Getting climate, energy & environment news right.

State and Local Permitting Restrictions on Solar Energy Development
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State and Local Permitting Restrictions on Solar Energy Development

"In our analysis of wind ordinances, we found that not only were there numerous county-level wind ordinances but that the rate of adoption for new ordinances was accelerating. While there are fewer solar ordinances, this trend is similar for PV solar, which also has an accelerating rate of adoption of new ordinances restricting siting. As a caveat, the NREL database does not have the adoption year for every ordinance, so this assessment is only using ordinances for which there is such data collected. And, similar to our finding with wind ordinances, as solar power becomes more common, so too do ordinances restricting it."

Wall Street Wants In on America’s Battery Storage Boom
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Wall Street Wants In on America’s Battery Storage Boom

"Storage capacity in the U.S. has grown enough in recent years to be able to power many millions of homes, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. California and Texas dominate the industry, but projects are in the works in Nevada, Arizona and elsewhere to help meet growing power demand from artificial-intelligence data centers and manufacturing plants."

Solar panel waste makes EV batteries 99.9% efficient, retain 83.1% capacity
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Solar panel waste makes EV batteries 99.9% efficient, retain 83.1% capacity

"The team used a 3M solution of LiPF6 electrolyte dissolved in a 1,3-dioxane and dimethoxyethane solution mixed with a volumetric ratio of 1:3. The unique chemical formulation helps form a solid-electrolyte interphase (SEI) that holds together silicon particles, even when they are fractured during charge-discharge cycles. This aids in maintaining the ionic conduction and keeping unnecessary reactions to a minimum."

Trade is key to countering China’s clean energy dominance
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Trade is key to countering China’s clean energy dominance

"Support for increased economic openness, new trade agreements and the World Trade Organization is already retreating in Washington. It would be a major policy error, however, to conflate concerns about imports from China with concerns about trade more broadly. Indeed, the only way to effectively counter China’s dominance in clean energy technologies is to embrace more, not less, trade with most other nations."

Concrete battery developed by MIT and Harvard researchers makes headlines again for its promising potential in powering devices
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Concrete battery developed by MIT and Harvard researchers makes headlines again for its promising potential in powering devices

"The power-storing building material could also help to offset some of the air pollution generated by the cement industry, widely reported as spewing  5-8% of worldwide planet-warming gas pollution. Those harmful, heat-trapping fumes are contributing to a warmup that is impacting even classroom performance, according to the Environmental Protection Agency." 

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