The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 986 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Senator Becker: California spent $1B extending dirty legacy power plants
“We spent a billion dollars on dirty legacy, you know, once through cooling, heavily polluting plants, just because we might need them for, like, 15 hours a year.”
Lacey: 99% of US coal plants cost more than new renewables
“Back in February, we made an episode about how 99% of coal plants in America are more expensive to operate than new renewables.”
Naam: Space launch costs are dropping faster than solar power costs
“Space launch is getting cheaper faster than solar. Only, only two things in history have gotten cheap faster than solar to date, which are computing and gene sequencing or gene printing. But right now, we're in a phase where the cost of space launch is actuall…”
Naam: Odds of limiting global warming to 1.5°C are minuscule
“But the bad news is we have missed 1.5 degrees C, and I don't know how to say this anymore clearly, because there are people that will tell you that we might hit it. The odds of that are minuscule.”
Ex-DNI Dennis Blair argued battery manufacturing lacked national security importance
“From Admiral Dennis Blair, who had been the former U.S. Director of National Intelligence under Obama, there's this amazing quote in his op-ed where he says, like, there are many things that the U.S., many technologies the U.S. Should seek to protect lithium-i…”
Tomlinson: Viral anti-wind freeze image was a three-year-old Swedish photo
“They had a spokesman who tweeted out an image of a helicopter spraying a liquid onto a wind turbine, and the caption was, a fossil fuel powered helicopter sprays fossil fuels on a clean energy device to generate electricity. Now, of course, the image was not f…”
Lacey: Republican districts get 5x more IRA clean energy funding than Democrats
“According to the Financial Times, Republican-held congressional districts are getting five times more funding for clean energy projects, including new manufacturing plants, than ones controlled by Democrats through this IRA legislation.”
Shah: Hydrogen and carbon capture achieved liftoff with $40B+ announcements
“It is very clear from the reports that hydrogen and carbon management
have already seen liftoff, right? There's 40 plus billion dollars worth of announcements on real projects, and we outlined that in the report.”
Lott: CARB mandates all new car sales be zero-emission by 2035
“Transportation is the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions in California, but on August 25th of this year, CARB, which stands for the California Air Resources Board, which is this organization that deals with regulating air quality in California, well, C…”
Lott: Up to 17 states tied to California rules may ban gas cars
“New York is also banning gas-powered car sales by twenty-thirty-five, and soon, as many as 17 other states, like Washington and Massachusetts, which currently have vehicle emissions standards tied to California's, may follow suit.”
Aggarwal: 50% to 70% of industrial heat can be electrified today
“About 50 to 70% of all the heat used in the industrial sector right now could be electrified with commercially available technologies.”
Thomas: There is zero documented contamination of town water supplies by solar panels
“There's never been A single documented instance of solar panels that have contaminated a town's water supply compared to fossil fuels where that's actually a very common experience or has happened a number of times.”
Susan Ralston's firm received $300,000 from the Paul Singer Foundation
“At the time she was setting up Citizens for Responsible Solar, Ralston's firm pulled in 300,000 dollars from the Paul Singer Foundation,”
Thomas: Local opponents have blocked clean energy in 49 US states
“Clean energy projects have been blocked by local opponents in 49 out of 50 states.”
Thomas: Over 30 states have local bans or restrictions on clean energy
“Local governments in more than 30 states have passed local ordinances that either severely restrict clean energy development or outright ban it, and more than a hundred local governments have passed severe restrictions Setbacks that make it almost impossible t…”
Matrix-Backed News Sites Rewrote Alabama Power PR Without Disclosure
“A lot of them were actually pulling direct stories from Alabama Power has its own PR website, and they were basically pulling directly from their PR press releases and rewriting them into stories without saying that they were.”
Alabama Power had not held a rate hearing in 30 years
“Alabama Power had not had to have a rate hearing in 30 years, three decades, and Terry Dunn said, that's something I want to look into.”
Alabama Power earns top utility profits while residents pay high bills
“Alabama Power has It's had some of the highest earnings out of any utility company in the country year after year, specifically in the last couple of years. And people in the state of Alabama are paying some of the highest utility bills.”
De la Garza: No US federal regulations prohibit launching sulfur balloons
“There's no federal regulation that prohibits someone from putting some of that burned sulfur in a balloon and letting it go.”
Riviera: The Sunshine Project Would Roughly Double Local Toxic Emissions
“Well, according to a Guardian article, this Sunshine Project would roughly double toxic emissions in its local area.”
Dr. Terrell: EPA maps show heavy cancer-causing pollution between New Orleans and Baton Rouge
“If you look at any map from the EPA of levels of cancer-causing pollution, the entire area between New Orleans and Baton Rouge will light up”
Schleifstein: Louisiana DEQ rarely denies permits to industrial companies
“The result of that is that It's rare that companies do not get the permits that they need.”
Patton: Oil and gas revenue share in Louisiana dropped from 40% to under 5%
“In the early eighties, when oil and gas was sort of at its peak, more than 40% of Louisiana state revenue came from oil and gas. Today, oil and gas pays less than five percent of Louisiana state revenue.”
Lacey: Clean Energy Is Only 5% of Global Oil Capex
“And even with windfall profits, clean energy only accounts for five percent of oil company capital expenditures globally.”
Boyle: Over 80% of US Coal Plants Cost 30% More Than Renewables
“You know, some coal plants are kind of close at the margin to the cost of new renewables, but a lot of the coal plants, more than 80%, are at least 30% more expensive to operate on a going-forward basis than the new renewables.”
Gas stoves leak unburned methane and 21 air toxics while turned off
“They actually found there's about
200 different chemicals that are present in gas.
21 of those are air toxins like benzene, which is a known carcinogen with no safe exposure limit and so we know that gas stoves leak about one percent of the methane even while …”
Baking in a gas oven exceeds outdoor NO2 limits within five minutes
“The outdoor one-hour standard for nitrogen dioxide is a hundred parts per billion, but we know from studies
that baking a cake, for example, in a gas oven will
Give you a reading of 230 parts per billion, and some recent researchers have been found that in jus…”
Lacey: Tesla faced a DOJ criminal probe for inflating Autopilot capabilities
“Tesla was facing a criminal probe from the Department of Justice for inflating autopilot capabilities, and a handful of startups were facing cash flow crunches.”
Rangarajan: 1,318 Companies Had 112M Metric Ton CO2 Reporting Gap in 2020
“And we found that, you know in, in 2020, A 1318 companies had a difference of hundred and twelve million metric tons CO₂ between their location and their market-based emissions.”
Lacey: Study finds 42% of corporate emissions targets fail real-world mitigation
“A study just published in the journal Nature Climate Change looked at a 115 companies with science-based targets. These are targets modeled after the Paris Climate Accord, and researchers found that 42% of planned emissions cuts from those companies will quote…”
Rangarajan: Without RECs, Procter & Gamble's emissions drop was only 12%
“So, you know, we looked at so many companies, and, you know, for example, Procter & Gamble, you know, decided to claim that, you know, it slashed 50% of its emissions and then when you really look at, you know, how they got to that 50% reduction, then a lot of…”
Rangarajan: Without RECs, Cisco's emissions rose 22% instead of dropping 60%
“With Cisco, again, you know emissions reductions, and claims using a certain form of accounting would be 60%, but then when you actually remove the credits from the equation, then their emissions have actually gone up by 22%.”
Rangarajan: Intel's emissions rose 38% without renewable energy credits
“Another example that comes to mind is Intel where, you know, their emissions have actually gone up by 38%, but when you, like, calculate Using renewable energy credits, then it only goes up by, like, 17%.”
Army Corps natural dunes will fail against storms stronger than Ike
“The Army Corps' natural dunes would only protect you for to about an Ike-like storm. Nothing stronger. So they would be wiped out. And then if another storm comes, and we've had up to three storms in a season come near us, so, you know, we could be hit again a…”
Proposed coastal spine alone still allows massive Houston Ship Channel surge
“A category five storm coming in south of Galveston, you know, south of the Galveston Bay entrance channel with the coastal spine in place would generate about 22 to 24 foot of flooding up the ship, up the Houston ship channel. Almost as bad as without, without…”
French: New York needs roughly 18GW of offshore wind for 2040 goals
“To actually achieve the state's, you know, ultimate twenty-thirty and twenty-forty goals We're going to need a whole lot more offshore wind than just nine gigawatts. We're going to need much more than that. I think the Climate Action Council, you know, support…”
French: NY climate law contains reliability off-ramps for 2040 target
“The climate law has off-ramps. The Public Service Commission, if it can, is concerned about reliability, Can, you know, be like, well, I guess we're not going to hit zero emissions by 2040.”
French: NYISO warned peaker plants may run longer if CHPE delays occur
“If Chippy the Champlain Hudson Power Express doesn't come online, you know, when it's currently forecasted to come online there could be some reliability issues that the NISO itself has said, you know, this could mean that the peakers need to stay on longer.”
Gallucci: Very Little of Puerto Rico's Federal Grid Aid Has Been Deployed
“Billions of Federal recovery dollars have been made available and are flowing to the island specifically to fix the grid and to potentially invest in renewable energy, and very little of that money is actually, you know, being distributed on the ground, and so…”
Pei: Decarbonizing SSAB requires 10% of Sweden's total electricity consumption
“When I started to explain that we want to replace coal that we use, and we want to use electricity, it's going to take about 10% of Sweden's total electricity consumption.”
Corbeau: European renewables cannot compensate for nuclear and hydro generation drops
“So all the renewables that we have been having that, that are presented as the solution in order to reduce natural gas are actually not enough to compensate the drop in In hydro and in nuclear.”
Mitrova: 25 out of 30 European Gas Buyers Accepted Ruble Payments
“Even recently with this very controversial introduction of rubble payments for gas, It worked, because 25 out of 30 consumers have accepted it, and only few refused, and the tensions have increased immediately.”
Corbeau: EU hydrogen import target equals 40 NEOM-scale projects by 2030
“Ten million tons of imported hydrogen. This is about 40 of this NEOM project, which is currently considered in Saudi Arabia. So that's a lot of project. And this is supposed to happen in eight years.”
Kibbe: Apparel demand for recycled plastic forces bottle makers into virgin plastic
“The textile industry has been siphoning off recyclable plastics from the bottle industry and making recycled plastics for bottles. The prices of that commodity go up. Which increases the need for virgin plastics for the bottle industry.”
PREPA waited months to request mainland utility mutual aid after Maria
“Puerto Rico has that as well, but for whatever reason, for reasons that are unclear, PREPA did not initiate that process until months later.”
Power outage durations doubled under privatized grid operator LUMA Energy
“In the fall of last year, there was some investigative reporting about what was happening to the grid under Luma, and one of the stats that grabbed me was that outage times have actually doubled under Luma. It's taking them longer to repair service than it did…”
PREPA signed a $1.5 billion gas infrastructure deal with New Fortress
“In twenty-nineteen, PREPA signed a 1.5 billion dollar contract with an American company called New Fortress Energy. To replace, ah, two of its oil-fired power plants with fossil gas, and kind of more controversially, to build an import terminal for liquefied f…”