August 3, 2024

Weekend Reads: Airlines Falling Short on SAF; What Are Underwater Power Grids?

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

Lofty sustainable aviation fuel climate goals lose altitude (CleanTechnica)  This week, Air New Zealand became the first airline to announce it was unable to meet its emissions reduction goals and will withdraw from the industry’s net zero by 2050 pledge. The airline had hoped to reduce its emissions 29% by 2030, but said that goal was now unrealistic.

It’s always sunny in space: Michigan startup hopes to beam solar power to Earth (MLive)  In space, the sun is always shining. So why not put a solar farm up there? One Michigan startup is already on its way, aiming to take an idea featured in Isaac Asimov’s science fiction 80 years ago and turn it into reality.

Offshore wind farms connected by an underwater power grid for transmission could revolutionize how the East Coast gets its electricity (The Conversation)  In the U.S., the East Coast is an ideal location to capture this power, but there’s a problem: getting electricity from ocean wind farms to the cities and towns that need it. The U.S. Department of Energy and 10 states in the Northeast States Collaborative on Interregional Transmission are working on a potentially transformative solution: plans for an offshore electric power grid.

Almost quarter of big fashion brands have no decarbonisation plan, report finds (The Guardian)  Almost a quarter of the world’s biggest fashion brands, such as Reebok, Tom Ford and DKNY, do not have a public plan for decarbonisation, a report has found.

A Manhattan Project nuclear weapons site is being turned into a giant solar farm (Engadget)  The US Department of Energy (DOE) recently announced plans to turn land that previously housed aspects of the Manhattan Project into a 1 GW solar farm. For the uninitiated, the Manhattan Project was a top-secret and successful effort to develop nuclear weapons during the 1940s.

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