Massachusetts electricity users will reap $1.4 billion in benefits over 20 years from the first commercial-scale offshore wind farm in the U.S.
Avangrid Inc. and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, joint developers of the 800-megawatt project south of Martha’s Vineyard, expect to provide power and renewable energy credits at a levelized price of 6.5 cents per kilowatt hour, in 2017 dollars, over the term of the contracts, according to a letter Wednesday from the State Department of Energy Resources.
That makes the Vineyard Wind project about 18 percent cheaper than other alternatives, according to the letter. It’s also lower than the wind industry expected and shows that offshore wind can be a competitive source of clean energy as costs continue to come down.
“That’s pretty shocking for us,” said Tom Harries, a wind analyst at Bloomberg NEF. “I think the wider industry expected much higher prices. The repercussions of this are it will probably awaken a lot of other coastal states to the value of offshore wind.”
As prices continue to fall, offshore wind is expected to grow by 16 percent annually through 2030, driven by installations in the U.K., Germany, Netherlands, and China, according to Bloomberg NEF. The U.S. is a latecomer to the market, and early projects may cost more than those in Europe, in large part because developers will need to import components for the massive offshore structures, which can be as big as 600 feet (183 meters).
With Vineyard Wind, the U.S. is starting to close the gap, Harries said. While offshore wind is still more costly than onshore wind and solar, it offers other advantages, notably that the turbines will generate power in the winter when prices are high.
‘Pretty Fast’
“The general consensus was that it would take a while for new markets to reach levels we’ve seen in Europe and the U.S. seems to be doing this pretty fast,” he said.
The wind farm 15 miles (24 kilometers) south of Martha’s Vineyard is expected to deliver power at a price that lowers monthly energy bills by about 0.1 percent to 1.5 percent, according to the letter. Construction is expected to begin in 2019, with the project in operation by 2021, the developers said in May. It will reduce the state’s carbon emissions by more than 1.6 million tons per year, the equivalent of removing 325,000 cars from the road.
Read more at US Offshore Wind Farm to Sell Power for 6.5 Cents per kWh
Researchers from the University of Hawai'i at M'noa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) discovered that several greenhouse gases are emitted as common plastics degrade in the environment.
Mass production of plastics started nearly 70 years ago and the production rate is expected to double over the next two decades. While serving many applications because of their durability, stability, and low cost, plastics have deleterious effects on the environment. Plastic is known to release a variety of chemicals during degradation, which has a negative impact on organisms and ecosystems.
The study, published Wednesday in PLOS ONE, reports the unexpected discovery of the universal production of greenhouse gases methane and ethylene by the most common plastics when exposed to sunlight. The science team tested polycarbonate, acrylic, polypropylene, polyethylene terephthalate, polystyrene, high-density polyethylene, and low-density polyethylene (LDPE) -- materials used to make food storage, textiles, construction materials, and various plastic goods. Polyethylene, used in shopping bags, is the most produced and discarded synthetic polymer globally and was found to be the most prolific emitter of both gases.
Read more at Degrading Plastics Revealed as Source of Greenhouse Gases
A rapid assessment by scientists of the ongoing heatwave across northern Europe this summer has found that human-caused climate change made it as much as five times more likely to have occurred.
The preliminary analysis, by a team of scientists at the World Weather Attribution network, uses data from seven weather stations in Ireland, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland. The team were not able to get sufficient data at short notice to include a UK station.
The findings suggest that rising global temperatures have increased the likelihood of such hot temperatures by five times in Denmark, three times in the Netherlands and two times in Ireland.
The sizeable year-to-year fluctuations in summer weather in Scandinavia makes it harder to pin down a specific change in likelihood for the heatwaves in Norway, Sweden, and Finland, the researchers say. However, “we can state that, yes, heatwaves have increased – and are increasing – in Scandinavia as in the rest of Europe”, says one of the scientists involved.
Climate change link
From the UK to Canada through to Oman and Japan, the northern hemisphere has seen a pattern of prolonged heatwaves in recent weeks. The record-breaking temperatures have been linked to wildfires in Sweden, Greece, and California and heatwave deaths in several countries.
Many news reports have speculated on the potential role that rising global temperatures could be having on the spate of extremes this summer. Carbon Brief has published a summary of all the media coverage from recent weeks.
Now, in a rapid analysis over the past few days, scientists have been able to quantify the impact that climate change is having.
Read more at Climate Change Made 2018 European Heatwave Up To ‘Five Times’ More Likely
A renewable portfolio standard tells utility companies how much of their electricity should come from renewables by certain dates.
Many states in the US have renewable portfolio standards. California, not surprisingly, has the highest goal — 50% renewables by 2030. Some have none at all. See the National Conference of State Legislatures web page for specific information about each state. Naturally, the states that have no RPS are places where Trump supporters live, people who believe deep in the hearts that governments have no business telling industries what they should or should not do, no matter how much harm their activities may cause others.
In Massachusetts, the current RPS is 13% — not the worst in the nation but far behind many other states. The standard goes up by 1% a year, but a new law passed this week by the legislature would increase the standard by 2% a year for 10 years beginning January 1, 2020. On January 1, 2030, the yearly increase would fall back to 1% a year unless the legislature further amends the law in the meantime. That means by 2030, the RPS in Massachusetts will be about 35% — far behind California and several other states that have adopted policies calling for 50% renewables by that date.
Read more at Massachusetts Legislature Approves Higher Renewable Portfolio Standard
More burn days, more fuel
What is driving this trend? Many factors have come together to create a perfect storm. They include climate change, past forest and fire management practices, housing development, increased focus on community protection, and the professionalization of wildfire management.
Fire seasons are growing longer in the United States and worldwide. According to the Forest Service, climate change has expanded the wildfire season by an average of 78 days per year since 1970. This means agencies need to keep seasonal employees on their payrolls longer and have contractors standing by earlier and available to work later in the year. All of this adds to costs, even in low fire years.
Read more at A Perfect Storm of Factors Is Making Wildfires Bigger and More Expensive to Control
A two-minute video attacking the scientific consensus on climate change — made by infamous denier Marc Morano — is going viral. While the Guardian has already thoroughly debunked the content of the video, it’s still making the rounds on social media. On Tuesday, it had racked up over 100,000 shares and 6.3 million views on Facebook.
Even though the social media site has bragged about hiring third-party fact-checkers in many countries to cope with its fake-news problem, its approach to fake science remains obscure. “I don’t know if they are even fact-checking science,” says Gordon Pennycook, a professor at Canada’s University of Regina who studies fake news and political bias.
John Cook, who focuses on climate misinformation as a professor of cognitive science at George Mason University, says he hasn’t heard of the social media giant flagging any climate denial content. “Facebook’s fact-checking algorithms are a bit of a black box,” he tells Grist via email. (The social media site did not respond to a request for comment.)
Instead, Facebook seems to be taking aim at lower-hanging fruit, by limiting the spread of sensational stories from websites known to peddle in falsehoods like Infowars and YourNewsWire. “There’s a wide world of B.S., unfortunately,” Pennycook says.
But while fact-checkers focus on falsehoods akin to “Pizzagate,” fake science stories — which have the potential to influence public policy, health, and the future of the earth — can spread widely. Anti-vaccine groups run rampant on Facebook, with hundreds of thousands of followers exposed to misinformation about health risks of immunization. And the Flat Earth Society (don’t get me started), has more than 150,000 followers, although some of them (hopefully) follow the page as a joke.
...
Worse, some of Facebook’s third-party fact-checkers are known climate deniers themselves. The Weekly Standard, which was announced as a fact-checking partner in December, has called climate science “Dadaist science” and has critiqued climate action. The fossil fuel-funded Heritage Foundation has espoused climate change denial for decades — and is now partnered with Facebook to investigate possible “liberal bias” in its operations. As Joe Romm writes for ThinkProgress: “This is indeed the fox guarding the henhouse.”
Read more at A Climate Denial Video Has 6 Million Views. Facebook Doesn’t Care.
