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Rhiannon12866's JournalClimate change: Did we just witness the beginning of the end of Big Oil?
The energy sector is notorious for booms and busts, but oil and gas stocks’ weighting in the S&P 500 has not been this low since as far back as 1979.Investors have lost faith in oil companies, but it is not yet clear whether that is a permanent change caused by fear of increasing advances made by renewable-energy sources like wind, solar and electric batteries, or a temporary reluctance to invest caused by low oil prices.
Is the oil barrel half empty or half full? In the past week you had your pick of answers to choose from, and they were bookended nicely from the week’s beginning to its end.
The missile and drone attack on the largest Saudi Arabian oil-refining operation, which resulted in the largest single-day gain for crude oil ever on Monday, reminded a world that had gone a long time without a geopolitical shock how central the role of oil remains.
By Thursday, though, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos — a man whose every latest decision is equated with doom for whoever is on the other side of the competition — announced his company would reach a goal of carbon neutrality by 2040, a decade ahead of the Paris Agreement goal. Bezos said 10,000 electric-delivery vehicles will be on the roads in just three years (2022) and 80% of Amazon will be operating on renewable energy by as early as 2024. By 2030 all of Amazon and 100,000 delivery trucks will be 100% powered by renewable energy. On the same day, Google announced it was investing $2 billion in new renewable-energy projects, a record corporate purchase.
One day later millions around the world took to the streets — including Amazon and Google employees — in a climate strike ahead of UN Climate Week. “The plain truth is that capitalism needs to evolve if humanity is going to survive,” Patagonia CEO Rose Marcario wrote on LinkedIn.
You could add the fact that Duke Energy — the largest utility in the U.S., which for years had resisted renewables — announced this week that it would reach an interim target of 50% carbon emission reductions by 2030, 100% by 2050. Or that Daimler, credited with inventing the modern gasoline engine, announced it will cease all research and development related to internal combustion in favor of electrification.
And that was just one week.
Much more (Includes video): https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/22/climate-change-did-we-just-witness-beginning-of-end-of-big-oil.html
Out of service fuel pumps are covered in plastic wrap and tarps at an Exxon Mobile gas station.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Many wind turbines are slated to come online in the United States in 2019 and 2020
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) expects that U.S. wind capacity additions in both 2019 and in 2020 will be near the annual record level of additions set in 2012. Wind capacity additions through June 2019 totaled 3.7 gigawatts (GW). According to projects reported to EIA through surveys and on EIA’s Preliminary Monthly Electric Generator Inventory, operators expect another 8.5 GW to come online by the end of this year, with an additional 14.3 GW by the end of 2020.
Changes in annual wind capacity additions in the United States are often related to changes in tax incentives. The U.S. production tax credit (PTC), which provides operators with a tax credit per kilowatthour of renewable electricity generated for the first 10 years a facility is in operation, was initially set to expire for all eligible technologies at the end of 2012 but was later retroactively renewed.
Developers that scheduled projects to be completed in time to qualify for the PTC drove the high level of annual capacity additions in 2012 (13.3 GW). Similarly, the legislated phaseout of the PTC extension for wind is largely driving the increase in annual wind capacity additions in 2019.
When renewed in 2013, the PTC provided a maximum tax credit for wind generation of 2.3 cents per kilowatthour (kWh) for the first 10 years of production. Under the PTC phaseout, the tax credit decreases by 20% per year from 2017 through 2019. Facilities that begin construction after the end of 2020 cannot claim the PTC.
Under the current PTC legislation, wind projects are eligible to receive the tax credit based on either the year the project begins operation or the year in which the project owner demonstrates that project construction has begun and they have spent 5% of the total capital cost for the project. The 5% threshold provision, known as safe harboring, enables wind developers to receive the PTC based on the credit available for that year if they complete construction in no more than four calendar years after the calendar year during which facility construction began.
More: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=41373
Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Preliminary Monthly Electric Generator Inventory
How decades of L.A. smog led to California's war with Trump over car pollution
In 1953, there were no San Gabriel Mountains — at least not that Lee Begovich could see.
When the 24-year-old kindergarten teacher moved from Chicago to Southern California that year, Los Angeles was choked with smog — eye-burning, lung-stinging, headache-inducing smog. It hung so thick in the air that it often limited visibility to mere miles for months on end.
So when Begovich looked northeast from her Compton classroom, the Los Angeles topography faded into a gauzy haze, like peering into the smoke-filled backrooms of the era’s bars. But one day that fall, the wind blew hard; it cleared out the intractable smog. For the first time in her life, Begovich saw the outline of the San Gabriel Mountains. She was stunned, she remembered 66 years later.
You wouldn’t hear that story today, said Ann Carlson, Begovich’s daughter and an environmental law professor at UCLA. For the past two decades, the air has been far cleaner. Now, in most panoramic photographs of the city, the mountains sit atop its skyline like a crown.
“People don’t realize just how bad it was and how much better it is today,” said Carlson, who’s writing a book on the region’s history of air pollution.
The city and the state have made extraordinary progress in the past half century, and it’s largely because of California’s ability under the Clean Air Act to curb dangerous emissions from the biggest polluters around: automobiles.
But this week, President Trump said he would revoke California’s ability to set its own auto emissions standards, a provision that gave the most populous state significant sway over the car industry.
On Friday, California and 22 other states responded, filing a lawsuit that challenged his decision to revoke the waver, which is rooted in Los Angeles’s smoggy past. Trump’s move enraged environmentalists and residents who knew just how far that exception had allowed the city to come.
Much more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/09/21/how-decades-la-smog-led-californias-war-with-trump-over-car-pollution/
A view of Los Angeles in 1958. (AP)
13 totally innocent explanations for Trump's Ukraine shenanigans
By Dana Milbank
Columnist
September 20 at 5:01 PM
President Trump offered a curious defense against a whistleblower’s reported allegation that he made a troubling “promise” on a call with a foreign leader.
“Is anybody dumb enough to believe that I would say something inappropriate with a foreign leader while on such a potentially ‘heavily populated’ call,” he asked.
Why, yes. Yes, I am dumb enough to believe it, given that the president has previously handed over highly classified intelligence to Russia; sided with Russian President Vladimir Putin against U.S. intelligence; devised military strategy in public at Mar-a-Lago; insulted leaders of Britain, Germany and France; shoved the prime minister of Montenegro; fallen “in love” with North Korea’s dictator; invited the Taliban to Camp David; asked if he could nuke hurricanes; taken children from their parents and put them in warehouses; altered a weather forecast with a Sharpie; said windmills cause cancer; and hired Rudy Giuliani.
The last may be most worrisome, for when the former New York mayor and current raving madman went on CNN on Thursday night to explain the president’s promise, his primary defense was to shout out Joe Biden’s name — 24 times (with cameos for George Soros and Whitey Bulger’s nephew). Giuliani said he had proof that Biden bribed the Ukrainian government to protect his son, but “I don’t have to give you the proof” — and, alas, available evidence doesn’t support Giuliani’s claim.
In the process, Giuliani managed to contradict himself within seconds, first saying he didn’t ask Ukraine to investigate Biden, then saying, “Of course I did.” He completed his defense of the president with a series of random interjections shouted at host Chris Cuomo: “You are a sellout. .?.?. Come after me! .?.?. Go somewhere on an island. .?.?. Do you think I’m a fool? .?.?. I’m institutionally insulting you. .?.?. Holy God! .?.?. You don’t think there’s a Deep State? .?.?. Wait, wait, damn it, let me finish! .?.?. Of course I’m making sense! . . . You shouldn’t be embarrassed for me. .?.?. Of course I’m aware of what I’m saying! .?.?. You shouldn’t have a good night!”
Clearly, Trump and his wild-eyed lawyer can do better. I am here for them.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/13-totally-benign-explanations-for-trumps-ukraine-promise/2019/09/20/4f91a36e-dbc8-11e9-bfb1-849887369476_story.html
(Tom Toles)
Stephen Colbert Presents: Best Of The Late Show, Season Four - and Opening
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Meanwhile... The Best-whiles Of Season Four's Meanwhiles
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Stephen Fought John Krasinski, Met Gritty and Introduced BTS To America
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Listen, and listen good: the name is Mr. T, and he's got some advice for our tongue-tied Commander-in-chief.
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Monologue: Trump's Treason Three-WayBill recaps the top stories of the week, including Trump's whistleblower complaint and Justin Trudeau's "brownface" scandal.
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I Don't Know It For a Fact...I Just Know It's True
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In his editorial New Rule, Bill declares that Trump Derangement Syndrome is real – and that it applies to anyone condoning the president's indefensible behavior.
Overtime: Heather McGhee, Sarah Haider, Andrew Sullivan, Timothy Naftali
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Seth Meyers: Andrew Yang on Universal Basic Income and Measuring Our Economic Health
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Seth Meyers: Margaret Atwood's The Testaments Continues The Handmaid's Tale from New Perspectives
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Seth's Favorite Jokes of the Week: Sean Spicer on Dancing with the Stars, Justin Trudeau
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