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On dangerous storms, Big Oil’s plea, and world water levels
Current conditions: Rescue teams have arrived in Bosnia after intense rain triggered flooding and landslides that killed at least 18 people • Phoenix marked its 13th straight day of record heat Sunday • There are three storms churning in the Atlantic simultaneously, which has never happened before this far into hurricane season.
Hurricane Milton is intensifying rapidly in the Atlantic and is expected to become a major hurricane later today. Forecasters believe it will make landfall near Tampa Bay in Florida by Wednesday, less than two weeks after Hurricane Helene tore through the area. It could bring a foot of rain, possible more, and 10-15 feet of storm surge. “We expect the storm surge to be worse than what many people experienced during Helene,” said AccuWeather’s lead hurricane expert Alex DaSilva. “This storm has the potential to create a catastrophic storm surge that no one in Tampa has seen in their lifetime.”
AccuWeather
More than 15 million people across southern and central Florida are under flood watches, and a state of emergency has been declared in 51 of the state’s counties. Kevin Guthrie, executive director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management said the state was preparing for “the largest evacuation that we have seen, most likely since 2017, Hurricane Irma.” In a bleak warning, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody said those who choose not to evacuate should “write your name in permanent marker on your arm, so that people know who you are when they get to you afterwards.”
Some large fossil fuel companies have urged Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump not to gut the Inflation Reduction Act if he comes into power again in November, The Wall Street Journalreported. The IRA, President Biden’s landmark climate law, provides tax credits for renewable energy and carbon capture projects, including many that these oil giants have heavily invested in. According to the Journal, executives from Exxon Mobil, Phillips 66, and Occidental Petroleum have been in discussions with the Trump campaign and congressional allies to make the case for the law, which Trump has called the “Green New Scam” and vowed to roll back. Political strategists told the Journal that Trump may try to “rebrand” the IRA given its popularity among Republican states. A recent report found that nearly 60% of the projects supported by the IRA are based in Republican congressional districts.
BP has dropped its ambitious 2030 plan to reduce its oil and gas production by 40% and shift to renewables, three sources toldReuters. The company made the commitment in 2020, and had already watered it down last year. Now it has reportedly abandoned the plan entirely and will focus on new investments to increase oil and gas output. Other oil giants including Shell have also walked back their energy transition goals.
Tangentially related: Fossil fuel company Equinor announced this morning it had acquired a 9.8% stake in wind energy giant Orsted. That makes Equinor the firm’s second largest shareholder, behind the Danish government.
In case you missed it: Mexico’s new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, pledged last week to “boost renewable energies” to a 45% share of the country’s total energy mix by 2030. Sheinbaum, who was inaugurated on Tuesday, is a climate scientist, and her ascension has raised hopes among environmentalists that Mexico could ramp up climate action. Sheinbaum made many promises during her campaign but analysts have been skeptical of their staying power because she also promised to carry on the legacy of her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who doubled down on fossil fuels. But the strong words during Sheinbaum’s first speech as president “marks a sharp departure” from López Obrador, noted The Associated Press. “The terms ‘sustainability’ or ‘renewable energy’ really never appeared” in his policies, one expert commented. “He didn’t use the term in any speech, in any document. And she has been using it all the time.” Sheinbaum promised to soon unveil her energy transition program focused on “the reduction of greenhouse gases that cause climate change.” Mexico is the only G20 nation that does not have a net zero target.
The World Meteorological Organization published its 2023 State of Global Water Resources report today. It found that more than half of the world’s “river catchments” – watersheds or drainage basins – saw unusual levels of water flow last year. Mostly, there was less water than normal, with “large territories” of North, Central, and South America especially dry and many river flows falling to all-time lows. But in some places, like the Horn of Africa, the Philippines, and the United Kingdom, there was much more water than normal. These extremes – drought in some places and extreme flooding in others – were reflected in the regional soil moisture and terrestrial water levels. Glaciers lost more than 600 gigatons of water last year, the largest loss registered in the last 50 years. “Water is the canary in the coalmine of climate change,” WMO secretary general, Celeste Saulo, toldThe Guardian. “As a result of rising temperatures, the hydrological cycle has accelerated. It has also become more erratic and unpredictable, and we are facing growing problems of either too much or too little water. A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture which is conducive to heavy rainfall. More rapid evaporation and drying of soils worsen drought conditions.”
“In the U.S., there is a decision being made now – and I’m not a part of it – as to whether to stop making pure ICE for the U.S. market. Just the fact that we’re thinking of that means that, OK, it must be close.” –Gill Pratt, Toyota’s chief scientist, speaking to Bloomberg about the future of the internal combustion engine.
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Did a battery plant disaster in California spark a PR crisis on the East Coast?
Battery fire fears are fomenting a storage backlash in New York City – and it risks turning into fresh PR hell for the industry.
Aggrieved neighbors, anti-BESS activists, and Republican politicians are galvanizing more opposition to battery storage in pockets of the five boroughs where development is actually happening, capturing rapt attention from other residents as well as members of the media. In Staten Island, a petition against a NineDot Energy battery project has received more than 1,300 signatures in a little over two months. Two weeks ago, advocates – backed by representatives of local politicians including Rep. Nicole Mallitokis – swarmed a public meeting on the project, getting a local community board to vote unanimously against the project.
According to Heatmap Pro’s proprietary modeling of local opinion around battery storage, there are likely twice as many strong opponents than strong supporters in the area:
Heatmap Pro
Yesterday, leaders in the Queens community of Hempstead enacted a year-long ban on BESS for at least a year after GOP Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, other local politicians, and a slew of aggrieved residents testified in favor of a moratorium. The day before, officials in the Long Island town of Southampton said at a public meeting they were ready to extend their battery storage ban until they enshrined a more restrictive development code – even as many energy companies testified against doing so, including NineDot and solar plus storage developer Key Capture Energy. Yonkers also recently extended its own battery moratorium.
This flurry of activity follows the Moss Landing battery plant fire in California, a rather exceptional event caused by tech that was extremely old and a battery chemistry that is no longer popular in the sector. But opponents of battery storage don’t care – they’re telling their friends to stop the community from becoming the next Moss Landing. The longer this goes on without a fulsome, strident response from the industry, the more communities may rally against them. Making matters even worse, as I explained in The Fight earlier this year, we’re seeing battery fire concerns impact solar projects too.
“This is a huge problem for solar. If [fires] start regularly happening, communities are going to say hey, you can’t put that there,” Derek Chase, CEO of battery fire smoke detection tech company OnSight Technologies, told me at Intersolar this week. “It’s going to be really detrimental.”
I’ve long worried New York City in particular may be a powder keg for the battery storage sector given its omnipresence as a popular media environment. If it happens in New York, the rest of the world learns about it.
I feel like the power of the New York media environment is not lost on Staten Island borough president Vito Fossella, a de facto leader of the anti-BESS movement in the boroughs. Last fall I interviewed Fossella, whose rhetorical strategy often leans on painting Staten Island as an overburdened community. (At least 13 battery storage projects have been in the works in Staten Island according to recent reporting. Fossella claims that is far more than any amount proposed elsewhere in the city.) He often points to battery blazes that happen elsewhere in the country, as well as fears about lithium-ion scooters that have caught fire. His goal is to enact very large setback distance requirements for battery storage, at a minimum.
“You can still put them throughout the city but you can’t put them next to people’s homes – what happens if one of these goes on fire next to a gas station,” he told me at the time, chalking the wider city government’s reluctance to capitulate on batteries to a “political problem.”
Well, I’m going to hold my breath for the real political problem in waiting – the inevitable backlash that happens when Mallitokis, D’Esposito, and others take this fight to Congress and the national stage. I bet that’s probably why American Clean Power just sent me a notice for a press briefing on battery safety next week …
And more of the week’s top conflicts around renewable energy.
1. Queen Anne’s County, Maryland – They really don’t want you to sign a solar lease out in the rural parts of this otherwise very pro-renewables state.
2. Logan County, Ohio – Staff for the Ohio Power Siting Board have recommended it reject Open Road Renewables’ Grange Solar agrivoltaics project.
3. Bandera County, Texas – On a slightly brighter note for solar, it appears that Pine Gate Renewables’ Rio Lago solar project might just be safe from county restrictions.
Here’s what else we’re watching…
In Illinois, Armoracia Solar is struggling to get necessary permits from Madison County.
In Kentucky, the mayor of Lexington is getting into a public spat with East Kentucky Power Cooperative over solar.
In Michigan, Livingston County is now backing the legal challenge to Michigan’s state permitting primacy law.
On the week’s top news around renewable energy policy.
1. IRA funding freeze update – Money is starting to get out the door, finally: the EPA unfroze most of its climate grant funding it had paused after Trump entered office.
2. Scalpel vs. sledgehammer – House Speaker Mike Johnson signaled Republicans in Congress may take a broader approach to repealing the Inflation Reduction Act than previously expected in tax talks.
3. Endangerment in danger – The EPA is reportedly urging the White House to back reversing its 2009 “endangerment” finding on air pollutants and climate change, a linchpin in the agency’s overall CO2 and climate regulatory scheme.