#dirty fossil fuels

[ms-boogie-man]

Dodge commercial (America Fuck Yeah!)

No Tumblr blog is proper without this epic little ditty yo!  *nods

Angie/Maddie🦇❥✝︎🇺🇸

[joe-england]

As Texans suffer in the heat, state Republicans play politics

Damn, just... damn.

No water breaks.

[ambicephalic]

Title:

Ted Williams tunnel

Origin:

Palpable air pollution on the way to the airport.

Description:

Fun fact, I drew this mirrored and was already halfway done coloring before I realized I somehow drew everyone driving on the left like British traffic. then I digitally flipped the image horizontally to correct it. If the drawing itself doesn't explain my feelings on car dependency well enough, maybe my Freudian slip of forgetting basic traffic rules will clarify matters.

[swaps55]

I had to get up off the mat and attend a conference today. I was dreading it. Woke up at 3:30 this morning with a knot in my stomach heavy enough to be a murder weapon, and now I had to talk to people who possibly voted against my existence and act like it was fine.

But a couple of things happened today.

I work in a fairly niche industry, and in the sessions I attended today, people were talking about solving problems.

In one session, the speaker talked about discovering an accessibility problem on their college campus. This university is in a remote area, and students without cars weren't enrolling because public transit to get there took four hours.

So a group of people sat down in a room to try and solve the problem, afraid they'd run into roadblocks with costs and infrastructure. To their delight, they realized that by moving a bus stop and adjusting bus schedules by 15 minutes, they could take that 4 hours down to 90 minutes.

This speaker was so excited about creating better access for students who needed it. They'd found a solution for people who wanted to learn but couldn't due to lack of transportation.

In another session, a panel of people talked about how they integrate art into public buildings, and how the public entity, building designer, builder, and artist worked together to create art that belonged to a community, and how all the challenges to making it happen were worth solving. The building they did their case study on was beautiful.

In a later session, a room full of higher education professionals who manage transportation on their campuses talked about the growing need for EV charging stations on campus. It's a surprising complex and complicated challenge in terms of energy supply, infrastructure, cost, planning, etc. There are no easy answers on how to do it.

A few made the observation that by providing chargers, they'd accidentally wound up in the energy business, where they didn't think universities should be.

"Yes we should," one of them said. He went on to remind us that yes, we could expect students and faculty could go home to charge their cars instead of doing it on campus. But those are also the worst time to plug into the grid. It's overloaded. Solar energy can't handle it, so it taps into fossil fuels. It's dirty energy. And he wasn't satisfied for making it someone else's problem. "We don't have to be in the energy business. But it's better for the environment if we are. It's better for the future. We should be in the energy business, because it's the right thing to do."

All day I was surrounded by people who put their professional energy into solving problems, not because it would make them rich, but because they were problems that needed to be solved, and they were the ones who took it upon themselves to solve them.

And...I felt better.

After the electric vehicle panel, I thanked the person who made a plea for the right thing to do, because I felt a little less despair after hearing it. He smiled at me and said, "Yesterday was rough. But 48 million people in this country stood up and did the right thing. That's a lot of people."

On a lot of days to come that might not feel like enough. But in your city, in your town, in your state, there are still people who are taking on challenges and standing up to do the right thing, for both the small things and the big things.

It's not going to be easy. But I'm going to be one of them.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Canary Media:

The country that once boasted the world’s first coal-fired power plant is now set to eliminate the highly polluting fossil fuel from its power grid.

In late September, the United Kingdom will shutter the Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station, the country’s last operational coal-fired power plant. The closure indicates just how far the U.K. has come in its bid to do away with dirty sources of electricity. 

The rapid change was made possible by the U.K.’s embrace of wind power, both on- and offshore. Over the last decade, this form of renewable energy has surged in the U.K., from generating around 8 percent of the country’s electricity in 2013 to 29 percent in 2023. Coal has plummeted over that same time period, falling from 36 percent of power generation to 1 percent last year — and then to a (literally) vanishingly small portion this year.

The country’s grid cleanup comes amid a backdrop of declining electricity demand. The U.K. used 17 percent less electricity in 2023 than it did in 2013, per Ember, as households adopted more efficient appliances, natural gas prices rose, and its economy shifted away from energy-intensive manufacturing jobs. Demand has continued to decline even as the country has started to embrace heat pumps and electric vehicles.

As a result of the U.K.’s rapidly decarbonizing grid and falling electricity demand, emissions from the country’s power sector have taken a nosedive, helping the nation reduce overall emissions to the lowest levels since 1879 — three years before that first coal-fired power station was even built.

Still, planet-warming fossil gas remains the single biggest source of electricity in the U.K. The country has led the way in moving past one form of polluting power, but now it will have to do the same with another if it is to meet its rapidly approaching goal of decarbonizing the grid by 2035.

[jensorensen]

Dirty Fuel, Clean Conscience

A few recent stories got me thinking about the oil industry this week, leading me to actually wonder how fossil fuel CEOs can stand to live with themselves given that the world is burning up in front of their faces, much as their own scientists predicted decades ago.

Help keep this work sustainable by joining the Sorensen Subscription Service! Also on Patreon.

[probablyasocialecologist]

There is a point — and an obvious one at that — to the ongoing demonization of trans identity, one that requires a full view of the organized Right’s goals, tactics, and coalition-building to see. From a political economic vantage, we might assess how and why trans people have become such a useful scapegoat — an object of blame and scorn — in what are ultimately efforts to insulate business interests from public accountability and to dismantle democracy’s ability to redistribute wealth to the many from the few. Unlike past essays for the Law and Political Economy Project and Boston Review in which I delineated the various economic incentives that drive capitalists into a mix of pro and anti-trans political projects (my next book tackles this subject further), this essay focuses mainly on those forces which consistently find trans scapegoating useful — even lucrative. The right-wing power bloc here has deep roots in fossil fuels, “dirty” manufacturing, large-scale family firms, and the usual array of financial and real estate interests and draws significant electoral support from small business owners and disaffected conservative Christian voters. Although my perspective is somewhat parochial, many of the coalitional dynamics and authoritarian aims are far from unique to the US. To the contrary, these appear to be an international phenomenon. Similar reactionary movements against gender-nonconforming people from Europe to South America to Africa (where US-based groups have been active for decades) dot the global landscape. The fight in Germany over gender recognition legal reforms has also brought together a similar coalition of far-right politicians, trans exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs), and religious parties and institutions. Accordingly, it is absolutely crucial to begin with asking questions about who benefits from the present assault on trans lives.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

The world isn’t on track to meet its climate goals — and it’s the public’s fault, a leading oil company CEO told journalists.

Exxon Mobil Corp. CEO Darren Woods told editors from Fortune that the world has “waited too long” to begin investing in a broader suite of technologies to slow planetary heating.

That heating is largely caused by the burning of fossil fuels, and much of the current impacts of that combustion — rising temperatures, extreme weather — were predicted by Exxon scientists almost half a century ago.

The company’s 1970s and 1980s projections were “at least as skillful as, those of independent academic and government models,” according to a 2023 Harvard study.

Since taking over from former CEO Rex Tillerson, Woods has walked a tightrope between acknowledging the critical problem of climate change — as well as the role of fossil fuels in helping drive it — while insisting fossil fuels must also provide the solution.

In comments before last year’s United Nations Climate Conference (COP28), Woods made a forceful case for carbon capture and storage, a technology in which the planet-heating chemicals released by burning fossil fuels are collected and stored underground.

“While renewable energy is essential to help the world achieve net zero, it is not sufficient,” he said. “Wind and solar alone can’t solve emissions in the industrial sectors that are at the heart of a modern society.”

International experts agree with the idea in the broadest strokes.

Carbon capture marks an essential component of the transition to “net zero,” in which no new chemicals like carbon dioxide or methane reach — and heat — the atmosphere, according to a report by International Energy Agency (IEA) last year.

But the remaining question is how much carbon capture will be needed, which depends on the future role of fossil fuels.

While this technology is feasible, it is very expensive — particularly in a paradigm in which new renewables already outcompete fossil fuels on price.

And the fossil fuel industry hasn’t been spending money on developing carbon capture technology, IEA head Fatih Birol wrote last year on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

To be part of a climate solution, Birol added, the fossil fuel industry must “let go of the illusion that implausibly large amounts of carbon capture are the solution.”

He noted that capturing and storing current fossil fuel emissions would require a thousand-fold leap in annual investment from $4 billion in 2022 to $3.5 trillion.

In his comments Tuesday, Woods argued the “dirty secret” is that customers weren’t willing to pay for the added cost of cleaner fossil fuels.

Referring to carbon capture, Woods said Exxon has “tabled proposals” with governments “to get out there and start down this path using existing technology.”

“People can’t afford it, and governments around the world rightly know that their constituents will have real concerns,” he added. “So we’ve got to find a way to get the cost down to grow the utility of the solution, and make it more available and more affordable, so that you can begin the [clean energy] transition.”

For example, he said Exxon “could, today, make sustainable aviation fuel for the airline business. But the airline companies can’t afford to pay.”

Woods blamed “activists” for trying to exclude the fossil fuel industry from the fight to slow rising temperatures, even though the sector is “the industry that has the most capacity and the highest potential for helping with some of the technologies.”

That is an increasingly controversial argument. Across the world, wind and solar plants with giant attached batteries are outcompeting gas plants, though battery life still needs to be longer to make renewable power truly dispatchable.

Carbon capture is “an answer in search of a question,” Gregory Nemet, a public policy professor at the University of Wisconsin, told The Hill last year.

“If your question is what to do about climate change, your answer is one thing,” he said — likely a massive buildout in solar, wind and batteries.

But for fossil fuel companies asking “‘What is the role for natural gas in a carbon-constrained world?’ — well, maybe carbon capture has to be part of your answer.”

In the background of Woods’s comments about customers’ unwillingness to pay for cleaner fossil fuels is a bigger debate over price in general.

This spring, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will release its finalized rule on companies’ climate disclosures.

That much-anticipated rule will weigh in on the key question of whose responsibility it is to account for emissions — the customer who burns them (Scope II), or the fossil fuel company that produces them (Scope III).

Exxon has long argued for Scope II, based on the idea that it provides a product and is not responsible for how customers use it.

Last week, Reuters reported that the SEC would likely drop Scope III, a positive development for the companies.

Woods argued last year that SEC Scope III rules would cause Exxon to produce less fossil fuels — which he said would perversely raise global emissions, as its products were replaced by dirtier production elsewhere.

This broad idea — that fossil fuels use can only be cleaned up on the “demand side” — is one some economists dispute.

For the U.S. to decarbonize in an orderly fashion, “restrictive supply-side policies that curtail fossil fuel extraction and support workers and communities must play a role,” Rutgers University economists Mark Paul and Lina Moe wrote last year.

Without concrete moves to plan for a reduction in the fossil fuel supply, “the end of fossil fuels will be a chaotic collapse where workers, communities, and the environment suffer,” they added.

But Woods’s comments Tuesday doubled down on the claim that the energy transition will succeed only when end-users pay the price.

“People who are generating the emissions need to be aware of [it] and pay the price,” Woods said. “That’s ultimately how you solve the problem.”

[commiepinkofag]

Fueling Genocide

BP: dirty deals with Israel for Gaza’s gas

Dozens of activists from Fossil Free London assembled outside BP’s London headquarters to protest Israel’s approval of 12 new licences for natural gas exploration off the west coast of Gaza to six companies, including BP.

BP not only received this licence but is also set to acquire 50% of the Israeli Delek Group-owned NewMed, who have also been granted a licence. NewMed owns 45% of Leviathan, the largest gas field in the Mediterranean, situated off the coast of Israel. Israel’s occupation of the Gaza Strip denies the besieged population access to natural resources within its waters, in violation of international law.

[tomorrowusa]

Part of Trump's plan to fire competent specialists in the federal government and replace them with MAGA hacks includes NOAA - the agency which forecasts hurricanes and monitors climate change.

If NOAA isn't around to report temperatures and compile data on tropical weather, then climate change doesn't exist – at least in the feeble minds of MAGA zombies. And with climate change not a factor in US decision making, then fossil fuel companies which lavishly fund the Trump campaign can "drill drill drill" unhindered and do irreparable damage to the planet.

Remember when Trump tried to change the forecast for Hurricane Dorian with a Sharpie marker? Imagine what storm predictions would be like if MAGA political quacks were completely running weather predictions.

Bill McKibben is an outspoken critic of climate wreckers. In the video above he has praise for Joe Biden's willingness to stand up to dirty energy. He contrasts Biden with convicted felon Donald Trump who would turn the planet over to fossil fuel oligarchs for a $1 billion campaign contribution so they can complete their destruction of Planet Earth. McKibben says that the difference between Biden and Trump on climate change "could not be clearer".

Monica Medina, President and CEO of the Wildlife Conservation Society who served in the Obama and Clinton administrations, said in the same video that Trump will "weaponize weather against his political enemies" in a second term.

Here's a peek at what hurricane forecasts would look like in a Trump second term...

[materialsscienceandengineering]

Getting dirty to clean up the chemical industry's environmental impact

The global chemical industry is a major fossil fuel consumer and climate change contributor; however, new Curtin University research has identified how the sector could clean up its green credentials by getting dirty. The article, "Insulator-on-Conductor Fouling Amplifies Aqueous Electrolysis Rates," was published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Most chemical reactions involving electricity and organic materials can't be done efficiently using water because the organic materials don't dissolve well, forcing industry to use fossil fuels to provide heat rather than electricity or use alternative substances to water, which add environmental and safety risks. However, a team of researchers led by Associate Professor Simone Ciampi, from Curtin's School of Molecular and Life Sciences, has found chemical reactions in water can be dramatically sped up by adding a water-resistant material to an electrode—a process known as "fouling."

Read more.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This day in history

I'm coming to DEFCON! On Aug 9, I'm emceeing the EFF POKER TOURNAMENT (noon at the Horseshoe Poker Room), and appearing on the BRICKED AND ABANDONED panel (5PM, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01). On Aug 10, I'm giving a keynote called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification" (noon, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01).

#20yrsago How cellphones change teenagers https://web.archive.org/web/20040812081823/http://www.receiver.vodafone.com/08/articles/index07.html

#20yrsago Webcomic creator turns down Universal Syndicate, offers works for free to any newspaper https://web.archive.org/web/20040810034621/http://www.pvponline.com/rants_panel.php3

#15yrsago CLIQ and other “unpickable” locks pwned at DefCon https://www.wired.com/2009/08/electronic-locks-defeated/

#15yrsago Associated Press will sell you a license to quote the public domain http://laboratorium.net/archive/2009/08/03/the_ap_will_sell_you_a_license_to_words_it_doesnt

#15yrsago Berlin’s luxury car arsonists https://www.theage.com.au/world/german-radicals-turn-to-arson-20090731-e4hf.html

#5yrsago Elsevier sends copyright threat to site for linking to Sci-Hub https://twitter.com/Citationsy/status/1156626811398307840

#5yrsago Corruption is contagious: dirty cops make their partners dirty https://www.scholars.northwestern.edu/en/publications/the-network-structure-of-police-misconduct

#5yrsago We could fund the transition to green energy with 10-30% of the world’s fossil fuel subsidy https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/01/fossil-fuel-subsidy-cash-pay-green-energy-transition

#5yrsago Leaks reveal that disgraced, hacked surveillance company wrote Republican Congressman’s border security talking-points https://theintercept.com/2019/08/01/perceptics-hack-license-plate-readers/

#5yrsago Cathay Pacific’s new privacy policy: we are recording you with seatback cameras, spying on you in airports, and buying data on your use of competing loyalty programs https://www.flyertalk.com/articles/cathay-pacific-passengers-not-to-expect-any-privacy.html

#5yrsago Amazon’s secret deals with local cops give them access to realtime 911 data for use in scary alerts sent to Ring owners https://gizmodo.com/cops-are-giving-amazons-ring-your-real-time-911-data-1836883867

#5yrsago A visit to Bosnia’s last pigeon post office https://balkaninsight.com/2019/08/01/youve-got-mail-bosnias-last-pigeon-post-office/

#5yrsago Paying for climate change: the question isn’t “How?” but “Who?” https://www.wired.com/story/dont-ask-how-to-pay-for-climate-change-ask-who/

#1yrago Forcing your computer to rat you out https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/02/self-incrimination/#wei-bai-bai

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

[cognitivejustice]

Wind and solar accounted for 38.4 per cent of overall installed capacity in China during the first half of the year, while coal-fired capacity fell to 38.1 per cent, report shows

China is expected to add about 300 gigawatts (GW) of solar and wind power capacity to the grid this year.

This could boost the cumulative grid-connected wind and solar power generation capacity in China to 1,350GW by the year-end, accounting for more than 40 per cent of the 3,300GW total installed capacity from all energy sources, according to CEC.

The continuing momentum in solar and wind power installation could also drive the overall installed capacity of non-fossil fuel energy sources, which include nuclear and hydropower, to 1,900GW by the end of 2024, or 57.5 per cent of the overall energy mix, versus 53.9 per cent in 2023, the report said.

China, the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter and power consumer, is working towards having 80 per cent of its total energy mix from non-fossil fuel sources by 2060, when it aims to become carbon neutral.

[quazardrawing]

Another Ingo and Pokémon reunion! This time its Garbodor!

[image description: Ingo (6 ft) hugs A huge green trash monster Pokémon (10 ft) both Ingo and Garbodor are smiling ]

More details and headcanons below the readmore!

- Garbodor's name is Ballast! Which is the loose gravel below train rails, they provide drainage and cushion the tracks from the earth and lower the effect of the vibration the train makes on the ground

- Ballast is also the name of extra weight ships take on to ensure that they are bouyant enough and well balanced when on return trips but that not relevent

- You might say, Hey isn't Garbodor trash and garbage bag green section supposed to be reversed? And yes, this is actually a headcanon that the Garbodor found in the Pokédex is actually the Wild version, to properly take care of a Garbodor you need to supply them with plenty of trash bags for them to create a pseudo skin with, this allows them to be more durable and protects them when they are ingesting or come across sharp objects (and helps them heal from scratches) Without steady access they proritize their head over their body, which causes their brain to overheat and become more aggressive or impulsive, Covering the body also helps them stay cleaner, and keep those that they touch cleaner too,

- Garbodor is a unique Pokémon because of their diet, which is a combination of compostable items, actual poke chow/ regular food and plastics, Garbodors are actually able to break down non-compostable plastics! making them a very important part of the post fossil fuel age environmental clean up! Every reagion has a bunch of them in their Waste Management department whose job is dispose of large scale plastics created prior to the invention of compostable plastics (which are the standard in this time period of the Pokémon world)

- As Garbodor is basically a mobile and sentient recycler they tend to run kinda hot, kinda like a worm bin and tend to smell like a combo of a worm bin, a burning engine and dirty laundry (the smell can change depending on their diet) Ingo and Emmett have gotten mostly used to the smell but occasionally feed Ballast the Pokémon equivalent of frebreeze which either helps or makes them sick of smelling that type of oderizer for a months on end

- One of the reasons that Ingo does so well as Lady Sneazler's Warden is because he was already mostly immune to poisen from living with and raising Ballast (although his other Pokemon's poisen type moves also contributed) Normally Lady Sneazler's wardens go though years of slowly building up poisen immunity but Ingo just walked up and shook Sneazler's poisen claw hands when they first meet and was totally fine, Tanking the poisen like it was nothing

- Ingo is also partially immune to high voltage (from Eelektross), Small burns (Chandelure) and some ghost/ soul type damage (Also Chandelure)

- This actually freaked out some people from Pearl clan when they found this out but is actually pretty common among Modern trainers, depending on what Pokémon the protag raised prior to coming to Hisui they might have some minor resistances (unlike Ingo who has Major resistances)

- dispite being made of trash and very stinky, it's actually pretty comfortable to take a nap on Ballast's belly, (although putting a blanket down is recommended) kinda like a huge heated bean bag chair, this is because while Ballast does eat construction materials, Ingo and Emmett are very good and making sure they are ground down small enough as to not hurt Ballast, which is good because large and/or sharp objects can hurt Garbodor digestive system

- Ballast does double duty as a fighter but also helps deal with the waste from when the subway system/ tunnels was upgraded, His favourite stuff is Drywall and ceramic tiles, which if he wasn't well trained or properly watched means he might start licking random walls, which leaves slight acid stains behind

- occasionally Ingo or Emmett will have also have Ballast act as a bouncer to whatever area is corndended off, Between the smell, his size, his power as a professional fighter and His stanch no nonsense attitude, he's a very good at this job

- like most Garbodor, Ballast has a kinda simple personality, not as in unintelligent but as in they are food motivated and don't feel the need for other thinking, although because Emmett and Ingo's training Ballast has very good impulse control (for a Garbodor) and will not steal food/ eat random junk without permission, He will however stare longingly and slightly drool like a dog who wants your fries when he sees something he wants to eat, Which can include almost anything, such as paperwork, or a plastic container full of dirty socks, It also doesn't help that instead of sitting beneath the table and staring at you eat or work on something, he will stand behind or next to you and loom over you while you work

- Lastly as Garbodor process things with color or dye they tend to break them down and create patches of the 5 primary dye colours, white, black, magenta, cyan and yellow, eventually these single colour disks flake off as the material is disposed of but Garbodor can have some control over when and how they look, Ballast chooses the patches to be triangles and have the black and white ones be in pairs, symbolising his Trainers, He was also given a gear station metal sign to wear as a badge on his arm, which he wears all the time as it shows he's a member of the Battle Subway Crew

[feministdragon]

‘Financing represents the ultimate chokepoint,’ Christophers writes, ‘the point at which renewables development most often becomes permanently blocked.’ Investors aren’t choosing between ‘clean’ and ‘dirty’ electricity generation, but judging opportunities across a wide range of asset classes. Capitalists’ sole concern, as Marx observed, is how to turn money into more money, and it’s not clear that renewables are a very good vehicle for doing this, regardless of how cheap they are to run.

The problem, from the perspective of investors, is ‘bankability’. Investors want as much certainty as possible regarding future returns on their investments, or else they require a hefty premium for accepting additional uncertainty. The challenge for the renewables sector is how to persuade investors that they can make reliably high returns in a market with highly volatile prices, low barriers to entry and nothing to stabilise revenues. The very policies that were introduced to bring electricity costs down – marketisation and competition – have made the financial sector wary. Whenever renewables appear to be doing well, new providers rush in, driving down prices, and therefore profits, until investors get cold feet all over again.

What investors crave is price stability, or predictability at least. Risk is one thing, but fundamental uncertainty is another. Industries characterised by a high degree of concentration, longstanding monopoly power and government support are far easier to incorporate into financial models, because there are fewer unknowns. Judged in terms of decarbonisation, the most successful policies reviewed in The Price Is Wrong are not those which reduce the price of electricity, which would be in the interest of consumers, but those which stabilise it for the benefit of investors. Meanwhile, the extraction and burning of fossil fuels remains a more dependable way of making the kind of returns that Wall Street and the City have come to expect as their due. This is an industry with more dominant players, much higher barriers to entry, and which was largely established (and financed) long before the vogue for marketisation took hold.

Despite the exuberance over the falling costs of solar and wind power, Christophers doubts ‘whether a single example of a substantive and truly zero-support’ renewables facility ‘actually exists, anywhere in the world’. What’s especially galling is that, to the extent renewable electricity remains hooked on subsidies, this isn’t money that is ending up in savings for consumers, but in the profits of developers and the portfolios of asset managers. Paradoxically, the ideology that promoted free markets and a culture of enterprise (against conglomeration and monopoly) has enforced this sector’s reliance on the state. The lesson Christophers draws is that electricity ‘was and is not a suitable object for marketisation and profit generation in the first place’. Ecologically speaking, neoliberalism could scarcely have come at a worse time.

What can be done? It is clearly no good hoping that electricity markets will drive the energy transition, when it’s financial markets that are calling the shots. The option that has come to the fore in recent years, led by the Biden administration, is the one euphemistically called ‘de-risking’, which in practice means topping up and guaranteeing the returns that investors have come to expect using tax credits and other subsidies. The Inflation Reduction Act, signed by Biden in the summer of 2022, promises a giant $369 billion of these incentives over a ten-year period. This at least faces up to the fact that much of the power to shape the future is in the hands of asset managers and banks, and it is their calculations (and not those of consumers) that will decide whether or not the planet burns. There is no economic reason why a 15 per cent return on investment should be considered ‘normal’, and there is nothing objectively bad about a project that pays 6 per cent instead. The problem, as Christophers makes plain, is that investors get to choose which of these two numbers they prefer, and no government is likely to force BlackRock to make less money anytime soon. "

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Canary Media:

Texas has become an all-around clean energy juggernaut, thanks to its lax permitting regime, fast grid-interconnection process, competitive energy market, and ample amount of solar- and wind-friendly land.

Its plans for the next year and a half underscore that status. As of July, the state intended to build 35 gigawatts of clean energy over 18 months, more than the next nine states combined, according to a Cleanview analysis of U.S. Energy Information Agency data.

Texas has long been the biggest player in U.S. wind energy. But in recent years, energy developers have raced to build solar in Texas too. Five years ago, the state had connected just 2.4 gigawatts of utility-scale solar to its grid; as of this past June, it had installed almost 22 GW of solar, per an American Clean Power report released this week. That’s nearly 10 times as much as back in 2019, and enough to propel Texas past California for large-scale solar installations.

Now Texas is writing its next chapter on clean energy: The state has become the nation’s hottest market for grid batteries as energy developers chase after its cheap solar and wind energy.

Given its staggering construction plans, Texas is set to only further solidify its place at the top of the clean energy leaderboard. But the rapid rise of the state’s clean energy sector has not yet yielded an outright energy transition, as the writer Ketan Joshi points out.

Though Texas has built more large-scale clean energy than any other state in absolute terms, it lags behind California — and plenty others — in terms of how clean its grid actually is. The Golden State met over half its electricity needs with renewables in 2023, per Ember data, while clean sources generated just 28 percent of Texas’ power. Electricity produced in the Lone Star State remains slightly more carbon intensive compared with the U.S. average.

Part of the story here is that, largely thanks to data centers and bitcoin mines, Texas is seeing some of the fastest growth in electricity demand of any state. That means much of the new solar, wind, and battery storage it’s building is just meeting new demand and not necessarily booting dirty energy off the grid.

The other hurdle preventing Texas from cleaning up its grid faster is the entrenchment of the fossil fuel industry in its local politics. Last year, the state passed a law creating a taxpayer-funded program to give energy developers billions of dollars in low-interest loans to build several gigawatts’ worth of new fossil-gas power plants.

In other words, the Lone Star state’s fossil fuel buildout isn’t ending even as its clean energy sector takes off. For Texas to be considered a true leader on decarbonizing the power sector — and not just a state that builds lots of everything — that will need to change.