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On Ukraine aid, a solar geoengineering test, and California snowpack
Current conditions: India is expecting unusually high temperatures from now through June • A late-season blizzard warning is in place for parts of Michigan • A drought disaster has been declared in Zimbabwe.
Global EV market leaders Tesla and BYD turned in dismal sales for the first three months of the year, sending investors into a panic and prompting speculation about what it all means. Here are a few noteworthy reactions from analysts and insiders:
It wasn’t all bad: Other automakers including Rivian, Hyundai, and Toyota reported healthier numbers. Hyundai reported EV sales up more than 60% from the first quarter of 2023. Electric truck maker Rivian modestly surpassed expectations, beating both analysts’ and its own estimates with 13,588 deliveries in the first few months of 2024. Still, Heatmap’s Robinson Meyer says Tesla’s and BYD’s flagging sales may be signaling to investors that a general EV slowdown is coming.
The Biden administration is reportedly open to the idea of ending its pause on approvals of new liquified natural gas export terminals if it means the House will green-light an aid package for Ukraine, two White House sources told Reuters. The report follows a Sunday Fox News interview in which House Speaker Mike Johnson hinted that ending the pause might convince his fellow Republicans to support a new aid package. “We want to have natural gas exports that will help unfund Vladimir Putin’s war effort there,” said Johnson. Environmental activists applauded the White House’s January decision to pause new terminal approvals until the Energy Department can study the effect LNG projects have on the climate. A White House spokesman said the Reuters report wasn’t accurate and that the administration wants Republicans to pass the $95 billion bipartisan national security agreement, which includes Ukraine aid. The bill already passed the Senate and would be poised to pass the House, but Johnson has so far refused to bring it to a vote and is now “signaling that a LNG U-turn is table stakes for any Ukraine vote,” explained Politico’s Playbook. The House is back in session next week.
Engineers in San Francisco yesterday conducted the first outdoor test of a device that could one day be used to cool the planet through solar geoengineering. The Cloud Aerosol Research Instrument, or CARI, is designed to spray sea salt aerosol particles into the air to brighten clouds and reflect some of the sun’s rays. The tool’s first spray test outside a lab took place Tuesday on the flight deck of the Hornet, a decommissioned aircraft carrier that’s been turned into a museum. Solar geoengineering is a contentious topic, and the research team kept this project pretty quiet. The CARI tool will remain on the Hornet for the public to view, and the researchers hope it will “demystify the concept of climate intervention technologies,” according toThe New York Times.
The National Weather Service experienced an outage yesterday morning just as a line of severe storms ripped across the Midwest. The disruption lasted for five hours, during which time about 50 storm alerts, including tornado warnings, were issued across the region. “Meteorologists around the Midwest were without key information that would normally be at their fingertips, and many severe-weather warnings went out to the public late, if at all,” The Washington Post reported. One meteorologist had to rely on a hand-drawn map of tornado warnings from the Weather Service. A spokesman said the agency was working to figure out what went wrong.
California’s snowpack is registering just above average right now as the precipitation season ends and the warm and dry season begins, state officials announced yesterday. Snowpack is California’s largest source of stored water, so if it’s low in April – as it has been in recent years following historic droughts – residents know they should brace for water shortages in the summer months to come. On the flipside, if the snowpack is way above average, as it was last year, there’s a chance of flooding. But this year, levels are at about 110%, or just above average. Still, Governor Gavin Newsom wants residents to be mindful of their water use because “this time next year, we might be in a different place.” He said the state is preparing for a near-term future in which climate change will make water even more scarce, and is considering options like desalination and water recycling. Here is a look at how 2015 snowpack (top) compares to this year’s snowpack (bottom):
“There is no guarantee of a just, nourishing, and healthy future for humanity, and hope will not catalyze the change we need.” –The authors of a new paper published in PNAS Nexus, titled “Earth at risk: An urgent call to end the age of destruction and forge a just and sustainable future”
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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.