Tag: renewable energy
Biden Takes Action To Increase Renewable Energy Production

Biden Takes Action To Increase Renewable Energy Production

President Joe Biden announced on Monday that he is authorizing initiatives under the Defense Production Act to increase the domestic manufacture of clean energy technologies, especially of components used for solar panel construction.

"While President Biden continues pushing Congress to pass clean energy investments and tax cuts, he is taking bold action to rapidly build on this progress and create a bridge to this American-made clean energy future,” the White House said in a statement.

The Defense Production Act was passed by Congress in 1950 and can be invoked by the president to order private businesses to prioritize the production of materials that have been deemed necessary for the national defense.

The White House statement said:

Specifically, the President is authorizing the Department of Energy to use the DPA to rapidly expand American manufacturing of five critical clean energy technologies:

Solar panel parts like photovoltaic modules and module components;

Building insulation;

Heat pumps, which heat and cool buildings super efficiently;

Equipment for making and using clean electricity-generated fuels, including electrolyzers, fuel cells, and related platinum group metals; andCritical power grid infrastructure like transformers.

Also on Monday, Reuters reported that Biden will declare 24-month exemptions from tariffs on solar panels imported to the U.S. from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam. The Commerce Department had halted the importation of panels from those countries, which comprise more than half the panel supply in the United States, as it investigates whether the products brought in from those countries are evading tariffs on goods imported from China.

The Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade group of over 1,000 companies and organizations advocating for the increased use of solar power, praised Biden's actions.

"Today's actions protect existing solar jobs, will lead to increased employment in the solar industry and foster a robust solar manufacturing base here at home," Abigail Ross Hopper, the president and CEO of the group, said in a statement on Monday.

Biden has invoked the Defense Production Act three times before, to increase the availability of baby formula, to manufacture COVID-19 vaccines, and to manufacture firehoses to combat wildfires. By comparison, former President Donald Trump was criticized for delaying the use of the act to boost production of medical equipment needed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The executive actions come after the Biden administration in May launched an initiative to connect more sources of clean energy to the national power grid. The Department of Energy said the Interconnection Innovation e-Xchange, or i2X, will bring together "grid operators, utilities, state and tribal governments, clean energy developers, energy justice organizations, and other stakeholders to connect more clean energy to America’s power grid."

The exchange is financed by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which Biden signed into law on Nov. 15, 2021.

A Stanford University study published in December 2021 found that electricity blackouts such as the one that hit Texas in 2020, which killed over 200 people and caused $24 billion in damage, could be prevented with more widespread usage of clean energy. The study showed that shifting to renewable energy would decrease energy demand by 57 percent and household energy costs by 63 percewnt.

The Biden administration has promoted the use of clean energy in multiple ways. In February, the administration set revenue records with the auction of offshore wind lease rights in the region known as the New York Bight. In May, the Department of Interior announced that wind lease rights off the coast of California would be auctioned for the first time.

In his first State of the Union speech, in May, Biden called for clean energy tax credits that would spur clean energy production and lower the price of electric vehicles.

Reprinted with permission from American Independent.

Solar panels

Renewables Best Coal As America's Second Largest Energy Source

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) announced that renewables generated 21 percent of all electricity in the country for 2020. Renewable energy sources like biomass, geothermal, solar, and wind accounted for 834 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of the nation’s power last year. That falls just behind natural gas, which generated 1,617 billion kWh or 40% of all energy in the U.S. The news comes from a report released in July that the EIA shared again last week as the year winds down and we look towards 2022. The agency believes that coal-fired electricity use likely rose this year due to rising natural gas prices, increasing about 18 percent compared with 2020. This will likely push coal to be the second-most used energy source in 2021.

It’s highly unlikely that the trend of coal surpassing renewables will continue into 2022. For one, coal-fired electricity has been on the downturn since 2007 when it peaked at 2,016 billion kWh and was the largest source of energy until 2016, most likely because natural gas has replaced much of coal’s capacity. According to another EIA report, dozens of coal-fired plants have been replaced or converted to natural gas since 2011. Some of those decisions made by power companies are in order to comply with emissions regulations, like the EPA’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, which was unveiled in 2011.

In the following years until 2019, Alabama Power Co. converted 10 of its generators at four Alabama coal plants to comply with the standard, which took effect in 2016.As for renewables, the EIA believes their power generation will rise 7% this year and another 10% next year. The agency also forecast that 2022 will be another year in which renewables are the second-most-used energy source, making 2020 not an anomaly, but a possible sign of trends to come. It’s anyone’s guess what 2022 will hold in terms of emissions, primarily because it’s unclear how deeply the pandemic will continue to affect the power industry.

Graph Shows Alterative Energy Beating Coal in 2021

images.dailykos.com


A report released on December 22 by the EIA shows that 2020 saw a substantial decrease in carbon dioxide emissions due in part to a warmer winter season and factors exacerbated by the pandemic, including more people working from home and traveling less, plus industry slowdowns resulting in lower commercial building activity. One of the long-term factors cited by the EIA was a trend in declining natural gas production. This resulted in a decrease in emissions of 11 percent in 2020, or 570 million metric tons compared to 2019. Such declines in emissions haven’t been seen since 1983, shortly after an amended Clean Air Act was implemented requiring cars built in 1981 and beyond to comply with lower emissions standards. More stringent emissions goals, such as the Biden administration’s push for 50 percent of new vehicles to be electric by 2030, could see a similar reduction that puts the U.S. one step closer to reaching its goal of net-zero by 2050.


Manchin Bullies Reporter For Asking About His Coal Millions

Manchin Bullies Reporter For Asking About His Coal Millions

This month, Sen. Joe Manchin's interests in the fossil fuel industry have been the subject of in-depth reporting by Coral Davenport in the New York Times and Kate Aronoff in The New Republic. And when Bloomberg News reporter Ari Natter asked the centrist West Virginia Democrat about his fossil fuel interests this week, Manchin became quite defensive.

Davenport, on September 19, reported, "Joe Manchin, the powerful West Virginia Democrat who chairs the Senate energy panel and earned half a million dollars last year from coal production, is preparing to remake President Biden's climate legislation in a way that tosses a lifeline to the fossil fuel industry — despite urgent calls from scientists that countries need to quickly pivot away from coal, gas and oil to avoid a climate catastrophe."

Aronoff noted that Manchin has received considerable donations from fossil fuel companies and made millions of dollars from Enersystems Inc. and Farmington Resources, two coal companies he founded during the 1980s."NBC News' Frank Thorp, on Twitter, described the testy exchange between Manchin and Natter — who asked if it is a conflict of interest that someone with his fossil fuel connections is playing a major role in shaping energy policy. Manchin said of Enersystems, "I've been in a blind trust for 20 years. I have no idea what they're doing."

But Natter persisted, noting that Manchin is still receiving dividends from Enersystems stock — to which Manchin angrily responded, "You got a problem?"

Natter also pointed out that Manchin handed over control of Enersystems to his son, Joseph. And the senator snapped, "You'd do best to change the subject."


Yes, We Really Can Save The Earth (And Here’s Proof)

Yes, We Really Can Save The Earth (And Here’s Proof)

Reprinted with permission from Creators

Anyone who lives in the world of scientific reality — which we all do, although some like to pretend we don't — may feel dejected these days by the inevitability of catastrophic climate change. For years now, the news about the fate of the Earth (and the living things that inhabit our planet) has grown increasingly grim, with doomsday projected to arrive sometime before the end of this century.

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