Brian McCowan, Zondits staff, 2/29/2024 Image: The Edwards & Sanborn solar and storage project in Kern County, California. (Mortenson) The new California facility makes grid-scale solar energy available even when the sun doesn’t shine. Two million solar PV panels and over 120,000 batteries have come online on a combination of public and private land in … Read more
Brian McCowan, Zondits staff, 2/29/2024 The International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasts that renewable energy-generated electricity will surpass coal-generated power by the end of 2025. Further, the IEA predicts that by 2026, nuclear power and renewable energy combined will generate almost 50% of the world’s electricity. The report, titled Electricity 2024, is the current edition of … Read more
Brian McCowan, Zondits staff, 2/12/2024 Hot on the heels of COP28 (Was COP28 a Success? It Depends on Who You Ask | Zondits), two new reports are sounding alarms on climate change. The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service announced that 2023 was the hottest year ever recorded—and that’s in 173 years of record-keeping. The … Read more
Emily Collins, Zondits guest, 2/1/2024 By now, it’s no secret that heat pumps just might be a key factor in climate solutions. From reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to saving homeowners money on their monthly utility bills, the heat pump continues to increase in popularity. In 2022 alone, even before the U.S. passed the Inflation … Read more
Brian McCowan, Zondits staff, 1/9/2024 At the close of 2023, 100,000 individuals representing nearly 200 nations met in Dubai to negotiate an updated climate action agreement at the United Nations COP28 conference. The UN Climate Change Conference – United Arab Emirates | UNFCCC, officially known as the 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference of Parties, … Read more
Brian McCowan, Zondits staff, 12/19/2023 Just as the Biden administration announced a new international effort to expand nuclear power generation (https://phys.org/news/2023-12-triple-nuclear-power-cop28.html), a key project toward reviving nuclear power in the U.S. has been canceled due to cost overruns. The Carbon Free Power Project (CFPP), designed by NuScale Power, was to be the first of its … Read more
John Podesta, senior adviser to President Joe Biden, said “The U.S. government has a huge share of the market – particularly of concrete and asphalt – and that I think helps drive the industry towards meeting an ever increasing level of innovation when it comes to decarbonizing.” Read the full article here: US invests $2 … Read more
John Mandyck, CEO of the nonprofit Urban Green Council, said “We need to think about payback differently. Climate is a life-safety issue now. Nobody asks what the payback is to put a sprinkler safety system in your building. There’s no payback there — if there isn’t a fire.” Read the full article here: NYC’s big building-decarbonization law faces … Read more
A senior administration official said on a press call, “We’ve seen the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission take action on its own motion to improve interconnection processes. But that doesn’t take the opportunity away from Congress to help us move even faster in the direction of building outlines that will reduce consumer costs and boost resilience … Read more