GOLDEN CRESCENT AND 1000 ISLAND NEWS

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UBS Banker’s Frustration Exposes Cracks in World of Climate Finance The world’s biggest banks are quietly hanging on to carbon-intensive clients because of what they see as unrealistic demands from regulators and civil society — and the threat to their fees.   By  Alastair Marsh  and  Natasha White   March 28, 2024   Judson Berkey  didn’t hold back. It was early February and the  UBS Group AG  banker had WebEx-dialed into a meeting held on the 17th floor of the Japanese Financial Services Agency’s building in the Kasumigaseki district of central Tokyo. The closed-door gathering with representatives of the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and public officials from around the world was billed as a “check-in” for regulators to ask key market participants how they were dealing with the growing tapestry of rules and guidelines around transitioning the economy away from high-carbon assets. What might otherwise have been a staid ...

Offshore wind news and policy: Tracking the latest US developments   Updates include the addition of three offshore wind projects to the map, and South Fork Wind being listed as having completed construction. https://link.utilitydive.com/click/34853676.31763/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cudXRpbGl0eWRpdmUuY29tL25ld3MvdHJhY2tpbmctb2Zmc2hvcmUtd2luZC1mYXJtcy1jb25zdHJ1Y3Rpb24tcG9saWN5LzY0NzQwOC8/5f0711066772f87a971aa652B2678c2ad

The North American Electric Reliability Corp. has proposed cold weather reliability standards—a group of North American RTO/ISOs (aka power markets), has  filed  a complaint with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission urging it to reject NERC’s standards. “Settling for the standard that NERC has filed in this proceeding,  with its glaring exceptions and vague requirements , will only result in reliability issues that the Commission will need to address later and at a greater cost to generator owners and the public,” the RTOs said. NERC has been trying to formulate cold weather reliability standards since the Uri blackouts in Texas in 2021. One of the RTO’s major complaints about NERC’s proposal is the “Generator Cold Weather Constraint” element that would allow power plant owners to exempt themselves from freeze protection measures if such measures fall beyond a “reasonable cost consistent with good business practices, reliability, or safety.” “Enforcing the standard wh...

March 27, 2024   China’s wind turbine manufacturers dominated global supply last year, riding the nation’s  renewables installation boom  as a contraction in the US and meager growth in Europe dented overseas competitors. Four of the five biggest producers in 2023 were China-based companies, up from just two in the prior year, according to a BloombergNEF report released Wednesday.  Goldwind Science & Technology Co.  retained the top spot, while Envision Energy Co. took second place from  Vestas Wind Systems A/S .  General Electric Co.  and Siemens Gamesa were pushed out of the top five. China accounted for about two-thirds of global additions of onshore and offshore wind last year, and while the nation’s manufacturers lifted sales overseas they continued to rely on their home market for about 98% of deployments, according to the report.  Wind installations in the US fell to the lowest since 2017. “The boom in China last year hides a worry...

The appeal of the moniker is waning, probably because it is trying to serve too many interests at once   By  Jon Sindreu   March 24, 2024   Investors are now consistently yanking money out of decarbonization-related funds.    The ESG brand probably has its best days behind it. Following a three-year craze for investment products focused on environmental, social and corporate-governance concerns, the percentage of newly created funds in the U.S. and Europe with ESG in their name has fallen from a peak of 8.3% to just 3.3%, according to an analysis of quarterly data by  Morningstar   Direct. Likewise, online searches for “ESG investing” have plummeted back to mid-2019 levels, according to Google Trends. Mentions of the term in company analyst calls have dropped 59% from their quarterly peak in 2022,  FactSet  data suggest.  One explanation is the collapse of the clean-energy stocks most readily associated with the ESG movement.  ...

Artificial-intelligence data centers and climate rules are pushing the power grid to what could become a breaking point.   By  The Editorial Board   March 29, 2024   President Biden and the press keep raising alarms about a climate crisis that his policies can’t do much about. Yet in the meantime they’re ignoring how government climate policies are contributing to a looming electric-grid crisis that is more urgent and could be avoided. These pages have been warning for years about an electric-power shortage. And now grid regulators and utilities are ramping up warnings. Projections for U.S. electricity demand growth over the next five years have doubled from a year ago. The major culprits: New artificial-intelligence data centers, federally subsidized manufacturing plants, and the government-driven electric-vehicle transition. *** Georgia Power recently increased 17-fold its winter power demand forecast by 2031, citing growth in new industries such as EV and battery ...

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  A wind farm project proposed for the Cassel and Innerkip areas of East Zorra-Tavistock ended before it began Wednesday after East Zorra-Tavistock   council declared the township an “unwilling host.” The unanimous decision was met with loud cheers from most of the standing room-only crowd , who had gathered in council chambers to hear presentations from Helmut Schneider, Prowind Canada’s vice-president of renewable energy, and David Cunningham, a local farmer who represented Wind Concerns EZT, a grassroots citizens’ group. “I believe that renewable energy is important, and I also believe wind turbines may form a part of that,” township Mayor Phil Schaefer said to councillors and the roughly 120 people in the gallery before the vote, “but I don’t understand why the most valuable farmland in the township and the county would be proposed for a massive wind-turbine development. “It produces energy, yes, intermittently, but it also produces division. It pits neighbour against neig...

  Investors looking to ride the artificial-intelligence wave have turned their eyes to a sleepier corner of the market—companies that own and operate power plants. Is the run-up justified? AI hype has helped lift Vistra stock 85% year to date. That falls short of  Nvidia ’s  eye-watering 92% surge, but is far greater than the 12% lift that  Microsoft     has seen over that time.  Constellation Energy  , the owner of the U.S.’s largest fleet of competitive nuclear generation capacity, has rallied 60% year to date, while  NRG Energy    is up 32%.   U.S. electricity demand has been relatively flat since 2010, thanks to energy efficiency. Now, the prospect of data-center growth due to AI, as well as a Chips Act-driven nearshoring of manufacturing and the electrification of things like heating and transportation, are expected to  drive electricity demand growth . McKinsey, BCG and S&P Global Commodity Insights all project e...

  KIRKLAND, N.Y. -- The Kirkland Town Planning Board held a public hearing Monday evening to hear input from residents about a proposed industrial solar facility. It was a packed house at the Kirkland Town Hall as residents and board members first heard from Atlas Renewables regarding the facility, which, if approved, will be located along Route 12B between Middle Settlement and Homewood Road. When it was time for the public to speak,  the board got an earful. Many residents speaking out against the project saying it is not be beneficial to the Town and would lead to the deforestation of more than 50 acres of forest along mud creek. "The benefits of these proposed solar farms are at least partially offset by the effects of using clear cut land, the damage to the watershed, the effects on the surrounding land, and the irreparable harm to the plants and animals that now use that land,” stated one local resident. Another was concern about the effect building the solar facility wo...