|
|
 |
|
|
Good morning and happy Friday,
We sprang into spring this week, and the clean energy markets also had a spring in their step, with E2 reporting that last month saw the announcement of 14 new projects representing $4 billion in investment and 4,400 jobs across 11 states.
That’s good news, because the U.S. needs more electricity – and in
fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this week that electricity prices rose 3.6% over the past 12 months, outpacing inflation which was at 3.2%.
Another reason to ramp up renewables? A new report says hydrogen could be
cost-competitive with natural gas by 2030, and national demand could reach 50 million metric tons by 2050 – but meeting this would require an additional 700 GW of green power.
And with the April 8 solar eclipse just a couple of weeks away, Texas – which now has 22 GW of solar power – has plans in place to manage the
temporary dip in production the eclipse will cause.
Read on for more.
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Merchants of Denialism
The title of the Sierra Club magazine’s spring feature says it all: Climate-Science Deniers, Right-Wing Think
Tanks, and Fossil Fuel Shills Are Plotting Against the Clean Energy Transition: Inside the conspiracy to take down wind and solar power. It’s a valuable reminder of the scope and scale of opposition to clean energy. Here are just a few teasers:
John Droz gets several paragraphs of coverage thanks to his involvement in “an impressive array of local energy fights over the past 15 years,” starting with convening an “anti-wind confab” in Washington, D.C. in 2012.
Among other things, Droz is credited with creating template anti-renewables legislation that result in “de facto wind-farm bans” and developing other tactics so successful they “are now being deployed against solar.”
More than a quarter of the article is dedicated to covering energy-related debacles in Ohio, such as “dark-money groups” launching “brazen attacks on renewable energy,” including some bankrolled by FirstEnergy, the “bankrupt utility at the center of the state’s largest-ever corruption scandal;” Big Coal’s fight against wind in Lake Erie; and the vagaries of the Ohio Power Siting Board.
⚡️ The Takeaway
Climate delayism. These days, outright climate denialism is being replaced by “climate delayism,” misinformation campaigns that undermine climate solutions by sowing confusion and uncertainty. The book Merchants of Doubt details “how Big Oil took a page from Big Tobacco’s playbook to stoke the embers of the climate-denial movement,” and today, supporters of wind and solar are “running up against the same barrier: a chorus of disinformation, much of it tied to, or even circulated directly by, fossil-fuel-backed groups waging an existential fight to preserve the status quo.”
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Batter(ies) Up!
As the 2024 MLB season gets underway, battery storage is being used to help meet surging demand for electricity. As we reported last week, storage had a banner Q4’2023, installing more than 12k MWh, a 100% increase over Q3’2023. 2024 is off to a strong start as well, with big installations in Arizona and Utah. Here’s why folks are charged up:
Last week, the Salt River Project announced operations had begun for the largest battery in the Grand Canyon State. The Sonoran Solar Energy Center combines 260 MW of solar with 1 GWh of energy storage and will help reduce the carbon footprint of Google’s forthcoming data center in Mesa.
Waiting in the wings is the Sierra Estrella Energy Storage project, which will also provide 1 GWh of storage and is expected to come online this summer in Avondale, just west of Phoenix.
In Utah, Salt Lake City–based rPlus Energies has quadrupled the size of an energy storage project it’s building for Rocky Mountain Power. A key factor making this big change possible? The project’s max output won’t change, so it won’t “trigger any onerous new transmission-grid upgrades, which could have incurred punishing costs and delays.”
⚡️ The Takeaway
Hotting up in Coolidge. Jumping back to Arizona, things are hotting up in Coolidge, where Orsted is building its 300 MW Eleven Mile Solar Center, which will combine 300 MW of solar with 300 MW of
four-hour energy storage. All of which underscores the fact that in 2024, the amount of energy storage built is expected to exceed the amount of new wind and new natural gas, combined.
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Supersize Me
If Mark Lundstrom prevails, blades for mega-turbines used in future onshore wind farms could be delivered by the “gargantuan cargo
plane” he’s designed.
Lundstrom’s company, Radia, is based in Boulder, CO, and is valued at $1 billion. It has an array of expert advisers and solid financial backing – and proposes to deliver massive wind turbine blades using the WindRunner.
|
 |
|
|
How big are we talking? Well, at 79 feet tall and 356 feet long, it would be 80 feet longer than the longest aircraft currently in military use, and 124 feet longer than a Boeing 747, with 12 times the payload capacity. The tires are shoulder-height, and the plane has the ability to land on “semi-prepared airstrips as short as 6,000 feet, something no other large commercial aircraft can achieve.”
WindRunner planes will offer a solution to the vexing problem of transporting massive wind turbine blades, the longest of which are already difficult, if not impossible, to transport on land. Lundstrom estimates the plane is more than halfway through the years long process needed to design, build, and certify the aircraft.
We know that in wind, bigger is better, at least in terms of clean energy production – so we’ll be watching to see if the WindRunner gets off the ground.
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Contact us to learn more about working with Bantam.
|
|
|
| Contact Us |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
Copyright © 2024 Bantam Communications, All rights reserved.
|
|
|
|
|
