Huge Barriers Remain in Rapid Shift to Renewables, But Solution Is at Hand

This article is the third of a three-part series on the Future of Electricity. Read Part I and Part II.
A few weeks ago I posted two of a promised three part series on the remaking of the electricity sector of the U.S. economy. Those posts outlined the flimsiness of the arguments being made against clean electricity by coal companies and incumbent utilities, and the overwhelming economics driving the revolution from the renewables side.
And since those postings the gales of change have steadily risen in ferocity. The government now estimates that wind alone could provide 35 percent of U.S. electricity by 2050; a major traditional utility, TXU, has now partnered with Solar City to offer Texas customers lower utility bills if they lease solar on their rooftops. Solar City in turn announced it will now offer cities, college campuses and remote communities its own renewable micro-grids, becoming the world’s first distributed utility. New reports show that 60 percent of the new electricity generation capacity added last year in the U.S. was renewable. And New York State has launched an almost revolutionary new approach to the public utility business model.
But this third post contains the bad news—huge political and institutional barriers remain to a rapid, fair, inclusive shift to a low cost, high reliability clean electricity sector.
Any rapid economic change means losers as well as winners—capital assets stranded before their investors planned, or workers, families and communities whose economies rested on a technology now outraced by something newer and better. Those with the most to lose from a rapid shift to renewable electricity have enormous power to obstruct, slow down or sabotage change.
It is not accidental that the charge against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Rule is led by Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell, representing Kentucky, one of the nation’s most coal dependent economies. But while the political opposition to clean energy comes heavily from coal companies and utilities, they are not the most important barrier. The coal companies, for one thing, no longer enjoy much market power. The entire market valuation of the U.S. coal sector is only $12 billion, less than half that of Tesla alone—down 78 percent in 4 years. Most U.S. coal reserves are not even owned by coal companies, but by the federal government, which could just stop giving them away at subsidized rates.
Most of the coal plants were fully amortized years ago—their investors have already recovered the capital. These plants were due for retirement this decade anyway—the utilities planned to replace them with a wave of new coal generation, plans which collapsed from 2005-2010 when the economic lunacy of coal investments became clear.
But there is another set of stakeholders, who have both the power to slow a clean electricity transition and a powerful moral claim to be compensated for losses which have not been amortized or written down by the market.
These are workers and communities—in the coal fields, yes—but also wherever coal fired power plants were primary employers and tax base for communities, particularly in and around the Ohio Valley. Valuable social and community assets could be stranded by an unplanned rapid electricity transformation—which would be both foolish and unjust.
Begin with the workers who extract and then covert coal into electricity. In previous transitions, (California’s North Coast shift from redwood logging), critical safety nets were put in place for such workers. We need a similar plan for the transition away from coal. Ending the unfair federal give-away of western, strip-mined coal, which undercuts employment intense Appalachian deep-mined coal, would make the problem much, much easier. It would also, as the Center for American Progress has pointed out, provide important additional revenues to finance the clean power transition).
As many utility workers as feasible should be shifted to the cleaner power plants which will replace old coal. The reclamation of ravaged, strip mined coal fields can and should be a major employment opportunity for today’s miners and their children—we need to use the funds paid into the Surface Mining Reclamation Act by coal consumers to reclaim abandoned mine sites. But not all workers will find such landing pads. We need effective development strategies for their communities to create new livelihoods and diversify their economies.
As power plants aged and mining mechanized, the average age of workers rose—shrinking employers don’t hire the young. In most countries, this would not be a problem. The work force would shrink naturally, through retirement. But in the US, uniquely, pensions are tied to individual employers, or industries who were permitted to massively underfund them. So like autos and steel before it, coal finds itself with a huge cohort of older workers who earned their pensions—but may not get them, because the companies did not set aside sufficient funds and now don’t have big enough profits. Indeed, Peabody and Arch Coal have already managed to dump their pension and health care obligations on the retirees and taxpayers by exploiting loopholes in federal bankruptcy law. Existing pension guarantee mechanisms are far too flimsy to handle the potential collapse of the pension plans for miners and utility workers—such an event could spiral through the rest of the economy in a very corrosive way.
The communities where jobs may become scarce and retired workers no longer adequately covered for pensions and health care are, of course, the very communities where tax revenues will shrink most dramatically as coal mines and power plants close. So if each community and its workers are left to fend for themselves, the price of a transition to clean power will be far, far higher than it needs to be —and the resistance to change will be turbo-charged by legitimate fear.
This is avoidable. The transition from outmoded, dirty power to advanced, clean energy is highly lucrative—innovative technologies will make a lot of money and create millions of new jobs. Winners should compensate vulnerable losers—just capture a fraction of these new profits and we can protect the security and welfare of otherwise stranded workers and communities, provide investment capital for economic diversification and ensure the full value of pension funds.
The Obama Administration has suggested a down-payment on such a vision in its 2016 budget, calling for “dedicated new resources for economic diversification, job creation, job training and other employment services for workers and communities impacted by layoffs at coal mines and coal-fired plants.” This proposal has strong support from organized labor, and the Center for American Progress has proposed to fund these kinds of programs by cutting back on the give-away of Western public coal to private mining companies, much of it for export.
But like most ideas that are headed towards Capitol Hill, modesty has trumped boldness. The Administration is asking for only a $55 million down-payment, and the CAP proposal would still leave private coal companies getting unfair deals on initial bids for public coal—though even these first steps are unlikely to get through this Congress.
What’s really needed to accelerate the gain of a fast clean electricity transition, and minimize the pain is a mechanism to capture a portion of the profits of innovation and use them to compensate communities and families left behind. One idea is a “system improvement fee,” perhaps a half cents a kilowatt hour, levied on all electricity generated in the U.S. for five years. Such a fee would capture about $20 billion a year. Three quarters could be devoted to modernizing the grid and improving infrastructure for all customers, and the remaining quarter used to create a safety net for workers, communities and pensioners at risk, as well as to clean up the legacy of strip mining, coal ash dumping and environmental devastation left behind by coal. The customer savings from the grid improvement alone would easily outstrip the total cost, enhance national competitiveness, clean the environment and protect the climate.
But that would require a political system that believed in the American dream.
Doesn't that sound almost—nostalgic?
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A Healthy Microbiome Builds a Strong Immune System That Could Help Defeat COVID-19
By Ana Maldonado-Contreras
Takeaways
- Your gut is home to trillions of bacteria that are vital for keeping you healthy.
- Some of these microbes help to regulate the immune system.
- New research, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, shows the presence of certain bacteria in the gut may reveal which people are more vulnerable to a more severe case of COVID-19.
You may not know it, but you have an army of microbes living inside of you that are essential for fighting off threats, including the virus that causes COVID-19.
How Do Resident Bacteria Keep You Healthy?
<p>Our immune defense is part of a complex biological response against harmful pathogens, such as viruses or bacteria. However, because our bodies are inhabited by trillions of mostly beneficial bacteria, virus and fungi, activation of our immune response is tightly regulated to distinguish between harmful and helpful microbes.</p><p>Our bacteria are spectacular companions diligently helping prime our immune system defenses to combat infections. A seminal study found that mice treated with antibiotics that eliminate bacteria in the gut exhibited an impaired immune response. These animals had low counts of virus-fighting white blood cells, weak antibody responses and poor production of a protein that is vital for <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1019378108" target="_blank">combating viral infection and modulating the immune response</a>.</p><p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0184976" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">In another study</a>, mice were fed <em>Lactobacillus</em> bacteria, commonly used as probiotic in fermented food. These microbes reduced the severity of influenza infection. The <em>Lactobacillus</em>-treated mice did not lose weight and had only mild lung damage compared with untreated mice. Similarly, others have found that treatment of mice with <em>Lactobacillus</em> protects against different <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/srep04638" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">subtypes of</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-17487-8" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">influenza</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1008072" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">virus</a> and human respiratory syncytial virus – the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-39602-7" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">major cause of viral bronchiolitis and pneumonia in children</a>.</p>Chronic Disease and Microbes
<p>Patients with chronic illnesses including Type 2 diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease exhibit a hyperactive immune system that fails to recognize a harmless stimulus and is linked to an altered gut microbiome.</p><p>In these chronic diseases, the gut microbiome lacks bacteria that activate <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1198469" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">immune cells</a> that block the response against harmless bacteria in our guts. Such alteration of the gut microbiome is also observed in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1002601107" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">babies delivered by cesarean section</a>, individuals consuming a poor <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/nature12820" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">diet</a> and the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/nature11053" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">elderly</a>.</p><p>In the U.S., 117 million individuals – about half the adult population – <a href="https://health.gov/our-work/food-nutrition/2015-2020-dietary-guidelines/guidelines/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">suffer from Type 2 diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease or a combination of them</a>. That suggests that half of American adults carry a faulty microbiome army.</p><p>Research in my laboratory focuses on identifying gut bacteria that are critical for creating a balanced immune system, which fights life-threatening bacterial and viral infections, while tolerating the beneficial bacteria in and on us.</p><p>Given that diet affects the diversity of bacteria in the gut, <a href="https://www.umassmed.edu/nutrition/melody-trial-info/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">my lab studies show how diet can be used</a> as a therapy for chronic diseases. Using different foods, people can shift their gut microbiome to one that boosts a healthy immune response.</p><p>A fraction of patients infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 disease, develop severe complications that require hospitalization in intensive care units. What do many of those patients have in common? <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6912e2.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Old age</a> and chronic diet-related diseases like obesity, Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.</p><p><a href="http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jada.2008.12.019" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Black and Latinx people are disproportionately affected by obesity, Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease</a>, all of which are linked to poor nutrition. Thus, it is not a coincidence that <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6933e1.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">these groups have suffered more deaths from COVID-19</a> compared with whites. This is the case not only in the U.S. but also <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/blacks-in-britain-are-four-times-as-likely-to-die-of-coronavirus-as-whites-data-show/2020/05/07/2dc76710-9067-11ea-9322-a29e75effc93_story.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">in Britain</a>.</p>Discovering Microbes That Predict COVID-19 Severity
<p>The COVID-19 pandemic has inspired me to shift my research and explore the role of the gut microbiome in the overly aggressive immune response against SARS-CoV-2 infection.</p><p>My colleagues and I have hypothesized that critically ill SARS-CoV-2 patients with conditions like obesity, Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease exhibit an altered gut microbiome that aggravates <a href="https://theconversation.com/exercise-may-help-reduce-risk-of-deadly-covid-19-complication-ards-136922" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">acute respiratory distress syndrome</a>.</p><p>Acute respiratory distress syndrome, a life-threatening lung injury, in SARS-CoV-2 patients is thought to develop from a <a href="http://doi.org/10.1016/j.cytogfr.2020.05.003" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">fatal overreaction of the immune response</a> called a <a href="https://theconversation.com/blocking-the-deadly-cytokine-storm-is-a-vital-weapon-for-treating-covid-19-137690" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">cytokine storm</a> <a href="http://doi.org/10.1016/S2213-2600(20)30216-2" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">that causes an uncontrolled flood</a> <a href="http://doi.org/10.1016/S2213-2600(20)30216-2" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">of immune cells into the lungs</a>. In these patients, their own uncontrolled inflammatory immune response, rather than the virus itself, causes the <a href="http://doi.org/10.1007/s00134-020-05991-x" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">severe lung injury and multiorgan failures</a> that lead to death.</p><p>Several studies <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trsl.2020.08.004" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">described in one recent review</a> have identified an altered gut microbiome in patients with COVID-19. However, identification of specific bacteria within the microbiome that could predict COVID-19 severity is lacking.</p><p>To address this question, my colleagues and I recruited COVID-19 hospitalized patients with severe and moderate symptoms. We collected stool and saliva samples to determine whether bacteria within the gut and oral microbiome could predict COVID-19 severity. The identification of microbiome markers that can predict the clinical outcomes of COVID-19 disease is key to help prioritize patients needing urgent treatment.</p><p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.01.05.20249061" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">We demonstrated</a>, in a paper which has not yet been peer reviewed, that the composition of the gut microbiome is the strongest predictor of COVID-19 severity compared to patient's clinical characteristics commonly used to do so. Specifically, we identified that the presence of a bacterium in the stool – called <em>Enterococcus faecalis</em>– was a robust predictor of COVID-19 severity. Not surprisingly, <em>Enterococcus faecalis</em> has been associated with <a href="https://doi.org/10.1053/j.gastro.2011.05.035" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">chronic</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/S0002-9440(10)61172-8" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">inflammation</a>.</p><p><em>Enterococcus faecalis</em> collected from feces can be grown outside of the body in clinical laboratories. Thus, an <em>E. faecalis</em> test might be a cost-effective, rapid and relatively easy way to identify patients who are likely to require more supportive care and therapeutic interventions to improve their chances of survival.</p><p>But it is not yet clear from our research what is the contribution of the altered microbiome in the immune response to SARS-CoV-2 infection. A recent study has shown that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.12.11.416180" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">SARS-CoV-2 infection triggers an imbalance in immune cells</a> called <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/imr.12170" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">T regulatory cells that are critical to immune balance</a>.</p><p>Bacteria from the gut microbiome are responsible for the <a href="https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.30916.001" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">proper activation</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1198469" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">of those T-regulatory</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/nri.2016.36" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">cells</a>. Thus, researchers like me need to take repeated patient stool, saliva and blood samples over a longer time frame to learn how the altered microbiome observed in COVID-19 patients can modulate COVID-19 disease severity, perhaps by altering the development of the T-regulatory cells.</p><p>As a Latina scientist investigating interactions between diet, microbiome and immunity, I must stress the importance of better policies to improve access to healthy foods, which lead to a healthier microbiome. It is also important to design culturally sensitive dietary interventions for Black and Latinx communities. While a good-quality diet might not prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection, it can treat the underlying conditions related to its severity.</p><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/ana-maldonado-contreras-1152969" target="_blank">Ana Maldonado-Contreras</a> is an assistant professor of Microbiology and Physiological Systems at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.</em></p><p><em>Disclosure statement: Ana Maldonado-Contreras receives funding from The Helmsley Charitable Trust and her work has been supported by the American Gastroenterological Association. She received The Charles A. King Trust Postdoctoral Research Fellowship. She is also member of the Diversity Committee of the American Gastroenterological Association.</em></p><p><em style="">Reposted with permission from <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-healthy-microbiome-builds-a-strong-immune-system-that-could-help-defeat-covid-19-145668" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="">The Conversation</a>. </em></p>By Jeff Masters, Ph.D.
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