2024.02.28 Deny, delay, deceive - the oil industry playbook plays on.

‘A Trojan horse of legitimacy’: Shell launches a ‘climate tech’ startup advertising jobs in oil and gas (The Guardian)

2024.02.18 So, if you are a legacy automaker that bet on hybrids (win) and hydrogen (lose) and recognized that BEVS are going to eat your lunch because there are no hydrogen filling stations, what would you put in the concept car shop window?

Toyota went with a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle that is more BEV than HFCEV. Also note, they're ditching their flagship HFCEV (the Mirai) after making trivial sales after a decade in production.
Honda’s Hydrogen-Powered CR-V Is Coming, Even If There’s Nowhere Left To Fill It

2024.02.18 I would worry about EOR and leakage.

Alberta First Nations seek answers on carbon capture and storage plans (Globe & Mail)
The Alberta Energy Regulator won't consider what's injected or how it behaves after injection, per their spokesperson.
So, no requirements for monitoring or that the CO2 will stay sequestered

2024.02.18 One solution would be for organizations to take green energy production in-house

like many do for their own heating, cooling, sewage, electrical distribution, data communications and other on-premises utilities and use it to off-set their current externally-provided energy for electricity, heating, cooling and plubing. It's called facilities management, and it would remove all reliance on the credibility of external 'green energy' providers or offsets sellers.
Princeton Study Uncovers Unseen Pitfalls of Popular Clean Energy Procurement Methods (SciTechDaily)
“There are beginning to be actual legal and financial ramifications for greenhouse gas accounting,” [Jenkins - Princeton assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment] said. “It’s not just about making marketing claims anymore.”

2024.02.18 California shows battery storage wins over natural gas 'peaker' plants on cost and functionality.

New report shows incredible success of grid in one state: ‘[This] proved the only tool ready to … avoid grid outages’ (The Cooldown)

2024.02.18 Battery electric trains on branch lines; grid-connected trains on main lines.

Available now, zero emissions, no fossil fuels, nor biofuels, nor expensive hydrogen equipment or fuel required.
GWR battery powered train travels UK record distance (Oxford Mail)

2024.02.18 Cobalt recovery from battery recycling

Scientists make breakthrough discovery while experimenting with urine: ‘We can reuse a very significant portion of the cobalt’ (The Cooldown)

2024.02.17 The problem with thresholds is they are really hard to reverse once triggered.

Once melting glaciers shut down the Gulf Stream, we will see extreme climate change within decades, study shows (Phys.org)

2024.02.17 It's still trees for the win (if you don't keep burning them to the ground).

Very cool: trees stalling effects of global heating in eastern US, study finds (The Guardian)

2024.02.17 Fossil fuel companies have spent millions on lobbying politicians, advising their PR teams to sow uncertainty about irrefutable science

‘Speak to people’s values’: A climate psychologist’s guide to confronting denial and delayism (euronews)

2024.02.16 Household battery storage keeps improving

Tesla opens Powerwall 3 orders, Elon reveals 30 kW peak power (US$8400) (electrek)

2024.02.16 A thing governments could do on climate change is

to stop paying the 'inefficient' subsidies to the fossil carbon sector and use those funds to accelerate putting more renewables in place to green the grid, encourage lower cost EVs and make the public EV charging network truly functional and rational to speed the shift to clean transportation; fund weather-sealing and insulation upgrades for existing housing; provide incentives to install heat pumps to replace fossil fuel heating and even resistance electric heating, and change the building codes to actually encourage efficiency instead of inadequate building shells built cheap to increase developer profits.
Wind and solar are delivering an energy transition at record speed (Renew Economy)

2024.02.16 How is this (more expensive, less energy efficient, reduces cargo space) better than drop-in biofuel?

A container ship just tested a system to capture its own CO2 emissions (NewScientist)
Key line from the article:
“Shipping faces a very short time to decarbonise, because it has started so late,”

2024.02.16 Seismic shift at TVA: they finally get the EV thing, and they're going for it.

Millions Of Electric Vehicles To Invade US Southeast In Big Decarbonization Push (CleanTechnica)

2024.02.16 89% of people want governments to do more on climate change, but there's a perception gap.

Interview: Why global support for climate action is ‘systematically underestimated’ (CarbonBrief)

2024.02.16 I disagree with the premise of this article, because we solved these problems in the 1980s.

Most of the current crop of EVs do suffer degraded range in the temperatures where hydrogen vehicles can't operate at all, and where internal combustion vehicles also suffer in typical short-haul urban driving missions where EVs can excel. But, for the most part, this isn't a materials problem; it's design and driver behaviour issues. One possible exception at the moment may be some components in Level 3 chargers which weren't spec'ed for 'cold' conditions.

I drove EVs in the 1980s in Ottawa, Canada winters. Day in and day out. What we learned was to keep the batteries warm in the winter, and to remove excess heat in the summer, which improved battery capacity (range) and life. Today, that is called 'thermal management' (and it's still a weak spot for today's Nissan Leaf in particular). We learned to heat the cabin and clear windows while still at the 120-volt outlet before setting out. Today, that is called 'pre-conditioning', and the industry dismisses Level 1 charging because they're still missing low-hanging fruit on vehicle efficiency. It's taken the gas-car industry over a century to refine its product to its current state (climate destroyer), and it still has room for improvement. (E.g., gas filler doors with remote cable releases that fail and freeze shut, and reliance on engine waste heat for window defogging/defrosting which doesn't show up unit the end of a 20-30 minute commute drive.)

And sure, we would all like zero-cost batteries with infinite range that never need to be recharged, but today's lithium and sodium batteries are a big leap forward over the lead-acid and nicads we used in the 1980s in terms of weight, space and cost per kWh of storage. And there are improved versions in the development pipeline. Meanwhile, when are we going to get zero-emissions gas cars? I mean, if the driver for this article is unusual weather conditions, let's remember that's being caused by burning fossil fuels in the first place.

2024.02.15 The transition to renewables continues, with Texas leading the shift. Yes, that Texas.

Solar + battery storage will make up 81% of new US electric generating capacity in 2024 (electrek)

2024.02.15 Decision-makers keep talking about 'decarbonizaion', but the decisions just keep raising the CO2 level.

Keeling Curve hits all-time high (AXIOS)
The official NOAA CO2 tracker graphs from Mauna Loa/P>

2024.02.15 So, the oil industry is saying the 'carbon tax' isn't high enough to justify carbon capture projects.

World's biggest carbon-capture project at risk, Wood Mackenzie warns (CarbonBrief)
So, how about governments just calling boondoggle on the whole charade and fund renewables and biofuels with the incentive money instead?
I mean, even the Canadian oil minister and chief fossil fuel cheerleader is saying the Pathways Alliance should spend less on advertising (public-facing lobbying pressure) and buy a shovel.

2024.02.15 The Canadian fossil fuels sector can't make carbon capture viable, because it's just a cover for Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR).

CCS Redux: “Best” Carbon Capture Facility In World Creates 25x More CO2 From Use Of Product (CleanTechnica)

2024.02.15 Presumably these big financial firms now understand that actually acting on climate change will threaten their profits.

JPMorgan, State Street quit climate group, BlackRock steps back (Reuters)

2024.02.14 Food production is definitely vulnerable to climate change. Can we adapt it fast enough?

Climate change is hitting Ontario’s farms hard. Why won’t the government talk about it? (The Narwhal)

2024.02.14 Major methane leakage points matter because methane is over 100 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a GHG on a 10-year timeframe.

Google to share oil and gas methane leaks spotted from space (Reuters)

2024.02.14 Sigh, 'decarbonization' is so 10-years-ago.

Methane is the key GHG to go after now (though don't let up on carbon dioxide either). They're both GHGs and we need to reduce both. The either-or question is not methane vs. carbon dioxide; it's species survival on this planet or not.
Decarbonization the latest buzzword from gas companies (National Observer)

2024.02.14 Some data and facts on the shift away from gas

Tiresome to keep seeing the clickbait headlines questioning the shift, but then backed up with nothing. So, again, I'll just say that buying a new vehicle now that is completely dependent gasoline for power is a questionable financial decision.
US EV Sales Up 385% Since 2019, Normal “ICE” Vehicle Sales Down 14% (CleanTechnica)

2024.02.13 We have technology to capture methane from landfill sites and burn it for beneficial uses.

Methane could make or break the world’s global warming limit. Where in Europe is it leaking most? (euronews)

2024.02.13 I'm going to take issue with this article posted at TVO.

If you understand power generation, the Ford government’s decision on nuclear makes sense (TVO Today)

I'm going to claim I do understand power generation in Ontario, including nuclear, more than the average bear. I'll just point to my award-winning book about energy and the environment ( The Emperor's New Hydrogen Economy - ebook version also available) as short-form credentials to back that claim, and I hold a Certificate in Energy Programming and Evaluation.

The TVO piece comes out in favour of pouring billions of Ontario taxpayer dollars into further extending the lifetime of part of the Pickering nuclear complex. This will result in this capacity coming online in 10 to 20 years from now, and will likely be the most expensive wholesale priced electricity in Canada when it starts producing, just as Bruce Nuclear is now the most expensive electricity on the Ontario grid today. By then, the world will either be producing cheaper electricity predominantly from renewables, or we'll on course to cooking our species into extinction.

There's another problem set with nuclear fission generation as practised by OPG (Ontario Power Generation). It's designed to be baseload power because it is hard and really expensive to turn nuclear fission generators off and on. Ontario learned this the hard way in 2003, as a result of the power utility in Ohio cutting costs by not trimming trees per the maintenance schedule. Turns out you can't just restart a nuclear generator and dump 500-900 MW of additional power onto the grid without causing more problems. So, forms of generation which can be turned off and on without damage need to be in place to balance the power surges the nuclear plants create. For Ontario, that was provided by its massive hydro power resource (thank you, Sir Adam Beck). Today, that would be simpler if Ontario had some big batteries connected to the grid to provide power stabilization and conditioning, much as Australia is doing in order to avoid service disruptions and save money. (Aside: Australia is learning that the batteries should be located near the demand areas, e.g. cities, so that when the transmission system is impacted, the battery storage can minimize disruptions for the most people.) In summary, increased (or continued) use of nuclear fission stations means the grid operator HAS to have non-nuclear generating assets in place that can turn off and on instantaneously and repeatedly to allow for unplanned outages at nuclear facilities, and restarting the grid or significant portions of it. Fossil methane plants can't spin up that fast, which is why batteries are already a better and less expensive solution for 'peaker' / 'grid stabilization' functions. 'Flow' batteries, preferably based on relatively benign materials, have the advantage of having expandable storage capacity after initial construction.

The plan to take the Pickering reactors off-line for rebuilding means those baseline load deficits will have to be replaced by other generation capability. If there is new-build to fill that gap, it will likely outlive the rebuilt Pickering generators, so it can't be based on fossil fuels which will be effectively banned in Canada (and the world) by 2040. Taking a portion of Pickering power offline for 10 to 20 years means a need to fill the gap, and that should be renewables and storage, given we'll be living with it for a very long time - likely to 2060 or later, when we need to be off fossil fuels per current legislation.

Doddy and Kastanya (both of the Canadian Nuclear Society) should not have raised the issue of the recent near blackouts in Alberta to try to bolster their case. The facts don't support their premise. It was not the predictable drop in output from solar at night-time or wind-power during a massive, stable weather system sitting on the Prairies which were the core problem. Those things are predictable, and can be resolved by having other generation assets and energy storage online and working, the job of the AESO. The low power availability on the Alberta grid was caused by natural gas generators failing as a result of the cold weather, causing unscheduled outages. Three things avoided blackouts in Alberta during this period:
a) people and industry responded to calls to reduce power consumption, despite the cold;
b) a pilot battery storage unit provided power for hours at the worst point in the shortages; and,
c) electricity from Manitoba was wheeled through Saskatchewan to cover the remaining shortfall.
And that electricity from Manitoba came from renewable hydro power, utilizing the storage of hydro reservoirs.
Despite the self-serving rhetoric from the Alberta and Saskatchewan premiers, renewable energy with storage was the hero of the hour during the event, not the cause of it.

More nuclear generation in Ontario will perpetuate another problem the IESO and OPG (and hence Ontario taxpayers have). Ontario already has too much baseload (nuclear) power online at low demand times, and has to find ways to get rid of it to avoid shutting down nuclear generators. (At least they would if all 13 GW of nuclear power that the IESO claims is available was actually operable, but at the moment 5 reactors are offline: Bruce A-1, Bruce A-3, Darlington-1, Darlington-4, Pickering B-7 (per Gridwatch).)
They have a few basic tools for this.
a) they can store the surplus generation for later use, typically by using pumped storage into the hydro reservoir above Niagara Falls (Sir Adam Beck GS);
b) they can store the surplus generation in batteries, though this capacitiy is still miniscule in Ontario, but has a better round-trip efficiency story than pumped storage;
c) they can sell the power to other jurisdictions (nearby U.S. states and Quebec); and,
d) they can burn it off in giant resistor banks.

The catch with selling the surplus power is that they are selling when others are also at low demand periods, so the market price is low, and sometimes negative - in other words, Ontario pays other utilities to take the electricity so OPG doesn't have to shut down generation from one of their nuclear stations. The catch with burning off the electricity is that it creates waste heat and wear on the resistor banks, which were originally designed for emergency use, not regular, repeated use. The catch with the pumped storage at Niagara is that it has a finite capacity - when it's full, it's full. The advantage of batteries is that there is a version called a 'flow' battery, which can store large and expandable amounts of energy. Moreover, if such batteries and pumped storage can solve the nuclear and fossil-fuelled power plant needs, that same technology can address the load storage/load-balancing issues for renewables. Therefore, we should only increase renewable solutions now – they have much shorter deployment timeframes and lower costs than conventional power plants.

In short, there are better options for Ontario in the short term and long term for securing the provincial electrical grid and providing reliable, affordable and environmentally-superior electricity for its citizens, starting with more renewables combined with appropriate amounts of energy storage. By comparison, the plan to rebuild the Pickering B reactors is a bad plan for Ontarians.

There is one over-riding justification for extending the life of the Pickering complex. It avoids two expensive and embarrassing bits of reality for a while longer. Shuttering power production at Pickering would require that a decommissioning plan would have to be undertaken which would show how mind-blowingly expensive that will be, and, a workable solution for permanent disposal of the nuclear waste which is stored at the Pickering complex. As the industry and government have bare shelves in that cupboard, they don't want those doors opened. The consequence of running the facility for another 4-5 decades beyond its rated lifetime could possibly be borne by those downwind of the facility.

2024.02.13 Fossil-fuel sector funded disinformation is driving energy and climate change policy

Journalist uncovers sources of well-funded campaign to spread deceit about offshore wind energy: ‘It’s changing voters’ minds’ (The Cooldown)
Effective spreading of disinformation takes effort and money. You have to figure out the right message that will resonate effectively (market research) and get people to want to share that disinformation forward, thus legitimizing it in the eyes of next-round recipients (paid influencers and recipient emotional manipulation). Typically, this needs to be reinforced with covert advertising via social media and in the corporate ('mainstream') media. So, when that much effort is going into an 'information' or 'educational' campaign, we can be sure the backers have an agenda. That's what was found here. Wind power does have some issues; every energy source we use does. The question is: on balance, does wind power (with storage) provide a better benefits to cost ratio than alternatives? My analysis over years says wind power (with storage) is a winner on capital costs, speed of deployment, environmental impact (extremely low GHG and other pollutant emissions) and operating costs (the fuel is free), resulting in low cost of electricity to the end consumer. It is a change, and people resist that, which is why we still use horses and buggies as our primary mode of transportation and taxpayer-subsidized coal-fired power generation.

2024.02.13 Potential to undermine the 'need' for carbon capture (CCS/CCUS) as alleged climate solution

Iron ore giants’ green steel collaboration leaves carbon capture even further behind (Renew Economy)

Based on research I did years ago - and I still follow the file - CCUS is a fossil fuel industry scam funded by taxpayers. It's part of the fossil fuel deny, delay, disinform playbook, like hydrogen as an energy store. In Canada, the original term was Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS), where sequestration meant taking the carbon dioxide GHG out of the atmosphere for a geologic timescale period. But the oil and gas sector had another agenda for squeezing more oil and gas out of old wells, called Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR). The dominant feature of EOR is pumping gas or liquids into the edges of a depleting well zone to increase pressure and push reluctant hydrocarbons to the well heads for extraction. Carbon dioxide fit the bill perfectly, so the terminology shifted to Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage (CCUS). Storage being short-term and utilization is about EOR. However, in oil and gas well regions, the carbon dioxide isn't sequestered; it works it's way to the surface through leaky well casings, poorly sealed exploratory holes, and fractures from fracking. It's called the 'pincushion effect'. Further, some of that carbon dioxide is intentionally brought to the surface with produced water and the desired oil and gas, and then released into the atmosphere. Net result, more GHG emissions due to additional oil and gas production and leakage, not less emissions. Further, despite billions of taxpayer dollars spent on CCS/CCUS over the decades, none of the projects have proved to be cost-effective or result in a positive energy return on energy invested. Leaks of carbon dioxide are hazardous to air-breathing animals, including humans.
If you want to explore that risk further, do a web search for 'Lake Nyos disaster', or check out this recent article.

2024.02.13 If 'reformed' coal fan Andrew Forrest is calling you out on a 'climate change solution', you have a real problem.

Carbon capture tech a 'complete falsehood', says Fortescue Metals chairman (Reuters)

2024.02.12 Remember, as recently as 2021, Australia was refusing to phase out coal or encourage renewables.

South Australia enjoyed 82 pct wind and solar for entire December quarter. So it can be done (Renew Economy)

2024.02.12 The hydropower legacy isn't without issues, but it puts Quebec ahead on reducing CO2 emissions.

For climate progress, maybe the rest of Canada should join Quebec (The Hill Times)

2024.02.12 Methane is over 100 times as potent a GHG as carbon dioxide on a 10-year timescale.

‘It’s impossible to breathe’: Delhi’s rubbish dumps drive sky-high methane emissions (The Guardian)

2024.02.12 Now that we're looking for them, we can find the big methane emitters on the planet

Revealed: the 1,200 big methane leaks from waste dumps trashing the planet (The Guardian)

If we chose to capture this methane, we could burn it for beneficial purposes, massively reducing methane releases to the atmosphere and lowering GHG emissions on a CO2e basis, and displace the use of fossil methane with its attendant fugitive emissions.

2024.02.12 Scientists say global heating is driving ice loss and warmer water, as ice cover falls short of 50-year average of 18%

Great Lakes average ice cover drops to 6%, one of lowest levels ever recorded (The Guardian)

2024.02.09 Year-round local produce in a winter environment - reducing food-miles, creating local employment

Cornwall company growing year-round crop yields with innovative farming tech (CTV News)

2024.02.09 Brazil gas imports in 2023 at lowest level in 20 years, displaced by domestic hydro

Brazil's hydro power adds to global gas surplus (Reuters)

2024.02.09 Canada's oil and gas industry environment and climate change greenwashing disinformation goes into overdrive.

What do ‘clean’ and ‘green’ actually mean? Canadian watchdog receives complaints about environmental claims by Shell, RBC, Enbridge (The Narwhal)

2024.02.09 Solution: require all large-scale crypto-miners to use only new-build renewable energy to power their operations.

Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power — government now requiring commercial miners to report energy consumption (Tom's Hardware)

2024.02.09 The fossil-fuel-funded disinformation network takes a hit: money and credibility.

US climate scientist Michael Mann wins $1m in defamation lawsuit (The Guardian)

2024.02.09 Aviation, shipping and industry are on the table - how about drop-in biofuels and high-speed rail as solutions for aviation?

The world is reducing its reliance on fossil fuels – except for in three key sectors (The Guardian)

2024.02.09 Taxpayers worldwide have funded billions of dollars on carbon capture R&D and pilot projects, and little has been sequestered.

CCS Redux: Global Spend On Carbon Capture Since 1970 Would Have Avoided More CO2 If Spent on Wind & Solar (CleanTechnica)

2024.02.09 As the world gets hotter, more plants, livestock and workers will appreciate more shade.

Research finds agrivoltaics have payback time of less than five years in Portugal (PV Magazine)

2024.02.09 A new coalition of nine US states has joined forces to promote electric heat pumps,

with the aim of decarbonizing thousands of buildings by pushing oil and gas out of the heating, air conditioning and hot water business.
Yet Another Heat Pump Headache For Fossil Fuel Stakeholders (CleanTechnica)

2024.02.09 Contradictory headlines and narratives on EV adoption - intended to create confusion and doubnt?

Electric Vehicle Sales Growing Fast! (CleanTechnica)

2024.02.08 David Hughes is always worth reading.

A New Report Maps Canada’s ‘Daunting’ Path to Net-Zero Carbon (The Tyee)
Key conclusions from the 64 page report: Getting to net-zero in Canada

2024.02.08 ... she points to developments and statistics that tell a more optimistic story, from improving air quality to rising EV sales

A leading data scientist's journey from doomism to climate hope (BBC)

2024.02.08 Every month since June has been the world’s hottest on record, compared with the corresponding month in previous years.

World just experienced its hottest January on record: EU climate agency (Global News)

2024.02.08 I post EV advances items mostly to show demand for EVs is driving improvements in the technologies

EV Breakthrough May Allow Longer Journeys on One Charge (Newsweek)

2024.02.08 Sea level rise could happen faster than we imagine, driving shoreline erosion and storm surges

Scientists discover an alarming change in Antarctica’s past that could spell devastating future sea level rise (CTV News)

2024.02.08 Canada’s carbon footprint is not just a step but a giant leap beyond what’s been claimed

So the Canadian government has doubled down on climate destruction by using taxpayer money to complete the TMX pipeline so that even more emissions can be generated behind the smokescreen.
Canada’s Carbon Emissions Cover-Up (Jacobin)

2024.02.07 Canada's going to need a lot more solar panels and data transmission

How solar panels could act as a bushfire early warning system (Renew Economy)

2024.02.07 I have long said one of the options for displacing fossil carbon fuels is drop-in biofuels.

A new technology can make biofuels cheaper and greener than petroleum (Interesting Engineering)

2024.02.07 Batteries beat diesel for supplying peak demand - again

Diesel power stations to close as big batteries take centre stage (Renew Economy)

2024.02.07 "Blue tarp capital of the planet" - read on for the context for that one.

Joe Biden just did the rarest thing in US politics: he stood up to the oil industry (The Guardian)

2024.02.07 Climate solutions aren't always high-tech and complex; simple, appropriate technology works, too.

What Is A Solar Water Heater? How Does It Work? (The Times of India)
I have used a simple, seasonal solar water heater in a climate where sub-freezing temperatures are a reality for months at a time. As the planet warms, the useful season will likely be extended. Year-round solar water heaters based on vacuum tubes are also available, though more expensive. Either way, free heating energy is hard to beat on cost.

2024.02.07 More Canadian taxpayer wasted on another fossil fuel 'climate' charade

Europe's record renewable use weakens case for LNG in Canada (National Observer)
Didn't anybody else see the problem with the business case where the supposed market for a fossil fuel is already shrinking, the ability to deliver is still a decade away (yep, you need to build the ships and terminals), and the supply points are on the wrong side of the country (actually world) to deliver efficiently to the supposed market?

2024.02.06 EU reports coal use down 26% in 2023, natural gas down 15% for electricity production over 2022

Fossil fuels are losing ground to renewable energy in Europe (The Verge)

2024.02.06 So, we're going to use more fossil methane to power the AI disinformation engines? How about we just don't?

AI will trigger global surge in gas demand, says BP boss (Yahoo)

2024.02.06 China still building massive amount of new coal-burning power plants, which will run for decades.

China Was Responsible for 96% of Coal Plants Constructed in 2023 (OilPrice.com)

2024.02.06 Wait! What? OPEC thinks national governments should give them $14 trillion to produce more oil until 2045?!

Oil Market Needs $14 Trillion: OPEC Secretary General (OilPrice.com)

2024.02.06 And becoming less so by the day, it seems.

World ‘not prepared’ for climate disasters after warmest ever January (The Guardian)

2024.02.05 I wonder if humans will ever take climate change seriously

UN Carbon Removal Estimates ‘By No Means Feasible,’ Scientists Warn (Yale)

2024.02.05 One under-recognized contributor to climate change is the wasteful use of energy - in this case, crypto-currency.

Fundamentally, the mining of cyrpto-currency is the burning of electricity to power computers to achieve nothing of intrinsic value. We already have currencies and exchanges for turning currency into goods and services; we call them stores, banks, credit and cash. This is actually harder with crypto-currency, which is a gambling enterprise more than a reliable store of value. Further, one of primary benefactors of using crypto-currency is illegal activity, such as collecting funds from deploying ransomware.

So, when a government says it wants to be able to deny providing subsidized electricity to crypto-miners, I'm in favour. In most jursidictions, there are times of day when producing a marginal unit of electricity costs the system more than the revenue it collects from it, so a subsidy. At those times, grid operators and generators should have the ability to turn down that non-essential demand for electricity.

If the marginal price of electricity from the grid is not subsidized, then the crypto-miner has the option of generating their own electricity at a lower cost per unit, and doesn't need grid power to run its operations. Solar panels, wind turbines, battery storage and power-handling equipment are all commercially-available off-the-shelf techology.

2024.02.05 Still at the lab stage, and has some issues to work through, but has potential.

An electrifying new ironmaking method could slash carbon emissions (Science.org)

2024.02.02 The reason oil is so 20th century is because

new oil has a lousy EROEI, and can't beat renewables without massive taxpayer subsidies. That's just math and basic finance. It doesn't even include the fact that climate change is an existential challenge for our species, and oil/gas/coal/nuclear are the primary drivers.
Continuing to fund fossil fuels development and use is basically a suicide pact for humans on planet Earth.
We have already reached post-peak oil (National Observer)

For a good but short treatment of the EROEI (energy return on energy invested) topic, a recent piece from Michael Barnard. (CleanTechnica)

2024.02.02 Hunh, so all those new EVs didn't break the grid. Told ya so.

The US Added 1.2 Million EVs To The Grid Last Year, & Electricity Use Went Down (CleanTechnica)

Years ago, I wrote: "EVs are the killer app for the smart grid." Sadly, the electrical supply industry chose to see EVs as a threat to their stability, and have resisted their adoption, usually while pretending not to put up barriers. Hence the past disinfo campaigns about how EVs would break the grid or require massive additional costs to meet the demand. Turns out doing a little math debunked those claims, but they still pop up pretty frequently in various forms.

Electrical demand tends to go up and down over the course of the day. Conventional power production - and especially nuclear fission - wants a steady demand level. So, one of the big challenges for the grid (generators, transmission system and local distribution) is to meet the demand without interruption (load-following), while minimizing the amount of power generation equipment they have to buy, install, maintain, and smoothing out the amount being transmitted. Building excess generation and transmission capacity is the most expensive solution to that problem. A much cheaper opportunity is to move loads from high demand times (e.g. dinner-time, aka peak-demand period) to lower demand times (e.g. the middle of the night, aka sleep-time). (There are some variations on this, such as parts of California where there is so much solar electrical energy production that it moves the time that big power plants see maximum demand during the daily cycle.) But for the most part, dinner-time is high demand time and sleepy-time is lowest demand time.

Anyway, if you can find a way to use your infrastructure more efficiently (e.g. ship and sell more electrons on the same equipment), that lowers your overall fixed cost per electron sold, and thus your overall cost per electron sold. (Actually, the electrons are more rented than sold - you just pay to have electrons pushed around to power your stuff. No electrons are actually consumed, they just get recycled through the wires continuously.)

Suppose somebody shows up and says to the electric utility, I want to buy rather a lot of electricity on a daily basis, and I don't much care when during the day I get the power as the load is discretionary and is available to be connected to the plug about 20-22 hours a day. If you're a bright spark at the electric utility, you might look at your daily demand curve and note that when it's sleepy-time each day, you have lots of excess supply capacity earning no money. So, you ask this new load if they're OK with getting their juice during the night (say from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m.); they say OK; and you say Great! Done!

You have probably figured out this honking new load is an electric vehicle, and figure it's going to suck back electrons like a V8 muscle car at the gas pump. Except, electric cars can be crazy efficient. I know because I have been driving them since way before Tesla Motors was a thing. When I was commuting about 50 km a day, I would plug into a regular 120-volt wall socket and recharge my EV battery each day. Used about 7 kWhs a day in the summer and 8 kWhs a day in the winter. I mostly work from home now, but the power consumption is about the same - about 6-7 km per kWh. So how much energy is that? Well, to give you a sense of the power use, a hand-held hair dryer uses about 1.5 kW. A vacuum cleaner uses about a kW. My EV charger uses less than that, but runs for hours at a time to get to that 7-8 kWh per day to cover 50 km.

Most people really have no sense of what a kWh is, but dollars they understand. So, let me do that math for you so you know how crazy expensive it is to recharge my electric car, assuming I will travel 50 km per day. This is a little more complicated than you might think, because the price of electricity isn't a constant here. I can choose from 3 pricing plans from my local utility, and the price varies by time of day in 2 of those plans. Turns out the grid in my jurisdiction has a really good deal on electricity between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. every day, because they have way more generation during sleepy-time than demand. Even after they pump water into hydro reservoirs, and sell all they can outside the province (sometimes at negative pricing), and tell all the wind generators, gas generators and hydro stations to stop producing, and burn some up in big electrical resistance coils, they still have too much power being produced at night. So they offer a really sweet price on electricity from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. (C$0.028 per kWh). So, that whacking 7 kWhs a day I need to cover 50 km a day costs me - wait for it - C$0.20 (I rounded up). Adding taxes, that jumps to $0.22. A day. Just for fuel. $1.10 a week. Crazy, right? Of course, if I wasn't such an environmental crusader, I could just use a gas car that gets about 12 km/litre, and at $1.40 a litre, my weekly fuel bill would be just $29.20.
(50 km per day x 5 days per week x ($1.40 per litre / 12 km per litre)) = $29.20 per week)
Wait, what? My weekly fuel bill for electricity would be $1.10, but my weekly fuel bill to go the same distance using gasoline would be $29.20!

The article I referenced at the top of this post talks about some reasons why overall electricity demand went down in 2023 over 2022, while the number of EVs increased by over a million. They're right about appliances, heat pumps, lighting, computers, screens and other things being more efficient, and they're not even accounting for the additional load resulting from crypto-currency mining or AI servers serving up a lot of wrong answers.

Let's think about some other things that are also likely reducing the need for electricity from the grid. How about a few folks putting up solar panels on their roof, offsetting some need for electricity, though that's smaller than you think, as most are grid-connected.

How about some other electrical demand that is likely shrinking as EVs reduce the demand for gasoline and diesel fuel. Oil refineries are huge consumers of electricity, and as they produce less gasoline and diesel, their need for electricity drops. As people shift to heat pumps, their demand for heating oil will be reduced. Getting the gasoline and diesel from the refinery typically requires using long pipelines (usually electric powered and there are a lot of pumping stations). The pipelines get the gasoline and diesel to regional storage tank farms, which have to pump the gasoline and diesel to the top of the big storage tanks. Then, the gasoline and diesel is pumped into trucks for delivery to houses, buildings and refuelling stations, and they use electric pumps to load the trucks. Then, when you pull up to the gas or diesel pump, electricity is used to power the pump and the stand that processes your credit card and the cashier's shack. (aka "convenience store")

You probably figure it can't be that much electricity though, right. Well, I'll leave you with a couple of data points to consider.
This website says refineries in the U.S. used 48.89 billion kWh in 2005.
This website says the U.S. used 9.2 million barrels of gasoline and 4.1 million barrels of diesel per day on average in 2005.
So if you do the math (kidding, I'll do it for you), turns out a gallon of gasoline or diesel takes about a quarter of a kWh of electricity at the refinery. That doesn't include any of the pumping and storage electricity use to get the fuel to your gas tank.
(I'm assuming the same amount of electricity per barrel of gasoline or diesel. Technically, not exactly accurate, but close enough. 365 days in a year.)
(9.2 million + 4.1 million) x 365 = 4.855 billion barrels per year
Divide the 48.98 billion kWh by the 4.855 billion barrels, and we get about 10 kWh of grid electricity used per barrel.
Most Americans don't buy their gasoline or diesel by the barrel, so we'll convert to gallons. Strangely, the U.S. oil industry 'barrel' is 42 gallons. That dates back to the 1800s and using wooden barrels to move oil from Pennsylvania wells. Anyway,
10 kWh per barrel / 42 gallons per barrel = 0.24 kWh per gallon.

Suppose you're pumping in about 10 gallons (about 45 litres), that's 2.4 kWh of refinery-only electricity used. So each EV doing a regular commuting task is probably reducing overall electrical demand related to avoided liquid fuels by at least 250 kWh per year. 1.2 million new EVs in 2023 in the U.S. could be about 300 million kWhs for that year.

2024.02.02 U.S. auto dealers still think they can stop the tide. Which is why Tesla is eating their lunch.

Dealers Say 'Slow Down' On EVs. But The Sales Numbers Say Otherwise (InsideEVs)
There is a simple way of addressing the 3 main complaints raised by the auto dealers in their whinging letter to the White House.
1) Tax incentives were intended to 'prime the pump' for zero and low-emissions vehicles, so they should disppear with time. However, the oil industry continues to get massive incentives and subsidies from the U.S. government, despite being a mature industry raking in record profits while rendering the planet uninhabitable. So, to level the playing field, remove the incentives enjoyed by the oil industry in short order, as the G7 and G20 agreed to do more than a decade ago. Of course, that will end demand for your bread-and-butter product.
2) If you think the charging infrastructure is inadequate, then fix it yourselves. Install charging stations at your dealerships. Install charging stations in you communities where it will be valued, and brand the charging station with your advertising. However, it appears you're going to end up begging Tesla to let your vehicles charge at their stations, because Tesla has spent the money creating an adequate charging network, and continue to invest in it.
3) U.S. automakers could stimulate consumer demand for EVs by making a product that consumers want, such as an affordable EV that meets basic needs, or the Chinese are going to obliterate their market, much as the Japanese automakers got their foothold in the U.S. market by providing low-cost, fuel-efficient cars in the wake of the 1973 and 1978 OPEC oil embargoes. Or, do a web search on 'Tesla Redwood'. 2025 is next year.

2024.02.01 As some jurisdictions are still shy about adding battery storage to save money, businesses are stepping up.

Solar self-consumption boosted as battery cuts grid imports by 94% (pv magazine)
This set-up gives a second-life to Nissan Leaf electric car batteries, allowing the company to store electricity from solar panels during the day and use it to power operations after dark, reducing their overall energy costs and providing the ability to operate during grid outages.
From the article:
the installation of the battery has marked a pivotal step in the company’s journey to achieving a net-zero operation, noting that the battery “gives us the opportunity to store the solar energy we’ve generated during the day and utilise it to meet our energy needs around the clock.”

2024.02.01 We don't have to wait for 'breakthroughs' to address most of our industrial carbon emissions.

We just have to decide to make it financially attractive for industry to get serious about it.
How to decarbonize 85% of all industry using today's technology (New Atlas)

You can find many earlier postings (going back to year 2000) related to climate change at:
Keith's List Archive and
the Sustainable Biofuel List Mail Archive.

I present a lot of information in this blog and on this website. If you need some help sorting through the noise level and getting a forward-looking, proactive approach to climate change for your business, I can do that work for you via my consulting business. Contact