Hey Mr. President, maybe the reason why more Americans emigrated to Norway last year than the other way around is because they have universal health care and a strong social democracy.
Hey Mr. President, maybe the reason why more Americans emigrated to Norway last year than the other way around is because they have universal health care and a strong social democracy.
One year in, Trump’s environmental agenda is already taking a measurable toll
Evan Halper, Contact Reporter January 18, 2018
A massive coal ash spill near Knoxville, Tenn., in 2008 forever changed life for Janie Clark’s family and left her husband with crippling health problems. So Clark was astounded late last year when she heard what the Environmental Protection Agency had done.
In September, at the behest of power companies, the agency shelved a requirement that coal plants remove some of the most toxic chemicals from their wastewater. The infamous Kingston power plant that released millions of cubic yards of toxic coal ash into area rivers was among some 50 plants given a reprieve.
After the EPA’s action, the plant’s owners delayed new wastewater treatment technology for at least two years.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Clark said. “It is like a slap in the face. It is like everything that has happened is just being ignored.”
The real-time impact of the most industry-friendly regulatory regime in decades is at times overshadowed by policy battles that are years from resolution. President Trump’s moves to shrink national monuments, return drilling to the waters off the West Coast and allow natural gas companies to release more methane into the air are destined to be tied up in court for the foreseeable future. The contentious Keystone XL pipeline may never get built as volatile oil prices threaten its profitability.
Yet under EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, the air and the water are already being affected as the administration tinkers with programs obscure to most Americans, with names like “Effluent Limitations Guidelines and Standards for Steam Electric Power Plants” and “Air Quality Designations for Ozone.”
Pruitt sued the EPA more than a dozen times when he was Oklahoma attorney general, challenging the agency’s restrictions on the fossil fuel industry and authority to protect the nation’s air and water. Now under his leadership, the agency’s enforcement actions against scofflaws have plummeted, agency data indicate.
The numbers emerging from the federal government’s database of enforcement actions against polluters show that from the time Pruitt took the helm early last year through November, the dollar amount of pollution-control equipment and cleanup activity the EPA demanded dropped by more than 85%. Even compared with the dollar amount required during the same period of the George W. Bush administration, there is a dropoff of more than 50%.
“It is one thing to say we have a change of administration and a different level of emphasis and focus,” said Cynthia Giles, who led the EPA’s enforcement office during the Obama administration and has analyzed the recent data. “But this kind of drop is not a change of emphasis. That is abandonment. That is a very, very big deal.”
The EPA strenuously objects to the characterization. The agency says holding polluters accountable remains a priority, that a nine-month snapshot of the data does not tell a complete story and that in many cases the EPA has shifted enforcement of environmental violations to state agencies.
Yet those state agencies often lack the resources and sophistication to handle them.
Even in California, where state leaders defiantly assert that their agencies will hold polluters accountable where the EPA retreats, a case involving large amounts of toxic material at the former Exxon Mobil refinery in Torrance highlights how ill-equipped the state can be for enforcement responsibilities.
When EPA inspectors arrived at the refinery in December 2016, they found 265 tons of toxic material had sat illegally at the site, in unsuitable tanks, for 26 years, according to a copy of their report provided to The Times by the Washington-based Environmental Integrity Project. Such material is supposed to be moved to a hazardous waste facility within a year, according to Kandice Bellamy, a retired EPA inspector in California who was part of the team.
State inspectors had earlier been to the site while the many tons of toxic material sat there, Bellamy said, but apparently had not done anything about it.
State officials refused to comment, saying the refinery remained subject to investigation.
“One of the alarming things with this facility is that not too far in the past there had been an explosion there, and they had to evacuate a sizable chunk of the area,” Bellamy said, referring to an incident in 2015 which the U.S. Chemical Safety Board, which investigates accidents at plants, called a “serious near miss” that could have resulted in a “potentially catastrophic release” into surrounding communities.
“And we still found things that were of concern.”
Bellamy said the federal team was dismayed EPA higher-ups did not pursue the long list of potential violations they drew up, many of them serious. Instead, the case was turned back over to the state.
“We had the sense that they [EPA] had decided not to take on any of these challenging type cases because any refinery operator and their attorney could just appeal directly to the administrator in Washington,” Bellamy said. “And their pleas would most likely be seen favorably by this administration.”
An EPA spokeswoman in Southern California declined to discuss the case, writing in an email that “EPA’s policy is not to comment on investigations nor potential investigations.”
In another case, in southwestern Michigan, the Trump administration abandoned a years-long push to require a coal-fired electrical plant operated by DTE Energy to update its pollution controls.
A federal appeals court had twice upheld the EPA’s position. But the administration changed direction and put the company in the clear. That decision relaxed restrictions on harmful emissions that owners of other coal-fired power plants will be subject to when they expand facilities.
Pruitt announced the new policy in a December memo, writing that it is not the EPA’s place to investigate whether plant operators are lowballing the emissions that renovated facilities will generate.
The move is expected to slow the pace at which plants install state of the art pollution controls, just as the EPA decision that so upset Janie Clark in Knoxville is moving utilities to slow down plans to remove some of the most toxic materials from coal plant wastewater.
The EPA delay of the wastewater rule, made after power companies protested it would cost jobs and undermine Trump’s energy agenda, is having ripple effects across the country.
Coal plants that were poised to start installing the new technology as soon as this year are now balking.
“We were working with a good number of utilities who immediately said we are putting this on hold,” said Jamie Peterson, CEO of San Diego-based Frontier Water Systems, a company that installs the treatment technology.
“If this rule had not been changed, there would be a significant amount of work being done right now,” said Peterson. “The market has dropped by 80 or 90%.” Regulatory documents obtained by the Southern Environmental Law Center confirm that plants are changing their plans.
As the market for high-tech equipment meant to keep some of the most harmful toxins from migrating into drinking water craters during the Trump administration, the market for the highest-polluting trucks is looking up.
The attorneys general of California and 11 other states call the trucks a “pollution menace” that produce 20 to 40 times the harmful emissions of new trucks their size, but the industry that makes “gliders” — trucks built using a new chassis and an old, refurbished diesel engine — has been given a big gift by the administration.
Federal officials are racing to block a rule taking effect this month that aims to keep gliders off the road. The regulation limits the number of new gliders not meeting emission standards to roughly 1,500 each year, nationwide, and eventually bans them altogether. The EPA is moving to change the rule to allow unlimited gliders.
Pruitt pilloried the cap as an attempt by the Obama administration to “bend the rule of law and expand the reach of the federal government in a way that threatened to put an entire industry of specialized truck manufacturers out of business.”
The California Air Resources Board warns the about-face threatens to completely offset all the clean-air gains it has made through the state’s aggressive regulation of heavy diesel trucks and “have a profoundly harmful impact on public health.”
The trucks would continue to roll onto the roads at the same time California and many other states are scrambling to deal with another blow the EPA delivered to their efforts to clean the air. The agency has delayed for at least six months its deadline for declaring which parts of the country are plagued with smog levels that violate new, stricter limits guided by the Clean Air Act.
The EPA’s delay inhibits state and regional air regulators from taking actions to confront the pollution. In California alone, the ozone standards are projected to save as many as 218 lives and prevent 120,000 missed days of school each year.
The EPA says it will have new rules ready by April, but Janet McCabe, who headed the agency’s clean air efforts during the Obama administration, said even so, the delay has consequences.
“If you are an asthmatic exposed to high levels of air pollution, it can mean a lot of missed school days in that six months,” McCabe said.
Nine of the 12 board members quit Monday night, citing Zinke’s refusal to convene the citizen advisory panel or discuss matters with it since he came into office last March. Zinke has drawn criticism for a number of his actions in the Interior Department, including silencing scientists about climate change.
Zinke has rejected numerous requests to meet with the advisory panel, which is required to meet twice a year, despite his efforts to review restructuring national parks. Departing board Chairman Tony Knowles told the Post that the panel has waited to work with Zinke but has been “frozen out.”
“We understand the complexity of transition but our requests to engage have been ignored and the matters on which we wanted to brief the new Department team are clearly not part of its agenda,” Knowles wrote in a letter to Zinke, which was obtained by the Post.
All nine panel members, who are not employees of the Interior Department but are citizens who have shown a commitment to the National Park Service, have terms set to expire in May. Their early departure leaves the government without a functioning body to designate national historic or natural landmarks, according to the Post.
Phil Francis, chairman of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks, said in a news release that he understood the members’ frustration at the “complete lack of response” from the Interior secretary.
“This discourteous and disrespectful treatment of the Board is inexcusable and, unfortunately, consistent with a decidedly anti-park pattern demonstrated by Secretary Zinke’s department,” Francis said in the release sent to HuffPost.
The Interior Department did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.
“It’s profoundly offensive because it portrays a lack of understanding about the civil service and the mission of the agency,” Clement told HuffPost. “It made it clear that what he’s trying to do is not work with the career staff and advance the mission ― he’s trying to undercut the agency and its mission. And it became very clear that his interests were aligned with special interests, like the oil and gas industry.”
CNN Politics
9 Park Service advisory board members quit
By Sara Ganim and Sophie Tatum, CNN January 16, 2018
Ryan Zinke
Washington (CNN)Nine members of the National Park System Advisory Board quit Tuesday, citing concern over the Trump administration’s priorities regarding the national parks, according to a letter obtained by CNN.
The letter, sent by nine members of the board to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, says the group has been unable to meet with Zinke and the Interior Department during his first year in the position.
The author of the letter, former Alaska Democratic Gov. Tony Knowles, said the board is supposed to meet twice a year. However, he said, he’s been told things were “suspended.”
Previous administrations met with the board immediately, Knowles noted, having served on the board for seven years.
A request for comment has not been returned by the Interior Department.
“Here we were just being basically stonewalled. … They had no interest in learning our agenda, and what we had to brief them on,” Knowles told CNN. “The board said we need to make a statement. We can’t make a statement to the secretary, then we need to make a public statement.”
Eight of the nine who were part of the letter had terms expiring in May, and suspected Interior was running out the clock.
“For the last year we have stood by waiting for the chance to meet and continue the partnership between the NPSAB and the DOI as prescribed by law,” the letter reads. “We understand the complexity of transition but our requests to engage have been ignored and the matters on which we wanted to brief the new department team are clearly not part of its agenda.”
“I have a profound concern that the mission of stewardship, protection, and advancement of our National Parks has been set aside,” the letter said.
Trump ends 1st year with lowest average approval rating
Emily Swanson, Associated Press January 16, 2018
Graphic shows average job approval ratings for U.S. presidents in the first year of office.
WASHINGTON (AP) — This is a record not to be coveted: Donald Trump is wrapping up a year in office with the lowest average approval rating of any elected president in his first term.
That’s according to polling by Gallup, which shows that Trump has averaged just a 39 percent approval rating since his inauguration. The previous low was held by Bill Clinton, whose first-year average stood 10 points higher than Trump’s, at 49 percent.
Recent surveys show most Americans view Trump as a divisive figure and even question his fitness for office. One relative bright spot for Trump is his handling of the economy, though even there his ratings are not as high as might be expected given a relatively strong economy.
What the polls show about how Americans view their president a year into his term:
Unusual Popularity
Trump’s current approval rating in Gallup’s weekly poll is comparable to his average rating, standing at just 38 percent, with 57 percent saying they disapprove.
The persistence of Trump’s first-year blues is unprecedented for a president so early in his term. Americans usually give their new presidents the benefit of the doubt, but Trump’s “honeymoon period,” to the extent he had one, saw his approval rating only as high as 45 percent.
Since then, Trump has spent more time under 40 percent than any other first-year president.
Presidents have recovered from periods of low popularity before. For example, Clinton’s rating fell to just 37 percent in June 1993 before quickly regaining ground, and he went on to win re-election. Harry S. Truman held the approval of less than 40 percent of Americans for significant chunks of his first term and was also re-elected. He went on to set Gallup’s lowest-ever approval mark, at just 22 percent in 1952.
Trump’s lowest point in Gallup’s weekly polling — 35 percent — remains higher than those of several earlier presidents. Truman, Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter all had their ratings dip under 30 percent.
Strong Suits
There aren’t many bright spots for Trump, but there are some. For one, most Republicans continue to approve of him — 83 percent of registered voters who identify as Republicans, according to a recent Quinnipiac poll.
The same poll found that most voters overall find Trump to be intelligent and a strong person.
And positive ratings for Trump’s handling of the economy have tended to run higher than his overall job ratings.
In a December poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, Trump’s rating on handling the economy was 8 percentage points higher than his overall approval, though even that stood at just 40 percent in the survey, which was a particularly negative one for Trump.
In the Quinnipiac poll, voters were more likely to say Trump is helping the economy than hurting it, 37 percent to 29 percent. On the other hand, more said President Barack Obama deserves the credit than Trump does, 49 percent to 40 percent.
On The Issues
Aside from the economy, surveys have suggested few policy bright spots for Trump.
Health care has been a consistent low point. Seven in 10 Americans in the December AP-NORC poll said they disapproved of Trump’s handling of the issue, even as 85 percent called the issue very important to them personally.
In another AP-NORC poll conducted late in 2017, just 23 percent of Americans said he has kept the promises he made while running for president, while 30 percent said he’s tried and failed and 45 percent said he has not done so at all. More than half said the country is worse off since Trump became president.
That poll was conducted before the passage of a tax bill that Trump signed into law in late December, but there’s little sign that the law will have an immediate positive impact. A Gallup poll conducted in January found that just 33 percent of Americans approved of the legislation.
Character Concerns
But it may be character more than policy that’s driving negative opinions of Trump. In the January poll by Quinnipiac University, most voters said Trump is not level-headed, honest or even fit to serve as president.
And the AP-NORC poll conducted in December found that two-thirds of Americans thought the country has become even more divided as a result of Trump’s presidency.
In a July Gallup poll that asked those who disapproved of Trump for their reasons why, most cited his personality or character over issues, policies or overall job performance. That stood in stark contrast to Gallup’s polling on Obama in 2009 and George W. Bush in 2001, when far fewer cited such concerns about personality or character as reasons for their negative opinions.
Voters Give Trump an ‘F’ Grade for First Year in Office, Poll Shows
Harriet Sinclair, Newsweek January 16, 2018
Voters Give Trump an F Grade for First Year in Office, Poll Shows
Donald Trump has been given an “F” grade for his first year as president by more than a third of voters, a new poll revealed.
The Morning Consult and Politico poll asked respondents to grade the president based on the previous 12 months, which have seen Trump criticized for a failed attempt to repeal Obamacare, several bungled attempts at a Muslim ban, and, most recently, a pledge to pull DACA, with the largest portion of voters giving him an F.
Of the 1,988 registered voters who took the survey, 698 of them (or 35 percent) said the president was failing in his first year in office, followed by the second largest group of 354 people (or 18 percent) who gave the president an A for his first year, highlighting the oft-discussed polarization in U.S. politics over the past 18 months.
Voters, who were surveyed from January 4-5 also felt the president had not done well on issues including tackling terrorism, foreign relations, debt, and the economy—with the largest groups being those who rated the president an F on the aforementioned topics.
Indeed, 26 percent of respondents gave the president an F on the economy, compared with 25 percent who gave him an A; 38 percent of respondents said the president had failed on health care, compared with 10 percent who gave him an A on the topic; and 28 percent rated the president an F on tackling terrorism compared with the 22 percent who believed Trump was excellent on tackling terrorism.
For his part, the president has previously suggested polls that dismiss his performance or give him a low approval rating are “fake polls” reported by “fake news,” and previous polls leading up to his surprise election victory did indeed suggest he had far less voter support than his base proved on the day.
However, his approval rating must be a cause for concern, with a CNN poll released before Christmas giving Trump the lowest approval rating of any president in modern history, and indicating a 10 percent drop in favorability since he took office.
Iranian Tanker Leaves Massive Oil Slick, Worries Mount Over Environmental Damage
Lorraine Chow January 15, 2018
Experts have expressed concern about the potential environmental aftermath of a stricken Iranian oil tanker that exploded and sank in the East China Sea on Sunday.
The Sanchi—carrying 150,000 tons, or nearly 1 million barrels, of condensate oil—collided with the CF Crystal on Jan 6. The tanker caught fire and burned for more than a week before sinking. Iranian officials said all 32 crew members on the tanker were killed.
According to the BBC, Chinese ships are racing to clean up a 46 square mile oil slick left behind. The slick is thought to be made up of heavy fuel used to power the vessel.
BBC’s China Correspondent Robin Brant reported that the oil slick has more than doubled in size since Sunday, noting that the big concern now is the environmental impact.
There could also be a very tall plume of condensate oil underneath the surface, Brant noted. Condensate is an ultra-light oil that is highly toxic and much more explosive than regular crude oil.
Experts worry that ship’s sinking would likely expel the remaining condensate and the tanker’s bunker fuel, contaminating the surrounding waters, Reuters reported.
According to Reuters, “bunker fuel is the dirtiest kind of oil, extremely toxic when spilled, though less explosive. Condensate is poisonous to marine organisms.”
As Rick Steiner, a U.S. marine scientist explained to the news service, the East China Sea is known for its rich—but already polluted—marine ecosystem that includes whales, porpoises and seabirds.
“As with all major oil spills, time is of the essence. This is particularly so with condensate spills, as the substance is so toxic and volatile,” said Steiner.
In a statement, Greenpeace said the explosion and sinking occurred in “an important (fish) spawning ground.”
“At this time of year the area is used as wintering ground by common edible species such as hairtail, yellow croaker, chub mackerel and blue crab. The area is also on the migratory pathway of many marine mammals, such as humpback whale, right whale and gray whale,” the environmental organization said.
Teng Da from the Chinese Oceanic Administration told CGTN, “Now that the tanker has sunk, what comes next to the ecological system the government should watch very closely.”
Two Major Food Companies Announce War on Packaging Waste
Lorraine Chow January 16, 2018
More and more businesses are stepping up to reduce consumer waste. Iceland Foods, a major UK supermarket chain specializing in frozen food, announced on Tuesday that it will eliminate plastic packaging from its own brand of products by the end of 2023.
In a separate announcement on Tuesday, McDonald’s said it will add recycling to its more than 36,000 locations around the world by 2025 and pledges that all packaging on customer products will come from “renewable, recycled or certified sources” by that same year.
The moves from Iceland and McDonald’s are very important. Sure, an individual’s own efforts to reduce their plastic footprint makes a difference, but when global corporations also step up to reduce waste, it can make a big impact.
“The onus is on retailers, as leading contributors to plastic packaging pollution and waste, to take a stand and deliver meaningful change,” Richard Walker, Iceland’s managing director, said. “Other supermarkets, and the retail industry as a whole, should follow suit and offer similar commitments during 2018. This is a time for collaboration.”
Iceland aims to become the first major retailer globally to eliminate plastic packaging from its own brand. Its new products will consist of paper or pulp trays food trays and paper bags instead of plastic ones. The items will be fully recyclable through domestic waste collection or in-store recycling facilities.
We’re becoming the first UK retailer to go #PlasticFree in its own-label product range by 2023. Are you with us? #TooCoolForPlastic
“There really is no excuse any more for excessive packaging that creates needless waste and damages our environment,” Walker added. “The technologies and practicalities to create less environmentally harmful alternatives exist, and so Iceland is putting a stake in the ground.”
John Sauven, the executive director of Greenpeace, applauded Iceland’s commitment to go plastic-free in five years.
“It’s now up to other retailers and food producers to respond to that challenge,” he said. “The tidal wave of plastic pollution will only start to recede when they turn off the tap.”
McDonald’s, the world’s biggest food chain, is also tackling the issue of unnecessary packaging. Currently, only 10 percent of McDonald’s tens of thousands of locations allow people to recycle. Its new goal is to recycle guest packaging in 100 percent of its restaurants by 2025.
“With 37,000 restaurants in more than 100 countries serving over 69 million customers daily, McDonald’s has the responsibility and opportunity to use our scale for good,” Francesca DeBiase, the chief supply chain and sustainability officer for McDonald’s said. “By acting now and boldly, we hope to lead the industry and our customers toward a more sustainable future and fuel a movement to address waste as a global community.”
“We understand that recycling infrastructure, regulations and consumer behaviors vary city to city and country to country, but we plan to be part of the solution and help influence powerful change,” DeBiase said.
“For example McDonald’s restaurants in UK offer recycling bins for our customers, and in Germany, our crew members separate the guest packaging for our customers,” DeBiase continued. “One of the strengths of the McDonald’s system is that together with our franchisees, we have global reach, and we integrate locally into the communities where we operate. We’re excited to keep learning about what works well for recycling in different geographies and localities, which will help us find solutions in places that are just getting started on this journey.”
McDonald’s also pledges that by 2025, 100 percent of its guest packaging will come from renewable, recycled or certified sources, with a preference for Forest Stewardship Council certification for fiber.
As Business Insider noted, McDonald’s latest move follows a recent announcement to ditch foam cold-beverage cups and trays. The company also has plans to use 100 percent recycled fiber-based packaging globally by 2020.
This was one of our most-viewed videos on Facebook this year.#BestOf2017: She's had her water supply contaminated by coalmining, her milk rendered undrinkable, and watched her property be coated in coal dust. Meet 83-year-old farmer Wendy Bowman, who refused to sell her Hunter Valley property to make way for a coalmine.
Renewable Energy Will Be Consistently Cheaper Than Fossil Fuels By 2020, Report Claims
Dominic Dudley, Contributor January 13, 2018
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
The cost of renewable energy is now falling so fast that it should be a consistently cheaper source of electricity generation than traditional fossil fuels within just a few years, according to a new report from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).
The organization – which has more than 150 member countries – says the cost of generating power from onshore wind has fallen by around 23% since 2010 while the cost of solar photovoltaic (PV) electricity has fallen by 73% in that time. With further price falls expected for these and other green energy options, IRENA says all renewable energy technologies should be competitive on price with fossil fuels by 2020.
Globally, onshore wind schemes are now costing an average of $0.06 per kilowatt hour (kwh), although some schemes are coming in at $0.04 per kwh, while the cost of solar PV is down to $0.10 per kwh. In comparison, the cost of electricity generation based on fossil fuels typically falls in a range of $0.05 to $0.17 per kwh.
IRENA
A delegate walks through the lobby at the 8th Assembly of the International Renewable Energy Agency in Abu Dhabi on January, 2018 (Photo: IRENA).
The figures are contained in IRENA’s Renewable Power Generation Costs in 2017 report, which was released on January 13, the first day of the 8th IRENA Assembly in Abu Dhabi, the capital city of the UAE. The report predicts that solar costs will fall even further in the next few years, with a further halving of typical costs by 2020. That means onshore wind and solar PV projects could be consistently delivering electricity for as little as $0.03 per kwh within two years.
Adnan Amin, director-general of IRENA, says a significant shift is underway in the energy sector. “These cost declines across technologies are unprecedented and representative of the degree to which renewable energy is disrupting the global energy system,” he said.
The expected price falls for green energy will provide a fresh challenge to the market position of legacy fuels and to the countries that rely on them for export earnings, such as many Middle East states which have long looked to oil and gas sales as the bedrock of their economies. It also provides a challenge for some Western countries including the United States, where President Donald Trump has made a point of championing the coal industry and has taken steps to increase oil output.
If renewable energy is indeed able to undercut the cost of legacy fuels, then governments and large corporations building new power plants will almost certainly turn to green energy for any new capacity, which will reduce demand for oil, natural gas and coal.
There are several reasons for the fast-improving cost performance of the key renewable energy technologies. One is the growing preference among governments for competitive bidding processes when handing out contracts to develop new power plants, which is helping to force down the tariffs that project developers can demand. Alongside that, there is a growing base of experienced developers competing for project opportunities around the world. Thirdly, continued advances are being made in the technologies themselves.
While onshore wind and PV solar are leading the way, other sister technologies are also becoming more competitive. IRENA estimates that offshore wind and concentrating solar power should cost in a range of $0.06-$0.10 per kwh by 2020-22.
And although solar and wind power are the main drivers of a shift to renewable energy, other green energy sources are also becoming more competitive. The report points to bio-energy, geothermal and hydropower which, it says, have all been able to compete directly on cost with fossil fuels in some cases over the past year.
The falls in costs is leading to some big investments. IRENA says that since 2013 more than $1 trillion has been invested in renewable energy around the world and the industry now provides nearly 10 million jobs.
“Turning to renewables for new power generation is not simply an environmentally conscious decision, it is now – overwhelmingly – a smart economic one,” said Amin. “We expect the transition to gather further momentum around the world in 2018.”
IRENA
Adnan Amin, director general of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), speaking at the 8th IRENA Assembly in Abu Dhabi on January 13, 2018.
Dominic Dudley is a freelance journalist with almost two decades’ experience in reporting on business, economic and political stories in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Europe.
Futurism
Denmark Breaks Own Record for Electricity Generated via Wind Power
The Wind Rises
Denmark recently set a new record in wind power generation, harvesting 43.4 percent of its electricity from the resource in 2017 — beating its previous best from 2016. The country’s government is hoping to use the momentum to encourage other countries to get on board.
“The price of wind energy is moving in one direction only, and that’s a steep downward trajectory,” commented Denmark’s energy minister Lars Chr. Lilleholt, according to a report from Bloomberg.
While Denmark’s decision to pursue renewable resources is part of a larger global effort to phase out fossil fuels, the country does have something of a vested interest. The world’s biggest turbine maker, Vestas Wind Systems A/S, is Danish. Furthermore, its government holds a controlling stake in Orsted A/S, which remains the biggest operator of offshore wind farms internationally.
Denmark still subsidizes wind power projects, as it has done since the 1970s. However, Lilleholt is confident that this will not be necessary for much longer.
Certain areas of the United States are making strides forward, like the record-breaking results reported in California and the enormous Amazon-backed wind farm set to be constructed in Texas. The future of those plans remains to be seen, however, as calls to discontinue tax credits promoting its usage would seem to be a step in the opposite direction.
AFP
Fossil fuels blown away by wind in cost terms: study
There is a bright future for wind and solar power as they are rapidly becoming cheaper than fossil fuel electricity plants, according to a new study. (AFP Photo/Johnathan Nackstrand)
January 13, 2018. Paris (AFP) – New onshore wind and solar energy projects are set to deliver electricity more cheaply than fossil fuels plants, with other green technologies also rapidly gaining a cost advantage over dirty fuels, a report published Saturday said.
According to a new cost analysis from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), within two years “all the renewable power generation technologies that are now in commercial use are expected to fall within the fossil fuel-fired cost range, with most at the lower end or undercutting fossil fuels”.
It expects renewables will cost between three and 10 US cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) by 2020, while the current cost spectrum for fossil fuel power generation ranges from five to 17 US cents per kwh.
“This new dynamic signals a significant shift in the energy paradigm,” said IRENA’s Director-General, Adnan Amin, in a statement.
“Turning to renewables for new power generation is not simply an environmentally conscious decision, it is now — overwhelmingly — a smart economic one,” he added.
Continued technological advancements are not the only factor helping drive down prices. The report found that the market was becoming more competitive and a number of experienced project developers had emerged in the sector.
The best onshore wind and solar PV projects are expected to deliver electricity for three US cents or less by next year.
But onshore wind and solar are not the only sectors becoming more competitive rapidly. The study found that new bio-energy and geothermal projects commissioned in 2017 had global weighted average costs of around seven US cents per kwh.
IRENA said auction results suggest that two other technologies –concentrating solar power (CSP) and offshore wind — will provide electricity for between 6-10 US cents per kwh by 2020.
“These cost declines across technologies are unprecedented and representative of the degree to which renewable energy is disrupting the global energy system,” said Amin.
The report was released on the first day of the eighth assembly of IRENA, which aims to be a global hub for renewable energy cooperation and information exchange by its 154 member countries.
Voters Give Trump an F Grade for First Year in Office, Poll Shows
A delegate walks through the lobby at the 8th Assembly of the International Renewable Energy Agency in Abu Dhabi on January, 2018 (Photo: IRENA).
Adnan Amin, director general of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), speaking at the 8th IRENA Assembly in Abu Dhabi on January 13, 2018.
The Wind Rises
There is a bright future for wind and solar power as they are rapidly becoming cheaper than fossil fuel electricity plants, according to a new study. (AFP Photo/Johnathan Nackstrand)