You’re out of free articles.
Log in
To continue reading, log in to your account.
Create a Free Account
To unlock more free articles, please create a free account.
Sign In or Create an Account.
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Welcome to Heatmap
Thank you for registering with Heatmap. Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our lives, a force reshaping our economy, our politics, and our culture. We hope to be your trusted, friendly, and insightful guide to that transformation. Please enjoy your free articles. You can check your profile here .
subscribe to get Unlimited access
Offer for a Heatmap News Unlimited Access subscription; please note that your subscription will renew automatically unless you cancel prior to renewal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. We will let you know in advance of any price changes. Taxes may apply. Offer terms are subject to change.
Subscribe to get unlimited Access
Hey, you are out of free articles but you are only a few clicks away from full access. Subscribe below and take advantage of our introductory offer.
subscribe to get Unlimited access
Offer for a Heatmap News Unlimited Access subscription; please note that your subscription will renew automatically unless you cancel prior to renewal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. We will let you know in advance of any price changes. Taxes may apply. Offer terms are subject to change.
Create Your Account
Please Enter Your Password
Forgot your password?
Please enter the email address you use for your account so we can send you a link to reset your password:
On the R1S and R1T, fusion, and a copper shortage
Current conditions: China just experienced its warmest spring on record • Some residents in Sydney, Australia, are evacuating after excessive rainfall caused a dam to overflow • Eleven people suffered from heat exhaustion while waiting outside a Trump rally yesterday in Phoenix, Arizona, where temperatures reached 113 degrees Fahrenheit.
The Department of Energy wants to to “accelerate” the development of commercial fusion energy. It will put $180 million toward funding fusion research from universities, nonprofits, national labs, and also private companies. The department also plans to create a public-private consortium framework that will utilize funding from state and local governments, private companies, and philanthropies. President Biden has a goal of developing commercial fusion within a decade. Nuclear fusion, the process by which stars produce energy, is seen as a sort of holy grail for the future of clean power, but research into harnessing this reaction has so far been slow and costly, hence the DOE’s new strategy to ramp things up.
EV maker Rivian unveiled the next generation of its flagship R1 vehicles this week: the R1S SUV and the R1T pickup. To survive what may be the defining year of its life, the company is trying to cut the costs of these vehicles without hurting their performance, and it plans to do so by swapping out 600 under-the-hood components for new parts that improve efficiency and in-house manufacturability. For example, the company says it managed to remove 1.6 miles of wiring from each R1 vehicle just by revamping the electrical system. “Rivian has focused its efforts on reworking the guts,” wrote Kirsten Korosec at TechCrunch, “changing everything from the battery pack and suspension system to the electrical architecture, interior seats, and sensor stack.” The new R1S will start at $75,900 and the R1T will start at $69,900, but considering the company is losing something like $38,000 per vehicle right now, Fred Lambert at Electrek is correct when he notes “the bigger question is how much it costs Rivian to build them.”
R1S SUVRivian
R1T pickupRivian
The rise of artificial intelligence is putting added pressure on the supply of copper, a metal that is key to the renewable energy transition. A recent report from the International Energy Agency concluded that existing and planned copper mines will only meet 80% of global needs by 2030. Analyzing forecasts from JP Morgan and Bank of America, The Wall Street Journalreports that by that same year, the power-hungry AI data centers will exacerbate a predicted global copper deficit of 4 million metric tons by another 2.6 million tons. The IEA has called for expanding critical mineral supplies, and improving recycling. Copper recycling rates are low currently, but the WSJ said “that could change as AI data centers add to strained demand.”
Get Heatmap AM directly in your inbox every morning:
The EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service yesterday released its analysis of global temperatures for May 2024, finding that the month was warmer than any prior May on record, coming in at 1.52 degrees Celsius (almost 3 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial May averages. The average sea surface temperature, too, was the highest on record for the 14th straight month. The graphic below gives a sense of just how unusual the sea surface temperatures have been over the last year. The increase observed over 2023 and 2024 is in red – you can’t miss it.
Copernicus
Researchers at the University of Cambridge say they’ve discovered a new, energy efficient way of removing carbon dioxide from the air using low-cost materials. Their direct air capture process utilizes activated charcoal, a cheap material often used to help filter and purify water. Using a similar process to charging a battery, the charcoal is “charged” in such a way that makes certain ions accumulate in its pores. Those ions bond with CO2, removing the gas directly from the air. Once the CO2 has been collected, it has to be released from the “charcoal sponge” and stored. This is done by heating the charcoal to about 100 degrees Celsius. This relatively low temperature is important, because it can be achieved using renewable electricity, whereas “in most materials currently used for CO2 capture from air, the materials need to be heated to temperatures as high as 900°C, often using natural gas,” the team wrote. They’ve filed a patent for their technology and are working on commercialization. The research was published in the journal Nature.
Tesla is selling new “Tesla Mezcal” in the U.S. One bottle costs $450.
Log in
To continue reading, log in to your account.
Create a Free Account
To unlock more free articles, please create a free account.
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 …