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On the future of ICEs, stuck bridges, and patriotic appliances
Current conditions: Some Greek islands are resorting to desalinating sea water for tourists this summer as reservoirs run dry • Tokyo residents have been warned to avoid physical activity due to a risk of heatstroke • It will be 98 degrees Fahrenheit today in Washington, D.C., where Biden is hosting a NATO summit.
The world’s largest oil company, Saudi Aramco, recently invested €740 million (about $800 million) in taking a 10% stake in a company that makes internal combustion engines (ICEs), the Financial Timesreported, signalling that the oil giant believes these engines aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. The investment in Horse Powertrain is based on a calculation that “as the industry stops designing and developing its own combustion engines, it will start buying them from third parties,” the FT wrote. Aramco’s executive vice president, Yasser Mufti, told the paper he thinks ICEs will see “significant improvements” over the coming years that will make them more sustainable, but didn’t specify what those improvements might be. ICEs, of course, run on fossil fuels and spew greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Saudi Aramco last year bought lubricant brand Valvoline, which will supply all Horse engines with products. As the FT noted, “the venture’s success will depend on whether other carmakers are willing to put their trust in a company born out of their rivals.”
At least seven people are dead and more than 2 million remain without power in Texas after Hurricane Beryl made landfall on the state’s Gulf Coast yesterday. Officials are assessing the economic damage, but large parts of Houston are flooded, with water levels exceeding 10 inches. The streets are littered with branches and downed power lines, and first responders have been dispatched to help stranded residents. Temperatures are climbing in the area, posing even more risk to people without power.
A stranded vehicle on a flooded road in Houston. Brandon Bell/Getty Images
The storm system has been downgraded to a tropical depression but is expected to bring heavy rain and tornado conditions to Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, and parts of southern Illinois and Indiana as it tracks northeast this week. Already more than 110 tornado warnings were issued overnight across in eastern Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas, which is “the most tornado warnings issued in the U.S. in a single July day since records began in 1986,” according to weather analyst Colin McCarthy.
The Third Avenue Bridge in New York City was temporarily closed yesterday after sweltering temperatures caused its steel to expand. The 126-year-old bridge, which serves as an artery between the Bronx and Manhattan, swings opened to accommodate water traffic in the Harlem River. Temperatures reached 95 degrees Fahrenheit in the city yesterday, and after the bridge opened, it wouldn’t close. Authorities tried to cool the structure by spraying water on it. Eventually the bridge reopened a few hours later. Yesterday was the hottest day of the year so far in NYC, and the heat wave will last through the week.
House Republicans are expected to vote today on two bills aimed at curbing the Department of Energy’s authority to set efficiency standards for home appliances. H.R. 7637, known as the “Refrigerator Freedom Act,” and H.R. 7700, aka the “Stop Unaffordable Dishwasher Standards Act,” would “prohibit the Secretary of Energy from prescribing or enforcing energy conservation standards” that “are not cost-effective or technologically feasible.” The DOE finalized efficiency standards for several appliances over the last few months, aiming to improve their performance, cut greenhouse gas emissions, and save consumers money. It estimated the standards will save Americans $33 billion on utility bills over 30 years. Republican lawmakers claim the new rules will increase the costs of appliances, but others say the savings on utility bills would more than make up for any short-term increase in sticker prices. Most of the energy consumed by homes and commercial buildings goes toward powering appliances.
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Deforestation in Colombia dropped by 36% last year to a 23-year low, according to the nation’s environment ministry. The government credits its program of paying farmers to conserve nature, as well as peace talks with guerilla groups. But those peace talks have reached a stalemate, and deforestation has increased in 2024. “It's really good news ... but we definitely cannot say that the battle is won," Environment Minister Susana Muhamad said.
“Each push alert marks the distance we’re closing between the previous range of normal activity and the future that scientists warned us of.” –Zoë Schlanger writing in The Atlantic about how we’ll watch the climate crisis unfold through emergency push alerts on our phones.
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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.