tech

Clean energy in New York

March 14, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority – NYSERDA – recently issued a report on clean energy progress in the state during 2024. The report highlighted continued and increased growth in heat pumps, electric vehicles, and solar energy.

Heat pumps, which provide both heating and cooling, have outsold gas furnaces countrywide for three straight years. Air source heat pumps outsold gas furnaces by 37%. This does not include ground source heat pumps, also known as geothermal heat pumps. New York offers Clean Heat rebates to offset the cost of installing heat pumps.

2024 was a good year for electric vehicles in New York with 90,221 new registrations. More than 60 car models are eligible for New York’s Drive Clean state rebates.

New York achieved its Climate Act goal of having 6,000 MW of distributed solar power in October. The state is expected to have more than 10,000 MW of distributed solar by 2030.

Nationwide, solar energy represented 64% of all the new electricity generation capacity installed in 2024, up from 55.5% in 2023. Utility-scale solar generation in the lower 48 states was 36% higher in the summer of 2024 than in summer 2023.

NYSERDA’s report points out that converting to clean energy technologies can bring multiple benefits that include energy efficiency, cost savings, and reduced greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution.

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Heat Pumps, Electric Vehicles, and Solar Scale Up Through 2024

Photo, posted April 6, 2017, courtesy of Stephen Yang / The Solutions Project via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Wave energy in LA

March 6, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Ocean waves form as wind blows over the surface of open water. Globally, waves contain tremendous amounts of energy. Theoretically, the energy generating potential of waves off the coasts of the U.S. would meet more than 60% of the country’s electricity needs. There are a variety of methods and technologies for tapping into this energy source, but none have reached the point of commercial adoption to date. There are many problems that remain to be solved.

Eco Wave Power, a wave energy company, announced that it has received the necessary permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to operate the first onshore wave energy installation in the United States. The installation will be at the Port of Los Angeles at the facilities of AltaSea, a public-private ocean institute that conducts research on food and energy supply, climate change, and ocean exploration.

The system will utilize eight of Eco Wave Power’s energy floaters that will be installed on the piles of an existing concrete wharf structure on Municipal Pier One. The system will also include an energy conversion unit enclosed in two shipping containers and connected to the floaters. The installation is expected to be completed by the end of the first quarter of this year.

Floaters draw energy from waves by using their rising and falling motion to generate electricity. The bobbing motion of the floaters compresses and decompresses hydraulic pistons. These transmit hydraulic fluid into land-based accumulators that build up pressure. The pressure rotates a hydraulic motor, which then operates a generator, producing electricity.

The project is a collaboration on the development of wave energy in the Port of Los Angeles between Eco Wave Power and Shell Marine Renewable Program.

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Eco Wave Power secures final USACE permit for its first U.S. wave energy project

Photo courtesy of Eco Wave Power.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Electricity demand from data centers

February 17, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Data centers are dedicated facilities containing computers and their related hardware equipment such as servers, data storage drives, and network equipment; they are the physical facilities that store digital data. Data centers are one of the most energy-intensive building types, consuming 10 to 50 times more energy per floor space than a typical commercial office building. With the explosive growth of artificial intelligence technology, data center energy use is expanding rapidly.

A new report by the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory outlines the energy use of data centers from 2014 to 2028. The report estimates that data center load growth has tripled over the past decade and is likely to double or triple again by 2028.

Data centers consumed about 4.4% of total U.S. electricity in 2023 and are projected to consume between 6.7% and 12% of total U.S. electricity by 2028. Most of the increased power demand of data centers is due to the growth in AI servers. Artificial intelligence requires increasingly powerful chips and intense, power-hungry cooling systems.

There have been revolutionary changes in artificial intelligence technology in just the past couple of years and its role in society has dramatically expanded. With that expansion has come a dramatic change in the energy usage by the data industry and innovative solutions are needed to allow data centers to meet their growing demand for energy.

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Berkeley Lab Report Evaluates Increase in Electricity Demand from Data Centers

Photo, posted August 31, 2024, courtesy of Aileen Devlin / Jefferson Lab via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio