Energy

Severe wind and rain left more than 870,000 customers without power on Sunday evening according to data compiled by poweroutage.us, and remains at over 610,000 as Monday dawns.

Solar power feeding into the Texas energy grid set two records on January 28th. Production hit 15,222 MW at around 10am, and at 3:10pm, solar power met 36.1 percent of electricity demand, a new peak. Solar met around a third of overall demand every hour from 11am to 4pm.

The industry has been navigating choppy waters lately with soaring costs forcing companies to cancel plans to develop offshore wind farms along the east coast of the US. In a big blow to the state’s clean energy plans, Ørsted nixed two major projects off the coast of New Jersey last October. Bouncing back, New Jersey just inked new deals with Leading Light Wind and Attentive Energy Two to develop a couple new offshore wind projects.

The OpenAI CEO said during an event in Davos this week that “We still don’t appreciate the energy needs of this technology,” which is expected to consume an enormous amount of electricity as it matures. “There’s no way to get there without a breakthrough. We need [nuclear] fusion or we need like radically cheaper solar plus storage or something at massive scale,” Altman said.

After years of opposition from the Havasupai Tribe and environmental advocates, a contested mine near the Grand Canyon started producing uranium in December. It’s one of three mines in Arizona and Utah that started operations thanks to rising uranium prices and increased interest in nuclear energy as a carbon-free alternative to fossil fuels, despite uranium’s legacy of pollution and contaminated water. Two more mines in Colorado and Wyoming could also start producing uranium over the next year.

Jackery tells the The Bearded Tesla Guy that the center solar panel of that expandable 1000W array will be capable of 400W when the rooftop tent ships in Q4. It will feature a removable power station (with optional battery expansion) integrated into the tent that’s “sleekly designed” to maximize interior sleeping space. There’s also an optional AC inverter to quickly charge those batteries off the vehicle’s alternator.

Power stations commonly feature a small integrated light, but the Solix C800 Plus attaches a rechargeable camping light to a long retractable pole (that doubles as a selfie stick) to illuminate a larger area of 10 square meters for up to eight hours. It’s loaded with ports and features 768Wh of LFP storage, up to 1200W of AC output, and 300W of solar input. Available in March but pricing is still TBD.

The new Office of Critical and Emerging Technology is supposed to track developments in AI, quantum computing, semiconductors, and biotech. The DOE also appointed a new Chief Artificial Intelligence, Semafor reports. Joe Biden’s October executive order on AI development established the office.

“There has been an explosion of fossil fuel lobbyists heading to UN talks, with nearly four times more than were granted access last year,” according to a new analysis by a coalition of environmental groups called Kick Big Polluters Out. Lobbyists for coal, oil, and gas got more passes to the conference than the total number of delegates from 10 of the countries most vulnerable to climate change (which includes Somalia, Chad, Tonga, Solomon Islands and Sudan), the Guardian reports.

Demonstrators in inflatable Pikachu costumes showed up at international climate talks in Dubai this weekend to call on Japan to end financing for fossil fuel projects. The photos and video are giving me life this Monday morning.

That includes the US, EU, Brazil, and others that made the pledge during United Nations climate talks taking place in Dubai. Renewables like solar and wind energy are already more affordable than fossil fuels. The bigger question at the international climate talks, though, is whether countries can commit to phasing out coal, oil, and gas to reach goals set in the Paris climate accord.

During a United Nations climate conference, the US joined the Powering Past Coal Alliance. It includes more than 50 other countries that have committed to switch from “unabated coal power generation” to clean energy. But let’s keep it real. The word “unabated” changes everything. It means that power plants can continue to burn coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, as long as they install unproven technologies designed to capture carbon dioxide emissions but not other air pollutants. Such technologies are expected to make electricity more expensive, and have already wasted hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding in failed carbon capture projects. The US recently carved out a similar loop hole for carbon capture in its federal pollution standards for power plants.

The US Fusion Energy International Partnership Strategy “will support the timely development, demonstration, and deployment of commercial fusion energy,” the White House announced during a United Nations climate conference going down in Dubai. For decades, scientists have chased breakthroughs in nuclear fusion, seen as the “Holy Grail” of nearly limitless clean energy. Most experts don’t think commercial nuclear fusion power plants can come online in time to meet global climate goals, even under optimistic scenarios. Nevertheless, the Biden administration and Microsoft are supporting startups trying to make fusion a reality.

The plan is to triple nuclear energy capacity globally by 2050. The US joined a coalition of more than 20 countries that set that goal during the United Nations climate conference taking place in Dubai. Never mind the risks across the uranium supply chain or that the US still doesn’t doesn’t know what to do with its nuclear waste, the Biden administration is betting on next-generation nuclear power plants as a source of carbon-free energy.

They join some 12,500 mayors and city governments including Paris, Kolkota, London, Los Angeles, Lima, and Sydney that have endorsed the creation of such a treaty. This latest push comes during a United Nations climate conference in Dubai where delegates are debating a possible deal to phase out fossil fuels.

The Environmental Protection Agency announced what it says is the “single largest investment in environmental justice going directly to communities in history.” The money is supposed to benefit “disadvantaged communities that are marginalized by underinvestment and overburdened by pollution” through projects that deploy clean energy, cut down pollution, and help communities adapt to climate change. Applications for funding, which comes from the Inflation Reduction Act, will be open over the next year.