News Round-up, August 8, 2023
Most read…
Offshore Wind Runs Into Rising Costs and Delays
Some troubled projects are raising concerns about the role to be played by offshore wind farms in tackling climate change.
NYT By Stanley Reed and Ivan Penn, Aug. 7, 2023Climate Is Now a Culture War Issue
The issue of anti-environmentalism is undeniably influenced by true greed. However, climate denial has morphed into something more than just a battle against acknowledging the science of climate change. It has become a front in the culture wars, with right-wing individuals rejecting scientific consensus not only due to their general aversion to science but also out of a visceral opposition to anything that liberals support.
NYT By Paul Krugman, Opinion Columnist, Aug. 7, 2023Biden Plans to Run on Protecting Democracy, as Trump Faces Charges of Subverting It
President Joe Biden speaks about his economic plan "Bidenomics" at Auburn Manufacturing Inc. in Auburn, Maine, on July 28, 2023.
TIME BY BRIAN BENNETT, AUGUST 7, 2023 How a Former Oil Guy Is Using Fracking Tech to Boost Geothermal Energy
TIME BY ALEJANDRO DE LA GARZA, AUGUST 7, 2023Brazil’s Lula pushes end to deforestation, stumbles on fossil fuels
Summit will be a major political and diplomatic test for the Brazilian leader.
POLITICO EU BY LOUISE GUILLOT, AUGUST 7, 2023 Exclusive: Defying war risk, European traders store gas in Ukraine
REUTERS By Jan Lopatka and Marek Strzelecki, August 8, 2023
At the COA Spring Gala 2023, Andrés Gluski, the CEO & President of AES and Chairman of the Americas Society/Council of the Americas, presented President Lacalle Pou with the prestigious Gold Insigne. This award was given in recognition of President Lacalle Pou's outstanding leadership in successfully transforming Uruguay into a prominent technology and innovation hub, all while upholding a thriving democracy and robust economy.
Image by Germán & CoOffshore Wind Runs Into Rising Costs and Delays
Some troubled projects are raising concerns about the role to be played by offshore wind farms in tackling climate change.
NYT By Stanley Reed and Ivan Penn, Aug. 7, 2023“Vattenfall, a Swedish energy company, has for years been doing preliminary work for what would be one of the world’s largest offshore wind complexes, in the North Sea off eastern England.
Now, there are questions about whether this project will ever be built. Last month, Vattenfall said it would halt the first of three phases of the wind farm complex, the Norfolk Offshore Wind Zone, which is projected to provide power for about four million homes in Britain.
Vattenfall blamed rapidly escalating costs for equipment and construction expenses, which they said had climbed as much as 40 percent over the past few quarters. The estimated price tag for the three phases has risen to 13 billion pounds, or about $16.6 billion, from £10 billion.
“With the new market conditions, it simply doesn’t make sense to continue the project,” Helene Bistrom, head of business area wind at Vattenfall, said during a video presentation. The decision led Vattenfall, which is owned by the Swedish government, to write-down more than $500 million.
Vattenfall’s pullback added to the widespread alarm unfolding across the offshore industry about rapidly increasing costs, due partly to supply chain issues and rising demand.
In recent months, several developers in the United States have sought to renegotiate power supply contracts, scrapping them in at least one case, and Orsted, a Danish company that is the world’s largest offshore wind developer, warned that a major project, Hornsea 3, in Britain could be “at risk” without more government support.
With interest rates shooting up, financing the billions of dollars in investment that go into these installations has also become far more expensive.
On Monday, the turbine maker Siemens Energy reported a net loss of 2.9 billion euros ($3.2 billion) for the April-June quarter, largely because of problems tied to “increased product costs and ramp-up challenges” in its offshore energy business.
“There’s very few projects that are immune to the inflationary impact,” said Finlay Clark, an analyst at Wood Mackenzie, a consulting firm.
Europe’s Shift Away From Fossil Fuels
The European Union has begun a transition to greener forms of energy. But financial and geopolitical considerations could complicate the efforts.
A Competitive Field: The E.U. is trying to assemble the building blocks to produce electric cars, but incentives offered by the Biden administration are luring companies to the United States.
A Wind Pioneer: Henrik Stiesdal helped design the first modern wind turbines. A thousand patents later, he’s a green tech entrepreneur rolling out new innovations.
Nuclear Power: Germany shut down its three remaining reactors, just as other European countries look to expand their reliance on nuclear energy.
Ban on Gas-Powered Cars: Germany has reached an agreement with the E.U. to allow the sale of vehicles that burn fuels made from renewable energy past 2035, resolving a dispute over a proposed ban on internal combustion engines.
Rising costs for wind developers are a problem for governments in Europe, the United States and elsewhere. Many countries are counting on an enormous and rapid expansion of offshore wind to achieve a significant portion of their renewable energy goals.
“We are wasting time here,” Morten Dyrholm, group senior vice president for corporate affairs at Vestas Wind Systems, the Danish turbine maker, said of the industry’s problems. “We need to grow the sector quite dramatically.”
Mr. Dyrholm and others in the industry say the inflation problems are a warning sign that governments need to change their system of awarding offshore wind licenses.
The procedures for obtaining the rights to build wind farms vary in different countries but often involve an auction of seabed leases followed, sometimes years later, by agreements that set the price paid by power companies for the electricity generated.
These arrangements, designed to drive down power prices for consumers and, often, to maximize revenues from lease sales, should be broadened to take into account other factors, some industry leaders say. An auction for seabed rights awarded by Scotland in 2022 is cited as a model because it put greater emphasis on factors like the ability of wind companies to develop suppliers, and the experience of the companies.
The debate could open the way for more power deals with corporations like Amazon and Microsoft, whose data centers are hungry consumers of electricity. Large businesses might be more flexible partners for wind developers than government officials who tend to say “this is the rule,” said Deepa Venkateswaran, a utilities analyst at Bernstein, a research firm.
Renewable energy programs like Britain’s — which is designed to encourage financial backing by providing a guaranteed price to wind developers, and also to gradually drive down charges paid by consumers — attracted billions in investment when inflation was low. Now, in a very different world, after the disruptions of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, Britain is taking fire for policies that could make wind projects uneconomical.
“I am afraid the U.K. has gone from being one of the best governments in Europe on offshore wind to one of the worst,” said Giles Dickson, chief executive of WindEurope, a trade body.
Turbine parts at Orsted’s pre-assembly site in Taichung Port in Taiwan, in March.Credit...Ann Wang/Reuters
A British government spokesman responded: “We understand there are supply chain pressures for the sector globally, not just in the U.K., and we are listening to companies’ concerns.”
The inflation problems are mainly hitting offshore wind farms in late stages of development rather than those already generating power.
Offshore projects can require a decade to progress from planning stages to generating power. That means agreements on issues like the power price may be years old before the turbines are in place and generating electricity.
That system worked when inflation was negligible and demand for turbines and other equipment was relatively subdued. Now, as a growing number of developers look to secure everything necessary to undertake the projects — from wind turbines, which cost millions of dollars, to the services of specialized construction ships, to bank financing — they discover that the price tags have suddenly soared. Mr. Dyrholm estimates that prices of wind turbines alone have increased 30 percent in the past year.
“The costs have risen, and you have a mismatch,” said Bernard Looney, chief executive of BP, which is an investor, with Equinor, a Norwegian company, in three offshore wind projects in the Atlantic that would supply power to around two million households in New York State. Equinor and BP have petitioned state authorities to renegotiate their power contracts.
Similarly, developers in Britain and elsewhere don’t seem to want to completely jettison projects. Many are trying to renegotiate the deals or push governments to alter the formats of future auctions. Some are terminating existing contracts to supply power to utilities and seeking new ones — or threatening such moves, figuring there will be plenty of demand for clean power in the future.
Walking away from contracts signed years ago has become “the prudent commercial course” even with the risk of financial penalties, SouthCoast Wind, a project part-owned by Shell that would be located in the Atlantic near Martha’s Vineyard, in Massachusetts, said in a statement in June.
Another Massachusetts proposal, Commonwealth Wind, which is owned by Avangrid, a U.S. subsidiary of the Spanish energy giant Iberdrola, has terminated its power supply contract and plans to seek a new deal in a future auction, the company said.
“The economics are challenging,” said Stephanie McClellan, executive director of Turn Forward, an offshore wind advocacy organization in the United States.
Equinor’s floating wind turbines about 25 miles off the Scottish coast, in 2021.Credit...Andrew Testa for The New York Times
Despite the soured deals, interest in offshore wind remains strong. In a recent auction in Germany, BP and TotalEnergies in France agreed to pay around $14 billion over three decades for offshore tracts.
The German deals differ from others because the companies are simply paying for the rights to develop sea bottom, and they will negotiate what they get paid for the electricity at a later day.
Such deals are attractive to a corporate giant like BP, which has the financial firepower to make them happen and would be freer to do what it wants with the power. Mr. Looney said he hoped to steer away from the long-term power contracts, preferring instead to try to squeeze more value from wind-generated electricity by using it to make green hydrogen, a still scarce clean fuel, or charge electric vehicles.
“We’d like to do something with those electrons; take them and put them to use,” he said.
But there are only a handful of companies with the heft of BP and TotalEnergies. Whether nations can achieve their offshore ambitions through such commercial deals remains to be seen. Critics say that charging high prices for leases will lead to higher power prices for consumers.
Source: NYT/Editions by Germán & Co Climate Is Now a Culture War Issue
The issue of anti-environmentalism is undeniably influenced by true greed. However, climate denial has morphed into something more than just a battle against acknowledging the science of climate change. It has become a front in the culture wars, with right-wing individuals rejecting scientific consensus not only due to their general aversion to science but also out of a visceral opposition to anything that liberals support.
NYT By Paul Krugman, Opinion Columnist, Aug. 7, 2023Understanding climate denial used to seem easy: It was all about greed. Delve into the background of a researcher challenging the scientific consensus, a think tank trying to block climate action or a politician pronouncing climate change a hoax and you would almost always find major financial backing from the fossil fuel industry.
“Those were simpler, more innocent times, and I miss them.
True, greed is still a major factor in anti-environmentalism. But climate denial has also become a front in the culture wars, with right-wingers rejecting the science in part because they dislike science in general and opposing action against emissions out of visceral opposition to anything liberals support.
And this cultural dimension of climate arguments has emerged at the worst possible moment — a moment when both the extreme danger from unchecked emissions and the path toward slashing those emissions are clearer than ever.
Some background: Scientists who began warning decades ago that the rising concentration of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere would have dangerous effects on the climate have been overwhelmingly vindicated.
Worldwide, July was the hottest month on record, with devastating heat waves in many parts of the globe. Extreme weather events are proliferating. Florida is essentially sitting in a hot bath, with ocean temperatures off some of its coast higher than body temperature.
A changing climate, a changing world
At the same time, technological progress in renewable energy has made it possible to envisage major reductions in emissions at little or no cost in terms of economic growth and living standards.
Back in 2009, when Democrats tried but failed to take significant climate action, their policy proposals consisted mainly of sticks — limits on emissions in the form of permits that businesses could buy and sell. In 2022, when the Biden administration finally succeeded in passing a major climate bill, it consisted almost entirely of carrots — tax credits and subsidies for green energy. Yet thanks to the revolution in renewable technology, energy experts believe that this all-gain-no-pain approach will have major effects in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
But not if Republicans can help it. The Heritage Foundation is spearheading an effort called Project 2025 that will probably define the agenda if a Republican wins the White House next year. As The Times reports, it calls for “dismantling almost every clean energy program in the federal government and boosting the production of fossil fuels.”
What’s behind this destructive effort? Well, Project 2025 appears to have been largely devised by the usual suspects — fossil-fueled think tanks like the Heartland Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute that have been crusading against climate science and climate action for many years.
But the political force of this drive, and the likelihood that there will be no significant dissent from within the G.O.P. if Republicans do take the White House, has a lot to do with the way science in general and climate science in particular have become a front in the culture war.
About attitudes toward science: As recently as the mid-2000s, Republicans and Democrats had similar levels of trust in the scientific community. Since then, however, Republican trust has plunged as Democratic trust has risen; there’s now a 30-point gap between the parties.
We saw the effect of this anti-science trend when Covid vaccines became available: Vaccination was free to the public, so there was no economic cost to individuals, yet getting vaccinated was widely perceived as something “experts” and liberal elites wanted you to do. As a result, Republicans disproportionately refused to get their shots and suffered substantially higher rates of excess deaths — deaths over and above those you would normally have expected — than Democrats.
Does anyone seriously doubt that similar attitudes are driving rank-and-file Republicans to oppose action on climate change? The other day my colleague David Brooks argued that many Republicans dispute the reality of climate change and push for fossil fuels as a way to “offend the elites.” He’s right. Look at the hysterical reaction to potential regulations on gas stoves, and while it’s clear that special interests were, um, fueling the fire, there was also a strong culture-war element: The elites want you to get an induction cooktop, but real men cook with gas.
The fact that the climate war is now part of the culture war worries me, a lot. Special interests can do a great deal of damage, but they can be bought off or counterbalanced with other special interests. Indeed, an important part of President Biden’s climate strategy is the idea that renewable energy investments, which have been soaring since his legislation passed, will give many businesses and communities a stake in continuing the green transition.
But such rational if self-interested considerations won’t do much to persuade people who believe that green energy is a conspiracy against the American way of life. So the culture war has become a major problem for climate action — a problem we really, really don’t need right now.
“AES El Salvador Team Awarded the “Golden Hard Hat” Award 2022.
Bernerd Da Santos, First AES Executive Vice President - President Global Renewable and AES Clean EnergyAES Executive Vice President - President Global Renewable and AES Clean Energy“The AES El Salvador team has been awarded the 2022 "Golden Hard Hat" Award, a highly prestigious accolade that recognizes their unwavering commitment to safety. This award, presented by AES Corporation, highlights the team's exceptional dedication to making safety a priority. The team demonstrated professionalism and dedication by working 8 million hours, conducting 30,000 inspections, and dedicating 45,000 hours to technical and environmental training to ensure safety standards. However, the most important thing to note here is that the AES El Salvador team achieved a remarkable feat without any fatalities, demonstrating their exceptional commitment.
I would like to congratulate the union's leader and management team of AES El Salvador: Abraham Bichara, Daniel Bernardez, Roberto Sandoval, John Davenport, and Wilfredo Flores. Their combined efforts have been instrumental in making this outstanding achievement possible.
Once again, my heartfelt congratulations to the AES El Salvador team for this well-deserved recognition. Their tireless efforts and unwavering commitment to safety are an inspiration to us all.
Image by Germán & CoBiden Plans to Run on Protecting Democracy, as Trump Faces Charges of Subverting It
President Joe Biden speaks about his economic plan "Bidenomics" at Auburn Manufacturing Inc. in Auburn, Maine, on July 28, 2023.
TIME BY BRIAN BENNETT, AUGUST 7, 2023 President Joe Biden was on vacation in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware when Donald Trump was indicted for trying to overturn the 2020 election. As TV news anchors chewed over the meaning of the four felony charges, bringing the total number of criminal charges Trump’s facing across multiple investigations to 78, Biden went on bike rides along a scenic salt marsh, ate out at a seafood restaurant and saw the film Oppenheimer in a movie theater.
The next day, as Biden rode his bike past a scrum of reporters, one from the Associated Press shouted out, “Indictments?” The President kept riding.
Biden was adopting the same strategy for Trump’s third indictment as he had for the previous two: staying out of the way. White House officials say that Biden wants to avoid weighing in on Trump’s charges because he doesn’t want to influence the judicial process.
Yet those two earlier indictments were about Trump’s use of hush-money payments to cover up an affair and his handling of classified documents. The latest charges speak to the heart of Biden’s political message to voters in 2024: that the extreme ideas embodied by Trump and championed by much of the Republican Party pose a threat to American democracy.
Biden “will be measured in how he approaches all this given there are many ongoing court cases,” says Simon Rosenberg, a long-time Democratic strategist.
In his first successful bid for President in 2020, Biden traveled to events with the slogan, “Battle for the Soul of the Nation” painted on the side of his campaign bus. Two years later, made the idea that America’s democracy was at stake a major part of his pitch to midterm voters, when control of both the Senate and the House were up for grabs.
He is preparing to employ a similar strategy for his 2024 campaign, while also emphasizing what he’s done to create manufacturing jobs and raise wages.
It’s likely to be a tight race. A recent New York Times/Siena poll showed Biden and Trump neck and neck in a possible head to head general election.
Last November, Attorney General Merrick Garland named special counsel Jack Smith to lead the federal investigations into Trump in order to keep the prosecution of Biden’s chief political rival at arm’s length.
Pushing back on autocratic ideas that undermine legitimate voting results will be a key part of Biden’s pitch to voters in 2024. But Biden may be hemmed in on how far he can go in pressing that point. Not only is he reluctant to seem like he’s cheering on the prosecutors, Trump and his allies have framed all of Trump’s legal problems as being orchestrated by Biden as a campaign strategy.
“The entire Biden Administration knows that I’m the ONLY candidate who would defeat Crooked Joe in a free and fair election,” Trump wrote in a fundraising email to supporters last week. “So, their only hope is to try and send me to JAIL for the rest of my life.”
Rosenberg notes that Republicans have already gone to the polls defending Donald Trump’s election lies and performed poorly. Every Republican candidate for secretary of state who denied the legitimate 2020 election results lost their races, he says.
“These issues were heavily litigated in the battleground in 2022 and it didn’t go well for Republicans and it’s not going to go well for them again in 2024 because Trump represents a far more clear and present danger to our democracy than he did even in the last election,” says Rosenberg.
This time around, Trump is running as a former President who is defending himself against charges related to his efforts to cling to power, including conspiracy to defraud the United States. While the prosecution will be an unavoidable issue in next year’s presidential race, it will be up to Biden to decide how much his campaign intends to talk about it.
Image: Germán & CoCooperate with objective and ethical thinking…
Project Red, Fervo Energy’s full-scale commercial pilot project in northern Nevada, Fervo EnergyHow a Former Oil Guy Is Using Fracking Tech to Boost Geothermal Energy
TIME BY ALEJANDRO DE LA GARZA, AUGUST 7, 2023Of all the technological progress of the past few decades, there is a good argument to be made that a series of fossil fuel industry innovations that helped spark the U.S. shale oil boom have had the single largest effect on the course of global geopolitics, and the world’s biosphere. Horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracking shifted the U.S. from being a net fuel importer to exporter—a realignment of the world’s strategic chessboard currently being demonstrated in the fleets of American oil and natural gas tankers helping circumvent Russia’s energy blockade of Europe. At the same time, all that new, cheap fuel helped prolong the U.S.’s carbon addiction for years, with incipient renewables unable to compete against natural gas.
But that drilling technology may yet have a climate upside. Last month, Houston-based startup Fervo announced the successful test of a first-of-its kind commercial-scale power plant, which uses the shale oil drilling innovations to produce zero-emission geothermal energy. While horizontal drilling allows oil producers to access new seams of fossil fuels, in Fervo’s case, the company is drilling sideways into hot, porous rocks heated by tectonic activity. The company then pumps water through those rocks in order to generate steam and produce electricity. Right now, its project in northern Nevada is capable of producing about 3.5 megawatts of energy, or enough electricity to power about 2,600 homes. Once the plant gets hooked up to the grid later this year, that electricity will be used to power Google data centers and other Alphabet operations.
Unlike solar and wind energy, which only generate energy when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing, geothermal plants can provide a constant stream of power, which is crucial to balancing the grid. Currently, geothermal energy accounts for about 0.4% of U.S. electricity. But, like in the U.S. fracking boom, Fervo’s technology could make it feasible to develop geothermal power plants in many more areas where it wouldn’t have made financial sense before, a change that could help raise geothermal energy as a serious player in decarbonizing the U.S. grid.
Tim Latimer started his career in the oil and gas industry, before co-founding Fervo in 2017. He spoke with TIME about finding a way to use oil industry technology for the planet, and his vision for the future of geothermal energy.
TIME: Can you tell us about how Fervo’s technology works? Why is it important?
Tim Latimer: Geothermal power generation has been around for over 100 years. The first geothermal power plant was built in Italy around the turn of the last century. All geothermal [power] kind of works the same way: you drill to high temperature geology, and then you produce hot water or steam out of wells that you drill into, and then capture that at the surface to create electricity. There's been plants built all over the world. It's a huge part of the electricity mix in places like Iceland, New Zealand, and Kenya. But traditionally, the struggle has been that you [have to] tap really hot, shallow, productive, natural basins to be cost-effective. But those sites got tapped [decades] ago, and we had to drill deeper to less hot places and less productive wells, and technology really didn't keep up. So the reason geothermal hadn't expanded was that once you cherry pick these geologic hotspots and try to move on to other places, the tech didn't exist to make it cost effective.
Traditionally, you would drill simple vertical wells, and you would flow [water] between injection wells and production wells. What's novel about our site is we drilled down about 8,000 ft., and then we turned and drilled horizontally for 4,000 ft. And then we flowed [water] from one horizontal well to the other across several hundred feet in that high temperature rock 8,000 ft. beneath our feet. That solves some of these economic challenges and allows us to go to deeper places and still make the economics work.
What was the biggest challenge of making that oil and gas technology work for geothermal power?
Our geology requirements are quite a bit different. In the U.S., there's been well over 100,000 horizontal oil and gas wells drilled, but generally, those are in shallower places where the rock is softer, and it's not as hot. So it has taken a lot of work to be able to adapt the equipment. Our wells are much higher temperature—the project that we did here was nearly 400℉. We're also drilling through granite, and so that's much harder rock.
What sort of new technology did you need to drill through harder rock and higher heat?
Some of it is better tools, like drill bits with harder surfaces, and motors and electronics that are built to deal with higher temperatures. And some of it is just better techniques. One of the things that we drove forward was a way of pumping fluid down while we're drilling that cools your drilling system more efficiently than in an oil and gas operation.
Where are these hot rocks that you need? How much more geothermal energy could your technology open up?
Our current projects are in states like Utah and Nevada that have good natural geology for geothermal, where we can still drill relatively shallow wells and get to high temperature [rock]. But we're not limited to those geologies. We're just starting there first because it's the low-hanging fruit. Principally, there's virtually an unlimited amount of geothermal energy. The world is really big, and the world is really hot. We've got billions of years of energy under our feet. It's all a question about how much you can access economically. We think with existing technology, drilling down to about 4,000 meters [over 13,100 ft.] is probably cost effective.
As part of the [U.S.] Energy Secretary's enhanced geothermal Earthshot that she announced last year, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory did a study looking in detail at the Western United States, and determining how much high temperature rock can you find at 4,000 meters [over 13,100 ft.] or shallower, and found over 200 gigawatts of [potential power] that was just in that shallow depth. That would represent as much as 20% of U.S. electricity supply, if we can develop that amount. But what we think is, as we expand this technology, we won't have to be just limited to the western United States. We can get so cost effective that we can come to the Eastern United States where we would have to drill deeper, but still make it cost effective. And so there's really no practical limit to how much geothermal [energy] there can be. It's just a question of how quickly we can get more efficient at drilling and repeat the results that we did in our pilot, and just continue to bring costs down every time we build a new power plant.
Was there a particular day where you got out of bed, and said, “I'm done with oil and gas, and I’m going to use this drilling technology for renewables instead?”
I've always been really passionate about the environment. I love the outdoors. And so even when I started my career in oil and gas, it was something I was thinking about a lot. I'm from Houston. The oil and gas industry has been a big part of my life and my community. But the more I got passionate about climate change, the more I really wanted to start looking at new solutions.
There's two things that happened for me that were important. I realized that a lot of my friends, a lot of my family, and a huge part of our city all had our employment prospects tied up in the oil and gas industry. And I started realizing this energy transition is real, and if we're going to take serious action on climate, we need to make sure that there's something that Houston is doing. And not just Houston, but other major oil and gas places around the world. People in places where oil and gas is the primary economic driver need to find a way to transition. And so I wanted to figure out how somebody from the oil and gas industry could apply their skills to climate change. When I discovered geothermal, I felt really excited. This is a field that needs drilling engineers, but to produce a carbon-free energy source.
And then another thing for me was I lived in Houston during this series of floods we got in the 2010s. Year after year, we got these one-in-1,000 year events. Everybody knows about Hurricane Harvey in 2017. But for me, in 2015, there was a flood and they canceled my work. And I walked outside my apartment, and the road outside had 20 ft. of water on it. Everything was underwater. It was this moment where [climate change] went from being this thing that I was intellectually curious and about to being like, “This is not normal. This is a pretty urgent crisis.”
I ended up quitting my job just a couple of months after that to go to graduate school, and ended up pursuing this new geothermal path. I wrote in my application essay to Stanford Business School that my goal was to learn the entrepreneurial skills to launch a geothermal company that can take technology from the oil and gas industry to disrupt the geothermal sector. So it was a pretty calculated move.
I imagine that a lot of people you're working with also come from an oil and gas background, and maybe decided to leave because that industry is not really going to be viable anymore for us as a species. Does that play into recruiting folks?
Totally. 60% of the employees at Fervo come from a background in the oil and gas industry. Growing up here [in Houston], oil and gas is just a massive employer. I really get frustrated when people demonize the people that work in oil and gas. They are some of the best people. It's an incredibly diverse group with people from all over, and a lot of them are also passionate about climate change. We’re able to tap into that growing part of that workforce that is thinking deeply about climate change. If we want to deploy geothermal energy as quickly as we need to to actually have an impact on global carbon emissions, we need to recruit tens of thousands of people to come work with us. And so recruiting from the oil and gas industry is a major part of our strategy.
What does the future look like for Fervo?
We're going into full deployment mode. Technologies like this only make a difference if we deploy them at large-scale in a way that can reduce carbon emissions and increase the reliability of the grid. Our next project that we're breaking ground on is going to be nearly 100 times bigger than our pilot. We're targeting a 400 megawatt project [in Utah] that we're going to be constructing over the next four years. And then beyond that, it's our ambition to unlock that full multi-hundred gigawatt resource that the National Renewable Energy Lab has identified. The goal here is to be 20% of U.S. electricity supply by 2050, and then to repeat that around the world.
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 by Germán & CoBrazil’s Lula pushes end to deforestation, stumbles on fossil fuels
Summit will be a major political and diplomatic test for the Brazilian leader.
POLITICO EU BY LOUISE GUILLOT, AUGUST 7, 2023 Under pressure from the EU to rein in deforestation or face trade restrictions, Amazon countries must figure out how to bring prosperity to the region without destroying the forest. And that’s proving difficult.
At a two-day summit starting Tuesday, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is looking to corral countries to speed up efforts to stop deforestation and decide on a common strategy to save the rainforest.
But it's likely to be an uphill climb, with countries disagreeing on whether they should commit to a zero deforestation goal and on whether oil and gas drilling should be banned in the region.
The summit comes as the EU is rolling out new rules to ban commodities’ imports driving deforestation abroad and is asking countries to police their supply chains against environmental and human rights violations.
That's increasing pressure on the Amazon region — and particularly on Brazil, one of the largest exporters of agri-food products to the EU and home to 60 percent of the rainforest — to commit to ambitious action at this week's meet-up.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro has argued that phasing out fossil fuels is essential for the forest's protection. “Even if we get deforestation under control, the Amazon faces dire threats if global heating continues to climb,” he wrote in an op-ed last month, adding that “to avoid the point of no return, we need an ambitious transnational policy to phase out fossil fuels.”
But Lula isn’t pushing to phase out fossil fuels domestically, highlighting a tension between conservation efforts and ensuring economies stay on track.
The Brazilian leader told local media ahead of the summit he wants to “keep dreaming” about drilling in the region. His comments come as Brazilian oil major Petrobras is looking to open new fields near the mouth of the Amazon River despite receiving a negative opinion from the national institute for the environment.
If fossil fuels are kept underground, Amazon countries will need alternative activities to keep their economies afloat. Observers have suggested using this week's summit as a way to promote greener farming and sustainable forest management, as well as discuss potential schemes to pay farmers and indigenous people to help protect the forest.
“The bioeconomy is the key to unlocking the region's economic potential while preserving its ecological heritage and, as such, needs to be at the center of any sustainable and inclusive development plan for the Amazon,” said Vanessa Pérez, global economics director at the World Resources Institute.
Indigenous groups are also watching the summit closely, and want their contribution to climate protection, as well as their rights and territorial claims recognized by country leaders.
“It is not possible to plan the future of the Amazon without indigenous peoples, without guaranteeing our territorial rights,” said Ângela Kaxuyana, political adviser at the Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon.
High stakes
The outcome of the summit is a major political and diplomatic test for Lula, who has pledged to achieve zero deforestation in the Amazon.
Since taking office last year, Lula has stepped up efforts to crack down on illegal miners, protect indigenous groups and boost conservation efforts in the Amazon, with the government reporting a 66 percent drop in the rate of deforestation in July compared to the same month last year.
But not all Amazon countries are ready to commit to a similarly ambitious goal; Bolivia and Venezuela failed to sign a pledge made at the COP26 climate talks to end global deforestation by 2030.
Scientists have warned that the continued deterioration of the Amazon, a major carbon sink, is likely to have a profound impact on global climate efforts.
“If [Lula] doesn't come out of this summit with agreement from other countries that they also see this goal as important, it really undermines Brazil's efforts to reach this [zero deforestation] goal,” said Diego Casaes, campaign director at the NGO Avaaz.
The regional meet-up is also a key opportunity for Lula to assert his credibility as a climate leader both domestically and internationally as Brazil prepares to host the COP30 summit in 2025, Casaes added.
The outcome is "a test of how far Lula can go given the constraint that he has from the congress,” he said, given the Brazilian legislative body has pushed back against measures to boost policing and protection of the rainforest.
Scientists have warned that the continued deterioration of the Amazon, a major carbon sink, is likely to have a profound impact on global climate efforts | Victor Moriyama/Getty Images
European lawmakers will be looking for signals for how the region is preparing to adapt to new rules to police imports driving deforestation, tackle human rights abuses and green trade.
Under the EU Deforestation Regulation, imports of commodities like soy and beef produced on deforested land will be forbidden from 2024, while under the new corporate sustainability due diligence rules companies will be forced to scrutinize their supply chains for environmental damage and human rights abuses.
And although the trade deal between the EU and the Mercosur countries isn’t officially on the agenda, it will certainly come up.
That’s because the EU is currently negotiating a sustainability addendum to the trade deal with his Latin American counterparts, which should give reassurances — notably to France — the agreement will not have negative consequences on the environment and worsen deforestation.
The summit is an opportunity to see whether Amazon countries "are able to coordinate efforts" and to ensure policies related to the forest "are aligned with [global] climate goals," said Caseas.
Pressure gauges, pipes and valves are pictured at an "Dashava" underground gas storage facility near Striy, Ukraine May 28, 2015. REUTERS/Gleb Garanich//File PhotoExclusive: Defying war risk, European traders store gas in Ukraine
REUTERS By Jan Lopatka and Marek Strzelecki, August 8, 2023PRAGUE/WARSAW, Aug 8 (Reuters) - European gas traders have begun storing natural gas in Ukraine to take advantage of lower prices and available capacity there, regardless of the risks from the ongoing war, three traders and company officials said.
Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, begun in February last year, the European Union (EU) has sought high levels of gas storage to compensate for reduced Russian supply, especially during the peak demand winter months.
The bloc is expected to reach a target of filling its storage facilities to 90% full by Nov. 1.
Traders said there was commercial logic in storage in Ukraine, in addition to on EU soil, to take advantage of cheaper prices now versus for future delivery.
Gas for September delivery is priced at 30 euros ($32.96) per MWh compared with forward prices for first quarter of 2024 at 49 euros, according to prices from the TTF Dutch gas futures market.
Czech EPH group told Reuters its decision to use Ukrainian storage was also a sign of confidence in the country.
"EP Commodities transports natural gas to Ukraine and uses Ukrainian gas storage facilities," Miroslav Hasko, chairman at EPH's EP Commodities, said.
"We believe in the reliability of the Ukraine’s gas transport and storage systems, which proved themselves even in such an immensely difficult wartime situation."
He did not disclose volumes.
EU countries' gas storage facilities were 87% full on Aug. 7, according to transparency platform GIE.
"We see a positive trend in gas injection by foreign traders into our (storage) facilities," said Ukriane's state-owned Ukrtransgas, part of Naftogaz Group.
Naftotgaz said foreign customers could use more than 10 billion cubic metres (bcm) of storage of the country's around 30 bcm capacity, mostly in the country's west, which is far from the front lines.
Slovakia state-owned SPP, which supplies most of the Slovak market, in part with Russian gas, said it was looking at the possibility of using Ukrainian storage given Slovak storage was already 90% full.
"We consider gas storage in Ukraine as one of the interesting business opportunities that we are currently considering," SPP told Reuters.
Other European traders said there are risks due to possible military strikes or questions over what happens to the network if Russia stops pumping the gas it still sends westward via Ukraine.
"Imagine a well-targeted missile hits a compressor station or some other infrastructure. You have to take that risk," said Martin Pich, head of trading at Czech firm MND.
He said volumes at current spreads may not be large but could pick up if spot prices drop. He did not comment on MND's trading.
The Bruegel think tank said last month Ukraine could increase Europe's storage capacity by about 10%.
"Utilising the extra 100 TWh capacity available in Ukraine will provide a nice boost to Europe’s winter outlook, and a welcome boost to Ukraine’s income," Bruegel said.
Gas for storage in Ukraine can be purchased anywhere and pumped using real or virtual flows in pipelines from Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.
Nominations have risen for the pipeline that transports Russian gas from Ukraine to Slovakia at the Velke Kapusany border for flows into Ukraine - virtual reverse flows. They have been up to 10 mcm per day since July.
Physical flows from Slovakia into Ukraine also started in August through the Budince point with daily volumes of around 17 mcm.