GOLDEN CRESCENT AND 1000 ISLAND NEWS

  Taxpayers and utility customers naturally expect to pay heavily for wind and solar power. After all, if such projects made economic sense, there would be no need for governments to subsidize and mandate them. But even beyond the costs of inefficient power production, there’s a question of whether alternative-energy cheerleaders yet have a handle on the environmental impact of their projects. It seems that there is still no free lunch and that every method of producing electricity carries costs and benefits. For example, a solar farm often requires the removal of large swathes of vegetation, which naturally carries a local consequence—and not just for the wildlife who used to live there. Stephen Peterson  reports  for the Sun Chronicle from Plainville, Mass.: Numerous homes in town have for months been seeing their yards and basements flooded by rainwater flowing down a hill from land where a solar farm is being built... The flooding has been going on since last summer a...

  National Wildlife Foundation NWF.org   Climate education in New York State Wildlife Facts Conservation Garden Habitats Students and Nature Environmental Justice   Donate  to   STUDENTS AND NATURE New Climate Education Bill for New York NY state climate education bill addresses causes and impacts of climate change and its solutions. High school students helped to write it. EMILY FANO    |    LAST UPDATED: DECEMBER 7, 2023   Credit: Emily Fano In November 2023, scientists in Europe reported that Earth’s global average temperature was briefly two degrees Celsius hotter than pre-industrial  levels . NOAA and NASA— U.S. federal agencies—both confirmed that 2023 is virtually certain to be Earth’s hottest year on record since global records began in  1880 . New York is the fourth most populous state in the U.S. and has the largest school district in the country. The climate crisis represents a significant threat to the state’s 19.5 ...

  On Thursday, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority announced several bids for offshore wind projects in a  solicitation  geared toward allowing developers to rebid on projects that had become economically non-viable. “Equinor rebid its 816-MW Empire Wind 1 project after announcing a split with previous co-developer BP that will see Equinor taking full ownership of the Empire Wind lease and projects, while BP takes ownership of the Beacon Wind lease and projects,”  reports  Utility Dive. BP is set to take a pre-tax  impairment charge  of about $600 million, while Equinor anticipates losses of around $200 million total. Some BP analysts believe that the company overpaid for its stake in Beacon Wind when it bought its stakes in the project for $1.1 billion in 2020. Ørsted also rebid its 924-MW Sunrise Wind project in the solicitation, acquiring a 50% share from Eversource. “If Sunrise Wind is not successful in the solicitation, th...

  New York-ISO Natural gas, nuclear, and hydro kept the lights on in the Empire State. Solar – basically zero.  Wind – not much, and almost nothing in the latter part of the week The red line for nuclear would be higher and the tan line for natural gas would be lower if only we had saved Indian Point. So much for New York’s CO2 mitigation efforts Day-ahead and real-time prices diverged throughout the week, but not by much.  

  Anthony Fauci isn’t the only oracle of science who regards dissent from his findings as heresy. Meet Michael Mann. He is the climate scientist who gave us the iconic “hockey stick” graph showing a sharp rise in the global temperature in the 20th century. He has been pursuing two of the stick’s critics—conservative author Mark Steyn and policy analyst Rand Simberg—through the courts for 12 years, saying they defamed him by attacking his personal and professional integrity. Their fate will be decided any day now by a District of Columbia Superior Court jury. This isn’t Mr. Mann’s first legal rodeo. In 2011 he sued geographer Tim Ball in Canadian court for saying in an interview that “Michael Mann at Penn State should be in the state pen, not Penn State.” In 2019 a Canadian judge dismissed the charges because of the “inexcusable” delay in the trial and ordered Mr. Mann to pay Ball’s legal costs. But news reports say Mr. Mann never paid, and Ball di...

  New York’s “cap and invest” program (NYCI), a central part of the state’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, appears designed to hold back much of the program’s sticker-shock until January 2027—after the 2026 election. About two-thirds of emissions would be subject to NYCI (pronounced “nicky”), meaning the companies responsible would need to purchase allowances from the state. Allowances would be required for most fuel purchases (federal law exempts aviation fuel), and officials are still deciding among other things whether the rules would apply to electric generators, who already pay into a  separate system .   Source: NYSERDA The Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) would determine how many allowances each company needs, establish a limit on the number of allowances sold in a year and place a ceiling on the price of those allowances. As the state approaches its 2030 emissions reduction goal (about 34 percent below 2021 levels), the number of allowan...

  January 26, 2024   Orsted A/S withdrew from an agreement with regulators in the US state of Maryland to sell electricity from a big offshore wind farm it plans to build in the Atlantic Ocean. It’s the latest step for the Danish firm to reconfigure a portfolio of American projects after soaring costs forced it to take billions of dollars of writedowns last year. Orsted’s executives intend to update investors Feb. 7 on how they’ll reset the company after the setbacks. The prices set in the power contract for the Skipjack Wind project were no longer viable because of inflation, high interest rates and supply-chain problems, the Danish company  said  late Thursday. Orsted will still move forward with the almost 1 gigawatt project. The company doesn’t expect any material cancellation fees and won’t take an impairment because of the decision, a spokesperson said by email. Shares  rose  as much as 2.5% in Copenhagen. “Today’s announcement affirms our commit...

  Our docuseries will be out next Wednesday, more rural resistance to solar, Apache and Tohono O’odham sue to stop SunZia, and China's record coal production   JAN 25, 2024   Still image from  Juice: Power, Politics, & The Grid . Credit: Tyson Culver January has been a blur. I was in Tulsa, Denver, Houston, and Wimberley over a one-week span earlier this month. I was in San Antonio for a speaking engagement on Monday and Tuesday. I flew to Bismarck on Tuesday night for speeches on Wednesday and later today at the Energy Progress & Innovation Conference. (By the way, it’s not that cold here in Bismarck. Today, we had beautiful blue skies.) All month, I’ve been writing, preparing for my speeches, recording podcasts, and teeing up the release of our new docuseries,  Juice: Power, Politics, & The Grid . The five-episode docuseries will be published next Wednesday, for free, on YouTube.   My colleague, Tyson Culver, has done a great job putting it al...

  Extreme weather shows need for  dispatchable  resources:   FERC commissioners . Jan. 19, 2024   Ethan Howlan d   Senior Reporter Christie warns on power plant retirements While grid operators and utilities generally managed to keep the lights on during this week’s extreme weather, FERC Commissioner Mark Christie said  that was only possible because they had enough dispatchable power supplies provided by gas- and coal-fired power plants and nuclear generating stations. On Wednesday morning, during PJM’s peak demand period, gas-fired power plants produced 41% of the grid operator’s electricity, nuclear plants produced 25% and coal-fired generators produced 24%, according to Christie. During the Midcontinent Independent System Operator’s peak, gas and coal power plants each generated 34% of MISO’s electricity, followed by wind at 20% and nuclear at 9%, he said. Those numbers indicate the danger posed by the loss of dispatchable generation through power ...

  WALL STREET JOURNAL CLIMATE & ENVIRONMENT Companies Are Snapping Up New Clean-Energy Tax Credits Government program will funnel tens of billions of dollars to renewable-energy companies   By  Richard Rubin  and  Amrith Ramkumar   Jan. 18, 2024   Solar-project developers can more easily raise money by selling tax credits directly to big companies.    WASHINGTON—A  nascent market  for clean-energy tax breaks is surging faster than expected, with deals totaling as much as $9 billion already done and tens of billions more expected this year.  The new government program is designed to funnel cash quickly to renewable-energy developers, potentially accelerating the transition from fossil fuels, while giving tax breaks to buyers such as  JPMorgan Chase   and  Fiserv .  Congress created the tax credit transfer program for renewable-energy companies in the  2022 climate law . About 100 companies pursuing m...