Bloomberg Philanthropies Tracks “Petrochemical Incidents”: Beyond Petrochemicals

Bloomberg Philanthropies Tracks “Petrochemical Incidents” but Not Wind and Solar Accidents (full series)
Beyond Petrochemicals | Basic Physics
Accidents Jan.–June 2024 | Accidents July–Dec. 2024

Key Points

• Bloomberg Philanthropies is tracking oil and gas industry accidents and reported 132 incidents in 2024, also counting traffic accidents.
• In 2024, there were at least 43 instances of weather-dependent energy accidents in the United States, including solar panel fires, wind turbine fires, wind tower collapses, and blades detaching.
• The number of weather-dependent energy accidents is disproportionate, considering that wind and solar combined produced less than 3 percent of total American energy consumption in 2023.
• Wind and solar electricity generators need hundreds of times the land area to produce the same energy output as natural gas or carbon-free nuclear power plants.
• There is no official tracking effort for wind and solar energy accidents.

Wind and solar produce just a tiny (and unreliable) trickle of total American energy consumption, yet in 2024 there were at least 43 instances of tower collapses, solar panel fires, turbine fires, blades being thrown, and pollution from improper blade disposal.

Is that too much?

Beyond Petrochemicals

Bloomberg Philanthropies, the philanthropy funded by billionaire climate lefty Michael Bloomberg has begun tracking and is very concerned over a comparatively small number of oil and gas industry accidents. Earlier this year, the Bloomberg Philanthropies “Beyond Petrochemicals” campaign launched SpillTracker.org, a “database of fires, flares, spills, and other petrochemical incidents, which occur on average every four days.”

Launched in September 2022, Beyond Petrochemicals is an $85 million commitment to block development of more than 120 petrochemical projects in the United States. Some of the named allies (and presumably recipients of loot from Bloomberg) include Beyond Plastics, EarthJustice, Earthworks, the Hip Hop Caucus, and the Resources Legacy Fund. Each is an anti-energy activist nongovernmental organization, and at least three of them oppose even carbon-free, reliable nuclear power.

“In 2024 alone, there were 132 petrochemical-related incidents, up from 96 reported incidents in 2023,” claims SpillTracker.

Their accounting is fairly liberal. In one incident listed on SpillTracker, a chemical tanker truck was involved in a freeway accident in Pennsylvania, in which only the driver’s cab, but not the tanker full of petrochemicals, caught fire.

In the next installment, as a matter of basic physics, developing energy often means playing with fire—there are always tradeoffs.