Ozzie renewables boom

Last year, one of the largest coal power stations in Australia, Hazelwood in Victoria, closed down.  It was old and its owners, Engie, decided that it would cost too much to fix, plus there was reputational damage because Hazelwood burned brown coal (lignite) which is by far the highest emitter of CO2 per MW of any large-scale generation.  When it closed, the Right had an orgy of ill-informed recrimination, blaming Labor and forecasting that the loss of Hazelwood's output would lead to blackouts this summer (even in Victoria, in the south of the country, demand is highest in summer because of air conditioners)

In fact, there were no blackouts because of insufficient supply this summer.  (Several coal power stations however had units which went off line because of the heat, and some substations tripped because of excessive demand during heat waves.)  As it happened, the output of solar this summer from 8 am to 4 pm exceeded the maximum output of Hazelwood  last summer.  (What happens after 5 p.m.?  Wind and hydro take up the slack, though when the whole grid goes renewable, storage via batteries or pumped hydro will be necessary.  In any event, 60+% of electricity demand is during the day.)

Source: PV Magazine

This is part of a renewables boom in Oz.  5 GW (gigawatts, = 1000 MW) of wind and large scale solar is under construction now, the largest ever--and that ignores rooftop solar which is also at a record.  Total generation capacity in the NEM (national electricity market, which covers all of Australia except for the Northern Territory and WA) is about 45 GW.   Effective capacity of renewables is about 40% compared with fossil fuels of 60% (varies a lot, though).  So a quick calculation suggests that we would need about 65 to 70 GW of renewables capacity.  At this rate it would take 30 years or so to replace Oz's current coal generation with 100% renewables. 

But the rate of retirement of coal generators will accelerate as solar and wind costs continue to decline.  We're close to the point in Australia (and in many other countries round the world) where new wind and solar will be cheaper to run than old coal, and when that happens, coal power stations will be rapidly retired.  Which means we're likely to have a 100% green grid here in Australia and in other developed countries well within 20 years.  In China and India, they're still building new coal power stations, so their transition is likely to take 30 years, but even there, the construction  rate of new coal power stations is slowing fast.  It seems entirely plausible that for the developed world, there will be no coal-fired power stations within 20 years, and for China, India, Vietnam, Bangladesh, etc, there will be none within 30 years or soon thereafter.

Obamacare

A Pat Bagley cartoon

Lowest winter Arctic ice extent

The chart below is very telling.

Source: Eric Holthaus

Each decade, the annual (winter) max of sea ice has fallen.  The purple line shows the average for 2010-2017,  and as you can see, 2018 is even lower.  In fact, record lows.

Why does this matter?  Well, apart from evidence that global warming is continuing decade by decade, the warming of the arctic makes severe winter storms in the NE USA 2 to 4 tim4es more likely.  This is probably because the polar vortex is weakened, though researchers still need to do more research about that. 

 “Our statistical analysis shows that one is more likely to be struck by lightning, attacked by a shark, and win the Powerball all at the same time than the possibility of severe winter weather in the northeastern US not being related to Arctic temperatures,” Cohen says.

[Read more here]

The evidence that the world is warming and that it is already having serious climate and economic consequences just keeps mounting.  It's not enough to promise zero emissions in 2050.  That's too far away.  Pious protestations of future virtue are not enough.  We must set out a year-by-year target.   For example, we should decide to make electricity generation 100% green in 20 years' time, i.e., by 2038.  To reach that target, every year 5% of generation capacity would need to be converted away from coal or gs to renewables.  To set a year-by-year target makes it more likely that we will achieve our long term target. 

Kim and Trump to meet

A cartoon from Matt Golding

Arctic sea ice at seasonal record lows

Source

As temperatures at the North Pole approached the melting point at the end of February, Arctic sea ice extent tracked at record low levels for this time of year. Extent was low on both the Atlantic and Pacific sides of the Arctic, with open water areas expanding rapidly in the Bering Sea during the latter half of the month. On the other side of the globe, Antarctic sea ice has reached its minimum extent for the year, the second lowest in the satellite record.

Winter continues to be mild over the Arctic Ocean. Sea ice extent remained at record low daily levels for the month. Arctic sea ice extent for February 2018 averaged 13.95 million square kilometers (5.39 million square miles). This is the lowest monthly average  recorded for February, 1.35 million square kilometers (521,000 square miles) below the 1981 to 2010 average and 160,000 square kilometers (62,000) below the previous record low monthly average in 2017.

[Read more here]

EVs now at 80 MPG

From Green Car Reports:

More good news about electric cars in the U.S.: the emissions associated with the electricity used to charge them have fallen.

Again.

Based on the latest data on powerplant emissions from the EPA, an electric car on the road in the U.S. now has average emissions as low as an 80-mpg car.

That figure is sales-weighted, meaning it takes into account where electric cars exist today in the U.S.

But that 80-mpg average translates to emissions 10 percent lower than even last year's average, which was 73 mpg—demonstrating that every time any powerplant gets cleaner, so does every single electric car that plugs into the grid it supplies. 

[Read more here]

The greening of the grid needs to go hand in hand with the electrification of transport.  And that is exactly what's happening.  In principle, switching all electricity generation to renewables and all surface transport to electric would cut emissions by 70% or more (land clearing and  forest burning would remain the biggest source of CO2 after that, followed by cement and iron steel manufacture, and sea and air transport).  It's doable.  And vital.

Big jump in US EV/PHEV sales

As always, the source of the base data is InsideEVs for EV/PHEV sales and the St Louis Fed for car sales.  I have seasonally adjusted the underlying data, using my variant of the NBER's X-11 program.  InsideEvs is having trouble estimating EV sales because some manufacturers now refuse to split out EV/PHEV sales (presumably because it's too embarrassing), so they haven't yet provided an update for global EV sales (although I now have better data for total global car sales, including data for 2017). So I haven't updated the global charts. 

On a seasonally adjusted basis (there's seasonal strength in November/December and weakness in January/February) US EV/PHEV sales are growing strongly, as is their percentage of total car sales.  The growth slowdown in 2017 while the market waited for the production ramp up the Tesla Model 3 and the new Nissan Leaf is well and truly over.

Trump landfill

A cartoon by Tom Toles of the Washington Post

Largest US wind farm ever.

The Wind Catcher facility, developed by Invenergy, will be the largest single-site wind farm in the U.S. once complete. The 2,000-megawatt facility will generate power from 800 GE 2.5 megawatt turbines. The project also involves building a 360-mile extra high-voltage 765 kilovolt power line to connect two new substations, one located at the wind facility and a second near Tulsa, Oklahoma.

"Oklahoma's panhandle has some of the best wind in America but is hundreds of miles from larger cities and communities that can benefit from low-cost, clean energy," the developers tout. "Wind Catcher Energy Connection is a $4.5 billion infrastructure investment that will bring Oklahoma wind power to more than 1.1 million energy customers in the South Central U.S."

[Read more here]

This will be the equal-fourth largest wind farm in the world.

Wind and solar continue to replace electricity generation from fossil fuels.  But will this revolution happen fast enough?

Source: EcoWatch

Massive Arctic temperature uptrend

The Arctic winter has become 5 degrees warmer in just 30 years.  5 degrees!  (the chart shows the actual temperature; the map shows the anomaly from the 1981 -2000 average)

Mean 925 hPa air temperature north of 67N (Arctic Circle) over 1949-2018 (October – February). Temperature reanalysis from NCEP/NCAR R1. Subplot highlights surface air temperature anomalies averaged from October – February 2018 using a 1981-2010 baseline. (Updated 3/5/2018) (Source)

48% of Americans support a UBI

A UBI is a "universal basic income" (also called  "the social wage" or "negative income tax").  The various proposals differ slightly, but essentially all schemes involve a fortnightly or monthly income from the government, which is given to everybody, but which is "clawed back" for each dollar or pound or euro you earn after that.  The claw back rate suggested is somewhere between 25 and 33.3 percent.  A slightly different proposal is that all income except the UBI be subject to income tax, which amounts to much the same thing as an explicit claw back rate, but is administratively simpler. The UBI would replace unemployment benefit, the old age pension, disability pensions, family income support and other tax credits.  The advantages in switching to a UBI are several:

1. The impact of the "poverty trap" is reduced.  This occurs when any income supplement (for example, the dole) is withdrawn when the recipient earns some income.  It is a powerful disincentive to getting work, especially where the only available work is part time.  In Australia, for example, the effective claw back rate for people on unemployment benefit can reach 80%.
2. A UBI raises income for the working poor, not just the unemployed or old age pensioners.
3. The rules are dramatically simplified, making them easy to understand and administer
4. The large bureaucracy required to administer the dole, the old age pension, etc., can be eliminated.

About half of Americans would support a Universal Basic Income for workers who lose their jobs to artificial intelligence, according to a new survey from Northeastern University and Gallup.

The results, which came from 3,297 adults in the U.S. ages 18 and older, showed that:

• 48% of Americans support a universal basic income program

• 46% of supporters would pay higher personal taxes to support it

• 80% of supporters say companies should pay higher taxes to fund the program

“It represents an enormous increase in support,” Karl Widerquist, an associate professor at Georgetown University in Qatar and an advocate for a Universal Basic Income, told CNBC. “It’s really promising.”

[Read more here]

Support in Europe is also high.  (Interesting--support in countries with existing robust welfare systems is not high.  Presumably they believe that with existing systems, a UBI isn't needed, but in fact the UBI would replace many existing welfare programs.)

Source

They've been coached

A cartoon from Pat Pagley of the Salt Lake Tribune