Weekend Reads - Smart Energy Decisions

January 6, 2024

Weekend Reads: Texas Becomes Unlikely Renewables Leader; Africa's Pay-As-You-Go Power Plan

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

Texas' Unique Energy Industry Is Helping the State Become a Renewables Leader (CNET)  Texas is one the leading US energy producers -- and renewables are a big reason why. Traditionally considered to be "oil country," Texas continues to have a heavy fossil fuel presence in the state. Though it may not seem like the likeliest candidate on the surface, the state is a pioneer of clean and renewable energy production. Texas generated roughly 15% of the country's electricity from all-renewable sources in 2022, according to the Energy Information Association. While it was wind power that helped blow Texas to the top of the clean energy production charts, increased solar capacity in recent decades has helped its standing. 

In Juneau, Alaska, a carbon offset project that’s actually working (Grist)  When Kira Roberts moved to Juneau, Alaska, last summer, she immediately noticed how the town of 31,000 changes when the cruise ships dock each morning. Thousands of people pour in, only to vanish by evening. As the season winds down in fall, the parade of buses driving through her neighborhood slows, and the trails near her home and the vast Mendenhall Glacier no longer teem with tourists. “That unique rhythm of Juneau is really striking to me,” she said. “It’s just kind of crazy to think that this is all a mile from my house.” But Mendenhall is shrinking quickly: The 13-mile-long glacier has retreated about a mile in the past 40 years. 

Renewables now generate more of Britain’s electricity than fossil fuels – but what happens next? (The Conversation)  Wind is now up to 29% and solar has doubled again. In 2015, coal still generated a quarter of British electricity, but last year it was down to 1%. Indeed the same author, energy analyst Grant Wilson, recently noted that 2023 was the first ever year when Britain would get more electricity from renewables than fossil fuels. If you include electricity generated by “biomass” plants (which burn wood pellets, often imported from forests in America) then, as Wilson notes along with his University of Birmingham colleagues Joseph Day and Katarina Pegg, renewables actually first overtook fossil fuels in Britain in 2020.

Crop and Energy Production Merge in Iowa Project (Modern Farmer)  Solar power may be the answer to the world’s future energy needs. But its benefit is limited if it hampers our ability to produce food. Using farmland for solar panels, especially in the agriculture-heavy Midwest, is fraught with controversy. “There is concern that solar energy will prevent land from being used for farming,” says Matt O’Neal, professor of entomology and Henry A. Wallace Chair for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University. What if the two could co-exist? A new study underway at Iowa State University seeks to answer that question.

‘Electricity is fundamental to quality of life’: the man bringing off-grid, pay-as-you-go power to Africa (The Guardian)  In the next four years, British entrepreneur Mansoor Hamayun expects to connect 36 million people to an electricity source, many for the first time. It is an ambition that would see his clean energy company, Bboxx, expand its reach tenfold across sub-Saharan Africa. The London-headquartered company has grown from an idealistic startup with hopes of transforming the lives of African households to a company offering pay-as-you-go solar power, batteries, smartphones and electric motorbikes to about 3.6 million people across Africa in little more than a decade. 

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