The Duane Arnold Energy Center in eastern Iowa, the current site of a now-idle nuclear power plant, will soon host a 690-megawatt solar farm. The new solar farm plus storage will replace the single-unit, 615-megawatt nuclear plant, which powered more than 600,000 homes.

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In today’s Electrek Green Energy Brief (EGEB):

• African Development Bank pulls out of an eastern Kenyan coal plant project at Lamu.
• Seoul is putting solar on all public buildings and 1 million homes.
• German steel giant Thyssenkrupp uses hydrogen as a step toward its net-zero-by-2050 pledge.
• An earthquake in France earlier this week prolongs the shutdown of nuclear reactors until December.

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In today’s Electrek Green Energy Brief (EGEB):

• 5 green energy standouts from the Democrats’ climate-crisis town hall
• Rutgers University releases new study on states, equity, and green energy.
• 3 ways cities are improving the energy efficiency of homes.
• Big oil to seal record number of green energy deals in 2019.

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The world’s most famous and damaging nuclear meltdown is now being considered for the world’s largest solar power plant. The Ukrainian nuclear power station Chernobyl had a nuclear meltdown on April 26, 1986. Since then 1,600 square miles of land has been deemed an ‘exclusion zone’ as the radiation levels are too high for human health. But in a recent interview, Ukraine’s ecology minister said the government was negotiating with two US investment firms and four Canadian energy companies, which have expressed interest in the Chernobyl’s solar potential.

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk was in France earlier this year. During a special event for Tesla owners at the automaker’s French headquarters in Chambourcy, Musk reiterated that in the near future Tesla will need to establish some manufacturing capacity in Europe. But this time, he nonchalantly brought up the possibility to build its first European electric car factory in Alsace, a northeastern French region on the Rhine River plain bordering Germany and Switzerland.

The comment wasn’t really serious and Musk only brought it up as a potentially good option geographically speaking, but the comment certainly didn’t fall on deaf ears. Today, French Energy Minister Ségolène Royal said that she already suggested a site to Elon Musk and she will meet with “Tesla executives” later this month. expand full story