Climate Change? Nahhh ...

Renewables are saving Texas. Again. So give them their due.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/04/renewable-energy-texas-heat/


"This summer, like last summer, Texas has battled a brutal heat wave that regularly reaches triple-digit temperatures. This summer, like last summer, the heat wave triggered record levels of energy demand. This summer, like last summer, there have miraculously been no rolling blackouts; in fact, this year, the state’s grid operator has so far asked for just one day of voluntary energy conservation.

And this summer, like last summer, renewables have been the heroes of the story — yet they remain curiously vilified by politicians in the Lone Star State.

In recent years, renewable energy has been ramping up across Texas. The state has rapidly increased solar capacity, for instance, enabling as much as 16,800 megawatts of solar power to be produced on the grid as of the end of May. That’s roughly six times the capacity that existed in 2019 (about 2,600 megawatts), according to data from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the state’s grid operator.

This increase — coupled with greater wind and storage development — is what has allowed Texans to beat the heat and keep their electricity bills down.

After all, several thermal-energy plants in the state went offline in recent weeks, as coal, natural gas and nuclear facilities appeared to buckle under extreme temperatures and shrinking maintenance windows. Additional solar and wind generation more than made up the difference. Renewables overall have lately represented roughly 35 to 40 percent of power generation at peak, compared with about 30 percent last year.

The result is not only that renewables have enabled Texas residents to keep the lights and air conditioning on during this hellish heat. They probably also saved Texans “billions of dollars” last week alone by keeping prices from spiking, says Doug Lewin, an Austin-based energy consultant and author of the Texas Energy and Power Newsletter."

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So tell me. If Texas - Texas, of all the bright red oil producing states in the nation - can do this, what's stopping many other states from making the effort and investment?

 

Improving soil could keep world within 1.5C heating target, research suggests

 

‘Double agents’: fossil-fuel lobbyists work for US groups trying to fight climate crisis

 

Finally ... an idea that isn't dumber than dirt.

 

Shouldn’t we make an all-out push for electric vehicles, heat pumps, and cooktops, not to mention solar panels and wind turbines to supply the necessary electricity? The degrowth movement's answer is, at the least, a muted no. A green-energy boom, the Canadian journalist Andrew Nikiforuk wrote, would come with “monstrous ecological costs,” because of the mining for the minerals needed to produce and use electricity at the required scale. He cited the energy ecologist Vaclav Smil, who recommends that we return “to living standards of the 1960s” so that we can “consume less, travel less, build less, eat less wastefully.” It’s a view with power: those opposed to new lithium mines or transmission corridors or solar farms are increasingly basing some of their argument on the idea that we should consume less. “If we are to avoid ecological collapse,” the journalist Christopher Ketcham maintains, we must pursue “contraction and simplification, a downsizing of the economy and population, so that Homo sapiens can prosper within the regenerative and assimilative capacity of the biosphere. In other words, we must live within our planet’s biophysical limits.”

Yep.

 

Look - if people want to have a consumption discussion, let's have it. It's the only serious conversation to have.

People generally do not want to have a conversation about that. Doing less? Eating less wastefully? Travel less? No.

 

This all seems willfully self-fulfilling.

And it's not the only conversation worth having. It's part of a broader conversation, including alternative energy s0urces, about what can be done.

You seem pretty openly contemptuous of EV buyers.

But more broadly you condescend to "people" - whoever and wherever they are - by assuming they're unwilling to spend a single thought on wasting less of what they consume.

40% of the food we produce is wasted. Food Waste FAQs

Think of the savings - in time, money and energy - if those "people" could be roused to tighten up even ten percent of that spoilage.

 

If whatever we do to try to fight climate change is not immediately perfect, it's even not worth trying. Hadn't you realized that yet?

 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/07/07/offshore-wind-farm-new-jersey/70389783007/

NEPTUNE, N.J. — The federal government has approved the largest U.S. offshore wind energy project, which officials say could power hundreds of thousands of New Jersey homes with clean energy and is expected to create over 3,000 jobs through construction and development.
The Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) announced its approval of Ocean Wind 1 project's plan for construction and operations Wednesday. It is New Jersey's first offshore wind energy project and will be located about 13 nautical miles southeast of Atlantic City.

 

trigger warning

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