Climate Change

[xyz]

As does solar.

And wind.

And pumped hydro.

And nuclear.

See how that works?

Sigh.

Solar doesn’t.
Wind doesn’t.
Pumped hydro doesn’t.
Nuclear does
Geothermal does.

Solar and wind are unreliable and require unscalable battery storage. Pumped hydro lol. We have a dam in. BC that’s been under construction since 1954. You can’t drop them anywhere you want.

Geothermal and nuclear can go anywhere in comparison to wind, solar and dams.

Let go of wind and solar, focus on clean reliable base load power and we have a chance.

[skaredshtles]

Sigh.

Solar doesn’t.
Wind doesn’t.
Pumped hydro doesn’t.
Nuclear does
Geothermal does.

Solar and wind are unreliable and require unscalable battery storage. Pumped hydro lol. We have a dam in. BC that’s been under construction since 1954. You can’t drop them anywhere you want.

Geothermal and nuclear can go anywhere in comparison to wind, solar and dams.

Let go of wind and solar, focus on clean reliable base load power and we have a chance.

[neufox47]

Surprising (actually not surprising given the NYT has an agenda) that the article made no mention of how electricity is produced and transmitted.

In China they are opening an average of 2 new coal fired electric generating plants per week.

In California the power grid is so outdated that rotating electric power grid blackouts have become a seasonal thing. My guess is that many home owners that can afford it have installed whole house backup generators, powered by diesel, gasoline, or propane.

Now that subsidies are winding down, in the US electric car sales have plummeted. And for millions of folks living in apartments where a recharging set up is not possible, they have never been potential EV customers.

What a load of nonsense. Do you have any sources for those claims? Even after considering greenhouse gases produced by electric vehicles ICE almost always produce more. If we are comparing a small electric bike or scooter to an ICE car it isn’t even close. https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/el...-vehicle-myths

Secondly small engines are notoriously inefficient and pollute more. Often generating massive amounts of air pollution given their small size (especially true if 2 stroke like in the 3rd world).

Rolling blackouts were reduced to near 0 in California this year and one of the biggest reasons is the doubling of battery backup capacity. My home battery will be part of a plan next year where the utility can pull electricity from it (paying me a premium rate per kWh and an annual amount for participating).

House generator sales have plummeted, the only people installing them in CA with any frequency are those prone to long outages from winter storms. You’d never install a generator over a battery if your concern is the short excess demand power outages (and you cared about money). I know a bunch of people who installed generators in 2018-2019 and now firmly regret it and wish they had went with a solar + battery. A generator is a money pit, $10-20k to install and hundreds of dollars a day to run it vs a battery that will pay for itself over its useful life.

The cheapest way to create electricity today is solar and it isn’t even close. Saying solar shouldn’t be a major component of the future grid is dumb and a position that is only taken by fossil fuel interests and the morons who parrot their misinformation.

[AirheadD8]

Geothermal has a ton of potential. You don’t need to be Iceland either. My home heat and ac is ran on geothermal with just a glycol loop down a 200’ borehole. All you need is an heat exchanger to capture the temperature difference.The pump is even ran on hydro power.

My monthly bill is less than my internet bill. Even in -30 and 40 C temps.

Great way to go,I’m happy I did 10yrs ago. Unfortunately the up front costs are a deterrent for a lot of people. Although the subsidies help a great deal. In order to see a payback you have to commit to staying in your home for quite a few years.
I installed my own system and it’s paid for itself.

Newer homes have better insulation values but a lot of energy wasted in this country is old masonry homes with drafty windows so any investment in insulation goes a long way. Kind of a catch 22 in order to save money you have to have money.

[LongShortLong]

Rolling blackouts were reduced to near 0 in California this year

This is also nonsense isn't it? I live here and my power has never been off. Though it is true at some point in the last decade there were some rolling blackouts. I was scheduled once, but it didn't happen. Recently, the only rolling blackouts I've heard of were in Texas.

Yes EVs might have some remote pollution in regions with coal power. However, EVs are unlike gas cars. Once purchased, a gas car pollutes where it's used, and only pollutes more as it ages. An EV gets cleaner as the grid gets cleaner.

[WMD]

Sigh.

Solar doesn’t.
Wind doesn’t.
Pumped hydro doesn’t.
Nuclear does
Geothermal does.

Solar and wind are unreliable and require unscalable battery storage. Pumped hydro lol. We have a dam in. BC that’s been under construction since 1954. You can’t drop them anywhere you want.

Geothermal and nuclear can go anywhere in comparison to wind, solar and dams.

Let go of wind and solar, focus on clean reliable base load power and we have a chance.

Wow. Just wow. Sources?

[xyz]

Wow. Just wow. Sources?

Many. Mostly Trump, the KKK and Alex Jones.

[Bunion 2020]

Bozeman’s ‘green tariff’ won’t help the climate crisis
Mike Garrity

December 12, 2023 4:35 am

The City of Bozeman reached an agreement with Northwestern Energy that will allow people to voluntarily pay more for “green” solar and wind energy. Missoula is considering signing a similar agreement. But the question that’s going unanswered is: Why NorthWestern’s customers should pay more for solar and wind generated electricity when they are far cheaper to generate than its antiquated coal-fired plants at Colstrip?

The major increases in the amount of NorthWestern’s solar and wind generated electricity have not come from the corporation’s investments in building solar and wind facilities, but rather from facilities built by others that qualify for contracts and avoided cost rates under the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978 or PURPA, which was implemented to mandate that, among other things, energy corporations buy electricity from renewable and sustainable sources at rates that match the “avoided costs” of the utilities building new non-renewable generation facilities.

As the technology for wind and solar energy has improved and prices have dropped for solar panels, the cost for renewable sources of electricity that have come online in the last decade are far cheaper, cleaner and more efficient than NWE’s carbon-based electricity generation such as Colstrip or its methane plants.

The Northern Cheyenne are working on a solar project with the Department of Energy. Bozeman’s residents who support green energy would be much better off if NorthWestern simply bought more electricity from projects such as the Northern Cheyenne solar array or the Gallatin Power’s solar battery project near Trident. NWE has an agreement with Gallatin that it could advance. NorthWestern could accept those projects under the standard terms of avoided cost, with 25 year contracts. All NorthWestern ratepayers would all be better off if Bozeman and Missoula supported the Northern Cheyenne solar project, the Gallatin solar project, and convinced NorthWestern to stop fighting PURPA projects.

Bozeman and Missoula could also encourage solar farms of 3 megawatts or less to be built nearby. Small solar farms could get a contract at a price set by the Public Service Commission, which to date has been below the current cost Northwestern pays to generate electricity at Colstrip 3 and 4. If Bozeman was successful, there would be more renewable energy in NorthWestern’s portfolio and ratepayers would pay less not more for green electricity.

Finally there’s the fact that Montana’s Public Service Commission recently granted NorthWestern a massive 28% electricity rate increase, mainly because of the high cost of maintaining its antiquated, massively polluting and very expensive coal-fired generators at Colstrip. Electrical rates will go up even more once Northwestern’s new methane-fired electrical generating facility in Laurel comes online.

The bottom line is the City of Bozeman will make climate change worse by making residents pay more for green electricity when, in fact, it’s an energy source that costs less to produce, is far cleaner, sustainable and will help keep snow on the Bridgers in the winter and water in the Gallatin in the summer.

© Daily Montanan, 2023
ABOUT US

The Daily Montanan is a nonprofit, nonpartisan source for trusted news, commentary and insight into statewide policy and politics beneath the Big Sky.

.

[WMD]

Many. Mostly Trump, the KKK and Alex Jones.

That makes sense. At least you are honest about your sources. Now try being honest about renewables and climate change.

[old goat]

Geothermal has a ton of potential. You don’t need to be Iceland either. My home heat and ac is ran on geothermal with just a glycol loop down a 200’ borehole. All you need is an heat exchanger to capture the temperature difference.The pump is even ran on hydro power.

My monthly bill is less than my internet bill. Even in -30 and 40 C temps.

My heating bill is less than my internet bill too, and I'm heating with NG. Although that says more about the cost of internet in rural America.
I doubt ground source heat pumps will ever be practical for individual homes. For large buildings or perhaps clusters of homes in new developments. They did a ground source heat pump when they added on to Truckee High--although there was a big cost overrun. We live on top of granite.

[xyz]

Great way to go,I’m happy I did 10yrs ago. Unfortunately the up front costs are a deterrent for a lot of people. Although the subsidies help a great deal. In order to see a payback you have to commit to staying in your home for quite a few years.
I installed my own system and it’s paid for itself.

Newer homes have better insulation values but a lot of energy wasted in this country is old masonry homes with drafty windows so any investment in insulation goes a long way. Kind of a catch 22 in order to save money you have to have money.

Sure pay back can be slow depending on your energy cost, capital cost and consumption but it’s adding value, for a better resale.

The strata next to me is less attractive to ours mostly based on our geothermal system. The monthly savings are significant. Everything else is equal, location, sq ft, layout etc.

[xyz]

I doubt ground source heat pumps will ever be practical for individual homes. For large buildings or perhaps clusters of homes in new developments. They did a ground source heat pump when they added on to Truckee High--although there was a big cost overrun. We live on top of granite.

Why not? Each unit in my complex has their own individual system. Borehole, loop, heat exchanger, pump. And granite canprovide a pretty good extraction rate.

[LongShortLong]

Bunion's "Daily Montanan" post shows the political advantage solar and wind have against traditional generation, fueled by surface-level ignorance of electrical grid operation. I don't know the specifics of NorthWestern's power plant economics, but so long as they aren't paying a carbon tax, those old dirty coal plants likely provide the most useful power. Which is another way to say that if your sole concern is cheap power, using an already built dirty fossil plant is a good choice.

That author's key misunderstanding is that a power company must always instantaneously meet the demand for power. So, while wind or solar may be cheaper on a per kilowatt basis, this power is only useful to offset the operation of another power source that provides always available power. E.g. the power company must build (or contract for) enough power generation to meet evening demand and early morning demand every day, when the sun isn't shining and the wind may not blow. It does the power company little good to be able to buy cheap solar kilowatts at noon when the customer wants to run their heater at 6 am.

That said, since power grids are complicated, maybe that author has the best tactic - use misunderstanding to drive outrage against fossil plants and in favor of "cheaper" green plants. Which is probably fine given the fossil plants are only cheap because they freeride by dumping their pollution.

[old goat]

Why not? Each unit in my complex has their own individual system. Borehole, loop, heat exchanger, pump. And granite canprovide a pretty good extraction rate.

Sounds like it was done when the complex was built, which is reasonable. I'm guessing it's a pretty swanky complex, making the cost of drilling, piping etc a relatively percentage of each unit. As an option for affordable housing that's a problem. As a retrofit for existing housing--that's a problem. And it doesn't matter what the payback and increase in property value is if you can't afford the upfront cost. As far as drilling in granite--that's what caused the Truckee HS project to go way over budget. Most people don't live where it's very hard to drill, though, so Truckee's problem doesn't apply to most.

If we knew 100 years ago what we know about the climate and if we had the technology we have today--or better yet the technology we'll have in 5 or 20 or 50 years--we would have done things much differently. We wouldn't be gtrying to figure out how to charge EV's in Boston and NY, how to fit commuter rail and bus lanes into our urban grid, how to afford the land for high speed rail. We would have built houses around transit. But we're stuck with the built environment we have now and that is what makes it so challenging. And what works in Pemberton BC will not necessarily work in NYC. (Which btw is a lot more energy efficient place to live than Pemberton--since small apartments are far more efficient than freestanding houses and a lot of people in NYC rely on mass transit to the extent that they don't own cars.)

[xyz]

And it doesn't matter what the payback and increase in value is if you can't afford the upfront cost.

That pretty much sums up why the transition ain’t coming.

[Bunion 2020]

Sounds like it was done when the complex was built, which is reasonable. I'm guessing it's a pretty swanky complex, making the cost of drilling, piping etc a relatively percentage of each unit.

For the past 8-10 years Geo-thermal has been subsidized though tax credits.

In August 2022, the tax credit for geothermal heat pump installations was extended through 2034. Geothermal equipment that uses the stored solar energy from the ground for heating and cooling and that meets ENERGY STAR requirements at the time of installation is eligible for the tax credit.

I see a lot of these systems installed on large Mansions owned by the very wealthy who can make use of a 1-1 tax credit to offset the cost of building yet another monster home that will be lived in maybe 6 weeks a year.

[Bunion 2020]

That said, since power grids are complicated, maybe that author has the best tactic - use misunderstanding to drive outrage against fossil plants and in favor of "cheaper" green plants. Which is probably fine given the fossil plants are only cheap because they freeride by dumping their pollution.

NWE has a bunch of Hydro-power available to cover peak demands. Approx. 32% of their power comes from Hydro.

[neufox47]

“Conservatives” continue to try to block renewables use and “capitalists” refuse to price in the cost of pollution, meanwhile:

“November 2023 was the warmest November on record globally, with an average surface air temperature of 14.22°C, 0.85°C above the 1991-2020 average for November and 0.32°C above the temperature of the previous warmest November, in 2020. The global temperature anomaly for November 2023 was on a par with October 2023, and only lower than the September 2023 anomaly of 0.93°C. The month as a whole was about 1.75°C warmer than an estimate of the November average for 1850-1900, the designated pre-industrial reference period.

For the calendar year to date, January to November, the global mean temperature for 2023 is the highest on record, 1.46°C above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial average, and 0.13°C higher than the eleven-month average for 2016, currently the warmest calendar year on record. European temperatures varied in November 2023 from much below the 1991-2020 average over central Norway and Sweden to much above average over the far southeast of the continent. The average sea surface temperature for November over 60°S–60°N was the highest on record for November at 0.25°C warmer than the second warmest November, in 2015. The El Niño event continued in the equatorial Pacific, with anomalies remaining lower than those reached at this time of year in the 2015 event.”

November 2023 was the warmest November on record globally, with an average surface air temperature of 14.22°C, 0.85°C above the 1991-2020 average for November and 0.32°C above the temperature of the previous warmest November, in 2020. The global temperature anomaly for November 2023 was on a par with October 2023, and only lower than the September 2023 anomaly of 0.93°C. The month as a whole was about 1.75°C warmer than an estimate of the November average for 1850-1900, the designated pre-industrial reference period.”

https://climate.copernicus.eu/surfac...-november-2023

Our children and grandchildren will look back and wonder how we were so stupid and selfish.


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[AirheadD8]

That pretty much sums up why the transition ain’t coming.

The upside is once the ground loop is installed it’s got a 50yr lifespan. The indoor unit is pretty much plug and play when it wears out in 20yrs .
The manufacturers have gotten better with efficiency by using variable speed loop pumps, not moving more water than necessary.

[xyz]

The upside is once the ground loop is installed it’s got a 50yr lifespan. The indoor unit is pretty much plug and play when it wears out in 20yrs .
The manufacturers have gotten better with efficiency by using variable speed loop pumps, not moving more water than necessary.

I was referring to the entire planet’s transition to low emission.

Anyway, my surface until lasted 19 years. The boreholes loops all good, we just replaced the circulating fluid.

[fomofo]

You have to start somewhere, you have to start sometime. The longer we wait, the more painful, i.e. expensive, it will be.

[Trackhead]

Great video. Maybe the next video can include where the raw materials will come from for all the batteries, and the recycling of said batteries.

[Iwantmy2dollars]

“Conservatives” continue to try to block renewables use and “capitalists” refuse to price in the cost of pollution, meanwhile:

“November 2023 was the warmest November on record globally, with an average surface air temperature of 14.22°C, 0.85°C above the 1991-2020 average for November and 0.32°C above the temperature of the previous warmest November, in 2020. The global temperature anomaly for November 2023 was on a par with October 2023, and only lower than the September 2023 anomaly of 0.93°C. The month as a whole was about 1.75°C warmer than an estimate of the November average for 1850-1900, the designated pre-industrial reference period.

For the calendar year to date, January to November, the global mean temperature for 2023 is the highest on record, 1.46°C above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial average, and 0.13°C higher than the eleven-month average for 2016, currently the warmest calendar year on record. European temperatures varied in November 2023 from much below the 1991-2020 average over central Norway and Sweden to much above average over the far southeast of the continent. The average sea surface temperature for November over 60°S–60°N was the highest on record for November at 0.25°C warmer than the second warmest November, in 2015. The El Niño event continued in the equatorial Pacific, with anomalies remaining lower than those reached at this time of year in the 2015 event.”

November 2023 was the warmest November on record globally, with an average surface air temperature of 14.22°C, 0.85°C above the 1991-2020 average for November and 0.32°C above the temperature of the previous warmest November, in 2020. The global temperature anomaly for November 2023 was on a par with October 2023, and only lower than the September 2023 anomaly of 0.93°C. The month as a whole was about 1.75°C warmer than an estimate of the November average for 1850-1900, the designated pre-industrial reference period.”

https://climate.copernicus.eu/surfac...-november-2023

Our children and grandchildren will look back and wonder how we were so stupid and selfish.


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Some of us have been wondering (angry, pissed, astounded) for more than 2 decades. We should all have been rowing the same direction on this a long time ago. And yet just last week - "drill drill drill , day one".... It's pathetic insanity.

These people smile as they giddily sh-t their own bed (all our beds in reality) and wallow in it. People are amazingly uncaring and selfish. Soon the cost will be untenable. And they will cast blame it on immigrants, Sun spots, sea monsters, anyplace except where it belongs

[LongShortLong]

NWE has a bunch of Hydro-power available to cover peak demands. Approx. 32% of their power comes from Hydro.

Sounds great. Replace those coal plants with something green.

[k2skier112]

Great video. Maybe the next video can include where the raw materials will come from for all the batteries, and the recycling of said batteries.

Are you lazy or being obtuse?!

https://ndep.nv.gov/land/thacker-pass-project

https://search.earth911.com/?what=Lithium-ion+Batteries