October 29, 2022

Weekend Reads: Imagining a Clean Energy Future for America's Landfills; How to Take Your Sustainability Plans to the Next Level

It's the weekend! Kick back and catch up with these must-read articles from around the web.

The US Trifecta of Oil, Gas, and Clean Energy Growth in Five Charts (BloombergNEF) The approaching US midterm elections could decide whether measures to address climate change are accelerated, stalled or even rolled back. Right now, the country’s journey to a low-carbon economy looks to be picking up speed, in no small part due to the $369 billion of funding for clean technologies packed into August’s landmark Inflation Reduction Act. The US appears teed up for a renewables boom this decade. But the future isn’t just green. As countries around the world look to shore up their energy security amid the fallout of Russia’s war in Ukraine, the US is capitalizing on renewed appetite for oil and gas, too. Here are five charts from BloombergNEF on the future of US energy.

The wasted potential of garbage dumps (Vox) About 17 miles south of downtown Houston, Texas, on the western edge of a majority-Black neighborhood called Sunnyside, there is an unkempt-looking patch of trees. To a visitor driving down Belfort Avenue or Reed Road, which serve as the trees’ boundaries to the north and south, they might look like a rare patch of urban forest in the city, or perhaps an extension of nearby Sunnyside Park. But the trees are not the remnants of an old forest that survived Houston’s hungry sprawl, nor are they the kind of green space that arises from careful public planning. “These are trash trees,” said Efrem Jernigan, a lifelong resident of Sunnyside and president of South Union CDC, a local community development nonprofit. Jernigan means that literally: They’re growing on top of a 240-acre patch of land that used to be an active landfill.

Tesla Is No Longer Alone in the Electric Vehicle Race (Time) For years, one carmaker has stood out as the leader for electric vehicles: Tesla. But the company now faces a growing slate of deep-pocketed competitors, including General Motors, Ford, and Mercedes-Benz, looking to disrupt its market dominance. More than a dozen new electric vehicles are set to hit the market over the next year as carmakers make the shift to greener vehicles. That could spell trouble, auto analysts say, for a company that was once the only American electric carmaker. “Tesla has been the dominant EV player for so long but we’re seeing a lot more competition coming in, not only with luxury EVs but also mainstream vehicles that come in different body types and price points,” says Kevin Roberts, director of industry insights and analytics at CarGurus.

3 ways CEOs can take sustainability programmes to the next level (World Economic Forum) We are entering a post-greenwashing era with the necessary shift from talking and measuring to acting for serious impact. In response, many firms have established sustainability programmes and partnerships to address social and environmental issues. At the same time, digital technology has matured to the point where it can serve as a force multiplier for social impact. Yet the opportunity to make corporate sustainability initiatives even more effective through the use of technology is too often overlooked. Many executives still view sustainability and technology as separate priorities and even opposing goals. The opposite is true, as the interplay between digitalization and sustainability opens up brilliant opportunities to create a greener economy and society.

This is not your grandparents’ power grid (Santa Fe New Mexican) Triple-digit summer heat. Windstorms and wildfires. Snow and ice and nasty cold snaps. These are not just facts of life in the Southwest, they are stressors on the power grid that increase the likelihood of outages. As extreme weather events become more frequent, these tests to the grid will continue. But the good news is that advanced mathematics, physics and computer science solutions are increasingly ready to help operate the grid and allow for the design of safer, more reliable systems. Reliably operating the power grid around the clock without interruption depends on the dedicated service of tens of thousands of people across the country. Equally vital, though out of sight and unknown to the general public, is the software that network operators rely on to make decisions for operating the grid in the most reliable and cost-effective way possible.

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