Hurricane Ida Power Failures Prompt Calls for More Solar Energy, Tougher Grids

Damaged power lines and homes can be seen days after hurricane Ida ripped through Grand Isle, Louisiana, US, September 2, 2021. REUTERS/Leah Millis
Damaged power lines and homes can be seen days after hurricane Ida ripped through Grand Isle, Louisiana, US, September 2, 2021. REUTERS/Leah Millis
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Hurricane Ida Power Failures Prompt Calls for More Solar Energy, Tougher Grids

Damaged power lines and homes can be seen days after hurricane Ida ripped through Grand Isle, Louisiana, US, September 2, 2021. REUTERS/Leah Millis
Damaged power lines and homes can be seen days after hurricane Ida ripped through Grand Isle, Louisiana, US, September 2, 2021. REUTERS/Leah Millis

Hurricane Ida power failures prompt calls for more solar energy, tougher grids Jenel Hazlett, 61, had a choice to make with Hurricane Ida bearing down on New Orleans: stay in the city and hope for the best, or evacuate with her small “zoo” of animals in tow.

In the end Hazlett stayed put - and online - in her raised bungalow that features solar panels and a battery backup system.

Those proved a huge advantage amid power outages that initially left more than one million in the state without electricity.

“We haven’t had to chase gas like my neighbors have for their generators - the sun comes to me,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone. “I don’t want to have to fool with a gas generator."

Ida’s swath of destruction across the eastern half of the United States has put renewed focus on the need for power alternatives and backups as climate-fueled extreme weather increasingly threatens centralized electrical grids.

“The solutions are in our own hands – you can just look across the street at folks who have power and those who do not,” said Monique Harden with the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, based in New Orleans.

TAX INCENTIVES
When Ida struck, it took out eight major transmission lines delivering electricity to the New Orleans metro area, after Hurricane Laura severely damaged lines last year as well.

US President Joe Biden, who trekked to Louisiana last week to assess the damage, said moving power lines below ground - a costly measure, he admitted - would be one way to build energy system resilience to worsening storms.

Wooden poles carrying electricity transmission lines can snap in hurricanes and "we know, for a fact, if (lines) are underground, they’re secure," he said.

The Biden-backed $1.2 trillion infrastructure package moving through Congress contains about $65 billion for power grid upgrades – though environmentalists say significantly more is needed to make energy systems both climate-smart and resilient.

Both changes are crucial, as continuing widespread use of oil, gas and coal for energy is driving accelerating climate change, which in turn increases the severity of hurricanes, wildfires and other energy-grid-threatening disasters, they say.

Many New Orleans residents have invested in home solar systems, but the upfront cost of such systems - even though they then provide cheap energy - keeps too many people from following Hazlett's lead.

While the costs of home solar installations are swiftly falling as their use becomes more widespread, US federal tax credits to help pay the costs are also declining.

A 30% tax credit in recent years has now fallen to 26% for systems installed after 2019 and is set to decline further, though congressional Democrats are in the midst of an aggressive push to extend or expand such breaks.

Hazlett said the tax incentives were a big reason she could afford her system.

“When I put my solar panels up, I only paid for 20% of them – it was what allowed me to put the panels on the house,” she said.

The state of Louisiana has also moved in recent years to scale back the practice of 'net metering', which gives those operating solar panels energy bill credits for excess power they feed into the grid.

Wider use of renewable energy and resilient small-scale energy "microgrids", and expanded numbers of power transmission lines could have helped people weather Hurricane Ida better, said Daniel Tait of the Energy and Policy Institute, a US watchdog group.

“New Orleans is in the crosshairs of climate change and hurricanes – it has been and it will be," he said. "But more distributed infrastructure can help reduce the impact."

UTILITY SCRUTINY
Initial electricity outages in the US Gulf Coast region after Ida swiftly spurred renewed scrutiny of Entergy Corporation, Louisiana's largest utility, and its efforts to bolster the electric system against storms.

One challenge is that multiple bodies of water - Lake Pontchartrain, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Mississippi River - limit the corridors available for adding transmission lines.

More lines could help ensure at least some power gets through after increasingly powerful storms.

The company also has asked regulators to approve more than $500 million to repair and rebuild transmission lines damaged by 2020 hurricanes.

An Entergy spokesperson did not respond to questions about why its transmission lines failed in the most recent storm, but the company has defended its response and recovery efforts in the aftermath.

“The reason the lights are out is not because we aren’t building a resilient system,” Rod West, Entergy’s group president of utility operations, said last week.

“The lights are out because Mother Nature is still the undisputed, undefeated heavyweight champion of the world."

Still, power grids across the United States appear increasingly vulnerable as climate-fueled extreme weather events accelerate across the country.

In February, a major cold snap crippled Texas’s grid, knocking out power to more than 4 million residents and contributing to dozens of deaths , officials said.

“How many people were having to burn anything they could because they didn’t have fuel... or they didn’t have a generator at all and just burned stuff to keep warm?” Tait asked.

He said the Texas blackout highlighted safety issues from carbon monoxide when residents turn to to gas-powered generators - rather than solar or wind power - to keep the lights on.

The Louisiana Department of Health said there have been at least four deaths and more than 140 emergency department visits in about the last week tied to carbon monoxide poisoning, though it’s unclear how many are directly related to generator use after Ida.

Farther west, Pacific Gas & Electric shut off power for about 48,000 California customers last month as a planned safety measure when wildfires threatened the Golden State’s power grid.

Hazlett, of New Orleans, said a more robust electricity grid, along with properly tailored tax credits for renewables, should be part of the discussion on building resilience to storm threats moving forward.

“Something’s got to change with the way tax credits are done in order to incentivize distributed generation of clean energy,” she said. “And (it's) quiet energy – my God, those generators are awful."



What to Know about the Latest Effort to End Türkiye's 40-year Kurdish Conflict

FILED - 02 November 2041, Hesse, Frankfurt_Main: A man displays a flag with the image of imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan at the Kurdish Newroz celebration in Frankfurt. Photo: Boris Roessler/dpa
FILED - 02 November 2041, Hesse, Frankfurt_Main: A man displays a flag with the image of imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan at the Kurdish Newroz celebration in Frankfurt. Photo: Boris Roessler/dpa
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What to Know about the Latest Effort to End Türkiye's 40-year Kurdish Conflict

FILED - 02 November 2041, Hesse, Frankfurt_Main: A man displays a flag with the image of imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan at the Kurdish Newroz celebration in Frankfurt. Photo: Boris Roessler/dpa
FILED - 02 November 2041, Hesse, Frankfurt_Main: A man displays a flag with the image of imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan at the Kurdish Newroz celebration in Frankfurt. Photo: Boris Roessler/dpa

A group of 30 Kurdish fighters clad in camouflage fatigues burned their weapons in a large cauldron in northern Iraq on Friday, in a symbolic gesture marking the first concrete step in an effort to end one of the Middle East’s longest-running insurgencies.

The ceremonial laying down of arms by members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK -- including 15 women — comes months after the group’s imprisoned leader, Abdullah Ocalan, called on it to disarm and disband as part of a new peace effort with Türkiye. Ocalan repeated that call in a video message to his fighters this week.

The process in Türkiye was initiated in October by Devlet Bahceli, a firebrand ultranationalist politician who has usually opposed any concessions to Kurdish identity or rights.

While Turkish officials have welcomed the first step toward the PKK’s disarmament, questions remain about the future of Kurdish fighters in Syria.

What is the PKK? The Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, has waged an armed insurgency against Türkiye since 1984, initially with the aim of establishing a Kurdish state in the southeast of the country. Over time, the objective evolved into a campaign for autonomy and rights for Kurds within Türkiye.

The conflict between militants and state forces, which has spread beyond Türkiye’s borders into Iraq and Syria, has killed tens of thousands of people. The PKK is considered to be a terrorist organization by Türkiye, the United States and the European Union.

Who is Ocalan? Abdullah Ocalan, who as a student of political science in Ankara became deeply involved in leftist movements, formed the PKK in 1978 as a Marxist organization. He fled to Syria in 1979, along with other PKK members, where he remained until 1998, when Syria expelled him under intense pressure from Türkiye.

Ocalan was captured in Kenya in 1999 and imprisoned on Imrali island in the Sea of Marmara, where he remains to this day. His death sentence for treason was commuted to a life term in prison after Türkiye abolished the death penalty.

The 76-year-old endures as a symbol for Kurdish independence and rights and continues to wield influence over the Kurdish movement, with past messages relayed through family members or lawyers resonating beyond Türkiye, in Iraq and Syria.

Push for peace

In October, Bahceli, a close ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, suggested Ocalan could be granted parole if he renounces violence and disbands the PKK.

It was a major shift for the hardline politician who had previously strongly supported the state’s military action against the militant group and its affiliates in neighboring Syria and rejected any notion of negotiation.

In a message delivered through senior officials of the pro-Kurdish People's Equality and Democracy Party, or DEM, Ocalan called on the PKK leadership to take the decision to disband and disarm in February.

The PKK announced a unilateral ceasefire in March in response to Ocalan’s call and later announced its decision to disarm.

It was not immediately clear what concessions, if any, the Kurdish groups would get in return. PKK officials have said they expect former fighters to be given a path to integrate into the political system in Türkiye.

There are also concerns that some splinter groups may emerge within the PKK and that attacks may continue.

Soon after Bahceli's announcement, the PKK claimed an attack on Türkiye’s key aerospace company outside of Ankara that killed several people.

Previous attempts

There have been several peace efforts between the Turkish state and the PKK over the years, including secret negotiations held in Oslo, Norway from 2009 until 2011. However, none have yielded results.

The last attempt to reach a peace deal took place between 2013 and 2015 with a series of talks between Turkish officials and Ocalan, who declared a ceasefire and withdrew fighters to bases in northern Iraq.

Turkish officials took steps to improve Kurdish rights, including allowing Kurdish-language broadcasts. The process collapsed in July 2015, after a series of violent attacks, including one by the ISIS group that killed 33 pro-Kurdish activists.

Since then, Türkiye has cracked down on its pro-Kurdish movement and has jailed thousands of people, including the former leader of the main pro-Kurdish political party, Selahattin Demirtas, over alleged links to the PKK.

Reshaping the region

The latest peace effort comes at a time when Türkiye and the Kurds are both seeking security to face the challenges in the Middle East.

The renewed peace initiative unfolds amid fundamental changes reshaping the region, including the reconfiguration of power in Syria after the toppling of President Bashar Assad, the weakening of the Hezbollah militant movement in Lebanon, and the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

Türkiye strongly supports a deal reached between Syria’s new administration and the Kurdish-led and US backed Syrian Democratic Forces under which the SDF forces would merge with the new Syrian national army. The US envoy to Syria told The Associated Press this week that the sides remain at odds over the merger.

Hamish Kinnear, Senior Middle East and North Africa Analyst at risk intelligence company Verisk Maplecroft, said Ocalan’s decision to abandon the armed struggle coincides with a period when the PKK’s leverage is weak due to military setbacks and regional isolation.

“The PKK’s armed struggle was already faltering in the face of advances by Türkiye’s military, while its popularity among its traditional base was in decline,” Kinnear said. ”Ultimately, the peace talks were a useful off ramp in which improvement of Kurdish rights could still be pursued."

However, some believe the main aim of the reconciliation effort is for Erdogan’s government to garner Kurdish support for a new constitution that would allow him to remain in power beyond 2028, when his term ends.

Bahceli has openly called for a new constitution, saying it was essential to keep Erdogan in power for Türkiye’s future. Erdogan and Bahceli are reportedly seeking parliamentary support from the DEM.