• Youth Climate Activists Get Major Win in Montana Supreme Court

    ByAdmin

    The Montana Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld a landmark victory for youth climate activists, affirming a decision by a lower court last year that the state’s energy policies violated their constitutional rights to a clean environment.

    Many of the 16 young people who brought the case, Held v. Montana, testified during the trial about the extreme weather they had witnessed in their home state, which is a major player in oil, gas and coal. They argued that a state law barring consideration of climate in setting energy policy was unconstitutional.

  • Progress Report: Some Good News

    ByAdmin

    Here are some items reported by Heatmap News as the year wraps up:

    • Permian Basin methane emissions drop 26% in 2023 as new EPA rules hit.
    • Biden approves 11th large-scale offshore wind project near Nantucket; construction to start in 2025.
    • A large coal plant in Texas is being converted into a solar and battery power facility, financed by a federal grant.
    • A surprising finding about the eco-friendliness of real vs. fake Christmas trees!

  • What’s with the US Electricity System in 2024

    ByAdmin

    We don’t often think of the US electricity system in this aggregated and integrated way, but it’s worth doing so. To wrap these figures all together: almost 600,000 people [who work in the industry] invest $200 billion a year [of capital investments], receive $500 billion in revenue [i.e., what people pay for electricity], and operate a $2 trillion machine [the value of the infrastructure, aka “The Grid” and all the generation plants] that provides the essential energy input of our built environment, our technology system, and increasingly, our transportation and industry systems as well.

    Here is a concise overview of trends and current status.

  • Ocean Heat Wiped Out Half These Seabirds Around Alaska

    ByAdmin

    About four million common murres were killed by a domino effect of ecosystem changes, and the population is showing no signs of recovery, according to new research.

    The first evidence was the feathered bodies washing up on Alaskan beaches. They were common murres, sleek black-and-white seabirds that typically spend months at a time away from land. But in 2015 and 2016, officials tallied 62,000 emaciated corpses from California to Alaska.

    Since then, scientists have been piecing together what happened to the birds, along with other species in the northeast Pacific that suddenly died or disappeared. It became clear that the culprit was an record-breaking marine heat wave, a mass of warm water that would come to be known as the Blob.

  • Western Governors Association issues bipartisan energy resolution

    ByAdmin

    Western governors of both parties are greeting the incoming second Trump administration with calls for “all of the above” energy development, even as they urged national Republicans to preserve some of the Biden administration’s energy policies. Democratic and Republican members of the Western Governors’ Association — which covers the 22 westernmost states and territories, including some of the top-producing states for fossil fuels and renewables — approved five policy resolutions this week at their annual winter meeting in Las Vegas. The WGA’s energy policy resolution called for permitting reform, more aggressive forest management — including more prescribed burns — and sustained investment in the electricity grid.

  • Permafrost begins to melt; carbon sink now a carbon source?

    ByAdmin

    WASHINGTON—The icy region at the top of the globe, lashed by wildfire and pelted with increasingly heavy precipitation, has tipped into “uncharted territory,” scientists reported Tuesday.

    The Arctic tundra has shifted from storing carbon in the soil to becoming a carbon dioxide source, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and its partner researchers concluded in their 19th annual Arctic Report Card.

    As a result, the Arctic’s ability to help regulate Earth’s temperature is significantly compromised. Emissions from warming permafrost regions must be thought of as an increasing risk to a planet already being transformed by the overburden of fossil fuel pollution

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    Electric vehicle battery prices are expected to fall 50% by 2026

    ByAdmin

    Editor’s Note: Here’s another example of the “learning curve” bringing down the prices of CleanTech.  From a report by Goldman Sachs.

    Technology advances that have allowed electric vehicle battery makers to increase energy density, combined with a drop in green metal prices, will push battery prices lower than previously expected, according to Goldman Sachs Research.

    Global average battery prices declined from $153 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2022 to $149 in 2023, and they’re projected by Goldman Sachs Research to fall to $111 by the close of this year. Our researchers forecast that average battery prices could fall towards $80/kWh by 2026, amounting to a drop of almost 50% from 2023, a level at which battery electric vehicles would achieve ownership cost parity with gasoline-fueled cars in the US on an unsubsidized basis. 

  • Permitting Reform is a bipartisan issue

    ByAdmin

    from Packy McCormick
    Government efficiency should not be a partisan issue. Republican or Democrat, you should want your government to work both harder and smarter for you, for your tax dollars to go a bit further, and for there to be less unnecessary red tape.

    We’re excited about what DOGE is going to do on this front. If DOGE can make efficiency a winning political value proposition, then you are going to see leaders from both sides of the aisle adopt it. Democratic Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro is already starting. Shapiro has been on the efficiency train since before it was cool — his record-breaking 1-95 reconstruction put him on the map.

    Efficiency should not be the end goal here. Ultimately, we’ll want not just an efficient government but an effective one, too. Let’s Make Government Efficient Again! And I say that in the least partisan way possible.

  • America’s Struggling Solar Industry Has a New Comeback Plan

    ByAdmin

    FSLR is the country’s only major U.S. solar manufacturer. The Inflation Reduction Act has begun to change the industry’s fortunes. The 2022 law added tax credits for domestic manufacturing, compelling several companies to announce plans to build factories. Still, it has been slow-going.

    Chinese companies have ramped up production and driven prices relentlessly lower, making it difficult for American firms to catch up. FREYR will get its polysilicon from both the U.S. and Asia, and its solar cells from Asia. It’s exploring whether to build another factory for cells in the U.S.

    So far, the U.S. has tried to keep Chinese panels out by ramping up tariffs or outright banning panels. Chinese companies still want access to the U.S. market, so they have begun to build factories in the U.S. The Inflation Reduction Act allows companies based in foreign countries to qualify for tax credits as long as they set up shop in the U.S.

  • Trump’s Win Threatens U.S. Clean-Energy Boom

    ByAdmin

    Donald Trump’s victory puts a skeptic of global warming back in the White House, triggering an about-face on climate policy that threatens to derail billions of dollars in clean-energy investment and slow a reduction in the nation’s emissions.

    Investors dumped shares of renewable-power developers and bought oil-and-gas stocks in the days after the election. Trump has said he wants to repeal a 2022 Biden administration climate law that promised to channel several hundred billion dollars of tax incentives, loans and grants into the sector. The subsidies triggered a surge in manufacturing and jobs, most in Republican congressional districts. Trump also aims to rip up environmental regulations, which he says will unleash oil and gas production that is already at record levels.

  • The AI Frenzy Could Unlock More Money for Clean Energy

    ByAdmin

    The world’s biggest investors are tripping over themselves to plow money into the power sector for artificial intelligence. The resulting frenzy could accelerate the energy transition if companies can harness the capital into the right projects.

    Private-equity firms KKR and Energy Capital Partners recently agreed to invest a combined $50 billion in data-center and power-generation projects, topping a planned $30 billion fund in the works from BlackRock, Microsoft and a United Arab Emirates state-backed investor.

    Other investment titans like Blackstone and Apollo are channeling billions of dollars into data centers and related infrastructure. Blue Owl Capital recently became part of a $3.4 billion joint-venture developing a data center in Texas it hopes to run on wind and solar power.

  • 3rd Lithium Mine in Nevada OK’d by Feds

    ByAdmin

    Editor’s Note: Nevada has one operating lithium mine and another one (Thacker Pass) in development. This will be the third. See Primer: Lithium Mining in Nevada

    The United States’ Bureau of Land Management (BLM) on Thursday approved Ioneer’s (ASX: INR) Rhyolite Ridge lithium-boron project in southwest Nevada, opening the door for closing $1.19 billion in funding.
    Ioneer can now access a $700 million loan from the US Department of Energy (DOE) and a $490 million equity investment from Sibanye Stillwater

    The Sydney, Australia-based Ioneer aims to finalize its financing agreements for the $785 million project before year-end. However, legal battles, regulatory adjustments, and political uncertainty remain obstacles as the company pushes toward construction, CEO Bernard Rowe said on a late Thursday webcast.