C
"A meeting of the G7 nations on the environment begins in Paris on Thursday, but climate change has been left off the agenda to avoid a dispute with the United States."
A meeting of the G7 nations on the environment begins in Paris on Thursday, but climate change has been left off the agenda to avoid a dispute with the United States, France’s Ecology Minister Monique…
France 24 (www.france24.com)
ICE cars have 100 times more moving parts than e-cars.
Learn how fewer moving parts lead to increased reliability and lower ownership costs.
Alpha Motor (www.alphamotorinc.com)
It's actually a minor engineering miracle that a bunch of controlled explosions (!) gives the energy that gets transferred through a complicated drive train to eventually move the wheels!
I don't know the situation in the UK, but in the US car manufacturers have switched to selling SUVs almost exclusively. Because fatter profits.
Less than 10% of new cars in the US are electric. Even so, the average price of a new car topped $ 50,000 last year. It's ridiculous, People are taking out 7-year loans on cars now.
A surge in EV sales may have helped push the average transaction price to its highest ever point.
Car and Driver (www.caranddriver.com)
"Opening up of parts of the public estate for renewable energy projects, including brownfield, industrial and railway sites, would potentially allow up to 10 gigawatts of new capacity, according to the government's plans.
It will overhaul planning and land-use rules to speed up grid connections and infrastructure upgrades, and aim to make it easier for renters and apartment dwellers to install EV chargers, solar panels and heat pumps."
Demand destruction
"The IEA sees global oil demand falling by 80,000 barrels per day (bpd) this year, compared with a projected year-on-year rise of 640,000 bpd in its previous monthly report.
“Demand destruction will spread as scarcity and higher prices persist,” the IEA report said"
The IEA’s oil ‘demand destruction’ report comes after its chief said unnamed countries are hoarding stocks.
Al Jazeera (www.aljazeera.com)
"The price of new battery electric cars has fallen below petrol cars in the UK for the first time, according to the car sales website Autotrader, in a significant milestone in Britain’s transition away from fossil fuels."
“They’ve long been cheaper to run, and now they’re cheaper to buy, too. Add in growing competition and more choice, and it’s clear the direction of travel: electric is the obvious option for drivers.”
Autotrader says average EV cost is £785 cheaper, in an important milestone in the move away from fossil fuels
the Guardian (www.theguardian.com)
IEEFA:
There is a stampede to build new fossil gas plants.
It is misguided.
"The price of new combined-cycle gas plants is roughly triple the cost of projects built in the early 2020s and orders placed now likely will not be fulfilled until 2030, or later."
Wind and solar, paired with dispatchable battery storage, are cheaper to build, and they have no fuel costs.
Cost to consumers will be stable, and lower.
I started a thread on this. The hashtag is #Xodus but it covers tech beyond X
Xodus thread. Entities that have discontinued use of Big Tech Includes social media platforms, "AI" platforms, cloud hosters, all that. X -- New Brunswick possibly Nova Scotia "Since New Brunswick premier Susan Holt signalled her government will abandon the social media platform X, previously know as Twitter, it’s prompted the Nova Scotia government to consider its use of the platform." https://www.ctvnews.ca/atlantic/nova-scotia/article/nova-scotia-reviewing-use-of-x-as-new-brunswick-logs-off-platform/?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub
Mastodon (mastodon.social)
"The current increase in coal utilisation reflects its role as a “shock absorber” in India’s energy mix.
The central risk facing India today is not an immediate energy crisis, but long-term lock-in. Every new coal plant, gas pipeline, or LNG terminal represents a commitment to decades of fossil fuel use."
Hans Rosling gives a zinging good talk that you remember.
Auf YouTube findest du die angesagtesten Videos und Tracks. Außerdem kannst du eigene Inhalte hochladen und mit Freunden oder gleich der ganzen Welt teilen.
(www.youtube.com)
This is good news!
"Together, renewables — including solar, wind, hydropower, and bioenergy — were the biggest source of U.S. electricity in March, according to data from the think tank Ember. Along with nuclear power, they supplied more than half of U.S. power."
"Japan said on Wednesday it would establish a financial framework worth about $10 billion to help Asian countries procure energy resources and bolster their stockpiles as Middle East tensions drive prices higher and disrupt supply chains.
The support [is] aimed at preventing knock-on effects on Japan's own supply chains."
"Per capita fossil energy peaked after the twin oil shocks of the 1970s and never recovered.
The parallels with the 1970s oil shocks are striking. But so too is the difference. For the first time, there are scalable, cost-competitive alternatives.
The shock has jolted the electric age forward. But the response is a choice: lean into local, electric security, or reach back to the old fossil playbook."
How the energy crises of the 2020s speed up the electric age
Ember (ember-energy.org)
This is one way to cut carbon emissions.
Accelerating the energy transitions is a less painful way.
"The European Union warned member countries on Wednesday that if the Iran conflict continues, energy markets will face a prolonged supply shock that would force cuts to fuel consumption, EU diplomats told Reuters."
"Lead author Ted Scott said the data showed the [Sidney's] summers had lengthened by about 15 extra days every decade since 1990, when compared with the 1961-1990 period.
"Another way to think about that is in 20 years, Sydney has been on average adding a whole month of summer," he said."
For every 10 years since 1990, Sydneysiders have experienced an extra 15 days of summer, new research has found.
(www.abc.net.au)
There's got to be a nice - if scary - graphic about this somewhere: strips of daily temps for each year.
That one has been operational since 1966!
I hope the tide - no pun intended - is turning for offshore energy generation of all kinds. The war in Iran may give it a big push.
Nuclear power stations are low carbon but they are thermal tech and they have been shut down when heatwaves raise the temperature in the rivers from which they get their cooling water, precisely when you need the electricity for cooling homes.
I looked up the story of that tidal farm, it's a sad story.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paimpol%E2%80%93Br%C3%A9hat_tidal_farm
There are lots of technical issues with tidal power but it seems as if they are not even trying.
Off the coast of Brittany they have one of the largest min-max difference in the tides: it's meters. I can't wait to see that energy harnessed.
France announces ban on gas boilers in new buildings starting in 2027
Also, "starting in June, the government will subsidize 50,000 more electric vehicles through reduced-rate leases for high-mileage drivers hit by fuel price spikes, such as health aides, nurses and tradespeople who rely on cars for work. Businesses will get aid for electric vans and trucks, up to €100,000 per vehicle – including, for instance, cargo bikes sought by last-mile delivery firms."
Among other things, there is the alfalfa grown in Colorado for export as animal feed to the Middle East.
The fact that that is happening, in the face of a water crisis and a climate crisis, tells you that water and energy are not priced correctly.
e.g. There are places - Brazil, Tunisia - where the price of water goes up with your water consumption. That protects the poorest families and sends a clear signal.
