Creating a Sustainable Future

A war on climate is also a war on our health

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 03 Apr 2017 10:53:00 +0000

Climate change and human health are inextricably linked. Stepping back from the fight against climate change will also be a massive loss for public health.

The Clean Power Plan has been a big win for health. According to the EPA, cutting exposure to particle pollution under the CPP would have averted up to 3,600 premature deaths, 90,000 asthma attacks in children, and 1,700 heart attacks each year.

According to the Global Burden of Disease project, more than 5 million people die worldwide each year because of air pollution — and emissions from coal-fired plants are a major risk factor here. It's one reason why health experts have been pushing policymakers to rapidly phase out of coal.

For miners, the immediate health risks include black lung disease and scarring of the lung tissue. But the pollutants emitted when coal is processed — including sulfur dioxide, particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, and mercury — have much more far-reaching effects on many more people.

In one large study involving 450,000 Americans followed between 1982 and 2004, researchers found that increased exposure to the particles in fossil fuel emissions increased the risk of death from heart disease — and particles from coal burning were five times more damaging than other similar particles.

Reducing emissions from coal-fired power plants also makes it easier to breathe. Over the past 30 years, the percentage of Americans with asthma has more than doubled, and climate change has been a significant driver of that trend. Air pollution triggers asthma attacks, contributing to lung abnormalities, particularly in the developing pulmonary systems of children.

Our health needs to be a big part of the discussion. It is not just the fate of our planet that is at risk if we scale back our commitment to fighting climate change.

[Vox]

Climate Change, Water and Trees

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 03 Apr 2017 10:53:00 +0000

The benefits of moving beyond our focus on energy.

When we talk about "energy", certainly in terms of policy, we usually mean what fuels our cars and heats our homes. Let's look at energy in a very basic sense, as in what happens when sunlight meets the ground. Say you have pavement, or land marked by degraded, exposed soil – the condition of much of the world's surface. When the sun beams down on that bare soil, solar energy is absorbed; it becomes sensible heat, or heat you can feel. Now amble over to a nice meadow, or well-managed rangeland with a thick carpet of grasses. Here solar energy touches down on plants that are transpiring. The solar heat is dispersed and becomes latent heat, embodied in water vapour, to be condensed and released as rain.

Climate is not a function of one sole metric; it is not a single story. And this is where we find opportunities.

When faced with an environmental predicament, it can be useful to inquire as to how nature has approached similar scenarios. For instance, in the case of wildfire, one can ask what processes used to keep that landscape hydrated and therefore resilient to fire. We learn that in the American west, beavers created wetlands and acted as "shock absorbers" that minimised fire risks. And when we ask what maintains our climate, the answer is water.

Were it not for the blanket of water vapour that buffers the Earth, our planet would be too cold to inhabit. The phase changes of water – from solid to liquid to gas, and back – represent an extraordinary transfer of heat. According to Australian microbiologist Walter Jehne, water-based processes in the atmosphere and the oceans, over land and across ice, govern some 95% of Earth's natural heat dynamics. It is the sheer immensity of water's role in climate that led scientists to conclude that humans could not have interfered with it. And yet, once we understand how water works – and how water intersects with factors we can influence, such as land use and plant cover – we can help to restore the processes that sustain the heat and energy balance, and therefore sustain our climate.

A deforested area in the middle of the Amazon jungle. Photograph: Raphael Alves/AFP/Getty Image

Peter Andrews, a farmer and author in Australia, made a statement that has stuck with me: "Plants manage water. And in managing water, they manage heat." Worth noting: we have de-vegetated a quarter of the planet – including destroying most of our natural forests.

Every square metre of Earth's surface receives an average of 342 watts of solar energy a day. Because of how humans have altered the environment, we now radiate back about 339 watts per square metre – a difference of less than 1%. If we managed our ecology better, how might we make up that three-watt differential? How about if we had a lot more plant cover and a lot less bare ground?

[Guardian]

Peak Precipitation increasing in a Warming World

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 03 Apr 2017 10:50:00 +0000

A new study by Dr. Guiling Wang from the University of Connecticut and her colleagues has made a surprising discovery. Their work was just published in Nature Climate Change. They report that the peak temperature (the temperature where maximum precipitation occurs) is increasing in a warming world.

The idea is shown in the sketch below. Details vary with location but, as the world warms, there is a shift from one curve to the next, from left to right. The result is a shift such that more intense precipitation occurs at higher temperatures in future, while the drop-off moves to even higher temperatures.

Increasing precipitation curves as the world warms

In my state, we have had four 1000-year floods since the year 2000! Two years ago, Minneapolis, Minnesota had such flooding that people were literally fishing in the streets as lakes and streams overflowed and fish escaped the banks.

It falls upon city planners and engineers to design infrastructure that is more able to accommodate heavy rains and manage water. This means designing river containment areas or flood plains, reinforcing buildings and houses, and increasing the capacity of storm drainage, just to name a few.

[Guardian]

Should Massachusetts go 100% renewable

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 03 Apr 2017 10:49:00 +0000

The Boston Globe recently ran two editorials with the pros and cons of going 100% renewable and then asked their readers to vote.

Here are the results. Going 100% renewable won by almost 12 to 1!

[Boston Globe]

Business Insider discovers solar's potential

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 03 Apr 2017 10:48:00 +0000

There's one simple fact that may just change your thoughts on renewable power.

In a single hour, the amount of power from the sun that strikes the Earth is more than the entire world consumes in a year.

To put that in numbers, from the US Department of Energy:

Each hour 430 quintillion Joules of energy from the sun hits the Earth.

That's 430 with 18 zeroes after it!

In comparison, the total amount of energy that all humans use in a year is about 410 quintillion Joules.

Clearly, we have a source of virtually unlimited clean energy in the form of solar power.

[Business Insider]

Energy Star on the chopping block

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 01 Apr 2017 11:24:00 +0000

Since it was established in the 1990s, the Energy Star program has saved U.S. consumers some $360 billion, mostly in electricity and water costs. According to a program report, consumers and business saved $31.5 billion in 2014 alone, while costs were about $57 million. That puts the return on investment for taxpayers at about 550 to 1.

The concept is simple: When someone goes to buy a washing machine (or drier, or blender, or light bulb), she looks at a number of factors — the price, the capacity, the size, maybe the brand name — and picks the one that is the cheapest while meeting her needs. But it's not always obvious what the ownership cost of a washing machine is. How much water does it use? How much electricity? In other words: How efficient is it? The Energy Star program (which has a whopping 85 percent brand recognition rate in the United States) offers that valuable information.

And largely because of that high recognition rate, the program also incentivizes manufacturers to develop and offer more efficient products. Energy Star sells.

But maybe not for long. President Trump reportedly aims to kill the program entirely.

[Climate Progress]

India and China with some good news

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 01 Apr 2017 11:22:00 +0000

India is planning to cut coal consumption by dialing coal plants back so they are running less than half time over the next 5 years.

"CEA has also estimated that all coal-based thermal power plants need to brace for drastic fall in capacity utilisation to as low as 48 per cent by 2022 as additional non-thermal electricity generation capacities come on stream." [India Times]

Beijing has announced a plan to replace all 67,000 fossil-fueled taxis in the city with electric cars. [Clean Technica]

Photos of the US before the EPA

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 01 Apr 2017 11:21:00 +0000

Green Car Reports has a series of photos reminding us why the EPA was created in the first place.

That is the George Washington Bridge below - if you can't tell.

1970s Los Angeles smog

[Green Car Reports]

Wind and Solar are disrupting utility business models

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 01 Apr 2017 11:15:00 +0000

The Economist lays out the problems and solutions of integrating renewables with the grid. Their assessment of the problem.

ALMOST 150 years after photovoltaic cells and wind turbines were invented, they still generate only 7% of the world's electricity. Yet something remarkable is happening. From being peripheral to the energy system just over a decade ago, they are now growing faster than any other energy source and their falling costs are making them competitive with fossil fuels. It is no longer far-fetched to think that the world is entering an era of clean, unlimited and cheap power. About time, too.

There is a $20 trillion hitch, though. To get from here to there requires huge amounts of investment over the next few decades, to replace old smog-belching power plants and to upgrade the pylons and wires that bring electricity to consumers. Normally investors like putting their money into electricity because it offers reliable returns. Yet green energy has a dirty secret. The more it is deployed, the more it lowers the price of power from any source. That makes it hard to manage the transition to a carbon-free future, during which many generating technologies, clean and dirty, need to remain profitable if the lights are to stay on. Unless the market is fixed, subsidies to the industry will only grow.

[Some see] ...this inconvenient truth as a reason to put the brakes on renewable energy.
However, the solution is not less wind and solar. It is to rethink how the world prices clean energy in order to make better use of it.

Their conclusion,

The bigger task is to redesign power markets to reflect the new need for flexible supply and demand. They should adjust prices more frequently, to reflect the fluctuations of the weather. At times of extreme scarcity, a high fixed price could kick in to prevent blackouts. Markets should reward those willing to use less electricity to balance the grid, just as they reward those who generate more of it. Bills could be structured to be higher or lower depending how strongly a customer wanted guaranteed power all the time—a bit like an insurance policy.

In short, policymakers should be clear they have a problem and that the cause is not renewable energy, but the out-of-date system of electricity pricing. Then they should fix it.

[Economist]

Devastating budget cuts for earth science satellites

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 01 Apr 2017 11:09:00 +0000

Under the draft Trump plan, NOAA's satellite program would be cut by more than a half billion dollars.

These cuts would be particularly dangerous given that the Trump team has suggested eliminating NASA's Earth observation program and shifting its work over to NOAA.

Apparently, the only kind of satellites team Trump likes are those that point away from Earth and thus can't see and report on our changing climate. Who cares if those satellites are also critical for agricultural forecasting, disaster planning, weather prediction, and predicting the path of extreme events like hurricanes, tsunamis, and tornadoes?

"Cutting NOAA's satellite budget will compromise NOAA's mission of keeping Americans safe from extreme weather and providing forecasts that allow businesses and citizens to make smart plans," former NOAA chief Jane Lubchenco told the Post. NOAA's former chief scientist Rick Spinrad said such cuts "would virtually guarantee jeopardizing the safety of the American public."

[Climate Progress]

Cities Buying $10 Billion in Electric Vehicles

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 01 Apr 2017 11:07:00 +0000

Dozens of U.S. cities are willing to buy $10 billion of electric cars and trucks to show skeptical automakers there's demand for low-emission vehicles, just as President Donald Trump seeks to review pollution standards the industry opposes.

Thirty cities including New York and Chicago jointly asked automakers for the cost and feasibility of providing 114,000 electric vehicles, including police cruisers, street sweepers and trash haulers, said Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, who is coordinating the effort.

[Bloomberg]

Large Sections of Australia’s Great Reef Are Now Dead

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 01 Apr 2017 11:06:00 +0000

Severe bleaching last year on the northern Great Barrier Reef affected even the largest and oldest corals, like this slow-growing Porites colony. CreditTerry Hughes et al./Nature

The Great Barrier Reef in Australia has long been one of the world's most magnificent natural wonders, so enormous it can be seen from space, so beautiful it can move visitors to tears.

But the reef, and the profusion of sea creatures living near it, are in profound trouble.

Huge sections of the Great Barrier Reef, stretching across hundreds of miles of its most pristine northern sector, were recently found to be dead, killed last year by overheated seawater. More southerly sections around the middle of the reef that barely escaped then are bleaching now, a potential precursor to another die-off that could rob some of the reef's most visited areas of color and life.

"We didn't expect to see this level of destruction to the Great Barrier Reef for another 30 years," said Terry P. Hughes, director of a government-funded center for coral reef studies at James Cook University in Australia and the lead author of a paper on the reef that is being published Thursday as the cover article of the journal Nature. "In the north, I saw hundreds of reefs — literally two-thirds of the reefs were dying and are now dead."

Mature stands of clonal staghorn corals on Lizard Island in the Great Barrier Reef could be seen destroyed by heat stress on Feb. 26, 2016, at left, and colonized by algae just a few weeks later on April 19, at right.CreditPhotographs by Terry Hughes et al./Nature

[NY Times]

Court holds TEPCO liable for Fukushima disaster

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 31 Mar 2017 21:03:00 +0000

In the court ruling, the judges found that science-based evidence of major risks to the nuclear plant was "foreseen" but ignored and not acted upon by Japan's government and TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company).

Writing inside Ukedo elementary school near Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, March 1, 2017.

Judges in the Maebashi District Court in Gunma prefecture ruled that TEPCO and the government were aware of the earthquake and tsunami risks to the Fukushima Daiichi plant prior to the 2011 triple reactor meltdown, but failed to take preventative measures.

The company announced a plan to restructure their business to respond to the court ruling and the industry ministry's doubling of its estimated total cost for the nuclear disaster cleanup to ¥22 trillion ($197 billion).

Is this a warning that fossil fuel companies and governments may also be held liable for ignoring science based evidence of major risks and failing to take preventative action?

It certainly is a sobering warning that when companies go bankrupt as a result of ignoring science, that ordinary citizens and taxpayers are the ones who are left paying the price.

[Asia Times]

[Japan Times]

Carbon free electricity by 2060?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 29 Mar 2017 22:43:00 +0000

Carbon emissions from electricity generation could be reduced 70 percent by 2050, and eliminated entirely by 2060, according to a new report by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).

So what would it take to eliminate carbon emissions entirely from making electricity?

The answer is both efficiency improvements, and a shift of the generating mix into renewable energy.

The study claims 90 percent of that reduction could be achieved by expanding renewable-energy use and by making improvements in a wide range of energy efficiency measures.

Renewable energy already accounts for 24 percent of global power generation, and 16 percent of "primary energy supply," according to IRENA.

But to achieve the necessary reduction in carbon emissions, it would need to reach 80 percent of power generation and 65 percent of primary energy supply by 2050, the study said.

Electric cars would need to become the "predominant" vehicle type by 2050, for example, and recharge largely on electricity from renewable sources.

Buildings would also need to convert to all-electric power, with a focus on energy efficiency.

A total of 2 billion buildings would need to be renovated or built new to achieve the necessary carbon-emissions reductions, according to the study.

Elimination of carbon emissions from electricity generation is a worthy and important goal, but environmentalists and policymakers will have to work hard to achieve the fairly ambitious goals called for by this study.

[Green Car Reports]

Madison, WI & Abita Springs, LA commit to 100% renewable

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 29 Mar 2017 22:42:00 +0000

Madison, Wisconsin committed to getting 100 percent of its energy from clean, renewable sources in a resolution passed unanimously by the City Council on Tuesday. It became the 24th city to make such a promise, according to a tally by the Sierra Club, which has a "Ready for 100" nationwide campaign.

Madison's resolution calls for the entire city to get all of its power from clean renewable sources, starting with city operations. There is no target date specified, but the resolution mandates that a plan to get the city government's operations to all-renewable must be developed by January 2018, including specific dates and benchmarks.

Surprisingly, Madison Gas & Electric endorsed the resolution.

Madison residents have voiced overwhelming support for the resolution and renewable energy in general, with crowds attending multiple hearings about the proposed resolution and testifying in its favor.

A Sierra Club press release notes that on the same day the resolution was passed by Madison, with its famously progressive politics, the town of Abita Springs, Louisiana passed a similar measure. Abita Springs voters favored Donald Trump in the presidential election.

"Politics has nothing to do with it for me," said Abita Springs Mayor Greg Lemons in a statement. "Clean energy just makes good economic sense. By establishing a 100 percent renewable energy goal, we have an opportunity to use solar power that we can control in our community, for our community."

[Midwest Energy News]

Tesla's Solar+Storage project saves money in Hawaii

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 29 Mar 2017 22:41:00 +0000

Tesla has completed its fully dispatchable solar+storage project on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, installing a 13 MW, 52 MWh project that will help boost the amount of renewables.

Under the terms of a 20-year contract, Kauaʻi Island Utility Cooperative will pay Tesla $0.139 / kWh—less than the current cost of oil, according to the utility.
The project will allow solar energy to be delivered at night, helping the utility toward its goal to deliver 100% renewable power in line with Hawaii's renewable goal of 100% by 2045.

[Utility Dive]

Huge cost overruns push Westinghouse into bankruptcy

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 29 Mar 2017 22:34:00 +0000

Westinghouse Electric Co, a unit of Japanese conglomerate Toshiba Corp, filed for bankruptcy on Wednesday, hit by billions of dollars of cost overruns at four nuclear reactors under construction in the U.S. Southeast.

A Westinghouse project in Georgia remains unfinished, its future in doubt - Reuters

The bankruptcy casts doubt on the future of the first new U.S. nuclear power plants in three decades, which were scheduled to begin producing power as soon as this week, but are now years behind schedule.

The four reactors are part of two projects known as V.C. Summer in South Carolina, which is majority owned by SCANA Corp (SCG.N), and Vogtle in Georgia, which is owned by a group of utilities led by Southern Co (SO.N).

Costs for the projects have soared due to increased safety demands by U.S. regulators, and also due to significantly higher-than-anticipated costs for labor, equipment and components.

The bankruptcy could embroil the U.S. and Japanese governments, given the scale of the collapse and the $8.3 billion in U.S. government loan guarantees that were provided to help finance the reactors.

State regulators have approved costs of around $14 billion for each project but Morgan Stanley has estimated the final bill of around $22 billion for the South Carolina project and around $19 billion for the Georgia plant.

SCANA told investors on a conference call on Wednesday that 5,000 workers would continue working on its South Carolina site for 30 days while the company weighed options.

"Our preferred option is to finish the plants. The least preferred option is abandonment," said SCANA CEO Kevin Marsh.

[Reuters]

Rooftop solar could generate 47% of Massachusetts' electricity

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 04 Mar 2017 15:22:00 +0000

According to a report released by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), rooftop solar could meet almost half of Massachusetts' electricity demand. For the country as a whole, NREL estimates a suitable rooftop potential for solar of 1,118 GW. The 1,432 TWh this amount of solar could produce, would account for 39% of the United States' electricity sales.

The study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory says the estimated potential from rooftop solar has been revised upwards by more than 80 per cent since the last study in 2008, mostly because of improvements of module efficiencies, building availability and solar modelling.

A cluster of New England states – Maine, Vermont, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Connecticut and Massachusetts – could generate more than 45 per cent of their electricity needs from rooftop solar PV, despite the below-average solar resource of these states.

The NREL says a common feature of the top six states – in terms of potential PV generation as a percentage of total sales – is the significantly below-average household consumption, suggesting the role an energy-efficient residential sector could play in achieving a high penetration of energy from rooftop PV.

NREL points out that these are not predictions, just potential output. But is also says its own estimates could be highly conservative.

Firstly, it uses an average module efficiency of 16 per cent, when most modern rooftop systems have efficiencies of around 20 per cent. If this average was used, it would lift its figures by around 25 per cent, meaning that rooftop solar had the potential to meet half the country's electricity demand (and nearly 90 per cent in California).

The study also did not take into account the enormous potential of ground-mounted solar, nor did it take into account other installations such as car parks, or integrating solar PV into building facades. Only 26 per cent of "small rooftop" spaces were considered suitable for solar PV.

[MassSolar]

Lessons from Oroville Dam

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 04 Mar 2017 15:21:00 +0000

The evacuation of nearly 200,000 people near Oroville Dam is the kind of event that makes climate change personal. Like many extreme events, the Oroville emergency is a combination of natural weather likely intensified by climate change.

Dams in the United States were built 50 years ago, on average. Since then, the Earth's surface temperature has warmed about 1.35°F, and there's now more than 5% more water vapor in the atmosphere as a result, which intensifies storms. With hotter temperatures, more precipitation falls as rain and less as snow, and California's Sierra snowpack also melts earlier in the year.

Our infrastructure was designed for yesterday's climate, not today's or tomorrow's. We know the climate is changing and we need to be prepared.

We already see fundamental changes in storm frequency and intensity, increases in the size and duration of droughts and rainfall events, disappearing snow packs, growing agricultural water demands with rising temperatures, and more.

We cannot afford the luxury of pretending climate change isn't real, and we cannot afford to ignore the risks to our water infrastructure posed by these changes. Any investment in infrastructure must take climate change into account through smart flexible design, integration of better weather-forecasting and modeling tools, and adoption of new standards for facility construction and operation.

Environmental groups warned the state about Oroville Dam in 2005, noting that in an intensely wet year like we've seen in 2017, its emergency spillway could erode, and thus should be coated with concrete. State agencies concluded that the cost of this project couldn't be justified given the low probability of such a wet season, but climate change increases the likelihood and intensity of extreme precipitation events.

[Guardian]

Big Wind Power Purchases Competitive with Natural Gas

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 06 Jan 2016 12:49:00 +0000

Xcel Energy increased its ownership of installed wind capacity from 325 MW to 675 MW at the end of 2015 by acquiring the 150 MW Border Wind Farm in North Dakota and bringing online its 200 MW Pleasant Valley Wind Farm in Minnesota.
This doubling of its wind generation moved Xcel closer to its goal of getting 35% of its power for its Upper Midwest customers by 2030 from wind and, in these cases, it came at a price that is "competitive with new natural gas generation," according to Regional President Chris Clark.

[Utility Dive]

Lexington Senator Mike Barrett wants to put a price on carbon

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 31 Oct 2015 21:27:00 +0000

"We have to step up our fight against climate change," Massachusetts state Sen. Michael Barrett told a packed committee hearing in Boston on Tuesday. Barrett's solution: put a price on carbon.

Tuesday's hearing of the Massachusetts Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy in Boston was packed. Attendees overflowed the limited seating, sat on the floor, lined the walls, and spilled into the hallway of the State House. The majority of the nearly five-hour meeting focused on the competing carbon pricing schemes, and many of the speakers favored Barrett's bill.

Barrett, the second person to testify, said a carbon price is necessary if Massachusetts is to slash its carbon emissions 25 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050 compared to levels before 1990, a mandate laid out in the state's Global Warming Solutions Act of 2008.

Barrett laid out his plan in Senate Bill S.1747, one of two carbon price options before the legislature. Massachusetts joins five other states—Connecticut, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington—with proposed legislation exploring this option for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Although the idea of a carbon price is not new, it is increasingly seen as a key climate solution in the leadup to the U.N. climate talks in Paris in December. Six major oil and gas companies, including BP, Shell and Statoil, have said they support carbon pricing. In recent weeks, Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkeland Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg voiced support for a global price on carbon. So have the heads of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, along with many global leaders in business and politics.

"The idea of putting a price on carbon is catching fire as one of the best ways we can cut emissions and deal with the worst effects of climate change," Kenneth Kimmell, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, a climate research and communications nonprofit told InsideClimate News. "I do think the Paris agreement is going to galvanize that further.

Read the rest of the Inside Climate News article here

Wind Power Cheaper than Natural Gas

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 30 Oct 2015 14:32:00 +0000

Wind energy's current 20-year power purchase agreement price of $25/MWh beats the projected average of $32/MWh price for natural gas over the same time period, according to Xcel Energy CEO Ben Fowke.
Fowke said Xcel does not expect natural gas, presently at an historic low of below $2.50 per MMBTU, to remain at that price indefinitely. The utility plans to invest in 1,600 MW of new wind capacity over the next 15 years as a hedge against natural gas price volatility, Fowke said.
On Oct. 2, Xcel set a single-day record for wind energy electricity generation on its Colorado grid by supplying an average of 54% of its customers' electricity over the course of the entire day.

Xcel set a one-day wind energy generation record early this month. On Oct. 2, more than half of Xcel's system's electricity was generated by wind power for almost every hour. The utility also set a new one-hour record for wind energy output that day with 2,352 MWh, outpacing the record reached in 2014 of 2,203 MWh.

The utility's move to increase its wind capacity 20% by the end of 2016 aligns with a goal to cut 60% of its emissions by 2030.

In setting the one-day wind energy generation record, over 50% of the Xcel system's electricity was generated by wind power every hour of the day except the last one, during which it met 49% of load.

The utility is planning to use wind to replace coal plants being retired to meet EPA pollution regulations. Xcel's plan bucks the trend being set by other U.S. utilities moving to natural gas to meet EPA regulations.

[Utility Dive]

Deadly Heat Expected

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 29 Oct 2015 14:34:00 +0000

Pilgrims in Mecca

According to a study published Monday some population centers in the Middle East "are likely to experience temperature levels that are intolerable to humans" because of humanity's contribution to climate change.

By the end of this century, areas of the Persian Gulf will experience waves of heat and humidity so severe that simply being outside for several hours could threaten human life.

As climate change causes temperatures to rise around the world, it should come as no surprise that the warm-water coasts in the Middle East could be the first to experience brutal combinations of heat and humidity. The conditions would not be constant, but spikes would become increasingly common.

A temperature that today would rank in the 95th percentile "becomes approximately a normal summer day" by the end of the century, the researchers said. Wet-bulb temperatures that even exceed the 95-degree threshold could be expected to occur once every 10 or 20 years, Dr. Eltahir said. "When they happen, they will be quite lethal," he said.

If the nations of the world reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions, the authors concluded, the predicted disasters can be prevented: "Such efforts applied at the global scale would significantly reduce the severity of the projected impacts."

Many cities on the Persian Gulf coast could be essentially uninhabitable by the end of the century for those without air-conditioning. "That is truly shocking," he wrote in an email exchange, and added that he found it ironic, "given the region's importance in providing fossil fuels."

[NY Times]

Sunscreen linked to coral reef destruction

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 22 Oct 2015 09:36:00 +0000

Coral reefs cannot seem to catch a break this year. Between a particularly strong El Niño, ocean acidification and increasing ocean temperatures, links between overfishing and reef collapses, and the declaration of a massive coral bleaching event expected to affect 95 percent of U.S. coral reefs by the end of the year, the current state of the global environment has been particularly detrimental to coral reefs.

And now, research has shown that a chemical found in almost every chemical-based sunscreen used in the United States is linked to coral destruction.

The study, published Tuesday in the Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology, was led by Craig Downs from the Haereticus Environmental Laboratory in Virginia. He told Reuters that the research was conducted in order to help explain why baby corals have not been developing in many established reefs.

Researchers conducted the study in the U.S. Virgin Islands and Hawaii — areas that attract large amounts of tourists each year to swim in reef areas. They found that the chemical oxybenzone affects coral in three different ways: it alters its DNA, makes coral susceptible to potentially fatal bleaching, and acts as an endocrine disruptor, which causes baby coral to encase itself in its own skeleton and leads to its death.

To make things worse, it does not take a large amount of this chemical to upset coral. According to the research, concentrations of oxybenzone as low as 62 parts per trillion — equivalent to a drop of water in six and a half Olympic-sized swimming pools — are deemed harmful.

[Climate Progress]

Bill McKibben Arrested because "Exxon Knew"

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 21 Oct 2015 14:37:00 +0000

Bill McKibben Arrested at an Exxon Station

The bare facts are, he tried to get arrested in a one-person protest in his home town, and he succeeded - because he wants you to read two well researched articles about Exxon's deception on climate change.

What Exxon Knew - LA Times

Exxon: The Road Not Taken

Exxon Knew Everything There Was to Know About Climate Change by the Mid-1980s—and Denied It: Bill McKibben

From The Burlington Free Press:

Climate activist and author Bill McKibben was arrested Thursday afternoon in Burlington after blocking access to a downtown gas pump.

McKibben, a Ripton resident, said he hoped his protest at the Simon's Quick Stop and Deli Mobile station on South Winooski Avenue would draw attention to recent evidence that suggests that Exxon Mobile knew about fossil fuel's role in global warming several decades ago — and shaped drilling strategies accordingly.

"I don't want this story to disappear in all this media clutter," McKibben told journalists and a dozen or so supporters. "We need to let people know what we now know about ExxonMobil."

Now the explanation. Why did he do this?

At the moment I'm sitting in front of an ExxonMobil station in Burlington Vermont waiting to be arrested and feeling, frankly, a little silly.

But I'm doing it because I want people to read and share two news stories, and I figure this small gesture might be enough to move a few people to do so. The stories come from teams of reporters at the Los Angeles Times, the Columbia Journalism School, and the Pulitzer-Prize winning Inside Climate News, and they demonstrate—exhaustively, undeniably, and appallingly—that ExxonMobil, the biggest and most powerful company on earth, knew all about climate change in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. The company had sophisticated computer models demonstrating exactly how fast the globe would warm, and its highest levels of management were clearly aware that this would be a severe problem for the planet. They even used this knowledge to bid on oil leases in the rapidly melting Arctic.

But they didn't tell anyone. Instead, they lied—they helped fund institutes devoted to climate denial, and bankrolled politicians who fought against climate action. Their CEO—who had overseen much of the research—told Chinese leaders in 1997 that the globe was cooling and that they should go full-steam ahead with fossil fuel.

This is not just one more set of sad stories about our climate. In the 28 years I've been following the story of global warming, this is the single most outrageous set of new revelations that journalists have uncovered. Given its unique credibility—again, it was the biggest corporation on earth—ExxonMobil could have changed history for the better. Had it sounded the alarm—had it merely said 'our internal research shows the world's scientists are right'—it would have saved a quarter century of wheel-spinning. We might actually have done something as a world before the Arctic melted, before the coral reefs were bleached, before the cycles of drought and flood set fully in.

Instead, their silence and their lies—driven by nothing more than the desire to keep making money—helped disrupt the earth's most critical systems. When people ask, how could our species have wrecked our planet, the memos and internal documents uncovered by these reporters offer a huge part of the answer. We wrecked the planet, in no small part, because we were lied to by the most powerful institutions on that planet.

And so here I sit. I don't have any great hope this action of mine will change anything practical. I fear that no one is likely to prosecute Exxon—they're too big and too powerful. And for that matter it wouldn't undo the damage. I know that we can't rally enough Americans to boycott Exxon to make more than a token dent in their endless profits, and that even if we did those profits would flow to some other oil giant whose deeds are yet to be uncovered. Indeed, I know that most of the gas stations that say Exxon or Mobil on the sign aren't even owned by the company. I know that none of this is the fault of the local franchisees—I gave the folks who run this station a hundred bucks before I sat down in hopes that my small protest won't cost them too much in income.

I also know that there are clever and cynical people who will wave off these stories by saying, 'of course, we knew that all along. That's just how the world works.' Or they will say, 'it's not Exxon's fault; we all use fossil fuels.' These clever people are the cousins of the cynics who worked at ExxonMobil; their knowingness is a cover for inaction. Exxon didn't act when its actions could have changed the course of history; that's not true of the rest of us.

My only real hope is that this gesture of mine will lead a few more people to read these pieces of reporting before they disappear into what my wife correctly and despairingly called the overwhelming clutter of our digital culture. I don't want you to sign a petition, add your name to a mailing list, send money to a kickstarter. Just to read. I guess I figure that some people will say: if it's important enough to someone to get arrested, I can spare ten minutes to read the story.

Perhaps this understanding will lead more people to join in the movement for fossil fuel divestment, or to oppose giant new oil projects, or to take away government subsidies from dirty energy. That would be good—I've spent much of my life on those battles, and will keep at them with my colleagues at 350.org and throughout the climate justice movement. It would help in every battle that matters if the Exxons of the world had less credibility and less power.

But even if these stories simply lead to more understanding without any practical consequence, that seems worthwhile. People are dying already around the world from the effects of climate change, people who never burned a gallon of oil in their lives. Everyone who comes after us will inhabit a planet much less vibrant than the one we were born into. My daughter graduates from college this spring, and she inherits this world that Exxon did so much to break. They—and all of us–deserve at least to know the truth.

Here are the stories I've been referring to:

http://graphics.latimes.com/exxon-arctic/

http://insideclimatenews.org/content/Exxon-The-Road-Not-Taken

Sincerely,

Bill McKibben

P.S.—if others elsewhere want to repeat this small gesture, please do it peacefully, and respectfully.