Great summary of the many co-benefits that come from installing solar in harmony with productive agricultural land. The added $ in the pockets of farmers is good too. Denser pollinator-friendly solar landscapes near agrivoltaic fields improve germination, while sheep graze in the shade of others.

>>Rep. Kevin Mullin (D-Calif.) said in a markup earlier this year that the bill would allow “fossil fuel projects to cut the line.”<< The problem is they aren't ready to cut the line. With gas turbines on back order for the next 3-5 years, all this bill will do is increase energy costs even faster.

"Texas’ extreme summer temperatures have frequently driven ERCOT to ask people to conserve power...But this year, ERCOT didn’t ask customers to conserve power at all, and credited its summertime stability to Texas’ nation-leading deployment of solar and batteries."

What if we integrated ground source heat loops under our roads to provide heating and cooling to the neighborhoods they serve? The savings for the connected homes is massive! There is so much free energy around us if we just choose to tap into it.

Vertical rows are the agrivoltaic winner! “The vertical panels produce slightly less electricity—but with higher value, as generation peaks coincide with morning and late afternoon demand…The crops don't seem to mind the presence of solar panels and they like the wind protection they provide.”

Can a flood of stories like this spark enough FOMO and competitive spirit to stir changes to current U.S. policy?

How about the concept of “owning”or “pwning” someone? It seems to be the guiding principle of too much of politics today—complete domination over your opponent. Its roots are in gamer culture, but there are historical parallels. Times when leaders lacked empathy for the governed who they “pwned.”

Thanks to Third Act, 350.org, Moms for Clean Air, and the Frick Environmental Center for hosting #SunDay. The City of Pittsburgh and Commonwealth of PA can be doing a lot more to support solar. Thanks to Councilwoman Deb Gross and Rep. Mandy Steele for speaking today!

This chart is bonkers and there is plenty of blame to go around. The trend is only going to get worse unless we embrace solar, wind, and storage in a big way.

Beautiful pictures starting to stream in from around the country on Sun Day!

Another circular solar panel company in The Netherlands: www.biosphere.solar This one is TOPCon technology. The Netherlands is always living just a little bit in the future.

Because LNG can no longer compete with the cost of solar+storage, we could see a significant drop in global LNG imports in the second half of the 2020s, just as the U.S. is ramping up investment in export terminals. Meanwhile the EIA just assumes importers will keep buying?

Whereas global fossil fuel trade causes asymmetry and conflict, international electricity transmission can be a strong force for peace. As nations tie their clean energy economies together across solar and wind energy resources, they become more interdependent and cooperative. Report from 2023.

“Electricity prices in California are 4 cents per kWh. By next week SCE will be charging 40 cents per kWh, which will mean the generation cost on consumers’ bills is less than 10% of their bill. The rest of it is grift.” “Since 2022, one of six households is behind on an energy bill.” -Jigar Shah

“China’s clean-tech exports in 2024 alone will represent a 1 percent reduction in global emissions outside China.”

“In the years after Paris, you would often hear the phrase “World War II-style mobilization,” invoked to inspire climate action of the same scale and urgency. Instead, we have gotten a real re-militarization, with Europe” spending 5% of GDP on weapons instead of on the energy transition. 🎁

“The simplest explanation for why refineries are closing is that demand is shrinking. California consumed around 16 percent less gasoline in 2024 than 20 years earlier, state data show…Most of the state’s diesel is now made from fats such as canola oil, used cooking grease and other waste products.”

At some point even folks like Chris Wright must come face to face with the reality that we need more generation infrastructure as soon as possible, and solar + wind + storage is the fastest and cheapest path to build it.

We need more public banks where wise, longterm investments give back profit to the people instead of private banks (the current model) where hype-following, neoliberal, short term investments siphon profits to the wealth-hoarding 0.1%, cause volatility, and divest from our common infrastructure.

Welcome to the #Electrotech Age where “a century of evolution is convening into a decade of revolution.” We have never experienced a transformation quite like this before. It’s an exciting time to be alive.

It should not be big news that the Democratic governor of New York is endorsing the winner of the Democratic primary for New York City mayor. “Mr. Mamdani and I don’t see eye to eye on everything, and I don’t expect us to.” You’d be way more popular if you did tho.

We’re not talking about this nearly enough. Without long-term plans in place for the end of gas grids, the later stages of transition will see regressive death spiral tariffs being paid by the poorest households after higher earning homes have electrified and left the rate-payer rolls.

“Inflammatory” statements are reactionary, intolerant, bigoted, conservative, and violent. Our society right now is functioning like an overactive immune system in a human. We’re attacking ourselves by misidentifying our neighbors as “the other.”

Oh no. “The most common question we get, by a lot, is: Is this actually God I am talking to?” said Patrick Lashinsky, ChatwithGod’s chief executive.

Just look at what happened with solar investment - it’s astonishing. Solar has seen the most rapid investment growth, soaring from $142 billion in 2015 to a projected $441 billion this year.

The precautionary principle should be considered in policymaking because it is nearly impossible to do rigorous long-term studies on the accumulation of environmental pollutants in human organs. Instead of proving harm, what if the scientific burden were on proving chemicals are *not* harmful?

“The closure of the Shenango coking plant, a significant fossil-fuel pollution source, was associated with an immediate 20.5% decrease for weekly respiratory ED visits, and an immediate 41.2% decrease in pediatric asthma ED visits, followed by an additional 4% per month longer-term downward trend.”

“The race to expand Appalachian natural gas production in anticipation of new power demand for AI data centers and increased export capacity of liquified natural gas (LNG) is unlikely to generate long-term job growth or local prosperity.”

“The iron laws of economics have kicked in. These cheap forms of electricity generation are already displacing more and more fossil fuels.”

Can Toyota make up for the time they lost while ignoring the EV market? They were ahead of the curve with hybrids, then got lost for a decade w/o a competitive EV offering, while making news about forthcoming solid-state battery tech. We may find out next year if they’re back in the game.

“The Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program is nothing more than bureaucratic red tape.” —Lee Zeldin, E.P.A. administrator Or…maybe it is the most important tool we have to understand our impact on the environment and take knowledgeable action to mitigate it. Who’s to say really‽

Solarge is in discussions to open a plant in Illinois. They will build an adjacent solar farm to power the plant on an unusable brownfield parcel where asbestos was manufactured and next to a closed coal plant that left behind a distressed economy. Over 500 green energy jobs. Genius!

More news about how solar energy landscapes can support ecosystems and reverse desertification. On a large scale, the land use impacts of solar could have a beneficial impact on climate (beyond their mitigating benefits of drawing down carbon emissions) by supporting evapotranspiration.

It can't by the way. This BBC piece is rubbish, failing to provide any useful information and allowing co-CEO Sam Adlen to lie through his teeth.

This technology (luminescent solar concentrators) was actually invented at Michigan State University in 2013. Due to lack of U.S. investment, it first migrated to an Australian startup (ClearVue) and is now being advanced in China.

Until we completely redesign our economic systems and the metrics we use to define and reward success—endless growth of GDP, stock market valuations, dividends—we are structurally incapable of mitigating our destructive and self-harming impact on the environment.

This is bonkers. Build some damn batteries and transmission already PJM. If you live in the PJM electricity market (PA, MD, VA, NJ, WV, OH) you are paying more on your bill to cover $700 million in unnecessary Q1 2025 costs because of piss poor planning. rmi.org/batteries-th...

"Putting solar arrays above water can help keep panels cool, in turn improving their efficiency and electricity output. Shade from the panels can also prevent water loss through evaporation in drought-prone regions and can limit algae growth in waterways." Looks good too!

Ideally, RECs would come not only with pricing data related to the exact time & place (the precise CO2/MWh of the grid onto which it is generated so you don’t need some impact equation), but also with the environment footprint of the development (e.g. did the solar field require deforestation?)…

It seems crystal clear to me that 24/7 matching RECs would better incentivize storage co-located with solar developments and firm power. The guests on this @volts.wtf episode are not convincing me otherwise. Hour-specific RECs will provide the certainty needed for investment.

“When communities help design their own energy systems, they’re more resilient—not just technically, but socially.”—Elizabeth Monoian, LAGI co-founder

Under our current rotten model of economic growth, gross domestic product (GDP) goes up the more the “school shooting industry” is able to sell its products.

Solar power can light your office, run your car, heat your home, make steel, and all sorts of other things. One thing solar power can't do however is pollute your drinking wells.

Not good. Makes sense though since the machine is incapable of world modeling. Extinction, nuclear winter, suffering, feeling. These are all just words, which the machine statistically positions within paragraphs, and even then only through a haze of zeros and ones. It has no concept of concepts.

This is $100 billion more they just added to the debt for their cronies. Imagine the IRS dropping an investigation into some random middle class person who owes back taxes. Ha.

See the footnote? They don't want you to see this. Read this to find out how deep that hole goes: www.bloomberg.com/features/202...

If Kennedy wants to go after corporations for harming public health he doesn’t have to make shit up about safe vaccines or Tylenol. There are plenty of real villains out there.

The current administration has claimed renewables are making the grid less reliable. If that were the case, I'd expect states adding the most renewables over the past decade to have the largest increase in outages. However, the opposite seems to be true!

"How Are the Very Rich Feeling About New York’s Next Mayor?" A Dramatic Reading of The Recent New York Times Dispatch from the Hamptons. Presented by The Gilded Age's Morgan Spector.