(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Renewable Tuesday 11/14: Racing against Doom to Peak Carbon [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-11-14 Not news: We are in a race between more carbon and higher temperatures on one side, and unprecedented growth in renewables and decarbonizing industry on the other. Doom&Gloom is also on the increase. News: Peak Carbon is coming. Or maybe it’s here. Analysis: Global CO2 emissions could peak as soon as 2023, IEA data reveals The IEA’s latest World Energy Outlook 2023 says it now expects CO2 emissions to peak “in the mid-2020s” and an accompanying press release says this will happen “by 2025”. Yet the IEA’s own data shows the peak in global CO2 coming as early as this year, partly due to what the outlook describes as the “legacy” of the global energy crisis triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Bill Gates backs novel device promising wind energy at 1/3 the cost It looks nothing like a typical "fan on a stick" wind turbine, but this oval track with evenly spaced wing blades could be an enormously disruptive addition to the renewable energy mix, since it slashes the cost of wind power to unprecedented lows. Wyoming's Airloom Energy has come out of stealth mode with a new CEO fresh out of Google[x], US$4 million in seed funding, led by Bill Gates's Breakthrough Energy Ventures fund, and a radically different technical approach that it says fundamentally upends the financial equation for wind farms. Airloom's approach makes everything much smaller and much closer to the ground. A 2.5-MW Airloom setup would use a number of 25-m (82-ft) poles to suspend an oval-shaped track, into which a series of 10-m (33-ft) wing blades are set, joined by a cable. Like sailboats, which can harvest motion energy from wind in any direction except dead-ahead or straight behind, these blades harvest wind energy as they travel around the track, which is oriented such that its long sides are angled for maximum wind capture and its short ends are spaces where the blades can change direction as the rest of the blades haul them around. Continuing that story, Compared with a regular turbine, for example this 2.5-MW-rated GE unit – a 100-m-diameter (328-ft) fan supported by a hub held 85 m (279 ft) high on a tubular steel tower – Airloom says a wing track will be less than 10% of the cost, at somewhere under US$225,000. Add in the land requirements and whatnot, and a full wind farm setup promises to be less than 25% of the capital cost, at less than $6 million for a 20-MW wind farm. And at the brass-tacks level, Airloom claims its design will bring the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCoE) of wind energy down to about one third of what it costs today per kilowatt-hour, somewhere around 1.3 cents per kilowatt hour – making one of the cheapest forms of renewable energy much, much cheaper. Cue whining from denialists about these systems taking up too much land. As if we don’t have enough deserts, or we couldn’t build these a bit taller to allow farm animals and equipment access underneath the blades. x Can't wait to see this headline: "Climate-related disasters and deaths rapidly fall after fossil fuel phase out." Let's just make it sooner rather than later, folks. #COP28 pic.twitter.com/UACXf9Y4E9 — Catherine McKenna (@cathmckenna) November 8, 2023 x 2023 has been a breakout year for #EnergyStorage in the US: 🔋 BESS installations growing rapidly, up 63% YOY in Q3 alone. ⚡ BESS projects in the pipeline have increased 50% YOY 📈 BESS had its strongest third quarter ever, with 2.1 GW/6.2 GWh added https://t.co/5x4xHxFlL1 pic.twitter.com/y68Nkixmw4 — Scott Poulter (@sfpoulter) November 7, 2023 U.S. company that planned to build the first small nuclear reactor power plant cancels its project Meteor Blades The only planned and approved small modular reactor project in the United States was canceled Wednesday, adding to the troubles the so-called “nuclear renaissance” has encountered since that term came into prominence a couple of decades ago. x Thanks to supportive programs like Solar Ready Vets, veteran employment in the U.S. #solar and #storage industry has outpaced the overall economy for the last decade. Before #VeteransDay, read more from SEIA and @IRECUSA on how key programs are helping to recruit, retain, and… pic.twitter.com/QauIJJOzJL — Solar and Storage Industry (@SEIA) November 9, 2023 LIHUE, Hawaii — It’s hard to find anywhere in the United States that has greened its electricity supply as quickly as verdant Kauai. And the people of Kauai achieved that on their own, through collective ownership of the electricity grid, not by hoping profit-maximizing utilities find a way to balance the urgency of human-caused climate change with quarterly dividends for shareholders. Kauai used to have a Wall Street–owned, for-profit utility, much like roughly 70% of U.S. electricity customers. But the island’s grid infrastructure took a beating from Hurricane Iniki in 1992, and the utility, Citizens Utilities Company of Connecticut, eventually wanted to sell. Kauai residents raised financing and acquired the utility in 2002, turning it into a locally owned cooperative that pledged to lower rates, which were the highest in the state at the time. NOAA: 25 separate billion-dollar weather/climate disasters so far this year, and counting Note that the events include both short term phenomenon like fires, hurricanes, floods, and longer term events like drought — and the year is not over yet. Here is something I hadn’t heard about in this form, that is worth more attention. We have, of course, looked at increasing carbon in soils by various methods not called by this name. The international "4 per 1000" Initiative The International “4 per 1000” Initiative, launched by France on 1 December 2015 at COP 21, aims to show that agriculture, and in particular agricultural soils, can play a crucial role in food security and climate change. But it also represents an enormous potential for carbon storage: the world’s soils contain 2 to 3 times more carbon than the atmosphere. If the level of carbon stored by soils in the top 30 to 40 centimetres of soil increased by 0.4% (or 4‰) per year, the annual increase of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere would be significantly reduced. 75% of soils are already degraded to varying degrees due to human activity – and climate change is accelerating this process. 3 examples of Electric Vehicle misinformation BBC has an article out now titled ‘Three big reasons Americans haven’t rapidly adopted EVs’. All three reasons included false and misleading information. Affordability Charging Time No SUVs available Weekly spotlight on climate & eco-diaries (11/12/23) EV misinfo; dark forces behind food pyramid by Meteor Blades From Good News Roundups: Some houses are being built hurricane resistant and for lower emissions India solar adoption entering accelerated growth Building adequate grid flexibility is the next key step in India’s clean power transition Small Finnish city will be carbon neutral in a few years Country’s largest ferry system going green Bubble curtain protects porpoises from wind turbine noise [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/11/14/2204606/-Renewable-Tuesday-11-14-Racing-against-Doom-to-Peak-Carbon?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/