Brian McCowan, Zondits staff, 2/29/2024 Image: The Edwards & Sanborn solar and storage project in Kern County, California. (Mortenson) The new California facility makes grid-scale solar energy available even when the sun doesn’t shine. Two million solar PV panels and over 120,000 batteries have come online on a combination of public and private land in … Read more
Brian McCowan, Zondits staff, 2/12/2024 Hot on the heels of COP28 (Was COP28 a Success? It Depends on Who You Ask | Zondits), two new reports are sounding alarms on climate change. The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service announced that 2023 was the hottest year ever recorded—and that’s in 173 years of record-keeping. The … Read more
A senior administration official said on a press call, “We’ve seen the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission take action on its own motion to improve interconnection processes. But that doesn’t take the opportunity away from Congress to help us move even faster in the direction of building outlines that will reduce consumer costs and boost resilience … Read more
Brian McCowan, Zondits staff, 11/7/2023 The Biden administration is making good on its pledge to invest billions in “clean” hydrogen, with the announcement of $7 billion in awards for regional hydrogen hubs. The funding was included in the 2021 Infrastructure Law to establish multiple regional hubs to produce hydrogen for fuel, agricultural, and industrial uses. … Read more
Kate Helm, Zondits guest, 10/3/2023 Not quite ready to take the plunge into electric vehicle (EV) ownership? Neither was I, truthfully, and I have worked my entire career in the environmental consulting and energy efficiency spaces. Whether it’s range anxiety or the unknowns of installing a charger at your home (owned or rented), there are … Read more
Brian McCowan, Zondits staff, 9/26/2023 The first United Nations Stocktake on Climate Change Progress calls for a dramatic acceleration of policy and technical action to combat climate change. The report, released in early September, recognizes that some progress has been made since the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, but states that both “ambition and implementation” must … Read more
U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm said “Cutting back on our carbon emissions alone won’t reverse the growing impacts of climate change; we also need to remove the CO2 that we’ve already put in the atmosphere—which nearly every climate model makes clear is essential to achieving a net-zero global economy by 2050.” Read the … Read more
David Crane, Under Secretary for Infrastructure at the Department of Energy, said “Time is not on our side; we’re on the clock. This bill, IRA, together with the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law — and to us they’re very much two sides of the same coin — to me, this is the last great opportunity we have … Read more
Brian McCowan, Zondits staff, 9/5/2023 The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced $11 million dollars in research grant awards to 11 education and research entities. The funding is to be used for researching the financial and environmental impacts of the transition away from fossil fuels in Tribal and other underserved communities. The funding comes at … Read more