Doron Brenmiller, co-founder of Brenmiller Energy , knows all about the useful things hot rocks can do. Over the past 12 years, the Israel-based manufacturer of thermal energy storage systems has evolved from producing heat batteries for a specific purpose — solar-thermal power p … | Continue reading
Zero-carbon energy is just about the only form of energy the U.S. is building anymore. In the first half of this year, developers and power plant owners built 20.2 gigawatts (GW) of electricity generation capacity, per the U.S. Energy Information Administration , a 21 percent inc … | Continue reading
A big facility for recycling lithium-ion batteries is now operating in Central Ohio, where workers are busy salvaging and repurposing the metals and minerals needed to drive the clean energy transition. On Thursday, Cirba Solutions officially opened its expanded battery recycling … | Continue reading
Zero-carbon energy is just about the only form of energy the U.S. is building anymore. In the first half of this year, developers and power plant owners built 20.2 gigawatts (GW) of electricity generation capacity, per the U.S. Energy Information Administration , a 21 percent inc … | Continue reading
Canary Media’s Electrified Life column shares real-world tales, tips, and insights to demystify what individuals can do to shift their homes and lives to clean electric power. Canary thanks EnergySage for its support of the column. Fraudsters can dim even an industry as bright as … | Continue reading
Steel and concrete form the backbones of our modern infrastructure. Billions of metric tons of both materials are churned out every year to make the world’s buildings, bridges, sewers, electrical grids, and seemingly everything else. But producing steel and cement — the key ingre … | Continue reading
Deep waters off the coast of Maine may soon host some of the nation’s first floating offshore wind turbines, an emerging but potentially essential technology in the clean energy transition. The state of Maine and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management agreed to lease 15 square mil … | Continue reading
When Max Kanter bought an electric vehicle back in 2022, he didn’t expect it to be so hard to find accurate data on the cost and carbon-intensity of the electricity surging through the power grid. As not only a new EV owner but also a data whiz, he sought out the information beca … | Continue reading
This article was originally co-published by THE CITY and The Guardian . It was the midst of a July heat wave, with humidity sticky in the air. Phoebe Saldana sat in the colorful plaza of her East Harlem housing complex, watching her two young daughters ride scooters and climb on … | Continue reading
Cement is one of the most widely used materials in the world, but making it causes a lot of planet-warming carbon emissions . The industry is responsible for roughly 8 percent of global emissions, most of which are not from burning fossil fuels but a byproduct of the high-tempera … | Continue reading
Despite widely diverging party platforms, there’s one goal that both Democrats and Republicans currently endorse: bringing manufacturing jobs back to America. That’s already happening, and nowhere more so than in Georgia. The state capitalized early on federal incentives to spur … | Continue reading
In vanguard markets like California, the demand for places to charge electric vehicles, and battery-powered big rigs in particular, is outstripping the pace at which charging depots are being built. The companies rolling out electric trucks are increasingly eager to close that ga … | Continue reading
Coffin Butte, a rapidly growing landfill in Oregon that is leaking explosive levels of methane, has caught the attention of state and federal officials. On August 8, Oregon’s U.S. senators, Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden, and one of its U.S. House members, Val Hoyle, wrote a letter t … | Continue reading
Exactly two years ago today, President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, establishing a wide array of clean energy programs meant to supercharge spending on climate solutions. Investment in clean energy projects — from solar manufacturing facilities to home batteries … | Continue reading
JR Howard of Texas Solar Sheep can’t buy sheep fast enough. He supplies them to solar farms, where their grazing keeps grass short for less than the cost of mowing it. Demand for his animals has skyrocketed over the past few years as more and more large solar installations are be … | Continue reading
New England states are attempting to make good on their climate pledges while addressing some very real concerns about the long-term stability of the region’s electrical grid. The Department of Energy awarded $389 million in grant funding last week to strengthen that system. Much … | Continue reading
Vineyard Wind 1, the first utility-scale offshore wind farm in Massachusetts, will resume limited construction following a monthlong pause, its developer announced. It’s the project’s first major update since a football-field-size blade snapped off a spinning wind turbine on July … | Continue reading
Two years ago this week, President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, the major climate legislation brimming with clean energy subsidies — including a marquee $8.8 billion in home energy rebates to help hundreds of thousands of households decarbonize their homes. But t … | Continue reading
This story was first published by Energy News Network . North Carolina regulators have approved a controversial green tariff proposal from Duke Energy, rejecting protests from critics who argue it won’t bolster the company’s transition to zero-carbon electricity. Originally desig … | Continue reading
DALTON, Ga. — Growing up in Cartersville, Georgia, Lisa Nash saw what happens to communities when factory jobs disappear. It was the 1980s and corporations were offshoring production to reduce costs and raise profits. The jobs that remained in this northwest corner of the state w … | Continue reading
To stop climate change, buildings from squat to tall will need to swap out their fossil-fuel boilers and furnaces for über-efficient heat pumps that can run on clean power. But adapting or installing new pipes, ductwork, refrigerant lines, and indoor air handlers is invasive work … | Continue reading
Tritium , the insolvent Australia-based manufacturer of EV charging equipment, has found a buyer for its assets — India’s largest EV charger manufacturer Exicom . The acquisition provides hope that a major provider of fast-charging equipment for the U.S. market will be able to av … | Continue reading
This story was first published by Energy News Network . Massachusetts has awarded $53 million — and announced plans for additional funding — to allow affordable housing operators to execute energy efficiency retrofits that are expected to reduce carbon emissions, cut energy bills … | Continue reading
Across the U.S. East Coast, nuclear power plant owners are proposing marriages to tech giants who are both desperate for electricity to fuel their massive data-center expansion plans and publicly committed to using clean energy. The proposals go like this: Build data centers that … | Continue reading
(Wondering what ancillary services are? Read our quick overview on grid services , or drill down further .) Climatoonist cartoons capture the hopes, frustrations, and absurdities of working on the front lines of the energy transition. Read our profile about Climatoonist to learn … | Continue reading
Early in his term, President Joe Biden set an ambitious goal for the country’s power grid: 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2035. Recently released data provides a status update on that target. As of the end of 2022, 13 states received the majority of their electricity from … | Continue reading
A U.S. court just dealt a major blow to a string of giant fossil fuel projects under development in coastal Texas. Earlier this week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit overturned the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s authorizations for two liquefied natural gas … | Continue reading
A hefty chunk of U.S. emissions comes from the energy used to heat buildings. That means millions of homes must be converted to electric heating in order to meet climate targets. In Colorado, a 2021 law spurred the state’s largest investor-owned utility to produce a plan that cou … | Continue reading
The U.S. Department of Energy awarded $389 million this week to a coalition of New England states for improvements to the power grid that will significantly increase the region’s capacity for offshore wind development. The Power Up New England plan — a collaboration between Conne … | Continue reading
Some flights from a major U.S. airport are about to get a little bit cleaner. Last week, United Airlines announced it’s purchasing up to 1 million gallons of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) from Neste, a major producer of the fuel, to use at Chicago O’Hare International Airport t … | Continue reading
SunPower , a Silicon Valley solar pioneer, filed for bankruptcy in Delaware yesterday , marking the collapse of a onetime icon of American solar. The company will sell some of its assets to the recently formed residential installer Complete Solaria , whose investors include veter … | Continue reading
In rural Benton County, brigades of waste-collection vehicles lumber through forested hills and wheat fields, each truck trailed by an acrid stench. They’re hauling trash from across the western half of the state to Coffin Butte Landfill. The site accepts waste from nearly two do … | Continue reading
Electricity prices are set to spike for roughly 65 million Americans — and rules that keep new clean energy from being built are largely to blame. Last week, PJM, which manages the power grid serving Washington, D.C., and 13 states stretching from the mid-Atlantic coast to the Gr … | Continue reading
The U.S. power grid is overburdened and under-resourced — and the Biden administration just announced a major investment aimed at helping solve those problems. The Department of Energy has offered $2.2 billion to eight projects across 18 states that could expand and strengthen th … | Continue reading
It's bad enough when a public EV-charging station is out of service. It's worse when your app doesn't know that and sends you there just as you're in desperate need of a charge. This experience is all too common among the U.S. EV drivers who don't have access to Tesla's dependabl … | Continue reading
Two cold regions in the U.S. are getting a massive infusion of funds to swap fossil-fueled furnaces, boilers, and water heaters for heat pumps. In late July, the initiatives — one based in New England, the other in Alaska — were among the 25 projects selected by the U.S. Environm … | Continue reading
In a major milestone, the European Union generated more electricity from solar and wind than from fossil fuels in the first half of this year. A new report from think tank Ember shows that in the first six months of 2024, solar and wind rose to account for 30 percent of the regio … | Continue reading
This story was first published by Grist . A climate scientist half-jokingly once told me that if billionaires really wanted to save the planet, they would buy everyone a heat pump, the ingenious appliance that extracts heat from even frigid winter air to warm a home, then reverse … | Continue reading
Earlier this year, Puerto Rico passed a law that extends the island’s highly successful rooftop solar program through 2031. Lawmakers and solar advocates say the measure is needed to maintain the clean energy boom that’s helping households and communities across the U.S. territor … | Continue reading
For the first time ever, electric Ford F-150 drivers are getting paid to run their homes from their pickup truck batteries during peak hours to help meet grid demand. And the pathbreaking program is happening in Baltimore, a city better known for the creation of Old Bay seasoning … | Continue reading
To help the energy transition happen faster, the high-voltage power lines crisscrossing the U.S. will need a high-tech upgrade. Recent federal and state regulations are calling on utilities to deploy a new generation of cables to get that done — and the companies making the neces … | Continue reading
This latest technical innovation, now starting to ship, means you can use an electric range with just a standard 120-volt outlet. | Continue reading
The U.S. Department of Energy announced plans last week to transform a contaminated former nuclear weapons production site into what could be the largest solar project in the country. The installation would stretch across up to 8,000 acres in south-central Washington state and bo … | Continue reading
Earlier this month, renewable energy developer Black Bear Energy and clean-energy finance company Evergrow unveiled a set of solar projects structured to make the most of the climate law’s tax credit bonanza. It’s a relatively small solar investment — 556 kilowatts of projects ac … | Continue reading
This story was originally published by Energy News Network . Advocates in Ohio are stepping up their clean energy efforts in response to the Republican Party platform and Project 2025 , which detail how a second Trump administration would promote fossil fuels while cutting back f … | Continue reading
Linda Cleveland knew that getting solar panels on the roof of the Watts-Willowbrook Church of Christ was more than just a way for her congregation to save on electric bills. It would further its broader community mission too. The 12-kilowatt solar array on the roof of “The Brook, … | Continue reading
Most planned new steelmaking capacity will use lower-emissions electric arc furnace technology rather than the historically dominant but emissions-intensive basic oxygen furnaces, per a new report from the nonprofit Global Energy Monitor. Most planned new steelmaking capacity wil … | Continue reading
I hear the same refrain from climate advocates and fossil-fuel boosters: Whether you like electric vehicles or not, mining all the minerals needed for those batteries is going to be a problem. People worry that we’ll run out of lithium, or skyrocketing demand will push prices thr … | Continue reading