Energy

While maybe it’s just defensive or because I’ve clicked on the ads of a few fossil fuel companies that oppose any kind of climate action that would negatively impact their business, there seems to be a real uptick on advertising against a climate related tax on fossil fuels

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While maybe it’s just defensive or because I’ve clicked on the ads of a few fossil fuel companies that oppose any kind of climate action that would negatively impact their business, there seems to be a real uptick on advertising against a climate related tax on fossil fuels. Maybe it’s a good time too, as the public’s attention is focused on the news of predicted high heating bills this winter and gas prices that keep hiking at the pump.

I doubt legislators are in any kind of rush to enact taxes on gasoline, especially with prices going up so much lately. It seems like political suicide, although maybe less so in the New York City metropolitan area where so few people fuel their own cars or pay their own heating bills. But still, I can’t see much of a push to hike taxes on energy these days. Maybe it’s just about firing a warning shot, to keep the possibility of fossil fuel taxes off the agenda.

On the whole, I like the idea of enacting fossil fuel taxes as long as other taxes are reduced, so the proposal is revenue neutral. While it wouldn’t set well with progressives, I think it would be good for the economy to cut capital gains taxes to make up for revenue on fossil fuel taxes — and encourage people to invest their money rather then spend it on fossil fuels.

How would you react if you turned on the news on Tuesday morning to only find out your house and entire neighborhood had been condemned under the state’s quick take eminent domain law, for a large renewable energy project by a private developer?

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How would you react if you turned on the news on Tuesday morning to only find out your house and entire neighborhood had been condemned under the state’s quick take eminent domain law, for a large renewable energy project by a private developer?

The state would compensate you for fair market value and moving expenses but you would have to moved out of your home within 30 days. By filing a quick take deed with the county clerk, the state had already taken title to your property, your only choice is to take the check the government is sending you or sue in the court of claims for additional compensation based on what you believe the fair market value is to be.

In theory, homeowners and other property owners could band together and sue the state under Article 78 arguing that the project was arbitrary and capricious under the law but you could not challenge the individual eminent domain as quick take can not challenged in court. But even there, everything was stacked up against you as the state had decided building renewable energy projects was their priority, and the state with its millions in resources had no interest in defending homeowners and farms against big solar.

Solar and wind energy in many ways is the next interstate highway system. The climate crisis is already unlocking the next generation of Robert Moses and the master builders. The solar or wind farm must be built, the hell with the environment or community. A crisis affords no time to consider such impacts, the outcome has been predetermined by government officials. The bulldozers must come, the cement laid, steel I beams set and the thousand of acres of silicon and glass panels set into place.

I have a friend who visited a CalTrans office during the 1960s, and said the experience was like visiting a war room filled with enormous maps that filled the walls detailing the planned superhighways. The walls were certainly backed by stacks of files that contained detail survey data and rooms of super computers and reels of magnetic tape that would be used to crank out letters and prefilled out checks to owners of condemned property for compensation without much human intervention. Cold hard, statistics and FHWA regulations basically predetermined the route after all.

With massive government subsidies and the climate crisis the renewable energy projects must go ahead without question or significant evaluation of environmental impacts. The future has been predetermined by the planners, there is no turning back, we are told. Historic buildings must be hauled off to the landfills, forests stripped of their timber, farm fields stripped of their soils and concreted, open space industrialized. There are good union jobs, tax revenue, campaign contributions and patronage jobs after all to fill.

At least I’m glad to hear that local governments are asking solar developers about decommissioning plans, requiring some kind of bonding and calculations on landfill space to dispose of the panels when their time is done, not imagine they will be recycled into pixie dust. But no time to focus on that, the tax revenue and campaign contributions are more important than community character in a fucking climate crisis.

While I’m sure it won’t be popular, I sure hope people do rise up and ask before it’s to late:

Why and what cost?

I really don’t know what to think about the push for electrification of everything

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I really don’t know what to think about the push for electrification of everything. 🔌

In many ways, electricity is a very elegant way of delivering and managing energy. For one, you can generate electricity a long distance away, ship it down an electrical wire at high voltage and relatively low amperages, and have relatively low losses. Electricity is easily controlled by electronics that drive IGBT transistors to deliver a perfect sine wave for powering virtually anything you would want with relatively low losses. Sounds great.

The question becomes where does all this electricity come from? God doesn’t send electrons bouncing down the wires, instead most power comes from fossil fuels, with a relatively smaller portion coming from nuclear and hydroelectric. Renewables barely make a dent. It’s hard to generate a lot of electricity from renewables when urban demand is so high and renewable energy is not dense or easy to harvest on demand.

Most of the big solar facilities being built these days are for show, they aren’t that big of contributions to the grid. Maybe they’ll scale up – wind is now a noticeable part of the electricity grid at times in New York State but it’s still a pretty minor player.

Despite optimistic predictions, I just don’t see how in a few years the majority of our electricity will come from renewables especially with demand surging as people replace fossil fuel heating with electric heat pumps and gasoline cars with electric vehicles. Existing plants along with additional renewables and natural gas capacity might allow these technologies to be integrated relatively seamlessly into the grid but it’s not going to decarbonize electricity at the same time.

That said, going electric has big advantages. For one it moves pollution out of our homes and our sense urban neighborhoods. Most large power plants are located in remote, rural areas where there high stacks carry pollution away. It’s also vastly more flexible and efficient, at least to motors compared to internal combustion engines. But also it is no guarantee that electrons will be generated from renewable sources.

Why More Climate Change Means More Oil Spills

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Why More Climate Change Means More Oil Spills

More than 2,000 reports of waterway pollution, including oil and chemical spills, and a segment of broken pipeline have been found in the Gulf of Mexico in the wake of Hurricane Ida. Experts say this is a sign of the growing untenability of the miles of offshore oil and gas infrastructure that the US operates.

In the two weeks since Ida ravaged Louisiana, leaving more than one million residents without power, divers have located large volumes of oil leaked underwater from infrastructure destroyed in the Category 4 hurricane’s wake. Nearly 90 percent of the region’s oil and gas production shuttered following the storm, and, as of Tuesday, more than 100 production platforms were decommissioned, in what some predict might be the worst-ever recorded damage to the region’s fossil fuel sector by a natural disaster

The Record-Breaking Failures of Nuclear Power – CounterPunch.org

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The Record-Breaking Failures of Nuclear Power – CounterPunch.org

The Tennessee Valley Authority could likely rightfully claim a place in the Guinness Book of World Records, but it’s not an achievement for which the federally-owned electric utility corporation would welcome notoriety.

After taking a whopping 42 years to build and finally bring on line its Watts Bar Unit 2 nuclear power reactor in Tennessee, TVA just broke its own record for longest nuclear plant construction time. However, this time, the company failed to deliver a completed nuclear plant.

Watts Bar 2 achieved criticality in May 2016, then promptly came off line due to a transformer fire three months later. It finally achieved full operational status on October 19, 2016, making it the first United States reactor to enter commercial operation since 1996.