When we talk about climate change, a lot of weird looking numbers can get tossed around. Metric tons, millions of tons, and so on.
How do we make sense of this, and put it all in context?
Welcome to “Carbon in Context” by Project Drawdown. It helps you see the bigger picture.
Check it out!
It's interesting how a progressive can read some of the points and come to entirely different endpoints. Another example:
"6. National service should be a universal duty."
I read that and immediately think Civilian Climate Corps installing solar modules across the country.
"Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible."
Oh cool! Like we should go back to the progressive tax rates of the 1950s, end tax loopholes, and invest all that treasury income in public infrastructure?
Oh. No. That is not what you meant.
Over the next year we will be working with our local partners in Fiji to realize this community solar + water minigrid. The winner of last year's LAGI design competition, The O by Alberto Roncelli will generate 150 MWh of electricity and 1.2 million liters of filtered water each year.
I'll be presenting at DC Climate week this Wednesday, April 22,
3:00 PM - 5:00 PM along with Terry Lee (Garvey Labs), Ernest Popescu (Metrobloks), and Trevor Lee (Olin Studio). Join us as we explore what is possible for the design of data centers and the energy landscapes that power them. See more:
If you read one thing today ...
An essential article by the great @billmckibben.bsky.social
billmckibben.substack.com/p/big-oil-br...
The AMOC moves roughly 1.25 Petawatts of heat. Ironically this is more than 60 times the total global energy consumption, so if we could have figured out some way to tap into that energy we wouldn’t have needed to burn all the fossil fuels that might shut it down.
Katherine Hamilton calls batteries the bacon of the electricity grid because they make everything better. I’d prefer a less meat-focused analogy but you get the point.
“Distributed generation developers say that in the meantime, the uncertainty has brought investment to a halt.”
“Mr. Stewart said his clients are having a hard time financing and moving forward with projects.”
“As long as this is a question mark, it’s a black cloud over the industry.”
“A study by Aurora Energy Research this month, commissioned by solar developer Dimension Energy, found that adding 2 gigawatts of small-scale, distributed solar farms in Pennsylvania could reduce ratepayer costs by $1 billion over 20 years.“
“Distributed generation — small-scale technologies that produce electricity near where it is used, rather than relying on distant, centralized power plants — has value to all ratepayers, utility analysts have found, by easing peak demand and avoiding costly transmission grid upgrades.”
Instead of enabling community solar legislation, Pennsylvania is considering penalizing smaller scale solar installations, scapegoating them for rising rates with no evidence.
“They’re trying to dismantle the solar industry based on something that’s simply not true.”
“Colorado was the first state to set up a community solar platform, in 2010.”
Meanwhile, states like Pennsylvania (and 25 others) have yet to enact community solar legislation.
Where is the solar canopy and EV charger network? Did you photoshop that out?
The Art + Environment Summit at the Nevada Museum of Art just wrapped up. If only everyone could have experienced these past few days of inspiring presentations and panels we really could bring a better world into being.
As long as it’s a 1955 Mercedes Benz 300 SL Gullwing.
The Obama era clean power plan never stood a chance because the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court was ideologically opposed to regulating greenhouse gases. This does not bode well for the endangerment finding legal battle currently making its way up to the top court.
Eventually we will come to realize that carbon-free electricity needs to be built and maintained as a public good. Markets have been far too slow to decarbonize grids. Major structural barriers remain and may even get worse just when we need to accelerate faster.
India needs batteries ASAP.
"Only about a quarter of the power generated by India’s new sources actually reaches consumers."
"India’s first utility-scale battery system in New Delhi, was installed less than a year ago."
Since no other country can compete, India must rely entirely on China.
This is really good news. "This isn’t module assembly – it’s solar cell manufacturing, which is a more critical (and historically more overseas-dominated) part of the supply chain.
If Suniva delivers on this timeline, it’ll meaningfully boost US cell capacity, which has been the biggest bottleneck."
Until the United States figures out how to on-shore lithium production in an environmentally sustainable way, the people and landscapes of Chile will continue to be exploited. "Groundwater levels have fallen by more than 10 meters (33 feet) in the last 15 years" in the Atacama.
"Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and reported here for the first time — finds we may be able to extract 18 million metric tons of “white gold” from the heated underground pool, which is not connected to the surface lake, the equivalent of 382 million electric vehicle batteries."
There is enough lithium in Southern California's Salton Sea to make an electric vehicle battery for every single American and have plenty left over. The problem is that it has to make sense economically and it's taking a very long time for that to pan out.
The “extra” is from spare capacity at a large desalination plant. If there is a swap to be made, it will need to consider the massive electricity demand required to ramp up production at the facility. The energy-water nexus is not mentioned in the article.
Rural Washington county lifts moratorium on large solar projects and places "agrivoltaic principles" standards on developers, including crop production, grazing, beehives, and/or cover crops and pollinator habitats. Detailed agrivoltaic plan is required as part of their permit application.
If AMOC actually collapses, an additional 0.2 C of warming is going to be the very least of our problems.
Solutions: Deploy more solar, wind, and especially battery storage; Invest in transmission and distribution with grid enhancing technologies; Implement demand management systems through VPPs and flexible loads; More coops and municipal utilities that aren’t driven by shareholder profits.
5. The cost of retails electricity is rising faster under private for-profit investor owned utilities while rates at municipal and cooperative utilities have been more modest.
4. “Distribution (and transmission) expenditures have contributed to retail price increases, in part due to aging infrastructure and supply-chain constraints.”
