Sustainability

Tag Archives: solar energy

California Will Require Solar Power for New Homes

SACRAMENTO — Long a leader and trendsetter in its clean-energy goals, California took a giant step on Wednesday, becoming the first state to require all new homes to have solar power.

The new requirement, to take effect in two years, brings solar power into the mainstream in a way it has never been until now. It will add thousands of dollars to the cost of home when a shortage of affordable housing is one of California’s most pressing issues.

That made the relative ease of its approval — in a unanimous vote by the five-member California Energy Commission before a standing-room crowd, with little debate — all the more remarkable.

State officials and clean-energy advocates say the extra cost to home buyers will be more than made up in lower energy bills. That prospect has won over even the construction industry, which has embraced solar capability as a selling point.

Achieving 100% Renewable Energy is Within Our Reach

“..if you pay a power bill [100% renewable] is increasingly the common-sense path forward.”

We watch in horror as the damages from climate change continue to mount.

Last year, Hurricane Harvey dropped more rain on Houston than any storm has ever dropped on any American city, ever. Hurricane Maria set back development in Puerto Rico 25 years, according to early estimates. And the tab keeps mounting: in 2017 alone, the economic cost of hurricanes and wildfires was greater than the cost of paying tuition for every American in a public college or university. We can’t have a working nation or a world if we don’t stop the climate from careening out of control. That’s been clear for decades now, but what’s been less clear is precisely what we should do about it.

Happily, that’s no longer the case. We now know exactly what to do, and we’re increasingly certain it can be done. We have to switch off of coal, oil, and gas, and on to 100% wind, water, and sun energy sources. And though this drive for a conversion to clean energy started in northern Europe and northern California, it’s a call that’s gaining traction outside the obvious green enclaves. More and more major US cities have taken the pledge to go 100% renewable by the year 2050, while others have taken action to sever their ties with the fossil fuel industry, signifying a global shift in how we’re thinking about our energy system.

https://www.sandersinstitute.com/blog/04/18/2018/achieving-100-renewable-energy

World’s First Road That Recharges Vehicles While Driving Opens in Sweden

(VIDEO at link)

Sweden inaugurated on Wednesday the first road of its kind that can recharge commercial and passenger car batteries while driving.

The eRoadArlanda project consists of 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) of electric rail installed on a public road outside Arlanda Airport. The innovation was funded by the Swedish Transport Administration and is part of the government’s goal of fossil fuel-free transportation infrastructure by 2030.

According to the project website, the road works by transferring energy from an electrified rail to a movable arm attached underneath the vehicle. The arm is able to detect and lower onto the electrified section when the vehicle drives above it.

The road is divided into 50-meter sections, with each section supplying power only when a vehicle is above it. When the vehicle stops, the current is disconnected. The system is also able to calculate the vehicle’s energy consumption, which enables electricity costs to be debited per vehicle and user.

A diesel-turned-electric truck owned by logistics firm PostNord is the first to use the road. Over the next 12 months, the truck will stay juiced as it shuttles deliveries between Arlanda Airport and its distribution center 12 kilometers away, The Local reported.

https://www.ecowatch.com/electric-vehicles-recharge-road-sweden-2559608067.html

US Electricity: Natural Gas & Coal Fall, While Renewables Continue to Rise

Electricity generation from both natural gas and coal fell in 2017. At the same time, renewables – especially hydropower, wind, and solar – continued to rise according to new data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/us-electricity-natural-gas-coal-fall-while-renewables-continue-to-rise/

Renewable power generation costs continue to fall and are already very competitive to meet needs for new capacity.

 

January 2018
ISBN : 978-92-9260-040-2

Renewable energy has emerged as an increasingly competitive way to meet new power generation needs. This comprehensive cost report from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) highlights the latest trends for each of the main renewable power technologies, based on the latest cost and auction price data from projects around the world.

http://www.irena.org/publications/2018/Jan/Renewable-power-generation-costs-in-2017

Cheap renewables undercut nuclear power

Cheap renewables are mounting a serious challenge to nuclear power, which in 2017 has had a difficult year.

Key projects have been abandoned, costs are rising, and politicians in countries which previously championed the industry are withdrawing their support.

Renewables, on the other hand, especially wind and solar power, have continued to expand at an enormous rate. Most importantly, they have got significantly cheaper.

And newer technologies like large-scale battery storage and production of hydrogenare becoming economic, because they harness cheap power from excess renewable capacity.

Cheap renewables undercut nuclear power

Smart money should back solar

We are on the verge of a revolutionary transformation able to power the last billion

https://www.ft.com/content/eb6dc174-d4f3-11e7-8c9a-d9c0a5c8d5c9

The Sun

We consume energy in dozens of forms. Yet virtually all of the energy we use originates in the power of the atom. Nuclear fusionreactions energize stars, including the Sun, and the resulting sunlight has profound effects on our planet.

Sunlight contains a surprisingly large amount of energy. On average, even after passing through hundreds of kilometers of air on a clear day, solar radiation reaches Earth with enough energy in a single square meter to run a mid-size desktop computer—if all the sunlight could be captured and converted to electricityPhotovoltaic and solar thermal technologies harvest some of that energy now and will grow in both usage and efficiency in the future.

The Sun’s energy warms the planet’s surface, powering titanic transfers of heat and pressure in weather patterns and ocean currents. The resulting air currents drive wind turbines. Solar energyalso evaporates water that falls as rain and builds up behind dams, where its motion is used to generate electricity via hydropower.

Most Americans, however, use solar energy in its secondhand form: fossil fuels. When sunlight strikes a plant, some of the energy is trapped through photosynthesis and is stored in chemical bonds as the plant grows. Of course we can recover that energy directly months or years later by burning plant products such as wood, which breaks the bonds and releases energy as heat and light. More often, though, we use the stored energy in the much more concentrated forms that result when organic matter, after millions of years of geological and chemical activity underground, turns into coaloil, or natural gas. Either way, we’re reclaiming the power of sunlight.

 

http://needtoknow.nas.edu/energy/energy-sources/the-sun/

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