Constellation just announced a deal that the generation utility will restart the surviving Three Mile Island reactor, which was shut down in 2019. That’s good news. The more complicated news is that Microsoft is buying all of that power for its data centers and artificial intelligence, both of which continue to consume staggering amounts of electricity– which they buy for far cheaper than what we peasants must pay.
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The Department of Energy and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory are teaming up to produce a series of competitive prize programs to facilitate innovation in energy and decarbonization.
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Energy data show that cities, as we already know, allow for far more energy-efficient uses of land and space than their suburban and rural counterparts.
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The world’s favorite international stopover for consumer largesse and one of the biggest oil producers in the world is hosting the UN’s climate conference. Should we be outraged? Or ever more invested?
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The second day of the annual conference of the Michigan Association of Planning involved a great tour, a lot of learning, and some serious head-scratching about how little attention is being paid to topics of decarbonization and climate change.
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City buses have historically been powered by dirty diesel engines. Upgrading to CNG improves emissions and reduces smog, but doesn’t improve efficiency. Electrification, on the other hand, could drastically improve efficiency, drastically reduce emissions, and reduce operating costs to boot. There is a higher capital cost up front, which can potentially be amortized over a longer lifespan.
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Municipalization of public utilities, transportation systems, and distribution systems for gas and electricity was all the rage about a century ago. Is it time to bring it back into vogue? A symposium looked at this question.
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The levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) of solar and onshore wind power have declined so much in the past decade that we’ve gone from an all-renewable grid being a pipe dream to it being a matter of simple market logic. While there are a couple of challenges ahead, this is at least encouraging as we continue down the road toward decarbonization.
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Solar farms are growing in popularity, taking up more and more land every day. Is that a good thing?
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The Republican Party has drafted its “policy” plans for 2025, when they at this point seem unlikely to be able to retake the White House. While there are some valuable points in critiquing the structure of the federal regulatory apparatus, most of the over-arching objectives include dismantling federal agencies and applying theocratic and corporatist dogma to American public policy.
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