November 17, 2018

Weekend reads: Big data drives green energy; Corporates support climate policy

 It's the weekend! Kick back and relax with these must-read stories from around the web:

From Google to Facebook, Big Data Is Driving Green Energy Shift (Bloomberg)  Dozens of wind turbines each standing 260 feet tall spin in the breeze on the plains of Oklahoma, feeding electricity for a Google data center about 180 miles away. Worldwide, data centers like the Mayes County site outside Tulsa handle almost 32 quintillion bytes of information each day, according to Cisco Global Cloud Index. That’s the equivalent of streaming 32 billion hours of Netflix, and it makes big tech companies some of the fastest growing energy consumers. 

3 Reasons Why Apple, Danone, Mars, Nestle, Unilever Just Stood Up For Strong Climate Policy (Forbes)  In the media storm surrounding the midterm elections, you might have missed an important act of sustainability leadership. Five of the world’s leading brands filed public comments opposing the administration's Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule. The ACE rule would replace the Clean Power Plan, which all five companies have previously supported, and place no quantitative limits on climate pollution from power plants.

Governors say cost, reliability, renewable benefits would flow from unified power grid (Telegram)  A bipartisan group of 18 governors, including Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, is proposing that the federal government take a serious look at stitching together the three main United States power grids, comparing the importance of grid modernization to the creation of the interstate highway system 60 years ago. The idea the governors are pushing is that by improving connections at the seams between the eastern, western and Texas-based grids to energy to be shared between grids would make the nation’s overall electrical power system “more resilient, efficient, reliable, competitive, and less vulnerable to cyber-attack.” 

New Study Finds Correlation Between Financial and Sustainability Performance (Triple Pundit)  Is there a financial return on sustainability? Can a company improve its financial performance by increasing its focus on the environment, its employees and suppliers, and the communities in which it operates? Will producing comprehensive sustainability reports enhance these returns? The answer to all of these questions is “yes,” according to a study released last week by the Centre for Sustainability and Excellence (CSE), a sustainability consulting and educational organization.  

Algae may soon fuel your car thanks to U of M researchers (WXYZ Detroit) Researchers at the University of Michigan are working to create a fuel out of algae that could change everything about the energy field. Recently the U.S. Department of Energy chipped in $2 million to help researchers create a biofuel that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 60 percent. Less than a month ago, a new UN climate change report left a scary assessment: We have until 2030 to prevent Earth’s climate from destabilizing. What does that mean? 

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