White House Climate Advisor: Big Tech Should Censor Dissent // Massachusetts Ponders Ending Residential Retail Electricity // The Five Drivers of India's Coal Crunch

White House Climate Advisor: Big Tech Should Censor Dissent

Axios hosted a series of conversations with experts on the problem of "misinformation" last Friday. The talks were called The Infodemic Age and featured a suite of experts including the first-ever climate advisor in the White House, Gina McCarthy. 

"The tech companies have to stop allowing specific individuals over and over again to spread disinformation," she said, referring to people who criticize renewables and point out the benefits of fossil fuels. 

Tech companies should do this because "the challenge really is, how do we accelerate the solutions we have available to us, the technology improvements that we've seen that are most cost-effective, in fact, cost-competitive with fossil fuels? And what the industry is now doing is seeding, basically, doubt about the costs associated with that and whether they work or not."

McCarthy said that people were wrong to point out that $66 billion worth of renewables investments in Texas crapped out during a winter storm due to a poorly structured market that favors renewables. That kind of talk came from, according to her, fossil fuel dark money groups trying to "fool folks." 

Gina McCarthy is the former president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, which has a long history of anti-nuclear activism. In the 1980s, the NRDC successfully put California's nuclear moratorium in place. More recently, it has helped shut down the Indian Point nuclear power plant in New York, which resulted in higher emissions in the state (see above image). It also continues to support the closure of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in California. I've documented the anti-nuclear movement's cynical tactics and deployment of pseudo-sicknesses like "Chernobyl AIDS."

Does the NRDC deal in disinformation? I guess it depends on who you ask.

Massachusetts Ponders Ending Residential Retail Electricity

Eighteen states have electricity spot markets serving residential customers. Massachussetts opened its electricity sector to the market in 1998. Now, it might be one of the first to walk away from that whole project, according to Utility Dive. 

A recent study from the Massachusetts Attorney General's office "showed retail electric supplier offers as generally being more expensive than the default utility supply offer." The Attorney General, Maura Healey, has been pressing the issue since 2018. She testified on the issue last summer. 

Naturally, Healey's getting pushback from retail market groups. They claim the study is flawed and that "the state has [a] strong demand for other options besides the incumbent utility service: 79% of Massachusetts respondents to a 2021 poll by SurveyUSA on behalf of Clean Choice Energy said they would like to choose who provides their electricity."

Massachusetts is currently working out an energy omnibus bill that would involve banning retail suppliers for residential customers. But S.2842 is also very focused on climate and clean energy. Utility Drive reports that "the bill directs the state energy department to study and make recommendations for a competitive solicitation with other New England states for 1,750 GWh of long-term clean energy generation. The bill would also set a 10 GW offshore wind goal by 2035, as well as establish a timetable for offshore wind efforts."

What happening in Massachusetts could be the shot heard 'round the country in the war over the electricity sector. 

The Five Drivers of India's Coal Crunch

India's been facing a brutal coal crunch during an unprecedented heat wave. The country generates 75% of its electricity with coal. According to SPG, it's also the third-largest electricity producer in the world. SPG has also laid out the five main drivers that brought India to this crisis. 

The trouble started in the middle of last year. The current spike looks like an echo of a larger spike in October 2021, around when the post-Covid demand rebound started troubling energy markets.  

The crunch worsened after Russia invaded Ukraine and countries that once relied on Russia for coal began to look elsewhere. "The price of Australia's 5,500 kcal/kg NAR coal with 23% ash has surged 83.6% year to date to $189.95/mt FOB June 9, according to S&P Global data. Indonesia and Australia were among the largest exporters to India in the financial year 2021-22 (April-March), together forming 66% of India's import basket, according to India trade ministry provisional data."

"To meet India's rising power demand as COVID-19 restrictions eased, the government first tried to boost domestic coal production, which rose to 777 million mt in FY 2021-22 from 716 million mt in FY 2020-21, coal ministry data showed."

But the government's attempt to become less coal import-dependent fell apart in April of last year. "As coal stockpiles dwindled to critically low levels, summer weather arrived early, leading to extremely high power demand." Tight supply and surging demand have produced blackouts. 

Monsoon season has been a mixed blessing: while it has brought demand down it has also stymied coal production. 

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Word of the Day

Land use 

The ultimate uses to be permitted for currently contaminated lands, waters, and structures at each Department of Energy installation. Land-use decisions will strongly influence the cost of environmental management. (source)

Conversation Starters

• A new report from The Brattle Group argues that keeping Diablo Canyon would help the state decarbonize cheaper, faster, and more reliably than if allowed to close. It's the kind of "water is wet" study nuclear needs more of to stay alive these days.

• Biden is still puzzling out how to help the oil and gas industry to bring down prices at the pump while threatening them with windfall taxes. Meanwhile, building refineries has become so onerous that new ones have not been completed since the '70s. That's unlikely to change as profits from refineries come decades later and many in government and finance and signaling that oil and gas won't be needed in the future.

• Warren Buffett and Big Tech are duking it out in Iowa over a renewables project. Buffett wants to build a $4 billion renewables project near data centers owned by Microsoft, Google, and Facebook. The three tech giants, despite their own commitments to renewables, warn that Buffett's project will drive up electricity costs.

Crom's Blessing