Crude oil prices went down today in Asian trade, after making small gains on Monday when news came out that President Biden and House Speaker and top Republican Kevin McCarthy had reached a deal to raise the debt limit.
But now, Reuters is saying that some Republican “hardliners” in Congress won’t back a deal that raises the debt ceiling. This could make it harder for the deal to pass.
At the time this was written, a barrel of Brent oil sold for close to $76.50, while a barrel of West Texas Intermediate sold for just over $72 per barrel. Both were down a little bit when trading started today.
In the last two weeks, oil prices have changed a lot because of how Republicans and Democrats in Congress can’t seem to agree on how to raise the federal government’s spending limit.
Early stories about the tentative deal between Biden and McCarthy say that spending will stay the same over the next two years and that unused Covid funds will be used again.
But it looks like this is not good enough for some Republicans in and out of Congress. “It’s not worth it. Rep. Chip Roy said on Twitter, “$4 trillion in debt for, at best, a two-year spending freeze and no major policy changes.”
“After this deal, our country will still be careening toward bankruptcy,” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said on Fox News.
This means that getting the deal through would be hard, but not impossible. Democrats and Republicans have always been able to put aside their differences to avoid a debt default, so this shouldn’t be a problem.
Aside from the problems with the U.S. debt cap, another thing that has been putting pressure on prices is that Saudi Arabia and Russia, the leaders of OPEC+, may be sending messages that are at odds with each other.
Saudi Arabia’s Energy Minister Abdulaziz bin Salman is said to have suggested more cuts, but Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said there was no need for more cuts.
A new report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) says that investment in clean energy is significantly outpacing fossil fuel spending and will surpass it this year, with solar projects expected to exceedgas-development-global-warming.html’ >oilproduction expenditures for the first time.
According to the World Energy Investment report, the global energy crisis that followed Russia s invasion of Ukraine, as well as the growing affordability of renewables, has given rise to more sustainable alternatives, sparking a rise in investments.
Clean energy is moving fast faster than many people realize. This is clear in the investment trends, where clean technologies are pulling away from fossil fuels, said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol in an IEApress release. For every dollar invested in fossil fuels, about 1.7 dollars are now going into clean energy. Five years ago, this ratio was one-to-one. One shining example is an investment in solar, which is set to overtake the amount of investment going into oil production for the first time.
In 2023, approximately $2.8 trillion will be invested in energy globally, the report said. More than $1.7 trillion of that amount is projected to be invested in green energy technologies like electric vehicles(EVs), renewables, power grids, nuclear energy, heat pumps, low-emissions fuels, and improvements in energy efficiency. The remaining more than $1 trillion will be invested in gas, oil, and coal.
Yearly investments in renewables are predicted to increase by 24 percent from 2021 to 2023, while fossil fuel investments are expected to rise just 15 percent. Advanced economies, as well as China, are responsible for more than 90 percent of the growth, which could jeopardize global energy equality if green energy investment increases aren t seen in other parts of the world.
Weak grid infrastructure is a limiting factor for renewable investment in many developing economies, and here too current investment flows are highly concentrated. Advanced economies and China account for 80% of global spending and for almost all of the growth in recent years, the report said.
Renewable energy technologies are projected to make up nearly 90 percent of power generation investment this year, led by solar energy.
Investments in solar are expected to reach more than $1 billion per day this year, for a total of $382 billion in 2023, reported Reuters. Oil production investment is projected to be $371 billion.
This crowns solar as a true energy superpower. It is emerging as the biggest tool we have for rapid decarbonization of the entire economy, said Dave Jones, an energy think tank Ember s head of data insights, as Reuters reported.
EV sales are projected to rise by one-third in 2023, following a jump last year, the press release said. Since 2021, sales of heat pumps worldwide have also grown by double digits.
New initiatives like the U.S.Inflation Reduction Act and policies in Europe, China, Japan, and other countries, as well as phases of vigorous economic growth coupled with unstable fossil fuel prices, have helped prompt investments in clean energy.
Oil and gas upstream spending is projected to increase by seven percent this year, primarily by large Middle Eastern national oil companies.
New fossil fuel investments will increase by six percent to $950 billion this year, according to the IEA report.
The increase in fossil fuel investments will lead to levels this year that is more than twice where they need to be in 2030 to be on track for the Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario laid out by the IEA, the press release said.
Last year, demand for coal was at a record high. In 2023, investment in coal is on a trajectory for a six-fold increase over the levels forecast to reach net zero goals for 2030.
Investment in coal supply is expected to rise by 10% in 2023 and is already well above pre-pandemic levels. Investment in new coal-fired power plants remains on a declining trend, but a warning sign came in 2022 with 40 GW of new coal plants being approved the highest figure since 2016, the report said.
The largest green energy investment deficiencies were found to be in developing and emerging nations. Higher interest rates, weak grid infrastructure, high capital costs, obscure policy rules, and strained utilities have hampered investments in renewables in those countries.
The irony remains that some of the sunniest places in the world have the lowest levels of solar investment, Jones said, as reported by Reuters.
The U.S. and Canada have announced the Binational Electric Vehicle (EV) Corridor, a network of charging stations, including DC fast-chargers, from Kalamazoo, Michigan to Quebec City, Quebec to help travelers going between the two countries.
The corridor will feature charging stations about every 50 miles (80 kilometers), according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. The project is supported by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law which on its own has allocated $7.5 billion in federal funding for a national network of 500,000 public EV chargers as well as the CHIPS Act and the Inflation Reduction Act in addition to about CA$1.2 billion in funding from Canada, CleanTechnica reported.
Canada and the United States have built the world s largest market-based energy trading relationship, which provides a firm foundation as we strive to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, Canadian Minister of Transport Omar Alghabrasaid in a statement.
This first cross-border alternative fuel corridor will help drivers to travel across the border and charge or refuel worry-free. It contributes to bringing us another step closer to making our air cleaner while helping people save money on traditional fuels.
The corridor will include 215 charging stations, with 154 stations along highways from Toronto to Quebec City and 61 stations along highways from Detroit to Toronto. The stations will be within 6 kilometers (about 3.7 miles) of the highways to make them more convenient for travelers.
The EV charging network will be the first cross-border corridor of its kind, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer said, as reported by Detroit News. But this is not Michigan s first collaborative charging network. It has also worked with other states to build a 1,100-mile circuit of EV charging stations around Lake Michigan.
The Binational EV Corridor is meant to help both nations boost jobs, strengthen supply chains, and further encourage the transition to electric vehicles. It will also help Canada reach its goal to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 as well as the U.S. goal for half of all new vehicle sales to be electric by 2030. In Canada, about 10% of new vehicles currently sold are electric.
With historic investments in EV infrastructure from the Biden-Harris Administration and the Canadian government, we are creating a new generation of good-paying manufacturing jobs, making it possible for drivers everywhere to reap the benefits and savings of these vehicles while helping us fight climate change, U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said.
The biggest fossil fuel companies in the world owe at least $209 billion in yearly climate reparations to communities that suffered the brunt of the calamities caused by the climate crisis, a new study has concluded.
While substantial, the researchers consider theirs to be a conservative cost estimate, as it did not put a price tag on the loss of lives or income, additional well-being considerations, or extinction of species and other types of biodiversity depletion not reflected in gross domestic product calculations, reported The Guardian.
The study said the 21 biggest polluters have collectively caused $5.4 trillion in sea level rise, drought, wildfires, glacial melt, and other climate-related disasters. They include ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP, TotalEnergies, and Saudi Arabia s state-oil company, Saudi Aramco.
Human-caused climate change has long been acknowledged as essentially an ethical issue that threatens humanity and ravages the planet. While the Global North s historical carbon emissions have exceeded their fair share of the planetary boundary by an estimated 92%, the impacts of climate breakdown fall [disproportionately] on the Global South, which is responsible for a trivial share of Africa, Asia, and Latin America contribute only 8% of excess emissions, the authors wrote in their analysis.
The research is the first time the economic burden of companies that have made exorbitant profits from climate-damaging fossil fuels has been assessed.
The paper, Time to Pay the Piper: Fossil fuel companies reparations for climate damages, was published in the journalOne Earth.
The researchers said fossil fuel companies’ history of misinformation and climate denial has stymied global efforts to mitigate the climate crisis and that they have a moral responsibility to right the climate damage they have caused with their legacy of fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions, Climate Change News reported.
The argument presented by the paper calls on the fossil fuel companies to use some of the tainted wealth they have accumulated to compensate those who have suffered the most, reported The Guardian.
Fossil fuel companies have a moral responsibility to affected parties for climate harm and have a duty to rectify such harm. Moral theory and common sense as well as international environmental agreements through the polluter pays principle embodied in article 16 of the 1992 Rio Declaration, which calls for the internalization of environmental costs demand that historical wrongdoing must be rectified, the authors wrote in the study.
The authors used the carbon majors database as the platform for their study. The database has been keeping track of the emissions of gas and oil companies since 1988, which was the year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established. Following the foundation of the IPCC, claims of scientific uncertainty concerning the climate crisis no longer held water.
As increasingly devastating storms, floods and sea level rise bring misery to millions of people every day, questions around reparations have come to the fore, said Harjeet Singh, head of global political strategy at Climate Action Network International, a group of almost 2,000 civil society groups across 130 countries, as The Guardian reported. This new report puts the numbers on the table polluters can no longer hide from their crimes against humanity and nature.
Economic damages from the climate crisis worldwide from 2025 to 2050 are projected to be about $99 trillion. More than 700 climate economists have said that emissions from fossil fuels are the cause of $69.6 trillion of that amount.
According to the study, about a third of these predicted climate costs can be attributed to governments, a third to the fossil fuel industry worldwide, and a third to consumers, which means the fossil fuel industry is responsible for at least $893 billion annually, or $23.2 trillion total, for the next quarter-century.
About 50 percent of global warming to date has occurred since 1988, when James Hansen, a NASA scientist, testified before the U.S. Senate on humanity s role in climate change.
It is a widely held view that the richest one percent of the global population is responsible for double the greenhouse gas emissions of the poorest half of the world, which suffer the lion s share of climate harm.
According to the study, if the largest fossil fuel corporations were made to pay reparations, Saudi Aramco, which produced the most emissions of any state-owned company, would owe $43 billion per year, or a little more than a quarter of its profits from last year. ExxonMobil, which had profits of $56 billion last year, would be liable for $18 billion annually. BP and Shell, which made $68 billion combined in 2022, would have to pay $30.8 billion each year.
Four companies from low-income countries were exempt, and the liability for six fossil fuels companies in middle-income countries was cut in half under the moral reasoning that it would allow them to be able to afford more in taxes in order to contribute in other forward-thinking ways.
The proposed framework for quantifying and attributing reparations to major carbon fuel producers is grounded in moral theory and provides a starting point for discussion of the financial duty owed by the fossil fuel industry to climate victims, said Marco Grasso, a professor at the University of Milano-Bicocca, who was a co-author of the study, as The Guardian reported.
Erika Lennon, a senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law s energy and climate program, said the framework could also be useful for courts in ascribing responsibility for these climate harms and in assessing damages.
The case is clear for oil and gas companies to pay reparations for the harm their fossil fuels have caused. Not only has their dirty energy wrecked the climate, but they have also [in many cases] spent millions of dollars on lobbying and misinformation to prevent climate action, said Mohamed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa, a climate and energy think tank based in Kenya, as reported by The Guardian.
Since 1970, the chasing arrows symbol has been an iconic marker of recyclability. But now, President Joe Biden s administration is considering if the symbol has become misleading.
The symbol was first designed by Gary Anderson, who was studying at the University of Southern California and submitted the logo for the International Design Conference in 1970. It was designed to address Earth Day and the growing awareness of sustainability and caring for the environment.
The logo features three arrows chasing one another in a triangular loop. The first arrow is meant to represent items being collected for recycling, the second arrow represents the manufacturing of recyclable materials into new materials, and the third loop represents the consumption of the materials once again.
But today, the symbol is used on many materials that are not easily or commonly recycled.
As the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) considers updating its Green Guide for the first time in over a decade to address greenwashing, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has submitted a letter to comment on greenwashing and current recycling systems within the country. It noted that part of the necessary improvements to recycling includes clearer labels that are more transparent and accurate to consumers.
Plastics are a significant problem that needs to be addressed. Categorizing plastics by resin identification code coupled with chasing arrow symbols does not accurately represent recyclability as many plastics (especially 3-7) do not have end markets and are not financially viable to recycle, the EPA said in its letter to the FTC.
The EPA has noted that the arrow symbols, combined with the resin numbers on plastics, have been a major source of confusion for consumers, with many people reaching out for clarification on what can and cannot be recycled, as reported by The Guardian.
In the U.S., only23.6%of all generated municipal solid waste is recycled, according to the EPA. While plastic recycling was around 8.7% in 2018, a 2022 report from Beyond Plastics found that post-consumer plastic recycling rates were actually only around 5% to 6%.
The plastics industry must stop lying to the public about plastic recycling. It does not work, it never will work, and no amount of false advertising will change that. Instead, we need consumer brand companies and governments to adopt policies that reduce the production, usage, and disposal of plastics, Judith Enck, president of Beyond Plastics and former U.S. EPA regional administrator, said in a statement about the 2022 report.
In recent years, states have already targeted the label of the chasing arrow, with California being the first to restrict the logo on items that are not routinely recycled.
In addition to calling for changes to the recycling symbol, the EPA also recommended that the FTC restrict the use of several terms, including biodegradable and degradable, on products that are typically sent to landfills, recycling facilities, or incinerators.
In the letter, the EPA wrote that products labeled with terms such as degradable, biodegradable, etc., should always provide clear instructions for consumers on how to dispose of the product in a way that it will decompose in a safe and timely manner.
According to a recent study led by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), at least one-third of the total land burned by wildfires in the western United States and Canada since 1986 may be attributed to 88 major fossil fuel and cement corporations and their carbon emissions.
The study discovered 88 companies in the fossil fuel and cement industries that are a part of the world’s Carbon Majors, or companies responsible for the vast majority of harmful greenhouse gas emissions globally, were responsible for about 19.8 million acres of burned forests in the western U.S. and southwestern Canada, or about 37% of all areas burned by wildfires since 1986.
According to Kristina Dahl, a lead climate scientist at UCS and author of the research, typical Western wildfires have evolved into extraordinarily devastating events over the past few decades due to human-caused climate change. Livelihoods are being destroyed when towns burn to the ground.
According to UCS, emissions from these major producers of fossil fuels and cement may also be responsible for nearly 50% of the region’s increasing drought and high fire risk circumstances since 1901.
The vapor pressure deficit (VPD), a measurement of how air takes water from plants and the soil, allowed scientists to pinpoint the main polluters responsible for the emissions. The team then looked at variations in VPD, discovering that emissions from businesses were responsible for around 48% of the increase in VPD between 1901 and 2021 and that this increase was associated with more fires and megadroughts.
The study adds to previous research that has connected these major polluters’ emissions of carbon dioxide and methane to climate change, sea level rise, and ocean acidification. According to DeSmog, this rising corpus of research serves as an illustration of attribution science, which links polluters to their climate impacts.
The main contribution of this work is to draw a direct line from certain human-related carbon emission sources to recent increases in the frequency of forest fires across a substantial area of western North America. According to Philip Higuera, a fire ecologist at the University of Montana, the majority of the connections have been well-known for a long time, but this is the first time all the dots have been joined quantitatively.
Communities of color and low-income areas, which also have less access to resources to recover from wildfires, are said to face the greatest health hazards from smoke pollution and wildfires. According to Jos Pablo Ortiz-Partida, a senior bilingual water and climate scientist at UCS, these communities must be given top attention when thinking about solutions like holding Carbon Majors accountable and investing in fire preparedness.
The new report is intended to inform policymaking and hold polluters accountable for the increasingly harmful and devastating effects of climate change.
According to Dahl, our study provides fact-based responses to the concerns of who is accountable for this horrible destruction. We believe that with the new information at their disposal, policymakers, elected officials, and legal professionals will be better able to hold fossil fuel businesses liable in the public, political, and legal spheres.
According to recent research from the University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder), the average farm size will double by the end of the century while the number of farms will have decreased by half. This trend might have serious consequences for the world’s food systems.
According to a news statement from CU Boulder, the study is the first to track the size and number of farms annually from 1969 to 2013, with forecasts through the year 2100.
According to Zia Mehrabi, the study’s author and assistant professor of environmental studies at CU Boulder, “We see a turning point from widespread farm creation to widespread consolidation on a global level, and that’s the future trajectory that humanity is currently on.” Key environmental and social consequences are correlated with the size of the farm and the number of farms.
The research was published in the journal Nature Sustainability with the title Likely Drop in the Number of farms globally by the Middle of the Century.
According to Mehrabi’s research, the number of farms globally is expected to decline from 616 million in 2020 to 272 million by the end of the century. The typical farm size will double during that period.
There will be a continuation of recent trends in some regions, like Europe and North America, while there will be a shift toward broad consolidation in other regions, such as Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, Oceania, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Mehrabi composed.
According to the press release, the study found that even in rural populations in Asia and Africa that depend on farming, there will be fewer active farms.
Mehrabi examined statistics on rural population size, an agricultural area, and GDP per capita for more than 180 nations from the UN Food and Agricultural Organization in order to reconstruct the progression of farm numbers during the research time period and project them through 2100.
According to Mehrabi, one of the main causes of the decline in the number of farms worldwide is that when a nation’s economy improves, more people move to urban regions, leaving fewer people in rural areas to cultivate and care for the land.
Western Europe and the United States have witnessed this for many years. The most recent data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture show that there were fewer farms in 2008 than in 2007.
Even if the amount of farmland worldwide stays the same, Mehrabi’s analysis revealed that fewer people will own and farm the available land in the future, which could endanger biodiversity.
According to Mehrabi’s statement in the news release, larger farms often have less biodiversity and more monocultures. Smaller farms are often more resilient to insect outbreaks and climate shocks since they typically have a greater variety of crops and wildlife.
This might put the world’s food supply in danger. Previous studies by Mehrabi revealed that the world’s smallest farms produce a third of all food on just a quarter of the planet’s arable area.
The fewer farms there are, the less indigenous farmers have access to centuries-old expertise. Instead, automation and contemporary technology have taken the place of this essential information.
According to Mahrabi, having a variety of food sources provides long-term advantages.
Your portfolio is rather diversified if you’re investing in the current food systems, according to Mehrabi, who stated in the press release that there are about 600 million farms worldwide. If one of your farms is damaged, it’s likely that the effect on your portfolio will be balanced out by the success of another. The impact of that shock on your portfolio will rise though if you reduce the number of farms while increasing their size. You run a higher risk.
In order to preserve Indigenous knowledge, maintain climate resilience, assure biodiversity protection, and create improvement incentives for the global rural economy, Mehrabi expects that the study’s findings will influence policy.
For the human species and the food systems that sustain it, this scenario in which a small number of huge farms replace a large number of smaller ones entails both significant benefits and threats, according to Mehrabi’s analysis.
In the UK, members of the Environment Audit Committee (EAC) discovered that customers must wait up to 15 years for solar systems. Insufficient investment in grid infrastructure, such as cables and transformers, and poor management of grid connection applications.
Regulatory failure on the part of the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem) and unresponsive operators in the distribution network are all cited by the EAC as contributing factors to the lengthy wait times, according to Business Green.
Although there is hope for a bright future for solar energy in the UK, the industry is dogged by delays that prevent it from reaching its full potential. Evidence presented before our Committee demonstrated that the UK has the capacity to achieve its goal of 70GW of solar-powered generating capacity.
According to Philip Dunn, chairman of the UK Parliament’s Environmental Audit Committee, “Access to finance and the imposition of [Value Added Tax (VAT)] on batteries continue to be major sticking points for households.”
The lack of data on solar photovoltaic generation, particularly for installations on a smaller scale, as well as developers applying for connections to the grid without having obtained project planning permission, were two other areas where the connection to the grid was causing delays.
According to Business Green, Dunne wrote in a letter to Energy and Net Zero Secretary Grant Shapps last week that the government’s aim of 70 gigawatts of solar power by 2035 would be difficult given the present backlogs.
According to Business Green, Dunne said in the letter that this is inhibiting households and companies from investing in solar PV installations to lower their energy bills, which is hurting the economy and delaying the UK’s ability to reach its decarbonization goals.
Accelerating the solar transition will improve energy security in the UK, making it possible for individuals and businesses to reduce their energy costs, and significantly aid in decarbonizing the country’s electrical supply.
Solar energy is cheap to produce, but the EAC warned that it might be too expensive to deploy. According to Chris Hewett, chief executive of Solar Energy UK, solar projects with planning approval and ready-to-go financing can be advised to wait more than a decade just to connect to the grid. This is utterly unacceptable, according to Business Green. The scenario is costing the UK’s economy billions of pounds.
MPs recommended that the government look at measures to assist people in obtaining cheap loans and offer a VAT discount for battery storage. The EAC is starting another examination into the UK’s lack of solar connectivity to see whether other barriers stand in the way of renewable technologies being able to connect to the grid.
According to the press release, the committee will also take into account the possibilities for a smarter, more adaptable grid that enables dynamic demand management, peer-to-peer electricity trading, and storage. Dunne claimed that the UK’s target of net zero emissions by 2050 might not be achieved because of the delays in solar installation.
Net Zero Britain may be significantly jeopardized if low-carbon energy sources, including solar, are unable to connect to the grid. Our investigation into solar power revealed that some developers can wait up to 15 years for a grid connection, which is inexcusable.
In the press release, Dunne stated that we must make sure that issues with infrastructure and planning are promptly addressed. We are starting a new inquiry today to address the growing concerns our Committee has regarding grid connections for low-carbon energy projects. I urge anyone who has opinions on these topics to provide supporting data.
The first photovoltaic (PV) solar farm to directly link to the UK’s National Grid transmission network began producing electricity this week. According to a National Grid press release, the project connects the 49.9 megawatts (MW) Larks Green solar array in England to the 400-kilovolt Iron Acton substation of the National Grid.
A 49.5 MW battery energy storage system (BESS) with a 99 MWh power output will be part of the carbonizing-energy-system-trillions.html’ rel=’noopener no follow>renewable energy power source.
According to Roisin Quinn, director of National Grid Customer Connections, “Solar power has a critical role to play in the clean energy transition, so connecting the first PV array to our high voltage transmission network represents a key step on that journey.”
The solar plant, the first tandem solar and battery system of its sort, might assist the UK in achieving its 2035 carbon goals.
According to Ian Harding, co-founder and director of Enso Energy, the completion of this project is a significant milestone for renewable energy in the UK and offers additional proof that co-located solar and battery storage projects connecting directly to the transmission network will play a key role in the implementation of the UK setzero plans.
The 152,400 solar modules that make up the 200-acre solar farm will produce more than 73,000 MWh annually, which is enough energy to power more than 17,300 houses.
When compared to the energy output from fossil fuels, the novel solar-to-grid connection will yearly offset 20,500 tons of carbon dioxide.
Utilizing the BESS to store energy during periods of peak production will increase the amount of clean power available when demand is high and guarantee the site’s optimal efficiency.
Solar farms in the UK relied on the nation’s lower voltage regional networks to supply power to homes and businesses prior to the Larks Green solar array being connected to the National Grid.
Clean energy can go further by being directly connected to the National Grid, and this initiative makes it possible for larger projects to be connected to them in the future.
According to Marta Martinez Queimadelos, CEO of Cero Generation, in a press release, “As the nation’s first solar project to connect to the transmission network, it represents true innovation that paves the way for others to follow and enables the rapid deployment of much more clean energy.”
The government has set a goal of five-folding solar energy deployment by 2035, including the installation of up to 70 gigawatts of capacity, which would be enough to power roughly 20 million homes, according to a recent report from the energy security strategy Powering Up Britain.
The press release states that local wildlife resources will be included in the layout and construction of the solar farm and BESS, including the planting of woodlands to offer food and shelter for a variety of protected species. This will result in a net increase in biodiversity.
As we recognize the enormous advantages of co-location in advancing the green transition and supporting our mission of delivering a net-zero future, for this generation and every generation after it, Queimadelos said, we are proud to be celebrating a significant step in the UK’s renewable energy mission and in our journey into battery storage.
In its most recent budget, the state of New York passed laws requiring its public power provider to obtain only clean energy for the generation of electricity by the end of this decade. The action encourages the use of renewable energy and may increase consumer control over their energy.
The law permits the New York Power Authority (NYPA) to construct renewable energy projects and control and manage them, which may cause more utilities to switch from private to public ownership.
According to Lee Ziesche, an activist with Public Power New York, which has fought for this legislation for four years, it’s a historic victory for the environment and for clean jobs. It will serve as a national example of public power and demonstrates the importance of making energy a shared benefit.
Parts of the Build Public Renewables Act (BPRA), which had already passed the state Senate, were included in the budget proposal that Governor Kathy Hochul first unveiled in February 2023.
Many of the elements mentioned in the BPRA have also been passed along with the budget. If the proposal is approved, NYPA will supply electricity from renewable sources to state-owned properties by 2030 and municipally owned facilities by 2035, respectively.
In addition to the fact that publicly operated utilities are typically less expensive than utilities provided by privately held businesses, NYPA will be compelled to provide lower prices for renewable energy to consumers with low to moderate incomes.
The Act also establishes a shorter deadline for shutting down the six natural gas plants in the state that are run by NYPA. They will now be phased out by 2030 instead of the previous deadline of 2035.
The Public Power New York alliance, however, said in a statement that the law is intended to make it more difficult to develop more renewable energy projects after 2035.
Even so, NYPA’s decision to move to renewable energy could inspire similar legislation in other states because it is the largest publicly owned state utility in the U.S.
According to a statement from New York Public Power, the Build Public Renewables Act will finally fulfill the promise of the Green New Deal by ushering in a new era of green union jobs in renewable energy production, reducing rising energy costs, and closing down dirty fracked gas power plants in Black and Brown communities.
With a publicly owned system that is accountable to New Yorkers, not stockholders, the new policy will allow New York to achieve its ambitious climate goals set forth in the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA).
