tingilinde

residential oil production

A serious health hazard that is common in California. 

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And unlike more rural oil-producing states, where oilfields might be uninhabited but for the people who work on them, drilling in California happens to a large degree in residential settings. In the Kern County town of Shafter, pump jacks hover over an elementary school. In Signal Hill to the south near Long Beach, drilling rigs butt up against playgrounds. In addition to drilling operations, refineries in the Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay areas, handle some of the dirtiest oil in the world, from Alberta’s Athabasca oil sands to the state’s own carbon-heavy crude. In both locations, refineries occupy space in neighborhoods.

A 2020 analysis by FracTracker Alliance, a nonprofit that collects data on the health consequences of oil and gas development, found that some 2.17 million people in California live within a half mile of an oil or gas well; another 5 million live within a mile. From 2015 through 2020, the state issued more than 25,000 permits for drilling new wells and redrilling older ones, more than 60 percent of them in Spanish-speaking communities.

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china stays with coal

A large expansion of coal-fired plants in underway. 

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In the short term, the Communist Party’s chief concern remains how to grow the economy by around 6 percent per year. And, as identified in its latest Five-Year Plan, one of the top risks to China’s aim of maintaining a “moderately prosperous society” remains a lack of energy to drive its economy.

“Energy security in the Chinese context primarily means coal,” said Li Shuo, a climate policy advisor at Greenpeace East Asia. “So how do you reconcile these two narratives? I don’t think the plans that have been announced have given us a clear answer.”

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getting ready for large scale ev adoption

It's a large undertaking and not exactly straightforward.  The type of government we have over the next decade will probably have a big impact.

 

looking backwards

Coal in Rawlins, Wyoming.

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Wyoming, with its vast wind resources, has the potential to lead the country in renewables. But the clean energy revolution espoused by Mr. Biden is not what is pushing officials here to embrace wind.

In this heavily Republican state, people raise climate change issues “only if they want to be punched in the face,” Mr. Weickum said.

What’s driving the change is pragmatism.

At least six coal companies have filed for bankruptcy in the past six years, and the state’s coal mining sector last year alone lost 761 jobs. Two decades ago, coal generated 96 percent of the electricity in Wyoming; by 2019, it had dropped to 84 percent. Meanwhile, in that same time period wind grew from almost nothing to 10 percent.

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1959 and an early global warming warning

When Edward Teller warned the oil industry about global warming.

a tip of the hat to Bjarne

 

 

moving towards a car-free city

Heidelberg and its environmentally conscious urban planning. Of course they run the risk of making the place extremely attractive and healthy. 

 

propublica on power companies

They tend to get what they want.

 

electricity in europe

Norway is now the largest exporter.  The average Norwegian also uses twice as much electricity as their Swedish counterpart .. rates are lower and the degree of electrification (heating and transport) are higher.

 

the approaching failure of texas

They've been very successful with one technology (fossil fuels)  for decades and refuse to move on ..  Kodak is a good example of this class of failure - dabbling with new technologies, but the management is firmly wedded to the past.  

Of course the same is true for most of the other fossil fuel production states.

 

 

 

 

how electricity is produced matters

A study looking at pollutants in China if the country switched to electric vehicles.  One really wants clean energy, but even with heavy coal fired generation (like they currently have) there's some improvement.  (an interesting difference between cars and trucks)

Separately - China is much more worried about PM 2.5 and NOx pollution than CO₂.  To this end many of the new coal fired plants are removed from cities using high voltage DC transmission lines.