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Some 20 million Americans woke up on Monday to the news that they have just one full day to prepare for Tropical Storm Idalia, which is expected to strengthen into the first major U.S. hurricane of the season this week. The “nasty” weather is likely to begin in Florida on Tuesday night, ahead of landfall on Wednesday morning.
Though meteorologists had been carefully watching Idalia — née Invest 93L — since at least Wednesday, the storm’s rapid intensification has taken even forecasters by surprise. Idalia had grown into a tropical depression by Saturday, fully a day or two ahead of schedule, only for a NOAA reconnaissance flight on Sunday to discover it was already gusting at 65-mile-per-hour — enough for it to promptly be given status as a named tropical storm. Newly minted Idalia then intensified even further overnight on Sunday. New models show it will grow from a Category 1 hurricane on Monday night into a full-blown Category 3 hurricane “just 24 hours later.”
Needless to say, Idalia has everyone jumpy. Part of that is superstition: Storms with names that start with the letter "I" are the most frequently retired. But it also looks like Idalia is the real deal: “The number one rule of this column is not to pull the fire alarm unless there is a fire,” meteorologist Ryan Truchelut wrote for his newsletter WeatherTigeron Sunday. “Idalia is a fire. I’m pulling the alarm.” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis stressed similar urgency in an early morning news conference on Monday: “This is going to be a major hurricane,” he said, adding, “Floridians, you need to be executing your plans now. Late Tuesday, early Wednesday, it’s going to start to get really nasty.”
In an age of sophisticated weather modeling, the rapid intensification of Idalia feels like the hurricane snuck up on us. Sure enough, conditions like the record-warm Gulf of Mexico water temperatures — which Axiosdescribes as “the equivalent of a powder keg for hurricane energy” — have some experts cautioning we might not have exhausted all of Idalia’s surprises just yet.
Here are some of the most concerning variables as the storm approaches the coast.
The biggest reason to watch Idalia carefully is that it’s churning over some seriously deep warm water. The Gulf of Mexico has averaged a temperature of about 88 degrees Fahrenheit this month, which is 2.6 degrees above normal. For context, just a 1-degree rise in ocean temperature can bump up a hurricane’s winds by 15 to 20 miles per hour, meaning Idalia is essentially running on “rocket fuel,” Yale Climate Connections warns.
So we know Idalia will have ample fuel, but we don’t quite know what that means yet, since “storm intensity forecasts are notoriously hard to make, especially more than a day in advance,” as Andrew Freedman writes for Axios. But deadly Hurricanes Ian and Michael also rapidly intensified over warm waters, and “Idalia is likely to encounter waters even hotter” than they did.
Though climate change caused by human activities doesn’t increase the frequency of hurricanes, warmer oceans mean the ones that form tend to be more intense, slow, and destructive. Earlier this month, the National Hurricane Center updated its 2023 outlook from a “near-normal” season to an “above-normal” season, anticipating two to five major hurricanes. Oh, and in case you were wondering: The Atlantic, where Hurricane Franklin is chugging toward Bermuda, is really hot, too.
The biggest threat to life from to-be Hurricane Idalia looks like it will be from the storm surge. Though conditions can still worsen — particularly with a storm as seemingly unpredictable and rapidly intensifying as this one — emergency officials aren’t suggesting people in the storm’s path flee altogether, just that they get to higher grounds ASAP. “Evacuate tens of miles, not hundreds of miles,” the Executive Director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management Kevin Guthrie said.
One reason for the storm surge danger is because of the region’s “bathymetry,” meteorologist Matthew Cappucci tweeted. That is to say, the slope of the sea floor can lead to water “piling” up against the coast and being pushed inland. On top of that, emergency officials are closely watching the tides; as Florida Today notes, this week’s supermoon is making high tides even higher.
Hurricanes that approach the west coast of Florida can be “notoriously challenging” to track because of their angle, Yale Climate Connections writes. “[O]nly a slight nudge in trajectory to the right or left can change the landfall location by 50 or 100 miles.”
Idalia’s trajectory will become increasingly clear as it moves closer and closer to shore, but in the meantime, emergency officials are urging everyone both within and without the cone to be prepared for the storm. Notably, the storm surge in particular will impact areas outside of where Idalia directly hits:
One rule of thumb for hurricane season is to always keep half a tank of gas in your car. But on Sunday afternoon, Florida reported contaminated gasoline and diesel had been sold from at least 29 stations in the state in a corridor potentially stretching from Brooksville south to Fort Myers.
The contaminated gas could “increase the chances of drivers getting stranded” while “generators used in the case of storm-related power outages could also be affected,” The Washington Post reports.
All the more reason to know your zone and leave early if necessary, follow evacuation orders promptly (and arrange alternative travel if you’re concerned about your car), and be prepared for flooding.
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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 …