Green Energy

Update: President Trump signed the domestic policy and tax bill into law on Friday, July 4.

“These bills are an affront to our sovereignty, our lands, and our way of life. They would gut essential health and food security programs, roll back climate resilience funding, and allow the exploitation of our sacred homelands without even basic tribal consultation,” said Chalyee Éesh Richard Peterson, president of the Tlingit and Haida in Alaska, in a statement. “This is not just bad policy — it is a betrayal of the federal trust responsibility to tribal nations.”

Tribes across the country are particularly worried about the megabill’s hit to clean energy, complicating the development of critical wind and solar projects. According to the Department of Energy, tribal households face 6.5 times more electrical outages per year and a 28 percent higher energy burden compared to the average U.S. household. An estimated 54,000 people living on tribal lands have no electricity.

Addressing a crowd outside the White House on Friday (4 July), the US president said: “China’s right now building 68 coal-generating plants, and we’re putting up wind … It does not work, aside from ruining our fields and our valleys and killing all the birds, being very weak and very expensive – all made in China.”

Commenting on “all the windmills that China sends us”, he then went on to claim: “I have never seen a wind farm in China. Why is that?”

Well, the reality is that they are there, because the country is described as the “global renewable energy leader” due to it hosting “nearly half of the world’s total operating wind and solar capacity” – per a 2023 report from the non-profit research organisation, Global Energy Monitor.

The same report notes at the time of its publication in June that year, the combined onshore and offshore wind capacity of China had doubled from what it was in 2017, surpassing 310 gigawatts.

And according to the energy think tank Ember, China accounted for more than half of the global increase in both wind and solar power last year.

The American clean power industry is thriving and making a significant contribution to the U.S. economy thanks to policies of the Biden-Harris administration, as well as the highly competitive prices and speed with which clean power systems and energy storage can be currently installed. But the industry is now facing an all-out assault from President Donald Trump.

His signature “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which Trump signed into law on July 4, heavily targets the industry, which Trump has labeled the “green new scam.” The legislation eliminates a 30 percent tax credit for residential rooftop solar panels by the end of 2025, as well as those dedicated to utility-scale solar and wind, although plants that are already financed and approved by June 2026 — or that are operational by 2027 — can still qualify for the credits. (The credit for solar leasing companies will also last through 2027 and can be passed through to consumers.) The bill also eliminates tax credits for electric vehicles and chargers, as well as battery storage systems, geothermal heating, electric panel upgrades, energy audits and weatherization, all of which can lower consumer’s energy bills.

In a last minute move, however, Republicans struck a proposed excise tax on wind and solar projects if the materials included a percentage of minerals sourced from certain foreign countries. Experts say that, regardless of the excise tax reprieve and the included grandfather provisions, the clean energy industry will be badly hurt and consumers’ energy prices could rise by eight to 10 percent.

Some scholars and activists are raising concerns that Indigenous voices are not being heard amid the debate over whether to host nuclear waste storage facilities.

After the 2011 meltdowns at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, the world’s worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl, all of Japan’s nuclear power stations were shut down while new safety standards were drawn up. Well over a decade on, only 14 of its 54 reactors have been restarted.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/32373636

Britain wasted £649m already this year powering down wind farms as there is not enough grid capacity to send renewable energy where it is needed, utility finds

Unlike lithium-ion batteries, vanadium flow batteries use electrolyte solutions containing vanadium ions to store and release energy. The technology offers a number of advantages for grid-scale storage: high safety (non-flammable), long cycle life (over 15 years), and the ability to decouple power and energy capacity, offering greater design flexibility.

Australian-based renewable energy and storage investor Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners says its new 373 MW Cleve Hill Solar Park – the biggest in the UK – has begun commercial operations.

The Cleve Hill solar park, situated in Kent in England’s south, consists of over 550,000 solar panels and is expected to provide clean electricity equivalent to the needs of 102,000 homes, and is being hailed as a landmark on multiple fronts.

It is four times the size of the next largest operational UK solar project, and will also feature a 150 MW co-located battery energy storage system (BESS), making it also the largest co-located solar plus storage project ever constructed in the UK power market.

Cleve Hill was also the first solar and battery storage project to be consented as a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP) by the UK government, and secured the first solar contract for difference (CfD) by the UK Government-backed Low Carbon Contracts Company.

"This is not a transition. It’s a systematic expansion of all energy sources.”

Most countries in BRICS, which includes Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, remain major fossil fuel producers, but the group together produced 51% of the world’s solar energy in 2024 — up from 15% a decade earlier, energy research firm Ember said in the report.

Serra Verde’s licence, granted by the state in 2019 to explore rare earths, was met with enthusiasm locally.

Serra Verde claims to be a “sustainable” mining company,

Residents living near the mine are nonetheless concerned about the potential environmental effects. Families report that since mining began, two streams in Serra Verde have become muddy, with a greasy substance turning clear water a reddish colour. They also reported miscarriages in cattle drinking water from the same source.

Maintaining a positive image in Brazil is crucial for the company as it seeks to differentiate itself from those mining in Asia, where problems have already been identified in the extraction of rare earths.

Residents such as Lima believe life mining rare earths will bring no greater prosperity to for most than when they lived with asbestos. “These rare earths are now the same,” he says.

When the design, manufacturing, and service of a piece of equipment, whether it’s a platform, lifting device, seal system, or shielding assembly, are handled by separate parties, accountability can become unclear. If an issue arises or a field modification is required on short notice, it’s not always obvious who owns the resolution. Project teams can find themselves stuck between vendors, each deferring responsibility to another, while the work halts and outage time extends.

• Argentina is trying to position itself as a global hub for clean energy, attracting private investment in lithium mining while marketing new battery factories in the region.
• The World Bank has framed some of the lithium projects it backs as “climate action” that will help advance the clean energy transition.
• But critics say lithium mining is hurting local and Indigenous communities and depleting freshwater resources.
• The race to buy up private land for lithium mining has also allowed an influx of international corporations that may contribute to increased carbon emissions rather than help lower them, critics point out.

archived (Wayback Machine)

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/24136514

archived (Wayback Machine)

Critics of the 'green transition' argue it is imposing an unacceptable cost on ordinary working people. But is it really renewable technologies that are causing our bills to go up, or are there other forces involved? We scratch the surface and take a look.

Imagine this. You’re living in a remote rural hamlet in the forested hills of Mysore, in the southern Indian state of Karnataka. You’re miles from the nearest doctor, a day’s journey by foot and bus to the nearest hospital. And there’s no mains electricity. If you suddenly fall ill and need urgent medical help, what are your chances?

A few years ago, they’d be slim. Today, though, you make your way a couple of hundred metres down the track to a minor miracle: a small, gleaming white building topped with solar panels. Inside, a specially trained health worker checks you out, runs a few tests, takes your blood pressure, even does an ECG, maybe gives you some lifesaving treatment or medicine. Then she connects you to a doctor in a distant hospital, who’s right there on the screen, giving you the sort of specialist consultation that would normally be far out of reach.

It sounds like one of those rosy scenarios beloved of futurists, but this isn’t speculative fiction. The Climate Smart Health Clinic, as the sign over the door declares, is here and now, in the village of Basavanagiri Hadi.

It’s part of an ambitious programme that is using a combination of solar power and mobile connectivity to revolutionise the prospects for healthcare across swathes of rural India. It springs from the Selco Foundation, an independent not-for-profit, which is a sister organisation of Selco India, the country’s leading solar company specialising in small-scale, decentralised systems.

With the backing of the Ikea Foundation, the scheme is designed to provide reliable, clean and affordable electricity to 25,000 of the country’s state-run primary health care (PHC) centres, as well as to explore entirely new ways of delivering health services – like the ‘tele-clinic’ in this Mysore village.