April 30th, 2023
Via HeatMap, some optimism that America is quietly making progress on one of the biggest challenges to the renewable energy rollout: New England is about to get a big infusion of carbon-free energy. On Thursday, a Maine jury ruled that a 145-mile power line connecting hydroelectric dams in Canada with the New England grid via […]
Read more »The U.S. Is Laying New Power Lines Too Slowly For Its Renewables Transition
April 16th, 2023
Via Quartz, an article on how growth in US power transmission lines has dropped from an already meager 1.5% to 1% over the last five years: Renewables are having a bumper run, according to JP Morgan’s annual assessment (pdf) of the energy market. More money is being invested into clean tech than fossil fuels—and this was true […]
Read more »April 16th, 2023
Courtesy of the New York Times, a look at how the explosion in proposed clean energy ventures has overwhelmed the system for connecting new power sources to homes and businesses: Plans to install 3,000 acres of solar panels in Kentucky and Virginia are delayed for years. Wind farms in Minnesota and North Dakota have been abruptly […]
Read more »Plan to Build More Solar Faces a Familiar Constraint: The Need for More Power Lines
March 26th, 2023
Via Inside Climate News, a report on how California could embrace “policy synergy” to deploy solar in areas transitioning out of agriculture, but the transmission lines must come first: California’s San Joaquin Valley, a strip of land between the Diablo Range and the Sierra Nevada, accounts for a significant portion of the state’s crop production […]
Read more »March 26th, 2023
Via The Washington Post, a report on Apple’s Clean Energy Charging feature: Apple is getting a lot of flak for setting up iPhones to charge when the sun shines or the wind blows. The feature, called “Clean Energy Charging,” incited a tiny but vehement Twitter rebellion as critics, many of them right-wing personalities, slammed it as yet […]
Read more »Staying Big or Getting Smaller: Energy Systems In Transition
February 28th, 2023
Via Energy Atlas, an interesting graphic that look at the transformation occurring in much of the world’s energy systems. What we are seeing is a much more consumer-centric model emerging with much more diversity in terms of generation and consumption. This graphic provides a simplified yet useful way to visualise this trend. From centralised to […]
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