Russ Bates’ Post

#FERC new siting rule will prioritize communities, Tribes, and the environment. ✅ Read NWF’s recommendations for responsible transmission planning and siting 📲 https://ow.ly/eG1G50RyRWY #ClimateChange #CleanEnergy #transmission

It’s possible. It just takes leaders and people with vision and who can think outside the box and to the future. It’s obvious at this point who possesses these qualities and who doesn’t.

In Sweetwater, Texas, the wind farms of Nolan County have been a symbol of progress and prosperity. Yet, with progress comes challenges — specifically, what to do with thousands of turbine blades when they reach the end of their lifespan. 🔄 The challenge is that these turbines required new blades, the old ones started accumulating. By 2018, Sweetwater faced a significant problem: thousands of old blades with no sustainable disposal plan. A previous company promised a solution – to store and recycle these blades – but failed to deliver, leaving vast piles of blades, a growing environmental concern. ♻️Our mission is to provide scalable, effective solutions for wind blade recycling across the country. We're cleaning up and rethinking the end-of-life process for wind energy infrastructure. https://lnkd.in/eQZCBv7t #windpower #recycling #windbladerecycling #reuse #metalrecycling Tella Firma Foundations Vestas GE GE Power NRG Energy EDF Renewables North America Sky Climber Renewables Borrego Leonor & Irmão S.A. AMSC Emilie Oxel O'Leary Christina Anderson

Rural communities confront tough land use decisions, as this story from Michigan reveals. On the one hand, there are large swathes of undeveloped land that can be put to use for solar and wind-farm projects. Those projects make it possible for landowners to keep their properties amidst rising costs, but alter the physical landscape in ways that may impact tourism and the bucolic vistas that attract people to live in the same areas. We recently started a project in west central Illinois. The horizon in one county is dotted with massive wind turbines. Cross the county line and the turbines disappear from view, because the adjacent county is not yet allowing wind farms onto farmland. Pass out of that second county into a third and the turbines reappear. Coming so soon after our visit, this article really hit home in capturing the tough decisions facing local communities and the need to balance competing interests and values and hopefully without tearing communities apart in the process. https://zurl.co/h0oS

With the right support, just how much could community energy achieve? An inspiring article and call to arms from Bristol Energy Cooperative's CEO in The Ecologist. What gets in the way of community energy coming into its own isn't just availability of funding, but small tweaks in policy, delays in connection time and a range of issue that could be resolved with the right focus. https://lnkd.in/edHedY-U

In Sweetwater, Texas, the wind farms of Nolan County have been a symbol of progress and prosperity. Yet, with progress comes challenges — specifically, what to do with thousands of turbine blades when they reach the end of their lifespan. 🔄 The challenge is that these turbines required new blades, the old ones started accumulating. By 2018, Sweetwater faced a significant problem: thousands of old blades with no sustainable disposal plan. A previous company promised a solution – to store and recycle these blades – but failed to deliver, leaving vast piles of blades, a growing environmental concern. ♻️Our mission is to provide scalable, effective solutions for wind blade recycling across the country. We're cleaning up and rethinking the end-of-life process for wind energy infrastructure. https://lnkd.in/eQZCBv7t #windpower #recycling #windbladerecycling #reuse #metalrecycling Tella Firma Foundations Vestas GE GE Power NRG Energy EDF Renewables North America Sky Climber Renewables Borrego Leonor & Irmão S.A. AMSC Emilie Oxel O'Leary Christina Anderson

Safety is often the first item that is overlooked but should be front and center in the design and engineering process.

What solar, wind, renewable energy, net-zero and climate policies have not accomplished. Here is what net zero and climate policies have not accomplished. Solar, Wind, and Peak Oil. 1. Despite the impressive number of new Wind and Solar plants and their gigawatts of energy produced, the reality is that Wind and solar have only supplied 45 Exajoules of energy in the last 27 years, averaging 1.7 exajoules per year. 2. To put this into perspective, each exajoule equals 174 million barrels of oil. The urgency of the situation becomes clear when we consider that until Wind, solar, and renewables can grow exajoules by 9.4 exajoules per year for the next 26 years and have an electricity generation capacity of approximately 250 exajoules of energy by 2050, the "energy transition" will never replace peak oil. 3. Reaching net zero would require more nuclear, hydro, hydrogen, batteries, and whatever other sources of energy we can create. 4. It's crucial to acknowledge the global scale of the issue. From 1997, the year of the Kyoto Protocol, to 2022, the world's dependence on fossil fuels has grown significantly, as the energy use of crude oil has increased by 180 exajoules, a staggering figure. This stark reality underscores that crude nor coal, demand has not peaked. 5. Let's delve into the specific case of China. China has increased its use of crude oil from 5 million barrels per day in 2011 to 11.3 million barrels per day in 2023, representing a rise in energy consumption from 10.49 exajoules to 23.7 exajoules. 6. This increase reflects China's growing reliance on fossil fuels, driven by its rapid industrialization and economic growth. India is also importing more oil per day, a trend that mirrors its own economic expansion. Only when the developing nations' demand for crude oil, coal, and natural gas stabilizes and they have industrialized will there be a peak in oil demand. 7. Additionally, China's coal use in exajoules [EJ] has grown from 22 exajoules in 1998 to 88 exajoules by 2022, an increase of 400%. India's coal use has grown from 457 million tons, or 13.39 Exajoules. to 1155 million tons in 2023, or 33.77 Exajoules, an increase of 252%. Globally, coal consumption has increased from 4.4 billion tons, or 129 Exajoules of global energy, to over 8 billion tons by 2023, or 234 Exajoules, an increase of 181%.  8. Just accounting for coal and crude, the increase in exajoules of fossil fuels consumed is 180 exajoules for crude oil and 105 [234-129], an increase of 295 exajoules in the use of coal and crude.   Article on peak oil: https://lnkd.in/gE_mwmp8. Facts from Vaclav Smil, report on Achieving Net Zero, 2024. I formed a group on Electricity Generation Worldwide, https://lnkd.in/graRy4uz

Another win for the US citizens and enforcing engineering judgement not only on policy decisions but bringing accountability to ensuring grid reliability. The EPA is lawless and out of control with policies that are built upon nothing more than wishful thinking and climate alarmisms. If this passes it can help put the breaks on this wasteful useless expansion of low energy density intermittent unreliable energy generation investments whilst preventing early retirements of our affordable reliable baseload thermal generators. #EPA #NERC #FERC #accountability #Manchine #coal