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“An engineering problem that, when solved, solves energy.”

Geothermal power is the perpetual also-ran of renewable energy, chugging along in the background for decades, never quite breaking out of its little niche, forever causing energy experts to say, “Oh, yeah, geothermal … what’s up with that?”

Well, after approximately 15 years of reporting on energy, I finally took the time to do a deep dive into geothermal and I am here to report: This is a great time to sart paying attention!

After many years of failure to launch, new companies and technologies have brought geothermal out of its doldrums, to the point that it may finally be ready to scale up and become a major player in clean energy. In fact, if its more enthusiastic backers are correct, geothermal may hold the key to making 100 percent clean electricity available to everyone in the world. And as a bonus, it’s an opportunity for the struggling oil and gas industry to put its capital and skills to work on something that won’t degrade the planet.

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The untimely Oct. 15 shut down of the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant’s Unit 2 is the second malfunction in a critical component of its electric generator, which was just rebuilt. In July, the same Pacific Gas & Electric unit was forced offline because then, as now, the cooling system that lowers the extreme heat inside the spinning generator was leaking hydrogen gas, which is the cooling fluid.

“While this isn’t a radioactive disaster, it could lead to a catastrophic industrial disaster,” warned David Weisman, Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility outreach coordinator. It is not only the loss of the 1,000 MW of power the plant produces, but also the potential loss of over $100 million worth of machinery, he noted.

Diablo Canyon’s only other unit also is down, undergoing planned maintenance since Oct. 3. Thus, the entire 2,200 MW plant was offline when the grid operator called for conservation last Thursday. It is still not sending any power to the grid.

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As our state has suffered through a summer of record-breaking heat waves, blackouts and wildfires, Gov. Gavin Newsom has rightly pegged what’s principally behind these challenges: “If you are in denial about climate change,” he said recently, “come to California.”

In the wake of wildfires that have burned an area roughly the size of Connecticut, the governor pledged to accelerate progress toward the state’s goal of 100% clean energy by 2045.

Turning this pledge into reality will require a full-force effort. The first step may be the hardest: It will require state leaders to accept that California, for all the progress we’ve made on climate issues, has not yet done what needs to be done to prepare for the next, all-important phase of renewable energy expansion over the next 10 years.

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WASHINGTON — Coronavirus patients in areas that had high levels of air pollution before the pandemic are more likely to die from the infection than patients in cleaner parts of the country, according to a new nationwide study that offers the first clear link between long-term exposure to pollution and Covid-19 death rates.

In an analysis of 3,080 counties in the United States, researchers at the Harvard University T.H. Chan School of Public Health found that higher levels of the tiny, dangerous particles in air known as PM 2.5 were associated with higher death rates from the disease.

For weeks, public health officials have surmised a link between dirty air and death or serious illness from Covid-19, which is caused by the coronavirus. The Harvard analysis is the first nationwide study to show a statistical link, revealing a “large overlap” between Covid-19 deaths and other diseases associated with long-term exposure to fine particulate matter.

“The results of this paper suggest that long-term exposure to air pollution increases vulnerability to experiencing the most severe Covid-19 outcomes,” the authors wrote.

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State officials signed off Thursday on a climate change target that critics say will reduce planet-warming emissions far too slowly. The action comes as economic disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is expected to slow the growth of renewable energy.

Meeting via video conference to protect against the novel coronavirus, the five-member California Public Utilities Commission unanimously approved a plan that aims to cut power-plant emissions by about 25% over the next decade — a slower pace than those emissions fell during the previous decade. The commission had studied a plan to cut power-sector emissions in half but ultimately concluded the less aggressive target would keep California on track to meet its goal of 100% clean electricity by 2045.

Commissioner Liane Randolph described the agency’s decision as plenty ambitious. She said it would require California to roughly double its fleet of solar panels, wind turbines and lithium-ion batteries by 2030, dramatically reducing the use of fossil fuels.

“These historic levels of renewable procurement will be a significant challenge to achieve,” Randolph said.

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State officials signed off Thursday on a climate change target that critics say will reduce planet-warming emissions far too slowly. The action comes as economic disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is expected to slow the growth of renewable energy.

Meeting via video conference to protect against the novel coronavirus, the five-member California Public Utilities Commission unanimously approved a plan that aims to cut power-plant emissions by about 25% over the next decade — a slower pace than those emissions fell during the previous decade. The commission had studied a plan to cut power-sector emissions in half but ultimately concluded the less aggressive target would keep California on track to meet its goal of 100% clean electricity by 2045.

Commissioner Liane Randolph described the agency’s decision as plenty ambitious. She said it would require California to roughly double its fleet of solar panels, wind turbines and lithium-ion batteries by 2030, dramatically reducing the use of fossil fuels.

“These historic levels of renewable procurement will be a significant challenge to achieve,” Randolph said.

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California is aiming to slash planet-warming emissions faster than ever over the next decade — and critics say state officials aren’t acting with nearly enough urgency.

The Golden State reached its 2020 climate change goal four years early, bringing economy-wide emissions back down to 1990 levels without most Californians noticing that anything was different. But the state’s next target, a 40% reduction in climate pollution by 2030, will be a much bigger lift.

A recent report from the research firm Energy Innovation found that the state must cut emissions nearly twice as quickly over the coming decade as it did during the last one, and that current policies won’t get the job done. The think tank Next 10 reached a similar conclusion, finding that the state is on track to meet its 2030 target three decades late.

Despite those findings, the California Public Utilities Commission is considering a proposal to cut power-sector emissions by just 25% during the 2020s, a slower pace than during the previous decade. Commission staff also studied a plan that would aim to cut climate pollution in half, before recommending the less aggressive target.

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From giant earth towers to compressed-air plants, entrepreneurs are piloting systems to make renewable energy more reliable

Canada’s Hydrostor is using compressed air to store energy. Pictured, the company’s facility in Goderich, Ontario.
PHOTO: HYDROSTOR

In the Alpine town of Arbedo-Castione, Switzerland, an electric-blue, 400-foot-high crane with six heads lifts a block of compacted soil into the air and carefully adds it to the top of a stack.

Later, the crane will reverse that process, generating power as gravity lowers the block back toward the ground.

Energy Vault, the company that built the contraption, believes it could help the renewable-energy industry confront its most intractable problem: storing up energy against the surges and lulls that characterize renewables like wind and solar.

These options are gaining ground as alternatives to fossil fuels, but they can’t yet be relied on to generate power around the clock. Without cheap ways of getting power when it is cloudy or calm, there is a limit to how much the grid can rely on renewables.

“What you’d like to do is power the grid 100% with zero-carbon energy, and there aren’t very many ways to generate it,” says Eric Toone, an emeritus professor of chemistry at Duke University and executive managing director at Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a clean-tech venture fund that has invested in energy-storage startups.

To decarbonize the world’s power with solar and wind, storage capacity also has to grow, he says.

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Planners must think beyond the levelized cost for renewables to the value that each resource brings to the grid.

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Surprisingly, the plunging cost of some renewables could keep states from reaching ambitious climate goals if planners fail to recognize the higher value in some higher cost renewables.

States like New York, Massachusetts and California with ambitious 2030 renewables and 2045 emissions reduction mandates are starting to find a tension between cost and value. Offshore wind’s reliability and emissions reduction values have raised its profile, though it remains more expensive than onshore wind. Now California policymakers are beginning to see the potentially extraordinary, but so far unrecognized value of its geothermal resources.

“We overbuilt natural gas and then we built so much solar that we have solar over-generation, so we have fallen in love with batteries,” Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies (CEERT) Executive Director V. John White told Utility Dive. “Batteries are great, but planning is too driven by costs, and not enough by the value in meeting grid needs, and not having a balanced resource portfolio could be the Achilles heel of our climate effort.”

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