6 Questions You Asked Yourself about Solar
- How fast will it take over,
- how fast are costs shrinking,
- why is it so cheap,
- what industries will it birth,
- how much surface will it take up, and
- where will it appear first?
First-of-its-kind report reveals heat’s stark toll on Nevadans’ health
With just two months until the winter solstice, temperatures are finally cooling off, a relief from the relentless heat Nevadans experienced this summer. From July through September, Las Vegas recorded 74 days above 100 degrees, making it the hottest summer period since record keeping began in 1937.
The city easily broke its own heat record July 7, when temperatures reached a scorching 120 degrees.
In Northern Nevada, Reno set its own record by recording four consecutive days with temperatures of 105 degrees. Nevadans across the state suffered. Along with the scorching temperatures, state officials recorded a substantial increase in the number of people seeking treatment for heat-related illness.
Huge, accessible Lithium source found in South Coast area
A paper recently published in Science confirmed that that entrepreneur is on the right track. The researchers identified a substantial lithium resource in southern Arkansas. Using an AI model trained on geological, geochemical, and temperature data, the team predicted lithium concentrations across the region and estimated the formation contains between 5.1 and 19 million tons of lithium, or about 35% to 136% of the current U.S. lithium resource estimate. Lithium boom baby!
The U.N.’s Verdict: No Decline This Year in GHG emissions
An annual assessment by the world body tracks the gulf between what countries have vowed to do and what they’ve actually achieved. One year after world leaders made a landmark promise to move away from fossil fuels, countries have essentially made no progress in cutting emissions and tackling global warming, according to a United Nations report issued on Thursday.
Global greenhouse gas emissions soared to a record 57 gigatons last year and are not on track to decline much, if at all, this decade, the report found. Collectively, nations have been so slow to curtail their use of oil, gas and coal that it now looks unlikely that countries will be able to limit global warming to the levels they agreed to under the 2015 Paris climate agreement.
8 oz. of this powder captures as much CO2 from the air as a tree
The Green Premium for existing “direct air capture” efforts is unaffordably expensive at this point (over $1,000/ton). This new technology uses more efficient chemistry, so the Green Premium is probably lower, but no numbers are yet available.
UN says world is now on course for warming of up to 3.1 °C
Take heart, the “business as usual” prediction from The Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC (2014) was worse: “If no new policies are implemented to mitigate climate change, the report projected an increase in global mean temperature of approximately 3.7°C to 4.8°C above pre-industrial levels by 2100.” The Paris Agreement in 2015 started the process. WE HAVE MORE WORK TO DO! #permitting_reform #carbon_pricing
Google Backs New Nuclear Plants to Power AI
EcoTech Note: Here’s the clearest statement of the important of having “learning curve” improvements in price/performance reduce the cost of this new design:
“The [power purchase agreement by Google] answers questions that have bedeviled smaller-reactor designs: What customer would pay the higher price for a first-of-a-kind project? And who would order enough to get an assembly line started? The concept, which remains to be proven, is that building the same thing over and over in a factory would drive down costs.
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Airloom Wind Energy: Across the Valley of Death
EcoTech Note: Here is a new wind energy system that has raised early money (two rounds: $4m in 2020 and $13m recently) and created “proof of concept” pilot plant. The $13m will create a full-size 1.0 megawatt demonstration.
Below are two important charts showing how much lower the upfront capital and installation costs are compared to conventional wind turbines. Below that are links to a positive press story and a skeptical YouTube evaluation.
It also looks like DOD funding will help get this promising CleanTech across the Valley of Death with 2.5 megawatt reactors built in 2026.
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McKinsey: Why Only Climate Tech Can Help Avoid Catastrophe
EcoTech Note: McKinsey, the premiere corporate strategy consulting firm, explicitly talked about increasing the speed and scale of the CleanTech transition such that Learning Curve cost reductions get the Green Premium down toward zero.
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McKinsey studied the growth of an earlier generation of climate technologies to divine a roadmap for more nascent tech to become cost competitive with fossil-fuel. McKinsey found that every 100% increase in deployment can yield at least 70% of cost reductions. Patel said this relationship is predictable and should give investors confidence that rapid scaling will lead to disproportionate cost cuts and unlock faster adoption.
“It’s intuitive that the more scale, the lower the unit cost should become, but in climate tech we have the challenge of promising technologies that didn’t get beyond first-of-a-kind operations and didn’t reach a unit cost near parity with the fossil alternative,” Patel said.
U.S. Approves Billions in Aid to Restart Michigan Nuclear Plant
EcoTech Note: Here’s an example of a subsidy operating on the supply side of a market. The federal guarantee on an otherwise private loan makes it less risky … so the interest rate will be lower …. which makes the final cost of the electricity from this nuclear plant cheaper. The direct GRANT also radically lowers the cost of using the plant to generate electricity.
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The Energy Department said on Monday that it had finalized a $1.52 billion loan guarantee to help a company restart a shuttered nuclear plant in Michigan — the latest sign of rising government support for nuclear power.
Two rural electricity providers that planned to buy power from the reactor would also receive $1.3 billion in federal grants under a program approved by Congress to help rural communities tackle climate change.
DOE’s Energy Earthshots supporting R&D of 8 key objectives
EcoTech Note: In 2021, the Biden Administration announced the Energy Earthshots™ Initiative, which sets technical and cost goals in key next-generation clean energy to be achieved by 2030 or 2035. The effort was based on DOE’s highly successful SunShot, which set out in 2011 to slash the cost of solar energy 75% within a decade (and did so three years early).
See the ambitious stretch goals for these 8 Energy Earthshots (where *means 2030 goal): cheap hydrogen* ($1/kg); carbon dioxide removal* at less than $100/ton; long-duration energy storage* for 90% less than 2020; floating offshore wind costs down by 70%; enhanced geothermal energy below $45/mwh; decarbonized industrial heat with 85% lower GHGs; clean fuels and [chemical] products with 85% lower GHGs; and reduced home energy costs* by 20% and having retrofit upfront costs decline by 50%.
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Microsoft may pay a premium in Three Mile Island power agreement
EcoTech Note: Here is a great example of a “Green Premium” being paid by a company desperate for clean power a) to meet their need to power a data center and b) to meet their “net-zero by 2035” commitment:
“Jefferies estimated that Microsoft might pay Constellation about $110-$115 per megawatt hour (MWh) as part of the 20-year-long fixed price PPA. The brokerage’s analysts said the estimated cost represents a significant premium to market expectations, which are in the low $100 per MWh for a collocated deal.”
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