Energy Efficiency, Energy Storage, Sourcing Renewables, Wind  -  May 12, 2018

Weekend reads: Electrify America boosts EVs; Big oil eyes RE & more

Kick back and relax with these must-read energy stories from around the web:

Electrify America’s Big Plans (DesignNews) Nobody realized that when Volkswagen got caught cheating on diesel emissions, the end result would be a big boost for electric vehicles (EVs) in the US. Volkswagen’s so-called “Diesel-gate” scandal involved programming the engines in the company’s diesel-powered vehicles to produce low levels of pollutants when they were being tested, and much higher—up to 40 times higher—exhaust pollutants the rest of the time in real-world driving. In January, 2017 the German company admitted to the scam. 

As renewable energy grows, so does interest from Big Oil (CBC News)  As the potential for wind and solar energy grows — and the cost of the technology falls — experts anticipate a growing number of traditional oil and gas companies to invest in the renewables sector. Morgan Bazilian, former lead energy specialist at the World Bank, told an audience of oil executives this week in Calgary that the industry has already seen some of the sector's largest companies — Shell, Total, BP and others — make billion-dollar investments in renewables. 

Jobs in renewable energy hit 10.3 million last year, report finds (CNBC) Over 500,000 new jobs were generated by the renewable energy industry last year, a 5.3 percent rise when compared to 2016, according to a report. The number of people working in the renewable energy sector — including large hydropower — hit 10.3 million in 2017, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) study said. The world's biggest renewable energy employers were China, Brazil, the U.S., India, Germany and Japan. Altogether, these countries represented over 70 percent of jobs in the industry globally. 

Rick Perry’s DOE thinks 100 hours of energy storage is the answer (Energy Storage News) The US government Department of Energy is funding research into storing energy for periods of between 10 and 100 hours, announcing last week that “up to US$30 million” will be available through the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). Typically, advanced batteries used in grid-scale energy storage will have anything from around 15 minutes duration – for applications that might require bursts of high power for short periods of time such as frequency regulation – to about four hours at the upper scale.

Every one of America’s 57,636 wind turbines, mapped (Washington Post) California's Kern County, home to the city of Bakersfield, bills itself as the “Wind Capital of the West.” But a Washington Post analysis of a massive new U.S. Geological Survey database of over 57,000 commercial wind turbines suggests that the county is being overly modest: It is, in fact, the wind capital of the entire country. To create the database, the USGS partnered with the Department of Energy, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the American Wind Energy Association. 

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