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emissions

May 06
Love79

Resonating Fugitive Radical Renegades and GHGs

By Energy Rant No Comments
Think you're a climate change genius? Strap in and prepare for whiplash.  To close out last week's post, I referenced a Forbes article, Green Hydrogen's Hype Hits Some Very Expensive Hurdles, which seeded the roots for this week's Energy Rant. It referenced a Cornell University paper claiming carbon capture from the manufacture of blue hydrogen "is energy intensive and leads to even more climate pollution than if CO2 just wafted into the air."  Whoa, ho, Nellie! Does carbon capture result in more emissions and energy consumption than free release of combustion products? The latter isn't surprising, but more emissions are a headliner. I…
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Apr 29
Love79

Theory #2 For Batteries Increasing Emissions

By Energy Rant No Comments
As a glutton for punishment (I look forward to getting past sciatica so I can run marathons again), I tasked myself with getting to the technical bottom of this article from Utility Dive: Energy storage for grid reliability can increase carbon emissions: University of Michigan study. The article doesn't get into the details, so I dived into the source document sponsored by the University of Michigan – a brutal read – like the last miles of a marathon, maybe Heartbreak Hill or Central Park. I spare readers the pain so they can follow along from their La-Z-Boys.  I know enough about wholesale electricity markets to use terminology and…
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Nov 28
Love57

Dive Into Cement Manufacturing Emissions

By Energy Rant No Comments
Over the years, I’ve seen numerous mentions of decarbonizing concrete or cement. Random articles describing the need and means to decarbonize cement include this McKinsey article, this DOE post, and this Canary Media article. Those don’t cut it for me. I set out to explore cement making and why it is so carbon-intensive. But first, some terminology review is advised to differentiate cement from concrete. Growing up, in college, and even post-college, we used the term cement synonymously with concrete. E.g., “cement hands” to describe a guy who couldn’t catch a basketball or football or “cement head” to tell civil engineers. Each of…
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Sep 19
Love45

Mining the Energy Transition

By Energy Rant One Comment
A few weeks ago, we had a little snafu. A promotional email said the energy transition is failing. That hit a nerve with one state government official. This week, I’ll present some facts, and you can decide. Cobalt First, we have the issue of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the energy transition. The following video from France’s AFP News describes the toil in Congo for cobalt, a key ingredient of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles and grid-scale storage. The video states the scene shows “almost biblical toil.” No. It’s biblical. Seventy-two percent of the world’s cobalt comes from the Democratic…
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Aug 01
Love40
Image shows wind turnine.

What’s on the Minds of Utility Consumer Advocates

By Energy Rant No Comments
This week I’m focusing on the concerns expressed by members of the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates, NASUCA, which met in parallel with NARUC in Austin, TX, a week before last. The topics of concern include outage risk, high prices, and related energy poverty. Outage Risk In the short term, this year or next year, I can only repeat what the experts are saying. Jim Robb, President of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), said the bulk power system has seen steady improvement . At the same time, the risk is “terrifying” due to peak load growth…
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Jun 20
Love34
Image shows a graphic displaying CO2 with a down arrow down to plants and text "Ambient CO2 Scrubbing Grifters."

Ambient CO2 Scrubbing Grifters

By Energy Rant No Comments
The origin of this post is a spicy Zerohedge article, The Phony Climate Change Catastrophe, specifically, carbon capture from ambient air. That reminded me of an April article in The Wall Street Journal that referenced the same redonkulous effort by Occidental Petroleum to self-absolve its CO2 emission contributions by vacuuming CO2 from ambient air. If this sounds absurd, you have my company. Incidentally, chief investors in this technology include Warren Buffet (Berkshire Hathaway), the largest shareholder of Occidental stock, and Bill Gates. These grifters are always first in line with their golden tin cups when there is tax money available…
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Jan 11
Love0
Climate Resistance Blog Post Image

Climate Resilience – Flood, Fire, Ice

By Energy Rant No Comments
A reader last week asked, “What kind of home can withstand fire, hurricanes, floods, heat domes, and polar vortex?” This is a great question. I love the challenge, so here we go. Flooding and Landslides Think ahead and ask yourself, “what if” before or even after buying a property. For example, my first home was built to suit my engineering brain. It is wonderful for heating with a wood stove and is very practical; it is not huge and can be expanded with nice amenities for a family. It is built on the side of a bluff in the great…
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Mar 10
Love0
electricity storage - climate change

Innovative Electricity Storage Crushes Batteries; Death Sentence for Duck

By Energy Rant One Comment
I’m not in the electricity storage business, but I can recognize lousy ideas when I see them. Grid-scale battery storage is a bad idea. It will never be anything more than a frequency and voltage regulation technology, although I have to say these are critical functions that batteries can provide. Innovation comes out of left field while everyone else is trying to make a pig fly. And when I see it, I think, “Wow, why did I not think of that?” The Roots of Sound Storage Thermal power generation, particularly from coal, and to a lesser extent, nuclear, have enormous…
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Feb 10
Love0
grid modernization

Grid Modernization Risk and Protest

By Energy Rant No Comments
God, it’s great to be back writing again. On that note, here is a quote, “There’s an old saying: Everyone wants to go to heaven, but no one wants to die.” I’ve been under a rock all my life because I had never heard that one. It’s the opening line to this NIMBYism and grid modernization article. This subject, ironically, is one of the very first ones I wrote about over ten years ago in Renewable NIMBY. According to the article coopted by Energy Central and written by ersi (what it stands for is anyone’s guess), and references the DOE,…
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May 28
Love0

Decarbonizing the Bourgeoisie Through the Eye of a Needle

By Energy Rant No Comments
Climate change mitigation policies are firmly intertwined in hot political tribalism like school choice, abortion, taxes, and the minimum wage. I can think of few topics that are supported by both ends of the spectrum, although infrastructure spending and staying out of objectiveless wars seem to be two such things. We know things are at peak hostility when DC can’t even agree on infrastructure spending because somebody may get credit for it or allow a win for the other. I like perspectives from outside our industry from sources that don’t wear their agenda on their sleeves. This post was triggered…
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We talk a lot about energy – from the serious to the satirical.

All things energy. That’s our jam.

We talk a lot about energy – from the serious to the satirical.

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