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power plant

New nuclear power for New York

July 9, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

New nuclear power plant is coming in New York

Nuclear power has been around since the 1950s, but it has fallen out of favor in recent decades, in part due to a couple of traumatic disasters at nuclear power plants.  In fact, only two new nuclear power plants have been built in the US in the past 30 years, and they took a very long time and an enormous amount of money to build.

However, in recent times there has been a great deal of developmental work on nuclear power.  Such newer technologies as small modular reactors, molten salt reactors, light water reactors, and more hold promise for safer, less expensive, and higher performance nuclear power.

In late June, New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced that she has instructed the New York Power Authority to develop and construct a zero-emission advanced nuclear power plant in Upstate New York.  The plant is to produce 1 GW of power, about half of what the decommissioned Indian Point Power Plant produced when it provided significant amounts of power to New York City residents.

Renewed interest in nuclear power has emerged in part because of the soaring electricity demand from AI data centers.  Companies like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have all begun investing in nuclear power for this reason.

NYPA is instructed to begin evaluating technologies, business models, and locations for the new power plant and will seek to secure key partnerships needed for the project.  As things stand, it is not known what technology the plant will use, where in Upstate New York it will be located, how much it will cost to build, who will pay for it, and how long it will take to build. 

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New York Again Embraces Nuclear Power With Plans to Build New Plant

Photo courtesy of Constellation Energy.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Sun powered carbon capture

June 30, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Using solar power to help capture carbon

As the world struggles to implement technologies and find the political will to reduce carbon emissions, there are also ongoing efforts to find ways to capture carbon from emitting sources and from the atmosphere itself.  After capturing carbon dioxide, there is then the need to safely store it or make use of it.

Current methods for capturing and then releasing carbon dioxide are expensive and energy intensive.  In fact, some methods even require the use of fossil fuels.  Recently, researchers at Cornell University have developed a method for capturing carbon dioxide that is powered by sunlight.

The Cornell method mimics the mechanisms that plants use to store carbon which involves using sunlight to make a reactive enol molecule that grabs carbon dioxide.  

Existing chemical-based carbon capture techniques make use of amines, which are organic ammonia-derived compounds that react selectively with carbon dioxide.  But amines are not stable in the presence of oxygen and don’t last, which necessitates the energy-intensive production of more and more amines.

The Cornell method uses the same method that the plant enzyme RuBisCo uses in photosynthesis.  It is based on an inexpensive sorbent material that is capable of a high rate of carbon capture.

The researchers tested the system using flue samples from Cornell’s Combined Heat and Power Building, an on-campus power plant that burns natural gas.  The system was successful in isolating carbon dioxide.

Ultimately, they would like to stage the reaction on what looks like a solar panel, but one that would capture carbon instead of generating electricity.

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In a first, system uses sunlight to power carbon capture

Photo, posted August 8, 2015, courtesy of Holly Victoria Norval via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

The world’s largest energy plant

April 19, 2024 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The largest energy plant in the world is being built in India.  In an area of barren desert in western India near the Pakistani border, Adani Green Energy Limited (or AGEL) is building a sprawling solar and wind power plant that will cover more than 200 square miles.  It will be five times the size of Paris and will produce enough electricity to power 16 million homes.

The Khavda Renewable Energy Park will cost about $20 billion to build and will take about five years to complete.

The success of the plant is critical to India’s efforts to reduce pollution and meet its climate goals.  India is the world’s third-largest energy consuming country.  Even though its energy use and emissions per person are less than half the global average, its enormous population offsets that advantage and its expanding economy and ongoing modernization are driving rapid growth of energy demand.  Energy demand has doubled since 2000 and 80% is still being met by coal, oil, and solid biomass.  India uses massive amounts of coal, and, in fact, the Adani Group of companies is India’s biggest coal importer and a leading miner of the fossil fuel.   Adani represents two sides of the coin.

More than 600 million people in India will be coming into middle and upper income over the next 10 to 15 years and they will have increasing energy needs.  India is in a race to develop clean energy capacity.  If it simply follows the torturous path that China, Europe, and US all have done, the prospects for the global climate are bleak.

Building the world’s largest clean energy plant is just a first small step in the necessary direction.

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A coal billionaire is building the world’s biggest clean energy plant and it’s five times the size of Paris

Photo, posted February 25, 2010, courtesy of Bhavin Toprani via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Record renewable energy in Scotland

March 1, 2024 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Record renewable energy in Scotland

The Scottish government recently announced that in 2022, renewable technologies in that country produced the equivalent of 113% of Scotland’s electricity consumption.

Fossil fuels still supplied electricity in Scotland, helping to fill in gaps in renewable power, but the government figures showed that the growing amount of Scottish renewable generation can easily generate more power than the country uses.  Scotland has seen significant growth in wind power as well as a small drop in overall electricity consumption.

Scotland, with a population of only 5.5 million, aims to produce enough renewable power to both meet its own demand and export clean electricity to other countries.  The U.K. is the obvious potential customer, but it will need to upgrade its national power grid and develop enough capacity to store up surplus wind and solar power.

The U.K. itself is drawing less power from natural gas and coal than it has at any point in the last 66 years.  Fossil fuels supplied only 33% of British electricity in 2023 while renewables supplied 43%. 

Fossil power use in Britain peaked in 2008.  Since then, power from natural gas has fallen nearly in half while coal power has dropped by 97%.  The U.K. has aggressive decarbonization goals in place, but the current Conservative government under Prime Minister Sunak has recently set about weakening British climate policy.

Meanwhile, the Scottish government is talking about becoming a global renewables powerhouse and is making investments aimed at achieving it.

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Record renewable energy output

Photo, posted July 21, 2010, courtesy of Martin Abegglen via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Lower carbon emissions in the U.S.

February 7, 2024 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Carbon emissions in the United States are slowly falling

American greenhouse gas emissions in 2023 fell by 1.9%.  In total, U.S. emissions have now fallen by over 17% since 2005.  The largest factor in the decline has been the reduction in the burning of coal to produce electricity.  Coal-fired generation has fallen to its lowest level in half a century.

There was a huge drop in emissions at the start of the covid pandemic when large segments of the economy shut down.  But then there was a sharp rebound in emissions in the following two years when economic activity resumed.  But over the long term, American emissions have been trending downward as both cars and power plants have become cleaner and greener.

The decline in emissions is a good thing but hasn’t been nearly enough to meet the nation’s goals for trying to slow down global warming.  The U.S. has a goal of reducing emissions by 2030 to half of the 2005 level.  To achieve that goal, annual emissions would have to fall more than three times faster than they did last year for the rest of the decade.

The emissions data used for the current assessment included those from transportation, electricity generation, industry, and buildings.  It did not include pollution from agriculture, which accounts for about 10% of the nation’s greenhouse gases.

The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act provided record amounts of money for low-emissions technologies like solar panels, wind turbines, nuclear reactors, electric vehicles, and hydrogen fuels.  The full impact of these federal investments has yet to be seen, since many companies are still ramping up their efforts in clean energy.  How quickly emissions will fall as these efforts come to fruition remains to be seen.

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U.S. Carbon Emissions Fell in 2023 as Coal Use Tumbled to New Lows

Photo, posted May 17, 2020, courtesy of Frans Berkelaar via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

A giant underground battery

February 5, 2024 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Building a giant underground battery

Two up-and-coming energy technologies are coming together near a tiny town in central Utah.  Outside of the town of Delta, population 3,600, two caverns, each as deep as the Empire State Building, are being created from an underground salt formation to be used to store hydrogen gas.  The gas will be used as a fuel in a new electricity generation plant.

The plant will replace an aging local coal-fired power plant.  The new plant will burn a mixture of natural gas and hydrogen – green hydrogen produced without emitting greenhouse gases. To produce the hydrogen, the facility will operate 40 giant electrolyzers that will use excess solar and wind power generated at times of low demand to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen.

The caverns were created by a process called solution mining in which high-pressure water is pumped down into salt deposits that are dissolved. The resulting caverns are 200 feet in diameter and 1,200 deep and lie 3,000 to 4,000 feet below the surface.  Hydrogen cannot escape through the thick salt layers.

The amount of energy that can be stored in the form of hydrogen fuel in these caverns is massive – far more than all the battery storage installed in the U.S. to date.  Chevron has a majority stake in one of the projects and will supply the natural gas.  The facility is expected to go online in 2025.

While this will produce far fewer emissions than existing coal plants, it is not carbon-free.  Currently, turbine technology cannot operate with pure hydrogen fuel.  The Delta plant will run on only 30% hydrogen.  The hope is that turbine technology will improve in the future and permit operation on pure hydrogen.

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A Huge Underground Battery Is Coming to a Tiny Utah Town

Photo, posted September 9, 2013, courtesy of Scott via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

A Big Year For Rooftop Solar | Earth Wise

July 19, 2023 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Rooftop solar growing around the globe

The global capacity of rooftop solar power grew by 49% in 2022.  Overall, the installed amount of rooftop solar grew from 79 gigawatts to 118 gigawatts last year and it is projected to reach 159 gigawatts by the end of this year.  By comparison, a typical nuclear power plant can produce 1 gigawatt; a gas-powered power plant is typically half a gigawatt.

Rooftop solar constitutes a relatively small fraction of the total global installed solar capacity, which is dominated by utility-scale solar arrays.  Total installed solar capacity rose from 950 gigawatts to 1,177 gigawatts last year and is projected to reach 1,518 gigawatts this year.  That is enough power to meet more than half the electricity demand of the European Union.

The rapid growth of solar power can only continue if there is more energy storage put in place to manage the peaks and troughs in solar output.  Countries will also need to upgrade their power grids to be able to transport excess solar power from where it is generated to where it is needed.   Bottlenecks in the grids of most of the leading solar-producing nations are already interfering with further solar development.

The overall potential for rooftop solar is based on the number of rooftops that would be suitable for solar power, which depends on the size, shading, orientation, and location of the roofs.  According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, rooftops in the United States have the potential for more than 1,000 gigawatts of solar capacity. Currently, only about 4% of US homes have rooftop solar. 

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Rooftop Solar Grew Nearly 50 Percent Globally Last Year

Photo, posted November 16, 2022, courtesy of Oliver Knight via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Hybrid Renewable Energy Plants | Earth Wise

November 17, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Hybrid renewable energy systems combine multiple renewable energy and/or energy storage technologies into a single plant.  The goal is to reduce costs and increase energy output relative to separate systems taking advantage of common infrastructure and the ability of one renewable energy source having appreciable output while a second one might not at a particular time.

Recently, the largest hybrid renewable power plant in the United States was completed in rural Oregon.  The Wheatridge Renewable Energy Facility combines a wind farm, a solar array, and battery storage.

Plants that include just solar power and energy storage are also called hybrid plants, but the Wheatridge Facility is special because it includes wind power.  The facility comprises a 200-megawatt wind farm, a 50-megawatt solar array, and a 30-megawatt battery system capable of providing power for four hours.  The combined system can provide for the electricity needs of about 100,000 homes.

There are about 140 projects in the United States that combine solar and storage.  There are 14 that combine solar and wind.  There are only four plants – with the completion of Wheatridge – that have wind, solar, and storage.  

Wind and solar energy are generally complementary technologies.  Wind is usually strongest at night while solar, of course, is a daytime source of energy.  Solar and wind plants don’t need to be close together to take advantage of this, but hybrid projects benefit from needing only one grid connection and one lease for land.

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A Clean Energy Trifecta: Wind, Solar and Storage in the Same Project

Photo, posted December 27, 2015, courtesy of Gerry Machen via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Capturing Carbon Dioxide With Plastic | Earth Wise

May 11, 2022 By EarthWise 2 Comments

The world is awash in both waste plastic and in carbon dioxide emissions.   Researchers at Rice University have discovered a chemical technique for making waste plastic into an effective carbon dioxide absorbent for industry.

Chemists at Rice reported in the journal ACS Nano that heating plastic waste in the presence of potassium acetate produces particles with nanometer-scale pores that trap carbon dioxide molecules.   According to the researchers, these particles could be used to remove CO2 from the flue gas streams of power plants.

Significant sources of CO2 emissions like power plant exhaust stacks could be fitted with this waste-plastic-derived material to absorb large amounts of carbon dioxide that would otherwise enter the atmosphere. 

The Rice University process is an enhancement to the current process of pyrolyzing waste plastic – that is, breaking it down in the presence of heat.  By pyrolyzing plastic in the presence of potassium acetate, porous particles are formed that can hold up to 18% of their own weight in carbon dioxide.

According to the researchers, the cost of capturing carbon from a power plant would be $21 a ton, which is far less expensive than existing energy-intensive processes used to pull carbon dioxide from natural gas feeds.

The sorbent material can be reused.  Heating it to about 167 degrees Fahrenheit releases trapped carbon dioxide from the pores and regenerates about 90% of the material’s binding sites.

The Rice process may represent a much better way to capture carbon dioxide from power plant exhaust stacks.  It could be a way to make use of one environmental problem – waste plastic – to deal with another one.

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Treated plastic waste good at grabbing carbon dioxide

Photo, posted April 19, 2021, courtesy of Ivan Radic via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Offshore Wind Ramping Up In The Northeast | Earth Wise

March 23, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

There is a growing number of large offshore wind projects in the pipeline in the Northeast.  The large Vineyard Wind project off the coast of Massachusetts began construction in November.  Contracts for the Empire Wind and Beacon Wind projects in New York were finalized in January.

The first offshore wind project to begin construction in New York broke ground in February.  South Fork Wind, a 132-megawatt project located about 19 miles southeast of Block Island, Rhode Island, is expected to come online in 2023.

New York’s goal is to develop 9 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2035 and the state is investing $500 million to set up manufacturing and supply chain infrastructure for offshore wind.  Major facilities will be built in the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal and in the Port of Albany.

Meanwhile, Massachusetts recently announced that the site of the last coal-fired power plant in that state will become the home of its first offshore wind manufacturing facility.

The Brayton Point power plant in Somerset was shut down in 2017 after more than 50 years of operation.  The site, located on Mount Hope Bay near Providence, Rhode Island, will host a $200 million facility for the manufacturing of undersea transmission lines used to connect the grid to offshore wind turbines.  The first of these will be the Vineyard Wind’s Commonwealth Wind project, which will generate 1.2 gigawatts of electricity.

Both New York and Massachusetts are investing in the opportunities afforded by the soon-to-be booming offshore wind industry.  With numerous windfarms planned up and down the Atlantic coast, manufacturing, maintenance, and support infrastructure will be big business for the two states.

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Work starts on New York’s first offshore wind project

Former Coal Power Site in Massachusetts to Become Offshore Wind Plant

Photo, posted May 13, 2011, courtesy of SSE via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Carbon Capture And The Infrastructure Bill | Earth Wise

September 17, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

carbon capture in the infrastructure bill

The trillion-dollar infrastructure bill contains a variety of provisions related to energy and the environment.  Among them is authorization for more than $12 billion for carbon capture technologies, including direct air capture and demonstration projects on coal, natural gas, and industrial plants and supporting carbon dioxide infrastructure.

Inclusion of this provision has largely been driven by energy companies, electrical utilities, and other industrial sectors.  The strongest proponents have been fossil fuel companies.  The reasons are fairly clear.

Support for carbon capture and storage (or CCS) technologies would yield billions of dollars for corporate polluters while allowing them to continue to burn fossil fuels.  To date, CCS technology has not progressed very far.  It is very expensive and has done little to reduce emissions. 

The strongest argument against directing significant resources into CCS for the power sector is that the plummeting costs of wind and solar energy have made renewable energy sources competitive with or cheaper than burning fossil fuels to generate electricity.  Adding expensive carbon capture equipment to a power plant only makes the economics of using fossil fuels worse.

The infrastructure bill does promote direct air capture technology, which is literally pulling carbon dioxide out of the air independent of any industrial activities generating it.  Given the world’s progress on reducing emissions, direct air capture technology may be an essential part of the global strategy to combat climate change.  If infrastructure funds largely go in that direction rather than for propping up fossil fuel companies, they may prove to be of great value.

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Fossil Fuel Companies Are Quietly Scoring Big Money for Their Preferred Climate Solution: Carbon Capture and Storage

Photo, posted March 15, 2021, courtesy of Michael Swan via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Green Hydrogen | Earth Wise

December 11, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Countries betting big on hydrogen

Saudi Arabia is a country built around oil, but it is now placing a big bet on green hydrogen as the next big thing in its energy future.  The country is constructing a $500 billion futuristic city called Neom in the desert along the Red Sea.  The brand-new city will be home to a million people, and it will be powered by green hydrogen.

The U.S. company Air Products & Chemicals has been building a green hydrogen plant there for the last four years.  The giant plant will be powered by 4 gigawatts of wind and solar projects.

Green hydrogen is hydrogen produced without carbon emissions.  Most hydrogen produced commercially is made from natural gas, which results in CO2 emissions.  Green hydrogen is made by using electricity to split water into its component elements using renewable energy to power the process.

Saudi Arabia is an ideal place for a giant green hydrogen plant.  The Middle East has the world’s cheapest wind and solar power.  The sun reliably shines there almost every day and the wind blows almost every night.

While some proponents argue that hydrogen should fuel the entire energy system, other experts see it as a more targeted solution.  The view is that wind and solar power can provide the electricity we need to power homes and electric cars.  However, green hydrogen could be ideal to power energy-intensive industries like concrete and steel manufacturing, as well as parts of the transportation sector that are more difficult to electrify.

While green hydrogen is barely on the radar in the US, around the world a green hydrogen rush is underway, developing it as an energy source that could help end the reign of fossil fuels.

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Green Hydrogen: Could It Be Key to a Carbon-Free Economy?

Photo, posted November 6, 2020, courtesy of RSM Chrystie via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Building The World’s Largest Battery Energy Storage Plant | Earth Wise

April 6, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The World’s Largest Battery Energy Storage Plant

The Monterey County Planning Commission has unanimously approved a joint project between Tesla and Pacific Gas and Electric to turn the Moss Landing Power Plant in California into the world’s largest battery energy storage facility.

The Moss Landing Power Plant is a natural gas-powered electricity generation plant located at the midpoint of California’s Monterey Bay.  At one time, it was the largest power plant in the state of California with a generation capacity of 2560 MW but has been gradually shutting down over time.

The new facility will incorporate 1.2 GWh of storage capacity for energy generated by solar and wind systems.  The stored energy will be available for use during periods of high energy demand and lower output.  This is about ten times larger than Tesla’s Hornsdale energy storage project in Australia, which was three times bigger than any other batter storage facility when it was built a few years ago.  In 2018, the battery system at Hornsdale made back a third of its cost in just one year.  The systems make use of Tesla’s Megapack battery products which come in pre-assembled units that provide 3 MWh of energy storage capacity.

The project will make use of existing power lines to transmit energy around Monterey County and parts of Silicon Valley.  Tesla and PG&E hope to break ground in early spring with completion scheduled for the end of the year.  California has been adding massive amounts of wind and solar power to its electrical grid and incorporating energy storage is an important step towards creating a truly resilient power system.

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Humongous Tesla Battery Plant Approved In California Is 10× Bigger Than World’s Biggest Battery Plant

Photo, posted September 22, 2019, courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

New Membranes For Carbon Capture

October 2, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Drastically reducing the amount of carbon dioxide being emitted into the atmosphere is an essential goal in the effort to mitigate the effects of climate change.  While the ultimate solution is to avoid combustion of fossil fuels by the use of clean alternative energy sources, that transition will take time – possibly more time than we have.  As a result, there is a great deal of effort underway to develop techniques for capturing the carbon emitted by fossil fuel combustion and either recycling it or storing it.

There are multiple ways to capture carbon emissions, but the ultimate goal is to find a technique that is both inexpensive and scalable.  One promising technique involves the use of high-performance membranes, which are filters that can specifically pick out CO2 from a mix of gases, such as those coming out of a factory smokestack.

Scientists at a Swiss laboratory have now developed a new class of high-performance membranes that exceeds the targeted performance for carbon capture by a significant margin.  The membranes are based on single-layer graphene with a selective layer thinner than 20 nanometers – only about 40 atoms thick. The membranes are highly tunable in terms of chemistry, meaning that they can be designed to capture specific molecules.

The membranes are highly permeable – meaning that they don’t impede gas flow too much – but highly selective.  The CO2/N2 separation factor is 22.5, which means that 22.5 times more nitrogen can get through the membrane than carbon dioxide.

The work is just at the laboratory stage at this point, but it is a very promising step towards developing a practical scheme for keeping carbon dioxide from escaping from power-plant and factory smokestacks.

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Next-gen membranes for carbon capture

Photo, posted December 28, 2010, courtesy of Emilian Robert Vicol via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

The World’s Largest Storage Battery

May 24, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Many homeowners are installing solar energy systems with battery backup.  Energy stored in the battery can be used when the sun isn’t shining.   As battery prices come down, utility-scale solar installations are also turning to battery-based energy storage.

Florida Power & Light has announced plans to build the world’s largest solar-storage combination facility in Manatee County.  The 409-MW Manatee Energy Storage Center will be the largest solar-battery system by a factor of four.  The specifics of the technology and source of the battery system components have yet to be announced.

The system, which is scheduled to be completed in late 2021, will be charged by a nearby FPL solar power plant.  The plan is to discharge batteries during times of higher demand, thereby offsetting the need to run other power plants.  As a result, there will be reduced emissions and customers will save as much as $100 million through avoided fuel costs.

Installing the mega-sized battery system will accelerate the retirements of two nearby 1970’s-era gas-fired generation units.  At peak efficiency, the Manatee energy storage system will be able to power 390,000 homes for up to two hours.

FPL has already been pursuing the use of battery storage technology.  Last year, they added a 10 MW battery storage system to its 74.5 MW Babcock Ranch Solar Energy Center in Charlotte County.

These large battery systems are increasingly practical because of dramatic reductions in lithium-ion battery costs.  The levelized cost of electricity from lithium-ion batteries has declined a remarkable 38% just since the beginning of 2018.  The economics of clean energy continue to get better and better.

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FP&L Plans World’s Largest Energy Storage Battery To Support Its Renewable Energy Goals

Photo, posted April 21, 2010, courtesy of Frank Starmer via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

How Much Cleaner Is Natural Gas?

August 8, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

https://earthwiseradio.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/EW-08-08-18-How-Much-Cleaner-Is-Natural-Gas.mp3

The ascendance of natural gas over coal during the past decade has been driven primarily by fracking technology that has provided large quantities of the stuff at low prices.  But beyond that, there are environmental issues as well.  Natural gas emits 50 to 60% less carbon dioxide when combusted in a new, efficient natural gas power plant compared with emission from a typical new coal plant.  It appears to be a win-win situation.

[Read more…] about How Much Cleaner Is Natural Gas?

The Future Of Energy

August 3, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

https://earthwiseradio.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/EW-08-03-18-The-Future-of-Energy.mp3

A new report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance takes a long-term look at the world’s energy production.  According to the report, renewable energy, mostly in the form of solar and wind power, is set to provide close to 50% of the world’s energy by the year 2050.

[Read more…] about The Future Of Energy

Geothermal Power For LA

February 1, 2018 By EarthWise 1 Comment

https://earthwiseradio.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/EW-02-01-18-Geothermal-Power-for-LA.mp3

Los Angeles has a tremendous thirst for electric power and is always trying to find new sources.  On December 1, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power began buying all the power generated by the brand-new 24 MW Tungsten Mountain geothermal power plant located in Churchill County in Nevada’s Great Basin region.

[Read more…] about Geothermal Power For LA

Turning Emissions Into Fuel

January 8, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

https://earthwiseradio.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/EW-01-08-18-Turning-Emissions-Into-Fuel.mp3

Reducing carbon dioxide emissions is an essential element in mitigating climate change.  The best approach is to not produce the stuff in the first place and the ongoing transition away from fossil fuels is trying to do just that.  But realistically, fossil fuels will be with us for a long time to come.  Given that, additional approaches are necessary.

[Read more…] about Turning Emissions Into Fuel

Islands Ditching Diesel

March 31, 2017 By EarthWise

https://earthwiseradio.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/EW-03-31-17-Islands-Ditching-Diesel.mp3

Islands around the world have a difficult time developing the infrastructure for electricity generation.  Many are simply too small or too poor for conventional power plants.  The most common electricity source on islands is diesel generators which are not environmentally friendly and result in some of the most expensive electricity in the world.

[Read more…] about Islands Ditching Diesel

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