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Electrek morning green energy brief: 373,000 solar workers, autonomous solar powered ship, large scale battery storage coming and more!

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Solar industry employs 373,000 American, 2.8 million globally – Solar power will continue to gain political strength across the nation as we see serious installation volumes spread to all 50 states. Already solar power lobbyists are able to wield great influence – see the 2015 tax credit extension. The energy industry, in 2016, represented 14% of all new jobs in the USA – a large amount of those coming from renewable and efficiency.

Autonomous solar powered research ship being designed – We’ve got an airplane that circled the world on solar, islands that live off of solar and now an autonomous ocean research vessels to be powered by solar. Scientists are real good at designing instruments that work off of light amounts of energy – a lot of times those restrictions have to do with large amounts of fuel needing to be on the same vessels. If the fuel was coming from the sky – and the infrastructure of the machine held the energy generation – the game changes.

Canadian building one of most energy efficient in North America – I know the building was built in 2008, but it found its way into the headlines. What I really liked seeing was the PDF linked to on the building page (see link here). It breaks down the very specific items that the building does to make it energy-efficient – the categories include: sustainable site (located near public transportation), water, energy, materials, indoor environment and design process. Commercial building use a large amount of energy (very efficiently when you consider how many people are in the buildings daily).

Commercial Energy storage making moves in California, India and China – California is replacing a natural gas site that leaked for months into the atmosphere, China and India and building their first industrial-scale power plants. Expect all three of these regions (plus Massachusetts) to deploy some serious battery volume over the next year.

If the Middle East is going solar, should you be paying attention?

In the 1970s Exxon’s scientists told it that Climate Change was caused by humans building fossil fuels…Exxon had a choice – you know the rest of the story.
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