Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York Balancing the risks and benefits of environmental initiatives
By Roger Caiazza
Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York
Balancing the risks and benefits of environmental initiatives
Articles of Note January 7, 2024
Sometimes I just don’t have time to put together an article about specific posts I have read about the net-zero transition and climate change that I think are relevant. This is a summary of posts that I think would be of interest to my readers.
I have been following the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) since it was first proposed and most of the articles described are related to it. I have devoted a lot of time to the Climate Act because I believe the ambitions for a zero-emissions economy embodied in the Climate Act outstrip available renewable technology such that the net-zero transition will do more harm than good. The opinions expressed in this article do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other company I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.
New Year’s Prediction
I predict the following definition of unexpectedly will be used to describe a spike in the cost of energy prices in New York. Unexpectedly: adv. Frequently used by people who don’t know what they are doing, to describe unpleasant events or situations they have created.
An article at the Institute for Energy Research titled “Spain Increases its Renewable Share but Soon May Need to Replace its Windmills” highlights the aggressive renewable energy transition for Spain. Their plan has aggressive plans to implement wind and solar, includes manufacturing for almost the entire supply chain for wind turbines, and has a “green” hydrogen goal. Some noteworthy takeaways:
“Spain’s new government goal to double wind capacity means it would need to almost triple wind installations from current annual rates.? At the same time, “over one third of the existing turbines must be replace within five years.” In my opinion, the goal is unlikely.
“The wind industry in Europe, including Spain, is facing billion-euro losses, mainly due to competition from China, which has been developing its clean energy resources for decades and offers lower prices due to cheap coal power and government subsidization.” New York renewable manufacturing cannot escape the same competition problem.
The draft climate strategy sets a 2030 target of 11 gigawatts for electrolyzers, which would be used to make green hydrogen, up from 4 gigawatts. I would like to find a place where I could bet that will never happen.
Francis Menton and I both have wondered which jurisdiction’s net-zero transition plan will implode first. Based on this article, I would say Spain is coming up fast to the leaders.
Wind turbine threats to birds and bats
A company in Australia uses dogs to count the victims of wind turbines in southern Australia.
The numbers are troubling. Each turbine yields four to six bird carcasses per year, part of an overall death toll from wind turbines that likely tops 10,000 annually for the whole of Australia (not including carcasses carried away by scavengers). Such deaths are in the hundreds of thousands in North America. Far worse are the numbers of dead bats: The dogs find between six and 20 of these per turbine annually, with tens of thousands believed to die each year in Australia. In North America, the number is close to a million.
It is interesting that “Ecologists have noticed that small bat species in particular are most likely to get struck by the blades when wind speeds are relatively low, around 4.5 to 11 miles per hour.” This means that the impacts to bats could be reduced by reducing operations during light winds when bats are present. Because they hibernate the turbines would still be available during those periods in the winter and in the summer the days are shorter so most of the time the turbines could be operating. I have not heard anyone suggest this commonsense mitigation technique or any other one in New York.
An Egregious Failure of Scientific Integrity
Roger Pielke Jr. notes that NOAA’s “billion dollar disasters” report this week:
On Tuesday, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will release with great fanfare the year-end update of its “billion dollar disaster” tally. If past is prologue, NOAA will vigorously promote the dataset in collaboration with environmental NGOs, reporters on the climate beat will uncritically parrot and amplify NOAA’s claims, and before long, the dataset will find itself cited in the peer-reviewed literature, identified by the U.S. government as a key indicator of human-caused climate change, and perhaps even cited by the U.S. president in support of the claim that all U.S. disaster costs are attributable to climate change.
In his post he shares a new preprint of a paper that he submitted to the new Nature journal, npj Natural Hazards. My paper, which was invited by the journal’s editors, is titled, Scientific Integrity and U.S. “Billion Dollar Disasters.” Pielke is not impressed with the disasters data set:
The NOAA billion dollar disaster dataset comprehensively falls short of NOAA’s guidelines for scientific integrity. The shortfalls documented here are neither small nor subtle. They represent a significant departure from NOAA’s long-term history of scientific integrity and excellence, which has saved countless lives and facilitated the nation’s economy. A course correction is in order.
He concludes that despite all the problems, it will eventually get sorted out because “science and policy are both self-correcting”. I do not disagree that the absurdity of the “existential threat of climate change that we are seeing before our eyes” narrative will ultimately fall apart. The question is whether it will fall apart before we go so far down the road of a disastrous energy policy that people freeze to death in the dark.
Press Release – Empire Wind 2 Offshore Wind Project Reset
Empire Wind is being developed through a 50-50 joint venture between Equinor and bp. Empire Wind 1 and 2, have a potential capacity of more than 2 GW (816 + 1,260 MW). However, the developers announced on January 3 that they were going to terminate the Offshore Wind Renewable Energy Certificate (OREC) Agreement for the Empire Wind 2 project.
This agreement reflects changed economic circumstances on an industry-wide scale and repositions an already mature project to continue development in anticipation of new offtake opportunities. The decision recognizes commercial conditions driven by inflation, interest rates and supply chain disruptions that prevented Empire Wind 2’s existing OREC agreement from being viable.
Equinor and bp believe offshore wind can be an important part of the energy mix and are committed to maintaining substantial contributions to the state and local economy.
“Commercial viability is fundamental for ambitious projects of this size and scale. The Empire Wind 2 decision provides the opportunity to reset and develop a stronger and more robust project going forward,” said Molly Morris, president of Equinor Renewables Americas. “We will continue to closely engage our many community partners across the state. As evidenced by the progress at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal, our offshore wind activity is ready to generate union jobs and significant economic activity in New York.”
Long story short, they saw an opportunity to get more money from New Yorkers and leapt at the chance. Now the question is whether the Hochul Administration’s will reassess the cost impacts to New Yorkers. Sorry, I had a memory lapse – they have never provided consumer cost estimates so why would they start now.
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Author: rogercaiazza
I am a meteorologist (BS and MS degrees), was certified as a consulting meteorologist and have worked in the air quality industry for over 40 years. I author two blogs. Environmental staff in any industry have to be pragmatic balancing risks and benefits and (https://pragmaticenvironmentalistofnewyork.blog/) reflects that outlook. The second blog addresses the New York State Reforming the Energy Vision initiative (https://reformingtheenergyvisioninconvenienttruths.wordpress.com). Any of my comments on the web or posts on my blogs are my opinion only. In no way do they reflect the position of any of my past employers or any company I was associated with.View all posts by rogercaiazza
Author rogercaiazzaPosted on January 7, 2024Categories Uncategorize