If another year passes without the public learning that the U.S. fracking boom is a key driver of the climate crisis – especially in the critical short term – humanity’s chances of averting runaway climate and social chaos could shrink to nil.
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Solar microgrid helps return Great Smoky Mountains National Park land to the wild — Solar Power World
Among the tulip trees, red oaks and Carolina silverbells of Mt. Sterling, a peak in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, stands a 60-ft communications tower.
Energy Storage by Businesses, Cities, Other Big Power Users Set to Slash Duke Energy Revenue — News Release from NC WARN
NC WARN’s updated solar-with-storage plan to be filed with regulators; as clean techs surge, Duke Energy plans to be only 8 percent renewable in 15 years
Cheaper Battery Is Unveiled as a Step to a Carbon-Free Grid — New York Times
On Wednesday, an energy company headed by the California billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong announced that it had developed a rechargeable battery operating on zinc and air that can store power at far less than the cost of lithium-ion batteries. … “It could change and create completely new economies using purely the power of the sun, wind and air,” Dr. Soon-Shiong…said.
Solar With Storage Surges as Gas Falls — Common Dreams
Op-Ed by Jim Warren. There’s good news – outside of North Carolina – in the increasingly desperate fight to slow the climate crisis before its own momentum makes acceleration unstoppable. Economical storage, the long-sought Holy Grail of renewable energy, is surging in the marketplace while climate-wrecking fracked “natural” gas has begun to decline. Op-Ed also featured in Raleigh News & Observer, Fayetteville Observer, and Greensboro News & Record.
Why solar power is beating coal and natural gas — News & Observer
Op-Ed by Jim Warren. There’s good news — outside of North Carolina — in the increasingly desperate fight to slow the climate crisis before its own momentum makes acceleration unstoppable.
In North Carolina, renewable energy losing its edge as a political wedge — Energy News Network
Despite anti-wind bluster from parts of the state, candidates who supported renewables came out on top in Republican primaries earlier this year.
The $3 Billion Plan to Turn Hoover Dam Into a Giant Battery — The New York Times
Hoover Dam helped transform the American West, harnessing the force of the Colorado River — along with millions of cubic feet of concrete and tens of millions of pounds of steel — to power millions of homes and businesses. It was one of the great engineering feats of the 20th century. Now it is the focus of a distinctly 21st-century challenge: turning the dam into a vast reservoir of excess electricity, fed by the solar farms and wind turbines that represent the power sources of the future.
Reverse Power Flow: How Solar+Batteries Shift Electric Grid Decision Making from Utilities to Consumers – ILSR
For 100 years, most decisions about the U.S. electric grid have been made at the top by electric utilities, public regulators, and grid operators. That era has ended.
Solar-with-Storage Projects Surge as Fracked Gas Falls — News Release from NC WARN
There’s a ton of good news in the fight to slow the global climate crisis – outside of North Carolina. A key question remains: Will this state finally get out from under Duke Energy’s climate-wrecking, fracked gas obsession and clean-power sabotage in its monopoly-captured territories?