GOLDEN CRESCENT AND 1000 ISLAND NEWS

  Jul 26, 2023 — While the state's power grid operator says there's enough juice to fuel demand right now,  a recent report warns  that supply might run short in the New York City area in two years.   The New York Independent System Operator, or NYISO, has been issuing quarterly assessments of the state’s power reliability since 2019. That’s when New York enacted the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions linked to climate change.   Kevin Lanahan, who runs NYISO’s government relations, said the most recent report, issued in July, finds that without a faster build-out of the power grid, New York City will have a deficit as large as 446 megawatts in two years. That’s the amount of power needed to run around half a million homes.    “The system has become strained in the sense of being able to deliver the megawatts across that part of the service territory under certain conditions,” Lanahan said.  ...

  Fire departments battle flames at four lithium-battery storage trailers at a solar farm on County Route 179 in Chaumont Thursday afternoon. CHAUMONT – Jefferson County Fire and Emergency Management   lifted a shelter-in-place order after nearly four hours Thursday, but officials are continuing to monitor a battery fire at the solar farm across from the village’s wastewater treatment plant.    Multiple fire departments responded to trailers burning at the solar farm on County Route 179 in the town of Lyme, just outside the village of Chaumont, Thursday afternoon. Trooper Jack L. Keller, state police Troop D public information officer, said four lithium-battery storage trailers caught fire. Concerns about potentially toxic smoke from the fire caused the shelter order to be in effect for residents within a mile of the fire. Officials are continuing to monitor the air quality in the Chaumont area. Drivers on Thursday were being rerouted and told to keep their windows u...

  In what could be a foreshadowing of future offshore wind pricing, Rhode Island’s leading utility this week opted not to move forward with a project called Revolution Wind 2 because the cost of the electricity was deemed too high. “Higher interest rates, increased costs of capital and supply chain expenses, as well as the uncertainty of federal tax credits, all likely contributed to higher proposed contract costs,” said the utility, Rhode Island Energy, in a press release. “Those costs were ultimately deemed too expensive for customers to bear and did not align with existing offshore wind power purchase agreements.” Those same cost factors are wreaking havoc in Massachusetts. Two major offshore wind developers in Massachusetts  are terminating  their power purchase agreements with the state’s utilities because the developers say the agreements, hammered by inflation, interest rate hikes, supply chain disruptions, and the war in Ukraine, are no longer sufficient to secure...

  July 27, 2023   by  Adnan Durakovic   The government of Sweden has rejected Vattenfall’s application to build an offshore wind farm at Stora Middelgrund off Sweden’s west coast, citing  ”negative effects on the environment”  and  ”national interests”  as the reasons for the decision. The Swedish government will not grant Vattenfall permission to build and operate the wind farm located offshore Halmstad, saying that  ”the applicant has not shown that the chosen location meets the requirement for suitable location according to ch. 2. Section 6 of the Environmental Code.” ”The government is working hard to increase the production of fossil-free electricity and has recently given permission to two offshore wind farms off the west coast. After difficult balancing of interests, the government has today come to the conclusion that an establishment at Stora Middelgrund  would risk damaging sensitive natural values ​​in an unacceptable way ....

  Elections have consequences, and that sometimes includes even the obscure ones. The latest example comes from the United Kingdom, where last week’s election for a single parliamentary seat has set off debates within Britain’s two major parties over climate policies. The ruling Conservatives barely held the suburban London seat vacated by former Prime Minister  Boris Johnson ’s resignation. The Labour Party had been expected to grab the district, which Mr. Johnson won by around 7,000 votes in the 2019 election, and on the same day Labour pulled off a far bigger swing in another by-election in the north of England. Within hours of the result, it was clear Labour’s loss came down to environmental policies . The Tory candidate to replace Mr. Johnson framed the race as a referendum on London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s plan to expand a tax on older vehicles to crack down on carbon-dioxide emissions. The tax disproportionately hits lower-income households and small businesses that can...

  Offshore wind developers, citing changing market conditions, are demanding what could be billions of dollars in additional subsidies—but refusing to let the public see how much or explain their reasoning. An unlikely team is pushing to make them. Empire Wind and Sunrise Wind have contracted with the state to build hundreds of wind turbines off Long Island and Martha’s Vineyard and then get a guaranteed subsidy through charges applied to customer bills statewide. Earlier this month, the state Public Service Commission took steps to reopen those contracts  as the developers demanded more money to complete the projects . The amount of additional money demanded, however, was redacted in documents posted by the PSC website, as was the basis offered by Empire and Sunrise. A filing yesterday by the City of New York and Multiple Intervenors (MI), a group of large private and nonprofit electricity customers, to the state Public Service Commission would compel Empire Wind and Sunrise ...

  Credit:    By David Wildstein, July 28 2023 |  newjerseyglobe.com  ~~ Translate:   FROM  English  |  TO  English Two non-profit organizations opposing New Jersey’s plan to build offshore wind turbines have filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the state providing nearly $1 billion in tax credits as illegal special legislation. “The Legislature’s giveaway of federal tax credits to Orsted benefits a single company in violation of the New Jersey Constitution,” said Bruce Afran, the attorney for the two groups, Protect Our Coast NJ and Defend Brigantine Beach. “In New Jersey, laws that favor a single private party are generally unconstitutional.” Orsted will receive tax credits to build a 98-unit wind farm off the coast of New Jersey under legislation signed by Gov. Phil Murphy last month. The state Division of Rate Counsel said the project will eventually push the cost of the wind turbines onto ratepayers, and found th...

  The government’s green energy ambitions have been dealt a blow after plans for a giant offshore windfarm off the  Norfolk  coast ground to a halt due to spiraling supply chain costs and rising interest rates.   The Swedish energy giant Vattenfall said it would stop work on the multibillion-pound Norfolk Boreas windfarm, designed to power the equivalent of 1.5m British homes, because it was no longer profitable. The state-owned company said costs had climbed by 40% due to a rise in global gas prices which have fed through to the cost of manufacturing, putting “significant pressure on all new offshore wind projects”. “It simply doesn’t make sense to continue this project,” said Anna Borg, Vattenfall’s chief executive. “Higher inflation and capital costs are affecting the entire energy sector, but the geopolitical situation has made offshore wind and its supply chain particularly vulnerable.” Vattenfall won a government contract to build the Norfolk Boreas project las...

  Gary Abraham July 26, 2023 At the start of my 23-year legal career as an environmental attorney, I represented towns and grassroots environmentalists opposed to massive landfills in rural communities. Today I focus on the same sorts of clients, concerned about the environmental impacts of wind farms and solar farms. For example, the recently approved (but stalled) Alle-Catt wind farm, with a project area over 100 square miles covering parts of Wyoming, Cattaraugus, and Allegany counties,  would, according to the state Siting Board, kill 41 bald eagles and 26,000-39,500 bats, and clear-cut 1,550 acres of mature forest.  The project will also fragment large blocks of contiguous forest affecting the movement, breeding, roosting or nesting behavior of birds and bats. This is in addition to the noise level and extent of shadow flicker when the sun rises or sets behind moving wind turbines, which the state Department of Health testified would harm public health...

  Electrification is all the buzz. As more governments, corporations, investors and consumers commit to reducing the world’s reliance on carbon-intensive fossil fuels, they are frequently turning to electricity as the power of choice. The International Renewable Energy Agency, an intergovernmental organization, projects that close to half of world energy consumption could be in the form of electricity by 2050, up from about 20% today. It makes sense: Electrification is often the fastest and cheapest way to decarbonize our energy consumption. The technologies to decarbonize electricity already exist and are, for the most part, readily deployable at a large scale by the private sector. But here’s a sobering fact about all the talk of the “electrification of everything”: It isn’t likely to happen. At least, not soon. We can’t go all the way down the electrification road for a host of reasons—nor should we want to. For one thing, it would place unnecessary limitatio...

  Notable & Quotable: Crazy From the Heat ‘Reading a climate report on my phone in the early hours of the morning, I went into a standard-issue emotional spiral thinking about it all.’   Jia Tolentino  writing  in the New Yorker, July 10: It may be impossible to seriously consider the reality of climate change for longer than ninety seconds without feeling depressed, angry, guilty, grief-stricken, or simply insane. . . . A couple of years ago, reading a climate report on my phone in the early hours of the morning, I went into a standard-issue emotional spiral thinking about it all. I woke up my boyfriend, seeking consolation; he took in my frenetic wheel-spinning and went back to sleep. The next morning, he drew up a list of thirty action items for us to consider, ranging from phone banking to ceasing international travel to committing eco-sabotage. There were tasks on the list that we had been doing for years—composting food waste, buying secondha...