đ Good News Corner đ
Now this is what Iâm talking about: Last week, the Biden administration forked out $7 billion to states, tribal nations, and non-profits to carry out its Solar for All program aimed at expanding rooftop and residential solar and energy storage access to low-income folks and other underserved communities. About $1.7 billion of that cash will go to the West (see breakdown below). This is what I call a win-win-win-win situation:
Win 1 = It will add more solar power to the nationâs energy mix, hopefully displacing some fossil fuel generation, which will result in cleaner air and fewer greenhouse gas emissions.
Win 2 = This added solar will be on rooftops or vacant lots in or near towns or cities, reducing the need to blanket the desert with photovoltaics, which can be hugely destructive to ecosystems and wildlife habitat.Â
Win 3 = Rooftop and community-level solar installations will increase residentsâ self-sufficiency and reduce dependency on the grid, which is becoming less and less reliable as more frequent and severe extreme weather events damage infrastructure and utilities are forced to shut off power to reduce wildfire hazard. Plus, many homes that lack access to electricity, especially on tribal lands, will now have power.Â
Win 4 = This program has the potential to radically transform the residential solar landscape, redistributing this exclusive amenity now reserved to homeowners who can afford to spend tens of thousands of dollars upfront on a solar system, to, well, all of us, including renters.Â
Recipients include:Â
Colorado Energy Office: $156 million for single-family and multifamily rooftop solar statewide.Â
New Mexico Energy, Minerals, & Natural Resources Department: $156 million to âhelp overcome existing barriers to widespread adoption of distributed solar generationâ by expanding access to shared solar beyond the new community solar program.Â
Utah Office of Energy Development: $62 million to launch a new program to âstrengthen the market for deploying residential-serving solar ⌠for disadvantaged and low-income homesâÂ
Montana and Wyoming and Idaho, Bonneville Environmental Foundation: $131 million to âexpand economic and environmental benefits of solar to low-income, tribal, and disadvantaged communities.âÂ
Colorado-based Oweesta Corporation: $156 million to âaddress adoption barriers to Native residential and community solar deploymentâ in tribal lands across the nation.Â
Executive Office of the State of Arizona: $156 million to âbring the benefits of the stateâs abundant solar resources to the stateâs low-income and disadvantaged communities.âÂ
California Infrastructure Economic Development Bank: $250 million to reach âthe homes and businesses statewide that are most in need of affordable, reliable clean energy.âÂ
Nevada Clean Energy Fund: $156 millionÂ
Hopi Utilities Corporation: $25 million to deploy residential solar and storage systems on the Hopi Reservation, where 35% of households do not have electricity and those that do experience frequent and extended outages.Â
GRID Alternatives (Western Indigenous Network Solar for All) $62 million. Provides grants and incentives and technical assistance to deploy tribal residential solar, prioritizing communities in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah.Â
Alaska Energy Authority, $62 million, to partner with Alaska Housing Finance Corporation to deploy solar photovoltaic infrastructure statewide.Â
Oregon Department of Energy, $87 millionÂ
Washington State Department of Commerce, $156 millionÂ
Alaska, Tanana Chiefs Conference $62 million to provide tribal residents with residential and community solar.Â
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And the good news keeps a coming: Wind, solar, hydropower, and geothermal generation supplied more than 100% of Californiaâs energy demand on 39 of 47 days this spring. It wasnât all day, by any means, but anywhere from about 15 minutes on some days to just over nine hours on April 20.Â
That is to say that a state of 39 million people, with one of the worldâs largest economies, ran on non-fossil-fuel energy sources for more than nine hours. Thatâs a big deal.Â
Sure, it was on a Saturday in spring, when power demand tends to be lower, and on 4/20, when I guess a lot of people might have been outside smoking dope, which may or may not have affected electricity use. And a small percentage of that power came from large hydropower dams, which have their own problems and which California does not apply toward its renewable portfolio standards. Still, itâs a milestone that wasnât imaginable a couple of decades ago, when coal generation dominated the power grid and utility-scale solar and wind power barely registered.
Most of the power came from utility-scale solar installations (California grid operators donât track rooftop solar output, but it contributed by reducing overall demand). In fact, the stateâs collective solar systems not only met demand, but exceeded it enough to charge grid-scale batteries and still have enough left over to export to other states. On some days there was so much solar they had to curtail generation â or basically throw it away.
Hereâs what it looked like:
And then thereâs the dreaded solar duck curve to deal with. This refers to the shape of the electricity net-demand graph on sunny days (net-demand is determined by subtracting solar and wind supply from demand since they arenât âdispatchableâ power sources). On a number of days this spring, solar output was so high that it pushed the net-demand curve down into negative territory in the middle of the day. The real problemâs start when the sun sets and solar output suddenly diminishes. The net-demand curve shoots back up, forcing grid operators to fire up natural gas generation to âfollow the load,â or meet demand.Â
But even that dynamic is changing as an ever-increasing amount of that late afternoon load spike is being met with power from grid-scale batteries that had been charging all day. On the evening of April 16, for example, another milestone was reached when battery storage discharge became the largest energy source on Californiaâs grid, contributing nearly as much power as natural gas and nuclear generation combined for about an hour. Just this week, California announced it had surpassed 10,000 megawatts of battery storage capacity â a 1,250% increase from just five years ago.Â
Batteries alone, however, wonât get California or the West to 100% clean energy. The region will also need more of whatâs known as âgeographic smoothing,â or moving power around the region to fill gaps left when wind and solar generation drop off. This might include sending Wyoming wind power to California when the sun stops shining, or shipping California solar to Colorado during the middle of the day. Achieving this will require better regional integration of the grid and power markets. Just yesterday the Biden administration announced a plan to spend $331 million to help build out transmission lines, an important step in realizing this goal.
Read more about the Duck Curve:
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NEWS: Another proposed pumped hydropower storage project on the Navajo Nation bites the dust.
CONTEXT: One way to store energy is in batteries. Another way is with pumped hydropower facilities, usually consisting of two reservoirs, one above the other. Surplus power from the grid, usually generated by solar or wind during the day, is used to pump water from the lower to the upper reservoir. When the power is needed, such as when the sun sets and solar drops off, water is released from the upper reservoir and gravity propels it through a turbine that feeds electricity into the grid before emptying into the lower reservoir to begin the cycle anew.
Itâs smart technology, capable of providing massive amounts of energy just when itâs needed. The problem is, these things require water, dams, reservoirs, pumping plants, and pipelines, all of which can have an impact. That means properly siting these facilities â and working with stakeholders before finalizing plans or applying for permits â is important. And, well, so far, a lot of developers havenât done a great job with that, and now itâs biting them in the butt.
A few months ago the Land Desk reported on federal regulatorsâ rejection of seven proposed pumped hydropower storage projects on the Navajo Nation, while also establishing a policy of denying any project on tribal land if the tribe opposes it. The regulators deferred a decision on one additional proposal â the massive, three-reservoir Big Canyon project that would be on Navajo Nation land along a tributary of the Little Colorado River. The Navajo Nation initially had expressed concerns about the proposal without explicitly opposing it. After the new policy was put in place, the tribe clarified its opposition. This week, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission followed its new policy and rejected the permit.
Itâs a bummer to see so many clean energy proposals go down in flames. Had they been built, the projects would have contributed mightily to the Western energy transition. Their failure, however, is not on the tribal nation or advocates who opposed the projects. The developers are to blame for faulty siting decisions and for failing to adequately consult with stakeholders at the very beginning of the process. That would save everyone a lot of headaches, and it might even result in some good projects getting built in the right places.
For more on the proposals and their problems, check out this excellent piece â complete with great maps â by the Grand Canyon Trustâs Daryn Akei Melvyn.
đ¸ Parting Shot đď¸
During the last ten years over 12 trillion dollars has been spent globally building-out âcleanâ energy infrastructure, to include solar and wind generation capacity. In spite of this investment, the global consumption of fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas) continued to increase, as did CO2 emissions, which set a record in 2023.
Here is the problemâŚ.
During the ten years from 2014 to 2023, the global economic output grew annually by an average of 2.7 percent. Projecting this forward results in a doubling of global economic output by 2050 (Year Net-Zero). During the same ten year period, global population grew by an average of 1.1 percent annually (750,000,000 people over ten years). Projecting this rate of population growth forward results in a global population by 2050 (Year Net-Zero) of over ten billion people (25 percent more than we have today).
That 12 trillion dollar investment in âcleanâ energy merely helped to partially cover the increase in energy demand due to the growing global economy and population growth. It did nothing to contribute to an absolute reduction of CO2 emissions. Net-Zero at 50 is an unattainable goal under current trends of global economic and population growth.
Complex technological fixes are not going to do the job. Green ammonia, green hydrogen, battery storage, Carbon Capture and Underground Storage, and all the rest of the magic and make believe that is supposedly going to save us is an exercise in wishful thinking. These âsolutionsâ overpromise now and will underperform when attempts are made to scale them up. Recall what was said about electricity produced by nuclear fission in the late 1950s. The industry boosters said that nuclear generation was going to provide electricity so cheap that there would be no point in metering it at the point of consumption. And how did that fairy-tale turn out?
The global population has already overshot any reasonable number that can be sustained within a true renewable energy economic system. Economic growth will have to end in order to have any chance of bringing the needs of humanity into balance with the preservation of the biosphere (which we require for our own survival). The solution will involve a radical change in how we live; something close to how the Old World Amish of Lancaster County PA live. Are readers ready to embrace that lifestyle?
Since 1979 there have been 36 global climate conclaves where John Kerry clones flew in their private jets to exotic locales to blah, blah, blah about the existential threat of climate change. All their hot air has done nothing to impact the trajectory of global CO2 emissions. Nothing! Might was well worry about animal welfare or some other cause with a higher probability of making a difference.
This is the BIG PICTURE; what happens in the âGoldenâ State doesnât matter.
Ed is mostly right, but he doesn't tell us the solution which is not an easy one. We have to voluntarily reduce our own population. Drastically and quickly. We are the problem and reducing our numbers significantly is a step in the right direction. But Ed is correct in some of his cynicism. We're unlikely to take truely effective measures.