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YouTuber Marques Brownlee — aka MKBHD — took to Twitter to tease the world with some still shots of a Tesla Model 3 Performance Edition and some vertically mounted cameras capturing blood-curdling, portrait-mode video footage destined for Instagram's new IGTV platform

Today, renewable energy resources like wind and solar power are so affordable that they’re driving coal production and coal-fired generation out of business. Lower-cost natural gas is helping, too

The wait time for the Tesla Solar Roof and Powerwall is going up instead of coming down. JB Straubel says, "Don't worry. Be happy."

Power sector transition is often dominated by 'shiny new objects' like solar+storage, and the chance to serve customers more comprehensively can be overlooked. One way to change this is the European "chauffage" contract, which provides a strong incentive to maximize efficiency.

 

Should California expand its energy markets to incorporate the rest of the Western United States? 

This vital question for California’s energy future has been the subject of vigorous debate for years now. Supporters say it will allow California to access ever-cheaper wind and solar power from across the region, driving down energy costs and boosting jobs and the economy, while pressuring uncompetitive fossil-fuel-fired power plants to shut down. 

Opponents fear it will drive renewables investment and jobs out of state, support coal plants owned by Rocky Mountain states utility PacifiCorp and others, and open California grid operator CAISO to losing its independence to determine its own clean energy and carbon reduction future. 

The debate moved into sharp focus as of last month, when state legislators passed through a key committee a bill (AB 813) that would take the first steps toward creating a new regional energy market, giving it a chance to be brought to a vote before an August 31 deadline.  

This week, the nonpartisan Next 10 Foundation released a report, A Regional Power Market for the West: Risks and Benefits, that weighs both sides of this debate, and largely finds that the benefits of grid regionalization outweigh the potential negative effects. 

That’s largely because the report finds that the positive effects of regionalization — up to $1.5 billion per year by 2030 in reduced energy costs in California due to more competition, economies of scale, and cheap regional wind and solar power — outweigh the projections of losses for in-state renewable energy investment and jobs. 

“Lower costs come from developing the best resources in the region, rather than restricting development to California,” report author Bentham Paulos wrote. “On the whole, studies say that regionalization would lead to greater job growth in California.” 

As for the concerns that changing CAISO to a regional entity could undercut California’s control, the report noted that CAISO is already regulated by FERC. That fact that doesn’t change whether its board is appointed by California’s governor, as is true for CAISO today, or appointed via an independent commission, as is the case for the rest of the country’s grid operators. 

“Because it has been responsive to state policy goals, some people think of it as a state agency, regulated by state policymakers. But it is not, and hasn’t been for almost two decades,” Paulos wrote. “A regional RTO, just like CAISO, would have to operate under a framework of FERC orders and federal law that require cooperation, free trade, and fair competition.”

In an interview this week, Paulos also noted that AB 813, if passed, “doesn’t just wave a magic wand and create a regional market.” Instead, it simply “sets the conditions under which California utilities can join a regional RTO,” he explained. “The California legislature can’t tell any other state what to do, but they can tell their utilities what to do. That’s the leverage that the legislature has, and that’s the reform mechanism” in play. 

Jon Wellinghoff, former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), and Mike Florio, former California Public Utilities Commissioner, as well as members of groups both for and against regionalization, also contributed to the Next 10 report.

The report was welcomed by groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council and Vote Solar, which have been arguing in favor of regionalization for the past three years. 

However, Paulos also highlighted certain caveats to the report’s conclusions. 

First, it does not include an analysis of a future in which California gets much of its energy from distributed energy resources such as rooftop solar PV, demand response or energy storage. That’s because, as he wrote in the report, “unfortunately, a distributed-intensive scenario was not included under the SB350 studies mandated by the state to investigate a western RTO, nor has it been adequately studied by other agencies, labs, universities, or think tanks.”

“On a technical level, a regional grid and a lot of DERs are really substitutes for each other – or could be,” he said in the interview. But without a DER-rich scenario to compare to the various bulk power-focused analyses included in the report, Next 10 was unable to measure how well DERs might serve to defer transmission-scale needs.

The Clean Coalition, one of regionalization’s biggest opponents at present — and a participant in the Next 10 report — has argued that California could obtain the same benefits of regionalization through DERs, without the risks and downsides. 

Clean Coalition has also said expanding the regional Energy Imbalance Market, which has provided about $350 million in benefits by allowing California and other Western U.S. utilities that operate transmission systems to trade in a real-time market, is a more prudent move than pushing ahead with a regional authority. 

Paulos also raised one more wild card in the regionalization analysis — the potential politicization of FERC by the Trump administration. 

“Watching FERC these days is a real moving target,” he said. “All these Trump appointees, people aren’t really sure what they’re going to do. Is it going to be as politicized as the EPA? So far it hasn’t been,” he said, noting FERC’s unanimous rejection of Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s plan to force regulations that would guarantee payments for uncompetitive coal and nuclear plants in the name of grid resilience.

However, FERC’s recent split decision to force grid operator PJM to remake its capacity markets, in ways that could limit participation by state policy-supported resources including nuclear, wind and solar, has left many FERC-watchers uncertain over its impact on clean energy policies across the country, he said. 

Lithium exploration and development company Bacanora Minerals (LON:BCN) won’t go ahead with a proposed $100 million share sale, citing volatile prices for the battery raw material as the main reason for the u-turn, it said Thursday.

Earlier this week, the company had announced the plan saying it would help it help fund the construction of its 17,500 tonnes-a-year lithium carbonate mine in Sonora, Mexico.

“Challenging market conditions have led us to take the decision not to proceed with the placing at this stage,” chief executive Peter Secker said in the statement.

Initially, investors reacted negatively to the news and the company’s shares dropped in London from 80p to 67p. The stock ended up closing 4.34% higher to 69.7p.

Investor are growing increasingly concerned about a wave of new lithium projects sprouting up from Australia to Nevada, which could put pressure on prices.

Bacanora said it will now focus on completing the Front End Engineering Design, while talks are ongoing with several additional parties to find alternative funding.

Sonora’s first phase is expected to cost $420 million with a further $40 million needed for working capital. A recent feasibility study assigned the asset a net present value of $1.25-billion and an internal rate of return of 26%.

The company plans to extract lithium from clay, a technology that has not yet been proven at mass scale. Bu that hasn’t stopped giants, such as Tesla Motors, from signing an agreement with the company and its partner Rare Earth Minerals (LON:REM) that secure supply of lithium hydroxide from the Sonora project to the electric cars and energy storage products company.

In May 2017, Bacanora secured a $11 million investment from Blackrock. It came a few months after inking another long-term supply deal with Japan’s Hanwa Corporation, which will see the Tokyo-based trader acquire up to 100% of the output coming from Sonora.

Frequently referred to as "white petroleum," lithium drives much of the modern world, as it has become an irreplaceable component of rechargeable batteries used in high tech devices and electric cars.

Investor are growing increasingly concerned about a wave of new lithium projects sprouting up from Australia to Nevada, which could put pressure on prices. Lithium carbonate, a key ion battery raw material, have climbed almost 40% in the past 12 months on the back of increasing electric car production, according to Benchmark Minerals Intelligence.

Shares in the world’s largest producers of lithium, however, have gone the opposite way this year, following double-digit gains in 2017.

The post Bacanora Lithium changes its mind on how to fund flagship Sonora mine appeared first on MINING.com.

Since cutting meat from my diet, my eyes have been opened to the numerous other reasons people get rid of meat from their diets. Here on CleanTechnica, we should talk more about the climate impact of eating meat, because it's huge and yes, cow farts are a part of the equation

Thanks to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. for providing a first-hand account of the sixth day in court in the Dewayne Johnson vs. Monsanto Co. trial. Proceedings began in San Francisco Superior Court on July 9.

Central Michigan station in Detroit has been closed for many years. In fact, for some it has been a symbol of urban decay, but Bill Ford wants to change that. In the next four years, the plan is to renovate it for use by the Ford Motor Company, so it becomes an entrepreneurial hub

A new report from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance describes some of the implications of the growing solar power and energy storage trend as it relates to the current, centralized utility-based electricity distribution model. Because solar and energy storage can be cost competitive with grid electricity prices in some places, consumers now have an alternative to only using utility-based electricity. Report author John Farrell answered some questions for CleanTechnica

New York utility Consolidated Edison this week launched an online marketplace to make it easier for customers to purchase electric cars.

That follows a June decision by National Grid to add electric vehicles to its own online marketplace.

As utilities stare down a future of flat or declining electricity consumption, electric vehicles offer a glimmer of hope. If customers suddenly need to buy electricity to fuel their cars, that means new load for utilities to fulfill, plus charging infrastructure and distribution upgrades that need to be built.

Hence ConEd’s new creation: Cars.coned.com. The new addition compares electric cars to their cheaper gasoline-powered foils in a way that makes the EV always look like the wiser choice. The site arrives at this conclusion by factoring in lifetime cost of ownership.

Looking for a sweet SUV for cruising to the mall? Sure, it’s 2018 after all. But doesn’t a Tesla Model X cost $14,000 more than a beefy Lincoln Navigator? Yes, the marketplace counsels, but if you factor in the cost of five years of gasoline versus five years of electric charging, and subtract the NY Drive Clean Rebate and the federal tax credit (while it lasts), and voila: the more expensive EV is actually cheaper to own!

True, paying more upfront can lead to long-term savings. But aspiring electric drivers could look for this assurance in marketing materials paid for by EV companies. The only difference here is it comes from the unbiased third party that just happens to sell everyone electricity.

Energy retailers have demonstrated an eagerness to use their customer relationship to cross-sell clean energy items. That rationale pushed several companies to jump into rooftop solar, until they failed to make money and abandoned the effort.

Here, at least, Con Ed and National Grid have outsourced the work to Enervee, a Los Angeles company that invokes “data-science, behavioral science and digital marketing” to help utilities guide their customers to purchase efficient appliances. It has been active in New York and California, but also set up an appliance marketplace for AEP Ohio earlier this year.

The firm really does have a knack for efficiency: it delivered two identical car comparison websites with different utility logos slapped on the top. The same service could be coming soon to additional energy providers.

It’s a new twist on an existing trend: the online utility-backed marketplace. These marketplaces started largely as a way to improve rebate applications, notes Fei Wang, a senior grid edge analyst at GTM Research.

If you live in New York and buy an efficient LED lightbulb for $7, you might not realize that Con Ed offers a $4 rebate on that very item. Or filling out the paperwork for a $4 check might be too much of a hassle. The marketplace applies the rebate automatically at the point of purchase.

Rebates, however, will not last forever.

“We have seen marketplaces adding features like scheduling contractors, signing up for demand response and additional utility programs, and now a platform to compare EVs and non-EVs,” Wang said. “These additional features show that utilities are testing ways to play the energy advisor role, exploring additional revenues (through revenue sharing or referral fees), and/or improving customer experience.”

More EV marketplaces may soon spring up, Wang added, particularly among utilities that already work with Enervee and have EV infrastructure programs underway.

It’s not clear what success would mean for this endeavor, or how it would even be measured (“increased customer understanding”?). The service does not actually sell cars, it simply reiterates publicly available information about them.

Still, it’s easy enough to fire up a clone of the service if some other company wants to slap their logo on it. One day soon, even more Americans could look to their utility for advice on whether to buy more electricity.

It seems like there’s always some good news about clean energy: We are breaking records, building more solar panels and wind turbines every day!

Despite clean energy’s meteoric growth, a new global assessment from the International Energy Association shows that fossil fuel projects are growing even faster. The money going to fossil fuel projects accounted for 59 percent of all energy investments last year. Sorry to say but clean energy’s share is shrinking.

You can see what’s going on in the following charts. First, improving energy efficiency (orange) is now big business. That’s great! Investments in renewables along with new transmission lines and batteries (the blue rectangle labelled “networks”), now dominate the electricity sector. Great again! But then there’s that big honking red section, which swings things back in the other direction.

IEA

“Investment in all forms of clean power, as well as in networks, would need to rise substantially,” according to the IEA report, for the world to have a shot at keeping climate change below 2 degrees Celsius.

So what happened to all that good news about renewables? Well, it’s real. Investment in solar photovoltaics reached record levels in 2017, while the price of solar power was falling fast, which means those investments are getting more bang for the buck. Investment in offshore wind also hit a record last year, but investment in land-based wind turbines, hydropower, and nuclear fell. The world put nearly $300 billion into renewables, which is a lot, enough to dominate the electric power sector:

IEA

But that’s not as much as we spent on in oil and gas drilling and exploration (also known as “upstream” investment) — $450 billion. And that doesn’t count all the money that went into building new pipelines, refineries, and gas stations.

IEA

We could kick our addiction to oil by switching to electric vehicles. And, indeed, the world is spending lots of money on EVs. People spent $43 billion on them last year, and more than one out of every 100 cars on the road is electric. Investors are also putting lots of money into build the lithium batteries powering Teslas and Chevy Bolts: Funding for lithium mining has increased by a factor of 10 since 2012.

IEA

It’s good news but not good enough. All our driving and shipping and air travel caused oil consumption to grow by “1.6 million barrels per day,” according to the IEA. All the electric cars on the road trimmed consumption by 30,000 barrels a day.

If there’s a true bright spot in this report, it’s found in the section on government research. Around the world, governments spent $27 billion on energy research in 2017, a record high. Most of the growth in government R&D went toward low-carbon technologies.

As the costs of renewables fall, and more wind and solar power surges onto the electric grid, it can start to seem as if the market is taking care of climate change on its own. This report is a bucket of cold water to dispel that fantasy. Yes, there’s good news, but fossil fuels are still growing faster than clean energy.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline New evidence shows we’re still way too addicted to fossil fuels on Jul 19, 2018.

HOUSTON, July 19, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Talos Energy Inc. ("Talos" or the "Company") (NYSE: TALO) to ...

ODESSA, Texas. (July 19, 2018) – HENDERSON, a leader in the sales and service of drilling rigs an ...

July 19, 2018Indigenous RightsPolitics in CanadaAssembly of First Nations 2018 election is a battle for sovereignty The Assembly of First Nations will hold its election for national chief on July 25 in Vancouver -- and this election feels like a boiling point for Indigenous rights and sovereignty. Assembly of First Nationsafn electionIndigenous SovereigntyAboriginals; Truth and reconciliation commission; TRC;

The current pace of global climate change remains double that of the international targets set in the Paris Climate Agreement due to a lack and speed of global action to limit its impact, according to Schroders Climate Progress Dashboard. 

A new research paper published this week has raised the specter of accelerated global warming due to a weakening of the North Atlantic Ocean's circulation system, which is not only expected to continue to weaken in the coming decades but which could impact global surface temperature levels. 

When we rebooted our life a few months back, I took the opportunity to go all in on rechargeable batteries and naturally went right back to Eneloop. We bought a nice starter pack that had a nice variety of cells and adapters as well as a charger and a few weeks later, picked up a pack of loose cells for all of our devices

Pamela Palmater

The Assembly of First Nations will hold its election for national chief on July 25 in Vancouver. Only the chiefs of the 634-plus First Nations are eligible to vote but most chiefs' assemblies see less than half of those attend, and of those, many are proxies and not actual chiefs. 

While elections for prime minister, premier and even mayors attract nightly political commentary, analysis and predictions in the months and weeks prior to their elections, there is generally very little commentary about the AFN election outside of Indigenous media like APTN, Windspeaker or smaller Indigenous political blogs. Yet, what is at stake in this election for First Nations should be of great concern to Canadians. 

This election feels more like a boiling point -- a critical juncture spurred by the growing discontent of the AFN that was apparent in the last three AFN elections for National Chief. The outcome of this election could change everything for the better or the worse and Canadians will be impacted either way.

The colonial reality of First Nations impoverished through the dispossession of lands and resources, together with an aggressive and unrelenting assimilation policy, forces leaders to make hard decisions in order to provide relief for their people. Their own local elections depend on whether houses are built on reserve to relieve the crisis-level over-crowding and homelessness or whether there is access to safe drinking water and food to keep their children out of foster care. 

The focus of local First Nation elections is often based on life and death issues -- a far cry from federal or provincial elections which tend to focus on the best interests of the middle class, tax relief or international trade. The AFN is well aware of this dynamic in First Nations and uses the fear of losing critically needed social programs and services as a means to garner support for federal policies -- which in turn equate to more money for the AFN itself. While everyone is aware of this dynamic, the need to provide for First Nation citizens is often paramount.

Historically, First Nation leaders addressed their concerns privately, but the AFN's drastic departure from its original purpose as an advocacy organization risks the very rights of First Nations, thus requiring the very public pushback we have seen in recent years. 

What is happening both before our eyes and behind closed doors is an epic battle to protect First Nation sovereignty, lands and cultures. It is a battle that seeks to frame reconciliation as more than the beads and trinkets offered by the Trudeau government and one which aligns more with First Nation constitutional and international rights. 

This election will be a contest between those who accept the federal government's legislative framework agenda in exchange for relatively minor (but desperately-needed) funding increases to programs and services versus those who reject it, and demand the return of some of their lands, a share in their natural resources, and the protection of their sovereignty and jurisdiction. Either path will result in significant consequences for First Nations. But make no mistake -- there will be government retaliation if the election choice is real reconciliation.

Sadly, this is not a battle of their own making. Most of the divisions amongst First Nations have been created and maintained by federal bureaucrats, who have maintained their vise-like grip on the so-called "Indian agenda." Even the first few attempts at national political organizing among First Nations after the First and Second World Wars were defeated by government interference. 

While the National Indian Brotherhood started out strong in defence of core First Nation rights and title, more recent years as the re-named Assembly of First Nations have seen a drastic decline in advocacy and a corresponding increase in the support of federal agendas. While most of the federal pressure occurs behind the scenes, the previous Conservative government wielded social program funding and federal legislative power as a weapon to bludgeon any attempt to advocate for First Nation rights. Former Prime Minister Harper's government enacted a historic amount of legislation against the will of First Nations and even threatened to cut funding for "rogue chiefs" who dared challenge their legislative agenda of increased federal control over First Nations.

While Trudeau was elected on a promise to repeal all of Harper's legislation, he hasn't done so -- nor will he ever. He has his own legislative agenda designed to build upon Harper's increased legislative control of First Nation governments by also limiting the scope and content of First Nation constitutional rights and powers once-and-for-all. 

The Trudeau government seeks to define and limit the scope of First Nation rights and powers under section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982 in federal legislation under the guise of reconciliation. Therein lies the Trojan Horse of Trudeau's brand of reconciliation. Trudeau's reconciliation, while flowery and tearful, will result in the legal assimilation of First Nations into the body politic. Something his father, former Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau, tried to do with the 1969 White Paper on Indian Policy designed to get rid of Indian status, reserves and treaty rights.

Real reconciliation -- which is about addressing the wrongs of both the past and the present -- requires the transfer of lands and resources back to First Nations, the sharing of the wealth made in First Nation territories and the full recognition of First Nation sovereignty and jurisdiction (the right to be self-determining). However, most Chiefs are acutely aware that although this is the path that most honours our ancestors and coincides with our rights; it is also the path with the most severe consquences. The path of retaliatory reconciliation has always attracted the full force of Canadian law enforcement and military power.

When the Mi'kmaw Nation at Listuguj tried to manage their own fishery in the 1980s, they were brutally beaten and arrested by the Surete du Quebec (SQ) police. When the Mohawks of Kanesetake tried to protect their traditional territory and burial grounds from a golf course in 1990, the SQ, RCMP and military laid siege to their territory for months. 

In 1995, an unarmed land defender named Dudley George was killed by Ontario police for protecting his reserve lands at Ipperwash. In the same year, the RCMP launched the largest attack on ever on a civilian population at Gustafsen Lake -- all to prevent a small group of sun dancers from performing their ceremonies on so-called Crown lands. 

Even once the Mi'kmaw Nation at Esgenoopetitj (Burnt Church) had proven their treaty right to fish at the Supreme Court of Canada in 1999, the RCMP and DFO used brutal force to stop the Mi'kmaw from fishing. Hundreds of RCMP SWAT forces were called out to suppress the peaceful resistance of the Mi'kmaw Nation at Elsipogtog to hydro-fracking on traditional lands.

Sadly, Canada's vision of reconciliation only works if First Nations don't assert their rights. First Nations are more than welcome to enjoy their powwows, re-name streets in their languages or hang their art in public spaces, as acts of multi-culturalism. But when it comes to asserting inherent, treaty or constitutional Aboriginal rights and land title -- that is where Trudeau's vision of reconciliation breaks down. One need only look at the arrests related to protests against the Trudeau/Kinder Morgan Pipeline to know where real reconciliation is headed. 

Canadians should be very concerned about the actions of their governments towards reconciliation and what this AFN election means for the safety and well-being of Indigenous peoples moving forward. After all, as beneficiaries of the treaties, Canadians have a role to play in addressing historic and ongoing wrongs.

There is no way to sugarcoat what is at stake in this AFN election. A vote for Perry Bellegarde is a vote down the rabbit hole of assimilation that looks eerily like a pipeline. A vote for real reconciliation means First Nations will have to brace for retaliatory impact -- but this is the only path that will protect our rights from voluntary erasure.

Full disclosure: I was the runner-up candidate in the AFN election 2012 to the former incumbent National Chief Shawn Atleo.

This article was originally published in Lawyer's Daily on July 18, 2018.

Postscript:

I would like to refer you all to two very good articles written by Indigenous commentators on the AFN election. Both Niigaan and Doug are excellent writers and have a great deal of insight into First Nation political issues.

1. "National chief election matters" written by Niigaan Sinclair for the Winnipeg Free Press on July 7, 2018.

2. "Changes needed to AFN structure" written by Doug Cuthand for the Saskatoon StarPhoenix on July 14, 2018.

Photo: Andrew Scheer/Flickr

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Modeling of new energy-efficient home developments found community solar offers system advantages not available from rooftop solar.