EU10C. Stay Current—Our Energy Future

2024-11-30. Solar Harvest Coming to a Field Near You. By John Dietz, SuccessfulFarming. Excerpt: Agrivoltaics, a relatively new term, unites cropping practices and solar panels on the same fields. …Well-established programs exist throughout Europe, as well as in Japan and China. “Agrivoltaics has emerged as a formal pillar of the energy plan for countries with scarce farmland, including France, Germany, and Italy,” Winter explains. It’s catch-up time in North America. …[Joshua] Pearce calls agrivoltaics in North America “a slam dunk” opportunity. “A few percent of agricultural land in the U.S. could power the entire country,” he asserts. …In his latest research paper, Pearce posits that as little as 1% of Canadian farmland could provide a quarter to a third of Canada’s electrical energy needs. …“You can increase the yield for your crop if you do it right ,” he said in an interview. “You do get more food, and you get the added revenue of the solar. [That’s] why agrivoltaics is growing like crazy in the whole world.” …Annual academic agrivoltaics conferences have begun in the United States (agrivoltaics-conference.org) and Canada (agrivoltaicscanada.ca)…. Full article at https://www.agriculture.com/expansion-of-large-scale-solar-power-generation-on-farmland-is-underway-8746100.

2024-11-08. Trump’s election win tanked renewable energy stocks — and short-sellers cashed in. By Rocio Fabbro, Quartz. Excerpt: Renewable energy stocks plunged following Donald Trump’s election victory Tuesday, as the sector braces for the real possibility that the president-elect actually does “drill, baby, drill.” That resulted in a roughly $1.3 billion windfall for investors betting against the stocks, according to calculations by Bloomberg. Among the most shorted clean energy stocks are Plug Power (PLUG), SolarEdge Technologies (SEDG), Bloom Energy (BE), First Solar (FSLR), and Enphase Energy (ENPH)…. A second Trump presidency is expected to give other areas of the energy sector a major boost — especially oil. The Republican has promised to expand oil drilling on his first day in office, and to do away with clean energy policies…. Full article at https://qz.com/renewable-energy-stocks-short-sellers-donald-trump-oil-1851692959.

2024-10-23. Manufacturer finds innovative solution to solve major solar panel challenge: ‘It’s been a long time coming’. By Robert English, TCD—The Cool Down. Excerpt: Heliene, a solar panel manufacturer based in Ontario, is making big strides in the solar energy industry by using recycled solar panel materials in its new ones, according to Electrek. Partnering with solar panel recycling company Solarcycle, Heliene will use recycled solar glass in its solar panels manufactured in its two factories, in Ontario and Minnesota. Over the next four years, Solarcycle plans to deliver approximately 20 million square meters (about 215 million square feet) of recycled glass to Heliene for use in its products…. Full article at https://www.thecooldown.com/green-tech/recycled-solar-panel-materials-manufacturer-heliene/. See also Heliene will make solar panels using SOLARCYCLE’s recycled glass and it’s a big deal and New report finds one major energy source breaking records worldwide: ‘Growing faster than people expected’ For GSS Energy Use chapter 10.

2024-10-11. New Hampshire’s low-income community solar program is finally nearing the starting line. By Sarah Shemkus, Energy News Network. Excerpt: More than seven years after New Hampshire regulators first approved the idea of using community solar to create savings for low-income households, electric bill discounts are finally on the horizon for the first batch of participants. …Community solar is widely considered an important strategy for extending the benefits of renewable energy to people unable to take advantage of rooftop solar. Nationally, some two-thirds of households can’t install solar panels, generally because they don’t own their home, don’t have a suitable roof, or can’t afford the cost of the array, said Kate Daniel, Northeast regional director for the Coalition for Community Solar Access…. Full article at https://newhampshirebulletin.com/2024/10/11/new-hampshires-low-income-community-solar-program-is-finally-nearing-the-starting-line/.

2024-10-10. This may be one of Germany’s most sustainable cities. So what is Freiburg doing right? By Alisha McDarris, Adventure.com. Excerpt: …transforming Freiburg into the sustainable beacon it is—with its passive homes (homes designed to make the most of natural light and heat), solar plants, and emphasis on public transportation—has been very intentional…. it’s been a destination driven toward innovation, from championing renewable energies like solar and wind, to reducing vehicular traffic with functional public transit and encouraging cycling—Radstation near the central transit station houses hundreds of bikes in an automated storage center—all of which has earned it the nickname, ‘Green City’. …In Freiburg, the public transit system, consisting of trams and buses, is designed so that no residence is more than 400 meters from any public transport stop—it makes the car I drove into town feel utterly irrelevant. Indeed, I didn’t use it again until it was time to leave the city and return home. And that’s the point. …there are incentives which encourage citizens to make more sustainable choices, for example encouraging parents to use cloth diapers instead of disposables, and offering discounts for residents who compost their green waste—which is often sent to wood-fueled heat and power stations where it’s fermented and converted into electricity…. Full article at https://adventure.com/freiburg-germany-blueprint-sustainable-city/.

2024-10-09. The Ocean Has Massive Energy Reserves. Scientists Just Learned How to Take Advantage of Them. By Darren Orf, Popular Mechanics. Excerpt: …a new electrode produced by the U.S. company Equatic can safely extract oxygen and hydrogen from seawater while leaving the salt, which usually produces deadly chlorine gas. As a bonus, this method uses direct air capture to remove carbon from the atmosphere. And the anodes are recyclable—they only need a recoating of catalysts (made from abundant materials) every three years. …Producing hydrogen via seawater electrolysis has the nasty habit of also producing toxic chlorine gas, so current hydrogen production relies on pure water—a resource that’s becoming more and more precious as the world warms. Now, the carbon removal company Equatic—thanks to funding support from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E)—has successfully developed “oxygen-selective anodes” (OSAs) that will hopefully help scale up hydrogen production via seawater electrolysis. …The process does produce acidic and alkaline streams. According to New Scientist, Equatic raises the pH of the acidic stream by flowing the material over silica-rich rocks, and the alkaline stream simply reacts with carbon dioxide to form stable minerals. This is two-birds-one-stone innovation, as the process uses direct air capture technology to trap atmospheric CO₂ into solid minerals…. Full article at https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a62501592/seawater-electrode/.

2024-10-06. Cement Is a Big Polluter. A Plant in Norway Hopes to Clean It Up. By Stanley Reed, The New York Times. Excerpt: As Mr. Houg toured the site, workers were fine-tuning equipment that held chemicals designed to absorb vast quantities of the carbon dioxide emitted through cement production. More than half a ton of the gas arises from every ton of cement that a plant like this turns out. …Early next year, carbon dioxide from the facility will be chilled to a liquid, loaded onto ships and carried to a terminal near the city of Bergen, farther up the Norwegian coast. From there, it will be pumped about 70 miles offshore into rocks a mile and a half below the bottom of the North Sea. …It helps that the Norwegian government is underwriting 85 percent of the up to 400-million-euro cost of what will be the first large, commercial-scale effort to strip carbon dioxide from cement and bury it. …Cement production, which accounts for nearly 7 percent of energy-related emissions, presents one of the knottiest problems for emissions reduction…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/06/business/cement-pollution-carbon-capture-norway.html.

2024-10-03. U.S. clean energy careers are booming—but you wouldn’t know it if you look at the monthly jobs report. By George Sakellaris, Fortune. Excerpt: Clean energy currently employs 3.3 million Americans, or one in 50 workers nationwide, according to a report from E2. That’s more than the total number of nurses, cashiers, elementary and middle school teachers, and waiters or waitresses. Jobs in the renewable energy industry also grew by 10% from 2021 to 2023, faster than the growth rate for overall U.S. employment. However, if you’ve taken a look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) latest jobs report, you would be excused for not knowing about the massive opportunity and growth the clean energy sector represents. While we’ve seen a host of renewable energy and climate-friendly legislation come out of Washington over the last two years, including the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), which have been widely and rightfully applauded, the monthly jobs report is one area of the federal government’s output that seems to be lagging. Although monthly jobs reports include some tangentially related industries, such as mining and logging, construction, and utilities, failing to highlight renewable energy as a standalone category is a missed opportunity, due to the outsized impact the field is having on our economy, as well as on the present and future of our everyday lives…. Full article at https://finance.yahoo.com/news/u-clean-energy-careers-booming-152850334.html.

2024-10-03. Adani Group to supply clean energy for Google’s India cloud operations. By Reuters. Excerpt: India’s Adani Group will supply clean energy to power Google’s  cloud services and operations in India, the ports-to- power conglomerate said on Thursday. The group, owned by billionaire Gautam Adani, will supply energy from a new solar-wind hybrid project located at its 30 gigawatt (GW) Khavda renewable energy park in the western state of Gujarat…. The solar-wind hybrid project will start commercial operations in the third quarter of 2025. Google powers most of its cloud operations and services with electricity from the grid and plans to run them entirely through clean energy by 2030…. Full article at https://www.reuters.com/world/india/adani-group-supply-clean-energy-googles-india-cloud-operations-2024-10-03/.

2024-10-02. Georgia program gets $156M from feds to increase access to solar power. By Riley Bunch, The Atlantic Journal-Constitution. Excerpt: Tens of thousands of Atlantans lost power last week when Hurricane Helene swept through the south, causing heavy flooding in parts of the city and devastation throughout other areas of the state. …Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens…announced a massive chunk of federal money, $156 million, coming to Georgia to help increase access to solar power for Atlanta’s low-income residents. Atlanta is one of three cities in the state that will benefit from the funds doled out through a renewable energy initiative tucked within the Inflation Reduction Act passed by Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2022. In total, the Environmental Protection Division announced $7 billion in “Solar for All” grants to 60 applications across the country, as part of a $27 billion pot aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions…. Full article at https://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta-news/georgia-program-gets-156m-from-feds-to-increase-access-to-solar-power/YDACUOHYSRBGXNXBFBO73MRY2I/.

2024-09-25. New solar cells break efficiency record – they could eventually supercharge how we get energy from the Sun. By Sebastian Bonilla, Associate Professor of Materials, University of Oxford. Excerpt: …surge in solar is fuelled by two key developments. First, scientists, engineers and those in industry are learning how to make solar panels by the billions. Every fabrication step is meticulously optimised to produce them very cheaply. The second and most significant is the relentless increase in the panels’ power conversion efficiency – a measure of how much sunlight can be transformed into electricity. The higher the efficiency of solar panels, the cheaper the electricity. This might make you wonder: just how efficient can we expect solar energy to become? And will it make a dent in our energy bills? Current commercially available solar panels convert about 20-22% of sunlight into electrical power. However, new research published in Nature has shown that future solar panels could reach efficiencies as high as 34% by exploiting a new technology called tandem solar cells. The research demonstrates a record power conversion efficiency for tandem solar cells…. Full article at https://theconversation.com/new-solar-cells-break-efficiency-record-they-could-eventually-supercharge-how-we-get-energy-from-the-sun-239417.

2024-09-13. This Type of Home Generator Is Gaining Popularity. By Sandi Schwartz, bob villa. Excerpt: As more people experience extreme weather events that knock out power, the demand for home backup generators is booming. Homeowners experienced 16 percent more power disruptions in 2022 than in 2013, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. And those power outages can last more than a day at a time, putting a strain on daily living. While backup generators provide convenience and peace of mind, the problem with more generators running, especially during periods of record heat and lengthy power outages, is the pollution they create. Various factors are driving the increase in demand for more sustainable options to muscle through a power outage, particularly solar backup generators. …Although buying a solar backup generator might require more up-front investment than a traditional generator costs, over time you are likely to save money compared to using other types of generators. As for other advantages, solar backup generators are quieter, safer, and odorless; require minimal maintenance; and increase energy independence from fossil fuels. …From dealing with hurricanes to ice storms, more people are looking for ways to keep the lights on during a blackout that are both sustainable and reliable. The global solar generator market size was valued at about $551 million in 2023 and is projected to grow to more than $1 billion by 2032, according to Fortune Business Insights…. Full article at https://www.bobvila.com/exterior/solar-home-generator-demand/.

2024-09-12. Wind and solar have risen to ‘new highs’ in the EU overtaking fossil fuels for the first time ever. By Rosie Frost, EuroNews. Excerpt: Renewables have broken electricity-generating records in the EU this year, according to the European Commission. Newly published data has revealed that in the first six months of 2024, half of the bloc’s electricity came from renewable sources, outperforming fossil fuels. …It says that wind power has now overtaken gas as the EU’s second-largest source of electricity behind nuclear power for the first time. The EU also set another record with 56 GW of new solar energy installed in 2023, beating the previous record of 40 GW from 2022…. Full article at https://www.euronews.com/green/2024/09/12/wind-and-solar-have-risen-to-new-highs-in-the-eu-overtaking-fossil-fuels-for-the-first-tim.

2024-09-06. President’s announcement Thursday is just one piece of a big clean energy picture. By Erik Gunn, Wisconsin Examiner. Excerpt: On Thursday afternoon, President Joe Biden stood in front of a solar panel array on the grounds of Vernon Electric Cooperative in Vernon County to announce $7.3 billion that will go to expand clean power sources for rural electric co-ops across the country. It was …just a slice of what has been a major economic priority for Biden since he took office in January 2021: pushing the U.S. toward more clean and renewable sources of energy. Provisions in two of the Biden administration’s signature pieces of legislation have sought to address climate change on several fronts, but with an emphasis on hastening the country’s conversion to solar, wind and other forms of power that advocates hope can supplant the fossil fuels blamed for accelerating climate change. …Biden’s announcement Thursday focused on just one clean energy avenue — power generation in rural America. Wisconsin-based Dairyland Power Cooperative will receive $573 million, a grant combined with a loan, to increase its supply of solar and wind power. The co-op will combine those funds with private investment for the $2.1 billion project. Dairyland is one of 16 rural energy co-ops serving 23 states that will participate in the $7.3 billion Empowering Rural America (New ERA) program operated through the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The White House has compared the effort to bring renewable power to places like western Wisconsin to the federal rural electrification program that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt instituted in the 1930s…. Full article at https://wisconsinexaminer.com/2024/09/06/presidents-announcement-thursday-is-just-one-piece-of-a-big-clean-energy-picture/.

2024-09-05. University funding from fossil fuels slowing switch to green energy – report. By Dharna Noor, The Guardian. Excerpt: Fossil fuel companies’ funding of universities’ climate-focused efforts is delaying the green transition, according to the most extensive peer-reviewed study to date of the industry’s influence on academia. For the study, published in the journal WIREs Climate Change on Thursday, six researchers pored over thousands of academic articles on industries’ funding of research from the past two decades. …During the past two decades, non-profits, campus organizers and a small group of scholars have sounded the alarm about oil companies’ influence in academia, drawing parallels to tobacco, pharmaceuticals and food producers who have also funded scholarship. In the new study, researchers found that out of roughly 14,000 peer-reviewed articles about conflicts of interest, bias and research funding across all industries from 2003 to 2023, only seven mentioned fossil fuels. …“We find that universities are an established yet under-researched vehicle of climate obstruction by the fossil fuel industry,” the authors write. The analysis found that oil companies have long influenced universities to focus on climate efforts that would enshrine a future for fossil fuels, despite experts’ repeated warnings that the world must stop burning coal, oil and gas to avert the worst climate impacts…. Full article at https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/sep/05/universities-fossil-fuel-funding-green-energy.

2024-09-05. Fire Panic: Blazes May Lead to Bans on Batteries Key to Renewable Energy Commitments. By MacKenzie Elmer, Voice of San Diego. Excerpt: After a couple of fires at renewable energy battery storage sites in San Diego, a growing number of leaders in the county want to suspend the building of new ones.  But that would undermine the county’s soon-to-be and legally binding commitment to run on 100 percent renewable energy by 2045 via a new Climate Action Plan. …batteries are key to keeping the lights and A/C on when the sun goes down. The County Board of Supervisors will decide on Sept. 11 whether to ban building battery storage until stricter fire safety restrictions are in place. Such a moratorium …makes it harder for the county to transition away from fossil fuels because batteries store the sun and wind’s energy at night when it’s in high demand. …Two large battery projects caught fire recently elsewhere in the region: One at Gateway Energy Storage in Otay Mesa earlier this year, and another in September of 2023 at the Valley Center Energy Storage Facility operated by Terra-Gen. These …are notoriously difficult to put out and typically can’t be doused by conventional firefighting methods. …Joe Rowley, a former Sempra executive who built gas-fired and renewable projects across North America, says he’s against the Seguro project because it’s too close to homes and says large battery projects like Seguro should be placed 1,000 feet away from existing residences.  “Batteries are not going away. …But what’s missing here is any kind of recognition in zoning regulations that these are a whole different animal and need to be addressed specifically,” Rowley said…. Full article at https://voiceofsandiego.org/2024/09/05/fire-panic-blazes-may-lead-to-bans-on-batteries-key-to-renewable-energy-commitments/.

2024-08-22. Manufacture and testing of biomass-derivable thermosets for wind blade recycling. By Ryan W. Clarke et al, Science. Abstract: Wind energy is helping to decarbonize the electrical grid, but wind blades are not recyclable, and current end-of-life management strategies are not sustainable. To address the material recyclability challenges in sustainable energy infrastructure, we introduce scalable biomass-derivable polyester covalent adaptable networks and corresponding fiber-reinforced composites for recyclable wind blade fabrication. …Overall, this report details the many facets of wind blade manufacture, encompassing chemistry, engineering, safety, mechanical analyses, weathering, and chemical recyclability, enabling a realistic path toward biomass-derivable, recyclable wind blades…. Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adp5395.

2024-08-19. Coal Power Defined This Minnesota Town. Can Solar Win It Over? By Ivan Penn, The New York Times. Excerpt: The past and the future of electricity in America are perhaps most visible in a Minnesota town surrounded by potato farms and cornfields. Towering over Becker, a community of a little more than 5,000 people northwest of Minneapolis, is one of the nation’s largest coal power plants. It is being replaced — to the dismay of some residents — with thousands of acres of solar panels and a test of long-duration batteries. Becker is one of the first of a group of seven Minnesota municipal areas, called the Coalition of Utility Cities, making the change from a fossil-fuel-based economy to clean energy. …When the Sherburne County Generating Station, known as Sherco, completes its renewable project on adjacent land, it will stand as the largest solar farm in the Upper Midwest — replacing three coal units in Becker with three solar sites on the town’s outskirts along the Mississippi River. …Becker crystallizes part of the legacy of the administration of Gov. Tim Walz, Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate, and his commitment to Minnesota’s goal of 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2040. And it tests how the energy transition could unfold on a nationwide scale for jobs at decades-old fossil fuel facilities, local tax revenues and agricultural businesses. President Biden’s climate bill, the Inflation Reduction Act, aims to cut U.S. emissions at least 52 percent below 2005 levels by the end of this decade, and his administration is counting on solar power to play a significant role in decarbonizing electricity production…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/19/business/energy-environment/coal-solar-power-minnesota.html.

2024-08-15. Wind Beat Coal Two Months in a Row for U.S. Electricity Generation. By Minho Kim, The New York Times. Excerpt: Wind turbines generated more electricity than coal-burning power plants across the United States in March and April, outstripping the dirtiest fuel for two consecutive months for the first time, according to the Energy Information Administration. The crossover in wind and coal generation is the latest milestone in the country’s energy transition as renewables rise and coal declines. In recent years, breakthroughs in technology have lowered the cost of building new wind turbines, solar panels and battery storage, helping renewable energy replace coal as the cheapest power source in many places. Renewable energy has also gotten a boost from tax credits awarded under the Inflation Reduction Act, the climate law Congress passed in 2022. And states have passed regulations mandating that utilities transition away from fossil fuels, particularly coal. More than 20 states — including Minnesota, North Carolina and Nebraska — have enacted legislation that requires utilities to get all their electricity from clean, carbon-free sources by 2050 or before…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/15/climate/wind-power-coal.html.

2024-08-12. Spain Is Thirsty. Here’s How It Gets Water. By Stanley Reed and Rachel Chaundler, The New York Times. Excerpt: …tourists filled the cafes and hotel rooms along Spain’s Mediterranean coast, including in Torrevieja, a small city of tightly stacked apartment blocks running along a curved beach. …low-slung structures house a vast network of pipes, pumps and tanks in a plant that performs a kind of alchemy crucial to the economy of this part of Spain: drawing huge volumes of water from the sea, removing the salt and creating more than 60 million gallons of fresh water a day. Acciona, a Spanish company that built the plant, says the facility can supply water for 1.6 million people through the process known as desalination. For much of the year, though, the output is largely used to nurture oranges, lemons and other crops for consumers in Northern Europe. The Torrevieja plant is the largest of its kind in Europe, and similar plants dot the Spanish coastline. …With nearly 100 big plants, Spain is the largest user of desalination in Europe and one of the world’s largest. In many other countries, including Australia, China and Israel, reliance on desalination for drinking water and other needs is increasing. …the costs of operating the energy-intensive desalination technology — called reverse osmosis, which is standard at large plants including the one at Torrevieja — are being brought down by pairing water purification with cheap solar energy, encouraging the building of new plants…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/12/business/spain-water-desalination.html.

2024-08-08. Solar Panel Arrays May Affect Soil Carbon Levels. By Emily Dieckman, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: On a recent spring afternoon, I joined a group of people to tour Jack’s Solar Garden, an agrivoltaics farm in Longmont, Colorado. Agrivoltaics describes the colocation of solar panels and agricultural land. The solar panels can provide shade to crops, the crops’ transpiration can help keep the solar panels cool, and the idea is for it to be a win-win situation. Allison Jackson, the education and policy manager at the Colorado Agrivoltaic Learning Center …touched on something called ecovoltaics. Ecovoltaics is less focused on agriculture and more concerned with coprioritizing energy production and ecosystem services. This could be providing shady space for animals to graze, offering habitats for pollinators, or—according to some research—even increasing the amount of carbon stored in soil. …Jackson spoke about an experiment at the garden that was focused on how simply growing perennial grasses under solar panel arrays can affect carbon soil levels…. Full article at https://eos.org/articles/solar-panel-arrays-may-affect-soil-carbon-levels.

2024-08-07. Energy Vault to deploy gravity battery inside 1640-feet-deep mine shafts in Italy. By Abhishek Bhardwaj, Interesting Engineering. Excerpt: Two firms, Energy Vault, and Carbosulcis, have announced a collaboration to build a 100-megawatt hybrid gravity energy storage project to accelerate the carbon-free technology hub at Italy’s largest former coal mining site in Sardinia. …The collaboration is to develop a 100MW Hybrid Gravity Energy Storage System, a solution designed by Energy Vault for underground mines, pairing their modular gravity storage and batteries. According to a press release by Energy Vault, the energy storage solution will be deployed 1640 feet (500 meters) deep mine shafts. …According to the press release by Energy Vault, the project is essential for the Sardinia government’s targeted conversion of the coal mine to a carbon free technology hub. …The solution’s design will be optimized to fully benefit from the mine shaft’s area and location, especially the 1640 feet depth at which it is planned to be constructed…. Full article at https://interestingengineering.com/energy/energy-vault-gravity-battery-storage.

2024-08-06. The next world’s tallest building could be a 3,000-feet-high battery. By Amy Gunia, CNN. Excerpt: One of the biggest hurdles to a power grid dominated by clean energy is the intermittency of some renewable sources. Sometimes clouds roll in when solar energy is needed, or the wind stops blowing, and turbines can’t generate power. Other times, the sun and wind produce more electricity than is required. …Enter battery skyscrapers. At the end of May, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), the architecture and engineering firm behind some of the world’s tallest buildings, announced a partnership with the energy storage company Energy Vault to develop new gravity energy storage solutions. That includes a design for a skyscraper that would use a motor powered by electricity from the grid to elevate giant blocks when energy demand is low. These blocks would store the electricity as “potential” energy. When there is demand, the blocks would be lowered, releasing the energy, which would be converted into electricity. …SOM and Energy Vault’s superstructure tower, which could range from 300 to 1,000 meters (985 to 3,300 feet) in height, would have hollowed out structures resembling elevator shafts for moving the blocks, leaving room for residential and commercial tenants. (The firms are also looking at integrating pumped storage hydropower into skyscrapers, using water instead of blocks)…. Full article at https://www.cnn.com/style/skyscraper-batteries-som-energy-vault-spc/index.html.

2024-08-06. 4 lessons from Melbourne on how cities can build neighborhood batteries that people love. By Michael Shank, Fast Company. Excerpt: Fossil fuel enthusiasts, when defending their carbon emitting industry, love saying that the wind doesn’t always blow, and the sun doesn’t always shine. …They frame it as an obstacle to the green transition and a reason to not fully rely on renewable energy.  Anyone working in the transition, however, knows full well that we can store that wind and solar power for later use. …Now, cities around the world are getting into the storage game, rolling out batteries across neighborhoods and communities. Batteries that charge during the day, when renewable energy is shining and blowing, and then release that stored energy when and where it’s needed most. Melbourne, Australia, is approaching this process collaboratively with the community, as both a teaching tool and a way to ensure that any battery designs, locations, and uses have neighborhood buy-in. It’s all part of a campaign called Power Melbourne that’s helping to aid in the city’s transition to 100% renewable energy by 2030. And while the council’s operations are already powered by 100% renewable energy, the city facilitates energy power purchase agreements for businesses to also tap into abundant local renewable energy, like wind power. …communities aren’t just supportive of neighborhood batteries but have some great ideas for how to design, locate, and make multiple uses out of them. …Support for these batteries is overwhelming. In early surveying of residents and businesses, 89% agreed that community batteries are an important part of the solution in transitioning to more renewable energy. Another 77% of respondents were supportive of a community battery in their local area…. Full article at https://www.fastcompany.com/91167911/4-lessons-from-melbourne-on-cities-can-build-neighborhood-batteries-that-people-love.

2024-08-02. Why Africa is on the brink of solar power revolution. By Verity Bowman, The Telegraph. Excerpt: The continent’s tremendous potential could soon be unlocked by a widespread shift to renewable energy. …Making perishable harvests last is the key to surviving periods of hardship, but without access to electricity it can be extremely difficult. An unassuming white shipping container adorned with solar panels may be the solution. These solar-powered mobile cold-stores are popping up across Africa, from Kenya to Ghana and Nigeria, allowing farmers to protect their harvests from the elements and stave off hunger. …With access to electricity soaring and the cost of solar panels falling rapidly, experts say the continent is on the brink of an energy revolution similar to the one that transformed the Gulf States in the 1970s. …Last year, a record number of solar panels were installed in Africa, and in April the World Bank and African Development Bank launched an initiative to expand electricity access to 300 million more people by 2030. It’s part of a global shift towards solar power. …Over the past four decades, the price of solar panels has plummeted by a staggering 99 per cent, a development heralded as a triumph for renewable energy…. Full article at https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/climate-and-people/why-africa-is-on-the-brink-of-solar-power-revolution/.

2024-07-30. Robots Are Coming, and They’re on a Mission: Install Solar Panels. By Brad Plumer, The New York Times. Excerpt: The companies racing to build large solar farms across the United States are facing a growing problem: Not enough workers. Now, they’re turning to robots for help. On Tuesday, AES Corporation, one of the country’s biggest renewable energy companies, introduced a first-of-its-kind robot that can lug around and install the thousands of heavy panels that typically make up a large solar array. AES said its robot, nicknamed Maximo, would ultimately be able to install solar panels twice as fast as humans can and at half the cost. …After months of testing, AES will put Maximo to work in the California desert later this year to help install panels at the largest solar-plus-battery project under construction, meant to help power Amazon data centers. If all goes well, the company aims to build hundreds of similar A.I.-powered robots…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/30/climate/solar-panels-robots-maximo-construction.html.

2024-07-29. Germans Combat Climate Change From Their Balconies. By Melissa Eddy, The New York Times. Excerpt: At a Berlin trade fair for sustainability, a new gadget caught Waltraud Berg’s eye — a solar panel small enough to be easily installed on the side of a balcony and then plugged into a wall socket to feed energy produced by the sun directly into her home. “I was absolutely thrilled to learn that such a thing even existed, that you can generate your own power and be more independent,” said Ms. Berg, a retiree who installed several panels on the south-facing balcony of her Berlin apartment by herself. …in homes across Germany, they are powering a quiet transformation, bringing the green revolution into the hands of people without requiring them to make a large investment, find an electrician or use heavy tools. “You don’t need to drill or hammer anything,” Ms. Berg said. “You just hang them from the balcony like wet laundry in Italy.” More than 500,000 of the systems have already been set up across Germany, and new laws that relaxed rules around solar panel installation have contributed to a boom in use. In the first six months of the year, the country added nine gigawatts of photovoltaic capacity, …. As part of its push to move away from dependence on Russian natural gas, the European Union is looking to quadruple the amount of power generated through photovoltaic sources by 2030, to 600 gigawatts. Germany aims to reach a third of that amount by the same year…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/29/business/germany-solar-panels-climate-change.html.

2024-07-26. Green economy could generate 3.3m jobs across Africa by 2030 – report. By Caroline Kimeu, The Guardian. Excerpt: A greener economy could bring millions of jobs to some of the largest countries in Africa, according to a new report. Research by the development agency FSD Africa and the impact advisory firm Shortlist predicts that 3.3 million jobs could be generated across the continent by 2030. Forecasting Green Jobs in Africa predicts that 60% of the roles, mainly in the renewable energy sector, will be skilled or white collar positions that can “spur the growth of the middle class in countries with high-growth sectors” such as renewable energy, e-mobility, construction and manufacturing. The report was based on forecasts from five countries – the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa – that the study says will see more than a fifth of the jobs expected from the green transition over the next six years…. Full article at https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/article/2024/jul/26/green-economy-could-generate-33m-jobs-across-africa-by-2030-report.

2024-07-26. Pioneering project to cover canals with solar panels nears finish: ‘Allows for greater power production per land size’. By Leslie Sattler, Yahoo! TCD. Excerpt: America is about to get its very first solar-covered canal — a huge win for clean energy innovation. This groundbreaking project, nearing completion on tribal lands in Arizona, will generate solar power while also helping preserve precious water resources, according to Canary Media. The Casa Blanca Canal project aims to tackle two urgent issues at once: the need for more renewable energy and the importance of water conservation, especially in hot, arid regions. By covering a portion of the extensive canal network with solar panels, the installation will produce clean electricity for local communities while reducing water evaporation. This concept has been deployed successfully in India, inspiring U.S. engineers to design a solution tailored for American infrastructure. …The 1.3-megawatt pilot project was funded by the Inflation Reduction Act and has also received support from the Department of Energy and California Energy Commission…. Full article at https://www.yahoo.com/tech/pioneering-project-cover-canals-solar-040000444.html.

2024-07-16. California’s grid passed the reliability test this heat wave. It’s all about giant batteries. By ARI PLACHTA, Sacramento Bee. Excerpt: California’s power grid emerged from a nearly three weeklong record-setting heat wave relatively unscathed, and officials are crediting years of investment in renewable energy — particularly giant batteries that store solar power for use when the sun stops shining…. Full article at https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article290009339.html.

2024-07-16. How incredibly simple tech can supercharge the race to net zero. By Roger Harrabin, New Scientist. Excerpt: Some 450 kilometres north of Helsinki, Finland, lies a decommissioned mine. Despite its remote location, it is being keenly watched because it looks set to play a role in revolutionising our energy systems – though not for the reasons you might suspect. The Pyhäsalmi mine used to yield wealth from zinc and copper, but it is about to monetise the power of gravity. As the deepest metal ore mine in Europe, it is an ideal spot for what’s known as a gravity vault. UK-based company Gravitricity plans to dangle a heavy weight down a mine shaft and connect the mechanism to a generator. It will store power as potential energy by pulling up the weight, then generate it again by letting it plummet. If that sounds surprisingly simple, that is exactly the point. Governments are wrestling with the epic challenge of the intermittency of renewable power: how to keep the lights on when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. So far, they have largely focused on expensive technologies like hydrogen, nuclear power and lithium-ion batteries. But what if we could solve the problem of intermittency – and cut bills and emissions too – with far more rudimentary methods? …. Full article at https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg26335002-500-how-incredibly-simple-tech-can-supercharge-the-race-to-net-zero/.

2024-07-16. A Giant Offshore Wind Turbine Blade Breaks, Prompting Beach Closures. By Brad Plumer, The New York Times. Excerpt: Debris from a damaged wind turbine blade has been washing up on the shores of Nantucket, Mass., prompting the closure of several beaches to swimmers and spurring an investigation into what caused the mishap. The damage to the blade occurred on Saturday evening at Vineyard Wind, the country’s second large-scale offshore wind farm, which is 14 miles off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, Mass. It’s still under construction but the first turbines began generating electricity in February. The companies behind the project…plan to install a total of 62 turbines by the end of the year that could, at full strength, produce 800 megawatts of electricity, or enough to power more than 400,000 homes. The turbines being installed at Vineyard Wind are enormous, featuring 351-foot-long blades that can reach heights taller than the Eiffel Tower. …the developers of Vineyard Wind said that while the fiberglass debris was not hazardous to people, they recommended that beachgoers not try to pick up pieces on their own. …The incident comes at a turbulent time for the nascent offshore wind industry. Several proposed wind farms off the coasts of Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York have been canceled or postponed over the past few years as inflation and rising interest rates have upended the economics of the projects. While many Northeastern states are still trying to build offshore wind farms, seeing the technology as their best option for generating emissions-free power, the projects have sometimes faced intense opposition from fishing groups and local homeowners…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/16/climate/wind-turbine-breaks-nantucket.html.

2024-06-04. As Solar Power Surges, U.S. Wind Is in Trouble. By Brad Plumer and Nadja Popovich, The New York Times. Excerpt: Solar panel installations are indeed soaring to record highs in the United States, as are batteries that can store energy for later. But wind power has struggled, both on land and in the ocean. …Some factors behind the wind industry’s recent slowdown may be temporary, such as snarled supply chains. But wind power is also more vulnerable than solar power to many of the biggest logistical hurdles that hinder energy projects today: a lack of transmission lines, a lengthy permitting process and a growing backlash against new projects in many communities. …wind power is much more sensitive to location. Wind turbines in a gusty area can generate eight times as much electricity as turbines in an area with just half the breeze. For solar power, the difference between sunny spots and less sunny spots is considerably smaller. That means developers can’t just build wind farms anywhere. …wind turbines provide very cheap electricity, and they often ramp up at night, when solar power is unavailable…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/06/04/climate/us-wind-energy-solar-power.html.

2024-05-24. Virginia Has the Biggest Data Center Market in the World. Can It Also Decarbonize Its Grid? By Sarah Vogelsong. Inside Climate News. Excerpt: This March, Loudoun County, a suburb of Washington, D.C. in Northern Virginia that is home to the greatest concentration of data centers in the world, made an unexpected move: It rejected a proposal to let a company build a bigger data center than existing zoning automatically allowed.  “At some point we have to say stop,” said Loudoun Supervisor Michael Turner during the meeting, as reported by news site LoudounNow. “We do not have enough power to power the data centers we have.” County supervisors would later reverse the decision, approving a smaller version of the project. But the initial denial sent ripples throughout Virginia, where concern over the rapid growth of data centers and what that means for the state’s ambitious decarbonization goals is growing. …said Tim Cywinski, a spokesperson for the Virginia chapter of the Sierra Club, …“The data center industry is about 2 percent of global carbon emissions….” …Dominion Energy, Virginia’s largest electric utility, has …pledged it will decarbonize its Virginia grid by 2045, in line with the Virginia Clean Economy Act passed by the state legislature in 2020, …. “We are 100 percent committed to achieving the goals of the VCEA. We are not taking our foot off the accelerator with renewables,” said Aaron Ruby, a spokesperson for Dominion. But, he added, “…The inescapable reality is we are experiencing unprecedented growth in electric demand.” …Companies have also set their own goals: Google aims to operate its data centers on carbon-free energy by 2030, while Amazon is pushing for net-zero carbon emissions by 2040…. Full article at https://insideclimatenews.org/news/24052024/virginia-data-center-market-electricity-demand/.

2024-05-15. Sunlight-trapping device can generate temperatures over 1000°C. By Chen Ly, NewScientist. Excerpt: Engineers have developed a device that can generate temperatures of over 1000°C (1832°F) by efficiently capturing energy from the sun. It could one day be used as a green alternative to burning fossil fuels in the production of materials such as steel, glass and cement. …“About half of the energy we use is not actually turned into electricity,” says Emiliano Casati at ETH Zurich in Switzerland. “It’s used to produce many of the materials that we need in our daily lives and our industries.”…. Full article at https://www.newscientist.com/article/2431224-sunlight-trapping-device-can-generate-temperatures-over-1000c/. See also original article Solar thermal trapping at 1,000°C and above.

2024-05-10. First New U.S. Aluminum Smelter in 45 Years Could Cut Production Emissions by 75%. By Maddie Stone, Grist. Excerpt: Aluminum is a crucial raw ingredient in the fight against climate change. But to ensure the transition off fossil fuels is a clean one, the industry needs a serious makeover. A new federally funded “green smelter” could help make that happen. …aluminum manufacturers are responsible for about 1.1 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year. …In March, the agency announced $6 billion in funding for “industrial demonstration” projects that showcase promising strategies for reducing the climate impact of heavy industry. …The beneficiaries of the government’s cleanup effort include Century Aluminum Company, which could receive up to half a billion dollars to build the nation’s first new aluminum smelter in 45 years. The facility, dubbed the Green Aluminum Smelter, could double the amount of virgin, or primary, aluminum the country produces while emitting 75 percent less CO2 than older smelters, thanks to increased efficiency and the use of renewable electricity…. Full article at https://gizmodo.com/first-new-u-s-aluminum-smelter-in-45-years-could-cut-p-1851469454.

2024-05-10. Renewables are meeting 95% of Portugal’s electricity needs. How did it become a European leader? By Euronews Green. Excerpt: Portugal has made huge progress in renewable power, up from 27 per cent in 2005 and 54 per cent in 2017. Portugal generated an ‘historic’ 95 per cent of its electricity from renewables in April, according to the network operator REN. …Solar might not have been the star of the show in REN’s new stock take. A third of the way through the year, the renewable made up 7 per cent of Portugal’s electricity mix, behind wind at 30 per cent and hydroelectric plants at 48 per cent. However, “the solar component continues to grow substantially,” REN says. April saw the “highest monthly significance ever recorded” for solar – when it covered 10.5 per cent of the country’s electricity consumption. …Portugal had the third highest share of wind energy in its electricity mix last year at 29 per cent, behind Ireland (36 per cent) and Denmark (58 per cent)…. Full article at https://www.euronews.com/green/2024/05/10/renewables-are-meeting-95-of-portugals-electricity-needs-how-did-it-become-a-european-lead.

2024-05-02. Cheap catalyst could help turn carbon dioxide into fuels. By ROBERT F. SERVICE, Science. Excerpt: Molybdenum compound offers an efficient way to make carbon monoxide—a building block of chemicals and fuels. Imagine if carbon dioxide (CO₂)—the primary cause of global warming—could be collected from smokestacks and turned back into fuel. Now, chemists report the discovery of a potentially cheap and stable catalyst that can efficiently split CO₂ into carbon monoxide (CO), a molecular starting point for plastics, diesel, and jet fuels. Because renewable electricity can power these reactions, the catalyst could help make commodity chemicals without burning fossil fuels. It could also help create a market for the vast amounts of CO₂ that companies are planning on capturing not just from smokestacks, but from the ocean and air…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/cheap-catalyst-could-help-turn-carbon-dioxide-fuels.

2024-04-22. Three Places Changing Quickly to Fight Climate Change. By Delger Erdenesanaa, The New York Times. Excerpt: To mark Earth Day (and to try to reach young, environmentally-minded voters) President Biden is promoting a new national program to train and employ people in climate-related jobs, and reminding voters of the clean-energy investments underway following the Inflation Reduction Act. …Uruguay, a nation of 3.4 million people wedged between Argentina and Brazil, generates nearly all its electricity from renewable sources. In 2008, the government set a goal of transforming the electric grid, which had come to depend on imported oil. …Between 2013 and 2018, wind generation grew sharply from almost nothing to about a quarter of Uruguay’s electricity mix. By the end of 2022, the most recent year data is available, Uruguay generated more than 90 percent of its power from renewables, with wind and solar growing even as hydropower declined. …Transportation is the second biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions. Electric car sales have grown exponentially over the past decade, and China is by far the largest market for these vehicles. About 7.3 million battery electric vehicles were sold around the world in 2022, according to the International Energy Agency. More than half of these cars, about 4.4 million, were sold in China. …The most popular electric car in China is currently the Hongguang Mini, a tiny two-door model that costs about $5,000. …In 2021, officials in Paris announced a plan to make their city “100 percent cycle-friendly” in the next five years. …Between 2001 and 2018, the number of car trips taken in Paris fell by 60 percent. Over that same period, public transit trips increased by 40 percent and bicycle trips by 20 percent…. See article at https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/22/climate/earth-day-climate-change.html.

2024-04-08. Can Green Hydrogen Production Help Bring Oceanic Dead Zones Back to Life? [https://hakaimagazine.com/news/can-green-hydrogen-production-help-bring-oceanic-dead-zones-back-to-life/] By Brian Owens, Hakai Magazine. Excerpt: Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau had met with Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, in nearby Stephenville, Newfoundland…in August 2022, the two leaders locked in Canada’s commitment to supply Germany with hydrogen gas. …Stephenville…is the site of the proposed World Energy GH2 project, a facility that will use wind power to produce hydrogen gas …reducing Germany’s reliance on Russian oil. …[Douglas] Wallace, an oceanographer at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, was tracking how dissolved oxygen moves from the Atlantic Ocean through the gulf into the St. Lawrence River, and how the dearth of oxygen in some places can lead to the development of low-oxygen dead zones. …So when he heard that Canada was set to ramp up hydrogen production—achieved by electrically splitting water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen—he wondered: could all of that spare oxygen help bring the dead zone back to life? …As the world warms, the oceans are losing their oxygen. Since the 1950s, they’ve already lost about two percent—a figure that could hit four percent by the end of this century. …Too little oxygen in the water can reduce the diversity of marine life as animals either leave the area or die. In the Gulf of St. Lawrence—where the size of the dead zone has grown nearly sevenfold since 2003 to encompass roughly 9,000 square kilometers—dropping oxygen levels are already affecting many commercially important and at-risk species, such as cod, halibut, and northern shrimp, Wallace says. …Maybe, thought Wallace, he could take the oxygen created during hydrogen production and somehow pump it into the gulf. His calculations suggest that it could work….

2024-03-28. AI in Africa: Basics Over Buzz. [https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ado8276] By ROSE M. MUTISO, Science. Excerpt: When Buti Manamela visited Lengau, one of Africa’s fastest supercomputers, he had more prosaic technology in mind: electricity. South Africa’s Deputy Minister of Higher Education, Science and Technology was at the Center for High Performance Computing in Cape Town for what should have been a showcase tour of a facility providing the country with the computing power needed to run and analyze the kinds of complex models and huge datasets that underpin artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). But Manamela was there to better understand the impact of South Africa’s rolling power blackouts on the center’s operations. Lengau, which means “cheetah” in Setswana, is one of the most important outposts in Africa’s AI infrastructure landscape; yet, it is struggling to operate at full capacity because of unreliable power. …I’ve written before on the following connection: no power, no internet, no digital transformation. The entire digital ecosystem, from home internet connections to the base stations that underpin cellular networks to the data centers that store the internet’s content, is powered by electricity. AI is just the latest manifestation of the long awaited digital revolution in Africa, only vastly more power hungry….

2024-03-18. Wind turbines have little effect on US property values. [https://nature.berkeley.edu/news/2024/03/not-my-backyard-wind-turbines-have-little-effect-us-property-values] By Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. Excerpt: The values of houses in the United States within a wind turbine’s viewshed drop only slightly and temporarily due to the disrupted view, a new study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) shows. The effect is smaller the further away the recently installed turbines are and fades over time. …“The impact of wind turbines on house prices is much smaller than generally feared: In the U.S., it’s about one percent for a house that has at least one wind turbine in a 10 km radius,” explains Maximilian Auffhammer, a professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ARE) at the University of California, Berkeley and co-author of the study. …scientists from the German Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), the Italian Centro Euro-Mediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici (CMCC) and the University of California, Berkeley analyzed the majority of home sales in the U.S. in the last 23 years. The researchers statistically analyzed data from more than 300 million home sales and 60,000 wind turbines from 1997 to 2020 to discern the impact of wind turbine visibility on home values….

2024-03-18. Storing Renewable Energy, One Balloon at a Time. [https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/18/science/renewable-energy-storage-climate.html] By Amos Zeeberg, The New York Times. Excerpt: Central Sardinia …in Ottana, …, a new technology is taking shape that might help the world slow climate change. …Energy Dome, a start-up based in Milan, runs an energy-storage demonstration plant that helps to address a mismatch in the local electricity market. …Energy Dome uses carbon dioxide held in a huge balloon… as a kind of battery. During the day, electricity from the local grid, some produced by nearby fields of solar cells, is used to compress the carbon dioxide into liquid. At night, the liquid carbon dioxide is expanded back into gas, which drives a turbine and produces electricity that is sent back to the grid….

2024-03-15. The Zombies of the U.S. Tax Code: Why Fossil Fuels Subsidies Seem Impossible to Kill. [https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/15/climate/tax-breaks-oil-gas-us.html] By Lisa Friedman, The New York Times. Excerpt: As a candidate in 2020, Joseph R. Biden Jr. campaigned to end billions of dollars in annual tax breaks to oil and gas companies within his first year in office. It’s a pledge he has been unable to keep as president. …Mr. Biden’s wish is opposed by the oil industry, Republicans in Congress and a handful of Democrats. …The oil and gas industry enjoys nearly a dozen tax breaks, including incentives for domestic production and write-offs tied to foreign production. …The Fossil Fuel Subsidy Tracker, run by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, calculated the total to be about $14 billion in 2022. …The oldest, known as “intangible drilling costs,” was created by the Revenue Act of 1913 and was aimed at encouraging the development of U.S. resources. The deduction allows companies to write off as much as 80 percent of the costs of drilling, …. Another subsidy, dating from 1926 and known as the depletion allowance, initially let oil companies deduct their taxable income by 27.5 percent, a number that seemed strangely specific. “We could have taken a 5 or 10 percent figure, but we grabbed 27.5 percent because we were not only hogs but the odd figure made it appear as though it was scientifically arrived at,” Senator Tom Connally, the Texas Democrat who sponsored the break and who died in 1963….

2024-03-07. Can the Belt and Road Go Green? [https://eos.org/features/can-the-belt-and-road-go-green] By Mark Betancourt, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: China’s global infrastructure investments could tip the scales on climate change, but its relationship with partner countries is complicated. …The Cauchari Solar Plant, which came online in 2019, can generate up to 300 megawatts of power at a time, making it the largest solar park in South America. …China has emerged as a dominant force behind Argentina’s engineering infrastructure, partly because Western banks have been hesitant to support the country, …. China, on the other hand, has poured more than $26 billion into Argentina’s infrastructure since 2005. …the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) …Xi announced that China would no longer build new coal power plants abroad, signaling a major shift to green infrastructure that could bend billions of dollars toward slowing climate change. …It remains to be seen how aggressively China will pursue renewable power, but more than 40% of the country’s investment in BRI energy projects was in wind and solar during the first half of 2023, up from only 20% in 2021. …Because China also brought its considerable manufacturing might to bear on scaling up the industry, streamlining the mass production of renewable technology from solar cells to wind turbines, …China dominates the global market, supplying more than 80% of solar power equipment worldwide. Its investments in research and development have made solar cells both cheaper and more efficient…. See also New York Times article How China Came to Dominate the World in Solar Energy.

2024-02-29. A.I. Frenzy Complicates Efforts to Keep Power-Hungry Data Sites Green. [https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/29/business/artificial-intelligence-data-centers-green-power.html] By Patrick Sisson, The New York Times. Excerpt: Artificial intelligence’s booming growth is radically reshaping an already red-hot data center market, raising questions about whether these sites can be operated sustainably. …The carbon footprint from the construction of the [data] centers and the racks of expensive computer equipment is substantial in itself, and their power needs have grown considerably. …Just a decade ago, data centers drew 10 megawatts of power, but 100 megawatts is common today. The Uptime Institute, an industry advisory group, has identified 10 supersize cloud computing campuses across North America with an average size of 621 megawatts. …The data center industry has embraced more sustainable solutions in recent years, becoming a significant investor in renewable power at the corporate level. Sites that leased wind and solar capacity jumped 50 percent year over year as of early 2023, to more than 40 gigawatts, capacity that continues to grow. Still, demand outpaces those investments. …A.I. is only a small percentage of the global data center footprint. The Uptime Institute predicts A.I. will skyrocket to 10 percent of the sector’s global power use by 2025, from 2 percent today….

2024-02-22. The Paradox Holding Back the Clean Energy Revolution. [https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/22/opinion/vegas-sphere-energy-efficiency.html] By Ed Conway, The New York Times guest essay. Excerpt: In the 1990s, when multicolor LED lights were invented by Japanese scientists after decades of research, the hope was that they would help to avert climate catastrophe by greatly reducing the amount of electricity we use. It seemed perfectly intuitive. After all, LED lights use 90 percent less energy and last around 18 times longer than incandescent bulbs. Yet the amount of electricity we consume for light globally is roughly the same today as it was in 2010. That’s partly because of population and economic growth in the developing world. But another big reason is …Instead of merely replacing our existing bulbs with LED alternatives, we have come up with ever more extravagant uses for these ever-cheaper lights, …. As technology has advanced, we’ve only grown more wasteful. …There’s an economic term for this: the Jevons Paradox, named for the 19th-century English economist William Stanley Jevons, who noticed that as steam engines became ever more efficient, Britain’s appetite for coal increased rather than decreased….

2024-02-17. In Wyoming, Sheep May Safely Graze Under Solar Panels in One of the State’s First “Agrivoltaic” Projects. [https://insideclimatenews.org/news/17022024/in-wyoming-sheep-may-safely-graze-under-solar-panels-in-one-of-the-states-first-agrivoltaic-projects/] By Jake Bolster, Inside Climate News. Excerpt: The elevated photovoltaic panels can actually improve grazing conditions, a novelty that could help make solar projects more land-efficient and accepted in the ranching-heavy state. Converse County is one of the most welcoming areas in Wyoming when it comes to clean energy. For roughly every 20 residents, there is one wind turbine, the highest ratio in the state. At a recent County Commissioners meeting, it took another step in diversifying its energy infrastructure, signaling its intent to issue its first solar farm permit to BrightNight. The global energy company has proposed to build more than 1 million solar panels, a battery storage facility and a few miles of above-ground transmission lines on a 4,738 acres of private land run by the Tillard ranching family near Glenrock. The Dutchman Project, as it is called, is notable neither for its generation nor its storage capacity but for the creatures moseying beneath its panels. The base of each sun-tracking panel will be several feet off the ground, allowing enough room for the Tillard’s sheep to continue grazing. In a state whose ranching industry predates its inclusion in the union, pairing solar generation with livestock grazing or other agricultural practices, a technique called “agrivoltaics,” could forge an unlikely alliance between two industries—one ancient; the other, high tech— that typically compete for resources….

2024-02-11. The Planet Needs Solar Power. Can We Build It Without Harming Nature? [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/02/11/climate/climate-change-wildlife-solar.html] By Catrin Einhorn, The New York Times. Excerpt: For pronghorn, those antelope-like creatures of the American West, this grassland north of Flagstaff is prime habitat. …But for a nation racing to adopt renewable energy, the land is prime for something else: solar panels. …Animals need humans to solve climate change. …The good news for wildlife is that there are ways for solar developers to make installations less harmful and even beneficial for many species, like fences that let some animals pass, wildlife corridors, native plants that nurture pollinators, and more. …“We’re faced with two truths: We have a climate change crisis, but we also have a biodiversity crisis,” said Meaghan Gade, a program manager at the Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies….

2024-02-08. Gusher of gas deep in mine stokes interest in natural hydrogen. [https://www.science.org/content/article/gusher-gas-deep-mine-stokes-interest-natural-hydrogen] By ERIC HAND, Science. Excerpt: Researchers have discovered a massive spring of hydrogen, bubbling out of a deep mine in Albania. Although it may not be economical to exploit, the surprisingly high flow of the gas is likely to raise interest in the emerging field of natural hydrogen, the overlooked idea that Earth itself could be a source of the clean-burning fuel….

2024-02-05. An electrifying new ironmaking method could slash carbon emissions. [https://www.science.org/content/article/electrifying-new-ironmaking-method-could-slash-carbon-emissions] By ROBERT F. SERVICE, Science. Excerpt: Making iron, the main ingredient of steel, takes a toll on Earth’s delicate atmosphere, producing 8% of all global greenhouse gas emissions. Now, a team of chemists has come up with a way to make the business much more eco-friendly. By using electricity to convert iron ore and salt water into metallic iron and other industrially useful chemicals, researchers report today in Joule that their approach is cost effective, works well with electricity provided by wind and solar farms, and could even be carbon negative, consuming more carbon dioxide (CO₂) than it produces. …The world mines 2.5 billion tons of iron every year, and reducing it to iron emits as much CO₂ as the tailpipes of all passenger vehicles combined. So, scientists are looking for economically viable ways to produce metallic iron that don’t generate greenhouse gases. …If it all works out, ironmaking could someday put a little less burden on the climate….

2024-01-25. Water Batteries. [https://www.science.org/content/article/how-giant-water-batteries-could-make-green-power-reliable] By ROBERT KUNZIG, Science. Excerpt: The machines that turn Tennessee’s Raccoon Mountain into one of the world’s largest energy storage devices—in effect, a battery that can power a medium-size city—are hidden in a cathedral-size cavern deep inside the mountain. But what enables the mountain to store all that energy is plain in an aerial photo. The summit plateau is occupied by a large lake that hangs high above the Tennessee River…. At night, when demand for electricity is low but TVA’s nuclear reactors are still humming, TVA banks the excess, storing it as gravitational potential energy in the summit lake. The pumps draw water from the Tennessee and shoot it straight up the 10-meter-wide shaft at a rate that would fill an Olympic pool in less than 6 seconds. During the day, when demand for electricity peaks, water drains back down the shaft and spins the turbines, generating 1700 megawatts of electricity—the output of a large power plant, enough to power 1 million homes. The lake stores enough water and thus enough energy to do that for 20 hours. Pumped storage hydropower, as this technology is called, is not new. Some 40 U.S. plants and hundreds around the world are in operation. …Pumped storage, however, has already arrived; it supplies more than 90% of existing grid storage. China, the world leader in renewable energy, also leads in pumped storage, with 66 new plants under construction, according to Global Energy Monitor. …In the Alps, where pumped storage was invented in the late 19th century, Switzerland opened a plant in 2022 called Nant de Drance that can deliver 900 megawatts for as long as 20 hours….

2024-01-23. To Slash Carbon Emissions, Colleges Are Digging Really Deep. [https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/23/climate/geoexchange-climate-colleges-heat.html] By Cara Buckley, The New York Times. Excerpt: …Princeton University … is using the earth beneath its campus to create a new system that will keep buildings at comfortable temperatures without burning fossil fuels. The multimillion dollar project, using a process known as geoexchange, marks a significant shift in how Princeton gets its energy, and is key to the university’s plan to stop adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere by 2046. …the more than 2,000 boreholes planned for the campus will be undetectable, despite performing an impressive sleight of hand. During hot months, heat drawn from Princeton’s buildings will be stored in thick pipes deep underground until winter, when heat will be drawn back up again. The change is significant. Since its founding in 1746, Princeton has heated its buildings by burning carbon-based fuels, in the form of firewood, then coal, then fuel oil, then natural gas. …Among the colleges where geoexchange or geothermal systems are being tested, installed or are in use: Smith, Oberlin, Dartmouth, Mount Holyoke and William & Mary. Cornell University has dug a two-mile test geothermal borehole at its Ithaca campus, and is using geoexchange at one of its buildings on Roosevelt Island in New York City’s East River. Brown University drilled test boreholes to gauge heat conductivity this past fall, and Columbia University secured a special state mining permit to drill an 800-foot test bore on its New York City campus….

2024-01-22. Is NASA too down on space-based solar power?. [https://www.science.org/content/article/nasa-too-down-space-based-solar-power] By DANIEL CLERY, Science. Excerpt: This month, NASA cast a shadow on one of the most visionary prospects for freeing the world from fossil fuels: collecting solar energy in space and beaming it to Earth. An agency report found the scheme is feasible by 2050 but would cost between 12 and 80 times as much as ground-based renewable energy sources. Undaunted, many government agencies and companies are pushing ahead with demonstration plans. Some researchers say NASA’s analysis is too pessimistic….

2024-01-19. New type of water splitter could make green hydrogen cheaper. [https://www.science.org/content/article/new-type-water-splitter-could-make-green-hydrogen-cheaper] By ROBERT F. SERVICE, Science. Excerpt: To wean itself off fossil fuels, the world needs cheaper ways to produce green hydrogen—a clean-burning fuel made by using renewable electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. Now researchers report a way to avoid the need for a costly membrane at the heart of the water-splitting devices, and to instead produce hydrogen and oxygen in completely separate chambers. As a lab-based proof of concept, the new setup—reported this month in Nature Materials—is a long way from working at an industrial scale. But if successful, it could help heavy industries such as steelmaking and fertilizer production reduce their dependence on oil, coal, and natural gas. …Any successes in eliminating electrolyzer membranes could be a boon to efforts to decarbonize parts of industry most dependent on fossil fuels, he says. “I can not overstate how big of an advantage that is.”….

2024-01-11. Take a Look at the First Major Offshore Wind Farm to Power U.S. Homes. [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/01/11/nyregion/ny-wind-farm-south-fork.html] By Patrick McGeehan, The New York Times. Excerpt: More than 30 miles out in the Atlantic Ocean, the first colossal steel turbines have started spinning at South Fork Wind, turning offshore breezes into electricity that lights homes on Long Island. The rest of the wind farm’s 12 towering turbines are set to be assembled and connected to New York’s power grid early this year. The arrival of this moment in the nation’s transition to renewable energy may seem sudden. But it has come after more than 20 years of contentious debates over its cost, appearance and effect on wildlife….

2024-01-03. Human activity is powering ‘a new industrial revolution’ at sea, say experts. [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/03/human-activity-is-powering-a-new-industrial-revolution-at-sea-say-experts] By Karen McVeigh, The Guardian. Excerpt: Researchers using AI and satellite imagery find 75% of industrial fishing is not being publicly tracked, while wind turbines now outnumber oil platforms.

2023-12-14. Solar-powered clothes, for the heat and cold. [https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adl5650] By XINGYI HUANG AND PENGLI LI, Science. Excerpt: Clothing plays an indispensable role in maintaining the human body temperature within a comfort range in our daily life, especially when facing sudden temperature changes or in harsh environments (1). …Wang et al. (3) report a full-day, self-powered, and bidirectional thermoregulatory clothing that can quickly respond to fluctuating temperature. …Wang et al. …designed and fabricated a wearable thermal-management system by combining an organic photovoltaic unit and an electrocaloric unit into a single device with the required flexibility. The device also achieved bidirectional thermal management, providing 10.1 K of cooling to the skin during hot days but also keeping the human body 3.2 K warmer than bare skin in the dark or at night by using additional energy collected by the organic photovoltaic unit….

2023-12-11. Cheap electricity could recycle animal waste, recover valuable chemicals. [https://www.science.org/content/article/cheap-electricity-could-recycle-animal-waste-recover-valuable-chemicals] By ROBERT F. SERVICE, Science. Excerpt: Every year the world’s livestock farms generate more than 3 billion tons of animal waste, equivalent to more than 9000 Empire State Buildings. All that manure pollutes bodies of water and releases noxious fumes and greenhouse gases. But a new recycling technique could reduce those burdens while turning a profit. Researchers have shown that they can use electricity to break down organic nutrients in animal waste, all while recovering valuable chemicals. Initial projections—reported this month in Nature Sustainability—suggest that in most cases the value of these chemicals would be higher than the costs of the technique, making it profitable for farmers to pursue it. …renewable power is expected to lower electricity costs in some rural areas to about $0.03 per kWh by 2030. …Given how efficient the overall process is, she says, the electrochemical treatment could capture nearly 70% of the ammonia in manure and reduce farm emissions of the compound by a similar amount….

2023-12-08. People Just Ran Entirely on Renewable Energy for 149 Hours. [https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/green-tech/a45900085/portugal-renewable-energy/] By DARREN ORF, Popular Mechanics. Excerpt: For 149 consecutive hours in November, Portugal provided a stunning example of what that could look like, as it used a mix of solar, wind, and hydropower to provide more clean energy than the entire country needed. …Producing 1,102 GWh (according to the national grid operator Redes Energéticas Nacionais) for both industrial and residential use, the country’s renewable energy sources—a mix of wind, solar, and hydropower—provided 262 GWh more than was needed. …This exceeds the country’s previous record—it ran for 131 hours on renewable energy back in 2019—and for 95 hours during this recent test, Portugal even exported its excess clean energy to Spain. Although the country’s gas plants were on standby, Portugal’s renewable infrastructure proved to be more than up for the task. …Portugal’s 149 hours of renewable bliss is a hopeful vision of the future for a fossil fuel-weary present. Humans can adapt to the climate challenges that face us—we just have to do it one renewable megawatt at a time….

2023-11-01. Offshore Wind Firm Cancels N.J. Projects, as Industry’s Prospects Dim. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/01/business/energy-environment/offshore-wind-farm-new-jersey.html] By Stanley Reed and Tracey Tully, The New York Times. Excerpt: Plans to build two wind farms off the coast of New Jersey were scrapped, the company behind them said on Wednesday, a blow to the state’s efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions and the latest shakeout in the U.S. wind industry. …Offshore wind and other parts of the renewable industry have hit some snags in Europe, especially in Britain. But Mr. Nipper said the problems were more acute in the United States because early contracts lacked protection from inflation and developers incurred high costs because of delays in approvals during the Trump administration. …In its announcement, Orsted said it would move forward with a $4 billion project called Revolution Wind intended to supply power to consumers in Rhode Island. And other developers have projects under construction, like Vineyard Wind, which will eventually have 62 turbines in the waters off Martha’s Vineyard, Mass….

2023-10-27. Critical Minerals for a Carbon-Neutral Future. [https://eos.org/features/critical-minerals-for-a-carbon-neutral-future] By Douglas C. Kreiner, Jane Hammarstrom and Warren Day, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: Imagine driving an electric car past a solar farm …below a ridge of wind turbines. Or …changing a thermostat to cool or heat your home, …not …increasing greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere. Transitioning to carbon-neutral economies and lifestyles will require substantial sources of mineral commodities …including the cobalt, nickel, lithium, manganese, germanium, gallium, indium, and graphite needed for EV batteries, solar panels, wind turbines, and energy storage…. In some cases, supplier countries have histories of poor environmental, social, or governance practices…. In 2019, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in partnership with the Association of American State Geologists and other federal, state, and private-sector organizations, initiated the Earth Mapping Resources Initiative (Earth MRI) to provide the high-quality data needed for evaluation of critical minerals. …In its first few years, the effort has already helped scientists better grasp the country’s critical minerals landscape….

2023-10-24. Clean Energy, Cherished Waters and a Sacred California Rock Caught in the Middle. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/24/travel/chumash-marine-sanctuary-morro-bay-california.html] By Lauren Sloss, The New York Times. Excerpt: The proposed Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary could create a new model for Native collaborative management of public lands. But the sanctuary faces headwinds with a last-minute boundary change to accommodate a wind farm….

2023-10-19. This Number Helps Explain Why Rooftop Solar Is Becoming More Attractive in Many States. [https://insideclimatenews.org/news/19102023/inside-clean-energy-15-cent-rule-residential-solar-adoption-electricity-rates/] By  Dan Gearino, Inside Climate News. Excerpt: About 5 percent of U.S. households have rooftop solar, a share that may seem like a lot, but it looks low compared to places like Germany (about 20 percent) and Australia (about 30 percent). One of the big reasons that the United States lags some of those other countries is that electricity is unusually cheap here, so it makes less sense on a financial basis for someone to buy rooftop solar. But this is changing. Utilities across the country have been raising their electricity rates by leaps and bounds…. This is fueling demand for rooftop solar, the technology that many utilities view as competition. At what point is a customer’s electricity rate high enough to justify rooftop solar on a financial basis? …let’s simplify things and I’ll throw out a number: 15 cents. This rate, 15 cents per kilowatt-hour, translates to a monthly bill of about $130 for a household with average electricity consumption. People in the solar business and energy analysts sometimes talk about 15 cents per kilowatt hour as the approximate point at which things change. In states with rates above that level, companies that sell rooftop solar can more easily demonstrate the potential for financial savings to customers….

2023-10-13. U.S. hands out $7 billion for hydrogen hubs. [https://www.science.org/content/article/u-s-hands-out-7-billion-hydrogen-hubs] By KATHERINE BOURZAC, Science. Excerpt: President Joe Biden’s administration today announced $7 billion in funding for seven regional “hubs” to produce hydrogen, which produces water as exhaust when combusted. If made cleanly, hydrogen could help fight global warming by replacing fossil fuels in the fertilizer and steel industries, and in tricky-to-electrify vehicles such as long-haul trucks. …Hydrogen has had a “chicken and egg” problem, says Keith Wipke, program manager for fuel cell vehicles at DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory. “Nobody will start large-scale production until there are customers,” he says. And customers are reluctant to switch to hydrogen without a steady and cheap supply of the gas. “It’s the same story as we’ve seen with solar and wind. The more you build, the cheaper it becomes,” says Anne-Sophie Corbeau, a researcher at the Columbia University Center on Global Energy Policy….

2023-10-04. Why China’s clean energy tech will determine our climate future. [https://www.newscientist.com/article/2395586-why-chinas-clean-energy-tech-will-determine-our-climate-future/] By James Dinneen, New Scientist. Excerpt: As the world’s biggest carbon emitter and the largest producer of clean energy tech, China is crucial to our climate future, …. In 2023, which will be a record year for global development of renewable energy, more than half of all new wind and solar capacity is set to be installed in China. It is also adding more new nuclear power and hydropower than anywhere else, and in August overtook Europe as the largest builder of offshore wind. In June, two years ahead of schedule, fossil fuels made up less than half of China’s electricity generating capacity, though coal remains a big and growing part of its energy mix. …China boasts record adoption of electric vehicles too, with these making up more than a fifth of all new vehicles sold in China in 2022, as well as the world’s largest high-speed train system. …All of this gives observers confidence that China will, at the very least, be able to meet its near-term target of reaching peak carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 or earlier. …One report from Norwegian research firm Rystad Energy has even projected that China’s emissions from burning fossil fuels could peak as soon as this year, and fall 10 per cent by 2030. …China now makes at least 80 per cent of the world’s solar panels….

2023-09-28. Low-Tech, Energy-Free Tool Collects and Cleans Fog Water. [https://eos.org/articles/low-tech-energy-free-tool-collects-and-cleans-fog-water] By Kimberly M. S. Cartier, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: Communities in some regions of the world lack easy access to clean fresh water, some due to their remote locations, some to insufficient or damaged infrastructure, and others to changing climate conditions. People in these regions often rely on alternate methods of gathering fresh water, such as harvesting rain, dew, vapor, and fog—but that water can be polluted and dangerous to use. Now, an innovative update to a tried-and-true method of harvesting fog water can purify it, too. Researchers developed and tested how well a polymer-based coating on a metal mesh collected water that had been contaminated with organic pollutants. They found that not only did the coated mesh outperform existing fog harvesters, but also the coating purified the water by 91%, producing nearly pure water without requiring any power…. See also NPR article Harvesting water from fog and air in Kenya with jerrycans and newfangled machines.

2023-09-28. Chemical cages could store hydrogen, expand use of clean-burning fuel. [https://www.science.org/content/article/chemical-cages-could-store-hydrogen-expand-use-clean-burning-fuel] By ROBERT F. SERVICE, Science. Excerpt: Cheap molecular “sponges” made with aluminum can be low-pressure gas tanks. Hydrogen seems like the perfect fuel. By weight it packs more punch than any other fuel. It can be made from water, meaning supply is almost limitless, in principle. And when burned or run through a fuel cell, it generates energy without any carbon pollution. But hydrogen takes up enormous volume, making it impractical to store. Compressing it helps, but is expensive and essentially turns hydrogen storage tanks into high-pressure explosives. Now, a molecular sponge made of organic compounds and cheap aluminum promises a practical solution, holding significant amounts of hydrogen at low pressures. Described in a paper accepted last week at the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS), it is the latest in a series of promising metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), and it suggests that the materials could be close to a mass market application, serving as fuel depots for backup power sources at industrial operations….

2023-09-07. U.S. bets it can drill for climate-friendly hydrogen—just like oil. [https://www.science.org/content/article/u-s-bets-it-can-drill-climate-friendly-hydrogen-just-oil] By ERIC HAND, Science. Excerpt: …Today, the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), the high-risk, high-reward arm of the Department of Energy (DOE), announced it would fund $20 million in grants to advance technologies for extracting clean-burning hydrogen from deep rocks. …some researchers have concluded that, contrary to conventional wisdom, Earth harbors vast deposits of the gas that could be tapped like oil—and that reserves could be stimulated by pumping water and catalysts into the crust. …Most hydrogen today is manufactured by combining steam and methane in factories that emit carbon dioxide (CO₂) and add to global warming. Governments are supporting efforts to make hydrogen cleanly, either by capturing the emitted CO₂ and storing it underground (blue hydrogen) or by using renewable electricity to split water and harvesting the resulting hydrogen (green hydrogen). …For decades, few geologists believed Earth held significant hydrogen deposits, because the gas is so readily eaten up by microbes or chemically altered into other forms. But prospectors are now fanning out across the globe, spurred by the discovery of a massive hydrogen field underneath a village in Mali and records suggesting puzzling surges of nearly pure hydrogen in old boreholes. Whereas oil and gas companies tend to tap relatively youthful basins of sedimentary rock, hydrogen hunters are probing the crystalline, ancient hearts of continents for the iron-rich rocks thought to fuel hydrogen production. …The grant program will not support the hunt for existing deposits, because that is better left to USGS and industry, says ARPA-E Program Director Doug Wicks. Instead, it will focus on ways to artificially stimulate one of the main hydrogen producing reactions, called serpentinization, which occurs when water encounters iron-rich rocks at high temperatures and pressures. The reactions transform minerals such as olivine into serpentine, releasing hydrogen in the process….

2023-08-12. The Clean Energy Future Is Arriving Faster Than You Think. [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/08/12/climate/clean-energy-us-fossil-fuels.html] By David Gelles, Brad Plumer, Jim Tankersley, Jack Ewing, The New York Times. Excerpt: The United States is pivoting away from fossil fuels and toward wind, solar and other renewable energy, even in areas dominated by the oil and gas industries. …renewables are now expected to overtake coal by 2025 as the world’s largest source of electricity. …China, which already leads the world in the sheer amount of electricity produced by wind and solar power, is expected to double its capacity by 2025, five years ahead of schedule. In Britain, roughly one-third of electricity is generated by wind, solar and hydropower. And in the United States, 23 percent of electricity is expected to come from renewable sources this year, up 10 percentage points from a decade ago….

2023-07-12. The Energy Transition Is Underway. Fossil Fuel Workers Could Be Left Behind. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/12/us/politics/coal-gas-workers-transition.html] By Madeleine Ngo, The New York Times. Excerpt: …The United States is undergoing a rapid shift away from fossil fuels as new battery factories, wind and solar projects, and other clean energy investments crop up across the country. An expansive climate law that Democrats passed last year could be even more effective than Biden administration officials had estimated at reducing fossil fuel emissions. While the transition is projected to create hundreds of thousands of clean energy jobs, it could be devastating for many workers and counties that have relied on coal, oil and gas for their economic stability. Estimates of the potential job losses in the coming years vary, but roughly 900,000 workers were directly employed by fossil fuel industries in 2022, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. …Beyond construction, wind and solar farms typically require few workers to operate, and new clean energy jobs might not necessarily offer comparable wages or align with the skills of laid-off workers. …U.S. coal-fired generation capacity is projected to decline sharply to about 50 percent of current levels by 2030, according to the Energy Information Administration. About 41,000 workers remain in the coal mining industry, down from about 177,000 in the mid-1980s….

2023-07-06. Hand-held water harvester powered by sunlight could combat water scarcity. [https://data.berkeley.edu/news/hand-held-water-harvester-powered-sunlight-could-combat-water-scarcity] By Rachel Leven, UC Berkeley College of Computing, Data Science, and Society. Excerpt: UC Berkeley researchers have designed an extreme-weather proven, hand-held device that can extract and convert water molecules from the air into drinkable water using only ambient sunlight as its energy source, a study published in Nature Water today shows. This atmospheric water harvester used an ultra-porous material known as a metal-organic framework (MOF) to extract water repeatedly in the hottest and driest place in North America, Death Valley National Park. These tests showed the device could provide clean water anywhere, addressing an urgent problem, as climate change exacerbates drought conditions “Almost one-third of the world’s population lives in water-stressed regions. The UN projects in the year 2050 that almost 5 billion people on our planet will experience some kind of water stress for a significant part of the year,” said Omar Yaghi, the Berkeley chemistry professor who invented MOFs and is leading this study. “This is quite relevant to harnessing a new source for water.” …It is also extremely efficient at harvesting water, releasing as drinking water 85 to 90 percent of the water it captures as atmospheric vapor. It harvested up to 285 grams of water per kilogram of metal-organic framework in a day, the equivalent of a cup of water….

2023-06-28. A Giant Wind Farm Is Taking Root Off Massachusetts. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/27/business/energy-environment/marthas-vineyard-wind-farm-massachusetts.html] By Stanley Reed and Ivan Penn, The New York Times. Excerpt: “This has been really hard,” said Rachel Pachter, the chief development officer of Vineyard Offshore, the American arm of Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, a Danish renewable energy developer that is a co-owner of the wind farm. To bring a big energy project to this point near population centers requires clearing countless regulatory hurdles and heading off potential opposition and litigation. …Ms. Pachter, though, has helped orchestrate a campaign of community outreach, job creation and funding that has finally led to a point where, in industry parlance, steel is going into the water. …62 turbines, each up to 850 feet high (taller than any building in Boston) with blades about 350 feet long, will be planted on a sweep of seabed 15 miles off Martha’s Vineyard….

2023-06-24. Energy Change Sweeps the North Sea. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/24/business/energy-environment/north-sea-green-energy-wind.html] By Stanley Reed, The New York Times. Excerpt: The North Sea has long been host to some of the world’s busiest shipping lanes and hundreds of rigs for producing oil and natural gas. Now, if European leaders have their way, this shallow and often turbulent stretch of water will, in the coming years, see what could amount to hundreds of billions of dollars worth of investment aimed at reducing carbon emissions and further shrinking imports of fossil fuels from Russia. …in Ostend, a Belgian port, in April, the leaders of nine European governments pledged to work together to roughly quadruple the already substantial amount of offshore wind generation capacity in the North Sea and nearby waters by 2030 and to increase it by about tenfold by 2050….

2023-06-22. Solar sprawl is tearing up the Mojave Desert. Is there a better way? [https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2023-06-27/solar-panels-could-save-california-but-they-hurt-the-desert] By Sammy Roth, LA Times. Excerpt: High above the Las Vegas Strip, solar panels blanketed the roof of Mandalay Bay Convention Center — 26,000 of them, rippling across an area larger than 20 football fields. …“This is really an ideal location,” said Michael Gulich, vice president of sustainability at MGM Resorts International. …There’s enormous opportunity to lower household utility bills and cut climate pollution — without damaging wildlife habitat or disrupting treasured landscapes. The same goes for the rest of Las Vegas and its sprawling suburbs. But that hasn’t stopped corporations from making plans to carpet the desert surrounding Las Vegas with dozens of giant solar fields — some of them designed to supply power to California. The Biden administration has fueled that growth, taking steps to encourage solar and wind energy development across vast stretches of public lands in Nevada and other Western states. Those energy generators could imperil rare plants and slow-footed tortoises already threatened by rising temperatures. …The key questions are: How many big solar farms are needed, and where should they be built? Can they be engineered to coexist with animals and plants?….

2023-06-08. UC Berkeley Goes All-Electric As Part of Ambitious Clean Energy Campus Plan. [https://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-magazine/2023-spring-summer/berkeley-goes-all-electric-as-part-of-ambitious-clean-energy-campus-plan/] By Pat Joseph, California Magazine. Excerpt: Goodbye 36-year-old gas turbine, hello electric thermal plant. …In 2028, as part of Berkeley’s ambitious Clean Energy Campus plan, the 36-year-old gas-fired cogeneration plant will be replaced with a new electrified heating and cooling plant, to be located at North Field, the extramural playing field just north of Hearst Gym, and a utility-fed electrical system.  The current power plant provides about 90 percent of the electricity and 100 percent of the steam needs of campus. When it was first brought online in 1987, the cogen plant was state of the art, efficiently producing both electricity and steam, the latter used for heating and lab processes. But now, says Kira Stoll, chief sustainability and carbon solutions officer, it’s time to move on to a better, cleaner source of power—one that doesn’t emit 135,000 metric tons of CO₂ annually. “One really critical piece of this is the heightened awareness that we need to act on the climate and create solutions,” Stoll said. “If we’re investing in infrastructure that’s going to be around for 50 or more years, we really don’t want to invest in last-century technology. We really need to invest in the future.” Indeed, if all goes according to plan, Berkeley will become the first University of California campus to achieve zero-carbon energy goals….

2023-06-01. Treasure Hunt. [https://www.science.org/content/article/major-us-geological-survey-aims-uncover-minerals-critical-batteries-microchips] By Paul Voosen, Science. Excerpt: The first U.S. nationwide geological survey in a generation could reveal badly needed supplies of critical minerals. …Few topics draw more bipartisan support in Washington, D.C., than the need for the United States to find reliable sources of “critical minerals,” a collection of 50 mined substances that now come mostly from other countries, including some that are unfriendly or unstable. The list, created by USGS at the direction of Congress, contains not only the 17 rare earth elements produced mostly in China, but also less exotic materials such as zinc, used to produce steel, and cobalt, used in electric car batteries. …The last nationwide survey, a quest for uranium, ended in the 1980s. Ryker says the U.S. is “undermapped” compared with most developed countries, including Australia, Canada, and even Ireland. “We’re at an embarrassing point.” …To start filling in this knowledge void, USGS in 2019 began what it calls the Earth Mapping Resources Initiative, or Earth MRI. With a modest $10 million annual budget, the agency began working with state geological surveys. …Then, in 2021, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law directed $320 million into the program—nearly one-third of the entire USGS budget—to be spent over 5 years….

2023-05-28. Wind energy has a massive waste problem. New technologies may be a step closer to solving it. [https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/28/world/wind-turbine-recycling-climate-intl/index.html] By Laura Paddison, CNN. Excerpt: Wind turbines are built to last. Their tall bodies are topped with long fiberglass blades, some more than half a football field in length, made to withstand the harshest, windiest conditions. But this sturdiness brings a big problem: What to do with these blades when they reach the end of their lives. While about 90% of turbines are easily recyclable, their blades are not. They are made from fiberglass bound together with epoxy resin, a material so strong it is incredibly difficult and expensive to break down. Most blades end their lives in landfill or are incinerated. …But in February, Danish wind company Vestas …announced a “breakthrough solution” that would allow wind turbine blades to be recycled without needing to change their design or materials. …the “newly discovered chemical technology” breaks down old blades in a liquid to produce high quality materials, which can eventually be used to make new blades, as well as components in other industries….

2023-05-18. A Symbiosis Between Agriculture and Solar Power. [https://eos.org/research-spotlights/a-symbiosis-between-agriculture-and-solar-power] By Aaron Sidder, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: Introduced in the 1980s, agrivoltaics, or AV, is the concept of pairing agriculture and solar energy production on the same plot of land. Practitioners grow crops under solar panels and can control the amounts and wavelengths of light that pass through for photosynthesis. Light that is not necessary for photosynthesis can power clean energy production. Meanwhile, as plants photosynthesize, they lose water through transpiration. That water loss cools the air and improves the efficiency of energy generation by the panels. It’s a win-win scenario—at least in theory. …In a previous study, scientists argued that successful AV setups could partition light into wavelengths that are efficient for either energy production or photosynthesis: red for crops and blue for solar panels, for example. …The study also considers how solar panels alter the microclimate and light availability beneath their cells. …The commentary highlights that candidate crops for AV are shade tolerant and have large leaf areas aboveground. Reduced air temperature and higher soil moisture below the photovoltaic system allow plants to allocate more carbon to aboveground biomass, resulting in greater leaf area. This trait is common in shade-tolerant plants and suggests that big leafy crops such as arugula, kale, and tomatoes may be more likely to succeed in an AV setup….

2023-05-13. Danish Wind Pioneer Keeps Battling Climate Change. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/03/business/energy-environment/denmark-wind-power-stiesdal.html] By Stanley Reed, The New York Times. Excerpt: The contemporary wind power industry, which has spawned hundreds of thousands of spinning rotors generating electricity without putting greenhouse gases into the air, was to a great extent born in a notoriously windy region of Denmark called Jutland. …perhaps no one has had more influence than a Jutlander named Henrik Stiesdal. As a young man of 21, he built a rudimentary machine to generate electricity for his parents’ farm. He was later co-designer of an innovative three-bladed turbine that set the stage for what has become a multibillion-dollar global industry. His inventions have led to about a thousand patents, and Mr. Stiesdal is widely seen as a pioneer in this very Danish field. At age 66, he is not done. After decades working for what became some of the giant companies in wind energy, Mr. Stiesdal is putting his ideas into a start-up that bears his name, pursuing innovative ways to offer clean and affordable energy and tackle climate change. …massive tetrahedral structures, designed by Mr. Stiesdal, that will serve as bases for floating wind turbines …partly submerged, covering an area of roughly two American football fields. …a new design for an electrolyzer — a device that takes water and, from it, derives hydrogen gas, which is drawing increasing attention as a replacement for fossil fuels….

2023-05-02. Is It a Lake, or a Battery? A New Kind of Hydropower Is Spreading Fast. [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/05/02/climate/hydroelectric-power-energy.html] By Mira Rojanasakul and Max Bearak, The New York Times. Excerpt: New research released Tuesday by Global Energy Monitor reveals a transformation underway in hydroelectric projects — using the same gravitational qualities of water, but typically without building large, traditional dams like the Hoover in the American West or Three Gorges in China. Instead, a technology called pumped storage is rapidly expanding. These systems involve two reservoirs: one on top of a hill and another at the bottom. When electricity generated from nearby power plants exceeds demand, it’s used to pump water uphill, essentially filling the upper reservoir as a battery. Later, when electricity demand spikes, water is released to the lower reservoir through a turbine, generating power. Pumped storage isn’t a new idea. But it is undergoing a renaissance in countries where wind and solar power are also growing, helping allay concerns about weather-related dips in renewable energy output. …In recent years, China has accounted for about half of global growth in renewable energy. According to official documents, China will roll out more wind and solar capacity each year between now and 2030 than Germany currently has in total. … China has stopped financing coal projects abroad, but at home last year it approved the building of more coal plants than ever before. And it is already by far the world’s biggest user of coal, a particularly dirty fuel. But even as China doubles down on coal, it is reducing the overall proportion of power it derives from it. China now leads the world in wind, solar and hydroelectric power capacity….

2023-04-26. New molecular membranes could slash costs for storing green energy. [https://www.science.org/content/article/new-molecular-membranes-could-slash-costs-storing-green-energy] By Robert F. Service, Science. Excerpt: Ability to let certain ions pass with near-zero friction could vastly improve batteries, fuel cells, and other electrochemical devices. New technology promises to dramatically improve the performance of batteries, fuel cells, and the electrolyzers that make green hydrogen and other fuels from electricity. The advance—used in a type of “flow battery” that’s becoming common for storing renewable energy—boosted the speed at which the battery could provide power fivefold. That jump in performance could sharply reduce the cost of storing green energy for use on the grid, making it easier for societies to completely shift from fossil fuels to renewables….

2023-04-14. How electrification became a major tool for fighting climate change. [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/04/14/climate/electric-car-heater-everything.html] By Nadja Popovich and Brad Plumer, The New York Times. Excerpt: The United States still gets most of its energy by setting millions of tiny fires everywhere. Cars, trucks, homes and factories all burn fossil fuels in countless engines, furnaces and boilers, creating pollution that heats the planet. To tackle climate change, those machines will need to stop polluting. And the best way to do that, experts increasingly say, is to replace them with electric versions — cars, heating systems and factories that run on clean sources of electricity like wind, solar or nuclear power. But electrifying almost everything is a formidable task….

2023-04-09. The Real-World Costs of the Digital Race for Bitcoin. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/09/business/bitcoin-mining-electricity-pollution.html] By Gabriel J.X. Dance, The New York Times. Excerpt: Texas was gasping for electricity. Winter Storm Uri had knocked out power plants across the state, leaving tens of thousands of homes in icy darkness. By the end of Feb. 14, 2021, nearly 40 people had died, some from the freezing cold. Meanwhile, in the husk of a onetime aluminum smelting plant an hour outside of Austin, row upon row of computers were using enough electricity to power about 6,500 homes as they raced to earn Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency. …The New York Times has identified 34 such large-scale operations, known as Bitcoin mines, in the United States, all putting immense pressure on the power grid and most finding novel ways to profit from doing so. Their operations can create costs — including higher electricity bills and enormous carbon pollution — for everyone around them, most of whom have nothing to do with Bitcoin. …Each of the 34 operations The Times identified uses at least 30,000 times as much power as the average U.S. home. Altogether, they consume more than 3,900 megawatts of electricity. That is nearly the same amount of electricity as the three million households that surround them….

2023-03-15. Splitting seawater could provide an endless source of green hydrogen. [https://www.science.org/content/article/splitting-seawater-provide-endless-source-green-hydrogen] By Robert F. Service, Science. Excerpt: …“Green” hydrogen, made by using renewable energy to split water molecules, could power heavy vehicles and decarbonize industries such as steelmaking without spewing a whiff of carbon dioxide. But because the water-splitting machines, or electrolyzers, are designed to work with pure water, scaling up green hydrogen could exacerbate global freshwater shortages. Now, several research teams are reporting advances in producing hydrogen directly from seawater, which could become an inexhaustible source of green hydrogen. …Md Kibria, a materials chemist at the University of Calgary, says for now there’s a cheaper solution: feeding seawater into desalination setups that can remove the salt before the water flows to conventional electrolyzers. …Today, nearly all hydrogen is made by breaking apart methane, burning fossil fuels to generate the needed heat and pressure. Both steps release carbon dioxide. Green hydrogen could replace this dirty hydrogen, but at the moment it costs more than twice as much, roughly $5 per kilogram. That’s partly due to the high cost of electrolyzers, which rely on catalysts made from precious metals. The U.S. Department of Energy recently launched a decadelong effort to improve electrolyzers and bring the cost of green hydrogen down to $1 per kilogram….

2023-03-11. Inside the Global Race to Turn Water Into Fuel. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/11/climate/green-hydrogen-energy.html] By By Max Bearak, The New York Times. Excerpt: this remote parcel of the Australian Outback for an imminent transformation. A consortium of energy companies led by BP plans to cover an expanse of land eight times as large as New York City with as many as 1,743 wind turbines, each nearly as tall as the Empire State Building, along with 10 million or so solar panels and more than a thousand miles of access roads to connect them all. But none of the 26 gigawatts of energy the site expects to produce, equivalent to a third of what Australia’s grid currently requires, will go toward public use. Instead, it will be used to manufacture a novel kind of industrial fuel: green hydrogen. …the biggest problem that green hydrogen could help solve: vast iron ore mines that are full of machines powered by immense amounts of dirty fossil fuels. Three of the world’s four biggest ore miners operate dozens of mines here….

2023-03-08. In Zimbabwe, drought is driving a hydropower crisis—and a search for alternatives. [https://www.science.org/content/article/zimbabwe-drought-driving-hydropower-crisis-and-search-alternatives] By Andrew Mambondyani, Science. Excerpt: …a prolonged drought has plunged Zimbabwe into a severe energy crisis. Water levels behind Zimbabwe’s main hydropower dam, which produces nearly 70% of the nation’s electricity, have dropped too low to reliably generate power, forcing utility managers to impose rolling blackouts that last for up to 20 hours per day. …The crisis, researchers say, has highlighted the growing threat that an increasingly dry and erratic climate poses to African nations that rely on hydropower. In Zimbabwe, it is prompting the government and researchers to step up the search for more dependable energy supplies for the nation’s 16 million people. …by 2030 “new hydropower dams will no longer be an attractive option across most of Africa.” …the nation’s government is moving to expand coal-fired power plants. But it is also examining sources of energy that won’t add to greenhouse gas emissions, including solar power and biogas made by fermenting organic wastes. “The costs of these technologies have been rapidly dropping; hence they have become more attractive investment options,” Sterl says. …researchers concluded that biogas has the potential to play a bigger role in Zimbabwe’s energy mix. A second recent study, from a team based at Shanghai University, notes that Zimbabwe, which receives some 3000 hours of sunlight per year, also has yet to fully tap the potential of solar power. By building solar panel arrays that are linked to battery storage systems, power producers could reduce their reliance on imported electricity and ensure more reliable power supplies, they reported in the Journal of Renewable Energy and Environmentin August 2022….

2023-02-27. As Oil Companies Stay Lean, Workers Move to Renewable Energy. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/27/business/energy-environment/oil-gas-renewable-energy-jobs.html] By Clifford Krauss, The New York Times. Excerpt: …Oil and gas companies laid off roughly 160,000 workers in 2020, and they maintained tight budgets and hired cautiously over the last two years. But many renewable businesses expanded rapidly after the early shock of the pandemic faded, snapping up geologists, engineers and other workers from the likes of Exxon and Chevron. …Executives and workers in energy hubs in Houston, Dallas and other places say steady streams of people are moving from fossil fuel to renewable energy jobs….

2023-02-16. How a Record-Breaking Copper Catalyst Converts CO2 Into Liquid Fuels. [https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2023/02/16/copper-catalyst-converts-co2-into-liquid-fuels/] By Theresa Duque, Berkeley Lab. Excerpt: …new insights could help advance the next generation of solar fuels. …a research team led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has gained new insight by capturing real-time movies of copper nanoparticles (copper particles engineered at the scale of a billionth of a meter) as they convert CO₂ and water into renewable fuels and chemicals: ethylene, ethanol, and propanol, among others. The work was reported in the journal Nature last week. …Peidong Yang, a senior faculty scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences and Chemical Sciences Divisions who led the study …is also a professor of chemistry and materials science and engineering at UC Berkeley. “Knowing how copper is such an excellent electrocatalyst brings us steps closer to turning CO₂ into new, renewable solar fuels through artificial photosynthesis.”…

2023-02-16. Hidden Hydrogen. [https://www.science.org/content/article/hidden-hydrogen-earth-may-hold-vast-stores-renewable-carbon-free-fuel] By Eric Hand. Excerpt: IN THE SHADE of a mango tree, Mamadou Ngulo Konaré recounted the legendary event of his childhood. In 1987, well diggers had come to his village of Bourakébougou, Mali, to drill for water, but had given up on one dry borehole at a depth of 108 meters. “Meanwhile, wind was coming out of the hole,” Konaré told Denis Brière, a petrophysicist and vice president at Chapman Petroleum Engineering, in 2012. When one driller peered into the hole while smoking a cigarette, the wind exploded in his face. …The color of the fire in daytime was like blue sparkling water and did not have black smoke pollution. The color of the fire at night was like shining gold, and all over the fields we could see each other in the light. …It took the crew weeks to snuff out the fire and cap the well. …In 2012, …Chapman Petroleum …discovered that the gas was 98% hydrogen. That was extraordinary: Hydrogen almost never turns up in oil operations, and it wasn’t thought to exist within the Earth much at all. …Contrary to conventional wisdom, large stores of natural hydrogen may exist all over the world, like oil and gas—but not in the same places. These researchers say water-rock reactions deep within the Earth continuously generate hydrogen, which percolates up through the crust and sometimes accumulates in underground traps. There might be enough natural hydrogen to meet burgeoning global demand for thousands of years, according to a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) model that was presented in October 2022 at a meeting of the Geological Society of America….

2023-01-23. ‘No miracles needed’: Prof Mark Jacobson on how wind, sun and water can power the world. [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/23/no-miracles-needed-prof-mark-jacobson-on-how-wind-sun-and-water-can-power-the-world] By Damian Carrington, The Guardian. Excerpt: Wind, water and solar can provide plentiful and cheap power, he argues, ending the carbon emissions driving the climate crisis, slashing deadly air pollution and ensuring energy security. Carbon capture and storage, biofuels, new nuclear and other technologies are expensive wastes of time, he argues. …We have wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, electric cars. We have batteries, heat pumps, energy efficiency. We have 95% of the technologies right now that we need to solve the problem.” The missing 5% is for long-distance aircraft and ships, he says, for which hydrogen-powered fuel cells can be developed….

2023-01-04. Sun-powered water splitter produces unprecedented levels of green energy. [https://www.science.org/content/article/sun-powered-water-splitter-produces-unprecedented-levels-green-energy] By Robert F. Service, Science. Excerpt: …The latest iteration of their device uses not only the visible and ultraviolet photons able to split water, but also the less energetic infrared photons. The combined changes enabled the scientists to convert 9.2% of the Sun’s energy into hydrogen fuel, roughly three times more than previous photocatalytic setups, they report today in Nature. …In addition, …the new setup also works well, though somewhat less efficiently, with seawater, a cheap and inexhaustible resource. Being able to convert seawater cheaply into carbon-free fuel would truly be the ultimate in green energy.

2022-12-30. The U.S. Will Need Thousands of Wind Farms. Will Small Towns Go Along? [https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/30/climate/wind-farm-renewable-energy-fight.html] By David Gelles, The New York Times. Excerpt: …In the fight against global warming, the federal government is pumping a record $370 billion into clean energy, President Biden wants the nation’s electricity to be 100 percent carbon-free by 2035, and many states and utilities plan to ramp up wind and solar power. But …the future of the American power grid is in fact being determined in town halls, county courthouses and community buildings across the country. …In Piatt County, population 16,000, the project at issue is Goose Creek Wind, which has been proposed by Apex Clean Energy, a developer of wind and solar farms based in Virginia. …If completed, the turbines, each of them 610 feet tall, would march across 34,000 acres of farmland. The $500 million project is expected to generate 300 megawatts, enough to power about 100,000 homes. The renewable, carbon-free electricity would help power a grid that currently is fed by a mix of nuclear, natural gas, coal, and some existing wind turbines. But with more and more renewable energy projects under construction around the country, resistance is growing, especially in rural communities in the Great Plains and Midwest. …Much of that skepticism appeared to be earnest concern from community members who weren’t sold on the project’s overall merits. On the fringe of the debate, however, was a digital misinformation campaign designed to distort the facts about wind energy. The website of a group called Save Piatt County!, which opposes the project, is rife with fallacies about renewable energy and inaccuracies about climate science. On Facebook pages, residents opposed to the project shared negative stories about wind power, following a playbook that has been honed in recent years by anti-wind activists, some of whom have ties to the fossil fuel industry. 

2022-12-15. California Reduces Subsidies for Homes With Rooftop Solar. [https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/business/energy-environment/california-rooftop-solar-subsidy.html] By Ivan Penn, The New York Times. Excerpt: California regulators voted unanimously on Thursday to significantly reduce how much utilities have to pay homeowners with rooftop solar panels for power they send to the electric grid — a decision that could hurt the growing renewable energy business. The five members of the California Public Utilities Commission said the existing payments to homeowners through a program known as net metering amounted to an excessively generous subsidy that was no longer needed to encourage the use of solar panels. Under the proposal adopted on Thursday, compensation for the energy sent to the grid by rooftop panels will be reduced by about 75 percent for new rooftop solar homes starting in April. …By reducing the subsidy to rooftop solar owners, the commission aimed to establish what it said would be a more equitable system, agreeing with arguments by utility companies and some consumer and environmental groups like the Utility Reform Network and the Natural Resources Defense Council. Those groups had claimed that affluent homeowners were more likely to install rooftop solar systems, leaving lower-income residents to bear more of the cost of supporting the electric grid….

2022-12-13. The carbon-free energy of the future: this fusion breakthrough changes everything. [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/dec/13/carbon-free-energy-fusion-reaction-scientists] By Arthur Turrell, The Guardian. Excerpt: This is a moment that scientists have dreamed of for well over half a century. The US’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) has smashed the longest-standing goal in the quest for carbon–free energy from fusion, the nuclear process that powers stars. Researchers from NIF used the world’s most energetic laser to fire 2.05 megajoules (MJ) of energy into a millimetre-sized capsule of hydrogen fuel. Reaching temperatures many times those found in the sun’s core and pressures 300bn times those normally experienced on Earth, a wave of nuclear reactions ripped through the fusion fuel, releasing 3.15 MJ of fusion energy – 1.1 MJ more than was put in – over a few tens of nanoseconds. …it’s the first scientific proof that fusion can produce more energy out than is put in, also known as “net energy gain”. If the numbers check out, the experiment generated 54% more energy than was put into it. …Fusion would complement renewables by providing baseload energy, rain or shine, while taking up little precious land. So the prize is big – which is why scientists and engineers have stuck with it for decades. …that doesn’t mean fusion power that we can use is a reality yet. This is a single result on a single experiment. A commercially viable plant would need to produce 30 times energy out for energy in (30x), rather than the 1.54x seen in this experiment. Even with that magnitude of energy release, there would be engineering and economic challenges to overcome, such as firing the laser 10 times a second, rather than once a day. Gigantic lasers may not even be the best route to economical fusion power: promising alternative approaches are being explored that use magnetic fields to trap the 150mC fuel….

2022-12-09. Could Floating Solar Panels Help Mitigate Climate Change?. [https://eos.org/articles/could-floating-solar-panels-help-mitigate-climate-change] By Sofia Moutinho, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: Many countries bet on solar panels when engaging in the switch to cleaner energy. But the technology requires much larger areas than conventional fossil fuel plants to generate the same amount of electricity. An emerging solution to save space is to float the panels on bodies of water: floatovoltaics. Scientists believe this new approach could help solar energy to scale globally and fight climate change, but its environmental impacts are largely unexplored….

2022-11-27. Giant Wind Farms Arise Off Scotland, Easing the Pain of Oil’s Decline. [https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/27/business/scotland-wind-farms-offshore.html] By Stanley Reed, The New York Times. Excerpt: It was a regular workday for these employees and contractors of a Scottish utility, SSE, and its partners, which operate the vast Beatrice wind farm off the northern tip of Great Britain. …Mr. Larter also considers himself fortunate to have signed onto a business that is growing as Europe seeks to replace oil and gas, whose production has been a mainstay of this part of Scotland, with cleaner energy. …These initiatives are attractive to investors and lawmakers because they produce enormous amounts of clean energy and can be placed far enough from shore that they are largely out of sight. Britain is already generating more than 10 percent of its electricity from wind at sea, and on some gusty days, like Nov. 2, wind produces more than half. As energy security becomes a critical issue in wake of Russia’s war in Ukraine, the country aspires to nearly quadruple offshore capacity over the next decade. …skepticism about the future of fossil fuels remains strong in Britain and much of Europe, and the numbers tell a story of decline. After reaching a peak in 2014, investment in oil and gas in Britain plummeted by about three-quarters to around £3.7 billion last year, according to Offshore Energies UK, an industry group. Jobs supported by the business have fallen by more than half over roughly a decade, to around 200,000….

2022-11-10. Solar Energy Gets Flexible. [https://www.science.org/content/article/ultrathin-organic-solar-cells-could-turn-buildings-power-generators] By Robert F. Service, Science Magazine. Excerpt: In November 2021, while the municipal utility in Marburg, Germany, was performing scheduled maintenance on a hot water storage facility, engineers glued 18 solar panels to the outside of the main 10-meter-high cylindrical tank. It’s not the typical home for solar panels, most of which are flat, rigid silicon and glass rectangles arrayed on rooftops or in solar parks. The Marburg facility’s panels, by contrast, are ultrathin organic films made by Heliatek, a German solar company. In the past few years, Heliatek has mounted its flexible panels on the sides of office towers, the curved roofs of bus stops, and even the cylindrical shaft of an 80-meter-tall windmill. The goal: expanding solar power’s reach beyond flat land. “There is a huge market where classical photovoltaics do not work,” says Jan Birnstock, Heliatek’s chief technical officer. Organic photovoltaics (OPVs) such as Heliatek’s are more than 10 times lighter than silicon panels and in some cases cost just half as much to produce. Some are even transparent, which has architects envisioning solar panels not just on rooftops, but incorporated into building facades, windows, and even indoor spaces. “We want to change every building into an electricity-generating building,” Birnstock says. Heliatek’s panels are among the few OPVs in practical use, and they convert about 9% of the energy in sunlight to electricity. But in recent years, researchers around the globe have come up with new materials and designs that, in small, labmade prototypes, have reached efficiencies of nearly 20%, approaching silicon and alternative inorganic thin-film solar cells….

2022-11-10. Carbon Dioxide Emissions Increased in 2022 as Crises Roiled Energy Markets. [https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/10/climate/carbon-dioxide-emissions-global-warming.html] By Brad Plumer, The New York Times. Excerpt: Global fossil fuel emissions will most likely reach record highs in 2022 and do not yet show signs of declining, researchers said Thursday, a trend that puts countries further away from their goal of stopping global warming. This year, nations are projected to emit roughly 36.6 billion tons of planet-warming carbon dioxide by burning coal, natural gas and oil for energy, according to new data from the Global Carbon Project. That’s 1 percent more than the world emitted in 2021 and slightly more than the previous record in 2019, which came before the coronavirus pandemic caused a temporary drop in global energy use and emissions. The findings were released at the United Nations climate change summit in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, where world leaders have gathered to discuss how to avert catastrophic levels of warming. Scientists have warned that the world as a whole will need to stop adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by around midcentury in order to stabilize global temperatures and minimize the risks from deadly heat waves, sea-level rise and ecosystem collapse….

2022-10-19. Space-based solar power is getting serious—can it solve Earth’s energy woes?. [https://www.science.org/content/article/space-based-solar-power-getting-serious-can-it-solve-earth-s-energy-woes] By Daniel Clery, Science Magazine. Excerpt: Late last month in Munich, engineers at the European aerospace firm Airbus showed off what might be the future of clean energy. They collected sunlight with solar panels, transformed it into microwaves, and beamed the energy across an aircraft hangar, where it was turned back to electricity that, among other things, lit up a model of a city. The demo delivered just 2 kilowatts over 36 meters, but it raised a serious question: Is it time to resurrect a scheme long derided as science fiction and launch giant satellites to collect solar energy in space? In a high orbit, liberated from clouds and nighttime, they could generate power 24 hours a day and beam it down to Earth. …Private space company SpaceX has made the notion seem less outlandish. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lofts cargo at about $2600 per kilogram—less than 5% of what it cost on the Space Shuttle—and the company promises rates of just $10 per kilogram on its gigantic Starship, due for its first launch this year.…

2022-10-15. The great hydrogen gamble: hot air or net zero’s holy grail?. [https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/oct/15/the-great-hydrogen-gamble-hot-air-or-net-zeros-holy-grail] By Alex Lawson, The Guardian. Excerpt: …Companies including Cadent, National Grid, Centrica and boiler maker Worcester Bosch joined Bamford’s companies Ryze Hydrogen and Wrightbus in trying to convince Labour and Conservative MPs that hydrogen, the emissionless, highly combustible gas, can be a valuable weapon in the fight against the climate crisis. …Since Jo Bamford bought bankrupt London bus maker Wrightbus in 2019, the grandson of JCB founder Joseph Cyril Bamford has bet big on hydrogen. It has won several taxpayer-funded contracts for green transport, including an £11.2m deal to develop hydrogen fuel cell technology in Northern Ireland. Last year, he launched HyCap, a £1bn investment fund designed to back hydrogen specialists from producers to fuelling stations and transport firms. …Hydrogen is seen as a transition fuel to a future powered by renewables such as wind and solar, allowing existing gas pipes to be used to pump the gas. “Green” hydrogen is produced by splitting water using electricity from renewables, with minimal emissions. However, detractors argue that creating green hydrogen for home heating is six times less energy efficient than using heat pumps powered by electricity. Meanwhile, “blue” methods to produce the gas from fossil fuels require the carbon dioxide released to be captured and stored to prevent emissions. However, this relies on the success of the unproven carbon-capture and storage industry, which is in its infancy. Last year, the chief executive of the hydrogen lobby group quit, saying he could no longer lead an association that included oil firms backing blue hydrogen projects, because the schemes were “not sustainable” and “make no sense at all”.…

2022-10-06. Solar and wind farms can hurt the environment. A new study offers solutions. [https://www.latimes.com/environment/newsletter/2022-10-06/solar-and-wind-farms-can-hurt-the-environment-a-new-study-offers-solutions-boiling-point] By Sammy Roth, Los Angeles Times. Excerpt: …would you be willing to pay 3% more on your energy bills to protect the natural world? I didn’t pluck that number out of thin air. It comes from a new study by the Nature Conservancy, an environmental advocacy group, finding the American West can generate enough renewable power to tackle climate change even if some of its most ecologically valuable landscapes are placed off-limits to solar and wind farms — without causing costs to spiral out of control….

2022-10-05. What Does Sustainable Living Look Like? Maybe Like Uruguay. [https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/05/magazine/uruguay-renewable-energy.html] By Noah Gallagher Shannon, The New York Times. Excerpt: No greater challenge faces humanity than reducing emissions without backsliding into preindustrial poverty. One tiny country is leading the way.…

2022-09-21. Are There Better Places to Put Large Solar Farms Than These Forests? [https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/21/opinion/environment/solar-panels-virginia-climate-change.html] New York Times opinion piece by Gabriel Popkin. Excerpt: CHARLOTTE COURT HOUSE, Va. — In Charlotte County, population 11,448, forests and farms slope gently toward pretty little streams. The Roanoke River, whose floodplain includes one of the most ecologically valuable and intact forests in the Mid-Atlantic, forms the county’s southwestern border. On a recent driving tour, a local conservationist, P.K. Pettus, told me she’s already grieving the eventual loss of much of this beautiful landscape. The Randolph Solar Project, a 4,500-acre project that will take out some 3,500 acres of forest during construction, was approved in July to join at least five other solar farms built or planned here thanks to several huge transmission lines that crisscross the county. When built, it will become one of the largest solar installations east of the Rocky Mountains. Although she is all for clean energy, Ms. Pettus opposed the project’s immense size, fearing it will destroy forests, disrupt soil and pollute streams and rivers in the place she calls home. “I was so excited and hoped to see solar canopies over parking lots, solar panels on rooftops, solar panels on big box stores” after Virginia passed a 2020 law requiring the elimination of fossil fuels from its power sector by 2050, Ms. Pettus says. “I never dreamed it would involve so much deforestation and grading in a place I deeply care about.” The conflict Ms. Pettus described is becoming increasingly common in rural Virginia, where a recent boom in solar farm construction has given many people pause.…

2022-09-15. Facing Budget Shortfalls, These Schools Are Turning to the Sun. [https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/15/climate/solar-energy-school-funding.html] By Cara Buckley, The New York Times. Excerpt: One school district was able to give pay raises to its teachers as big as 30 percent. Another bought new heating and ventilation systems, all the better to help students and educators breathe easier in these times. The improvements didn’t cost taxpayers a cent, and were paid for by an endlessly renewable source — the sun. As solar energy gains traction across the country, one beneficiary have been schools, particularly those in cash-strapped districts contending with dwindling tax bases. From New Jersey to California, nearly one in 10 K-12 public and private schools across the country were using solar energy by early 2022, according to data released Thursday by Generation180, a nonprofit that promotes and tracks clean energy. That’s twice as many as existed in 2015. The savings in electric bills from schools with solar panels often topped millions in each district, and many have been able to adopt the technology without shouldering any costs up front.…

2022-09-15. Ethereum cryptocurrency completes move to cut CO₂ output by 99%. [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/sep/15/ethereum-cryptocurrency-completes-move-to-cut-co2-output-by-99] By Dan Milmo, The Guardian. Excerpt: Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency, has completed a plan to reduce its carbon emissions by more than 99%. The software upgrade, known as “the merge”, will change how transactions are managed on the ethereum blockchain, a public and decentralised ledger that underpins the cryptocurrency and generates ether tokens, the world’s most popular cryptocurrency after bitcoin. …The move means that ethereum will no longer be created by an energy intensive process known as “mining”, where banks of computers generate random numbers that validate transactions on the blockchain and generate new ether tokens as part of the process. The process, known as “proof of work” in the cryptocurrency world, will now move to a “proof of stake” system, where individuals and companies act as validators, pledging or “staking” their own ether as a form of guarantee, to win newly created tokens. …Ethereum mining used up as much electricity as Austria, according to the Digiconomist website, at 72 terawatt-hours a year. Alex de Vries, the economist behind the website, estimates that the merge will reduce the carbon emissions linked to ethereum by more than 99%. De Vries added that the move could represent 0.2% of the world’s electricity consumption disappearing overnight. However, he said bitcoin remained the biggest single contributor to the crypto world’s carbon footprint. “All eyes will be on bitcoin. It remains the largest polluter in the crypto space. Even today bitcoin is responsible for as much electricity consumption as Sweden. And we know that’s not going to change,” said De Vries.…

2022-09-07. Clean Energy Projects Surge After Climate Bill Passage. [https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/07/business/energy-environment/clean-energy-climate-bill.html] By Jack Ewing and Ivan Penn, The New York Times. Excerpt: In the weeks since President Biden signed a comprehensive climate bill devised to spur investment in electric cars and clean energy, corporations have announced a series of big-ticket projects to produce the kind of technology the legislation aims to promote. Toyota said it would invest an additional $2.5 billion in a factory in North Carolina to produce batteries for electric cars and hybrids. Honda and LG Energy Solution announced a joint venture to build a $4.4 billion battery factory at a location to be named. …At a time of economic uncertainty, the legislation gives companies more confidence that they can earn a return on their bets. The investments serve as affirmation of political leaders’ intent: to further accelerate America’s transition away from fossil fuels and to reduce dependence on foreign suppliers, especially those in China.…

2022-09-06. Out of thin air: new solar-powered invention creates hydrogen fuel from the atmosphere. [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/07/out-of-thin-air-new-solar-powered-invention-creates-hydrogen-fuel-from-the-atmosphere] By Donna Lu, The Guardian. Excerpt: Researchers have created a solar-powered device that produces hydrogen fuel directly from moisture in the air. According to its inventors, the prototype produces hydrogen with greater than 99% purity and can work in air that is as dry as 4% relative humidity. The device would allow hydrogen to be produced without carbon emissions even in regions where water on land is scarce, they say. Hydrogen is a zero-carbon fuel that yields only water as a byproduct when combusted. However, pure hydrogen is not abundant in nature and producing it requires energy input. Large-scale production commonly involves fossil fuels that generate carbon emissions. The study’s lead author and a senior lecturer in chemical engineering at the University of Melbourne, Dr Gang Kevin Li, said the hydrogen-producing device could be powered by solar or wind energy.…

2022-08-31. California Installing Huge Solar Panels Over Canals to Combat Drought
[https://futurism.com/the-byte/california-installing-huge-solar-panels-over-canals] By Victor Tangerman, The Futurist. Excerpt: Canal Shade California is spending $20 million on a pilot project that will involve 8,500 feet of solar panels being installed over sections of important water sources, including canals — a futuristic effort to fight a devastating drought hitting California this summer. The idea is simple. The massive panels, to be installed over the Turlock Irrigation District (TID) in central California by the end of next year, are intended to stop dwindling water reserves from evaporating too quickly and forming vegetative growth — while simultaneously providing renewable energy for the local grid. …The TID is citing a 2021 study which found that shading 4,000 miles of public water delivery systems with solar panels could save approximately 63 billion gallons of water a year. That’s enough to meet the demands of more than two million people, according to the organization. The solar panels themselves would generate enough energy to represent “one-sixth of the state’s current installed capacity,” according to TID’s website.…

2022-08-04. Where the Clean Energy Jobs Are: 2022. [https://climatenexus.org/climate-issues/energy/clean-energy-jobs-2022/] By ClimateNexus. Excerpt: At the end of 2021, over 3.3 million people worked in wind, solar, efficiency and other clean energy fields, according to the Energy Department’s 2022 U.S. Energy & Employment Report, which uses data from 2021. That’s more than the number of people employed as registered nurses. Like many industries, the energy sector has been hit hard by the COVID-19 crisis, but is experiencing a strong recovery. Energy sector jobs last year grew 4 percent over 2020, while overall U.S. employment only grew 2.8 percent year-to-year. The clean energy sector experienced especially high growth: jobs in net-zero aligned sectors made up nearly 40 percent of total energy jobs in 2021, and emissions-reducing vehicle manufacturing grew 25 percent between 2020 and 2021. Meanwhile, fossil fuel jobs continue to decline, with the coal sector seeing job losses of nearly 12 percent. The continued decline in fossil energy jobs underscores the importance of investing in clean energy jobs and economic diversification in communities historically dependent on fossil fuels. Even as they laid off thousands of American workers, oil and gas CEOs made record profits.…

2022-07-05. Green hydrogen storage system project launched on NREL Colorado campus. [https://www.energy-storage.news/green-hydrogen-storage-system-project-launched-on-nrel-colorado-campus/] By Cameron Murray, Energy Storage News. Excerpt: Hydrogen storage company GKN Hydrogen, gas utility SoCalGas and the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory are collaborating on a new green hydrogen storage solution. The three will work together to deploy two of GKN’s ‘HY2MEGA’ green hydrogen storage subsystems on NREL’s Flatirons Campus in Colorado, US. They will connect to an existing electrolyser and fuel cell at the ARIES (Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems) facility at Flatirons. The electrolyser will use renewable energy sources, possibly wind based on photos provided in the press release, to produce hydrogen for storage in GKN’s storage solution. HY2MEGA stores hydrogen in a solid state under low pressure, which can then be converted to produce electricity. The two systems will store a total of 500kgs of hydrogen on-site and GKN said its solution can enable long duration clean energy storage, providing resilient power in case of widespread outages. The three-year project is set to launch by the end of 2022. …“This project is exactly what the ARIES platform was designed for: demonstrate the benefits of a new technology that efficiently stores energy produced from renewable electricity,” said Katherine Hurst, group manager and research scientist at NREL. “It brings together a national laboratory, a clean energy technology developer, and a large utility to work on solutions that help decarbonize the power grid.”.…

2022-06-28. Can Dual-Use Solar Panels Provide Power and Share Space With Crops?. [https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/28/business/dual-use-solar-panels-agrivoltaics-blue-wave-power.html] By Ellen Rosen. The New York Times. Excerpt: In its 150-year history, Paul Knowlton’s farm in Grafton, Mass., has produced vegetables, dairy products and, most recently, hay. The evolution of the farm’s use turned on changing markets and a variable climate. Recently, however, Mr. Knowlton added a new type of cash crop: solar power. …He had already installed solar panels to provide electricity for his home and barn. When a real estate agent came knocking to see if he was interested in leasing a small portion of his land for a solar array, “she planted the seed that I could do more,” Mr. Knowlton said. …Soon, two small parcels of largely unused land were home to low-to-the-ground panels that produce power. This year, Mr. Knowlton’s farm will go one step further: In a third parcel, solar panels will share space with crops so that both can thrive. This approach is called agrivoltaics — a portmanteau of agriculture and voltaic cells, which transform solar power to electrical power. Also called dual-use solar, the technology involves adjusting the height of solar panels to as much as 14 feet, as well as adjusting the spacing between them, to accommodate equipment, workers, crops and grazing animals. The spacing and the angle of the panels allows light to reach the plants below, and has the added benefit of shielding those crops from extreme heat.…

2022-05-17. Michael Bloomberg Plans a $242 Million Investment in Clean Energy. By Maggie Astor, The New York Times. Excerpt: Michael R. Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City, will announce a $242 million effort on Tuesday to promote clean energy in 10 developing countries. The investment is part of Mr. Bloomberg’s push, announced last year, to shut down coal production in 25 countries and builds on his $500 million campaign to close every coal-fired power plant in the United States. The announcement is tied to a gathering this week in Rwanda hosted by Sustainable Energy for All, an international group working to increase access to electricity in the global south. The money will fund programs in Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Pakistan, South Africa, Turkey and Vietnam.… [https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/17/climate/michael-bloomberg-climate-coal.html]

2022-05-13. Lithium Valley: Imperial County big winner in California budget revision. By Janet Wilson, Palm Springs Desert Sun. Excerpt: California Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to add up to $400 million to the 2022-23 budget to accelerate development of a potential huge global supply of lithium and clean energy at the south end of the Salton Sea, …. “Lithium Valley represents an extraordinary economic opportunity for the Imperial Valley and all of California, with the potential to power the transition to clean energy and zero-emission vehicles nationwide — and beyond,” Newsom said. “We’re doubling down on our progress with new investments to develop Lithium Valley while keeping our values of inclusive, green growth and sustainability front and center to ensure communities in the region share in the benefits.” …President Joe Biden and U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, along with Newsom, have in recent months promoted the little known portion of the state as a major potential provider of global and domestic lithium and clean energy supply.… [https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/environment/2022/05/13/lithium-valley-imperial-county-big-winner-california-budget-revision/9752840002/]

2022-05-06. Hawaii Legislature Calls For Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. By Andrea Germanos, Common Dreams. Excerpt: Hawaii lawmakers put the state on the path to making history after the Legislature passed a resolution Thursday endorsing a document called the “Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty.” “Hawaii has reminded the world of the climate leadership and spirit communities throughout the Pacific have embodied for decades by calling for the immediate phaseout fossil fuels and… a just transition to ensure the survival and continued flourishing of our peoples and our planet for generations to come,” said Auimatagi Joe Moeono-Kolio, a campaigner with the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative. …Senate Concurrent Resolution 108, introduced by state Sen. Karl Rhoads (D-13), passed the upper chamber Thursday after clearing the House last month. The measure affirms Hawaii’s commitment to the Paris Climate Agreement, the United Nations Sustainable Development goals, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s targets for greenhouse gas reductions. …Launched in 2020, the treaty initiative is grounded in three pillars, the first of which is immediately ending all new exploration and production of oil, gas, and coal. At the same time, existing fossil fuel production must be phased out in line with the Paris agreement’s 1.5°C threshold for warming, with wealthier nations leading the effort. The third pillar calls for a “peaceful and just transition” to a renewable energy system that provides “real solutions… for every worker, community, and country.”.… [https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/05/06/hawaii-legislature-calls-fossil-fuel-non-proliferation-treaty]

2022-05-02. The west can cut its energy dependency on Russia and be greener. By Jeffrey Frankel, The Guardian. Excerpt: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has amplified the importance of national-security considerations in western countries’ energy policies. At the same time, governments must continue to focus on reducing environmental damage – in particular, on cutting greenhouse-gas emissions. Both goals, geopolitical and environmental, are urgent and should be evaluated together.  These two objectives are not necessarily in conflict, as some believe. There are plenty of energy measures the west can adopt that would benefit the environment and further its geopolitical aims. The most obvious steps, especially for the European Union, are sanctions that reduce demand for imports of fossil fuels from Russia. …governments should not prolong the life of coal and should withdraw coal subsidies. The International Monetary Fund has estimated that global energy subsidies (including for oil and natural gas, as well as coal), at either the producer or consumer end, exceed $5tn a year. Direct US fossil-fuel subsidies alone have been conservatively estimated at $20bn annually.… [https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/may/02/west-energy-depencency-russia-green-ukraine-war]

2022-04-13. ‘Thermal batteries’ could efficiently store wind and solar power in a renewable grid. By Robert F. Service, Science Magazine. Excerpt: How do you bottle renewable energy for when the Sun doesn’t shine and the wind won’t blow? …Massive battery banks are one answer. …Another strategy is to use surplus energy to heat a large mass of material to ultrahigh temperatures, then tap the energy as needed. This week, researchers report a major improvement in a key part of that scheme: a device for turning the stored heat back into electricity. A team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory achieved a nearly 30% jump in the efficiency of a thermophotovoltaic (TPV), a semiconductor structure that converts photons emitted from a heat source to electricity, just as a solar cell transforms sunlight into power. …The idea is to feed surplus wind or solar electricity to a heating element, which boosts the temperature of a liquid metal bath or a graphite block to several thousand degrees. …TPVs …Funnel the stored heat to a metal film or filament, setting it aglow like the tungsten wire in an incandescent light bulb, then use TPVs to absorb the emitted light and turn it to electricity. …With researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, [Asegun] Henry’s team laid down more than two dozen thin layers of different semiconductors to create two separate cells stacked one on top of another. The top cell absorbs mostly visible and ultraviolet photons, whereas the lower cell absorbs mostly infrared. A thin gold sheet under the bottom cell reflects low-energy photons the TPVs couldn’t harvest. The tungsten reabsorbs that energy, preventing it from being lost. The result, the group reports today in Nature, is a TPV tandem that converts 41.1% of the energy emitted from a 2400°C tungsten filament to electricity.… [https://www.science.org/content/article/thermal-batteries-could-efficiently-store-wind-and-solar-power-renewable-grid]

2022-04-10. Wind Energy Company to Pay $8 Million in Killings of 150 Eagles. By Eduardo Medina, The New York Times. Excerpt: A wind energy company pleaded guilty last week to killing at least 150 eagles at its wind farms and was ordered to pay $8 million in fines and restitution, federal prosecutors said. …ESI [Energy] acknowledged that at least 150 bald and golden eagles had died at its facilities since 2012, and that 136 of those deaths were “affirmatively determined to be attributable to the eagle being struck by a wind turbine blade,” the Justice Department said in a statement. …The company agreed to spend up to $27 million on measures to “minimize additional eagle deaths and injuries,” prosecutors said. …The case comes as the bald eagle, the nation’s symbol whose resurgence is considered one of the greatest conservation stories of the 21st century, faces a new threat: lead poisoning. All but a few hundred bald eagles were presumed dead by the mid-20th century, killed off largely by the widespread use of the synthetic insecticide DDT. A ban on DDT in 1972 and conservation efforts helped the population to rebound. The bald eagle was removed from Endangered Species Act protection in 2007 and its estimated population grew to 316,700 by 2019. …A 2013 study found that between 140,000 and 328,000 birds are killed each year in the United States at monopole turbines. …Roberto Albertani, a professor of mechanical engineering at Oregon State University, said in 2017 that he and his team had devised a system …using cameras to determine if the birds were approaching the blades, triggering on-the-ground inflatable tubes, or “wind dancer” figures, like those often seen at car dealerships, to scare the birds away, Professor Albertani said in a presentation last year. Eagles appear to be “annoyed by anthropomorphic figures,” he said. Professor Ponder said some researchers were looking into using audio signals to keep the birds away from turbines… [https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/10/us/bald-eages-dead-wind-farms.html]

2022-03-28. Solar Cookers International at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) Forum. [Youtube video] By Solar Cookers International. Excerpt: …Approximately 2.6 billion people cook over open fires around the globe and women and girls carry the greatest burdens of this cooking method. Gathering fuel and cooking over open fires increases the risks of rape, premature deaths, burns, and disability. Solar cooking frees women from those burdens with an affordable, healthy, sustainable, off-grid solution. SCI advocates for the adoption of solar cooking to empower women and their families to live healthier and more sustainable lives while alleviating climate change.… [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccZR9Np3vWI]

2022-03-16. A high-performance capillary-fed electrolysis cell promises more cost-competitive renewable hydrogen. By Aaron Hodges et al, Nature Communications. Abstract: Renewable, or green, hydrogen will play a critical role in the decarbonisation of hard-to-abate sectors and will therefore be important in limiting global warming. However, renewable hydrogen is not cost-competitive with fossil fuels, due to the moderate energy efficiency and high capital costs of traditional water electrolysers. Here a unique concept of water electrolysis is introduced, wherein water is supplied to hydrogen- and oxygen-evolving electrodes via capillary-induced transport along a porous inter-electrode separator, leading to inherently bubble-free operation at the electrodes. An alkaline capillary-fed electrolysis cell of this type demonstrates water electrolysis performance exceeding commercial electrolysis cells, with a cell voltage at 0.5 A cm⁻² and 85 °C of only 1.51 V, equating to 98% energy efficiency, with an energy consumption of 40.4 kWh/kg hydrogen (vs. ~47.5 kWh/kg in commercial electrolysis cells). High energy efficiency, combined with the promise of a simplified balance-of-plant, brings cost-competitive renewable hydrogen closer to reality.… [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-28953-x]

2022-03-08. The largest remaining tall-grass prairie in Texas is getting solar panels. Environmentalists can’t stop it. By Mary Beth Gahan, The Washington Post. Excerpt: A solar facility on a 3,594-acre tract of land has environmental groups searching for a way to save what they consider a living museum …“We recognize the importance of this native prairie ecosystem,” said Daniel Willard, a biodiversity specialist at Orsted. “One of the best ways to protect biodiversity is the development of clean energy, and we are taking several steps to ensure that development is done in balance with nature.”… [https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2022/03/08/texas-prairie-solar-panels-climate-change]

2022-03-01. Forecast for Solar Power Boom: Sunny and Bright. By Nathanael Greene, Nature’s Voice (NRDC). Excerpt: Clean power just keeps winning in the marketplace. According to the federal Energy Administration, wind and solar made up 62 percent of new electric generating capacity in 2019, and 76 percent in 2020. The reason is clear…wind and solar are simply less expensive than dirty fossil fuels. And costs for wind, solar, and battery technologies continue to fall. …In 2021 more than 10,000 megawatts of utility-scale solar projects came online—triple the amount just five years before. …here’s more good news: the Energy Department also found that the disturbed lands that are suitable for solar use—that is, lands denuded or contaminated by prior use, impacted by invasive species, or good for rooftop solar—are about eight times what is needed to decarbonize the whole country…. [https://issuu.com/nrdc/docs/naturesvoice-spring-2022]

2022-02-20. A year after Texas cold spell, study shows renewable energy could help prevent blackouts. By Kasha Patel, The Washington Post. Excerpt: …a recent study shows that electricity blackouts can be avoided across the nation — perhaps even during intense weather events — by switching to 100 percent clean and renewable energy, such as solar, wind and water.[https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/02/20/texas-energy-winter-renewable-jacobson-dessler-rogan]

2022-01-27. Gas stoves in kitchens pose a risk to public health and the planet, research finds. By Maxine Joselow, The Washington Post. Excerpt: Gas-burning stoves in kitchens across America may pose a greater risk to the planet and public health than previously thought, new research suggests. The appliances release far more of the potent planet-warming gas methane than the Environmental Protection Agency estimates, Stanford University scientistsfound in a study published Thursday in the journal Environmental Science and Technology. The appliances also emit significant amounts of nitrogen dioxide, a pollutant that can trigger asthma and other respiratory conditions. Scientists and climate activistshave increasingly urged homeowners to switch to all-electric stoves, water boilers and other appliances, even as the natural gas industry fights in New York and across the country to keep the signature blue flames of gas-burning stovesas a staple in American homes.… [https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/01/27/gas-stoves-kitchens-pose-risk-public-health-planet-research-finds]

2022-01-24. Science Off the Seashore. By Heather Goss, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: In January 2021, the United Nations launched the Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. The initiative encourages partner nations to fund scientific research that “achieves the ocean we want by 2030.” …Ocean thermal energy conversion is a fairly simple concept that could help island nations find independence from fossil fuels, but it’s suffering from the “innovation valley of death.” Read more about the potential of this ocean-based power source…. …The deep-sea mining industry is impatiently waiting for international regulators to take the leash off so they can begin collection of the rare earth elements waiting on the floor of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone in the Pacific. We report on the stakes that are all going to become clear in less than 2 years—for the ocean ecosystems, for the investors in deep-sea mining, and for the renewable energy tech that currently depends on these resources…. [https://eos.org/agu-news/science-off-the-seashore]

2022-01-20. Superstores can meet half their electricity needs with rooftop solar, says a new report. By Tik Root, The Washington Post. Excerpt: From Walmart to Ikea, a report finds that the rooftops of big-box stores offer enough solar potential to power the equivalent of 8 million American homes.… [https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2022/01/20/superstores-can-meet-half-their-electricity-needs-with-rooftop-solar-says-new-report/]

2022-01-04. These homes are off-grid and climate resilient. They’re also built out of trash. By Nick Aspinwall, The Washington Post. Excerpt: Earthships originally spawned from the arid climate of Taos, maximizing abundant sunlight while squeezing whatever they can from about eight inches of annual rainfall. Each Earthship shares a set of core organs such as a water organization module, which filters and separates water as it moves throughout the house. In the Earthship ecosystem, water is first used for drinking, showering and hand washing before moving to interior plants, such as fig and banana trees, along with hanging gardens of herbs and flowers. The resulting “gray water” is used to fertilize ornamental outdoor plants and can be safely released into the groundwater supply or used in the toilet, from which “black water” is flushed into a septic tank. …Another module controls solar power, which is used primarily for lights and appliances. Earthships use about one-sixth as much power as a conventional house. “You take care of it, it’ll take care of you,” Albury said. “It’s very symbiotic.” A typical Earthship can produce 25 to 50 percent of the food its residents need, .… [https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2022/01/04/earthship-houses-climate-change/]

2022-01-03. As U.S. moves toward solar energy, this roofing company hopes ‘solar shingles’ will get homeowners to buy in. By Tik Root, The Washington Post. Excerpt: Thousands of Americans install solar energy systems on their roofs each year. Most commonly, that means solar panels mounted on racks, but another option may become more accessible: solar shingles. Starting Monday, one of the largest roofing companies in the United States will be selling a new solar shingle product. The aim is to drive the cost of installation down and the rate of solar adoption up. …The goal is to lower the cost of rooftop solar by combining roofing and solar installation, said DeBono, …. His traditional roof, he said, cost around $28,000, and the solar panels he installed would be around $24,000, for a total price tag of around $52,000, or about $44,000 after rebates and incentives…. In comparison, he estimated a GAF Energy solar roof would cost approximately $42,000 and drop to around $30,000 after incentives, saving about $14,000. …Rooftop solar on small buildings could theoretically meet a quarter of electricity demand in the United States, a 2016 assessment from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory found. But putting efficient, durable and eye-pleasing solar panels on roofs at a reasonable cost hasn’t been easy. According to the Solar Energy Industry Association, less than 3 percent of single-family homes have any type of solar system installed.… [https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2022/01/03/solar-energy-roof-shingles-climate/] See also CNBC article, Roofing giant takes on Tesla to make solar roof shingles more affordable.

2022-01-04. These homes are off-grid and climate resilient. They’re also built out of trash. By Nick Aspinwall, The Washington Post. Excerpt: Earthships are off-grid, self-reliant houses built from tires, dirt and garbage that have long been an offbeat curiosity for travelers passing by the ski town of Taos, but suddenly look like a haven for climate doomers. Residents of the 630-acre flagship Earthship community treat their own waste, collect their own water, grow their own food, and regulate their own temperature by relying on the sun, rain and earth, which Reynolds and other adherents call natural “phenomena.” At this Earthship community in New Mexico, renters can give sustainable living a try. Reynolds, 76, has been building these structures — he calls them “vessels” — since the early 1970s when, after graduating from architecture school at the University of Cincinnati, he took up off-road motorcycle racing on the high desert plateau around Taos to try to injure himself to avoid being drafted to the Vietnam War. He never left, attracting interest and eyerolls as dozens of Earthships arose from the dirt.… [https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2022/01/04/earthship-houses-climate-change/]

2022-01-02. Coming Soon to This Coal County: Solar, in a Big Way. By Cara Buckley, The New York Times. Excerpt: MARTIN COUNTY, Ky. — In Martin County, Ky., where coal production has flatlined, entrepreneurs are promising that a new solar farm atop a shuttered mine will bring green energy jobs. …For a mountain that’s had its top blown off, the old Martiki coal mine is looking especially winsome these days. With its vast stretches of emerald grass dotted with hay bales and ringed with blue-tinged peaks, and the wild horses and cattle that roam there, it looks less like a shuttered strip mine and more like an ad for organic milk. The mountain is poised for another transformation. Hundreds of acres are set to be blanketed with solar panels in the coming year, installed by locals, many of them former miners. The $231 million project, which recently cleared its last regulatory hurdle, may well be the biggest utility-scale coal to solar project in the country.… [https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/02/climate/coal-mines-solar-climate.html]