The blackouts are coming
Due to increasing energy demand in the PNW (US), my local electric utility, which gets most of its power from Bonneville Power Administration, is saying energy deficits are expected to occur within the next two years and continue indefinitely.
They are saying we need to build “local power generation” with solar energy plants and tidal energy machines.
The county where I live is beholden to the Growth Management Act which says we must look at previous years’ population growth and build capacity to support that same growth. This will, of course, add even more strain on the power situation. The continual push for heat pumps and EVs to comply with laws in the Pacific Northwest that require “electrifying” residential heat and transportation in a bid to reduce emissions add even more to the burden on the power grid.
30GW of new power is estimated to be needed by 2030 on the Northwest grid. This will be interesting, because they’ve added only 1GW in the past 8 years.
My utility has also repeated the often repeated conception that the US must cut emissions by 50% by 2030 to stay within the +1.5C goal. Considering 2024 was officially +1.62C (Berkely Earth; +1.6C Copernicus), I think we can safely say we’ve utterly failed in that goal. Five more years of emissions at current or increasing rates and continued land destruction for new development, both of which seem likely based on recent history, all but ensure the +1.5C goal is dead in the water.
Leon Simons, climate researcher and expert in aerosol impacts on climate change, posted the following graph to X on Nov 15, 2024, showing that if recent acceleration of global warming continues, the world will likely hit +2C in 2035. Acceleration might not continue, but no one really knows. Given primary energy consumption, emissions, and population are continuing to rise, with no sign of slowing, it seems likely it may.
I recently wrote an article for one of my local rags suggesting that rather than continuing to grow the community, and thus our electricity consumption, we ditch the Growth Management Act, replace it with a Degrowth Management Act, and begin a serious reduction program, including reducing energy consumption.
The response from the utility spokesperson was essentially that “these solutions may work for you, but we are mandated to supply electricity to meet demand so we’ll continue to pursue our plan assuming growth in demand for electricity.”
Climate scientist Kevin Anderson and others have said that +4C is “incompatible with an organized global community.” Given the massive changes we’ve seen already from +1.6C, I would not be at all surprised if +3C could be similarly described. Possibly even +2C.
I recently read a 2023 report, The Emperor’s New Climate Scenarios, by the University of Exeter Institute and Faculty of Actuaries. The authors of this report state that +3C is likely to occur by 2080, assuming no unexpected tipping points are reached before then, and are recommending their financial clients do risk planning for 50% GDP destruction between 2070-2090. I note that actuaries are generally considered a conservative bunch of people.
Given global warming seems to be accelerating and multiple tipping points that may occur in the next few decades are not included in the 2080 +3C timeline, it seems likely +3C will happen before 2080.
All of this is taking into account just one of the many symptoms of ecological overshoot—climate change. There are many other symptoms including pollution and the collapse of biosphere integrity.
Just yesterday I read an article about a new study, titled “Manufactured Chemicals and Children’s Health — The Need for New Law”, published January 8, 2025 in the New England Journal of Medicine. The article says:
“The paper points to data showing global inventories of roughly 350,000 synthetic chemicals, chemical mixtures and plastics, most of which are derived from fossil fuels. Production has expanded 50-fold since 1950, and is currently increasing by about 3% a year – projected to triple by 2050.
Meanwhile, noncommunicable diseases, including many that research shows can be caused by synthetic chemicals, are rising in children and have become the principal cause of death and illness for children.”
The paper’s authors write:
“Pollution by synthetic chemicals and plastics is a major planetary challenge that is worsening rapidly. Continued, unchecked increases in production of fossil-carbon–based chemicals endangers the world’s children and threatens humanity’s capacity for reproduction. Inaction on chemicals is no longer an option.”
Pollution is at a critical stage. Chemicals, plastic, mercury and lead from old and new mining, air pollution, and more are reducing male fertility, and causing cancer, diabetes, and asthma, and probably many other diseases. It seems likely pollution is severely affecting non-human life as well.
Biosphere integrity is collapsing. Pollution is rampant. Climate change is accelerating.
I have posed the following question to my local government: why is this county’s government planning for a future that no longer exists?
I have suggested that the citizens of my county dramatically reduce demand both to alleviate the need for our local utility to build local power generation, which would do even further damage to the already heavily damaged local environment, and to prepare us all for a future that will surely have much less energy along with greatly simplified lifestyles.
Needless to say, I don’t anticipate my local community will change course.
Meanwhile, I’m doing everything I can to prepare for the day the blackouts begin.
This is what Jimmy Carter was saying back in 1976, almost half a century ago. I live in the country, surrounded by an extended family who ride ATVs, hunt, can't keep their hands off their contractor equipment even when on vacation. They don't clearcut (for the most part) but they do cut the most valuable (read oldest) trees on their property, causing ridiculous flooding, slower growth in saplings surrounding their elders, the increase of local temps, destruction of cover for wildlife, etc. I protect my woods so they poach saying all the deer are hiding on my place, and my temps are a full 10 degrees lower than that on cleared land and in town. They live between 30 feet and a half mile from each other, but do they walk to each other's homes? Hell, no. They have to drive their work trucks or their ATVs, back and forth, the live-long day. They are their own little society and cannot bear to be alone, apparently. I have never been able to count how many vehicle trips they make within a 24 hour period. I'd estimate 30-40. When the electric goes out, on come the whole-house generators. I use no more than 1.5 cords of wood for heat every year. This winter I'm using roughly 1/4 what the average consumer here is in electric and still feel guilty. They're trying to put in SMART meters which actually cost you more since they draw electric to surveil your energy use 24/7 as well as emit EMFs. The electric company wants us to pay for infrastructure they haven't built yet, even though a lot of the electricity generated here (natural gas now--used to be coal) goes to large metropolitan areas like NYC. The one home up a dead-end road near my place uses a cord every three weeks for an outdoor burner which also uses electric. This wood is cut from trees on their land. And these people are not unusual. I feel guilty using satellite internet even though that's all that is available here. When it was out for two weeks, it cut my electric bill in HALF! I am a low consumer because I grew up in the Middle East so I'm keenly aware of the many real costs--not just financial--of oil consumption and have always had the need for low consumption in all energy sources drilled into my head. Climate change aside, the addiction for oil in the West will likely result in WWIII and nuclear war. If for no other reason, the US and Israel need to get out of the Middle East. And how much pollution have the Ukraine/Israel wars caused? I read somewhere one sortie by a fighter jet produced as much pollution as your typical, over-consuming American driver would if they lived to be 100. One flight.
If you ever live off the grid with the lowest electric consumption you can, you know getting rid of as many excessive appliances as you can cuts your need for electricity to a shocking degree. When I first bought my land, I lived in a trailer and had a very small solar system. I used 200 watts per day. Of course, I had an on-demand-propane water heater (do not want fossil fuels in my life, if possible now) and a propane fridge (ditto). I'm working on getting off the grid again in a much larger house that dates back to 1790 and was built for the climate here. Nine months of the year the most climate-mitigating energy I use is a fan facing outwards on the top floor to draw cool air in and up from below the house.
There are a number of products (solar generators with built-in battery banks) available now that do not require you to wire your own solar system. I am buying smallish Bluetti solar generators so I can get off-grid entirely. And when I quit my current work, I'll quit with Internet at my home. There are plenty of free wifi stations within cycling distance. The difference in energy consumption between a laptop and desktop system is enormous. There is so much we could do, but are not, because people figure they have the money to pay for excess consumption so why not? Average electric bill right now around here is between $300-600 a month. That's 1/4 to 1/2 many people's monthly income. Perhaps electric costs should be graduated year-round so that the less you use the less you pay. Conversely, the energy hogs need to pay more. There need to be limits on demand. Americans think they have a right to as much of an item as they want/can pay for. They do not. We have produced most of the pollution and consumed way more than even Europeans use (6X per capita; 12X what Middle Easterners use; 24X what Africans use).
Thank you for being sane.