Editorial…

The abbey of environmental groups in conflict with the harsh realities of millions of people is complex and challenging.

Maintaining a balance between preserving the environment and making sure that people have access to the resources they require to survive is difficult.

Why Greta Thunberg and Other Climate Activists Are Protesting Wind Farms in Norway…

“The scene in downtown Oslo this week is hardly unusual in the era of climate protest: chained to doorways and bundled up in thick blankets, Greta Thunberg and dozens of other young activists are blocking the entrance to Norway’s energy and finance ministries to challenge government climate policy. But this time, their target may surprise you: wind farms.” 

TIME BY CIARA NUGENT, FEBRUARY 28, 2023 

Climate Activists Have a New Target: Civilians…

“We don’t want them to think that they can buy a big car and just enjoy their life and ignore what’s going on in the world,” Claude explained to me. He and his two accomplices gave false names as a condition of allowing me to observe their nighttime expedition. The vehicles weren’t damaged, but they’d need a refill or a tire change. Before he left, Claude stuck a leaflet to the windscreen saying, in French: “Don’t take it personally. You are not our target, it’s your car.”

POLITICO EU BY KARL MATHIESEN, MAY 2, 2023 

Burning Man Becomes Latest Adversary in Geothermal Feud

“Festival organizers are trying to block plans to build a clean energy plant in the Nevada desert, highlighting the struggle to combat climate change and the cost of clean power.

NYT By Arielle Paul, May 17, 2023

By Germán & Co, May 18,2023

Life is indeed a complex journey with many twists and turns that can both bring joy and sorrow. It is these challenges that test our resilience and ability to adapt. Unfortunately, our world and humans are not immune to disasters, whether they be natural or man-made. Pollution, for example, can have devastating effects on our environment and health, while the actions of those who disregard basic moral principles can cause harm to others. One of the most recent challenges is the SARC-2 virus, which has disrupted our daily life.

The SARC-2 virus has had a significant influence on our emotional health since it has pushed us to give up physical contact and rely solely on digital communication.

Human beings have always been praised for their ability to adapt to change quickly, and it's not hard to see why. This unknown time has been a cruel change, as human contact is essential to nourish our souls. Unfortunately, the virus has also had a devastating effect on the global economy. The pandemic has caused a shortage of essential goods, which has triggered a dangerous inflationary spiral. And just when we thought things couldn't get any worse, Russia's invasion of Ukraine further destabilized the economy by disrupting the fossil fuel market.

The invasion of Ukraine by Russia severely weakened the economy by causing a disruption in the fossil fuel industry.

So, that times have been demanding since the pandemic hit, and now with the added stress of the Ukraine war, seeing how some people struggle to meet their basic needs is heart-breaking. It's not easy when you need a lot of money product to inflation —that you don't have it—to buy the essentials like bread, tortillas, and rice. It's even worse when you can't afford to pay your electricity bill or rent, and you're forced to be homeless, exposed to the elements. Sadly, even retirees in wealthy countries must rummage through garbage containers to survive. It's a shame that so few people are speaking out against this injustice.

Of course, without any doubt, climate change is a fundamental issue. As someone deeply concerned about the effects of climate change, it is essential to have open and —honest, realistic, scientific, and human discussions— about the subject is our duty to place as much importance and care into looking out for the welfare of our neighbour’s as we do in safeguarding the environment. We must be careful that what we do doesn't hurt others around us. After all, When there are no humans on the globe, what use is it to have a healthy planet?

Unfortunately, the environmental movement can sometimes use —wrong—information and misleading narratives to sway people's emotions instead of simply presenting the facts. While must we recognize that some of these groups may have begun with good intentions, it takes time to determine their impartiality as they grow into massive corporations with significant wealth and well-compensated staff.

Now, while millions of people try to cope with this challenging situation, especially in Europe, like the rest of the world, on the one hand, politicians try to find urgent solutions to supply the fuel that no longer comes from Russia, on the other hand, by exploring many new and environmentally friendly sources of energy. It's a tricky situation that we can overcome with determination and cooperation. Unfortunately, some environmental groups are more interested in pushing their agenda than helping those in need. These groups have inhumanely boycotted projects vital to the current electricity industry, causing further hardship for those already struggling.

Burning Man Becomes Latest Adversary in Geothermal Feud…

NYT By Arielle Paul, May 17, 2023

One of the darkest towns in America lies roughly 100 miles north of Reno, where the lights are few and rarely lit until one week each summer when pyrotechnics and LEDs set the sky and mountains aglow.

In tiny Gerlach, just outside the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, residents have watched the Burning Man festival grow over the last 30 years to a spectacle of nearly 80,000 countercultural hippies and tech billionaires, offering an economic lifeline for the unincorporated town. Now, Burning Man and Gerlach are more tightly aligned, joining conservationists and a Native American tribe in an alliance against a powerful adversary: Ormat Technology, the largest geothermal power company in the country.

Both Burning Man and Ormat share a vision for a greener future, yet neither can agree on the road to get there.

The festival promotes self-reliance and leaving no trace of its ephemeral metropolis, yet it contributes an enormous carbon footprint; the power company is vested in the future by battling climate change, but its clean energy facilities pose a threat to local habitats while reaping a sizable profit.

The dilemma has complicated similar projects worldwide, underscoring the tension between the need to combat climate change and the cost of doing so using clean power. In the effort for a sustainable future, what compromises must be made?

Experts say the answer comes down to the No. 1 rule in real estate: location, location, location.

“Devil’s in the details with the exact spot,” said Shaaron Netherton, the executive director of Friends of Nevada Wilderness. The organization has joined in a lawsuit to block Ormat’s project, which would explore potential geothermal resources in Gerlach.

Several Ormat initiatives have stalled or been forced to relocate amid concerns about potential threats to endangered species like the bleached sandhill skipper, a rare butterfly; populations of sage-grouse; the steamboat buckwheat; and, most recently, the Dixie Valley toad.

Opponents of Ormat’s project plans in Dixie Valley, Nev., fear it would drain the surface springs and push the tiny toad toward extinction. “Geothermal energy has a dark, dirty little secret: They dry up hot springs every time,” said Patrick Donnelly, the Great Basin director at the Center for Biological Diversity.

Yet other plants, such as Ormat’s Tsuchiyu Onsen plant in Fukushima, Japan, coexist with neighboring hot springs, inspiring the Japanese to reconsider the potential of geothermal energy, which creates electricity using fluids from underground.

Ormat said in a statement that it recognized the value of Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. “Sustaining its resources is not only important to residents but also to our long-term success,” the company said.

Nevada’s geothermal resources have become a controversial topic. The state, known as the “golden child of geothermal,” contributes 24 percent of the country’s geothermal power, the highest after California, and produces nearly 10 percent of its electricity using the earth’s heat.

Ormat has 15 plants in Nevada, which together contribute 433 megawatts to the state’s electrical grid — enough to power 325,000 homes. Geothermal environments, including hot springs, geysers and steam vents found along the “Ring of Fire,” the tectonic pathway encircling the Pacific Ocean, are home to a wide range of biodiverse ecosystems. They can also serve as sacred sites for Indigenous tribes and supply spring water to rural towns like Gerlach.

Loss of drinking water is one of the many concerns Gerlach residents have over Ormat’s proposed project. Another is subsidence, the gradual sinking of land already occurring in certain parts of town.

“They build the plant on the aquifer Gerlach is sitting on, Gerlach will sink,” said Will Roger, who, along with his partner, Crimson Rose, is a founder of Burning Man and have lived in Gerlach for 10 years. “That means the foundations of our houses will break and we’ll get condemned.”

Ormat worked to ensure there would be “no significant environmental or economic losses generated by exploration or development” of the site, the company said in its statement. “Geothermal development can bring numerous benefits to communities, especially in rural towns like Gerlach.”

The aquifer also houses the Great Boiling Springs, studied by the likes of NASA for its rare microbial similarities to conditions on Earth billions of years ago. Locals fear the plant would irreversibly affect the spring by mixing geothermal fluids with groundwater.

These are “geological uncertainties,” said Roland N. Horne, a professor of earth sciences at Stanford University. He explained that older steam plants have dried up hot springs, but most Ormat plants, including the one proposed in Gerlach, run on binary technology in which geothermal water never leaves the ground. Binary power plants create energy through a heat exchanger “with no emissions whatsoever of geothermal fluid or gases,” he said.

Still, binary plants are not foolproof. At Ormat’s nearby Jersey Valley plant, springs dried after operating for a few years. Ormat claims there is no proof the drought was caused by the plant, attributing it instead to a poorly plugged mining core hole.

Complicating matters in Gerlach, the plant would infringe on springs culturally significant to the Summit Lake Paiute Tribe. Randi Lone Eagle, the tribe’s chairwoman, said the Bureau of Land Management failed to adequately consult them before greenlighting the project. “Tribes want to be notified way ahead of that process because a lot of the time, we’re coming to the table when the project is already done,” she said.

The plant’s critics say the town’s 130 residents could also be subject to light, noise and pollution, with desert views and historic emigrant trails sullied by the presence of an industrial plant a hundred feet away. These risks were not weighed when the Bureau of Land Management found “no significant impact” in its environmental assessment of the exploration project.

“It’s kind of a NIMBY thing, but so much more,” said Mr. Roger, the Burning Man co-founder, whose two-acre home has 50 trees, a labyrinth, chickens and an aquaponics system that harvests tilapia and fertilizes their greenhouse. “It’s not just ‘not in my backyard,’ but don’t ruin my backyard.”

Last month, local authorities rescinded a permit for Ormat to “temporarily explore whether a commercially viable geothermal resource exists” in Gerlach, Ormat said in its statement, cuing up what is likely to be a long conflict.

Burning Man organizers say when it comes to their social principles, they practice what they preach. Sustainability projects funded by the Burning Man Project, the nonprofit entity that runs the festival, are sprouting around town. The organization claims that it “owns more than half of the commercial property in Gerlach,” advancing its goal to build a permanent community.

As part of an effort to cut the festival’s annual carbon footprint of 100,000 tons by 2030, the Burning Man Project has outlined green initiatives like supplying more “solar installations for artwork and campers” and “having serious conversations” about what art to burn, Ms. Rose said.

But it’s an ambitious goal. About 90 percent of Burning Man’s emissions are caused by cars, RVs and planes hauling thousands of attendees to the remote desert.

Mr. Roger said he hoped greener grids will beckon more electric vehicles to the festival. Unfortunately, electric cars require lithium-ion batteries mined from plants like the one Fuse Battery plans to build outside of Gerlach and will probably receive similar pushback.

He added that he had no plans to scale down the festival to offset its carbon footprint.

“Burning Man changes lives, so if we can wake people up there, to me all that is worth it,” he said. “I don’t want to lower the number; I’d like to raise it.”

Most read…

An Untested Oil Price Cap Has Helped Choke Revenue to Russia

Group of 7 leaders are prepared to celebrate the results of a novel effort to stabilize global oil markets and punish Moscow.

NYT By Jim May 18, 2023

Carbon Accounting Changes Could Lift Corporate Greenhouse-Gas Emissions

Some multinationals might be underestimating their emissions by close to 50% under current rules

WSJ By Dieter Holger, May 18, 2023 

The EU should start planning now for Russia after Putin

Political destabilisation could lead to armed conflict within Russia itself. There must be a strategy to contain the fallou

POLITICO EU Alexander Clarkson and Kirill Shamiev, Today

Why the U.S. is so bad at building clean energy, in 3 charts

As Congress battles over the debt ceiling and permitting reform, here’s what’s at stake

WP by Shannon Osaka, Climate zeitgeist reporter, May 18, 2023 

How can strategic investment achieve both economic growth and social progress?… What is the role of renewable energy and battery storage in achieving the goals of the low-carbon economy?…

The AES Corporation President Andrés Gluski, Dominican Republic Minister of Industry and Commerce Victor Bisonó, and Rolando González-Bunster, CEO of InterEnergy Group, spoke at the Latin American Cities Conferences panel on "Facilitating Sustainable Investment in Strategic Sectors" on April 12 in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

An Untested Oil Price Cap Has Helped Choke Revenue to Russia

Group of 7 leaders are prepared to celebrate the results of a novel effort to stabilize global oil markets and punish Moscow.

NYT By Jim May 18, 2023

*Jim Tankersley is an economics reporter who covers the White House. He has been tracking the Biden administration’s efforts to limit Russia’s oil revenues for the past year.

In early June, at the behest of the Biden administration, German leaders assembled top economic officials from the Group of 7 nations for a video conference with the goal of striking a major financial blow to Russia.

The Americans had been trying, in a series of one-off conversations last year, to sound out their counterparts in Europe, Canada and Japan on an unusual and untested idea. Administration officials wanted to try to cap the price that Moscow could command for every barrel of oil it sold on the world market. Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen had floated the plan a few weeks earlier at a meeting of finance ministers in Bonn, Germany.

The reception had been mixed, in part because other countries were not sure how serious the administration was about proceeding. But the call in early June left no doubt: American officials said they were committed to the oil price cap idea and urged everyone else to get on board. At the end of the month, the Group of 7 leaders signed on to the concept.

As the Group of 7 prepares to meet again in this week in Hiroshima, Japan, official and market data suggest the untried idea has helped achieve its twin initial goals since the price cap took effect in December. The cap appears to be forcing Russia to sell its oil for less than other major producers, when crude prices are down significantly from their levels immediately after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Data from Russia and international agencies suggest Moscow’s revenues have dropped, forcing budget choices that administration officials say could be starting to hamper its war effort. Drivers in America and elsewhere are paying far less at the gasoline pump than some analysts feared.

Russia’s oil revenues in March were down 43 percent from a year earlier, the International Energy Agency reported last month, even though its total export sales volume had grown. This week, the agency reported that Russian revenues had rebounded slightly but were still down 27 percent from a year ago. The government’s tax receipts from the oil and gas sectors were down by nearly two-thirds from a year ago.

Russian officials have been forced to change how they tax oil production in an apparent bid to make up for some of the lost revenues. They also appear to be spending government money to try to start building their own network of ships, insurance companies and other essentials of the oil trade, an effort that European and American officials say is a clear sign of success.

“The Russian price cap is working, and working extremely well,” Wally Adeyemo, the deputy Treasury secretary, said in an interview. “The money that they’re spending on building up this ecosystem to support their energy trade is money they can’t spend on building missiles or buying tanks. And what we’re going to continue to do is force Russia to have these types of hard choices.”

Some analysts doubt the plan is working nearly as well as administration officials claim, at least when it comes to revenues. They say the most frequently cited data on the prices that Russia receives for its exported oil is unreliable. And they say other data, like customs reports from India, suggests Russian officials may be employing elaborate deception measures to evade the cap and sell crude at prices well above its limit.

“I’m concerned the Biden administration’s desperation to claim victory with the price cap is preventing them from actually acknowledging what isn’t working and taking the steps that might actually help them win,” said Steve Cicala, an energy economist at Tufts University who has written about potential evasion under the cap.

The price cap was invented as an escape hatch to the financial penalties that the United States, Europe and others announced on Russian oil exports in the immediate aftermath of the invasion. Those penalties included bans preventing wealthy democracies from buying Russian oil on the world market. But early in the war, they essentially backfired. They drove up the cost of all oil globally, regardless of where it was produced. The higher prices delivered record exports revenues to Moscow, while driving American gasoline prices above $5 a gallon and contributing to President Biden’s sagging approval rating.

A new round of European sanctions was set to hit Russian oil hard in December. Economists on Wall Street and in the Biden administration warned those penalties could knock oil off the market, sending prices soaring again. So administration officials decided to try to leverage the West’s dominance of the oil shipping trade — including how it is transported and financed — and force a hard bargain on Russia.

Under the plan, Russia could keep selling oil, but if it wanted access to the West’s shipping infrastructure, it had to sell at a sharp discount. In December, European leaders agreed to set the cap at $60 a barrel. They followed with other caps for different types of petroleum products, like diesel.

Many analysts were skeptical it could work. A cap that was too punitive had the potential to encourage Russia to severely restrict how much oil it pumps and sells. Such a move could drive crude prices skyward. Alternatively, a cap that was too permissive might have failed to affect Russian oil sales and revenues at all.

Neither scenario has happened. Russia announced a modest production cut this spring but has mostly kept producing at about the same levels it did when the war began.

Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency, has called the price cap an important “safety valve” and a crucial policy that has forced Russia to sell oil for far less than international benchmark prices. Russian oil now trades for $25 to $35 a barrel less than other oil on the global market, Treasury Department officials estimate.

“Russia played the energy card, and it didn’t win,” Mr. Birol wrote in a February report. “Given that energy is the backbone of Russia’s economy, it’s not surprising that its difficulties in this area are leading to wider problems. Its budget deficit is skyrocketing as military spending and subsidies to its population largely exceed its export income.”

Biden administration officials say that there is no evidence of widespread evasion by Russia, and that Mr. Cicala’s analysis of Indian customs reports does not account for the rising cost of transporting Russian oil to India, which is embedded in the customs data.

There is no dispute that the world has avoided what was privately the largest concern for Biden officials last summer: another round of skyrocketing oil prices.

American drivers were paying about $3.54 a gallon on average for gasoline on Monday. That was down nearly $1 from a year ago, and it is nowhere near the $7 a gallon some administration officials feared if the cap had failed to prevent a second oil shock from the Russian invasion. Gas prices are a mild source of relief for Mr. Biden as high inflation continues to hamper his approval among voters.

After rising sharply in the months surrounding the Russian invasion, global oil prices have fallen back to late-2021 levels. The plunge is partly driven by economic cooling around the world, and it has persisted even as large producers like Saudi Arabia have curtailed production.

Falling global prices have contributed to Russia’s falling revenues, but they are not the whole story. Reported sales prices for exported Russian oil, known as Urals, have dropped by twice as much as the global price for Brent crude.

The Group of 7 leaders meeting in Japan this week will probably not spend much time on the cap, instead turning to other collective efforts to constrict Russia’s economy and revenues. And the biggest winners from the cap decision will not be at the summit.

“The direct beneficiaries are mostly emerging market and lower-income countries that import oil from Russia,” Treasury officials noted in a recent report.

The officials were referring to a handful of countries outside the Group of 7 — particularly India and China — that have used the cap as leverage to pay a discount for Russian oil. Neither India nor China joined the formal cap effort, but it is their oil consumers who are seeing the lowest prices from it.

Carbon Accounting Changes Could Lift Corporate Greenhouse-Gas Emissions

Some multinationals might be underestimating their emissions by close to 50% under current rules

WSJ By Dieter Holger, May 18, 2023 

Changes to emissions accounting rules are being considered that could significantly increase carbon footprints for companies claiming to use 100% renewable power in their efforts to decarbonize.

How companies tally greenhouse-gas emissions from their electricity purchases—so-called Scope 2 emissions—was the most popular issue in a recent consultation on updating widely used GHG Protocol carbon accounting rules. Officials are analyzing whether to recommend more granular reporting of Scope 2 emissions, which would improve accuracy but also could lift reported emissions by as much as nearly 50%, according to recent research. The GHG Protocol is used by more than 10,000 companies to calculate their emissions and is expected to underpin international and U.S. climate reporting regulations. 

Under current standards, businesses can claim to be using 100% renewable energy as long as they offset their use of fossil fuel-generated electricity with credits from wind or solar projects in the same general power market, such as the whole of the U.S. or the European Union. For example, a company with a factory in Ohio could buy renewable-energy certificates for power from a Texas wind farm and use the certificates to offset its fossil-fuel electricity consumption in Ohio. 

One change being discussed would restrict emissions accounting to electricity from the same grid region, which would mean these kinds of claims wouldn’t be possible since Texas and Ohio are in separate grid regions. The American power market has three major grid regions, which are divided into 26 subregions, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 

Rules limiting renewable-energy claims to within the smaller subregions would improve the accuracy of emissions accounting because companies would be more likely to actually use the renewable electricity paid for with their certificates. 

Another change being discussed would only allow companies to claim they are using renewable energy if the electricity was generated at the same hour of the day that the company was using power from the grid. A 2023 Princeton University study analyzed the emissions effect of location and hourly matching requirements. Lead author, Wilson Ricks, said the restrictions would force companies to do the hard work of sourcing carbon-free electricity to supply their needs when and where these occur. “The result would be that claims of 100% carbon-free electricity become much harder to make, but also much more believable,” Ricks said. 

According to a 2022 study, companies that don’t account for hourly and location data could be under- or overestimating their emissions by 35%. A recent review by carbon management firm FlexiDAO of 22 multinationals that bought renewable electricity across 27 countries found that they could be underestimating their electricity emissions by close to 50% under the current system.

“It gives the false impression of achievement and it’s too easy for companies to say, ‘I’m done. I’m 100% renewable, I’ve bought enough stuff, I’m good to go, I’m zero emissions,’” FlexiDAO Chief Executive Simone Accornero said. “That’s clearly not the case.”

However, respondents to a GHG Protocol survey from November 2022 to March 2023 were split between moving to more granular data or maintaining the current rule’s flexibility, said Kyla Aiuto, research associate at the World Resources Institute, the nonprofit co-managing the GHG Protocol with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. 

Google’s published comments to the survey supported the change: “Purchasing clean energy on the same grid where consumption occurs is the best way to create an inventory that accurately reflects the physical realities of the grid and directly addresses the emissions associated with a company’s operations.” 

The tech company is aiming to use so-called 24/7 carbon-free energy by 2030, which essentially means using power from clean energy sources like nuclear or renewables in its operations around the clock. Google reached 66% on an hourly basis in 2021. Microsoft has a similar goal and also supports restricting accounting to tighter locations.

However, Emissions First partnership—a group including Facebook -parent Meta, General Motors, Heineken and Amazon —is pushing instead for a new method to be added to the GHG Protocol that allows companies to account for avoided emissions from a renewable-energy investment regardless of where it is in the world.

The broader approach would help deliver a fast, cost-effective and scalable way to decarbonize power grids, said Jake Oster, Amazon Web Services’ director for energy and environment policy in the EMEA region and spokesman for Emissions First.

The GHG Protocol secretariat is reviewing the more than 1,400 survey responses, around 400 of which mentioned Scope 2. Other areas of focus were emissions in the value chain, or so-called Scope 3 emissions, market-based accounting approaches, and corporate accounting and reporting standards.

The group plans to conduct more surveys, convene technical experts and seek feedback on proposals before changes are made. An update could come as early as 2025.

The EU should start planning now for Russia after Putin

Political destabilisation could lead to armed conflict within Russia itself. There must be a strategy to contain the fallou

POLITICO EU Alexander Clarkson and Kirill Shamiev, Today

Twenty-seven years before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, in what now seems a very distant past, the European Union considered sanctioning Russia.

In 1995, following Russia’s military intervention in Chechnya, EU leaders suspended the ratification of a planned partnership and cooperation agreement and threatened Moscow with even greater consequences if its war crimes, including the indiscriminate bombing of Chechen civilians, did not stop.

The Boris Yeltsin government dealt with the conflict in Chechnya by unleashing further brutal military force, but Europe eventually backed down and ratified the agreement anyway. In the years that followed, Russia’s leadership went on to dismantle democratic institutions, invade Georgia in 2008 and ignite a war in eastern Ukraine in 2014, the prologue to the full-scale invasion of February 2022.

Looking back at the missed opportunities of the 1990s is a reminder of how immediate dilemmas can lead policymakers to overlook signs of the next crisis on the horizon. As it responds to the carnage caused by Vladimir Putin in Ukraine, the EU cannot afford not to prepare for the next Russian crisis.

The war in Ukraine, much like the war in Chechnya in the 1990s, has put immense pressure on Russia’s stability as a state. It is critical that EU member states and institutions start to plan for a range of postwar and post-Putin scenarios in Russia, including a destabilisation of the Russian political system that could lead even to armed conflict within the country. To protect the collective interests of Europe, including Ukraine, from any future turmoil engulfing Russia, the EU needs a strategy that actively encourages its democratisation, no matter how small the chances of that now seem.

The Kremlin has long dismissed Brussels as a global player. After European condemnation of the brutalities committed during the Chechen wars, Moscow tried to divide and rule, breaking down the bloc’s values-based unity, engaging individual leaders, identifying the most influential member states and their national interests. In many cases, Russia received the amount of economic and political integration with western nations it wanted while sidestepping domestic democratic reform.

Moscow’s cynical fixation on the interests of individual EU member states both reflected and cast a long shadow over the Russian perception of the EU. Even opposition-minded members of Russian civil society viewed the EU as an imbalanced confederation with big powers dictating the bloc’s economic and foreign policies. Economic growth, travel freedoms and cooperation with individual EU member states left them blind to the gradual decline of freedom in Russia. Russian elites acquired foreign language skills and enough stolen or oil-driven wealth to holiday comfortably in western Europe without bothering to endorse democratic values at home.

For Russia’s middle and upper class, this bargain with Moscow and Brussels ended with the invasion of Ukraine. Having lost any influence over Putin, Russian elites chose either to lie low, escape the country, or start infighting by shifting the blame for the crisis on to one another. If Russia manages to avoid a full-scale slide into totalitarianism, what remains of its democratic opposition may finally be able to acknowledge the EU’s capacity to exert transformative progressive power.

Ukrainian frustration with any deeper EU engagement with Russia would be understandable, but fostering a shift away from Russian imperialism would be in the interests of all of Russia’s neighbours. Since Moscow’s current elite will accuse the EU of interfering anyway, the EU has nothing to lose by having a wider debate about democratic reform in post-Putin Russia.

A postwar Russia trying to overcome Putin’s toxic legacy would have much to learn much from an economically prosperous bloc that has brought together and transformed societies that had once fought each other in two world wars.

But EU institutions would have to set out the detailed steps that Russia’s state elite must take as strict conditions for the reopening of trade, travel and investment access to the rest of Europe. They would also provide incentives. A genuine process of reform that launched the rule of law and acknowledged Russia’s post-conflict obligations to Ukraine and other affected states could be rewarded with the promise of negotiations with Brussels.

European distrust of Russia runs deep so the EU should be resolute about verification at every stage of this process. Many Russians are familiar with the principle of “trust but verify”, which underpinned talks on nuclear disarmament in the Gorbachev-Reagan era. But only an unwavering commitment to verification can rebuild trust. As trust is gradually restored, Russia could over time gain integration into the EU’s single market, the basis for Europe’s successful economic and social order.

It might sound premature to discuss strategies for stimulating Russian reform. But there may be only a fragile window of opportunity to support genuine transformation in Russia. It will require Russians to abandon the imperialist delusions of the Putin regime. If they can do so, there may be a path towards a common European home for all. The west must not lose sight of the potential for positive change in Russia, even as it supports Ukraine in its struggle for survival.

Why the U.S. is so bad at building clean energy, in 3 charts

As Congress battles over the debt ceiling and permitting reform, here’s what’s at stake

WP by Shannon Osaka, Climate zeitgeist reporter, May 18, 2023 

The United States has big plans to move away from fossil fuels. By 2050, the Biden administration has promised, the country will have a carbon footprint of zero — thanks to thousands of wind and solar farms, new nuclear and geothermal power plants, electric vehicles and all-electric homes and buildings.

Want to know how your actions can help make a difference for our planet? Sign up for the Climate Coach newsletter, in your inbox every Tuesday and Thursday.

There’s just one problem: The United States really isn’t very good at building clean energy.

This paradox has become a central question in the anxiety-inducing race to raise the debt ceiling this month. Congressional leaders, haggling over how best to avoid default, have suggested that including legislation to speed up the development of energy projects and power lines — known as “permitting reform” — could help cement a final deal. (They have very different ideas of what that legislation should include: Democrats want to focus on building interstate power lines, while Republicans want to speed up the process of building power plants, including fossil-fuel ones.)

But how bad is the United States, actually, at building all the wind, solar and geothermal needed to eliminate carbon pollution? And why does it take years to build seemingly simple projects?

These three charts show why the country is lagging in its quest to build clean energy, and how certain policies could help.

Clean energy projects stuck in line

The United States needs an estimated 950 gigawatts of clean energy and around 225 gigawatts of storage to substantially clean up its electricity sector. But, almost unbelievably, projects accounting for more than 1,200 gigawatts of clean energy and more than 650 gigawatts of storage have already been proposed; they just can’t get connected to the grid.

This little-known bottleneck is blocking clean energy for millions

This is the frustration of the country’s “interconnection queue,” a long line of projects across the country that are waiting to get plugged in to the country’s aging electricity grid. Right now, key areas of the grid are at capacity — imagine a freeway traffic jam — and new wind and solar can’t be added unless the grid is upgraded, which costs developers money. According to data from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the number of renewable projects waiting in the queue has skyrocketed in recent years.

“It’s kind of a double-edged sword,” said Joe Rand, an energy policy researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley lab. “There’s the really good news that all this clean energy capacity is trying to connect to the grid. But then there’s the backlog and bottlenecks and barriers.”

Many developers end up withdrawing their projects due to the high costs of connecting to the grid. According to Rand’s data, only 21 percent of the projects entering the long line ultimately get built. And for the projects that do get built, getting through the process takes years. It now takes an average of about five years for an energy project to be operational once it enters the queue.

Federal agencies are working on streamlining the process, and the Biden administration has cited this long wait for approval as one area where Congress should act. “Congress should reform the transmission interconnection queue so that new generation projects are not stuck in line,” the White House said in a statement last week.

But one way to alleviate the queue problem is to fix another issue: The slow rollout of transmission lines.

Power lines are painfully slow

Coal and natural gas plants pollute the air and warm the climate, but they do have one upside: They can be on all the time. Wind and solar, however, only produce power at certain times of the day. And some sites are way better (that is, windier or sunnier) than others for producing renewable energy.

“The best sites for wind and solar happen to be in the sunny Southwest or the windy Midwest,” said Johan Cavert, a transmission policy analyst at the think tank the Niskanen Center. “And those areas are just not near the biggest population centers.”

So a country that wants to be largely — around 80 percent, let’s say — powered by renewable electricity needs to have big, interstate transmission lines that carry power from where the renewable energy is generated to where it will be used.

But building transmission lines is slow and complex. Lines often have to cross through states that don’t benefit from them, and the federal government can’t just rubber-stamp those projects. That means that a transmission line can take eight to 15 years to build, slowing progress on clean energy. (A natural gas pipeline, on the other hand, only takes around three years to build.)

A transmission line started now might not be finished until the mid-2030s — well after the point that the United States should have already slashed emissions.

Many Democrats want to prioritize giving the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission more transmission siting authority in any permitting deal. But Republicans argue that authority could infringe on state’s rights.

Local communities push back

As wind and solar farms increasingly gobble up unused land around the country, renewable infrastructure is getting closer and closer to rural communities that aren’t always welcoming of new energy development. In recent years, the number of local communities who have rejected wind and solar farms has risen, according to the Renewable Rejection Database managed by journalist Robert Bryce.

Communities have cited historical heritage, the fear of falling property values, or simply not liking the look of wind and solar as reasons for rejecting projects.

Republicans have suggested narrowing the timeline for environmental reviews, which would ease some of the opposition to energy projects. But this would apply to both fossil fuel projects and clean energy projects — and Democrats worry that loosening the rules under the National Environmental Policy Act might boost oil, gas and coal operations. It currently takes projects an average of 4.5 years to make it through this federal gantlet.

The Biden administration has supported Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.)’s plan, which would impose a two-year time limit on reviews and allow developers to sue if the process extends beyond that. This proposal includes more authority for building transmission, but would also approve the natural gas Mountain Valley Pipeline — a sticking point for some Democrats.

It’s still unclear whether a permitting deal will make it across the finish line in the debt ceiling negotiations — and, if it does, how much it will boost renewable energy and transmission. But something will have to change if America wants to reach its clean energy goals.

Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country

More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

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