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Trump admin throws wrench into offshore wind plans
The Trump administration is ordering a sweeping environmental review of the burgeoning offshore wind industry, a move that threatens to derail the nation’s first major project and raises a host of questions for future developments. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, a division of the Interior Department, is ordering a study of the cumulative impact of a string of projects along the East Coast. The review comes in response to concerns from fishermen about the impact of offshore wind development on East Coast fisheries.
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Policy & Politics
Getting to 100% renewables requires cheap energy storage. But how cheap?
There are many sources of grid flexibility, but the one that seems to have the most potential and is laden with the highest hopes is energy storage. To a first approximation, the question of whether renewables will be able to get to 100 percent reduces to the question of whether storage will get cheap enough. With cheap-enough storage, we can add a ton of it to the grid and absorb just about any fluctuations. [ read more … ]
Once-Unpopular Carbon Credits Emerge as One of the World’s Best Investments
The price of the credits, doled out by governments in Europe to polluting power plants and steel mills to curtail the production of greenhouse gases, has soared more than fivefold over the past two years. Prices are up strongly again this year and near a record of about €30 ($33.60) a ton of carbon dioxide emitted. Driving prices higher is a combination of a shrinking supply of credits and a hot summer in Europe, which has put big demands on power plants that are legally required to hold the credits to operate. [ read more … ]
‘Flight shame’ fuels carbon offset boom
Campaigning by climate activist Greta Thunberg and filmmaker-naturalist David Attenborough is persuading pollution-conscious fliers to try to mitigate the environmental damage caused by their flights. Sales of so-called carbon offsets are soaring: Myclimate, a Swiss nonprofit whose clients include Deutsche Lufthansa AG, reported a five-fold uptake in its credits in a year. At Ryanair Holdings PLC, Europe’s largest discount carrier, the number of customers making voluntary offset payments has almost doubled in 18 months. [ read more … ]
‘DeepRoof’ AI targets cities’ solar hot spots
Computer scientists from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, say they’ve invented a tool that can zero in on rooftops well-suited for solar panels in nearly any part of the country. Researchers developed the software tool, known as DeepRoof, with homeowners in mind, said Stephen Lee, associate professor in the University of Pittsburgh’s computer science department and lead author of a paper about the model. [ read more … ]
Wind Technologies Market Report
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Wind Technologies Market Report provides an annual overview of trends in the U.S. wind power market. You can find the report, a presentation, and a data file on the Files tab, below. Additionally, several data visualizations are available in the Data Visualizations tab. [ read more … ]
Opinion
The Great California Mileage Con
Ford, Honda, Volkswagen and BMW have been canonized in the media for cutting a deal with California that flouts the Trump Administration’s fuel-economy deregulation. This is corporate cynicism hiding under the hood of green virtue. The Environmental Protection Agency is finishing revisions of the Obama-era corporate average fuel-economy rules. In its waning days the Obama Administration rolled through a mandatory midterm review and reaffirmed the 2012 rules requiring auto makers to average 54 miles a gallon by 2025.
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