September 10, 2022

Weekend Reads: Why the CA Power Grid is Buckling Under Recent Heat Waves; Weighing the Costs of a Global RE Transition

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

Switching The World To Renewable Energy Will Cost $62 Trillion, But The Payback Would Take Just 6 Years (CleanTechnica) Mark Jacobson and his colleagues at Stanford University have published a new study in the journal Energy & Environmental Science that claims 145 of the world’s nations could switch to 100% renewable energy in a few years using renewable energy technologies available today. They recommend the world make the switchover by 2035, but in no event later than 2050. Their goal is to have 80% operating on renewable energy by 2030.

Few states have comprehensive plans to integrate the expected surge in EVs. ACEEE wants to change that (Utility Dive) Electric vehicle adoption is growing rapidly and utilities are spending billions of dollars to support necessary charging infrastructure. But in a report published Tuesday, the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy warns that only a few states have adopted a comprehensive planning approach for transportation electrification, or TE, investments, and that more must be done to ensure they are made equitably.

The real reason a heat wave is pushing California’s power grid to its limits (Vox) California is in the midst of a blistering heat wave that’s breaking temperature records, scorching the state, and pushing the power grid to the breaking point. Last week, the California Independent System Operator (CAISO), which oversees the state’s power grid, issued the first of many “flex alerts” asking Californians to reduce their energy use and avoid using large appliances or charging electric vehicles between the hours of 4 and 9 pm, when a combination of a reduction in solar power as the sun sets and a rise in demand as people return home from work puts extra stress on the grid.

How can a company maintain focus on sustainability commitments at a time of major change? (edie) We all need to step up if we are to avoid the worst effects of climate change. Certainly, the urgency with which we drive sustainability improvements in our business has ramped up significantly in the past few years as the reality of the climate crisis has come into sharper focus. That’s why, in 2020, as part of a wider set of environmental commitments, we at Tate & Lyle set ourselves a series of science-based carbon reduction targets for 2030.

This ‘solar tree’ may be the EV charging station of the future (Electrek) London-based SolarBotanic Trees officially launched its “solar tree” prototype today, and the company wants to use it to power EV charging stations first. The SolarBotanic energy tree, which features what the company says is the “world’s first” 3-D leaf-shaped photovoltaic nanotechnology, utilizes thin-film solar cells and has a power generation capacity of 5 kilowatts. SolarBotanic developed its energy trees with Co-Innovate, which is a London-based small-to-medium enterprise business support program that taps into academic and innovation resources at Brunel University London, the Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC) in Coventry, and the University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre’s Design and Prototyping Group.

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