The Climate Crisis Spikes Home Insurance Price
The numbers people at insurance companies say the costs of extreme weather impacts on homeowners will spike. From YaleClimateConnections via YouTube
Gleanings from the web and the world, condensed for convenience, illustrated for enlightenment, arranged for impact...
The numbers people at insurance companies say the costs of extreme weather impacts on homeowners will spike. From YaleClimateConnections via YouTube
Including new environmental protections and integration of wind and solar. From U.S. Dept. of Energy via YouTube
The strong new federal financial and policy support makes this move possible is available to cities, towns, and individuals all across the country. From U.S. Dept. of Energy via YouTube
New EV sales remain strong in established economies and are doubling and tripling in emerging economies. From the International Energy Agency via YouTube
Sea level rise, coastal flooding, salt in the mud, trees die, and only bare stumps and dry twigs remain. From CBS News via YouTube
‘Beginning of the end’ for fossil fuels: Global wind and solar reached record levels in 2022, study finds
Sophie Tanno, April 12, 2023 (CNN)
“A boom in wind and solar has pushed the amount of electricity produced by renewable energy to record levels last year [and the use of coal, oil and gas to produce electricity is expected to fall in 2023], according to a new analysis…This would mark the first year to see a decline in the use of fossil fuels to generate electricity, outside of a global recession or pandemic [suggesting levels of planet-heating pollution from fossil fuel electricity generation may have already peaked…Nearly 40% of global electricity is now powered by renewables and nuclear energy…
Wind and solar made up 12% of global energy generation in 2022, up from 10% the previous year…Solar energy was the fastest-growing source of electricity in 2022 for the 18th year in a row, rising by 24% compared to the previous year. Wind generation increased by 17%...[I]n 2023, clean energy will be able to meet the total growth in electricity demand…Coal power remained the single largest source of electricity across the globe, accounting for 36% of global electricity production in 2022. This is because overall demand for electricity rose…” click here for more
These laws have formed a foundation to fight climate change
John Letzing, April 14, 2023 (World Economic Forum)
“Nearly four decades ago, a US senator proposed legislation to draw up a national strategy for studying and addressing climate change. It quickly went nowhere…[But the steady construction of climate laws] around the world over the years has created the legal footing necessary to confront the threat of physical and financial destruction…[A Grantham Research Institute/Columbia Law School database] puts the cumulative number of global climate laws and policies at 3,145. It stretches back to Japan’s 1947 Disaster Relief Act to recent entries like] a UK plan to decarbonize and domesticate energy production, and Türkiye’s policy bid to ramp up the production and use of hydrogen…
EU member states just approved a plan requiring that all new cars sold there must be emissions-free by 2035…[The historic legislation and policies crucial for climate progress] share a focus on curbing pollutants, fossil fuels, and the damage they can unleash…[from the Clean Air Act passed in the US in 1963 to Norway’s 1976 law to prevent products from damaging health and [the environment, and France’s law supporting nuclear power that made it] the advanced economy with the lowest emissions per capita…
Climate policy is a boring necessity drawn up in backrooms…It’s been nudged forward by decades of international efforts to spur discussion and pool global knowledge, setting crucial guideposts along the way for domestic lawmakers…[The UN’s International Panel on Climate Change included 743 experts from around the world in environmental physics, energy efficiency, and economics who] tend to be both profoundly committed and broadminded…[But the] recent UN panel report found that there’s very little remaining chance of limiting warming to the crucial threshold of 1.5°C, barring dramatic emissions reductions…” click here for more
There is never a time to stop working to turn back the climate crisis but it is clear the change is gaining momentum. First Stop Burning. From American Museum of Natural History via YouTube
New Energy will keep electrons flowing in 2050’s net zero emissions economy. From the International Energy Agency via YouTube
Weather is about immediate impacts, climate is about long-term trends. Weather happens in a place, climate happens to the planet. Weather is hot sometimes and cold sometimes, the climate has been slowly and steadily getting hotter for over a century. From via YouTube
Duke, APS planning reforms show ways to work with stakeholders to meet emerging power system needs; Better integrated planning can lower rates and transform the resource mix for any power provider, an RMI analysis found.
Herman K. Trabish | February 28, 2023 (Utility Dive)
Editor’s note: Efforts continue in many states to find ways to expand the power system’s resource mix.
The energy transition’s new resources, technologies and voices require the utility integrated resource plan, or IRP, to be better, many planners and analysts say.
An IRP is the strategy a utility submits to its regulators every one to three years in most states for investing in reliable affordable power and meeting its policy goals and obligations. But new approaches, like those being explored by Arizona Public Service, or APS, and Duke Energy Indiana, are needed to meet upward pressures on rates, stakeholder calls for clean energy options and equity, and federal and state policies, many regulators and stakeholders agree.
“Market forces are shaping utility resource portfolios,” acknowledged Commissioner Pat O’Connell of the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission. “But this moment of change is an opportunity to go big on high-level IRP reforms with more analysis of more factors,” he added.
For APS, “the changing landscape requires transparency with stakeholders in the IRP process,” said APS Vice President of Resource Management Justin Joiner. “That means coming to planning sessions with stakeholders without answers, because two heads are better than one, and decisions about affordability, reliability and clean energy can best be reached with diverse stakeholder viewpoints,” he added.
Reform efforts to introduce best practices like all-source solicitations, distribution system planning, and engaging new voices could add more work for already overburdened utility planners and regulators, some said. But developing integrated system planning with state-of-the-art modeling that optimizes solutions to today’s reliability and affordability challenges will be easier than undoing bad planning decisions, others responded.
Utility “planning processes are being stretched and challenged” to meet the power system’s emerging dynamics, according to a new report from independent analyst RMI. But utilities, regulators and stakeholders can “shape the future electricity system” by “reimagining” IRP “rules and guidelines,” to make planning more comprehensive, transparent, and aligned with policy, RMI said… click here for more
Massive transmission line will send wind power from Wyoming to California; After 18 years, the TransWest Express line receives final approval.
Gabriela Aoun Angueira, April 17, 2023 (Grist)
“…[After a nearly two-decades-long permitting process, the Bureau of Land Management, or BLM, gave final approval to begin building the $3 billion, 732-mile TransWest Express high-voltage transmission line] capable of sending power from what will be the largest onshore wind farm in North America to western states…[It] will deliver three gigawatts of power from the 600-turbine Chokecherry and Sierra Madre Wind Energy Project, which broke ground this year in a former coal-mining community in Wyoming, to grids in Arizona, Nevada, and California…
…[C]omplicated permitting processes can slow the country’s transition to clean energy…Projects built on federal lands are subject to the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, which dictates the environmental review process. NEPA does not include time limits for when environmental reviews must be completed…[and the] TransWest Express crosses four states, through both public and private lands, and required approvals from various federal, state, tribal, and local agencies, as well as some determined property owners…
…[Despite support for permitting reforms by Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm,] substantive changes have not yet materialized…[House Republican permitting reform in the Lower Costs Energy Act were so antithetical to clean energy goals that it] was a “nonstarter” in the Senate…[TransWest Express delivered wind[ could be particularly impactful for California…TransWest Express LLC, a subsidiary of Anschutz Corp., which also owns the wind farm project, said it expects to complete the project by 2028.” click here for more
Queued Up: Characteristics of Power Plants Seeking Transmission Interconnection
Joseph Rand, Rose Strauss, Will Gorman, Joachim Seel, Julie Mulvaney Kemp, Seongeun Jeong, Dana Robson, Ryan Wiser, April 2023 (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)
High-Level Findings
Developer interest in solar, storage, and wind is strong
Over 10,000 projects representing 1,350 gigawatts (GW) of generator capacity and 680 GW of storage actively seeking interconnection Most (~1260 GW) proposed generation is zero-carbon Hybrids comprise a large share of proposed projects
Completion rates are generally low; wait times are increasing
The top 1% of emissions come from people who generate 1000 times more CO2 than the bottom 1%, and the world’s richest 1% create ten times the emissions of the rest of the world’s richest 10%. From the International Energy Agency via YouTube
It’s time to turn investors away from fossil fuel financing. From National Sierra Club via YouTube