This week’s Current Climate, which every Saturday brings you the latest news about the business of sustainability. Sign up to get it in your inbox every week. getty Earlier this month, analyst firm Pitchbook published its analysis of venture investments into clean energy in 2022. The firm found that 2022 was a record year for […]
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Transmission towers carry power lines. (Photo by John Paraskevas/Newsday RM via Getty Images) Newsday via Getty Images Electric shortages have become more acute; brownouts and blackouts have become common. Look deeper and it becomes clear that the nation’s power grid has not only become less reliable but also more fragile. This fact is especially troubling […]
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49 BCE Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon river with the 13th Legion, a defiant act that signalled the start of the Roman Civil War. Crossing the Rubicon https://twitter.com/abouthistorymag/status/951022863234093056 The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant on 17th March against Vladimir Putin, leader of the world’s largest energy exporter (Russia), accusing him of the […]
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Haruko Wainwright, the Norman C. Rasmussen Career Development Professor in Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE) and assistant professor in civil and environmental engineering at MIT, grew up in rural Japan, where many nuclear facilities are located. She remembers worrying about the facilities as a child. Wainwright was only 6 at the time of the Chernobyl […]
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Oil prices plunged 10 percent on macro economic fears in the wake of the collapse of SVB despite a … [+] well-supplied market. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images) Getty Images The macroeconomic fears in the wake of the latest banking crisis have tripped up oil, leading to a 10% plunge in prices. How worried should […]
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White House National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi (left) and former Energy Secretary Steven Chu in a … [+] fireside chat at Stanford University. Sarah Weaver Solutions to the world’s converging environmental crises may not always align, the Biden Administration’s climate czar said last week. “There are a lot of hard conversations around the clean energy […]
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TOPSHOT – Electricity pylons are seen in front OF the cooling towers of the coal-fired power station … [+] of German energy giant RWE in Weisweiler, western Germany, on January 26, 2021. (Photo by Ina FASSBENDER / AFP) (Photo by INA FASSBENDER/AFP via Getty Images) AFP via Getty Images The electricity network is among the […]
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IN FLIGHT – FEBRUARY 03: (——EDITORIAL USE ONLY – MANDATORY CREDIT – “UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF … [+] DEFENSE / HANDOUT” – NO MARKETING NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS – DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS——) U.S. Air Force pilot looks down at the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon as it hovered over the Central Continental, United States […]
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This week’s Current Climate, which every Saturday brings you the latest news about the business of sustainability. Sign up to get it in your inbox every week. Sound Agriculture Since 2020, California-based Sound Agriculture has been selling its crop additive called Source, which mimics a signal that naturally occurs in plants to attract microbes. Those […]
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Ken Gilmartin, chief executive officer of John Wood Group Plc, during the 2023 CERAWeek by S&P … [+] Global conference in Houston, Texas, US, on Tuesday, March 7, 2023. The global energy industry is facing a welter of uncertainty and change — driven by the effects of the global pandemic; shifting geopolitics and a war […]
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Lightship’s L1 trailer in its collapsed mode. Lightship In 2020, San Francisco-based entrepreneur Ben Parker toiled away as a battery engineer at Tesla before getting wrapped up in a pet project: Electrifying food trucks, where he dreamed of ditching the noisy, exhaust-coughing generators that sat behind them. This quickly morphed into a broader idea to […]
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The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has transformed the US from laggard to leader in energy transition policy – but greater clarity in some areas will be essential to prospective investors Authored by David Brown, Director, Energy Transition Service at Wood Mackenzie The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is an energy transition policy game-changer for the US. […]
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National and global plans to combat climate change include increasing the electrification of vehicles and the percentage of electricity generated from renewable sources. But some projections show that these trends might require costly new power plants to meet peak loads in the evening when cars are plugged in after the workday. What’s more, overproduction of […]
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Smoke pours out of a factory in Copsa Mica, Romania. The billowing, carcinogenic black clouds of … [+] carbon black, used for dyes and tires, pollutes and poisons the enviroment and contributes to global warming. (Photo by ANDREW HOLBROOKE/Corbis via Getty Images) Corbis via Getty Images An international body representing the voluntary carbon market is […]
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Cheniere Energy President and CEO Jack Fusco, right, is applauded as he rings the opening bell of … [+] the New York Stock Exchange, Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2020. (AP Photo/Richard Drew) Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved My apologies up front for going long here, but do a printout because I find this […]
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On March 10th Silicon Valley Bank (“SVB”) failed. Since that time there has been a lot of shouting from all sides on what type of economy and banking system should exist and how that should inform the administration’s response to this crisis. No matter your political view there is something for everyone to latch on […]
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This week’s Current Climate, which every Saturday brings you the latest news about the business of sustainability. Sign up to get it in your inbox every week. Alisha Fredriksson GUERIN BLASK FOR FORBES This week, Forbes launched its annual 30 Under 30 Europe list, and as always, there were lots of talented young people already […]
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In a lab on the fourth floor of MIT’s Building 56, a group of Massachusetts high school students gathered around a device that measures conductivity. Vincent Nguyen, 15, from Saugus, thought of the times the material on their sample electrode flaked off the moment they took it out of the oven. Or how the electrode […]
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But how might transition metals markets cope? Authored by Robin Griffin, Anthony Knutson and Oliver Heathman in Wood Mackenzie’s metals & mining team. By 2050 the energy transition could see nickel (Ni) demand triple, copper (Cu) demand more than double, and demand for Lithium chemicals grow 700%. The burden on miners of transition metals will […]
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Investment in oil and gas companies listed on the S&P 500 increased by more than 26% this past year, … [+] even as the index tumbled by 5% overall. getty Reports of the shine going off the oil and natural gas sector with investors have been greatly exaggerated. Investment in oil and gas companies listed […]
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Jennifer Granholm, U.S. energy secretary, speaks during the 2022 CERAWeek by S&P Global conference … [+] in Houston, Texas, U.S., on Wednesday, March 9, 2022. CERAWeek returned in-person to Houston celebrating its 40th anniversary with the theme “Pace of Change: Energy, Climate, and Innovation.” Photographer: Aaron M. Sprecher/Bloomberg © 2022 Bloomberg Finance LP In a […]
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Assil Halimi has loved science since he was a child, but it was a singular experience at a college internship that stoked his interest in nuclear engineering. As part of work on a conceptual design for an aircraft electric propulsion system, Halimi had to read a chart that compared the energy density of various fuel […]
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The MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) leads energy education at MIT, developing and implementing a robust educational toolkit for MIT graduate and undergraduate students, online learners around the world, and high school students who want to contribute to the energy transition. As MITEI’s director of education, Antje Danielson manages a team devoted to training the next […]
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PARIS – APRIL 7 : (FILE PHOTO) Author Jeremy Rifkin poses in his office in Paris on April 7, 2005 in … [+] Paris, France. (Photo by Ulf Andersen/Getty Images) Getty Images In the last half century, energy has frequently been a primary topic in the news, academia, the halls of Congress and other equally […]
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Welcome to the $400 billion green subsidy gravy train. The nation’s biggest solar panel maker, First Solar, sells $3.5 billion a year of its “thin-film” solar panels made with exotic “cadmium telluride” semiconductors that work well in hot and humid regions and in low light. Farhad “Fred” Ebrahimi, 84, is not an executive at the […]
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Modern fabrication tools such as 3D printers can make structural materials in shapes that would have been difficult or impossible using conventional tools. Meanwhile, new generative design systems can take great advantage of this flexibility to create innovative designs for parts of a new building, car, or virtually any other device. But such “black box” […]
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Biden nominates former Mastercard CEO as president of World Bank | The Hill Skip to content FILE – MasterCard CEO Ajay Banga speaks to reporters in New York, April 6, 2011. Former Mastercard CEO Ajay Banga has been nominated by the U.S. to lead the World Bank, President Joe Biden announced on Thursday morning. The […]
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Phosphorus is an essential ingredient in thousands of products, including herbicides, lithium-ion batteries, and even soft drinks. Most of this phosphorus comes from an energy-intensive process that contributes significantly to global carbon emissions. In an effort to reduce that carbon footprint, MIT chemists have devised an alternative way to generate white phosphorus, a critical intermediate […]
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A coal-fired power plant near Underwood, North Dakota, in January 2022. The Washington Post via Getty Images Looking back on Petra Nova. Petra Nova was a CCS demonstration out of Houston, supported by the US federal government. CCS stands for carbon capture and storage. At Petra Nova, CO2 was captured from a coal-fired power plant […]
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Illustration of a fusion reactor. getty Fusion energy needs more than a sustained fusion reaction before it can help the world produce sufficient carbon-neutral energy. The U.S. Department of Energy has identified a research and development agenda for a suite of technologies and processes to enable fusion. Two DOE officials named five of those pressing […]
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In December, Department of Energy officials announced that experiments at the National Ignition … [+] Facility at the LLNL achieved ‘ignition,’ where the fusion energy generated exceeded the laser energy that started the reaction for the first time. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) Getty Images Investment in fusion energy is about to go mainstream, according […]
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