huffingtonpost.com - by Alexander C. Kaufman - December 14, 2018
In a little over a month, the so-called Green New Deal has won endorsements from more than three dozen sitting or incoming federal lawmakers as Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) makes a high-profile bid to shift debate over climate change toward policy on the scale of the crisis.
On Friday, the effort got a boost from 311 state and local officials.
Forty-four mayors, 63 county and state legislators and 116 city council members were among the officials from 40 states ― including some top oil and gas producers ― who signed an open letter issuing a sweeping, full-throated call for the phaseout of fossil fuels and adoption of Green New Deal-style climate policies.
fastcompany.com - by Katharine Schwab - November 15, 2018
. . . One Concern is launching a machine learning platform that provides cities with specialized maps to help emergency crews decide where to focus their efforts in a flood. The maps update in real-time based on data about where water is flowing to estimate where people need help the most. It’s the latest in a wave of AI-powered tools aimed at helping cities prepare for an era of severe, and increasingly frequent, disasters.
theverge.com - by Angela Chen - September 27, 2018
Solar energy is becoming more and more popular as prices drop, yet a home powered by the Sun isn’t free from the grid because solar panels don’t store energy for later. Now, researchers have refined a device that can both harvest and store solar energy, and they hope it will one day bring electricity to rural and underdeveloped areas.
The problem of energy storage has led to many creative solutions, like giant batteries. For a paper published today in the journal Chem, scientists trying to improve the solar cells themselves developed an integrated battery that works in three different ways.
Purdue researcher Jialiang Tang helped resolve charging issues in sodium-ion batteries that have prevented the technology from advancing to industry testing and use. Credit: Purdue University Marketing and Media
Most of today's batteries are made up of rare lithium mined from the mountains of South America. If the world depletes this source, then battery production could stagnate.
Sodium is a very cheap and earth-abundant alternative to using lithium-ion batteries that is also known to turn purple and combust if exposed to water—even just water in the air.
Sea level rise contributions from ice melt in different areas, including Greenland (a), West Antarctica (b), East Antarctica (c) and median of global glaciers (d). Values are ratios of regional sea level change to global mean sea level change. Adapted from Kopp et al. 2015.
axios.com - by Andrew Freedman - June 14, 2018
News of Antarctica's accelerating ice melt garnered worldwide headlines yesterday, as scientists revealed that 3 trillion tons of ice has been lost to the sea since 1992 — mostly from the thawing West Antarctic Ice Sheet and Antarctic Peninsula.
Why it matters: The location of the ice melt is important for determining the future of coastal communities, according to climate scientists. And, due to West Antarctica melting, it turns out that the U.S. coastline will be hit extra hard . . .
- Forecasters see wind output staying low for at least two weeks
- Wind generating 4.3% of U.K. electricity on Wednesday
bloomberg.com - by Rachel Morison - June 6, 2018
Britain’s gone nine days with almost no wind generation, and forecasts show the calm conditions persisting for another two weeks.
The wind drought has pushed up day-ahead power prices to the highest level for the time of year for at least a decade. Apart from a surge expected around June 14, wind levels are forecast to stay low for the next fortnight, according to The Weather Company.
A new study found that hurricanes intensify more quickly now than they did 30 years ago. Hurricanes from 2017 like Irma (center), and Jose (right) are examples of these types of hurricanes. Hurricane Katia is seen on the left. (Photo: NOAA)
usatoday.com - by Doyle Rice - May 10, 2018
With the start of hurricane season just three weeks away — and memory of last year's disastrous storms still fresh — scientists reported that powerful hurricanes are strengthening faster than they did 30 years ago.
Four of the monster hurricanes last year (Harvey, Irma, Jose and Maria) all intensified rapidly — when the maximum wind speed increases at least 29 mph within 24 hours . . .
. . . According to a study out this week, the main cause appears to be a natural climate phenomenon that warms the seawater where hurricanes typically intensify in the Atlantic.
A transmission tower and downed lines in the mountainous terrain of eastern Puerto Rico. Workers from the island and throughout the United States have worked to restore power after Hurricanes Irma and Maria last September.
It took months to restore electricity in Puerto Rico after hurricanes dealt a one-two punch. Many homes are still without power, and the system’s future is far from certain.
nytimes.com - by JAMES GLANZ and FRANCES ROBLES - Photographs by TODD HEISLER - May 6, 2018
. . . After Maria and the hurricane that preceded it, called Irma, Puerto Rico all but slipped from the modern era . . .
. . . an examination of the power grid’s reconstruction — based on a review of hundreds of documents and interviews with dozens of public officials, utility experts and citizens across the island — shows how a series of decisions by federal and Puerto Rican authorities together sent the effort reeling on a course that would take months to correct. The human and economic damage wrought by all that time without power may be irreparable.
Energy Innovation's Michael O'Boyle and Silvio Marcacci outline the barriers to high-penetration wind and solar in the least-cost era
The following is a viewpoint from Michael O'Boyle, electricity policy manager for Energy Innovation, and Silvio Marcacci, communications director for Energy Innovation
utilitydive.com - by Michael O'Boyle, Silvio Marcacci - March 21, 2018
Wind and solar are now cheaper than virtually anyone predicted, and renewable technologies have reached an inflection point: Rapid cost declines made renewable energy the cheapest available sources of new electricity, even without subsidies, in 2017. In many locations across America, building new wind energy projects is cheaper than running existing coal-fired power plants.
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