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Nevada considers capping water use for homes in Vegas

News Feed
Tuesday, March 14, 2023

The proposed legislation comes amid crisis on the Colorado River, where major reservoirs have fallen to dangerous levels.

The proposed legislation comes amid crisis on the Colorado River, where major reservoirs have fallen to dangerous levels.

The proposed legislation comes amid crisis on the Colorado River, where major reservoirs have fallen to dangerous levels.
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Related News

South Africa’s power crisis will continue until 2025 with blackouts taking 5 years to phase out

South Africa is in the middle of a severe electricity crisis, with enforced power cuts that have worsened every year. Electricity is sometimes unavailable for 10 hours a day. The shortfall is the consequence of frequent breakdowns at its ageing coal power plants, which constitute 74% of the country’s generating capacity. In theory, improving the […] The post South Africa’s power crisis will continue until 2025 with blackouts taking 5 years to phase out appeared first on SAPeople - Worldwide South African News.

South Africa is in the middle of a severe electricity crisis, with enforced power cuts that have worsened every year. Electricity is sometimes unavailable for 10 hours a day. The shortfall is the consequence of frequent breakdowns at its ageing coal power plants, which constitute 74% of the country’s generating capacity. In theory, improving the performance and reliability of the existing coal plants would resolve the power crisis. This remedy is promoted in some quarters. But it’s easier said than done. To function satisfactorily, many of the plants would require a complete overhaul, which would be both time-consuming and prohibitively costly. Estimates suggest that South Africa needs around 6,000MW of extra capacity to overcome the current deficit. The following sections explain why I predict it is likely to require as long as five years to eradicate this shortfall, though partial improvement should already be felt by the end of 2024. Building new coal, nuclear or gas plants is still being considered to improve future power supply, but these typically require construction times of 10 years. They would therefore not play a role in the short- to the medium-term period under consideration, and I don’t discuss them further here. Time lines for fixing existing power stations The 4,800MW Kusile and its twin Medupi are the two largest power stations in South Africa, and among the biggest coal plants in the world. Their construction was commissioned in 2007. At the time they were expected to guarantee South Africa ample electricity supply and allow the decommissioning of older plants. But the construction of the plants proceeded disastrously. Costs escalated to more than double the initial projections and construction was much slower than anticipated. One of Kusile’s six units has still not been finished. Calamity also struck twice in the first few years of operation. The damage caused by an explosion at Medupi’s Unit 4 in 2021 resulted in so much damage that the unit not yet been brought back on line. Then in October last year a chimney at Kusile collapsed. This forced the closure of three Kusile units. The 1,800MW Koeberg nuclear power plant has in recent decades contributed about 5% of South Africa’s electricity. It will reach the end of its initially projected 40-year lifespan in 2024. To extend its operating licence for a further 20 years, the National Nuclear Regulator requires specific part replacements and upgrades, the most significant being the installation of new steam generators. These operations were initially projected to require 10 months (five months for each of Koeberg’s two units) to be completed. The attempted upgrade of the first unit early last year was aborted after it became clear that preparations for the project were incomplete. The second attempt began in January this year. But it has already been acknowledged that this stage, initially projected to end in June, will not be completed until at least August. After that a similar process will commence for the other unit, and this will be followed by a 200 day planned outage. Koeberg is therefore effectively only running at half-power, and this state of affairs will likely continue into 2025. Gas power ships Amid clear signs of a deepening power crisis, the minister of mineral resources and energy in 2021 announced successful bids to supply 2,000MW of emergency power. The bulk of this award, 1,200MW, was allocated to Turkey’s Karpowership, a company with a fleet of floating gas plants to be shipped in and moored in three of South Africa’s ports – Richards Bay, Nqurha and Saldanha. The award attracted controversy, with accusations that the terms of reference of this bidding round amounted to an unfair advantage to Karpowership. Court challenges queried the legality of the environmental impact approvals too. The key objection to the Karpowership deal is that it would cement what is painted as an arrangement for temporary emergency power for a 20-year period. This opposition and delays in some other projects reaching financial close mean that the emergency programme is at least a year behind schedule. Some might come on line at the end of 2023, but the added capacity would decrease South Africa’s electricity shortfall by only a moderate amount. Renewables The Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme was designed to enable the production of mostly solar and wind energy by private developers, who would then sell it to the power utility, Eskom. Given the intermittency of sunshine and wind, solar and wind farms in South Africa on average typically only produce about 25% (solar) and 35% (wind) of what they can generate under ideal conditions. Meeting a national shortfall of 6,000MW with one of these technologies alone would therefore require solar farms with a total capacity of 24,000MW, or wind farms with a total capacity of 18,000MW. Two rounds of establishing new plants under the renewables programme are under way. The first of these should see 1,000MW of solar power and 1,600MW of wind power come on stream by early 2025, while the second round will see a further 1,000MW of solar projects completed about a year later. A mega-initiative to install 15,000MW of solar and wind power has recently been touted by the new electricity minister. While this would massively ameliorate the power scarcity, it would be very challenging to construct such a large number of solar plants simultaneously, due to potential import bottlenecks and a shortage of skilled installers. So while some of these plants might be ready by late 2025, the entire programme is likely to require five years. Domestic and private solar installations The greatest progress in accelerating electricity production has been achieved by small-scale solar power installation initiatives, ranging from municipal or private enterprise solar farms to solar panels on household roofs. Although this component is still comparatively small, late last year the president announced that projects amounting to a total of 9,000MW were under development. Despite the major growth in this sphere, the rollout of private solar installations is hampered by the same constraints faced by the renewables programmes: import bottlenecks and skills shortages. While municipalities and smaller entities able to get such programmes working will experience considerable relief from power cuts, these initiatives will only moderately cut the national shortfall. The timeframe for a possible recovery Any remedies to the South African power crisis initiated now or already under development are not going to have a significant impact this year. The projections also assume that no major setback like last year’s Kusile accident is imminent. 1,000-2,000MW might be added to the generating capacity towards the end of the year, but a substantial decrease in the power shortage will only be possible towards the end of 2024, if Kusile repairs are then completed as expected, and when several renewable energy initiatives should come on line. Ending power cuts completely will probably take another five years if the infusion of more solar and wind capacity proceeds as currently planned. Hartmut Winkler, Professor of Physics, University of Johannesburg This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. The post South Africa’s power crisis will continue until 2025 with blackouts taking 5 years to phase out appeared first on SAPeople - Worldwide South African News.

Crisis
Energy
Climate

Iraq’s oil boom blamed for worsening water crisis in drought-hit south

Pollution from gas flaring – the burning of natural gas associated with oil extraction – is also a major concern in the oil-rich but extremely dry southWestern oil companies are exacerbating water shortages and causing pollution in Iraq as they race to profit from rising oil prices after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.Water scarcity has already displaced thousands and increased instability, according to international experts, while Iraq is now considered the fifth most vulnerable country to the climate crisis by the UN. In the oil-rich but extremely dry south, wetlands that used to feed entire communities are now muddy canals. Continue reading...

Pollution from gas flaring – the burning of natural gas associated with oil extraction – is also a major concern in the oil-rich but extremely dry southWestern oil companies are exacerbating water shortages and causing pollution in Iraq as they race to profit from rising oil prices after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.Water scarcity has already displaced thousands and increased instability, according to international experts, while Iraq is now considered the fifth most vulnerable country to the climate crisis by the UN. In the oil-rich but extremely dry south, wetlands that used to feed entire communities are now muddy canals. Continue reading...

Crisis
Water
Pollution

South Africa’s power blackouts: solutions lie in solar farms and battery storage at scale, and an end to state monopoly

Rolling blackouts are costing South Africa dearly. The electricity crisis is a barrier to growth, destroys investor confidence and handicaps almost every economic activity. It has raised input costs for producers and retailers and has triggered a new round of inflation and interest rate increases. Any solution will obviously incur costs because it will require […] The post South Africa’s power blackouts: solutions lie in solar farms and battery storage at scale, and an end to state monopoly appeared first on SAPeople - Worldwide South African News.

Rolling blackouts are costing South Africa dearly. The electricity crisis is a barrier to growth, destroys investor confidence and handicaps almost every economic activity. It has raised input costs for producers and retailers and has triggered a new round of inflation and interest rate increases. Any solution will obviously incur costs because it will require the adoption of new technologies, such as large-scale grid-connected solar farms that are linked to battery energy storage. But these technologies are expensive. A solar farm consisting of 50 MW of photovoltaic panels with 240 MWh of storage capacity will cost R2.6 billion. Batteries are the biggest outlay, accounting for about 40% of the total cost. A photovoltaic panel converts solar energy to electricity, which can be used to charge a bank of batteries or supply consumers directly. The batteries then supply the stored energy into the grid over peak periods. Combining solar with storage makes it more expensive than coal – which still accounts for 80% of South Africa’s electricity generation – when comparing units of energy produced. But this technology is affordable relative to the options consumers are already adopting in significant volumes – diesel generators or small-scale batteries coupled to inverters – as long as it is at a large scale and is used for peak power only. I argue that South Africa can solve much of its energy crisis by building new facilities consisting of battery storage with photovoltaic panels. However, the new technology cannot be used without reform of the wholesale energy market. Reforms to the energy market Much of the media’s attention to the energy crisis has been focused on generation capacity or lack thereof. But there is another equally important contributor – the failure by the government to unbundle Eskom (the state-owned electricity utility) and create a market operator and a transmission system operator as independent entities. A market operator is an energy “stock exchange”. It facilitates contracts between the energy producers, the transmission system and the distributors. Many countries in the world have already restructured their electricity supply industry to establish such a market and introduce greater competition among power producers. The UK, Canada, the US and many countries in the European Union have undertaken market reforms like this, with positive outcomes. South Africa indicated an intention to follow such an approach in 1998. But it has never acted on this policy. Instead, it has kept alive an increasingly inefficient and dysfunctional state-owned utility. As a result, the country has a shortage of generation capacity, a shortage of connection and transmission capacity, and a growing environmental disaster. Blackouts have changed supply and demand Analysis of the usage data from the Eskom portal suggests that rolling power blackouts have led to changes in the country’s energy landscape. On the supply side, customers are increasingly using alternative energy sources. Consumers who require a stable energy supply have made alternative plans, in most cases shifting to the use of diesel generators. Figures of diesel consumption are not available, but, based on the electricity shortfall, I estimate, using the data for April 2023, that the additional diesel usage, excluding Eskom and the independent power producers, was about 660 million litres per month, which is almost the same as the amount used by the whole transport sector. On the demand side, the blackouts have led to shifts in the use of grid electricity at different time of the day/night cycle. This has been driven mainly by the use of lithium batteries. Eskom is already reporting that there is an added demand of 1.4GW to recharge battery storage, or about 5% additional load on the grid. The costs of small-scale solutions The cost of a battery-plus-inverter system to meet the needs of an average household under Stage 4 loadshedding – which is about 6 hours of outages every 24 hours – is about R100,000 to R150,000 (about US$5,000 to $7,600). At current interest rates, and assuming an average energy consumption of 15kWh per day and an Eskom rate of R2.75 per kWh, the net cost will be R6.10 per kWh. This makes it more expensive than diesel. Back-up power from an 8kVA diesel generator, using the same set of assumptions, will cost about R5.20 per kWh, including diesel and capital charges. The installation of 1.4GW of battery capacity nationally confirms that there is already a market for the purchase of energy at higher cost. Energy security is a necessity for many businesses, especially those operating cold storage or essential equipment. The costs of large-scale solar with batteries In a recently published article I set out what the landscape might look like if South Africa implemented a plan to balance renewable energy capacity and time-of-use tariffs, and ended Eskom’s monopoly. Customers could pay different rates depending on the time of day when they used electricity. For my article, I used a simple model for the South African energy grid and considered the optimal configuration for a photovoltaic/battery storage facility which could provide peak power of 6GW, which is about 20% of the total demand. It concluded that the grid would need an installed photovoltaic capacity of 18GW, coupled with a storage system rated at 3.7GW/10.4 GWh. The facility would pay for itself if a time-of-use tariff of R3.50 per kWh, almost double the present tariff excluding network charges, could be levied. But this would require ending Eskom’s distribution monopoly and the establishment of the market operator. Different tariffs would be the result of competition between different players. A three-step plan The analysis suggests that it would be possible to solve the peak power problem in three steps. Firstly, unbundle Eskom and establish the market operator, secondly use the bail-out funds to build connection capacity, and thirdly, use the market operator to build large-scale photovoltaic/battery capacity. Market reform has been on the policy agenda for nearly 25 years. But little real progress has been made. South Africa should stop going around in circles. It needs to take a straight line in the fast lane. David Richard Walwyn, Professor of Technology Management, University of Pretoria This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. The post South Africa’s power blackouts: solutions lie in solar farms and battery storage at scale, and an end to state monopoly appeared first on SAPeople - Worldwide South African News.

Crisis
Business
Government

We Asked an AI Chatbot How to Fight the Extinction Crisis

…and it did a halfway decent job. But algorithms alone can’t save endangered species. For that you need people who care and who act. The post We Asked an AI Chatbot How to Fight the Extinction Crisis appeared first on The Revelator.

When a certain search engine recently asked me to test out its new artificial intelligence chatbot, I thought “How bad will this be?” After all, tech companies love to position their AI systems as solutions, but many experts fear they will result in waves of bad data and disinformation. That’s not going to help a world plagued by runaway climate change and an extinction crisis that threatens to push a million species into oblivion. But at the same time, artificial intelligence and machine learning have some truly wonderful implications for conservation — anything that speeds up data analysis is welcome, for example. Could that potential benefit carry over to a chatbot designed to spit out easy answers to users’ questions? I wanted to see how good the systems really are, so I gave it a test — I asked the chatbot how to solve the extinction crisis. No small task. So here they are: the chatbot’s 10 ways to fight the extinction crisis (in italics), along with my interpretation and response. 1. Reduce your consumption of meat and animal products. Animal agriculture is a major driver of habitat loss, deforestation and climate change. By eating less meat and more plant-based foods, you can help to reduce the impact of your diet on the environment. A surprisingly strong start right out of the gate. Animal agriculture is one of the leading factors in the extinction crisis, and while I wouldn’t necessarily have put this at number one, it certainly deserves to be in the top three. Good job, chatbot. 2. Support sustainable farming practices. When you buy food, choose products that were grown or raised using sustainable methods. This helps to protect wildlife habitat and reduce pollution. This is vague and possibly redundant, but it’s useful for the chatbot to lay out causality. Unsustainable farming does destroy habitat and create enormous pollution, often enough to be seen from space. But what “sustainable” methods is it recommending, and how is this recommendation actionable? At the very least consumers should look for the USDA Organic label, but there are a host of other labels out there, some of which are more misleading than others. (Hmm, could be worth digging into that in a future article. Thanks for the idea, chatbot.) 3. Get involved in local conservation efforts. There are many ways to get involved in conservation efforts in your community. You can volunteer for a local environmental organization, donate to conservation groups, or simply spread the word about the importance of protecting wildlife. Fair enough. Local efforts can do a lot to benefit native or migratory species, but a vague reference to “many ways” doesn’t provide any actionable ideas or talk about why local efforts matters. That’s important, since to most people extinction feels like something that happens half a world away, not in their own backyards. 4. Advocate for environmental policies. Contact your elected officials and let them know that you support policies that protect wildlife and the environment. Good advice, chatbot, but the devil’s in the details: What are those policies? Here in the United States, it’s a good idea to actively call for support of the Endangered Species Act, which is chronically underfunded and under threat. There are other regulations and policies — both existing and proposed — that will benefit wildlife, but people will need to do their own digging to find out what those are. (Our suggestion: Start by calling for support for the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act.) 5. Reduce your energy consumption. By turning off lights when you leave a room, unplugging appliances when you’re not using them, and weatherizing your home, you can help to reduce your energy consumption and save money. Okay, here’s where the chatbot starts to get a little … off. Reducing energy consumption is a great goal, but this answer doesn’t connect that with benefiting wildlife. It’s more of a climate solution, which in turn can help address the extinction crisis. However, reducing home energy consumption simply by turning off a light doesn’t address the severe waste and devastation of the fossil fuel industry, which destroys habitats, poisons ecosystems and drives the climate change that causes even more chaos. That needs to be addressed on a systematic level, not by unplugging your blender. 6. Recycle and compost. Recycling and composting help to reduce the amount of waste that goes to landfills, where it can release harmful methane gas into the atmosphere. Decent advice, but why? Chatbot, don’t be afraid to spell out the fact that methane is a greenhouse gas that worsens climate change — and why that’s harmful to wildlife. 7. Support sustainable businesses. When you shop, choose businesses that are committed to sustainability. This helps to send a message to businesses that consumers care about the environment. Vague. Vague, vague, vague. 8. Educate yourself and others about the extinction crisis. The more people who know about the extinction crisis, the more likely we are to take action to address it. This echoes things I’ve said for years. It’s why we always ask people to share our articles — so friends and colleagues who might not seek out this kind of reporting on their own can also see what’s going on. We may be intimately familiar with certain environmental topics ourselves but should never assume other people have the same knowledge base. 9. Get creative. There are many ways to get involved in the fight against extinction. Come up with your own ideas and share them with others. Sure. I guess that’s helpful? 10. Never give up. The extinction crisis is a serious problem, but it’s not insurmountable. By working together, we can make a difference. Color me impressed: While still vague, this may be the best advice on the whole list, albeit the hardest to live up to. The extinction crisis is excruciating, but it can be stopped. After all, almost every species that has received endangered species protection in time to do something about it has been saved from extinction. That’s why the Endangered Species Act has been such a massive success in the United States, why we need similar laws around the world, and why we need to communicate our successes — so people see that the things they do can have a lifesaving impact. There you go. Not the worst list, but evidence that chatbots don’t obviate the need for human wisdom, experience and proven solutions. Why does this matter? For now, these chatbots are isolated — you need to know where to go to use them — but search engines have already announced they plan to integrate the technology into average search results. That means that sometimes, instead of a link to an article answering your question, you’ll get a chatbot’s answer. Those answers may or may not come from a reliable authority or be correct. Many publishers worry that these chatbot answers will supersede links to authoritative web pages where readers can find the correct information. That could wipe out critical web traffic and harm the already struggling news business — which in turn could cause publications to go out of business. Artificial intelligence is a tool that could do a lot of good when deployed correctly and cautiously. But if it kills off expert sources, it could drive knowledge itself extinct. We’ve already had a bitter taste of that, here in the “post-truth” era. We may not survive much more. What are the real solutions to the extinction crisis, and how can we each help? We’ll have an article with some answers for you soon — and they won’t be the kind that can be served up by a chatbot. The post We Asked an AI Chatbot How to Fight the Extinction Crisis appeared first on The Revelator.

Crisis
Extinction
Animals

"Significant global ecological disruption": Plastic is destroying Earth — and recycling won't help

A new report analyzed previous studies and reached sobering conclusions about the plastic pollution crisis

A new report analyzed previous studies and reached sobering conclusions about the plastic pollution crisis

Crisis
Pollution

Suggested Viewing

Reboot

Humans have exploited Earth to the point where it is no longer possible to live on it. Their only option is to relocate to Mars. When the last group of people has boarded the spaceship for the red planet, the Earth can finally breathe easy. Like an expressionist painting, Reboot depicts a world in which the absence of our species is the only chance nature has to recover its lushness and flourish once more.

Animation
Crisis
Cosmos

Stalking Chernobyl: Exploration After Apocalypse

A documentary that examines the underground culture of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Three decades after the world's most infamous nuclear disaster, illegal hiking adventurers (known as “stalkers”), extreme sports aficionados, artists, and tour companies have begun to explore anew the mysterious, ghostly landscape, where trees and forest animals have reclaimed land abandoned by villagers. Even as survivors continue to reckon with a dishonest government’s attempts to cover up the extent of the disaster, and as humanity faces new nuclear incidents in place like Fukushima, the Chernobyl site has turned into a bizarre tourist attraction, drawing seekers with a taste for the post-apocalyptic. (a Cultures Of Resistance film)

Crisis
Culture
Pollution

The Kodiak Queen

Richard Branson had a decorated WWII warship that survived Pearl Harbor taken to the British Virgin Islands to be turned into an artificial reef and dive site to inspire a generation of ocean lovers. But the project became a part of something much bigger when Hurricane Irma struck the Caribbean and Florida Keys on September 6, 2017. Irma caused unimaginable destruction and devastated thousands of lives. In this haunting film, the award-winning Sorrenti and Academy Award winner Kate Winslet describe the momentous task of restoring the British Virgin Islands.

Water
Crisis
Conservation

Sounding the Alarm ~ America's Climate Crisis

"It's really hard being a fire family. Every day it's getting worse." -Brett, wife of Marin County Battalion Chief in California.Every day, Americans who live close to the land and sea face the dangers of climate change—from a firefighter in California, to a beekeeper in Arizona, to a climate refugee losing her home in Florida. The changing climate affects our food systems, water and way of life. These American families are in the trenches sacrificing everything while facing depression, PTSD, and suicide—collateral damage of a crisis unchecked. Award-winning filmmaker, Peter Goetz, captures America's faces and voices, shot in 2020 leading up to the presidential election. Goetz and the Biden campaign made history, producing the first national climate spot to run during a presidential election. But this film dives deeper into the American climate crisis to explore the lives of the people who are sounding the alarm, worried about their grandchildren’s future, asking, "If not us, then who?" This is a story of the resilience, perseverance, and ingenuity of the American people. Ever hopeful, they collectively take on a common enemy. As the young, Navajo solar visionary Brett Issac insists, "We've got to turn this train around before it's too late."

Climate
Crisis
Government

Capturing The Fire

When Louise Coghill saw the first plume of smoke begin to rise behind her parents property, she could never have predicted that in less than four hours, it would become a wall of flames, swallowing everything in its path. A photographer by trade, Louise has travelled the world documenting everything from the nomadic wanderers of Mongolia, to base life at Mount Everest. Capturing the extraordinary comes naturally to Louise, so when her family home in the semi-rural Western Australian town of Gidgegannup became engulfed in flames, her first instinct wasn’t to take shelter, it was to pick up her camera.

Conservation
Climate
Nature

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