Shoko Oda and Tsuyoshi Inajima of Bloomberg report that Japanese firms are cutting methane emissions from their LNG supply. Twenty-two Japanese utilities and trading houses are joining an initiative that aims to leverage their buying power to curb methane emissions from liquefied natural gas supply chains, as pressure mounts globally to curb the harmful greenhouse gas. Companies...
Barbara Grady writes in Trellis about Chevron’s bet on green hydrogen. In Richmond, California, a city plagued by the carbon dioxide, soot and methane emitted by a massive oil refinery owned by Chevron Corp., a startup is building a waste-to-green hydrogen conversion project designed to produce zero-carbon hydrogen for transportation applications. If it succeeds, the...
Kendra Pierre-Louis and Leslie Kaufman of Bloomberg write on the status of America’s dams. As flooding hammered Appalachia in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, residents became intimately familiar with a new norm in the US’s post-storm script: dams at imminent risk of failing. Officials last week said multiple dams were on the brink, including Tennessee’s...
Andrew Freedman of Axios writes on Zillow and First Street’s partnership to include climate risk in home listings. Mindful of increasing risks from extreme weather events such as hurricanes, Zillow will combine climate risk scores, interactive maps and insurance information on its home listings, the company announced this morning. Why it matters: This step gives prospective buyers their...
Mark Mills writes in The Wall Street Journal about AI’s role in bringing back Three Mile Island. The news that Microsoft plans to fund the reopening of the undamaged reactor at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island nuclear plant spread almost as quickly as news about the nuclear accident at that same site in 1979. Microsoft’s decision was animated,...
Abhishek Bhardwaj of Interesting Engineering writes about the efficiency of solid-state batteries. Australia-based Altech Batteries has announced that its first Cerenergy ABS60 battery prototype is online and operating successfully at its joint venture partner Fraunhofer IKTS’ test laboratory in Dresden, Germany. The prototype 60 kWh sodium chloride solid-state battery energy storage system has been integrated...
Maria Gallucci of Canary Media reports on Meta’s investment in a clean concrete startup. The United States makes some 90 million metric tons of cement every year to bind together the nation’s concrete buildings, bridges, and other infrastructure. In the process, U.S. cement plants generate huge amounts of planet-warming emissions — equivalent to those from 16 million gas-powered cars. Decarbonizing cement...
Robert Walton of UtilityDive reports on grid damage caused by Helene. Recovery efforts continue after Hurricane Helene knocked out power to about 6 million customers and devastated communities in the U.S. Southeast. In some areas served by rural cooperatives, utility leaders warn it could be weeks before service is restored. “The consumers of electric cooperatives...
France, the UK and Scandinavia will be the coldest parts of Europe during October, according to forecasters. By contrast, southeast Europe and the south of Spain are likely to remain warm, according to Maxar Technologies Inc. Athens, which was seared by heat waves and wildfires over the summer, could see temperatures reach 32C (90F) early in the month, according to Weather Services International.
Most recently, on September 20, Microsoft and Constellation announced that they will reopen a reactor at Constellation’s Three Mile Island nuclear energy center in Pennsylvania to power Microsoft data centers. Microsoft agreed to pay $16 billion to restart the Unit 1 reactor which has a capacity of 835 megawatts. It was shut down in 2019 under financial pressure from growing competition with cheap natural gas. (The Unit 2 reactor was destroyed in 1979 accident and is undergoing decommissioning; however, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (USNRC) noted there were no deaths or accidents, or discernible health effects from some small radioactive releases.) Microsoft has agreed to buy up to 100% of the electricity produced by Unit 1. This is part of the tech giant’s efforts to secure enough reliable, low-carbon electricity to supply its energy-thirsty data centers powering the boom in artificial intelligence.
Help us promote free market solutions for climate change.
Thank you for signing up
