Energy

Utilities’ Failures And Shady Practices Show We Need Energy Democracy

February 3, 2023 Lauren Schandevel, The Real News Network. Create! Corporatism, Energy, Energy Democracy, Monopolies

In June of 2021, torrential rains flooded the City of Detroit and surrounding areas, causing over $100 million in damages, mostly in poor, Black, and Brown neighborhoods. Kamau Clark, an organizer for the nonprofit We The People Michigan, moved into his apartment in Detroit’s West Village neighborhood just two days before the storm. “I came home at 2AM and the apartment was flooded,” he recalls. Overwhelmed and unsure of where to turn, Clark went to a town hall on the city’s east side, where representatives from water and sewage authorities tried to explain the situation to him and a crowd of angry residents. According to officials, the city’s infrastructure was not fit to handle the unprecedented volume of rain. However, there was another problem — the storm had also caused a power outage at the city’s wastewater facilities, rendering some of their pumps only partially operational. At the time, city officials told residents that it was these outages, combined with the heavy rain, that caused the record flooding.

‘Robin Hood’ Strikes In France

February 2, 2023 Otto Fors, Left Voice. Resist! Energy, France, Mass Action, Worker Rights and Jobs

France has been roiled by protests over President Emmanuel Macron’s proposal to raise the retirement age. On both January 19 and 31, over a million people across the country took part in demonstrations, and last week, workers with the CGT union took a more radical approach: they provided free energy as part of so-called “Robin Hood” operations. Many members of the CGT, one of France’s largest labor unions, work in key energy sectors like oil refineries and power grids. In workers’ assemblies in Paris, Marseilles, Lille, and other cities, they unanimously decided to provide free energy for low-income households, hospitals, schools, and other public buildings and services. Workers also cut power for several hours to the office of a lawmaker from Macron’s party, disabled speed cameras, and manipulated electricity and gas meters to reduce bills for small business owners.

These Artists Are Turning Their London Street Into A Solar Power Station

February 1, 2023 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. Create! Energy, London, Solar, United Kingdom (UK)

The climate crisis, the energy crisis in Europe and rising power bills are inspiring many people to rethink where their power comes from and imagine possible alternatives for their energy needs. One artist and filmmaker couple in London are focused on the street where they live. Hilary Powell and Dan Edelstyn live in a narrow brick house on Lynmouth Road in the Northeast London neighborhood of Walthamstow and they’ve begun transforming their street into a solar power station. Their Power Station project intends to help as many of their neighbors switch from relying on fossil fuel power plants to generate their electricity to solar power through a series of local actions. “POWER is a ‘show and do’ project building a solar POWER STATION across the rooftops (streets, schools, community buildings) of North East London via enacting a grassroots Green New Deal – working with art and infrastructure to tackle the interlinked climate/energy/cost of living crises.

Designing A US Transit System With Smaller, Fewer Cars Could Cut Lithium Demand And Mining Harms Of EV

January 25, 2023 Olivia Rosane, EcoWatch. Create! Energy, Environment, Lithium, Transportation

One of the less sustainable aspects of the drive to transition from gas to electric vehicles (EVs) is that building them requires metals and minerals that must be mined from the Earth, an activity that raises both ecological and environmental justice concerns. In fact, a new report from the Climate and Community Project and the University of California, Davis (UC Davis), found that, if current trends for EV demand hold through 2050, the U.S. alone will require three times the amount of lithium that is now available on the market globally. However, replacing every gas-powered car with an EV isn’t the only way to decarbonize transit. Alternative steps including designing a less car-intensive transportation system, reducing the size of EV batteries and encouraging lithium recycling could reduce lithium demand by up to 92 percent from the worst-case scenario, according to The Guardian.

Democrats ‘Funneled’ Utility Money To Climate Candidate Challenger

January 25, 2023 Sara Sneath, DeSmog. Educate! climate crisis, Democratic Party, Energy, Louisiana, Money in Politics

Louisiana - Louisiana Democratic Party leaders are accused of funneling thousands of dollars from utility companies to the campaign of a fossil fuel–friendly candidate who ran for reelection on the state’s utility regulatory committee. Campaign finance records filed this week show that the Party received more than $90,000 in donations from utility companies, energy producers, and their executives during the elections for two Louisiana Public Service Commissioners. The same utility companies — Entergy, Cleco, and CenterPoint Energy — also donated directly to incumbent Lambert Boissiere III, whose campaign was largely sponsored by industry groups. Entergy, Cleco, and CenterPoint Energy did not respond to requests for comment for this story. Despite these industry donations to his opponent, climate candidate Davante Lewis won the District 3 Commissioner seat, which represents parts of New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

Peru: CIA-Linked US Ambassador Meets With Mining And Energy Ministers

January 20, 2023 Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy Report. Resistance Report Energy, Mining, Peru, US Imperialism

The US ambassador in Peru, Lisa Kenna, is a CIA veteran who supported a parliamentary coup in December 2022 that overthrew the South American nation’s democratically elected left-wing president, Pedro Castillo. Castillo was subsequently imprisoned for 18 months without due process, setting off massive protests across Peru. The unelected government responded with extreme violence, killing approximately 50 protesters in just over a month. One day before the December 7 coup, the former CIA officer turned US ambassador met with Peru’s defense minister, who subsequently told the country’s powerful military to turn against President Castillo. Since then, Kenna has been quite busy, regularly meeting with top officials in Peru’s coup government, including unelected President Dina Boluarte and her ministers.

US Now World’s Top LNG Exporter, As Europe Boycotts Cheaper Russian Gas

January 5, 2023 Ben Norton, Multipolarista. Resistance Report Energy, Europe, Russia, Ukraine, US Imperialism, Worker Rights and Jobs

The United States has rapidly become the world’s biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG), tied with Qatar. A significant reason for this meteoric increase is because Europe replaced Asia as the top market for US LNG in 2022, as Brussels pledged to boycott Russian energy over the proxy war in Ukraine. Among the principal importers of US LNG are France, Spain, Britain, the Netherlands, and Italy. Europe is now paying significantly more for expensive US LNG than it had previously for Russian pipeline gas. As of 2022, Europe had the highest energy prices on the planet. This was a key factor in fueling an inflation crisis that spread worldwide, and hit Europe especially hard.

Heard Of ‘Net-Zero Oil’ Or “Carbon Negative” Bioenergy? In 2023 You Will

January 4, 2023 DeSmog. Educate! climate crisis, Energy, Environment, False Solutions, greenwashing

Disinformation campaigns will certainly continue in 2023, confusing and convincing ever more people that fake news is true. Still, I’m encouraged by growing interest in “pre-bunking” — inoculating people against disinformation by familiarizing them with common disinformation tropes and techniques ahead of time. This is familiar territory for DeSmog — we have unpacked and decoded fossil fuel greenwashing and climate denier messaging for more than a decade — but now that social media has turbocharged the circulation of conspiracy theories and white grievance, it’s vital to get out ahead of these messages. Researchers have been studying the effectiveness of pre-bunking for some years, and now the idea seems to be going mainstream; NPR, the Associated Press, and NBC News have all run stories about pre-bunking in recent months.

The Nuclear Industry Is Trying To Come Back; Here’s What They Don’t Want You To Know

December 27, 2022 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. Podcast - Clearing The FOG climate crisis, Energy, Nuclear Power, weapons

At the most recent United Nations COP27 meeting in Egypt, the nuclear industry had a strong presence pushing nuclear power as a low-carbon alternative to fossil fuels. Clearing the FOG spoke to Dr. Arjun Mkhijani, the president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, about why nuclear power is not needed and is actually counterproductive in the age of the climate crisis. Dr. Makhijani wrote the book on a roadmap to a carbon-free, nuclear-free future. An expert in nuclear fusion, he also talks about the Department of Energy's nuclear fusion advances, which is actually a weapons program, and why this is a dangerous path. The false claims of nuclear fusion as a potential energy source are being used to justify this research.

Fusion Energy: The Nuclear Weapons Connection

December 25, 2022 Karl Grossman, Counter Punch. Educate! Energy, fusion energy, Nuclear, Nuclear Weapons

In 1980, in my book Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power published that year, I wrote: “What about fusion? This has been held out by the nuclear establishment as a somewhat cleaner form of nuclear power—as the hydrogen bomb, a fusion device, is somewhat cleaner in fall-out than an atomic bomb. Somewhat.” “Fusion is theoretically supposed to get its power from fusing nuclei together,” I continued. “This would be the opposite of fission, which blasts the nuclei apart. But to start the process, extremely high temperatures are required—100 million degrees Centigrade, more than six times the estimated temperature of the sun’s interior.” “Although Dwight Eisenhower, when he was President, suggested that the AEC keep the public ‘confused about fission and fusion,’ fusion is a dirty, radioactive process, too.

Fusion—And Its Radioactive And Nuclear Weapons

December 21, 2022 Karl Grossman, Nation Of Change. Educate! Energy, Nuclear, Radioactive, weapons

There was great hoopla—largely unquestioned by media— with the announcement last week by the U.S. Department of Energy of a “major scientific breakthrough” in the development of fusion energy. “This is a landmark achievement,” declared Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm. Her department’s press release said the experiment at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California “produced more energy from fusion than the laser energy used to drive it” and will “provide invaluable insights into the prospects of clean fusion energy.” “Nuclear fusion technology has been around since the creation of the hydrogen bomb,” noted a CBS News article covering the announcement. “Nuclear fusion has been considered the holy grail of energy creation.” And “now fusion’s moment appears to be finally here,” said the CBS piece.

House Committee Wraps Up Historic Investigation Into Oil Industry

December 19, 2022 Nick Cunningham, DeSmog. Educate! Big Oil, Congress, Energy, Oil and Gas

Congressional investigators released a new set of documents that underscored the oil and gas industry’s ongoing attempts to block climate policies and confuse the public about their long-term investments in fossil fuels. The latest tranche of documents caps off a nearly two-year investigation that appears set to come to an end with Republicans taking control of the House of Representatives in January. On December 9, the U.S. House Oversight and Reform Committee published its latest set of documents as part of its ongoing investigation into the oil industry’s history of climate denial and obfuscation. The documents offer more evidence showing that the industry’s “greenwashing” continues up to the present day.

Corporate Greed At Its Worst

December 18, 2022 Jake Johnson, Common Dreams. Educate! Class Struggle, Corporatism, Energy

With colder winter weather looming, a new analysis released Tuesday shows that the nine largest energy utility companies in the U.S. raked in nearly $14 billion in combined profits during the first three quarters of this year—and dished out roughly $11 billion to their wealthy shareholders—as tens of millions of U.S. households struggled to pay their utility bills due to soaring costs. The watchdog group Accountable.US found that NextEra Energy, Duke Energy, Southern Company, Dominion Energy, Constellation Energy, Eversource Energy, Entergy Corporation, DTE Energy, and CMS Energy Corporation brought in $13.8 billion in the first nine months of this fiscal year. The firms, the nine largest in the U.S. by market capitalization, returned over $11.2 billion to shareholders during that period in the form of dividends and stock buybacks.

The UK Is Mired In An Energy Crisis, But Not On Goldsmith Street

December 13, 2022 Olivia Rosane, EcoWatch. Create! Energy, Inflation, Passive House, Social Housing, United Kingdom (UK)

When the Goldsmith Street social housing development was completed in Norwich, UK, in 2019, it was the country’s largest residential complex built to energy efficient Passivhaus standards. At the time, it was dubbed a “modest masterpiece” and won the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Stirling Prize. Now, as the UK braces for the first full winter of a cost-of-living crisis and the energy crisis prompted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it is winning its residents something even more important: savings on their heating bills. “We don’t have to put the heating on so it’s cheaper,” resident Jayed Abdas Samad told The Guardian. “We feel very lucky.” Passivhaus standards were first developed in Germany and are the go-to standards for new construction there.

The US Can Get To 100% Clean Power Without New Nuclear

December 1, 2022 Arjun Makhijani, Utility Drive. Create! Energy, Nuclear Energy, Renewable Energy

There is a widespread view that nuclear energy is necessary for decarbonizing the electricity sector in the United States. It is expressed not only by the nuclear industry, but also by scholars and policy-makers like former Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who recently said that the choices we have “…when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine” are “fossil fuel or nuclear.” I disagree. Wind and solar are much cheaper than new nuclear plants even when storage is added. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimated the cost of unsubsidized utility-scale solar plus battery storage in 2021 was $77 per megawatt-hour — about half the cost of new nuclear as estimated by the Wall Street firm Lazard. (An average New York State household uses a megawatt-hour in about seven weeks.)

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