Tag Archive for: decarbonization

247Solar’s innovative concentrated solar power system stores sunshine for continuous clean energy, day & night.

MIT spinoff unveils continuous solar power solution technology

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For the past two decades, solar and wind farms have become a familiar sight, revolutionizing how we generate electricity. However, complete decarbonization requires a broader arsenal of technologies. This is because renewable sources like solar and wind are intermittent, meaning they don’t produce power consistently. Additionally, they can’t provide the high temperatures crucial for many industrial processes.

Enter 247Solar, a company pioneering a novel approach to concentrated solar power (CSP) that addresses these limitations. Their high-temperature systems boast overnight thermal energy storage, enabling them to deliver round-the-clock clean power and industrial-grade heat.

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Source: Interesting Engineering

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The three UC campuses leading the green transition have drawn on the collective brainpower of thousands of students and faculty to generate the most efficient, effective and equitable solutions for each campus.

How three UC campuses are phasing out fossil fuels

The plume of steam from UC Berkeley’s natural gas-fired power plant is a familiar sight on the skyline of San Francisco’s East Bay. But the facility’s days are numbered: The campus is on track to switch to an electrical heating system by 2028. As each UC campus prepares to publish its long-term plan for eliminating carbon emissions and transitioning to renewable energy, hear from sustainability experts on three campuses — Davis, Berkeley and Santa Cruz — that are phasing out fossil fuels ahead of schedule. 

Chancellor Cynthia Larive was barely a year into her tenure at UC Santa Cruz when a fast-moving wildfire nearly destroyed the campus. “It came to within a mile and a half of us. Everyone had to evacuate,” Larive recalled recently. “And if the wind hadn’t shifted overnight, I likely wouldn’t be talking to you from this office. The fires could have burned through campus to the sea.”

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Source: University of California

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Around the world, people are watching California try to decarbonize electricity completely by 2045 while growing its $4-trillion economy.

All eyes on California to figure out energy decarbonization, economic growth, and fairness

Around the world, people are watching California try to decarbonize electricity completely by 2045 while growing its $4-trillion economy and making sure low-income communities share in the benefits of clean energy and avoid any unfair burdens. Some people are looking to learn what to do where they live. Others want to see California fall on its face.

“Many folks are actually really rooting for our California clean energy experiment to fail, but in fact it’s succeeding,” David Hochschild, chair of the California Energy Commission, said Jan. 29 in opening a two-day conference at Stanford University. The CEC is responsible for the planning the state’s energy system. It co-sponsored the first day of the conference, which was hosted by Stanford’s Precourt Institute for Energy and the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. The day focused on how researchers can help California achieve its climate goals.

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Source: Stanford University

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The $1 billion investment will be the largest clean energy project in KY and one of the largest in the US to be built on former mine lands.

Rivian and partners are turning a huge Kentucky coal mine into an 800 MW solar farm

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Rivian, BrightNight, and The Nature Conservancy will together turn one of the largest coal mines in the US into Kentucky’s largest solar farm.

Starfire Mine used to be one of the largest coal mines in the US. And now, global renewable power producer BrightNight’s CEO Martin Hermann, Rivian’s founder and CEO RJ Scaringe, and The Nature Conservancy’s CEO Jennifer Morris announced today that all three companies will work together to transform Kentucky’s Starfire into a solar farm.

Rivian and The Nature Conservancy collaborated to choose “a clean energy project that would accelerate an equitable, science-based clean energy transition that maximizes positive impacts on climate, conservation, and communities,” and they selected BrightNight to be the Starfire solar project’s developer.

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Source: electrek

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Researchers from University of Cambridge developed a solar-powered reactor that converts captured CO2 & plastic waste into sustainable fuels.

Solar-powered reactor converts CO2 and plastic waste into sustainable fuels

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Researchers have demonstrated how carbon dioxide can be captured from industrial processes – or even directly from the air – and transformed into clean, sustainable fuels using just the energy from the Sun.

The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, developed a solar-powered reactor that converts captured CO2 and plastic waste into sustainable fuels and other valuable chemical products. In tests, CO2 was converted into syngas, a key building block for sustainable liquid fuels, and plastic bottles were converted into glycolic acid, which is widely used in the cosmetics industry.

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Source: Sci Tech Daily

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Solar’s levelized cost of electricity will reach $30/MWh in 2050, as global capacity surges, said DNV.

Solar to reach ‘unassailable position’ as cheapest electricity source, says DNV

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DNV, a global risk management firm, has offered its annual outlook on the global energy transition. It placed solar in the spotlight as the frontrunner in renewable energy supply.

“In 2050, solar PV will be in unassailable position as the cheapest source of new electricity globally,” said DNV. 

As the world transitions toward carbon emissions-free electricity generation, DNV expects the share in the generation mix for coal to decrease 4% and gas to fall by 8% by mid-century. As the global fossil fuel industry becomes a metaphorical fossil itself, DNV expects the world energy mix to be 70% reliant on variable renewable sources like solar and wind power. Fossil fuels will represent just over 10% of the energy mix by that time.

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Source: PV Magazine

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Imerys is partnering with TotalEnergies to install a 15-MW solar system paired with a 7.5-MWh energy storage system at Imerys’s Lompoc facility in Santa Barbara County, CA.

California mining site to install solar + storage system

Imerys is partnering with TotalEnergies to install a 15-MW solar system paired with a 7.5-MWh energy storage system at Imerys’s Lompoc facility in Santa Barbara County, California. TotalEnergies will install, maintain and operate the system under a 25-year power purchase and storage services agreement (PPSSA).

This collaboration is part of Imerys’ decarbonization roadmap in line with its commitment to align with the 1.5°C trajectory. Imerys targets to reduce its CO2 emissions by 42% in absolute terms by 2030.

The Lompoc industrial site began its diatomite mining and processing operations in the 1890s. The new renewable power installation will cover 50% of the current electrical energy demand of the site.

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Source: Solar Power World

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Tom Steyer's Galvanize Climate Solutions will acquire residential properties and retrofit them with the goal of deep emissions reductions.

Billionaire Tom Steyer plans net zero apartment upgrades across US

An arm of billionaire Tom Steyer’s investment firm Galvanize Climate Solutions will begin buying and upgrading property across the US this summer and fall, aiming to cut the portfolio’s greenhouse gas emissions to net zero in three years without the use of offsets.

“This is a real estate strategy with a decarbonization goal,” said Joseph Sumberg, the head of Galvanize Real Estate, who joined Galvanize last October from Goldman Sachs. “Capitalism will look at this successful strategy, and replicate it, creating ripples through the built environment.”

While Sumberg and Galvanize — a firm co-founded by Steyer and Katie Hall that plans to invest billions of dollars — declined to provide a figure for the size of the investment, Sumberg said it will be sizable and will focus on markets including the Pacific Northwest, Colorado, California, Arizona and Texas.

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Source: Bloomberg

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State policymakers and utility regulators can put more consumers and communities on a path to long-term energy affordability and mitigate the impact of future energy price spikes.

How states and utilities can lower consumer bills and accelerate the clean energy transition

Last year’s shocking winter heating prices are back with a vengeance: Natural gas heating costs are expected to rise 28% compared to recent winters. One in six households are already behind on their utility bills, and national utility bill debt doubled from December 2019 to June 2022, according to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association.

While household energy cost price spikes across the United States feel like déjà vu, the overall energy picture has changed drastically since last year. The Inflation Reduction Act’s historic clean energy investments will accelerate deployment of utility-scale renewable energy and energy storage, distributed clean energy resources, and high-efficiency electric technologies.

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Source: Utility Dive

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