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This is a special Hurricane Helene edition of Shift Key. Our regular programming will resume next week.
Nearly a week after Hurricane Helene made landfall, we are still coming to terms with the scale of its destruction. The storm killed at least 182 people, making it the deadliest cyclone to make landfall in the continental United States since Katrina. From Tampa Bay to Asheville, North Carolina, it caused the worst hurricane-related damage in a century.
Why was Hurricane Helene so bad? Why did it cause such horrible flooding in western North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia? And did climate change have anything to do with its destruction? To answer these questions, Rob and Jesse speak with Gabriel Vecchi, a Princeton geoscientist and one of the world’s top experts on hurricanes and climate change. Shift Key is hosted by Robinson Meyer is the founding executive editor of Heatmap, and Jesse Jenkins is a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University.
Subscribe to “Shift Key” and find this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can also add the show’s RSS feed to your podcast app to follow us directly.
Here is an excerpt from our conversation:
Jesse Jenkins: One of the things that always strikes me, too, about these sorts of events is, you know, think about a dam or a levy, right? It is resilient to the point where it’s not, right? You can have one more inch of rainfall, and that’s what it takes to overtop the dam, or to flood the river banks, or these kinds of things.
And so we have designed so much of our civil infrastructure for these one-in-100-year events, what used to be one-in-100-year events, right? The design specs were for that infrastructure. And now those probability distributions are shifting, and the kinds of events that can overwhelm the design basis of this infrastructure are much more probable.
And you go, it’s not like this event was 20% more intense, and so the damage is 20% more. It’s a binary thing. You go from something that our systems were designed to handle to something that they weren’t, and they break in spectacularly damaging ways. And that’s what I see when I look at these kinds of events. This is not the first flooding that we’ve seen in Appalachia, right? We have built out a flood control system because this happens in river valleys in the mountains, where water gets concentrated.
But this kind of rainfall event was so catastrophic because it just overtopped all of that infrastructure. And like you said, there’s very little you can do, once the infrastructure is fixed, to prepare once you see a storm like this coming. We have to really rethink all of the civil infrastructure planning that we’re doing, and that’s just going to take so much time and so much investment.
Gabriel Vecchi: Well, but I think you’re getting there to the issue of the time scales, right? So the National Weather Service did a phenomenal job of predicting this. But this could only be predicted on time scales of days. In order to change our infrastructure, in order to find an infrastructure that is better, it’s a question of years and decades, and maybe longer. And I think there, we need to be forward-thinking. It is important to see this as a call to think about what can start doing now so that in 10 years, in 20 years, whoever is in this situation is in a better position to handle whatever’s there.
Part of it, of course, is going to be to improve our forecasts, to make them longer range, more reliable, capture the universe of possibilities that a weather event can throw our way. But part of it is going to be relatively … maybe sophisticated is not the right word — build actual things on the ground that are different, right? Put rebar in concrete places, rethink the way that we site our buildings, rethink the way that we, where we take water up from. And one way to look at that is as a challenge. Another way to look at that is an opportunity.
I went to, initially, to college, I wanted to be an engineer. I wanted to build bridges. That was my, coming out of high school, I want to be a part of building things. And as I was in college, I realized, number one, I couldn’t take any electives. I didn’t like that. But number two, we weren’t really building many things. And it was sort of like, I wanted to build things right now.
We’re in a position where we do need to build things. We should be building a lot of things. This is, in a way, a call to opportunity.
This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by …
Watershed’s climate data engine helps companies measure and reduce their emissions, turning the data they already have into an audit-ready carbon footprint backed by the latest climate science. Get the sustainability data you need in weeks, not months. Learn more at watershed.com.
As a global leader in PV and ESS solutions, Sungrow invests heavily in research and development, constantly pushing the boundaries of solar and battery inverter technology. Discover why Sungrow is the essential component of the clean energy transition by visiting sungrowpower.com.
Intersolar & Energy Storage North America is the premier U.S.-based conference and trade show focused on solar, energy storage, and EV charging infrastructure. To learn more, visit intersolar.us.
Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.
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High winds down power lines. But high waters flood substations — and those are much harder to fix.
There’s a familiar script when it comes to hurricanes: The high winds snap tree branches and even tree trunks and whip around anything else that’s light enough or not bolted down — including power lines and distribution poles. While this type of damage can lead to large-scale outages, it’s also relatively straightforward to fix. In many cases the power comes back on relatively quickly, more like days rather than weeks or months.
But when it comes to flooding, especially in areas that do not regularly deal with big storms, the damage can be more severe, long-lasting, and difficult to repair. This is largely because what’s at risk in these scenarios is not power lines but substations. These messes of transmission and distribution lines that channel high voltage power to homes and businesses are vulnerable to rising water, and repairs can’t begin until the floodwaters recede. Often they have to be replaced entirely, which is expensive and can lead to further delays as there’s a nationwide shortage of transformers. Just one substation can support thousands of homes — a single point of failure that, when it floods, takes all its customers down with it.
Duke Energy, whose grid in the Carolinas was pummeled by Hurricane Helene, has said the damage to its system encompasses “submerged substations, thousands of downed utility poles, and downed transmission towers,” and noted that much of the affected area is “inaccessible due to mudslides, flooding and blocked roads, limiting the ability to assess and begin repairing damages.” In an update published Saturday, it stated that while more than 2 million customers had seen their power restored, about 250,000 customers across North and South Carolina remained without electricity more than a week after the storm.
Workers are “encountering more severe damage on a larger scale than we’ve ever experienced,” Duke Energy storm director Jason Hollifield said in a statement. (Duke didn’t respond to my request for comment.) One Duke employee told the local television station in Asheville, North Carolina, which saw more than three months’ worth of rain fall over three days, that a local substation would have to be completely rebuilt, a process that could take months. In Western North Carolina, the area’s Representative Chuck Edwards has estimated that 117,000 customers still lack electricity, and that while some of them will likely get it back by Sunday, others “whose properties are inaccessible or not able to receive power may be without electricity for an extended period of time as Duke Energy works to rebuild critical infrastructure.”
To prepare for the onrushing Hurricane Milton, Duke is staging thousands of “line technicians, vegetation workers, damage assessors and support personnel” in Florida, the company said. The same problem remains, however: Line technicians will not prevent substations from flooding.
While the exact effect of climate change on hurricanes and other storm categories is an area of intense debate among climate scientists and meteorologists, there’s a rough consensus that warming will cause the storms to be wetter. That means utilities will have to update their old disaster response playbooks, or else prolonged outages when an especially wet storm arrives over a flood plain.
In most hurricanes, utilities are able to pre-position workers to restore power quickly, working on knocked down poles and wires, explained Jordan Kern, an assistant professor engineering at North Carolina State University. “When trees fall on distribution lines, those are, in normal situations, easy to repair,” he told me. But, Kern said, “If the substations are flooded, you can’t do anything until the flood waters go down. They can be without power for a long time.”
Wetter hurricanes will likely mean more severe and less predictable flooding happening far away from the coasts, bringing with it risks that utilities and local governments may be less prepared to face, with costs that will ultimately be born by anyone who pays for electricity, as expensive repairs and hardening of electrical infrastructure will likely be born by ratepayers.
“Rates will necessarily rise” to deal with the higher costs of adaptation and repairing infrastructure more complex than a wooden pole, Tyler Norris, a PhD student at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment, told me while driving towards Asheville to help out family impacted by the storm.
While Helene has been an especially damaging storm, the risks of wetter storms and inland flooding away from the coastal areas that are prepared for frequent hurricanes have become more apparent in recent years. While Hurricane Irene in 2011 made landfall on Long Island, its most devastating effects were felt inland due to heavy rains, especially in Vermont.
North Carolina in particular has seen a rash of nasty hurricanes in the past 10 years or so, giving Duke ample recent experience with big storms — and some indication of what a warming world could bring.
During 2018’s Hurricane Florence, which knocked out power for around a million Duke customers, “at least 10 substations required de-energization due to flooding or flood risk where heavy rainfall and resulting inland flooding,” according to a 2022 Duke climate resiliency report. The report was meant to look at the effects of climate change to the Duke system by 2050 under two emissions scenarios outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, one assuming emissions start falling by 2040, the other assuming continued (some might say unrealistically) high emissions.
Under the extreme scenario, the “overall vulnerability priority of Duke Energy substations to climate-driven changes in precipitation and inland flooding is high,” the report said, while under the “middle of the road” projection, “transmission infrastructure faces a medium priority vulnerability.” In both cases, however, “without adaptation planning … substations are at the highest potential risk, with extreme heat and flooding being the greatest concerns for existing assets.”
Duke said at the time that it had “implemented permanent flood protection measures at new substations located in flood plains and substations with a prior history of flooding.” For its existing fleet, priority was being given to those substations considered particularly “at-risk,” however the flood protection plan had “not yet been universally implemented at all existing substations in the flood plain.”
“What they characterized there falls significantly short of what we just saw,” Norris said. While he noted that Duke had listed risk to substations from inland flooding as high (albeit only under the extreme scenario), it had listed the risk to the distribution of power, i.e. poles and wires, as “low” under both scenarios. “There’s been a dramatic misestimate of risk here,” Norris said.
For Duke customers, especially in the more isolated parts of Western North Carolina, they may simply have to wait for workers and parts to arrive. Repairs that could normally happen quickly will likely happen slowly as workers struggle to reach areas whose roads have been washed away. Duke said that it’s now focusing on restoring the “backbone” of the transmission and distribution system, and then is moving on to restoring fallen poles in less densely populated areas.
And it will likely happen again. Kern noted that inland flooding especially is notoriously hard to predict compared to coastal flooding from hurricanes. “Flooding is so idiosyncratic,” he said. “It’s hard for anyone to predict how flooding will affect a region. Let alone electric utilities.”
On rapid storm intensification, unlocking lithium, and John Kerry’s next move
Current conditions: What remains of former Hurricane Kirk could bring heavy rain and dangerous winds to Europe • Wildfires in Bolivia have scorched nearly 19 million football fields worth of land this year • It is 55 degrees Fahrenheit and rainy today at the Alpe du Grand Serre, an 85-year-old Alpine ski resort in France that announced it will close for good due to a lack of snow.
Hurricane Milton has horrified meteorologists with its swift transformation into a monster system, exploding from a Category 1 storm into a Category 5 storm in about 18 hours. As of this morning it has maximum sustained winds of 155 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center, and is expected to make landfall near Tampa, Florida, overnight on Wednesday. Milton will likely weaken slightly as it approaches the Sunshine State but will nonetheless bring life-threatening wind, rain, and storm surge to an area still in tatters from last month’s Hurricane Helene. “If Milton stays on its course this will be the most powerful hurricane to hit Tampa Bay in over 100 years,” the Tampa Bay National Weather Service said. “No one in the area has ever experienced a hurricane this strong before.”
NHC/NOAA
Veteran Florida meteorologist John Morales broke down in tears reporting on Milton’s remarkable drop in air pressure – generally the lower a storm’s pressure, the greater its strength. “This is just horrific,” Morales said. “The seas are just so incredibly, incredibly hot. You know what’s driving that. I don’t need to tell you: Global warming.”
The Federal Emergency Management Agency is under strain from back-to-back extreme weather events, including Hurricane Helene and looming Hurricane Milton. Last week Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas warned that FEMA “does not have the funds” to get through the rest of hurricane season. The agency’s former administrator, Craig Fugate, toldBloomberg the damage from Milton could be more costly than Helene’s. Staff shortages are compounding funding shortfalls, with just 9% of FEMA workers available to respond to disasters as of Monday, as personnel struggle to address a number of recent disasters in other parts of the country. “The agency is simultaneously supporting over 100 major disaster declarations,” Brock Long, who led FEMA during the Trump administration, said. “The scale of staffing required for these operations is immense.”
John Kerry has joined billionaire Tom Steyer’s sustainable investing firm, Galvanize Climate Solutions, as co-executive chair alongside Steyer and Katie Hall. The former secretary of state and top U.S. climate diplomat “will focus on expanding the resources and reach of Galvanize’s investment strategies, originating differentiated opportunities, and leveraging firsthand knowledge as to how technology, policy, and geopolitics are shaping the energy transition,” the firm said in a statement. Steyer and Hall launched Galvanize in 2021. It manages around $1 billion and focuses on “generating long-term value from the energy transition.” Kerry said Galvanize would play a key role in the energy transition by “bringing competitive, commercially viable solutions to market.”
Lithios, a Massachusetts-based startup with a novel method of lithium extraction, just raised a $12 million seed round. Energy market analysts predict that the world is hurtling towards a global lithium shortage by the 2030s, but Lithios is aiming to help unlock previously untapped lithium sources around the world, specifically salty groundwater deposits, a.k.a. brines. The company’s CEO, Mo Alkhadra, told Heatmap’s Katie Brigham that while about two-thirds of the world’s lithium is contained in brine rather than hard rock, only about 15% to 20% of these brines are currently worth mining. Lithios, he said, will get that number up to around 80% to 85%, in theory. The funding is led by Clean Energy Ventures with support from Lowercarbon Capital, among others. The round included $10 million in venture funding and $2 million in venture debt loans from Silicon Valley Bank.
The Biden administration wants to restart more nuclear power plants that have been decommissioned in an effort to provide zero-emission electricity to meet soaring demand, according to White House climate adviser Ali Zaidi. Two revivals are already in progress: The Department of Energy finalized over $2.8 billion in loans and grants to help restart the Palisades plant in Michigan, and tech giant Microsoft made a deal with energy company Constellation to revive Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island nuclear plant. Zaidi said he could think of at least two other plants that could be brought back online, but didn’t get specific.
“Governments come and go and they may change things, but the energy transition has passed the inflection point.” –Martin Pochtaruk, CEO of solar-module maker Heliene, which this week announced a strategic equity investment of up to $54 million that will support its new manufacturing operation in Minnesota.
The seed funding will help it build up to commercial production.
With the markets for electric vehicles and battery energy storage systems on the come-up, energy market analysts predict that the world is hurtling towards a global lithium shortage by the 2030’s. Lithios, a Massachusetts-based startup with a novel method of lithium extraction, is aiming to help by unlocking previously untapped lithium resources around the world.
The company just raised a $12 million seed round to help fund this mission, led by Clean Energy Ventures with support from Lowercarbon Capital, among others. The round included $10 million in venture funding and $2 million in venture debt loans from Silicon Valley Bank.
It’s not as if the world actually lacks for lithium, the energy dense mineral that is the primary component in lithium-ion batteries. It’s just that many current reserves are too low-grade to be economically exploited, and traditional extraction methods are land-intensive, inefficient, and often controversial with local communities. Chile, Australia, and China dominate the market, while the U.S. contributes less than 2% of the world’s annual supply.
Lithios aims to make it more economical and environmentally friendly to extract lithium from salty groundwater deposits, a.k.a. brines. The company’s CEO, Mo Alkhadra, told me that while about two-thirds of the world’s lithium is contained in brine rather than hard rock, only about 15% to 20% of these brines are currently worth mining. Lithios, he said, will get that number up to around 80% to 85%, in theory. “The vision with Lithios’ tech is to enable access to these lower-grade resources at a similar or maybe slightly higher cost structure relative to the highest grade deposits that are mined today,” Alkhadra explained.
The normal lithium brine extraction process involves pumping saline water from underground reservoirs to the surface, where it’s then moved through a series of large, wildly colored evaporation ponds, often located in the middle of vast salt deserts. Over a period of about 18 months, the sun slowly evaporates the brine, leaving behind increasingly high concentrations of lithium. But Lithios’ tech avoids these ponds altogether. Instead, the brine is pumped to the surface and delivered directly to the company’s refrigerator-sized electrochemical reactors, which contain stacks of electrodes that capture the lithium.
While the company wouldn't disclose the electrodes’ exact chemistry, Alkhadra told me they are made from “inorganic compounds which have geometries that fit basically only lithium and none of the other larger ions that you would find in these brine mixtures.” After lithium is extracted, the company produces a purified lithium concentrate and sends that off for refining into battery chemicals. The final batteries could end up in EVs, energy storage systems, or even just plain old portable consumer electronics.
Lithios’ tech comes at a good time, as the Inflation Reduction Act’s domestic content requirements for EVs incentivizes manufacturers to source critical minerals from the U.S. and countries that the U.S. has free trade agreements with. Alkhadra told me that Lithios could open up opportunities for brine mining in the Smackover formation, which spans a number of southern states including Texas and Arkansas, the Salton Sea area, which has been dubbed “Lithium Valley,” as well as deposits in Utah and Nevada. More areas in Canada and Europe could also be in play. (The company said it couldn’t talk yet about any specific partnership agreements.)
While there are a number of other companies such as Lilac Solutions and EnergyX that are also pursuing more efficient and less land-intensive brine-based extraction methods, they rely on a different, purely chemical process known as direct lithium extraction, which uses technology adapted from the water treatment industry. “The core thesis around what we're building at Lithios stems from that work,” Alkhadra told me, explaining that electrifying these chemical processes makes them “much more selective, energy efficient, and water efficient” — resulting in “modest to significant cost reduction.”
Lithios’ new funding will help the company scale its research and development efforts as well as build out a pilot facility in Medford, Massachusetts, with initial production to begin in the first quarter of next year. At first, output will be limited to just “several battery packs” per year, Alkhadra told me, scaling up to commercial production “in the coming years.”
Alkhadra is excited to see investors and the federal government alike beginning to express interest in the upstream, “dirtier” portions of the battery supply chain, which he told me have generally been overlooked in favor of downstream sectors such as battery manufacturing and cell production. “I think the U.S. departments of both energy and defense, and investors too, are coming to realize that the real bottlenecks in battery manufacturing and EV production are on the resource side.”