A new stream of reliable renewable energy: osmotic power

Renewable energy is still enjoying a period of robust expansion, despite the best efforts of Donald Trump (or, arguably, because of them).

But a relatively new and little-known source of renewable power is starting to come of age: osmotic power. While it might sound like a fictitious concept, or something the Power Rangers might invoke, the idea of the power of osmosis has been around for decades. Norway may be credited with the proof of concept of a practical power plant employing the notion, and Denmark opened the first fully-functioning osmotic power plant in 2023. But it is only with the recent commissioning of a full-scale, efficient, commercial plant at Fukuoka, Japan, that the real potential of the idea has become clear.

Osmosis is the movement of water from areas of low salt concentration to areas of high salt concentration through a membrane of some sort. It is the same principle that allows plants to draw water from the soil, and that keeps our own cells hydrated. In the context of power generation, as at Fukuoka, the difference in saltiness of seawater and freshwater is used to pull water across a membrane, increasing the pressure on the saltwater side. This pressure gradient can then be used to drive a turbine, thereby generating electricity.

In the case of Fukuoka, the saltwater is super-concentrated by using the brine left over from the operation of a nearby desalination plant, making the whole process much more efficient. The electricity generated is then fed back into the power-hungry desalination plant, as well as to supply a few hundred local homes. The power it generates is equivalent to about two soccer fields of solar panels, and it runs day and night, regardless of the weather. It produces zero carbon dioxide and no other harmful by-products.

The trick is to produce enough power to outweigh the energy cost of pumping the two streams of water into the power station, and the frictional loss across the membrane, which is what the Fukuoka plant has achieved. The idea is gathering steam [sic], and pilot projects are springing up in Norway, South Korea, Spain, Qatar and Australia. 

Right now, the modality is still in its infancy but, as technical challenges are gradually overcome and the concept comes of age, researchers say that it could eventually meet up to 15% of global energy demand by 2050 - not to be sniffed at. This prediction sounds overly optimistic, but it certainly represents yet another string to the essential bow of renewable energy.

Brightly-painted wind turbines would save many bird deaths

I've posted before on ways to make wind turbines less destructive of birds, bats, etc. (I've also posted on the fact that wind turbines are much less destructive of birds, bats, etc, than most people think.)

Now, another study, recently published in the journal Behavioural Ecology, shows that birds are much more likely to avoid turbine blades that are painted to mimic venomous snakes or frogs. It makes a lot of intuitive sense: neither birds nor bats are particularly sophisticated intellectually, and operate much more on short-range instincts.

Almost all wind turbines and their blades are painted bright white, for reasons I have never understood. And, for reasons no-one else really seems to understand, that is the very colour that attracts birds towards them. It has been known for some years that even just painting one of the blades black significantly reduces bird collisions, and yet I have still never seen a wind turbine painted anything other than white.

The latest study demonstrates definitively that birds are least likely to avoid white blades, followed by blades where one is painted black. However, they are even more likely to avoid blades painted red and white, or red, black and yellow (to mimic a venomous coral snake). The differences are apparently quite dramatic. 

Personally, I think that brightly-coloured striped wind turbines would be an improvement aesthetically - plain vanilla white is so blah - although I'm not sure everyone would agree.

Wind power under attack

And I don't mean from Donald Trump!

Sweden, always the overachiever, has managed to get to the point where it produces 99% of its electricity from "clean" sources (40% from hydro, 23% from wind, 2% from solar, and - OK - 27% from nuclear). Just 1.2% comes from fossil fuels. A pretty impressive achievement, even for an overachiever, and Swedes can justifiably congratulate themselves.

If you read Swedish social media, though, you'd get a very different impression. You'd think that Sweden's reliance on wind power in particular is excessive and somehow dangerous. You'd think that most of the country was up in arms against all this wrong-headed reliance on cheap, non-polluting wind energy. 

There are four main narratives: the wind industry is run by greedy developers putting naked profit before environmental and social good; wind power is being imposed by distant political or economic elites on unwilling local populations; wind turbines are harmful to nature and wildlife; and wind power is inherently destabilizing, technologically unviable, and economically unfeasible.

Of course, almost all of the online posts are disinformation (deliberately deceiving), those that aren't just misinformation (merely incorrect or out-of-context), and all of these contentions have been repeatedly disproved by reputable studies over many years. 

What's more, these attacks on the wind industry appear to be coordinated. Most of the attack posts seem to have been written in Sweden, but a good percentage of them are from France, Norway, Finland, UK and Germany. Analysis shows that those from the UK generate the most engagement, followed by Germany, Norway and France. Engagement from Swedish posts seems to be much lower. There doesn't seem to be a comparable backlash against solar, hydro, or even nuclear energy.

It's not clear where these social media posts are coming from, and how - or even if - they are being coordinated. It seems that they may be emanating from political groups hanging onto Trump's coattails. They seems to be attempts, presumably by the far right, to attack the business model of European companies and to weaponize anti-EU sentiment, or just to discredit the status quo. Just as in America, unscrupulous populist politicians can use such sentiments for electoral gain, regardless of whether they are based on truth or reality.

It seems there's no such thing as paradise, whether socially, environmentally or politically. Someone always wants to crap on it.

Plug-in solar is coming...

Plug-in solar is coming! I've seen that headline in multiple places recently. And it is kind of a big deal, in a small way.

So, what is plug-in solar anyway? It's "a simple, reliable way to save money by generating your own electricity" from small-scale modular solar panels that connect (via an inverter) to a standard power outlet in your home. It's an easy and affordable way to get started generating your own power. 

Solar panels can be put on any accessible flat surface, such as a balcony, in a front or back yard, or on a roof deck. Unlike a full-scale roof-top grid-tied system, installation is pretty straightforward and can be done without engaging a contractor and a whole lot of bureaucracy. Even renters and apartment dwellers can now reduce their grid dependence.

Plug-in panels come in a range of output sizes from 200W to 1,600W (as compared to a typical rooftop installation of 3,000W to 9,000W), and cost from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. It's not intended to power your whole home, merely to reduce load (particularly during peak times), and to save the consumer some money. Even a small 200W unit can power a fridge or overhead lighting, or be used to recharge laptops, phones, etc, or it can be used remotely to power camping appliances, a small boat, etc. Larger units can of course power larger and more power-hungry appliances.

The average payback time right now is about 5 years, and costs are expected to continue falling as market take-up increases. Annual savings depend on available sunshine hours and the cost of locally produced electricity.

Germany has been doing it for years, since the German government streamlined the rules for power generation without needing approval from electricity utilities back in 2019. The technology is tried, tested and safe. Germany remains the largest market - about 1 in 10 households there use some form of plug-in solar panels. Now, more and more other jurisdictions are starting to cut the red tape to make it easy for consumers to install a plug-in solar system. Plug-in solar is now legal in most EU states (25 of 27), excepting Sweden (puzzling) and Hungary (not so puzzling).r

Utah was the first US state to pass legislation allowing it, and many others have followed suit.(or are in the process). Britain recently changed its rules to allow, and even encourage, it. Embarrassingly, here in Canada, the Canadian Standards Association is still "evaluating" the technology, and there are still "regulatory barriers" to overcome. 

With the crunch on gas prices caused by the US war in Iran, there has never been a better time for plug-in solar.

Clean power as an energy security issue

Perhaps it's not much, but maybe something good might come out of the US-Israeli war on Iran.

Spooked by the precipitous increase in oil and has prices, Britain's biggest energy company, Octopus Energy, has already seen a 50% rise in solar panel sales in the few weeks since the war started, as well as a spike in heat pumps and enquiries about electric vehicles and chargers.

Now, the UK is introducing new rules to the effect that all new homes built there (from 2028) must be installed with heat pumps and solar panels. In addition, plug-in solar panels are to be widely available in stores in Britain. The idea is to avoid being held hostage by the globalized oil and gas market, as is happening in the aftermath of the Iran war, and to move closer to "energy sovereignty" for the country. 

Something very similar is happening in Europe, which is seeing a wave of increased interested in solar power. Ditto, Australia, which had all but given up on its ambitious target of 82% renewables by 2030, until a huge surge in household solar and battery installations since the US-Iran war.

All this thanks to anti-renewables Donald Trump and his misguided Iran war?

Well, partly. The last time there was an oil crunch of this magnitude, in the 1970s, there were few practical alternatives available. This time there are viable substitutes, powerful and cheap enough to build at scale, and many countries are looking towards that off-ramp, bringing in long-overdue policies that will stand them in good stead decades into the future.

Hey, maybe we could do that here too, here in sunny Canada? Ah, no, Alberta would never allow that!

Trump tries to bribe companies to abandon renewable energy projects

It's no secret that Donald Trump hates wind turbines, especially offshore ones. He has tried (and largely failed so far) to cancel a bunch of wind farms off the eastern US seaboard that were already in progress.

Now, though, he is setting his sights on cancelling offshore wind farms that are permitted but not yet begun. And this time, there's a twist.

Trump wants to cancel two large wind farms permitted by the Biden administration to the French oil/energy company TotalEnergies SE, one off the coast of New York, and one off North Carolina. His ploy now - or at least that of the Interior and Justice Departments, which just seem to follow Trump's every whim, no matter how random, foolish or financially imprudent - is to basically bribe the developers. 

The New York Times has viewed contracts drawn up with TotalEnergies that would see the company abandon the two wind farms (which would, between them, have powered over a million homes and businesses) and commit unspecified sums of money to investing in natural gas infrastructure in Texas instead (something they were doing anyway). To make TotalEnergies happy with this intervention and their loss of income, the Justice Department would pay them $795 million to abandon the New York project and a further $133 million for the North Carolina development. 

So, that's nearly a billion dollars of taxpayer money that Trump is making the government shell out just because ... well, we're not really sure why. There are no actual national security reasons or economic imperatives, whatever Trump may bluster. He has just decided that he doesn't like wind power, and his feckless administration humours him in it. And this, remember, in a so-called "energy emergency" that Trump himself declared last year.

Thing is, though, it's far from clear whether the Trump administration has the legal power to do this without the approval of Congress. We may not have heard the last of this.

UPDATE

Well, TotalEnergies backed down, accepted the bribes, and two more wind farms are now toast. You can totally see why the company might not want to pursue the wind projects in the face of such an antagonistic administration.

The winners: the US government and, in particular, Donald Trump. The losers: US taxpayers and electricity users, and the environment. The biggest disappointment: TotalEnergies. The biggest surprise: absolutely nothing.

UPDATE

The other anti-wind power policy Trump is currently pursuing is gratuitous delays in permitting. At least 30 wind farm developments are being deliberately delayed as the Trump administration sits on routine military reviews needed before the projects can be begun.

These reviews used to be considered a quick and routine rubber-stamping exercise, needed to confirm that the wind turbines will not interfere with military radar and aviation systems. But construction cannot start without these permits.

The increasing backlog and seemingly endless wait for routine permits makes it pretty clear that functionaries are being directed to stall wind projects on idealogical - not economic or military - grounds.

Does the world still run on oil?

The other thing the current oil crisis has brought home to me is the extent to which we still rely on oil. A depressing article in the Globe and Mail entitled "What energy transition? The Middle East war shows the world still runs on oil", pointed out that 87% of total global energy in the 1970s was from fossil fuels (oil, gas and coal), and that figure today is still 81%. 

That does indeed seem to be the case: the Energy Institute's 2024 Statistical Review of World Energy shows that primary energy consumption is made up 31.7% by oil, 26.5% by coal, 23.3% by natural gas (so, 81.5% by fossil fuels in total), 4.0% by nuclear, 6.4% by hydroelectricity, and 8.2% by other renewables (mainly wind and solar). So, 18.6% could be called carbon-free. Furthermore, overall energy consumption is still increasing at a pretty steady clip.

A more granular look shows that the contribution from renewables is still increasing, and increasing faster than the other sources, much of that due to China. So, the picture could be substantially different in a few years time. But it's still a pretty depressing picture, and all the more worrying since the move away from fossil fuels has noticeably slowed in the last year or so, mainly due to the single-handed influence of one, Donald Trump.

Offshore wind farms may actually help wildlife

Detractors of wind power - the Donald Trumps of this world - and even environmentalists who would otherwise have been in favour, often claim that wind turbines, and especially offshore wind turbines, are deleterious, even downright dangerous, for wildlife and biodiversity. Opponents point to the disruption of the marine environment during construction (and decommissioning) of offshore wind turbines, the distraction of larger fish and whales due to the noise and vibration of the turbines, and the effects of electromagnetic fields around them, although the ramifications of many of these issues are still not well understood or proven.

But data from Europe over the last few years is starting to tell a different story. It turns out that European windfarms in the North Sea may actually be offering new areas of protection for marine wildlife, including for some threatened species like great seals and North Sea cod. The huge underwater turbine towers can provide a home for some species, and reefs of marine life have begun to form on them (the construction of artificial reefs is also a possibility). They also provide protected areas where fishing vessels cannot access, thus reducing the risks of overfishing.

Other research shows that, while the construction phase of offshore wind turbines does disrupt fish and predator numbers, they very quickly come back after construction is completed, often in even larger numbers, as stationary and mobile species use the constructions as a kind of ready-made reef. Predators like seals also come back in turn. They may change their methods of hunting a bit but they too seem very happy with the new additions to the seascape.

The jury is still out and more research and data is needed, but it is possible that the positive side effects of wind farms may outweigh any unfortunate negative ones.

Trump's claims about Chinese wind power are WAY off

President Trump is still droning on in his speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, as I write this, already well over his allotted time. And, as expected, there's a lot to take exception to.

Just to take one example of his well-documented habit of citing "alternative facts" (aka "lies"), Trump was on his familiar hobby horse, criticising wind turbines, specifically Chinese wind turbines. He suggested that, although "China makes almost all of the windmills, and yet I haven't been able to find any wind farms in China".

Well, I guess he didn't look very hard. China is host to 11 of the largest 12 land-based windfarms in the world, headed up by Xinjiang Hami Wind Farm and Gansu Guazhou Wind Farm, which are an order of magnitude bigger than windfarms elsewhere in the world.

And China produces more wind power than any other country - a huge 992 terawatt hours in 2024. Second? The USA (despite Trump's best efforts to hobble the industry), which produced less than half as much.

Much else that Trump said during his rambling speech was misleading or just plain wrong. But Chinese wind power was definitely the wrong hill to choose to die on.

The US wind industry overcomes the MAGA blowhards

As has been reported repeatedly, here in this blog and elsewhere, Donald Trump (and, by extension, his administration, which blindly and unquestioningly follows whatever he says) hates wind turbines, particularly offshore wind turbines. He calls them "losers" and "the scam of the century". No-one is quite sure why he hates them so much - his convenient "national security" argument is far from convincing - but there are theories. 

Anyway, in pursuance of this irrational hate, Trump has issued several edicts banning various wind farm developments off the east coast of America, including some that were all but complete. The states and developers involved have taken recourse to the courts to try to rectify this, and to recoup some of the billions of dollars they have already sunk into these projects.

And they are winning.

Three separate federal judges, including one appointed by Trump, have ruled Trump's decrees illegal and allowed construction to resume on windfarms off the coasts of New England, New York and Virginia.

So, despite Congress stopping incentives and the Republican administration imposing a variety of roadblocks in the way of permitting, the wind industry persists against all odd

Trump's cancellation of offshore wind projects makes no sense

Donald Trump has cancelled five more offshore wind power projects along the east coast, despite them being well advanced, with billions of dollars already sunk into them. It's worth looking into exactly why he would do such a thing.

The US is in need of more electricity production, as even Trump agrees, but Trump wants to see any new power generated by coal, oil and gas, because, for whatever reason, he likes fossil fuels and he hates clean renewable energy. It's not very clear why he hates wind power so much, but it may just come down to an offshore wind project spoiling the view at one of his golf courses in Scotland. Yes, he's that petty. He has blamed wind turbines for causing cancer, killing whales, all sorts of unjustifiable claims.

But, of course [sic], he can't just come out and say that he is cancelling the wind farms because he doesn't like them; he would get laughed out of town. So, he falls back on his tried and tested excuse for pretty much anything illogical - "emergency national security concerns". And, because the words "national security" are in there, he doesn't have to explain any further, he can just say that the reasons are "classified".

The only national security concern anyone can think of in respect to wind turbines is interference with radio signals, due to reflection by the moving blades on wind towers. This could theoretically interfere with target tracking and impede critical weather forecasting, something the Department of Energy under Trump has talked about before, although countries like the UK and Denmark have been using offshore wind for decades without any such national security concerns. 

Conceivably, the very need for more power could be framed as an "emergency national security concern". Such a designation, by its very nature, means that discussion and explanation are out of the question because, well, national security. But if the problem is lack of power, cancelling almost finished wind projects that would provide said power doesn't make much sense. 

Wind currently generates about 10% of America's electricity, with most wind farms located on the Great Plains of Texas, Oklahoma, Iowa and Illinois, where the winds are "steady and consistent". The smaller number of offshore wind farms are mainly off the east coast, where winds are also steady and consistent, and where they are close to major population centres. It is one of the cheapest sources of power nowadays, much cheaper than coal or gas, and certainly less polluting.

Cancelling these offshore wind projects will waste billions of dollars in already sunk costs (who will pay for that?), and say goodbye to 6 to 8 gigawatts of annual power, enough to heat and light millions of homes in an area where it is most needed. But logic is not Trump's strong suit. He doesn't care about achieving net zero, or reducing the country's carbon footprint. He doesn't even care about economics unless it serves his ideological predilections. He prefers to just go with his gut, and everyone around him seems content to let him.

UPDATE

A few months later and estimates are that the Trump administration has also mothballed upwards of 250 onshore wind projects, mainly by strong-arming the Department of Defense and the Federal Aviation Administration. This is in line with Trump's inexplicable vow "to not let any windmill be built". It's also in spite of several legal losses in which the courts have struck down or overruled Trump's unilateral and extrajudicical actions.

How the internet can help heat our homes

Scandinavia comes up with another environmental first: Finland is using waste heat from internet and data centres to heat entire towns.

The increasingly large and numerous data centres that dot our landscape to accommodate the burgeoning demand for internet, and particularly AI, services pump out a lot of waste heat. The Finnish town of Mäntsälä plans on utilizing that heat with a district heating system that captures the heat and uses it to directly heat homes in the town.

What a neat solution, and how very Scandinavian!

The dark side of China's renewables push

Like so many things about China, it's hard to known what to think about its huge investments in renewable energy.

As with electric vehicles, high-speed trains, etc, China leads the world in renewables. It is bringing online each year more clean energy than the rest of the world combined, in fact twice as much as the rest of the world combined! Renewables now make up over half of China's power generation capacity. It also exports vastly more clean tech than the rest of the world, and the top several wind and solar exporters are all Chinese. And - whatever the USA under Trump (or even Canada under Carney) is doing, as it lurches back towards a 20th century reliance on coal, oil and gas - China is not slowing down: it plans to increase its renewable energy production six-fold in the coming years.

And so it should. For the last twenty years or so, China has accounted for the largest share of fossil fuel greenhouse has emissions, and it still has a huge number of legacy coal power stations, although renewables are now starting to replace them. The last year saw the first slight decline in Chinese CO2 emissions.

So, what's not to like? Well, as usual, China being China, anything good is tinged with unfortunate blemishes of bad stuff.

Much of China's renewable resources are in the north and west of the country, including the area in and around Tibet, which it has been illegally occupying for decades. The clear air at high elevations, the abundant sunshine, constant winds and fast-flowing rivers, make for a renewable energy bonanza, and China is developing it at a furious pace. 

Take, for example, a new solar energy development on the high Tibetan plains. Talatan Solar Park is 162 square miles in area, seven times the size of Manhattan, or about the size of Chicago, and still growing. Wind turbines, hydroelectric dams, and pumped water generation contribute still more to the huge amount of renewable power generated in the area. 

Thing is, though, 90% of China's population and the vast majority of its heavy industry and its power-hungry data centres are in the south and east of the country, over 1,000 miles away. Nothing daunted, China has developed a massive network of ultra-high-voltage transmission lines (800,000 - 1,000,000 volts or even higher in some cases) stretching more than 2,000 miles. These transmission lines use direct current (DC) technology, ensuring little or no transmission losses. Huge pylons march across the country, most of it reasonably unpopulated.

But there is some population, and, not too surprisingly, it turns out that a million volts overhead is not particularly healthy. Sparks fly from umbrellas and fishing rods, resulting in numb hands, and there are rumours of people being electrocuted. 

But, this being China, there have been no protests, no official investigations, and no statistics or reports to work with, just vague rumours and some stoic endurance for the national interest. NIMBY is just not a thing here.

Should we, then, laud China's attempts to kick its nasty coal and fossil fuel habit? Well, I guess so, but it must tempered with a healthy dose of skepticism.

Is there any point in fact-checking Trump's tirades against renewable energy?

It's too depressing to go into all of the various lies about renewable energy and climate change that Donald Trump reeled off at his address to the UN General Assembly yesterday. Among other howlers, he reiterated his unfounded beliefs that renewable energy sources like wind and solar "don't work" and are "too expensive", called the Paris Agreement a "scam" and all of consensus climate science a "hoax", claimed China and Germany are pulling back from renewable energy, called the UN'S assessment of climate change impacts are "exaggerated" and "incorrect" and a "con job", that reducing carbon emissions costs jobs. His solution to all this? More "clean, beautiful coal".

Wow. It's hard to know where to start, but ABC has already fact-checked most of these ridiculous claims and outright lies, so I don't have to. As Trump strengthens his economic stranglehold over the rest of the world, he is more and more forthright in putting forward his own magical and unsubstantiated beliefs about global warming and clearly energy. 

What's still not clear to me is why. Is he really in the pocket of the American coal lobby? I find that hard to believe. Are his views all coloured by the wind turbines just offshore from his Scottish golf course? I can just about believe he is petty enough for that, but hard to think that his whole worldview has been changed by that. Is it just a "conservative" desire to return to the American dominance and global influence of the 1930s (1950s? 1890s?)? Again, it doesn't make much sense logically, but logic is nothing to do with it. People have been trying to psychoanalyze Trump for years, and remain perplexed. 

I guess all we can do is keep fact-checking Trump's nonsensical tirades. We're not going to change his mind; he only listens to himself. But there is a small chance - and I admit it's a small one - that his followers may be swayed by the truth. 

If we admit the truth to ourselves, though, perhaps a more likely outcome is that, if Trump keeps banging on about this stuff, he will persuade more and more people by sheer force of will.

BC wants to be the next Norway

British Columbia says it wants to be like Norway. What it means by that is that it wants to be at the forefront of clean tech, while still pumping out fossil fuels, a fine balancing act indeed.

It's a balancing act that is close to the balancing act that characterizes Mark Carney's vision for Canada as a whole, but it's one that has BC's strong environmental movement in something like panic mode.

BC is pressing ahead with at least ten large new solar and wind projects, almost all of them joint ventures with Indigenous companies, and is building new transmission lines to share this clean energy with the province's resource-rich northlands.

But, at the same time, it is further developing its lucrative liquid natural gas (LNG) resources, with its first export terminal coming online and others in the planning or building phase, as well as a new gas transmission pipeline up to Prince George.

All of these large-scale projects easily fall into the definition of the large "nation-building" and "energy superpower" projects that Prime Minister Carney is trying to encourage with federal money. But the tension between fossil fuel development and sustainability is palpable. The sustainability part seems to be mainly for the domestic market, while the fossil fuels are mainly for export to the likes of Japan and South Korea, which see BC fossil fuels as slightly more sustainable than some of the available alternatives.

It's a fraught and frankly unconvincing argument - the old "transition fuels" justification that the oil and gas industry had been peddling for decades now - reliant on the increasing electrification of gas production (a bizarre juxtaposition in itself) and some stricter regulation around methane leaks.

This ability to hold two conflicting views simultaneously - a textbook definition of cognitive dissonance, with all of the psychological discomfort that involves - is not dissimilar to that of Norway, the undisputed world leader in electric vehicle take-up, with one of the cleanest power grids in the world, but at the same time a major oil and gas exporter. 

Norway, like BC, is unlikely to be able to achieve its ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets due to its continued fossil fuel production (its carbon emissions ARE coming down, although nothing like fast enough to meet its goals). But it manages to be able to keep both ideas in its mind without its metaphorical head bursting. Should we laud its efforts? Uncertain.

Trump's latest embarrassing tirade against "windmills"

Trump took the opportunity of his public meeting with EU boss Ursula von der Leyen to go completely off-topic and spend a substantial amount of time ranting about wind power, of all things. See, there are nine - count 'em! - wind turbines ("windmills", as he dismissively calls them) just off-shore from his golf course, and they spoil his view. Completely oblivious of the fact that the golf course spoils the natural scenery of the area anyway, he worries about how ugly wind turbines are, and what a shame they are where they are (i.e. in a reliably windy area).

As part of the rant, Trump came out with several howlers, secure in the knowledge that no-one would contradict him, certainly not in the midst of a hugely consequential trade deal anyway. Among them:

"It's the worst form of energy, the most expensive form of energy" - In fact, wind power is one of the least expensive energy sources. It is relatively cheap to build and efficient to run, with no fuel necessary, not to mention its (carbon-free) environmental advantages. The UN estimates that wind is 53% cheaper than the lowest-cost fossil fuel, and still falling (while fossil fuel prices continue to rise). Offshore wind is a bit more expensive than onshore, but can generate huge amounts of electricity, and is still significantly cheaper than coal or gas).

"It's driving the whales loco, it's driving them crazy" - This has been a favourite trope of Trump for years now, although it's not clear why. THe US's own National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adminstration states baldly, "There are no known links between large whatever deaths and ongoing offshore wind activities". 'Nuff said. And since when did Trump care about the mental health of whales?

"It kills the birds" - Yes, wind turbines do kill some birds, this is known. But the number of birds killed by turbines is miniscule compared to those killed by domestic  cats, power lines, high-rise buildings, vehicles, pesticides, etc. Norway is starting to paint its turbines black, which results in about 70% fewer bird casualties, although they don't look as nice in my opinion.

"They are killing us" - Killing who? People? Americans? Republicans? I think we can.put that one down to poetic licence.

"Windmills will not come, it's not going to happen in the United States" - Oh, they just did! The most recent figure I can find is 90,000 (2023), with about 3,000 new ones installed each year. Production has increased steadily over the years, and wind is now the fourth largest source of electricity generation in the USA, and a major.employer.

"We will not allow a windmill to be built in the United States" - China is by far the largest producer of wind turbines globally, but second is ... USA.

"When they start to rust and rot in eight years, you can't really turn them off, you can't burn them, they won't let you bury the propellers" - Ooh, a lot to unpack there. I'm not sure where his "eight years" came from: wind turbines typically last between 20 and 30 years. And you can turn them off at any time, including at the end of their lives, using ... a switch. And no, you probably can't burn them - why would you want to do that? You can't burn a coal plant or a nuclear power station either! But they can be recycled to a large extent. The UK's National Grid estimates that 96% of a wind turbine is made of recyclable materials. Gtanted, the blades are largely made of fibreglass, which is not generally recyclable, although breakthroughs in this area are occurring, so they usually end up landfills or incinerated (i.e. buried or burned). In 2021, the European wind industry committed to reusing, recovering or recycling 100% of decomissioned wind turbine blades, and has called for a ban on sending them to landfills. New technology is being developed all the time to better re-use old blades, such as in concrete.

"They're made in China, almost all of them" - As previously mentioned, China makes more wind turbines than any other country in the world. The Scottish offshore wind farm Trump is complaining about, though, was developed by Swedish company, Vattenfall, and the manufacturer was a Danish company, Vestas. Not China. And, incidentally, there are 11 of them, not 9.

"Germany tried it, wind doesn't work, you need subsidies" - Not sure why he mentions Germany in particular, but yes, Germany is a global leader in wind power, and has seen a continuous increase in installed capacity, both onshore and offshore. Wind provides at least 24% of Germany's electricity (this is an old figure I found from 2022, it would be substantially higher today). It is on track for record approvals and installations in 2025. Like many countries, Germany used to use a system of feed-in tariffs to encourage wind energy adoption, but changed to a system of competitive auctions in 2017 in an attempt to control expansion and ensure competitive market pricing. Many new licences for offshore windfarms now receive zero subsidies.

"Some of the countries prohibit it ... they will not allow it" - while it's true that wind power has its detractors and its challenges, hardly anywhere has outright prohibited it. The only examples I can find are Poland (which, in 2018, stipulated no new wind farms until 2035, and even the scrapping of existing ones - it's unclear how that is going) and England (which instituted an effective ban on new wind farms in 2015, although that has since been weakened, and then, in 2023, lifted). Oh, and America (Trump's own executive order - almost the first thing he did on assuming power - suspended new federal offshore wind leasing pending a review, which will probably conveniently never happen, although even some of that suspension has since been walked back).

It's hard to think how Trump can have got all of this - ALL of it! - quite so completely wrong. Couldn't he just have said, "Personally, I don't really like them". Uh, I guess not.

Canada's largest battery storage facility goes into operation

With everything else that is going on in these crazy times, it has received little public fanfare, but Canada's largest battery storage facility went online earlier this week in Haldimand County, Ontario, deep in the countryside between the city of Hamilton and Lake Erie.

In fact, at 250 MW, the Oneida Energy Storage Project is one of the five largest battery storage facilities in the world. 278 lithium-ion batteries, each about the size of a tractor trailer, are collected together on a site about 10 acres in size, and together they can store enough electricity to power a city of 200,000 (think Oshawa or Sudbury) for an hour. At a stroke, it doubles the province's energy storage capacity.

That might not sound that much, but this is a big deal. It can take a significant amount of surplus power from Ontario's grid during times of surplus, and release it in times of need. This is particularly useful for managing intermittent renewable power sources like solar and wind. It is estimated to reduce Ontario's greenhouse gas emissions by 1.2 - 4.1 million tonnes, about the equivalent of removing 40,000 gas cars from the roads. 

Oneida Energy Stoage LP is also a groundbreaking partnership with the local Indigenous commmunities, being a joint partnership between Six Nations of the Grand River Development Corporation, Mississaugas of the New Credit Business Corporation, NRStor Inc, Aecon Concessions, and Northland Power Inc. While not actually located within the Six Nations of the Grand River reserve, it is very close to its boundaries, and Oneida's workforce is primarily Indigenous.

This, then, is another step towards reducing our reliance on fossil fuels, and another valuable piece of ammunition to counter the claims of naysayers who keep insisting that those renewables are never going to come to anything because the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow (yawn!)

So, you see, we can build nice things here in Canada.

Renewables blamed for Iberian power outage - again!

Predictable as clockwork, some people are blaming renewables for yesterday's massive electricity blackout in Spain and Portugal (and some parts of Southern France). "Net zero blamed for blackout chaos" blared a headline in Britain's Daily Telegraph, for example, even though various experts interviewed in the article did NOT in fact come to that conclusion.

It happens every time, but, just as predictably, they are quite wrong. It is still not clear exactly what did cause the blackouts, which were rectified pretty quickly, but it seems to have been a grid problem, not a renewables supply problem. Some 2MW of renewable power was disconnected, but as a RESULT of the grid disturbance, not as a cause. In a statement, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez specifically ruled out renewable or nuclear energy as a cause of the outage, calling such claims "lies" and "ignorance".

Both Spain and Portugal do have a high proportion of renewable energy in their grids, but they have developed over the years good systems for handling intermittent sources of energy, and have a robust system of energy storage in place. I wish we had something comparable.

The actual causes of the blackout are still being studied, whatever the Daily Telegraph may have already decided.

Higher electricity production and costs in pursuit of an AI delusion

If, like me, younare deeply suspicious of artificial intelligence (AI) and the current infatuation with it, you might have read the latest news from Ontario's power system operator with some alarm and despondency.

AI is the flavour of the year this year. It is an ingredient in pretty much everything, even things that might seem to have no relationship with information technology. I'm pretty sure that some of the things that claim to be "AI-enhanced" or whatever are actually just using regular old fashioned computer analysis, not actually machine learning, but still...

In fact, AI, in the face of all the claims and ambitions for it, seems to me to be somewhat underperforming. It hasn't revolutionized healthcare; it hasn't cured world poverty; it hasn't really done much at all in concrete terms. Like 5G cell service, AI is a technology that is being pursued at breakneck speed, without a whole lot of compelling reason, largely just because it's there and it's trendy.

As we have come to understand too, AI is also a huge power hog. All those data centres, all that computing power, all the cooling requirements, they require an unprecedented amount of electricity.

Now, Ontario's Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) has issued a report saying that it expects electricity demand in the province to grow by 75% by 2050. Industrial electricity demand is predicted to rise by 58% by 2035. I'm not sure we should necessarily believe self-serving predictions from the supply industry itself, but it is clear that some level of demand increase is to be expected.

Now, to be fair, this is not just as a result of Ontario's AI ambitions. It is also a result of the general electrification of life, from electric cars to heat pumps. But AI considerations are front and centre of the report.

All that, in itself, is not necessarily such a bad thing. The problem arises in that Premier Doug Ford and his current crop of Conservative lackeys can not be relied on to make sensible decisions about energy production in the province. Ford has a record of favouring gas and nuclear plants, despite the fact that water, wind, solar and battery storage are much cheaper, faster, and cleaner options these days. But logic, clear thinking and progressive ideas are not Ford's strong suits. 

So, we, the taxpayers, could be saddled with decades of higher costs and polluted air as a result of AI pretensions that amount to little more than jumping on the bandwagon and a bad case of FOMO.

US ADVANCE bill not what America needs right now

A huge new bill just passed in the US Senate that has the American nuclear industry deliriously excited, and it has me (and others) in two minds.

The ADVANCE bill (Accelerating Deployment of Versatile Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy - an awkward moniker, to say the least) passed in the Senate by 88-2, with 10 abstentions and just Bernie sanders and Ed Markey voting against. It is designed to reverse the American nuclear industry's decades-long decline, by slashing development fees, speeding up the licensing process, and hiring new staff for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Spokespeople for the industry are calling it "monumental", "game-changing" and "much-needed".

The main impetus for the bill is climate change and carbon reduction, but it will affect more than that. The USA has been leery of new nuclear projects since the Vogtle plant on Georgia went so far over-budget and over-time, and solar and wind power generation became so comparatively cheap. Now, the US government - no doubt at the behest of the still-powerful nuclear lobby - is looking to tilt the playing field in its favour again.

But it will almost certainly have the effect of drawing money and investment away from true renewable energy and battery technology, which is ultimately where we need to be going. Nuclear power is a low carbon option, admittedly, but it is also expensive, slow, inflexible, and comes with a whole catalogue of other unsavoury side-effects, not least the need to safely store spent fuel for centuries. It's also not even necessary. And don't get me started on small modular reactor (SMR) nuclear  plants, which people have been calling the saviour of the energy industry for decades, but which still doesn't even exist, and show no signs of ever becoming practical. Even notoriously pro-nuclear France has just scrapped its SMR plans due to soaring costs.

Joe Biden will almost certainly rubber stamp the bill when it is presented to him. But it is probably not the right direction to go. Focussing on nuclear is an unwelcome distraction from the job in hand.