Green Energy

A Cornell-led collaboration has hit the trifecta of sustainability technology: The group developed a low-cost method to produce carbon-free "green" hydrogen via solar-powered electrolysis of seawater. A happy byproduct of the process? Potable water.

Ann Arbor, Mich., has an aggressive goal of net-zero emissions by 2030, and it is taking its desire for clean power into its own hands.

The City Council this week approved plans to create a sustainable energy utility, or S.E.U., which is an organization that helps local residents use less energy.

Ann Arbor’s hope is to build a kind of local, renewable grid close to homes and businesses, with solar power and connected buildings that draw power from geothermal power sources. It is intended to be cheaper than a traditional energy grid and more affordable than adding solar panels or battery storage to individual homes.

https://archive.ph/aPaMU

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/28050247

Up to 1200w can be back-fed into the 120v sockets in normal homes. No net metering or other permission required, as long as it meets UL/NEC standards.

archived (Wayback Machine)

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/20608290

Despite a renewed effort to prop up the shrinking US coal industry, renewable energy projects keep on attracting global energy investors. The pullback on federal support for renewables still stings, but at least the folks overseas still believe there is money to be made from clean kilowatts in the US.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/20559073

archived (Wayback Machine)

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/20558965

archived (Wayback Machine)

On March 25, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced it will release grant money through REAP and two other clean energy programs partly supported by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. But there appeared to be some fine print.

In the announcement, the USDA also invited grant and loan recipients to voluntarily revise their proposals to align with Trump’s executive order by “eliminating Biden-era DEIA and climate mandates embedded in previous proposals.”

In an email, a USDA spokesperson said that people who had already been awarded funding could voluntarily “review and revise” their plans within 30 days to more closely align with the Trump administration’s executive order. If recipients confirm in writing that they don’t want to change anything about their proposals, the USDA said “processing” for their projects would continue immediately. If recipients don’t communicate with the USDA, “disbursements and other actions will resume after the 30 days,” according to the statement. But many questions remain, and the agency did not address Grist’s requests for clarification.

For instance, the agency did not offer specifics about the timeline for already-approved projects to actually receive funds; whether or not the agency will open new application periods; whether the funding announcement and invitation to revise apply to REAP grants, loans, or both; and whether the announcement applies to future REAP applications.

"Pakistan isn’t the first country you’d expect to crash the global solar party. But by the end of 2024, it quietly rocketed into the top tier of solar adopters, importing a jaw-dropping 22 gigawatts worth of solar panels in a single year. That’s not a typo or a spreadsheet rounding error. That’s the kind of number that turns heads at IEA meetings and makes policy analysts double-check their databases. It certainly made me sit up and take notice when I first heard about what was happening in mid-2024.

It’s more solar than Canada has installed in total. It’s more than the UK added in the past five years. And yet it didn’t make a blip in most Western media."

Global demand for lithium is expected to increase by nearly 500% over the next few decades, as countries invest more in batteries and electric vehicles meant to reduce their carbon footprint. But lithium also brings its own environmental concerns, putting stress on freshwater supplies in the desert areas where the mineral is most common.

Heat pumps are essential for ditching fossil fuels. The appliances are many times more efficient than even the best gas furnaces, and they run on electricity, so they can draw power from renewables like wind and solar.

But the very thing that makes them such an amazing climate solution is also their biggest challenge. A common refrigerant called R-410A pumps through their innards so they can warm and cool homes and offices and anything else. But that refrigerant is also liquid irony, as it can escape as a greenhouse gas over 2,000 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. (This is known as its “global warming potential,” or how much energy a ton of the gas absorbs over a given amount of time compared to the same amount of CO2.) Leaks can happen during the installation, operation, and disposal of heat pumps.

But this year the industry is rolling out alternative refrigerant formulations like R-454B and R-32, which have around 75 percent less global warming potential. That’s in response to Environmental Protection Agency rules mandating that, starting this year, heat pump refrigerants have a global warming potential of no more than 700. Manufacturers are looking even farther ahead at the possibility of using propane, or even CO2, as the next generation of more atmospherically friendly refrigerants.

As interest in nuclear power rises, startups are pursuing plans to recycle spent fuel and reuse its untapped energy to power reactors. Advocates tout new recycling methods as a breakthrough, but many experts warn it will extract plutonium that could be used for nuclear weapons.

cross-posted from: https://lazysoci.al/post/24083335

China’s solar panel exports rose by 10% in 2024, with imports by global-south countries rising by 32% and those to the global north falling by 6%