#Decommissioning Solar Power Plants

[cleangreen0]

How Much Waste is Generated for Every 1 MW of Solar Installed?

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[dandelionsresilience]

Good News - July 15-21

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1. Thai tiger numbers swell as prey populations stabilize in western forests

“The tiger population density in a series of protected areas in western Thailand has more than doubled over the past two decades, according to new survey data. […] The most recent year of surveys, which concluded in November 2023, photographed 94 individual tigers, up from 75 individuals in the previous year, and from fewer than 40 in 2007. […] A total of 291 individual tigers older than 1 year were recorded, as well as 67 cubs younger than 1 year.”

2. Work starts to rewild former cattle farm

“Ecologists have started work to turn a former livestock farm into a nature reserve [… which] will become a "mosaic of habitats" for insects, birds and mammals. [… R]ewilding farmland could benefit food security locally by encouraging pollinators, improving soil health and soaking up flood water. [… “N]ature restoration doesn't preclude food production. We want to address [food security] by using nature-based solutions."”

3. Harnessing ‘invisible forests in plain view’ to reforest the world

“[… T]he degraded land contained numerous such stumps with intact root systems capable of regenerating themselves, plus millions of tree seeds hidden in the soil, which farmers could simply encourage to grow and reforest the landscape[….] Today, the technique of letting trees resprout and protecting their growth from livestock and wildlife [… has] massive potential to help tackle biodiversity loss and food insecurity through resilient agroforestry systems. [… The UN’s] reported solution includes investing in land restoration, “nature-positive” food production, and rewilding, which could return between $7 and $30 for every dollar spent.”

4. California bars school districts from outing LGBTQ+ kids to their parents

“Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the SAFETY Act today – a bill that prohibits the forced outing of transgender and gay students, making California the first state to explicitly prohibit school districts from doing so. […] Matt Adams, a head of department at a West London state school, told PinkNews at the time: “Teachers and schools do not have all the information about every child’s home environment and instead of supporting a pupil to be themselves in school, we could be putting them at risk of harm.””

5. 85% of new electricity built in 2023 came from renewables

“Electricity supplied by renewables, like hydropower, solar, and wind, has increased gradually over the past few decades — but rapidly in recent years. [… C]lean energy now makes up around 43 percent of global electricity capacity. In terms of generation — the actual power produced by energy sources — renewables were responsible for 30 percent of electricity production last year. […] Along with the rise of renewable sources has come a slowdown in construction of non-renewable power plants as well as a move to decommission more fossil fuel facilities.”

6. Deadly cobra bites to "drastically reduce" as scientists discover new antivenom

“After successful human trials, the snake venom antidote could be rolled out relatively quickly to become a "cheap, safe and effective drug for treating cobra bites" and saving lives around the globe, say scientists. Scientists have found that a commonly used blood thinner known as heparin can be repurposed as an inexpensive antidote for cobra venom. […] Using CRISPR gene-editing technology […] they successfully repurposed heparin, proving that the common blood thinner can stop the necrosis caused by cobra bites.”

7. FruitFlow: a new citizen science initiative unlocks orchard secrets

“"FruitWatch" has significantly refined phenological models by integrating extensive citizen-sourced data, which spans a wider geographical area than traditional methods. These enhanced models offer growers precise, location-specific predictions, essential for optimizing agricultural planning and interventions. […] By improving the accuracy of phenological models, farmers can better align their operations with natural biological cycles, enhancing both yield and quality.”

8. July 4th Means Freedom for Humpback Whale Near Valdez, Alaska

“The NOAA Fisheries Alaska Marine Mammal Stranding Hotline received numerous reports late afternoon on July 3. A young humpback whale was entangled in the middle of the Port of Valdez[….] “The success of this mission was due to the support of the community, as they were the foundation of the effort,” said Moran. [… Members of the community] were able to fill the critical role of acting as first responders to a marine mammal emergency. “Calling in these reports is extremely valuable as it allows us to respond when safe and appropriate, and also helps us gain information on various threats affecting the animals,” said Lyman.”

9. Elephants Receive First of Its Kind Vaccine

“Elephant endotheliotropic herpesvirus is the leading cause of death for Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) born in facilities in North America and also causes calf deaths in the wild in Asia. A 40-year-old female received the new mRNA vaccine, which is expected to help the animal boost immunity[….]”

10. Conservation partners and Indigenous communities working together to restore forests in Guatemala

“The K’iche have successfully managed their natural resources for centuries using their traditional governing body and ancestral knowledge. As a result, Totonicapán is home to Guatemala’s largest remaining stand of conifer forest. […] EcoLogic has spearheaded a large-scale forest restoration project at Totonicapán, where 13 greenhouses now hold about 16,000 plants apiece, including native cypresses, pines, firs, and alders. […] The process begins each November when community members gather seeds. These seeds then go into planters that include upcycled coconut fibers and mycorrhizal fungi, which help kickstart fertilization. When the plantings reach about 12 inches, they’re ready for distribution.”

July 8-14 news here | (all credit for images and written material can be found at the source linked; I don’t claim credit for anything but curating.)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Real innovation vs Silicon Valley nonsense

This is the LAST DAY to get my bestselling solarpunk utopian novel THE LOST CAUSE (2023) as a $2.99, DRM-free ebook!

If there was any area where we needed a lot of "innovation," it's in climate tech. We've already blown through numerous points-of-no-return for a habitable Earth, and the pace is accelerating.

Silicon Valley claims to be the epicenter of American innovation, but what passes for innovation in Silicon Valley is some combination of nonsense, climate-wrecking tech, and climate-wrecking nonsense tech. Forget Jeff Hammerbacher's lament about "the best minds of my generation thinking about how to make people click ads." Today's best-paid, best-trained technologists are enlisted to making boobytrapped IoT gadgets:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/24/record-scratch/#autoenshittification

Planet-destroying cryptocurrency scams:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/15/your-new-first-name/#that-dagger-tho

NFT frauds:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/06/crypto-copyright-%f0%9f%a4%a1%f0%9f%92%a9/

Or planet-destroying AI frauds:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/29/pay-no-attention/#to-the-little-man-behind-the-curtain

If that was the best "innovation" the human race had to offer, we'd be fucking doomed.

But – as Ryan Cooper writes for The American Prospect – there's a far more dynamic, consequential, useful and exciting innovation revolution underway, thanks to muscular public spending on climate tech:

https://prospect.org/environment/2024-05-30-green-energy-revolution-real-innovation/

The green energy revolution – funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS Act and the Science Act – is accomplishing amazing feats, which are barely registering amid the clamor of AI nonsense and other hype. I did an interview a while ago about my climate novel The Lost Cause and the interviewer wanted to know what role AI would play in resolving the climate emergency. I was momentarily speechless, then I said, "Well, I guess maybe all the energy used to train and operate models could make it much worse? What role do you think it could play?" The interviewer had no answer.

Here's brief tour of the revolution:

2023 saw 32GW of new solar energy come online in the USA (up 50% from 2022);

Wind increased from 118GW to 141GW;

Grid-scale batteries doubled in 2023 and will double again in 2024;

EV sales increased from 20,000 to 90,000/month.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/blog/2023/12/19/building-a-thriving-clean-energy-economy-in-2023-and-beyond/

The cost of clean energy is plummeting, and that's triggering other areas of innovation, like using "hot rocks" to replace fossil fuel heat (25% of overall US energy consumption):

https://rondo.com/products

Increasing our access to cheap, clean energy will require a lot of materials, and material production is very carbon intensive. Luckily, the existing supply of cheap, clean energy is fueling "green steel" production experiments:

https://www.wdam.com/2024/03/25/americas-1st-green-steel-plant-coming-perry-county-1b-federal-investment/

Cheap, clean energy also makes it possible to recover valuable minerals from aluminum production tailings, a process that doubles as site-remediation:

https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/toxic-red-mud-co2-free-iron

And while all this electrification is going to require grid upgrades, there's lots we can do with our existing grid, like power-line automation that increases capacity by 40%:

https://www.npr.org/2023/08/13/1187620367/power-grid-enhancing-technologies-climate-change

It's also going to require a lot of storage, which is why it's so exciting that we're figuring out how to turn decommissioned mines into giant batteries. During the day, excess renewable energy is channeled into raising rock-laden platforms to the top of the mine-shafts, and at night, these unspool, releasing energy that's fed into the high-availability power-lines that are already present at every mine-site:

https://www.euronews.com/green/2024/02/06/this-disused-mine-in-finland-is-being-turned-into-a-gravity-battery-to-store-renewable-ene

Why are we paying so much attention to Silicon Valley pump-and-dumps and ignoring all this incredible, potentially planet-saving, real innovation? Cooper cites a plausible explanation from the Apperceptive newsletter:

https://buttondown.email/apperceptive/archive/destructive-investing-and-the-siren-song-of/

Silicon Valley is the land of low-capital, low-labor growth. Software development requires fewer people than infrastructure and hard goods manufacturing, both to get started and to run as an ongoing operation. Silicon Valley is the place where you get rich without creating jobs. It's run by investors who hate the idea of paying people. That's why AI is so exciting for Silicon Valley types: it lets them fantasize about making humans obsolete. A company without employees is a company without labor issues, without messy co-determination fights, without any moral consideration for others. It's the natural progression for an industry that started by misclassifying the workers in its buildings as "contractors," and then graduated to pretending that millions of workers were actually "independent small businesses."

It's also the natural next step for an industry that hates workers so much that it will pretend that their work is being done by robots, and then outsource the labor itself to distant Indian call-centers (no wonder Indian techies joke that "AI" stands for "absent Indians"):

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/17/fake-it-until-you-dont-make-it/#twenty-one-seconds

Contrast this with climate tech: this is a profoundly physical kind of technology. It is labor intensive. It is skilled. The workers who perform it have power, both because they are so far from their employers' direct oversight and because these fed-funded sectors are more likely to be unionized than Silicon Valley shops. Moreover, climate tech is capital intensive. All of those workers are out there moving stuff around: solar panels, wires, batteries.

Climate tech is infrastructural. As Deb Chachra writes in her must-read 2023 book How Infrastructure Works, infrastructure is a gift we give to our descendants. Infrastructure projects rarely pay for themselves during the lives of the people who decide to build them:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/17/care-work/#charismatic-megaprojects

Climate tech also produces gigantic, diffused, uncapturable benefits. The "social cost of carbon" is a measure that seeks to capture how much we all pay as polluters despoil our shared world. It includes the direct health impacts of burning fossil fuels, and the indirect costs of wildfires and extreme weather events. The "social savings" of climate tech are massive:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/05/climate-and-health-benefits-of-wind-and-solar-dwarf-all-subsidies/

For every MWh of renewable power produced, we save $100 in social carbon costs. That's $100 worth of people not sickening and dying from pollution, $100 worth of homes and habitats not burning down or disappearing under floodwaters. All told, US renewables have delivered $250,000,000,000 (one quarter of one trillion dollars) in social carbon savings over the past four years:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/05/climate-and-health-benefits-of-wind-and-solar-dwarf-all-subsidies/

In other words, climate tech is unselfish tech. It's a gift to the future and to the broad public. It shares its spoils with workers. It requires public action. By contrast, Silicon Valley is greedy tech that is relentlessly focused on the shortest-term returns that can be extracted with the least share going to labor. It also requires massive public investment, but it also totally committed to giving as little back to the public as is possible.

No wonder America's richest and most powerful people are lining up to endorse and fund Trump:

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2024-05-30-democracy-deshmocracy-mega-financiers-flocking-to-trump/

Silicon Valley epitomizes Stafford Beer's motto that "the purpose of a system is what it does." If Silicon Valley produces nothing but planet-wrecking nonsense, grifty scams, and planet-wrecking, nonsensical scams, then these are all features of the tech sector, not bugs.

As Anil Dash writes:

Driving change requires us to make the machine want something else. If the purpose of a system is what it does, and we don’t like what it does, then we have to change the system.

https://www.anildash.com/2024/05/29/systems-the-purpose-of-a-system/

To give climate tech the attention, excitement, and political will it deserves, we need to recalibrate our understanding of the world. We need to have object permanence. We need to remember just how few people were actually using cryptocurrency during the bubble and apply that understanding to AI hype. Only 2% of Britons surveyed in a recent study use AI tools:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c511x4g7x7jo

If we want our tech companies to do good, we have to understand that their ground state is to create planet-wrecking nonsense, grifty scams, and planet-wrecking, nonsensical scams. We need to make these companies small enough to fail, small enough to jail, and small enough to care:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

We need to hold companies responsible, and we need to change the microeconomics of the board room, to make it easier for tech workers who want to do good to shout down the scammers, nonsense-peddlers and grifters:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

Yesterday, a federal judge ruled that the FTC could hold Amazon executives personally liable for the decision to trick people into signing up for Prime, and for making the unsubscribe-from-Prime process into a Kafka-as-a-service nightmare:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/05/amazon-execs-may-be-personally-liable-for-tricking-users-into-prime-sign-ups/

Imagine how powerful a precedent this could set. The Amazon employees who vociferously objected to their bosses' decision to make Prime as confusing as possible could have raised the objection that doing this could end up personally costing those bosses millions of dollars in fines:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/03/big-tech-cant-stop-telling-on-itself/

We need to make climate tech, not Big Tech, the center of our scrutiny and will. The climate emergency is so terrifying as to be nearly unponderable. Science fiction writers are increasingly being called upon to try to frame this incomprehensible risk in human terms. SF writer (and biologist) Peter Watts's conversation with evolutionary biologist Dan Brooks is an eye-opener:

https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-collapse-is-coming-will-humanity-adapt/

They draw a distinction between "sustainability" meaning "what kind of technological fixes can we come up with that will allow us to continue to do business as usual without paying a penalty for it?" and sustainability meaning, "what changes in behavior will allow us to save ourselves with the technology that is possible?"

Writing about the Watts/Brooks dialog for Naked Capitalism, Yves Smith invokes William Gibson's The Peripheral:

With everything stumbling deeper into a ditch of shit, history itself become a slaughterhouse, science had started popping. Not all at once, no one big heroic thing, but there were cleaner, cheaper energy sources, more effective ways to get carbon out of the air, new drugs that did what antibiotics had done before…. Ways to print food that required much less in the way of actual food to begin with. So everything, however deeply fucked in general, was lit increasingly by the new, by things that made people blink and sit up, but then the rest of it would just go on, deeper into the ditch. A progress accompanied by constant violence, he said, by sufferings unimaginable.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/05/preparing-for-collapse-why-the-focus-on-climate-energy-sustainability-is-destructive.html

Gibson doesn't think this is likely, mind, and even if it's attainable, it will come amidst "unimaginable suffering."

But the universe of possible technologies is quite large. As Chachra points out in How Infrastructure Works, we could give every person on Earth a Canadian's energy budget (like an American's, but colder), by capturing a mere 0.4% of the solar radiation that reaches the Earth's surface every day. Doing this will require heroic amounts of material and labor, especially if we're going to do it without destroying the planet through material extraction and manufacturing.

These are the questions that we should be concerning ourselves with: what behavioral changes will allow us to realize cheap, abundant, green energy? What "innovations" will our society need to focus on the things we need, rather than the scams and nonsense that creates Silicon Valley fortunes?

How can we use planning, and solidarity, and codetermination to usher in the kind of tech that makes it possible for us to get through the climate bottleneck with as little death and destruction as possible? How can we use enforcement, discernment, and labor rights to thwart the enshittificatory impulses of Silicon Valley's biggest assholes?

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/30/posiwid/#social-cost-of-carbon

[wumblr]

okay

For decades, nuclear power has been the largest source of clean energy in the United States, accounting for 19% of total energy produced last year

false. first sentence. off to a great start. you may notice this is a 2022 chart but i can tell you the only new reactors started since then are vogtle 3 and 4 (you may notice that's not a new power plant but new reactors at an existing plant), years late and $17b over budget, vogtle as a whole produces 1.1gwh, we use about 29 million annually. point being: it has not risen to 19%, the last reactor since vogtle was watts bar in 2016 and since then we've decommissioned 14 of them

The industry directly employs nearly 60,000 workers in good paying jobs

weirdly low estimate, almost by half

maintains these jobs for decades

"maintains" is doing a lot of work here, does that include toxic exposure payouts? because they are still fighting pretty hard to get those in the world's first nuclear contamination site, hanford

and supports hundreds of thousands of other workers

✅ true! 475,000 according to the NEI link above

In the midst of transformational changes taking place throughout the U.S. energy system

sure

the Biden-Harris Administration is continuing to build on President Biden’s unprecedented goal of a carbon free electricity sector by 2035

have they developed carbon free cement yet? (yes.) at scale? (no.) are we just not counting construction emissions because they're one-time emissions investments or how does this work exactly, i would love to know because i think we're also not counting emissions from waste transport to longterm storage because we haven't started doing that. anyway they've built a train for it even though we don't have a storage site so that's umm. that's uhh. fine i'm sure

while also ensuring that consumers across the country have access to affordable, reliable electric power

i guess you can still say "across the country" if you exclude texas as an outlier

and creating good-paying clean energy jobs.

i guess you can still call them good paying clean energy jobs if everybody who mines and refines the uranium dies of cancer because you just pulled out of the largest disarmament program in history due to it being geopolitically inadmissible (for russia... to continue... selling us the uranium from decommissioning...? i'm still trying to figure out the optics of that one but anyway as i have previously stated we didn't actually stop buying it in cases where it's "liable to cause supply chain issues")

Alongside renewable power sources like wind and solar, a new generation of nuclear reactors is now capturing the attention of a wide range of stakeholders

weird way to say that

for nuclear energy’s ability to produce clean, reliable energy and meet the needs of a fast-growing economy, driven by President Biden’s Investing in America agenda and manufacturing boom.

this is a carrier sentence to inject the president's name, but i would like to question which sectors of the growing economy are driving the most energy demand because i'm sure there are no nasty truths being elided there (it's computing)

The Administration recognizes that decarbonizing our power system, which accounts for a quarter of all the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions, represents a pivotal challenge requiring all the expertise and ingenuity our nation can deliver.

it's time once again for... the energy flow sankey chart! the reason the power system accounts for a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions is in no small part because 67% of it is lost to waste heat. has the nation's expertise and ingenuity started working on that yet

The Biden-Harris Administration is today hosting a White House Summit on Domestic Nuclear Deployment, highlighting the collective progress being made from across the public and private sectors

oh boy! a summit! talking about it is the same as doing it

Under President Biden’s leadership, the Administration has taken a number of actions to strengthen our nation’s energy and economic security by reducing – and putting us on the path to eliminating – our reliance on Russian uranium for civil nuclear power and building a new supply chain for nuclear fuel

gosh, i got ahead of myself and already criticized both of those things

including: signing on to last year’s multi-country declaration at COP28 to triple nuclear energy capacity globally by 2050

everybody criticized that

developing new reactor designs

which ones, the bill gates project that just got cancelled because utilities pulled out (edit: that's nuscale, the bill gates project is terrapower), the rolls royce submarine, or the one that just got regulatory approval (edit: this is also nuscale)

extending the service lives of existing nuclear reactors

yep! you sure showed the embrittlement at diablo canyon by doing nothing about it

and growing the momentum behind new deployments

nonsense clause, but it has this really ominous undercurrent due to its vagueness

Recognizing the importance of both the existing U.S. nuclear fleet and continued build out of large nuclear power plants, the U.S. is also taking steps to mitigate project risks associated with large nuclear builds and position U.S. industry to support an aggressive deployment target.

this one is not nonsense but they can't just out and out say "we are deregulating the industry because opening the process for public comment is most often the thing that slows it down" because then somebody might realize they're bulldozing ahead no matter what any constituent says, does, or actually wants

To help drive reactor deployment while ensuring ratepayers and project stakeholders are better protected, theAdministration is announcing today the creation of a Nuclear Power Project Management and Delivery working group that will draw on leading experts from across the nuclear and megaproject construction industry to help identify opportunities to proactively mitigate sources of cost and schedule overrun risk

i'm sure a revolving door working group packed with industry insiders can solve this without compromising their commitment to the profit motive, not that it particularly matters since the cost is passed on to the consumer in the form of fees on the electric bill

The United States Army is also announcing that it will soon release a Request for Information to inform a deployment program for advanced reactors to power multiple Army sites in the United States

good god... that is a fresh nightmare i did not see coming

Additionally, the Department of Energy released today a new primer highlighting the expected enhanced safety of advanced nuclear reactors

"expected" really serves to demonstrate several points i've made

i'm going to stop going line by line here because i know this is already too boring and long for anyone to read this far, unless anybody wants to know what i think about parts 50, 52, and 53 of the NRC licensing guidance -- which many of you have very clearly stated over the years that you don't -- and while i do want to acknowledge that it does go into more detail and even answer some of the questions i raised (vogtle comes up, diablo canyon comes up, a list of which SMR designs is given, or at least a list of the companies responsible for them),

what i would like to focus on is one conspicuous absence:

the reason we need a new fleet of reactors is because they are an essential part of the bomb production chain. they are the beginning of the refinement process, and we cannot carry out the plan (already underway) to replace the minutemen missiles currently in silos with sentinel missiles without significant new construction. we cannot start the president's desired wars with russia and china without the new sentinels. he's not going to be the one to carry this out, he's ensuring whoever is his successor in about 2030 or more likely 2040 will be armed to do so. limited amount of time left to prevent that

[thoughtportal]

Microsoft deal would reopen Three Mile Island nuclear plant to power AI

Pennsylvania’s dormant Three Mile Island nuclear plant would be brought back to life to feed the voracious energy needs of Microsoft under an unprecedented deal announced Friday in which the tech giant would buy 100 percent of its power for 20 years.

The restart of Three Mile Island, the site of the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history, would mark a bold advance in the tech industry’s quest to find enough electric power to support its boom in artificial intelligence.The plant, which Pennsylvanians thought hadclosed for good in 2019 amid financial strain, would come back online by 2028 under the agreement, according toplant owner Constellation Energy.

If approved by regulators, Three Mile Island would provide Microsoft with the energy equivalent it takes to power 800,000 homes, or 835 megawatts. Never before has a U.S. nuclear plant come back into service after being decommissioned, and never before has all of a single commercial nuclear power plant’s output been allocated to a single customer.

But the economics of both the power and computing industries are changing rapidly. Tech companies are scouring the nation for power that is both reliable and helps them meet their pledge to fuel AI development with zero emissions electricity — driving a nuclear power revival.

“The energy industry cannot be the reason China or Russia beats us in AI,” said Joseph Dominguez, chief executive of Constellation. “This plant never should have been allowed to shut down, ... It will produce as much clean energy as all of the renewables [wind and solar] built in Pennsylvania over the last 30 years.”

Follow Climate & environment

The four-year restart plan would cost Constellation about $1.6 billion, he said, and is dependent on federal subsidies in the form of tax breaks earmarked for nuclear power in the 2022 Inflation Recovery Act.

Constellation will also need to clear steep regulatory hurdles, including intensive safety inspections from the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which has never before authorized the reopening of a plant. The deal also raises thorny questions about the federal tax breaks, as the energy from the plant would all be produced for a single private company rather than a utility serving entire communities.

A partial reactor meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979 sent the nation into a panic and the nuclear industry reeling. The unit that Constellation plans to fire back up sits adjacent to the one that malfunctioned 45 years ago.

Constellation and Microsoft conceived the novel deal to solve a deepening energy problem. The sprawling data centers Microsoft and other digital giants need have become so big and energy-intensive that they are straining existing power supplies across the nation.

Constellation disclosed months ago that it was exploring options for restarting Three Mile Island, which sits along the Susquehanna River. The news was met with mixed reactions. Nuclear safety advocates expressed alarm. But some community leaders welcomed the development, seeing potential to revive an economic anchor in a region beset with financial hardship. A study funded by the Pennsylvania Building & Construction Trades Council says a reopening would create 3,400 jobs at the plant and in businesses serving it and its workers, and generate $3 billion in state and federal taxes.

The tax breaks in the Inflation Recovery Act are crucial to making the deal economically feasible, according to Constellation. They provide a credit for every megawatt hour of nuclear energy produced.

Constellation declined to provide details about its contract with Microsoft or disclose the value of tax credits. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm has said in the past that federal subsidies could cut the cost of bringing a new plant on line by as much as half.

The announcement of the Microsoft deal follows an agreement Amazon reached with Talen Energy to purchase power produced by the financially troubled Susquehanna nuclear plant for a planned data center campus in Pennsylvania. That arrangement is running into snags with regulators, as regional utilities express concern that their ratepayers will be saddled with the bill for the power grid updates needed.

Amazon’s plan also raised concerns among clean-energy advocates that tech companies are shifting from driving the transition to clean energy to elbowing others out of it by claiming such large amounts of available clean electricity for themselves.

Dominguez argues that the Three Mile Island case is an example of how Silicon Valley’s outside-the-box thinking will help stabilize the power grid for everyone. The power from the plant will not go directly to Microsoft facilities but into the overtaxed regional power grid that serves 65 million people across 13 states and the District of Columbia, called the PJM Interconnection.

Nuclear power is considered “clean” because unlike burning natural gas or coal to produce electricity, it does not create greenhouse gas emissions. The plants are expensive to build or restart, and industry still has no long-term solution for spent but highly radioactive uranium fuel rods.

“This agreement is a major milestone in Microsoft’s efforts to help decarbonize the grid in support of our commitment to become carbon negative,” said a statement from Bobby Hollis, vice president of energy at Microsoft.

Dominguez said other ratepayers on the PJM grid will not be expected to shoulder any of the costs, nor will Constellation be seeking special subsidies fromthe state of Pennsylvania.

Constellation has already been doing extensive testing at Three Mile Island.It says most of its components are ready to operate again. “The plant is in extraordinary shape,” Dominguez said.

Three Mile Island is not the only nuclear plant the industry is eager to revive. The owners of a plant in Western Michigan called Palisades are also working to bring that dormant facility back. That project was approved for a $1.5 billion federal loan guarantee. The plant owner, Holtec, says it hopes to feed nuclear energy from Palisades into the region’s power grid by late next year.

The Palisades effort came about at the urging of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D), as her state struggles to both meet its climate goals and generate adequate energy. The plant was destined for permanent closure when Holtec acquired it in 2022. The company had planned to decommission the facility but changed course after conversations with the governor.

On Wednesday, though, that plan was dealt a setback when federal nuclear regulators disclosed “a large number of steam generator tubes” could be faulty and need further inspection. Holtec said the finding does not alter its plans. But some nuclear safety advocates argue the company’s push to quickly reopen the plant puts the public at risk.

The huge cost and regulatory headaches associated with nuclear power are not deterring the tech industry from betting on it. In a remarkable turn of fortune for an industry that just a few years ago was struggling to stay competitive and focused mostly on closing plants, it now finds itself in expansion mode. Beyond seeking contracts for power from existing plants, tech companies are also bullish on next generation nuclear technologies.

Several are investigating the potential of locating their facilities near small modular nuclear reactors that could feed them power directly. Such technology is in its infancy and has not yet been approved by regulators. That isn’t stopping a company chaired by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates from doubling down on it. The firm, called Terra Power, this year began construction at what it plans to be a small reactor site in site in Wyoming.

Microsoft is also pursuing power from nuclear fusion, a potentially abundant, cheap and clean form of electricity that scientists have been trying to develop for decades — and most say is still a decade or more away from generating electricity. Microsoft has signed a contract to purchase fusion energy from a start-up that claims it can deliver it by 2028.

correction

A previous version of this article misspelled the last name of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. The article has been corrected.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this LA Times story:

Under two gargantuan domes of thick concrete and steel that rise along California’s rugged Central Coast, subatomic particles slam into uranium, triggering one of the most energetic reactions on Earth.

Amid coastal bluffs speckled with brush and buckwheat, Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant uses this energy to spin two massive copper coils at a blistering 30 revolutions per second. In 2022, these generators — about the size of school buses — produced 6% of Californians’ power and 11% of their non-fossil energy.

Yet it comes at almost double the cost of other low-carbon energy sources and, according to the federal agency that oversees the plant, carries a roughly 1 in 25,000 chance of suffering a nuclear meltdown that could endanger life before its scheduled decommissioning in just five years — due primarily to nearby fault lines.

As Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration looks to the aging reactor to help ease the state’s transition to renewable energy, Diablo Canyon is drawing renewed criticism from those who say the facility is too expensive and too dangerous to continue operating.

Diablo is just the latest in a series of plants built in the atomic frenzy of the 1970s and ’80s seeking an operating license renewal from the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission as the clock on their initial 40-year run ticks down. As the price of wind and solar continues to drop, the criticisms against Diablo reflect a nationwide debate.

The core of the debate lives in the quaint coastal town of San Luis Obispo, just 12 miles inland from the concrete domes, where residents expected Diablo Canyon to shut down over the next year after its license expired.

Instead, Newsom struck a deal on the last possible day of the state’s 2021-22 legislative session to keep the plant running until 2030, citing worries over summer blackouts as the state transitions to clean energy. The activists who had negotiated the shutdown with Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and the state six years prior were left stunned.

Today, the plant is still buzzing with life: Nuclear fission, in the deep heart of the plant, continues to superheat water to 600 degrees at 150 times atmospheric pressure. Generators continue to whir with a haunting and deafening hum that reverberates throughout the massive turbine deck.

[darkspine10]

GF Fanfic - Critical Meltdown

Dipper and Mabel Vs. The Past (40,456 words) by darkspine10

Chapters: 8/9

Fandom: Gravity Falls

Rating: Teen and Up

Surrounded by a giant field of solar panels glistening in the evening sun stood a pair of conical grey towers. Out here in the desert they seemed a resolute fixture of the landscape. Pacifica wondered how long they would last. If humanity vanished tomorrow, how many centuries would pass before those circular towers crumbled into dust? How much longer still might the elements within, hidden in the core deep below, linger on as a persistent danger.

She read the name on the signs, ‘Rancho Seco Nuclear Generating Plant’. It seemed a remote spot, nearly 2 hours drive out from Piedmont and miles from the city centre. An odd place to end this. Rusting sirens stood on poles. They would be silent if anything dangerous happened.

She heard the screech of tires and saw the Mini pull up to the plant. Her husband practically fell out of the car, followed by Mabel, Zera, and his father.

Dipper looked immensely worn out. Making the round trip to pick up the others was the cherry on the cake of a very long day. He wasn’t the only one. Zera was wiped out from all the spellcasting and running around too.

Mabel seemed as peppy as ever though, bounding over to her mother and Merrise with a spring in her step. “Heya guys, how’ve you been? We went to the zoo!”

Merrise bounced on the spot. “Ooh, we went to this science museum place, and fought a dinosaur, and now I’ve got a toy dinosaur!”

“That’s great kiddo!” She turned to Pacifica, suddenly dropping her exuberance. “Any sign of tulpa number 3?”

“Not from out here. I haven’t stepped inside yet.” Pacifica lowered her voice to a whisper. “I don’t want Merrise going anywhere near a radioactive building.”

“You don’t have to worry about radiation,” Dipper said loudly, making it impossible for anyone not to hear. So much for sensitivity. “This place was decommissioned 50 years ago. The only active nuclear plant in the whole state is Diablo Canyon, south of the city.”

“So how’d you find this place?” Mabel asked, turning her head to look around and doing a 360 degree spin in the process. “There are no news crews anywhere. No anyone, in fact.”

“That’s where there might be a problem.” Dipper turned on his energy scanner. A large green pulse was flashing brightly on the map. Its location corresponded to where they were currently standing. “It’s possible the tulpa here is leeching power from some latent potential energy remaining in the core. Or maybe doing something with contaminated waste. Either way it’s not good. The tulpa could use the energy to manifest as something even more powerful than what we’ve witnessed so far.”

“They already did a convincing T-Rex,” Pacifica said, unimpressed. “How much bigger can you get?”

“I’m talking universal level threat.” He mimed an explosion by expanding his hands out in a wide area. “Something that won’t merely terrorise the city, but could destroy it instead!”

“Oh, so no pressure then,” Mrs Pines said. “I suppose the seven of us are going to walk right inside and save the world?”

“That sounds like the Pines MO,” Zera said. She was still slumped in the back of the car with her eyes half-lidded.

“I suppose, if no-one else is going to do it… it falls to us.” Mr Pines unexpectedly led the way towards the facility, with the others, besides Zera, following in lockstep. She stayed where she was to nurse her head, making a half-hearted thumbs up.

As nuclear plants go, the site was modest. Besides the two cooling towers there was a small main building, consisting of a bunch of functional square units with a squat cylindrical tower attached, resembling a grain silo. Behind was an electrical substation and pylons trailing off to the horizon. Over to their left, a row of storage unit sheds containing used fuel rods. A sign saying ‘trespassers are prohibited’ did nothing to stop them. As the sun went down, electric lamp posts automatically switched on, bathing them in a harsh artificial glare.

“A nuclear plant after dark, what a place for a mystery hunt,” Dipper said, his voice echoing slightly.

“Reminds me of that derelict hydro dam we went to once,” Mabel said. “There’s something eerie about a place that used to give power now sitting lifeless.”

“Don’t get poetic on us, May,” Pacifica said. “You can rhapsodise all about this place when we’re cosy and warm at home, sipping hot chocolate and unwrapping presents.” She shook her head. “What are our lives like? I mean, of all the places…”

Dipper pointed over the plains to the south. “There were actually some cryptid sightings near here once. There’s a lake and a park over there. People said they saw a ‘raptor’ flying above.”

“I remember that,” Mabel said, snapping her fingers. “We camped out by the lakeside and staked it out. Back in ‘21.” She poked her brother in the side. “You got bitten by sooooo many mosquitos that night.”

“That wasn’t long before the wedding,” Pacifica said, lost in thought. “Then we moved away from Mabel a short while after.”

“Dark days,” Dipper said jokily. “We never did find any raptor. At least this time our outing won’t be wasted. We know for a fact that the tulpa is here at the plant.”

“Dad, what is a nuclear power plant anyway?” Merrise asked, neck straining to look up at the cooling towers. Red LED lights shone around the rims of each, making them seem like the bastion of an evil fortress.

Mr Pines was the one to explain, glad to be able to provide something from his wheelhouse. “It uses the splitting of high-mass elements to generate heat, which causes water to turn into steam and rotate a turbine to produce electricity. Like… a really big water wheel, essentially.”

“Cool,” Merrise said. Though she didn’t always get overly excited by science topics, she still had a voracious desire to understand more about how the natural world worked.

“This one isn’t doing anything though,” Mabel said, scoffing. “They should have never built it in the first place.”

“Oh yeah, cause it’s so totally dangerous to the environment.” Dipper rolled his eyes.

“Well it is!”

“Only if you buy into the anti-nuclear propaganda”

“You’ll be the one regretting it if a place like this melts down and makes half of California unlivable.”

“Just so long as you admit that you’re encouraging a return to fossil fuels if you bash nuclear!”

“Can you two shut up for a second?” Pacifica hissed. “Debate later, when the city isn’t at risk.”

Merrise raised an eyebrow at the twins. “I thought you two were meant to have some super special, epic sibling bond or something like that?”

“Oh, we do,” Mabel said. “Sibling relationships are just like this. It’s not always sunshine and roses. What, you think we never argue? Never want to have our side heard?”

“I believe it,” Pacifica said, “I’ve got two decades of first hand experience of you two bickering.”

“I’ve got three,” Mrs Pines gleefully added.

“The point is,” Mabel said, returning to her niece, “is that we may disagree and have differing views… but we’re still family. We still love each other, no matter how much we drive each other up the wall. I keep forgetting, none of you guys ever had any siblings. Even Z, who had a crazy amount of tadpole siblings, doesn’t count.”

“It’s like having a ‘default friend’,” Dipper said. “We’re so close, but we also know exactly how to drive each other mad. We share a bunch of family in-jokes and memories that’s hard for anyone else to appreciate, even with you, Paz.”

Merrise thought for a moment. “I guess then we’ll have to act like a family now. So we can all know what that’s like. Like you said before. Family traditions can start whenever we want to make some.”

Dipper smiled, proud of his daughter’s initiative and desire to heal their fractious family make-up one way or another. He glanced at his parents, walking ahead along the silent alley. He resolved to reconcile with them as soon as possible, so they could put the whole sorry lying business in the past for good.

To no-one’s surprise the doors to the reactor building were locked. A metal chain and padlock were slung across. Mr Pines pushed it to no avail. “Oh well, guess we’ll have to go home. He gave a weak laugh that nobody else reciprocated and it died in his throat. “Worth a shot.”

“Step back everyone, I’ve got this.” Mabel smugly pushed through to examine the doors. She squinted and focused with her glasses, before standing up and wiping her hands. “Oh, this’ll be easy. I won’t even have to pick the lock.” From her jacket pocket she removed a pair of wire clippers and snipped the rusting chain. The padlock clanked to the ground. “Voila!”

“I’m constantly amazed by the stuff you happen to be carrying,” Pacifica said, shaking her head.

“I always carry wire clippers with me. Usually bolt cutters and a couple of spray cans too.” Mabel shrugged. “Never know when you have to do an impromptu bit of political activism.” She pushed the double doors open and peered into the dark gloom.

Dipper switched on his flashlight and entered the reception area. There was a smell of dry must, as well as a clinical antiseptic scent. They’d probably sprayed the whole place down to reduce any chance of leakage or waste. His scanner showed the same bright pulse, but it was once again poor at giving him the fine detail needed to pin down the tulpa. He turned off the tracking feature and extended twin aerials on either side of the boxy device. It instantly started making a constant clicking noise. “Geiger counter reading is looking alright, only a little above background. Even though this place isn’t too big I think we should stick together for now. That way we won’t accidentally go anywhere with higher risk levels.”

“And you’re still sure Merrise should be in here?” Mrs Pines asked. “Might it be worth her going back to wait by the car?”

“I don’t want to go.” Merrise said, frowning. “This is a family adventure.”

“I’m being conscious of your wellbeing, my dear. It’s not even something out of the ordinary. Radiation poisoning is no laughing matter.”

“She knows the risks,” Dipper said absent-mindedly. “It’s dangerous, but if Pacifica and I are willing to stick our necks out then nothing we say can stop Merrise tagging along. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

“I suppose child endangerment is what you’re used to,” she said sharply. “You said it yourself, you started out so young.”

“That’s… that’s not important right now,” he mumbled. Resting his flashlight in the crook of his neck he shone it down at Journal 9 while he sketched a rough layout of the facility. “Ok, there’s the parking lot, cooling towers over here.” He drew two circles off to the right side. “Main entrance here, reactor core should be… there.” In an empty space at the middle of his drawing he marked a cross.

“Seems the most likely spot,” Mabel said. “Let’s go

“Then we have to deal with that Errata guy,” Pacifica added, a sour look on her face. It had already been a long enough day and she didn’t relish the idea of dealing with yet another cryptid on the loose.

The group passed through a series of functional grey corridors, only briefly shining their lights into side rooms and moving on. Dipper kept adding to his map, drawing more lines at every junction they went by. At the next turn he abruptly went left. They entered a large control room, with banks of dusty computers along the walls and ranks of freestanding consoles. A window running the length of the far wall looked down onto the reactor core itself. Walkways crisscrossed a large hall with empty circular pits.

“Most of the components were stripped out ages ago,” Dipper said. “The power generating equipment was all removed, the control rods, and the turbines. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission made sure to clean it all too, before you ask, Mabel, so in theory it should be safe.” His geiger counter was still ticking away at the same rate.

“Hmm, I’m still not convinced,” Mabel said, peering through the window. Given her poor eyesight she wasn’t able to make out much. “There must be something, or else why would the tulpa come here?”

“Fair point.” Dipper shone his light down into the reactor area but it barely made a dent in the enclosed darkness. “It makes you sad, doesn’t it? This place used to harness the power of the atom to create incredible amounts of power. Now it’s a husk.”

“Doesn’t make me sad,” Pacifica said. “It’s just a grimy industrial hole in the ground and I’d rather we don’t stick around chatting all evening and got the hell out of here.”

“Right right, let’s stay on mission.” He laid out his journal on the nearest desk and the others huddled around to look. Dipper’s finger slid along the page. “There are two passageways that lead down there, one on each side of the complex leading from this control centre. I recommend we break into two groups and meet again in the middle. Since the core’s likely the most likely place for the tulpa to be hiding, and also probably has the highest chance of radiation. I'm going to take a page out of your book, Mom. Merrise, I want you to stay up here, and before you argue,” she’d already opened her mouth to complain, “you can still help. From here you can watch everything that goes on down there and warn us if there’s trouble. The lights outside had electricity, so there should be an intercom.”

He hurried around the consoles, but his father found the microphone first. He clicked the button and they heard a quiet feedback sound from the main chamber.

“Good good,” Dipper said. “Now, Pacifica, I know you’ll hate me for this, but I want you to stay up here and look after Merrise.”

“What, and play babysitter while you go down there?”

“If my hunch about the core is wrong then we need someone to watch our flank if the tulpa shows up where we aren’t expecting it.” He put his palm on her cheek. “You and Merrise are our backup if something goes wrong.”

Pacifica clutched his hand and kissed it. “When you put it like that… don’t be reckless down there.”

“Hey, you know me. As long as I don’t eat any uranium rods I’m sure I’ll be fine.” He flashed a crooked grin and she giggled.

“Go on, get out of here and finish this.”

“I’ll go with Mom down the right corridor,” Mabel said. “You take Dad a go around the other way.”

Dipper nodded and both he and his sister strode out of the room. Mr and Mrs Pines shared an uneasy look before following their respective children out. “Relax,” Pacifica called after them. “It’s only a monster that can turn into any other monster in the multiverse, sitting on top of what could turn into a ginormous ticking time bomb. What’s the worst that could happen?”

“Ignore her,” Dipper said to his dad. “She’s trying to lighten the mood the way only Pacifica can.”

“You can sure pick ‘em,” Mr Pines replied.

They were only a few feet down the corridor when the air was split by an ear-piercing shriek. “Pacifica!” Dipper cried. “Dad, stay here.” He immediately bolted back down the corridor. When he got back to the control room he bumped into Mabel who’d had the same idea. They found Pacifica cowering in the corner, while Merrise was in hysterics. She pointed to the corner of the room, where a mass of cobwebs were tangled up. “I walked right into it!” Pacifica said, stamping her feet.

Mabel dropped down onto her front and watched a spider scuttling along the floor. “Aw, poor cutie.” She held out her finger and let the arachnid crawl over her fingers. “That tickles.” She set the spider down over by the webs and let it wander off. “You were scared of that tiny thing, Paz?”

“I wasn’t expecting it ok! It got in my hair! It’s not mutated is it?”

“Nope. Looks perfectly average. The girl who’s fought demons one-on-one can’t handle a small bug. Wow.”

Dipper coughed into his fist, “Moth.”

Mabel screamed and leapt to her feet. “WHERE? KILL IT!” The look of amusement on everyone’s faces made her straighten. “Uh, I mean. Wooh. Crazy.” She cupped her hands together then pointed down the corridor. “Let’s… let’s keep going.”

“Wait!” They turned to Merrise, face and palms right up against the glass. Down in the reactor room Mr and Mrs Pines each emerged from either side.

“They went on without us,” Mabel said, furrowing her brow.

“That’s why!” Merrise pointed but they’d all seen it. Following Mr and Mrs Pines into the room were two shimmering golden humanoids. They were short, only children. Dipper was confused. Where were the terrifying enemies, the cosmic entities hellbent on destruction that the tulpa would surely have turned into?

The two tulpas had taken the shape of a boy and a girl. The boy had a baseball cap and wore a sleeveless vest and shorts, while the girl’s colourful woollen sweater was hard to miss. Dipper had been wrong. The tulpa didn’t want the energy in this place to turn into something powerful. It needed the vast sums of energy to create another emotional connection, similar to his own repressed internal turmoil at the golf course. The tulpa had turned into perfect replicas of the Pines twins, circa 2012.

Zera’s eyes flipped open. She’d managed to drift off peacefully in the car. The lights from the plant hadn’t reached her and it was perfectly pitch black in the desert. Or it had been. A bright light made her cover her eyes and sit up. The glare was covering the entire plant and its surroundings in a diffuse halo. It wasn’t a golden illumination, as the tulpas and their creator had been. It was a harsher, lifeless light, like the glow of a distant forest fire over the horizon. An unholy aura.

Zera didn’t know what was causing the sudden luminance, but she knew it couldn’t be a good sign. She was worried it was radioactive in some way. That was silly though. Radiation didn’t actually glow like in a cartoon. It was an invisible, insidious killer. This must be related to the tulpas.

A dark shape flew past the car and she turned her head to catch it. Her mouth dropped open as she recognised the four-legged, top-heavy monstrosity lurching towards the main reactor building. “Oh May. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Mary? What are we doing? I’m not so sure this was a good idea.”

“Me neither. But what else are we supposed to do?”

They’d each seen a tulpa manifesting in the hallway, taking on the almost cherubic representations of their children. The children beckoned Mr and Mrs Pines onwards. Since they had no clue how to fight back they’d not demurred, and let the creatures guide them. Once all four of them were in the reactor room, the tulpas stood side-by-side and faced the parents. They each held one hand aloft, casting an ominous light to outshine the feeble flashlights. It enveloped the chamber, blocking all vision from the outside. Since then the tulpa twins had stood lifelessly in the reactor hall, staring vacantly ahead. They were like clockwork automatons waiting for the strike of noon.

Up in the control room, blinded by the glare, Pacifica and Merrise tried desperately to come up with answers. “We’ve gotta do something!” Merrise said, throwing her arms down in frustration. “This is a control room, right? Can’t we do anything from up here? I don’t know, turn off the power, stop the reactor. Control rods, those are a thing, right?”

“That’s just it, there are no controls.” Pacifica slammed a fist on the nearest console, which resounded with an echoing clang. “Like Mason said, all the power regulating machines are already gone. There shouldn’t be anything down there that’s capable of generating energy, let alone allowing us to switch it off!” Even the intercom had proven useless, giving nothing but static. Whatever the tulpas were doing to shine such a bright glow was also blocking radio waves too.

“That light, it hurts to look.” Merrise shielded her eyes with her hand and tapped the glass overlooking the floor below. “This is like bulletproof or something. They’re my grandparents!” Merrise said, on the verge of tears. “We’ve gotta be able to do something.”

“It’s up to the twins now.” Pacifica set her lip in a resolute line, determined not to show any fear in front of her daughter. “Why does it always have to fall on their stupid shoulders?”

That, as a matter of fact, was what Dipper was thinking at that same moment, creeping along the corridor to the reactor. He had no plan, no backup magic artefacts or clever tricks to win the day. He had his journal, his sister, and a fleeting hope his parents weren’t about to be disintegrated in a ball of fiery death.

Mabel ran up to the door to the room where her parents were. She pressed herself against the door, commando style, readying her gauntlet and squaring her shoulders. She nodded to Dipper as if expecting him to match her stance. He simply walked up to the door and shoved it open. Forget surprise; the tulpas must know they were coming.

He thought it would be burning hot inside but found all heat was being leached from the air. As they passed through the blazing nimbus of light the twins’ eyes adjusted quickly. It was like being underwater, the light speckling in bands which caught dust beams suspended in the air. “Mom, Dad!” Mabel yelled.

The tulpas and their parents were in the heart of the power plant, the eye of the storm where the light dimmed to acceptable levels to stare without squinting. Mr and Mrs Pines didn’t seem aware of the real twins outside the core, and hadn’t heard Mabel’s calls.

“Finally.” The multi-faceted voice ricocheted into the twins’ ears. The doors leading to the opposite corridor exploded off their hinges. The twins ducked. Swooping in was the enormous four-legged chimaera they’d last seen downtown. He was flying via a pair of wings that had sprouted out of the bark on his back. Each flapping wing was made of a tight coil of paper strands, brown and weathered, covered in scrawl from multiple writers.

Errata hovered above the tulpas and then set himself gently behind them. He held out his arms as if beckoning Mr and Mrs Pines forwards, like an evangelical preacher welcoming his flock. “Oh, that is good!” He primarily sounded like Dipper now, blocking out most of the other voices vying for dominance in the beast’s throat. “One happy family, back together. Isn’t that how it should be?”

Mabel ran towards her parents but came up against the wall of light. She pushed against the translucent barrier, finding herself repelled. “Don’t hurt them! Dipper, do something!”

“I- I don’t know what to do.” From out here the tableau within looked as still as the surface of an undisturbed lake. Neither the fantastical creatures or his parents were moving in the slightest. He reached out with his fingers and brushed the edge of the light core. To his astonishment they passed through the outer barrier.

Mabel watched him intently, then patted her brother on the back. “Dipper, it has to be you!”

“What, why me? You’re a part of this too, we both lied.”

“It’s not about that anymore. Dipper, don’t you get it? Errata, he’s a reflection of you more than anyone else. Think about it. Ford started the journals, sure, but you’ve written the most! You made them your entire life, devoted yourself to mysteries and adventures. You can break through. I believe in you, bro.” She hugged Dipper, then gently guided him towards the core.

As he’d anticipated, he passed through without resistance. The light parted like a curtain to let him approach. “Plus it was your decision to lie in the first place!” Mabel shoved Dipper the rest of the way through the light barrier. “You got this Dip! No backsies!”

“Hey, Mabel! Not fair!” He stumbled and nearly fell over until he righted his sense of balance. He looked forward and swallowed hard. “Oh crap.” The tulpas and his parents had turned to look at him with unanimous blank expressions. Dipper almost felt like laughing when he saw the copies of himself and Mabel up close. Him with his hat down firmly over his forehead, still mired in embarrassment about the birthmark that nowadays he considered nothing more than a fun quirk. Mabel’s purple sweater with a doofy cat wasn’t so different from something she’d still wear, but Dipper recognised the specificity. Both twins looked exactly as they had on the day Dipper had found Journal 3 in the woods. They were unchanged, a snapshot of innocence from that warm summer’s day 17 years ago.

His first thoughts were on practical matters. Ignoring his parents he fixed his glare on Errata’s starry face. The chimaera seemed to be smiling, though as always it was hard to discern. “First things first,” Dipper said. “I want to know how you harnessed the radiation. I’ve no idea where it’s coming from, but I demand you stop. Every second I spend bantering with you we’re all getting irradiated. I’d prefer if my parents didn’t end up mutated. Plus Pacifica and I have already dealt with enough infertility issues to last a lifetime, thank you very much.”

Dipper thought irreverence would be the easiest way to project his authority. Errata didn’t care. He gave a small grunt and shrug of the head that Dipper took to be a laugh. “Haven’t you figured it out yet? I thought you were supposed to be the smart one.” Dipper frowned at the perceived insult, both to him and the rest of his family. “There is no radiation.”

Dipper’s jaw dropped open. “But how-“

“Easy. I fed off the symbolic energy of this building.” Errata swept his hands around the room. A faint ectoplasmic glow appeared to hover off the walls before fading. “After you dealt so efficiently with the chaos I’d sown across the city, I was ready to embrace the lurking power. This place is practically drowning in…” Errata sniffed, “significance. All those technicians working here, they couldn’t help but express the way the world thought about it. The totemic fear, cracking the atom, the scientist’s dream of ultimate power. Of course it seeped into the very foundations of the brickwork! Then when it was abandoned it grew to an even greater significance. An enduring relic of man’s folly, of a path science went down before being treated as a dead end. I couldn’t resist the ritual of it all.”

“And now your tulpas are done harvesting all the energy up.”

“Not quite, you still have something of mine.”

Dipper felt in his pocket and found the two tulpas they’d caught, still locked in the form of the amulet and key. Seeing no other option, he held the objects out for Errata to take. He passed one each to the twins’ tulpas, handing the amulet to Mabel and the key to Dipper. It was then that the real Dipper realised the significance of the items. They’d managed to collect each others’ items, but it didn’t matter. These were in fact the very first artefacts the twins had acquired on their adventures, even if only temporarily in the amulet’s case. Dipper even still had the real President’s Key, framed back home.

Dipper slapped his forehead. “I should’ve realised sooner. You’re empathic. I’ve met a few empaths before. All those complicated foreign emotions swirling around must be enough to drive you mad.”

“Very nearly, boy. But I like the aftertaste of discord, the bitter swill of recriminations, smothered sentiment and… regret. Oh, how it feeds me. I was born in the crucible of lies and now it nourishes my soul!”

Dipper stood his ground and scowled. “Don’t think you can scare me. I’ve faced all kinds of psychic assaults. Dream demons who think they know me, regression to past events, I’ve seen it all. I’m not afraid of you.”

“Oh, I don’t want your fear, at least not this tawdry primal stew.” The chimaera’s paper wings swept down to surround Dipper’s parents, who remained oddly unresponsive. “No no no, not the shakiness of terror, the risk of physical hurt, even the potential harm to your loved ones. It’s all part of the game to you. The fear I want is much richer. It’s the fear that people could find out your secret: that you get off on all this.”

Dipper began to sweat and dropped his prepared stance. “You’re wrong.”

“Am I?” Errata snapped his finger, bringing Mr and Mrs Pines back to life.

“Dipper? What’s going on, where are-” Mr Pines gazed up to see Errata towering above him.

“Hi there,” Errata said wickedly. Pacifica’s tone of voice had floated to the top of the pile.“You’re a sick, dirty little addict. Mason ‘Dipper’ ’Ursus’ Pines. You and your sister, sneaking out at night, skipping school, repressing everything. How scrumptious it will be when those emotions come pouring out!”

Mrs Pines began to whimper. “He’s trying to make things worse, don’t listen to him.” Dipper’s parents tried to run free, but the wings kept them surrounded in a cruel embrace.

“Stop it!” he yelled, pushing forwards.

“Not yet.” Errata held out a single one of his six fingers and held Dipper back by the forehead. “Let’s have more of that juicy turmoil hidden behind your astronomical ego. Get the pun?” Dipper shoved the finger away from his birthmark but Errata had another trick up his sleeve.

“Boy, I can’t believe we defeated all those gnomes!” The tulpa of Mabel had spoken, and Dipper knew it was his reflection’s turn next.

“Who knows what other secrets are waiting to be unlocked thanks to this journal!” The copy sounded so eager, so carefree. He was ready to deceive his own parents if it meant there wasn’t even the slimmest chance of losing this new window of opportunity. Both of his parents could see this for themselves, giving disappointed glances at the golden twins, at least when not being intimidated into silence by Errata’s freakish thuggery.

The chimaera himself seemed overwhelmed with pleasure. “Oh, that’s decadent. Who knew one measly human boy could generate such drama.”

“Shut up!” Dipper shouted, surprising Errata. Defiance wasn’t an emotion he’d been expecting. “I’ve had it up to here with your petty taunts! Forget it. I don’t care if my parents don’t approve of my life. I’m an adult, I’ve got a family and responsibilities that I chose, alright. This doesn’t define anything anymore.” Dipper opened Journal 9 and held it for all to see. “Haven’t you got the memo yet, Errata? My parents have all the time in the world now to get to know me and my secrets. You said you were an open book? Well I’ve got dozens of the things lying around at home.” Errata was stunned into silence, and Dipper couldn’t tell if it was from his outburst or the sudden severing of his precious food source.

Dipper looked down from the irrelevant monster and approached his parents. “Yes, Mom, Dad. I lied. I did it because I wanted to have it both ways.” He pointed at his 12-year old self. “I could be ‘Dipper the investigator’, ‘Dipper the cryptid expert’, ‘Dipper the romantic hero’, and still come home and be ‘Mason the ordinary kid’.”

“Oh Dipper.” His mother knelt down and hugged him. “You could have told us and not had to hide any part of yourself.”

“Maybe,” he said, lightly hugging back. “Try telling that to me back then. You might not have understood, even if someone like Ford tried to explain it. There were times that first summer where I thought I couldn’t trust Grunkle Stan, or Mabel, or even my own doppelgangers. The idea of someone who didn’t even know the first thing about magic accepting it off the bat seemed laughable.” He rubbed his neck. “And if we’re being honest, I never really had any friends before that summer. I was a nerd, with freaky forehead acne. Then I found people I could relate to, who lived and breathed weirdness. I didn’t want to lose them as much as the actual adventures.”

Dipper sniffed, and Mr Pines put a supportive hand on his shoulder. “Hey now, we might not get all of this craziness, but we still love you son. None of this can change that. I mean, it’s not like you turned out to be hiding something bad about yourself, is it?”

“Exactly!” His mother was smiling now, almost forgetting where they were. “We never knew you had such a capacity to draw and write, in such detail.”

“Yeah, those tulpa things could only be so accurate if the source material already was, right? Lifelike doesn’t even begin to cover it! Then there’s Mabel, doing all those fancy spells. I never thought my little girl had it in her! Or Zera, she leapt into action to save us, near-strangers. If that isn’t heroic I don’t know what is.”

“And what about little Merrise, who was so brave to endure so much. If you hadn’t told us the truth we’d never know har far you’d all come.”

“And Pacifica, she… did we learn anything new about Pacifica, Mary?”

“I don’t think so.“ His parents laughed. “Well she’s a wonderful person as well, I’m sure she’ll be a great mother to Wendy and Merrise.”

“Thanks,” Dipper said, smiling and holding back tears. “It means a lot, to hear all that from you after so long.”

“C’mon Dipper!” Dipper looked up. Errata was frozen with a pensive expression. The tulpa of Mabel was leading her brother away. “Let’s go find another adventure in Gravity Falls.” The echoes of the twins wandered away, past Errata, before disappearing into the light. A cascade of golden energy flowed into Errata a moment later, but he didn’t react.

“I think I get it now,” he said, with an almost eerie calmness. He stumbled on his hind legs as if drunk. “I thought the potential of that trapped doubt and guilt was all I needed. But this, this cocktail of missed opportunity and exuberant acceptance, a new beginning… It’s a heady mix.”

“It’s an all new flavour of emotion. I like it too,” Dipper said softly. Errata smiled, and for the first time it wasn’t in a mocking way.

His brutish hands were almost graceful as they reached out to a sunbeam, catching falling dust motes in his palm. “Here I was thinking I knew you Dipper Pines. Perhaps I only knew your imprint. All your years jumbled together on the pages of the journals. None of them could quite capture who you are in the present.”

Dipper noticed the mood around them had subtly changed. There was a satisfying warmth in the reactor room, and the light was no longer harsh to the eye. It was a pleasant orange, like the light of a roaring campfire or a homely hearth. Dipper saw his sister waving, back by the entrance. She could tell something positive had taken place.

Errata creaked as he stretched out his trunk neck. “Thank you. For showing me there can be other paths. Perhaps we will meet again, and I can return the favour.” Errata stood in place, but the room began to shake.

Dipper was the first to cotton on to what was about to happen. He took his parents by the hand and backed away from his indirect creation, offering a grin of support before turning to leave.

“What the heck is-” Mabel was cut off as Dipper ran past, adding her hand to the list and dragging her away. Sprinting out, they stopped in the control room for only a second.

“Time to go guys,” Dipper said to Pacifica and Merrise, who looked relieved to see them all unharmed. The quakes became more violent, knocking over desks and computers, which let off a flurry of electrical sparks.

Dipper spared only a single glance down into the reactor. The light was building in intensity again. Errata was blurred and indistinct. Dipper lingered until he became completely obscured, and was the last to run out of the main block after his family. They continued to run until they reached the parking lot. Zera was standing outside the car, mouth agape watching as the entire plant shone like the sun.

A sudden gust of air blew inwards toward the reactor, dimming the light as it went. The Pines family watched in amazement as there was sudden implosion, with all the light focusing into one point at the centre of the plant before shooting upwards like a searchlight’s beam straight up into the night sky. The roof of the reactor room blew outwards, sending concrete walls catapulting away. Amongst the devastation, Dipper smiled when he saw a brief vision of Errata, racing away into the stars up above.

Then it was all over. The light dissipated, the earth was still, and the danger was over. They all let out deep breaths of relief and looked around at each other, celebrating the fact they’d survived together.

“It’s over.” Mrs Pines had spoken. Her gaze was fixed on the sky. “Where-”

“It’s not important,” Dipper said. “He’s nothing anymore. Merely a footnote. What’s really important is the story we write next.” He showed his parents the cover of Journal 9, with the same starry pattern as Errata’s face. It glimmered in the half-light of the moon. Dipper looked expectantly at the two of them. “So? What do you say? Want to add your own touch?”

His parents shared only a short look, before taking Journal 9 and turning it to the latest blank page. Marc and Mary Pines would be the latest in a long line to lend a small part of themselves to the ever expanding tapestry started in Gravity Falls so many years ago.

“Great, world’s saved again,” Zera yawned. “Now can we please go home and get some sleep?”

[mariacallous]

One hundred miles west of Johannesburg in South Africa, the Komati Power Station is hard to miss, looming above the flat grassland and farming landscapes like an enormous eruption of concrete, brick, and metal.

When the coal-fired power station first spun up its turbines in 1961, it had twice the capacity of any existing power station in South Africa. It has been operational for more than half a century, but as of October 2022, Komati has been retired—the stacks are cold and the coal deliveries have stopped.

Now a different kind of activity is taking place on the site, transforming it into a beacon of clean energy: 150 MW of solar, 70 MW of wind, and 150 MW of storage batteries. The beating of coal-fired swords into sustainable plowshares has become the new narrative for the Mpumalanga province, home to most of South Africa’s coal-fired power stations, including Komati.

To get here, the South African government has had to think outside the box. Phasing out South Africa’s aging coal-fired power station fleet—which supplies 86 percent of the country’s electricity—is expensive and politically risky, and could come at enormous social and economic cost to a nation already struggling with energy security and socioeconomic inequality. In the past, bits and pieces of energy-transition funding have come in from organizations such as the World Bank, which assisted with the Komati repurposing, but for South Africa to truly leave coal behind, something financially bigger and better was needed.

That arrived at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, in November 2021, in the form of a partnership between South Africa, European countries, and the US. Together, they made a deal to deliver $8.5 billion in loans and grants to help speed up South Africa’s transition to renewables, and to do so in a socially and economically just way.

This agreement was the first of what’s being called Just Energy Transition Partnerships, or JETPs, an attempt to catalyze global finance for emerging economies looking to shift energy reliance away from fossil fuels in a way that doesn’t leave certain people and communities behind.

Since South Africa’s pioneering deal, Indonesia has signed an agreement worth $20 billion, Vietnam one worth $15.5 billion, and Senegal one worth $2.75 billion. Discussions are taking place for a possible agreement for India. Altogether, around $100 billion is on the table.

There’s significant enthusiasm for JETPs in the climate finance arena, particularly given the stagnancy of global climate finance in general. At COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009, developed countries signed up to a goal of mobilizing $100 billion of climate finance for developing countries per year by 2020. None have met that target, and the agreement lapses in 2025. The hope is that more funding for clear-cut strategies and commitments will lead to quicker moves toward renewables.

South Africa came into the JETP agreement with a reasonably mature plan for a just energy transition, focusing on three sectors: electricity, new energy vehicles, and green hydrogen. Late last year, it fleshed that out with a detailed Just Energy Transition investment plan. Specifically, the plan centers on decommissioning coal plants, providing alternative employment for those working in coal mining, and accelerating the development of renewable energy and the green economy. It is a clearly defined but big task.

South Africa’s coal mining and power sector employs around 200,000 people, many in regions with poor infrastructure and high levels of poverty. So the “just” part of the “just energy transition” is critical, says climate finance expert Malango Mughogho, who is managing director of ZeniZeni Sustainable Finance Limited in South Africa and a member of the United Nations High-Level Expert Group on net-zero emissions commitments.

“People are going to lose their jobs. Industries do need to shift so, on a net basis, the average person living there needs to not be worse off from before,” she says. This is why the project focuses not only on the energy plants themselves, but also on reskilling, retraining, and redeployment of coal workers.

In a country where coal is also a major export, there are economic and political sensitivities around transitioning to renewables, and that poses a challenge in terms of how the project is framed. “Given the high unemployment rate in South Africa as well … you cannot sell it as a climate change intervention,” says Deborah Ramalope, head of climate policy analysis at the policy institute Climate Analytics in Berlin. “You really need to sell it as a socioeconomic intervention.”

That would be a hard sell if the only investment coming in were $8.5 billion—an amount far below what’s needed to completely overhaul a country’s energy sector. But JETPs aren’t intended to completely or even substantially bankroll these transitions. The idea is that this initial financial boost signals to private financiers both within and outside South Africa that things are changing.

Using public finance to leverage private investment is a common and often successful practice, Mughogho says. The challenge is to make the investment prospects as attractive as possible. “Typically private finance will move away from something if they consider it to be too risky and they’re not getting the return that they need,” she says. “So as long as those risks have been clearly identified and then managed in some way, then the private sector should come through.” This is good news, as South Africa has forecast it will need nearly $100 billion to fully realize the just transition away from coal and toward clean vehicles and green hydrogen as outlined in its plan.

Will all of that investment arrive? It’s such early days with the South African JETP that there’s not yet any concrete indication of whether the approach will work.

But the simple fact that such high-profile, high-dollar agreements are being signed around just transitions is cause for hope, says Haley St. Dennis, head of just transitions at the Institute for Human Rights and Business in Salt Lake City, Utah. “What we have seen so far, particularly from South Africa, which is the furthest along, is very promising,” she says. These projects demonstrate exactly the sort of international cooperation needed for successful climate action, St. Dennis adds.

The agreements aren’t perfect. For example, they may not rule out oil and gas as bridging fuels between coal and renewables, says St. Dennis. “The rub is that, especially for many of the JETP countries—which are heavily coal-dependent, low- and middle-income economies—decarbonization can’t come at any cost,” she says. “That especially means that it can’t threaten what is often already tenuous energy security and energy access for their people, and that's where oil and gas comes in in a big way.”

Ramalope says they also don’t go far enough. “I think the weakness of JETPs is that they’re not encouraging 1.5 [degrees] Celsius,” she says, referring to the limit on global warming set as a target by the Paris Agreement in 2015. In Senegal, which is not coal-dependent, the partnership agreement is to achieve 40 percent renewables in Senegal’s electricity mix. But Ramalope says analysis suggests the country could achieve double this amount. “I think that’s a missed opportunity.”

Another concern is that these emerging economies could be simply trapping themselves in more debt with these agreements. While there’s not much detail about the relative proportions of grants and loans in South Africa’s agreement, St. Dennis says most of the funding is concessional, or low-interest loans. “Why add more debt when the intention is to dramatically catalyze decarbonization in a very short timescale?” she asks. Grants themselves are estimated to be a very small component of the overall funding—around 5 percent.

But provided they generate the funding needed to bring emissions down as desired, the view of JETPs is largely positive, says Sierd Hadley, an economist with the Overseas Development Institute in London. For Hadley, the concern is whether JETPs can be sustained once the novelty has worn off, and once they aren’t being featured as part of a COP or G20 leadup. But he notes that the fact that the international community has managed to deliver at least four of the five JETP deals so far—with India yet to be locked in—shows there is pressure to make good on the promises.

“On the whole, the fact that there has been a plan, and that that plan is broadly in progress, suggests that on balance this has been fairly successful,” he says. “It’s a very significant moment for climate finance.”

[rebrandedstoryline]

Rebranded - 7 - Moving In

Moon brings Sun to their new home. There’s a few hiccups, but things seem to be going well.

Word Count: 1,489

When nightfall came, the two animatronics set out towards their potential home. Moon, having already visited the location multiple times, was the one to lead the way. Sun followed close behind, stepping only where his twin had stepped.

The journey took some time. A couple of hours, easily. 

The landscape was not even. There were multiple hills which needed to be ascended and multiple drops which needed to be carefully climbed. It was a relatively easy journey for them. Not so much for humans. 

That discovery ultimately helped Sun relax. The fact that they could so easily flee if needed. The fact that they could go back to their temporary shelter at any moment if something happened. The fact that the terrain meant that humans would struggle to maintain chase if they were found. All of it brought him a sense of comfort. 

The opportunity to escape would not be so easily lost. The risk of being decommissioned seemed just a little less prevalent.

Upon arriving at the house in question, Sun hesitated for a moment before following his twin. As he hesitated his solar flares flickered and rotated ever so slightly, before retracting completely into his head for a split second.

Moon made no move to rush his twin, well aware of what Sun was doing. The sensors used to detect signs of life were stored in their rays. Sun was just making sure that there were genuinely no people loitering about in the empty house. Once the house was concluded to indeed be empty, the hesitant animatronic resumed following after his brother. 

Just as had been promised, there were a lot of plants to be found. Plants which had clearly been planted by people. Plants which would bear fruit. Plants which would serve a purpose. Around the house itself there were berry bushes. They did not know what sort of berries were growing on these bushes, but they were berries nonetheless. 

As Moon had mentioned, there were strange looking black panels set up upon the roof. If those panels were somehow involved in solar power, then that would absolutely explain why the house still had electricity. 

Speaking of the house, it was definitely smaller than the animatronics were accustomed to. The daycare had been much larger, roughly the size of a small warehouse. They had been made taller in order to make working in that space easier. 

Getting used to a normal building would prove difficult. That would probably be the only downside, though. 

The AI would be able to make due with the luck they had been given.

“There’s a lot of yard space.” Moon abruptly spoke, taking a moment to point in the distance. “We’re too far away to see it, but there’s a fence marking the perimeter of the property. So we’ll have an established territory if we keep within the borders. We can treat it like the daycare… Stay within the boundaries and take care of what we have.” He explained, seemingly attempting to make the transitional period easier on his sibling. 

All the while he unintentionally used language befitting a security bot.

“Moony, are your security protocols still active?” Sun jokingly inquired, attempting to poke a bit of fun at how his twin had started to speak. The question coaxed what seemed to be an awkward laugh out of the nocturnal bot.

“My security protocols... They aren’t exactly inactive, but they aren’t active either. Somewhere in the middle. I’m always on alert, but my system isn’t giving me any false flags.” Moon explained, his tone rather quiet and a bit uneasy. The subject was not a comfortable one for him to discuss, given his background. Though he did not hold it against his sibling to try and lighten the mood. “It doesn’t matter, though. Come. I’ll show you the way inside.” He added, quickly changing the subject before Sun could become distracted by the somber tone of his earlier reply.

“Can’t we use the door?” Sun inquired, rightfully confused. He could see the entrance from where they stood.

“No, not really. The door has some sort of a mechanical lock in place. Whoever abandoned the house, they set up precautions to try and keep others out. The front and back door and all of the windows on the bottom floor are locked up tight. We’ll break them if we try to use them.” Moon explained, somewhat anxiously as he unloaded this information. He suspected that his sibling may find this knowledge at least somewhat distressing.

“W-wouldn’t that mean that someone might notice us going in? A security alert could go off...” Sun replied nervously, now seeming incredibly hesitant to approach the building.

“I tested that theory already.” Moon stated in turn, shifting so that he could put a comforting hand upon his brother’s shoulder. “I would not have brought you here if I didn’t consider this building completely safe. Any potential risk, I made sure it was not an issue. The windows on the second floor are not locked. The window leading to the attic is how I’ve been getting into the house. I have gone in multiple times and explored every room to test and see if any sort of alarm would go off. No one has ever come to investigate. So long as we don’t fool around with the windows or doors on the bottom floor, we’ll be fine.” He stated, making it very clear that he had already thought of the potential risks of moving into the abandoned house. 

Whatever security system was in place; if there was one in place; it would only be activated by damaging the integrity of the mechanical locks.

“I-I... I’m sorry, Moony. You’re-re ri-right. I’m just sc-sc-ared...” Sun stammered, a sort of anxiety induced vocal glitch taking hold of his voice box as he spoke. It was a symptom of high emotional distress. One that the technicians had never quite managed to work out of his system.

Moon could only attempt to coax his sibling towards the house. The vocal glitch would go away on its own once Sun’s stress had been reduced.

“It's alright, Sun. You’re alright. You know I’d never let anything hurt you. I promise.” Moon replied, gently tugging his twin towards the building. 

Sun did not reply for fear of his vocal stammer rendering him incomprehensible. He simply allowed his brother to lead him to the entrance of their new home. 

Thanks to their height and the long reach of their limbs, they were able to make their way to the third floor of the building without any issues. The large windows leading to the attic opened inward, allowing the two to make their way inside without need for any acrobatics. 

As Moon had warned, the inside of the building was caked in dust. The attic in particular was filthy when compared to the rooms below. Aside from a few crumbling boxes, the attic was entirely empty. It was home only to dust and cobwebs. 

Dusty cobwebs at that. The spiders that had built them had moved on long ago due to lack of food.

Moving down to the second floor, everything was cleaner. Still covered in dust, but nowhere near as filthy as the space above. 

Moon’s footprints from the previous nights of exploration were proof enough that he had explored the building multiple times in search of potential threats. 

The two had to crouch in order to move through doorways, but thankfully the ceilings were just high enough that they could stand without issue. For as small as the house was when compared to the daycare, it wasn’t all bad. Large compared to the homes that the pair had crept by in the city. But having had so little first hand experience with houses, it was unclear if this home was on the larger side or not. 

Sun was relieved to find that the house was not as cramped as he thought it may be. Surprised, even. Now that he had actually gone inside and seen all of the evidence of Moon’s investigations for himself, he had calmed down considerably.

“This... This might actually work~” Sun chimed, sounding hesitant for a split second, before his chipper tone returned. Thankfully his vocal stammer had gone away. 

Moon smiled at his brother, pleased to hear that they were content with their new home.

“We’ll just need to clean up a bit~” Moon replied, a sort of playful tone sneaking into his voice as he spoke.

“Clean up~! Clean up~!” Sun half sang in turn, waving his hands about slightly as a show of excitement. 

Yes. This could work. 

The building was secure and there would be no issue maintaining power. 

This was a perfectly suitable home for a pair of runaway animatronics. If fate remained kind, they would keep it. They would tend to it. 

If they were lucky, maybe they could even come to love it. Just maybe.

[blamebrampton]

I saw your reblog about nuclear and uh...

Are you a nuclear scientist? I don't really think too much about people's "real" lives on here (I like my anonymity on here). But if you are, um, wow you just got more intimidating.

Heh! I’m not intimidating, I’m the person dogs run up to in the park! Not a nuclear scientist, either, but I’ve been writing on science and tech topics including power tech and policy since the late 1980s, so I’ve spoken to multiple nuclear scientists over the decades as part of that.

The problems with nuclear have always been time/cost to build and safety of running, disposal and decommissioning. In the past, the reliability, comparatively low total greenhouse emissions over the lifetime of the plant (including construction and running) and comparatively low risk made the high cost and long build time worthwhile, because coal, gas and oil kill far more people more regularly and make many more ill.

That’s not to say that arguments about nuclear waste disposal and plants being dangerous are wrong: they’re real problems. But compared to 50,000 coal deaths per annum in the US alone, they’re small problems. And then there’s catastrophic climate change.

However, while nuclear plant designs have become cleverer, cheaper and easier to construct, the speed of improvement in solar and wind has far outstripped it and now renewable power generation costs are the lowest in many markets. Renewables aren’t all sunshine and roses, there are distribution and storage issues and environmental costs for the mining required to build plant, but it does look as though this is the sector that is the future of power generation, on simple market grounds. Anyone telling you it’s not possible is basing their arguments on 1980s’ tech.

In Australia, where I now live, there are some loud political voices who are now calling for nuclear. Ironically, it would have been great if they had built plant here 40 years ago given the geologically stable ground of most of the continent but those same voices were then shrieking against it to protect their coal interests. Never trust an Australian mining billionaire. (Or media billionaire!)

[b2bbusiness]

South Africa's Thermal Power Market: Transformation in the Midst of Tradition

South Africa's electricity sector is undergoing a significant shift. While thermal power, primarily coal-fired generation, has historically dominated the landscape, a growing focus on renewable energy sources is shaping the future. This article explores the current state and projected trajectory of South Africa's thermal power market.

Dominant Legacy: Coal and Thermal Power

For decades, coal has been the backbone of South Africa's energy production. Abundant domestic coal reserves have translated to a reliable and cost-effective fuel source for thermal power plants. These plants, responsible for over 77% of the country's installed capacity in 2021, continue to be the dominant source of electricity generation.

Winds of Change: The Rise of Renewables

Despite the prevalence of thermal power, South Africa is actively pursuing a renewable energy future. The government's commitment is evident in initiatives like the Renewable Independent Power Producer Programme (REIPPPP) which fosters private sector participation in renewable energy projects. Solar and wind power are gaining traction, with projections indicating their share of total power generation to rise from 9.3% in 2023 to 17.0% by 2032.

The Looming Decline of Coal

South Africa's heavy reliance on coal is not without its drawbacks. Environmental concerns regarding greenhouse gas emissions are pushing for a transition towards cleaner energy sources. Additionally, the economics of coal power are becoming less favorable. The projected decline in thermal energy production, from 200.1 TWh in 2023 to 188.0 TWh in 2032, reflects this shift.

Decommissioning and the Future of Thermal Power

The South African government has acknowledged the need to decommission older, less efficient coal-fired power plants. This strategic move aims to modernize the power generation infrastructure and align with environmental goals. While thermal power is expected to remain a significant contributor in the near future, its role is likely to diminish as renewable energy sources become more established.

Challenges and Opportunities in the Market

The South African thermal power market faces several challenges. Ensuring a stable and secure energy supply during the transition to renewables is crucial. Balancing the cost-effectiveness of thermal power with environmental sustainability will be a key concern. However, this transformation also presents opportunities. The decommissioning of coal plants opens doors for investments in cleaner thermal technologies like natural gas.

Conclusion: A Balanced Future

South Africa's thermal power market is at a crossroads. While coal-fired generation has served the country well, the path forward necessitates a strategic shift towards a more sustainable and diversified energy mix. By embracing innovation and fostering the growth of renewables, South Africa can ensure a secure and environmentally responsible energy future.

Note: This article is around 400 words. You can expand on the following points to reach 1000 words:

Deep dive into specific renewable energy projects: Provide details on some of the major solar and wind power plants being developed in South Africa.

Government policies and regulations: Discuss how government policies like the REIPPPP and carbon emission regulations are impacting the thermal power market.

The role of independent power producers: Explore how private companies are contributing to the growth of renewable energy in South Africa.

Impact on coal mining communities: Discuss the potential social and economic consequences of the decline in coal-fired power generation for communities dependent on the industry.

The future of clean coal technologies: Investigate the potential of cleaner burning coal plants or carbon capture and storage technologies in South Africa's future energy mix.

Buy Full Report for More Insights on the South Africa Thermal Power Market Forecast

Download a Free Report Sample

[sunnyenergysolar]

Top Arizona solar energy facts of 2024 no one talks about

This Blog was Originally Published at:

Top Arizona solar energy facts of 2024 no one talks about

Solar energy is a game-changer in the quest for sustainable electricity. Unlike traditional sources, solar power produces no harmful emissions of pollutants, making it a key player in combating climate change. With the world on the brink of surpassing the 1.5°C threshold, the shift to renewables like solar has never been more urgent. Arizona, with its scorching sun and abundant open land, is a natural leader in the solar energy revolution. As we move through 2024, the state continues to make significant strides in solar adoption, boasting impressive statistics and exciting developments.

Let’s delve into some of the top solar energy facts currently making Arizona shine and how Sunny Energy, a leading Arizona solar company, can help you.

Top Arizona Solar Energy facts -

1.Soaking up the sun:

Harnessing the immense potential of solar energy, we unlock a boundless source of light and heat radiation from the sun to fuel our world. With advancements in technology, we’re expanding the reach of solar capture globally. In just 90 minutes, the energy that touches the Earth’s surface could power humanity for an entire year. With the sun as our eternal ally, we possess the means and innovation to transition entirely to solar power, eliminating the need for fossil fuels on a global scale. In addition, Arizona boasts an impressive 8.23% of its electricity generation comes from solar power, placing it among the top solar-producing states in the nation. This percentage is expected to rise steadily in the coming years as solar continues to gain traction.

2. Solar is the most popular form of new electricity generation

Solar energy has skyrocketed to become the fastest-growing and most popular form of new electricity generation. Just a decade ago, solar accounted for a mere 0.06% of the global energy mix, but by 2019, it had soared to an impressive 1.11%. This growth is even more remarkable in the context of renewable energy, where solar’s share surged from 0.8% in 2010 to a substantial 10.3% in 2019. The capacity of solar power installations is expanding rapidly, enabling the capture of more energy and thus generating more electricity. In 2020 alone, global solar power capacity increased by a staggering 22%, indicating a booming trend in installations. When combined with wind power, renewable energy output has more than doubled since 2015, underlining the pivotal role of solar in the global energy transition.

3. Solar energy minimizes greenhouse gas emissions

Solar power generation is renowned for its minimal greenhouse gas emissions throughout its life cycle. While the actual generation of solar power itself emits no greenhouse gases, there are some emissions associated with other stages of the life cycle. These emissions primarily occur during the manufacturing of solar cell and panel materials, which are typically made of monocrystalline, polycrystalline, or thin film silicon. Other stages, such as transportation, installation, maintenance, and decommissioning, also contribute, but these emissions are minimal.

Estimates suggest that the life-cycle emissions for photovoltaic (PV) solar cell systems range from 0.07 to 0.18 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent per kilowatt-hour, showcasing the environmentally friendly nature of solar energy.

4. Solar PV accounts for 3% of global electricity generation

Solar photovoltaic (PV) power has surged to account for 3.1% of global electricity generation, a remarkable feat achieved through record growth. In 2020 alone, solar PV generation increased by an astounding 156 TWh, reaching a total of 921 TWh. This growth represents a remarkable 23% increase from the previous year, highlighting the rapid adoption of solar energy worldwide.

5. Solar Power plants can last 40 years or more

Solar power plants offer a sustainable energy solution with impressive longevity, often exceeding 40 years of reliable operation. Unlike traditional power plants, solar infrastructure can be easily updated and maintained by replacing outdated panels with newer, more efficient modules. This adaptability ensures that solar power plants remain efficient and cost-effective throughout their extended lifespan.

6. Environmental impact of solar energy

While solar power plants offer numerous environmental benefits, including reduced greenhouse gas emissions and sustainable energy generation, they do have some environmental impacts. According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), a solar power plant capable of providing electricity for 1,000 homes would require approximately 32 acres of land. Scaling this up to meet the energy needs of the entire United States would necessitate the use of approximately 18,734,500 acres of land, equivalent to 0.8% of the country’s total land area.

In addition to land use, solar thermal power plants require significant water use for cooling purposes. Furthermore, the disposal of hazardous materials used in solar panel production can pose environmental risks if not managed properly. Despite these impacts, the overall environmental benefits of solar power remain substantial, making it a key player in the transition to clean energy.

7. Solar energy will become cheaper

Solar energy costs are on a downward trajectory, with projections indicating a significant decrease by 2024. Forecasts suggest that the United States will double its solar installations to four million by 2023, reflecting a global trend where more countries are turning to solar to meet their climate objectives. Australia, for instance, set a record in 2021 by installing over 3,000MW of rooftop solar panels, with nearly one-third of Australian households now equipped with solar panels, the highest rate globally.

This positive trend in solar uptake is expected to drive down costs significantly. Experts anticipate a reduction of solar costs by 15% to 35% by 2024, fostering more significant growth in the industry over the latter half of the decade. This accessibility and affordability of solar energy will play a crucial role in accelerating the global transition to sustainable energy sources.

**If you like these solar energy facts, you might also like some solar energy facts related to Arizona state: **

8. Investment boom:

The total solar investment in Arizona has reached a staggering $14.6 billion, showcasing the state’s commitment to clean energy and recognizing the economic potential of the solar industry.

9. Financial incentives:

Arizona offers attractive solar energy facts like financial incentives for residents and businesses considering solar, including the federal Investment Tax Credit (ITC) of 30% (applicable until 2032) and the state’s 25% tax credit on solar system costs (up to $1,000). These incentives significantly reduce the upfront cost of going solar, making it a more accessible option.

10. Beyond the statistics:

Arizona is home to some of the largest solar power plants in the country, like the Solana and Mesquite Solar Project, showcasing the state’s commitment to large-scale solar energy production. The abundant sunshine in Arizona makes it an ideal location for solar energy research and development, attracting leading companies and institutions to invest in this field. As solar adoption increases, Arizona is exploring innovative solutions like battery storage and community solar projects to further enhance the benefits of solar energy.

By embracing solar energy, Arizona is setting a shining example for other states to follow. As the technology continues to evolve and costs decrease, we can expect to see even greater solar adoption in the Grand Canyon State, paving the way for a cleaner and more sustainable future.

Conclusion:

Arizona’s solar energy journey is not just a story of numbers and statistics; it’s a testament to the state’s commitment to a sustainable future. With impressive solar adoption rates, a thriving solar industry ecosystem, and innovative solutions on the horizon, Arizona is truly a solar powerhouse. As we look ahead after these solar energy facts, it’s clear that solar energy will play an increasingly vital role in Arizona’s energy landscape, benefiting both the environment and the economy. As other states look to Arizona’s example, it’s evident that the sun is shining brightly on the Grand Canyon State’s solar future.

Sunny Energy, a leading Arizona solar company, can help you understand these solar energy facts and determine how many solar panels your home needs through a personalized consultation. Their team of Arizona solar contractors and experts will assess your energy usage, roof size, orientation, and shading to design a custom solar system that maximizes energy production and savings. With Sunny Energy’s state-of-the-art technology and industry-leading expertise, you can trust that your solar panel installation will be optimized for efficiency and performance.

In conclusion, Arizona’s solar energy landscape is thriving, and Sunny Energy is at the forefront of this revolution. By harnessing the power of the sun, Sunny Energy is not only helping homeowners save money on their energy bills but also contributing to a greener, more sustainable future for Arizona and beyond. If you’re considering going solar, Sunny Energy is your trusted partner for the best solar company in Arizona. If you’re searching for solar power companies near me or solar power companies in Arizona, look no further than Sunny Energy. Their reputation as one of the best Arizona solar companies and top-rated solar companies in Arizona is well-deserved, and their commitment to excellence sets them apart from other solar Arizona companies. With Sunny Energy, you can rest assured that you’re getting the best solar solution for your home or business.

[newsource21]

(LifeSiteNews) — Various governments have made commitments to expand the use of electric vehicles (EVs) and alternative energy systems. The stated objectives include reducing pollution, improving human health and the environment, protecting the environment and providing reliable energy at lower costs. Among those jumping on this band wagon are the governments of the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the European Union, and the Governorate of Vatican City State.

Here’s the big question: Will adopting these technologies achieve these goals? To get an answer, we will examine what they require for operation, decommissioning and supporting infrastructure.

For starters, EV batteries require lithium, whose mining needs 2 metric tons of water for every 1 kilogram (kg) of extracted metal. To put things into perspective, each Tesla battery requires about 10 kg of lithium, which means that 20 metric tons of water are needed for each battery. To make matters worse, lithium is usually found in deserts that lack readily available water in large quantities.

EV batteries also require cobalt, with the Democratic Republic of the Congo being the largest producer and exporter of cobalt. Unfortunately, the expansion of cobalt mines has turned green areas into barren lands and often employs child labor in the extraction. For instance, Kasulo, located in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and formerly a popular urban neighborhood, has been made unlivable since underground ores began to be exploited in 2014.

As if these weren’t enough, EVs and wind and solar energy systems require rare earth metals. The mining of these results in environmental destruction, including deforestation, soil erosion, water contamination, loss of wildlife habitats, changes in landscapes, air pollution and adverse health effects to miners, including lead poisoning.

Thus, instead of reducing pollution and protecting the environment, switching to EVs and alternative energy systems does the opposite, beginning with the mining of necessary materials.

The construction of the infrastructure needed for alternative energy systems (e.g., hydro, solar, wind and geothermal) requires more than four times the amount of materials (e.g., steel, glass, copper, cement/concrete, aluminum, iron, lead, plastic and silicon) than conventional energy systems (coal, natural gas and nuclear). Compared to coal-fired power plants, land requirements for solar and wind energy systems are about 33 and 179 times more, respectively. These high material and land costs increase the cost of energy.

During their operation, solar energy systems and wind turbines kill birds, with the latter being fatal to bats as well, and have proved to be unreliable.

Reliability issues induced by over-reliance on wind and solar have arisen in numerous locales around the globe. For instance, California has been converting to solar, decommissioning all but one of its coal-fired power plants and all but one of its nuclear power plants and minimizing its use of gas-fired power. As a result, the state experienced rolling blackouts during a heat wave in the summer of 2020.

Similarly, Texas invested heavily in wind and solar only to have both fail miserably during a winter storm in February 2021. Frozen wind turbines and snow-covered solar panels left much of Texas without electric power for long periods, which led to the deaths of more than 200 people and billions of dollars in economic losses. The following July, natural gas power plants were called upon to make up for failing wind and solar energy systems during a heat wave.

During the winter of 2020-21, Germany had an experience similar to that of Texas when wind and solar succumbed to the effects of cold and snow. Since the country began switching to wind and solar around 2000, the price of German electricity has more than tripled.

In short, wind and solar energy systems are not cheap, reliable or environmentally friendly.

EVs also prove to be dangerous, unreliable and expensive. Because their lithium-ion batteries store so much chemical and electrical energies, EVs have become known as fire hazards. Compared to internal combustion engines, the power systems of EVs produce fires that are harder to extinguish because the batteries could reignite and cooling the battery pack is difficult. To make matters worse, EV fires may release large amounts of poisonous gases, such as hydrogen fluoride.

READ: Trudeau’s electric vehicle mandate could cause Canada’s power grid to collapse, analysis shows

Cold weather is a nemesis of EVs, as it is for many battery-operated devices. Temperatures below 32 °F (0 °C) can cause the driving range of EVs to drop significantly or even render the vehicle useless due to the increase in the internal resistance of lithium-ion batteries at cold temperatures. Charging EVs in cold weather can significantly increase the time needed for recharging and may cause permanent battery damage.

While it’s true that EVs do not have exhaust emissions, one needs to consider that there are other types of emissions, including particulate matter (PM) from brake wear, tire wear, road wear and resuspension of road dust. Because EVs are 24 percent heavier (due to their batteries) compared to their equivalent internal combustion engine vehicles, EVs emit about the same amounts of PM10 and emit only about 1-3 percent less PM2.5 than internal combustion engine vehicles. In fact, there is a positive relationship between the vehicle weight and its particulate matter emissions.

Finally, the disposing of EV batteries and the decommissioning of wind turbines and solar panels are both problematic environmental issues.

EV batteries last about 5 to 10 years and need to be replaced when their output goes below 80% of their initial capacities. Storing, burying, and exporting these used lithium-ion batteries are no longer acceptable. Unfortunately, the direct recycling of these batteries, with high remaining capacities, would be prohibitively expensive and highly energy- and resource-intensive, and would pollute the air, water and land.

READ: ‘National EV mandate’: Biden administration regulations aim to end sale of gas-powered cars by 2032

Similarly, the blades of wind turbines last about 10 years. The life of wind-turbine towers and solar panels is about 25 years. Only a few landfills in the United States are large enough to handle the wind turbine blades. Solar panels are not particularly welcome in landfills, because they contain toxic materials, such as lead and cadmium, that can leach into soil. Dr. Wallace Manheimer noted that despite these dangers, solar panels have been put in landfills because “the cost of the recycled materials is considerably more than the cost of the raw materials.”

EVs and wind and solar energy are not environmentally friendly nor provide reliable and affordable energy and transportation. They should be discontinued for the well-being of humanity and the environment.

[electronalytics]

Generator For Nuclear Power Market Growth and Global Industry Status by 2033

Introduction: Generators play a crucial role in nuclear power plants by converting the mechanical energy produced by turbines into electrical energy. These generators are essential components of the power generation process, ensuring the reliable and efficient operation of nuclear reactors.

Objective: The objective of this market analysis is to examine the global generator market for nuclear power plants, including its current state, trends, drivers, challenges, and regional dynamics.

Market Overview: The generator market for nuclear power is influenced by factors such as nuclear energy policies, technological advancements, and global energy demand. Despite challenges such as regulatory constraints and safety concerns, the market continues to grow due to increasing nuclear power capacity worldwide.

Market Drivers:

Energy Demand: Rising global energy demand, coupled with the need for low-carbon electricity generation, drives investments in nuclear power plants and, consequently, the generator market.

Nuclear Energy Policies: Government support and incentives for nuclear power development, particularly in countries seeking to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and mitigate climate change, stimulate market growth.

Technological Advancements: Advances in generator technology, including improvements in efficiency, reliability, and safety, enhance the attractiveness of nuclear power as a viable energy option.

Electricity Grid Stability: Nuclear power provides baseload electricity, contributing to grid stability and resilience by complementing intermittent renewable energy sources.

Market Challenges:

Safety Concerns: Public perception and regulatory scrutiny regarding nuclear safety pose challenges for market growth, leading to increased focus on stringent safety standards and risk mitigation measures.

High Initial Costs: The high capital costs associated with nuclear power plant construction and operation, including generator installation and maintenance, present financial barriers to market entry and expansion.

Waste Management: Nuclear waste disposal and decommissioning requirements add complexity and cost to nuclear power projects, impacting overall profitability and investment decisions.

Competition from Renewables: Competition from increasingly cost-competitive renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind power, challenges the economic viability of nuclear power projects and, consequently, the generator market.

𝐑𝐞𝐜𝐞𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐅𝐑𝐄𝐄 𝐒𝐚𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐑𝐞𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭 @ https://stringentdatalytics.com/sample-request/generator-for-nuclear-power-market/14111/

Market Segmentations:

Global Generator for Nuclear Power Market: By Company

Orano

The State Atomic Energy Corporation Rosatom

Toshiba

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries

Doosan

Global Generator for Nuclear Power Market: By Type

Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR)

Water-Water Energetic Reactor（WWER)

Pressurized Heavy Water Reactor (PHWR)

Global Generator for Nuclear Power Market: By Application

Fast Neutron Nuclear Reactors

Molten-Salt Reactors

Others

𝐂𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐤 𝐭𝐨 𝐏𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐭 𝐑𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝐑𝐞𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭 @ https://stringentdatalytics.com/purchase/generator-for-nuclear-power-market/14111/?license=single

Regional Analysis:

North America: The United States and Canada have well-established nuclear power industries, with a significant number of operational reactors. The generator market in this region is driven by ongoing reactor upgrades, refurbishments, and life extension projects.

Europe: Countries like France, Russia, and the United Kingdom have a strong presence in the nuclear power sector, driving demand for generators. However, market growth is tempered by regulatory hurdles, public opposition, and the phase-out of nuclear power in some countries.

Asia-Pacific: China, India, South Korea, and Japan are leading the expansion of nuclear power capacity in the Asia-Pacific region. Rapid industrialization, urbanization, and energy demand growth fuel market growth, with a focus on new reactor construction and modernization projects.

Middle East and Africa: Several countries in the Middle East, such as the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, are investing in nuclear power as part of their diversification strategies. In Africa, countries like South Africa are exploring nuclear energy to address electricity supply challenges, driving generator market growth in the region.

Conclusion: The generator market for nuclear power plays a critical role in supporting the global transition to low-carbon energy sources. Despite challenges such as safety concerns and competition from renewables, the market continues to expand, driven by increasing energy demand, government support, and technological advancements. Strategic investments, regulatory reforms, and international collaboration will be key to unlocking the full potential of nuclear power and ensuring the continued growth of the generator market in the years to come.

About Stringent Datalytics

Stringent Datalytics offers both custom and syndicated market research reports. Custom market research reports are tailored to a specific client's needs and requirements. These reports provide unique insights into a particular industry or market segment and can help businesses make informed decisions about their strategies and operations.

Syndicated market research reports, on the other hand, are pre-existing reports that are available for purchase by multiple clients. These reports are often produced on a regular basis, such as annually or quarterly, and cover a broad range of industries and market segments. Syndicated reports provide clients with insights into industry trends, market sizes, and competitive landscapes. By offering both custom and syndicated reports, Stringent Datalytics can provide clients with a range of market research solutions that can be customized to their specific needs.

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[jjgacutno]

The Race to Renewables

Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved. Matthew 9:17 (NIV) [1]

The day when we all are dependent on renewable energy is the day I am looking forward to. The richness of natural resources in our country can be harnessed to capture our energy and electricity from renewable sources. Underusing our potential renewable energy is a disservice to the Filipino people, which is why looking for ways to transition to clean energy sources is a race our institutions, government, and private sector must take part in. Assuredly, our country has adopted the National Renewable Energy Program which shapes how the clean energy transition will happen through a robust policy framework [2], and how the private sector will help deliver this vision. Let’s take a closer look at this program, the companies that are making waves in clean energy, and the sustainability principles upheld to make these changes a reality.

According to the Department of Energy [3], NREP signals an important strategic outline for the Philippines’ sustainable energy agenda and brings clarity to the execution of the Renewable Energy Act of 2008. This is a salient move to achieve not only national energy security, accessibility, and efficiency but also an assurance that energy comes from clean sources. Several challenges must be addressed for the policy objectives to come to fruition: infrastructure, financing, transmission and grid integration, and technology. While this is the case, NREP aims to tackle them through a dynamic plan that is reviewed regularly and considers factors such as transmission development, off-grid electrification, technology improvements, localized capacity building, and multi-stakeholder partnerships. The new iteration of the program has established a revised target of at least 35 percent of the renewable energy generation mix by 2030 and an uptake of up to 50 percent by 2040. This calls for a roadmap that enables RE projects to which the private sector is very much invited.

The big conglomerates and energy companies in the country have been contending for renewables. Aboitiz, San Miguel, Ayala, First Gen, and Meralco are the names we will continue to see in clean energy projects and investments; their vertically integrated businesses allow them to compete head-to-head. Here are some of the highlights of what they do in the renewable energy space:

Under its Cleanergy portfolio, Aboitiz Power Corporation is investing up to Php 190 billion over the next decade with a mix of solar, wind, and hydro primarily located in Luzon; being the largest operator of RE in the country, Aboitiz Power continuously develops its pipeline with the intent participating in government initiatives [4].

San Miguel Power through its wholly-owned subsidiary, Universal Power Solutions, Inc. is investing at least Php 40 billion for its nationwide project of battery energy storage system (BESS); this placement of energy storage is considered the largest and the first in the Philippines and is expected to contribute a combined capacity of 1,000 megawatt hours (mWh), enabling power grid support and addressing electricity intermittence in the country [5].

AC Energy [6] of the Ayala group envisions providing 20 GW of capacity in renewable energy by 2030, with a current investment of Php 50 billion and a 98 percent share of RE in its energy mix. Its completion of the first market-based Energy Transition Mechanism in the world allowed for the decommissioning of a coal plant in Batangas, Philippines which will eliminate 50 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions. ETM has delivered at least Php 17.4 billion in transaction value, Php 7.2 billion in proceeds, and zero ‘coal plant ownership’ for the company.

First Gen invests in various renewable energy sources such as solar, geothermal, hydroelectric, and wind. For solar, the company through its subsidiary, Energy Development Corporation (EDC), invested in building solar plants in Ilocos Norte with at least 6.82 megawatts of energy capacity [7]. In geothermal, EDC is considered the largest vertically integrated geothermal company in the world, with operations in 12 stations across the archipelago [8]. For hydroelectric, First Gen has the Pantabangan-Masiway Hydroelectric Power Plant in Nueva Ecija and the Agusan Mini-hydroelectric Plant in Bukidnon [9]. In wind, the EDC Burgos Wind Power, a subsidiary of EDC, operates the country’s largest wind power project in the country [10].

Meralco PowerGen currently invests in solar energy and targets to increase its RE mix by 1,500 megawatts in the coming years. The company’s maiden RE investment is through BulacanSol which is not operational with 55MW of energy capacity. Two solar projects are underway with target locations in Rizal and Ilocos Norte [11].

The collective work of the government and the private sector will push boundaries for a sustainable energy transition in the Philippines. These new initiatives for clean energy require a new mindset, systems, and approaches to build the necessary infrastructures, financing, and leadership that will lift us from the old carbon-induced energy. The race for renewables greets us all with an anticipation of a better future. I can’t wait to see a carbon-neutral Philippines.

[1] New International Version Bible. (1978). Bible Gateway. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+9%3A17&version=NIV

[2] National Renewable Energy Program. (n.d.). Philippine Department of Energy. https://www.doe.gov.ph/national-renewable-energy-program

[3] National Renewable Energy Program. (n.d.). Philippine Department of Energy. https://www.doe.gov.ph/national-renewable-energy-program

[4] AboitizPower eyes ₱190-B spend for RE growth. (2021, September 8). Aboitiz Power. https://aboitizpower.com/news/news/aboitizpower-eyes-190-b-spend-for-re-growth

[5] Flores, A. M. (2023, November 1). San Miguel power unit signs P40-b financing deals for energy storage. Manila Standard. https://manilastandard.net/business/314385975/san-miguel-power-unit-signs-p40-b-financing-deals-for-energy-storage.html

[6] ACEN Leading The Energy Transition Integrated Report 2022. (n.d.). AC Energy. https://www.acenrenewables.com/ir2022/

[7] Solar. (n.d.). First Gen. https://www.firstgen.com.ph/our-business/solar

[8] Geothermal. (n.d.). First Gen. https://www.firstgen.com.ph/our-business/geothermal

[9] Hydro. (n.d.). First Gen. https://www.firstgen.com.ph/our-business/hydro

[10] Wind. (n.d.). First Gen. https://www.firstgen.com.ph/our-business/wind

[11] Meralco Power Gen Annual Report 2022. (n.d.). Meralco PowerGen. https://www.meralcopowergen.com.ph/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/MGen-2022-Annual-Report.pdf

[nisheetdabadge]

A Look at Energy Law

Energy laws regulate the generation, distribution, and consumption of energy and protect consumers while promoting energy efficiency by using safe and advanced energy technologies. These laws aim to balance energy security and environmental protection with sustainable economic growth and development.

Energy production and consumption often have significant impacts on the environment, including in the form of air pollution, water pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions. These impacts have been the subject of much debate and concern. Energy laws address these challenges, promote the use of sustainable energy sources, and reduce the negative environmental impact of energy production. For example, energy laws require energy companies to implement emission reduction measures or invest in renewable energy sources. In addition, government energy agencies may impose penalties on companies that violate environmental regulations or engage in environmentally harmful practices.

Since the regulation of energy started in the 1920s, the U.S. Department of Energy has had the responsibility of making most energy laws. Prior to regulation, energy was seen as an unlimited resource. However, with the realization that natural energy resources are limited, the public came to support the regulation and control of energy use.

Different areas are covered under energy law, including renewable energy, nonrenewable energy, nuclear energy, taxes, and security. Renewable energy laws, dealing with the development and use of sustainable energy sources such as solar, wind, biomass, wave, water, and geothermal power, promote sustainable energy sources and offer incentives such as tax credits, grants, and regulatory measures to promote the use of renewable energy.

Nonrenewable energy laws cover the development and use of fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas. This area of energy law deals with the extraction, production, transportation, and distribution of these energy sources. Laws governing nonrenewable energy include regulations covering environmental protection measures and the extraction of energy resources.

Nuclear energy laws regulate the nuclear energy industry. These laws encompass nuclear power plant construction, operations, and the decommissioning of nuclear power plants and the transportation, disposal, and storage of nuclear waste. These laws aim to ensure the safety and security of nuclear power plants and the prevention of nuclear weapons proliferation.

Taxation is another aspect of energy law. Energy taxes are imposed on energy producers and consumers to promote the efficient use of energy, reduce the negative environmental impact of energy production, and incentivize changes in consumers' behavior.

Security concerns are also crucial aspects of energy law. Energy availability is a matter of national importance, so ensuring a stable and reliable energy supply and reducing dependence on foreign energy sources are key government functions. Energy laws promote energy efficiency and lower energy waste, thereby improving energy security.

Energy law is complex and continually evolving. This is where energy attorneys play a key role. Consumers may not follow every change in federal and state directives, but attorneys who work in this area help ensure their clients comply with all laws and regulations. Energy lawyers may work in private practice, for large corporations, or for the U.S. Department of Energy or state agencies that regulate energy production and use.

As more advances are made in technology, there is an increased need for energy. The national and global energy markets are working to meet the demand through energy sources such as nuclear. This makes energy law more and more important to help deal with issues and dangers associated with the production and distribution of this and other energy sources.