Talking Climate Tech 043
✅ UK Wind Wins | ⚫️ PHEV Smoke Screen | 🧠 AI Data Centre Desperation | 🤪 Trump Decent | 👂 Survey | ☠️ Climate Deaths
No time to waste, the world is on fire, remember! 🔥
🗞️ News Roundup
UK Wind Impact 👏
Interesting new study from UCL on UK wind generation, which might help shut up the yapping dog that is Farage and Reform:
...financial impact of wind generation on the UK energy market, challenging the idea that sustainability, security, and affordability are always in conflict.
From 2010 to 2023, wind power delivered a net benefit of £104.3 billion to UK consumers—£14.2 billion from lower electricity prices and £133.3 billion from reduced natural gas prices, partially offset by £43.2 billion in wind energy subsidies.
Love it when a plan comes together.
PHEV Smoke Screen ⚫
Interesting, and yet unsurprising, new analysis from the excellent T&E. Long-range plug-in hybrids and extended-range electric vehicles are a diversion on the road to zero emissions.
Some key headlines:
The real-world CO₂ emissions of PHEV models registered in 2023 are nearly five times the official emissions
Even when driven in electric mode, PHEVs emit 68gCO₂/km as their electric motors have insufficient power and the combustion engine needs to kick in.
PHEVs emitted roughly the same as conventional hybrids and combustion vehicles in the real world. Despite official emissions being 75% lower.
The logic of PHEV is beyond me. How could the battery systems be efficient if it has to power the car, invariably a legacy design and not developed for battery tech either, and all the extra weight of the ICE engine doing nothing up front. 🤯
Every Last Drop? 🛢️
Good old Wood Mackenzie, they love a drop of the black stuff, and not Guinness.
AI for finding every last drop of oil to keep the gravy train going, then?
'Analogues' uses a machine learning method known as clustering to identify each field’s closest matches across 60 different attributes spanning rock properties, fluid characteristics, and commercial factors.”
The AI tool could increase the share of recoverable conventional oil reserves by nearly 42%.
Lovely stuff. ⚫ Just what we need, AI for more oil. More here.
🔎 Deeper Dive
We looked at Data Centre heat recovery last week in 042. Data Centres can add value and co-benefits to communities. In some cases, well, not so much.
AI and Big Data means big power. The tech bros all scrabble for grid connections, gas turbines and even nuclear dreams. That means desperate moves, overreach and ultimately more emissions one way or another.
Elon Memphis Madness 😷
An older story, but with a recent update. Certainly worth revisiting as a reminder of what's happening on the ground, and what it means when Big Tech runs roughshod over permits and regulations.
Ultimately, local people and environments pay the price.
For his new Grok training AI data centre, Elon decided to throw in 35 gas turbines [422MW] to power it, over and above the permitted 15 turbines. They were used as prime power, as he couldn't be bothered to wait for the grid connection.
manufacturer-supplied emissions data for these turbines shows that xAI emits between 1,200 and 2,000 tons of smog-forming nitrogen oxides (NOx) per year, making the facility likely the largest industrial emitter of NOx in Memphis
More on the original story here, CNBC.
Want to see what those emissions look like through a thermal imaging camera?
Of course you do. ⬇️
Thanks as always to Sharon Wilson, the 'Methane Hunter'and Oilfield Witness for their dedicated work.
Now his initial power need is done, a few of the turbines have been removed, some remain, and ultimately, assuming a matched grid connection eventually, the balance will revert to standby backup, apparently.
Diesel gensets are usually used for backup, for the almost instantaneous black start capability with UPS support, whereas gas turbines take several minutes and prefer to run as continuous power.
Don't worry, he will be putting them to good use anyway for the next temporary power need. His new 1.1GW data centre down the road - about 1mil sq ft land parcel. More on that one here, DCD.
Lucky old Memphis residents. 🍀
Gas + CCS for Google ❌
Google is entering the natural gas market - it will purchase most of the power from the Broadwing Energy Centre, a new 400 MW natural gas plant in Decatur, Illinois.
Apparently, it will capture and store over 90% of its carbon emissions. 🥱
Google strangely seems rather keen on CCS, even more so now EPA has been de-fanged and emissions regulations weakened by Trumptown. Google has in the past mentioned CCS as...
“a number of emergent technologies” that “appear to be making good progress.”
“we must also develop and commercialize new technologies to fully decarbonize electricity systems quickly and cost-effectively while maintaining reliability...power generation with carbon capture and storage”
All very predictable, very dirty, and is only going to add to the emissions in the US now that emissions legislation has been unpicked. 😩
Nuclear for Amazon ☢️
Talking of nuclear dreams, about a year ago, Amazon invested in the small modular reactor developer X-energy. It has now unveiled its plans to build an almost 1GW plant located in Richland, Washington, along the Columbia River. The facility will nearly double the output of the Pacific Northwest’s only nuclear plant, the nearby Energy Northwest’s Columbia Generating Station.
They will apparently be installing the nuclear company’s next-generation technology for the first time. 🤔
The Cascade Advanced Energy Facility is set to begin construction “by the end of this decade,” with hopes of generating power from up to a dozen of X-energy’s 80-megawatt high-temperature gas-cooled reactors sometime “in the 2030s.” Amazon plans to build the plant in three phases, with four reactors at each stage, eventually reaching 960 MW in capacity.
Sounds like they have taken this development, which might have gone into the grid to decarbonise Washington State, into full private capture. World Nuclear News.
Also, all sounds a bit maybe, tech dependent, cost concern on 80MW units, maybe later, maybe never. 💭
I hope you enjoy reading this week's post - currently, Talking Climate Tech is a free newsletter - you can always become a supporter by popping something in the tip jar and keeping the coffee machine stoked!
💥 Trump Watch
The descent into senality and further madness continues with dear leader.
Remember all those calls for Biden to step down when he started bumbling about, lost his thread, talking nonsense, couldn't get down the stairs of AirForce One etc..all sounds a little familiar doesn't it.
After struggling down the stairs, Don 🍊managed to lose himself on the red carpet in Japan this week. More.
He also had a 'very hard IQ test' which is perhaps what they told him, in fact they had him in for MRI and cognative ability test, again. More.
"it was perfect"
Not sure any sane president would post this, on his own citizens either, in response to the 7 million people who joined the 'No Kings' protests. 💩
Question is, when will it stop, if they can ever stop him?
Dark Bannon is already talking up a 2028 run, as is Don 🍊, casually getting his hats made-up and leaving them on display. 🙄
Of course the constitution doesn't allow for a third term, but when did that ever stop him - it's just old paper right?
Golf Watch ⛳
Almost at the $100m mark!
70 days / 285 days in office = 24.6%, taxpayer cost $98m
🏡 Konfab News
More survey completions in thanks, for those who haven't, here it is ⬇️
Kane Watkinson
🌍 Climate Watch
One Dead Every Minute ☠️
Not the usual phrasing we've come to expect, but here we are.
Led by UCL in collaboration with the World Health Organisation and produced by 128 experts from more than 70 academic institutions and UN agencies - the Lancet - Countdown on Health and Climate Change. 🌍
Some more sombre takeaways:
In the past four years, the average person has been exposed to 19 days a year of life-threatening heat and 16 of those days would not have happened without human-caused global heating
exposure to high temperatures resulted in a record 639bn hours of lost labour in 2024, which caused losses of 6% of national GDP in the least developed nations
wilddfires, stoked by increasingly hot and dry conditions, are adding to the deaths caused by smoke, with a record 154,000 deaths recorded in 2024
Governments gave out $2.5bn a day in direct subsidies to fossil fuel consumers and producers in 2023
The time for action is well beyond now.
Thanks for your time, interest and support as always, let's keep pushing forward - remember, the momentum is unstoppable despite everything you might see and hear! 🌍
Kane
