By Mark P. Mills

A week doesn’t pass without a mayor, governor, policymaker or pundit joining the rush to demand, or predict, an energy future that is entirely based on wind/solar and batteries, freed from the “burden” of the hydrocarbons that have fueled societies for centuries.

Regardless of one’s opinion about whether, or why, an energy “transformation” is called for, the physics and economics of energy combined with scale realities make it clear that there is no possibility of anything resembling a radically “new energy economy” in the foreseeable future. Bill Gates has said that when it comes to understanding energy realities “we need to bring math to the problem.” He’s right. So, in my recent Manhattan Institute report, “The New Energy Economy: An Exercise in Magical Thinking,” I did just that.

Herein, then, is a summary of some of the bottom-line realities from the underlying math. (See the full report for explanations, documentation, and citations.)

Realities About the Scale of Energy Demand

1. Hydrocarbons supply over 80 percent of world energy: If all that were in the form of oil, the barrels would line up from Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles, and that entire line would grow by the height of the Washington Monument every week.

2. The small two-percentage-point decline in the hydrocarbon share of world energy use entailed over $2 trillion in cumulative global spending on alternatives over that period; solar and wind today supply less than two percent of the global energy.

3. When the world’s four billion poor people increase energy use to just one-third of Europe’s per capita level, global demand rises by an amount equal to twice America’s total consumption.

4. A 100x growth in the number of electric vehicles to 400 million on the roads by 2040 would displace five percent of global oil demand.

5. Renewable energy would have to expand 90-fold to replace global hydrocarbons in two decades. It took a half-century for global petroleum production to expand “only” ten-fold.

6. Replacing U.S. hydrocarbon-based electric generation over the next 30 years would require a construction program building out the grid at a rate 14-fold greater than any time in history.

7. Eliminating hydrocarbons to make U.S. electricity (impossible soon, infeasible for decades) would leave untouched 70 percent of U.S. hydrocarbons use—America uses 16 percent of world energy.

8. Efficiency increases energy demand by making products & services cheaper: since 1990, global energy efficiency improved 33 percent, the economy grew 80 percent and global energy use is up 40 percent.

9. Efficiency increases energy demand: Since 1995, aviation fuel use/passenger-mile is down 70 percent, air traffic rose more than 10-fold, and global aviation fuel use rose over 50 percent.

10. Efficiency increases energy demand: since 1995, energy used per byte is down about 10,000-fold, but global data traffic rose about a million-fold; global electricity used for computing soared.

11. Since 1995, total world energy use rose by 50 percent, an amount equal to adding two entire United States’ worth of demand.

12. For security and reliability, an average of two months of national demand for hydrocarbons are in storage at any time. Today, barely two hours of national electricity demand can be stored in all utility-scale batteries plus all batteries in one million electric cars in America.

13. Batteries produced annually by the Tesla Gigafactory (world’s biggest battery factory) can store three minutes worth of annual U.S. electric demand.

14. To make enough batteries to store two day’s worth of U.S. electricity demand would require 1,000 years of production by the Gigafactory (world’s biggest battery factory).

15. Every $1 billion in aircraft produced leads to some $5 billion in aviation fuel consumed over two decades to operate them. Global spending on new jets is more than $50 billion a year—and rising.

16. Every $1 billion spent on data centers leads to $7 billion in electricity consumed over two decades. Global spending on data centers is more than $100 billion a year—and rising.

Realities about Energy Economics

17. Over a 30-year period, $1 million worth of utility-scale solar or wind produces 40 million and 55 million kWh respectively: $1 million worth of shale well produces enough natural gas to generate 300 million kWh over 30 years.

18. It costs about the same to build one shale well or two wind turbines: the latter, combined, produces 0.7 barrels of oil (equivalent energy) per hour, the shale rig averages 10 barrels of oil per hour.

19. It costs less than $0.50 to store a barrel of oil, or its equivalent in natural gas, but it costs $200 to store the equivalent energy of a barrel of oil in batteries.

20. Cost models for wind and solar assume, respectively, 41 percent and 29 percent capacity factors (i.e., how often they produce electricity). Real-world data reveal as much as ten percentage points less for both. That translates into $3 million less energy produced than assumed over a 20-year life of a 2-MW $3 million wind turbine.

21. In order to compensate for episodic wind/solar output, U.S. utilities are using oil- and gas-burning reciprocating engines (big cruise-ship-like diesels); three times as many have been added to the grid since 2000 as in the 50 years prior to that.

22. Wind-farm capacity factors have improved at about 0.7 percent per year; this small gain comes mainly from reducing the number of turbines per acre leading to a 50 percent increase in average land used to produce a wind-kilowatt-hour.

23. Over 90 percent of America’s electricity, and 99 percent of the power used in transportation, comes from sources that can easily supply energy to the economy any time the market demands it.

24. Wind and solar machines produce energy an average of 25 percent–30 percent of the time, and only when nature permits. Conventional power plants can operate nearly continuously and are available when needed.

25. The shale revolution collapsed the prices of natural gas & coal, the two fuels that produce 70 percent of U.S. electricity. But electric rates haven’t gone down, rising instead 20 percent since 2008. Direct and indirect subsidies for solar and wind consumed those savings.

Energy Physics… Inconvenient Realities

26. Politicians and pundits like to invoke “moonshot” language. But transforming the energy economy is not like putting a few people on the moon a few times. It is like putting all of humanity on the moon—permanently.

27. The common cliché: an energy tech disruption will echo the digital tech disruption. But information-producing machines and energy-producing machines involve profoundly different physics; the cliché is sillier than comparing apples to bowling balls.

28. If solar power scaled like computer-tech, a single postage-stamp-size solar array would power the Empire State Building. That only happens in comic books.

29. If batteries scaled like digital tech, a battery the size of a book, costing three cents, could power a jetliner to Asia. That only happens in comic books.

30. If combustion engines scaled like computers, a car engine would shrink to the size of an ant and produce a thousand-fold more horsepower; actual ant-sized engines produce 100,000 times less power.

31. No digital-like 10x gains exist for solar tech. Physics limit for solar cells (the Shockley-Queisser limit) is a max conversion of about 33 percent of photons into electrons; commercial cells today are at 26 percent.

32. No digital-like 10x gains exist for wind tech. Physics limit for wind turbines (the Betz limit) is a max capture of 60 percent of energy in moving air; commercial turbines achieve 45 percent.

33. No digital-like 10x gains exist for batteries: maximum theoretical energy in a pound of oil is 1,500 percent greater than max theoretical energy in the best pound of battery chemicals.

34. About 60 pounds of batteries are needed to store the energy equivalent of one pound of hydrocarbons.

Avoiding The Eye - Ships Free Today!

35. At least 100 pounds of materials are mined, moved and processed for every pound of battery fabricated.

36. Storing the energy equivalent of one barrel of oil, which weighs 300 pounds, requires 20,000 pounds of Tesla batteries ($200,000 worth).

37. Carrying the energy equivalent of the aviation fuel used by an aircraft flying to Asia would require $60 million worth of Tesla-type batteries weighing five times more than that aircraft.

38. It takes the energy equivalent of 100 barrels of oil to fabricate a quantity of batteries that can store the energy equivalent of a single barrel of oil.

39. A battery-centric grid and car world means mining gigatons more of the earth to access lithium, copper, nickel, graphite, rare earths, cobalt, etc.—and using millions of tons of oil and coal both in mining and to fabricate metals and concrete.

40. China dominates global battery production with its grid 70 percent coal-fueled: EVs using Chinese batteries will create more carbon-dioxide than saved by replacing oil-burning engines.

41. One would no more use helicopters for regular trans-Atlantic travel—doable with elaborately expensive logistics—than employ a nuclear reactor to power a train or photovoltaic systems to power a nation.

 

---

This article is republished with permission from Economics 21. 

Mark P. Mills is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a McCormick School of Engineering Faculty Fellow at Northwestern University, and author of Work in the Age of Robots, published by Encounter Books.

This article was sourced from FEE.org

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The radical  progressive left is now working on subgroups of society to make it appear that they are much larger than they actually are. Namely, National Nurses United is boasting that it endorses the Green New Deal as proposed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

However, the National Nurses United was originally started by the California Nurses Association (CNA). CNA itself was reportedly founded in 1903 and is affiliated with the AFL-CIO. According to their website,

CNA/NNOC is also a founding member of the 185,000-member National Nurses United, which in 2009 united CNA/NNOC, the United American Nurses, and the Massachusetts Nurses Association to create the largest union and professional association of nurses in U.S. history.

Apparently, CNA has morphed into the national organization because its original URL “CalNurses.org” automatically redirects to “NationalNursesUnited.org”. It claims to speak for over 150,000 members.

The following press release was issued by National Nurses United on September 13, 2019. National Nurses United’s press releases are posted on the progressive/radical Common Dreams website.

National Nurses United Endorses Green New Deal and Ban on Assault Weapons

National Nurses United, the nation’s largest union and professional association of registered nurses, Thursday endorsed enactment of a Green New Deal and a ban on assault weapons.

Passage of the resolutions came in a joint meeting of the leadership boards of National Nurses United (NNU) and the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC) on the eve of a major Global Nurses Solidarity Assembly of more than 1,600 nurses being hosted by NNU and CNA/NNOC in San Francisco. CNA/NNOC is the largest NNU affiliate.

In calling for a comprehensive Green New Deal, NNU said it was a fundamental step to “tackle the crises of climate change and economic inequality.”

“We are facing an existential climate crisis,” said NNU President Deborah Burger, RN. “Nurses see the impact in patients harmed by super storms, wildfires, epidemics, environmental pollution, and other impacts of the climate crisis today. It is long past time to act in the most expansive way possible, while also protecting workers and communities that are affected today and in the years to come.”

NNU, for example, has for more than a decade been sending volunteer RNs to communities affected by disasters exacerbated by climate change. Most recently, NNU has sent 16 RN volunteers to date, with more to come, to provide basic medical aid to those harmed by Hurricane Dorian. Several of them are currently on the ground in Grand Bahama island.

Climate experts have noted that the severity of Dorian, including the Category 5 winds, flooding, and other effects, was accelerated by warm ocean waters and rising sea levels.

NNU said it would favor a Green New Deal that would include major elements including:

• A “complete transition away from using fossil fuels by 2035 — shifting to 100 percent clean renewable energy production.”


• A ban on fossil fuel projects, including pipelines, deep sea drilling, tar sands extraction, and fracking, coupled with “substantial investment into solar, wind, and geothermal energy production.”


• A “fair and equitable just transition for workers from the fossil fuel industry” with guarantees for “a minimum of five years of continued compensation,” including salary, health care coverage, pension contributions, as well as housing assistance, education, and job training and job placement for displaced workers.


• Significant investments in frontline communities to prepare for climate impacts, as well as drawing the links to combatting economic inequality.

A Call to Ban Assault Weapons

In urging legislative action to ban the proliferation of assault weapons, NNU and CNA/NNOC board members emphasized how the growing calamity of mass shootings has become a significant public health crisis.

“Nurses all too regularly care for patients with gun injuries,” noted Jean Ross, RN, another NNU president. “But the massive injuries we are seeing today that result when people are shot with assault weapons is very different because of the very nature of these weapons and ammunition. The only purpose of these weapons is to kill human beings.”

“NNU has long defined public health and patient advocacy as the hallmark of our organization and our role as registered nurses. Protecting our patients, our families, and our neighbors endangered by mass shootings with assault weapons is a part of that advocacy,” Ross said.

NNU leaders also noted how the increasing climate of hate makes mass shootings even more damaging by exacerbating fear, anxiety, and stress in the broader society.

In addition, NNU will follow up with a further analysis of public health impacts of gun violence.

By Patricia Burke

In 2009, utilities across the U.S. began installing new two-way wireless electric smart meters on homes. With economic stimulus funding from the federal government, investor-owned utilities were all too happy to have a shovel-ready scheme and a guaranteed rate of return on investment. Citizens were told that the meters would give them “more control over their energy usage.”

Investors were happy, buoyed by state and local regulations encouraging (and in some cases mandating) customers to accept radio-frequency emitting meters for gas, water, and electricity, with additional earnings from the wireless networks that collect the data, software, planned obsolescence, and other growth indicators.

Smart meters appealed to clean energy proponents, too. The narrative is that the meters are necessary in order to integrate more renewables into the grid, particularly solar. To address climate change, or to make electricity more sustainable, or to reduce dependence on fossil fuels, smart meters got hitched to the narrative for solar and other renewables. Approvals for smart meters started sailing through public utility commission hearings across the country, starting in California, Texas, and Maine. Environmental groups including the Sierra Club, National Resources Defense Council, and the Environmental Defense Fund provided compelling testimonies in favor of the grid technologies and smart meters.

When Hurricane Sandy slammed into the New Jersey shoreline in 2012,[1] modernizing the grid became an emergency. Smart meters and a smarter grid were again promoted as a “necessary” response to climate change, and the phrase “hardening the grid” made its way into the parlance of the “robust architecture” of smart meters.  Images of the wrath of the hurricane were linked to promises that the smart meters would prevent billions in costs caused by outages.

Illinois was one of the states that established itself as a business leader by promoting smart meters as an economic driver, at one point pushing the math that the grid could be completely modernized for somewhere around $3.00 per month per customer.  In 2013, when he voiced concerns for costs to ratepayers, the pro-business Illinois Legislature overrode Governor Pat Quinn’s attempt to veto the deployment of smart meters. [2] He lost his bid for re-election.

The non-profit Smart Grid Consumer Collaborative was eventually formed, and expert analysts published white papers and resources for policy makers.  One premise of the Smart Grid Consumer Collaborative’s work is that utilities need to customize their communications with their customers. By watching what was happening in every home and business, utilities would be able to tell individual customers that they needed a more efficient appliance. They could offer customers specific information about how to save energy or money via different rate structures. Utilities implied that customers were driving the demand for the utilities to monitor usage every minute of every day because customers wanted a more intimate and personalized relationship with their electric company.

Currently, smart meters are being portrayed as required to support the adoption of electric vehicles. Also, the time-of-use billing capability enabled by smart meters will now allow utilities to “shave the peak,’ thereby reducing the use of increasingly unpopular gas peaker plants and other “not-clean resources,” and possibly reducing the need to invest in additional generation while allowing the integration of even more “alternative energy.” [3] This scenario has widespread appeal to opponents of gas pipelines and nuclear power.

And, not to be left behind, those who care little for environmentalism but who favor robust economic growth have been buoyed by forecasts of windfalls created by smart meters, a connected economy, and the internet of things. [4]

So, what is not to like?

It turns out – just about everything.

It’s time to break up the forced child-bride marriage of solar to smart meters.

Direct Assaults on Solar

Solar expansion has been stymied by policies including caps on solar,[5] changes in the compensation paid to solar producers who sell electricity back to the grid (net metering),  [6],[7],[8],[9] surcharges to solar customers for their use of the grid,[10] favoring large utility-scale solar over rooftop installations,[11] and demand charges.[12]

(Demand charges typically bill consumers for the period of their highest usage —typically monthly. Normally found in the C&I sector, utilities have started proposed demand charges for residential customers, particularly solar. But most of those proposals were rejected, until now.” Massachusetts has imposed a demand charge for Eversource solar customers, penalizing its “prosumers.”) [13]

Direct Assaults on Privacy

When smart meter opponents initially raised the issue of customer privacy, utilities claimed that they were maintaining anonymity by aggregating the data. Some utilizes expressed very little interest in customer data, stating that they only focused on the big picture of what was happening grid-wide.

It turns out that utilities are in fact collecting and storing the personal private consumption details of customers, and ratepayers are bearing the cost of generation, transmission, analysis, and storage of all of that data in air-conditioned storage centers. The Appeals Court in Illinois recently rejected the District Court’s conclusion that granular smart meter data collected every 15-minutes is no different than analog meter readings collected once per month for billing purposes. [14]

While the courts have ruled that a search warrant will be required to obtain records concerning utility usage, [15] the industry is seeking ways to monetize the data. [16] Customers are presumed to have given the rights to the collection of private data to utilities in order to access essential services including water, heat, and electricity.

Direct Assaults on Climate Justice, Human Rights, and Sustainability

In an article entitled “More Recycling Won’t Solve Plastic Pollution” Matt Wilkins explains how “Coca-Cola and Anheuser-Busch, “along with Phillip Morris and others, formed a non-profit called Keep America Beautiful. Its mission was to educate and encourage environmental stewardship in the public. Joining forces with the Ad Council (the public service announcement geniuses behind Smokey the Bear and McGruff the Crime Dog), one of their first and most lasting impacts was bringing “litterbug” into the American lexicon through their marketing campaigns against thoughtless individuals.”[17]

In fact, the greatest success of Keep America Beautiful has been to shift the onus of environmental responsibility onto the public while simultaneously becoming a trusted name in the environmental movement. This psychological misdirect has built public support for a legal framework that punishes individual litterers with hefty fines or jail time, while imposing almost no responsibility on plastic manufacturers for the numerous environmental, economic and health hazards imposed by their products. [18]

Like the Keep America Beautiful campaign, the smart meter psychological misdirect campaign allowed utilities to portray themselves as the solution to the issues of global warming, or climate change, or air pollution, or issues of climate justice, rather than the cause.

Clean energy proponents are seeking to provide daytime workplace charging in order to encourage the adoption of electric vehicles, while surcharging those who are at home during the day, such as a senior with a home health aide, a stay at home parent, third shift workers, and those who work from home.  While all customers will finance grid modernization costs, certain classes of customers will be more severely impacted by time-of-use rates.

Direct Assaults on Health

If you wish to promote a lie, hire a liar. Speaking of Phillip Morris and its campaign to Keep America Beautiful, the cornerstone of the smart meter rollout across the U.S. was the expert opinion of a tobacco scientist who also testifies for Phillip Morris cigarettes.[19] Scientists from the two notorious product defense firms Gradient and Exponent gave testimonials and testimony across the country in favor of smart meters.

Yes, it is difficult to believe, but utility regulators,[20] legislators, and politicians across the country have endorsed the roll-out of wireless utility meters assuming that they are safe, based on the interpretation of the science by the same scientists who are still defending air pollution, asbestos, tobacco, toxic chemicals and other products.[21], [22], [23], [24], [25], [26]

As leading environmental groups and regulators continue to promote smart meters to address the health and environmental consequences of the fossil fuel model, they have incredulously ignored the fact that they are enabling another wave of environmental and health assaults.

Like it or not, there have been reports of harm from a portion of the population, coinciding with smart meter and smart grid installations. And, it appears that many of the energy efficient initiatives (including LED lighting and variable speed motors) are polluting the 60 Hz cycle with high frequency transients that are also resulting in adverse health effects.

The wireless industry has been essentially careening like a rig with no brakes since 1996.[27] It is actually enabled by law to ignore environmental concerns. Now, the FCC intends to accelerate the rollout of the 5G network, devoid of any premarket safety health and environmental testing. The industry is claiming that it is hampered by outdated and irrelevant zoning regulations that should not apply to small cells.

In truth, it is human health and the environment that is threatened by outdated regulations. [28], [29]

The collusion between the wireless industry and utilities has resulted in an unparalleled bullying of a portion of the population.

In a play directly out of the tobacco playbook, society is being manipulated to focus only on the issue of cellphone users and brain cancer. For decades, the tobacco wars focused only on lung cancer in smokers. The issues of neurological damage, DNA damage, and the acute onset of electromagnetic hypersensitivity are being suppressed by the industry and its economic partners.

Are we really going to do this again?

More Smart Meter Assaults

Smart meters did not improve storm response in Maine.[30]

Also lost in the translation is that wireless meters and infrastructure does not withstand hurricanes, [31] similar to the danger of losing a cellphone tower in a fire. If the infrastructure is damaged, there is no signal.

Unlike analogs, electronic meters are flammable, and do not make the grid more reliable in the face of fires.  They have failed in cold temperature extremes, and have caused fires as well as fire risk when the ground has shifted beneath buildings.[32],[33], [34] The meters do not withstand electromagnetic pulses or EMPs, whether from natural causes or from hackers. [35]

Smart meters do not prevent outages, although utilities claim that they reduce the length of outages. It is the utilities themselves that promote this claim, with no independent third party monitoring. Pro-industry promotional justification shifted from reliability to resiliency. Lost in the translation is the fact that the utilities have identified trees, trucks and training as the most important resources regarding outages and storm response. And, utilities can monitor outages elsewhere along the grid.

One of the supposed benefits of constant surveillance is early detection of problems. Meters for gas, water and electricity could be programmed to only send a signal when there is a problem, (like household flooding) rather than doubling as an energy-hog surveillance device.

Consumers are being led to believe that the system should send transmissions thousands of times a day as a tool for sustainability. [36]  This is a waste of energy and resources for the percentage of hours that homes and businesses are NOT occupied, or occupied only by sleeping residents.

The batteries run out faster due to all of the unnecessary transmissions, adding to mountains of e-waste.

Smart meters have caused billing problems. [37] They have not saved customers money.[38]

The industry never explored whether customers could be educated to adopt conservation behaviors without the cost and the resource consumption of installing infrastructure that introduces an invisible form of pollution and unnecessary risks into the lives of all citizens. (Vermont recently used a customer awareness campaign to lower its energy costs.)

It turns out that the cloud and the internet of things and 5G and all of the wireless technology that is being promoted in the name of sustainability is actually an energy hog. [39]

Reports from groups such as ICNIRP [42] are as inaccurate as claims by the FCC regarding safety. [43]

Conclusion

Smart meters are a dual-use technology, because although they provide the utility company with billing data, smart meters also give utilities access to something else – Data. Private data about everything that is taking place inside private homes and businesses creates another profit stream for the utilities; and, in fact, the data has been characterized as being even more valuable that than the electricity itself.

Meters for gas, water and electricity could be programmed to only send a signal when there is a problem, (like household flooding) rather than doubling as an energy hog surveillance device.

The solar industry could catapult humanity out of its current trajectory by discarding the corrupted science perpetrated by the collusion between utilities and the wireless industry in three ways.

1. The solar industry can endorse the immediate emergency need for the analogue opt out meter to protect medically vulnerable residents, and provide necessary relief to those who are being marginalized and facing discrimination in their need to maintain a home and work environment that supports their health.


2. The solar industry can join forces with the experts who recognize the hazards of radio frequencies as well as “dirty electricity,” riding on the grid [40] as well as being discharged into the ground. [41] The solar industry can endeavor to create technology that is not based on tobacco science lies and outdated theoretical enablers of two industries that are overrunning human health and the environment. Improvements in solar inverter technology are crucial to maintaining the integrity of the 60 Hz waveform. The wireless industry’s reach is worldwide.


3. The industry can police itself regarding emerging issues with unscrupulous sales tactics, property damage to roofs, and other issues that the fossil fuel industry is using to sustain opposition to solar. [44]

Someone has to take the high road.

Solar, you’re in an abusive relationship, and its time to jump ship.

Notes:

[1] https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/featured/resiliency-how-superstorm-sandy-changed-americas-grid#gs.mJq7WfA Nearly two years after the storm, a new buzzword has emerged as a framework for this next round of investment: “resiliency.”

The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners defines resilience as “robustness and recovery characteristics of utility infrastructure and operations, which avoid or minimize interruptions of service during an extraordinary and hazardous event.”

[2] http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-05-21/business/chi-comed-smart-grid-revenue-20130521_1_smart-grid-bill-comed-quinn-veto

[3] https://rethinkresearch.biz/articles/national-grid-and-fpl-point-to-iot-for-big-opex-savings/

“So the 4% reduction in peak usage means that National Grid could save 4% on its peak generation acquisition costs, which could be the difference nationally between building a new coal plant or being able to rely on the more environmentally friendly (and increasingly cheaper) renewable sources of energy like solar and wind that are captured in battery storage – either inside the home or at grid-scale.”

[4] Navigant Research Report Shows Global Revenue from IoT and Analytics for Utilities Market May Grow to $5.1 billion in 2028

https://newsok.com/article/feed/3652935/navigant-research-report-shows-global-revenue-from-iot-and-analytics-for-utilities-market-may-grow-to-51-billion-in-2028

[5] http://www.ncsl.org/research/energy/net-metering-policy-overview-and-state-legislative-updates.aspx

[6] https://seekingalpha.com/article/4015075-net-metering-battle-first-battleground-solar-wars

[7] https://nccleantech.ncsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/50sosQ4-FINAL.pdf

[8] https://www.newamerica.org/millennials/dm/battle-solar-increasing-trend-acrimonious-disputes-over-net-metering/

[9] https://www.technologyreview.com/s/545146/battles-over-net-metering-cloud-the-future-of-rooftop-solar/

[10] https://tucson.com/news/local/new-tucson-electric-power-solar-customers-to-get-higher-rates/article_c1c16729-8333-57e1-9c39-3a03cdd4b3c2.html

[11] https://www.utilitydive.com/news/solar-at-the-crossroads-is-utility-scale-distributed-or-both-the-way-to-g/522376/

[12] https://www.utilitydive.com/news/massachusetts-approves-new-demand-charge-for-eversources-net-metering-cust/514477/

[13] https://www.utilitydive.com/news/massachusetts-approves-new-demand-charge-for-eversources-net-metering-cust/514477/

[14] https://www.stinson.com/Resources/Alerts/2018_Alerts/Napervill__A_Framework_for_Smart_Meters_and_Privacy_Rights.aspx

[15]  https://smartgridawareness.org/2018/08/23/smart-meter-data-collection-a-search/

[16] https://cleantechnica.com/2018/09/12/ahead-of-the-curve-how-greenpocket-is-tackling-smart-metering-in-europe-and-abroad/

[17] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/more-recycling-wont-solve-plastic-pollution/

[18] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/more-recycling-wont-solve-plastic-pollution/

[19] https://www.truthinadvertising.org/wpcontent/uploads/2014/05/Phillips-v.-PhilipMorris-order-denying-class-cert-.pdf

[20] http://www.raabassociates.org/Articles/MA%20DPU%2012-76-B.pdf

[21] https://www.publicintegrity.org/environment/science-sale

Brave - The Browser Built for Privacy

[22] https://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/02/10/19265/making-cancer-cluster-disappear

[23] https://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/02/08/19223/meet-rented-white-coats-who-defend-toxicchemicals

[24] https://www.publicintegrity.org/news/RegulatoryToxicology

[25] https://www.racinecountyeye.com/we-energies-buys-first-home-mediation-group-for-350000/ (2016)

[26] https://smartenergycc.org/testimony-of-dr-peter-a-valberg/

[27] https://mdsafetech.org/telecommunications-act-of-1996/

[28] https://ehtrust.org/policy/fcc-safety-standards/

[29] https://mdsafetech.org/environmental-and-wildlife-effects/

[30] http://mainepublic.org/post/october-windstorm-took-down-cmp-s-200-million-smart-meter-network#stream/0

Carroll said that as utility poles went down in the storm, it wasn’t just power lines that got taken out — so did radio transmitters for the wireless smart-grid “mesh” that were installed at the top of the poles. Meters themselves lost power, and over time battery backup power for some components was drained.

[31] https://smartgridawareness.org/2017/09/22/smart-meters-slow-hurricane-restoration-efforts/

[32] http://stopsmartmeters.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Jamieson-I.-Smart-Meters-Weather-Extremes-1-Sep-2012.pdf

[33] https://smartgridawareness.org/2014/10/28/catastrophic-smart-meter-failures-in-saskatchewan/

[34] https://smartgridawareness.org/2014/11/07/saskpower-smart-meters-catch-fire-when-it-rains/

[35] Expert Testimony of Cynthia E. Ayers, before the Michigan House Energy Policy Committee, “The Cyber/Smart Grid Tech Threat to the Integrated North American Critical Electric Infrastructure,” March 7, 2017; available athttps://skyvisionsolutions.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/ayers-testimony-for-mi-house-committee-7-march-2017.pdf

[36] http://emfsafetynetwork.org/pges-big-confession/

PG&E says the average number of RF pulses for the electric meter would be about 10,000, per meter, per day and the maximum number over 190,000.

[37] http://emfsafetynetwork.org/pge-admits-billing-errors-offers-scanty-refund/

[38]https://www.synapse-energy.com/sites/default/files/Testimony-of-M-Chang-BGE-Rate-Case-15-120.pdf

[39] http://science.time.com/2013/08/14/power-drain-the-digital-cloud-is-using-more-energy-than-you-think/

[40] https://smartgridawareness.org/2017/04/09/dr-milham-testifies-smart-meters-public-health-hazard/

[41] Dave Stetzer presents evidence in support of the Michigan Attorney General’s case against Consumers Energy Company. http://www.stetzerelectric.com/david-stetzer-testimony-transcript/

[42] https://www.emfacts.com/2018/09/new-paper-critique-of-icnirps-latest-deception/

[43] https://alumni.columbia.edu/node/987531  Captured Agency: How the Federal Communications Commission Is Dominated by the Industries It Presumably Regulates

[44] https://environmentcalifornia.org/news/cae/report-highlights-17-bad-actors-waging-aggressive-anti-solar-campaigns

Patricia Burke works with activists across the country and internationally calling for new biologically-based microwave radio frequency exposure limits. She is based in Massachusetts and can be reached at [email protected].

A supposed “hi-tech robot” displayed at a youth robotics forum on Russian state television turned out to be a man in a suit, reports confirmed Wednesday.

Footage broadcast live on Russia-24 showed television anchors praising the ersatz android during coverage of a technology forum held in Yaroslavl, a city about 150 miles north-east of Moscow, boasting that “Robot Boris has already learned to dance and he’s not that bad.”

“It’s entirely possible one of these [students] could dedicate himself to robotics,” one anchor said. “Especially as at the forum they have the opportunity to look at the most modern robots.”

“I know mathematics well but I also want to learn to draw,” Boris responded, before dancing to the Little Big song Skibidi.

Other footage from the event showed Boris taking part in banter with people on stage and performing various dances. His level of sophistication was used to encourage children to develop an interest in robotics and as proof of the country’s technological breakthroughs.

However, many viewers were left unconvinced by the robot, with the Russian website TJournal posing a series of questions about the robot’s performance, including the location of his external sensors and why he made so many “unnecessary movements” while dancing. Later on, Some photographs posted on social media even showed the robot’s very visible neckline.

A photograph published by MBKh Media, an anti-Kremlin agency founded by the Vladimir Putin opponent Mikhail Khodorkovsky, appeared to show the man wearing the robot suit ahead of the forum.

As the questions mounted, it emerged that Boris was a £3000 costume made by the company Show Robots designed to give the “near total illusion that before you stands a real robot,” equipped with microphone and tablet display.

The event’s organizers did not claim that the android was anything other than a man in a suit, according to local reports, so it is not clear why the state television station chose to do so. On Wednesday morning, the television report was removed from Russia-24’s YouTube channel but was uploaded again by early afternoon.

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A new Very-Small, Long-LIfe, and Modular (VSLLIM) reactor design has been developed at the University of New Mexico’s Institute for Space and Nuclear Power Studies. It offers passive operation and decay heat removal and redundant control to make it walk-away safe.

During nominal operation and after shutdown, the VSLLIM reactor is cooled by natural circulation of in-vessel liquid sodium (Na), that is enabled using in-vessel chimney (1–2 m tall) and helically coiled tubes Na-Na heat exchanger, placed at the top of the downcomer.

The reactor can generate 1.0–10 MWth, depending on the height of the chimney and the HEX design, at an average fission power density up to 23.47 MWth/m3. The VSLLIM reactor can potentially operate continuously, without refueling for ∼92 and 5.9 full power years (FPY), respectively, and slightly below atmospheric pressure, owing to the sodium low vapor pressure.

The core is loaded with hexagonal assemblies of fuel rods with UN enriched to 13.76%, and has independent systems for emergency shutdown and nominal control.

Highlights of the SLIMM Design

• Walk away passively safe


• smaller than a shipping container


• factory mass-producible


• Narrow and small design could fit on rockets for space applications

As many as 10–30 units could be deployed incrementally at a single site, commensurate with the increase in electricity demand, for a plant total electricity generation of up to 120 MWe.

These VSLLIM power plant modules could also be integrated into either a distributed or a central grid, with renewable energy sources, or operated alone. They can also provide both electricity and process heat for industrial uses and district heating.

It also has two independent systems for safe passive removal of decay heat after shutdown, and following an unlikely malfunction of in-vessel HEX. These are liquid metal heat pipes (LMHPs) embedded in the primary vessel wall, and natural circulation of ambient air along the outer surface of the guard vessel wall.

The LMHPs are thermally coupled to thermoelectric elements for generating 10 s of kW of auxiliary DC power, independent of on-site and off-site sources, both during nominal reactor operation and after shutdown. The sodium coolant enters the fast-neutron energy spectrum core at 610 K and exits at ≤755 K, depending on the reactor thermal power. At these temperatures, Na is compatible with the HT-9 Ferritic-Martensitic steel cladding, core structure and reactor vessel.

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It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Georgetown, Texas – population 75,000 – was to be the new poster child of the green movement.

Environmental interest in Georgetown’s big push to generate all of its electricity from wind and solar power was amplified by three factors: the town and its mayor were nominally Republican; Georgetown is in an oil- and natural gas-rich state; and that state is deep-red Texas.

Former Vice President Al Gore and other climate change luminaries feted Georgetown Mayor Dale Ross, and Ross was featured prominently at renewable energy conventions.

Last October, while the green dream was still in full flower, the city applied for a $1 million grant from former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s nonprofit, Bloomberg Philanthropies, and won it.

Ostensibly to be used for energy storage innovation in batteries, the grant’s only real requirement was that the city serve as a public relations platform in Bloomberg’s push to convince Americas to abandon affordable fossil fuels and switch to more costly renewable energy.

Trouble started when politicians’ promise of cheaper renewable energy was mugged by reality.

Georgetown’s electric bills went up as more wind and solar power displaced cheaper natural gas in the power portfolio of the Georgetown’s municipal utility. Politicians scrambled for cover. And the bloom came off Georgetown’s renewable rose.

Now, largely embarrassed members of the City Council are trying to figure out how to unwind the renewable mess they and their predecessors voted themselves into.

With their municipal utility facing a $7 million shortfall – money that has to be made up by the city residents through higher electricity costs – the City Council voted 5-1 in July to instruct the staff to figure out how to wriggle out of the Bloomberg PR deal.

On Aug. 13 the Council voted 5-0 to officially kill the deal. The city is also raising property taxes.

The Council member who asked for the vote said he wasn’t opposed to renewable energy, but that in light of the city utility’s deficit, the city should focus on the basics, rather than “doing experiments.”

Indeed, there’s not a single city in the contiguous 48 states that runs solely on wind and solar power. The reason is simple: electricity gets to cities via a grid, and that grid draws its energy from a variety of sources – mostly natural gas.

Excluding large-scale dams, which fell out of favor with the environmental movement 50 years ago, renewables powered about 10 percent of the U.S. grid last year.

This means that cities like Georgetown, which have contracted to take power from wind and solar farms hundreds of miles away, don’t risk blackouts on windless nights, because reliable power is delivered from a grid getting power from fossil fuels.

As part of the Bloomberg agreement, Georgetown was going to hire a new bureaucrat to oversee the installation of solar panels on homes, while creating a battery storage farm to keep the grid energized when the sun wasn’t shining and the wind wasn’t blowing.

But such arrangements are hardly cutting edge. In fact, the physics and economics of battery storage are well known. And here’s where Georgetown’s 100 percent renewable push merely looks like expensive virtue signaling.

Moore’s Law governs the world of computing – the speed and capability of computers doubles every two years. But computers only manipulate 1s and 0s.

In contrast, we use energy to manipulate the physical world – to cool and heat homes, to move ourselves and commerce faster and farther than we could using our feet (or horses or bicycles), and to bring light to the darkness. Efficiency improvements in the natural world move more slowly and yield to diminishing returns as they reach physical limits.

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India’s Supreme Court has ordered its government to evict a million people from their homes – for the good of the country’s wildlife.

The ruling, issued Wednesday, was a startling conclusion to a decade-long case that has pitted the rights of some of India’s most vulnerable citizens against the preservation of its forests.

The court told the government to evict over a million people – mostly members of indigenous tribes – from their homes in public forest land because they had not met the legal criterion to live there.

With over 700 tribal groups, India is home to over 100 million indigenous people. While the forest land is legally controlled by the government, people have lived in such areas for centuries.

A landmark law passed in 2006 gave legal rights over forest land and its produce to tribes and forest-dwelling communities provided they could prove that their families have stayed there for at least three generations.

The battle for mineral-rich forest land is not new in India. The ruling is the latest flash point in the competing interests of industry, wildlife conservationists and forest communities.

In the last 30 years, the government has diverted 5,400 square miles of forest land, the size of Connecticut, for industrial projects – many of which were opposed by the indigenous people. Wildlife groups contend that granting “wide-ranging” rights to people on forest land leads to fragmentation of forests at a time when the country’s forest cover is shrinking. Critics, however, say that neither accounts for the rights of the indigenous people who rely on the forest for daily needs and for their livelihood.

Now the court says that those whose claims were rejected must go – by July 27. The number of affected people is estimated to go up to 1.89 million when more states comply with the order.

Human rights groups and activists were stunned by the ruling. Nicholas Dawes, the acting managing director of Human Rights Watch, wrote that it had “staggering” implications for India’s most marginalized.

Forest Rights Alliance, a grassroots advocacy group, called the judgment “draconian.” Another group advocating for the rights of forest dwellers, the Campaign for Survival and Dignity, called the order a “major blow.” It also noted that thousands of claims for land rights under the law – the Forest Rights Act – get “wrongly rejected.”

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Behind the schoolgirl climate warrior lies a shadowy cabal of lobbyists, investors and energy companies seeking to profit from a green bonanza

Whatever Greta or her parents know or think, her eco-mob increases the likelihood of legislation and investment that will make colossal profits for people like Global Challenge, We Don’t Have Time and Sustainable Energy Angels. For Sweden’s energy titans, saving the planet means government contracts to print the green stuff. Green energy lobbyists use populist scare tactics and a children’s crusade to bypass elected representatives, but their goal is technocracy not democracy, profit not redistribution. Greta, a child of woke capitalism, is being used  to ease the transition to green corporatism.   

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Greta Thunberg is just an ordinary 16-year-old Swedish schoolgirl whose fiery visions have convinced the parliaments of Britain and Ireland to declare a “climate emergency”. Greta’s parents, actor Svante Thunberg and opera singer Malena Ernman, are just an ordinary pair of parent-managers who want to save the planet. Query their motives, and you risk being accused of “climate denial”, or of bullying a vulnerable child with Asperger’s. But the Greta phenomenon has also involved green lobbyists, PR hustlers, eco-academics, and a think-tank founded by a wealthy ex-minister in Sweden’s Social Democratic government with links to the country’s energy companies. These companies are preparing for the biggest bonanza of government contracts in history: the greening of the Western economies. Greta, whether she and her parents know it or not, is the face of their political strategy.

The family’s story is that Greta launched a one-girl “school strike” at the Swedish parliament on the morning of August 20, 2018. Ingmar Rentzhog, founder of the social media platform We Have No Time, happened to be passing. Inspired, Rentzhog posted Greta’s photograph on his personal Facebook page. By late afternoon, the newspaper Dagens Nyheter had Greta’s story and face on its website. The rest is viral.

But this isn’t the full story. In emails, media entrepeneur Rentzhog told me that he “met Greta for the first time” at the parliament, and that he “did not know Greta or Greta’s parents” before then. Yet in the same emails, Rentzhog admitted to meeting Greta’s mother Malena Ernman “3-4 months before everything started”—in early May 2018, when he and Malena had shared a stage at a conference called the Climate Parliament. Nor did Rentzhog stumble on Greta’s protest by accident. He now admits to having been informed “the week before” by “a mailing list from a climate activist” named Bo Thorén, leader of the Fossil Free Dalsland group.

Independent journalist Rebecca Weidmo Uvell has obtained an earlier email from Bo Thorén’s search for fresh green faces. In February 2018, Thorén invited a group of environmental activists, academics and politicians to plan “how we can involve and get help from young people to increase the pace of the transition to a sustainable society”. In May, after Greta won second prize in an environmental op-ed writing competition run by the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, Thorén approached all the competition winners with a plan for a “school strike”, modelled on the student walk-outs after the shootings at Parkland, Florida. “But no one was interested,” Greta’s mother claims, “so Greta decided to do it for herself.”

Fortunately, Greta’s decision coincided with the publication of Scenes from the Heart, Svante and Malena’s memoir of how saving the planet had saved their family. Unfortunately, Malena omitted to tell her publisher that Ingmar Rentzhog had commandeered Greta’s stunt.

“We had a problem,” says Malena’s editor, Jonas Axelsson. “Journalists asked if it was promotion for the book. It wasn’t at all. It was a nightmare.”

It was, however, a dream for Ingmar Rentzhog. When Rentzhog combined Thorén’s plan and Malena Ernman’s musical fame with Greta’s uncanny charisma and We Have No Time’s mailing list, he turned Greta into a viral celebrity.

“I have not invented Greta,” Rentzhog insists, “but I helped to spread her action to an international audience.”

Trained by Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project, Rentzhog set up We Don’t Have Time in late 2017 to “hold leaders and companies accountable for climate change” by leveraging “the power of social media”. Rentzhog and his CEO David Olsson have backgrounds in finance, not environmental activism, Rentzhog as the founder of Laika, an investment relations company, and Olsson with Svenska Bostadsfonden, one of Sweden’s biggest real estate funds, whose board Rentzhog joined in June 2017. We Don’t Have Time’s investors included Gustav Stenbeck, whose family control Kinnevik, one of Sweden’s largest investment corporations.

In May 2018, Rentzhog and Olsson of We Don’t Have Time became chairman and board member of a think-tank called Global Utmaning (Global Challenge). Its founder, Kristina Persson, is an heir to an industrial fortune. She is a career trade unionist and a Social Democrat politician going back to the party’s golden age under Olof Palme. She is also an ex-deputy governor of Sweden’s central bank and a New Ager who has discussed her reincarnations and communication with the dead. Between 2014 and 2016, Persson served as “Minister for the Future” in the Social Democratic government of Stefan Lofven.

Petter Skogar, president of Sweden’s biggest employer’s association, is on Global Challenge’s ten-person board. So is Johan Lindholm, chairman of the Union of Construction Workers and member of the Social Democrats’ executive board. So is Anders Wijkman, president of the Club of Rome, chair of the Environmental Objectives Council, and a recipient in February 2018 of Bo Thorén’s call for youth mobilisation. So is Catherina Nystedt Ringborg, former CEO of Swedish Water, advisor at the International Energy Agency, and former vice-president at Swedish-Swiss energy giant ABB.

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