Wind and solar capacity will double over the next five years globally and surge past both gas and coal, according to a new International Energy Agency (IEA) report published today, “Renewables 2020,” which is an analysis and forecast to 2025.
Expand Expanding Close
Independent think tank RethinkX, which “analyzes and forecasts the speed and scale of technology-driven disruption,” has released a report that says that most of the world is technologically capable of achieving 100% wind, solar, and storage electricity grids in 10 years.
Expand Expanding Close
It looks as though the latest holder of the title, “world’s largest solar farm,” is set to be Newcastle Waters in Australia’s Northern Territory. The solar farm in the Outback will be capable of producing 10 gigawatts and will be so big that it will be able to be seen from space.
Expand Expanding Close
Want to charge your electric bicycle or e-scooter for free, using solar power? The startup Swiftmile is making that happen with hundreds of new charging stations in the US and Europe.
Expand Expanding Close
Eight out of 15 deaths in Hurricane Laura on the US’s Gulf Coast were caused by carbon monoxide poisoning from portable generators, as NPR wrote in September. And that’s not an isolated incident — 85% of all carbon monoxide poisoning deaths in the US are caused by portable generators because people mistakenly run them indoors or in their garage when they lose power.
Mark Rabin is the CEO of Vancouver, BC-based Portable Electric, which manufactures emissions-free mobile power stations — green generators — that run on solar and li-ion batteries. Rabin spoke with Electrek via email about the role electric generators can play in natural disasters such as wildfires and hurricanes and how vital it is to switch to electric generators and off fossil-fuel-powered generators overall, as quickly as possible.
Expand Expanding Close
Net metering allows residential and commercial customers who generate their own electricity from solar power to sell the electricity they aren’t using back into the grid. That saves money on electric bills.
But electric companies perceive that they make less money as a result, and they’re not so keen on that. So in Florida, utilities want to roll net metering back — and there’s a hearing about it tomorrow.
Expand Expanding Close
BP stated in a forecast published today that oil may have reached its peak due to the pandemic and that renewables will take the place of fossil fuels.
Expand Expanding Close
Randolph County in eastern Indiana has adopted a first-ever solar energy ordinance that includes a pollinator-friendly provision ahead of the construction of Indiana’s largest solar farm.
Expand Expanding Close
Green energy, which includes wind, solar, hydro, and bioenergy, has generated 40% of European Union electricity for the first time in 2020, compared to fossil fuels generating 34%, independent think-tank Ember said in a half-yearly report.
The UK’s National Grid and Denmark’s Energinet has begun work on the world’s longest subsea power cable. The €2 billion Viking Link project, a 475-mile-long (765 km) cable, is being built in Lincolnshire. It will run between the UK and Denmark in order to share green energy between the two countries.
The Department of the Interior under the Trump administration approved around half as many wind and solar projects on federal land as the Obama administration had at the same point in its first term, according to a report published yesterday by the Center for American Progress (CAP).
The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities has awarded 20.358 MW, or more than 26% of first-round capacity, to solar contractor Solar Landscape as part of the New Jersey Community Solar Energy Pilot Program.
The United States could deliver 90% clean electricity nationwide by 2035, without the need for new fossil fuel plants, according to a study released today from the University of California, Berkeley — with the right policies.
In today’s Electrek Green Energy Brief (EGEB):
Electric motorcycles are already a great way to explore beautiful, scenic areas of nature without disturbing the land or other travelers. And now a new tour company in New Zealand has taken this form of eco-tourism to the next level, using UBCO’s 2X2 all-wheel-drive electric motorbikes and a solar charging base station.
The Environmental Working Group (EWG) has released a report, “Tone Deaf: The Facts Behind Duke Energy’s Low-Income Programs,” which claims that the power company consistently harms low-income customers.
What do you think of when you think of Houston and energy? Oil and gas, probably. But did you know that Houston buys more green energy than any other city in the US?
The Sierra Club has released a green recovery report that asserts that 9 million US jobs could be created every year for the next 10 years “while building an economy that fosters cleaner air and water, higher wages, healthier communities, greater equity, and a more stable climate.”
The largest solar project in New Jersey has been completed at Naval Weapons Station (NWS) Earle in Tinton Falls, northwest of Asbury Park. It was designed, procured, and built by CS Energy, which designs and builds projects in the solar, storage, and emerging energy industries.
The dream of a solar-self-charging electric vehicle lives on. A Ford patent application was published this week for a roof-mounted device that, with a flip of a switch, cocoons the entire parked vehicle in a shield of solar panels. The patent application was filed on November 8, 2019, and published on May 14, 2020.
Top US and British economists, including Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment chairman Lord Nicholas Stern, published a working paper on Tuesday that asserts that the most effective coronavirus stimulus packages will also focus on reducing carbon emissions.
Germany’s photovoltaic plants produced 32.227 GW on Monday (40% of the country’s power), which beat the country’s previous record on March 23. The UK broke its solar record on Monday at 9.68 GW. The previous record was 9.55 GW in May 2019.