Energy Efficiency, Energy Storage, Sourcing Renewables  -  June 11, 2022

Weekend Reads: Using the Defense Production Act to boost clean energy; Beaming solar power from space to earth

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

Why Joe Biden is invoking a war power to build heat pumps and solar panels (Vox)  It looks like President Joe Biden is done waiting for Congress to do something about the country’s dependence on foreign energy. Through a series of executive actions announced on Monday, the president plans to use the Defense Production Act to boost clean energy in the United States by putting a two-year freeze on tariffs for solar panels coming to the country from Southeast Asia and simultaneously scaling up the domestic production of clean energy technologies.

Inside Ithaca's plan to electrify 6,000 buildings and grow a regional green workforce using private equity funds (Utility Dive)  Ithaca, New York, made headlines last year when its city council voted to fully decarbonize. Achieving the 2030 goal will require grid decarbonization, electrifying transportation and rolling out heat pumps to the city’s 6,000 aging commercial and residential buildings. Ithaca is known for its progressive politics — in the 90s the city pioneered a time-based currency to inspire local spending, for example. But the decarbonization plan is among its most ambitious efforts, according to Director of Sustainability Luis Aguirre-Torres.

Aviation can meet Paris targets - if it makes massive changes (Grist)  For those hoping to slow the halt of climate change, aviation often seems like a near-intractable problem. Roughly 115,000 flights take off and land around the world every day, accounting for 3 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. A single passenger flying from San Francisco to London is responsible for around 1 metric ton of carbon dioxide spewed into the atmosphere – about half the emissions that a citizen of India, on average, releases in a whole year. 

Space-Based Solar Power is Back On The Table (Clean Technica)  Beaming solar power down to Earth from space? Don’t laugh. The idea — once written off as technically and financially unworkable — is being actively considered by several countries, including the US, China, Korea, Japan, and the UK. The European Space Agency is also involved. In January, the ESA said it would fund 13 of the 85 proposals it received after it put out a call for ideas related to space-based solar power (SBSP).

Giant wind turbine ports prepare to transform NYC's coastal woodland (Gothamist)  Fourteen miles off the coast of New York, vast fields of offshore wind turbines will soon be installed in the Atlantic Ocean. Spurred by a recent $4.37 billion federal auction of more than 488,000 acres of offshore leases in the New York Bight, these wind farms will help New York realize its 2019 mandate to generate 70% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030. But growing an offshore wind industry will require the transformation of huge sections of the shoreline in order to construct and maintain the giant turbines. 

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