SALT LAKE CITY -- Extreme drought has brought abnormally high temperatures across the Western states this week, and normally temperate Utah has not escaped the sizzling heat.
With temperatures rising well above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, many experts wondered aloud if Utah's power grid could withstand the stress.
Recent problems in Texas and California were cited in a study presented to the Utah Legislature's Public Utilities, Energy, Technology Committee.
The report found Utah's power provider might not be able to avoid blackouts in a period of extreme heat.
Christine Kruse, lead meteorologist at the National Weather Service Salt Lake City office, said the forecast is not optimistic.
"We had a temperature of 107 in Utah in this stretch, and that ties our all-time high-temperature record," Kruse observed. "Those temperatures are normally in July. This has been almost unprecedented heat for June."
The report found when Utah sees summer temperatures like its neighbors in Nevada and Arizona, its grid does not have enough "spinning" or reserve capacity or the interconnectivity to keep the lights and air conditioning on in an extended heat wave.
Jeff, Bousson, climate program manager for Clean Energy Utah, said urban planners need to better account for climate change as they build the state's towns and cities.
"This is the climate decade," Bousson asserted. "What we decide to do now in the 2020s is going to dictate what kind of future we want to live, what kind of climate change future we want to live in."
Bousson argued officials need to help Utahns do a better job of preparing to deal with extreme summer heat as well as the winter's cold.
"Right now, real time, community members that don't have A/C during summer, especially during these times, what they can do to stay cool and what the county is proposing to do moving forward to have greener and shadier and cooler communities," Bousson remarked.
Bousson added local municipalities and groups such as the LDS Church help Utahns prepare for natural disasters. He pointed out, however, extreme heat is the number one cause of death due to climate change.
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As Coloradans begin to weigh their options in this year's presidential election, a new Carbon Brief analysis projects that a second Biden term would help reduce climate pollution - but the administration will still fall short of meeting its 2030 goals.
Report co-author Simon Evans - senior policy editor at Carbon Brief - said by contrast, a second Trump term that successfully rolls back Biden initiatives, including the Inflation Reduction Act as promised, would add four billion extra tons of fossil fuel pollution.
"That's equivalent to the combined annual emissions of the European Union and Japan," said Evans. "That amount of extra emissions, four billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, would cause global climate damage worth something like $900 billion."
Trump has repeatedly claimed that climate change is a hoax, and advanced policies that increased crude oil drilling in order to maintain American energy dominance.
Researchers project a second Trump term would wipe out all emission-reduction gains made over the past five years by installing wind turbines, solar panels, and other clean energy technologies across the globe twice over.
In the 20th century, Evans said nations controlling large fossil fuel reserves did hold significant economic and other advantages.
But in the 21st century and beyond, he said he believes countries with large portfolios of clean energy will have the advantage.
"Actually, clean energy technologies are a great way of bringing energy security," said Evans. "Because you're not relying on import, you're just relying on the wind and the sun that you have in your own country. And the U.S. is certainly very well endowed with wind and solar resources."
Four billion tons is also equivalent to the combined annual emissions of the world's 140 countries with the smallest carbon footprints.
Evans noted that people who can't afford air conditioning to survive extreme heat, or move away from areas prone to flooding and wildfire, will continue to face the biggest threats.
"The people around the world that are least responsible for climate change," said Evans, "whether that's in the poorest countries in the world, or the poorest people in the richest countries - those tend to be the people that are most exposed to the negative impacts of climate change."
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Environmental groups in Virginia are among those looking at how to improve and modernize electrical grid transmission.
Experts said the grid's age and current state aren't conducive to the boom in renewable energy projects being developed. The lack of preparation is being felt all over the country but particularly in Virginia, where the latest report card gives the state's grid operator the lowest score.
Quentin Scott, federal policy director for the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, said grid operators' long-term planning needs to consider increasing renewable energy.
"They don't really account for high usage of renewables," Scott pointed out. "They're not accounting for the popularity of the Inflation Reduction Act. They're not accounting for state policies that require states to be 100% clean energy by 2050 or 2040."
Other experts feel grid operators like Virginia's PJM Interconnections need to hire more people to deal with interconnection requests. But increased demand for those jobs makes it harder to address the problem. Virginia's General Assembly passed House Bill 862 to make the process more efficient.
If grid operators cannot make the changes in time, around 80% of the emissions reductions outlined in the Inflation Reduction Act might not happen. Scott and other environmental advocates are worried about losing ground. Along with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission being a backstop authority for such projects, he noted microgrids can help improve the grid's efficiency.
"Solar panels that are on your roof or community solar projects; small businesses that erect you know, a wind turbine near their business," Scott explained. "Microgrids allow those sort of localized communities to have more planning, more control over their local resources."
Microgrids are also known to be weather resilient. Given the strong effects climate change is having on states' electrical infrastructure, it can be prudent to prevent blackouts. Research has shown if Texas had more connections with the Southeastern U.S., there would not have been as many power outages during the deadly 2021 winter storm.
Disclosure: The Chesapeake Climate Action Network contributes to our fund for reporting on Climate Change/Air Quality, and Sustainable Agriculture. If you would like to help support news in the public interest,
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The first satellite launched by a nonprofit organization is now circling the globe, getting ready to deliver data on methane pollution from oil and gas facilities worldwide.
The MethaneSAT satellite backed by the Environmental Defense Fund will help track methane emissions, a major contributor to global warming.
Jon Goldstein, senior director of regulatory and legislative affairs for the fund, said the advocacy group is focused on making the data transparent, accessible to anyone, and actionable.
"It's going to help the government, it's going to help industry, and it's going to help communities that want to know, 'What's going on in my backyard?'" Goldstein explained. "They'll have this publicly accessible, online data source."
Goldstein emphasized data collected should provide accountability from the more than 50 oil and gas companies that pledged at last year's Dubai "COP-28" climate summit to "zero-out" methane and eliminate routine gas flaring.
Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency published new methane regulations adopted in 2023. New Mexico adopted its own rules in 2021 to crack down on leaks, particularly from smaller facilities.
The new satellite is designed to measure known sources of methane and discover and quantify previously unknown sources. Goldstein noted it would allow companies and countries to take action sooner to help reverse the Earth's rising surface temperature.
"It is a very powerful greenhouse gas; more than 80 times more powerful, pound-for-pound, than carbon dioxide at driving climate change," Goldstein outlined. "That makes it a huge opportunity for folks that want to address this problem quickly, to get out there and get these leaks fixed."
New Mexico is second only to Texas as the largest oil-producing state in the U.S. MethaneSAT was launched last week from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base.
Disclosure: The Environmental Defense Fund contributes to our fund for reporting on Climate Change/Air Quality, Energy Policy, Environment, and Public Lands/Wilderness. If you would like to help support news in the public interest,
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