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A summer tradition is getting fried.
In retrospect, perhaps it was the wrong choice of words. “Gulley Park Concert Series set to heat up the summer,” a local news headline advertised on May 26, when the high in Fayetteville, Arkansas, was a pleasant 83 degrees and “heating up” was still just an innocent journalistic cliché.
But by late June, with the Fayetteville heat index pushing into the triple-digits, the prior phrasing became, suddenly, ironic. “Gulley Park Concert canceled due to extreme heat,” a new headline soon read.
It isn’t a story unique to Fayetteville, though. With more than 2,300 heat records shattered since June 10 and some two-thirds of the population under heat advisories last week, outdoor concerts — that wholesome American summer tradition — are being canceled left and right.
In Austin, the city’s oldest performing arts group made the “hard decision” to cancel a July 9 show “due to extreme heat.” Then it canceled its July 16 show. Then its July 23 show. Then its July 30 show. (The August 6-20 shows remain “TBD”).
The show also won’t go on in Phoenix, where the remaining Saturday night Sunset Concert Series performances for the summer have all been axed.
Over in the Midwest, a July 28 outdoor concert in Mount Healthy, Ohio, was likewise canceled “due to excessive heat and humidity,” according to a message posted on the city website, alongside a cautionary illustration of an overheating camel.
In Omaha, a Jazz on the Green performance last week was rescheduled, optimistically, for mid-August, while would-be attendees of a Finding Dixie concert were redirected, more prudently, to the country band’s return performance at the end of October.
And in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, a municipal band’s concert was also canceled.
The East wasn’t spared either, as the heat wave last week caused cancelations across New Jersey and New York City that felled, among others, the Hazlet Pops community band outdoor concert, Nutley and Netcong’s respective Concerts in the Park, and the entirety of the three-day Harlem Festival of Culture, which would have included performances across Randall’s Island.
Others nevertheless forged ahead. “Concertgoers in South Philadelphia [braved] the extreme heat for Luke Combs,” CBS Philadelphia reported, noting that “many fans were still in cowboy boots,” despite the sizzling temperatures. In East Rutherford, New Jersey, cooling tents were erected outside MetLife Stadium for Beyoncé fans who similarly refused to let the heat index compromise their outfits.
But the hottest July in recorded human history also proved the limits of stoically pushing ahead with plans during an extreme summer. Country star Jason Aldean rushed off stage mid-song during a performance in Connecticut due to heatstroke symptoms and Disturbed canceled their concert at Phoenix’s Talking Stick Resort Amphitheatre at the last minute because their equipment wouldn’t turn on in the heat. In Pittsburgh, 17 attendees of an Ed Sheeran concert were hospitalized due to heat-related illness, including “one seizure and two cardiac arrest patients.”
Outdoor concerts, though, are as much a staple of American summers as BBQs and pool parties. And in an age of Ticketmaster surge pricing and variable movie theater costs, local shows in particular are an inexpensive or free way for families to enjoy entertainment outside the house — part of what makes them so popular that practically every municipality seems to have its own version. But while in past summers, hot days at least led to cool evenings in lawn chairs after the sun went down, nighttime temperatures have offered little relief this year. Already some organizers are beginning to consider moving future summer shows indoors to protect performers and audiences, though doing so will also likely make them less accessible and more expensive.
There does come a breaking point, however. Last year, Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder suffered throat damage while trying to sing at a concert during Europe’s deadly heatwave, and fans have died at festivals like Tennessee’s Bonnaroo and Las Vegas’ Electric Daisy Carnival from high temperatures, especially when heat stress on the body is exacerbated by drugs and alcohol. Chicago’s Lollapalooza festival is set to go forward beginning on Thursday, though thankfully Illinois is one of the lucky states, being only in the realm of heat “caution,” rather than heat “danger,” this week.
In Omaha, things are also looking promising for the make-up date of a “Live on the Lawn” concert that was postponed last week. The forecast for the show on Friday? Only a balmy 88 degrees.
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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.