Greta Thunberg Blocks Windfarm

Activists, including climate activist and renewable energy advocate Greta Thunberg, protested outside Norway's energy ministry to demand an end to a wind farm project. The protestors claim the project obstructs the Sami indigenous people’s right to raise reindeer.

In October 2021, Norway's Supreme Court ruled that the construction of the wind turbines indeed violated the rights of the Sami. The Sami, who live in Lapland, have been raising reindeer in the region for centuries.

But the turbines are still spinning. The protesters want the Norwegian government to implement the Supreme Court's decision and stop the wind farm project.

“It is absurd that the Norwegian government has chosen to ignore the ruling,” said Thunberg.

Thunberg et al.’s protest echoes similar efforts in America. “The National Congress of American Indians on Thursday called for a moratorium on offshore wind development along US coasts, insisting the Biden administration do a better job protecting tribal interests,” reports Bloomberg. “The decision by the largest lobbying group for tribes in the US follows a plea Tuesday by 30 New Jersey mayors to halt offshore wind activity so government officials can investigate recent whale deaths.”

CPUC’s New Climate Plan

California's Public Utilities Commission has announced an ambitious goal of substantially lowering the state’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

To achieve this, the CPUC has approved an initiative to procure an additional 4,000 MW of clean electricity sources for 2026 and 2027.

The commission's decision is a response to concerns about climate change and the California Energy Commission's forecasted increases in electricity demand. The commission's initiative sets its goal at 30 million metric tons of greenhouse gas.

Katherine Ramsey, the senior attorney from the Sierra Club, praised the Commission’s initiative for modeling how natural gas resources will be replaced.

“This is super important to environmental justice communities and Regenerate’s campaign because we want to make sure that communities that have been overburdened by gas plant emissions for years are the first to see relief,” Ramsey told Courthouse News Service. “We want to plan for a scenario where the clean resources that we're all paying for are actually displacing fossil fuel usage.”

However, if the state fails to extend the life of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, it will lose 10% of its clean electricity and over half of the clean electricity they expect to add by 2030 via the CPUC’s new initiative. The Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club support the closure of Diablo Canyon.

DOE Offers $48 Million for Semiconductor Improvements

The US Department of Energy is providing $48m for the development of semiconductor materials and devices to enable better control and protection of the grid.

“The funding will stand up the ‘Unlocking Lasting Transformative Resiliency Advances by Faster Actuation of power Semiconductor Technologies’ program, which will be managed by DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy,” reports Utility Dive. “Teams will compete for ULTRAFAST funding in three categories: device and module technologies with protection functions at high voltages, high switching frequency devices, and ‘complementary technologies’ such as wireless voltage sensing.”

Semiconductors play a crucial role in controlling power generation and transmission, especially for renewables.

ULTRAFAST-funded projects will “aim to enable utilities to more effectively control grid power flow to avoid disturbances, and quickly isolate and route around disruptions,” DOE said.

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Conversation Starters

1. The new head of Florida Power & Light is determined to stay out of the headlines. “Armando Pimentel, who held executive roles in finance at NextEra for more than a decade before retiring in 2019, is coming back in what investors hope will mark the end of FP&L's era of political and campaign-finance scandals,” reports Reuters. “Pimentel replaces outgoing FP&L CEO Eric Silagy, who joined NextEra roughly two decades ago, worked as a top lobbyist for the company and has been at the center of some of its publicity problems. Since 2020, Florida-based news organizations have reported about FP&L's role in questionable political and campaign finance-related activity.”

2. Russian crude exports have held strong despite sanctions. “Russia’s crude oil producers managed to export 7.32 million barrels per day of crude oil and crude oil products in February, Kpler data showed, indicating to some that the ban on Russian seaborne crude shipments into Europe and the price cap mechanism have done little to curb the flow of Russia’s crude,” reports Oilprice.com. “The 7.32 million barrels per day of crude oil exported from Russia in February is largely on par with that exported in December, shortly after the crude sanctions went into effect.”

3. A Colorado refinery outage is spiking gasoline prices in the Rocky Mountain Region. “The only petroleum refinery in Colorado shut down in late December after sustaining damage from extremely cold weather, and it is expected to remain offline for months to repair, the refinery owner and operator, Calgary-based Suncor, stated. The refinery outage may tighten the supply of gasoline and diesel in Colorado and, more broadly, the Rocky Mountain region, leading to higher retail prices for both From the end of December to February 20, the average retail gasoline price increased 51% in Colorado and 27% in the Rocky Mountain region, according to our Gasoline and Diesel Fuel Update, compared with a 9% increase in the United States overall,” reports the Energy Information Administration. “On December 24, Suncor shut down its 103,000-barrel per day (b/d) oil refinery in Commerce City, Colorado, just outside of Denver. Suncor announced that extreme cold weather earlier in the month had damaged equipment and that the repairs would require a full shutdown of the facility and delay operations until the end of the first quarter of 2023.”

Crom’s Blessing