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Showing posts from April, 2023

Manchin threatens to support repeal of Biden’s landmark climate bill

  BY  ALEXANDER BOLTON  - 04/25/23 West Virginia Sen.  Joe Manchin  (D) is stepping up his feud with  President Biden  by threatening to support a repeal of Biden’s landmark climate and prescription drug reform bill, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which Manchin largely crafted last summer.   Manchin thought he had a deal with the Biden administration to allow more investment in fossil fuel production over the next decade, but he doesn’t think the president is holding up his end of the bargain.   “If the administration does not honor what they said they would do and continue to liberalize what we are supposed to invest in over the next 10 years, I will do everything in my power to prevent that from happening. And if they don’t change, then I would vote to repeal my own bill,” Manchin told Fox News host Sean Hannity in an interview Monday evening.   There’s no chance of a repeal bill passing Congress before 2025 as Democrats control the White House and Senate and view Biden’s climate

NY isn't building power transmission lines fast enough, leaving energy goals in jeopardy

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  April 19, 2023   The overseer of NY's energy grid is worried that delays in adding transmission lines could slow the state's renewable build-out and jeopardize reliability during extreme weather. There are not enough transmission lines upstate to deliver the amounts of wind and solar energy being produced. The television monitor on a wall in Richard Dewey’s office tells the story. A pie chart offers a minute-by-minute breakdown of the fuel sources feeding New York’s energy grid, generating the electricity needed to power homes and businesses. Shades of red and orange represent the fossil fuels natural gas and oil, much of it generated downstate. Blue represents hydro power from Niagara Falls and yellow the nuclear power from three upstate plants, two on Lake Ontario and a third near Rochester.  Smaller slivers  of green represent wind and solar power, mostly generated upstate. It’s not a color scheme that appeals to Dewey, the president of the   New York Independent System Op

Wisconsin Town Fights Big Solar (And Climate Corporatism)

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  When I arrived at the Christiana Town Hall yesterday afternoon, Mark A. Cook, the town chairman, and two local landowners, John Barnes, and Roxann Engelstad, were ready and waiting. They had multiple maps and charts showing the footprint and details of Invenergy’s proposed 300-megawatt Koshkonong Solar Energy Center. Cook got right to the point. Christiana, he said, has been “based on agriculture since people settled here. This project will completely kill ag in this town for generations.” The solar project is targeting “our very best farmland. It’s not like they are taking the crap land. This is the cream of the crop.” He went on, saying that the company is targeting farmland because it’s relatively flat and therefore will be easy to cover with panels. In addition, Christiana is near a gas-fired power plant that is connected to the high-voltage transmission grid. That location will make it easy for the proposed solar project to get its electricity onto the grid. About 1,800 people l

Key Environmentalist Myths about Energy Go Up in Smoke

  April 22, 2023   Environmentalists who genuinely care about lowering CO2 emissions should heed the data — even when they defy progressive shibboleths about the future of energy. N ew  data confirm that several common environmentalist talking points about energy are highly misleading. The chasm between reality and eco-activist fantasy is so wide that even the  Washington Post  — not exactly a right-wing media outlet — has taken notice. Reality has disrupted both the simplistic left-wing narrative of blue states producing clean energy while red states allegedly pollute and popular conceptions of what a “green” energy future might look like. The first eco-myth shattered   is the idea that wind and solar energy actually lower carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions. “Historically,  the two main ways to make electricity without emitting carbon dioxide have been nuclear power plants and hydroelectric dams . Their share of U.S. electricity generation has not changed in decades,” Pulitzer Prize–winni

The Pentagon Tilts at Windmills

  We know climate change tops the White House agenda, but it’s still depressing to see it supersede even national defense. Witness how the   Department of the Interior rolled over Pentagon warnings that offshore wind installations in the mid-Atlantic could interfere with military training. President Biden has set a goal of generating 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2030. Waters off the coasts of North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and Delaware are prime real estate for wind farms because they are relatively shallow. But they are also training grounds for the Navy and Air Force, including North Carolina’s Dare County bombing range. Offshore wind turbines three times the height of the Statue of Liberty could interfere with training and radar . As the Energy Department explains, “if not mitigated, such wind development can cause potential interference for radar systems involved in air traffic control, weather forecasting, homeland security, and national defense missions.” National d

New York Goes Full Central Planning For The Electricity Sector

  New York Goes Full Central Planning For The Electricity Sector — Manhattan Contrarian

San Francisco Earth Day Celebration Boots Pro-Nuclear Energy Group

https://sfstandard.com/community/san-francisco-earth-day-celebration-boots-pro-nuclear-energy-group/

THE GOOD NEWS ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE

  The PBS series "Energy Switch" will air this episode on May 7. But it is available to watch right now on the web   here .     The episode features Roger Pielke, Environmental Studies Professor at Univ. of Colorado Boulder, and Daniel Cohan, Environmental Engineering Professor at Rice   Univ.  on why we are far from an existential crisis.