This is so amazing. This is everything I hoped for 30 years ago or so. We do not need coal. We do not need oil. We do not need natural gas. All we need is ourselves.
https://www.cusd1.com/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=1552877&type=d&pREC_ID=1678920
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Go there and read. More next week.
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This may be the beginning of the death of green house gas pollution in our atmosphere. To be clear it is not just carbon dioxide, but includes many other gases such as methane. It is the first generation, so dedicated, and it is magnificent to see. If I could
,,,,,,,,,//dance
in print
…………………..//I would.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2019/03/15/climate-change-strike-students-weir-dnt-newday-vpx.cnn
Mar—19—2019 03:26PM EST
Last Friday, students across 110 countries walked out of their classes in the massive Youth Climate Strike to bring attention to the effects of climate change. Hundreds of students filled New York’s City Hall Park, the air thrumming with excitement and anxiety. Some even hung from the lamp posts to get a better view of the swarming crowd before police inevitably invited them to climb down. It was the first protest I’ve been to where children far outnumbered adults.
“I’m here because I don’t want to have to grow up in a world where I am terrified the people I love could lose their home,” Simone Rubin, a senior at NEST+M high school, told The Outline, referencing the potential affect sea level rise could have on New York City’s coast. “It’s unfair that we’re in this situation now because adults refuse to act and now we’re tasked with cleaning up an earth that we shouldn’t have had to do because we shouldn’t have put ourselves in this situation to begin with.”
The Youth Climate Strike was born out of the #FridaysforFuture demonstrations started by 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg. In August 2018, Thunberg started skipping school each Friday to protest outside of the Stockholm Parliament House, calling on leaders to prioritize environmental issues. Thunberg’s notoriety grew as she spoke at the U.N. climate talks last December, and the #FridaysforFuture hashtag received more and more attention. She’s since been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for her activism.
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Please go there and read most joyously. More next week.
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It really all comes down to the fossil fuel companies like Exxon. If they would have admitted that Global Warming was happening, like their research showed, then we could have been doing this in the 1980s. As it is now, we are in a horse race and we are losing. Still I try to be positive, this is happening in Texas, red of red states, so there is hope that this example will pick up the pace.
California-based 174 Power Global is breaking ground Thursday on the largest utility-scale solar project in Texas, the company said.
The project is on 1,500 acres of private land in Pecos County, in West Texas, and area that has become a hub of utility-scale solar projects. It’s 236 megawatt capacity can power 50,000 homes a year, and all of its power will be sold to Austin Energy, a utility for the city of Austin. The project will cost $260 million.
174 Power Global is a subsidiary of South Korea’s Hanwha Energy. 174 Power Global has focused on developing solar projects on land without competing interests. The project in Pecos County, for instance, has not oil and gas development and the salinity of the property’s water prevents it from being used for livestock or agriculture.
RELATED: Solar power emerges where oil and gas once dominated
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Go there and read. More next week.
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What can I say about Trumps environmental policies in general and his energy policies specifically that hasn’t been said before. They SUCK. The economic surge in their direction is so strong that they can’t be stopped. But will it be in time?
Business
Reuters 13 hours ago
By Nichola Groom
(Reuters) – U.S. solar installations fell 15 percent in the third quarter as the Trump administration’s tariffs on overseas-made panels forced developers to put off large projects, according to a report commissioned by the industry’s primary trade group.
Current weakness in the utility-scale market, however, will be offset by larger volumes of projects than had been expected over the next five years because solar energy is now cheaper than ever, the report said.
Quarterly installations of utility-scale solar were 678 megawatts, the lowest quarter since 2015 and a more than 30 percent decline from a year ago, the report by Wood Mackenzie for the U.S. Solar Energy Industries Association said. The total market, which includes residential and commercial installations, came in at 1.7 gigawatts.
The slowdown is a shift for solar, which has experienced runaway gains in the last decade. Through the first three quarters of the year, solar accounted for 30 percent of electricity generating capacity additions.
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Go there and read. More next week.
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I know I posted about this before, but this time they made it final. So this is a way to celebrate. 49 States to go..
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/california-becomes-1st-state-require-181816746.html
California has taken the final step to be the first state in the nation to require solar panels on new homes.
The California Building Standards Commission on Wednesday unanimously upheld a May 9 decision to require solar panels on homes up to three stories. The requirement goes into effect Jan. 1, 2020.
Currently, just 9% of single-family detached homes in California have solar panels. But as the state pushes toward decreasing greenhouse gas emissions—and with a 2045 goal to transition to a fully renewable energy grid devoid of fossil fuels—this rule will help accelerate that progress. Aside from energy efficiency, solar panels reduce ozone-damaging household emissions, most of which come from natural gas-generated electricity.
In the long-term, solar panels benefit homeowners. While the upfront cost for building a home will increase—by as much as $10,000, according to the California Energy Commission, or as much as $25,000-30,000, according to home construction company Meritage Homes—long-term energy bill savings will be considerable.
Reuters reports that a homeowner could expect to save $19,000 in energy costs over 30 years, while Meritage Homes predicts reduced operating costs could amount to as much as $50,000-60,000 over a 25-year period.
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It is OK to dance. Go there and read. More next week.
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That report said that the World had to shift to renewables by 2050 or face dramatic changes. The report says that Society as we know it will be destroyed. Everybody went wild. But I prefer to keep things positive. Even Utility Companies are trying to change and Duke is one of the worst.
Duke Energy Corp. expects to spend $500 million over the next 15 years installing more than 300 megawatts worth of storage batteries on its Carolinas grid.
Charlotte-based Duke (NYSE: DUK) released the estimate Wednesday morning, days after proposing its first microgrid project — including a two-megawatt solar farm and a four-megawatt storage battery — for residential and business customers. That will serve the remote mountain town of Hot Springs, on the North Carolina-Tennessee border north of Asheville.
Duke says it plans to expand the use of batteries beyond storing and dispatching of energy. Its long-range plan includes deploying batteries for other purposes such as system balancing, increasing reliability of “end of the line” power supplies and to defer other traditional grid upgrades.
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Go there and cheer up. More next week.
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This is what it is like at the end of a power source. People can hardly wait to get away from coal and on to something else. I say, GOOD FOR THEM. Coal is no longer competitive. No matter how they try to stand in the way coal supporters, including Dotard in Chief, will always lose. Can you say, dust bin of history.
In the desert near Arizona’s border with Utah on the Navajo Nation, a massive solar array built in 2017 now provides power for around 18,000 Navajo homes. Nearby, construction will begin later this year on a second solar plant. And on another corner of Navajo land, the largest coal plant west of the Mississippi River is preparing to close 25 years ahead of schedule, despite some last-minute attempts to save it.
“Those two [solar] plants really are the beginning of an economic transition,” says Amanda Ormond, managing director of the Western Grid Group, an organization that promotes clean energy.
The coal plant, called the Navajo Generating Station, was built in the 1970s to provide power to growing populations in Southern California, Arizona, and Nevada. A nearby coal mine supplies the power plant with coal. As recently as 2014, the coal plant wasn’t expected to close until 2044–a date negotiated with the EPA to reduce air pollution. But reduced demand for coal, driven both by economics and climate action, means that the plant is scheduled to close in 2019 instead. The coal mine, run by Peabody Energy, will be forced to follow.
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Go there and celebrate. I mean read. More next week.
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I have been at a loss for words for the last month. Things are going so well. I know Dotard is still President and many things are seriously messed up. But on the alternative energy front things just keep getting better and better. Don Blankenship actually made a fool out of himself and lost a primary vote for the Senate in West Virginia. Next week I may even get to report that Yucca Mountain is open for business. But for now, California hits one out of the park.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-solar-panels-20180509-story.html
California regulators on Wednesday mandated that all newly built single family houses have solar panels, part of the state’s aggressive push to combat climate change.
The California Energy Commission voted 5-0 to approve the measure, which also applies to multifamily buildings of three stories or fewer. The mandate is set to take effect in 2020 and does not need the approval of the Legislature.
The requirement is expected to save consumers money in the long run through reduced utility bills, but also make a new house more expensive to purchase at a time many families already struggle to afford a mortgage.
In addition to the solar mandate, the commission approved new insulation and air filter requirements for newly built homes. In all, the new residential requirements are expected to make a single-family house $9,500 more expensive to build on average, but save $19,000 in reduced utility bills over a 30-year period, according to the Energy Commission.
Go there and do a happy dance – I mean read. More next week
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Solar and Wind Power are on a huge tear. This is both in price, where coal is dead and natural gas is getting iffy. But in terms of availability and cutting edge technology. I see a future where generating electricity through renewables may be a same day thing and cheap as dirt. I know I am a dreamer but I am not the only one.
By the way, some people say that size doesn’t matter. I ain’t one of those.
SOLAR BLANKET
Saudi Arabia has a plan to wean its economy off oil. In the biggest sign of what the future of the Gulf state would look like, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed Bin Salman, has signed a memorandum of understanding with Japanese multinational Softbank to build 200 GW of solar power by 2030 at a cost of $200 billion.
These are eye-popping numbers. If built, that solar-power plant will be about 200 times the size of the biggest solar plant operating today. It would more than triple Saudi Arabia’s capacity to produce electricity, from about 77 GW today.
With current technology, solar panels capable of generating 200 GW would likely cover 5,000 sq km—an area larger than the the world’s largest cities.
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No it is not an April’s Joke. Go there and read. More next week.
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In Florida no less. I could hype this piece up, but why? They do such a good job. The place even has its own website.
So here is one version of the story.
https://www.planetizen.com/news/2018/01/96772-residents-move-americas-first-solar-powered-town
“Families are starting to move into what is being called America’s first solar-powered town,” announces John Dickerson for CBS This Morning on Jan. 16. “Babcock Ranch, about half an hour northeast of Fort Myers, Florida, is supposed to produce more energy than it consumes once it’s finished.”
Developer Syd Kitson is building 20,000 homes for a projected 50,000 people, states Dickerson in the newscast video accompanying the article.
There are more than 300,000 solar panels spread across 440 acres there, producing enough electricity not only for the town, but also the surrounding areas, reports CBS News’ Manuel Bojorquez.
One critical energy element lacking in the solar-powered community will be adequate energy storage to allow the city to be truly self-powered:
The town doesn’t run on solar power all the time. At night, when the sun is down, it has to draw from the traditional electrical grid. Kitson says the technology for storing all that surplus energy the solar cells generate during the day is still too costly.
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Go There. I mean literally go there if you can. If not go there and read. More next week.
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