Bad News for Big Oil: Electric Vehicle Sales to Surpass Gas Guzzlers by 2038

EcoWatch

Bad News for Big Oil: Electric Vehicle Sales to Surpass Gas Guzzlers by 2038

Lorraine Chow July 14, 2017

Despite the Koch brothers’ best efforts, it looks like gas guzzlers are on the way out. Sales of electric vehicles will surpass those using internal combustion engines by 2038, a new analysis has found.

Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) projects that “electric cars will outsell fossil-fuel powered vehicles within two decades as battery prices plunge, turning the global auto industry upside down and signaling economic turmoil for oil-exporting countries … [displacing] about 8 million barrels a day of oil production—more than the 7 million barrels Saudi Arabia exports today.”

“This is economics, pure and simple economics,” BNEF’s lead advanced-transportation analyst Colin McKerracher said. “Lithium-ion battery prices are going to come down sooner and faster than most other people expect.”

The report’s bold forecast was also bolstered by surging investment in lithium-ion batteries, higher manufacturing capacity at companies like Tesla Inc. and Nissan Motor Co., as well as rising demand for EVs in China and Europe.

BNEF admitted that its report is the “most bullish to date and is more aggressive than projections made by the International Energy Agency.”

Here are other notable projections for the booming category, according to BNEF:

In just eight years, electric cars will be as cheap as gasoline vehicles, pushing the global fleet to 530 million vehicles by 2040
Electricity consumption from EVs will grow to 1,800 terawatt-hours in 2040, or 5 percent of global power demand, from 6 terawatt-hours in 2016
There’s around 90 gigawatt hours of EV lithium-ion battery manufacturing capacity online now, and this is set to rise to 270 gigawatt hours by 2021.
Charging infrastructure will continue to be an issue with bottlenecks capping growth in key Chinese, U.S. and European markets emerging in the mid-2030s

The report is another sign of the shifting energy landscape. Just this month, France joined Norway, Germany and Kenya’s efforts to ban gasoline- and diesel-powered cars. Also, Volvo became the first major carmaker to phase out vehicles powered by fossil fuels. Finally, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced that his company is building the world’s largest lithium ion battery to solve in South Australia’s energy woes.

Meanwhile, DeSmog reported that conservative oil billionaires Charles and David Koch are funding a campaign called Fueling U.S. Forward to squash the rise of electric vehicles. The group released a video called the Dirty Secrets of Electric Cars., featuring “blatant factual errors, misleading statements, and glaring omissions,” DeSmog writes.

Interestingly, the BNEF points out that the world’s “Electric Car Revolution” could be well underway except for one major factor: Donald Trump.

According to the report:

“In Europe, almost 67 percent of new cars sold will be electrified in 2040, and 58 percent of sales in the U.S. and 51 percent in China, BNEF said. Though there’s uncertainty in the U.S., where President Donald Trump could dramatically disrupt electric vehicle growth by withdrawing support for the technology in the world’s second biggest car market.”

Lorraine Chow July 14, 2017

BNEF admitted that its report is the “most bullish to date and is more aggressive than projections made by the International Energy Agency.”

Here are other notable projections for the booming category, according to BNEF:

In just eight years, electric cars will be as cheap as gasoline vehicles, pushing the global fleet to 530 million vehicles by 2040
Electricity consumption from EVs will grow to 1,800 terawatt-hours in 2040, or 5 percent of global power demand, from 6 terawatt-hours in 2016
There’s around 90 gigawatt hours of EV lithium-ion battery manufacturing capacity online now, and this is set to rise to 270 gigawatt hours by 2021.
Charging infrastructure will continue to be an issue with bottlenecks capping growth in key Chinese, U.S. and European markets emerging in the mid-2030s

Interestingly, the BNEF points out that the world’s “Electric Car Revolution” could be well underway except for one major factor: Donald Trump.

According to the report:

Editorial: Trump names an anti-science blowhard as ‘chief scientist’. Help! Congress….

The Mercury News

Editorial: Trump names an anti-science blowhard as ‘chief scientist’. Help! Congress….

Sam Clovis, a talk radio host, calls climate change “junk science” and “not proven.”

Mercury News Editorial Board July 23, 2017

President Trump’s disdain for science apparently knows no bounds. He has now nominated climate change skeptic Sam Clovis, a talk radio host, to serve as the Department of Agriculture’s chief scientist — a slap in the face of the scientific community and a disservice to those responsible for the integrity of the USDA’s research.

The Senate should should reject the nomination. Naming an anti-science blowhard to a job meant for a scientist would be like Ford picking a CEO who rides a horse to work.

If confirmed as the Department of Agriculture’s undersecretary of research, education and economics, Clovis would be responsible for implementing the department’s mission of providing leadership on agriculture and natural resource issues “based on sound public policy, the best available science, and efficient management.”

The post, created in 1994 by Congress, demands someone who commands the respect of scientists. The 2008 farm bill clarified the requirements, saying the undersecretary “shall be appointed by the president, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, from among distinguished scientists with specialized training or significant experience in agricultural research, education, and economics.”

Clovis has none of these qualifications. His degree is in political science, and his chief claims to fame are as a conservative talk radio host and Trump’s national campaign co-chair.

The most recent undersecretary, Catherine Woteki, had a PhD in human nutrition, a bachelor of science in biology and chemistry and had served as Director of the Food and Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine at the National Academy of Sciences.

Woteki, under the direction of the Obama administration, had focused the agency’s research dollars largely on trying to help farmers get a better understanding of how to deal with the impact of climate change — droughts, for example — on their crops.

She was vocal about this: “We really need to increase the amount of research that we’re doing to face challenges like we’re facing with this variable weather, and how can we increase productivity both in crops as well as in livestock to be able to produce more food on the same amount of land or perhaps less, depending on how climate might change over the next 30 to 40 years.”

It was bad enough that Trump’s choice as USDA Secretary, Sonny Purdue, thinks climate science is “obviously disconnected from reality” and “a running joke among the public.” This even though polls show 70 percent of Americans favor aggressive action to slow global warming.

Clovis calls climate change “junk science” and “not proven.” That goes against the consensus of more than 90 percent of climate scientists.

He’s entitled to his opinion. He’s perfect for today’s talk radio. He is not a scientist, let alone qualified to be a “chief scientist.” Congress needs to take a stand.

Did you know in rural America, disability benefit rates are twice as high as in urban areas?

Washington Post-Social Issues

Did you know in rural America, disability benefit rates are twice as high as in urban areas?

By Terrence McCoy July 22, 2017

Between 1996 and 2015, the number of working-age Americans who subsist on federal disability benefits grew rapidly, becoming one of the country’s most hotly debated social benefits. The rise has become another indicator of the divide between urban and rural America, where disability benefit rates are nearly twice as high.

Here are answers to some of the most important questions about this form of public assistance.

Q: What programs serve Americans with disabilities?

A: Two federal programs provide benefits to people with disabilities. One is Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), which was signed into law in 1956 and serves disabled workers. It is available only to people with enough work experience. The other, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), which began paying benefits in 1974, serves the disabled poor and is a means-tested benefit.

Q: If the number of people receiving disability has increased so much, it must be easy to get on the rolls, right?

A: Wrong. Disability benefits, for both SSI and SSDI applicants, are very difficult to secure. In fact, only about four in 10 applications are approved. It can take as long as two years, after several layers of appeals, to win approval.

Q: So what has driven the growth then?

A: This is more controversial. Most experts agree that the primary factor in SSDI’s growth is demographics. Because of the aging of the baby-boom generation, more people are at an age when disability is more likely. More women also are in the workforce. Then there is simple population growth. Some experts think those factors represent nearly all of the increase. But others point to a congressional act that broadened the definition of disability, economic factors such as recessions and approvals they criticize as too lenient as contributing factors.

Q: Is the number of people on disability still rising?

A: No. In 2015, for the first time in decades the number of people on disability decreased slightly as the demographic factors that drove the rise started to subside and older Americans aged into their retirement years.

Q: In that case, what’s the problem?

A: The program for disabled workers, which Congress had to rescue from insolvency in 2015, is estimated to go broke again sometime over the next decade or so. The government this year is expected to spend $192 billion on disability payments — more than the combined total that will be spent on welfare, unemployment benefits, housing subsidies and food stamps.

Q: What sort of income, individually, does this provide for recipients?

A: A meager one. The maximum monthly payment for an SSI beneficiary is $735. The amount of money SSDI beneficiaries receive depends on how much money they made. The average monthly check is less than $1,200. For most beneficiaries, the checks are not taxable.

Q: Do they receive any other services?

A: Beneficiaries receive health insurance through Medicare, for SSDI recipients, and Medicaid, for SSI recipients.

Q: Do beneficiaries ever return to work?

A: Rarely. Some die within a few years of starting benefits. Other disabled workers try to return to work, but don’t keep their jobs for long. Or they continue working, but make less than the income threshold that would put their benefit at risk. Less than 4 percent of disabled workers get off disability within 10 years of their first payment.

Q: Are disability beneficiaries spread evenly nationwide?

A: The majority of disability recipients live in densely populated urban and suburban areas, but they are disproportionately prevalent in rural America — where, on average, 9.1 percent of the working-age population receives disability, compared to the national average of 6.5 percent and an urban rate of 4.9 percent. Beneficiaries are even more over-represented in the Southeast and central Appalachia. These are places economists have called “disability belts.”

Terrence McCoy covers poverty, inequality and social justice. He also writes about solutions to social problems.

Mom encourages parents to teach their children about differences after son ridiculed at church

ABC Good Morning America

Mom encourages parents to teach their children about differences after son ridiculed at church

Joi-Marie McKenzie, Good Morning America July 22, 2017

An Arizona mother has taken to the web to encourage other parents to teach their kids about differences after her son was ridiculed at church.

Stacey Gagnon said she and her husband, along with their six kids — four of whom have special needs and were adopted — attended a new church last Sunday in Camp Verde, Arizona.

As she and her three youngest children walked into the separate children’s church, where she was dropping the kids off, “the room became silent and every child stared or pointed at my son, Joel,” Gagnon wrote in a Facebook post that has gone viral.

Gagnon, 41, adopted Joel when he was 18 months old. He has been diagnosed with Goldenhar syndrome, a congenital birth defect that affects the development of the face and other parts of the body. Joel was born without a right ear and a right rib, his mother said.

Other than that, “he’s just like a normal boy,” Gagnon added.

After the incident, Gagnon went on Facebook, saying, “I know he looks different, but today hurt.”

Although Gagnon, a former school teacher, has usually educated children on the value of differences when similar scenarios occurred in the past, she said that last Sunday she simply tended to her upset son.

“I held him in my arms during church and he drew ‘Joel loves Mom’ on my palm,” she began. “I have always stepped into the role of teacher to educate kids… but today I did not. Today, I did not teach someone else’s kid, because I was too busy holding my broken-hearted son.”

PHOTO: Joel Gannon, 9, who has Goldenhar Syndrome, wrote this on his mother Stacey's hand after she comforted him after being ridiculed at church. (Stacey Gagnon)

Gagnon said she hopes her emotional post, which has been shared more than 20,000 times, will encourage other parents to teach their children about differences.

“These weren’t bad kids,” she said, referring to the children in church that day. “But we have to be intentional about teaching kids about this. Kids fear things that look different, but when you just explain it, it’s not a big deal.”

Gagnon, who taught second and third grade and is now a nurse for special needs children, said one of the most important thing parents can teach their kids is compassion.

“And empathy,” she added. “It doesn’t just happen because they see you do it.”

As for Joel, Gagnon said he recovered quickly and had an enjoyable time when the family went out to lunch after church.

Scientists Found a Second Giant Garbage Patch in the Pacific

Popular Mechanics

Scientists Found a Second Giant Garbage Patch in the Pacific

As if one wasn’t bad enough.

Getty Rosemary Calvert / Contributor

By Avery Thompson July 21, 2017

Somewhere in the North Pacific, there’s a giant floating patch of garbage thousands of miles wide. It contains millions of tons of plastic and is estimated to take up an area the size of Alaska. We’ve known about it for around 30 years, and scientists have struggled to develop a method to clean it up.

And now, a group of researchers has discovered another one.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch floating in the North Pacific is the result of ocean currents called gyres. These gyres are circling currents that can trap particles floating in them and push them into a single area. Essentially, all the trash thrown into the North Pacific is brought to a single area off the coast of North America.

But the Pacific Ocean has another gyre in the Southern hemisphere, and it behaves the same way. Recently, scientists exploring a remote island in the South Pacific found almost 20 tons of plastic washed up on a beach, and they began to suspect that the South Pacific had a garbage patch of its own.

A recent expedition to the area appears to confirm that this new garbage patch does exist. The researchers found an area about a million square miles in size, bigger than the state of Texas, containing over a million tons of plastic.

Most of this plastic is tiny, less than a millimeter in size. These “microplastics” are often worn down, broken apart, and eroded by ocean currents until they become microscopic in size. These microplastics can still kill large ocean animals, but they also pose a danger to smaller organisms too.

This second garbage patch appears to be a relatively new phenomenon. An expedition to the area in 2011 picked up little trace of the patch, which means it’s likely only formed in the past few years.

With any luck, we can figure out how to get rid of it as quickly as we created it.

Trump has lost 1 in 8 people who backed him in 2016 – and now say they want a do-over

Daily Mail

Trump has lost 1 in 8 people who backed him in 2016 – and now say they want a do-over

Just 88 per cent of Trump voters say they would support him again if the 2016 election were held again today
That number is better than the 82 per cent who said the same thing in May
‘If I had to walk around wearing a T-shirt saying who I voted for, I may have voted differently,’ one Trump backer said

By Reuters Published July 20, 2017

About one in eight people who voted for President Donald Trump said they would not do so again after witnessing Trump’s tumultuous first six months in office, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll of 2016 voters.

While most of the people who voted for Trump on Nov. 8 said they would back him again, the erosion of support within his winning coalition of older, disaffected, mostly white voters poses a potential challenge for the president.

Trump, who won the White House with the slimmest of margins, needs every last supporter behind him to push his agenda through a divided Congress and potentially win a second term in 2020.

The poll surveyed voters who had told Reuters/Ipsos on Election Day how they had cast their ballots. While other surveys have measured varying levels of disillusionment among Trump supporters, the Reuters/Ipsos poll shows how many would go as far as changing the way they voted. The survey was carried out first in May and then again in July.

President Donald Trump has lost the support of 12 per cent of the Americans who voted for him in November

The new Reuters poll shows 12 per cent of Trump voters would abandon him in a do-over

In the July survey, 12 percent of respondents said they would not vote for Trump ‘if the 2016 presidential election were held today’ – 7 percent said they ‘don’t know’ what they would do, and the remaining 5 percent would either support one of the other 2016 presidential candidates or not vote.

Eighty-eight percent said they would vote for Trump again, a slight improvement over the May figure of 82 percent. Taken together, the polls suggest that Trump’s standing with his base has improved slightly over the past few months despite his Republican Party’s repeated failures to overhaul the healthcare system and multiple congressional and federal investigations into his campaign’s ties to Russia.

To be sure, most presidents lose support among core supporters the longer they are in the White House. According to the Gallup polling service, former President Barack Obama saw his popularity dip among Democrats and minority voters, though it did not come until later in his first term. But Obama, who won the Electoral College with greater margins than Trump, was not as reliant on retaining his core supporters.

The minority of Trump voters who said they would not vote for him again gave varying reasons in interviews for why they had changed their minds.

Some were tired of his daily trolling of Democrats, the media and the judiciary. Some were disappointed that the Trump administration has not yet swept illegal immigrants out of their communities. Others said the president has not ended the mistrust and hyper-partisanship in Washington as much as they had hoped.

Some of the president’s failures in his first six months have turned die-hard supporters into skeptics

‘If I had to walk around wearing a T-shirt saying who I voted for, I may have voted differently,’ said Beverly Guy, 34, a Trump voter who took the poll in July. If the election were held today, Guy said she would vote for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson.

Guy said she picked Trump mostly because she did not support Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. She never cared that much for Trump and now finds herself rationalizing a decision that has angered many of her friends.

‘I care more about my neighbors than I do about politics,’ she said.

Another poll respondent, Brian Barnes, said he was standing by his choice to vote for Trump. He thinks the media is focusing too much on the Russia investigation and not enough on Trump’s accomplishments like his elevation of another conservative justice to the Supreme Court.

‘I think he’s doing all he can,’ Barnes said, ‘even though the Republicans in the House and Senate are creating a lot of problems’ by not passing a healthcare bill.

Experts in American politics said it makes sense that a transformative political figure like Trump would retain a high degree of loyalty from his supporters no matter what negative headlines are swirling around the White House. Political winds do not shift quickly in a strong economy, they said, especially when many of the president’s decisions have yet to take root.

‘People are still invested in the choices they made’ on Election Day, said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. ‘They’re not about to admit that they’re wrong, at least not yet.’

Elaine Kamarck, an expert in American electoral politics at the Brookings Institution, said the erosion in Trump’s base could certainly hurt his chances of re-election, though it is too early to say so for sure. The most important question is whether he loses support where it counts – in battleground states that he barely won last year.

‘If these disenchanted Trump voters are in California, it doesn’t matter,’ Kamarck said. ‘If they live in Wisconsin or Michigan or Pennsylvania, it matters.’

The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online in English throughout the United States and has a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of about 5 percentage points.

The July 11-12 poll gathered its sample from 1,296 people, including 541 Trump voters, while the May 10-15 poll gathered its sample from 1,206 people, including 543 Trump voters. In both cases, Ipsos weighted their responses according to voter profiles gathered from the U.S. Census´ voting and registration supplement to the Current Population Survey.

Climate change will force today’s kids to pay for costly carbon removal technologies, study says

Washington Post Energy and Environment

Climate change will force today’s kids to pay for costly carbon removal technologies, study says

By Chelsea Harvey July 19, 2017

New research suggests that if immediate and significant emissions reduction efforts are undertaken — amounting to a decline in global carbon output by at least 3 percent annually starting in the next four years — then less carbon extraction will be needed. (Martin Meissner/AP)

The longer humans continue to pour carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the closer we draw to leaving the next generation with an unmanageable climate problem, scientists say. A new study, just out Tuesday in the journal Earth System Dynamics, suggests that merely reducing greenhouse gas emissions may no longer be enough — and that special technology, aimed at removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, may also be necessary to keep the Earth’s climate within safe limits for future generations.

The research was largely inspired by a landmark climate change lawsuit brought by 21 children against the federal government, which is scheduled to go on trial in February 2018, and will be used as scientific support in the case. In fact, its lead author, Columbia University climatologist and former NASA scientist James Hansen, is a plaintiff on the case, along with his now 18-year-old granddaughter.

The new paper argues that the Paris Agreement’s target of keeping global temperatures within 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius (2.7 to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) of their preindustrial levels isn’t strong enough. During a previous warm period in the Earth’s history, known as the Eemian, or the last interglacial period, the planet experienced similar levels of warming, the authors note — and the resulting consequences included the disintegration of ice sheets and six to nine meters of sea level rise.

Noting the dramatic changes that occurred during the last interglacial period, the paper calls for a more stringent target of bringing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels down from their current concentration of more than 400 parts per million to about 350 parts per million by the end of the century. This would bring global temperature closer to a 1-degree threshold, rather than 1.5 or 2 degrees, the authors say.

But the study has already come in from some criticism from other scientists, such as Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, who told The Washington Post that some aspects of the study were “alarmist” and that if changes come slowly enough, society will be able to adapt to them. Trenberth said he disagreed that the 1 degree target is justified and thinks that even 1.5 degrees is “unrealistic.”

Hansen is no stranger to controversy. In 2015, he and more than a dozen colleagues published a highly contested paper in the open-access journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, suggesting that sea level rise may occur more rapidly in this century than previously predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

In the new study, the researchers suggest that allowing temperatures to creep into the Eemian range once again could eventually trigger the onset of certain slow-developing climate processes that may ultimately enhance global warming, once again inducing catastrophic ice melt, sea level rise and other harmful climate effects. For instance, continued loss of ice may reduce the Earth’s reflectivity, they suggest, allowing more solar radiation to warm the planet’s surface and melt more ice.

But to keep temperatures lower, the paper finds, would require not only significant emissions reductions efforts, but also the use of “negative emissions” technology, or special methods for pulling carbon dioxide back out of the atmosphere.

Using models, the researchers suggest that if immediate and significant emissions reduction efforts are undertaken — amounting to a decline in global carbon output by at least 3 percent annually starting in the next four years — then less carbon extraction will be needed. A majority of it could be accomplished through basic changes in agricultural and forestry practices to promote greater storage of carbon in vegetation and soil.

On the other hand, the longer global greenhouse gas emissions are allowed to remain at high levels, the more carbon extraction will be needed to reach this target, requiring additional, costlier forms of technology. These may include the burning of biomass for energy, accompanied with carbon capture and storage technology, or technology that directly sucks carbon dioxide out of the air.

If humans immediately began reducing global greenhouse gas emissions by a relatively high rate of 6 percent each year, the researchers estimate that the carbon extraction technology needed to get down to 350 parts per million could cost anywhere from $8 trillion to nearly $18.5 trillion. And if no emissions reductions occur, these costs could rise above $500 trillion through the end of the century.

“Some consequences [of climate change] are already becoming inevitable, but as yet it could be moderate if we begin to reduce emissions rapidly,” Hansen said. “So that’s the objective — to try to get the global community to understand the importance of beginning those emissions reductions soon, and keeping the task that we’re leaving for young people one that they can manage.”

But Trenberth said of the paper that while “it is a good point that some slow feed-backs do not kick in until temperatures have been sustained at a certain level,” a great deal of the future human experience with climate change will depend not only on which thresholds we cross, but how quickly we cross them.

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“If we can slow things down then a lot of adaptation can occur,” he said.

Other researchers are a little more cautiously accepting of the paper’s points.

Christian Proistosescu, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Washington who was not involved with the new research (but who recently led a major study, himself, on the potential future impact of slow-developing climate modes) expressed some skepticism about using the Earth’s ancient history as an analogy for the future.

He noted that some of the conditions that were true during the Eemian — the existence of large ice sheets that have already disappeared, for instance — are not the same now. And because humans have not been around to witness some of the slow-developing climate processes that scientists fear will intensify in the future, there’s uncertainty about how and even whether they will affect future climate change.

“But that would be the wrong way to think about it,” he added in an email to The Post. “The more important point is that we cannot rule out the very real probability that there are slow feed-backs — and risk is probability times cost. … Once you start thinking in terms of risks I would concur with Dr. Hansen that the current trajectory presents some unacceptable risks.”

Chelsea Harvey is a freelance journalist covering science. She specializes in environmental health and policy.

China is crushing the U.S. in renewable energy

CNN Tech

China is crushing the U.S. in renewable energy

by Sherisse Pham and Matt Rivers July 18, 2017

China may be the planet’s biggest polluter but it’s also powering ahead of other countries on renewable energy.

As the Trump administration yanks the U.S. out of the Paris climate change agreement, claiming it will hurt the American economy, Beijing is investing hundreds of billions of dollars and creating millions of jobs in clean power.

China has built vast solar and wind farms, helping fuel the growth of major industries that sell their products around the world.

“Even in China where coal is — or was — king, the government still recognizes that the economic opportunities of the future are going to be in clean energy,” said Alvin Lin, Beijing-based climate and energy policy director with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

More than 2.5 million people work in the solar power sector alone in China, compared with 260,000 people in the U.S., according to the most recent annual report from the International Renewable Energy Agency.

While President Trump promises to put American coal miners back to work, China is moving in the opposite direction.

Coal still makes up the largest part of China’s energy consumption, but Beijing has been shutting coal mines and set out plans last year to cut roughly 1.3 million jobs in the industry. The Chinese government has also moved to restrict the construction of new coal power plants.

For the first time ever, China’s National Energy Administration in January established a mandatory target to reduce coal energy consumption. It also set a goal for clean energy to meet 20% of China’s energy needs by 2030.

Analysts expect China to easily meet that target. Greenpeace noted in a report earlier this year that the country’s clean energy consumption rose to 12% at the end of 2015. Renewable energy sources account for about 10% of total U.S. energy consumption, according to official statistics.

To help reach the 2030 goal, China is betting big on renewable energy. It pledged in January to invest 2.5 trillion yuan ($367 billion) in renewable power generation — solar, wind, hydro and nuclear — by 2020.

The investment will create about 10 million jobs in the sector, the National Energy Administration projects. China currently boasts 3.5 million jobs in clean energy, by far the most in the world, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency.

The country has already become a major manufacturer and exporter of renewable energy technology, supplying some two-thirds of the world’s solar panels.

China also has a strong grip on wind power. It produces nearly half of the world’s wind turbines — at a rate of about two every hour.

Inside the U.S. solar jobs boom

China’s hottest new project is a giant floating solar energy farm located in the eastern province of Anhui.

Covering about 100 square miles, it is the largest floating panel facility in the world. It has the capacity to produce enough energy to power 15,000 homes, according to Sungrow Power Supply, the company behind the farm.

Fittingly, the solar farm floats atop a flooded area once home to a coal mining factory.

The idea to float solar panels is fast catching on in an industry that faces one persistent problem — space.

“The government won’t allow us to just install panels wherever we want,” says Yao Shaohua, the deputy director of the project. “This lake wouldn’t be used otherwise, so it makes sense.”

Initially it is more expensive to build solar farms on water than on the land. But experts say floating solar panels can run more efficiently in the long run, because they are cooled by the water underneath.

“The whole world, including China, is recognizing that we need to fight climate change,” said Yao. “I’m pretty sure this is going to be a trend.”

China’s growing dominance in the sector has had a huge effect on the global market.

Manufacturers dramatically ramped up production of solar panels, driven by an estimated $42 billion in government subsidized loans between 2010 and 2012, according to the GW Solar Institute at George Washington University. The flood of Chinese panels was one of the main reasons why world prices crashed by 80% between 2008 and 2013.

The U.S. accused China of flooding the market and the Commerce Department started imposing steep tariffs on Chinese-made solar panels in 2012 in a bid to protect American producers.

Just last month, the U.S. informed the World Trade Organization that it may impose tariffs on imports of solar panels from other countries as well, alleging that Chinese companies have opened production facilities in third countries to get around import restrictions.

Wind, solar do not harm power grid reliability-draft U.S. study

Reuters

Wind, solar do not harm power grid reliability-draft U.S. study

By Timothy Gardner, Reuters July 19, 2017

Snow is seen on the San Gorgonio Mountains behind a windmill farm in Palm Springs, California, January 7, 2016. REUTERS/Sam Mircovich

(The July 17 story corrects paragraph 14 to show that ERCOT does not serve a small part of Nevada.)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The growth of renewable power, including wind and solar, has not harmed the reliability of the U.S. electricity grid, according to a draft U.S. Department of Energy study, echoing the findings of grid operators across the country.

The conclusion of the draft, dated July and viewed by Reuters, could ease fears in the renewable energy industry that the widely anticipated study would be used by President Donald Trump’s administration to form policies supporting coal plants at the expense of wind and solar.

“Numerous technical studies for most regions of the nation indicate that significantly higher levels of renewable energy can be integrated without any compromise of system reliability,” the draft says.

It added that growth of renewables could require the building of more transmission lines, advanced planning, and more flexibility to balance generation and meet demand. But it said that baseload power – coal and nuclear power – “is not as necessary as it used to be” given advances in grid technology.

Shaylyn Hynes, an Energy Department spokeswoman, said the draft was “outdated” and had not gone through “any adjudication” from career or political staff. The final report had been slated for release in early July, but is now expected within a couple of weeks, she said.

The draft can be seen at http://tmsnrt.rs/2v9PJ9l. Bloomberg first reported on it on Friday.

Energy Secretary Rick Perry had called in April for his department to examine whether regulations backing renewable energy use imposed by former president Barack Obama and other administrations “threaten to undercut the performance of the grid well into the future.”

Critics of wind and solar energy have argued that those technologies leave the U.S. power system vulnerable to shortages when the sun is blocked or the wind does not blow – meaning that coal, nuclear, and natural gas plants that do not depend on weather should remain the bulk producers.

Renewable energy is seen by many state and local government as a cost-effective way to reduce emissions linked to climate change. Nuclear energy is virtually emissions-free but poses potential safety risks and the thorny issue of disposing radioactive plant waste.

Renewables and natural gas have displaced a slew of coal and nuclear plants in recent years, due to lower prices, environmental regulations and government subsidies. The draft said this is “not yet a problem for grid reliability and resilience – but further study is needed,” to determine how much of this “baseload” power can be lost while still ensuring reliability.

GRID OPERATORS SEE NO THREAT

Officials at four grid operators, serving about 133 million customers, agreed renewables do not harm energy security or reliability.

“I don’t see them as threatening, no,” said Woody Rickerson, vice president of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. “We can perform reliably with renewable generation; there are just things you have to do with renewables that you don’t have to do with (conventional) power generation.”

ERCOT said Texas got about 15 percent of its power from wind generation in 2016, and the region’s solar power will grow quickly.

Grid operators said that as renewables become more common they depend more on weather forecasting. Storm fronts and cloud covers sometimes require grid operators to ensure that conventional power is readily available as solar and wind power generation waxes and wanes.

Stu Bresler, senior vice president for operations at PJM Interconnection, which coordinates the movement of power in all or parts of 13 states from New Jersey to Tennessee, said renewables have not harmed reliability in his region.

Steven Greenlee, senior spokesman at the California Independent System Operator, said on one day in May wind and solar served 67 percent of CALISO’s demand.

“We don’t see the security at risk,” he said.

(Editing by Jonathan Oatis)

California Just Did Something That Will Make the Rest of the Nation’s Liberals Green With Envy

Mother Jones

California Just Did Something That Will Make the Rest of the Nation’s Liberals Green With Envy

Bipartisan agreement on climate change is possible.

Oliver Milman July 18, 2017

This story was originally published by The Guardian and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

California legislators have voted to extend a centerpiece program to cut greenhouse gas emissions, burnishing the state’s reputation as a bulwark against Donald Trump’s demolition of climate change measures.

In a rare show of bipartisan agreement on climate change, eight Republicans joined with Democrats in California’s two legislative houses to extend the cap-and-trade emissions system a further 10 years until 2030.

The emissions-lowering scheme, the second-largest of its kind in the world, aims to help the state reach its target of cutting planet-warming gases 40% by 2030, compared to 1990 levels.

“Tonight, California stood tall and once again, boldly confronted the existential threat of our time,” said Jerry Brown, California’s governor. “Republicans and Democrats set aside their differences, came together and took courageous action. That’s what good government looks like.”

The cap-and-trade program, established in 2006 under then governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, sets a limit on emissions and requires polluters to either reduce their output or purchase permits from those who have. As the limit steadily becomes stricter, it nudges businesses to take the more financially attractive option of cutting their pollution.

California, the sixth-largest economy in the world, is in stark opposition to Trump’s administration. The president has said he will withdraw the US from the Paris climate agreement and has set about dismantling federal policies that lower emissions.

Brown has positioned himself as a countervailing force to Trump, visiting China to talk to its leaders about climate change and promising to build and launch weather-monitoring satellites should federal budget cuts endanger programs handled by Nasa and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOOA).

“A lot of you people are going to be alive, and you’re going to be alive in a horrible situation,” Brown told California lawmakers at a committee hearing shortly before the vote. “This isn’t for me, I’m going to be dead. This is for you, and it’s real.”

“A lot of you people are going to be alive, and you’re going to be alive in a horrible situation,” Brown told California lawmakers. “This isn’t for me, I’m going to be dead. This is for you, and it’s real.”

Many Californian Republicans remain opposed to the cap-and-trade system, warning it will pose a “crushing” blow to small businesses. But the bill ended up gaining an unusual level of Republican support, with the extension also supported by key conservative constituencies, including the California Chamber of Commerce and associations representing manufacturers and agriculture interests.

Concessions to get some Republican support, such as the limiting of separate regulations on refineries, risked alienating more liberal Democrats. Some environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, attacked the bill for allowing polluters to continue emitting greenhouse gases if they offset them with green projects, including those outside California.

But other climate activists declared themselves pleased with the outcome, pointing out that it showed that action to reduce emissions is bipartisan and popular.

“California is once again showing Washington DC and the rest of the world that fighting climate and air pollution is the right thing for our health, economy and future,” said Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund.

California’s pioneering attitude to climate change action was underlined by separate court action launched on Monday, aimed at holding fossil fuel companies accountable for global warming.

Marin and San Mateo counties, along with the City of Imperial Beach, filed a lawsuit in the California superior court to complain that 37 oil, gas and coal companies knew burning their products would increase carbon pollution and cause sea levels rise.

“Defendants have known for nearly 50 years that greenhouse gas pollution from their fossil fuel products has a significant impact on the Earth’s climate and sea levels,” the complaint states.

The municipalities are claiming damages from the fossil fuel firms, echoing a strategy used against the tobacco industry in the 1990s that resulted in multi-billion dollar payouts.

The companies targeted in the lawsuit include Shell, Exxon Mobile, Chevron and BP. According to the municipalities, these businesses have caused around 20% of all industrial carbon dioxide and methane pollution since the 1960s.