In Mexico, private cash races to plug nearshoring energy crunch


Isabel Woodford
Wed, July 26, 2023 



Sign with companies' names is pictured inside the Santa Fe Industrial Park in Silao

By Isabel Woodford

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - For Mexican industrial park owners like Sergio Bermudez, business is booming amid a wave of U.S businesses setting up over the border.

So-called nearshoring has pulled over $9 billion into Mexico since last October by manufacturers like Unilever , Barbie maker Mattel , and Tesla , lured by its proximity to the giant U.S market, cheap labor, and geopolitical stability.

Yet Bermudez and many of his 400-strong cohort have a serious cost issue on their hands: energy.

Industrial parks are under pressure to spend millions of dollars to build federal power transmission lines and substations amid government underinvestment, growing energy demand, and aging infrastructure which is at capacity.

While these parks have long contributed to state infrastructure, the lines and specifications now required are getting much longer and costlier in Mexico's manufacturing north, according to nearly a dozen sources.

"Federal funds can't keep up with the growth we're seeing… so the developers or companies have to absorb the cost," said Eduardo Martinez, an official for the state of Nuevo Leon, pointing to austerity and the unpredicted nearshoring boom.

Sergio Arguelles, president of the Mexican Association of Private Industrial Parks (AMPIP), said parks' investment in state energy assets today is unprecedented. The group is yet to calculate exact amounts, but said it is "very significant."

The lure of new clients for parks is strong, but it is still a bitter pill: with regulation restricting private ownership, park owners essentially donate the infrastructure to the state.

"It's the biggest challenge...We are thinking about how are we going to reach an agreement with the government to manage this for the good of the country," said Aaron Gallo, the real estate director at American Industries, whose multiple Mexican industrial parks cater to foreign clients like Danish toymaker Lego.

American Industries is currently building a $12 million 12-kilometer (7.5-mile) line. Gallo said such investments mean they have as much as tripled energy costs for clients in recent years, complicated by lengthy permit processes.

"It's very bureaucratic, it does slow us down," said Gallo. "But there’s no other option."


The issue underscores the holes in President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's attempt to concentrate power in the state energy utility company, CFE, which critics say is unfit to support Mexico's major growth opportunity.

Though private sector assistance may help bolster Mexico's energy security in the short term, much more is needed accommodate the wave of new demand, said David Gantz, a fellow on U.S -Mexico trade at the Baker Institute.

"Mexico would be very well positioned to take advantage of nearshoring if it didn't have such an energy problem," he said.

CFE did not respond to a request for comment.

THE SHRINKING STATE

Mexico's approach to its groaning electricity grid is in contrast to its fast-growing peers, which tend to either incentivize private energy contractors or have state utility companies with deep pockets.

Last year, CFE investment slid to 35.3 billion pesos ($2 billion), or 0.15% of GDP, a fraction of manufacturing rival China's planned investment in the grid of 0.9% of GDP, per Reuters analysis.

Meanwhile, CFE built just under 150 km of transmission lines last year, more than 10 times less per 100,000 square km than in Brazil, where Electrobras said it added 8,679 km to the network.

"We needed a lot more," said AMPIP's Arguelles, noting the bulk of CFE's budget has gone to power generation rather than distribution and transmission infrastructure.

Lopez Obrador has pressed hard to tighten state control of the energy sector, arguing that past governments rigged the market in the favor of private companies.

Yet with billions dedicated to the heavily indebted state-oil company Pemex, industry observers say Mexico lacks the funds to support upgrades to the electricity network.

"The CFE had a very different vision and budget before," said Bermudez, whose family has been in the "maquiladora" or remote manufacturing business for decades. "It used to be much easier."

Indeed, 91% of parks report issues related to energy supply, according to a recent AMPIP survey, including line congestion and being forced to turn away new clients.

Meanwhile, Ramses Pech, CEO of energy consultancy firm Group Caraiva estimated 80% of infrastructure built in industrial areas is now privately funded.

Still, there is some hope for the new wave of 47 planned industrial parks. The energy ministry said it plans to build around 3,000 km of transmission lines next year, as well as new substations, particularly in the north.

FOOTING THE BILL

Some argue that it is only right that the private sector pay its own way, especially given Mexico's relatively low corporation tax, and parks' healthy return on investment.

Hans Joachim Kohlsdorf, an electricity wholesale executive in Mexico, argues that park owners often do not think strategically when setting up remote manufacturing hubs, and understands why the government is reticent to pay.

"There needs to be better planning," he said. "We're in a Catch 22: (the parks) want everything free, and the other party doesn't want to pay."

Zonia Torres, a commercial director of an industrial park in the state of Guanajuato, which has paid for federal infrastructure, agrees.

"The CFE doesn't want to bet on future (energy) demand," she said, adding that Mexico is still "an emerging market" with limited resources.

Yet critics say Mexico's push for state control over energy distribution while also neglecting it is self-sabotage.

"The network provider should be capable of building the infrastructure...The public policy does not take into account the reality, and the level of (foreign) demand." said Alfredo Nolasco, founding partner of nearshoring consultancy Spyral.

"The lack of foresight is likely to be disastrous."

(Reporting by Isabel Woodford; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

Is the biggest US public utility finally catching up on clean energy?




Julian Spector
Wed, July 26, 2023 

LONG READ


CHATTANOOGA, Tennessee — The Tennessee Valley Authority is the biggest and most important public utility in the country. It also, historically, has resisted a rapid shift away from fossil fuels.

President Franklin Roosevelt created TVA as part of the New Deal to deliver the rural electrification that for-profit companies neglected to provide, and it has operated as an independent wing of the federal government for 90 years since.

The utility now generates power for 10 million people across seven states in the Southeast. But unlike most utilities, it answers to neither state regulators nor Wall Street shareholders: The president of the United States holds the power to appoint (with confirmation by the Senate) or fire its nine board members. TVA’s mandate is not to turn a quarterly profit for shareholders, but to serve the public good and use leftover proceeds to develop the regional economy.

Today, TVA’s electricity mix is more than 50 percent carbon-free — markedly cleaner than the U.S. as a whole, which still burns fossils for 60 percent of its power.

But that’s not because the utility embraced the rising tide of modern clean energy. The vast majority of TVA’s carbon-free energy comes from rivers it dammed and nuclear plants it built in the middle of the 20th century. Meanwhile, it gets just 3 percent of its electricity from wind and solar, even as those energy sources are surging onto the grid nationwide. TVA has no large-scale lithium-ion battery plants, and it recently cut back on rooftop solar incentives while adding fees for customers.

“Right now, they’re missing the mark, but there’s so much potential for them to become that leader and become the pioneer that they were established to be,” said Gabriela Sarri-Tobar, the Center for Biological Diversity’s lead energy justice campaigner for TVA territory.

On a recent journey through Tennessee, I found signs that TVA is working to realize that potential at last. Much of the progress still exists only on paper, but the organization is taking action now to build clean energy at a scale that few utilities can match.

In May 2021, TVA’s board set the aspirational goal of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. Last year, the organization requested proposals for a gargantuan 5 gigawatts of “carbon-free” energy, to be operational before 2029. That request brought in 14 gigawatts’ worth of proposals, according to the utility’s vice president for origination and renewables, Chris Hansen, and it may well constitute the largest single instance of a U.S. utility buying clean power.

Meanwhile, TVA’s planners are taking advantage of the public-sector utility’s insulation from market short-termism to explore capital-intensive projects that are near impossible for private developers to build at the same scale. Engineers are pursuing decade-long bets on new pumped-hydro storage and small nuclear reactors. If these long shots ever come to fruition, they could provide the kind of firm, carbon-free power that researchers say is necessary to run a cost-effective and reliable grid without fossil fuels.

This new sprint toward renewable energy is a major shift from the utility’s trajectory just a few years ago, when new wind and solar played only a marginal role in its energy mix. But as encouraging as the pivot might be to clean-energy advocates, many worry about TVA’s pace of decarbonization, given its insistence on adding more fossil fuel plants to the mix.

“Is TVA aggressively going for renewables? 100 percent,” said Gil Hough, executive director of TenneSEIA, the felicitously named state solar trade group, in an interview with Canary Media. “Are they aggressively going after natural gas and small modular reactors? 100 percent.”

Some say the Biden administration, which has called for a “whole of government” approach to climate change, ought to apply more pressure to the utility’s clean energy plans. After all, President Biden set a national goal to remove all fossil fuels from the grid by 2035, while TVA — the massive utility that ultimately answers to him — has instead hewed to the utility industry norm of seeking net-zero emissions by far-off 2050.

But mainstream ambitions were never the metric for TVA, an organization created to achieve something the conventional utilities weren’t doing. Its New Deal–era mandate gives it the unique potential to lead on decarbonization, not to follow investor-owned utilities that have to chase profit above all else. Now it’s up to TVA’s board to decide whether they fully seize that potential — and up to Biden to decide how far he wants to push them.

TVA embraces solar to attract corporate customers

Beyond a newly constructed industrial park in Shelbyville, Tennessee, off the two-lane blacktop to a dirt road, is a sight that will soon become more common in the Tennessee Valley: row upon row of blue solar panels, tracking the arc of the piercing Southern sun. TVA facilitated this 35-megawatt utility-scale project, developed by homegrown solar company Silicon Ranch roughly 50 miles southeast of Nashville.

TVA customers as a whole aren't receiving the power; instead, one big, important customer gets it: Vanderbilt University. The Shelbyville site will offset 70% of the university’s carbon emissions from electricity consumption. It constitutes the largest project yet serving TVA’s efforts to supply big institutional customers with the clean power they desire.

TVA had 993 megawatts of utility-scale solar operating in its footprint as of June 30, meaning its entire seven-state territory has installed about 22% less solar capacity than Connecticut. That’s a decidedly unremarkable fleet for a major utility in the era when solar leads new power plant construction in America. (TVA’s 1,242 megawatts of contracted wind capacity comes almost entirely from outside its territory.) But now TVA expects to add 10 gigawatts of solar by 2035, a buildout that starts with deals like Shelbyville.

After the ceremonial flipping of the switch for the Silicon Ranch–Vanderbilt solar project one April morning, Hansen told me that TVA warmed up to new renewable power because large corporate customers were clamoring for it.

“Around 2017–18, we saw the next phase of our economic development was really focused on the technology companies bringing their data centers to the valley,” Hansen said. “And they came and said, ‘Hey, we're not going to build here unless we have a path to 100% renewables.’”

Since that revelation, TVA has solicited several rounds of large-scale proposals for clean energy projects. It signed contracts for another 2.2 gigawatts of new solar that is under construction between now and 2028. The forthcoming deals from the 5-gigawatt solicitation will get the utility most of the way to its 10-gigawatt goal, well ahead of 2035.

“Historically, TVA was a slow and steady [solar] market, but now I’d call them one of the most aggressive, at least in the Southeast,” said Hough, whose job is to advocate on behalf of Tennessee’s solar industry.

Now, if Google, Meta or a new electric vehicle factory (like Ford’s enormous Blue Oval City outside Memphis, which TVA is supporting) want to buy a bunch of cheap, clean energy, TVA arranges it for them via its “Green Invest” label; Vanderbilt was the first customer to sign a contract through that program. It’s a two-for-one win for a public utility charged with both providing electricity and developing the regional economy.

Small-scale solar still stymied

After the speeches and acknowledgments praising the Shelbyville project, multiple attendees pulled me aside and darkly whispered that I should dig deeper into rooftop solar. This was something Hough had warned me about, after praising TVA’s progress on big solar: “It's the small, distributed stuff that we’re still hurting in,” he said.

TVA used to offer incentives for customers to install solar locally, but it ended the Green Power Providers program in 2019. As TVA’s Hansen tells it, the incentives helped install more than 3,000 rooftop systems since the early 2010s, but “it just became a really expensive program.” TVA’s website describes it more imperiously: “The market no longer needs these incentives.”

Now, though, TVA customers cannot access net metering, the bedrock solar policy that pays residential solar owners for excess rooftop production they send to the grid. This makes TVA territory an outlier nationally: Nearly everywhere else offers net metering, per a recent tally by Solar.com. In 2018, TVA updated its rate design to add grid-access charges that further cut into the potential savings from adding solar.

The result is that TVA made it more difficult for ordinary households to access clean energy and bill savings by putting solar on their roof, while enthusiastically and explicitly delivering these benefits to the Googles and Metas of the world in order to attract them to the region. That discrepancy amounts to a “massive energy injustice,” Sarri-Tobar declared.

“It leaves this massive gap for actual residential customers who can’t access renewable energy as easily,” she said. It’s not just rooftop solar that’s held back: TVA “needs to be doing a whole lot more” for energy efficiency, distributed energy, microgrids and demand response, according to Sarri-Tobar.

The Center for Biological Diversity recently published a study on how a rapid shift to clean energy and a distributed-energy-focused scenario might work in TVA territory. It concluded that the latter strategy, which includes the deployment of 6.3 gigawatts of distributed solar by 2050, would reduce the cost of decarbonization compared to the scenario that banks on large-scale clean power plants. If saving money for customers overall was TVA’s justification for axing rooftop solar incentives, there’s now an argument to be made that distributed energy delivers more savings in the long run.

As it stands now, communities have a better shot than individuals at accessing the benefits of solar, thanks to a program called “Generation Flexibility” that TVA formalized in 2020. TVA doesn’t sell electricity directly to customers — it sells to 153 local power companies, the municipal and cooperative utilities which then retail to local residents and businesses. At the Shelbyville plant, for instance, Silicon Ranch exports power to TVA’s grid, which TVA passes along to Nashville Electric Service, which allocates it to Vanderbilt’s power bills.

Under Generation Flexibility, local power companies may self-generate up to 5% of their annual needs. They can typically build solar at cheaper costs than TVA power, Hough said, so this puts downward pressure on costs for customers while easing the strain on TVA to keep pace with quickly growing regional electricity demand.

A year and a half into the program, a few companies are coming close to this threshold, like BrightRidge in Johnson City, Tennessee. If everyone seems to benefit from this affordable, clean, local generation, one might well wonder why TVA only allows it to make up only 5% of a community’s annual consumption; Sarri-Tobar called the limit “arbitrary.”

Hansen, TVA’s renewables leader, told Canary Media that Generation Flexibility is a “first step” toward encouraging distributed energy across the valley. He held out the possibility that the cap could rise: “Where we go from there — there's a lot that could still be implemented,” he said.

TVA’s long-shot bets for a low-carbon future

While TVA bolsters its (large-scale) renewables fleet, it’s winding up for two big swings to deliver dependable, carbon-free power in the long run: new pumped-hydro storage and novel modular nuclear reactors. Both endeavors build on decades of previous experience at the utility. Neither is guaranteed to succeed, but they represent the kind of long-term thinking that TVA is uniquely designed to do.

With its solar capacity rising like a rocket, TVA will need to expand its grid storage capabilities. Utilities elsewhere have turned to large-scale lithium-ion batteries for that task. TVA has none, so far — but it wields something far more powerful.

Another 100 miles southeast of Shelbyville, Chattanooga straddles an S-curve of the Tennessee River, downstream from TVA’s Chickamauga Dam. To the south, flat-topped Lookout Mountain looms above town, the site of a decisive Union victory that cleared the way for the campaign that ended the Civil War. To the west, Raccoon Mountain rises nearly 1,800 feet tall, crowned with a shimmering lake and partially hollow on the inside.

TVA constructed an epic water battery inside Raccoon Mountain in the early 1970s to store excess power from the utility’s nuclear fleet, said Scottie Barrentine, project manager for TVA’s Pumped Storage Hydro Initiative. Instead of scrambling to turn down reactors when the region didn’t need all their power, TVA used excess electricity to pump water 1,000 feet up to the newly dug reservoir on top of Raccoon Mountain. When that power was needed once again, operators let it out through hydropower turbines, unleashing a deluge of electrons onto the grid.

Now the mountain acts as an “enabler” of new clean energy technologies, helping TVA’s grid absorb the ups and downs of increasing renewable generation, Barrentine said. Indeed, Raccoon Mountain positively swaggers in the Greek pantheon of grid storage: After a recent upgrade, it can surge 1,680 megawatts onto the grid for up to 22 hours straight. That astonishing capability outclasses any lithium battery plant in the world, as does its five-decades-and-counting lifespan. And in contrast to the forgettable aesthetics of battery plants with their rows of off-white shipping containers, Raccoon Mountain welcomes hikers and picnickers to the lip of its elevated lake to savor water-colored sunsets over forest-green slopes.

The mind-boggling scale of this 1970s-era technology puts TVA in a funny position: It lags behind just about any large utility in its adoption of advanced battery technology, but even so, it stands better prepared than most to absorb the ebbs and flows of renewable generation. And instead of simply chasing the contemporary grid battery trend, TVA planners are investigating new pumped-hydro construction that would build on their legacy expertise.

“We’ve not been this deep into a study of pumped storage since the 1970s and ‘80s,” Barrentine said. His team is exploring two sites in northeastern Alabama and a potential expansion of capacity at Raccoon Mountain by adding new turbines. The utility is conducting field investigations, geologic studies and an environmental impact study to comply with National Environmental Policy Act permitting requirements.

But Barrentine cautioned that a new pumped-hydro plant can take a decade or more to complete.

That’s true even though TVA is exempt from the market forces that have made pumped hydro all but impossible to build in most parts of the U.S. Monopoly utilities created most existing pumped hydro before the power sector deregulation of the late-20th century, back when they planned over the timescale of decades on behalf of their captive customer populations. Private investors seeking a short-term return in the marketplace have never pulled off a pumped-hydro project in the U.S. But TVA, untouched by time, operates the same way now as it did way back when it engineered Raccoon Mountain.

Similarly, TVA has operated light-water nuclear reactors for decades and pulled off the country’s first new reactor completion of the 21st century at its Watts Bar site in 2015. Now TVA wants to build on that expertise by co-developing a brand-new, nimbler reactor with industrial heavyweight GE.

TVA partnered with GE to help develop the forthcoming BWRX-300, a 300-megawatt light-water reactor — basically a smaller, mass-produced version of the standard technology that powers existing nuclear plants around the world. This design uses conventional nuclear fuel, unlike most newfangled “advanced” reactors. TVA is supporting the reactor’s development with $200 million that its board earmarked for research into new nuclear tools, and it will work with GE to tailor the product design based on TVA’s experience operating plants.

It’s an unusual arrangement, to be sure: a public utility investing in a private product that will be sold by a private company. But TVA deemed this to be the best shot at getting its hands on the kind of new nuclear reactor it actually wants to build.

If approved, the first reactor would be built at Clinch River, a site initially designed to host a breeder reactor in the 1980s. That plan got canceled, but TVA already has an early site permit approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for adding small modular reactors there.

Crucially, TVA has no obligation to buy one of the small reactors forthcoming from GE until the design meets the utility’s cost-effectiveness tests (and pins down the necessary regulatory approvals).

“The numbers we have right now suggest this plant can be competitive” in a net-zero grid, Greg Boerschig, vice president of the Clinch River Project, said. But TVA has “an off-ramp at every gate”; if it comes time to send the board a specific nuclear project proposal and the numbers don’t make sense, TVA can walk away. Nobody wants to project-manage the next Vogtle, the over-budget, fantastically delayed Georgia project that likely portends the end of large-scale nuclear construction in the U.S.

If the GE product does work, TVA could add new carbon-free nuclear for dispatchable, on-demand power — the role currently served by fossil gas. The smaller reactors could operate more flexibly with the patterns of renewable generation than big old reactors.

TVA CEO Jeff Lyash said last fall that he’s not interested in just buying one small nuclear reactor; if it works, he’d want to install 20 or more.

“This is a perfect sweet spot for a public power entity to take on some of that risk, to try to really get a technology that we need off the ground,” Matt Huber, a professor of geography at Syracuse University, said of TVA’s small modular reactor program. “They have the resources and the social mission to do that, where private capital wouldn't.”
Will Biden let TVA lock in new fossil fuel construction?

TVA has come a long way on its climate strategy in the last five years. Now it’s chasing large-format renewables on a scale seemingly unparalleled among U.S. utilities and encouraging local communities to install their own solar, albeit while making it tougher for individual households to do the same. The public utility is also using its freedom from short-term market pressures to methodically pursue expensive, long-lead-time projects that could yield carbon-free power on demand — if they ever pan out.

So what’s left to do?

The obvious place for TVA to start is the gap between its decarbonization timeline and Biden's more ambitious 2035 clean grid target.

Hardly any power company has sped up its decarbonization timeline in response to that White House goal, even though various studies suggest it’s both feasible and economical. Michigan lawmakers are debating whether to adopt that target for the state’s power sector, but they would be the first state to legislatively phase out fossil fuel power by then.

Unlike the rest of the utility industry, however, TVA answers to a board of directors that’s mostly handpicked by Biden. If the major utility under presidential control won’t heed those clean power goals, it's hard to imagine why anyone else would. When asked why TVA doesn’t subscribe to the president’s timeline, a TVA spokesperson told Canary Media in an email that “TVA is aligned with the Biden administration, as well as other stakeholders, in that reducing carbon emissions across the economy must be a shared priority.”

Curiously, Biden hasn’t said much about TVA’s deviation from his target, at least in public. Back in January 2021, when the White House first declared its “whole of government” response to climate change, the clarion call neglected to even mention the federal agency that generates and transmits electricity to 10 million people in the Southeast.

“Biden doesn't seem to want to center TVA in the climate stuff he's doing,” Huber observed. “He's now going all around the country to trumpet all this infrastructure stuff, but I don't think he's talking much about TVA.”

Canary Media reached out to the White House to clarify how TVA fits into its climate strategy but did not receive a response. This radio silence is a far cry from the most ambitious left-wing proposals for wielding the TVA, such as the People’s Policy Project’s 2020 concept to unleash the public utility to build clean energy across the U.S.

Sarri-Tobar, the energy justice campaigner, said it’s time for Biden to “bring TVA into this ‘whole of government’ approach to tackle the climate crisis and achieve a just energy future.”

Though it will turn off its remaining coal plants in the next decade, TVA plans to fill the gap by building more natural-gas plants; that fossil fuel burns cleaner than coal but still imposes severe warming impacts, especially when it leaks along the supply chain. TVA is building 3,450 megawatts of new fossil gas plants in just the next three years, and more beyond that to replace its outgoing coal capacity.

Biden’s board appointees will vote later this year on whether to replace the outgoing Kingston coal plant with a new fossil gas plant and 122-mile pipeline, or with a portfolio of solar and storage plants instead. And those leaders will steer and vote on the next integrated resource plan, the document that guides new power plant development to meet future needs. Discussion kicked off at the May board meeting and will continue through next year until a final decision.

Changing 10,000-employee bureaucracies takes time, especially when they shoulder the responsibility of keeping the lights on. The hope, for climate hawks, would be that TVA leadership reassesses whether it needs all the gas turbines it currently views as necessary, in light of rapidly emerging clean technologies and the swath of new incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act. Around the country, utilities have warily resisted clean energy, until they tried it and liked it and then sought out more than they had ever expected to.

Whether or not TVA succeeds in its clean energy aspirations matters to more than the 10 million customers who could enjoy cleaner air and more stable power prices. Observers like Huber argue that the big public power model is necessary to decarbonize society at the urgent pace justified by the planetary crisis we face.

“When you talk about what we need to do with climate change and the scale of it and the speed of it, the private sector’s doing some good things, but it's very clear we're not going fast enough,” Huber told Canary Media. “We need much more coordination, not just throwing out a bunch of market incentives and hoping that the market will magically get us to the destination.”

If public power truly can lead the way on economywide decarbonization, TVA is the largest and best-equipped practitioner to prove it.

GOLAN HEIGHTS

Are wind farms low-key harming people's health?

Zayna Syed

Wed, July 26, 2023 

Wind turbines operate in a wind farm in the Israel-annexed Golan Heights on the the border with Syria. A new wind project has spurred protests among native farmers in the area.

Scientists agree that harnessing energy from renewable sources to power our lights, ACs, phones, stoves, and cars will be necessary to slow global warming. But wind farms across the world have increasingly been subject to protest by communities whose land they’ve encroached on. People in small towns across the US have raised concerns at zoning meetings about health issues and depressed property values. An Indigenous group in Norway says a wind farm will affect their ability to herd reindeer, a concern supported by climate activist Greta Thunberg.

One of the most common concerns raised by protestors worldwide is how these turbines will affect their health. People say wind projects near their homes, different from the off-shore wind farms at sea, have caused a range of harmful effects on their bodies, including migraines, chronic pain, increased blood pressure, and difficulty sleeping.

When wind turbines are properly regulated, these problems don’t quite reach the point of a public health concern, says Chris Ollson, an environmental health consultant in Canada who has worked for on minimizing fallout from wind projects for more than a decade. He points to more than a hundred studies that measure the impacts of wind turbines on sleep and other biological responses.

When wind turbines are properly regulated, problems don’t quite reach the point of a public health concern.

Chris Ollson, environmental health consultant

But regulations don’t always consider important local context. Take the Golan Heights for example, where one of the world’s more contentious wind projects led thousands of Druze farmers to protest in the streets in June. The Golan has been occupied by Israel since 1967 and was annexed in 1981, although international law and every country except the US recognizes it as Syrian land. The state’s relations with the Druze community, most of whom consider themselves Syrian, have been tense—Israeli police responded to the recent demonstrations with force, using teargas, water cannons, and rubber-coated metal bullets.

The chief concern of the protestors is how the wind farm, proposed by the multinational company Energix, would further entrench Israeli occupation over the Golan. But another main concern is how the turbines will affect their health. In the region, regulations must consider context and the circumstances in which the new site would be built, Druze leaders say.

Noise pollution and shadow flicker

The two primary health concerns with wind farms include the level of noise they emit and the flickering lights they create, called “shadow flicker,” Ollson says. Disruptions are created when the three-pronged turbines spin, emulating a slow, giant fan. Typically, governments don’t allow wind farms to send more than 50 decibels of sound to nearby houses, which is about as loud as the hum from a household refrigerator.

The noise pollution could prevent those living nearby from sleeping properly. When people can’t rest well for a prolonged period of time, it can reduce their quality of life. They might feel both tired and sick, which could lead to trouble eating and exercising, among other problems, Ollson explains. However, research shows that turbines that hum at less than 45 to 50 decibels don’t have any statistical effect on sleep quality, he adds.

Ollson points to one 2016 study from Canada that he says is considered the gold standard around the world. The government studied the sleep quality of 720 people who lived between 820 feet to about 7 miles away from a wind farm emitting a range of 20 to 46 decibels of noise. The researchers used actimeters, which are similar to fitbits, to track participants’ sleep quality. The study found no statistical difference between those living near the wind farm and those living a few miles away. “There's some indication when we go over 55 or 60 decibels that it's probably too close. But ultimately, we aren't seeing that in jurisdictions that are [regulated] properly,” Ollson says.

[Related: The hard truth of building clean solar farms]

It’s unclear exactly how many decibels of sound the Energix wind project would wreak on Majd Al Shams, one of the few remaining Druze towns in the Golan. The farm is expected to be about 3,280 feet away from the neighborhoods, meaning the residents should be safe from noise. But farmers who work near the project would still be exposed—and there are more than 1,800 cottages that people visit regularly on the farming properties a few hundred feet away from the designated site, Wael Tarabieh, a project manager for Al Marsad, says.

Other major health concerns from living or working around turbines are epileptic seizures, headaches, nausea, and general disturbance from shadow flicker, which occurs when the sun shines through the turbine’s spinning prongs, causing a shadowing effect that can sometimes be seen in homes and buildings. People can simulate shadow flicker by pointing a flashlight at a ceiling or desk fan: The dark shapes created on the wall are similar to what people living near a wind farm might experience, though at a significantly lower rate, given that the fan blades move much faster than a turbine’s does. A near universal standard across the world is limiting shadow flicker to 30 hours per year, Ollson says. This can be done by using computer programs to model conditions and choosing spots for turbines accordingly.

“We can't find a correlation in these larger epidemiological studies” between shadow flicker and headaches or nausea, Ollson notes. And the turbines move too slowly to cause epileptic seizures, he adds. “What the majority of my colleagues in the field would say, is that shadow flicker isn't a health concern, but it is an annoyance or nuisance. Imagine you're sitting in your place tonight, and if I was standing at the wall and turning your lights on and off, in a slow fashion, for 20 minutes at a time. You would not enjoy that.”

An Israeli Centurion tank abandoned during 1973 Kipur war, sits on a older wind farm in the Israel-annexed Golan Heights.

But in the Golan, some residents could experience up to one hour of shadow flicker per day during certain times of the year. This is because of the wind farm’s location and use of larger turbine blades, Israeli doctor Ofer Megged told Al Marsad for their 2018 report on the wind farm. The project has been modified several times since then—it’s unclear how many hours of shadow flicker the latest plan would produce.

All forms of energy have their drawbacks, Ollson adds. Oil refineries and coal plants, the main way the world has generated power for the past century, churn out air pollution, which has been linked to a much wider range of health problems, including increased risk of asthma, cancers, and heart disease.

Winds of change in the Golan Heights

New construction needs to take native people, their history, and their current situation into context, explains Munir Fakher Eldin, an assistant professor at Birzeit University in Palestine who writes about land rights in the Golan, where he is from.

The Golan is known for its wealth of natural resources, such as water, wind, and potentially petroleum. The area is attractive for renewables because of an estimated wind speed almost double that of Israel’s coastal plane, vast open areas, and low population density, according to the Syria Report. Wind energy is a major component of Israel’s net zero goal, and the country plans for nearly half of it to come from the Golan.

[Related: What companies really mean when they say they’re ‘net-zero’]

The Golan is already home to two wind farms, which are both near Israeli settlements. (Some settlers have also opposed the turbines, according to Tarabieh.) Israel also has plans to build a dozen more wind projects in the Golan to serve locals, both native and non-native. But the Energix project, first proposed in 2018, has received scrutiny from the Druze and become the subject of both protests and lawsuits for the past five years.

After Israel began to occupy the Golan in 1967, they expelled around 131,000 Syrians, which was about 95 percent of the population in the area, according to Al Marsad. Since then, the 1,800 cottages near the wind farm have served as a place for many to escape. “Our agricultural lands are not simply a place to cultivate the land. Actually, they are a kind of extension to our everyday life,” Tarabieh says. “Most of the people escape from [overcrowding in Majd Al-Shams] to the agricultural lands to spend the time with their family. People sleep in these cottages all the time ... That's why in our case, it's really very dangerous. It's not that people are afraid of or imagining something. It's real, and we are all close to it.”

The new project would also subsume a quarter of agricultural land left to farmers, who were already stripped of most of their land more than 50 years ago. Settlements, military facilities, and national park acquisition put 95 percent of the Golan under Israeli control, according to Tarabieh. The wind farm would also limit how much Majd Al-Shams could grow. Mountains in the north, a ceasefire line in the east, and settlements in the west mean that the agricultural land to the south, where the farm is planned, is the only place the town could expand. A new residential zoning code also allows houses to be built much closer to the turbines, which could increase health risks from the wind farm, Tarabieh says.

In our case, it's really very dangerous. It's real, and we are all close to it.

Wael Tarabieh, a project manager for Al Marsad

Fakher Eldin and Tarabieh also think the development would affect residents' psychological health. In a complaint echoed by those living near wind farms around the world, the turbines, which stand at about 680 feet tall, would ruin their land’s pastoral beauty. What’s different in the Golan though, they say, is the wind farm could serve as yet another reminder of how little control the Druze have over their home. “The land is part of people's identity and sense of security, belonging, and communal safety,” says Fakher Eldin. “Basically we're defending our right for reasonable existence on our land … The wind farm will feel like a suffocating presence.”

Wind of change picks up for German region's energy sector

Jean-Philippe LACOUR
Wed, July 26, 2023

In Schnabelwaid, residents have said "yes" to the installation of wind turbines on the hillside next to their rural Bavarian village in a rare win for an unloved energy source in Germany's biggest region (Christof STACHE)

Residents of the rural Bavarian village of Schnabelwaid have said "yes" to the installation of wind turbines on the hillside next to their community in a rare win for an energy source unloved in Germany's biggest region.

Economically prosperous and hungry for power, Bavaria has dragged its feet on the expansion of wind energy capacity, vitally needed for Germany to hit its goal to be carbon neutral by 2045.

Since January, the southern region has installed just five turbines and signed off on another two new projects, putting it close to the bottom of the league table among Germany's 16 federal states.


But a new wind seems to be blowing, as the government in Berlin looks to speed construction of new wind projects.

The roughly 900 residents of Schnabelwaid approved the new project to install about 10 turbines by a whisker at the end of a public consultation in April.

More than 80 percent of them rejected the idea 13 years ago when the idea was first put forward to place 18 turbines in the same location in Kitschenrain forest next to the village.

- 'For our children' -

The change of heart can be traced back not only to a growing awareness of climate change and the concern caused by Germany's exit from nuclear energy in April, but the village's own precarious finances.

The district is "heavily indebted", said mayor Hans-Walter Hofmann, while the wind park "will generate revenues".

Hofmann estimated that at a rate of 0.2 cents per kilowatt-hour, the area could bank two million euros ($2.2 million) over 20 years.

Schnabelwaid resident Guenther Angerer supported the turbine project to secure "the supply of energy for our children", the pensioner told AFP on his way to pick up his granddaughter from daycare.

On the other side of the debate, Karin Bauer said that clearing forest to make way for wind turbines "completely goes against" climate preservation principles.

The area's rich groundwater would be "at risk if 10 wind turbines are built" there, Bauer's neighbour Rosemarie Ballwieser added.

The prospective wind park's impact on local resources will be examined as part of the final approval process, which is set to last until 2024.

Thereafter, the blades of the 200-metre-tall (656-feet-tall) turbines "could start turning in the autumn of 2026", said Maximilian Weiss, the head of the project.

The energy produced by the wind park could produce enough electricity for 30,000 homes, according to his company Uhl Windkraft.

- Turbine target -

By setting a target to cover 1.4 percent of Germany's land surface with wind turbines by 2027 -- rising to two percent by 2032 -- Olaf Scholz's coalition government is hoping to send a signal to Germany's regional governments to get a move on.

The message is particularly directed at Bavaria, currently led by Markus Soeder from the conservative opposition CSU.

Not upsetting residents unhappy at the sight of new turbines in their backyard has often guided policymakers in the region.

In Bavaria, installing wind energy capacity is made more difficult by a rule that means any new mast has to be at a distance of 10 times its own height from the nearest house.

In northern Bavaria, there is a "real spirit of optimism", said regional MP Martin Stuempfig from the Green party.

But in the south of the region, closer to the Alps, only a few isolated places are willing to push forward with new wind parks, Stuempfig regretted.

With regional elections approaching in October, the CSU will "only want to talk about national issues to divert attention" from its poor record on wind energy, he said.

jpl/sea/dlc/lth

The world’s energy supply just hit an ‘immense’ milestone that was 40 years in the making: ‘This is an enormous moment’


Erin Feiger
Wed, July 26, 2023 

A major clean energy milestone was reached ahead of its expected timeline this month, and it’s been 40 years in the making.

Electrek reported that the capacity of global installed wind power reached 1 terawatt in June and that it will likely reach 2 terawatts before the end of this decade.

The 40-year benchmark used by The Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) dates back to the late 1970s when Danish engineers like Henrik Stiesdal — who established the basis for the modern wind turbine — experimented with designs referred to as “The Danish Concept,” and that is the foundation of today’s global wind industry.

Wind energy has been steadily growing for decades — it currently accounts for more than 6% of global electricity — and the GWEC credits recently completed wind power projects in China, the U.S., Europe, and Morocco for bumping the capacity across the 1 terawatt threshold.

Global energy consumption is more than 17 terawatts, with the U.S. accounting for around 16% of that, per the Energy Information Administration. A single terawatt could generate more than one-third of the energy needed to power the entire U.S.

This achievement is great news for both individuals and the environment. The U.S. Department of Energy reports that almost 40% of emissions of all harmful, planet-warming pollution come from burning dirty energy to create the energy we use every day.

Globally, wind energy replaces dirty energy sources like oil, coal, and natural gas and plays a crucial role in decarbonizing the global power system and helping the world achieve net-zero energy goals.

Individually, wind can be used as a clean energy source to power homes, saving consumers money and protecting them from price fluctuations of dirty energy sources.

In an announcement of the milestone, the GWEC’s CEO, Ben Backwell, said, “This is an enormous moment for the wind industry, but it is also a moment to celebrate for the whole world. This landmark achievement shows the path to a clean energy future is here.”

While the GWEC is understandably proud, its members have also emphasized the need to keep pushing wind technology forward.

“While this is an immense achievement, it still represents only a small portion of what we must build in the coming years in order to decarbonize our planet,” Jonathan Cole, the GWEC chairman, said in the same announcement.

UFO hearing: Whistleblower testifies government 'absolutely' has possession of 'nonhuman' craft

In testimony before the House of Representatives, former Air Force officer David Grusch said the U.S. has recovered "biologics" from downed craft.

·Senior Writer
Updated Wed, July 26, 2023

A former Pentagon intelligence official testified Wednesday that he was “absolutely” certain the government had possession of nonhuman craft.

David Grusch, a former Air Force officer, said during a House Oversight Committee hearing that his information was based on interviews with 40 witnesses and that he knew where the material was being held. Grusch added that nonhuman “biologics” were recovered along with the craft.

Who is David Grusch?

Retired U.S. Air Force Maj. David Grusch. (Nathan Howard/AP)

Grusch initially made the claims last month before adding the information about pilots in a NewsNation interview. He was an intelligence officer for the Air Force and eventually joined the task force looking into unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAP, the military’s preferred term for UFOs. He said he became a whistleblower in May 2022 after he received a number of concerning reports that the government was acting with secrecy and without congressional oversight with regard to UAP.

A Pentagon spokesperson strenuously denied Grusch’s initial claims, saying they have “not discovered any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently.”

Grusch said he feared for his life and had faced professional and personal consequences from the government for speaking out, noting there was an ongoing whistleblower retaliation investigation into his treatment. He said he believed that the government first became aware of nonhuman technology in the 1930s and that there had been a “multi-decade campaign to disenfranchise public interest.”

The former intelligence officer said he had not seen any nonhuman bodies personally and responded to many questions by stating that he could not discuss details in an open forum but could brief legislators in private.

The hearing was the second public congressional panel this year on UAP. Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., was a major proponent of the hearing and said that other members of Congress had told him privately about their own UFO experiences.

'We're saying that there's something our pilots are seeing'

Retired Navy Cmdr. David Fravor at the House hearing. 

(Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters)

Other witnesses at the hearing were Ryan Graves, a former Navy pilot who said he encountered numerous unexplained flying objects while flying near Virginia Beach, Va., and David Fravor, another retired Navy pilot who says he encountered UAP near the coast of San Diego.

“As we convene here, UAP are in our airspace, but they are grossly underreported,” Graves said. “Sightings are not rare or isolated.”

The pilots said the movements taken by the observed craft would be impossible with the current known technological limitations. They added that humans would not be able to survive the level of acceleration that occurred and that if the crafts had attacked, they would not have been able to defend themselves or their crew.

Graves said that since his initial reporting, he’d learned that pilots had similar encounters everywhere the Navy was operating. Fravor, asked about how he rationalized what he’d seen, said he wasn’t a “UFO fanatic,” but “I will tell you that what we saw with four sets of eyes over a five-minute period, still there's nothing we have nothing close to it. It was amazing to see. I told my buddy I wanted to fly it, but it's just an incredible technology.”

Former Navy pilot Ryan Graves. (Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters)

Graves said that commercial airlines are not taking the threat seriously at all and that pilots are worried their careers will be negatively affected by reporting them, as well as noting the lack of a system for reporting through the Federal Aviation Administration.

The pilots added that the military reporting process needs to be streamlined, with Graves saying that, in his personal estimate, only 5% of UAP sightings were reported.

Last week at a White House briefing, John Kirby, a retired Navy admiral and the current Pentagon spokesperson, said that UAP “have already had an impact on our training ranges.”

“Now, we’re not saying what they are or what they’re not,” Kirby said. “We’re saying that there’s something our pilots are seeing. We’re saying it has had an effect on some of our training operations. And so we want to get to the bottom of it. We want to understand it better.”

Long history of UFO investigations

Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence Scott Bray with a video of UAP at a 2022 hearing.

 (Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)

UFO whistleblower tells Congress the US has likely been aware of 'non-human' activity since 1930s

At a Senate Armed Services hearing in April, the head of the office formed by the Pentagon last year to investigate unexplained phenomena said it had “found no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity, off-world technology or objects that defy the known laws of physics.”

The interest in UFOs has been bipartisan and active in both chambers of Congress. A group of senators led by Majority Leader Chuck Schumer are attempting to include an amendment in the annual defense appropriations bill that would require UFO records to be made public. Last year, Democrats in the House held the first public hearing on the topic in more than 50 years.

The military has had an interest in UFOs since at least the 1940s. In 1952, the Air Force set up Project Blue Book, a classified program that counted more than 12,000 UFO sightings over its 17-year existence, with hundreds still unexplained.

Then-Rep. Gerald Ford wrote to two fellow congressmen in 1966 to “strongly recommend that there be a committee investigation of the UFO phenomena.” In 2017, the New York Times published a story about how Democratic former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had pushed for funding to investigate unexplained aerial sightings from 2007 to 2012.

Congress holds hearing about claims US government has UFO evidence 

– watch live

 

Unilever sees Chinese consumer confidence at 'historical low point'


Richa Naidu
Tue, July 25, 2023 

Unilever headquarters in Rotterdam


LONDON (Reuters) - British consumer goods giant Unilever said on Tuesday that China's declining property market and exports had sent its consumer sentiment to a historic low, having earlier this year forecast a Chinese "consumption boom".

The maker of Dove soap and Ben & Jerry's ice cream in February flagged $1.5-$2 trillion in "excess household savings" in China that it believed could boost its sales in the country and in Southeast Asia.

Beijing at the time, after almost three years of a "zero-COVID" strategy, had recently dropped its restrictions almost completely and said it would boost imports and promote a consumption recovery to boost the economy.

But a lot has changed in the region since then.

Economic data from China this month showed its post-pandemic surge was quickly fizzling out, raising expectations that the government needs to bring out more stimulus measures to drive activity and bolster tepid consumer confidence.

"What we're seeing is a very cautious consumer in China, a declining property market and reduced export demand in China -- a lot of demand has shifted into the markets of Southeast Asia. Thailand, Vietnam, in particular benefit quite a bit from that," Unilever finance chief Graeme Pitkethly said on a call with journalists.

"And there is high unemployment in China, particularly youth unemployment...As much as we can tell we're at the historical low point in terms of Chinese consumer confidence."

Nonetheless, Unilever said underlying sales growth in China rose by high single-digits, recovering in the second quarter with volume-led, double-digit growth against a softer prior year comparison figure which was impacted by lockdowns.

Unilever on Tuesday reported earnings, beating underlying sales growth forecasts after again raising prices to offset higher costs and sending its shares higher.

(Reporting by Richa Naidu; editing by Jason Neely)

Brazil’s Citrosuco Threatens Force Majeure on Some Orange Juice Supplies

Dayanne Sousa
Mon, July 24, 2023 


(Bloomberg) -- Brazil’s Citrosuco, one of the world’s top orange juice producers, warned it may need to declare force majeure on supplies to some clients after disease and rainfall damaged crops.

In a July 17 letter sent to clients and seen by Bloomberg, the company said it was being “severely affected” by greening disease and rain that flooded farms. It added it won’t be able to ensure supplies at the volumes and prices previously agreed.

Citrosuco confirmed the contents of the letter, which it said was sent as a warning to some clients who had contracts for delivery earlier this year. In a statement to Bloomberg on Monday, the company added the communication was part of specific commercial negotiations.

While the letter stated “supply performance is currently prevented by force majeure, until further notice,” the company said it had not taken the actual legal step associated with invoking force majeure, a clause companies usually enforce when an unforeseen event, such as a fire or natural disaster, prevents them from complying with a contract.

Citrosuco’s letter is a reminder of just how tight global orange juice markets are. Brazil ships almost four of every five cups of orange juice consumed globally, according to data by the US Department of Agriculture, and Citrosuco is part of a group of three major juice companies — including Sucocitrico Cutrale LTDA and Louis Dreyfus Co. — that is responsible for most exports from the country.

Orange juice futures reached a record high Monday, rising by the exchange limit of 10 cents early in New York trading. Greening disease, which is spread by an infected insect and causes trees to produce unusable fruit, was responsible for decimating Florida’s orange groves.

Bloomberg Businessweek

TRADING PLACES 

ORANGE JUICE SALE ON WALL ST TRADING FLOOR

Adobe’s $20 Billion Figma Deal Faces EU Probe, Adding to Global Scrutiny

Samuel Stolton
Mon, July 24, 2023 


(Bloomberg) -- Adobe Inc.’s $20 billion takeover of design startup Figma Inc. is on course for an in-depth investigation from European Union merger regulators, adding to growing global scrutiny of the deal dubbed by Adobe’s boss as “transformational.”

Adobe won’t propose remedies to fix potential competition concerns, meaning an in-depth investigation from the EU’s competition branch is forthcoming, according to two people familiar with the matter.

So-called phase 2 probes add about 90 working days to deal reviews. Regulators typically demand remedies to solve competition concerns but sometimes also decide to give their unconditional approval if initial concerns are shown to be unfounded.

The purchase is a massive bet that more creative work will be done by small businesses and everyday users on the web, a market that Figma has rapidly seized. While Adobe has introduced less-expensive, streamlined products for that audience, most of its offerings are still heavyweight programs aimed at specialists.

A spokesperson for Adobe said that the company continues “to have productive conversations with regulatory bodies worldwide.” Figma didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Adobe, the longtime top seller of software for creative professionals, also faces scrutiny further afield, with the US Justice Department preparing an antitrust lawsuit seeking to block the merger, according to people familiar with the matter.

The UK antitrust watchdog already announced on July 13 that it will kick-off a longer review after Adobe didn’t offer remedies to address antitrust issues. The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority will issue its findings by Dec. 27.

The deal comes as Adobe adds generative AI features throughout its products. The company last month unveiled enterprise-level subscriptions for the new tools, which include legal assurance against copyright claims. As part of the forecast, Adobe raised the revenue projection for its Digital Media unit, which includes Photoshop and other creative software.

--With assistance from Katharine Gemmell.

 Bloomberg Businessweek

Iranian judges diagnosed 3 female actors with mental illnesses for not wearing hijabs in public, prompting outrage

Joshua Zitser
Updated Mon, July 24, 2023 

Women stand under an Iranian flag during a rally in support of the hijab on July 12, 2023.

Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Iranian judges diagnosed three female actors with mental illnesses after they refused to wear hijabs, per reports.


They must attend psychiatric centers for treatment as part of their court sentencing, per RFE/RL.


The ruling caused outrage among psychiatrists, who wrote an open letter criticizing the move.

Judges in Iran have handed down diagnoses of mental illnesses to three famous Iranian female actors for refusing to wear hijabs, RadioFranceEurope/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reported.

Azadeh Samadi, Leila Bolukat, and Afsaneh Bayegan recently appeared in public without headscarves, a violation of Iran's strict rules on modesty.

Women who refuse to wear a hijab in public in Iran can face up to two years in prison, though repeat offenders can expect to spend more time behind bars if proposed legislation passes.

Bayegan, a veteran actor who wore a hat instead of a hijab to a film ceremony, was handed a two-year prison sentence, as well as a ban on travel and using the Internet, on July 19.

She was also ordered to undergo mandatory psychological treatment for what was described by judges as an "anti-family personality disorder" — a condition that is not recognized by any major Western medical bodies, per RFE/RL.

Samadi, 44, was given a similar medical order.

Tehran's Criminal Court ordered on July 18 that she must visit psychiatric centers every two weeks to be treated for an "anti-social disease," RFE/RL reported, citing Iranian media.

Samadi was detained after wearing a hat instead of a hijab at a funeral. Though she was not given prison time, she was denied access to her phone for six months and had all of her social media accounts shut down.

Bolukat, 42, who was previously handed a sentence of six months in prison, with a further ban on professional activities for two years, was also diagnosed by judges with a mental illness, per RFE/RL.

Her punishment comes after she posted images of herself without a hijab on social media, the news outlet reported.

Iran's strict hijab laws have inspired major protests over the past year, sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini last September.

Iran's major psychiatric bodies pushed back on this latest move, with the heads of four psychiatry boards going public with their criticism in an open letter to Iran's judiciary chief, RFE/RL reported.

"The diagnosis of mental disorders is within the competence of a psychiatrist, not a judge," the letter said, per the news outlet. "Just as the diagnosis of other diseases is in the competence of doctors, not judges."

Calling the diagnoses "unscientific and strange," the open letter demanded that authorities amend the sentences against the three women, according to RFE/RL.