Climate change
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T&D
Heavy Push by Industry, Biden Administration to Jumpstart Transmission Expansion, Grid Modernization
Bolstering the Biden administration’s recently announced initiatives to modernize the nation’s grid and improve its resilience, the Department of Energy (DOE) on April 27 made up to $8.25 billion in loans available to expand transmission capacity nationwide, while the Department of Transportation (DOT) offered new guidance to help speed the siting and permitting of transmission […]
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News
Biden Sets New Paris Agreement GHG Target: 50-52% below 2005 levels by 2030
President Biden has set a new nationally determined contribution (NDC) for the U.S. to achieve a 50% to 52% reduction in economy-wide greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2030 compared to 2005 levels. The White House said on Thursday the NDC, which was determined after a “a whole-of-government process” organized through the Biden administration’s National Climate […]
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Commentary
Bipartisan Action, Not Litigation, Is Key to Solving Climate Change
If we plan on making real progress on beating back climate change, we’re going to have to work together. That means working across not just international borders, but party lines, aggressively pursuing realistic solutions that will make a difference. Democrats like me have always worked hard to not only be leaders on responsible environmental stewardship, […]
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POWER Podcasts
What’s Been Holding Hydrogen Fuel Cells Back, and How to Change That
The technology used in modern hydrogen fuel cells is not new. In fact, NASA used fuel cells for its manned space missions in the 1960s. But fuel cells have not really “taken off” (pardon the pun) in earthly applications since that time. Some industry insiders believe that will change very soon. “We’ve been sort of […]
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News
Power Infrastructure Prominent in Biden’s $2.25 Trillion Blueprint
A major chunk of President Joe Biden’s $2.25 trillion transformational plan to overhaul the nation’s infrastructure is dedicated to re-energizing America’s power infrastructure. The initiatives garnered the industry’s approval—with notable exceptions. The “American Jobs Plan,” released on March 31, strives to jumpstart the U.S. economy, which drooped under burdens posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. But […]
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Electric Vehicles
The Surge in Electrification of Transportation Requires a Sustainable and Resilient Electrical Infrastructure
As society contends with the impacts of climate change, we need to aggressively pursue strategies for reducing carbon emissions. Although states in the U.S. are taking a variety of approaches to greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction, and following an equally diverse set of timelines, most state-level GHG emission goals announced so far are fairly consistent—to reduce […]
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Fuel
First Commercial Deployment of Supercritical CO2 Power Cycle Taking Shape in Alberta
Siemens Energy and Canadian pipeline company TC Energy in February agreed to commission a novel waste-heat-to-power facility in Alberta by 2022 that captures waste heat from a gas-fired turbine operating a
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News
Ocean Power Developers Made Crucial Progress in 2020
Tidal and wave energy installations in 2020 brought global cumulative installations for ocean energy to almost 60 MW. Another 6 MW of wave and tidal energy is slated for deployment this year, suggesting marked
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Commentary
Our Iceberg Is Still Melting
In 2009, only three in 10 American adults said dealing with global climate change should be a top priority. Over the past 10 years, this number has more than doubled: Nearly seven in 10 American adults say the federal government is doing too little to reduce the effects of global climate change, with six in […]
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POWER Podcasts
Are 1-in-10-Year Events Really 1-in-10-Year Events Anymore?
When evaluating resource adequacy requirements, many power companies and grid operators have used a methodology that originated more than 70 years ago. This probabilistic reliability approach has generally performed adequately through the years. It has generally evaluated loss-of-load events occurring at frequencies of one-day-in-10-years (1-in-10) to be acceptable in terms of system reliability. However, it’s […]