For now, it’s only a gaping hole in the ground, 100-by-100 feet, surrounded by farm machinery and bales of hemp on a sandy patch of earth in the Lower Sioux Indian Reservation in southwestern Minnesota. 

But when construction is complete next April, the Lower Sioux — also known as part of the Mdewakanton Band of Dakota — will have a 20,000-square-foot manufacturing campus that will allow them to pioneer a green experiment, the first of its kind in the United States. 

They will have an integrated vertical operation to grow hemp, process it into insulation called hempcrete, and then build healthy homes with it. Right now, no one in the U.S. does all three.

Once the tribe makes this low-carbon material, they can begin to address a severe shortage of housing and jobs. Recapturing a slice of sovereignty would be a win for the Lower Sioux, once a largely woodland people who were subjected to some of the worst brutality against the Indigenous nations in North America. 

They lost most of their lands in the 19th century, and the territory finally allotted to them two hours south of Minneapolis consists of just 1,743 acres of poor soil. That stands in contrast to the fertile black earth of the surrounding white-owned farmlands. 

Nearly half of the 1,124 enrolled members of the tribe need homes. Some of the unhoused camp on the hard ground outside the reservation, with nowhere else to turn. Those who do have shelter live in often moldy, modular homes with flimsy walls that can’t keep out the minus-15 Fahrenheit winter cold. 

Now, they have two prototypes that are nearly done and know how to build or retrofit more. While learning how to make the houses, the construction team developed a niche eco-skill they can market off the reservation as well. 

“The idea of making homes that would last and be healthy was a no-brainer,” said Robert “Deuce” Larsen, the tribal council president. 

“We need to build capacity in the community and show that it can be an income stream.”

That one of the smallest tribes in the country, in terms of population and land in trust, is leading the national charge on an integrated hempcrete operation is no mean feat, seeing that virtually no one in the community had experience with either farming or construction before the five-man team was assembled earlier this year.

“It’s fantastic,” said Jody McGuinness, executive director of the U.S. Hemp Building Association. “I haven’t heard of any other fully integrated project like this domestically.” 

Besides, hempcrete as a construction material is normally the domain of rich people with means to contract a green home, not marginalized communities. That’s because the sustainable material is normally imported from Europe rather than made locally. 

“It’s accessible to people with wealth, who can afford to build a bespoke house. It’s not accessible to the general public,” McGuinness said.

The project is the brainchild of Earl Pendleton, 52, a rail-thin man of quiet intensity, who until recently was the tribal council’s vice president. He grew obsessed with industrial hemp when reading about it 13 years ago. 

Pendleton was intrigued to learn that the bamboolike plant has 25,000 uses, including wood substitutes, biofuel, bioplastics, animal feed, and textiles. 

Hemp can grow in a variety of climates and, depending on the location, can yield more than one harvest a year. What’s more, hemp regenerates soil, sequesters carbon, and doesn’t require fertilizers.

“It blew my mind,” he recalled.

People often confuse hemp with its cannabis cousin, marijuana. But hemp has negligible THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, the psychoactive component that creates a weed high. And this stalky variant is more versatile than the flowery CBD (cannabidiol) type.

Hempcrete is made by mixing mashed stalks with lime and water. The oatmeal-like substance is stuffed or sprayed into the cavities of framed walls. Once it hardens, it resembles cement to the touch (thus the name) but has different properties.

The petrified substance has airtight qualities that can dramatically cut down on heating and air-conditioning needs. Unlike many commonly used building materials, it is nontoxic and resists mold, fire, and pests.

While used in Europe, commercial hemp was banned in the U.S. until the 2018 Farm Bill. Since then, hempcrete has been slow to catch on, due to a chicken-and-egg conundrum. Farmers don’t want to plant without facilities nearby to process the stalks. Potential processors don’t want to buy expensive machinery without guarantees of raw material. And most American contractors don’t know anything about hempcrete.

Aside from the green value, Pendleton saw a chance to pivot from the reservation’s Jackpot Junction Casino, the tribe’s main source of income for the past 35 years. A bronze statue of a warrior spearing a buffalo stands in front.

For many years, as Pendleton managed the floor and worked blackjack, he saw gamblers lose their paychecks, and more. The Lower Sioux weren’t getting richer. The population on the reservation has expanded rapidly since 2000, which meant the per capita cut that each family got from the $30 million yearly profits shrank. For most families, it is the only income they receive.

“We sell misery. It’s nothing to be proud of, the money to be made here,” Pendleton said.

He added that the guaranteed money from the casinos killed many people’s ambitions to get education or training for jobs, or to seek work off the reservation.

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It took a while for him to convince the tribal leadership to endorse his hemp vision. “When I would bring it up eight years ago, they’d say, ‘What? You’re going to smoke the wall?’ They associated it with weed.”

He had some learning to do, too. Pendleton knew nothing about the industry, so he binged on YouTube videos about techniques and drove around the country to meet experts. 

“It was daunting,” he said. 

Once the tribal council got on board three years ago, they cobbled together loans, government grants, and their own funds to earmark more than $6 million to build the first two prototype homes and the processing campus.

They have the potential to plant hemp on 300 acres and, at a given time, grow on between 100 to 200 acres. Test seeds came from New Genetics in Colorado and the Dun Agro Hemp Group, a Dutch company with a new processing facility in Indiana that is seeking partnerships with tribal communities.

Pendleton recruited Joey Goodthunder, a cheerful 33-year-old who had picked up farming cattle and corn from his grandfather, as agricultural processing manager. Goodthunder set to planting in a field called Cansa’yap, or “the place where they paint the trees red,” which is what the tribe used to do to mark territory.

Pendleton lured as project manager Danny Desjarlais, 38, a tattooed carpenter who had been thinking about becoming a long-haul truck driver for lack of other work.

“Earl found out and took me and my kids’ mom out to eat and told her, ‘If he drives a truck, he’s not going to be home every night. I’ll have him home for dinner every night,’” Desjarlais said.

Desjarlais entertained doubts about this bizarre product he had never heard of. Pendleton sealed the deal by taking him to a hemp building conference in Austin, Texas. “That was eye-opening,” Desjarlais said. 

Pendleton signed up three other Lower Sioux, only one of whom had experience putting up walls. And he invited two luminaries in hemp building: Jennifer Martin, a partner in HempStone, and Cameron McIntosh of Americhanvre to teach the different application techniques. They are based, respectively, in Northampton, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania.

Intrigued by what this project could achieve in terms of Native sovereignty, Martin traveled to Minnesota again and again to usher the crew through the project.

“What the Lower Sioux is doing is the most compelling and forward-thinking thing that’s happening in hempcrete today,” she said. “No one else is doing anything like this. And Danny is one of the smartest people I’ve ever worked with; he’s like a sponge.” 

The venture has, unsurprisingly, experienced bumps. Equipment housed at another company’s warehouse nearby broke down. Replacement parts were backlogged due to pandemic supply chain issues. Since they couldn’t process hemp in the time allotted to build, the crew had to import some.

Goodthunder, meanwhile, struggled with harvesting techniques alien to conventional agriculture, such as leaving cut stalks to rot in the field for weeks so that unwanted seeds separate from the woody inner fiber, called hurd. 

Yet they’ve made progress.

They began with a demo shed in September 2022, placed on a field where the tribe holds powwows, an annual celebration of music and dance. The kids used it as a concession stand to sell sodas and candies. The remaining skeptics all wanted their pictures taken next to it. 

“Once they saw it, they changed their minds,” Desjarlais said. “They said, ‘Let’s build a house.’”

Build they did. In a 14-day blitz in July, the team threw together a 1,500-square-foot lime-green ranch, without any blueprints. It’ll be used as two units of temporary housing for people coming from substance abuse treatment or jail.

“Everyone said, ‘It‘s impossible.’ Even people in the hemp world thought it was impossible,” Desjarlais said proudly. His muscled arm, tattooed with the words “Love Life,” pointed at the hempcrete blocks wedged securely into the 12-inch-thick walls. A pleasant, haylike smell wafted through the house. 

Another four-room prototype is already framed and being filled with hempcrete. It will be rented out to community members when done.

The processing campus where they hope to manufacture blocks or panels of hempcrete has a solar greenhouse to store bags of lime and hemp, as well as equipment such as a combine harvester and a decorticator that separates the hurd from the softer fibers that can be used for textiles.

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The project could serve as an example for the 573 other federally recognized tribes, many of which face similar critical shortages of jobs and housing. Native Americans retain 25 percent of U.S. land tenure in federal trust, and self-governing communities don’t have to wait for permits from other authorities.

Larsen, the tribal president, thinks hemp could provide a lucrative income stream for tribes that have the land to grow it and a trained crew that can offer its skills off the reservation.

“Native American tribes have an advantage, because they can build with materials that are new, without having to get them certified by a national agency,” said McGuinness. “They don’t have the bureaucracy holding them down.” 

What’s more, he’s hearing about non-tribal companies, Dun Agro among them, that are viewing tribal communities as development partners.

Architect Bob Escher, who has four residential designs in the works involving hemp, sees demand for skilled hemp professionals increasing as green building takes off. So far, there are only a handful of these experts in the U.S.

“Who knew five years ago that a hempcrete consultant would be sitting at the same table with structural engineers, electrical contractors, HVAC installers, and interior designers to help me and the client develop the design program,” he said. “This is the pure definition of job creation.”

For now, the Lower Sioux undertaking has caught the eye of four other reservations in Minnesota, as well as Dallas Goldtooth, who plays the Spirit in the hit show Reservation Dogs on Hulu. Desjarlais said the actor was interested in a hempcrete build for his mother, who lives in the community.

Farther north, the Gitxsan First Nation in Canada invited Desjarlais to show them in August how to build. They’ve grown enough hemp for three prototype homes on their Sik-E-Dakh reserve 16 hours north of Vancouver and are seeking $5.5 million (Canadian) to get a similar integrated project off the ground.

Desjarlais left them inspired, said Velma Sutherland, a band administrator. “This could be the start of something big.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The Lower Sioux in Minnesota need homes — so they are building them from hemp on Nov 27, 2023.

This story was originally published by Canary Media.

One recent autumn afternoon, I watched the Atlantic gusts collide with the cliffs that rise above Nazaré, Portugal. Rain pelted down, and the world-renowned swells rose into walls of water that even the most death-defying surfers reach only via Jet Ski. For me, this looked like a rained-out, late-season beach getaway, but for the sliver of Iberia that is Portugal, it looked like a bright future. That weekend, the nation of 10 million ran on nothing but wind, solar and hydropower.

As it turned out, those rainy, blustery days were just a warmup. Portugal produced more than enough renewable power to serve all its customers for six straight days, from October 31 to November 6.

“The gas plants were there, waiting to dispatch energy, should it be needed. It was not, because the wind was blowing; it was raining a lot,” said Hugo Costa, who oversees Portugal for EDP Renewables, the renewables arm of the state utility, which was privatized in 2012. ​“And we were producing with a positive impact to the consumers because the prices have dropped dramatically, almost to zero.”

To hit Paris Agreement climate goals by 2050, nations need to run their grids without carbon emissions not just for three or six days, but year-round. A handful of countries already do this, thanks to generous endowments of hydropower, largely developed well before the climate crisis drove investment decisions for power plants. Others score highly on carbon-free power thanks to big fleets of nuclear plants.

Portugal falls into a different, more relatable bucket: It started its decarbonization journey with some legacy hydropower, but no nuclear capacity nor plans to build any. That meant it had to figure out how to cut fossil fuel use by maximizing new renewables.

How did Portugal make this happen? It committed to building renewables early and often, pledging a 2050 deadline for net-zero carbon emissions in 2016, several years before the European Union as a whole found the conviction to take that step. Portugal’s last coal plants shut down in 2022, leaving (imported) fossil gas as the backstop for on-demand power.

“The key conclusion, in my opinion, is that it shows that the Portuguese grid is prepared for very high shares of renewable electricity and for its expected variation: We were able to manage both the sharp increase of hydro and wind production, and also the return to a lower share of renewables, when natural-gas power plants were requested again to supply some of the country’s demand,” said Miguel Prado, who covers Portugal’s energy sector for Expresso newspaper.

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The task ahead for Portugal’s grid decarbonization is to reduce and ultimately eliminate the number of hours when the country needs to burn gas to keep the lights on. Leaders want gas generation, which made up 21 percent of electricity consumption from January through October, to end completely by 2040.

To reach its climate goals, Portugal has focused on diversification of renewable resources; instead of depending primarily on wind, water, or sun, it blends each into the portfolio and finds ways to make them more complementary. The country’s power companies are now chasing major additional offshore wind opportunities, expanding solar installations and repowering older onshore wind projects to get more out of the best locations.

Anatomy of a six-day clean energy streak

After the overthrow of the authoritarian Estado Novo dictatorship in 1974, the newly formed state utility Energias de Portugal constructed a series of hydroelectric dams on the once-wild rivers that rushed from the eastern mountains to the western coast. The company built its first onshore wind projects in the 1990s, when solar simply couldn’t compete economically, and solar installations have only recently started to catch up.

That’s why the gray skies didn’t hurt overall renewable production during the country’s recent record-setting stretch, as they would have in, say, California or Hawaii. The wind and hydro were cranking, and that’s what mattered.

Any milestone in the rapidly evolving clean energy sector should come with specific parameters. So what exactly did the Portuguese grid accomplish earlier this month?

The six-day record refers to the 149 consecutive hours in which ​“energy from renewable sources exceeded the industrial and household consumption needs across the country.” The country’s previous record for that metric was 131 hours (a little over five days), achieved in 2019. That doesn’t mean that fossil fuel plants weren’t operating — just that the overall renewable generation more than met customer needs.

But Portugal also just set a national record for meeting the entire electricity system’s needs ​“without resorting to conventional thermal power generation.” This gas-free stretch started Halloween night and ran for 131 consecutive hours, about 5 days, nearly tripling Portugal’s previous record of 56 hours straight in 2021. And for 95 of those consecutive hours, Portugal exported clean electricity to Spain, because it consistently had more than it needed — again without burning gas.

That trendline is the thing to watch. Renewables-friendly weather will come and go, and shoulder months are ripe for renewables to outpace consumer demand because heating or cooling needs are lower than in the summer and winter. But the last time Portugal had ideal conditions for a renewables record, it only lasted one-third as long without burning gas. As more wind and solar capacity comes online, Portugal expands its arsenal for running entirely on renewables.

This particular week stood out, but it exemplifies a historic shift in energy sources. Natural-gas use for Portugal’s electricity production fell 39 percent year-over-year for the period from January to October, according to REN. That brought overall gas use to its lowest level since 2006.

Portugal has made grid decarbonization perfectly tangible for itself. To reach its climate goals, it needs to take the playbook from this one week in November and run it for longer periods of time, until eventually it doesn’t even need gas on standby. And it has to do so even in the parts of the year when the winds and the rain don’t lash the off-season traveler who’d heard so much about a climate reminiscent of Southern California.

Next steps for grid decarbonization

Portugal’s clean energy accomplishments today build on several decisions made in the past: The country chose to invest in new hydropower capacity, and 18 years ago, it ran a large-scale wind auction, Prado noted.

“It was also important that the country didn’t go to a massive investment in solar capacity when the technology was still expensive,” he explained. ​“Now Portugal is facing a huge demand of developers to build new PV utility-scale plants, as well as a big demand for decentralized solar projects, taking advantage of a low-cost technology to increase the share of renewable energy in the years to come.”

The country still has a steep task ahead to hit its national target of 85 percent renewables by 2030, Prado added. Major challenges include slow permitting processes and the complexities of balancing ecological impacts with the need for cleaner power.

One way to mitigate delays in permitting new plants is to refurbish old ones.

Portugal has limited landmass to work with, and the best onshore wind sites are already taken, Costa said. But early projects still run 500-kilowatt turbines, while new turbines can produce 6.2 megawatts. Thus, swapping an old turbine for a new one could unlock 12 times the existing capacity. EDP Renewables is doing this strategically to increase production at times when projects aren’t hitting their full export levels; such upgrades produce more clean power throughout the year without necessitating grid investment to handle surges of power.

EDP Renewables is also investigating hybrid power plants, which combine wind and solar at the same location.

“If we combine wind and solar, what we see is that there is a big complementarity,” Costa said. ​“Typically, when we have wind blowing, we don’t have sun. And when we have sun, typically we don’t have that much wind.”

Grouping developments like that dilutes the fixed costs of construction, making them ​“more rational, economics-wise,” Costa said. In other words, developers can save money compared to building the same resources in separate locations.

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Portugal currently has no large stand-alone battery storage plants, though some batteries sit alongside solar or wind projects. The storage built into the hydropower networks has sufficed until now to balance swings in other forms of generation. But as renewables push ever higher in their share of electricity production, the need to rapidly store and discharge power will call for more batteries, Costa said.

The most ambitious part of Portugal’s clean energy expansion isn’t even happening within Portugal’s terrestrial borders. Having tapped the choicest onshore locations, the power sector will grow wind installations by looking offshore, in waters so deep they demand floating turbines. A few pathbreaking projects globally have proved this is possible, but it remains far less mature than the offshore turbines mounted to shallower sea bottoms.

Back in 2011, EDP Renewables tested a 2-megawatt floating turbine supplied by American company Principle Power, and it valiantly survived pummeling by 17-meter waves off northern Portugal. The company followed up with three 8.4-megawatt floating turbines, and even managed to secure project financing from the European Investment Bank.

“We have a lender who is confident about the cash flows that will be generated by the project and is not relying on any kind of guarantees from the sponsor,” Costa said.

Financiers as a rule fear newer technologies they deem risky; this stamp of approval marks an important step toward normalizing floating wind as a regular part of the clean energy toolkit.

That’s exactly what Portugal aims to do: Its target is to build 10 gigawatts of offshore wind, which will have to be floating. These projects still have a lot of work to do, so Costa said not to expect them until the 2030s. But the government is set to hold an auction for 2 gigawatts of offshore development in December.

That timeline is less certain as a result of this month’s resignation of Prime Minister António Costa due to, of all things, a corruption investigation centered on green hydrogen and lithium interests.

“This government won’t be able to make relevant decisions in the coming months, until the elections in March, which would delay the launch and conclusion of the first offshore wind auction,” Prado said. Other auctions for green hydrogen, renewable fuels and energy storage are likely going to be pushed back, too.

That unexpected interruption doesn’t change a broad political consensus around the need for more clean energy. But for now, it’ll just be the surfers and the fishing boats braving the massive Atlantic waves.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Portugal just ran on 100 percent renewables for six days in a row on Nov 26, 2023.

This story was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government, and statewide issues.

A Republican-controlled Texas State Board of Education last week rejected seven of 12 proposed science textbooks for eighth graders that for the first time will require them to include information on climate change.

The 15-member board largely rejected the books either because they included policy solutions for climate change or because they were produced by a company that has an Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) policy. Some textbooks were also rejected because SBOE reviewers gave the books lower scores on how well they adhered to the state’s curriculum standards.

The board voted on November 17 to allow five textbooks for eighth grade science to be included on the list, published by Savvas Learning Company, McGraw-Hill School Division, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Depository, Accelerate Learning and Summit K-12.

San Antonio Democratic board member Marisa Perez-Diaz said she was disappointed by last week’s decision to reject so many textbooks, some that included Spanish texts.

“My fear is that we will render ourselves irrelevant moving forward when it comes to what publishers want to work with us and will help us get proper materials in front of our young people, and for me that’s heartbreaking,” Perez-Diaz said during last Friday’s meeting. “I’m very disappointed that so many things were voted down based on assertions or thoughts about how things are written or thematics.”

In an almost weeklong meeting that began on November 14, the members discussed dozens of textbooks that will be placed on a list of approved materials for districts to select from next fall.

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While school districts are not required to choose only from the SBOE-curated list, many school districts choose to do so because those textbooks are guaranteed to be in compliance with the state’s curriculum standards.

A science curriculum overhaul approved two years ago threw eighth grade science textbooks, in particular, into the political fray. The new standards will require, for the first time next year, that Texas eighth graders learn about climate change — meaning that textbook manufacturers had to update their teaching materials.

Texas is one of only six states that does not use the Next Generation Science Standards to guide its K-12 science curriculum. The standards — developed by states and a committee convened by the National Research Council in 2013 — emphasize that climate change is real, severe, caused by humans and can be mitigated with actions that reduce greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere.

The updated Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, or TEKS, require eighth graders to learn about climate change and describe how human activities “can” influence the climate. Critics have said that the standards don’t go far enough, arguing that the requirements don’t ensure students will learn how reducing greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels could mitigate climate change.

But overall, most of the proposed eighth grade science textbooks did a good job meeting the state’s new requirements for including information about climate change, according to an analysis by educators who were asked to review the books for Texas Freedom Network, a progressive think tank focused on education.

The curriculum change was approved before many of the current board members were elected. It’s a body that’s taken a rightward turn in recent years after Republicans nationally began taking aim at how schools were teaching history, race and gender.

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Republicans have also in recent years sought to punish companies that adopt ESG policies, which typically attempt to align companies with international climate goals, set internal emissions reductions targets, or employ investment strategies that emphasize renewable energy over fossil fuels. In 2021, Texas lawmakers prohibited state funds, such as the Teacher Retirement System of Texas, from contracting with or investing in companies that divest from oil, natural gas and coal companies.

The SBOE’s discussions last week have reflected those trends, with board members voting against books that they said were written by companies with environmentally-friendly corporate policies or that went too far in teaching students how to advocate for climate solutions. Others wanted more emphasis on religion, or argued that scientific theories should not be taught as fact.

Evelyn Brooks, a Republican board member from Frisco who represents District 14, for example, last Tuesday questioned the scientific consensus on climate change and suggested that “creation” — a religious concept — should be taught alongside scientific theories of the origins of the universe. Brooks was first elected to the board in 2022 and said that she wanted to see more perspectives of people of faith included in the books.

“The origins of the universe is my issue — big bang, climate change — again, what evidence is being used to support the theories, and if this is a theory that is going to be taught as a fact, that’s my issue,” Brooks said while discussing one of the textbooks. “What about creation?”

Board Chair Keven Ellis, a Lufkin Republican with six years on the board, responded that he believed the board had previously pushed the textbook standards “as far as we can go on that” without the books being determined unconstitutional.

In another discussion on November 14, board member Julie Pickren, a Pearland Republican who has represented District 7 since January, complained that some of the textbooks presented a “theme” that humans are causing climate change.

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Human activity has likely caused around 100 percent of climate change since 1951, according to the Fourth National Climate Assessment, and the Global Change Research Program’s most recent report, published earlier this week, reiterated that finding.

“Human activities — primarily emissions of greenhouse gasses from fossil fuel use — have unequivocally caused the global warming observed over the industrial era,” the Fifth National Climate Assessment said.

Throughout the November 14 meeting, Pickren motioned to remove several textbooks from the SBOE’s list.

She successfully motioned to remove the textbooks created by Discovery Education last Tuesday, arguing that the company has an initiative that’s aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and that the initiative was a “theme replicated throughout the curriculum.” Pickren was concerned that the book might violate anti-ESG state laws.

The board also chose to remove a textbook created by publisher Green Ninja after Republican board member and secretary Patricia Hardy argued last Tuesday that it too explicitly took a position that students should warn their friends and family about extreme weather made worse by climate change.

“It’s taking a position that all of that is settled science, and that our extreme weather is caused by climate change,” said Hardy, a Fort Worth Republican who has served on the board since 2003.

Several types of extreme weather in Texas — including more intense heat, droughts and hurricanes — have been found by scientists, including the state climatologist, to be made worse by climate change.

A handful of Texans spoke to the board in favor of adopting the textbooks during the meeting this week, including one scientist.

“It’s high time that climate change was presented in a straightforward way in Texas science textbooks, beginning in the eighth grade,” Robert Baumgardner, a retired geologist who worked for the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas, told the board last Tuesday.

Others expressed dismay that elected officials were stuck in a conversation about whether climate change is caused by humans rather than preparing students to lead the energy transition.

“I can’t believe we’re having this discussion, that we need to keep climate change in the books, and keep the religious stuff out of the books,” said Ethan Michelle Ganz, a community organizer and pipefitter from Houston. “Climate change is happening right now. It’s not a future thing. … We need to be competitive in the world market.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Texas board rejects many science textbooks over climate change messaging on Nov 25, 2023.