From water saving to clean energy: Here’s why floating solar farms are booming in the US.
This technology is already popular in Asian countries where free land is scarce and expensive but now it is taking off in other parts of the world.
Producing electricity uses up huge amounts of land and often generates vast quantities of climate-heating emissions.
But what if it didn’t need to?
Floating solar panels are a simple concept but they could provide the answer to these problems - and prevent water loss from evaporation at the same time.
So #EnergySparks has grown by x4 in the last 12 months. This has given us opportunity to work with more schools and collect more data about how they use energy.
We've used that to produce our first "Energy Efficiency in Schools" report to share some insights more broadly.
The @losangelestimes let me pen a few words arguing that people’s health and mobility should take precedence over goods movement in the quest for cleaner air in #California:
Though #EVs emit fewer greenhouse gases than fuel-powered vehicles, their batteries require rare minerals – especially lithium.
Lithium extraction is speeding up in Bolivia, where it holds significance to Indigenous communities. The very idea of a ‘raw material’ is foreign to them.
A massive fire at a #Houston-area #Shell refinery was just the latest incident at the site, which has generated 1000s of pounds in illegal #pollution ... but $0 in fines from the state.
EU's West Balkans gas expansion hurts security and renewables
Governments have announced new gas pipelines, terminals and power plants, to steer the region away from Russia.
Gas infrastructure to be built from scratch would be costly and take years, locking in the region for decades. This diverts investments in energy efficiency and sustainable renewables.
“Ideally, our energies circulate in #balance with the earth’s energies - through soil, air, light, plants and more. When grounded, our body systems are being fed vital information to seek #harmony with the world. Once grounded, you are available for other possibilities, operating firmly from central command.”
“Clean your refrigerator coils,” they say, “to #save#energy and the #planet.” Yet to access more than 1% of said coils, one must invert one’s refrigerator, which is a rather big ask. Could we get the Energy Saving People and the Refrigerator Maker People in the same room please? Thanks.
Fully Charged LIVE is coming to the north of England on the 19th, 20th and 21st of May. If you’re interested in the future of clean energy and transport, THIS is the place to be - talks, test rides for e-bikes/scooters/unicycles and EVs, domestic advice on heat pumps, solar etc, a zero carbon kitchen, and a positive, interesting, fun exploration of just how exciting this is all going to be. And it’s not just about cars. Do come and join us! https://fullycharged.show/events/fully-charged-live-uk-north-2023/#FullyCharged#Energy#EV
@arstechnica 👆 Sidebar: I need somebody knowledgable to go into the question about the feasibility of a #hydrogen infrastructure. H looks promising, but besides the fact that it's another fuel lock-in - in contrast to (improving) batteries which will take electricity from any (improving) sources - H is a highly combustible invisible gas which burns with an invisible flame & transports under high pressure, spelling a logistical nightmare to my layman's eyes...
We would need to ask Hazel Southwell (author of the article) about the actual message they were trying to convey with this article, but IMHO they are basically saying:
"Synthetic hydrocarbon fuels are so absurd, that even a very bad idea such as Hydrogen starts looking like almost sensible."
The article clearly destroys the case for synthetic fuel (and I fully agree with that), but it is not very clear to me what their point was with regard to Hydrogen.
To this day we don't have any scalable energy-efficient way of producing H that is not from fossil fuels and generating CO2 as part of the process, so until we sorted that out, there is no much value in discussing the transport, storage and safety challenges.
Yes, we could inject the CO2 back into the oil field, but that is only reasonably possible if the H plant is virtually next the oil field, which is unlikely to be the scenario in almost every case.
Electrolysis can be a clean process to produce H, but only if the electricity required comes from a clean source, so we are back to score 1.
The elephants in the room here are the vehicle and our mobility paradigm... Regardless of the technology used, if we keep displacing a 1,000 ~ 2,000 kg vehicle to transport a 70kg human body, there is no way in which this is not going to be wasteful.
The same applies for flying live lobsters from Maine to Tokyo or Singapore.
Of course we need to shift to clean sources of energy, but we must reduce our insatiable energy thirst significantly too.
So the challenge is not about choosing a more efficient car the next time, but about giving up our cars entirely and shifting to public transport instead for most of our needs.
Similarly, we must limit our air cargo and travel, including the private jets, to a bare minimum as well.
#India needs 2.5 percent of its GDP ($ 3.2 tn) to cut #emissions deeply. That's $ 80 bn a year.
"Estimates suggest that compared with a no policy action scenario that could increase India's carbon emissions to 3.9 gigatonnes by 2030 (from 2.7 gigatonnes in 2021), a balanced policy intervention can lower carbon emissions to 0.9 gigatonne by 2030, the report added."
Large majority of Indians are "alarmed" or concerned about #ClimateChange and ready to see climate action from their government.
“The implications of this report for India are significant, as it shows that the majority of the Indian public is concerned about global warming and supports #climate and #energy policies.
The “alarmed” and “concerned” segments are highly educated and younger than the rest of the categories.”
If you needed some more evidence of the UK's problem with #greedflation, then the RAC has some:
In April #Diesel was159.4p a litre across the UK's forecourts (on average), compared to 146.5p for #petrol But wholesale prices for diesel at the end of the month stood at 104.9p a litre, well below the 111.2p for petrol.
The RAC's evidence is pretty damning, but the BoE & #JeremyHunt will continue to blame #workers for #inflation, rather than publicly criticise their chums in the #energy sector!
"... the first long distance coach running on biogas will operate the Stockholm-Oslo route. Powered by liquid biogas (LBG), the coach will reduce climate impact and contribute to a fossil-free transport between the two Nordic capitals."
Our #Renewable future: Laying the Path for One Hundred Percent
Clean #Energy
"Our lives, communities, and economies changed radically with the transition from wood and muscle power to fossil fuels, and so it is logical that a transition from fossil fuels to renewables—
that is, a fundamental change in the quantity and quality of energy available to power human civilization—will also entail a major shift in how we live." https://www.resilience.org/resources/our-renewable-future-laying-the-path-for-one-hundred-percent-clean-energy/