NREL – Peter Fairley

‘It just goes into a black hole’

In August my exposé in The Atlantic detailed the Trump administration takedown of a clean energy study. Since then I have been working hard to document how deep the political interference goes at the U.S. Department of Energy. The answer is DEEP.

My story for InvestigateWest and Grist shows that political interference is a pervasive practice targeting research funded by the DOE’s efficiency and renewables office. In all, Trump appointees have blocked reports for more than 40 clean energy studies, according to emails and documents I obtained as well as interviews with more than a dozen current and former employees at the Department of Energy and its national labs.

“There are dozens of reports languishing right now that can’t be published,” said Stephen Capanna, a former director of strategic analysis for the Energy Department’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy — the office that Simmons runs — who quit in frustration in April 2019. “This is a systemic issue.”

Bottling up and slow-walking studies violates the Energy Department’s scientific integrity policy and is already harming efforts to fight climate change, according to energy and policy experts, because Energy Department reports drive investment decisions. Entrepreneurs worry that the agency’s practices under the current White House will ultimately hurt growth prospects for U.S.-developed technology.

The meddling is also fuelling an energy science brain drain. Not only because research is held up. But because scientists have no idea why their work is disappearing. They, and the research they’re waiting to publish, are simply left dangling. “There’s no feedback,” said one national lab researcher. “It just goes into a black hole.”

Illustration: Amelia Bates / Grist

Read the story at Grist or InvestigateWest

October 26, 2020October 26, 2020 by pfairley

A sad tale for federal science. A potent lift for this science journalist.

Response to my August 20, 2020 investigation for The Atlantic and InvestigateWest has been moving, humbling and, at times, overwhelming. We took a deep dive into censorship of clean energy research by Trump officials at the U.S. Department of Energy, and it struck a chord. Especially our inside story of the impact on federal researchers doing their best science. The suppression of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s grid modernization study is a dark tale, but the positive feedback provides a much-needed boost to this journalist during these dark times for the press.

The ripples are still moving, but already include …

Interventions by the U.S. House of Representatives: House Science Committee chairwoman Eddie Bernice Johnson sent a letter to the Secretary of Energy demanding answers about NREL’s missing study and the department’s violations of its scientific integrity policy. Two days later the House passed an energy bill with a last minute amendment ordering the Interconnections Seam Study’s release.
Interviews for the BBC World Service, radio outlets such as Seattle’s KUOW, and podcasts including Greentech Media’s Interchange.
Followup coverage of the Seams study’s takedown by media outlets including The Los Angeles Times, E&E News, Energy Central and the wonderfully-quirky Numlock News.

Plus a tweetstorm on Twitter. Tweeters include a U.S. Senator, a Cousteau, and globally-recognized researchers such as climate scientist Ken Caldeira, former World Bank energy analysis chief Morgan Bazilian, and US-Canadian applied physics superstar David Keith.

Twitter also delivered several limericks by #energytwitter experts, and a #FreeSeams movement led by Joseph Majkut, the Princeton-trained climatologist who directs climate policy for the Niskanen Center, a Washington, DC-based thinktank.

The best feedback of all are the messages from federal scientists at the national labs and at DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, who have suffered in silence under the Trump administration’s anti-science regime and finally feel heard.

Oh, and word from insiders that the Department of Energy is moving to release the Seams study.

Stayed tuned: Followup investigation in preparation. And #FreeSeams!

October 5, 2020 by pfairley

FERC Boss Dubs the Plug-in a ‘Cashback’ Hybrid

The head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) predicts that plug-in hybrid vehicles will provide immense benefit to power grid operators — enough for utilities to provide kickbacks to their customers, paying down the extra cost of a plug-in in as little as three years. Jon Wellinghoff, FERC’s acting chairman, made that comment at a Las Vegas trade show last week according to coverage by the Las Vegas Review-Journal (which I picked up on thanks to the keen newswatching eyes of specialty publication EV World).

Wellinghoff’s comments refer to plug-in hybrids equipped with the smarts to communicate with the power grid, which he termed the “Cashback Hybrid” according to the Review-Journal article:

When the Cashback is plugged in, motorists can allow the utility to vary the speed at which the battery recharges so that the utility can more closely match supply and demand for power on the electric grid…In return, the car owner could obtain cash back or a credit from the utility that makes the electricity free, he said.

Continue reading “FERC Boss Dubs the Plug-in a ‘Cashback’ Hybrid”

February 4, 2009April 3, 2009 by pfairley

Electric Vehicles Can Cut Power Plant Pollution

Last week we saw that doing right by the environment is more complicated than simply downsizing the carbon footprint. Shifting to soot-free power sources will reduce mortality in cities, we noted, while increased use of variable wind power could jack up emissions of smog-forming NOx from the ‘peaking power’ plants that ramp up and down to balance electrical supply and demand.

Now power grid modelers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory add another twist to this story with a report that electric vehicles (EVs) plugged into the grid can reduce NOx emissions and possibly more. Their report “Emissions Impacts and Benefits of Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles and Vehicle-to-Grid Services” appears in the January 22 issue of the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

Continue reading “Electric Vehicles Can Cut Power Plant Pollution”

January 29, 2009April 3, 2009 by pfairley

Solar Squabble Tops Renewable Energy Podcast

Carbon-Nation returns today from a month-long hiatus that took editor Peter Fairley on a fact-finding mission to North Africa. More to come on that. For instant gratification we refer you to the latest installment of Renewable Energy World’s Inside Renewable Energy podcast, released this morning. Topping this week’s podcast is an interview with C-N’s editor on the growing acrimony within organic photovoltaics research over the credibility of recent reports touting record power output from this promising next-generation approach to solar power.

Call it another friendly effort to pop the solar bubble before unrealized hype damages the entire industry. Akin to lancing a wound to stem a life-threatening infection.

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May 29, 2008May 29, 2008 by pfairley

Popping the Solar Bubble

A sudden zeal to go fossil-free is fueling plenty of hype in renewable energy circles. That hype hits its shrillest notes in the promise of the least cost-effective of the major renewable options: photovoltaics that convert sunlight directly into electricity.

Consider the holiday season gush around silicon-valley PV startup Nanosolar. The firm was founded to demonstrate a truly novel nanotech-inspired design, but is now commercializing comparatively conventional CIGS thin-film PV. Nevertheless, after Popular Science crowned the company’s “Powersheet” as its innovation of the year, articles on this “game-changing technology” multiplied to fill the slow late-December news season.

Never mind that Nanosolar declined to disclose the most important spec on its product: the efficiency with which it converts sunlight to electricity. Without the efficiency, it is impossible to analyze the product’s economic potential.

The solar rot, however, goes deeper than venture capital-fueled startups. My latest feature for IEEE Spectrum — “Solar-Cell Squabble” — shows that some scientists may also be overstating their advances. And they may be doing so in peer-reviewed reports in top journals such as Science and Nature.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a big fan of solar energy, in all of its myriad forms. I’m ecstatic to see research dollars once again pouring into solar energy. But let’s make sure those dollars don’t pour back out via the sink, or walk out the rear exit.

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April 1, 2008April 1, 2008 by pfairley