Montana told CNBC.
Biden’s ‘Buy America’ plan may hit a solar wall — Monday, March 1, 2021 —President Biden has pledged to make the United States a leader in clean energy manufacturing as part of his efforts to jump-start the economy and create “millions” of green jobs. But when it comes to boosting U.S. production of solar parts and modules – key technologies in Biden’s plans to zero out electricity-sector carbon emissions – the administration faces an uphill battle. Asia has maintained its status as the dominant solar manufacturing hub despite steep tariffs imposed by the Trump administration. What’s more, critics have said protectionist U.S. trade policies such as tariffs have backfired, hampering domestic solar deployment and increasing costs. “This is the sector that is most clearly dominated at the moment by Chinese players,” said Ethan Zindler, head of Americas at BloombergNEF, during a webinar Thursday on clean energy supply chains hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Solar advocates say there’s good reason for the Biden administration to be interested in manufacturing: Producing more solar parts domestically could ease the transition to 100% carbon-free electricity by 2035, a campaign pledge of Biden’s that will require a massive build-out of renewable energy. In addition, shipping solar parts and materials around the world contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, said Desari Strader, president and founder of Violet Power, a company that last year announced its intention to create an integrated solar manufacturing supply chain in the United States. “If you truly care about climate change, you put your energy source near your supply chain and feedstock,” Strader said. Industry leaders say they see signs that Biden is serious about addressing the issue. Biden has signed an executive order aimed at strengthening the Buy American Act, which instructs the federal government to give preference to domestic manufacturers when procuring goods and services. The order closed loopholes in the BAA that allowed some companies doing business overseas to benefit from the policy and bolstered enforcement tools to ensure that the government works with firms that employ people in the United States, according to the White House. While executive action alone may not be enough to expand domestic manufacturing of solar panels, industry leaders have welcomed Biden’s order.
Stabenow, Manchin push tax credits for clean energy projects – U.S. Sens. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., and Joe Manchin, D-WVa., on Monday introduced legislation to provide billions in tax credits for factories built or retooled to make clean or advanced energy products.The legislation would authorize $8 billion in tax credits for companies making parts and products that reduce carbon emissions. Stabenow’s office said that could include manufacturers making batteries for electric and electric-hybrid vehicles, semiconductor chips and components for solar panels or wind turbines. The tax credit would allow up to 30% of the investment to be written off.Half of the funding would be dedicated to projects in communities where coal mines or coal-fired power plants have been shut down. An earlier version of the tax credit written by Stabenow and used during the recession in 2009-10 and again in 2013did not dedicate funds in those areas.That provision, though, could greatly help coal mining communities in West Virginia, and Manchin’s sponsorship – and possible support from more moderate or conservative senators from other coal mining states – could aid its passage.
U.S. energy regulator focuses on access to renewable power to reduce climate impact (Reuters) – The head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said on Thursday he is focused on enabling the construction of long-distance power transmission lines to help bring more renewable power onto the grid. Richard Glick, FERC’s chairman, told the virtually-held CERAWeek conference that new power lines would help bring electricity generated at solar and wind farms in the countryside to populated cities. “If we are going to really meet our targets, whether they’re set by the federal government or states … we’re going to need to access the great remotely located renewable resources we have,” said Glick. He did not mention specific projects, but one effort is the SOO Green HVDC Link. It hopes to install high voltage direct current underground cable along existing rail corridors to deliver 2.1 gigawatts of power from Iowa wind and solar projects to Chicago. The project needs FERC to update how grid operators connect new transmission projects, among other things. FERC for the most part does not have authority over the siting of transmission lines, which sometimes acts an impediment over transmission development, Glick said. But the panel does have authority over cost allocation and transmission planning. “Those are the particular areas I think we’re going to be focused on in the near future to figure out,” ways to incentivize planning to build long distance lines, he said. Biden has pledged to put the country on a path to decarbonize the grid by 2035. Glick, a Democrat, and the rest of the five-member FERC could help lay the groundwork for that especially after June, when his party is expected to regain a 3-2 majority. In recent years FERC passed a rule, which Glick dissented from, that removed the review of greenhouse gas emissions of new natural gas pipelines from environmental assessments. While Glick has been criticized by some as being against all gas pipelines, “that simply isn’t true,” he said. The DC Circuit, a federal court that reviews FERC decisions, ruled twice in the last four years that FERC had to review the emissions impact of the pipelines before going forward. That has led to delays and extra costs. “I think it’s in the interest of pipeline developers to work with us as well to develop a good methodology to assess climate change impacts,” Glick said. Last week, the White House restored a key climate measure calculating the cost of climate change in federal permitting called the social cost of carbon. The price estimate will be about $50 a ton of carbon dioxide, and a working group will work to develop a new estimate. Glick said the social cost of carbon could be one way to measure the climate impact of natural gas pipelines.
Inside Clean Energy: Warren Buffett Explains the Need for a Massive Energy Makeover – Warren Buffett’s annual letters to shareholders are an entertaining read, as if your great-uncle was an investing savant.In this year’s edition, released on Feb. 27, Buffett has something to say about the transition to clean energy and the necessity of making vast investments in interstate power lines.The message, about the challenges and opportunities of building a cleaner grid, has been communicated before by many others, but not in quite the same way, and not by someone in a position to do something about it on the scale that Buffett can. But it would be incorrect to say that his company is at the forefront of addressing climate change. His holdings are so large and in so many sectors that he is simultaneously financing the transition to clean energy while continuing to have deep connections to fossil fuel industries. Buffett said in his letter that Berkshire Hathaway Energy is in the middle of an $18 billion project, begun in 2006 and continuing until 2030, to rework and expand the electricity grid in the West. This includes PacifiCorp’s Energy Gateway plan that is in the process of building 2,000 miles of interstate power lines throughout the West, and NV Energy’s Greenlink plan, with nearly 600 miles of lines in Nevada.The projects are indicative of how “our country’s electric utilities need a massive makeover in which the ultimate costs will be staggering,” Buffett said.“Historically, the coal-based generation of electricity that long prevailed was located close to huge centers of population,” he continued. “The best sites for the new world of wind and solar generation, however, are often in remote areas.” Berkshire Hathaway Energy, or BHE, is building transmission lines to carry electricity from remote areas to population centers. But, as the company has learned, such projects are difficult.“Billions of dollars needed to be invested before meaningful revenue would flow,” he said. “Transmission lines had to cross the borders of states and other jurisdictions, each with its own rules and constituencies. BHE would also need to deal with hundreds of landowners and execute complicated contracts with both the suppliers that generated renewable power and the far-away utilities that would distribute the electricity to their customers. Competing interests and defenders of the old order, along with unrealistic visionaries desiring an instantly-new world, had to be brought on board.”In those few sentences, he has encapsulated why transmission line proposals can get bogged down in years of delays and debate. He also managed to throw in a dig at “unrealistic visionaries,” which seems to refer to some of the most assertive environmental advocates. Suffice it to say that many people working in the renewable energy technologies BHE’s power lines will serve would see his comparison of the “old order” of fossil fuels and “unrealistic visionaries” as a false equivalency.
Where should new power lines for offshore wind go? Dominion Energy holding meetings to gather input – Dominion Energy is looking for input as to where power lines carrying current from their offshore wind turbines should be placed in Virginia Beach and Chesapeake. The power company is holding four virtual public meetings this week, two on each Tuesday and Wednesday, to update the community on their latest plans for the $8-billion project that’ll see 188 wind turbines off the coast of Virginia by 2026. While the wind farm’s location is solidified, the path the power will take to the online substation is not. Current plans call for 27 miles of undersea power cables to come ashore at or near the State Military Reservation (formerly Camp Pendleton) and eventually make their way to a Dominion substation near Naval Auxiliary Landing Field Fentress in Chesapeake. “We need to have a collaborative discussion with everyone in Hampton Roads, especially Chesapeake and Virginia Beach to get their input on the best place to put the onshore infrastructure,” said Bonita Billingsley Harris, a regional director of Dominion Energy. Harris said the lines could be a combination of above and below-ground on the nearly 20-mile journey. The plan is to maximize the use of existing rights-of-way and other available space where feasible.
Wind Power Was Thriving in Texas. Then Came the Freeze. – WSJ – The Texas wind industry suffered a devastating financial blow during last month’s electricity crisis, which hit roughly half of the state’s wind farms and may force some to seek bankruptcy protection or relinquish control to Wall Street.With ample breezes and open spaces, the Lone Star State has become the biggest producer of wind power in the U.S. It now derives roughly 23% of its power on an annual basis from the renewable energy source.But a financial arrangement that helped wind companies thrive in Texas now threatens to crush many operators, after an unusually strong winter storm led officials to drastically raise wholesale prices in the state’s deregulated power market and caused blackouts that left millions in the dark for days.Many wind farms in Texas, to get construction financing, enter into long-term hedged contracts with financial institutions in which the wind farm operator agrees to provide a steady stream of electricity to the counterparty. If it cannot deliver electricity – because the wind isn’t blowing – the operator agrees to pay to purchase electricity on the wholesale market, or agrees to pay the counterparty to purchase it on its behalf.In return, the financial institution, often a Wall Street bank, agrees to pay a set price for the electricity. The bank can then resell the electricity on the state’s wholesale power market, potentially clearing a profit. When the wind is still and operators need to purchase power to fulfill their obligations, it typically costs somewhere between $0 and $50 per megawatt hour. But during the February blackouts, when some wind farms stopped running after ice built up on their fan blades, operators were forced to pay $9,000 a megawatt hour. (The average price in 2020 was $22.18.)Over a four-day span at such prices, a midsize wind farm could easily end up owing $50 million or more for electricity.Wind farms that owe their counterparties more than they can pay may be forced to seek bankruptcy protection or work out an arrangement.Alternatively, the Wall Street banks could go after the only asset available for repayment: the wind farm itself. The gallows-humor joke in the wind industry this week was that Wall Street could soon become the biggest wind player in Texas.Power prices skyrocketed in the state after the Texas Public Utility Commission, a three-member panel appointed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, set them at $9,000 per megawatt hour to try to spur power plants to make more electricity. The move didn’t result in generators producing more, however, as dozens of power plants and wind farms were down due to the freeze and a corresponding shortage of natural gas. In a filing with the Texas PUC, representatives of nine renewable-energy generators – including wind farms owned by BlackRock Inc., Danish investment fund Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, Swiss asset manager Capital Dynamics and Algonquin Power & Utilities Corp. – asked the state this week to reprice the power market between Feb. 15 and Feb. 19, the height of the blackouts.If nothing is done to unwind the power prices, they wrote, at least 46 projects totaling nine gigawatts of capacity “would suffer severe financial losses.” There are 31.9 gigawatts of wind power on the main Texas grid, and half or more were financed with hedged contracts, according to market observers.
Editorial: Blow, baby, blow. Wind is a fair-weather friend – but it delivers for Texas. [http://www.houstonchronicle.com%20-/]www.houstonchronicle.com -Yes, wind is a fair-weather friend. It blows when it blows – not necessarily when we need it or want it. And until humans learn how to harness it and store its energy, its on-again, off-again nature is an inconvenient truth in Texas’ complex relationship with the affordable energy source.That doesn’t mean wind is unreliable. Here in Texas, we generally know the way the wind blows – when and how much, depending on the season and the time of day. Unexpected weather can thwart production forecasts, slowing blades in winter or turning them so fast at other times that they can power 60 percent of Texas’ energy needs and even risk overheating the whole electric grid.In the end, even a fair-weather friend is valuable when you’ve got a whole army of them. And Texas, which claims the largest wind capacity in the nation, has amassed quite an army. In 2019, the federal government counted more than 13,000 operating wind turbines here – generating jobs, tax revenues and power and zero carbon emissions.All that explains why, back in December, when Congress voted on a massive pandemic relief measure, it made sure to tuck in a familiar provision: a one-year extension of a tax credit for wind energy production – the 13th such extension since a Republican president first signed it into law in 1992. The credits have faced gale force opposition in recent days as Texas’ tragic power outages have left politicians looking for a scapegoat and fossil fuel advocates seeking to channel the gust of public skepticism about wind into competitive advantage.The opportunists have ignored, downplayed or simply lied about how the sudden shutdown of nuclear power and frozen natural gas pipelines played a far bigger role in the emergency than other energy sources in the mix. Out of the entire pie of energy expected in those critical days, wind’s percentage of unmet obligation was in the single digits.Texas derives roughly half its electricity from natural gas. But when the bitter cold disrupted natural gas supplies, people across Texas died. Our much-bragged-on electric grid simply won’t work when the temperatures dip below 10 degrees. That’s largely because pipelines and wellheads freeze up, Vistra Corp. CEO Curt Morgan told Texas lawmakers Thursday. “Let’s be honest, they’re not built for the winter.”They should be, and so should the wind turbines. But Texas’ failure to require weatherization doesn’t change the fact that no state has benefited from the explosive growth of the wind industry more than Texas. If Texas really were a whole other country, it’d rank fifth in the world for installed wind power capacity. In their haste to tarnish, at least publicly, any alternatives to fossil fuels, many voices – from Gov. Greg Abbott to oil and gas industry advocates – seem to suggest energy sources present an either/or proposition and that Texans must pledge loyalty to one. That’s hot air. Despite our reservations about the mantra ‘drill, baby, drill,’ it coexists quite happily with ‘blow, baby, blow.’
The U.S. Grid Isn’t Ready For A Major Shift To Renewables | OilPrice.com – The blame game for the massive power outages in Texas last month continues. The dominant argument is that renewables had an ignorable part to play in the crisis, with natural gas and coal the indirect culprits due to their reduced availability resulting from infrastructure freezing and diverting supplies for heating purposes.Yet what the real problem actually lies in, not just in Texas but everywhere where energy demand is growing, is grid reliability and resiliency.“When it comes to the U.S. electrical grid, it is the largest interconnected machine on Earth: 200,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines and 5.5 million miles of local distribution lines, linking thousands of generating plants to factories, homes and businesses,” Westhaven Power, a California utility, told Oilprice.This is one massive system, and the sources that feed it electricity have become increasingly diversified. And while the shortage of natural gas was a big reason for the power outages in Texas, it was certainly not a shortage of gas that caused the blackouts in California last summer during a heatwave. Grid reliability has come to the fore because the decarbonization of electricity generation is not all fun, games, and zero-emission power.The U.S. grid, as it is now, cannot support the massive shift to low-carbon power generation, Westhaven Power says. Operators need better control of regional grids to be able to anticipate dangerous situations like the ones in Texas and California, but obtaining it would become trickier with more intermittent wind and solar feeding the grid, the utility explains. “What events in Texas and California demonstrate is the shortcomings of having highly-centralised power systems and the true value of resilience and flexibility in our energy grids, a value that is going to become even more vital as we continue to transition to renewable energy,” While it is one of the wiser rules in life that you should not put all your eggs in one basket, the dominant narrative among politicians seems to be that we have no other basket left but the electrification of everything. This means that we need to brace for the costs. Europe alone will need to spend $4.9 trillion on its grids, Morison notes, adding that as much as 45 percent of this investment will be used to strengthen the already existing infrastructure. In addition to strengthening the centralized grid, there is also a solution in boosting the share of distributed power systems, according to experts. This would alleviate the consumption load on the grid, potentially reducing the risk of overloads and outages. It might also reduce – slightly – the size of investments that need to be made in new transmission infrastructure to connect new solar and wind installations to the grid. “When our energy systems are pushed to their limits, through extreme weather changes as in both of these cases, and power generation sources are taken offline, the impact is felt at much greater scale,” IPG’s Gill told Oilprice. “If however, we have more segmented/distribution power sources, we lower our reliability on fewer large power sources, therefore reducing the number of towns and people affected when one or more of these go offline.”
The U.S. Grid Isn’t Ready For A Major Shift To Renewables – Yves here. The fallout from the Texas grid collapse during its deep freeze continues. The Texas independent energy market monitor Carrie Bevins has written the Public Utility Commission of Texas to recommend that $16 billion of charges by the grid manager Ercot be unwound because Ercot kept the $9,000 per megawatt hour price in place (versus a typical price of $25 a megawatt hour) for a full 33 hours after the power emergency was over. From the Financial Times:Retroactively revising prices “is not ideal”, she [Bevins] said, but “allowing them to remain will result in substantial and unjustified economic harm”.Such a move would require Ercot, which acts as a payment clearing house for the market, to claw back money already paid through its invoice settlement system, a process never carried out on anything akin to the scale that would be needed…At a Texas Senate hearing on Thursday, Kenan Ogelman, Ercot’s vice-president of commercial operations, said the state’s wholesale power market was in “distress”. About $1.7bn of power bills were unpaid, a figure he said was likely to keep rising.Brazos Electric Power Cooperative, the state’s largest and oldest power co-op, has been the largest casualty, declaring bankruptcy this week after failing to pay more than $2bn in bills it received from Ercot.The market watchdog’s recommendation echoed warnings from many companies – both retail providers and generators that had to buy power on the wholesale market to meet supply commitments – of further bankruptcies to come. And Bloomberg:The erroneous charges exceed the total cost of power traded in real-time in all of 2020, said Bivens, who spent 14 years at Ercot, where she most recently was director of market operations before becoming its watchdog. “It’s a mind-blowing amount of money.”While prices neared the $9,000 cap on the first day of the blackouts, they soon dipped to $1,200 – a fluctuation that the utility commission later attributed to a computer glitch. The panel, which oversees the state’s power system, ordered Ercot to manually set the price at the maximum to incentivize generators to feed more electricity into the grid during the period of supply scarcity. The market monitor argues that Ercot should have reset prices once rotating blackouts ended because, at the point, the emergency was over…Bivens acknowledged the market monitor isn’t typically in favor of repricing, but noted in her letter to the commission that the move wouldn’t result in any revenue shortfalls for generators. Instead, the new price would reflect the actual supply, demand and reserves during the period.Of course, there’s plenty of whining. Again from Bloomberg:Texas Competitive Power Advocates, a trade association representing generators, said retroactively changing prices could discourage future investments in Texas’s electricity market. “Changing prices after the fact creates additional instability and uncertainty,” Michele Richmond, the group’s executive director, said in an email.Recall that the widespread power outage knock-on effects hit Mexico. From Reuters: The cold snap…knocked out power to more than 4 million people in Texas..It has halted about one-fifth of the nation’s refining capacity and halted nearly all oil and natural gas production in west Texas…Texas’s outages also affected power generation in Mexico, with exports of natural gas via pipeline dropping off by about 75% over the last week, according to preliminary Refinitiv Eikon data.
Texas will have to winterize its grid or interconnect with neighbors: experts (Reuters) – Texas should winterize its electric generation plants or consider connecting its grid with other parts of the country to help avoid another deadly blackout like the one last month that left people without heat, power or water for days, experts at a top energy conference said on Thursday. A winter-storm surge in demand saddled the companies that sell, transmit and generate electricity in the state with about $47 billion in costs as fuel prices soared. The political fallout has included the ouster of the chief executive of Texas’ power grid operator on Wednesday and a second round of contentious state lawmaker hearings set for Thursday. Power costs are likely “10 times what it would have been if we had identified what we needed and paid for it,” said Lawrence Makovich, vice president at IHS Markit, speaking at CERAWeek virtual conference. The flaw of Texas’ market system is that the low prices don’t cover the full costs of reliable generation, he said. Texas has diverse power supplies, but needs better standards for reliability, several experts said. That could include winterizing equipment, requiring natural gas-fueled plants to be able to run on liquid fuels for five days in case the natural gas system fails to deliver fuel, and connecting its grid with neighbors, they said. “We design a system great for the summer, but are we focusing on these one-in-ten year events?” asked Pat Woods, chief executive of Hunt Energy Network and past chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. “We’re absolutely going to plan for that now.” Natural gas, wind, solar, coal and nuclear generation all had failures along with Texas’ natural gas production and pipelines. The only form of generation that outperformed expectations was hydroelectric, which isn’t practical to add in Texas, said Michael Webber, chief science and technology officer at Engie SA. Connecting the Texas grid with neighbors would benefit the state “99% of the time,” Webber said, adding, “We export every form of energy except the electron.”
Texas power cooperative files for bankruptcy, citing $1.8 billion grid debt (Reuters) – The largest and oldest electric power cooperative in Texas filed for bankruptcy protection in Houston on Monday, citing a disputed $1.8 billion debt to the state’s grid operator. Brazos Electric Power Cooperative Inc, which supplies electricity to more than 660,000 consumers across the state, is one of dozens of providers facing enormous charges stemming from a severe cold snap last month. The fallout threatens utilities and power marketers, which collectively face billions of dollars in blackout-related charges, executives said. Unusually frigid temperatures knocked out nearly half of the state’s power plants in mid-February, leaving 4.3 million people without heat or light for days and bursting water pipes that damaged homes and businesses. Brazos and others that committed to provide power to the grid – and could not – were required to buy replacement power at high rates and cover other firms’ unpaid fees. The grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), on Monday said that $2.46 billion in bills went unpaid, underscoring the financial stress on utilities and power marketers. ERCOT acts in part as a clearinghouse, collecting from power buyers and paying those who provide the electrons. ERCOT triggered the squeeze when it pushed up spot-market rates to $9,000 per megawatt hour (mwh) over more than four days and levied huge fees for services. The service fees were 500 times the usual rate, industry executives said. Brazos executive Clifton Karnei, who sat on grid operator ERCOT’s board of directors until last week, told the federal court that Brazos “finds itself caught in a liquidity trap that it cannot solve with its current balance sheet”. Brazos said ERCOT’s $2.1 billion invoice was nearly three times the cooperative’s power costs for all of 2020. Brazos responded by issuing a notice of force majeure, rejecting the bills, Karnei’s statement said.
Texas Power Firm Hit With $2.1 Billion Bill Files for Bankruptcy — The largest power generation and transmission cooperative in Texas filed for bankruptcy in the wake of power outages that caused an energy crisis during the winter freeze last month. Brazos Electric Power Cooperative filed for Chapter 11 in Texas after racking up an estimated $2.1 billion in charges over seven days of the freeze. Last year, it cost cooperative members $774 million for power for all of 2020. The magnitude of the charges “could not have been reasonably anticipated or modeled” and far exceeds Brazos highest liquidity levels in recent years, Executive Vice President Clifton Karnei said in a bankruptcy court declaration. The cooperative on Feb. 25 told state grid operator the Electric Reliability Council of Texas that it wouldn’t pay the $2.1 billion sum, and Karnei resigned from Ercot’s board of directors, court papers show. Brazos had “no choice” but to file for bankruptcy, Karnei said. Chapter 11 protection lets Brazos keep operating while it works out a plan to repay creditors. The cooperative listed assets and liabilities of as much as $10 billion each. “Brazos Electric suddenly finds itself caught in a liquidity trap that it cannot solve with its current balance sheet,” Karnei wrote in the declaration. Aside from its power bills, the cooperative has more than $2 billion of debt outstanding, spread across $1.56 billion of secured notes and about $480 million under a credit line administered by Bank of America Corp., court papers show. Brazos had A+ credit grade from Fitch Ratings and an A from S&P Global Ratings prior to the bankruptcy. Brazos, a member-owned power provider serves customers across 68 Texas counties, stretching from just north of Houston to near the Texas panhandle, court papers show. The bankruptcy is likely to be one of many after four million homes and businesses went without heat, light and water during the deep winter freeze last month, causing as much as $129 billion in economic losses. The state’s broader market set a record for the most expensive week of power in U.S. history. The impact on individual companies is only starting to emerge, with some racking up huge losses while oil and gas producers saw their output halted.
Duke Energy Renewables puts cost to replace power during Texas storm at up to $100M – Duke Energy Renewables spent an estimated $75 million to $100 million to replace power that its renewable energy projects – largely wind power – could not generate for customers during the February freeze in Texas. Duke Renewables President Chris Fallon says the final tally is not available yet as power companies and the Energy Reliability Council of Texas continue to gather information. The company included the estimated losses from power replacement in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing last week, but Fallon says the figures could change. “It will take us a couple of weeks to unwind, but Duke Energy Renewables has paid all its bills,” he says. All of the costs included in Duke’s 10-K annual filing relates to the costs for replacing power, not to any damage done to Duke’s wind and solar projects in Texas. “The way our contracts are structured, our requirement is that we must buy power on the market to replace contracted power we cannot produce,” Fallon says. Those purchases cost as much as $9,000 per megawatt hour, as power generation – mostly natural gas but also including other sources – went offline over five days of sub-zero temperatures from Feb. 11-15. The average price of power in the days before the storm was $50 per megawatt hour, according to ERCOT figures. Iced blades The grid operated by ERCOT is its own island without access to power from the grid elsewhere in the nation. That was a choice Texas made decades ago to prevent any federal regulation on its electric grid. That meant when power generation on ERCOT’s grid failed, less expensive power from surrounding states could not be purchased to replace it. Fallon is quick to point out it was the failure of traditional energy sources on the grid, which provide the vast majority of power on the ERCOT system, that caused many Texas customers to be completely without power for days during the winter storm.
Energy Secretary Granholm: Texas Outages Show Need For Changes To U.S. Power Systems – Newly confirmed Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm seized on the bruising winter weather that left millions of Texans without heat and electricity last week to press for reform of the state’s power systems, arguing that pivoting to a clean energy economy can ensure a dependable grid and help create jobs. In her first interview with NPR since taking office, the former Michigan governor made the case for sweeping changes to the nation’s energy markets in order to help meet President Biden’s pledge to make the U.S. carbon neutral by 2050. Granholm, who won confirmation in the Senate by a vote of 64 to 35 on Thursday, said “there may have to be public-private partnerships to get initiatives off the ground,” and pledged that for any jobs lost in the fossil fuel industry, there would be “more than a one-to-one replacement” in clean energy. Addressing the disaster in Texas, Granholm told Morning Edition host Noel King on Friday that one big lesson from last week’s outages is that Texas needs to weatherize and winterize its energy systems. “Climate change is not going away, so it’s only going to intensify those kinds of events,” Granholm said. She said it may make sense for the state’s famously independent energy infrastructure to be connected to the national grid “in some way, shape or form that allows its neighbors to help” in an emergency. “We all plan for redundancies and backups in our lives and this might be just a backup that Texas might want to consider at this time.” Granholm, 62, responded to misinformation from some leaders in Texas, including Gov. Greg Abbott, blaming renewable energy sources such as wind turbines for the majority of the power failures. Wind and solar were only a “very small part” of what happened in Texas, she said, noting that a larger driver of the outages were coal piles that froze and natural gas lines that weren’t weatherized or winterized.
Some Texas companies will claim major windfalls out of weather emergency – As millions of Texans went days without heat, light or water, as store shelves were emptied, as deaths blamed on the cold began to add up, Texas’ frenzied and deregulated electricity market opened the door for some companies to reap windfalls that may mount into the billions of dollars.The nation’s most deregulated energy economy was supposed to be a win for consumers and for energy companies nimble enough to do business in a bustling, cacophonous market. But the cold snap – rare but by no means unprecedented – shattered it last week, plunging consumers into misery and leaving a badly prepared and dislocated energy sector in pieces.“This is the classic definition of market failure,” said Aneesh Prabhu, an analyst with S&P Global. Wholesale prices for electricity spiked 300-fold, and for natural gas almost as much, and when supplies dwindled firms that had some of either commodity to sell were in line for tremendous short-term profits. But other companies are looking at stupendous losses. Nearly $50 billion in electricity sales were carried out last week through the Texas organization that acts as a clearinghouse – as much as the three previous years combined – and now await a sorting out of who owes what to whom, which will determine the winners and losers. The frigid temperatures dammed much of the flow of natural gas, and caused 356 electric power generators across the state to fail at some point last week. Blackouts spread until they covered 4 million households.And even as millions of Texans are still without water because of the power failures, several thousand residential customers have already been socked with towering bills for a week’s worth of electricity.“Texas has paid the price,” said Robert McCullough, an energy analyst based in Oregon whose firm calculated the $50 billion figure. “Well, some people in Texas are paying a very high price. And some are making out very well.” Comstock Resources, a company controlled by Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, also took advantage of the spike in natural gas. “We were able to get super premium prices,” Almost two weeks after the storm walloped the state, Texas consumers and the general public still don’t know which companies profited during the storm or which companies failed to adequately prepare their equipment, with a few exceptions. That’s because much of the data will remain confidential, if held by private companies, and Texas officials have not made other data public.
Texas top utility regulator quits in fallout over blackouts – — Texas’ top utilities regulator resigned Monday in the widening fallout from blackouts triggered by an unusually heavy and widespread winter storm that left millions in the state without power and water for days. DeAnn Walker, the chairwoman of the Public Utility Commission, is the highest-ranking official to step down in the aftermath of one of the largest power failures in U.S. history. Gov. Greg Abbott appointed Walker to the commission in 2017, and she is one of two commissioners who used to work in his office. In a letter to Abbott, Walker said she accepted her role in the outages but that others should acknowledge their responsibility, including gas companies and lawmakers. “I believe others should come forward in dignity and courage and acknowledge how their actions or inactions contributed to the situation,” Walker wrote. She resigned the same day Texas’ largest and oldest power cooperative announced it was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, and as the state’s attorney general launched an investigation into one electricity provider, Griddy, whose customers incurred massive bills during February’s winter storm. Abbott, a Republican, blamed the power failures on the state’s grid manager, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, commonly known as ERCOT. But the three-member commission appointed by Abbott has oversight authority over ERCOT. Abbott’s spokesman Renae Eze said in a short statement that the governor thanks Walker “for her years of service to the State of Texas.” The statement did not reflect on Walker’s performance ahead of the outages. Walker struggled in two lengthy appearances before legislative panels investigating the state’s electric grid breakdowns, the commission’s response and the lack of communication with the public over the approaching storm. She initially said her agency has little control over ERCOT, but later said it has total control. Lawmakers questioned her knowledge of her agency’s authority and the decision to reduce or reassign enforcement staff charged with policing the utility companies.
Texas electric industry financial crisis to grow as more costs surface (Reuters) – The Texas electricity market faces “insurmountable distress” as more gas and service bills come due, power industry officials said on Thursday at a hearing into financial fallout from the state’s February blackout. High prices for emergency fuel and power saddled the companies that sell, transmit and generate electricity in the state with about $47 billion in storm-related costs. Those costs have led to one bankruptcy and put two retail providers out of business in the state. Consumers facing bills for broken water pipes and food losses will see higher prices as costs get passed down through rate increases or fewer choices in providers, officials said. Future spending on weather defenses and grid linkages could add billions of dollars to the recovery. San Antonio’s city-owned utility expects about $1 billion in extra costs. “The market is facing a financial crisis and it’s a very severe financial crisis,” Catherine Webking, executive director of an industry lobby group told state lawmakers at a hearing in Austin on Thursday. “You’ll see more and more financial distress that is insurmountable,” as bills for natural gas and financial collateral come due in coming weeks, she testified. Vistra Corp., one of the largest utilities in Texas, forecast that buying natural gas at high prices triggered by the storm and selling power at fixed-rate prices will cut its profit by between $900 million and $1.3 billion, Vistra senior vice president Bill Quinn testified. Vistra’s power plants ran between 20% and 30% below capacity because of a lack of natural gas, Quinn said. “Getting gas to them was a challenge,” he said, noting all four of the utility’s gas providers could not meet their fuel commitments. On Wednesday, grid operator Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) disclosed 12 energy companies and two municipal utilities were overdue on $2.21 billion for power and services during February. Part of the deficit was covered by tapping internal grid accounts, but the rest eventually will be passed along to all grid users, straining those that have covered their initial bills, an official said. ERCOT has little means to cover the charges, said Kenan Ogelman, the grid’s vice president for commercial operations. It collects money from suppliers and pays generators, typically in four days. Texas may have to consider providing a financial backstop during future emergencies, he said in response to a question. “This event has demonstrated some consideration for a grid instrument,” Ogelman said. Multi-billion dollar service charges have led to collateral calls on top of the fuel bills. The short period to pay both has led to “cascading concerns,” he said. The decision to hold power rates high to keep power plants running even after the emergency passed was management judgment, he said. “In hindsight, it would look like that wasn’t needed. In real-time it looked like it was needed,” Ogelman said. ERCOT normally uses a bid system to set prices but officials decided to set a $9,000 per megawatt hour charge that was about 450 times the price before the storm. It held at that $9,000 level for about 90 hours, leading to 10s of billions of dollars in charges over five days. The state Public Utility Commission (PUC) on Friday is expected to vote on a proposal to claw back some charges for standby power and other services that were not provided. It could save grid users about $1.5 billion, Carrie Bivens, the state’s independent market adviser told the PUC in a letter on Thursday. She previously estimated the storm would push up state-wide power costs by $47 billion.
AG sues Texas utility over customers’ sky-high energy bills(AP) – Texas’ attorney general said Monday he’s suing electricity provider Griddy for passing along massive bills to its customers during last month’s winter storm. The lawsuit comes days after Texas’ power grid manager effectively shut down Griddy by revoking its access to the state’s electricity market. Griddy charges $10 a month to give people a way to pay wholesale prices for electricity instead of a fixed rate. But when temperatures plummeted well below freezing last month, wholesale prices spiked and Griddy customers were left with sky-high electricity bills. “Griddy misled Texans and signed them up for services which, in a time of crisis, resulted in individual Texans each losing thousands of dollars,” Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement. “As Texans struggled to survive this winter storm, Griddy made the suffering even worse as it debited outrageous amounts each day.” The lawsuit accused Griddy of violating the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act and seeks refunds for customers. The unusually heavy winter storm blanketed much of Texas with snow, knocking out electricity to 4 million customers and leaving many struggling to find clean water. Meanwhile, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, shifted about 10,000 Griddy customers to other utilities on Friday. Griddy said in a statement that ERCOT “took our members and have effectively shut down Griddy.” “We have always been transparent and customer-centric at every step. We wanted to continue the fight for our members to get relief and that hasn’t changed,” the statement said.
Texas Attorney General Sues Griddy for False Advertising in Wake of Winter Storm Price Hikes -Griddy, the Texas power supplier that’s made headlines recently forcustomers’ sky-high energy bills in the wake of widespread winter storm outages, has racked up another lawsuit. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing the company for “false, misleading, and deceptive advertising and marketing practices” that he claims deceived customers with promises of cheap, “wholesale” energy prices.Griddy offers customers what it claims are “wholesale rates” for electricity with rates per kilowatt-hour tied to market prices, as opposed to the kind of fixed-rate plans provided by other retailers. The advantage is customers save a few extra bucks when energy is cheap. The disadvantage though, as many Texans are unfortunately finding out, is that these variable rates canskyrocket to as much as $9,000 per megawatt-hour when demand spikes because of, say, statewide power outages caused by a record cold snap like the one we saw last month. The fallout left customers stuck with bills of $5,000 or more for just five days of usage.The state received more than 400 complaints from Griddy customers about the surge pricing in less than two weeks, the lawsuit claims.“Griddy misled Texans and signed them up for services which, in a time of crisis, resulted in individual Texans each losing thousands of dollars,” said Paxton, a Republican, in a statement this week. “As Texans struggled to survive this winter storm, Griddy made the suffering even worse as it debited outrageous amounts each day.”“As the first lawsuit filed by my office to confront the outrageous failure of power companies, I will hold Griddy accountable for their escalation of this winter storm disaster. My office will not allow Texans to be deceived or exploited by unlawful behavior and deceptive business practices,” he continued.The lawsuit accuses Griddy of violating the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices-Consumer Protection Act because it “failed to adequately disclose the risks of its pricing model to its customers” and downplayed the potential consumercost of fluctuating energy prices. The suit particularly calls out Griddy’s use of auto-billing to automatically withdraw these exorbitant sums from its customers’ checking accounts, which lead to overdrawn accounts and overdraft fees that left Texans incapable of paying their other bills.Griddy is also facing a class-action lawsuit from pissed-off customers that are seeking $1 billion in damages. Earlier this week, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas effectively shut down Griddy by revoking the company’s access to the state’s electricity market. Paxton has also announced an investigation into ERCOT along with almost a dozen power companies in the wake of this scandal.
Texas power grid names firms with unpaid bills, cuts off second (Reuters) – Texas’ power grid operator on Wednesday cited 12 energy companies and two municipal utilities for failure to pay their bills for power and services during February’s deadly blackout that has led to the ouster of the operator’s chief executive. The companies and utilities owe $2.21 billion for power and services during the storm, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which runs the grid providing electricity to 90% of state residents, said. In response to the blackouts, some of which ERCOT imposed to balance the grid after freezing generators went offline, the operator ousted Chief Executive Bill Magness, following calls for his resignation by state lawmakers. The winter storm created a surge in electricity demand that overwhelmed the grid at the same time the cold temperatures and other faults knocked out nearly half the state’s power plants. High prices for emergency fuel and power saddled the companies that sell, transmit and generate electricity in the state with about $47 billion in costs, an official estimated. Texas consumers will see higher prices as the storm-related charges and unpaid fees are passed along to remaining providers. An ERCOT spokeswoman did not immediately reply to a request for comment. Magness is still listed as CEO on the ERCOT website. He took on the role in 2016. ERCOT officials are scheduled to go before a Texas senate committee on Thursday that is delving into the grid failure and resulting financial crisis facing the state’s power industry. As part of its duties, ERCOT acts as a clearinghouse, collecting for power and paying the companies that provide the electrons. Defaulting companies can have their customers taken and their outstanding debts are reallocated to all grid users. The largest of ERCOT’s 14 debtors, Brazos Electric Power Cooperative Inc, filed for bankruptcy on Monday listing $1.8 billion owed to ERCOT. A Brazos spokesman did not reply to requests for comment. The second-largest ERCOT debtor, Entrust Energy Inc, on Wednesday became the second electric provider cut from the grid in five days. It owed nearly $234,000. Entrust did not reply to a request for comment after normal business hours.
Texas Overcharged $16 Billion for Power During Freeze, Monitor Says – WSJ –An independent market monitor said the Texas power-grid operator made a critical mistake that resulted in $16 billion in electricity overcharges last month, and recommended that the charges be reversed.The monitor concluded that Texas kept wholesale prices high for 33 hours longer than warranted as the state dealt with a major winter storm that led to power shortages and mass blackouts and should correct this mistake by retroactively repricing its wholesale power market for that period.A Public Utility Commission of Texas spokesman said the issue was slated for discussion at a scheduled meeting on Friday.A reversal of the charges would be a boon to many participants in the market – from retailers to electric cooperatives, wind farms to multistate generators – that suffered significant financial harm when they needed to buy power at the peak price of $9,000 per megawatt hour.The monitor’s determination caps a tumultuous week that has thrown the Texas electricity markets into a slow-motion meltdown. The chairman of the Public Utility Commission of Texas, which regulates the markets, resigned. The chief executive of the nonprofit that runs the market was fired – not long after his organization, Ercot, said it was $2.5 billion short in payments. One of the state’s largest electric cooperatives filed for bankruptcy, citing $2.1 billion in debts it couldn’t pay. And several wind-farm operators and retail electric providers indicated they were under severe financial distress.
Texas grid manager responsible for $16B in overcharges, says watchdog –The grid manager for Texan energy markets overcharged some $16 billion for electricity during the winter storm that hammered the state’s independent power grid, according to a third-party monitor. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) set prices at a ceiling of $9,000 per megawatt hour during the emergency, but left the rate in place for two days longer than necessary, independent market monitor Potomac Economics concluded. The monitor, which the state hired, recommended the charges be reversed, according to Bloomberg. Prices came close to the $9,000 maximum on Day One of the blackouts but plunged to $1,200 soon after, which the state utility commission has said was caused by a technical glitch. ERCOT should have reset prices to the normal level as soon as the rolling blackouts concluded, Potomac said. The time frame for the correction request is midnight on Feb. 18 to 9 a.m. on Feb. 19. “The signal that we want to send is not that we changed the rules after the game’s been played,” Michele Richmond, executive director of trade group the Texas Competitive Power Advocates, told Bloomberg. “That doesn’t instill confidence in the markets.” The trade group represents power companies owning a total of 70 percent of ERCOT’s generating capacity. Resetting the rate retroactively would reduce some pressure on power companies in the state, which include Just Energy and EDF Renewable Energy. Both companies have previously asked the state’s Public Utility Commission to roll back the pricing for the days following the emergency. “If we don’t act to stabilize things, a worst-case scenario is that people will go under,” said Carrie Bivens, who serves as Potomac’s ERCOT independent market monitor director. “It creates a cascading effect.” Bivens, who worked at ERCOT for 14 years, said the “mind-blowing amount of money” ERCOT overcharged was greater than the entirety of the cost of energy traded in real-time for all of last year, according to Bloomberg.
Texas Opts Not to Fix $16 Billion Power Overcharge – The Public Utility Commission of Texas on Friday signaled it didn’t intend to reverse $16 billion in electric overcharges that an independent market monitor had flagged as stemming from the state’s weeklong blackouts.Commission Chairman Arthur C. D’Andrea said it was too difficult to reprice the energy markets and involved too many uncertainties.“It is impossible to unscramble this sort of egg,” he said.Mr. D’Andrea said there were so many hedges and private transactions outside the view of the commission that taking a step designed to help consumers might have unintended consequences. “You think you’re protecting the consumer and it turns out you’re bankrupting a co-op or a city,” he said.The commission met Friday morning to consider a recommendation from its independent market monitor, which concluded that Texas kept wholesale prices artificially high for 33 hours longer than warranted during a winter freeze last month, resulting in $16 billion in excess charges to consumers.
Texas power grid CEO fired after deadly February blackouts (AP) – Texas’ power grid manager was fired Wednesday amid growing calls for his ouster following February’s deadly blackouts that left millions of people without electricity and heat for days in subfreezing temperatures. Bill Magness, CEO of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, becomes the second senior official to depart in the wake of the one of the worst blackouts in U.S. history. The state’s top utility regulator resigned Monday. Magness was given a two-month termination notice by ERCOT’s board in a meeting Wednesday night. The move came as the grid operator is now under investigation by the House Oversight Committee. “During this transition period, Bill will continue to serve as President and CEO and work with state leaders and regulators on potential reforms to ERCOT,” the organization said in a statement. Magness, who made more than $876,000 in salary and other compensation in 2019, was the target of much of the outrage over the blackouts that began Feb. 15 when a winter storm plunged temperatures into single digits across Texas, causing skyrocketing demand for electricity to heat homes. Grid operators unplugged more than 4 million customers as the system buckled, which Magness has said was necessary to avert an even more catastrophic blackout that could have lasted months. But the power did not flip back on for days for millions of residents, and the prolonged outages quickly escalated to a crisis of tragic proportions, as people trying to keep warm died of carbon monoxide poisoning and others froze to death. The storm and resulting blackouts have been blamed for more than 40 deaths in Texas, but the full toll may not be known for months. At the Texas Capitol last week, lawmakers investigating the outages laid into Magness for his handling of the storm. Over hours of testimony, Magness defended actions that he said kept the grid that serves most of Texas’ 30 million residents intact. “It worked from keeping us (from) going into a blackout that we’d still be in today, that’s why we did it,” Magness said last Thursday. “Now it didn’t work for people’s lives, but it worked to preserve the integrity of the system.”
Fight Continues Over Eminent Domain For Utility Line Across Missouri – The Missouri Legislature is considering a law that would outlaw utility companies taking land through eminent domain, but the move is designed to block a specific project. The Grain Belt Express is a private venture that would take wind generated energy from Kansas and move it east across Missouri to power customers. The Missouri House passed a bill 123-33 last week that would make that project nearly impossible because landowners could refuse to sell and not be forced to by the government. Iowa and Illinois are considering similar measures. “We see that all the surrounding states are saying, hey, we don’t want to be a part of this,” said the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Mike Haffner, R-Pleasant Hill. “We have eight East Coast governors who say we don’t want your clean energy. So basically what’s happening here is that we have an electrical highway running through the heart of Missouri using agricultural land.” Proponents of the Grain Belt Express have said it could be a good way to increase use of clean energy and avoid power disruptions like the one in February that left millions of Texans in the dark. Haffner and other Grain Belt Express opponents said even the construction of the proposed transmission line will damage hundreds of acres of farmland. “When you compact soil, you can rip it up with a chisel plow, you can work it to death, but in some cases it’s going to take years and years and years for that land to be productive again,” Haffner said. The measure now goes to the Missouri Senate for debate.
Wyoming coal mines eyed for disposal of old windmill parts (AP) – The slow, steady turning of thousands of wind turbines continues to pace a revolution in the U.S. domestic energy generation portfolio, or perhaps millions of small revolutions. With wind, solar and other green sources of electricity making up a growing share of America’s power generation, states are facing an increasingly worrisome dilemma of dealing with the massive amounts of waste created by the wind industry. Now that wind has emerged as the nation’s fastest-growing energy sector, the gold standard for green energy is revealing a dirty secret of its own with massive amounts of industrial waste, the Gillette News Record reports. Although made of fiberglass to reduce weight and cost, the huge blades that rotate the turbines can be longer than the wing of a large jumbo jet and weigh more than 5 tons each. As the industry adds thousands of new turbines a year, the problem of disposing of worn-out parts and blades has escalated, especially for local municipalities. When photos of thousands of used wind turbine blades at the Casper landfill went viral last year, local and state officials took notice, said state Speaker of the House Eric Barlow, R-Gillette. That’s because relatively small local governments like the ones in Wyoming can’t handle adding that volume of waste in their landfills for long. As federal policies and tax incentives continue to spur wind development, Wyoming’s unique weather landscape will continue to make the Cowboy State a leader in building and expanding wind farms. And as residents have expressed concern about the impact those farms can have on landfills, Barlow was drawn to a simple potential solution. He suggested burying the blades in the huge Powder River Basin coal pits as companies reclaim the land. “Now, the state of Wyoming and communities pay to dig holes to bury refuse,” Barlow said. “I don’t know that we need to subsidize that for every material. This material is one that if we can get the transit situation down, we wouldn’t fill our municipal landfills with industrial waste.” The hole solution That’s what prompted Barlow to propose House Bill 129 in the last legislative session, which passed. The bill allows private coal producers to use inert waste created by the wind industry as fill for reclamation of the mines. Because the turbine blades are fiberglass and contain no harmful chemicals, there’s no danger to the environment to bury them in the pits.
Coal-fired Merrimack Station in Bow wins another year of funding – The coal-fired power plant in Bow has won another year’s funding from a program designed to guarantee future electricity supplies. The two units at Merrimack Station, soon to be the last coal-fired plant in New England, will be paid about $1.08 million per month from mid-2024 to mid-2025 in return for promising to produce up to 438 megawatts of electricity whenever needed. The money will come out of electric bills and will be paid whether or not the units are called on to produce electricity. The plant will get paid more for any power that it generates. Merrimack Station won the payment with its bid under what is known as the Forward Capacity Market run by ISO-New England, which oversees the six-state power grid. Virtually all wholesale power producers, from Seabrook Station to dams to gas-fired plants to wind farms, bid into the auction. Merrimack Station has won similar payments during all previous auctions, which are held every year to cover a 12-month period three years in the future. The news comes on the heels of the near-collapse of the Texas power grid during a record cold snap. The forward capacity auction is designed to protect New England from a similar situation by propping up power plants that would otherwise shut due to financial pressure, keeping them available to step in during peak periods such as heat waves or cold snaps. Coal plants around the country are shutting because gas-fired and renewable electricity is much cheaper and underbids them in the power market. The regions’ two remaining coal plants have been generating up to 5% of New England’s electricity at times this month, as snow and calm weather has limited production of solar and wind power, and natural gas has been diverted for heating. New England’s other coal plant, Bridgeport Harbor in Connecticut, is scheduled to close this July. The news that Merrimack Station won another year’s support will be a disappointment to its opponents, who argue that the auction is a subsidy which keeps the most polluting of all types of power plants. The 448-megawatt Merrimack Station is owned by Granite Shore Power, an investment group that bought it from Eversource in 2017. It operates mostly as a “peaker plant,” providing power only occasionally to meet peak demand. The power plant is a major payer of property tax in the town of Bow.
Lax Oversight Of Coal Plant Demolitions Could Leave Illinois Communities Vulnerable –Environmentalists in Illinois worry that having few regulations for coal-fired power plant demolitions will increase the chance for a toxic disaster when these facilities are dismantled. Since 2009, 12 of the state’s 23 remaining coal power plants have closed, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. Five more, all owned by Vistra Energy, are set to close this decade, according to an announcement from the company. One of those is in Baldwin, 40 miles southeast of St. Louis. Six others will either close some generating units or have no official retirement dates. “We’re hitting this big transition moment; all these power plants are going to close,” said Andrew Rehn, a civil engineer at Prairie Rivers Network, which works on water, land and pollution issues across Illinois. “We just don’t have a plan, and it’s coming across the state.” The plant closures leave behind property with massive buildings and smokestacks laden with heavy metal byproducts, like mercury, arsenic and lead, from decades of burning coal. Most are still standing. Ahead of last month’s demolition of the Wood River Power Station’s main building, local residents and environmental groups worried what might happen because the property’s owner, Commercial Liability Partners, avoided talking with local residents and elected leaders, said Toni Oplt, chair of the Metro East Green Alliance. Her small group of Madison County residents sent emails, made phone calls and submitted “contact us” forms on the company’s website after first noticing the plant was being taken apart in 2019. “After about the fifth email, I got a response that said, ‘We’re doing everything we’re supposed to do, thank you very much,’” Oplt said. “They would never meet with us, they would never talk with us.”
Blackjewel’s Bankruptcy Filing Is a Harbinger of Trouble Ahead for the Plummeting Coal Industry – – A federal bankruptcy judge in West Virginia could soon decide whether to allow the Blackjewel coal mining company, once the nation’s sixth-largest coal producer, to shed responsibility for thousands of strip-mined acres, setting up a potential crisis over clean-up and reclamation of the land. Bankruptcy Court Judge Benjamin Kahn will hold a hearing Wednesday in Charleston on the West Virginia-based company’s liquidation plan, whichcalls for the abandonment of nearly 200 mining permits in Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia and Tennessee. Most of them are in eastern Kentucky, where the future of nearly 8,000 acres of strip-mined mountains hangs in the balance, as shown in court filings and testimony in the massive bankruptcy case that began in 2019.Both the state of Kentucky and the companies that issued bonds guaranteeing clean-up and reclamation of the dynamite-blasted landscape warned in court proceedings that there might not be enough money to do all the required work. With other U.S. coal-mining companies in similar financial straits and demand for coal plummeting, Blackjewel’s situation is a harbinger of the trouble ahead in coal country. Coal mining companies are required to post bonds to cover the costs of reclamation should they go bankrupt. They are also supposed to reclaim idled mine sites contemporaneously, as they are mining new areas. As the industry rapidly loses market share and continues its lurch toward the financial abyss, part of its legacy could involve scarred, strip-mined landscapes left behind by serial bankruptcies and government programs that may not be able to step in and finance clean-up and reclamation, environmental and citizens groups fear. “There just is not the capital left in the coal industry to satisfy all the remaining outstanding reclamation obligations,” said Peter Morgan, a Sierra Club attorney who closely follows coal-industry bankruptcy cases nationally. “These companies have been allowed to kick the can down the road time and time again, and now they are running out of road.” Morgan said he sees the Blackjewel case as “the tip of the iceberg,” with other major bankruptcies on the horizon. “There will be a lot more Blackjewels,” he said.
ENERGY POLICY: Manchin, Stabenow float $4B coal community investment bill — Monday, March 1, 2021 —Two senior Senate Democrats introduced legislation this morning to make available as much as $4 billion in clean energy manufacturing tax credits for communities affected by coal mine or power plant closures.The legislation from Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Agriculture Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) would revive the so-called 48C tax credit to bolster the private-sector transition to a clean energy economy.Manchin has made the clean energy manufacturing incentive a priority for his chairmanship as he looks to protect West Virginia and other states long dependent on fossil fuels. And he’s likely to use it as a bargaining chip when Democratic leaders seek his support for broad climate action.”Tax credits to help incentivize a transition to a cleaner energy future should be targeted to drive reinvestment in the communities who are most impacted by this transition, and that’s exactly what the ‘American Jobs and Energy Manufacturing Act’ does,” Manchin said during a Zoom press conference.The legislation would provide $8 billion for companies to make investments in manufacturing facilities that could increase domestic production of renewable energy, storage, electric vehicles, advanced nuclear reactors and carbon capture technologies. The Department of Energy would have a hand in determining which companies qualify. Of that $8 billion, $4 billion would be specifically set aside for coal communities caught in the grips of energy market changes.
How private equity squeezes cash from the dying U.S. coal industry (Reuters) – Private equity firms are proving there’s still plenty of profit in the U.S. coal industry despite a decade of falling demand for the fossil fuel. They are spending billions of dollars buying coal-fired plants on the cheap – and getting paid even when they are not providing power. Since the end of 2014, at least five U.S. private equity firms have bought coal plants in markets where regulators pay them to be on standby to provide emergency power when demand surges with extreme hot or cold weather, according to a Reuters review of U.S. regulatory disclosures and credit-rating agency reports. The lucrative investments illustrate how fossil fuels will remain an important part of the energy mix – and continue spinning off cash for investors – even years after demand for them peaks as the world transitions toward cleaner energy sources. The need for reserve power was on display during the utility crisis this month in Texas – the only U.S. grid system that operates without such an emergency system. A cold snap knocked out several of the state’s generating plants and triggered widespread blackouts, leaving a wake of human suffering including several dozen deaths. The so-called capacity payments are given out in most U.S. power markets, and regulators tend to favor coal-fired generators that store heaps of coal on site when other power sources might be disrupted. In the Pennsylvania, Jersey, Maryland Power Pool (PJM), which has the largest standby market, capacity revenue payments average more than $100 per megawatt per day – an insurance policy that costs about $9 billion a year and aims to make sure the grid’s 65 million customers avoid blackouts during heat waves and Arctic blasts. “The capacity power market is a certain source of revenue for coal plants that might otherwise be uneconomical,” said Sylvia Bialek, an economist at New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity.
Breakdowns, shutdowns and cost overruns plague Xcel’s Comanche 3 coal-fired power plant, investigation finds — Comanche 3, Xcel Energy’s state-of-the-art coal-fired power plant, has been plagued by operational, equipment and financial problems leading to more than 700 days of unplanned shutdowns since the plant went online in 2010, according to a report by the Colorado Public Utilities Commission. The report by the PUC staff found that the cost of electricity from the plant – $66.25 for each megawatt-hour (MWh) – was 45% more than forecast and the annual operating costs were 44% higher than projected at $34.8 million a year. The PUC undertook the assessment after two mechanical failures led to the unit being closed for all of 2020 and parts of 2021 – a total of 373 days. “What we are doing is a bit of public and private review of the utility’s performance,” former PUC Chairman Jeffrey Ackermann said in approving the study in October. “We are closely reviewing the Colorado Public Utilities Commission’s report on Comanche Unit 3 in Pueblo. Meanwhile, we are committed to the continued safe and reliable operation of the plant through its proposed early retirement in 2040,” Xcel said in a statement. The utility – Colorado’s largest electricity provider with 1.5 million customers – said it continues to look for new ways to learn and improve the way it runs its generation fleet. The first incident started on Jan. 13, 2020 when a loud noise and vibrations began to come from a low-pressure turbine. The plant was down until June 2 for repairs, costing $4.2 million, and inspections. When the unit was started up again there was a failure in a six-way valve that led to a loss of lubricating oil used to keep elements of the turbine from overheating. It is considered a “system critical to the operation and well-being of the turbine,” the report said. The report said that the design of the valve, maintenance and inadequate communication between the control room and operations staff all played a role in the failure. “The company acknowledged that the six-way transfer valve was never dismantled and inspected since the plant went commercial in 2010,” the report said, nor can it get a replacement valve since it is obsolete. “The company knows it cannot get replacement parts,” the report said. “The company has no policy with regard to the use of obsolete equipment in the power plant.” The cost of the June incident was $20.4 million and Xcel had to buy $14.4 million in replacement power, though subtracting the amount it would have cost to run Comanche 3 it brought the cost of the power purchases down to $9.5 million.
State lawmakers pitch bill to regulate electrical grid for reliability A new piece of legislation could give coal-fired power plants a lifeline. Filed on Friday in Wyoming’s Legislature, House Bill 155 would require state regulators to consider how a coal or natural gas power plant closure could affect the reliability of the power grid before approving its retirement. Prior to giving a utility a green light to retire an aging power plant unit, the Wyoming Public Service Commission – the state agency regulating certain utilities in Wyoming – would have to consider if the closure would increase the risk of power outages. “Before authorizing or approving the closure of an electric generation facility as proposed in a rate case, integrated resource plan or other submission to the commission, the commission shall consider the effect on available reliable, dispatchable electricity to Wyoming customers and on a nationwide basis,” the bill states. Under the proposed bill, utilities would also be held liable for damages or injuries caused by power outage, under certain circumstances. The bill aims to ensure Wyoming’s electrical grid maintains sufficient “baseload power,” or a source of continuously available electricity supply, especially as companies invest in more and more renewable energy. “The radical Left is attempting to destroy our Wyoming way of life by cancelling fossil fuels,” Gray said in a written statement. “Reliability on the grid would be destroyed by the radical Left’s actions. A reliable energy grid heats our homes and powers our businesses. (House Bill) 155 is designed to stop the radical Left from doing to Wyoming what they’ve already done to Texas, Colorado, and California. We saw in Texas what will happen if the radical Left wins on this issue.” Opponents of the bill said it could mean keeping coal-fired power plants in operation longer than makes fiscal sense for ratepayers.
Green Bay Senator Supports the Expansion of Two Rivers Nuclear Plant — State Senator Eric Wimberger of Green Bay has joined colleagues from across Wisconsin in sending a letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, expressing his support for an extension of the operating license for the Point Beach Nuclear Plant thru 2050. The current license is set to expire in 2030. In a news release, Wimberger said that the Two Rivers-based nuclear plant, “provides clean, safe energy and good jobs for the people of Northeast Wisconsin.” He also pointed to the struggles the state of Texas suffered in February, saying “having a diverse range of power sources is vital. Any serious discussion regarding reducing dependence on fossil fuels and increasing reliance on cleaner forms of energy must include nuclear energy.” The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is currently reviewing the application for license renewal, which was submitted in November 2020, with a final decision not expected for another 18 months.
Callaway Energy Center still at zero power — Two months after a generator issue caused an unplanned shutdown at Callaway Energy Center, the plant is still not operating. Related to the shutdown is the caravan of vehicles that crept east Monday on Missouri 94, complete with flashing lights, flags and “oversize load” written in bold block letters. The large, tarp-covered load was characterized by Ameren Missouri Site Vice President Barry Cox as a “significant component.” “We decided that significant components did need to be replaced,” Cox wrote in an email. “Those are long lead-time materials that need to be manufactured, installed and tested so that we can ultimately bring Callaway back safely and sustainably.” The plant experienced three unplanned shutdowns – also known as “scrams” – during the last three quarters of 2020. Those scrams, in addition to lower than normal hours of critical operation at the plant over the year, will result in additional oversight from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The NRC determines oversight based on a variety of performance indicators, sorting each plant in the country into five different columns on an “Action Matrix.” Most plants are currently in column one of the Action Matrix chart, indicating baseline inspections. According to a Feb. 10 letter from the NRC to Ameren Missouri, the Callaway reactor has been moved to column two, which warrants a supplemental inspection. Only three other reactors in the United States are currently in column two. None of the country’s reactors are in columns three, four or five, which indicate degraded or unacceptable performance.
Michigan AG moves to intervene in Palisades nuclear plant transfer – – Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel is objecting to the transfer of a nuclear power plant and a spent waste storage site on Lake Michigan, arguing that a Florida nuclear energy equipment company planning to take ownership of both sites lacks adequate financial resources and has underestimated decommissioning costs.On Wednesday, Feb. 24, Nessel filed a petition to intervene in the transfer of the Palisades Nuclear Plant near South Haven and the Big Rock Point fuel storage site near Charlevoix with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which is reviewing plans to transfer both site licenses to Holtec International of Jupiter, Fla., by the end of this year.Both sites are presently owned by Entergy Corp. of Louisiana, which is attempting to unload them after shutting down the 50-year-old Palisades plant in 2022. Holtec says it can accelerate the decommissioning and wants the NRC to approve its transfer application by December. In her petition, Nessel alleges that Holtec “underestimates the license termination, site restoration, and spent fuel management liabilities” at both sites. Although she supports “prompt, thorough and safe decommissioning, as well site restoration and fuel management,” Nessel said she’s concerned Holtec’s plan “endangers our environment and health, and potentially leaves our residents to bear the costs of proper cleanup.” Both sites occupy the Lake Michigan shoreline. The Big Rock was razed in 1997 and little remains there besides a spent nuclear fuel storage facility.Palisades would close next year and Holtec wants to move the spent fuel to a new temporary atomic waste repository that would be built in New Mexico if the regulatory commission gives its approval. Nessel alleges Holtec’s cost estimates assume the U.S. Department of Energy will begin taking title to spent nuclear fuel by 2030 and that the company will get approval to use nuclear decommissioning trust funds for Palisades site restoration and waste management. Holtec suggests it can finish decommissioning Palisades and release the site, which borders Van Buren State Park, for unrestricted use by “approximately 2041,” the filing states. Such a timeline makes no sense given the longstanding difficulties the federal government has faced in developing a permanent nuclear waste depository, Nessel argues. During a confirmation hearing in February, new U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said she opposes restarting the licensing process for the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada. Assuming federal authorities will begin accepting spent nuclear fuel is “not reasonable given DOE’s current progress in licensing a repository,” Nessel writes.
Consent required to bury nuke waste under new bill – Legislation that would require the federal government to receive consent from state, local and tribal entities before constructing a permanent repository for nuclear waste was filed in the House on Tuesday by Democrat Dina Titus of Nevada. Companion legislation was filed in the Senate by Catherine Cortez Masto, with support from Sen. Jacky Rosen, both Nevada Democrats. Gov. Steve Sisolak, a Democrat, urged Congress to pass the bills and provide a workable alternative to storing nuclear waste in Nevada. Titus has filed the bill in each session of Congress to prevent a restart of the process to review an application by the Department of Energy to receive a license to build a repository at Yucca Mountain, northwest of Las Vegas. The legislation has never been approved, despite the failure of the federal government to accept the waste and store it as required by law.
Quake shifts 53 water tanks at Fukushima plant – The operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant says it has found that 53 tanks storing radioactive wastewater were shifted from their original locations by a powerful earthquake earlier this month. But it says there have been no leaks from the tanks. Tokyo Electric Power Company inspected 1,074 tanks after a magnitude-7.3 quake struck off the coast of Fukushima Prefecture on February 13. TEPCO discovered that 53 tanks had moved from their original locations by 3 to 19 centimeters. TEPCO treats the water used to cool molten nuclear fuel at the damaged reactors before storing it in tanks. But the water still contains radioactive substances. The company says it also found that five sections of piping connecting the tanks shifted more than the limit recommended by the manufacturer. But it says it has so far found no cracks or other abnormalities in the piping. It plans to conduct further examinations. TEPCO also laid out a plan to repair two seismometers at the No.3 reactor building next month. It came to light on Monday that the devices went out of order partly because of heavy rain last July. As a result, they were unable to collect data when the quake struck.
Vipal Patel takes the reins of House Bill 6 investigation as acting U.S. attorney for southern Ohio – – Vipal Patel, a longtime federal prosecutor, will take over the lead in the largest bribery investigation in Ohio. Patel became the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Ohio on Monday, replacing his former boss, David DeVillers, whose last day was Friday. Former President Donald Trump appointed DeVillers. President Joseph Biden will name a successor in the coming months, based on Ohio Democratic U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown’s recommendation. He takes over the investigation into House Bill 6, the piece of legislation that has shaken the Ohio Statehouse. The scandal broke last summer, and federal prosecutors already have gained three guilty pleas, though authorities say that is just the start. FirstEnergy and its affiliates stand accused of funneling $60 million in bribes to Larry Householder, the former speaker of the Ohio House, and four others to pass a $1.3 billion legislative bailout of two nuclear plants, according to court records. A subsidiary of FirstEnergy once owned the aging plants in Oak Harbor and Perry. Neither FirstEnergy nor any of its employees have been charged in the investigation as of Monday. The Akron utility says it is cooperating in the investigation. Householder has denied the allegations. His political strategist, Jeffrey Longstreth, and lobbyist Juan Cespedes have pleaded guilty, as has a nonprofit at the heart of the scandal, Generation Now. Sentencing dates have not been set. Patel, 53, had served as the office’s first assistant for years, a job that required him to oversee its daily operations in Cincinnati, Columbus and Dayton. He has been a federal prosecutor since 2000, first in Los Angeles and later in Dayton. He has worked in civil, criminal and appellate divisions. He said in an interview last week that his office has ongoing local and state investigations. Since last February, it has prosecuted three members of Cincinnati City Council on corruption-related charges.
FirstEnergy attributed utility regulator’s actions to $4.3 million payment –A state utility regulator in Ohio acted “at the request or for the benefit” of FirstEnergy “as a consequence of receiving” a $4.3 million payment from the utility company shortly before their appointment, FirstEnergy disclosed in statements found buried in agreements it reached with lenders in November. Christopher Pappas, the independent executive director for FirstEnergy board, later disclosed on an earnings call last month that the $4.3 million payment improperly resulted in “amounts collected from customers,” as did other transactions that Pappas told financial analysts “could” have included money for lobbying and political activities.FirstEnergy first privately disclosed the $4.3 million transaction to lenders on or before November 17 of last year, according to agreements signed by the company’s treasurer Steven R. Staub and lenders. The agreements were dated and went into effect one day after the FBI searched a Columbus townhouse owned by Samuel Randazzo, the chairman of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, on November 16. Randazzo resigned days later, after FirstEnergy first publicly disclosed the payment in a quarterly report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on November 19. Copies of FirstEnergy’s November 17 lender agreements were included as exhibits to the quarterly report, and can be viewed here and here. FirstEnergy’s initial disclosures to lenders about the payment were found in statements on the bottom pages of the wordy November 17 agreements. Those disclosures included key details,highlighted below, later omitted from the company’s other more widely reported public statements about the transaction:
Ohio Senate votes to repeal nuclear subsidies in House Bill 6 – cleveland.com — The Ohio Senate voted unanimously on Wednesday to repeal the nuclear subsidies that are one of the central components of House Bill 6, the bailout law that’s at the center of an ongoing federal corruption probe. Senate Bill 44, sponsored by two Northeast Ohio lawmakers, keeps other portions of the bill in place, but repeals the nearly $1 billion in subsidies that were to have been sent to two Ohio nuclear plants owned by a former FirstEnergy subsidiary. The bill also would eliminate the fees on Ohioans’ electric bills that pay for the subsidies, which are currently on hold due to two court rulings. The bill is now headed to the House for consideration. Senators said Wednesday that the plants’ owner, Energy Harbor, has emerged from bankruptcy proceedings in a strong enough financial position that the company no longer needs the subsidies. They also said repealing them would help the legislature move on from the HB6 scandal while saving Ohioans money on their power bills. Senate President Matt Huffman, a Lima Republican, has noted that Energy Harbor has said the bailout might become a liability. That’s because the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ruled in late 2019 that if power generation companies receive state subsidies like the ones offered by HB6, the commission would make it harder for those companies to sell electricity from the two nuclear plants. “This is something that I feel will undo an awful lot of damage that has been done not only to our institution (the state legislature) but to the whole state of Ohio,” Sen. Rob McColley, a Toledo-area Republican, said on the Senate floor Wednesday. Federal prosecutors say the plants’ former owner, Akron-based FirstEnergy Corp., and its affiliates got HB6 passed with $60 million in bribes to former House Speaker Larry Householder. Householder was arrested after the investigation was made public last July. He has pleaded not guilty and denied wrongdoing, but two others who were charged in the probe, plus a pro-Householder political action committee, have pleaded guilty to corruption charges. Prosecutors say the $60 million was funneled through political groups that supported Householder’s bid for speaker, pushed for HB6′s passage and protected it against a repeal effort. Householder remains in the House, and although Cupp has called for his resignation, he has not been able to get enough Republican votes to remove him from the chamber.
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