Days before President Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office and took actions to stall the transition to clean energy, a disaster unfolded on the other side of the country that may have an outsize effect on the pace of the transition.

A fire broke out last Thursday at the Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility in California, one of the largest battery energy storage systems in the world. The fire raged through the weekend, forcing local officials to evacuate nearby homes and close roads.

Battery storage is an essential part of the transition away from fossil fuels. It works in tandem with solar and wind power to provide electricity during periods when the renewable resources aren’t available. But lithium-ion batteries, the most common technology used in storage systems, are flammable. And if they catch fire, it can be difficult to extinguish.

Last week’s fire is the latest and largest of several at the Moss Landing site in recent years, and I expect that it will become the main example opponents of carbon-free electricity use to try to stop battery development in other places.

  • @rottingleafEnglish
    1•1 day ago

    Hydroelectric energy is worse than burning coal. It’s not being strict, it’s being adequate.

    Housecats are a catastrophe, cars - not so much, agriculture - modern agriculture can have little impact for very good output.

    We started with nuclear energy which is greener than solar panels and wind turbines. It still is.

    • DerGottesknechtEnglish
      1•1 day ago

      Hydroelectric energy is worse than burning coal. It’s not being strict, it’s being adequate

      [Citation required]

      Housecats are a catastrophe, cars - not so much, agriculture - modern agriculture can have little impact for very good output.

      All are way bigger than windturbines. And the biggest is habit loss, which is mainly driven by agriculture.

      • @rottingleafEnglish
        1•1 day ago

        If citations are required for my truisms, then citations are also required for your bullshit.

        So - you start first, cause I’m lazy.

        And the biggest is habit loss, which is mainly driven by agriculture.

        Modern intensive agriculture is better for this particular kind of damage than hydroelectric energy, wind turbines and solar panel farms.

        Not using facts, but using logic:

        Space where wind turbines work becomes dangerous (as in uninhabitable) for a lot of life, not just birds being killed or their migrations affected by disorientation, but also seeds carried by wind. Same with solar panels - plants need sunlight, animals need plants, soil needs plants. Same with hydroelectric energy - by changing whole watersheds it incurs such enormous damage to existing ecosystems that a Chernobyl or two every decade is better, and humans don’t bother much about creating and maintaining new ones.

        While with modern agriculture one may make a lot of things closed from the surrounding environment, occupying only space.

        • DerGottesknechtEnglish
          1•23 hours ago

          Yeah, you’re lazy and wrong,

          https://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/eprint/6784/1/RR-03-05.pdf, Fig 8

          Not using facts,

          True

          but using logic:

          You mean pulling stuff out of your ass?

          not just birds being killed or their migrations affected by disorientation,

          Not true

          but also seeds carried by wind

          Wtf?

          that a Chernobyl or two every decade is better

          Wtf???

          Start bringing some sources