First TMI, Now Palisades. Is Uranium Back?
Nuclear power advocates have regained a healthy glow, though the environmental movement continues to split more hairs than atoms over the role of the carbon-free energy source.
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Energy
Nuclear Power Is Actually Not Bad. Microsoft is Bad.
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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NREL Prizes for Energy Innovation
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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Cities, Unsurprisingly, Have Far Lower Per Capita Energy Footprints.
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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Does Big Oil Deserve A Seat At COP28?
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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Planning Conference Day 2: Downtown Traverse, Renewable Energy
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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Is Bus Electrification Economical or Environmental? Possibly Both.
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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Southeast Michigan Dreams of Public Power
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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Sidebar: An Easy Argument Against Fossil Fuels? Cost.
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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Why Is So Much Farmland Suddenly Being Taken Up By Solar Power? Also, Is That Bad?
Solar farms are growing in popularity, taking up more and more land every day. Is that a good thing?
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