Links tagged “solar”

The mine would be “the most advanced lithium project in the U.S., and will become a major domestic supplier of refined lithium products, with enough supply of lithium materials for 400,000 electric vehicles a year for another quarter of a century,” ioneer executive chairman James Calaway said. ... 

But standing in its way is the Tiehm’s buckwheat, a flowering plant whose entire habitat is a 10-acre stretch of land located right where the new lithium mine would be operating. Responding to a 2019 petition submitted by the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) on June 3 proposed protecting the Tiehm’s buckwheat under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The FWS will undertake a 12-month review to determine whether the buckwheat will be listed as threatened or endangered.

Alex Epstein: Skyrocketing natural gas and coal prices are not a failure of the fossil fuel industry, but the total failure of *anti-fossil fuel policies*, which falsely promised that if we dramatically restricted fossil fuel energy production, green energy could easily replace it. There is no physical reason that the natural gas and coal industries can't meet rising demand. The world has hundreds of years' worth of gas deposits and thousands of years worth of coal deposits. But governments radically restrict the freedom to utilize those deposits. ... 

America has been called "the Saudi Arabia of coal." At today's prices, America's coal industry would love to be powering the world. But it can't because of onerous restrictions on coal transport, as well as myriad domestic restrictions on desperately-needed coal production. ...

There is no physical reason that the natural gas and coal industries can't meet rising demand. The world has hundreds of years' worth of gas deposits and thousands of years worth of coal deposits. But governments radically restrict the freedom to utilize those deposits."

Bloomberg News: "What does a Global Transition to Clean Energy Mean? Energy Crises, Gas Shortages"

Bloomberg News: The next several decades could see more periods of energy-driven inflation, fuel shortages and lost economic growth as electricity supplies are left vulnerable to shocks...The world is living through the first major energy crisis of the clean-power transition. It won’t be the last. ... At the same time, two other sources of power -- wind and water -- have had unusually low output, thanks to unexpectedly slower wind speeds and low rainfall in areas including Norway. In other words: A strained global gas market triggered Europe’s record-setting spike for electricity prices -- and the transition amplified it. ...

The richest economies are also undergoing one of the most ambitious overhauls of their power systems since the dawn of the electric age -- with no easy way to store the energy generated from renewable sources. ... Jeff Currie, global head of commodities research at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., points to underinvestment in fossil fuels as a big part of the problem. “In many parts of the world, you’ve overbuilt wind, you’ve overbuilt solar,” Currie said in an interview on Bloomberg TV. “The new economy is over-invested and the old economy is starved.” ... 

Wind and solar power production have soared in the last decade. But both renewable sources are notoriously fickle -- available at some times and not at others. And electricity, unlike gas or coal, is difficult to store in meaningful quantities. That’s a problem, because on the electrical grid, supply and demand must be constantly, perfectly balanced. Throw that balance out of whack, and blackouts result. So far, natural gas plants have served as the stable backup that wind and solar power need. That interdependence works fine, so long as gas prices aren’t going through the roof. 

"If we are serious about making our economy cleaner, we should be choosing technologies that deliver the biggest environmental benefit at the lowest possible cost. Too often, in pursuit of the renewable rainbow, we’ve done just the opposite. We burden our energy economy with high prices and complex regulations, all for fairly meager improvements in our environmental footprint."