The Weekly Anthropocene, February 14 2024
An epic lithium/geothermal project in California, an oasis neighborhood survives wildfires in Chile, hydropanels are awesome, the EU and India are electrifying, seven new MPAs in Spain, and more!
California
The Golden State’s epic Salton Sea lithium brines project is well under way! After successfully navigating the years-long complexities of “engineering, permitting, and finance” thanks to support from the state of California and the Biden Administration, Controlled Thermal Resources held a groundbreaking ceremony in January 2024 for their pioneering combined lithium extraction facility/geothermal power plant, and construction has now begun.
Phase One of the project, when complete (it’ll be built with union labor!), will produce 50 MW of geothermal power plus 25,000 tonnes of lithium hydroxide per year, a vital input for EV batteries. General Motors has invested in the project, and auto company Stellantis has already signed up to buy some of the lithium. And that’s just the beginning: there are a planned seven phases to the project. Eventually, the lithium-rich brines under the Salton Sea could supply 350 MW of round-the-clock geothermal power plus 175,000 tonnes of lithium hydroxide per year! This could go on for quite a long time: there’s an estimated 18 million tonnes of lithium1 in Salton Sea brines, enough for 382 million EV batteries! (For comparison, there are less than 300 million cars and trucks registered in the United States). California has just fired the starting gun on an epic clean industry colossus that will help electrify the world for decades to come!
America’s green reindustrialization remains woefully undercovered, but it’s more and more clear that it’s an epochal policy success. As projects like this multiply, the world is going to have more than enough lithium for the ongoing EVs boom! Spectacular work.
“These new investments are going to do more than create good-paying jobs. They’re also going to set America up to lead the world in building a clean energy economy and the clean energy future.”
-President Joe Biden
A new study has found that sea otters are helping shore up salt marshes near Monterey, California. The otters eat lots of burrowing crabs that dig into the soil and eat plant roots, so the presence of otters helps prevent salt marsh erosion, as well as speeding the restoration of eelgrass. It’s the classic “wolves in Yellowstone” effect once again; major predators help keep ecosystems in balance, up to and including shaping the very land they live on!
In 2020, the Dome Fire killed over 1.3 million Joshua trees in the drylands of southeastern California. Now, the U.S. National Park Service has planted thousands of new Joshua tree seedlings in the fire-scarred Mojave National Preserve, with the help of three camels carrying water and sprouts to remote locations in their saddlebags. Great work!
This is particularly resonant because Joshua trees coevolved with Pleistocene megafauna like the now-extinct North American camel (genus Camelops, aka “yesterday’s camel”), which may have helped them spread their seeds. Many recent studies have found that on continents, introduced large herbivore species long stigmatized as invasive tend to have positive ecological effects. For example, feral donkeys and horses in the American West often dig for water to drink, creating natural wells that have been found to be used by dozens of other animals. As an excellent recent Atlantic article put it, “Nature doesn’t care where a species is from.” Although no one seems to be working on this yet, it looks like there’s a prima facie strong case to rewild a population of camels in the Mojave as a reforestation and climate resilience measure!
Chile
When deadly wildfires struck Chile recently, the Botania neighborhood in Quilpué managed to ride out the threat essentially intact thanks to a USAID-funded fireproofing project2. The project had previously cleared the neighborhood boundaries of trash, vegetation, and debris to create a firebreak, then water sprayers were deployed to soak the ground and prevent flames from encroaching. As vast swathes of the surrounding area burned, Botania’s preparations kept their homes intact. This is the kind of sensible, proactive resilience work that can preserve high standards of living despite climate disruption! Great job.
Hydropanels
SOURCE, a rapidly rising company founded by ASU materials scientist Cody Friesen, is now privately valued at over $1 billion. Their product? Hydropanels, a self-contained solar-powered device that uses fans to channel air to a water vapor-trapping desiccant. One hydropanel costs about $2,000, lasts about 15 years, and produces about 4-5 liters of water per day. They’re already being used in 50 countries, and are available for residential or commercial applications.
This is such a cool technology! Water from thin air, even in dry climates! (SOURCE headquarters are in Arizona, which has less than 5% relative humidity in the summer, and hydropanels still work there!). Eminently scalable, from the house to apartment block to village to city levels. And it’s modular, so like solar panels and batteries it could have a rapid “learning curve” of technological improvements and cost declines. This is the kind of tech that could eventually enable clean drinking water for all humans worldwide! Human civilization is developing a truly incredible climate resilience toolkit. Great work!
India
Rooftop solar was already booming in India (as in much of the world!), with 4 gigawatts’ worth on track to be installed in the April 2023-March 2024 period. Now, decentralized clean energy’s growth in the subcontinent is set to accelerate even faster, as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced in January new plans to invest $9 billion to install rooftop solar panels on 1 crore (10 million) houses!
India is also rapidly becoming a world leader in electric trains, with 10,238 electric trains compared to just 4,543 diesel trains as of December 2023. 94% of India’s rail lines were electrified as of January 2024, with 100% possibly achievable in a matter of months, up from just 45% in 2015. (Note: a rail line being electrified means that an electric train *can* run on it, not necessarily that it does: it’ll still take a little more time for all the old diesel trains to be retired and replaced). For comparison, just 56% of the European Union rail network is electrified. This is a great example of the “leapfrog” effect in action, where later-developing countries can skip straight to more advanced technologies!
Just a few weeks ago, The Weekly Anthropocene’s summary article on Earth’s big cats noted the lack of data on snow leopard population numbers. Now, data from the first-ever survey of snow leopards in India has been released. Camera traps identified 214 individual snow leopards across India’s Himalayas, information which combined with analysis of leopard trails and other signs resulted in a final estimate of 718 snow leopards in the country. The mountainous Indian territory of Ladakh is estimated to be home to 477 of those snow leopards. Great work!
European Union
Renowned think tank Ember has released their European Electricity Review, and there’s some amazing news to report!
Coal power generation in the EU fell by 26% in 2023, a record.
Gas power fell by 15%, another record.
And as a result, carbon emissions from the EU electricity sector fell by 19%. Almost a fifth! In just one year!
EU power sector emissions are now 46% below their peak in 2007. Nearly half of their electricity’s yearly contribution to climate change fixed, with no corresponding decrease in power availability!
Yes, that means that fossil fuels supplied just one-third, 33%, of the European Union’s electricity in 2023, down from 39% in 2022.
Clean energy kept the lights on, as it increasingly does worldwide: wind and solar together provided 27% of the EU’s electricity in 2023 (up from 23% in 2022), wind and solar plus other renewables (mostly hydro) provided 44%, and renewables plus nuclear provided a whopping 67%!
Wind power alone produced more electricity in the EU than gas in 2023!
Wind and solar power generation in the EU has grown fivefold from 2009 to 2023.
The EU and the world will likely use more and more electricity as electric cars replace internal combustion engines and electric heat pumps replace oil furnaces, so it’s great that the vital electricity sector is rapidly shifting to clean energy! Spectacular work.
A referendum in Paris, France saw Parisians vote in favor of tripling parking costs for SUVs, a step further in the city’s long-underway progress towards pedestrian and cyclist-focused urbanism. A new component in the “Paris model” of urban policy that other cities are hastening to follow!
A Dutch company is leading a new European consortium that plans to deploy 150 megawatts of floating solar in the North Sea, within existing offshore wind farms. They hope that a 150 MW “block” format will become a new industry standard for floating solar, allowing rapid buildout of gigawatt-scale floating solar farms in the near future! Spectacular work.
The government of Spain (a country nicely balancing rapid rewilding with prospering cities) has declared seven new marine protected areas in its waters: Alicante Canyons, Ibiza Canal, Jaizkibel-Capbretón, Western Strait, Northeast Canaries Seamounts, Southeast Canaries Seamounts, and Western Galician-Cantabrian Migratory Corridor. The new MPAs will help protect habitat for wildlife ranging from bottlenose dolphins to loggerhead sea turtles to over 30 species of seabirds. (Here’s the official order with more details, in Spanish). Awesome!
And Spain’s Canary Islands are using “mechanical moss” fog catchers to collect water for forest restoration projects. Another great example of local climate resilience innovation!
18 million divided by 175,000 is over 102; Salton Sea lithium could end up being a century-long driver of growth and innovation!
Hat tip to reader Trich Wages, who brought this story to my attention!
Another dose of optimism! Focusing on the small scale today, I would like to say how neat it was to hear about (1) the possible introduction of wild free ranging camels to the Mojave! Maybe they could be given a kind of regional Endangered Species Act protection to protect from them from sports hunters, loons who wanted to have camel meat and wall mounted trophies, as well as entrepreneurs who might want to sell parts to "wild game meat" restaurants and aphrodesiac shops in China. (2) Hydropanels- what a brilliant idea! and (3) The Canary Islands moss/water collection systems, another great idea. I like the needle approach especially. Good job!
It's great to hear of good and hopeful stories . Thanks Sam 👍