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Can Solar and Batteries Outlast an Extended Power Outage?

Can Solar and Batteries Outlast an Extended Power ...

It depends, experts say. Just expect to make a few sacrifices. Even by the standards of the generally well-informed clean-energy customers in California’s Bay Area, Todd Karin is a savvy one. Karin works as a postdoctoral researcher in the energy storage and distributed resources division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Last year, he chose to add solar and storage to his home, first buying an array of...
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Solar-plus-storage projects spreading across the U.S.

Solar-plus-storage projects spreading across the U...

A new wave of solar farm development, pairing solar photovoltaics with battery storage, is accelerating across the United States, most notably in California, Hawaii, Florida and the Northeast. Roughly 40 such systems were in operation in the U.S. as of late September, combining about 533 MW of storage with 1,242 MW of solar capacity. Meanwhile, companies are developing at least another 85 co-located solar and storage...
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Toxic Metals Found in 95 Percent of Baby Foods

Toxic Metals Found in 95 Percent of Baby Foods

Heavy metals that may damage a developing brain are present in 95 percent of baby foods on the market, according to new research from the advocacy organization Healthy Babies Bright Futures (HBBF), which bills itself as an alliance of scientists, nonprofit organizations and donors trying to reduce exposures to neurotoxic chemicals during the first three years of development. Researchers commissioned by HBBF looked at 168...
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94 World Mayors Call for Green New Deal, Blast Slow National Actions

94 World Mayors Call for Green New Deal, Blast Slo...

Disappointed by the lack of concrete action at September’s UN Climate Action Summit, the mayors of some of the world’s biggest cities are taking matters into their own hands. The C40 group of mayors — who represent 94 cities, more than 700 million people and one quarter of the global economy — announced their support Wednesday for a Global Green New Deal to fight the climate crisis, The Guardian reported....
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Brief overview of new IPCC report on oceans and ice risks

Brief overview of new IPCC report on oceans and ic...

New special report from IPCC lists array of increasing risks facing oceans and ice in a warming world. On the heels of its August special report on climate and land, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in late September published another special report, this one focused on oceans and ice. This latest report was authored by 104 climate scientists from 36 countries and reflecting findings in 6,981 studies. It...
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On Climate and Food, What’s the Lesson We Insist on Missing?

On Climate and Food, What’s the Lesson We Insist o...

Food will be scarce, expensive and less nutritious,” CNN warns us in its coverage of the UN’s new “Climate Change and Land” report. The New York Times announces that “Climate Change Threatens the World’s Food Supply.” Reading these headlines, I’m tossed back to the late ’60s when our culture was gripped by what I came to call the “scarcity scare,” as Paul...
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We’re Just Starting to Learn How Fracking Harms Wildlife

We’re Just Starting to Learn How Fracking Harms Wi...

In January 2015 North Dakota experienced one of the worst environmental disasters in its history: A pipeline burst, spilling nearly 3 million gallons of briny, saltwater waste from nearby oil-drilling operations into two creek beds. The wastewater, which flowed all the way to the Missouri River, contained chloride concentrations high enough to kill any wildlife that encountered it. It wasn’t the first such disaster in...
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Ocean Cleaning Device Succeeds in Removing Plastic for the First Time

Ocean Cleaning Device Succeeds in Removing Plastic...

An enormous floating device designed by Dutch scientists for the non-profit Ocean Cleanup successfully captured and removed plastic from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the company announced Wednesday, as CNN reported. Ocean Cleanup has been hard at work on creating a device to attack the plastic waste crisis for seven years, by creating a device that captures plastic in its fold like a giant arm, according to Business...
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Amazon’s Move to Electric Trucks Is a Very Big Deal

Amazon’s Move to Electric Trucks Is a Very Big Dea...

I see a lot of announcements from companies touting their goals for reducing emissions. Too often, these plans are light on details and leave most of the heavy lifting until well after their current leaders have retired. This week, we start with a plan that has the makings of a standard-setter because it thinks big and will be taking meaningful steps soon. I’m Dan Gearino, your guide to the clean energy economy. Send me news...
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There’s Evidence that Climate Activism could be Swaying Public Opinion in the US

There’s Evidence that Climate Activism could be Sw...

There’s evidence that climate activism could be swaying public opinion in the US Climate activists walked out of classrooms and workplaces in more than 150 countries on Friday, Sept. 20 to demand stronger action on climate change. Mass mobilizations like this have become increasingly common in recent years.I’m a scholar of environmental communication who examines how people become engaged with solving dilemmas such as...
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The Hope of the Green New Deal

The Hope of the Green New Deal

There is significant talk in the U.S. now concerning the replacement of fossil fuels with renewable energy sources to reduce the U.S. impact on global warming.  Politically, a Green New Deal is being promoted for achieving the goal of full replacement of fossil fuels with renewable energy. The Green New Deal sounds like an admirable endeavor but, realistically, once fully implemented the U.S. would still consume huge volumes...
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Planting Billions of Trees Is the ‘Best Climate Change Solution Available Today,’ Study Finds

Planting Billions of Trees Is the ‘Best Clim...

Planting more than 500 billion trees could remove around 25 percent of existing carbon from the atmosphere, a new study has found. What’s more: there’s enough space to do it. The study, published in Science Friday, set out to assess how much new forest the earth could support without encroaching on farmland or urban areas and came up with a figure of 0.9 billion hectares, an area roughly the size of the U.S., BBC...
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Just One Tea Bag Can Release Billions of Microscopic Plastic Particles Into Your Drink, Study Finds

Just One Tea Bag Can Release Billions of Microscop...

From Arctic snow to the deep sea, microplastics have been found in some unusual places. Now, it turns out they could be lurking at the bottom of your cup of tea! McGill University chemical engineering professor Nathalie Tufenkji decided to test tea bags after she was given one in a Montreal cafe that looked like it was made from plastic. “I said, ‘Oh God, I’m sure if it’s plastic it’s, like,...
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Delicate Wash Cycle Uses More Water and Releases 800,000 More Microplastics

Delicate Wash Cycle Uses More Water and Releases 8...

The delicate wash cycle uses much more water than other settings, which triggers the release of hundreds of thousands of plastic microfibers, which travel down the drain and potentially into marine waterways, according to a new study published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology. Researchers at Newcastle University in the UK found that the delicate cycle, which uses about twice as much water as other...
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Youth Who Led Global Climate Strike Are Bringing a New “Spirit” to Climate Fight

Youth Who Led Global Climate Strike Are Bringing a...

Following Friday’s youth-led climate strike — the largest-ever global protest focused on climate — we speak with Bill McKibben, longtime journalist and co-founder of 350.org. McKibben’s latest piece for The New Yorker is titled “Money Is the Oxygen on Which the Fire of Global Warming Burns,” and his cover piece for Time magazine is headlined “Hello from the Year 2050. We Avoided the Worst of Climate Change — But Everything...
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