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On Copernicus’ Climate Atlas, tourist fees, and the culture wars
Current conditions: A tropical storm has formed in the South Atlantic for the first time in three years • Ongoing wildfires in Chile forced residents to evacuate • It’s 51 degrees Fahrenheit and cloudy in London where a pod of dolphins was spotted in the River Thames.
Hawaii may introduce a $25 tourist fee this spring to help protect the state from wildfires. Hawaii’s Democratic governor, Josh Green, told The Wall Street Journal the fee would bring in close to $70 million annually, and that the money would pay for things like fire breaks, disaster prevention and insurance, and establishing a state fire marshal. “It’s a very small price to pay to preserve paradise,” Green said. Hawaii is still recovering from the deadly Lahaina wildfires that struck Maui last year. The tourist fee would follow a larger trend of visitors being asked to help contribute to climate resilience efforts in high-risk destinations across the world.
Here’s one for the climate data nerds: The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) – a key resource for global climate data – today unveiled a cool new interactive tool. The Interactive Climate Atlas lets users explore very detailed changes in climate on a regional level, and peer into the future with climate projections based on different warming scenarios. The tool is a “gamechanger” for policymakers, the group said. It’s also just really fascinating (and/or terrifying) to play around with. It takes a little bit of getting used to, though, so good idea to read the user guide before you dive in.
Spatial precipitation changesC3S Interactive Climate Atlas
A bunch of European industrial business leaders are worried their firms are losing their competitive edge in the energy transition, and they want the EU to do something about it. About 70 CEOs from major European companies are petitioning the EU to introduce a “European Industrial Deal” that would reduce energy costs, boost funding for clean tech, cut red tape, and limit companies’ reporting obligations. “The group says Europe risks losing out to China and the U.S. in the race to supply the technologies needed to roll out renewables and slash industrial emissions,” reportedBloomberg. Ursula von der Leyen will join the group in Antwerp today in a bid to garner support as she launches her bid for a second term as European Commission president.
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A French company that manufactures parts for about half the world’s cars is cutting 10,000 jobs as the global shift to electric vehicles changes the automotive landscape, reportedThe Wall Street Journal. Forvia provides exhaust systems as well as interiors for carmakers including Ford, Tesla, Stellantis, and Volkswagen. The cuts, which will happen over the next five years, come as the company strives to stay competitive as new policies in the EU favor electric vehicles, and Chinese carmakers like BYD look to expand. Automotive suppliers “have made hefty investments in the shift to electric, and now they are seeing their markets being hit due to slower uptake than expected,” wrote Jennifer Mossalgue at Electrek.
Florida is one of a handful of states trying to ban lab-grown meat, seen by some as a potential way to help cut the greenhouse gas emissions of the meat and dairy industries. A new bill in the state legislature would make it a misdemeanor to sell or manufacture lab-grown meat (which is made from animal cells), and anyone caught doing so would be fined $1,000. “The development of lab-grown meat has been drawn into America’s culture wars, like other ventures aimed at disrupting traditional food production,” explained The New York Times. The irony is that “it likely will be years before lab-grown meat is a staple on dinner plates in America, if it happens at all.”
“Luxury is better when it’s quiet and doesn’t smell like diesel exhaust.” –Electrek’s Jo Borrás on why some ski resorts are rolling out electric equipment
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The company is placing a huge bet on small modular reactors.
First it was Microsoft and Constellation restarting Three Mile Island, then it was Google announcing it would buy power from small modular reactors built by Kairos. Now today, Amazon has said it’s investing in X-energy, the small modular reactor and fuel company, and supporting a joint project by X-energy and Energy Northwest, the Washington state public utility.
So what makes this deal different from all other nuclear tech deals?
“What makes this significantly different is the investment,” Brett Rampal, a senior director at Veriten, an energy advisory company, told me. Amazon is not just buying the power that a nuclear reactor will produce after it’s completed. It’s getting involved in the projects themselves.
This has not typically been how big tech companies with commitments to reduce emissions and rapidly expanding energy needs to power more data centers get involved with nuclear power.
The Microsoft/Constellation deal to restart Three Mile Island did not entail Microsoft taking on the financial and logistical burden of upgrading the plant so that it could be up and running again in a few years — for that, Constellation will be putting $1.6 billion of its own money into the plant. Instead, Microsoft signed a 20-year deal for the plant’s output, known as a power purchase agreement, which guarantees a price for the plant’s product. These types of deals were pioneered by Google to support renewables projects by giving them a guaranteed income independent of how electricity prices might fluctuate in whatever market they were selling into.
Amazon’s deal, on the other hand, is a “direct investment in the Energy Northwest project,” an X-energy spokesperson told me. According to an Amazon spokesperson, that means a “capital commitment to fund development, licensing and construction of an SMR project with Energy Northwest in Washington State,” a spokesperson told me. The project would be sited near the existing Columbia Generating Station in Richland.
“This is Amazon saying, We’re in, and we need this, and we’re putting skin in the game directly,” Rampal said. By contrast, other nuclear deals like Microsoft’s and Google’s “send demand signals and are, Hey, we’ll be there when you’re done.”
Energy Northwest and X-energy signed a joint development agreement for the project last year. If all goes as planned, the finished facility could be as large as 960 megawatts from 12 X-energy 80-megawatt “modules.” Amazon could buy the electricity from up to four of the modules, totaling 320 megawatts. Amazon said that the project “will help meet the forecasted energy needs of the Pacific Northwest beginning in the early 2030s.” (Last year X-energy and Energy Northwest said the project would be online “by 2030.”)
“We’ve been working for years to develop this project at the urging of our members, and have found that taking this first, bold step is difficult for utilities, especially those that provide electricity to ratepayers at the cost of production,” Greg Cullen, Energy Northwest’s vice president for energy services and development, said in a release. “We applaud Amazon for being willing to use their financial strength, need for power, and know-how to lead the way to a reliable, carbon-free power future for the region.”
That “first, bold” step is difficult because nuclear development is notoriously risky even with proven technologies, let alone novel designs like X-energy’s. The only other small modular reactor deal in the United States, between NuScale (which has the only approved small modular reactor design) and a coalition of Mountain West utilities, fell through due to escalating costs.
Amazon is also anchoring an equity investment in X-energy itself, alongside Citadel founder Ken Griffin and other investors. Amazon said its investment in X-energy “includes manufacturing capacity to develop the SMR equipment to support more than 5 gigawatts of new nuclear energy projects utilizing X-energy’s technology.”
The reactor design that Energy Northwest and X-energy plan to deploy, the Xe-100, is in the “pre-application” process with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. X-energy and the NRC have been engaging with each other since 2018, according to the docket for the project.
Amazon also announced that it had signed a memorandum of understanding with Virginia utility Dominion Energy to look into SMR projects. Earlier this year, Dominion put out a request for proposals for SMRs at its existing North Anna site near Richmond, whose two reactors have a capacity of around 1,800 megawatts.
The Department of Energy has estimated that existing nuclear sites could host an additional 60 to 95 gigawatts of new nuclear power, which means the United States’ nuclear output could double without having to set up a new site for a reactor. The North Anna site has an “early site permit” from the NRC, which approves a particular site for nuclear reactors.
On the IEA’s World Energy Outlook, power plant emissions, and Honda’s surprise
Current conditions: Snow is falling in the mountains of North Carolina, where many are still without power • Severe weather warnings are in effect for nearly half of Australia • A coral bleaching alert has been issued for the eastern Caribbean, where the coral face a risk of “near complete mortality” due to high ocean temperatures.
The world is entering the “Age of Electricity,” with low-emission energy sources on track to generate more than half of the world’s electricity by the end of the decade, according to the International Energy Agency’s new World Energy Outlook. The report examines how the energy transition would look in three different scenarios: following current energy and climate policies, fulfilling all announced climate commitments, and achieving net zero emissions by 2050. “The energy outlook is complex, multifaceted and defies a single view on how the future might unfold,” the report says. Some facts and figures:
Global energy-related CO2 emissions in different scenarios.IEA
The IEA’s report says the world should certainly be concerned about rising electricity demand overall, but it also conveys that perhaps we should all just calm down when it comes to data center load growth driven by the rise of generative artificial intelligence, wrote Heatmap’s Katie Brigham. The report demonstrates that on a global scale, data centers are pretty trivial compared to, say, the uptick in electric vehicle adoption or increased demand for cooling. By 2030 in the base case scenario, the IEA projects that data centers will account for less than 10% of global electricity demand growth, which is roughly equal to demand growth from desalination technologies, which we see much less hand-wringing about. By comparison, the combination of rising temperatures and rising incomes could create over 1,200 terawatt-hours of additional cooling demand by 2035, more than the entire Middle East’s electricity use.
Ninety-two people are still missing in North Carolina after Hurricane Helene, Gov. Roy Cooper, said yesterday. So far 95 storm-related deaths have been confirmed in the state, and thousands of people are still without power and other basic amenities. Nearly 600 roads are still closed, though this represents an improvement on the 1,200 that were closed immediately after the storm swept through the state three weeks ago. More than $99 million has been paid out in individual FEMA aid. Meanwhile, the U.S. Small Business Administration’s disaster loan program has been drained of funds after Helene. “Until Congress appropriates additional funds, the SBA is pausing new loan offers for its direct, low-interest, long-term loans to disaster survivors,” the SBA said. Congress is currently in recess, and won’t return until after the presidential election.
Emissions from America’s power plants fell 7% last year compared to 2022, according to the EPA’s annual Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program. The analysis looks at reported emissions from more than 8,100 industrial facilities across the country. When compared to 2011 emissions from power plants, last year’s levels were 34% lower, “reflecting the long-term shifts in power sector fuel-stock from coal to natural gas.” On the flip side, emissions from oil and gas operations are rising. They were up 1.4% last year compared to 2022 and 16.4% on 2016 levels. For the ninth year in a row, Alabama Power’s James H. Miller Jr. Electric Generating Plant was the country’s largest single producer of greenhouse gas pollution in 2023.
Honda has surprised analysts with its remarkable Q3 EV sales. The Honda Prologue, which only entered the U.S. market this year, was the fifth best-selling EV in the country. More than 12,600 of the all-electric SUVs were sold in the last three months. “Honda has been seen as a huge EV laggard for several years,” wrote Zachary Shahan at CleanTechnica. But its “reputation as a leader in fuel efficiency and hybrids made it an easy sell to get customers into its first serious full electric vehicle.” Patrick George at Inside EVsagreed: “This is a nice outcome for Honda's first modern EV, but perhaps it's not too surprising. American car buyers still tend to equate Honda and Toyota with being ‘green’ car companies since both were such pioneers in the hybrid arena.”
Honda
Research suggests that simply exposing people to climate change conspiracy theories can make them significantly less likely to believe the scientific community agrees that humans are causing climate change, and less likely to engage in pro-environmental behavior.
Rob interviews Ali Zaidi at Yale.
What’s next for the Biden administration — and for climate policy in the United States? Should Democrats negotiate with Republicans over permitting reform, even if it means making concessions to fossil fuel interests? And how should the country’s trade policy handle the problem of carbon pollution?
On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Rob speaks with Ali Zaidi, the national climate advisor to President Joe Biden. Zaidi leads the White House Climate Policy Office, which coordinates domestic climate policy across federal agencies. Before joining the White House in 2021, Zaidi was the state of New York’s deputy secretary for energy and environment. This interview was recorded live on October 10 in New Haven, Connecticut, at the Yale Clean Energy Conference.
Shift Key is hosted by Robinson Meyer, the founding executive editor of Heatmap, and Jesse Jenkins, a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University. Jesse is out this week.
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Here is an excerpt from our conversation:
Ali Zaidi: The conversation in Congress right now makes it seem like transmission is a Democratic policy priority when it boosts reliability and lowers rates. I thought Republicans and Democrats both agreed we need to boost reliability and lower rates. So I don’t know why that needs to be offset by any measure.
That’s thing number one. Thing number two is …
Robinson Meyer: This is the challenge of talking about things, is that if Democrats say, oh, we really value this, then suddenly it’s a Democratic priority.
Zaidi: Yeah. And then the second is, how do we accelerate the siting and permitting of things and then there is a how do we shift more power to the oil and gas industry. The conversation around leasing, happening against a backdrop where the industry itself is moving away from long-cycle investment to short-cycle investment, it’s tough. So I would hope that more of the permitting conversation were a permitting conversation.
Meyer: Well, one way this sometimes gets reflected is that you’ll hear environmentalists say, any policy that makes the oil and gas industry happy or bigger, we should not take. And that makes making a compromise …
Zaidi: And I reject that. Yeah, look, if ExxonMobil wants to pay for a pipeline that will help us deliver what was once solar and wind, as a fuel, to help us decarbonize a steel plant, they can be for it and I can be for it. If there is a — Blackstone, for example, has a Project Tallgrass that has converted a pipeline that used to pull hydrocarbons out of the ground. It’s now flipped the pipeline around, and is putting CO2 into the ground.
They can be for that. I can be for that — not speaking to the specific project, but conceptually. So I don’t think … It’s not the actor. It’s the question of whether this is directionally consistent with trying to chase down a 1.5 degree future or not.
We are behind as a world, and we need to run faster in that direction. If it’s not directionally consistent, that’s a problem.
This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by …
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Intersolar & Energy Storage North America is the premier U.S.-based conference and trade show focused on solar, energy storage, and EV charging infrastructure. To learn more, visit intersolar.us.
Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.