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I come bearing good news for a change: Most of the United States will see reasonable summer temperatures this week! With, of course, a few exceptions …
Hurricane Debby, which first made landfall in Florida last Tuesday, has set new weather trends in motion. After hitting Georgia and South Carolina, the storm continued north, reaching the Northeast last Friday. The wind and rainfall brought cooler, less humid air into the region, Reneé Duff, senior meteorologist at Accuweather, told me. Temperatures in the Northeast — which were several degrees below historical averages this weekend — will continue to be more comfortable this week compared to the recent past. Same goes for the northern Plains and Midwest.
In the Southeast, where the hurricane has caused the most destruction, temperatures will be near their historical averages — around the low 90s degrees Fahrenheit. While the cool-off will be good for those trying to recover after the storm, Duff told me that higher humidity levels with rounds of showers and thunderstorms in the region may still end up slowing cleanup efforts.
Despite Debby, the heat has found a way to stick itself to some states. Parts of Texas and New Mexico will see temperatures much higher than those expected for this time of the year, Tom Kines, senior meteorologist at Accuweather, told me.During the later part of the week, an intense heat wave will build across Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Arkansas. On Thursday, southern Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama will be under extreme heat risk alerts, according to data from the National Weather Service.
The rest of the country should “experience temperatures close to where they should be for this time of year,” Kines told me.
Little progress has been made on containing the Park Fire since last week. The wildfire, which is now 38% contained, continues to grow aggressively. Climate scientist Daniel Swain of the University of California, Los Angeles, explained in a live briefing Thursday that while parts of the fire that had been burning through grass have been contained, in its northeastern flank, the fire is currently ravaging through timber plantations which burn more violently than natural forests. The fire has now also reached the Lassen National Forest, burning over 100,000 acres of the protected area.
There is one tiny bit of good news: According to updates from Cal Fire, firefighters have been able to lift evacuation orders and warnings in Butte County.
Meanwhile, other wildfires have continued to pop up in California. On Tuesday, the Crozier Fire started in El Dorado County, and almost 2,000 acres have so far been burned. While not as powerful as the Park Fire, Crozier is also growing fast and in a more densely populated area, Swain said.
In late July, an especially long and intense heat wave settled over Alaska. On July 22, Fairbanks hit 90 degrees, breaking the previous record of 89 set last year. On that day, it was hotter in northern Alaska than it was in Atlanta.
The fact that such high temperatures are being seen so late into the summer in Alaska is particularly concerning, Brian Brettschneider, a climate scientist for the NWS, toldScientific American. Peak temperatures usually happen much sooner, in June; by July, after the summer solstice, Alaska gets fewer hours of sunlight, so temperatures should start settling down. Alaskans’ housing and habits are all adapted to keep the cold away, so scientists are worried about the health risks of prolonged high temperatures in the state.
East Asian countries have been sizzling this summer, and South Korea is no exception. Following the end of the monsoon season in late July, Seoul has constantly seen temperatures of 89 degrees and up. Most of the country has seen temperatures 10 degrees higher than historical averages. The relentless heat has led to almost 2,000 heat-related illnesses and 17 fatalities since the start of the summer. In some regions, including Jeju, people are struggling to keep livestock alive, for example using fans and air conditioners to try to cool down the island’s rare black pigs. Over 300,000 livestock have died since mid-July.
“The heat is mostly due to a persistent area of high pressure over the Philippine Sea with the high's axis reaching to the Korean Peninsula over the past week to 10 days,” Duff explained.
The country has opened 50,000 cooling shelters in response to the heat crisis, on top of smaller-scale counter-measures such as distributing umbrellas and salt tablets to try to keep people cool and hydrated.
Several communities in northern Canada broke heat records last week. Temperatures reached 95 degrees, breaking the record of 91 set last year. Inuvik, which saw its second ever recorded heat wave this summer, has been especially vulnerable to the recent heat. The region’s famous midnight sunsets means heat takes longer to dissipate, exacerbating the issues with low water levels in the Mackenzie River. Due to the dry and hot conditions, the community so used to ice and snow is now concerned about wildfires. Regions in Canada that have been historically shielded from major fire threats have been in the line of destruction in recent years, The Guardianreported.
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Almost half of developers believe it is “somewhat or significantly harder to do” projects on farmland, despite the clear advantages that kind of property has for harnessing solar power.
The solar energy industry has a big farm problem cropping up. And if it isn’t careful, it’ll be dealing with it for years to come.
Researchers at SI2, an independent research arm of the Solar Energy Industries Association, released a study of farm workers and solar developers this morning that said almost half of all developers believe it is “somewhat or significantly harder to do” projects on farmland, despite the clear advantages that kind of property has for harnessing solar power.
Unveiled in conjunction with RE+, the largest renewable energy conference in the U.S., the federally-funded research includes a warning sign that permitting is far and away the single largest impediment for solar developers trying to build projects on farmland. If this trend continues or metastasizes into a national movement, it could indefinitely lock developers out from some of the nation’s best land for generating carbon-free electricity.
“If a significant minority opposes and perhaps leads to additional moratoria, [developers] will lose a foot in the door for any future projects,” Shawn Rumery, SI2’s senior program director and the survey lead, told me. “They may not have access to that community any more because that moratoria is in place.”
SI2’s research comes on the heels of similar findings from Heatmap Pro. A poll conducted for the platform last month found 70% of respondents who had more than 50 acres of property — i.e. the kinds of large landowners sought after by energy developers — are concerned that renewable energy “takes up farmland,” by far the greatest objection among that cohort.
Good farmland is theoretically perfect for building solar farms. What could be better for powering homes than the same strong sunlight that helps grow fields of yummy corn, beans and vegetables? And there’s a clear financial incentive for farmers to get in on the solar industry, not just because of the potential cash in letting developers use their acres but also the longer-term risks climate change and extreme weather can pose to agriculture writ large.
But not all farmers are warming up to solar power, leading towns and counties across the country to enact moratoria restricting or banning solar and wind development on and near “prime farmland.” Meanwhile at the federal level, Republicans and Democrats alike are voicing concern about taking farmland for crop production to generate renewable energy.
Seeking to best understand this phenomena, SI2 put out a call out for ag industry representatives and solar developers to tell them how they feel about these two industries co-mingling. They received 355 responses of varying detail over roughly three months earlier this year, including 163 responses from agriculture workers, 170 from solar developers as well as almost two dozen individuals in the utility sector.
A key hurdle to development, per the survey, is local opposition in farm communities. SI2’s publicity announcement for the research focuses on a hopeful statistic: up to 70% of farmers surveyed said they were “open to large-scale solar.” But for many, that was only under certain conditions that allow for dual usage of the land or agrivoltaics. In other words, they’d want to be able to keep raising livestock, a practice known as solar grazing, or planting crops unimpeded by the solar panels.
The remaining percentage of farmers surveyed “consistently opposed large-scale solar under any condition,” the survey found.
“Some of the messages we got were over my dead body,” Rumery said.
Meanwhile a “non-trivial” number of solar developers reported being unwilling or disinterested in adopting the solar-ag overlap that farmers want due to the increased cost, Rumery said. While some companies expect large portions of their business to be on farmland in the future, and many who responded to the survey expect to use agrivoltaic designs, Rumery voiced concern at the percentage of companies unwilling to integrate simultaneous agrarian activities into their planning.
In fact, Rumery said some developers’ reticence is part of what drove him and his colleagues to release the survey while at RE+.
As we discussed last week, failing to address the concerns of local communities can lead to unintended consequences with industry-wide ramifications. Rumery said developers trying to build on farmland should consider adopting dual-use strategies and focus on community engagement and education to avoid triggering future moratoria.
“One of the open-ended responses that best encapsulated the problem was a developer who said until the cost of permitting is so high that it forces us to do this, we’re going to continue to develop projects as they are,” he said. “That’s a cold way to look at it.”
Meanwhile, who is driving opposition to solar and other projects on farmland? Are many small farm owners in rural communities really against renewables? Is the fossil fuel lobby colluding with Big Ag? Could building these projects on fertile soil really impede future prospects at crop yields?
These are big questions we’ll be tackling in far more depth in next week’s edition of The Fight. Trust me, the answers will surprise you.
Here are the most notable renewable energy conflicts over the past week.
1. Worcester County, Maryland –Ocean City is preparing to go to court “if necessary” to undo the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s approval last week of U.S. Wind’s Maryland Offshore Wind Project, town mayor Rick Meehan told me in a statement this week.
2. Magic Valley, Idaho – The Lava Ridge Wind Project would be Idaho’s biggest wind farm. But it’s facing public outcry over the impacts it could have on a historic site for remembering the impact of World War II on Japanese residents in the United States.
3. Kossuth County, Iowa – Iowa’s largest county – Kossuth – is in the process of approving a nine-month moratorium on large-scale solar development.
Here’s a few more hotspots I’m watching…
The most important renewable energy policies and decisions from the last few days.
Greenlink’s good day – The Interior Department has approved NV Energy’s Greenlink West power line in Nevada, a massive step forward for the Biden administration’s pursuit of more transmission.
States’ offshore muddle – We saw a lot of state-level offshore wind movement this past week… and it wasn’t entirely positive. All of this bodes poorly for odds of a kumbaya political moment to the industry’s benefit any time soon.
Chumash loophole – Offshore wind did notch one win in northern California by securing an industry exception in a large marine sanctuary, providing for farms to be built in a corridor of the coastline.
Here’s what else I’m watching …