Making the batteries to run electric vehicles and store solar power requires a lot of minerals, and mining those minerals imposes an environmental cost. I joined the Weather Channel’s climate-focused weekday show Pattrn to help weigh the pros and cons of this aspect of the clean … | Continue reading
This story was first published by Grist . For car buyers considering whether to go electric, one trade-off they must weigh is whether to give up the convenience of finding a gas station almost anywhere and being able to refuel in minutes. Fast-charging an EV can take 20 to 30 mi … | Continue reading
Canary Media’s chart of the week translates crucial data about the clean energy transition into a visual format. Since the Inflation Reduction Act passed into law last August, both domestic and foreign companies have rushed to set up shop or expand operations in the U.S. to take … | Continue reading
Electricity is taking over the transportation sector, with batteries replacing fossil-fuel engines in a growing number of passenger cars, big-rig trucks, school buses , delivery vans, speedboats and ferries. Yet one category in particular is only just starting to get on board wit … | Continue reading
Up and down the U.S. Northeast coast, the once-promising prospect of a burgeoning offshore wind power industry is facing a moment of reckoning. A wave of project cancellations, caused by periods of skyrocketing inflation, high interest rates, choked supply chains and financial tr … | Continue reading
We are an independent, nonprofit newsroom covering the transition to clean energy and solutions to the climate crisis. We report on how the world is decarbonizing — from electricity to transportation, buildings and industry — with a critical focus on finding out what works and wh … | Continue reading
This story was first published by Grist . When Matt McFadden came of age in southwestern Virginia in the early 2000s, he wasn’t planning on working for a clean energy outfit. He grew up playing in a high school garage band, part of his increasingly Republican county’s small punk … | Continue reading
The Inflation Reduction Act will create a lot of new construction jobs for people building the electric-vehicle and battery factories and the wind and solar manufacturing and generation projects spurred by the law’s hundreds of billions of dollars in tax credits and incentives. P … | Continue reading
Canary Media’s Charging Up column chronicles gender diversity in the climatetech sector. Part one is a short Q&A with an industry role model about their career path. Part two features updates on career transitions, plus data points on workplace trends and diversity. Please send f … | Continue reading
This webinar brought together experts on the world’s three highest-emitting industries — steel, cement and chemicals — to explore why these sectors are so difficult to decarbonize and what types of policy solutions and technical innovations are needed to curb emissions from produ … | Continue reading
The rooftop solar industry is booming, but far too few lower-income Americans are benefiting as a result. It’s a “modern version of redlining,” according to Joe Evans of the Kresge Foundation. Now an increasing number of charitable foundations are stepping up to redress that inju … | 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 Lunar Energy for its support of the column. Last year, Dan Fulop faced a problem. The 46-ye … | Continue reading
The Biden administration has a multifaceted plan to speed construction of the transmission lines needed to decarbonize the U.S. grid. Part of that plan: offering loans to bridge the gap between securing financing to build transmission projects and lining up the buyers of the clea … | Continue reading
The industries that produce the building blocks of modern society — steel, cement and chemicals — are incredibly carbon-intensive. And since we’ll always be dependent on at least some amount of these materials, we need to figure out how to produce them without sending staggering … | Continue reading
Many people, and not just climate advocates, have wished they could make their utility company disappear. On November 7, the people of Maine may actually do that. A ballot initiative will offer voters an unprecedented chance to revoke the license to operate held by the state’s t … | Continue reading
American consumers are used to making informed purchasing choices. We like to compare our options before opening our wallets. We want to know what ingredients are in our shampoo and how many calories are in our ice cream. It took many years of work to establish the federal consum … | Continue reading
Canary Media’s chart of the week translates crucial data about the clean energy transition into a visual format. Steelmaking is the most carbon-intensive heavy industry in the world; it alone accounts for as much as 9 percent of all human-caused CO 2 emissions each year. And whil … | Continue reading
You can’t build something out of nothing, and this immutable fact poses a challenge for the essential heavy industries whose decarbonization plans depend on cleanly produced hydrogen. The steel industry is betting on clean hydrogen to replace coal in the making of its key input, … | Continue reading
You’d be hard-pressed to find an object within arm’s reach that didn’t require a carbon-intensive chemical process or oil-refining step on its path to appearing in your home, car or office. Petrochemicals are the building blocks of our packaged, coated, molded, lubricated, stretc … | Continue reading
Chemelot is a vast industrial park of petrochemical plants and research labs in the Netherlands. Inside one of its facilities, a group of companies is working to solve a thorny problem vexing the global chemicals industry: how to make one of the world’s most important compounds — … | Continue reading
For the past 150 years, steelmaking has been a big, hot business centered around enormous blast furnaces that burn metallurgical coal to melt iron. Those furnaces are the chief driver of the industry’s enormous carbon footprint; it’s responsible for 7 to 9 percent of human-caused … | Continue reading
OSCEOLA, Arkansas — On a hot, dry morning in mid-October, dozens of visitors gathered in a former cotton field turned dusty compound, before a cluster of blue rectangular buildings. In the far distance, an earthen levee snaked along the banks of the drought-stricken Mississippi R … | Continue reading
One of the first batches of modern cement was cooked up in a kitchen. In 1824, the British bricklayer Joseph Aspdin began experimenting with clay and limestone, mixing the ingredients with water and heating them in a furnace. After grinding the fusion into a fine powder and addin … | Continue reading
BROOKLYN, New York — Jeff Hansen climbs up onto a narrow metal platform and stands beside three towering mixers, which are stirring up concrete with the texture of wet sand. In the bustling warehouse below, tall machines press the concrete into molds like giant Play-Doh sets, chu … | Continue reading
Holcim Group, the largest cement manufacturer outside of China, has a dilemma. On the one hand, its line of business couldn’t be more solid — cement is, after all, one of the building blocks of the modern world. But producing the material emits enormous amounts of planet-warming … | Continue reading
Three essential materials — steel, cement and chemicals — fortify and infuse our modern world. Though we may not think about them much, they are everywhere: in the walls that surround us, the roads we travel on and most of the everyday products we use. To meet our insatiable dema … | Continue reading
A new report draws on 10 years of detailed data to chart charger use patterns, as well as how they can work as home backup and grid-balancing tools. | Continue reading
My experience as a landlord illustrates the challenge of electrifying everything — and points to ways to improve the system. | Continue reading
Climavores podcast hosts Michael Grunwald and Tamar Haspel serve up some hot takes. | Continue reading
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