Project NOW

22/02/2023

Climate change is real. We can choose a better future. We will see more extreme weather like this:

Weeks of dry winter weather have raised concerns that Italy could face another drought after last summer's emergency, with the Alps having received less than half of their normal snowfall, according to scientists and environmental groups.

26/01/2023

Only 40K more. The savings are incredible over the lifetime of the home.

With extra insulation and lots of sun, a passive house in the town of Hope is able to maintain an indoor temperature of around 70 degrees without the use of a furnace.

05/09/2022

Germany's railways offered a month of unlimited rides for $9.

And it hasn't just resulted in happy customers. A study of air quality over the summer for the University of Potsdam's Center for Economic Policy Analysis showed a "substantial fall in the air quality index of more than 6%."

Germany's 9 euro ticket, which allowed a month of unlimited regional travel across the country, has been a roaring success, with nearly 60 million tickets sold in the first two months. But will it end on September 1 -- or will Germany start a replacement scheme?

28/06/2022

“MDA is providing access to RADARSAT-2 archive to monitor, track and intercept illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing activities using satellite technology.” What is the significance of this?

Cloudy weather is used by dark fishing fleets to illegally trawl and transfer fish to other vessels. Electro-optical satellites (uses visible light) cannot see through cloud cover or at night.

RADARSAT-2 is a synthetic aperture radar satellite. The satellite can see through the dark and through weather.

This like the ESA’s Sentinel satellites provides a means for monitor illegal fishing in a wide area basis.



Press release: mda.space/en/article/mda…

“ This is a unprecedented initiative and one that will shift the understanding of human activity at sea. We look forward to celebrating the partnership this week and delivery new insights to the world with data”

19/02/2022

If you want to see environmental and social-economic data together, the EPA has put together a new tool:

20/11/2021

Today’s energy learning moment (for me).

Blue flames occur when hydrocarbon combustion occurs at 1450-1650°C, i.e. when there’s enough oxygen for complete combustion.

Yellow or red flames indicate incomplete combustion (which is bad for fugitive CH4, PM, etc).

Happy science Friday!

19/11/2021

The next frontier in clean energy procurement is to match a
buyer’s electricity demand, hour-by-hour, 24/7, with
corresponding clean electricity generation from within the
same electricity grid region as the buyer’s operations.

This is 24/7 carbon-free electricity procurement

Webinar is free and in a few hours.

Kudos to Zero Lab

Shared with Dropbox

17/11/2021

An astonishing 82% decrease in the cost of solar photovoltaic (PV) energy since 2010 has given the world a fighting chance to build a zero-emissions energy system which might be less costly than the fossil-fuelled system it replaces. The International Energy Agency projects that PV solar generating capacity must grow ten-fold by 2040 if we are to meet the dual tasks of alleviating global poverty and constraining warming to well below 2°C.

Critical challenges remain. Solar is “intermittent”, since sunshine varies during the day and across seasons, so energy must be stored for when the sun doesn’t shine. Policy must also be designed to ensure solar energy reaches the furthest corners of the world and places where it is most needed. And there will be inevitable trade-offs between solar energy and other uses for the same land, including conservation and biodiversity, agriculture and food systems, and community and indigenous uses.

Colleagues and I have now published in the journal Nature the first global inventory of large solar energy generating facilities. “Large” in this case refers to facilities that generate at least 10 kilowatts when the sun is at its peak. (A typical small residential rooftop installation has a capacity of around 5 kilowatts).

We built a machine learning system to detect these facilities in satellite imagery and then deployed the system on over 550 terabytes of imagery using several human lifetimes of computing.

Github link here:

Repository for machine learning and remote sensing pipeline described in Kruitwagen, L., Story, K., Friedrich, J, et. al. (2019) , used to produce a global inventory of utility-scale solar photvolt...

18/10/2021

“I think the companies right now are putting toes into offshore wind. I don't think we see massive shifts in capital yet. But you can see that potentially, if that becomes profitable, being a big part of their future business,” says David Victor, a professor at the University of California, San Diego.”

Some experts say oil companies’ deep pockets and decades of working offshore make them uniquely suited to build turbines at sea. Others are skeptical. They worry that offshore wind could be a token investment.

18/10/2021

https://www.wbur.org/news/2021/10/15/offshore-wind-shell-bp-equinor-concerns

Some experts say oil companies’ deep pockets and decades of working offshore make them uniquely suited to build turbines at sea. Others are skeptical. They worry that offshore wind could be a token investment.

16/10/2021

We want clean air and clean electricity for our children. Senator Manchin’s rejection of the bill shows he is in the pockets of a dying coal industry.

Instead of rejecting the bill, he should be asking money to retrain and transition his state for a clean air future!

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/15/climate/biden-clean-energy-manchin.html

The West Virginia Democrat told the White House he is firmly against a clean electricity program that is the muscle behind the president’s plan to battle climate change.

13/08/2021

Ok I wasn’t expecting this:

Industry has been promoting hydrogen as a reliable, next-generation fuel to power cars, heat homes and generate electricity. It may, in fact, be worse for the climate than previously thought.