Energy

Lithium, Cobalt, And Rare Earths

May 20, 2021 Michael Klare, Tom Dispatch. Educate! climate crisis, Energy, Environment, Extraction

Thanks to its very name — renewable energy — we can picture a time in the not-too-distant future when our need for non-renewable fuels like oil, natural gas, and coal will vanish. Indeed, the Biden administration has announced a breakthrough target of 2035 for fully eliminating U.S. reliance on those non-renewable fuels for the generation of electricity. That would be accomplished by “deploying carbon-pollution-free electricity-generating resources,” primarily the everlasting power of the wind and sun. With other nations moving in a similar direction, it’s tempting to conclude that the days when competition over finite supplies of energy was a recurring source of conflict will soon draw to a close. Unfortunately, think again: while the sun and wind are indeed infinitely renewable, the materials needed to convert those resources into electricity — minerals like cobalt, copper, lithium, nickel, and the rare-earth elements, or REEs — are anything but.

President of Mexico Andrés Manuel López Obrador

Foreign Capital Is Trying To Crush AMLO’s Energy Reform

May 20, 2021 Kawsachun News. Educate! AMLO, Energy, Foreign Relations, Mexico

Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) has vowed to push on in his quest to properly regulate the country’s hydrocarbons industry, despite the obstacles placed by foreign capitalists and the notoriously corrupt Mexican justice system. President AMLO today rejected the move by two judges, Rodrigo de la Peza López Figueroa and Juan Pablo Gómez Fierro, who struck down his government’s reform to the Hydrocarbons Law, which was passed by the legislature and signed into law on May 4th. This reform seeks to expand public control over the nation’s own natural resources and roll back the neoliberal energy reform of 2013 that saw the state’s downstream monopoly largely handed over to foreign capitalists. Transforming energy policy was a key plank of AMLO’s campaign program.

New IEA Roadmap is flawed

May 19, 2021 Luisa Colasimone, Environmental Paper Network Educate! climate crisis, Energy, Environment, International Energy Agency

The International Energy Agency (IEA)’s roadmap released today fails to acknowledge the science that burning huge volumes of wood to substitute for burning coal is at least as emissive and climate damaging as coal in the short time frame to 2050, according to the global Environmental Paper Network (EPN).

What Would A Deep Green New Deal Look Like?

May 2, 2021 Don Fitz, Popular Resistance. Create! Energy, Extraction, Fossil Fuels, Green New Deal

The Green New Deal has attracted perhaps the greatest attention of any proposal for decades. It would guarantee Medicare-for-All, Housing-for-All, student loan forgiveness and propose the largest economic growth in human history to address unemployment and climate change. But the last of these hits a stumbling block. Creation of all forms of energy contributes to the destruction of nature and human life. It is possible to increase the global quality of life at the same time as we reduce the use of fossil fuels and other sources of energy. Therefore, a “deep” GND would focus on energy reduction, otherwise known as energy conservation. Decreasing total energy use is a prerequisite for securing human existence.

USDA May Allow Genetically Modified Trees To Be Released Into The Wild

April 23, 2021 Anne Peterman, Truthout. Educate! Chestnut, Energy, GE Trees, Genetically Engineered, Trees

On August 18, 2020, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) published a petition by researchers at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) seeking federal approval to release their genetically engineered (GE) Darling 58 (D58) American chestnut tree into U.S. forests. Researchers claim the transgenic D58 tree will resist the fungal blight that, coupled with rampant overlogging, decimated the American chestnut population in the early 20th century. In fact, the GE American chestnut is a Trojan horse meant to open the doors to commercial GE trees designed for industrial plantations. The D58 would be the first GE forest tree approved in the U.S. and the first GMO intended to spread in the wild. (GE canola plants were discovered in the wild in 2010 but that was unplanned.)

Europe: A Backlash Is Growing Over Incinerating Garbage

April 5, 2021 Beth Gardiner, Yale 360. Resist! climate crisis, Energy, European Union (EU), Incinerators

For decades, Europe has poured millions of tons of its trash into incinerators each year, often under the green-sounding label “waste to energy.” Now, concerns about incineration’s outsized carbon footprint and fears it may undermine recycling are prompting European Union officials to ease their long-standing embrace of a technology that once seemed like an appealing way to make waste disappear. The EU is in the process of cutting off funding for new incinerators, but there’s little sign most existing ones —currently consuming 27 percent of the bloc’s municipal waste — will close any time soon. And, even without EU financial support, new plants are in the works, many in southern and eastern European countries that have historically incinerated less than long-standing waste-to-energy proponents such as Germany, the Netherlands, and the Scandinavian nations.

The US Is Starving Venezuelans In the Name Of Democracy

March 9, 2021 Daniel Larison, Medium. Educate! economic war, Energy, US Sanctions, Venezuela

The Biden administration granted Temporary Protected Status to refugees from Venezuela, which will permit them to live and work in the United States. This is the right thing to do, and it is a break with the previous administration, but there need to be more significant changes to U.S. policy towards Venezuela. The TPS decision is treating the symptom of Venezuela’s deepening crisis while U.S. sanctions intensify it. As long as our government’s broad sanctions remain in place, they will exacerbate the economic and humanitarian crises in the country. The U.S. will succeed only in making conditions for ordinary Venezuelans worse while Maduro and his allies become more firmly entrenched. Trump’s pursuit of regime change in Venezuela was one of his worst policies, and it has deepened the misery of the Venezuelan people. It is maddening that the complete failure of this policy hasn’t prompted more demands for abandoning it.

This Obscure Energy Treaty Is The Greatest Threat To The Planet

March 6, 2021 Fabian Flues, Cecilia Olivet and Pia Eberhardt, Open Democracy. Educate! climate crisis, Corporate polluter, Energy, Legal System

On 4 February the German energy giant RWE announced it was suing the government of the Netherlands. The crime? Proposing to phase out coal from the country’s electricity mix. The company, which is Europe’s biggest emitter of carbon, is demanding €1.4bn in ‘compensation’ from the country for loss of potential earnings, because the Dutch government has banned the burning of coal for electricity from 2030. If this sounds unreasonable, then you might be surprised to learn that this kind of legal action is perfectly normal – and likely to become far more commonplace in the coming years. RWE is suing under the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT), a little-known international agreement signed without much public debate in 1994. The treaty binds more than 50 countries, and allows foreign investors in the energy sector to sue governments for decisions that might negatively impact their profits – including climate policies.

Half Of Texas Without Clean Water

February 22, 2021 Chase Lawrence, WSWS. Educate! Energy, Extreme weather, Texas, Water

More than 14.6 million Texans, about half of the population of the state, remained under a boil-water advisory Friday, according to Texas Commission on Environmental Quality spokeswoman Tiffany Young. This encompasses more than 1,225 water supply systems and 63 percent of Texas counties following the record winter storm which hit the state last weekend. In a press conference Austin Water Director Greg Meszaros stated that “we know that there are tens of thousands of leaks,” and that the Austin Fire Department responded to “thousands upon thousands of burst pipes.” In Houston, the fire department received almost 5,000 reports of burst pipes. Texas Republican officials are currently in the process of trying to pin the blame on each other for the disaster. Governor Greg Abbott blamed the state’s grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), claiming that it told state officials five days before the blackouts that everything would be under control.

Texas’s Independent Electric Grid Leaves Millions Without Power

February 18, 2021 Sharon Zhang, Truthout. Educate! Electric Grid, Energy, Extreme weather, Texas

On Tuesday, millions of Texans woke up to find themselves without power as unusually cold conditions for the state knocked out the state’s power grid. The blackouts began on Monday when the state grappled with a winter storm and record low temperatures. Over 4.3 million people in Texas remain without power as the state’s power grid struggles to keep up with high demand. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which operates the state’s grid, had originally announced 45-minute rolling blackouts starting around 1:25 a.m. in order to conserve energy. But the blackouts instead extended throughout the day and into Tuesday, and there is still uncertainty about when they will end.

A Fossil Fuel Fail In Texas

February 17, 2021 Jamie Henn, Fossil Free Media. Educate! climate crisis, Energy, Texas

As you may have seen on social media, a group of climate deniers, right wing politicians, and fossil fuel industry mouthpieces are spreading a bunch of disinformation about how wind and solar energy is to blame for the current blackouts in Texas. This is a lie. In reality, the blackouts in Texas are a fossil fail: the result of our over dependence on a fossil fuel energy system in the era of climate disruption. Fossil Free Media has pulled together a set of talking points that you can use to share the truth about what’s going on in Texas and pushback on the fossil fuel industry’s disinformation campaign.

Thursday: Day Of Action Targeting The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission

February 17, 2021 Beyond Extreme Energy, Popular Resistance. Resist! climate crisis, Energy, FERC, Fossil Fuels, Renewable Energy

Something new is happening this Thursday, February 18 at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). A person will be chairing a FERC Commissioners meeting who has written publicly that he appreciates why some consider FERC to be a rubber-stamp agency. Richard Glick has done more than this in his three-plus years as a FERC Commissioner. He has openly opposed and written strong dissents, primarily but not only on climate grounds, to majority decisions approving new gas pipelines, LNG terminals and compressor stations. Those dissents likely helped lead the DC Court of Appeals to strike down last year, FERC’s “Kafkaesque” (their words) decades-long abuse of...

Scientists Demand Stop To Tree Burning As A Climate Solution

February 16, 2021 Andrea Germanos, Commondreams. Resist! Biomass, climate crisis, Energy, Forests

A group of over 500 international scientists on Thursday urged world leaders to end policies that prop up the burning of trees for energy because it poses "a double climate problem" that threatens forests' biodiversity and efforts to stem the planet's ecological emergency. The demand came in a letter addressed to European Commission President Urusla Von der Leyen, European Council President Charles Michel, U.S. President Joe Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, and South Korean President Moon Jae-in. The signatories—including renowned botanist Dr. Peter Raven, president emeritus of the Missouri Botanical Garden—reject the assertion that burning biomass is carbon neutral.

Cheaper Solar Power Means Low-income Families Can Also Benefit

January 24, 2021 Galen Barbose, Eric O’Shaughnessy, and Ryan Wiser, DeSmog Blog. Create! Energy, Housing, Low Income, Solar Energy

Until recently, rooftop solar panels were a clean energy technology that only wealthy Americans could afford. But prices have dropped, thanks mostly to falling costs for hardware, as well as price declines for installation and other “soft” costs. Today hundreds of thousands of middle-class households across the U.S. are turning to solar power. But households with incomes below the median for their areas remain less likely to go solar. These low- and moderate-income households face several roadblocks to solar adoption, including cash constraints, low rates of home ownership and language barriers. Our team of researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory examined how various policies and business models could affect the likelihood of people at all income levels adopting solar.

Decoding The Hype Behind The Natural Gas Industry’s Hydrogen Push

January 18, 2021 Justin Mikulka, Nation of Change. Educate! Energy, Fracked Gas, Hydrogen, Renewable Energy

It seems like nearly every day another hopeful article touts the potential of using hydrogen as a fuel to tackle climate change. What’s known as “green hydrogen” — which relies on renewable power for production — is getting the bulk of that attention. In December, ABC News ran an article with the headline “Why green hydrogen is the renewable energy source to watch in 2021.” And as Bloomberg has reported, Airbus is betting big on hydrogen as a fuel for its planes. Meanwhile, South Korea’s SK Global just announced an investment in U.S. hydrogen fuel cell producer Plug Power; in the past year, the company’s stock value has increased ten-fold.

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