Wind energy development has long been stuck in the doldrums in the southeastern United States. Until very recently, nine states in the region had installed precisely zero megawatts of commercial wind capacity, even as turbines spread across every other U.S. state.

Mississippi, however, has just bucked that trend.

On Tuesday, the state officially marked the opening of its first utility-scale wind farm, which began producing clean electricity last month, according to an announcement shared exclusively with Canary Media.

AES Corp. owns and operates the 184-megawatt Delta wind project in Tunica County, which is nestled in Mississippi’s northwestern corner near the borders with Arkansas and Tennessee. Tech giant Amazon is purchasing power from the 41-turbine facility to support its growing data center operations and logistics hubs in the region.

Wind projects have historically struggled to take off in the U.S. Southeast for a few key reasons, including political opposition and a lack of favorable state renewable energy policies. The region also has relatively slower wind speeds at low altitudes, especially when compared with places like the Great Plains, which has made projects less attractive economically.

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More at: https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/wind/mississippi-just-got-its-first-utility-scale-wind-farm

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The reason is twofold. For one, clean energy costs have plummeted over the last decade — a decline that has also resulted in every dollar spent on wind and solar now going more than twice as far in terms of energy output as a dollar went a decade ago. Second, investment has also gotten a boost from the growing number of countries that have adopted emissions reductions goals in recent years.

Most clean energy investment is currently flowing to solar projects; the energy source is projected to attract more investment than all other power generation sources combined in 2024, including fossil fuels. The rise of renewables like solar has also sparked more investment in energy storage and grid capacity worldwide. Battery storage is expected to exceed $50 billion in investments this year, more than double what was spent in 2022.

While the record-high investment is a promising sign for the future of clean energy, there is one major caveat: Spending is not distributed equally. Most investment is happening in China, the United States, and the European Union; developing economies outside of China make up only 15% of this spending.

This is something that needs to change in order to transition the world away from fossil fuels fast enough to meet global climate goals. Total investment in clean energy needs to not only double by 2030 to meet COP28 goals — it needs to quadruple in developing economies outside of China. This year, the report predicts, clean energy investments outside of China will more than double, compared to just four years ago, reaching nearly $320 billion.

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The 50-year-old petrodollar agreement between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia was just allowed to expire. The term “petrodollar” refers to the U.S. dollar’s role as the currency used for crude oil transactions on the world market. This arrangement has its roots in the 1970s when the United States and Saudi Arabia struck a deal shortly after the U.S. went off the gold standard that would go on to have far-reaching consequences for the global economy. In the history of global finance, few agreements have wielded as many benefits as the petrodollar pact did for the U.S. economy.

The petrodollar agreement, formalized after the 1973 oil crisis, stipulated that Saudi Arabia would price its oil exports exclusively in U.S. dollars and invest its surplus oil revenues in U.S. Treasury bonds. In return, the U.S. provided military support and protection to the kingdom. This arrangement was a win-win situation for both; the U.S. gained a stable source of oil and a captive market for its debt, while Saudi Arabia secured its economic and overall security.

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Oil being denominated in U.S. dollars alone has significance beyond the categories of oil and finance. By mandating that oil be sold in U.S. dollars (DXY), the agreement elevated the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency. This, in turn, has profoundly impacted the U.S. economy. The global demand for dollars to purchase oil has helped to keep the currency strong, making imports relatively cheap for American consumers. Additionally, the influx of foreign capital into U.S. Treasury bonds has supported low interest rates and a robust bond market.

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The petrodollar’s expiration could weaken the U.S. dollar and, by extension, the U.S. financial markets. If oil were to be priced in a currency other than the dollar, it could lead to a decline in global demand for the greenback. This, in turn, could result in higher inflation, higher interest rates, and a weaker bond market in the United States.

Full article at: https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/us-saudi-petrodollar-pact-ends-after-50-years

By Juliana Birnbaum, June 12, 2024
Source: https://mailchi.mp/regeneration.org/the-waggle-global-emissions-turning-point

The world reached a monumental tipping point in the past year, and this one is good! According to new data estimates from BloombergNEF, global carbon dioxide emissions are starting to fall for the first time since the start of the Industrial Revolution. The data aligns with projections made by Climate Analytics last November that 2023 was the year of peak emissions, led by the explosive growth of renewable energy capacity. While forecasting emissions is not an exact science, the fact that humans are finally reducing the production of greenhouse gases is certainly worth celebrating. However, the decline will not be a rapid one– even if combating climate change were a top priority of every nation and corporation (which it isn’t), it would take at least two decades to fully transition to net zero emissions. The BloombergNEF report lays out a spectrum of scenarios. The most optimistic is that the world will reach net zero by 2050 with extraordinary decarbonization efforts, resulting in a temperature rise of 1.75 degrees above preindustrial levels. The other end has emissions falling by just 27 percent by mid-century, resulting in a 2.6-degree increase and accompanying extreme weather and sea level rise. Which direction we go depends on many factors, but the faster we can implement a wide range of solutions, the better chance we have of averting the worst consequences of climate change.

Source with links: https://mailchi.mp/regeneration.org/the-waggle-global-emissions-turning-point

Bill McKibben, Jun 11, 2024
Source: https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/what-you-want-is-an-s-curve

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So even amidst all the desperate news from climate science, I have some legitimately good numbers to update you on this morning. They come from the veteran energy analyst Kingsmill Bond and colleagues at the Rocky Mountain Institute, and they demonstrate that the world has moved on to the steep part of the S curve, which will sweep us from minimal reliance on renewable energy to—we must hope and pray— minimal dependence on fossil fuel. The angle of that curve may prove to be the most significant geometry of our time on earth, competing only with the slope of the Keeling Curve which documents the growing accumulation of co2 in the atmosphere above Mauna Loa.



It seems pretty clear, according to Bond’s team, that last year or this we will hit peak fossil fuel demand on this planet—the advent of cheap solar and wind and batteries, combined with rapidly developing technologies like heat pumps and EVs, has finally caught up with the surging human demand for energy even as more Asian economies enter periods of rapid growth: the question is whether we’ll plateau out at current levels of fossil fuel use for a decade or more, or whether we can make fossil fuel use decline enough to begin to matter to the atmosphere.

And the numbers in the new report give at least some reason for hope: sun and wind are now growing faster than any other energy sources in history, and they are coming online faster that anyone had predicted, even in the last few years. In the last decade, “solar generation has grown 12 times, battery storage by 180 times, and EV sales by 100 times.” This charge has been led by China, where “solar generation up 37 times and EV sales up 700 time.” and which as a result is “poised to be the first major electrostate.” Europe, and indeed the whole OECD group, are now seeing rapid growth too, and the best news is that there are increasing signs that countries like India and Vietnam, where growth in demand will be fastest over the rest of the decade, are figuring out how to electrify their economies. Fossil fuel for generating electricity has peaked in Thailand, South Africa, and in all of Latin America.

Solar power in particular is about to become the most common way to produce electricity on this planet, and batteries will this year pass pumped-hydro as the biggest source of energy storage; the supply chain seems to be in place to continue this kind of hectic growth, as there are enough factories under construction to produce the stuff we need, and investment capital is increasingly underwriting cleantech (though a treacherously large supply of money continues to flow to fossil fuels). Pick your metric—the number of cleantech patents, the energy density of batteries, the size of wind turbine rotors—and we’re seeing rapid and continuing progress; the price of solar power is expected to drop by half again in the course of the decade, reinforcing all these trends. The adoption curves for cleantech look like the adoption curves for color tv, or cellphones—that is to say, from nothing to ubiquitous in a matter of years.

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Earlier this month, Congressman Tom Emmer (R-MN) blasted college students protesting Israel's military operations in Gaza. "By these students’ own admission, they’re not just standing in solidarity with this pro-Hamas, anti-Semitic movement—they ARE the movement," Emmer told the Washington Free Beacon. "Perhaps they’d be happier studying at Terrorist University before pursuing their careers in Gaza."

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Now, Emmer and the other Republican members of Minnesota's Congressional delegation are being confronted with an issue much closer to home. Last Saturday, the Minnesota Republican Party formally endorsed Royce White, a former NBA basketball player, to be the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate. White was introduced at the Minnesota GOP convention by Steve Bannon, the far-right polemicist and former Trump advisor. Bannon has guided White's evolution from a Black Lives Matter protester to a MAGA Republican. In the process, White has publicly promoted deeply anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

In April 2022, White wrote on his Substack that "many of the Jewish people have lost their faith in a loving God," and their faith has been replaced by "materialism" and "a survivalist impulse that can give birth to the darkest of intentions and most grandiose effort for world control." In another rambling post published in September 2022, White said his criticism of Jewish people is not anti-Semitic because he is actually criticizing "anti-Jews." Many Jews, according to White, "joined the woke armies of globalists." These Jews, White said, became "globalists" because they "hate God" and "are enemies of all."

White defended Ye (formerly Kanye West) after the rapper praised Hitler in 2022. At the time, White criticized Jews for focusing on the Holocaust "to provide a victimhood cover for their own corrupt practices." White later praised Ye for speaking out against "the Jewish lobby." White also asserted that "[t]here is a group of Jewish elite, that tends to be secular in belief and corrupt in political practice." White has described Israel as "the lynchpin of the New World Order," a conspiracy theory that posits that elites are conspiring to create a global totalitarian government.

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Full Article: https://popular.info/p/the-minnesota-gop-endorsed-an-anti