Lapeer Solar Park, Michigan: Largest solar array east of the Mississippi – 200,000 solar panels – enough clean power to power 9,000 homes
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Time to shine: Solar power is fastest-growing source of new energy
Renewables accounted for two-thirds of new power added to world’s grids last year, says International Energy Agency
Solar power was the fastest-growing source of new energy worldwide last year, outstripping the growth in all other forms of power generation for the first time and leading experts to hail a “new era”.
Renewable energy accounted for two-thirds of new power added to the world’s grids in 2016, the International Energy Agency said, but the group found solar was the technology that shone brightest.
New solar capacity even overtook the net growth in coal, previously the biggest new source of power generation. The shift was driven by falling prices and government policies, particularly in China, which accounted for almost half the solar panels installed.
The Paris-based IEA predicted that solar would dominate future growth, with global capacity in five years’ time expected to be greater than the current combined total power capacity of India and Japan.: https://www.theguardian.com/environm...-energy-agency
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Airline plans to use electric airplanes in 10 years—is that possible?
Startups plan to make hybrid airplanes, and eventually purely electric ones.
One of Europe's largest airlines, EasyJet, announced on Wednesday that it is aiming to begin service with electric-powered airplanes within the next decade. EasyJet will be collaborating with an aviation startup called Wright Electric to make this vision a reality.
The companies have ambitious goals: they want to build airplanes with room for 120 and 220 passengers and a range of 335 miles. That's so ambitious, in fact, that I was a little skeptical that anyone should take it seriously.
The fundamental problem is a matter of physics: the energy density of jet fuel is way, way higher than the energy density of batteries. As a result, while a conventional airplane can travel thousands of miles before refueling, electric airplanes can only travel a fraction of that distance before they run out of juice.
Yet there's significant room for improvement in electric airplane technology, argued NASA scientist Sean Clarke in a Thursday email to Ars.
"Electric propulsion systems may be relevant in the marketplace sooner than you might expect, because they can be much more efficient," Clarke told Ars.: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/10...that-possible/
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A new way to harness wasted methane - Approach could help curb needless 'flaring' of potent greenhouse gas.
Methane gas, a vast natural resource, is often disposed of through burning, but new research by scientists at MIT could make it easier to capture this gas for use as fuel or a chemical feedstock.
Many oil wells burn off methane -- the largest component of natural gas -- in a process called flaring, which currently wastes 150 billion cubic meters of the gas each year and generates a staggering 400 million tons of carbon dioxide, making this process a significant contributor to global warming. Letting the gas escape unburned would lead to even greater environmental harm, however, because methane is an even more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide is.
But now, MIT chemistry professor Yogesh Surendranath and three colleagues have found a way to use electricity, which could potentially come from renewable sources, to convert methane into derivatives of methanol, a liquid that can be made into automotive fuel or used as a precursor to a variety of chemical products. This new method may allow for lower-cost methane conversion at remote sites. The findings, described in the journal ACS Central Science, could pave the way to making use of a significant methane supply that is otherwise totally wasted.: https://www.sciencedaily.com/release...1017114328.htm
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Australia adds 97MW rooftop solar in September, set for record 1GW in 2017
Australian households and businesses added another 97MW of rooftop solar in 2017, setting a record for the first nine months of the year of 780MW and putting it on track to break through the 1,000MW, or 1 gigawatt, mark for the first time in 2017.
The record level of installations is clearly a response from consumers – household and business – to the soaring cost of electricity from the grid, which jumped around 20 per cent in July due to the rise in wholesale prices caused by an increase in the cost of gas, and the big players exercising their market power.
Australia has now installed some 6.1GW of small-scale rooftop solar since 2010, but the current boom – which has seen households and business invest around $2 billion in their own solar installations – is bigger than the investment surges prompted by overly generous feed in tariffs.: Australia adds 97MW rooftop solar in September, set for record 1GW in 2017 : RenewEconomy
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How Lakes Can Generate Electricity - Scientists develop new ways to harness energy from evaporation.
When the conversation turns to sources of clean renewable energy, evaporation usually isn’t the first thing to come up, if at all.
Yet scientists think evaporation from U.S. lakes and reservoirs could generate almost 70 percent of the power the nation produces now. Even better, it could meet demand both day and night, solving the intermittency problems posed by solar and wind.
“Evaporation occurs day and night, all year round,” said Ahmet-Hamdi Cavusoglu, a graduate student at Columbia University and lead author of a new study published in the journal Nature Communications that calculated the possible future impact of evaporation as a renewable energy source. “By controlling evaporation, we can store and control the power output, allowing us to potentially provide reliable energy on demand without needing batteries and other energy storage methods.”
The evaporation engine sits on a shallow pool of blue-colored water. When water on the surface below evaporates, it drives the flaps to move back and forth. When connected to a generator, that motion produces electricity.: https://nexusmedianews.com/how-lakes...y-21f95e511817
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China halts more than 150 coal-fired power plants
China is to stop or delay work on 151 planned and under-construction coal plants as Beijing struggles to respond to a flat-lining of demand for coal power.
The newly released list implements a target announced by premier Li Keqiang in March to stop, delay and close down at least 50,000 megawatts of coal-fired power plant projects in 2017.
The list affects coal power plants with capacity equal to the combined operating capacity of Germany and Japan (95,000 megawatts) costing around US$60 billion (389 billion rmb).
The amount of capacity affected hence exceeds the target set for this year but is still well short of the total of 150,000 megawatts the government says is needed by 2020.: https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/201...-power-plants/
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Catholic church to make record divestment from fossil fuels
More than 40 Catholic institutions will make largest ever faith-based divestment, on the anniversary of the death of St Francis of Assisi
More than 40 Catholic institutions are to announce the largest ever faith-based divestment from fossil fuels, on the anniversary of the death of St Francis of Assisi.
The sum involved has not been disclosed but the volume of divesting groups is four times higher than a previous church record, and adds to a global divestment movement, led by investors worth $5.5tn.: https://www.theguardian.com/environm...m-fossil-fuels
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The war on coal is over. Coal lost. - Coal can’t compete with cheaper clean energy.: https://www.theguardian.com/environm...over-coal-lost
Aerial view of an industrial base consisting of wind turbines, solar panels and fish ponds at tidal flats on July 25, 2017 in Yancheng, Jiangsu Province of China.