[GWSG] US wind >90 Gw, going up; Saudi bargain renewables; Trump-Putin in oil marinade; trouble in the E Antarctic

[Tilley, Al]

1. Wind power in the US has been climbing steadily and impressively every year this century. Total capacity now tops 90 gigawatts, enough for 27 million homes. Most impressively, the country's near-term pipeline has more than a third of current capacity-38 gigawatts. https://cleantechnica.com/2018/07/27/us-wind-capacity-surpasses-90-gigawatts-as-record-construction-levels-continue/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+IM-cleantechnica+%28CleanTechnica%29


The US Production Tax Credit and the Investment Credit for renewable power are set to expire in 2020, explaining some of the bulge in the wind pipeline. https://cleantechnica.com/2018/07/27/us-wind-installations-to-surge-before-ptc-phase-out-in-2021/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+IM-cleantechnica+%28CleanTechnica%29



2. Agreements to provide solar and wind energy in Saudi Arabia are coming in as low as 2.3 cents a kilowatt-hour for solar and 2.1 cents for wind. (The record low bid for wind is 1.77 cents/kilowatt-hour in Mexico.) One Saudi project with a Japanese bank would build 200 gigawatts of solar-30% more than is now produced globally. https://cleantechnica.com/2018/07/27/saudi-arabias-1st-wind-farm-receives-strikingly-low-bid-prices/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+IM-cleantechnica+%28CleanTechnica%29



3. The Russian attacks on democracy and the Trump friendship with Putin are soaked in oil. The eight-minute video from CNBC is a handy summary of Trump-Russia ties. https://cleantechnica.com/2018/07/27/how-russian-attacks-on-democracy-the-usa-relate-to-cleantech/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+IM-cleantechnica+%28CleanTechnica%29



4. Totten and neighboring Moscow University glaciers in the East Antarctic have begun to lose significant ice mass. Both are subject to undercutting from relatively warm ocean currents. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180726161009.htm


The paper finds that "the Totten/Moscow sector of EAIS has been losing mass relatively rapidly in the last 15 years." The East Antarctic still has a net gain of mass over the period, though that figure, 14 Gt/year, is roughly equivalent to the mass loss of the Totten-Moscow U sub-basin, 14.8 Gt/year, indicating the potential for the East Antarctic to become a net contributor to sea level rise if the sub-basin's ice loss were to double while the accretion of mass from precipitation remained stable. The sub-basin's potential contribution to sea level is five meters.   https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/2018GL078173 ?

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