So the #parkfire is burning at an incredible rate of spread the past 48 hours, growing from a burning truck in a ravine to 164k acres as of this morning. Thank god it has not yet run into communities. I hope it does not. But it really spotlights a few things: Most ignitions have to do with people. The more people there are, the more chances for (a) things that go along with people starting fires (CampFIre) or (b) people starting fires unintentionally (CarrFire) or (c) people starting fires by doing stupid things (ParkFire).

So it seems like the state of California could run short of power during late afternoon into early evening. A few thoughts: (1) look after your neighbors. Especially any older neighbors that may struggle in the intense heat.

(2) it is highly likely that impacted customers will only see blackouts, if they occur, for an hour. Perhaps less. So don’t panic.

Lot's of people have been commenting about the jump in the middle of a brownfield site at the Olympics. What has most struck me are images like this one of the Downhill venue. And I actually think they are an important educational opportunity for many people about what skiing is. The downhill course is entirely artificial snow put down in a cold and very dry environment. It is fake. But what's great about it is how there is zero effort to cover up. China isn't hiding the ball here. I actually think that's maybe a good thing. This lack of pretending.

#caldorfire as viewed from the IR cam at Heavenly (across the Tahoe Basin from Echo Summit) just now (@AlertWildfire). Backing down the ridge into the Tahoe Basin. Damn. While many brave firefighters are doing the best they can to protect life and property under difficult circumstances, the ONLY thing that has worked to stop this fire so far is the Caples Ecosystem Restoration Project, a large prescribed fire from 2019.

So excited to see a bill that is near and dear to my heart in print! SB 440 (@SenBillDodd) would create a sustained funding source for wildfire hardening ($1 billion over 10 years) and earthquake retrofit ($500 million over 10 years). #resilience #wildfire The California Senate and Assembly have tried for several years to fund wildfire hardening but have come up short. @GavinNewsom proposed a small pilot last January that was zeroed out due to COVID and has proposed it again this year. This bill takes a much bigger and bolder step.

My take on the mid-continent electricity grid situation stemming from the Arctic winter temps. 3 key messages:

Millions remain without power in frigid temperatures after major winter storm - YouTube 1. These outages are caused by two factors: extraordinarily high demand for power and the failure of traditional, mostly fossil fueled, power plants to perform under cold conditions.

Ever since @JesseJenkins and colleagues work on a zero carbon US and this work by @DrChrisClack and colleagues on incorporating DER, I've been having the following set of thoughts about how to reduce the risk of failure in a US clean energy buildout. Bottom line is much more DER.

https://twitter.com/EnvAm/status/1349727218490982403

Typically, when we see zero-carbon electricity coupled to electrification of transport and buildings, implicitly standing behind that is totally unprecedented buildout of the transmission system. The team from Princeton's modeling work has this in spades for example.

To me, the key message of our work is that wildfire is rapidly undermining the massive air quality progress that has been made over the past 50 years. We show the progress being reversed (and this study doesn’t include 2020 data).

https://twitter.com/marshallbburke/status/1349018443446677507

And because wildfire smoke particles don’t count towards (or rather against) attainment due to the Clean Air Act’s “exceptional events” policy, we aren’t doing enough to develop effective responses to this growing public health crisis.

I really enjoyed this OpEd from two great people. Since neither of them is a lawyer, I want to add just one little piece to this discussion: NSPS.

https://twitter.com/oboylemm/status/1326948037244022784

Recall that the big deal climate reg in the power sector under Obama was the Clean Power Plan. This regulation of EXISTING power plants would have forced a coal to gas and renewable transition in the US over the next decade. It was legally risky then. Quite a bit riskier now.

I think this is a major problem for anyone with assets that might want to engage in prescribed fire - even though the actual risks are very low. The basic problem is that commercial insurers do not want to write anything having to do with wildfire and do not differentiate.

https://twitter.com/cxadlam/status/1326279180074377216

This is not a public perception issue. It is a perception issue on the part of risk transfer capacity that has been totally burned by the loss experience in California over the past several years. Addressing this problem may require coordinated effort at the state level.

It seems increasingly likely that Biden will win the presidential election but that democrats will not secure a majority in the senate. That means action on climate and energy will almost certainly have to proceed via regulation using existing authority. A thread... President Biden won't be able to rely on CRA to quickly revoke problematic rules but will be able to rescind or revise them. He will face a much less friendly Supreme Court when his rules are challenged. What does this all mean, practically speaking?

This article by @jtemple that came out just prior to the election should be essential reading for all sustainability officers trying to figure out how to achieve their CEO's net zero pledges. Companies need to learn from past experience with offsets.

technologyreview.com/2020/11/02/101… Avoiding a repeat of past missteps with offsets means having a red team of experienced offset critics; this should be a priority for any firm aiming for net-zero and to actually have that claim stick. It's great to work with nature-based CDR providers. But that's not sufficient.

I just got asked for the nth time about what I think about the comparison between CA wildfire CO2 emissions in 2018 and our state's climate goals. I think the comparison is misguided in at least two important respects. First, fossil fuels are largely carbon from plants that grew and were buried in the Cretaceous. Forest carbon is cycling between plants and the atm on a timescale of decades. There's no putting the Cretaceous CO2 back in the ground. Not true for forests that burn - they regrow.

I've been thinking a lot (in the dark) about what to take away from the last couple days of safety blackouts (aka PSPS) in Northern California and have a few thoughts about what this means for our thinking about wildfire and energy in California. My basic take is that any proposed solution to wildfire risks from the electric system needs to meet two key criteria.