(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to episode 222 of The Clean Energy Show. I'm Brian Stockman. - And I'm James Whittingham. This week Chinese cars may actually be of superior quality compared to Western made vehicles. Now that crap I buy in dollar stores, get all the catch up. - Airlines in the UK may soon have to disclose their carbon impact to passengers. I'm okay with that as long as they also disclose the carbon impact of thousands of people sleeping in the airport because of their canceled flights. - Kamala Harris could be the next leader of the free world. Where does she stand on global warming? Hopefully on it's throat. For one Kamala, you've got decades to enjoy this planet unlike the days that maybe Joe had left. - Yeah, or perhaps me as well. AI may be the answer to reducing wildfires caused by power utilities during extreme weather events. This makes perfect sense because the AI robot army will need a reliable power grid to achieve their goal of subjugating humankind. - All that and more, this edition of The Clean Energy Show. And also this week, does walking to work make you happy? I think you know the answer to that. You used to walk to work. - Yes, I walked to work for many, many years and it was fabulous. But as you know, the forest fire smoke is back. So now, if I was to walk to work now, be like smoking a bag of cigarettes, it's back. - Yeah, and it's, you know, we had a very wet spring here in Canada, in Western Canada. And maybe that wetness didn't get all the way up north where the forests are, I don't know, but I was kind of hoping, you know, I know it's supposed to be a hot summer, but yeah, it's back. And you know, it's one of the worst summers for me so far for my pool, like it's been a cool spring and it was mid-July when I finally opened my pool after spending a lot of money on chemicals to kill the algae, 'cause you can't go into the pool and scrape the algae off until it's warm enough or you'll get hypothermia. And it's just because I'm heating with solar panels, thermal solar panels, yeah. It's just unbelievable that it took that long, but now it's, you know, night and day, I'm in there and it's cool. - Yeah, but it's bulky. - I went in there yesterday, I said, I'm gonna go breathe the smoke. I've got an air purifier behind me and it's going on constantly. You put the windows closed and they are conditioning on and yeah, I'm using a lot of air conditioning this year for heat and moisture. Actually, it's been incredibly humid here, which is weird for us, but I mean, it happens in July, but it's a little bit weird how much how humid it's been 'cause then it gets warm at night and you can't open the windows. - Yeah, no, we would normally describe this as a dry place, but it seems to be one of the things with climate change that we get a lot more humidity now. - And it seems like the smoke is a normal thing now, which I don't like that. - No, no. - Well, I said last week, I finally got out and did some cycling last week because it seemed like, oh, it was too hot, then it was too cold and then, you know, it was smokey. So, you know, we had about a week there that was nice and we're back to the smoke and it's awful, it's terrible. - Yeah, and it's going down into the central and western states in the U.S. and it's bad 'cause it's, I mean, right now, I don't know if it's cloudy or sunny because there's so much smoke in the atmosphere that it looks like it's overcast, but it may not be. - Yeah, I was wondering that too. Yeah, it's like, yeah, is it cloudy or is all of that smoke because it's a lot of smoke. - And of course, somewhat ironically, it kills our solar generation. So that's-- - Way down, way down. - It's a feedback loop, it's, I don't care if it, you know, it's just nasty. - And I went to Moosejaw on the weekend. This is sort of our sister city nearby, Moosejaw, Saskatchewan, which is a place I love and it was very, very smoky, worse than here. And so I, you know, I looked up Environment Canada. They don't seem to even have a air quality station in Moosejaw. So, you know, they had a smoke warning. - I don't think they have a temperature station in Moosejaw. It's just too close to a major city. - It's possible, yeah, but, you know, they had a smoke alert, but there was no way to check, at least we have an air quality thing where there's a scale from one to 10. - Yeah. - Sometimes it's 10 plus, they call it, which is horrifying. - Yes. - But, but yeah, I always have a great time in Moosejaw. It's this wonderful little city nearby. I went to see Brent Butt do some stand up comedy. He was at the Festival of Words. They have a literary festival there in Moosejaw. And he did some stand up and then he did a little interview about his novel that he wrote, he wrote a novel. But, you know, it was occurring to me. We have a lot of listeners from around the world, you know, like places in Tasmania and, you know, Finland. Most people don't know where we live. And every once in a while we try and explain it, but it occurred to me, probably the most famous TV show to come from, Saskatchewan from here, is Corner Gas, that was Brent Butt's show that was set here at a little gas station in the middle of the prairie. So if you're ever wondering what it's like where James and I live, just look for that show called Corner Gas. - Then you'll get the Saskatchewan accent and many other things. - Yes. - And you did a bit part in one episode, I think. Two, didn't you? - Yeah, it was weird. Because the show had been on for a number of years and it was one of the highest rated, you know, it was probably the most successful sitcom in Canadian history. We're not known for a sitcom. We don't have a star system here. We don't have a, you know, much of a studio system or anything. So it was weird. And then to set it in where we live in the prairies. And one of the sets is in a small town called Rolo. And it's a cafe set and a gas station. So they shot the exteriors there. But they also shot some of the, half the interiors of the cafe. So that the actual prairie was behind you in the background. So when I walked on the set, it was like walking into, you know, Seinfeld's apartment, you know. It was like, ah, where have I? This is weird. And then I gotta pretend to be a guy here. - Yeah. - And then I'm, you know, interacting with cast. And I don't act very often. I wasn't acting very often. And, you know, they're a well-oiled machine. - Yeah, but yeah, Brent, but he did a little talk afterwards. And he mentioned, you know, corner gas. And there's an animated version and a live action version. You know, go to the live action one, if you wanna see what it's like around here. But yeah, he mentioned that, but like he was surprised as anybody what a hit it was. Like, you know, this is, should be available all around the world for all of our listeners everywhere. Just Google it. Look for it. It turned out to be a massive, massive hit show for here in Canada. And yeah, he mentioned once, you know, somebody asked him at some point if he wanted to pitch a TV show. And his answer was, well, I do have one idea, but no one's gonna want that. It's set at a gas station in Saskatchewan. And lo and behold, he was able to pitch it. They were able to make it. - Yeah, that's funny. You should mention that because we had both pitched our shows to CBC Saskatchewan. And we're both a finalist, it was between me and him. And he won, but then he went to a different network. And I'm still James with none. - No money in the bank account. And yeah, but I mean, at that time, I think it was, it was like a variety show where he had, you know, some stand up and then little vignettes at a gas station, but then it turned into a full-fledged sitcom at the gas station with a proper budget. You know, they put enough money behind it to make it look good and what it needed. But it is unusual for a sitcom 'cause it's not, I mean, it's not in front of a studio audience, but it's also in the limited sets that are like a studio sitcom or three cameras sitcom, but they, you know, the whole prairie thing was just crazy. The fact that they, you know, they had breakaway sets where one shooting one angle was shot in a small town and the other angle was shot in a studio of the same scene. So yeah, it was weird. - And of course, James and I made a movie too called The Sabatical, which is set in our city, Regina. - You could really learn about Saskatchewan there. It's on TubeE for free right now. People are still watching it, Brian, because I saw we keep getting reviews, but I am DB rating as slowly slipping as we get away from the inside crowd who actually were festival fans to people stumbling upon it on their movie apps. So there was on Prime for a couple of years too, but yeah, now you're retired. - And you can. - We're both very relaxed now, have a long time. - Yeah, you can rent it as well. - Yeah. So I want to give a quick update. A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that there was a little town in Germany that they were having to evict all the residents to expand the coal mine. - Right. - And so I wanted to just give a quick update on that. When you Google it, the first one that tends to come up is an older story from January. No, where is it here? Hang on. It was January 2023. This is the sort of the more famous story 'cause there were protests because the final residents were being evicted. And this is a small village of just a couple of hundred people and Greta Thunberg was involved in the protests for that. So that was January 2023. That was Lützeroth, a small hamlet in Germany. And they had started talking about this many years before that Germany has a lot of coal power and they still have some and they were forced to kind of extend. We talked about this on the show, but once Russia invaded Ukraine, they didn't want to buy natural gas from Russia anymore. So it meant keeping more of their coal plants alive. But it's, but it's just crazy to me that they've had to actually, you know, destroy several little villages to expand these coal mines. You know, we have coal around here, but it's out in the middle of nowhere. Like there's really no towns or villages around, but of course, Germany is a much smaller country. So it's, you know, surprising to me, but yeah, there's a more recent story here, July 8th from Bloomberg. And it's the coal industry is wiping a historic German village off the map. So this is another one that's going. It's the village of Mulrose in Germany's far east. Now there's only 200 people that live there. This is a super small, I mean, not that that makes it okay. - Yeah. - But what are they doing, they literally destroying the town to mine coal underneath of it somewhere. - And they've been paying people off for years. There's a few of these villages that are kind of on the radar here for this. And a lot of people just take the payout and they leave, but not everybody does. So there comes a point when there is a sort of an eviction notice. So yeah, this town of Mulrose, it's happening now. The final people are being evicted there. So they can expand this coal mine. - I don't understand, you know, like, how long as Chinese coal mines are starting to not get used? So how long can it be before renewables overtake? - Yeah. - The even necessity to have that coal plant and could they be doing more otherwise. - With stories this week, it's not on my list. But in England, they're having to debate building more natural gas power plants because they're worried they're not going to have enough generation. They have a plan to phase it all out. And Germany has a plan to phase out all of their coal by 2038 or something like that. And it just got slowed down because of the issues with Russia. You know, we often talk about this is the whole show, you know, the transition to clean energy. And, you know, it was Rishi Sunak that originally proposed that they build more natural gas power plants in the UK. He got voted out. It's the new labor government. They're much more clean and green. Well, now they're talking about it because they're just worried they're not going to have enough base load capacity. This clean energy can't necessarily come online fast enough. - It's probably like 12 years of coal production to wipe out a town. I don't understand this day and age. How is that even necessary, can't you, you know, build a transmission line or, you know, build some offshore wind or something like that? Yeah. - It seems crazy, but in 2024, people are being displaced from their homes in Germany to dig more coal. - Well, I'm going to talk a little bit about Kyle Connor from out of spec reviews YouTube channel. Some one we're both familiar with. He's from Fort Collins, just north of Denver and does reviews of cars and tests and things. He's our North American Bjorn, except not as weird. - Yeah. And he's kind of the charging expert guy. That's really part of his expertise is figuring out these charging networks and how they work and the different speeds and so on. And he does amazing tests with different charging speeds. And it did get a little bit cold there once. He did some tests there too. He even owns an old leaf that he bought. He said it was the cheapest EV in the country. He was banked up. He shipped it in from Seattle or somewhere on the Rivian. But he has a video out where the local dealership that he had, you know, bought some EVs from I think Kiab. They also sell Nissan and they were selling Nissan Leafs. Nissan Leafs are kind of one of the first mass produced North American EVs, but it really hasn't been updated. So it doesn't have any thermal cooling and the batteries are tend to be small. But they contacted him and he said, you know, we want to sell, we've got like 60 Leafs on the law. We want to get rid of them. And we're getting like 60 more, 70 more, something like that are coming in. These are all electric EVs that, you know, same form factor that I have, which is, you know, pretty decent sized, but they're the newer one. But there's a newer one, so they look better. They don't look weird. And, you know, they have all the latest safety features, you know, you know, the cars have on even on the base model. Now, these are the smaller models, which I think is like 150, 160 miles of range, like 250 kilometers. These cars aren't great for road tripping anyway, because they overheat if you're driving in hot weather, you basically can only charge at once. And, you know, they charge slowly, very slowly too. Yeah, but the least deal is for two years, 24 months. And he wanted to put money down. So he said, "How much can I put down?" And he said, "500, I'm like, for whatever reason." So he put down 500, and he's gonna lease this for his friend, who's kind of an EV, he's a cynic. And it was $19 a month, Brian, American. What? $19. And that's not plus tax, plus fees. That's everything, everything for 19 bucks a month. Now, if you split up the 500 he put down, that's $29 a month for two years for a brand new car. Now, if you had a paper route, a paper route, you could buy this brand new car. I mean, maybe you wouldn't have the financing if you were 14 years old, but maybe mom and dad could buy it. 'Cause if you're a high school student, and you're driving, you know, like my son is still driving like a 22 year old Honda Civic, right? It's rusty, it's banged up, it could die any day. You could pull into the school lot in a brand new car with a new car smell for less than what you would spend on gas for the, you know, beater car that every other high school student has, even if you don't do much driving, if you just go to and from school, you could save that much money on gas, and that would be your payment. And you'd be safer if you're a parent wanting your kid to be safe, you'd have all the latest safety features. My kid's car doesn't even have ABS brakes for some reason. That was an option at the time, which sucks, but in the ledger here, but I thought that was amazing. You know, we've talked about, you know, $100 lease payments for Leafs in the States, and you could do that as a high school student if you had like a two day a month job, but this, this is incredible, like. - So if we have any lifters in Colorado, they should look for this deal. - Oh, yes, yes. And basically Kyle has a lot of viewers on YouTube, obviously, and they've all snapped up most of them already. But there's more coming. And yeah, and the, I think the larger battery one is not as good a deal at all. This is because, you know, there's all these incentives, and that's, you couldn't get that if you're a 14 year old, you couldn't get the 7500 tax break off. - Right, 'cause in the US it's a, yeah, it's like a tax credit, so you need to earn money or something to actually get it. - Yeah, but it does come off rate at the dealership, and that's why it is basically, with Kyle's calling it basically free. So yeah, out of spec reviews is the YouTube channel if you want to go see that. I love the leaf in many ways. I wish they would have updated it to be, you know, faster charging, bigger batteries and all that. It's a perfectly good form factor of a car. Like it's, it's roomier, it's bigger than my Bolt, which is 100% electric, and it was, in some ways, bigger than our Prius, although a little bit shorter. So yeah, and now I'm gonna talk more about Kyle's, out of spec YouTube channel, 'cause he went to Austria and tested out Chinese vehicles. So that is my first sort of real look from someone I'm familiar with at Chinese vehicles. So a little bit later in the show, we'll get to that. - And this is from the Guardian Airlines, may have to disclose carbon impact of individuals' flights under new UK policies. So the Civil Aviation Authority in the UK is proposing these new measures that will basically disclose the amount of carbon. And this is something they do better in the UK and Europe as well in terms of emissions and pollution from cars. You always get a bit more information than we do here in North America about, you know, they actually, when you buy a car, they don't just give you the fuel economy figures. They also give you pollution figures. We don't get that here in North America. So they're just proposing the same thing. This is not passed yet, but it's essentially, it's like a nutrition label. When you buy food, you need to know what's in it in terms of, you know, calories and-- - So if you buy a bag of Doritos and you see it has 1,000 calories, maybe you don't buy as many Doritos anymore. - That's right. So they're just proposing similar labels for airline flights that it would be clear how much emissions you're, you know, putting out into the world when you take a certain flight. - And it would give them the opportunity to sort of have a built-in offset, although those are controversial and maybe not crazy effective, but it would give them the opportunity to do that or try that. - Yeah, and I've said before, on the flights that I've bought lately, there's a box you can check to do a carbon offset and, you know, it's only like $10 or something. - Is that on both Canadian airlines? - We have two here. - I haven't booked on WestJet for a while, so I'm not sure, but-- - So you're kind of able to buy it. - It's something, but yeah, if somebody did a bit more research to find out a more, I don't know, realistic figure or something like that. So they're thinking this policy would come into effect in 2025 and, you know, the airline industry is really gonna struggle to go green. They're talking about using sustainable aviation fuel and there are, you know, regulations in place that will, you know, by 2030, they're supposed to have 10% sustainable aviation fuel and these are fuels that are made from things like waste and recycled cooking oil and it's supposed to have a much lower footprint than typical jet fuel. It also is controversial 'cause you're still burning it. - The refinery a mile away from me says that in 2050, that's what they'll do. They'll make sustainable airline fuel, but you and I know that the trajectory of electrified flight probably means that that's not gonna happen. That by 2050, we're gonna have to have zero emissions and the planet will be a hot hell for everyone and I doubt that, you know, I'd like to see it shut down today, but what are you gonna do? - Yeah, air travel, it will be one of the slower things to go electric, but it will happen. Absolutely will happen. - Yeah, and we had a story on that last week. The ever increasing energy density and lower price of batteries enables that. So, you know, I think it was 3000 kilometer flights that were on a horizon from Chinese battery makers and speaking of China, we're gonna talk about the BYDC. Now, the BYD is build your dreams. That is the Chinese auto company. It is the biggest one in China. It is set to become perhaps the largest automaker in the world by 2030. It is expanding rapidly. They are heavily invested in EVs and the whole batteries. They own the supply chain, the mines for the batteries, and they are being very, very competitive. The BYDC is like a Tesla Model 3. It is a Rumi Sedan. It is not terribly big like the Model S, as you know, but a decent sized car that can fill a lot of needs. So, yeah, the seal is, I wondered about it, Brian. Like I just, they, so many things are like, oh, this is a Model 3 competitor. And that's like, you know, headline grabbing stuff or a Model 3 killer. But is it? And Kyle from Out of Spec refused. He went all the way to Austria to test some of these BYD models. And these are not from BYD. These are from a rental company that bought them from a dealership, like a small rental company. And I have a clip here of him talking about this car. It's about two minutes long. The first impression is just a such a high quality vehicle. Really nice color on this one as well. The body lines, again, this is, this is how to dealer. This is like a customer representative car. It's not a prepped press car or anything like that. No one put washers in the headlights like BMW does to make the body lines perfect. This is dead on, bang on perfection. Everywhere in the car, everywhere I can look. This thing is Audi level of, you know, sort of build quality, maybe even better in certain areas. The design of the car, you have eyes. I don't need to tell you what I think about the design, of course, but I think it looks good. And we'll just kind of leave it at that. It's a really nice looking car. Look at the amount of rear room that I have in this car. This is crazy. First of all, so much knee room, so much side room to really, you know, enjoy when the door is closed. You can see it concaves in here pretty well. So there's a lot of room for my elbow. The stitching here is nice as well. The materials, you know, this is sort of, I don't think it's actual leather, but it's a nice soft touch material. Some of this is a bit plasticky, but ambient lighting comes through. But I'm just so impressed with the view in the back seat for the first time sitting in here. Whoa, there is room. That's the thing that I'm noticing with these BYDs is room for days. This is a Model 3 competitor, but feels very close to my Model S in terms of cabin space, very impressive. All steering wheel. Again, this is not meant to be a performance car. This is all about comfort and luxury and the impression of comfort and luxury. It's almost, I would say, going after in the US market, like a Genesis level, which is, and if you told me this was a Genesis, I'd almost believe you because it uses that same feeling of this material on the inside. It has this, like someone described a luxury car over the telephone and then built this, and it's not a bad thing. It's not a Mercedes S-Class. It's not a, you know, lucid air on the inside, but it is, for the price point, really nice in here. - So that is a pretty glowing review of the car. BYD is making really good use of their space. He says it feels like it's Model S. It is not the size of a Model S, but it might be bigger than a Model 3 in some dimensions. He's not lying about the rear legroom. It is the size of many SUVs and maybe even bigger than, say, the Ionic 5 that I said in last week. As far as footroom and legroom is concerned, it is quite something. And the fact that the build quality is superior to many cars and at a luxury level. And, you know, the interior is much more luxurious than the Model 3 and the Model Y. It has all the bells and whistles that you would expect from a car. And, you know, it lacks road planning, but this is something that, you know, his major criticism of it was some of the software, not the way the software worked, but the lack of features on the software. Now that they kind of rush these to market, maybe they can, he thinks, come out with over-the-air updates 'cause these do, you know, update their software system over-the-air, over-wifi while you're in your driveway. - Yeah, well, we've talked about this before. For some reason, the software aspect of all this seems more difficult than the hardware. And this is true of a lot of different areas, I think, in 2024. Cameras is the one I always talk about. Like, cameras come out now from Nikon or Canon. And they'd never have all the features when they're released now. And then they keep adding firmware updates that make the cameras, you know, the autofocus gets better. And it's just what the software takes longer, for some reason. - Yeah, and, you know, I'm pretty impressed by this. There is a bit of a bias, like, even with myself, to get over, you know, we have to, we're not necessarily used to China making cars and how can they suddenly do it? 'Cause they were making kind of poor, cheap city cars, you know, 10, 15 years ago, but this is serious. They've gotten, you know, some of the major engineers, automotive engineers, they've plucked them from other car companies from the best in the world. 'Cause they can. And the designers, it looks good. There's nothing wrong with the way it looks. It looks really good, you may not, you may have a preference for something else, but it is a real car. And if they can get, you know, maybe it's just Europe, they haven't figured out Europe yet for the road planning. Road planning is when you say, okay, I want to go to city X and it'll tell you, okay, well, here's your chargers along though. You stop here for 20 minutes, you stop here for 10 minutes like Tesla does and other people do. So that probably will come. And when it does, it'll be fine because the screen looks great and it responds very quickly. It's not, doesn't have a lag on it, it's very good. There's some weird things in there that maybe they need to adjust, but it's minor, it's very minor. And he also did the dolphin, which is kind of like a bolt. It's a small hatchback and he kind of preferred that. He said it has a lot of personality to it and there's a lot of good things on it. And a lot of the features, you know, has surround cameras and a lot of the well-featured for the base model and good range on these suckers too. Like the charging wasn't up to high-end day standards. It was, or Tesla standards, it was 150 kilowatts compared to say, what do you get, 250 or so? A little bit more than that. Well, he said the charging car was pretty good because it keeps that 150 from the get-go all the way to around the middle of the battery then it drops off slowly. So it's a pretty good curve. You can't just, you know, base a car on this peak speed. You have to base it on how long it goes from say 10 to 80% on the highway, how many minutes. So it's fairly decent in that way. And yeah, the thing, Brian, is that these cars in China, I think sell for as little as $13, $15,000 US and in Europe, they're a little bit cheaper than the Tesla. So maybe you prefer the Tesla or the Tesla charging network, but there's nothing wrong with them. And, you know, we in North America are trying to build fences to keep these people out, to keep the Chinese vehicles out. But, and, you know, we hear four GM, they're both delaying their EV plans. They're slowing them down. Well, you know, if you had competition, you wouldn't be doing that. You'd be desperately trying to get your crap together to make decent EVs at a good price because the Chinese, particularly BYD and a couple of others, are doing it very well. Yeah, and of course, Kyle had to go to Europe to be able to review these cars because-- South America has some too, and by the way, if you're down there, send us an email. Yeah, in Australia and New Zealand, I believe, have them. So yeah, if we have any listeners that own a BYD, let us know. And it's peppy, it's very, it's got good performance. Like, it's, you know, it's not made for performance. It's made for more of a comfort ride. Like, the Teslas are a bit of a more of a sports car feel. But yeah, it's got a, you know, a good fast acceleration. It comes with heated seats, automatic wipers, intelligent torque adaptation system for improved driving performance. Performs well on mountain roads, he says, and offers a comfortable premium driving experience. Like, you know, electric cars feel premium in that they're silent and smooth, and responsive, but you add some extra value here on the interior and the quietness is very quiet. When all of the EVs are quiet, because you have road noise from tires, that has to be mitigated through the cabin and windows, it's a very good car, and it's just the beginning. Yeah, that's exciting. And let's dip it to the mail bag here for a second. We've got a note from Phil. He says, "Another great show this week." And he sent us a video that says, "Is a good summary of how EVs will help us use less electricity." So I think that link will be in your show notes. And he says, "By the way, Ford had some great incentives recently." So I traded in my 2016 Suburban, which is a SUV, big SUV, I think, on a lightning XLT that's a Ford lightning all electric pickup truck, and he's loving it. He says, "So it makes us an all EV household, "now to do some solar," he said. Thank you, Phil, for writing in. Solar plus EVs, love it, because your own oil well is on your roof. You are the master of your domain, if you do that. It's really great. I just need more panels now because I have two electric cars. Yes, lots more panels, more roof. Maybe you need to expand your sprawling house even bigger. Take over your neighbor's house. We got a letter from NASA this week, so shout out to NASA if you're listening. They wanted us to do an interview with someone, but it wasn't quite appropriate for us. But I assumed they played the podcast on their PA system all around various NASA. Oh, sure. They're building rockets, listening to the show, that type of thing. They're probably just being sure that on the space station right now. I think when you hear- Shout out to everyone on the space station, listening to us right now. (upbeat music) The Clean Energy Show wants to hear from you. (upbeat music) Contact us by email at cleanenergyshow@gmail.com or by online voicemail at speakpipe.com/cleanenergyshow. (upbeat music) The Kamala Harris, as seems to be the new Joe Biden. Yeah. So I'm still kind of trying to take a break from- Politics. The news, okay. The politics, especially, you know, obviously it's the US election is the big news story right now. All around the world. And just take a section before you talk about Kamala Harris here, who by the way, went to university in Canada. I don't know if you need to- Yeah, true. All right. Which one? (indistinct) McGill McGill. But anyway, I just a quick note for all of our listeners in the USA, because that's probably most of our listeners, right? I think- 60% yeah. Yeah. Anyway, to our American listeners, I just have to say, this is exhausting. This is absolutely exhausting. These election cycles just go on for years and years. And it's just too much. This is not- Elections don't take this long in other countries. What they have in the US is weird. It is weird, and there's a lot of money involved, which is too bad. I wish that would get reversed that Supreme Court decision would be altered, because there's a lot of money, billions of dollars. Like they're kind of spending like a billions, billion dollars to frame Ms. Harris one way. And then frame her the other way from the other side. And TV stations do well. And they have the presidential elections every four years, but then they have in the two years, then they have the whatever the Senate or the, I don't understand the Congress or whatever it is. So there's major elections every two years. And so the cycle basically never ends. Yeah, it doesn't. But what a week in US politics, it's been. So we might want to wonder because Joe, if you're listening, and I know you have a bit more time now, you did a hell of a job on climate. You've did the world's largest climate package, the Inflation Reduction Act, which most people in the United States don't know a damn thing about. Otherwise they'd probably vote for you, because it brings American manufacturing back to America. And I think some of it's a bit ambitious, like making solar panels in the United States when China is making them 80% of the world's solar panels very cheap and so much so that they're not making any money on it. And some of them will go out of business probably because there's so much supply coming. But yeah, she used to be the prosecutor in California. And she has a history of prosecuting environmental statins, people who are harming the environment. That's not greenhouse gases, but she has a record of going after those people and companies that have been doing that. Here's some tweets reporting here. Here's some tweets supporting Kamala Harris. Vice President Kamala Harris has a long record on climate and climate change and environmental justice you probably haven't heard enough about. I've been digging into her background and this woman is a climate champion. Can't wait for her to be president. In 2005, Attorney General Harris set up a new division to prosecute environmental crimes. A division, Brian. A environmental crime division for prosecution. In California, she said crimes against the environment are crimes against communities. Well said. As a senator and then as vice president, Harris champion, clean school buses, that is electric school buses, eventually securing $5 billion for the effort, 200,000 US kids are now writing clean electric buses and not breathing diesel emissions. Climate Oregon endorsements. The Sierra Club is proud to endorse Kamala Harris for president. And that last tweet from Dr. Leah Stokes. Right. From rewiring America. The Sierra Club is proud to endorse Kamala Harris for president. The Biden Harris administration has made historic strides in environmental and climate action. We must continue this progress with Harris at the helm. Our future depends on it. You know, Biden did a tremendous amount. And I was an early supporter of Harris. I didn't have much faith in Biden. I thought he was going to be a boomer and not really care about the climate or understand the climate. Not true. He was very, he had the right people around him, I think. And he was, I've said before, I think he's the best US president of my lifetime. The NRDC action fund says vice president Kamala Harris has been a driving force for historic climate action. In the Senate, she led the push for safe drinking water. And as California's attorney general, she held corporate polluters accountable. We are all proud to endorse Kamala Harris for president. So get your coca nuts out. It's Kamala for president. Yeah. And I just want to do a quick pitch right now for a TV show based on Kamala Harris's time in California. It would be called Law and Order, Environmental Crimes. I'm surprised it hasn't been done. There's one for everything. Yeah, all right. From Electric, AI is being used to reduce wildfires. So AI, the big buzzword of the day here in 2024. So we know from past stories we've talked about on the show here, power utilities often cause these wildfires. These are often sparks from electrical lines or down storm or something like that or a thunderstorm can knock over a branch onto a power line where it starts a wildfire. Yeah, and if it's in an area that has been dried out, this is going to happen. So there's this company called Rhysome. It's a platform that basically just uses AI to figure out where these problems are likely to happen. So they can input as much data as possible about whether patterns about basically the dryness in different areas or whatever. So it's just a more advanced way to figure out where these wildfires are likely to happen caused by utilities where they're likely to be running into extreme weather. So it's just another tool that utilities are going to have to try and stop this from happening 'cause it's a big problem. So basically they're using weather data and everything else to say this could be a problem here based on it's being a smart human. It's being smarter than humans and figuring out where the problem says. So if you go and check on that area or something, maybe you can prevent the fire from happening or get to it quickly before it spreads. Yeah, what can't it do Brian? What can't it? (gentle music) Time for the lightning round. The lightning round is a fast paced look at the latest headlines in climate. Clean energy and transportation. There are more than 300 suspected heat related deaths under investigation in Phoenix. So usually it takes a long time to understand from a heat wave how many people have died 'cause you have to look at it at normal deaths. Already they're saying 300 is suspect. From Birch, a grow alarm. A all train e-bike is being built and marketed for hunting. I just pictured myself as a deer or something, you know. Hunter on an e-bike coming after me. If that wasn't bad enough on foot, they're racing through a trail. So it's camel green. It's got big tires and pretty sturdy looking. And I don't see any gun mounts on it, but I'm sure there are anyway. China's largest city Shanghai plans to install 29 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity. Brian, its largest city could be powered half by this one wind farm of 29 gigawatts. That's pretty amazing. Wow. Just from one offshore wind farm. Shell Canada and others have dropped their 2050 climate goals from their websites due to new anti greenwashing laws in Canada. That's from D smog.com and it's time for a clean energy show. Fast fact, a beef emits between 30 and 50 times more greenhouse gases per pound than burning coal. What? Pound a coal, a pound of beef. Beef is actually 30 to 50 times worse than coal and coal. As we know from listening to the show, it's pretty damn bad. So try and reduce your beef if you can. New report says Canadian carbon tax, which is very controversial here, especially with rising inflation and things. People start to blame the carbon tax. The report says that the carbon tax that we have here did not cause a hike in gas prices or inflation. And you could see more at blog.to.com. Construction starts on New York's largest offshore wind farm. That's 924 megawatts. It won't power half a Shanghai, but it will power 600,000 home. Renewables jump from 30% of the global electricity mix in 23 to 35% next year. So 5% in two years is pretty good of your total mix. That's going to eat away and eat away. I mean, if they did that 5% every two years, we might meet our targets. Boy and slat configured. Congratulations, CrowdStrike. Bowen slat congratulated CrowdStrike. That's the organization that caused the outage. I don't know if you listened to the news and knew about that, but there was. I did hear that. Yes, big, big delays at airports and stuff. Delta had lots of airlines had to cancel flights. And it was related to this CrowdStrike software, which is ironically a, like a cybersecurity software. And I was watching the movie, Civil War, I'd rented it and streamed it. And it went stopped during that outage. I don't know if anything to do with it, but I don't normally have things paused. Anyway, it was an ironic situation. Yeah, so they've, they've been congratulated for reaching their carbon neutrality goals six years early through its disruption of global air traffic last week. So then he screwed up his reduced emissions. It's funny because it is true. A largest solar plus storage project in the United States is now operational in Nevada. 690 megawatts of solar plus 380 megawatts or 1.5 megawatt hours, 1.120 megawatt hours of storage. It will meet 10% of peak needs. Two years to construct from financial closing. So the bank says, yes. And boom, two years later you've got a solar farm. It doesn't work that way with nuclear. It doesn't work that way with a lot of things. Certainly hydro and coal plants can take some time too, though natural gas plants that they're building here is taking a lot longer than that. So long time years, it'll last for 25 years. They have a power purchase agreement where they, you know, agree to sell the power for that long. The communique of China's third plenum, don't ask me what that is. I don't have a full understanding of that, but it is a communique in China that the government puts out. And for the first time, it mentions carbon reduction. This is a momentous occasion. This elevates China's commitment to reducing emissions and tackling climate change to a new level. So they're doing it and now they're acknowledging it in their policy. Cuba, Cuba goes straight from 1950s gas guzzlers with no emission controls. By the way, those cars, they don't bother having emission controls. Not that, you know, Cuba's gonna make a huge difference from global warming but makes a difference to the air quality. They're transitioning to zero-mitting electric bikes and vehicles very quickly. Electric motorcycles are solving a lot of problems in Cuba. They are already used for almost everything. Is a quote from Yahoo.com. So yes, Cuba, I was wondering about it, it's electrified. Less emissions, less cost for gas. - Yeah, and famous for having lots of old cars because they stopped importing them at a certain point. - Waymo is suing people who allegedly smashed and slashed its robo-taxes. We mentioned that on the show before and you could see that story on ours, Technica. And finally this week, someone with a one-hour car commute needs to earn 40% more to be as happy as someone with a short walk to work. On the other hand, if someone shifts from a long commute to a walk, their happiness increases as much as if they had fallen in love. - I'm skeptical about how that is measured. - Go ahead. - Oh, they have measurement. They have ways of measuring these things, Brian. San Francisco's Arop, the global engineering firm that created the report is responsible for this. They studied dozens of studies to quantify 50 benefits of walkability in cities. So yes, they quantify that and you can read more about that on fastcompany.com. - And that is our show for this week. You can contact us, please, at cleanenergyshow@gmail.com around social media. We are Clean Energy Pod and the video podcast of the Clean Energy Show is on TikTok and YouTube. - Be sure to like and subscribe if you're watching at one of those video channels and you've made it all the way to the end. Congratulations, I admire you. Are you ready yet? You can get it to an argument with somebody in the comments that helps us too, so argue away people. The video version of our podcast is released from a weekend following the audio version and we have a store in your show notes. We have requests to rate and review us on Spotify if that's where you're getting us and you can donate to us in small amounts on PayPal. And that link is also in your show notes. If you haven't already, ready, remember, subscribe. So we do this every week. We'll get our shows every week delivered to you free. - Yeah, and we'll see you next week. You think you just fell out of a coconut tree? (laughing) You insist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.
