News round-up, June 12, 2023
Most Read…
Why the U.S. Electric Grid Isn’t Ready for the Energy Transition…
…“Decarbonizing the power grid by 2035 could total $330 billion to $740 billion in additional power system costs, depending on restrictions on new transmission and other infrastructure development. However, there is substantial reduction in petroleum use in transportation and natural gas in buildings and industry by 2035. As a result, up to 130,000 premature deaths are avoided by 2035, which could save between $390 billion to $400 billion in avoided mortality costs.
www.nrel.govTIME By Nadja Popovich and Brad Plumer, June 12, 2023In Russia, the outcome of Putin's leadership is being debated. Time and Newsweek offer two perspectives on the subject…
…“Sir Richard Dearlove, the former director of the United Kingdom's foreign intelligence service, on the potential trajectory of Vladimir Putin's leadership in Russia, are thought-provoking. According to Dearlove, the tenure of Putin as the leader of Russia will come to an end either due to his health or the intervention of another Russian faction.
Newsweek——————————————————————————-
Russia’s Elites Are Starting to Sour on Putin’s Chances of Winning the War in Ukraine…
TIME: BY BLOOMBERG NEWS, JUNE 8, 2023—————————————————————————-
There will be no civil war over Trump. Here’s why
Nations go to war over the ideologies, religions, racism, social classes or economic policies. Trump represents nothing other than his own grievance…
The Guardian by Robert Reich, Mon 12 Jun 2023UN concerned by ‘discrepancy’ in Ukraine nuclear plant water levels after dam collapse
IAEA head Rafael Grossi, who will visit Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, says there is a difference of about 2 metres from the reservoir that cools the plant
Reuters, Mon 12 Jun, 2023
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.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?…
Image: Germán & CoCooperate with objective and ethical thinking…
Image credit: www.nrel.gov / Editing by Germán & CoWhy the U.S. Electric Grid Isn’t Ready for the Energy Transition…
…“Decarbonizing the power grid by 2035 could total $330 billion to $740 billion in additional power system costs, depending on restrictions on new transmission and other infrastructure development. However, there is substantial reduction in petroleum use in transportation and natural gas in buildings and industry by 2035. As a result, up to 130,000 premature deaths are avoided by 2035, which could save between $390 billion to $400 billion in avoided mortality costs.
www.nrel.govTIME By Nadja Popovich and Brad Plumer, June 12, 2023The U.S. electric grid is often described as a vast, synchronized machine — a network of wires carrying electricity from power plants across the country into our homes.
But, in reality, there is no single U.S. grid. There are three — one in the West, one in the East and one in Texas — that only connect at a few points and share little power between them.
Those grids are further divided into a patchwork of operators with competing interests. That makes it hard to build the long-distance power lines needed to transport wind and solar nationwide.
America’s fragmented electric grid, which was largely built to accommodate coal and gas plants, is becoming a major obstacle to efforts to fight climate change.
Tapping into the nation’s vast supplies of wind and solar energy would be one of the cheapest ways to cut the emissions that are dangerously heating the planet, studies have found. That would mean building thousands of wind turbines across the gusty Great Plains and acres of solar arrays across the South, creating clean, low-cost electricity to power homes, vehicles and factories.
But many spots with the best sun and wind are far from cities and the existing grid. To make the plan work, the nation would need thousands of miles of new high-voltage transmission lines — large power lines that would span multiple grid regions.
To understand the scale of what’s needed, compare today’s renewable energy and transmission system to one estimate of what it would take to reach the Biden administration’s goal of 100 percent clean electricity generation by 2035. Transmission capacity would need to more than double in just over a decade:
Source: National Renewable Energy Laboratory | The 2035 map is based on the “All Options” path from NREL’s 100% Clean Electricity by 2035 Study. Both maps show utility-scale renewable projects, but do not include distributed installations, like rooftop solar.
There are enormous challenges to building that much transmission, including convoluted permitting processes and potential opposition from local communities. But the problems start with planning — or rather, a lack of planning.
There is no single entity in charge of organizing the grid, the way the federal government oversaw the development of the Interstate Highway System in the 1950s and ‘60s. The electric system was cobbled together over a century by thousands of independent utilities building smaller-scale grids to carry power from large coal, nuclear or gas plants to nearby customers.
By contrast, the kinds of longer-distance transmission lines that would transport wind and solar from remote rural areas often require the approval of multiple regional authorities, who often disagree over whether the lines are needed or who should pay for them.
“It’s very different from how we do other types of national infrastructure,” said Michael Goggin, vice president at Grid Strategies, a consulting group. “Highways, gas, pipelines — all that is paid for and permitted at the federal level primarily.”
In recent decades, the country has hardly built any major high-voltage power lines that connect different grid regions. While utilities and grid operators now spend roughly $25 billion per year on transmission, much of that consists of local upgrades instead of long-distance lines that could import cheaper, cleaner power from farther away.
“Utilities plan for local needs and build lines without thinking of the bigger picture,” said Christy Walsh, an attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Study after study has found that broader grid upgrades would be hugely beneficial. A recent draft analysis by the Department of Energy found “a pressing need for additional electric transmission” — especially between different regions.
The climate stakes are high. Last year, Congress approved hundreds of billions of dollars for solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles and other technologies to tackle global warming. But if the United States can’t build new transmission at a faster pace, roughly 80 percent of the emissions reductions expected from that bill might not happen, researchers at the Princeton-led REPEAT Project found.
Already, a lack of transmission capacity means that thousands of proposed wind and solar projects are facing multiyear delays and rising costs to connect to the grid. In many parts of the country, existing power lines are often so clogged that they can’t deliver electricity from wind and solar projects to where it is needed most and demand is often met by more expensive fossil fuel plants closer to homes and businesses. This problem, known as congestion, costs the country billions of dollars per year and has been getting worse.
The dearth of long-distance transmission isn’t just a climate problem, said Mathias Einberger, a manager for RMI’s Carbon-Free Electricity Program. It spells trouble for reliability, too.
Many power operators are increasingly struggling to keep the lights on as demand rises and extreme weather events become more frequent and severe. More capacity to transfer power between regions could help, so that if a storm knocked out power plants in one area, its neighbors could send electricity. Texas, for example, could have suffered fewer blackouts during a deadly winter storm in 2021 if its isolated grid had more connections with the Southeast, one analysis found.
There are a few efforts underway to ease the bottlenecks. The Biden administration has billions of dollars to help fund transmission projects, and Congress has given the federal government new authority to override objections from state regulators for certain power lines deemed to be in the national interest.
“There’s no silver bullet,” said Maria Robinson, the director of the Department of Energy’s newly created Grid Deployment Office. “Every transmission project is unique like a fingerprint, facing its own challenges, so we need a large arsenal of tools to try to move things along.”
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, an independent agency that regulates interstate transmission of electricity, gas and oil, is exploring ways to encourage grid operators to do more long-term planning and to strengthen ties between regions. Some lawmakers have proposed bills that would give the commission more power to approve the routes of major new lines that pass through multiple states, the way it does with gas pipelines.
But these efforts still face plenty of resistance. Utilities are sometimes wary of long-distance transmission lines that might undercut their local monopolies. Some Republicans in Congress say giving the federal government more authority over transmission would trample on states’ rights. During the debt ceiling debate, Democrats floated a proposal to mandate more connectivity between different grid regions, a provision that was opposed by some utilities and Republicans, and was eventually dropped.
If the country continues to struggle to build long-distance transmission, it might need to opt for more expensive measures to fight climate change instead, a recent study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory found. That could mean building more advanced nuclear plants or gas plants that capture their emissions, which could in theory be built closer to population centers.
Getting better at managing how and when we use electricity could also relieve some of the pressure on the grid. For example, utilities could provide incentives for people to charge their electric cars and other devices when demand is low or ask them to turn off unnecessary appliances during extreme weather events.
But even that wouldn’t entirely cancel out the need for a lot more transmission.
“The grid is already a critical element of our energy system,” said Matteo Muratori, an analyst at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. “But it’s going to become the central piece of the future energy system.”
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.
Image: Russian President Vladimir Putin during the Supreme Economic Eurasian Council at the Grand Kremlin Palace in Moscow, May 25, 2023 / Editing by Germán & CoIn Russia, the outcome of Putin's leadership is being debated. Time and Newsweek offer two perspectives on the subject…
…“Sir Richard Dearlove, the former director of the United Kingdom's foreign intelligence service, on the potential trajectory of Vladimir Putin's leadership in Russia, are thought-provoking. According to Dearlove, the tenure of Putin as the leader of Russia will come to an end either due to his health or the intervention of another Russian faction. Despite the conjecture surrounding his considerable wealth, Dearlove posits that Putin will be unable to enjoy a luxurious retirement following his departure from the presidency. Dearlove acknowledged Putin's misstep regarding Ukraine and made a prediction of an unfavorable outcome for him. This statement suggests that Dearlove has knowledge and expertise in the subject matter and is making an informed analysis of the situation. Since the commencement of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, conjectures regarding Putin's physical condition and the possibility of a successor have been in circulation within the public discourse. According to Ukrainian intelligence, there are purported plans among Russian elites to replace President Putin with Alexander Bortnikov, who currently serves as the director of Russia's Federal Security Service.
NewsweekRussia’s Elites Are Starting to Sour on Putin’s Chances of Winning the War in Ukraine…
TIME: BY BLOOMBERG NEWS, JUNE 8, 2023Amood of deepening gloom is gripping Russia’s elite about prospects for President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, with even the most optimistic seeing a “frozen” conflict as the best available outcome now for the Kremlin.
Many within the political and business elite are tired of the war and want it to stop, though they doubt Putin will halt the fighting, according to seven people familiar with the situation, who asked not to be identified because the matter is sensitive. While nobody’s willing to stand up to the president over the invasion, absolute belief in his leadership has been shaken by it, four of the people said.
The most favorable prospect would be negotiations later in the year that would turn it into a “frozen” conflict and allow Putin to proclaim a Pyrrhic victory to Russians by holding on to some seized Ukrainian territory, two of the people said.
“There is elite deadlock: they are afraid to become scapegoats for a meaningless war,” said Kirill Rogov, a former Russian government advisor who left the country after the invasion and now heads Re:Russia, a Vienna-based think tank. “It is really surprising how widespread among the Russian elite became the idea of a chance that Putin won’t win this war.”
The growing despondency is likely to intensify a blame game over responsibility for the faltering invasion that’s already stirred bitter public divisions between nationalist hardliners and Russia’s Defense Ministry. With the Kremlin facing a Ukrainian counteroffensive that’s backed by billions in weapons from the US and Europe, expectations are low among Russian officials for any significant advances on the battlefield after a winter in which Moscow’s forces made little progress and incurred huge casualties.
The catastrophic breach of a giant dam in Ukraine on Tuesday that the government in Kyiv blamed on Russia further complicated the conflict as floodwater swept across parts of the conflict zone. Russia denied responsibility.
Attacks inside Russia are adding to a sense of insecurity, including the largest drone strikes last week targeting Moscow since the war began. Fighting has spread into the Belgorod region bordering Ukraine, challenging Putin’s image as the guarantor of Russia’s security.
Even some who support the invasion and want to intensify the fight against Ukraine have become deflated about Russia’s prospects in a war that was supposed to conclude within days and is now in its 16th month. Nationalists led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner mercenary group, have raged against Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Russia’s army chief Valery Gerasimov for military failings, as they press for a full-scale mobilization and martial law to avert a potentially catastrophic defeat.
“There have been too many big mistakes,” said Sergei Markov, a political consultant with close Kremlin ties. “There were expectations a long time ago that Russia would take control of the majority of Ukraine but these expectations didn’t materialize.”
Putin and his top officials insist Russia will win, even as it’s no longer very clear what would constitute victory after its army failed to seize Kyiv early in the war. There’s no sign of any challenge to his leadership from within his circle.
Most in the elite are keeping their heads down and getting on with their work, convinced they can’t influence events, according to four of the people with knowledge of the situation. Putin shows no indication of wanting to end the war, five of the people said.
State media explain away repeated reverses by pumping out the message that Russia is fighting a proxy war in Ukraine against the US and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies, though it was Putin who initiated the unprovoked invasion in February 2022.
The Kremlin has imposed the harshest repression in decades to punish even mild dissent with jail terms. Russia’s middle class who’d formed the bedrock of support for opposition to Putin’s rule in major cities in the past decade have been cowed into silence or have fled the country as part of the biggest wave of emigration since the 1990s after the Soviet Union’s collapse.
So far, polls show most ordinary Russians continue to back Putin, who’s mixed Soviet-era nostalgia with Russia’s imperial past to assert that he’s defending the country’s interests and reclaiming historical lands by annexing areas of eastern and southern Ukraine.
Still, concern may be ticking up again after spiking last fall when Putin announced a draft of 300,000 reservists. A May 19-21 survey of 1,500 Russians by the FOM polling company found 53% considered their family and friends were in an anxious mood, a jump of 11 percentage points since April and the highest in nearly four months.
Prigozhin toured Russian cities last week warning of a “difficult” war that may last years as he argued for martial law and full mobilization. He said in an interview last month that Russia risked a revolution similar to the one in 1917 because of the divide between the Kremlin elite and ordinary Russians whose children “come back in zinc coffins” from Ukraine.
The ruling United Russia party began an investigation after a senior State Duma lawmaker, Konstantin Zatulin, told a forum that the invasion had achieved none of its declared aims, Vedomosti reported Monday. “Let’s get out of this somehow,” Zatulin said.
Konstantin Malofeev, a Russian Orthodox nationalist supporter of Putin, wants Russia to keep fighting because “the Ukrainian state should cease to exist.” He rejects any talk of a cease-fire, though he said many within the ruling elite including a “huge number” of business people would support China’s recent peace initiative that envisages a truce.
“They say they support the special military operation but in reality they’re against it,” said Malofeev, a multi-millionaire who’s also sponsoring a volunteer force fighting in Ukraine. “In six months, we’ll have clear superiority in ammunition and shell production and we’ll be ready to go onto the attack.”
To be sure, Russia still possesses enormous resources for the fight. Its troops are dug in on the front lines in eastern and southern Ukraine and Ukrainian air defenses have been kept busy as Russian missiles and drones have rained down on the country throughout the past month.
Ukraine has ruled out a resolution of the conflict that leaves Russia occupying any of its territory, as it begins to unleash the counteroffensive that’s been months in preparation.
“It’s time to take back what’s ours,” Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Valeriy Zaluzhnyi said in a Telegram post May 27.
With no end to the fighting in sight, Russian officials and billionaire tycoons know they face potentially years of international isolation and deepening dependence on the Kremlin as Putin pushes businesses to back the war effort and bans those around him from leaving their posts.
They and their families have been hit with asset freezes and travel bans under US and European penalties that have also made Russia’s economy one of the world’s most sanctioned, upending decades of integration into global markets.
“Officials have adapted to the situation but no one sees any light at the end of the tunnel – they’re pessimistic about the future,” said Alexandra Prokopenko, a former Russian journalist and central bank advisor who’s now a non-resident scholar at the Berlin-based Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. “The best they hope for is that Russia will lose without humiliation.”
Image credit: by Germán & CoThere will be no civil war over Trump. Here’s why
Nations go to war over the ideologies, religions, racism, social classes or economic policies. Trump represents nothing other than his own grievance…
The Guardian by Robert Reich, Mon 12 Jun 2023The former president of the United States, now running for re-election, assails “the ‘thugs’ from the Department of Injustice”, calls Special Counsel Jack Smith a “deranged lunatic” and casts his prosecutions and his bid for the White House as part of a “final battle” for America.
In a Saturday speech to the Georgia Republican party, Trump characterized the entire American justice system as deployed to prevent him from winning the 2024 election.
“These people don’t stop and they’re bad and we have to get rid of them. These criminals cannot be rewarded. They must be defeated.”
Once again, Trump is demanding that Americans choose sides. But in his deranged mind, this “final battle” is not just against his normal cast of ill-defined villains. It is between those who glorify him and those who detest him.
It will be a final battle over … himself.
“SEE YOU IN MIAMI ON TUESDAY!!!” he told his followers on Friday night in a Truth Social post, referring to his Tuesday arraignment.
It was chilling reminder of his 19 December 2020, tweet, “Be there, will be wild!” – which inspired extremist groups to disrupt the January 6 certification.
At the Georgia Republican party convention on Friday night, the Arizona Republican Kari Lake – who will go to Miami to “support” Trump – suggested violence.
“If you want to get to President Trump, you’re going to have to go through me and you’re going to have to go through 75 million Americans just like me,” Lake exclaimed to roaring cheers and a standing ovation. “Most of us are card-carrying members of the NRA,” the National Rifle Association gun lobby. “That’s not a threat, that’s a public service announcement.”
Most Republicans in Congress are once again siding with Trump rather than standing for the rule of law.
A few are openly fomenting violence. The Louisiana representative Clay Higgins suggested guerrilla warfare: “This is a perimeter probe from the oppressors. Hold. rPOTUS [a reference to the real president of the United States] has this. Buckle up. 1/50K know your bridges. Rock steady calm.”
Most other prominent Republicans – even those seeking the Republican presidential nomination – are criticizing Biden, Merrick Garland and the special counsel Jack Smith for “weaponizing” the justice department.
All this advances Trump’s goal of forcing Americans to choose sides over him.
Violence is possible, but there will be no civil war.
Nations don’t go to war over whether they like or hate specific leaders. They go to war over the ideologies, religions, racism, social classes or economic policies these leaders represent.
But Trump represents nothing other than his own grievance with a system that refused him a second term and is now beginning to hold him accountable for violating the law.
In addition, the guardrails that protected American democracy after the 2020 election – the courts, state election officials, the military, and the justice department – are stronger than before Trump tested them the first time.
Many of those who stormed the Capitol have been tried and convicted. Election-denying candidates were largely defeated in the 2022 midterms. The courts have adamantly backed federal prosecutors.
Third, Trump’s advocates are having difficulty defending the charges in the unsealed indictment – that Trump threatened America’s security by illegally holding (and in some cases sharing) documents concerning “United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack; and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack”, and then shared a “plan of attack” against Iran.
Republicans consider national security the highest and most sacred goal of the republic. A large number have served in the armed forces.
Trump’s own attorney general, Bill Barr, said on Fox News Sunday that he was “shocked by the degree of sensitivity of these documents and how many there were, frankly … If even half of it is true, then he’s toast. I mean, it’s a very detailed indictment, and it’s very, very damning. And this idea of presenting Trump as a victim here, a victim of a witch-hunt, is ridiculous.”
None of this is cause for complacency. Trump is as loony and dangerous as ever. He has inspired violence before, and he could do it again.
But I believe that many who supported him in 2020 are catching on to his lunacy.
Trump wants Americans to engage in a “final battle” over his own narcissistic cravings. Instead, he will get a squalid and humiliating last act.
Image by Germán & CoUN concerned by ‘discrepancy’ in Ukraine nuclear plant water levels after dam collapse
IAEA head Rafael Grossi, who will visit Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, says there is a difference of about 2 metres from the reservoir that cools the plant
Reuters, Mon 12 Jun, 2023The UN atomic watchdog has said it needs wider access around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant to check “a significant discrepancy” in water level data at the breached Kakhovka dam used for cooling the plant’s reactors.
International Atomic Energy Agency head Rafael Grossi, who is to visit the plant this week, said that measurements the agency received from the inlet of the plant showed that the dam’s water levels were stable for about a day over the weekend.
“However, the height is reportedly continuing to fall elsewhere in the huge reservoir, causing a possible difference of about 2 metres,” Grossi said in a statement.
“The height of the water level is a key parameter for the continued operability of the water pumps”.
The water from the reservoir is used to cool the facility’s six reactors and spent fuel storage, the IAEA said.
The agency has said earlier that the Zaporizhzhia plant can fall back on other water sources when the reservoir’s water is no longer available, including a large cooling pond above the reservoir with several months’ worth of water.
The destruction of the Kakhovka hydropower dam in southern Ukraine last week has flooded towns downstream and forced thousands of people from their homes.
Both the Kakhovka hydropower dam and the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant have been occupied by Russia since the early days of its invasion in February 2022.
“It is possible that this discrepancy in the measured levels is caused by an isolated body of water separated from the larger body of the reservoir,” Gross said in the statement. “But we will only be able to know when we gain access to the thermal power plant.”
Grossi said the thermal power plant “plays a key role for the safety and security of the nuclear power plant a few kilometres away,” hence the need for access and independent assessment.
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