Browsed by
Category: Renewable energy

A nickel rush threatens Indonesia’s last nomadic tribes and its forests, fishermen and farmers

A nickel rush threatens Indonesia’s last nomadic tribes and its forests, fishermen and farmers

Garry Lotulung writes: Deep in the backcountry here, Sumean Gebe, 42, lives with Bede Yuli, 39, and his two children in the forest around Dodaga Village, about four hours by road from the capital of North Maluku Province. Every so often, they’ll move to a different forest. “We have been like this since we were little,” he said. “Usually we will make a bivouac [a temporary shelter] with a roof of palm leaves and tarpaulin. We are comfortable living there.”…

Read More Read More

Hyundai is becoming the new Tesla

Hyundai is becoming the new Tesla

Patrick George writes: Hyundai has a lot riding on a patch of rural Georgia. In October, the South Korean auto giant opened a new electric-vehicle factory west of Savannah at the eye-watering cost of $7.6 billion. It’s the largest economic-development project in the state’s history (one that prompted the Georgia statehouse to pass a resolution recognizing “Hyundai Day”). For now, workers at the so-called Metaplant are building the company’s popular electric SUV, the Hyundai Ioniq 5, and soon more EVs will be built there, too….

Read More Read More

How the renewable energy boom is remaking the American West

How the renewable energy boom is remaking the American West

Inside Climate News reports: Local conservationist Patrick Donnelly drove east along the Loneliest Road in America, a ribbon of pavement in north central Nevada that deserves its name. Before him, sprawling in every direction, was a green-gray sagebrush basin so large you could probably plop Las Vegas in it and still have room to spare. Save for a stiff wind and the occasional cow bleat, a heavy silence sat on the valley. Not much moved aside from skittish grouse and…

Read More Read More

How solar microgrids are bringing power (and quiet) to North Carolina

How solar microgrids are bringing power (and quiet) to North Carolina

Energy News Network reports: Seventeen days after Hurricane Helene devastated Western North Carolina, tearing down power lines, destroying water mains, and disabling cell phone towers, the signs of relief were hard to miss. Trucks formed a caravan along Interstate 40, filled with camouflaged soldiers, large square tanks of water, and essentials from pet food to diapers. In towns, roadside signs — official versions emblazoned with nonprofit relief logos and wooden makeshift ones scrawled with paint — advertised free food and…

Read More Read More

Half of U.S. solar capacity came during Biden administration

Half of U.S. solar capacity came during Biden administration

Semafor reports: Solar energy in the US is cheaper and more widespread than ever. At Semafor’s World Economy Summit in Washington, DC, Friday, the White House’s top climate advisor Ali Zaidi said, “Half of the solar installed in the United States [was] installed in the Biden-Harris Administration,” which aligns with a report by the clean energy nonprofit Solar Energy Industries Association. Solar energy is also becoming cheaper, according to Boston-based clean energy company EnergySage. During the first half of 2024,…

Read More Read More

Trump’s obsession with oil could destroy America’s auto industry

Trump’s obsession with oil could destroy America’s auto industry

Robinson Meyer writes: There is a curious cognitive dissonance in how a lot of us think about the last decade’s climate policies and this decade’s economic problems. During the final years of the 2010s, the Trump administration proudly tore up dozens of policies meant to lower American greenhouse gas emissions and build a competitive domestic clean energy industry. It prioritized oil, coal and natural gas businesses over wind, solar and batteries, and as president, Donald Trump often seemed to revel in picking…

Read More Read More

‘Massive disinformation campaign’ is slowing global transition to green energy

‘Massive disinformation campaign’ is slowing global transition to green energy

The Guardian reports: Fossil fuel companies are running “a massive mis- and disinformation campaign” so that countries will slow down the adoption of renewable energy and the speed with which they “transition away” from a carbon-intensive economy, the UN has said. Selwin Hart, the assistant secretary general of the UN, said that talk of a global “backlash” against climate action was being stoked by the fossil fuel industry, in an effort to persuade world leaders to delay emissions-cutting policies. The…

Read More Read More

AI supercharges data center energy use – straining the grid and slowing sustainability efforts

AI supercharges data center energy use – straining the grid and slowing sustainability efforts

A data center in Ashburn, Va., the heart of so-called Data Center Alley. AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey By Ayse Coskun, Boston University The artificial intelligence boom has had such a profound effect on big tech companies that their energy consumption, and with it their carbon emissions, have surged. The spectacular success of large language models such as ChatGPT has helped fuel this growth in energy demand. At 2.9 watt-hours per ChatGPT request, AI queries require about 10 times the electricity of…

Read More Read More

California is showing how a big state can power itself without fossil fuels

California is showing how a big state can power itself without fossil fuels

Bill McKibben writes: Something approaching a miracle has been taking place in California this spring. Beginning in early March, for some portion of almost every day, a combination of solar, wind, geothermal, and hydropower has been producing more than a hundred per cent of the state’s demand for electricity. Some afternoons, solar panels alone have produced more power than the state uses. And, at night, large utility-scale batteries that have been installed during the past few years are often the…

Read More Read More

Fossil fuel companies are trying to rig the marketplace

Fossil fuel companies are trying to rig the marketplace

Andrew Dessler writes: Many of us focused on the problem of climate change have been waiting for the day when renewable energy would become cheaper than fossil fuels. Well, we’re there: Solar and wind power are less expensive than oil, gas and coal in many places and are saving our economy billions of dollars. These and other renewable energy sources produced 30 percent of the world’s electricity in 2023, which may also have been the year that greenhouse gas emissions…

Read More Read More

U.S. overhauls electric grid to make way for more renewables

U.S. overhauls electric grid to make way for more renewables

Reuters reports: The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Monday approved the first major electric transmission policy update in over a decade that aims to speed up new interregional lines to move more clean energy to meet growing demand amid the explosion of electric vehicles, data centers and artificial intelligence. Approved in a 2-1 vote, the new rule is also the first time the FERC has ever squarely addressed the need for long-term transmission planning, playing a key role in…

Read More Read More

A U.S. push to use ethanol as aviation fuel raises major climate concerns

A U.S. push to use ethanol as aviation fuel raises major climate concerns

MIT Technology Review reports: Eliminating carbon pollution from aviation is one of the most challenging parts of the climate puzzle, simply because large commercial airlines are too heavy and need too much power during takeoff for today’s batteries to do the job. But one way that companies and governments are striving to make some progress is through the use of various types of sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs), which are derived from non-petroleum sources and promise to be less polluting than…

Read More Read More

Renewables cover 56 percent of Germany electricity use in March quarter

Renewables cover 56 percent of Germany electricity use in March quarter

Renew Economy reports: Renewable energy sources covered around 56 percent of electricity consumption in Germany in the first three months of the year, according to preliminary calculations by the Centre for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Württemberg (ZSW) and utility association BDEW. “In total, renewable energy plants generated around 75.9 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity from January to March, around nine percent more than in the same period last year,” BDEW said. Onshore wind energy plants alone produced 39.4…

Read More Read More

Renewable energy shatters records in the U.S.

Renewable energy shatters records in the U.S.

E&E News reports: Renewable energy is breaking records across the U.S. Wind and solar accounted for 76 percent of electricity production in Texas’ primary power grid last Friday. The next day, New England set its own record, with 45 percent of its power coming from wind, solar and hydropower. Within the last month, grid operators have reported record solar generation in the Midwest, record wind generation in New York and record renewable generation in the mid-Atlantic, according to data collected…

Read More Read More

How China became the world’s leader on renewable energy

How China became the world’s leader on renewable energy

Isabel Hilton writes: Last November, Chinese climate envoy Xie Zhenhua and U.S. climate envoy John Kerry shook hands on a pledge to triple renewable energy globally by 2030. It was hailed as a welcome revival of climate cooperation between the world’s biggest and second-biggest emitters of greenhouse gases and offered hope that the two veteran climate negotiators had found a way through a blizzard of negative diplomatic exchanges to keep alive the prospects for greater global ambition on tackling climate…

Read More Read More

How a solar revolution in farming is depleting the world’s groundwater

How a solar revolution in farming is depleting the world’s groundwater

Fred Pearce writes: There is a solar-powered revolution going on in the fields of India. By 2026, more than 3 million farmers will be raising irrigation water from beneath their fields using solar-powered pumps. With effectively free water available in almost unlimited quantities to grow their crops, their lives could be transformed. Until the water runs out. The desert state of Rajasthan is the Indian pioneer and has more solar pumps than any other. Over the past decade, the government…

Read More Read More