Category: renewable

Future of Fossil Fuels

“The Future of Fossil Fuels Hinges on Two Huge Midwestern Pipeline Fights” by PETER MONTAGUE, Common Dreams, December 9, 2021, caught my attention. It is essential to stop construction of so-called Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) infrastructure that article is about.

But I think the extraction and use of fossil fuels will end prior to the construction of CCS because increasingly frequent and devastating environmental catastrophe will wipe out existing fossil fuel and other infrastructure. Just this year the “atmospheric river” in the northwest caused oil pipelines to be exposed and move up and down as water flowed around them.

The Trans-Alaska Pipeline, one of the world’s largest oil pipelines, could be in danger.

Thawing permafrost threatens to undermine the supports holding up an elevated section of the pipeline, jeopardizing its structural integrity and raising the potential of an oil spill in a delicate and remote landscape.

The slope of permafrost where an 810-foot section of the pipeline is secured has started to shift as it thaws, causing several of the braces holding up the pipeline to twist and bend.

This appears to be the first instance that pipeline supports have been damaged by “slope creep” caused by thawing permafrost, records and interviews with officials involved with managing the pipeline show.

Trouble in Alaska? Massive oil pipeline is threatened by thawing permafrost. The slope of permafrost where an 810-foot section of the pipeline is secured has started to shift as it thaws, causing braces holding up the pipeline to twist and bend. David Hasemery, Inside Climate News, July 11, 2021

The recent, horrendous tornadoes flattened everything in their path. Including water towers so there is no water. Including gas stations. Including power transmission infrastructure. Hospitals, pharmacies, news outlets, churches, schools, prisons, fire and police stations and equipment. Grocery and other stores, banks, car lots, manufacturing facilities. Local, state, and Federal offices, nonprofits, and systems they support such as Social Security and other social safety nets. Homes.

And renewables, including solar panels and wind turbines.

The center of fossil fuel refineries is New Orleans, below sea level, which will flood, wiping out that infrastructure. Transatlantic shipment of fossil fuels will likely end.

Sea level rise will have similar effects on millions who live on the coasts.

The question is what will we do now?

I’ve been working on this diagram that summarizes what I think needs to be done. We haven’t had the will to voluntarily move toward LandBack, abolition, participatory economy, conservation, and Mutual Aid. In the face of all that is collapsing, these are the solutions we need to build on now. This is what I’ve been writing about on LANDBACK Friends. https://landbackfriends.com/

#LANDBACK

Cannot depend on traditional power sources

Powerful hurricane Ida which gained strength from the hot Gulf waters (from global warming) destroyed square miles of buildings as it came ashore. Then caused massive flooding as it moved through the country.

The entire electrical grid failed in New Orleans! It will be weeks or months before full power returns.

In February this year the power grid for the entire state of Texas failed.

Each hurricane also renews calls to find new ways to produce and distribute energy in the face of climate change, which experts say is leading to more frequent and more devastating storms. In New Orleans, advocates have tried to push Entergy to invest more in renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind, and technologies that provide electricity to the area where it is produced.

Those concerns, along with worries about pollution in residential neighborhoods, fueled resistance to Entergy’s plan to build the new natural gas-powered plant in New Orleans East. Even after the company admitted to playing a role in the hiring of actors to support the project at public meetings, the council approved the plant. Groups that opposed the plan sued, and the case made it to the Louisiana Supreme Court, which upheld the council’s vote.

“​​Over and over we have tried to say we need not only climate action for renewables, but also we need to be adaptive to what is coming, because the traditional system to move power isn’t going to be able to help us weather these storms,” said Logan Atkinson Burke, executive director of the Alliance for Affordable Energy. “We’ve been ignored by utilities and regulators, and we are concerned that now, yet again, we will have this system rebuilt the same way we’ve done it and it will do us no good the next time.”

Slow return of power raises questions about a New Orleans plant that was supposed to deliver electricity after hurricanes. Calls for an investigation of Entergy’s power outages follow a wave of complaints about the company by Jon Schuppe, NBC News, Sept 1, 2021

Hurricane Ida thoroughly wrecked New Orleans’ power supply, preying on vulnerabilities that are only likely to get worse in the future as storms like Ida become more fierce. The storm knocked out all eight transmission lines that bring power into New Orleans, plunging the city into darkness. The damage was so intense that a new gas-fired power plant — sold as something that could keep the lights on after big storms — took days to bring power to the nearest neighborhood.

To keep the lights on in the future, leaders need to abandon old strategies and build up different kinds of energy infrastructure, experts say. The fallout from Ida is yet another reminder of how fragile the country’s existing energy infrastructure is, especially as climate change brings on more extreme weather.

“We’ve been saying, you know, we can’t depend on the traditional system,” says Logan Atkinson Burke, executive director of the local consumer advocacy group Alliance for Affordable Energy. “We need to be planning for the kind of climate impacts that we know are coming, and here they are. Having not planned for them, we’re experiencing the kinds of problems we expected.”

NEW ORLEANS NEEDS A BETTER BACKUP PLAN FOR BLACKOUTS. A new gas plant still isn’t enough to solve the city’s power problems by Justine Calma, Sep 1, 2021

This is what LANDBACK is about, restoring Indigenous ways.

“How about phasing out fossil fuels and quit acting like addicts? Let’s have a new green revolution. Let’s take the green path.” Winona Laduke (in video below). Winona was arrested while protecting the water from Line 3. Honor the Earth says that the “charge of the colonial world is in conflict with the Anishinaabeg,” citing a 2019 White Earth Nation tribal law which requires the White Earth Nation to stand up for and protect the rights of wild rice and other sacred food.

https://twitter.com/quakers_seekers/status/1433422785687207937?s=20

#TreatiesNotTarSands

#LANDBACK