Turning coal... green?

Swapping out coal for solar, deadly power outages on the rise, and how to plant for the planet

GOOD NEWS

Screenshot from WCCO - CBS Minnesota's YouTube segment "Xcel's Sherco plant transitioning from coal to solar," April 25, 2024

I’ve talked before about how effective it is to re-purpose old coal plant sites for new wind and solar energy. One of the major challenges that many new renewable projects face is how to connect to the grid, a process that typically involves a lot of red tape and delays, so re-using the existing land and grid connection makes a lot of sense.

“This should be one of the main strategies that we adopt going forward, because we already have so many existing assets, so much grid infrastructure and we don’t want to just throw them away,” says Umed Paliwal, a senior scientist at UC Berkeley. He co-authored a study that found that connecting new renewable projects to existing fossil fuel plants could double the grid’s electrical capacity.

Xcel Energy is taking this to heart. They're replacing the largest emitter in Minnesota with the biggest solar farm in the state. Specifically, the Sherco coal-fired power plant outside Minneapolis, Minnesota, is being replaced by a new 710-megawatt solar farm. And what isn’t changing is how that power gets on the grid: the solar energy will use the same grid interconnection as the coal plant used before. That's a win-win!

NOT-SO-GOOD NEWS

Photo by AS Photo Family on Shutterstock. Title, "Family spending time together during an energy crisis in Europe causing blackouts"

Air conditioning has played a large role in the growth of cities in hotter regions of North America, as this episode of The Daily describes in detail. But what happens when the power goes out? Like everything else about climate change, the resulting catastrophe disproportionately impacts those who lack the means or opportunity to go elsewhere, or to purchase generators and fuel.

The southeastern U.S. is particularly vulnerable to the twin catastrophe of a monster heat wave and blackout, thanks to hurricane risk, an aging electrical grid, and temperatures that continue to soar year after year. Houston got a dose of that this summer, when Tropical Storm Beryl knocked out power to 70 percent of the city and it took some homes more than a week to get electricity back.

A heat wave combined with an extended blackout could be devastating and experts say cities are unprepared for such a scenario. “I don’t think it’s likely — I think it’s an absolute certainty that we will have an extreme heat wave and an extended blackout in the United States,” Brian Stone, a professor at Georgia Institute of Technology who directs the school’s Urban Climate Lab, said.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Plant for the Planet is a youth-focused nonprofit that created the Trillion Tree Campaign, which has the aim of planting 1 trillion new trees to join the 3 trillion trees that already exist on earth. In their own words, “trees are certainly not the only solution to all climate problems, but they buy us, humans, time in the fight against the climate crisis that threatens the future of us all.”

Trees don’t only take up carbon, they also keep cities cooler during heatwaves. A recent study by The Nature Conservancy Science's Robert McDonald and colleagues found that planting 1.2 billion trees in cities across the U.S., for example, would eliminate heat inequity (where poorer neighbourhoods can be up to 7C or 13F hotter than greener, wealthier neighbourhoods during a heatwave), as well as saving electricity.

Nearly 2,000 kids have become climate ambassadors for Plant for the Planet since 2008. Children ages 8 to 14 can attend the organization’s online academy to become Climate Justice Ambassadors for the group. (In Germany there are multiple upcoming in-person academies.) Felix Finkbeiner, Plant for the Planet’s founder and CEO, started the organization when he was only 9 years old, so he knows the power that youth can have!