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Category: Renewable energy

How Russia’s war is putting green tech progress in jeopardy

How Russia’s war is putting green tech progress in jeopardy

Paul Hockenos writes: Volkswagen might as well hang a “sold out” sign on the doors of its European and U.S. factories. The world’s second-largest manufacturer of electric automobiles announced last month that any plug-in ordered after May won’t find its way to customers’ garages before 2023. The German carmaker’s sales of nearly 100,000 battery electric models in the first quarter landed it behind only Tesla, but far from the pace needed for the 700,000 it planned to roll off its…

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Zero-emissions natural gas may be possible

Zero-emissions natural gas may be possible

Mark Harris writes: The fossil fuel industry has long touted natural gas as a “bridge fuel”—abundant and reliable, cleaner than coal, and an essential stop-gap while the world transitions to renewable power. Now it is suggesting that gas can be a zero emissions power source all by itself. Start-up NET Power has developed technology that differs from traditional power stations. It burns natural gas with oxygen instead of air and drives a turbine with high pressure carbon dioxide instead of…

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Biden, 11 U.S. states to boost support for offshore wind energy

Biden, 11 U.S. states to boost support for offshore wind energy

Reuters reports: The Biden administration is partnering with 11 East Coast states to accelerate development of offshore wind facilities and create jobs by supporting a domestic supply chain for the industry, the White House said on Thursday. The move is part of President Joe Biden’s push to fight climate change by expanding clean energy technologies. That agenda has been weighed down recently by rising prices, particularly for gasoline. Offshore wind is a major component of that strategy. The administration has…

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A detailed roadmap for cutting U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030

A detailed roadmap for cutting U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030

Inside Climate News reports: Researchers of a new peer-reviewed study say they’ve developed the “first detailed roadmap” for how the United States can achieve its ambitious climate pledge to slash the country’s greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030. It’s a critical target that, if missed, would likely jeopardize the larger global efforts to prevent devastating runaway climate change. The study, published in Science late last month by some of the nation’s leading research institutions, found that it is both…

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The war in Ukraine could eventually help save the planet

The war in Ukraine could eventually help save the planet

Tom Friedman writes: [I]f we have a year or two of astronomical gasoline and heating oil prices because of the Ukraine war, “you are going to see a massive shift in investment by mutual funds and industry into electric vehicles, grid enhancements, transmission lines and long-duration storage that could tip the whole market away from reliance on fossil fuels toward renewables,” said Tom Burke, director of E3G, Third Generation Environmentalism, the climate research group. “The Ukraine war is already forcing…

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Biden to waive tariffs for 24 months on solar panels hit by probe

Biden to waive tariffs for 24 months on solar panels hit by probe

Reuters reports: President Joe Biden will declare a 24-month tariff exemption on Monday for solar panels from four Southeast Asian nations after an investigation froze imports and stalled projects in the United States, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. The move comes amid concern about the impact of the Commerce Department’s months-long investigation into whether imports of solar panels from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam are circumventing tariffs on goods made in China. Biden’s action would allay companies’ concerns…

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The U.S.’s new record in renewables, explained in three charts

The U.S.’s new record in renewables, explained in three charts

Inside Climate News reports: To make a swift transition to a cleaner grid, the United States needs to set records for renewable electricity generation pretty much every single quarter. So far in 2022, the numbers are encouraging. From January to March, renewable energy power plants generated 242,956 gigawatt-hours, which was 23.5 percent of U.S. electricity generation, both records—an increase from 19.5 percent in the first quarter of 2021, and 20.8 percent in the full year. The growth was thanks in…

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The Supreme Court just okayed Biden’s ‘social cost of carbon’ — but it’s still way too low

The Supreme Court just okayed Biden’s ‘social cost of carbon’ — but it’s still way too low

Vox reports: The Supreme Court decided on May 26 to allow President Joe Biden’s administration to continue using a key metric in the fight against climate change. The court’s order, in refusing to put back an order from a federal judge in Louisiana that had blocked the administration, is just one line long. But it represents a big setback for the Republican-led states that have been suing the president over the metric, known as the social cost of carbon: a…

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Department of Commerce decision puts fate of U.S. solar industry in jeopardy

Department of Commerce decision puts fate of U.S. solar industry in jeopardy

George Strobel writes: On March 28, in a decision that would put the U.S. solar industry on hold, the U.S. Department of Commerce initiated an anti-dumping investigation into imports of solar cells and modules from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam in response to a petition from a small California solar panel manufacturer, Auxin Solar. The investigation could result in tariffs of up to 250% on imports from these four countries, which account for more than 80% of all U.S. solar…

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Qantas says synthetic fuel could power long flights by mid-2030s

Qantas says synthetic fuel could power long flights by mid-2030s

The Financial Times (via Inside Climate News) reports: Synthetic fuel could start replacing traditional petroleum and plant-based biofuels by as early as the mid-2030s, helping to decarbonize long-distance air travel, Australian airline Qantas has said. The Sydney-based group said so-called power-to-liquid technology—which manufactures synthetic hydrocarbon fuel by extracting carbon from the air and hydrogen from water via renewable energy before mixing them together—could prove the “nirvana” of sustainable aviation fuel. This is because it would not compete with food production…

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Will Australia become a renewable energy superpower?

Will Australia become a renewable energy superpower?

Al Jazeera reports: Australia’s election has brought in a wave of Greens and independents pushing for aggressive targets to cut carbon emissions. The election result, with the pivotal role climate change played, represents a remarkable shift for Australia, one of the world’s biggest per-capita carbon emitters and top coal and gas exporters. It was shunned at last year’s Glasgow climate summit for failing to match other rich nations’ ambitious targets. “Together we can end the climate wars,” incoming Prime Minister…

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Make electric vehicles affordable for the rest of us

Make electric vehicles affordable for the rest of us

Tamara Sheldon writes: As an environmentalist who totes kids around town, I would love to buy an electric car. But here in South Carolina, the cheapest electric vehicles (EVs) are at least three times as expensive as my used VW Jetta. What about those big government subsidies, you ask? The truth is that EV subsidies overwhelmingly benefit the rich, not moderate-income people like me. The US federal government will give you up to a $7,500 tax credit for an EV,…

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U.S. hopes to cripple Russian oil industry, officials say

U.S. hopes to cripple Russian oil industry, officials say

The New York Times reports: The Biden administration is developing plans to further choke Russia’s oil revenues with the long-term goal of destroying the country’s central role in the global energy economy, current and former U.S. officials say, a major escalatory step that could put the United States in political conflict with China, India, Turkey and other nations that buy Russian oil. The proposed measures include imposing a price cap on Russian oil, backed by so-called secondary sanctions, which would…

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EU plans ‘massive’ increase in green energy to help end reliance on Russia

EU plans ‘massive’ increase in green energy to help end reliance on Russia

The Guardian reports: The EU plans a “massive” increase in solar and wind power, and a short-term boost for coal, to end its reliance on Russian oil and gas as fast as possible. In a plan outlined on Wednesday, the European Commission said the EU needed to find an extra €210bn (£178bn) over the next five years to pay for phasing out Russian fossil fuels and speeding up the switch to green energy. Senior officials conceded that in the short…

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The race to produce green steel

The race to produce green steel

May 11, 2022 by Marcello Rossi In the city of Woburn, Massachusetts, a suburb just north of Boston, a cadre of engineers and scientists in white coats inspected an orderly stack of brick-sized, gunmetal-gray steel ingots on a desk inside a neon-illuminated lab space. What they were looking at was a batch of steel created using an innovative manufacturing method, one that Boston Metal, a company that spun out a decade ago from MIT, hopes will dramatically reshape the way…

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The renewable energy revolution will need renewable storage

The renewable energy revolution will need renewable storage

Matthew Hutson writes: The German word Dunkelflaute means “dark doldrums.” It chills the hearts of renewable-energy engineers, who use it to refer to the lulls when solar panels and wind turbines are thwarted by clouds, night, or still air. On a bright, cloudless day, a solar farm can generate prodigious amounts of electricity; when it’s gusty, wind turbines whoosh neighborhoods to life. But at night solar cells do little, and in calm air turbines sit useless. These renewable energy sources…

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