Here Comes the Sun

Solar power is no longer marginal; now the (all-important) question is when it will be dominant.

The sun rises over Mt. Fuji on New Year’s Day

To understand the primal stakes in this year’s election, and to understand the very exciting possibility for rapid progress in the climate fight, a new set of numbers is extremely useful.

They come courtesy of Electrek’s Michelle Lewis, reporting on the longtime renewable researcher Ken Bossong’s analysis of the data on electric generation provided each month by the Energy Information Administration. And what they show is the remarkable transformation over the last decade. In 2014, solar power “utility-scale solar provided a mere 9.25 GW (0.75%) of total installed US generating capacity.” Which is to say, less than one percent. But “by the middle of 2024, installed solar capacity had risen to 8.99% of total utility-scale capacity.” (Add another few percent for rooftop distributed solar).

That still sounds like a relatively small percentage—under ten percent. But in fact what it measns is that we’ve finally moved on to the steep part of an S curve, and if we can keep up anything like that pace of expansion it won’t be long before the numbers are truly incredible. Indeed, as Bossong pointed out on Twitter, “the combination of utility-scale and “estimated” small-scale (e.g., rooftop) solar increased by 26.3% in the first six months of 2024 compared to the same period in 2023.” Statistics numb the brain so let me say it another way: we are on the cusp of a true explosion that could change the world. We are starting to put out the fires that humans have always relied on, and replace them with the power of the sun.

Pretty much the same thing is happening with wind, and pretty much the same thing is happening around the world. Bloomberg predicted last week that global installations of new solar modules would hit 592 gigawatts this year—up 33 percent from last year. The point is, when you’re doing this a few years in a row the totals start to grow very very fast. When something that provides one percent of your electricity doubles to two percent, that doesn’t mean much—but when something that supplies ten or twenty percent goes up by a third that’s actually quite a lot. And more the next year.

For a long while, you could see this growth coming, but it hadn’t yet added up to enough to materially dent the use of coal and gas and oil. But that is starting to change. Here’s the most important number I can give you, supplied to me this afternoon by Stanford professor Mark Jacobson, who has been keeping careful track of the California electric grid. As I wrote earlier, it’s been moving to renewable energy faster than almost anywhere in the country. The result: “For the (almost) 6-month period from March 7 to September 4, fossil gas use on the grid was 29% lower in 2024 than in 2023.” I’m going to repeat that. “For the (almost) 6-month period from March 7 to September 4, fossil gas use on the grid was 29% lower in 2024 than in 2023.” That is, the use of natural gas to generate electricity has dropped by almost a third in one year in the fifth largest economy in the world. In 2023, fossil gas provided 23% more electricity to the grid than solar in that six month period. In 2024, those numbers were almost perfectly reversed: solar provided 24 percent more electricity than fossil gas, 39,865 GWh v 24,033 GWh. In one year. That’s how this kind of s-curve exponential growth works, and how it could work everywhere on earth,

All this is the premise for understanding why the fossil fuel industry is so freaked out about this year’s election. They can read these charts as easily as anyone, and they know what’s coming. If it keeps happening at this pace, it will quickly start reducing demand for their products—they have vast reserves of, say, natural gas in the Permian Basin that will stay there forever simply because there’s no market. They have to lock in customers right now, or else watch their whole business start to slowly, and then quickly, fade. And with that fade will come, inevitably, reduced political power. Right now they can still frighten politicians—hence the fact that Kamala Harris, with Pennsylvania on the line, has to insist she supports fracking. But four years from now, not so much.

And if Trump wins, there’s tons that he can do to slow the transition down. He can’t “kill wind,” as he has promised. But he can make it impossible for it to keep growing at the same rate—right now there are teams in the White House managing every single big renewable project, trying to lower the regulatory hurdles that get in the way of new transmission lines, for instance. A Trump White House will have similar teams, just operating in reverse.

Again, he can’t hold it off forever—economics insures that cheap power will eventually win out. But eventually doesn’t help here, not with the poles melting fast. We desperately need clean energy now. That’s what this election is about—will Big Oil get the obstacle it desperately desires, or will change continue to play out—hopefully with a big boost from the climate movement for even faster progress.

In other energy and climate news:

+An incisive report from Coral Davenport in the New York Times on the threat posed by rising temperatures to America’s bridges.

Bridges designed and built decades ago with materials not intended to withstand sharp temperature swings are now rapidly swelling and contracting, leaving them weakened.

“It’s getting so hot that the pieces that hold the concrete and steel, those bridges can literally fall apart like Tinkertoys,” Dr. Paul Chinowsky, a professor civil engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder said.

As temperatures reached the hottest in recorded history this year, much of the nation’s infrastructure, from highways to runways, has suffered. But bridges face particular risks.

“With bridges, you’re working with infrastructure that may have been planned, designed and built decades ago,” Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary, said in an interview. “It’s one of the forms of infrastructure that takes the longest to update or refresh. And yet we’re seeing those vulnerabilities everywhere across the country.”

+Writing in the New Republic (and hopefully not jinxing anyone), Aaron Regunberg argues that Jamie Raskin should be Kamala Harris’s attorney general. He points out that

though Biden pledged to “strategically support ongoing plaintiff-driven climate litigation against polluters,” Merrick Garland has refused to initiate an investigation of Big Oil—despite multiple requests from congressional Democrats that he do so. In fact, he even escalated efforts by Trump’s DOJ to quash a landmark youth climate case.

It works for me, but I’m equally hopeful Raskin’s wife, Sarah Bloom Raskin, would get some crucial post in the Treasury or Fed—Joe Manchin blocked her last time because she was too tough on Big Oil.

(By the way, Regunberg has another piece in the same magazine suggesting that we might be able to sue big oil executives under reckless endangerment statutes,)

Now back to hatching chickens, not counting them.

+A truly desperate story from Pakistan, which has endured two Noah-scale floods in the last fifteen years, most recently two years ago. Now it seems to be happening again, as record temperatures melt Himalayan glaciers and monsoon rains drop deluges. As Zia ur-Rehman writes,

One recent evening, as heavy monsoon rains pounded down, Fauzia and her extended family of 15 huddled under a makeshift tent, its top patched with large plastic sheets.

Two years ago, her home was damaged in some of the worst flooding to ever hit Pakistan, a catastrophe that left more than 1,700 people dead and affected 30 million. Her family rebuilt three rooms with borrowed money and the sale of livestock. But as torrential rains have returned this year, their home has been damaged yet again, forcing them into the tent during downpours. Their memories of 2022 fill them with fear.

“Our children are terrified of the rain now,” said Fauzia, who, like many women in rural Pakistan, goes by one name. “Whenever it rains or the wind picks up, they cling to us and cry, ‘We will drown.’”

As unusually heavy rains lash Pakistan during this monsoon season, Fauzia is one of millions across the country who had only just recovered from the devastating 2022 floods and are now bracing for the possibility of losing what they had rebuilt.

+An important new video series from the good people at EarthJustice on “Our Energy Future.” Here’s how one installment starts

Dr. Rosemary Ahtuangaruak lives in Nuiqsut, a small Arctic village in Alaska, surrounded by oil and gas drilling. She was mayor in 2022 when a gas leak occurred at a nearby drill site.

"I, as mayor, got a call from the liaison for ConocoPhillips. And he informed me that there was a problem. There had been a gas leak, and they were looking to find out what was happening.

"Within that same day, I started having community members call me: 'What's going on? My son is sick. He can't breathe. It's not getting better. I gave him all the medicine. He still can't breathe.'

+Biden’s tariffs are protecting Detroit’s automakers for the moment, but….Chinese carmakers are producing truly amazing and truly cheap EVs. Here’s Bloomberg reporting on the new “Wish Upon a Star” model from Geely, which is competing directly with BYD’s Seagull and Dolphin. (China seems better at names)

The car targets young, first-time car buyers and has a spacious design for its size. Pricing and more specifications will be revealed later, the company said. They’ll be compared closely to those of the Seagull, which has a basic version that sells for as low as 69,800 yuan ($9,800) and the slightly larger Dolphin, which starts from 99,800 yuan.

+Longtime Green party activist Ted Glick (I’ve gone to jail with him more than once over the years) has a smart piece excoriating the party for its strategy, which seems to be: show up every four years to give Jill Stein a chance to spoil the election.

I remember when it was that I decided I had had it with the GP. I was at a national People’s Summit conference in Chicago in the summer of 2016 organized by National Nurses United and many other progressive groups and individuals who had come together after active involvement in the historic Bernie Sanders Presidential campaign. I was one of those people. On the second day of this event, attended by thousands, I looked up onto a screen that was projecting tweets about the convention that were being posted. I was shocked to see one from Jill Stein explicitly calling out this event and those who organized it as being “sheepdogs for the duopoly.” These supporters of independent socialist Bernie Sanders were all about corralling progressives into the Democratic Party, Stein was saying.

The GP, and others supporting them, don’t get it on mass politics. They believe in ideological purty before anything else. Unless you’re ideologically pure, they would say, you will never be able to bring about the transformational, revolutionary changes needed. Purity comes before anything else.

Twenty years of this approach have made it clear this is a losing strategy. The national US Green Party is a failure because of its rigid and narrow electoral approach.

He’s not the only one, by the way. AOC weighed in with a similar trenchant criticism last week.

+Depressing new UN research indicates that domestic violence could triple in sub-Saharan Africa in the coming decades because of the rising temperature. “Extreme heat threatens the safety and well-being of the most vulnerable women and girls all across Africa,” said UNFPA Executive Director Dr. Natalia Kanem. “Heat stress can put the health of pregnant women and their babies at risk, increasing the chance of preterm birth and stillbirth,” she added. “The climate crisis has also led to shocking levels of violence in the home – an impact often overlooked by policymakers.” 

+From the Economist: new research indicates that big cars aren’t just bad for the environment, they’re also killing far more people than they save.

+New Yorkers—don’t miss the Climate Justice Festival that Uprose is putting on September 28!

+Epically important win in California where the legislature refused Gov Newsom’s request to delay implementation of a new law requiring businesses that operate in the state (i.e., all big ones) to report their Scope 3 emissions. I’ve written detailed accounts before of why this rule could be absolutely critical in reining in Big Oil, but here’s the Wall Street Journal this afternoon, in more measured tones.

As the world’s fifth-largest economy, California’s policies affect corporate behavior nationwide. An analysis by the watchdog group Public Citizen estimated that at least 75% of Fortune 1000 companies would have to disclose greenhouse gas emissions under the state’s law. 

California’s laws cover more ground than currently paused federal rules proposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, in that they require companies to disclose Scope 3 emissions, a category that includes purchased goods, business travel and other indirect emissions. The emissions disclosure rules cover public and private firms with revenues exceeding $1 billion that do business in the state. 

+A narrow—49 votes out of 1.9 million cast—primary victory for Dave Upthegrove in the race for Washington state land commissioner race. That’s a key post, and he overcame the power of the timber industry with a climate-focused campaign that has a serious chance of going all the way.

+Mark Griffin, writing in the journal of the Global Association of Risk Professionals, offers an account of the dangers of what he calls “paper decarbonization,” where companies just sell, say, a coal mine to someone else so that their own emissions profile looks better.

Although it may make the portfolio look greener, this will not have any impact on real-world emissions (and might even make things worse if the purchaser plans to increase the output of the power station).

If we want to make sure that there are systemic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, we need to think at the system level. This is recognized by the Transition Plan Taskforce, which noted in October 2023 that since firms operate in an interdependent system, focusing on just net-zero target setting incentivizes so-called ‘paper decarbonization’. In other words, they are greening their own balance sheet in a way that may not necessarily contribute to greening the economy.

+Mary Booth continues the fraught but necessary work of explaining why burning wood to produce electricity is a great scam.

It violates physical reality. You don’t get to just wish away carbon. The fact that the trees are growing somewhere else, they were already growing somewhere else. They were already sequestering carbon. Nothing about cutting down and burning trees over here makes those trees over there grow faster and sequester carbon more quickly. Therefore, there’s obviously a net addition of CO2 to the atmosphere. And it is warming the climate just like fossil CO2

+Similarly, Rob Jackson continues to make the necessary argument about slowing down methane emissions. He profiles a restoration effort underway in Finland

“What I and others have most observed in the high Arctic tundra,” he said, “is the massive permafrost melt. I travelled, for example, 1,200 kilometres [745 miles] in a small, open boat on the East Siberian Sea coast. Kilometre after kilometre, I saw collapsing permafrost walls. I heard the sloosh of the coast slumping into the sea. There was a weird smell, too, as if you had a gas lamp running without a spark.”

“I had no words,” he said about seeing ecosystems collapse before him for hundreds of miles. “I decided: ‘I must press every button in my power to convey how bad this is.’”

Mustonen and others at Snowchange are doing more than sounding alarms; they are turning climate despair into climate repair. A decade ago, the wetland I visited at Linnunsuo was a Mordor-like slag heap, the legacy of industrial peat mined for energy. Only two bird species used the site. Today, the restored wetland has become a prime hotspot for more than 200 bird species during spring and autumn migrations. Snowchange’s efforts have reduced soil-based emissions at Linnunsuo by an amount equivalent to taking a 100,000 cars off our roads a year.

+New numbers from Frida Garza in Grist, answering the question: how much farmland would be freed up if Americans ate half as much meat? A lot—acreage about the size of South Dakota. Having drive across South Dakota, I can assure you this is nothing to sneeze at. (And a small percentage of that land in solar panels would produce a huge amount of energy, twenty times more than the ethanol that so much corn is used for)

Along those lines, an important new piece from Brian Martucci outlines the steps that enlightened states are starting to take to outflank the fossil-funded opponents of solar and wind

Lawmakers in Michigan, New York, Illinois and other states with 100% carbon-free electricity goals are pushing back with policies that centralize renewables permitting at the state level, provide financial incentives for more permissive local ordinances, or both. Though initiatives like Michigan’s Renewables Ready Communities Award program are too new to have had an observable impact, the early success of two New York programs is heartening for advocates of community-oriented approaches that include tangible financial benefits for municipalities and utility customers.

“There is no question that these packages help [developers] gain public support,” said Dan Spitzer, who co-leads New York-based law firm Hodgson Russ’s cleantech and renewable energy practice.

The most effective state policies, they say, incentivize constructive local participation in siting and permitting processes and nudge developers to treat host communities fairly while limiting opportunities for opponents to delay or kill mutually beneficial projects.