Featured

Nuclear’s Challenge as Renewables Surge

Two very interesting pieces from Bloomberg that deserve to be read in entirety.
Gift links should get you there.

First up, Europe’s renewable transition, unintentionally juiced by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, is presenting a big challenge for nukes currently in operation, as prices fall to zero and below on sunny, windy days.
Secondly, a US company originally started to build nuclear waste storage casks, is branching out into restarting an older nuke, and planning new Small Modular units of its own design.

Bloomberg:

The drive to promote renewable energy is turning the screws on Europe’s nuclear industry.

While churning out fossil-free electricity has never been more urgent, surging renewables and a slump in power prices are undermining operations of atomic plants that are still the cornerstone of electricity grids in several parts of the continent.

The signs are that they are facing some tough times ahead. Demand hasn’t recovered fully since the energy crisis and the region’s wind and solar parks are producing more power than ever, which is eating into the share that both nuclear and coal plants send to national grids.

“With current power prices, the traditional baseload plants will struggle, unless we face longer periods with very unfavorable solar and wind conditions, drought or strong heat,” said Sigurd Pedersen Lie, a senior analyst at StormGeo Nena A/S in Oslo.

Longer term, it’s a warning sign that reactors might get increasingly squeezed out, even as countries such as France and the UK plan to spend huge sums on new plants, having identified the technology as a key element in the fight to limit global warming. At the United Nations climate meeting in Dubai late last year, they were joined by more than 20 nations including the US, the United Arab Emirates, Japan and South Korea in calling for a tripling of global nuclear generation by the middle of the century.

Continue reading “Nuclear’s Challenge as Renewables Surge”

Are US Carmakers Toast? China’s EVs Sleek, Well Made, and Cheap

Wall Street Journal:

The Biden administration is preparing to raise tariffs on clean-energy goods from China in the coming days, with the levy on Chinese electric vehicles set to roughly quadruple, according to people familiar with the matter.

Higher tariffs, which Biden administration officials are preparing to announce on Tuesday, will also hit critical minerals, solar goods and batteries sourced from China, according to the people. The decision comes at the end of a yearslong review of tariffs imposed by former President Donald Trump on roughly $300 billion in goods from China. 

Officials are particularly focused on electric vehicles, and they are expected to raise the tariff rate to roughly 100% from 25%, according to the people. An additional 2.5% duty applies to all automobiles imported into the U.S. The existing 25% tariff on Chinese electric vehicles has so far effectively barred those models, often cheaper than Western-made cars, from the U.S. market. Biden administration officials, automakers and some lawmakers worry that wouldn’t be enough given the scale of Chinese manufacturing. 

Bloomberg:

Once upon a time, Japanese cars were seen as an exotic and quirky product that could never take on the might of Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Co. Right now, Chinese EVs are in a similar place. 

“Corolla, New Economy Car, Is Shown Here by Toyota,” the New York Times yawned in a 1968 headline, introducing history’s best-selling automobile to the US market. Four years later, another piece noted with idle curiosity that Honda Motor Co. — “primarily a motorcycle name in the United States” — was starting to sell “diminutive” four-wheelers as well.

The story of the Big Three automakers’ hubristic fall to Japanese rivals is well-known, and should act as a warning to manufacturers who underestimate China’s competitive threat. With designers focused on large, powerful gas-guzzlers that earned better margins for Detroit’s inefficient production lines, the US auto industry in the 1970s failed to comprehend the appeal of affordable Japanese cars that sipped fuel, needed minimal maintenance, and came packed with standard features that local buyers were used to finding only as pricey add-ons.

Continue reading “Are US Carmakers Toast? China’s EVs Sleek, Well Made, and Cheap”

Michigan Attorney General: I’m Putting Together a Team

Let’s go.

You’ve become part of a bigger universe. You just don’t know it yet.

Michigan Attorney General:

This request for proposals (RFP) is to solicit proposals from attorneys and law firms to serve as Special Assistant Attorneys General (SAAGs) to pursue litigation related to the climate change impacts caused by the fossil fuel industry on behalf of the State of Michigan through the Department of Attorney General (DAG) (together, the State) on a contingency fee basis.

Tornadoes Challenge Climate Science and Models

This video is a few years old, but still current scientifically.
I interviewed a pretty good spread of extreme weather experts to get current thinking on extreme convective storms and climate change.
Given the continuing outbreaks across the country this week, seems like a good time to review.

The connection for tornadoes is tough, because the reliable record is not as long as we would like. Modern systems of Doppler radar and networks of reliable spotters have only been in place for a few decades, according to Jason Samenow, weather guru at the Washington Post.

Still, Dr. Jeff Masters told me, “..we are seeing tornadoes at locations, and at times of year, we’re not used to seeing them.”
John Allen of Central Michigan University reminded me of the outbreaks of December 2021, which saw 218 twisters, more than any previous December – “that’s more like the number of tornadoes you’d see in a typical May, or April May period. That’s a really big departure from our normal values.”

I had also done a piece on the outbreaks of that December of ’21, which is below.

Continue reading “Tornadoes Challenge Climate Science and Models”

States Moving to Hold Climate Criminals Accountable

NBC News:

Vermont lawmakers passed a bill this week that is designed to make big fossil fuel companies pay for damage from weather disasters fueled by climate change.

The legislation is modeled after the Environmental Protection Agency’s superfund program, which requires the companies responsible for environmental contamination to either clean sites up themselves or reimburse the government for the costs of work to do so. 

Vermont’s bill, referred to as its Climate Superfund Act, would similarly mandate that big oil companies and others with high emissions pay for damage caused by global warming.

The amounts owed would be determined based on calculations of the degree to which climate change contributed to extreme weather in Vermont, and how much money those weather disasters cost the state. From there, companies’ shares of the total would depend on how many metric tons of carbon dioxide each released into the atmosphere from 1995 to 2024.

The law passed with just three no votes in Vermont’s state Senate in early April, followed by approval in the state House on Monday. The Senate will deliver a final vote later this week before the bill heads to Republican Gov. Phil Scott’s desk. 

State Sen. Anne Watson, a co-sponsor of the bill, said she hopes that if the law goes into effect, it pushes big oil companies “to become purveyors of renewable energy sources and keep fossil fuels in the ground.”

Continue reading “States Moving to Hold Climate Criminals Accountable”

Trump’s Pay for Play Proposition for Big Oil. Elect Me to Kill Clean Energy.

Trump has made it crystal clear what he wants from Big Oil, and what he’ll give them in return.

Young people in particular should know what a stark choice they have in the coming election. Most of them apparently do not.

UPDATE: Politico:

The U.S. oil industry is drawing up ready-to-sign executive orders for Donald Trump aimed at pushing natural gas exports, cutting drilling costs and increasing offshore oil leases in case he wins a second term, according to energy executives with direct knowledge of the work.

Washington Post:

As Donald Trump sat with some of the country’s top oil executives at his Mar-a-Lago Club last month, one executive complained about how they continued to face burdensome environmental regulations despite spending $400 million to lobby the Biden administration in the last year.

Trump’s response stunned several of the executives in the room overlooking the ocean: You all are wealthy enough, he said, that you should raise $1 billion to return me to the White House. At the dinner, he vowed to immediately reverse dozens of President Biden’s environmental rules and policies and stop new ones from being enacted, according to people with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation.

Giving $1 billion would be a “deal,” Trump said, because of the taxation and regulation they would avoid thanks to him, according to the people.

Trump’s remarkably blunt and transactional pitch reveals how the former president is targeting the oil industry to finance his reelection bid. At the same time, he has turned to the industry to help shape his environmental agenda for a second term, including the rollbacks of some of Biden’s signature achievements on clean energy and electric vehicles.

The contrast between the two candidates on climate policy could not be more stark. Biden has called global warming an “existential threat,” and over the last three years, his administration has finalized 100 new environmental regulations aimed at cutting air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, restricting toxic chemicals, and conserving public lands and waters. In comparison, Trump has called climate change a “hoax,” and his administration weakened or wiped out more than 125 environmental rules and policies over four years.

Continue reading “Trump’s Pay for Play Proposition for Big Oil. Elect Me to Kill Clean Energy.”

Insurance Industry Looks at Convective Storm Losses

Descriptions:

Severe convective storms dominated natural catastrophe losses in 2023, reaching a new high of USD 64 billion, according to Swiss Re Institute’s latest sigma report. Watch Elisabeth Viktor, our Senior Nat Cat specialist, break down the basics on what severe convective storms are, the factors that drive them, and their subsequent impact on the re/insurance industry.

Increasing risks associated with severe convective storms look like they are here to stay, with inflation and exposure driving this trend. There is also growing scientific evidence that climate change plays a role in influencing severe convective storms. The insurance industry can play an important role in helping society mitigate the effects of this hazard by developing strategies for managing risk, enhancing resilience, and improving modelling capabilities.

Connecting tornado frequency and climate change is tricky, because twisters are such short lived phenomena, and the best technology to detect them, Doppler Radar, has not been around long enough for a solid data base to emerge.
That said, as Jeff Masters tells me in the video above, “We are seeing tornados in places, and at times of year, when we have not seen them before.”

There is also evidence for a shift in tradtitional “Tornado Alley”, from the well known Texas, Oklahoma corridor, eastward into the American Southeast, and somewhat northward. (also discussed above)
This discussion from last year on Fox Weather is pertinent.

Continue reading “Insurance Industry Looks at Convective Storm Losses”