With just one ocean-based wind farm of five 6-megawatt turbines generating enough electricity to power about 17,000 homes, the United States is far behind other nations when it comes to installed offshore wind capacity. Compared with those 30 megawatts at Block Island off Rhode Island, Germany has 60,000 MW installed offshore capacity, India 42,000, Spain 29,000 MW, and the […]
With passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, which contains US$370 billion for climate and energy programs, policy experts are forecasting a big expansion in clean electricity generation. One source that’s poised for growth is offshore wind energy. Michael E. Webber, University of Texas at Austin and Hugh Daigle, University of Texas at Austin The Conversation […]
Wednesday, President Biden reiterated that climate change is a clear and present danger to the United States. Since Congress is not acting on this emergency, President Biden will. In the coming weeks, President Biden will announce additional executive actions to combat this emergency. President Biden is announcing his latest set of executive actions to turn […]
Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: Texas’s deregulated, isolated grid is stressed nearly to breaking by the excessive electricity demand during an extreme weather event because fossil fuel power plants are unexpectedly offline. Wind and solar make sure the light, and A/C stay on, but instead of being championed, they’re maligned as unreliable […]
A UK government auction has secured a record 11 gigawatts (GW) of new renewable energy capacity that will generate electricity four times more cheaply than current gas prices. By Simon Evans Carbon Brief The projects are all due to start operating within the next five years up to 2026/27 and have agreed to generate electricity for an […]
Curtailment has a special meaning in electric power systems. It describes any action that reduces the amount of electricity generated to maintain the balance between supply and demand – which is critical for avoiding blackouts. By Theodore J. Kury, University of Florida The Conversaiton Recently, curtailment has made news in states like California and Texas […]
To keep warming below the Paris agreement targets, we need wind and solar companies the world over to deliver utility-scale renewable electricity cheaper and more reliably than fossil fuel energy companies are doing now. But can they? By Climate Denier Roundup The fossil fuel industry certainly isn’t going to make it easy for them, but […]
Wind and solar energy are keeping the Texas electrical grid on-line amid record electricity demand caused by the early-season heatwave, CNN reports. By Nexus Media News Texas is generating more power from renewables than the peak demand record for New England right now. Almost like that stuff works! https://t.co/31hhG3zfPi — Ari Ofsevit (@ofsevit) June 15, […]
The Biden administration announced it was putting a two-year freeze on the threat of new solar tariffs, throwing a lifeline to U.S. solar installers – and likely to the country’s ability to meet its climate goals.The tariff threat involved imported solar panels and components from four Asian countries that supply about 80% of photovoltaic cells […]
Private utilities have shut off electricity to U.S. households more than 3.5 million times since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, even as the power companies have reaped windfall profits and their executives’ compensation has skyrocketed, a report published Monday revealed. By Brett Wilkins Common Dreams NEW REPORT: Electric utilities shutoff household power 3.6 mil times […]
It’s 2009. Robert Bryce is doing his fossil-fueled job attacking wind turbines for occasionally killing birds. He fails to mention the oil industry kills millions more. By Climate Denier Roundup It’s 2012. Robert Bryce is doing his fossil-fueled job attacking wind turbines for occasionally killing birds. He fails to mention the oil industry kills millions more. It’s 2013. Robert […]
Solar and wind energy had another good year for global expansion, the International Renewable Energy Agency said Monday, declaring that “the global shift to renewables is underway” but must accelerate. The intergovernmental agency released its latest Renewable Capacity Highlights, which showed that total global renewable generation capacity in 2021 was 3,064 GW, reflecting a 9.1% increase from […]
Limiting global warming to 1.5C or 2C would mean “rapid and deep” emissions reductions in “all sectors” of the global economy, says the latest report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Instead, emissions have continued to rise – albeit at a slowing rate – and it will be “impossible” to stay below 1.5C with “no or […]
To most people, a solar farm or a geothermal plant is simply a power producer. Scientists and engineers see far more potential. They envision offshore wind turbines capturing and storing carbon beneath the sea, and geothermal plants producing essential metals for powering electric vehicles. Electric vehicle batteries, too, can be transformed to power homes, saving their […]
Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland announced Friday that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) will hold a wind energy auction on May 11 for more than 110,000 acres in the Carolina Long Bay area off the coast of North and South Carolina. This move comes only one month after the Department of Interior concluded a record-breaking […]