Energy

Community Solar

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Community solar – its the new trendy thing – and I don’t like it ☀

There are some that say these massive industrial solar facilities are necessary to battle climate change but I’m skeptical not about climate change but their impact on reducing climate emissions. Sure, they make power plants that burn coal and gas work somewhat less hard to produce electricity, therefore burning less fuel and producing less carbon but the plants are still running.

Community solar is in many ways similar to turning off the air conditioning or headlights on your car to save fuel. The gas engine is still running, it’s still burning fuel at idle. Community solar shutdowns no actual fossil power plants, they’re still running but at a slightly lower load. Despite the marketing, community solar is not carbon free electricity.

Community solar is in many ways a method for people to sell off their guilt and pay their indulgences. It outsources the environmental impact of energy production to rural areas with land intensive, industrial solar facilities. It also makes people believe they are getting clean energy when they are not.

Community solar doesn’t even lead to new solar facilities being built – they’re being built by renewable energy mandates that require large utilities to get an increasing percentage of their power from solar. Your paying money earmarked for solar but electrons are not segregated in the grid.

I do support building solar on the roofs of homes, commercial and industrial buildings. Solar there can legitimately be eliminating load on the grid, and reducing waste throughout. While solar on roofs doesn’t eliminate the spinning reserve requirements at least its paired closely with the users load and saves consumers money. Brownfield generation on toxic waste sites and landfills is worthwhile considering but it’s really just too inconsequential to make a difference.

And to be sure I’m not against solar. I use solar energy on my truck to power my campsite and when I own my own land I will have solar for my off grid home. But I’m not going to be covering hundreds of acres with solar panels – just a few kilowatts of panels to create deminis electric power. That’s a little different than powering a city with off site solar.

Action on climate change is important but the real path forward is higher prices and taxes on fossil energy, not government subsidized community solar facilities that make electricity cheap. Fossil fuel energy on the grid can be and should be expensive to encourage people to put solar panels on their home and business and buy fossil energy from the grid as a last resort. Everybody needs to learn electricity is and should be expensive so people use less, especially when they are not able to generate their own power from solar.

With an appropriate price on fossil electricity, even renters and business owners will insist on solar being on their business to save money – and there will be an aggressive effort to conserve expensive fossil energy.

It’s not trendy and nice to talk about higher energy prices but its what’s necessary to save our planet.

When Coal First Arrived, Americans Said ‘No Thanks’ | Innovation| Smithsonian Magazine

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When Coal First Arrived, Americans Said ‘No Thanks’ | Innovation| Smithsonian Magazine

Until the early 1800s, Americans burned very little coal. The country was thickly forested, and wood was cheap. Most houses had one or more wood fireplaces. The country didn’t have many factories that required serious energy, and coal was a niche fuel used, for example, by blacksmiths who needed high heat for their work. Report an ad

But as cities grew rapidly and demanded ever more fuel, choppers quickly deforested surrounding areas. Firewood became scarce and expensive. By 1744, Benjamin Franklin was bemoaning the plight of his fellow Philadelphians: “Wood, our common Fewel, which within these 100 Years might be had at every Man’s Door, must now be fetch’d near 100 Miles to some towns, and makes a very considerable Article in the Expence of Families,” he wrote. Johann David Schoepf, a German physician and botanist who traveled through America during and after the Revolutionary War, fretted that all this wood-burning would not “leave for [American] grandchildren a bit of wood over which to hang the tea-kettle.

NPR

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U.S. House passes a major wildlife conservation spending bill : NPR

A bill to conserve endangered species — from the red-cockaded woodpecker to the snuffbox mussel — was passed by the U.S. House in a 231-to-190 vote on Tuesday.

The Recovering America's Wildlife Act would create an annual fund of more than $1.3 billion, given to states, territories, and tribal nations for wildlife conservation on the ground. While threatened species have been defined and protected under the Endangered Species Act since 1973, that law does not provide robust funding to proactively maintain their numbers.

The effort comes as scientists and international organizations sound the alarm about accelerating species decline.

Gas prices – POLITICO

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The White House has one problem that rules them all: Gas prices – POLITICO

For the past several months, a White House-led team of economic specialists has marked each day in the same way: With a painstaking, state-by-state examination of gasoline prices and the intricate market forces pushing them relentlessly upward.

Senior officials and others close to President Joe Biden view those prices as the cost that most directly affects voters’ everyday lives, and therefore their perception of the economy as well. As such, Biden and his top advisers fixate on them with an intensity that some aides describe as obsessive. White House chief of staff Ron Klain has grown particularly absorbed by the issue, checking the average price of a gallon of gas every morning. He’s lamented that it’s the one item everyone knows the cost of because gas station billboards are so ubiquitous throughout the country.