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#renewablesnow — Public Fediverse posts

Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #renewablesnow, aggregated by home.social.

  1. Boo hiss...

    Controversial #JackdawGasField set to be approved in weeks, sources say

    Simon Jack, 3 September 2026

    "The #UK government is set to give the go-ahead for a controversial new #GasField off the coast of #Aberdeen, the BBC understands.

    "Approval for the Jackdaw project could come in mid-September, just before #Parliament breaks for party conference season, according to government and industry sources.

    "The gas field was approved by the former #ConservativeGovernment in 2022 but was delayed by a legal ruling from a #ScottishCourt, after #EnvironmentalGroups argued consent was given without fully considering the #ClimateImpact.

    "Jackdaw's owner says it will account for 6% of UK gas output when at peak production but environmental groups say it will provide only 2% of UK use when imports are included.

    "Campaigners launched legal challenges after Jackdaw was approved in 2022 and when the #RosebankOilField off #Shetland was given the green light in 2023.

    "The Court of Session in Edinburgh ruled last year that #Rosebank and Jackdaw had been unlawfully approved because the government had failed to take into account the climate impact of burning extracted #OilAndGas from the sites.

    "A judge ruled that more detailed climate assessments had to be published, and further estimates were put out for consultation in July.

    "Both Jackdaw and Rosebank are operated by #Adura, a joint venture between energy giants #ShellOil and Norway's #Equinor. Aberdeen-based firm Ithaca also owns 20% of Rosebank.

    "Adura has estimated that Jackdaw could produce 35.8m tonnes of carbon over its 11-year lifetime, the equivalent of 90% of Scotland's emissions for 2023. But it said a more likely estimate was about 23.6m tonnes - equivalent to 60% of the 2023 figure.

    " #Environmentalists insist that more #drilling would be unconscionable, hampering efforts to cut planet-warming carbon emissions as deadly #heatwaves and #ExtremeWeather affect billions across the globe.

    "They also say starting production would not protect energy security and that transitioning sooner to #GreenerTechnologies would be better for supporting jobs."

    Read more:
    bbc.com/news/articles/cj9xe09j

    #RenewablesNow #NoDrilling #NorthSea #ScottishCoast #UKNews #UKPol #Scotland #BigOilAndGas #ShellLies #Oiligarchy

  2. From 2013: Ten Most #Radioactive Places on Earth Mapped Out [GRAPHIC]

    "Do you know the dirty side of the #NuclearIndustry? After researching this article by brainz.org, we were shocked to find out how truly awful our radioactive waste problem is and how it is going to be hurting us all, for a long time to come. Please take the time to read the links below, share this with your friends, and discuss solutions to these problems. ~ Jim Lee, #ClimateViewer News

    "This list is not a definitive TOP TEN, it is simply ten very disgusting examples of nuclear warfare against the citizens of this world."

    Read more:
    climateviewer.com/2013/11/24/1

    #Hanford #Sellafield #Chernobyl #Fukushima #Mediterranean #Mayak #SomalianCoast #Kazakhstan #Chernobyl #Kyrgyzstan #EnvironmentalRacism #IndigenousPeoples #SiberianChemicalCompound #NoNukes #RethinkNotRestart #RenewablesNow #NuclearDumping #NuclearColonialism

  3. SimplyInfo.org: 15th Anniversary Report #FukushimaDaiichi

    March 2, 2026

    Excerpt: "This TV Asahi investigative report from March 2025 [linked below] paints a sobering picture of the enormous challenges still facing the decommissioning of Fukushima Daiichi, fourteen years after the accident. While #TEPCO achieved a milestone the previous November by extracting roughly 0.7 grams of #NuclearFuel debris for the first time, experts interviewed for the piece emphasized that debris removal is just one piece of a far more complex puzzle. Around 1,000 fuel assemblies
    still remain in the spent fuel pools of Units 1 and 2, untouched since the accident, and officials from the Nuclear Damage Compensation and Decommissioning Facilitation Corporation (#NDF) described clearing these pools as the single most urgent priority — in part because another
    #earthquake or #tsunami could strike at any time.

    "Before large-scale debris removal can even begin, the area around the reactor buildings must be cleared of heavily contaminated structures and exhaust stacks to make room for the massive equipment required. Because humans cannot safely approach the highly radioactive debris, all removal work must be done remotely. Radiation levels outside the buildings remain dangerously high — a dosimeter near #Unit2 showed particularly elevated readings — and contaminated water continues to be generated at a rate of roughly 80 tons per day as #rainwater and #groundwater contact radioactive materials on site, despite TEPCO having already released about 80,000 tons of treated [but still radioactive] water into the ocean.

    "Perhaps the most troubling concern raised in the article is what happens to the debris and #RadioactiveWaste after it is removed. Hiroshi Miyano, chairman of the Decommissioning Review Committee of the Atomic Energy Society of Japan, was blunt in his criticism, saying no serious thought has been given to managing this waste over the coming century or two.

    "The Fukushima debris is uniquely complicated because it is a mixture of melted nuclear fuel and structural materials, and experts warned that removal may not even be possible until a concrete disposal plan is in place. General decommissioning superintendent Toyoshi Fukada warned that without proper storage facilities ready in advance, the entire decommissioning effort could eventually grind to a halt simply because there would be nowhere to put the waste."

    Read more:
    simplyinfo.org/2026/03/simplyi

    Asashi investigative report [pdf]:
    dropbox.com/scl/fi/ysaf6a7hj62

    #FukushimaIsntOver #TEPCOLies #RethinkNotRestart #NoNukes #NoNukesForAI #RenewablesNow #WaterIsLife #OceansAreLife #NuclearPlants #NuclearDisaster #Remember311

  4. 'Planet Wreckers': 4 Rich Nations Plotting Nearly 70% of New Oil and Gas Over Next Decade | Common Dreams

    This is not just hypocrisy," said one climate campaigner. "It is a death sentence for communities on the frontlines of the #ClimateCrisis."

    Brett Wilkins
    Jun 16, 2025

    "Four wealthy nations—the #UnitedStates, #Canada, #Norway, and #Australia—account for the majority of planned oil and gas expansion over the next decade, according to new data published by #OilChangeInternational on Monday, the first day of the #BonnClimateChangeConference in Germany.

    "Oil Change's analysis, titled #PlanetWreckers, notes that if those four #GlobalNorth nations stopped their planned new oil and gas extraction, 32 billion tons of carbon pollution would stay in the ground instead of being burned and released into the atmosphere, where they fuel planetary heating. That's the equivalent of three times the annual global emissions created by burning coal.

    " 'A handful of the world's richest nations remain intent on leading us into disaster. This is not just hypocrisy. It is a death sentence for communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis,' Oil Change International global policy lead Romain Ioualalen said in a statement Monday.

    "It is sickening that countries with the highest incomes and outsized historical responsibility for causing the climate crisis are planning massive oil and gas expansion with no regard for the lives and livelihoods at stake," Ioualalen added."

    Read more:
    commondreams.org/news/oil-chan

    #Oligarchy #Oiligarchy #BigOilAndGas #DrillBabyDrill #LeaveItInTheGround #CorporateColonialism #FossilFuels #Fracking #Oil #Pollution #Drilling #Ecocide #USPol #CanadaPol #PetroState #ThanksBigOil #ClimateCatastrophe #BPKnew #ExxonKnew #WaterIsLife #AirIsLife #OilUpTheSwamp #ExtractiveIndustries #NoPipelines #RenewablesNow #FossillFuel #NoJobsOnADeadPlanet

  5. #SodiumBatteries offer an alternative to tricky #lithium

    Lithium is relatively scarce and mostly refined in China. Sodium is neither

    Oct 26th 2023

    Excerpt: "Fortunately, lithium is not the only game in town. As we report this week, a clutch of firms are making batteries based on sodium, lithium’s elemental cousin. Since sodium’s chemical properties are very similar to those of lithium, it too makes for good batteries. And sodium, which is found in the salt in seawater, is thousands of times more abundant on Earth than lithium and cheaper to get at. Most of the companies using sodium to make batteries today are also Chinese. But pursuing the technology in the West might be a surer route to energy security than relying heavily on lithium.

    "Besides its abundance, sodium has other advantages. The best lithium batteries use #cobalt and 3nickel in their electrodes. Nickel, like lithium, is in short supply. #Mining it on land is #environmentally destructive. Proposals to grab it from the #seabed instead have caused rows. A good deal of the world’s cobalt, meanwhile, is extracted from small mines in the Democratic Republic of #Congo, where child labour is common and working conditions are dire. Sodium batteries, by contrast, can use electrodes built from iron and manganese, which are plentiful and uncontroversial. Since the chemical components are cheap, a scaled-up industry should be able to produce batteries that cost less than their lithium counterparts.

    "Sodium is not a perfect replacement for lithium. It is heavier, meaning sodium batteries will weigh more than lithium ones of an equivalent capacity. That is likely to rule them out in some cases where lightness is paramount. But for other applications, such as grid storage or home batteries, weight is irrelevant. Several Chinese carmakers are even beginning to put sodium batteries in electric vehicles.

    "Perhaps the biggest disadvantage of sodium batteries is their late start. #LithiumIon batteries were first commercialised in the 1990s and have benefited from decades of investment. But the rest of the world is behind China on both fronts anyway. America and the European Union have announced enormous programmes of green industrial subsidies. If they are determined to bankroll batteries, some of the pot should go to sodium."

    Read more:
    economist.com/leaders/2023/10/

    Archived version:
    archive.ph/7x6JX#

    #SolarPunkSunday #DeepSeaMining #NoLithiumMining #LeaveItInTheOcean #LeaveItInTheOcean #LithiumAlternatives #SodiumBatteries #RenewablesNow

  6. ‘A very Finnish thing’: Big #SandBattery to store wind and solar energy using crushed soapstone

    The battery will be able to store a week’s heat demand in winter - how does it work?

    By Lottie Limb
    Published on 10/03/2024

    "A huge sand battery is set to slash the carbon emissions of a Finnish town.

    "The industrial-scale storage unit in Pornainen, southern Finland, will be the world’s biggest sand battery when it comes online within a year.

    "Capable of storing 100 MWh of thermal energy from solar and wind sources, it will enable residents to eliminate oil from their district heating network, helping to cut emissions by nearly 70 per cent.

    " 'It's exciting to build a large-scale thermal energy storage, which will also act as a primary production plant in Pornainen's district heating network,' says Liisa Naskali, COO at Polar Night Energy, the company behind the innovation.

    " 'This is a significant step in scaling up the sand battery technology.' "

    Read more:
    euronews.com/green/2024/03/10/

    #SolarPunkSunday #RenewablesNow #ThermalStorage

  7. From the Bretton Woods Project: #Forests

    "Finally, the [#WorldBank] ’s #forest policy and #WeakSafeguards on #ForestProtection have also been observed to infringe the rights of local communities and have failed to protect one of the planet’s most important ‘#CarbonSinks’ (see Observer Spring 2017). CSOs have called for the Bank to open up its Forest Notes – which are meant to guide the interface between its lending and forests – to consultation (see Observer Winter 2017-2018). CSOs have also been highly critical of one of the forest initiatives the Bank manages, the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF), a climate investment fund that supports Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) projects. A March 2017 post in REDD Monitor called the FCPF, 'the most cost-inefficient tree-saving scheme ever,' owing to high administrative costs between fiscal years 2009-2015 absorbing 64 per cent of FCFP’s $55 million expenditure. More generally, the Bank’s overall approach to lending has undermined the protection of vital natural ecosystems in borrower countries. As noted by Bruce Rich in his influential 2013 book, Foreclosing the Future: The World Bank and the Politics of Environmental Destruction, 'When one examines the failures to conserve ecosystems, or to mitigate environmental impacts of development, one finds that failed governance at all levels is almost invariably at the root. …Many of [the Bank’s] problems are associated with a dysfunctional institutional culture in which the relentless pressure to move money out the door, even in violation of the Bank’s own policies and rules, often overrides all other considerations.'"

    2017: World Bank policy lending undermines climate goals

    "One of the main problems is the Bank’s refusal to adequately assess the social and environmental risks of their policy loans" - Harlem Mariño, Derechos, Ambiente y Recursos Naturales

    6 April 2017

    "A late January report by US-based NGO Bank Information Center (BIC), together with partners in Egypt, Indonesia, Mozambique and Peru, claimed that the Bank is undermining its climate commitments by supporting investment incentives for coal, gas and oil projects through its development policy financing (DPF) mechanism. DPF accounts for approximately a third of all Bank funding and provides resources for programmes of policy and institutional reforms that are agreed by the Bank and the borrowing government (see Update 82). The report argued that the Bank’s financing through DPF contradicts the internationally agreed and Bank-supported goal of limiting the global average temperature increase to 2°C, which according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change would require that at least two-thirds of existing fossil fuel reserves are left in the ground.

    "BIC’s report looked at the Bank’s DPF measures in four countries: Egypt, Indonesia, Mozambique and Peru. It found that DPF introduced subsidies for coal in all countries, apart from Peru. For example, the report argued that Bank-supported subsidies for coal infrastructure have helped Indonesia become one of the world’s top coal exporters. It found some DPF support for renewable energy, but argued that the Bank could do more given that all countries examined have potential to develop renewable energy. For example, while Peru’s DPF provides subsidies to public-private partnerships to develop oil and gas infrastructure, it does not include plans for solar or wind power projects."

    brettonwoodsproject.org/2017/0

    #FCPF #REDD #Ecosystems #ProtectTheForests #EnvironmentalDestruction #ForestDegradation #Deforestation #EnvironmentalImpacts #Egypt #Indonesia #Mozambique #Peru #LeaveItInTheGround #Coal #BigOilAndGas #ExtractiveIndustries #Exploitation #EnvironmentalImpacts
    #HumanRights #ParisAgreement
    #ParisClimateAgreement #BigOilAndGas #CorporateColonialism #IMFLoanSharks #RenewablesNow

  8. Which rural area will take the UK’s nuclear waste?

    "One [#Sellafield's] oldest waste storage silos is currently leaking radioactive liquid into the ground. That is a 'recurrence of a historic leak' that Sellafield Ltd, the company that operates the site, says first started in the 1970s."

    Victoria Gill and Kate Stephens
    September 8, 2024

    "A repeating tone - blip, blip, blip - is the audible reminder that we are in one of the most hazardous nuclear sites in the world: Sellafield.

    "That sound - pulsing from speakers inside the cavernous fuel-handling plant - is a signal that everything is functioning as it should.

    "That is comforting because Sellafield, in Cumbria, is the temporary home to the vast majority of the UK’s radioactive #NuclearWaste, as well as the world’s largest stockpile of #plutonium.

    "That waste is the product of reactions that drive the UK’s nuclear power stations and it is highly #radioactive.

    "It releases energy that can penetrate and damage the cells in our bodies, and 'it remains hazardous for 100,000 years', explains Claire Corkhill, professor of radioactive waste management at University of Bristol.

    "Sellafield is filling up - and experts say we have no choice but to find somewhere new to keep this material safe.

    "Nuclear power is also part of the government’s stated mission for 'clean [sic] power by 2030'. More nuclear power means more nuclear waste."

    Read more:
    bbc.com/news/articles/czx6e2x0

    #NoNukes #NoWar #RenewablesNow #RethinkNotRestart #Uranium #NuclearWasteDump

  9. #Supai, #Ute, #Dine', #Arapaho, and #Lakota Testify on #Uranium #Exploitation before #InterAmericanCommission on #HumanRights

    "The legacy of #UraniumMining in the #Southwest is death from #cancer and unreclaimed uranium mines. Now the contamination threatens the #ColoradoRiver. Tilousi urged the Commission to support the tribes efforts and pressure the #UnitedStates to change the #1872MiningLaw that allows international companies to seize #PublicLand for mining."

    by Brenda Norrell, #CensoredNews
    March 1, 2024

    WASHINGTON -- "'There was no respect for the people living on these lands, and certainly no respect for #MotherEarth,' Edith Hood, Dine' from Red Water Pond Road community, told the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

    "'The government was aware of the risks and the dangers but failed and neglected to inform our people.'

    "Dine', Havasupai, Northern Arapaho, Oglala Lakota and #WhiteMesa Ute testified on uranium exploitation by the United States on Wednesday, during the session, 'Impacts of Uranium Exploitation on #IndigenousPeoples' Rights.'

    "The #BIA, #EPA and #NuclearRegulatoryCommission praised themselves, and attempted to #CoverUp the legacy of death from uranium mining, strewn #RadioactiveWaste, and deadly uranium mills in Indian country.
    Eric Jantz, legal director of the New Mexico Environmental Law Center, disagreed with the United States assertions.
    Jantz pointed out that the U.S. appears to want Native people to sacrifice more for 'national security' -- rather than to deal with the devastation. As for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, it has not honored public comments. And as for the EPA, it's too late. There are more than 500 uranium mine sites waiting to be cleaned up on the Navajo Nation. Zero have been fully cleaned up, Jantz told the Commission.

    "'Our ancestors remains were desecrated to build the mill,' Anthony Badback, Ute Mountain Ute at White Mesa, told the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights today in Washington. Badback testified that #EnergyFuels uranium mill has contaminated the #groundwater, plants, birds, #wildlife, and air in his community in southeastern #Utah.

    "The young people are getting asthma, and the people can no longer use their spring water for ceremonies. Ute must buy bottled water to drink, and no longer hunt because of the contamination. Now, the mill is bringing in international waste and has become a low-level radioactive waste repository, because of the lax standards of the state of Utah. 'We want the mill to be shut down,' Badback told the Commission. 'Please help us.'

    Read more: bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2024/02

    #WaterIsLife #NuclearWaste #UraniumMills #Reprocessing #IndigenousActivism
    #CulturalGenocide #EnvironmentalRacism
    #NoNukes #NoNewNukes
    #RenewablesNow #NoMining #UraniumMining