Energy & the Environment News and Discussions

weatheriscool
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Biden to propose 20-year drilling ban around Chaco Culture National Historical Park

Source: Washington Post
The Biden administration on Monday will propose a 20-year ban on oil and gas drilling in Chaco Canyon and surrounding areas in northwestern New Mexico, a sacred tribal site that also contains valuable oil and gas. President Biden will announce the move at the opening of the White House Tribal Nations Summit, one of several steps intended to strengthen the relationship between the federal government and American Indian tribes. Administration officials said Biden will also issue an executive order directing his Cabinet to develop a strategy to improve public safety and justice for Indigenous Americans.

The plan for Chaco Canyon, which is in the home state of Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the nation's first Native American Cabinet secretary, would direct the Bureau of Land Management to start the process for removing from leasing federal lands within a 10-mile radius around Chaco Culture National Historical Park. "Chaco Canyon is a sacred place that holds deep meaning for the Indigenous peoples whose ancestors lived, worked, and thrived in that high desert community," Haaland said in a statement. "Now is the time to consider more enduring protections for the living landscape that is Chaco, so that we can pass on this rich cultural legacy to future generations."

The area now known as Chaco Culture National Historical Park was one of the hubs of the Ancestral Puebloan civilization from about 850 until it was abandoned in the 13th century, leaving behind its settlements' majestic remains. The agricultural society built houses with hundreds of rooms, using sawed timber. Excavations have found elaborate pottery, conch shell trumpets, beads, turquoise and other artifacts. The remains of these settlements are considered among the most important cultural sites on public lands in the United States. The plunder of artifacts from this area led to the 1906 Antiquities Act, which gives presidents the authority to designate protections for public land without congressional approval.

The prospect of oil and gas drilling in the area has repeatedly drawn opposition from tribes and environmentalists. In 2018, then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke postponed a proposed lease sale on more than 4,000 acres in the region, calling for a detailed analysis of cultural sites there before the auction could take place. The Trump administration then released a plan to allow the drilling of more than 2,300 oil and gas wells in the area. Late last year, Congress passed a one-year moratorium on drilling in the area. But tribal leaders and environmental groups say the landscape needs more permanent safeguards.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate- ... ing-biden/
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Yuli Ban
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South Australia produced nearly twice as much wind and solar as it could use at times on Sunday, forcing renewable plant operators to massively curtail their output. The total amount of curtailed at one point nearly equalled total demand.

South Australia leads the world in the share of wind and solar in its grid, but it wasn’t the only state affected by a big surplus of wind and solar over the weekend, with curtailment records falling across the grid.

According to Geoff Eldridge, a data analyst who provides the NEMLog service, the levels of curtailment hit instantaneous records in both South Australia and Victoria, and daily average records across the main grid.

The simple reason is that supply exceeded demand.

And whereas this is not unusual – the capacity of coal and gas plants has always far exceeded average demand (and many gas plants operate at less than 2 per cent of their capacity) – curtailment of technologies with zero marginal cost (the sun and the wind) does seem a bit of a waste.

There is probably no better case for added storage, or to use the excess for technologies such as green hydrogen, but the latter is a few year’s away at least from a rollout of significant scale, and storage capacity remains minimal.
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caltrek
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The World's Largest Organism Is Slowly Being Eaten
by Richard Elton Walton
November 24, 2021

https://www.sciencealert.com/the-world- ... ntist-says

Introduction:
(Science Alert) In the Wasatch Mountains of the western US on the slopes above a spring-fed lake, there dwells a single giant organism that provides an entire ecosystem on which plants and animals have relied for thousands of years.

Found in my home state of Utah, "Pando" is a 106-acre stand of quaking aspen clones.

Although it looks like a woodland of individual trees with striking white bark and small leaves that flutter in the slightest breeze, Pando (Latin for "I spread") is actually 47,000 genetically identical stems that arise from an interconnected root network.

This single genetic individual weighs around 6 million metric tons. By mass, it is the largest single organism on Earth.

Aspen trees do tend to form clonal stands elsewhere, but what makes Pando interesting is its enormous size. Most clonal aspen stands in North America are much smaller, with those in western US averaging just 3 acres.
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caltrek
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Why Putting Solar Canopies on Parking Lots Is a Smart Green Move
by Richard Connif
November 22, 2021

https://e360.yale.edu/features/putting- ... y-solution

Extract:
(Yale Environment 360) Fly into Orlando, Florida, and you may notice a 22-acre solar power array in the shape of Mickey Mouse’s head in a field just west of Disney World. Nearby, Disney also has a 270-acre solar farm of conventional design on former orchard and forest land. Park your car in any of Disney’s 32,000 parking spaces, on the other hand, and you won’t see a canopy overhead generating solar power (or providing shade) — not even if you snag one of the preferred spaces for which visitors pay up to $50 a day.

This is how it typically goes with solar arrays: We build them on open space rather than in developed areas. That is, they overwhelmingly occupy croplands, arid lands, and grasslands, not rooftops or parking lots, according to a global inventory published last month in Nature. In the United States, for instance, roughly 51 percent of utility-scale solar facilities are in deserts; 33 percent are on croplands; and 10 percent are in grasslands and forests. Just 2.5 percent of U.S. solar power comes from urban areas.

…The appeal of parking lots and rooftops, by contrast, is that they are abundant, close to customers, largely untapped for solar power generation, and on land that’s already been stripped of much of its biological value.

A typical Walmart supercenter, for instance, has a five-acre parking lot, and it’s a wasteland, especially if you have to sweat your way across it under an asphalt-bubbling sun. Put a canopy over it, though, and it could support a three-megawatt solar array, according to a recent study co-authored by Joshua Pearce of Western University in Ontario. In addition to providing power to the store, the neighboring community, or the cars sheltered underneath, says Pearce, the canopy would shade customers — and keep them shopping longer, as their car batteries top up. If Walmart did that at all 3,571 of its U.S. super centers, the total capacity would be 11.1 gigawatts of solar power — roughly equivalent to a dozen large coal-fired power plants. Taking account of the part-time nature of solar power, Pearce figures that would be enough to permanently shut down four of those power plants.

And yet solar canopies are barely beginning to show up in this country’s …parking lots.
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Ancient juniper trees illegally cut in New Mexico monument
Source: AP

By SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Several dozen ancient alligator juniper trees have been illegally cut down at El Malpais National Monument in western New Mexico and authorities with the National Park Service are trying to find out who’s responsible.

Known for their unique furrowed bark, alligator junipers grow very slowly. A seed can take up to 18 months to mature after pollination and the growth rate for young trees is about 0.6 inches (1.5 centimeters) per decade, slowing as they get older.

Officials said the trees that were cut down were likely hundreds of years old.

Lisa Dittman, a spokeswoman for the national monument, said Tuesday that officials don’t know why the trees are being targeted or what they’re being used for. Rural New Mexico residents frequently cut wood in the fall to help with winter heating needs, but cutting trees at El Malpais is illegal.


Read more: https://apnews.com/article/lifestyle-tr ... 45542f4d15
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Nine Democrats in Congress Urge Department of Justice to Free Steven Donziger
by Kenny Stancil
November 30, 2021

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/ ... ree-steven

Introduction:
(Common Dreams) Nine U.S. House Democrats on Monday urged the Justice Department to "take immediate action" to secure the release of Steven Donziger, a human rights attorney who helped thousands of Ecuadorians win a multibillion-dollar lawsuit against oil giant Chevron and is now incarcerated on a contempt of court charge that experts say is retaliatory—and which followed two years of pre-trial house arrest, a violation of international law.

In a letter addressed to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, the progressive lawmakers—Reps. Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), Jesús G. "Chuy" García (Ill.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), Jamaal Bowman (N.Y.), Cori Bush (Mo.), Barbara Lee (Calif.), and Raúl M. Grijalva (Ariz.)—wrote that Donziger's case "has shocked the worldwide community of environmental justice and human rights advocates and creates a distinct chilling effect on this type of advocacy going forward."

"Mr. Donziger," noted the lawmakers, "has done nothing but uphold the highest professional ethics in representing and protecting his clients but has since been thrown in federal prison for petty contempt charges, a first in United States history. Mr. Donziger began serving a six-month sentence for petty contempt of court at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut on October 27, 2021, despite the many calls from the international legal community that his pre-trial detention for over 800 days was a violation of international law."

"Mr. Donziger sits in a crowded federal prison because a Chevron attorney made it so, without Executive Branch supervision or ever seeing a jury of his peers," the lawmakers continued. "As the United States is a party to the District Court case against Mr. Donziger, we request that you act immediately to reclaim control of this case, dismiss the charges, and free Mr. Donziger from his imprisonment."

"The international legal community," they added, "is appalled by what has transpired in the Southern District of New York and the Department of Justice's commitment to a just rule of law requires immediate action."
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caltrek
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Renewables See Record Growth in 2021, but Supply Chain Problems Loom
by Justine Calma
December 1, 2021

https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/1/2281 ... n-problems

Introduction:
(The Verge) 2021 is on course to break a global record for renewable energy growth, according to the International Energy Agency’s latest Renewables Market Report. That’s despite skyrocketing commodity prices, which could bog down the transition to clean energy in the future.
With 290 GW in additional capacity expected to be commissioned by the end of the year, 2021 will smash the record for renewable electricity growth that was just set last year. This year’s additions even outpace a forecast that the International Energy Agency (IEA) made in the spring.

“Exceptionally high growth” would be the “new normal” for renewable sources of electricity, the IEA said at the time. Solar energy, in particular, was on track to take the crown as the “new king of electricity,” the IEA said in its October 2020 World Energy Outlook report.

SOLAR CONTINUED TO DOMINATE

Solar continued to dominate in 2021, with an expected record growth of nearly 160 GW. It made up more than half of all the renewable energy capacity added this year, a trend that the IEA thinks will continue over the next five. Renewables will likely make up 95 percent of new power capacity globally through 2026, according to the new report. The IEA also predicts explosive growth for offshore wind capacity, which could more than triple over the same time period.

By 2026, the IEA says, the amount of renewable electricity capacity globally will likely be equivalent to today’s fossil fuel and nuclear energy capacity combined. That’s a huge shift. In 2020, renewable energy only made up 29 percent of electricity generation globally.
The remainder of the article discusses potential negative effects of affordability caused by increases in commodity and shipping prices for solar energy components.
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caltrek
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Trends in Energy and Biodiversity – Threats and Opportunities
by Mary Hoff
November 29, 2021

https://ensia.com/articles/conservation ... sity-2022/

Extract:
(Ensia) Floating Solar…In recent years the notion of siting them on water rather than land has taken off dramatically, with more than 300 installations in place around the world today...

Energy Through the Air…Powerlines and the poles and towers that hold them are staples of civilization. Imagine being able to replace them with devices that transmit electricity through the air instead of along wires?...

Satellites…More than 2,000 communications satellites currently orbit our planet, and with current plans, the total could reach 100,000 in the next 10 years. The process of deploying and decommissioning these extraplanetary objects can disrupt the stratospheric ozone layer; deposit aluminum in, and otherwise modify the chemical composition of, the upper atmosphere; and alters Earth’s albedo — its ability to reflect sunlight...

(Amonia) …Recent attention has turned to ammonia as a fuel for shipping.
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Yuli Ban
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Last year was an unusual one for the global electricity sector. Despite massive and in many cases near-immediate changes in demand due to the Covid-19 pandemic, global power generation fell only two-tenths of a percent for all of 2020. Coal-fired power generation fell 3% year on year; gas-fired power fell 1%, and nuclear power declined 3%. Wind, solar, and hydropower all grew, however, and the result is something new for the power sector.

BloombergNEF recently analyzed a decade worth of data from 137 individual power markets and aggregated data from the rest of the world, and found something significant. Last year was the first year in which renewable wind, solar, hydropower, and biomass and waste power provided the entirety of growth in global power generation.
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