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Sparks

This Dam Weather

Climate change is really messing with American hydro power.

A California spillway.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Climate change and energy production are in a kind of twisted embrace. There’s the obvious aspect of it: Much of the energy produced today comes from burning hydrocarbons, which leads to further building up of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, causing climate change. To fix that, more energy has to be generated from sources that don’t emit carbon.

But here’s the less obvious aspect: The weather, and therefore the climate, also affects how much energy can be produced from non-carbon-emitting sources.

This can mean something as simple as smoke produced by wildfire obscuring the sun and leading to less solar power production, but it really matters a lot for power derived from rain and snowmelt.

In the United States, a major portion of our non-carbon-emitting energy comes from hydropower. And hydropower capacity — literally the amount of water stored in reservoirs — is affected by the climate.

In the Pacific Northwest, which has an extensive system of dams that provide much of the region’s power, the Energy Information Administration expects that hydropower generation will fall off by about a fifth for 2023 compared to 2022 — 19 percent to be exact.

The EIA credited the forecast reduction to “above-normal temperatures in May ... [that] melted snow rapidly, resulting in a significant loss of water supply.” In the first six months of the year, hydropower generation fell off by 24 percent.

But what climate can take away in one region, it can give in another. While the Northwest has about half of the country’s hydropower, much of the remainder is in California, which experienced a record-setting wet and snowy winter. And that means very full reservoirs. The EIA said that the state had 94 percent more hydropower generation in the first half of the year compared to 2022 and expected almost double 2022’s generation for the whole year.

And that pattern may be repeated.

The expected El Niño weather pattern this winter “is associated with wetter-than-average conditions in the Southwest United States, including parts of California, and warmer-than-average temperatures in the Northwest,” according to the EIA.

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Sparks

The Country’s Largest Power Markets Are Getting More Gas

Three companies are joining forces to add at least a gigawatt of new generation by 2029. The question is whether they can actually do it.

Natural gas pipelines.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Two of the biggest electricity markets in the country — the 13-state PJM Interconnection, which spans the Mid-Atlantic and the Midwest, and ERCOT, which covers nearly all of Texas — want more natural gas. Both are projecting immense increases in electricity demand thanks to data centers and electrification. And both have had bouts of market weirdness and dysfunction, with ERCOT experiencing spiky prices and even blackouts during extreme weather and PJM making enormous payouts largely to gas and coal operators to lock in their “capacity,” i.e. their ability to provide power when most needed.

Now a trio of companies, including the independent power producer NRG, the turbine manufacturer GE Vernova, and a subsidiary of the construction firm Kiewit Corporation, are teaming up with a plan to bring gas-powered plants to PJM and ERCOT, the companies announced today.

The three companies said that the new joint venture “will work to advance four projects totaling over 5 gigawatts” of natural gas combined cycle plants to the two power markets, with over a gigawatt coming by 2029. The companies said that they could eventually build 10 to 15 gigawatts “and expand to other areas across the U.S.”

So far, PJM and Texas’ call for new gas has been more widely heard than answered. The power producer Calpine said last year that it would look into developing more gas in PJM, but actual investment announcements have been scarce, although at least one gas plant scheduled to close has said it would stay open.

So far, across the country, planned new additions to the grid are still overwhelmingly solar and battery storage, according to the Energy Information Administration, whose data shows some 63 gigawatts of planned capacity scheduled to be added this year, with more than half being solar and over 80% being storage.

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The Capitol.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

As Republicans in Congress go hunting for ways to slash spending to carry out President Trump’s agenda, more than 100 energy businesses, trade groups, and advocacy organizations sent a letter to key House and Senate leaders on Tuesday requesting that one particular line item be spared: the hydrogen tax credit.

The tax credit “will serve as a catalyst to propel the United States to global energy dominance,” the letter argues, “while advancing American competitiveness in energy technologies that our adversaries are actively pursuing.” The Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Energy Association organized the letter, which features signatures from the American Petroleum Institute, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Clean Energy Buyers Association, and numerous hydrogen, industrial gas, and chemical companies, among many others. Three out of the seven regional clean hydrogen hubs — the Mid-Atlantic, Heartland, and Pacific Northwest hubs — are also listed.

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Core inflation is up, meaning that interest rates are unlikely to go down anytime soon.

Wind turbines being built.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

The Fed on Wednesday issued a report showing substantial increases in the price of eggs, used cars, and auto insurance — data that could spell bad news for the renewables economy.

Though some of those factors had already been widely reported on, the overall rise in prices exceeded analysts’ expectations. With overall inflation still elevated — reaching an annual rate of 3%, while “core” inflation, stripping out food and energy, rose to 3.3%, after an unexpectedly sharp 0.4% jump in January alone — any prospect of substantial interest rate cuts from the Federal Reserve has dwindled even further.

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