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Current conditions: An “Arctic outbreak” will bring bitter cold to much of the U.S. this weekend • 109 weather stations in China have broken mid-January heat records • Nearly a quarter of humanity now lives in drought conditions.
THE TOP FIVE
1. Red Sea tensions hit Tesla Berlin factory
Tesla will suspend operations at its Berlin gigafactory for two weeks – from January 29 through February 11 – due to supply chain problems caused by the escalating tensions in the Red Sea, Reutersreported. Iranian-backed Houthi rebels who support Hamas in its conflict with Israel have been attacking vessels in the region, disrupting trade in one of the world’s busiest shipping routes. “Tesla is the first company to disclose a resulting interruption to output,” Reuters noted. Other companies, including Ikea and China’s Geely, have hinted at possible delivery delays. On Thursday a U.S.-led coalition launched strikes against the militants in Yemen. President Biden said he “will not hesitate to direct further measures to protect our people and the free flow of international commerce as necessary.”
2. Hertz suggests its EV rentals are in more accidents than gas guzzlers
Car-rental company Hertz is making a “dramatic about-face” on electric vehicles, reports Bloomberg Green. The firm will sell off 20,000 EVs – about a third of its EV fleet – and use the money to buy gas-powered cars. One analyst suggested the sell-off could boost Hertz’s cashflow by up to $300 million over the next year or so. The company has given several reasons for the move:
Lack of demand from customers
Unexpected loss in resale value due to Tesla’s steep price cuts (most of the vehicles in Hertz’s EV fleet are Teslas)
Why more accidents? Perhaps customers who rent EVs don’t understand how the driving experience differs from that of a gasoline vehicle, posited Stephen Scherr, Hertz’s chief executive. EVs are much heavier, after all, and they accelerate more quickly. While some schools are starting to incorporate EVs into their driver’s ed courses, a small learning curve still exists for most Americans, and a road trip probably isn’t the best time to confront it.
Hertz says it isn’t abandoning EVs entirely, but wants to let the market develop. The upshot for anyone looking to buy a cheap EV is that “now would be a really good time to pop over to Hertz’s sales page and start browsing,” wrote Andrew J. Hawkins at The Verge. Tesla Model 3s are going for as little as $20,000.
3. California budget cuts hit state climate programs
State funding for California’s climate goals could be cut by 11% – down to $48.3 billion from $54 billion – in the year to come, the
Los Angeles Timesreported. “Climate crusader” Governor Gavin Newsom needs to close a $37.9-billion budget deficit and is eyeing climate programs. The initiatives on the chopping block include clean transportation, forest maintenance, watershed resilience, and coastal protection. The state’s Extreme Heat and Community Resilience Program would be trimmed by $40.1 million, and wildfire reduction programs could see $100.7 million in cuts. Environmentalists lamented the news; Newsom’s office insisted the state’s climate goals were still a priority, noting that more than $10 billion in funding from the Inflation Reduction Act will help soften the blow.
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4. Natural gas investments on the rise
Global investment in natural gas infrastructure is growing even as green energy pledges mount and renewable technologies gain momentum, reported Gavin Maguire at Reuters, citing data from Global Energy Monitor (GEM). Natural gas is a fossil fuel energy source, albeit one the International Energy Agency says emits less carbon than other sources. Many see it as a “bridge fuel” in the clean energy transition. More than $720 billion is slated to go toward building natural gas pipelines worldwide, and another $190 billion will fund import facilities, according to GEM. “Once completed, the pipelines and LNG import terminals will extend the use of natural gas for years to come, and guarantee that fossil fuels will retain a critical role in key power systems well beyond 2030,” Maguire said.
5. The case for naming heatwaves
A report from Australian nonprofit Renew suggests countries take a lesson from the Spanish city of Seville, which began naming heatwaves in 2022 to create a “heat culture” in which the public is more aware of and prepared for looming dangerous temperatures. “Naming heatwaves is about letting people know that this is a serious issue,” said Rob McLeod, a policy manager at Renew and author of the report. His recommendation is targeted mainly at Australia, but could be applied to many other regions where climate change is making extreme heatwaves more common.
THE KICKER
“Now that Stanley has helped show that relatively ecofriendly products can become wildly popular, the next milestone in nondisposable drinkware should be to prove that a mass consumer trend doesn’t inevitably lead to waste and excessive consumption.” –Elana Klein at Wired, The Big Problem With the Giant Stanley Cup
Jessica Hullinger is a freelance writer and editor who likes to think deeply about climate science and sustainability. She previously served as Global Deputy Editor for The Week, and her writing has been featured in publications including Fast Company, Popular Science, and Fortune. Jessica is originally from Indiana but lives in London.
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It’s been just over a week since one of the 350-foot-long blades of a wind turbine off the Massachusetts coast unexpectedly broke off, sending hunks of fiberglass and foam into the waters below. As of Tuesday morning, cleanup crews were still actively removing debris from the water and beaches and working to locate additional pieces of the blade.
The blade failure quickly became a crisis for residents of Nantucket, where debris soon began washing up on the island’s busy beaches. It is also a PR nightmare for the nascent U.S. offshore wind industry, which is already on the defensive against community opposition and rampant misinformation about its environmental risks and benefits.
The broken turbine is part of Vineyard Wind 1, which is being developed by Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners. The project is still under construction, but at least five turbines have been completed and began sending power to the New England grid in February. The plan is to bring another 57 online, which will produce enough electricity to power more than 400,000 homes. Now both installation and power generation have been paused while federal investigators look into the incident.
There’s still a lot we don’t know about why this happened, what the health and safety risks are, and what it means for this promising clean energy solution going forward. But here’s everything we’ve learned so far.
What happened?
Vineyard Wind
On the evening of Saturday, July 13, Vineyard Wind received an alert that there was a problem with one of its turbines. The equipment contains a “delicate sensoring system,” CEO Klaus Moeller told the Nantucket Select Board during a public meeting last week. Though he did not describe what the alert said, he added that “one of the blades was broken and folded over.” Later at the meeting, a spokesperson for GE Vernova, which manufactured and installed the turbines, said that “blade vibrations” had been detected. About a third of the blade, or roughly 120 feet, fell into the water.
Two days later, Vineyard Wind contacted the town manager in Nantucket to explain that modeling showed the potential for debris from the blade to travel toward the island. Sure enough, fiberglass shards and other scraps began washing up on shore the next day, and all beaches on the island’s south shore were quickly closed to the public.
On Thursday morning, another large portion of the damaged blade detached and fell into the ocean. Monitoring and recovery crews continued to find debris throughout the area over the weekend. The beaches have since reopened, but visitors have been advised to wear shoes and leave their pets at home as cleanup continues.
Why did the blade break?
Neither Vineyard Wind nor GE Vernova has said what caused the blade to break. GE Vernova is currently conducting a “root cause analysis” to find out and did not respond to a question about the timeline for the results.
Wind turbine blades can break for a variety of reasons. An extensive list from Lockton, an insurance and risk management company, includes factors like poor quality control and defects during manufacturing.
The turbine was one of GE’s Haliade-X 13-megawatt turbines, which are manufactured in Cherbourg, France, and it was still undergoing post-installation testing by GE when the failure occurred — that is, it was not among those sending power to the New England grid. This was actually the second issue the company has had at this particular turbine site. One of the original blades destined for the site was damaged during the installation process, and the one that broke last week was a replacement, Craig Gilvard, Vineyard Wind’s communications director, told the New Bedford Light.
How did Vineyard Wind respond?
By Vineyard Wind’s account at the meeting last week, the accident triggered an automatic shut down of the system and activated the company’s emergency response plan, which
included immediately notifying the U.S. Coast Guard, the federal Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, and regional emergency response committees.
Moeller, the CEO, said during the meeting that the company worked with the Coast Guard to immediately establish a 500 meter “safety zone” around the turbine and to send out notices to mariners. According to the Coast Guard’s
notice log, however, the safety zone went into effect three days later. Public accounts by mariners at the Select Board meeting and in local news outlets offer conflicting stories about when and how they were notified of the incident. (I reached out to the Coast Guard to clarify when the safety zone went into effect and when and how mariners were notified but did not hear back in time for publication.)
Two days after the turbine broke, on Monday, Vineyard Wind contacted the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for aid in modeling where the turbine debris would travel in the water. The agency
estimated pieces would likely make landfall in Nantucket that day. Vineyard Wind put out a press release about the accident and subsequently contacted the Nantucket town manager. At the Nantucket Select Board meeting last week, Moeller said the company followed regulatory protocols but that there was “really no excuse” for how long it took to inform the public, and said, “we want to move much quicker and make sure that we learn from this.”
The Interior Department’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement has
ordered the company to cease all power production and installation activities until it can determine whether this was an isolated incident or affects other turbines.
By Tuesday, Vineyard Wind said it had deployed two small teams to Nantucket in addition to hiring a local contractor to remove debris on the island. The company later
said it would “increase its local team to more than 50 employees and contractors dedicated to beach clean-up and debris recovery efforts.”
GE Vernova is responsible for recovering offshore debris and has not published any public statements about the effort. In response to a list of questions, a GE Vernova spokesperson said, “We continue to work around the clock to enhance mitigation efforts in collaboration with Vineyard Wind and all relevant state, local and federal authorities. We are working with urgency to complete our root cause analysis of this event.”
Did anyone get hurt?
There have been no reported injuries as a result of the accident.
What are the risks now?
Vineyard Wind and GE Vernova have stressed that the debris are “not toxic.” At the Select Board meeting, GE’s executive fleet engineering director Renjith Viripullan said that the blade is made of fiberglass, foam, and balsa wood. It is bonded together using a “bond paste,” he said, and likened the blade construction to that of a boat. “That's the correlation we need to think about,” he said.
One of the board members asked if there was any risk of PFAS contamination as a result of the accident. Viripullan said he would need to “take that question back” and follow up with the answer later. (This was one of the questions I asked GE, but the company did not respond to it.)
That being said, the debris poses some dangers. Photos of cleanup crews posted to the Harbormaster’s Facebook page show workers wearing white hazmat suits. Vineyard Wind said “members of the public should avoid handling debris as the fiber-glass pieces can be sharp and lead to cuts if handled without proper gloves.”
Though members of the public raised concerns at the meeting and to the press that fiberglass fragments in the ocean threaten marine life and public health, it is not yet clear how serious the risks are, and several efforts are underway to further assess them. Vineyard Wind is developing a water quality testing plan for the island and setting up a process for people to file claims.GE hired a design and engineering firm to conduct an environmental assessment, which it will present at a Nantucket Select Board meeting later this week. The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection has requested information from the companies about the makeup of the debris to evaluate risks, and the Department of Fish and Game is monitoring for impacts to the local ecosystem.
How is the cleanup going?
As of last Wednesday morning, Vineyard Wind had collected “approximately 17 cubic yards of debris, enough to fill more than six truckloads, and several larger pieces that washed ashore.” It is not yet known what fraction of the turbine that fell off has been recovered. Vineyard Wind did not respond to a request for the latest numbers in time for publication, but I’ll update this piece if I get a response.
Has anything like this happened before?
Yes. In May, a blade on the same model of turbine, the GE Haliade-X, sustained damage at a wind farm being installed off the coast of England called Dogger Bank. At the Nantucket Select Board meeting, a spokesperson for GE said the Dogger Bank incident was “an installation issue specific to the installation of that blade” and that “we don’t think there’s a connection between that installation issue and what we saw here.”
Several blades have also broken off another GE turbine model dubbed the Cypress at wind farms in Germany and Sweden. After the most recent incident in Germany last October, the company used similar language, telling reporters that it was working to “determine the root cause.”
A “company source with knowledge of the investigations” into the various incidents recently told CNN that “there were different root causes for the damage, including transportation, handling, and manufacturing deviations.”
The backlash was swift. Nantucket residents immediately
wrote to Nantucket’s Select Board to ask the town to stop the construction of any additional offshore wind turbines. “I know it's not oil, but it's sharp and maybe toxic in other ways,” Select Board member Dawn Holgate told company executives at the meeting last week. “We're also facing an exponential risk if this were to continue because many more windmills are planned to be built out there and there's been a lot of concern about that throughout the community.”
The Select Board plans to
meet in private on Tuesday night to discuss “potential litigation by the town against Vineyard Wind relative to recovery costs.”
“We expect Vineyard Wind will be responsible for all costs and associated remediation efforts incurred by the town in response to the incident,” Elizabeth Gibson, the Nantucket town manager said during the meeting last week.
The Aquinnah Wampanoag tribe is
also calling for a moratorium on offshore wind development and raised concerns about the presence of fiberglass fragments in the water.
Meanwhile, environmental groups supportive of offshore wind tried to do damage control for the industry. “Now we must all work to ensure that the failure of a single turbine blade does not adversely impact the emergence of offshore wind as a critical solution for reducing dependence on fossil fuels and addressing the climate crisis,” the Sierra Club’s senior advisor for offshore wind, Nancy Pyne,
wrote in a statement. “Wind power is one of the safest forms of energy generation.”
Current conditions: Taiwan is bracing for Typhoon Gaemi • A volcanic eruption from Mt. Etna closed Sicily’s Catania International Airport • Data suggests Sunday was the hottest day in Earth’s recorded history.
THE TOP FIVE
1. Manchin and Barrasso release bipartisan permitting reform legislation
Sens. Joe Manchin and John Barrasso released a permitting reform bill last night that “is expected to bolster the buildout of both renewable and fossil fuel energy sources,” as The Hillreported. The legislation would impose a timeline on legal challenges to federal authorizations for energy projects, require annual lease sales of both offshore wind and offshore oil through 2029, exclude some exploration activity for geothermal energy from environmental reviews, and scrap the Biden administration’s (now overturned) pause on approvals for liquefied natural gas export terminals by requiring the Department of Energy to decide on approving the terminals within 90 days. The bill also includes some longstanding Democratic and Republican ideas on environmental permitting, such as making permitting for renewables projects stand on a more equal footing with the relatively easy path for permitting oil and gas projects.
Reactions have so far been pretty mixed. Transmission company Grid United called the act “a significant bipartisan step forward in streamlining the permitting process for critical energy infrastructure projects,” and a “game changer for the U.S. electric grid.” Meanwhile the Center for Biological Diversity called it “the biggest giveaway in decades to the fossil fuel industry.”
Manchin and Barrasso are the chair and ranking member (respectively) of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Manchin is an independent from West Virginia who caucuses with Democrats, while Barrasso is a Republican from Wyoming, both states with large fossil energy resources and industries.
2. NOAA teams up with United Airlines to measure GHGs with commercial airliner
The U.S. government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency is partnering with United Airlines to deploy a commercial airliner that monitors atmospheric greenhouse gases. The multi-year partnership will involve kitting out a Boeing 737 with equipment that can measure carbon dioxide, methane, and other warming gases to see if “a potential larger network” of commercial aircraft could be used to keep tabs on the atmosphere. NOAA already regularly measures air pollution by contracting with private pilots, but these missions are costly and their scope is restricted. “Installing instruments on airliners would vastly increase the number and distribution of samples that would be collected,” NOAA said.
3. Analysis: U.S. emissions falling, but not enough to meet 2030 Paris goals
The Rhodium Group think tank today published its annual report forecasting the trajectory of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions based on things like current policy, economic growth expectations, fossil fuel prices, and clean energy trends. It found that, by 2035, the U.S. will cut its emissions pretty significantly – between 38% and 56% – when compared to 2005 levels as abatement efforts grow. By 2030, Rhodium said emissions could fall by 43% compared to 2005, but this is still short of the 50% target under the Paris Agreement.
Rhodium Group
When looking at emissions by sector, the sharpest decline will be in the power sector, where emissions are expected to be at least 42% lower than current levels by 2035, and possibly up to 83% lower. Renewables could account for up to 88% of electricity generation that year, and unabated coal generation will be near zero, thanks largely to the Inflation Reduction Act’s subsidies and new power plant emission limits imposed by the Environmental Protection Agency. Transportation emissions will also fall significantly thanks to the EPA’s tailpipe rules. Industry is expected to become the biggest source of emissions in 2033 and will see just modest declines, most of which will be in oil and gas operations.
The group applauded this progress but said growing demand for electricity (especially from data centers) coupled with slow permitting, building, and grid interconnection for clean energy projects could put Paris targets even further out of reach.
4. Pentagon warns China and Russia are working together in melting Arctic
The Pentagon is growing increasingly concerned about cooperation between Russia and China in the Arctic. As the planet warms and the Arctic region thaws, the two nations have been collaborating to develop new shipping routes in a broader effort to exert global influence, Reutersreported. The Defense Department released a report yesterday on the issue, saying it will expand its surveillance in the area to improve national security and “ensure the Arctic does not become a strategic blind spot.” The Arctic is warming about four times faster than the rest of the planet.
5. Google AI weather tool could improve long-range forecasting
Google researchers have created an experimental weather-prediction tool called NeuralGCM that could open the door to the future of forecasting. The model combines the speed of artificial intelligence with the accuracy of conventional atmospheric forecasting to churn out quality weather predictions quickly and efficiently. According to a paper published in the journal Nature, this hybrid tool has proven to be faster than traditional forecasting tools, and more accurate than AI-only models at long-range weather predictions. Tools like NeuralGCM could provide a breakthrough in predicting large-scale climate events and extreme weather far in advance. Here’s a look at how the tool (blue line) performed in predicting global temperatures (orange line) between 1980 and 2020 compared to a traditional physics-based, atmosphere-only forecasting tool (red line):
Google
THE KICKER
Researchers say warming waters along the U.S. Gulf Coast are driving a fivefold increase in the number of baby bull sharks in the region’s estuaries.
When former President Donald Trump addressed a crowd of non-union autoworkers in Clinton Township, Michigan, last fall, he came with a dire warning: “You’re going to lose your beautiful way of life.” President Biden’s electric vehicle transition, Trump claimed, would be “a transition to hell.”
Nearly 10 months later, Trump seems to have warmed up considerably to the idea of that hell. Despite denouncing the electric vehicle transition at countless interim rallies as a woke and all-but-certain “bloodbath” for American automakers and making endless jokes about range (including, admittedly, the banger: “The happiest moment for somebody in an electric car is the first 10 minutes … The unhappiest part is the next hour because you’re petrified that you’re not going to be finding another charger”), Trump’s tone on EVs has considerably softened in the past several weeks.
“I have no objection to the electric vehicle — the EV. I think it’s great,” Trump told Bloomberg earlier this month, shortly after promising to end Biden’s nonexistent EV mandate on “day one” in office. His improved mood still came with caveats (“They don’t go far enough; they’re very, very expensive; they’re also heavy”) but it seemed to be part of a larger trend. “I’m totally for [electric cars], whatever the market says,” Trump followed up with a crowd in Grand Rapids, Michigan, over the weekend. “And if it’s 10% of the market, 12%, 7%, 20% — whatever it is, it’s okay.”
Some of this fluctuation is normal for Trump. As Patrick George has written for Heatmap, the former president’s “knowledge of the workings of the auto industry is suspect on a good day”; when in office, Trump even hyped the now-defunct EV manufacturer Lordstown Motors.
But you don’t have to look too far for the answers to, Why this particular flip-flop? and Why now? Trump told us himself when he was in Arizona last month: “I’m a big fan of electric cars,” he said. “I’m a fan of Elon — I like Elon.” That is, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, the country’s biggest EV maker.
Bemused Tesla shareholders asked Musk about Trump’s change of heart on EVs, to which the CEO reportedly quipped, “I can be persuasive.” Trump’s new tune comes amid reports that the Tesla CEO pledged to give a new pro-Trump super PAC $45 million monthly through November. Trump isn’t even shy about hiding this link; in the same speech he claimed to be “totally for” EVs, he also bragged about the size of Musk’s donation.
Tesla shares popped 4% after Trump’s most recent comments, and the company is now big enough not to need the government subsidies that Trump would inevitably roll back. (Of course, it’s a different story for Tesla’s rivals.)
It’s not just that Trump’s support of EVs evidently has a price tag. It’s the unspoken suggestion of what other industry interests might be able to buy. You can bet fossil fuel executives haven’t missed the message — Trump has reportedly even pitched policy priorities like expanding oil drilling leases, threatening offshore wind, and undoing Biden’s protections for the Arctic behind closed doors with would-be oil and gas donors.
Voters usually want conviction and vision from their politicians—not someone taking best offers from the rich. But this is no ordinary election. Besides, there are still plenty of weeks to go until November. That’s plenty of time to change a mind.
Rhodium Group
Google
