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The Pacific Northwest sizzled beneath its first heat wave of the season. It probably won’t be its last.
The worst thing about growing up in Seattle was that school would get out before summer actually started. Every year around mid-June, when the last-day-of-school festivities were over, you still had to wait weeks before it would be warm enough to break out the Otter Pops or go swimming in the lake. Because, as every Seattle kid knows, summer reliably doesn’t start in the Pacific Northwest until July 5.
Or rather, as every Seattle kid knew.
Tuesday offered the first day of relative relief for the Pacific Northwest after four consecutive days of record-breaking spring heat (bless you, “deepening marine influence”). But it had been a doozy getting here: Some 12 million people in Washington and Oregon were under a heat advisory over the weekend as temperatures in the region topped out at more than 20 degrees above the normal high this time of year, which should be in the mid-60s.
Portland, Oregon, endured three straight days of 90-degree temperatures — more consecutive 90-degree days than Dallas, Texas, has seen this year, NBC News reports. Over the border in British Columbia, the city of Squamish hit what appears to be the blistering max of this particular heat wave: 96 degrees.
Some national news outlets correctly pointed out this heat wave is significantly cooler than the June 2021 “heat dome” that pushed temperatures to 116 degrees in Portland and 121 degrees in Lytton, British Columbia — an extreme weather event that killed an estimated 1,400 people in the U.S. and Canada. (This weekend’s heat event was also significantly different, meteorologically speaking).
But the question isn’t if the Pacific Northwest’s recent heat was its hottest ever. It’s if the region is prepared for this kind of anomalous heat to become a regular thing.
To be clear, tying a single heat wave to climate change involves extended study. Still, the nonprofit news organization Climate Central’s early analysis indicates that “human-caused climate change made the record-breaking spring heat forecast … up to 5 times more likely.” (The 2021 heat wave was ultimately found to have been “virtually impossible” without climate change).
It’s also well-researched at this point that heat waves are becoming worse and more frequent. Sure enough, in 2022, Seattle also had its longest heat wave ever. Events such as the one this weekend also increase the likelihood and intensity of future wildfires — a fact already evidenced in 2023 by a number of fires burning around the world, as I’ve previously written, including in Alberta, Canada, where this heat wave may further exacerbate already out-of-control burns.
But the Pacific Northwest is particularly susceptible to heat waves because it’s wildly unused to them. For one thing, there’s the physical shock of this kind of heat so early in the year: “Typically, unseasonably warm weather early in the ‘heat season’ can be particularly challenging to human health because the population is less acclimatized versus later in the summer,” Zac Schlader, an associate professor at Indiana University-Bloomington, told The Washington Post.
For another, it’s harder for people in the Pacific Northwest to cool down when it’s 90 out than for people in, say, Phoenix or Las Vegas — cities that were constructed with heat in mind. Seattle, for example, is the second-least-air-conditioned metro area in the country (behind only “the coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in” San Francisco). Just over half of the homes in the area have a/c, and many of them are new buildings.
The distribution is also unequal; many of the people who don’t have access to a/c live below the poverty level. Only recently has Oregon mobilized to require all new housing to have air conditioning installed in at least one room. Counterintuitively — as Heatmap has covered — there is also a very real risk that people in the Pacific Northwest, who don’t grow up having heat-coping techniques ingrained in them, could be in danger if the power grid fails and they suddenly aren’t able to rely on their a/cs.
There are other ways the region is worryingly ill-prepared for managing heat, too. Pacific Northwesterners, sick of dealing with the heat, might consider jumping into one of the region’s plentiful lakes and rivers. But those bodies of water are currently full of super-fresh new snowmelt and that water is very, very cold even when the air temperature is not. People die every year from the sudden shock of cannonballing into what looks like blissfully refreshing water. At the same time, many public pools in the area — a crucial resource during heat waves — are dealing with lifeguard shortages and weren’t able to open this weekend.
As hot as it is, though, it’s also still early in the year; so early, in fact, that snow hasn’t melted out of the mountains yet. But it has gotten warm up there, too. That means anyone who’s considering taking a hike in the heat could inadvertently end up in danger of, all things, an avalanche. And that’s not even to circle back to the fires, which will gobble up all the dry vegetation they can get whenever the right spark comes along.
If there’s a grim solace, though, it’s that practice makes perfect. The more extreme heat the Pacific Northwest experiences, the more its residents will learn to adjust. Already you can see these lessons being learned — Oregon’s a/c law, for one, as well as Seattle-area officials directing bus drivers to allow people to ride for free if they’re clearly escaping the heat. Regular people are also learning to recognize signs of heat illness or to preemptively keep their blinds closed in the mornings to maintain the dark, precious coolness inside.
There will be cultural changes as well, of course. Seattle kids don’t have to wait until the Fourth of July any longer to chase down ice cream trucks. As everyone knows, Pacific Northwest summers start in May.
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A conversation with VDE Americas CEO Brian Grenko.
This week’s Q&A is about hail. Last week, we explained how and why hail storm damage in Texas may have helped galvanize opposition to renewable energy there. So I decided to reach out to Brian Grenko, CEO of renewables engineering advisory firm VDE Americas, to talk about how developers can make sure their projects are not only resistant to hail but also prevent that sort of pushback.
The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
Hiya Brian. So why’d you get into the hail issue?
Obviously solar panels are made with glass that can allow the sunlight to come through. People have to remember that when you install a project, you’re financing it for 35 to 40 years. While the odds of you getting significant hail in California or Arizona are low, it happens a lot throughout the country. And if you think about some of these large projects, they may be in the middle of nowhere, but they are taking hundreds if not thousands of acres of land in some cases. So the chances of them encountering large hail over that lifespan is pretty significant.
We partnered with one of the country’s foremost experts on hail and developed a really interesting technology that can digest radar data and tell folks if they’re developing a project what the [likelihood] will be if there’s significant hail.
Solar panels can withstand one-inch hail – a golfball size – but once you get over two inches, that’s when hail starts breaking solar panels. So it’s important to understand, first and foremost, if you’re developing a project, you need to know the frequency of those events. Once you know that, you need to start thinking about how to design a system to mitigate that risk.
The government agencies that look over land use, how do they handle this particular issue? Are there regulations in place to deal with hail risk?
The regulatory aspects still to consider are about land use. There are authorities with jurisdiction at the federal, state, and local level. Usually, it starts with the local level and with a use permit – a conditional use permit. The developer goes in front of the township or the city or the county, whoever has jurisdiction of wherever the property is going to go. That’s where it gets political.
To answer your question about hail, I don’t know if any of the [authority having jurisdictions] really care about hail. There are folks out there that don’t like solar because it’s an eyesore. I respect that – I don’t agree with that, per se, but I understand and appreciate it. There’s folks with an agenda that just don’t want solar.
So okay, how can developers approach hail risk in a way that makes communities more comfortable?
The bad news is that solar panels use a lot of glass. They take up a lot of land. If you have hail dropping from the sky, that’s a risk.
The good news is that you can design a system to be resilient to that. Even in places like Texas, where you get large hail, preparing can mean the difference between a project that is destroyed and a project that isn’t. We did a case study about a project in the East Texas area called Fighting Jays that had catastrophic damage. We’re very familiar with the area, we work with a lot of clients, and we found three other projects within a five-mile radius that all had minimal damage. That simple decision [to be ready for when storms hit] can make the complete difference.
And more of the week’s big fights around renewable energy.
1. Long Island, New York – We saw the face of the resistance to the war on renewable energy in the Big Apple this week, as protestors rallied in support of offshore wind for a change.
2. Elsewhere on Long Island – The city of Glen Cove is on the verge of being the next New York City-area community with a battery storage ban, discussing this week whether to ban BESS for at least one year amid fire fears.
3. Garrett County, Maryland – Fight readers tell me they’d like to hear a piece of good news for once, so here’s this: A 300-megawatt solar project proposed by REV Solar in rural Maryland appears to be moving forward without a hitch.
4. Stark County, Ohio – The Ohio Public Siting Board rejected Samsung C&T’s Stark Solar project, citing “consistent opposition to the project from each of the local government entities and their impacted constituents.”
5. Ingham County, Michigan – GOP lawmakers in the Michigan State Capitol are advancing legislation to undo the state’s permitting primacy law, which allows developers to evade municipalities that deny projects on unreasonable grounds. It’s unlikely the legislation will become law.
6. Churchill County, Nevada – Commissioners have upheld the special use permit for the Redwood Materials battery storage project we told you about last week.
Long Islanders, meanwhile, are showing up in support of offshore wind, and more in this week’s edition of The Fight.
Local renewables restrictions are on the rise in the Hawkeye State – and it might have something to do with carbon pipelines.
Iowa’s known as a renewables growth area, producing more wind energy than any other state and offering ample acreage for utility-scale solar development. This has happened despite the fact that Iowa, like Ohio, is home to many large agricultural facilities – a trait that has often fomented conflict over specific projects. Iowa has defied this logic in part because the state was very early to renewables, enacting a state portfolio standard in 1983, signed into law by a Republican governor.
But something else is now on the rise: Counties are passing anti-renewables moratoria and ordinances restricting solar and wind energy development. We analyzed Heatmap Pro data on local laws and found a rise in local restrictions starting in 2021, leading to nearly 20 of the state’s 99 counties – about one fifth – having some form of restrictive ordinance on solar, wind or battery storage.
What is sparking this hostility? Some of it might be counties following the partisan trend, as renewable energy has struggled in hyper-conservative spots in the U.S. But it may also have to do with an outsized focus on land use rights and energy development that emerged from the conflict over carbon pipelines, which has intensified opposition to any usage of eminent domain for energy development.
The central node of this tension is the Summit Carbon Solutions CO2 pipeline. As we explained in a previous edition of The Fight, the carbon transportation network would cross five states, and has galvanized rural opposition against it. Last November, I predicted the Summit pipeline would have an easier time under Trump because of his circle’s support for oil and gas, as well as the placement of former North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum as interior secretary, as Burgum was a major Summit supporter.
Admittedly, this prediction has turned out to be incorrect – but it had nothing to do with Trump. Instead, Summit is now stalled because grassroots opposition to the pipeline quickly mobilized to pressure regulators in states the pipeline is proposed to traverse. They’re aiming to deny the company permits and lobbying state legislatures to pass bills banning the use of eminent domain for carbon pipelines. One of those states is South Dakota, where the governor last month signed an eminent domain ban for CO2 pipelines. On Thursday, South Dakota regulators denied key permits for the pipeline for the third time in a row.
Another place where the Summit opposition is working furiously: Iowa, where opposition to the CO2 pipeline network is so intense that it became an issue in the 2020 presidential primary. Regulators in the state have been more willing to greenlight permits for the project, but grassroots activists have pressured many counties into some form of opposition.
The same counties with CO2 pipeline moratoria have enacted bans or land use restrictions on developing various forms of renewables, too. Like Kossuth County, which passed a resolution decrying the use of eminent domain to construct the Summit pipeline – and then three months later enacted a moratorium on utility-scale solar.
I asked Jessica Manzour, a conservation program associate with Sierra Club fighting the Summit pipeline, about this phenomenon earlier this week. She told me that some counties are opposing CO2 pipelines and then suddenly tacking on or pivoting to renewables next. In other cases, counties with a burgeoning opposition to renewables take up the pipeline cause, too. In either case, this general frustration with energy companies developing large plots of land is kicking up dust in places that previously may have had a much lower opposition risk.
“We painted a roadmap with this Summit fight,” said Jess Manzour, a campaigner with Sierra Club involved in organizing opposition to the pipeline at the grassroots level, who said zealous anti-renewables activists and officials are in some cases lumping these items together under a broad umbrella. ”I don’t know if it’s the people pushing for these ordinances, rather than people taking advantage of the situation.”