clean tech

By Elaine Weinreb - North Coast Journal, July 27, 2023

This graphic shows various types of offshore wind farms. The deep-water variety on the left will be what's used off Humboldt County's shoreline, where the waters reach approximately 2,500 feet deep. Image courtesy of Shutterstock

Big changes are afoot on the Samoa Peninsula. The Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District is planning to construct a large manufacturing center to craft and assemble giant wind turbines suitable for the deep offshore waters of the Pacific Coast.

Officially known as the Humboldt Bay Offshore Wind Heavy Lift Multipurpose Marine Terminal Project, the port development is a crucial step to bring plans to build a first-of-its kind wind farm off the Pacific Coast to fruition. It would also position Humboldt's as the only port on the West Coast built to manufacture and repair the turbines — a potential economic boon for the area as the industry enters a period of unprecedented growth.

In an effort to address the climate crisis, the Biden administration issued an executive order about a year ago requiring 30 gigawatts of energy to be produced by offshore winds by 2030. That's enough to power approximately 15 million homes, or just about all the housing units in California.

"The government has said, 'Within the next seven years, we're going to deploy 60 coal-fired power plants' worth of wind,'" Harbor District Development Director Rob Holmlund said at a recent public meeting initiating the environmental review process for the port project. "That is a really ambitious goal ... it's nearly double what the world currently has."

To achieve this, the federal government has leased out numerous areas on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts in locations where the wind is the strongest.

While wind turbines are already common off the Atlantic Coast, where the ocean water is relatively shallow, the Pacific Coast poses unique challenges. Because the continental shelf drops steeply off only a few miles from the shoreline, wind farms off the Pacific Coast require a different design. While the East Coast's shallow waters allow for turbines to be built directly up from the sea floor, wind farms on the Pacific Ocean must float atop the water on barges tethered to the ocean's floor. It's a relatively new technology only being used at a handful of wind farms in the world on a small scale, and even those are different from what's being proposed off Humboldt's shore. (For example, the world's deepest offshore wind farm is currently in Norway at a depth of 721 feet, according to CalMatters, while Humboldt's farm would be located in waters approximately 2,500 feet deep.)

Pacific Coast wind turbines must be incredibly large. The platforms that will support the turbines alone are each the size of the Arcata Plaza, comprised of three separate pontoons. Atop each platform will stand a 500-foot tower, the top of which will be attached to three 500-foot rotating blades. The entire length of the completed turbine extends about 1,100 feet straight up from the surface of the water. (For reference, the smokestack at the old pulp mill on the Samoa Peninsula stands about 300 feet tall.)

By Jacob Whiton and Greg LeRoy - Good Jobs First, July 2023

Under a provision of the Inflation Reduction Act, some factories making batteries for electric vehicles will each receive more than a billion dollars per year from the U.S. government, with no requirement to pay good wages to production workers. Thanks to the Advanced Manufacturing Production Credit, also called 45X for its section in the Internal Revenue Code, battery companies will receive tax credits that they can use, sell, or cash out.

The 45X program alone will cost taxpayers over $200 billion in the next decade, far more than the $31 billion estimated by Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation. On top of 45X and other federal incentives, factories manufacturing electric vehicles and batteries have also been promised well over $13 billion in state and local economic development incentives in just the past 18 months.

What do local communities get from companies in exchange for public money? The Biden administration says the IRA will create “good-paying union jobs,” but the federal tax credit has no job quality requirements for permanent jobs and doesn’t mandate companies pay market-based wages or benefits.

Good Jobs First did the math for five recently announced battery factories. Here’s what we learned:

• Total subsidies will range from $2 million to $7 million per job.

• Average annual wages, as announced, will be below the current national average for production workers in the automotive sector.

• The 45X credit alone is large enough to cover each facility’s initial capital investment cost and wage bill for the first several years of production.

Download a copy of this publication here (PDF).

By Nikki Skuce - Northern Confluence, June 29, 2023

A new report “Critical Minerals: A Critical Look” seeks to expand the conversation around “critical minerals,” to ensure reducing consumption and incorporating other alternatives into an energy transition – like recycling and re-mining – are taken into consideration. 

While the federal government has already launched its Critical Minerals strategy, the Province of British Colombia has put forward $6 million in its budget toward developing one.

As B.C. moves forward with its “critical minerals” strategy, it needs to look beyond mining and toward other opportunities. What policies and programs are needed to support re-mining, recycling and urban mining? Can re-mining help to reclaim or close some of the abandoned and orphaned legacy mine sites littered throughout the province? How can B.C.’s strategy look at reducing consumption and link to its circular economy strategy? What investments does B.C. need to keep making in transportation alternatives, such as the recently announced e-bike rebate and investments in active transportation? How can B.C. work with the federal government on ensuring batteries and other technologies are designed with dismantling and recycling in mind? 

And for new mines that may open, how are Indigenous rights being respected and free, prior and informed consent achieved in the pursuit of mining critical minerals? What steps are being taken to improve B.C.’s reg­ulatory regime to ensure more responsible mining that minimizes environmental harms and risks?

We can’t just mine our way out of the climate crisis. As “critical minerals” gets lodged into our collective psyche, we need to ensure that policymakers do not just focus on the need for more mines. We hope that this report provides some facts and background information, and stimulates a broader conversation about what is needed for the energy transition.

Download a copy of this publication here (PDF).

By Ariel Pinchot, et. al. - Blue Green Alliance, June 2023

As one of the most important metals for modern life, aluminum is all around us. From our bridges and high-rise buildings to our smartphones and kitchen appliances, this highly durable, lightweight, and conductive material is essential. It’s also a key ingredient for achieving our climate, jobs, and national security goals. As a primary component of solar panels, power lines, electric vehicles (EVs), and other clean technologies, aluminum is a building block of our clean energy solutions. At the same time, producing aluminum requires a tremendous amount of energy, and globally, the sector is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. As the world produces increasing amounts of this material for the clean energy economy, we must simultaneously decrease the emissions from its production in order to achieve global climate targets.

In the United States, our growing need for aluminum already far surpasses the dwindling output from our domestic primary production. As a result, much of the aluminum we use comes from abroad, including from countries where aluminum production is much more emissions-intensive. Increasing our aluminum procurements from highly-polluting overseas producers will only push our climate justice goals further out of reach. What we need to advance these goals is a secure, domestically produced supply of clean aluminum made with high-road labor standards.

Revitalizing clean aluminum manufacturing in the U.S. will not only cut a major source of climate pollution, reduce worker and fenceline community exposure to airborne pollutants, and secure a reliable supply of an essential material for clean energy—it will also create good jobs for hard-hit workers and communities, while supporting the current workforce and retaining existing jobs. This report lays out a set of targeted recommendations for getting there. After assessing the state of the domestic industry, we outline the employment, climate, and community benefits of revitalizing clean aluminum manufacturing and present a set of policy solutions that can help create and sustain a strong, clean aluminum industry.

Download a copy of this publication here (PDF).

By Dan DiMaggio - Labor Notes, May 18, 2023

Contracts covering 150,000 auto workers at the Big 3 will expire on September 14, and the new leadership of the United Auto Workers is taking a more aggressive stance than in years past.

“We’re going to launch our biggest contract campaign ever in our history,” UAW President Shawn Fain told members in a Facebook live video.

Fain took office in March after winning the union’s first one member, one vote election. Running on the slogan, “No Corruption, No Concessions, No Tiers,” he and the Members United slate swept all the positions they ran for, giving reformers a majority on the international executive board.

While the union has vowed to take on tiered wages and benefits, job security, and plant closures, the transition to electric vehicles (EV) looms especially large.

Since President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act last August, companies have announced $120 billion in investments in domestic EV and battery manufacturing. The Act includes big tax credits and incentives for clean energy and EVs.

Ford alone is investing $11 billion in a new EV assembly plant and battery factories in Tennessee and Kentucky. The Biden administration wants EVs to make up half of all new vehicles sold by 2030.

By Luis Neuner, Jennifer Kalt, Caroline Griffith, and Colin Fiske - Lost Coast Outpost (reposted at Wild California), May 10, 2023

Humboldt Bay Offshore Wind & Heavy Lift Multipurpose Marine Terminal Conceptual Master Plan. Image from Humboldt Bay Harbor Resource & Conservation District.

Humboldt County’s proposed offshore wind project would significantly reduce carbon emissions throughout California by providing upwards of 1.6 gigawatts of clean, renewable-sourced energy. But to ensure the success of offshore wind and to meet the promise of climate action, decision-makers must commit to a green port facility capable of building and servicing the turbines while not further contributing to greenhouse gas emissions or polluting Humboldt Bay.

A key component of a thriving offshore wind industry is a port capable of constructing, assembling, and maintaining wind turbines. The Humboldt Bay Harbor District has partnered with Crowley Wind Services, a multinational port development company, to build this heavy lift terminal on the Samoa Peninsula. There are various potential benefits: port development could create many family-wage jobs and substantially contribute to a growing local economy—all while making important strides towards a clean-energy future to address the climate crisis.

Unfortunately, these types of heavy-lift terminals have a mixed track record for communities. On land, port equipment such as terminal tractors, forklifts, yard trucks, cranes, and handlers commonly run on diesel. In the water, most heavy-duty cargo ships and tugboats also run on diesel or heavy fuel oil, polluting the air. Ships and tugs even burn fuel while docked at the terminal to maintain a base load of electricity. As a result, communities surrounding these ports often suffer from the effects of air pollution. In Los Angeles, for example, air quality studies revealed that these diesel fumes significantly raised cancer risk for people within fifteen miles of the terminals.

Our port doesn’t have to be this way. Recent technological developments have made major progress towards enabling the possibility of a ‘green port.’ Green ports seek to make all aspects of operation sustainable, from the heavy machinery on land to the ships docked at the harbor. This work requires moving away from fossil fuels and shifting towards electrification and other zero-carbon energy sources, such as green hydrogen.

By Maristella Svampa, Thea Riofrancos, and Ashley Dawson - Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, April 25, 2023

By Amy Westervelt - The Intercept, May 8, 2023

In 2019, Thea Riofrancos was splitting her time between researching the social and environmental impacts of lithium mining in Chile and organizing for a rapid energy transition away from fossil fuels in the United States. A political science professor at Providence College and member of the Climate and Community Project, Riofrancos was struck by the contrast: Lithium is essential to the batteries that make electric vehicles and renewable energy work, but mining inflicts its own environmental damage. “Here I am in Chile, in the Atacama Desert, seeing these mining-related harms, and then there I go in the U.S. advocating for a rapid transition. How do I align these two goals?” Riofrancos said. “And is there a way to have a less extractive energy transition?”

When she went looking for research that would help answer that question, she found none, at least not for the transportation sector, which was her area of focus. “I saw forecast after forecast that assumed basically a binary of the future,” she said. “Either we stay with the fossil fuel status quo and the existential crisis that that is causing for the planet and all of its people. Or we transition to an electrified, renewably powered future, but that doesn’t really change anything about how these sectors or economic activities are organized.”

Riofrancos wanted to look at multiple ways to design an electrified future and understand what the costs and impacts of different scenarios might be. So she linked up with other Climate and Community Project researchers and put together a report mapping out four potential pathways to electrification for the transportation sector. Titled “Achieving Zero Emissions With More Mobility and Less Mining,” the report concluded that even relatively small, easy-to-achieve shifts like reducing the size of cars and their batteries could deliver big returns: a 42 percent reduction in the amount of lithium needed in the U.S., even if the number of cars on the road and the frequency with which people drive stayed the same.

It’s the sort of thing politicians and electrification advocates need to think through now, when decisions can be made to guide the energy transition in one direction or another. It’s also critical to an underdiscussed component of climate action: demand for products and services and the role energy plays in fulfilling those demands. Which connects right up to another topic that American politicians don’t want to touch with a 10-foot pole: consumption.

By Union Jake, Adam Keller, and Lee Harris - Valley Labor Report, April 25, 2023

By Alyssa Battistoni and Thea Riofrancos - Dissent, Spring 2023

Can we rapidly reduce carbon emissions while minimizing the damage caused by resource extraction?

After years of outright climate denial and political intransigence, the development of renewable energy is finally underway. When it comes to transportation—the number one source of U.S. carbon emissions—the strategy for decarbonization has focused heavily on replacing gas-powered cars with rechargeable electric vehicles. The Inflation Reduction Act offers billions of dollars of subsidies for both producers and consumers of EVs, including a $7,500 tax credit for buying new EVs made in the United States. The infrastructure bill passed in late 2021 included $5 billion to help states build a network of EV recharging stations. New York and California have announced bans on the sale of vehicles with internal combustion engines beginning in 2035. Half of this year’s Superbowl car ads touted electric vehicles. By 2030, it is estimated that electric vehicles will make up half of U.S. car sales.

For our reliance on privatized transportation to remain the same, everything else will have to change. We’re already seeing concerns about shortages of “critical minerals” necessary for batteries and other renewable technologies. Based on current consumption patterns, for example, U.S. demand for the lithium used in batteries would require three times the existing global supply—which comes primarily from Australia, Latin America, and China—by 2050. In anticipation of booming demand, a flurry of new mining operations has begun around the world—and so have protests by those worried that mines will disturb ecosystems, contaminate water supplies, generate toxic waste, and disrupt local livelihoods.

What does the current trajectory of the “green energy transition” mean for global environmental justice? What other options are there? Is it possible to rapidly reduce carbon emissions while also minimizing extraction and maintaining—or even increasing—people’s ability to move freely and safely?

A new report from the think tank Climate and Community Project presents the data behind different visions of the green future. A scenario in which the United States reduces car dependency by improving public transit options, density, and walkability could see a 66 percent decrease in lithium demand compared to a business-as-usual model. Even just reducing the size of U.S. vehicles and batteries could potentially reduce lithium use by as much as 42 percent in 2050. In other words, the choices Americans make about domestic transportation, housing, and development matter worldwide. In this interview, the report’s lead author, political scientist Thea Riofrancos, explains the implications of its findings for climate and environmental politics in the United States and around the planet.