🔗📻 Mineable Hydrogen?

CBC: Quirks & Quarks: Could buried hydrogen help save the world, and more…

Geologic Hydrogen could be clean, green and plentiful

More than a century ago we discovered that there were rich deposits of energy buried deep in Earth, and so oil and gas became the foundation of our industrial civilization. Now history might be repeating itself as scientists think there could be massive amounts of clean, green hydrogen hiding underground as well. Quirks producer Jim Lebans spoke with Geochemist Barbara Sherwood Lollar from the University of Toronto, and geologist Geoffrey Ellis from the United States Geological Survey to understand where this hydrogen has come from, how much there is, and what its potential could be as an energy resource.

📰 pv magazine: Renewables covered almost 60% of German electricity demand in 2023

New statistics from the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (Fraunhofer ISE) show that PV systems in Germany generated around 59.9 TWh of solar power in 2023, with 6.4 TWh used for home consumption.

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Installed battery capacity almost doubled from 4.4 GW in 2022 to 7.6 GW last year. Storage capacity increased from 6.5 GWh to 11.2 GWh. Output of German pumped storage plants reached 6 GW.

📰🔗 Home insurers cut natural disasters from policies over climate risk

WashPo: Home insurers cut natural disasters from policies over climate risk

In the aftermath of extreme weather events, major insurers are increasingly no longer offering coverage that homeowners in areas vulnerable to those disasters need most.

At least five large U.S. property insurers — including Allstate, American Family, Nationwide, Erie Insurance Group and Berkshire Hathaway — have told regulators that extreme weather patterns caused by climate change have led them to stop writing coverages in some regions, exclude protections from various weather events and raise monthly premiums and deductibles.

Major insurers say they will cut out damage caused by hurricanes, wind and hail from policies underwriting property along coastlines and in wildfire country, according to a voluntary survey conducted by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, a group of state officials who regulate rates and policy forms.

People are going to expect the government to be the insurer of last resort, but I can’t see how they can afford that. And of course, some will expect lower taxes too.

link: EVs Take 55% Of The German Auto Market In December!

CleanTechnica: EVs Take 55% Of The German Auto Market In December!

The tide has turned in the electrification of the German auto market, with plugin electric vehicles taking the majority of sales for the first time in December. Plugins took 55.4% of the month’s passenger auto sales, with full electrics taking a third (33.2%), and plugin hybrids taking over a fifth (22.2%). Plugless hybrids took 12.8%, leaving less than a third of sales for combustion-only autos (31.8%).

Latest interesting podcast episode

Grey Matter: Bill McKibben - Renown Environmentalist - Reclaiming the Climate

October 4, 2022

Bill McKibben is a life-long environmentalist, activist, journalist, and author who has written extensively on the impact of global warming. In our conversation we review the significance of recent climate legislation, the technological alternatives to fossil fuels, and the ways and means currently at work to reclaim the climate – with special focus given to what the Baby Boomers can do.

Is 63 years enough warning?

The Tyee: The Petro Elite Were Warned of Climate Calamity in 1959

Among them was Sun Oil head Robert Dunlop, who proceeded to exploit the tarsands of Alberta. Excerpted from ‘The Petroleum Papers.’

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However, Dunlop hinted cryptically at challenges to come: “There are aspects of the future which are clouded by the penetration of non-economic forces into the functioning of an industry which has always performed best in an atmosphere of economic freedom.”

Dunlop didn’t say what storm clouds specifically threatened the expansion of oil and gas. But the next “Energy and Man” speaker did. That speaker vividly described a new and unexpected threat to the industry: its vast and growing emissions of a greenhouse gas called carbon dioxide.

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Depictions of global warming’s impact on human society were also starting to enter popular culture. Several years before Teller attempted to alert his New York audience, an article in Time magazine warned that CO2 building up in the atmosphere could by the early 2000s “have a violent effect on the Earth’s climate.”

One wonders: how much warning do the Liberals think the oil & gas industry needs?

Reuters: [Evidence for man-made global warming hits 'gold standard': scientists](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-temperatures/evidence-for-man-made-global-warming-hits-gold-standard-scientists-idUSKCN1QE1ZU)

> “Humanity cannot afford to ignore such clear signals,” the U.S.-led team wrote in the journal *Nature Climate Change* of satellite measurements of rising temperatures over the past 40 years.