The construction of two coal-fired power plants has been stalled in Kenya by the Kenyan courts and in Bangladesh by UNESCO, both for environmental reasons. It’s an opportunity for the two countries to also recognise the purely commercial reasons to go for renewables, says Simon Nicholas of IEEFA. While most of Asia has been powering ahead with renewables, Bangladesh has been lagging behind. But a continued rollout of renewable energy will quickly … [Read more...]
Archives for July 2019
A cheap Carbon Capture breakthrough? MOF molecular cages that trap CO2
Carbon Capture is the Transition’s great unknown. Big targets have been set but nobody knows how we’re going to meet them. It's clear we need utility-scale breakthroughs, and fast. And cheap. We take a look at one example of cutting edge research that could deliver both. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s SLAC Laboratory and Stanford University have taken the first images of CO2 molecules captured within a highly porous nanoparticle … [Read more...]
Gas v Electric new buildings: U.S. standards agency backs gas with out-of-date data, says RMI
Official reports matter. That’s why the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) is taking to task the U.S.’s National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) which published a paper stating that all-electric systems are more carbon intensive and more costly than gas-fired systems in new buildings. The NIST paper assumed a high reliance on coal as the primary source for electricity generation in their Maryland case study. Those stats are out of date, … [Read more...]
Utility-scale batteries can undercut peaking gas and coal
A report by IEEFA looks at trends in the U.S. to install utility scale batteries. The report’s author, Dennis Wamsted, gives examples of how it is replacing the peaking and seasonal generation being provided by gas and coal. Emissions aside, the numbers are starting to add up. In Hawaii the combination of solar generation and storage is expected to undercut the price for fossil fuel generation. In Texas, Vistra Energy’s batteries are soaking up … [Read more...]
Can India’s 30m grid/diesel irrigation pumps go solar?
The Indian government is looking for effective ways to increase the use of solar powered pumps for small farm irrigation. About 70% of India’s rural households still depend primarily on agriculture for their livelihood, and successful farming usually requires irrigation. Currently, 21m pumps are connected to a primarily fossil fuel grid and 8.8m are diesel while solar has risen to just 130,000, mostly added in the last 5 years. Lelin Thouthang … [Read more...]