Michelle Lewis

Taking your electric car on a holiday road trip? Reduce your costs and carbon footprint, and make your trip safer with these 10 quick tips.

The United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), the largest coal mining union in the US, issued a statement yesterday that said they were “disappointed” in Senator Joe Manchin’s (D-WV) announcement on Sunday that he would not vote in favor of the Build Back Better (BBB) legislation. UMWA International president Cecil E. Roberts urged Manchin to “pass something that will help keep coal miners working, and have a meaningful impact on our members, their families, and their communities.”

As the electric car revolution ramps up, so does the need for critical minerals used in batteries, such as graphite. According to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, there will be a global graphite deficit starting in 2022, and demand from the battery sector is expected to rise 30% annually until 2030. The US has no manufacturing plants that can supply automotive-grade graphite at scale. Meanwhile, China controls 84% of the global supply. Electrek spoke with Don Baxter, CEO of Ceylon Graphite, about how graphite is used in EVs, the supply chain issue, and how EV battery manufacturers can successfully source the vital mineral.

Coal production is forecast to reach an all-time high in 2022, and then after a couple of years, plateau as demand flattens, according to the latest annual market report from the International Energy Agency (IEA), released today.

The UK’s Hornsea Two offshore wind farm, soon to be the world’s largest when it’s completed in 2022, will produce its first power before December 31 of this year.

A coalition of business, labor, and environmental advocacy leaders will host the US’ first-ever National EV Charging Summit on January 20, 2022. Members of the public are invited to attend, and it’s free.

Scientists at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) have developed paper-thin biodegradable zinc batteries. Once the batteries are expended, they break down in soil within weeks.

If President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better Act is enacted, the US is projected to install 43.5 gigawatts (GW) of additional solar capacity over the baseline forecast between 2022 and 2026. This would bring cumulative solar capacity in the US to over 300 GW – triple the amount of solar currently deployed, according to the US Solar Market Insight report released today by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Wood Mackenzie.

TIME magazine has named Elon Musk its 2021 Person of the Year. Here’s why it selected the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX.

Spanish-German wind giant Siemens Gamesa’s SG 14-222 DD prototype offshore wind turbine has produced its first electricity and delivered it to the grid at the test center in Østerild, Denmark.

Windpark Fryslân, the world’s largest freshwater wind farm that sits in the Netherlands’ Lake IJssel, is now fully commissioned.

California-headquartered SunPower (Nasdaq:SPWR) announced today that it’s launched SunPower Financial, which means that customers working with SunPower to buy rooftop solar and storage no longer need a third-party lender to obtain and manage financing.

The National Electric Highway Coalition, a newly formed body made up of 51 investor-owned electric companies, one electric cooperative, and the Tennessee Valley Authority, announced yesterday that it will provide electric vehicle fast-charging ports along major US travel corridors by the end of 2023.

China is the world’s biggest polluter – and it’s also the world’s leader in clean energy growth. China’s cumulative installed onshore and offshore wind capacity has now reached 302.2 gigawatts (GW), according to Windpower Intelligence (WPI), the data and research division of Windpower Monthly.

SEA Electric, an Australian company with US headquarters in Torrance, California, that makes battery electric power systems for commercial vehicles, and Illinois-headquartered Midwest Transit Equipment (MTE), one of the largest school bus dealers in the US, have partnered to update 10,000 school buses in the US Midwest with battery-electric power systems over the next five years.

Researchers have developed a prototype lithium-ion battery that uses water as an electrolytic solution. The water replaces a flammable organic solvent.

British utility SSE and Norwegian energy giant Equinor announced late last week that they have secured financing to proceed with the construction of the $3.98 billion Dogger Bank C offshore wind farm off England’s northeast coast.

StoreDot, an Israel-based electric vehicle battery startup, yesterday announced new patented technology that uses a background repair mechanism to allow battery cells to regenerate while they are in use. The company says the new technology will result in longer battery life and better EV performance. 

Despite the pandemic, supply chain challenges, and rising costs of materials, 2021 is going to be a record year for clean energy, the International Energy Agency (IEA) announced today in a new report.

I recently drove from St. Petersburg, Florida, to Tallahassee, Florida, and back in my Tesla Model 3. It’s a five-hour drive each way, and it was my first real road trip longer in my EV. Here are three things I learned.

Danish wind turbine manufacturer Vestas suffered a ransomware attack on November 19. But the world’s largest wind turbine maker said today that almost all of its IT systems are back online.

Australia has the world’s highest uptake of rooftop solar, but it also has a huge dependency on coal. And the country just threw open the door to another clean energy source: offshore wind. On Thursday, its Parliament passed a law that establishes a regulatory framework for offshore wind power.

More than 1 million electric vehicles are now driving on US roads. What will happen when those cars go out of service? The plan is to recycle their batteries.

Between 2022 and 2025, 27.3 gigawatts (GW) of new natural gas-fired capacity is scheduled to come online in the US, boosting its existing capacity of 489.1 GW as of August 2021, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). Here’s where it’s headed.