Connect with us

Science

Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm on cleaning up ‘clean’ energy

Published

on

[ad_1]

As much as climate change is reshaping life on Earth as we know it — the solutions posed are also going to change everyday life. 2023 is on track to be the hottest in the books, and unless we want to shatter that record year after year, every country on Earth will have to work together to wean themselves off fossil fuels. The US, the world’s biggest producer of oil and gas, has more work to do than others.

So, how do you remake our entire energy system while the clock is ticking? When you build all this infrastructure, how do you do so without steamrolling over communities in the process? And how do you avoid the harms caused by drilling and mining in the past, especially when we’ll need a lot of critical minerals to make EV batteries, wind turbines, and solar panels?

The Verge spoke with Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm shortly after the Department of Energy announced $7 billion in funding for hydrogen production hubs across the US. It’s a textbook example of a potential alternative energy source that has opened up a whole new can of worms.

The environmental benefits of hydrogen are still contested. Some of the hubs will run on renewable energy. Others will be made with fossil fuels that still produce greenhouse gas emissions. The Biden administration thinks it can clean up that pollution with controversial carbon capture technology. But a lot of communities don’t want that industrial infrastructure — pipelines and storage — adding to health risks they already face after decades of environmental injustice. 

That’s all to say, it’s complicated. In the interview, Granholm spoke about how she might navigate those tricky next steps. 

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

The DOE recently announced billions in funding for hydrogen hubs across the US. Hydrogen as a fuel has been around for a while. Why prioritize making more of it now?

Everybody always says renewable energy, fabulous, but the Sun doesn’t always shine, and the wind doesn’t always blow. How do you make sure that you have clean energy that’s 24/7? And how do you make sure that you have clean energy that is helping to decarbonize the hardest to decarbonize sectors? Like heavy industry, heavy trucking, for example. And so I think clean hydrogen is not for every use but certainly for those important areas as a filler, as a Swiss Army knife, as they call it.

Trucks right now run on diesel, and those create pollution, obviously. Well, if they’re able to run on fuel cells, that takes care of that problem. Equipment used at ports, marinas, sustainable aviation fuel, [the] creation of green ammonia, steel and industrial heat, data centers. Those kinds of uses are, I think, prime for this.

A few of the hubs will use gas to make hydrogen — and some environmental and climate justice groups — say this perpetuates dependence on fossil fuels. Why choose projects that rely on gas instead of just funding projects that make hydrogen using renewable energy?

We can’t flip the switch and just completely transform our energy system overnight. We have to have this transition. If these production sites are powered by natural gas, they all must have carbon capture and sequestration and not allow for carbon pollution to go up into the atmosphere.

I completely understand the desire not to perpetuate, as many in the environmental justice community have said, any uses of fossil fuels. But you know, the reality is people will be driving cars, and not everybody is driving electric vehicles. Not every business can convert tomorrow to have electric vehicles. There will be this transition. 

Even clean energy has an environmental footprint. Advocates are already concerned about mining minerals used in batteries for electric vehicles and renewable energy, for instance. How do you weigh those kinds of costs and minimize any harms?

Well, here’s what I would say. One, if we’re going to electrify our transportation system, we’re going to need batteries. And the batteries are going to need the critical minerals that propel those batteries. So somebody’s going to be mining them. Is it possible for us to be the leader in sustainable practices for mining as a nation? You bet it is. Is it possible for us to partner with countries that do that in a sustainable way, in a way that respects Indigenous lands and peoples who have deep concerns over land being used? Can we do this? Yes. The solar panels, the wind turbines, they’re made with steel, they’re made with glass. That glass has to be produced somewhere. Can we produce it in a sustainable way? Can we create the jobs here in America? Yes. 

We can’t create those products out of thin air, but we can do it in a way that we incentivize companies, provide carrots and sticks, so that they are producing, manufacturing in the cleanest way possible. 

America is in the best position to be able to do that, rather than relying upon countries whose values we may not share. Who may not share our respect for the environment, or who may use child labor, for example, to extract minerals from the Earth.

Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm pictured with Press Secretary Charisma Troiano.
Photo by Dee Dwyer for The Verge

The DOE is funding hubs for hydrogen and carbon removal — two technologies that critics sometimes say could create new environmental injustices. I’ve heard from communities that don’t want to share a fence line with these industrial facilities and pipelines that connect them. What would you say to a resident who’s concerned about that? 

We have to acknowledge that so much carbon pollution, and pollution in general, is in disadvantaged communities because of a history of racism. Those are the places that are going to need the most TLC, if you will, to help remove the emissions from the air for those communities. For example, in Cancer Alley in the Gulf Coast in Louisiana, so many people are experiencing health impacts because of the pollution of heavy industry. But if we were to have a solution that removes diesel fumes from the air, that can help to repair what has been a history and a legacy of pollution. 

Clean energy has gotten dragged into culture wars, and we often see those conversations devolving into questions of personal choice — what if someone wants to keep their gas stove, for instance. How do we get out of that trap to see what the bigger picture is? 

First of all, let me just be clear, President Biden does not want to ban gas stoves. We want to make all appliances efficient so that people aren’t wasting their money on energy that is not going to its intended use, for stoves or for anything. 

Those are all distractions. Our planet is on fire. All people have to do is look at what the number of extreme weather events has been this past year. We are at record-breaking temperatures all across the nation. This will be the hottest year that we have ever recorded because of our actions as human beings. 

All of that is to say, we have got to propel forward with a sense of urgency, the same sense of urgency that is felt by the communities that are experiencing these extreme weather events. And we cannot allow ourselves to be distracted by arguments that are political or are sideshows to what the main show is. The main show is that we must reduce our carbon emissions. 

Are you concerned that a future president will undo all of this administration’s efforts to promote sustainable energy?

Of course. Of course we are very concerned about that — about going backward and contributing further to the heating of our planet.

International climate talks are coming up at the end of the month. One of the biggest questions is whether countries can agree on a global plan to phase out fossil fuels. What do you think needs to happen? 

I think that we all have to get together as countries and commit to holding ourselves to the targets that we set. And for the countries that have not set targets, they need to set them. We cannot stand idly by as passive bystanders as our shared home, this planet, is on fire.

[ad_2]

Source link

Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Science

How AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile are responding to the LA wildfires

Published

on

By

[ad_1]

As wildfires continue to devastate parts of Los Angeles County, hundreds of thousands of residents are without power as utility crews work to restore connectivity. Mobile carriers are also taking action to keep their services online and provide relief to affected residents.

Here’s how major carriers are responding.

In an update on Thursday, Verizon said it will waive call, text, and data usage incurred by prepaid and postpaid customers in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, and Ventura counties from January 9th to the 18th. Verizon will automatically credit customers if they were billed for overages during this time.

Additionally, the company is extending service end dates for customers using prepaid services, including Straight Talk, Tracfone, Total Wireless, Simple Mobile, Walmart Family Mobile, Net10, GoSmart, and Page Plus, until January 18th, 2025. It’s also working with LA County officials to “aggressively deploy portable generators and mitigate impacts for those customers affected across the area.”

T-Mobile is similarly offering unlimited talk, text, and data for T-Mobile and Assurance Wireless customers across Altadena, La Cañada Flintridge, Los Angeles, Palisades, Pasadena, and Sierra Madre from January 8th to January 15th.

Meanwhile, the T-Mobile-owned Mint Mobile will increase the available data for users on 5GB, 15GB, and 20GB plans to 50GB through their current billing cycle, while Mint Unlimited customers in the area can use up to 2TB of high-speed data with no hotspot restrictions.

T-Mobile is also teaming up with SpaceX’s Starlink to temporarily deploy an “early test version” of its direct-to-cell satellite service, allowing people in affected areas to receive wireless emergency alerts and send SMS texts. At the same time, T-Mobile is working to deploy and refuel portable generators to keep its network online.

AT&T FirstNet’s satellite-equipped truck provides emergency communications.

AT&T will waive overage charges for prepaid and postpaid customers affected by the wildfires through February 6th. The company notes that customers in parts of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, and Ventura counties may experience home phone and internet disruptions due to power outages in the area.

Along with continuously deploying and refueling generators, AT&T has dispatched its disaster response team to help keep its wireless and wireline communications up and running. Its FirstNet Response Operations Group — a team led by former first responders who help during emergencies — “have been deployed to support firefighters and other first responders on the front lines where they need connectivity the most,” according to AT&T.

Starlink is providing free services to these areas affected by the wildfires.
Image: Starlink

Though Starlink isn’t a mobile carrier, it’s still working to provide LA County residents with satellite internet connectivity. Residents impacted by the wildfires can access Starlink for free through February 10th by placing an order through starlink.com/residential and choosing the “Disaster Relief” service plan. However, users still need to purchase a Starlink kit to access the free service.

Customers who already use Starlink will receive a one-month service credit.

[ad_2]

Source link

Continue Reading

Science

Joe Biden’s national climate adviser sees AI as a ‘massive opportunity’

Published

on

By

[ad_1]

Sure, President-elect Donald Trump is probably going to try to blow up efforts to tackle climate change as soon as he steps into office. There still isn’t enough renewable energy available to reach US climate goals or even meet skyrocketing electricity demand from AI. And time is running out to spend down climate funds from the Inflation Reduction Act before the Trump administration can attempt to claw it back. Despite it all, Joe Biden’s top adviser on climate change, Ali Zaidi, isn’t sweating it.  

He’s managed to keep the perhaps cloyingly upbeat optimism that’s become a trademark of the Biden and Harris camp even when that enthusiasm doesn’t necessarily reflect sentiment on the ground. The Verge spoke with White House national climate adviser Zaidi this week about what he sees ahead for clean energy technologies and where there might still be room for progress.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You have a background in law. How did climate change become your thing?

I came to the United States at the age of six, and for me, for my family, the story of America is the story of economic mobility. I really came to Washington wanting to work on putting more rungs in the ladder into the American dream, and it turns out that the biggest economic opportunity of the moment is tackling this crisis that impacts the most vulnerable Americans and the most vulnerable folks around the world.

“A tech-agnostic race”

I did not come to this work from the tree hugging side of the movement. I came to it with real, deep conviction that this was my way to give back to the economic opportunity engine that this country has been for so many who strive to reach the American dream.

President-elect Donald Trump says he’ll take the US out of the Paris climate accord and “drill, baby, drill.” How worried are you about the Trump administration undoing progress the US has made on clean energy? 

You know, I think that US progress will continue in a pretty robust way. This project is not just a project about climate and reducing emissions. It’s a project of invigorating our energy security and bringing economic revival to places that have been left out and left behind. 

The incentive to finish the job is stronger because the incentive is shared, and that’s how we’ve structured it on purpose. The other thing that I think is really powerful is that we’ve really set out a tech-agnostic race to net zero emissions as the North Star.

When we talk about decarbonizing the electricity grid, making it more modern, making it more resilient, sometimes that conversation is caricatured as a conversation about solar and wind. But look at what’s been happening in the United States, you’ve got a mega project now under construction in Utah. It’s a two gigawatt project, the size of the Hoover Dam in terms of electricity that’s going to produce power from hot rocks under our feet — geothermal energy. You’ve got wind, not just being deployed on the plains as it has been for decades, but now delivering electricity from offshore.

You have a nuclear renaissance taking place in the United States, the first new nuclear reactor in decades. I was there in Georgia as it came online. Plants that have been retired, like the Palisades plant in western Michigan. I went to the Palisades plant coming out of retirement, the workers coming out of retirement to bring electricity back to the grid and the next generation of reactors

We, as a federal government, should be a partner in helping catalyze all of that progress, whatever shape it takes. And you see that repeated in other sectors. With the transportation sector, it doesn’t matter to us if it’s strong, hybridization, fully electric, hydrogen, sustainable aviation, or biofuels. What we care about is two things: bending the curve of emissions and widening the aperture for economic opportunity.

The culture war over clean energy often swirls around this idea of individual choice — I should be able to choose to drive a gas-guzzling car if I want to or cook on a gas stove instead of going electric. What’s your take on that? 

We have to meet people where they are as we take on the climate crisis, period, full stop. One of the things that the world has learned so clearly about decarbonization is that there is no social license for decarbonization pathways that put upward pressure on consumer prices. So part of decarbonization has to be about making people’s lives better, delivering a better product, winning them over.

We saw this with LEDs. I was around at the beginning of the Obama administration when, for the first time, the United States got in the business of manufacturing LED lightbulbs. They used to cost a lot of money, but there was a technology cost curve there. And because we invested in it, the US was able to help make those cheaper and more affordable, and it turned out to be a better product. And now, across the country that technology is ubiquitous. I think that’s the way we win the future, is by delivering people a better product that also, by the way, doesn’t pump a bunch of pollution into the sky.

Countries that have signed onto the Paris agreement are supposed to update their national climate plans this year, and the Biden administration submitted a more ambitious plan last month of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by more than 60 percent by 2035. How can the US still achieve that goal?

I think the way we go the distance and meet this next target in 2035 is by continuing to invest in America, and here’s what that looks like. The farm bill will be in front of the Congress. It’s overdue, but it will be in front of this next Congress. They have an opportunity to act on whether they invest in increased total factor productivity in the agricultural sector. Turns out precision agriculture is also climate-smart agriculture. So will Congress, through the farm bill, invest more into climate-smart agriculture, into precision agriculture technologies, into the things that shore up the economics of our family farmers and boost the competitiveness of the sector? 

What we’re seeing at the state level is a massive mobilization to continue to accelerate decarbonization on the grid and in the transportation sector. There’s also this incredible industrial capacity. When we came into office, you barely made any batteries in the United States. Tesla, maybe a few others, but very limited battery capacity. By 2030, factories that are already underway, either operating or in construction, will have the capacity to manufacture 10 million vehicles’ worth of batteries in the United States. We sell, on average, 15 million vehicles a year. I think you’ll actually see private capital continue to build on the momentum of that transformation. 

And so another reason we think we’re going to keep picking up momentum is because private capital sees the win and is actually going to continue to make that bet in sectors like power and transportation. Clean energy is literally cheaper than dirtier power. And so that’s just where the smart money is going. In 2024, for example, we expect that 96 percent of what will have been built will be clean energy.

I think what we will need to do more of as a country — and that means state and local as well — is help families cut their utility bills at home. There’s this massive opportunity in our built environment to reduce energy waste and put consumers in control of their energy bills. And if we do that, that’s obviously great retail-level economics. It’s also going to be a big win for the climate. 

When it comes to lowering Americans’ utility bills and taking action on climate change, one of the concerns I hear a lot about is AI and the energy demand of data centers. How are you thinking about that? 

I’ve joined meetings with CEOs of the technology firms. I’ve also met with CEOs from the electricity sector. There is a consensus in industry and there is a consensus in the US government that we will and must seize the leadership opportunity in the development of AI technologies. And that means we must take away the barriers deploying clean power on the grid that is necessary to facilitate the buildout of these data centers. 

I have full confidence, not only in the federal government and in the technology entrepreneurs and their companies, but in state and local governments that they see the economic opportunity, they see the security imperative, and they also get that deploying clean power in almost all cases will be the cheapest, fastest, and safest way to get electricity to these new data centers. 

And so I don’t see these objectives at cross purposes with one another. I actually see AI as an accelerant to our ambition on the electricity grid. AI as an accelerant to advance grid modernization. This is a massive opportunity. But I also am the person who often sees opportunity in headwinds. So maybe that’s my bias.

We have to talk about the Inflation Reduction Act — the biggest piece of climate legislation to date, creating $369 billion for climate action and clean energy. But Trump says he’ll rescind any unspent funds. How much is left to dole out?

Very little. I remember this was a Google doc on my computer back in the summer of 2020 and Zoom calls with, at the time, the candidate. One of the big things that we did when we were designing what became the Inflation Reduction Act was to make sure it was structured in a way that reached every part of the economy. That it was structured in a way where the IRA came in, or the government came in, as booster packs to a rocket. The rocket was the private sector. And I think what you find with the Inflation Reduction Act now is that the rocket’s achieved escape velocity in so many parts of the economy. You’ve got 100 gigawatts of energy that relied on these tax credits to get off the ground, but now it’s up in the air. It’s flying. You can’t put that back in the bottle.

On the unspent funds, we are at a place where we’re north of $9 out of every $10 of grant funding and other similar dollars that have already hit the economic bloodstream across the country. 

The question then becomes, do you want to go and unplug economic opportunity that is now responsible for thousands of factory jobs and construction jobs all across the country? And I think that’s both a challenging economic proposition and also a very challenging political proposition. It’s why what you’ve heard even in Congress is that maybe they are interested in a scalpel approach, if I’m quoting the incoming speaker. That is still quite challenging. The way I think about it is, you know, Jenga blocks. When you’re pulling the blocks out of a Jenga tower, you don’t know which one is going to threaten the structural integrity of the whole thing. 

We are in a moment of economic uplift and revitalization, a manufacturing renaissance. America at the frontier of energy security and energy technology, finally fighting to win the global competition and pulling along jobs and opportunity at the local level. I don’t know that I would want to be in the business of pulling blocks out of the Jenga tower, but we will leave that to the judgment of the team that comes in in a few weeks.

[ad_2]

Source link

Continue Reading

Science

Drone takes out Super Scooper fighting Los Angeles wildfires

Published

on

By

[ad_1]

An aircraft helping to fight wildfires that are raging across Los Angeles was struck by a civilian drone on Thursday. The collision damaged the wing of the aircraft — a CL-415 “Super Scooper” capable of scooping up 1,600 gallons of ocean water to drop onto nearby blazes — according to a statement by the LA County Fire Department posted on X, putting it out of service until it can be repaired.

Cal Fire spokesman Chris Thomas told The New York Times that grounding the aircraft will likely set back local firefighting efforts. Super Scoopers can typically refill in about five minutes. But even if it takes ten, that’s six water drops that are lost each hour according to Thomas. “So whose house is not going to get that water to protect it?” The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) says the Super Scooper landed safely after the drone impact, and that the incident is now under investigation.

Temporary flight restrictions have been implemented in the Los Angeles area that prohibit drones and other aircraft from flying without FAA authorization in an effort to protect firefighting efforts.

According to LA County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone, the drone was not assigned to help tackle the Palisades fires, and was destroyed in the collision. Marrone told the LA Times that the FBI is now planning to implement so-called “aerial armor” in the area to prevent further interference from drones.

Several people online have violated the FAA-enforced flight restrictions, posting viral drone photos and video footage across social media showing the devastation from what appears to be prohibited airspace. Fire response agencies are often forced to ground their own aircraft to avoid collisions when dummies fly drones near wildfires for online clout.

“It’s a federal crime, punishable by up to 12 months in prison, to interfere with firefighting efforts on public lands,” the FAA said in a statement. “Additionally, the FAA can impose a civil penalty of up to $75,000 against any drone pilot who interferes with wildfire suppression, law enforcement or emergency response operations. The FAA treats these violations seriously and immediately considers swift enforcement action for these offenses.”

[ad_2]

Source link

Continue Reading

Trending

Copyright © 2017 Zox News Theme. Theme by MVP Themes, powered by WordPress.