The country has relied so heavily on Russian gas pipelines that it didn’t build a single LNG terminal, making it impossible to receive gas via carrier vessels from the U.S. and other overseas suppliers. //

The current energy crisis is of Germany’s own making. German Chancellor Angela Merkel ignored U.S. President Donald Trump’s warning in this regard.

The U.S. and German media regularly mocked the former president for his prescient warning. Even members of Chancellor Merkel’s government ridiculed him for these earnest warnings.

At the UN general assembly in September 2018, when President Trump cautioned Germany against becoming ‘totally dependent’ on Russian energy, the German delegation publicly laughed him off. “German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas could be seen smirking alongside his colleagues,” The Washington Post gleefully reported.

As Trump’s predictions come true, the German political elites and the media aren’t laughing anymore. And with all German eggs in Putin’s basket, Berlin fears a “gas crisis” that could cripple the nation’s industry and disrupt everyday life.

The European Union voted on Wednesday to keep some specific uses of natural gas and nuclear energy in its taxonomy of sustainable sources of energy.

Europe’s taxonomy is its classification system for defining “environmentally sustainable economic activities” for investors, policymakers and companies. This official opinion of the EU matters because it affects funding for projects as the region charts its path to address climate change. In theory, the taxonomy “aims to boost green investments and prevent ‘greenwashing,’” according to the EU’s parliament.

The vote on natural gas and nuclear energy follows one that was passed in February, which amounted to a referendum on what had been a particularly controversial piece of the ruling. Natural gas emits 58.5% as much carbon dioxide as coal, according to the U.S. Energy Information Association. Nuclear power does not generate any emissions, though it draws criticism surrounding the problem of storing radioactive waste. //

The U.K., Poland, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands have all announced plans to build new reactors, adding to Europe’s decades-old reactor fleet. France, which already generates 70% of its electricity from nuclear power plants, is beginning to train thousands of workers in the rigorous requirements of nuclear engineering and construction as part of a plan to build up to 14 new full-size reactors and other smaller ones. //

The International Energy Agency says it expects global nuclear power capacity will have to double by 2050 for the world to reach so-called net zero, in which greenhouse gas emissions are so low that they can be completely offset by forests and other natural means of absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Switching to renewables will only happen if gas prices remain expensive.

Once there were 17 reactors in Germany. Now there are only three remaining, all of which are scheduled to go offline by the end of the year.

The move to “clean energy”—without nuclear—has accomplished three things:

1. It has prompted Germany, and the rest of the EU, to begin relying more heavily on Russian natural gas as it “transitioned.” Putin, who has begun demanding EU nations pay for their energy in roubles, is now able to undercut the European economy at will.

2. It has created the highest global electricity prices per household in the world. In 2019, German households were paying 34 cents per kilowatt-hour compared to 13 cents in the United States. The price of energy has doubled since 2000, when Germany first mandated decarbonization, an effort that forced energy companies to purchase long-term inefficient renewables at high, fabricated prices.

3. It has meant the burning of coal. Even before Russia began cutting off supply, Germany was more reliant on coal than the United States. This week, Germany’s Economy Minister Robert Habeck, who earlier this year rejected a European Union label of nuclear energy as “green,” announced that in an effort to avoid future gas shortages—because cars can’t run on wind—the government would incentivize the use of more coal-fired power plants.

The “transition” to green that Germany began 30 years ago has not worked. In 2000, Germany obtained 84 percent of its energy from fossil fuels. By 2019, it was 78 percent. As Vaclav Smil pointed out a couple of years ago, at this rate, Germany would still be deriving 70 percent of its energy from fossil fuels by the year 2050. With a move back to coal in 2022, it will surely be even later, if ever.

In other words, renewable energy generation is just another racket subsidized by the federal government. It’s not that there isn’t enough energy to generate electrical power. There’s plenty of oil, plenty of coal and natural gas.

But who can compete with subsidized energy like solar and wind? //

Moreover, intermittent sources like wind are allowed to bid into MISO’s capacity auction. But wind is unreliable and can’t be dispatched—you never know when it will produce, and you can’t make it produce when you want it to. So, wind bids in at an average expected level of generation. A simple visual (left) reveals what a fatal flaw this is.

As Orr, the energy analyst, points out, this model assumes that wind will blow at 15 percent capacity. But there is no guarantee that it will do so.

In the end, it comes down to a simple, mathematical equation: will our company make a profit from generating electricity or not?

It should be noted that this is a feature, not a bug of renewable energy. Making it too expensive to use fossil fuels to generate electricity is part of the charm renewable energy holds for green fanatics.

And they want you to feel pain, they want you to suffer. They figure you aren’t going to be mad at heroic green warriors fighting to save the planet. They think you’ll become enraged at the dirty, greedy, energy capitalists the heroic green warriors are trying to destroy — along with a couple of million jobs and a reliable supply of energy.

They just don’t mention those last two goals or say them out loud.

The Left’s animus towards energy independence and corresponding human flourishing must be challenged. //

A new book from philosopher Alex Epstein, however, argues continued use of fossil fuels and its byproducts will positively impact our future.

Epstein’s new book, Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas--Not Less, masterfully makes the case for continued usage of coal, oil, and natural gas against so-called “renewables.”

The author articulates to readers the importance of refuting hostile viewpoints concerning fossil fuels. //

Epstein notes fossil fuel benefits far outweigh the negative side-effects attributed to them. Oft-dismissed benefits, he writes, include “affordable food, clothing, shelter, and medical care.” //

Nuclear energy, in Alex’s view, especially raw materials for it, are “far more abundant in nature than even fossil fuels” because it has massive scalability potential. And it boasts a reliable base load and isn’t intermittent like solar or wind.

Talk about an inconvenient truth. //

In his book, Epstein challenges readers to advance the “human flourishing framework” and associate it—not the “anti-impact framework” espoused by “designated experts”— with cleaner environmental standards and overall climate safety.

An unimpacted environment, he says, leads to more disasters —like high-intensity fires raging across the American West. And vice versa.

This framework parallels the debate surrounding conservation stewardship versus preservationist environmentalism. Preservationists intentionally conflate preservation (no use of natural resources) with conservation (wise use of natural resources).The former admonishes human input and calls for nature to take its course compared to the latter, which welcomes positive human impact (including multiple-use management of public lands) on the landscape.

On this token, environmental policies shouldn’t prefer nature over people but safeguard the interests of both. After all, this is the essence of America’s true conservationist ethos.

The nuclear power industry has been pushing the fantasy of yet another “renaissance” of nuclear power, based on the absurd idea that atomic reactors — which operate at 571 degrees Fahrenheit, produce substantial greenhouse gas emissions and, periodically, explosions — can somehow cool the planet. //

As a green power advocate since 1973, I’ve visited dozens of reactor sites throughout the U.S. and Japan. The industry’s backers portray them as high-tech black boxes that are uniformly safe, efficient and reliable, ready to hum for decades without melt-downs, blow-ups or the constant emissions of heat, radiation, chemical pollution and eco-devastation that plague us all.

In reality, the global reactor fleet is riddled with widely varied and increasingly dangerous defects. These range from inherent design flaws to original construction errors, faulty components, fake replacement parts, stress-damaged (“embrittled”) pressure vessels, cracked piping, inoperable safety systems, crumbling concrete, lethal vulnerabilities to floods, storms and earthquakes, corporate greed and unmanageable radioactive emissions and wastes — to name a few.

Heat, radiation and steam have pounded every reactor’s internal components. They are cracked, warped, morphed and transmuted into rickety fossils virtually certain to shatter in the next meltdown. //

Today, the utility’s two uninsured Diablo Canyon reactors threaten more than ten million people living downwind with potential catastrophes made possible by any of a dozen nearby earthquake faults (including the San Andreas). [All nuclear power plants are insured by the federal government] //

Desperate atomic cultists including Bill Gates are now touting small modular reactors. But they’re unproven, can’t deploy for years to come, can’t be guarded against terrorists and can’t beat renewables in safety, speed to build, climate impacts, price or job creation.

Our energy future should consist of modern solar, wind, battery and LED/efficiency technologies, not nuclear reactors. Let’s work to guarantee that none of them explode before we get there. //

Uneducated article.
The entire preface of the article is predicated around fear, uncertainty, and doubt; evidently motivated by emotions instead of factual information.

Not a single compelling argument against nuclear has been made here - move along.

JOËL LANGLOIS 23 HOURS AGO //

Saying No to Nuclear Power is what brought us the Climate Crisis
It is increasingly apparent that solar, wind, batteries & efficiency cannot provide a complete solution to decarbonise the grid. Anti-nuclear campaigners have promised this for the past 50 years but it is an unattainable goal. Such dogma has simply prolonged the use of fossil fuel, causing millions of avoidable deaths. We could, and should, have decarbonised the grid with nuclear power in the 20th century.

Even if batteries could someday work on the required scale, for the lengthy durations needed, they have a far, far higher environmental footprint than nuclear power. The recent UN report on Life Cycle Assessment of Electricity Generation Options shows (p35 ) that electricity from batteries has a carbon footprint of 175 g CO2/kWh. Whereas nuclear's footprint is only 5g. (p74). The same document shows solar emits 11-37g, and wind 12-14g. Batteries are simply not sustainable as a large-scale alternative to nuclear baseload.

The evidence shows nuclear energy has significantly lower environmental impacts than wind and solar. Lower carbon emissions, lower freshwater pollution (eutrophication), lower carcinogenic effects, lower land use, and lower consumption of metals & minerals.

When it comes to clean energy production nuclear power should really be the first choice for any environmentalist.

https://unece.org/sites/default/files/2021-10/LCA-2.pdf

COLIN GLASGOW 1 DAY AGO

The truth is this: every source of energy has costs and benefits that have to be carefully weighed. Wind and solar are no different. Most people are familiar with the benefits of wind and solar: reduced air pollution, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and reduced reliance on fossil fuels. But not as many recognize the costs of wind and solar or understand how those costs hurt both the environment and people—especially people with lower incomes. //

Solar advocates often gloss over the solar-panel manufacturing process. They just say, “We turn sand, glass, and metal into solar panels.” This oversimplification masks the real environmental costs of the manufacturing process.

Solar panels are manufactured using minerals, toxic chemicals, and fossil fuels. In fact, solar panels require 10 times the minerals to deliver the same quantity of energy as a natural gas plant.[1]Quartz, copper, silver, zinc, aluminum, and other rare earth minerals are mined with heavy diesel-powered machinery. In fact, 38% of the world’s industrial energy and 11% of total energy currently go into mining operations.[2]

Once the materials are mined, the quartz and other materials get melted down in electric-arc furnaces at temperatures over 3,450°F (1,900°C) to make silicon—the key ingredient in solar cells. The furnaces take an enormous amount of energy to operate, and that energy typically comes from fossil fuels.[3] Nearly 80% of solar cells are manufactured in China, for instance, where weak environmental regulations prevail and lower production costs are fueled by coal. //

First, many buildings are not suitable for rooftop solar panels. Rooftop installations are typically exposed to less direct sunlight due to local weather patterns, shade from surrounding trees, the orientation of a building (which are often not angled toward the sun), or the pitch of the roof.

Second, the average cost to buy and install rooftop solar panels on a home as of July 2021 is $20,474.[7] This makes rooftop installations cost-prohibitive—especially for lower-income families.

Finally, even if we installed solar panels on all suitable buildings in the U.S. we could generate only 39% of the electricity the country needs according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.[8]

Solar panels also have a shorter lifespan[9] than other power sources (about half as long as natural gas[10] and nuclear plants[11]), and they’re difficult and expensive to recycle because they’re made with toxic chemicals. When solar panels reach the end of their usable life, their fate will most likely be the same as most of our toxic electronic waste: They will be dumped in poorer nations. It is estimated that global solar panel waste will reach around 78 million metric tons by 2050[12]–the equivalent of throwing away nearly 60 million Honda Civic cars.[13] //

Adding more renewable energy to the grid is not only expensive; it’s dangerous! The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), a nonprofit organization that monitors the reliability, resilience, and security of the grid, says that the number-one risk to the electrical grid in America is adding more unreliable renewables.[16]

The reliability of a power source is measured by capacity factor. The capacity factor of a power plant tracks the time it’s producing maximum power throughout the year. When we compare the capacity factors of power plants, we see that solar is the least reliable energy source: natural gas is twice as reliable as solar, and nuclear energy is three times more reliable. //

A study conducted across 26 countries over two decades by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) concluded for every 1 megawatt of solar or wind power installed there need to be 1.12 megawatts of fossil fuels (usually natural gas) as backup capacity because solar and wind are unreliable.[21] Moreover, using backup diesel generators and ramping power plants up and down to meet energy shortfalls are two of the worst ways to use fossil fuels; they’re inefficient and cause unnecessary pollution.

A final point: solar and wind have low power densities. According to a facts guide on nuclear energy from the U.S. Department of Energy, a typical 1,000-megawatt nuclear facility in the United States needs a little more than 1 square mile to operate. Solar farms, by contrast, need 75 times more land and wind farms need 360 times more land, to produce the same amount of electricity.[22]

Even if we could overcome all the practical constraints on storing, transmitting, and distributing solar power, supplying a country the size of the U.S. would require over 22,000 square miles of solar panels[23]—approximately the size of New Jersey, Maryland, and Massachusetts combined.[24] And the unreliability of solar power means that even with that many solar panels, we would continue to need most of our existing power plants. //

Some people theorize that we will eventually be able to store surplus solar energy in batteries, but the reality is batteries cost about 200 times more than the cost of natural gas to solve energy storage at scale.[34] In addition, batteries don’t have enough storage capacity to meet our energy needs. Currently, America has 1 gigawatt of large-scale battery storage that can deliver power for up to four hours without a recharge. A gigawatt is enough energy to power 750,000 homes, which is a small fraction of the amount of energy storage we would need for a grid powered mostly by renewables. It is, for instance, less than 1% of the 120 gigawatts of energy storage that would be needed for a grid powered 80% by renewables.[35]

Manufacturing batteries also takes a serious toll on the environment, as they require lots of mining, hydrocarbons, and electricity. According to analysis completed by the Manhattan Institute, it requires the energy equivalent of about 100 barrels of oil to make batteries that can store a single barrel of oil-equivalent energy. And between 50 to 100 pounds of various materials are mined, moved, and processed for one pound of battery produced. Enormous quantities of lithium, copper, nickel, graphite, rare earth elements, and cobalt would need to be mined in China, Russia, Congo, Chile, and Argentina where weak environmental regulations and poor labor conditions prevail.[36] //

Here are five steps we can begin to take towards making things better for both people and the planet:

• End subsidies and incentives for solar and wind power;
• Invest in research and development to advance new energy technologies;
• Build new efficient natural gas power plants (and hydro and geothermal where possible);
• Reform regulations and build nuclear power plants;
• Retire the worst coal power plants (5% of power plants create 73% of carbon emissions from electricity generation)[38].

Every day we spend chasing fantasies causes unnecessary harm and suffering. Let’s pursue energy solutions that benefit people and also save the environment.

The last fixed-price government contracts offered for offshore wind energy in Britain—hardly the cheapest of renewables—were under 5p per kilowatt hour (kWh). That’s less than a quarter of the typical domestic tariff (what most people pay for electricity at home) that consumers are set to face in 2022. Households are paying for their electricity several times what it now costs to generate and transmit it from the cleanest energy sources at scale.

The design of electricity systems has failed to catch up with the revolution in renewable energy. Competitive electricity markets, established in many countries to try to minimize costs, are actually suffering the greatest price rises. This is not because governments elsewhere use taxes to subsidize electricity (though some do), but because in wholesale electricity markets, the most expensive generator sets the price.

Since renewables and nuclear will always run when they can, it is fossil fuels—and at present, unequivocally gas, plus the cost of taxes on CO₂ pollution—that set the price almost all the time, because some gas plants are needed most of the time, and they won’t operate unless the electricity price is high enough to cover their operating cost. It’s a bit like having to pay the peak-period price for every train journey you take.

Intended to make carbon taxes more popular, the scheme doesn't make an impression.

In some cases, producing one tonne of aluminum can result in 14 to 16 metric tons of CO2. //

In 2020, the World Bank released an oft-cited analysis called "Minerals for Climate Action: The Mineral Intensity of the Clean Energy Transition.” In this report, the authors identified aluminum as one of the minerals that would need to have its production scale by a large amount for the world to meet its climate goals. “PV was a large contributor,” Lennon said. “[This] made me think about the problem a bit more.”

However, Lennon said that the World Bank report assumed an early International Energy Agency clean energy roadmap, which predicted that only 4 TW of photovoltaics would need to be installed by 2050. This is a small sum compared to what many updated roadmaps are now predicting.

In Lennon’s paper, she and her team used the target of 60 TW, set by the most recent International Technology Roadmap for Photovoltaics (ITRPV). This would mean that the world would need to produce 4.5 TW of additional capacity each year until 2050 to reach net-zero emissions and limit global warming to under 2°C. For context, by the end of 2020, just over 700 GW were installed. //

From this data analysis, the team was able to predict the amount of aluminum the world would need by 2050.

The total came to 486 million metric tons to be used for frames, mountings, and inverter casings. To put this number into context, the world bank had calculated around 100 million metric tons. “Our estimate is a lot larger than the World Bank’s estimates,” Lennon said. “The amount of aluminum we’re going to have to produce is going to have to increase an awful lot from what we have now.”

The problem is not that there’s not enough aluminum in the world—as it is both quite common and fairly easy to extract. Rather, the required extraction and production could lead to a lot of greenhouse gas emissions. Producing one tonne of aluminum from bauxite—a common source of the element—results in between 14 and 16 metric tons of CO2 or equivalent (the paper assumes the process is done in China), Lennon said. “That’s really high,” she said, adding that the smelting process can be quite energy-intensive. “If your electricity is sourced by coal-fired power or fossil fuels in general, the emissions intensity [can be] huge.”

Shortages typically lead to higher prices, and this is exactly what happened here as well. As a result, the cost of solar panels, wind turbines, and EV batteries started climbing—a development that virtually no renewable energy forecaster had anticipated.

Bloomberg reported this month that solar panel prices had surged by more than 50 percent in the past 12 months alone. The price of wind turbines is up 13 percent and battery prices are rising for the first time ever, the report noted. //

That lending problem for the mining industry as well as oversupply in some segments of the metals market led to lower investments in new mines in recent years. That added to an already existing problem of falling ore grades: now, a miner needs to dig out a lot more ore to find the same amount of copper, for instance, than they had to 20 years ago.

This means that the extraction of a ton of copper has become costlier even without the rising demand. With the rising demand projections, the outlook for copper and other critical metals is definitely bullish. But a bullish outlook for copper means higher prices for windmills and solar farms, and for EVs as well.

Will green energy goals suffer as aging nuclear infrastructure is phased out? //

The French government is hoping a new kind of reactor could provide a boost for its nuclear efforts. French president Emmanuel Macron has announced a €30 billion ($35 billion) investment plan that includes funding for small modular reactors—lower-capacity plants would theoretically be faster and cheaper to build and could be placed in areas that are unsuitable for large plants. The UK government has also put £210 million ($286 million) behind the development of small modular reactors, but so far the only such reactors to have been connected to a grid anywhere in the world are two that make up a floating power plant docked in Pevek harbor, in the remote northeast of Russia.

Dries thinks the share of nuclear power in Europe's energy mix will continue to decline, even if plans for proposed plants in the Czech Republic and Poland go ahead. “I think that the declining trend is stronger than the upward trend in Europe,” he says. The question is whether countries replace their aging plants with more renewables or lean on fossil fuels to plug the gap. Not every nation will take the same approach. As Akshat Rathi and Will Mathis note on Bloomberg, the same social and political forces that led to Germany turning its back on nuclear helped it become a powerhouse for renewable energy. The path to zero emissions, it turns out, does not necessarily run in a straight line.

The EU Taxonomy for sustainable activities (EU Taxonomy) became law in July 2020, but the law left several decisions to be finalized in “delegated acts.” These decisions required additional technical evaluation. The treatment of nuclear energy was one of those technical issues. On December 31, 2021, a draft delegated act was published that recognized that nuclear energy could make a substantial contribution to the reduction of CO2 emissions.

In other words, nuclear energy is considered a sustainable, “green” investment. There are some conditions that are still being debated. //

As a result of intensive politicking and compromise, the delegated act also includes provisions for the inclusion of natural gas in the EU Taxonomy. Both nuclear energy and natural gas are recognized as useful tools, but both technologies must meet specific conditions and restrictions to be considered “sustainable.”

Including natural gas sounds like a cop-out to many climate activists, but it is part of a political compromise seen as necessary to avoid German rejection of the delegated act. Replacing coal with natural gas might be a reasonable step forward for the climate, but it risks deepening European energy dependence on Russia. That’s not one of the considerations influencing the EU Taxonomy.

Many articles on this subject give the impression that there is a balance between the countries that oppose nuclear and those who want it to be recognized for its obvious attributes. Those articles usually list Germany as leading a group of opponents and France leading a group of supporters. Most of those articles name two or three countries in each camp.

There are five EU members that strong oppose nuclear’s inclusion (Germany, Austria, Denmark, Luxembourg and Spain) while there are at least 10 who have formally expressed their support to the European Commission in a letter sent in mid December 2021 (France, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Romania). After that letter was sent, the Netherlands announced that their CO2 reduction plans would include a major reliance on nuclear power.

“One of the implications of being such a coal-dependent state is that when those coal plants retire, it presents a whole host of opportunities for new generation for utilities,” Jesse Kharbanda, executive director of the Hoosier Environmental Council, told Grist. “Utilities simply need to find a way to replace the 9,000 megawatts of predominantly coal-fired power that has been retired over the last 15 years. They have come to the conclusion that they’re better off investing in renewables and gas.”

For the small rural counties playing host to these new solar facilities, it often simply comes down to the money. That was the case with the Mammoth Solar facility in Starke and Pulaski counties. The tax revenue from the 1.65-gigawatt project will account for nearly one-fifth of each of their annual budgets. And for many landowners, the payments they will receive from Doral Renewables will be more than they make farming the land or leasing it themselves. Landowners can expect to receive between $600 and $1,000 per acre per year that they lease out for solar panels.

Work has been completed on the largest battery energy storage system (BESS) to have been paired with solar PV to date, with utility Florida Power & Light (FPL) holding a ceremony earlier this week.

Construction on the Manatee Energy Storage Center in Florida’s Manatee County was completed in just 10 months, having begun in February this year. The 409MW / 900MWh BESS is colocated with FPL’s existing 74.5MW Manatee Solar Energy Center ground-mounted PV plant.

Allowing solar energy to be used in evenings and at night or on cloudy days, the utility company — a subsidiary of electric utility holding company NextEra Energy — has placed 132 battery containers onto a 40-acre plot of land.

The BESS will charge at off-peak times with abundant solar energy and then discharge to the local grid at peak times, when power is most expensive and often at its most carbon intensive.

It will reduce the runtime of local fossil fuel power plants and will aid FPL in a plan to ease two 1970s-era natural gas power plants totalling more than 1,600MWh into retirement.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has slammed California’s plan for homeowners who use solar panels in their homes. The proposal calls for a discounted rate for excess power sold into the grid, as well as a monthly utility charge of $8 per kW to cover the cost of maintaining the state’s power infrastructure. Musk noted that the idea, which essentially penalizes sustainable energy, is “insane.” //

With battery storage systems, the PUC noted that excess power generated by solar panels could be held in reserve by the homeowners themselves instead of being sold back to the grid. The PUC also argued that the current system essentially translates to a multi-billion subsidy for wealthy homeowners that other utility ratepayers are paying for. //

According to the PUC, a review of its policy has revealed that its current systems are not cost-effective since homeowners with no solar panels are shouldered with the price of maintaining the grid. Unfortunately, most of the said ratepayers were from lower-income households. And considering that ratepayers from the state spent about $3 billion a year to support net metering, PUC Commissioner Martha Guzman Aceves noted that the funds are better used elsewhere.

Coal plants such as Drax, Ørsted Energy’s Avedøre power station, in Denmark; and the Rodenhuize thermal power plant, in Belgium; started to transition from coal to wood pellets. (Ali Lewis, the head of media and public relations for Drax, disputed Quaranda’s description. “How can we be ‘gaming the system’ when the carbon accounting for biomass is derived from the principles set by the world’s leading climate scientists at the U.N. I.P.C.C., and we follow those rules to the letter?” Lewis asked.) //

By 2019, biomass accounted for about fifty-nine per cent of all renewable-energy use in the E.U. The Dogwood Alliance estimates that sixty thousand acres of trees—trees that would have otherwise sequestered carbon—are burned each year to supply the growing pellet market. Global demand for wood pellets is expected to double by 2027, to more than thirty-six million tons. And although the entire premise of burning wood as renewable energy hinges on the assumption that trees grow back, there is no binding governmental or industrial oversight for replanting trees at all. “There’s no requirement that Drax or anyone has to replant trees, and no requirement that whatever they’re planting has to come back as natural forest,” Quaranda said.

Even if there were strict protocols for replanting trees, it takes between forty and a hundred years for a new tree to pay down the carbon debt racked up by logging and burning an old one. //

Pellets made from these trees are shipped from ports (Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is one; Prince Rupert, British Columbia, is another) to England, where they are loaded onto custom-built trains, brought to Drax, and burned to supply around six per cent of the electricity used in the U.K.

The Dogwood Alliance has extensive photographic evidence of whole trees in North Carolina and Virginia being piled up on trucks that are headed for Enviva’s pellet mills, which require some fifty-seven thousand acres of timber per year to operate. //

We pulled up to a giant, open-ended metal shed, where railroad tracks came in one side and out the other. Here, trains bearing the slogan “Powering Tomorrow” carry pellets in from the English ports. Seventeen trains per day, with twenty-eight cars each, bring twenty thousand tons of pellets to this shed every single day.

The Nez Perce Indians of northern Idaho received the state’s first large-scale battery from Tesla in November.

About the size of a standard shipping container, the Tesla Megapack will store power from solar panels, enabling the tribe to reduce its dependence on local dams. For decades, the Nez Perce have demanded the destruction of four hydropower plants along the Lower Snake River with claims the concrete barriers hamper a near-extinct salmon population.

The Tesla Megapack, installation company RevoluSun CEO Josh Powell told Public News Service, “allows people like the Nez Perce to control their energy where it’s being produced where they have lands.” //

A primary component of the megapack power station is lithium. The U.S. Geological Survey says the United States is home to some of the richest reserves of lithium but mines less than 1 percent of global production, according to the Wall Street Journal. The world’s top three lithium producers are Australia, Chile, and China, respectively, with the Chinese dominating refinement. Tesla sources its lithium from Chinese companies.

While reaping the rewards of Chinese lithium, the Nez Perce have become the primary opponents against mining on American soil. Their fight was chronicled by “CBS Saturday Morning” in August as tribal members protested operations on the retired site of the Stibnite Mine in Idaho. If the mine was opened, the United States would be able to tap the nation’s largest reserves of antimony, a critical mineral for missile defense systems.

Energy storage can change electricity’s status as the ultimate ‘just-in-time’ product, where supply and use have to be matched in real-time, but this won’t be possible without increasingly sophisticated software solutions.

Four industry representatives with expertise in software spoke last week at an energy storage event hosted online by Guggenheim Securities, the investment banking and capital markets business of global investment and advisory services firm Guggenheim Partners.

The introduction of scalable energy storage solutions is a new fundamental technical capability in electricity, the first time — with the exception of limited quantities of pumped hydro energy storage —that the model has been changed in over 100 years, Larsh Johnson, CTO of distributed energy storage company Stem Inc said.

Software enables that new storage, mostly from lithium-ion batteries, to react quickly, flexibly and be adaptable to changing market conditions, Johnson said. At the same time, more and more variable wind and solar resources are coming onto grids all over the world, requiring integration and balancing.

The energy industry has to deliver instantly and can’t always count on suppliers. Johnson compared the predicament to what online retail giant Amazon faced when rolling out its Amazon Prime Plus subscription model.

Amazon, he said, solved its problems with massive software investments. That software is underwritten by artificial intelligence (AI) that predicts customers’ future needs and behaviour while also projecting the retailer’s own supply and delivery constraints. Thus ensuring marketplace inventory and on-time deliveries.

“It’s the same with directing resources into real-time power markets,” the Stem CTO said.

Energy storage can provide workarounds to what Johnson called “some rigid power grid situations,” allowing energy to be flexibly transacted when it’s needed.

Not only that, but software is adaptable. With regulators and policymakers under continuous pressure to evolve their market design rules governing energy assets that may have useful lifetimes decades long, software can help shape those rules too.

Ben Irons, founder of Habitat Energy, a company specialising in software-backed optimisation of energy storage and renewable energy assets in markets including the UK, Australia and Texas, noted that “there’s no other traded commodity where you would see low prices every evening and high prices every night,” without seeing arbitrage and traders spotting the opportunity to trade.

Energy storage has revolutionised that, Irons said, adding that even five years ago, there weren’t “physical assets that could store electrical power in an efficient way at a reasonable price” the way lithium-ion can.