EGEB: American Petroleum Institute will fight Biden to frack

In today’s Electrek Green Energy Brief (EGEB):

• The API will fight against President-elect Joe Biden’s restriction of oil and gas drilling on federal lands.
• John Kerry gives his first speech as Biden’s climate czar: “Failure is not an option.”
• Providence, Rhode Island, will install three 1.5 megawatt wind turbines on its waterfront.
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API will fight to frack

President-elect Joe Biden has made it very clear that he supports a ban on new gas and oil permits, including fracking, on federal lands. And the American Petroleum Institute (API) has just made it very clear to Reuters that they will fight for the right to frack on federal lands.

API chief executive Mike Sommers told Reuters in an interview:

This [fracking ban on federal lands] would be a far-reaching proposal that would undermine American national and energy security to the detriment of the American people.

We would be very concerned about those kinds of proposals coming out of the Biden administration.

Sommers said the API would use “every tool at its disposal” including legal action in order to frack on federal lands, which he says are meant for “multi-use.”

Kerry’s first climate czar speech

John Kerry gave his first speech yesterday after being confirmed as President-elect Joe Biden’s first-ever US climate envoy. Kerry stated:

You’re right to rejoin Paris on day one. And you’re right to recognize that Paris alone is not enough.

At the global meeting in Glasgow one year from now, all nations must raise ambition together or we will all fail together. And failure is not an option.

Succeeding together means tapping into the best of American ingenuity, creativity, and diplomacy.

From brain power to alternative energy power, using every tool we have to get where we have to go.

You can watch Kerry’s full four-minute speech here:

Providence’s new wind turbines

Providence, Rhode Island, will install three 1.5 megawatt wind turbines on its waterfront, at the southern end of Fields Point, on land owned by the Port of Providence and Johnson & Wales University. They are expected to be completed in the fall of 2021. The Providence Journal reports:

Green Development, the only company actively developing land-based wind power in Rhode Island, announced Tuesday that it had secured all the necessary approvals for the turbines that will reach 325 feet high when their blades are at their highest points. 

Site work is set to begin in the closing weeks of this year for the $22.5-million project.

The trio of turbines will be manufactured by German company VENSYS. Green Development, based in Cranston, Rhode Island, has installed a total of 43.5 megawatts of onshore wind power in the state. As a comparison, Rhode Island’s Block Island wind farm, the first and only (but that will soon change) US offshore wind farm that was installed by Orsted, has a capacity of 30 megawatts.

The turbines will sell power directly into the regional electric grid.