QUICK NEWS, August 20: Climate Crisis Gets Primary Debate – CNN, September 4; Wind Prices Now Beating NatGas
Climate Crisis Gets Primary Debate – CNN, September 4 8 Democratic presidential candidates will participate in CNN climate town hall
Mark Preston, August 19, 2019 (CNN)
“…CNN is devoting the evening of Sept. 4 to the climate crisis. Eight of the [nine qualifying] Democratic candidates have accepted CNN's invitation to discuss this critically important issue: former Vice President Joe Biden; Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey; South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg; Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota; former Rep. Beto O'Rourke of Texas; Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont; Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts; and businessman Andrew Yang…Citing a scheduling conflict, Sen. Kamala Harris of California declined…CNN anchors Erin Burnett, Anderson Cooper, Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon will moderate individual candidate segments, and CNN Chief Climate Correspondent Bill Weir will join in the questioning throughout…
…[In back-to-back appearances, candidates will take questions directly from a live studio audience in New York drawn from Democratic voters and a CNN moderator. A late April CNN poll showed 96% of Democrats favored aggressive action to slow the effects of climate change. The United Nations projects temperatures will rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by as early as 2030 and] has warned that governments must take ‘rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society’…[including sea level rise] leaving hundreds of millions of people displaced and forced to migrate to dry areas…[and plant and animal extinctions and drought causing] lower crop yields…July 2019 was the hottest month ever recorded on Earth…” click here for more
Wind Prices Now Beating NatGas Wind power prices now lower than the cost of natural gas; In the US, it's cheaper to build and operate wind farms than buy fossil fuels.
John Timmer, August 17, 2019 (Ars Technica)
“…[Wind hardware prices are dropping and] new turbine designs are increasing the typical power generated by each turbine…[As a result, wind farms can be built and operated] for less than the expected cost of buying fuel for an equivalent natural gas plant…[Wind’s federal production tax credit (PTC) is phasing out, leading to some long-term uncertainty…[Growth in coal and nuclear are essentially at a standstill. Wind’s new 7.6GW was 20% of new U.S. capacity, third behind natural gas and solar…[ U.S. installed capacity is now] nearly 100GW…[It supplied 6.5% of total electricity in 2018 and Kansas, Iowa, and Oklahoma get over 30%,] with the two Dakotas not far behind. The Southwest Power Pool, which serves two of those states plus wind giant Texas, is currently getting a quarter of its electricity from wind…[The 2018 national average wind price fell] below $20/MWh for the first time…That puts wind in an incredibly competitive position…
…[N]atural gas—on its own, without considering the cost of a plant to burn it for electricity—is already over $20/MWh…[Photovoltaics have reached prices that are roughly equivalent to wind…[U]nless natural gas prices reverse the expected trend and get cheaper, wind and solar will remain the cheapest sources of new electricity in the US…[The levelized cost of electricity, which eliminates the impact of incentives and subsidies on the final prices, places natural gas around $50/MWh and] wind below $40/MWh in 2018…[I]t's clear that the economic case for wind energy will remain solid as the tax credits for the construction of renewable energy fade out over the next few years…[but developers are starting projects sooner rather than later to capture them, there could be] a bubble in construction for the next couple of years, followed by a dramatic drop off.” click here for more
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