GOLDEN CRESCENT AND 1000 ISLAND NEWS

  SEP 17, 2023   “ Reason, I sacrifice you to the evening breeze. ” – Aimé Césaire To be an effective podcast guest requires a few basic tactics. First, it is important to let the host get their full question asked before beginning to answer yourself. In normal conversation, it is not uncommon to understand where a friend is going and to get there before they do, but in a podcast setting it can be off-putting. It is also advisable to directly address the host’s questions in a concise manner and to mix in a few memorable phrases that listeners can work into their own discourse. Driving home a key communication objective with a catchy turn of phrase—a verbal meme, if you will—can make the difference between being remembered or forgotten.   One phrase that we coined and have popularized on various podcast appearances is  “ In the battle between physics and platitudes, physics is undefeated.”   It is a polite way of articulating that the hard realities of life must ...

  The myth that New York can replace fossil fuel power plants with cheap renewable energy has begun to crumble under renewable developers’ demands for higher prices to offset inflation and supply chain challenges.    Multiple offshore wind projects that are not even built yet have asked the state’s Public Service Commission (PSC) to renegotiate their  strike prices —the amount they will be paid per megawatt hour (MWh) of electricity produced. (A megawatt hour is roughly enough electricity to power 750 homes for one hour.)    Ørsted and Eversource have asked for a 27 percent increase for their Sunrise Wind project, which would raise their strike-price from around $110 to nearly $140 per MWh.    And the joint venture of Equinor and BP has asked for increases on all three of the projects it is developing. For Empire Wind 1, they want a 35 percent increase that would raise its strike-price from $118 to almost $160, for Empire Wind 2 a 66 per...

Sept. 20, 2023   Climate progress at big companies is hitting a wall.  The world’s largest companies  have committed to slashing their emissions  to address climate change. Many of them have overpromised and underdelivered because of  higher costs, slow advances in technology and political pressure.   One big factor is a lack of trust in  voluntary carbon markets . Many companies had intended to use carbon credits to offset emissions that are hard to reduce, such as the burning of jet fuel by airlines.  Those credits were supposed to cover short-term commitments. Companies are now  backing off of these goals while maintaining they are committed to long-term targets .  It is a sobering conclusion  two years after the 2021 United Nations climate summit in Glasgow  jump-started several climate initiatives .  Rio Tinto  can’t hit a near-term emissions target without using carbon offsets.    Delta Air Lines ...

BIR REBAA, Algeria—Once-obscure corners of the energy world, from offshore Congo to Azerbaijan, are booming as Europe finds new sources of natural gas to replace the Russian supplies that  once powered the continent . The shift is redrawing the world’s energy map at a rapid clip. In Bir Rebaa, deep in the Sahara, the Italian energy company Eni and Algeria’s state-owned energy company are drilling dozens of wells, producing gas from previously untapped fields in a matter of months. Three pipelines beneath the Mediterranean Sea connect Algeria’s vast gas reserves to Europe. For much of the last decade, Russian gas giant Gazprom had kept prices low, pushing suppliers like Algeria out of the European market. Before the war   45% of Russia's petroleum exports went to the European Union, while India bought most of its oil from the U.S., Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Russia exported most of its natural gas to the EU, accounting for 45% of the bloc's gas imports .   Russia first cut gas...

  Sept. 17, 2023   JUAZEIRO, Brazil—Weighing more than 100 pounds, big cats have long reigned over this hot and semi-arid region of Brazil, developing tougher paws for the scorched earth and reaching speeds of 50 miles an hour to bring down wild boar and deer. But nothing could have prepared them for the 150-foot blades now slicing up the deep blue sky above them. Jaguars and pumas are facing extinction in the Caatinga, Brazil’s northeastern shrublands, as Europe and China pour investment into wind farms, puncturing the land with vast turbines that are scaring the animals away from the region’s scant water sources. Particularly sensitive to changes to their habitat, the jaguars and pumas abandon their lairs as soon as construction work on the wind farms begins, said Claudia Bueno de Campos, a biologist who helped found the group Friends of the Jaguars and has tracked the region’s vanishing feline population. They then roam vast distances across the dusty plains in se...

  Commonwealth Edison (ComEd) signs historic agreement with Constellation to power its 54 facilities with clean energy produced where and when it is used, marking another key step toward a carbon-free economy BALTIMORE, September 14, 2023 --( BUSINESS WIRE )-- Constellation (Nasdaq: CEG), the nation’s largest producer of carbon-free energy and a leading supplier of energy products and services, announced today an agreement that will help ComEd, one of the nation’s largest utilities, power all of its 54 offices and metered facilities with locally produced carbon-free nuclear energy, every hour of every day. The agreement means ComEd will be the first investor-owned utility in the nation to power its facilities  with 100 percent clean energy produced at the same time and place it is consumed . The ComEd agreement follows a similar one between  Constellation and Microsoft   to power one of its Virginia data centers with nearly 100 percent carbon-free nuclear energy, Tog...