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Solar is keeping California’s lights on as hydro dries up

Solar is keeping California’s lights on as hydro dries up

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We told you recently that wind turbines kept the heaters working in Texas during a cold snap that shut down several natural-gas power plants. And now we have similar superhero news from that other great renewable energy source — the sun.

The San Jose Mercury News reports that solar energy is helping to meet California’s power needs amid a drought that has caused hydroelectric supplies to shrivel:

Despite last week’s showers, the lack of rain in California this winter is having a dire impact on the rivers and reservoirs that power the state’s hydroelectricity plants.

But the abundance of sunshine has been ideal for solar power, which is stepping in to fill the anticipated drop-off in hydroelectricity generation.

“We’re going to have enough power to keep the lights on: We are not concerned about blackouts or outages,” said Robert Weisenmiller, chairman of the California Energy Commission. “We are much less dependent on hydropower now than we were in the 1940s. In just the last year, we’ve added more than 1,000 megawatts of solar alone.”

Somebody ought hand renewable energy a cape and be done with it.


Source
Drought threatens California’s hydroelectricity supply, but solar makes up the gap, San Jose Mercury News

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Solar is keeping California’s lights on as hydro dries up

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Hooked on Speed: How Jazmine Fenlator Feeds Her "Bobsled Habit"

Mother Jones

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A “controlled car crash.” That’s how US bobsled pilot Jazmine Fenlator, 29, remembers her first run. “I was sliding down a mile of ice with my head buried in the bottom of the bobsled,” she says. “I’m getting jostled around and I’m not understanding why I’m moving so much.” She ended the run drooling and shaking, but she was hooked.

Bobsledders, many of whom, like Fenlator, hail from track-and-field sports, have to be some level of crazy to send their bodies careening down steep ice passages at speeds up to 100 miles per hour. But it’s not just the risk of bodily harm that makes the experience intense. “It’s a grueling blue-collar sport,” Fenlator says. “We carry our sleds. There’s no caddy, there’s no pit crew.” And, like many Olympians in less-prominent sports, the athletes often have to dip into their own coffers to pay for their training. At one point, Fenlator and her teammate had to scrounge up $20,000 for a new sled—which meant a slew of side jobs.

Their dedication paid off in early December, when Fenlator joined five teammates on the podium for a World Cup sweep—the first ever for US women’s bobsledding, and a hopeful indicator of what may lie ahead for Team USA in Sochi.

Mother Jones: What kind of reactions do you get when you tell people what you do?

Jazmine Fenlator: A lot of people think I’m on the Jamaican bobsled team. It’s a question every black bobsledder gets, even if you’re wearing a USA shirt. Or a lot of times people don’t know what bobsled is, so they’ll reference luge or skeleton. It’s a hard sport because not many people can relate to it, and it’s a hard sport to spectate. You only see it every four years on TV, and it doesn’t have a lot of popularity, which we’re trying to change. So, you get a lot of naïve questions. But I welcome those. The more people I can teach and tell about bobsled, the more cheers we’ll have in Sochi.

MJ: How does one become a bobsledder?

JF: I was a senior in college in 2006-2007 at Roger University as a track and field athlete. I started to realize that I was a little bit behind the pace I needed to qualify for Beijing. I was really going to focus on revamping my training when my coach mentioned bobsled. I didn’t really take him too seriously, but he submitted my athletic resume and the team invited me to a tryout camp. I jumped on the opportunity. It’s not everyday a national team invites you, especially if you’ve never done the sport before.

MJ: Had you ever even imagined bobsledding?

JF: No. I’d seen Cool Runnings and watching the 2002 and 2006 winter games, but I did not actually know much about it.

MJ: What do you remember from the 2002 games, the inaugural year for women’s bobsled?

JF: For Team USA to bring home gold, as well as Vonetta Flowers winning the first medal in winter sports for an African-American, was huge. I remember watching her and Jill Bakken push that sled down the start ramp on the final run and the announcer saying, “This is where Olympians are made, this is where medalists can break or make it.” They kept their composure and they did just what they needed to do and came across the line screaming.

MJ: What was bobsledding like the first time you did it?

JF: I had no idea what is happening. I was a brakeman, so you don’t get to see where you are going. My helmet doesn’t even fit properly, I am getting jostled around in this sled. A lot can happen in your brain in a minute, I’ve learned.

One of the coaches stood at the bottom to make sure that the newbies weren’t getting motion sickness or about to run and call a taxi and head to the airport. I’m breathing heavy and have drool and snot probably everywhere. I can’t unbuckle my helmet. I’m shaking, and I feel like “Aaah, I don’t really know. How many times do we do this today?” He’s like, “Great, ’cause we have a couple more training trips to go! Head right on the truck and go back up.” It was a pretty incredible experience. Extremely humbling.

MJ: How do you shave seconds off your time?

JF: You’re searching for thousands of seconds that add up to equal hundredths. I’ve gotten third in a race by six-hundredths. You can’t even blink that fast. And you can be like, where did I lose that time? Was it a piece of tape flapping on the side that I forgot to take off when cleaning my sled? Was it this little mistake here or there? You can’t just be a great athlete. You can’t just be a great pilot. You can’t just have great equipment. You’re looking for a combination, because it’s not just one thing. That’s why you’re in the weight room, and sprinting every day—to shave off hundredths in your 30-meter time, and lift 5 or 10 more pounds in the squat. Because all of that adds up.

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Hooked on Speed: How Jazmine Fenlator Feeds Her "Bobsled Habit"

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4 Climate Policies We’re Thankful For

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There isn’t much good news to report about the environment these days. But here are a few developments for which we can give thanks. Hang in there, buddy. Yvonne Pijnenburg-Schonewille/Shutterstock Unless it’s immediately proceeded by the word “no,” the phrase “good news” rarely appears these days in stories about climate change. But in a year in which we found out that our oceans may rise this century by as much as three feet and that atmospheric carbon dioxide is higher than it has been in nearly a million years, there were still some bright spots. And in preparation for Thanksgiving, we’ve compiled a list of four environmental developments for which you can give thanks. You can see even more on Twitter by searching the hashtag #ClimateThanks. 1. The US and the World Bank will avoid financing coal-fired power plants abroad. Burning coal is among the dirtiest ways to produce energy and quickest ways to accelerate climate change. So this July, when the World Bank announced that it would limit funding for new coal-burning plants to “rare circumstances” where countries have “no feasible alternatives,” green advocates were thrilled. At the same time, the global development giant also reversed its opposition to hydroelectric power, which many environmental activists had pushed as an alternative to cheap energy from coal. Last month, based on an announcement President Obama made in June, the United States Treasury Department also ceased financing any new coal projects abroad except in cases where coal was the only viable option for bringing power to poor regions. The US and World Bank decisions only affect coal projects that use public financing; around the world, many are built with private money. But a Treasury official told the New York Times that the Obama administration felt “that if public financing points the way, it will then facilitate private investment.” 2. The White House will push carbon limits for new and existing power plants. Natural gas and coal-fired power plants are responsible for 40 percent of the United States’ carbon emissions and one-third of its greenhouse gas emissions. The country can’t address climate change without regulating this sector of the economy. In his June speech at Georgetown University, President Obama announced that for the first time ever, the Environmental Protection Agency will propose rules to cap carbon emissions from existing power plants. His administration also pushed forward a rule to limit pollution from new power plants, which had stalled last year. If the EPA finalizes the rule and it’s upheld in court, it would limit new coal-fired plants to 1,100 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per megawatt hour—the average coal power plant releases 1,800 pounds—and new gas power plants to 1,000 pounds. Obama said the rules were necessary for the US to meet its pledge to bring greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent—or below 2005 levels—by the year 2020. 3. The global warming “slowdown” showed us that international agreements can reduce climate change. The so-called global warming “slowdown” you heard about over the summer certainly doesn’t mean that global warming has stopped—regardless of what climate skeptics may be saying. Although climate scientists determined that over the past 15 years, the rate of the warming of the planet has slowed—”kind of like a car easing off the accelerator,” as Chris Mooney wrote—the Earth’s surface and oceans are continuing to heat up at an alarming rate. (Other recent research suggests the “slowdown” might not have really occurred at all.) But one study found an unexpected factor contributed to the “slowdown”: the partial cause appears to be a planet-wide phaseout of greenhouse-trapping gases called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which more than 40 countries agreed to by signing the Montreal Protocol in 1988. “Without the Protocol, environmental economist Francisco Estrada of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México reports, global temperatures today would be about a tenth of a degree Celsius higher than they are,” Tim McDonnell explained earlier this month. “That’s roughly an eighth of the total warming documented since 1880.” Bottom line? The global warming “slowdown” actually seems to be a strong indication that international treaties aimed at reducing climate change can work—and that we need more of them. 4. The world’s largest economies will phase down the use of a potent greenhouse gas. The phaseout of CFCs had another unexpected outcome. Manufacturers began to replace CFCs—used in air conditioners, refrigerators, and aerosol cans—with hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). HFCs don’t eat away at the ozone layer like CFCs do. But scientists recently concluded that HFCs are a type of “super-pollutant”—gases that have exponentially more heat-trapping ability than carbon dioxide, although they dissipate from the atmosphere within a few years. Without intervention, HFCs were on track to make a huge contribution to global warming. If present trends hold steady, then by the year 2050, the amount of HFCs humans will have released into the atmosphere will cause as much warming as 90 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide. But this year saw positive signs that world leaders are ready to curb this powerful greenhouse gas. In a deal that the White House announced in June, the US and China agreed to explore technologies and financial incentives to reduce the use of HFCs. Three months later, leaders of the Group of 20, which includes major economic powers like Russia, announced that their countries, too, would make plans to reduce the use of HFCs.

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4 Climate Policies We’re Thankful For

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4 Climate Policies We’re Thankful For

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