"The Dutch Senate on Tuesday approved a law to permanently close the #Groningen gas field, following the government's promise that production will never be resumed to limit seismic risks in the region.
Pro-hydrogen tech bros will have a sook over this article, but reality has a way of asserting itself against their inane arguments. They're a sad bunch who like to think they're doing something good for the environment but they're in denial and cannot accept they've been sucked-in by greenwashing of the fossil fuel lobby who're trying to prolong the use of methane.
"Most of the funding, $621 million, will go toward 36 projects aimed at bolstering the resilience of existing infrastructure through things like improving draining, moving roadways, and lifting up bridges.
An additional $119 million will go toward protecting, strengthening, or removing at-risk coastal infrastructure like highways."
"The most high-profile rule issued Thursday is the greenhouse gas restriction, which applies to both existing #coal plants and newly constructed #NaturalGas plants.
Under the rule, these power plants are expected to have to capture 90 percent of their carbon dioxide #emissions."
Coal plants: by 2032, gas plants: by 2035.
They have a decade to develop carbon capture as real, cheap, and at scale, or it's the end of coal and gas power plants.
"My initial reaction would be to stick with gas and get a 96% efficient boiler which would probably be much more efficient than the heat pump."
I can't tell you how many times I've gotten this from contractors.
How is nobody seeing this as an opportunity to be the go-to shop for heat-pump installation. In DC there are thousands of nearly identical row-houses that will all need the same upgrades as we move away from fossil fuels.
But data centres’ voracious power needs are set to rocket, as cloud storage facilities, crypto mining and AI all add strain to grids. Microsoft alone is opening a new data centre globally every three days.
These power hungry operations will together consume more than 480 terawatt hours of electricity, or almost a tenth of total US power demand, by 2035, up from 4.5 per cent in 2025, according to S&P Global Commodity Insights.
The International Energy Agency estimates power demand from data centres globally could top 1,000 TWh by 2026 — double 2022 levels and an increase equivalent to Germany’s total power demand.
Dominion Energy, which supplies Virginia’s fast-growing data centre sector, said in a recent strategic plan that until zero-carbon energy could offer constant power, gas units would be the “most affordable and reliable” option." https://www.ft.com/content/1f93b9b2-b264-44e2-87cc-83c04d8f1e2b
Fine, learned how to connect a natural gas dryer (yes, outgoing technology... but, still), and checked for leaks.
(Don't trust the contractors would do it correctly, and when I asked the plumber if he connects gas appliances he started bickering with me over my distrust of the not-trustworthy contractors, so I decided to do it myself).
Will have the gas company double check things (they do that as a free service) before turning it all on again.
"What’s this chart, you ask? It’s the International Energy Agency’s 2024 methane tracker chart on the countries with the worst #methane#emissions from their oil and #gas industries. Which country is number one with a bullet? That would be the United States. On a related note, did you know that the United States is also the world’s largest producer of #oil by volume?"
Axios: Gas execs sees tailwinds from AI power needs
"Why it matters: Generative AI is joining with other advanced computing, electric vehicles, crypto-mining, new manufacturing and more to start sending U.S. power demand sharply upward after many years of largely flat consumption.
State of play: "AI and data centers are going to require a lot more energy, and that means a lot more energy produced," Mike Sommers, CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, told Axios recently."
Once we begin to run out of them, they will become much more expensive, which means everything else - especially food - will become much more expensive as well.”
The #AngloSaxon capitalist model ruined earth for humanity and many other species. #BigOil has been its undertaker, b/c #BigOilKnew.
If capitalism hadn't made the #GreenRevolution possible, human society would already have reached the #overshoot (1) point at the end of the last century:
In 1968, the #biologists Paul and Anne #Ehrlich wrote the book The #PopulationBomb"...
"...is created this way. There is 👉no substitute.👈 This is why fertilizer prices (and thus, food prices) are getting higher and higher, because #NaturalGas has gotten so expensive..."
Instead of using natural gas exclusively for fertilizer production, we are just "firing away"
Humans have essentially painted themselves into a corner." (1)
Sadly, the reality is even more disappointing if you read into it.
This is a German open pit mine, and coal is still heavily used in Germany, -despite- the #energiewende, in which over €100B has been invested already. Still, #Germany is one of Europe's most polluting countries when it comes to electricity generation.
Additionally, Germany consciously chose to use #Russian#naturalgas for the "transition" and shut down perfectly working, clean #nuclearpower.
I just published my Renewable Energy Pickups: contextualized highlights from 12 to 18 February:
-Low-carbon shipping moves fast from #naturalgas to #hydrogen through dual-fuel engines and design
-#Agrivoltaics grows: gets a specialized solar panel
President Biden just paused approvals of new natural gas exports. That is a small but positive step to address climate change. If Trump is elected, he will reverse it.
President Biden continues to enable genocide in Gaza, exactly as Trump would do if reelected. Nearly 30,000 Palestinians have been killed with American money and support.
"Environmentalists are gearing up for their next giant climate fight: They want to force a showdown with the Biden administration over the massive expansion of #US#NaturalGas exports.
More than two dozen new or expansion projects are under construction or under consideration. Opponents say that buildout far exceeds what is needed and will further burden communities of color on the #GulfCoast and other parts of the country."
"Far from being a boon, #NaturalGas has been a trap, one that the industry now wants to catch the rest of the globe in.
We now live on a planet where the cheapest way to produce power is to point a sheet of glass at the sun; there’s no reason not to go straight from coal to #RenewableEnergy, with no intermediate stop at gas."
Export LNG, & domestic gas prices surge.
OTOH,
"In June 2022, #NaturalGas prices plunged by 30 % after a fiery accident and massive explosion shut down an #LNG export terminal in Freeport, Texas, underscoring the link between exports and domestic prices."
“This whole concept of ‘drill baby, drill’ for lower prices is a complete fabrication,” Slocum said. “The whole goal of pushing exports is making gobs of money for gas producers.”