California was the model for NYS Clean Energy and Storage plan, now, NYS is the model for Arizona, on its Clean Energy and Storage plan.

Arizona Regulator Proposes Biggest Storage and Clean Energy Target Yet

Andrew Tobin, a member of the Arizona Corporation Commission, proposed a clean energy overhaul that would put the state at the front of the pack. The Energy Standard Modernization Plan aims to produce one of the cleanest energy mixes in the nation, while lowering prices for consumers and improving grid reliability.

 From article, (Arizona is setting out to prove clean energy leadership doesn't exist solely in coastal states like California and New York.

Andrew Tobin, a member of the Arizona Corporation Commission, proposed a clean energy overhaul Tuesday that would put the state at the front of the pack. The Energy Modernization Plan aims to produce one of the cleanest energy mixes in the nation, while lowering prices for consumers and improving grid reliability.

That means not only tackling the issue of clean baseload power, but also figuring out how to supply peak power in a cost-effective and clean way. Peak hours drive increasing expenses for utilities and their customers, a challenge that intermittent wind and solar alone cannot address. As such, Tobin's plan includes an 80 percent clean energy target by 2050 coupled with a 3,000-megawatt energy storage procurement target for 2030.

That would leapfrog the state ahead of California and New York, which have dominated the grid modernization discussion so far. They both have 50 percent renewable energy targets on the books for 2030, and storage targets of 1,300 megawatts and 1,500 megawatts, respectively.

"We’re not trying to get on the train; we're trying to be the engine in the train," Tobin told GTM. "This is Western people doing things and setting lofty goals and reaching them.")

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China is using its economic might, and $360 Billion dollars, on Clean Energy Projects to help its Citizen's Health.

China's latest energy megaproject shows that coal really is on the way out

The Chinese province of Anhui built a massive floating solar farm on top of an abandoned coal mine. An even larger floating solar plant will come online by May 2018. Due to rising concerns surrounding air pollution-related deaths, China is trying to invest more heavily in renewable energy projects.

From article, (China has some of the worst air pollution in the world. In several cities, thick layers of smog are common, resulting in thousands of deaths every year.

According to a 2016 study, the top contributor of air pollution-related deaths in China is the burning of coal. The team of Chinese and American researchers behind the study said that pollution from coal caused 366,000 premature deaths in 2013.

To improve the country's air quality, the Chinese government vows to spend at least $360 billion on clean energy projects and create 13 million new renewable energy jobs by 2020. China is already one of the world's biggest investor in alternative energy sources like solar, wind, and hydropower.

China's latest energy megaproject — a giant floating solar farm on top of a former coal mine in Anhui — may get the country closer to that goal. 

 In 2017, workers turned on the 166,000-panel array, which can generate 40 megawatts of power — enough to accommodate 15,000 homes, according to the South China Morning Post. It's currently the world's largest floating solar project and will operate for up to 25 years.

Local energy company Sungrow Power Supply developed the farm on a lake that was once the site of extensive coal mining. After an explosion caused the mine to collapse, a lake formed and flooded it.  As The Guardian notes, building solar plants on top of lakes and reservoirs can protect agricultural land and wildlife on the ground. The water also cools the solar panels, helping them work more efficiently.

In December, a unit of China Three Gorges Corp. started building an even larger floating solar farm, which is expected to come online by May 2018. Also in Anhui, this $151 million plant will produce up to 150 megawatts of power for approximately 94,000 homes.)

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A Battery Company is making Tomorrow's Rechargeable Batteries, Today.

A New Lithium-Metal Battery Takes Flight in Drones

SolidEnergy Systems, a spin-out from MIT, has developed a battery that it says has double the energy density of current lithium-ion batteries. That means that a battery from SolidEnergy Systems could be half the size of a standard lithium-ion battery and hold the same amount of energy, or it could be the same size as a lithium-ion battery and hold twice as much energy.

From article, (A Massachusetts-based startup says it’s doing something that no other company has been able to pull off: selling lithium-metal batteries commercially.

And they’re appearing first in drones.

SolidEnergy Systems, a spin-out from MIT, has developed a battery that it says has double the energy density of current lithium-ion batteries. That means that a battery from SolidEnergy Systems could be half the size of a standard lithium-ion battery and hold the same amount of energy, or it could be the same size as a lithium-ion battery and hold twice as much energy.

 The company, founded in 2012, has raised $50 million to date. That’s not a lot of capital to get a battery from the lab into a factory. The new funding will be spent on improving the battery tech and expanding manufacturing.

SolidEnergy System’s energy storage innovation is packed into a thin lithium-metal foil for the negative electrode, replacing the graphite that is commonly used in lithium-ion batteries.

The company’s batteries also use a semi-solid material for the electrolyte, replacing the flammable liquid usually found in lithium-ion batteries. The two-part breakthrough creates a battery with an energy density of 450 watt-hours per kilogram and 1,200 watt-hours per liter.

A recent report in the journal Nature, written by government scientists, suggests that the combination of the lithium-metal battery and a solid electrolyte could lead to a successor to the lithium-ion battery. The paper predicts that such batteries are at least a decade away.

However, SolidEnergy Systems is already selling batteries in low volumes today. Hu said the Nature paper is focused on the “perfect” battery, while batteries that are “good enough” are already arriving.

SolidEnergy System’s battery is more expensive than a lithium-ion battery. That’s largely because the new batteries are made in small volumes, said Hu. But drone makers are paying the premium in order to boost their flying times.

Down the road, Hu said the company’s lithium-metal battery will be the same cost as a lithium-ion battery. The Nature paper finds that with the right low-cost parts, lithium-metal battery cells could reach a cost of $100 per kilowatt-hour.)

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If you have competition from other Electric Car Makers, what is Tesla to do? Tesla is trying to Corner the Market on Chile's Lithium.

Tesla may get into the lithium business in Chile as the price of battery ingredients soar

While showing off Tesla's Gigafactory in the Nevada desert last year, its designers showed journalists a curious thing: One side of the factory's massive wall could be opened up to received lithium ore one day. Tesla said that the facility had been built with an eye toward receiving raw lithium material on one side and...

 From article, (While showing off Tesla’s Gigafactory in the Nevada desert last year, its designers showed journalists a curious thing: One side of the factory’s massive wall could be opened up to received lithium ore one day. Tesla said that the facility had been built with an eye toward receiving raw lithium material on one side and producing a finished battery pack on the other. The only operating lithium mine in the US is about 200 miles away in Clayton Valley, Nevada.

But Tesla is hedging its lithium bets. The Finanical Times reports (paywall) Tesla is in talks with Chile’s largest lithium producer Sociedad Química y Minera de Chile (SQM) to invest in a processing plant. Reuters quotes Chilean officials saying the two companies are “exploring” agreements for “important volumes” of lithium hydroxide, a key battery ingredient. Chile, Australia, and China are the largest producers, although Chile is the cheapest source (and Chilean officials recently agreed to up production quotas for an SQM site).)


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Saving money with Climate Change Resilience

Society saves $6 for every dollar spent on climate change resilience

In financial terms, 2017 was the worst year for natural disasters in American history, costing the country $306 billion. Scientists agree that hurricanes, floods, and fires are now turbo-charged by climate change, which the president and many top Republican leaders still refuse to acknowledge.

 From article, (In financial terms, 2017 was the worst year for natural disasters in American history, costing the country $306 billion. Scientists agree that hurricanes, floods, and fires are now turbo-charged by climate change, which the president and many top Republican leaders still refuse to acknowledge. But even while the federal government fails to address the root of the problem, there are ways to limit the damage from these increasingly frequent events — in property, and, more importantly, in human life.

A new report from the National Institute of Building Sciences finds that for every dollar spent on federal grants aimed at improving disaster resilience, society saves six dollars. This return is higher than previously thought: A 2005 study by NIBS found that each dollar from these grants yielded four dollars in savings.

 NIBS, a nonprofit group authorized by the U.S. Congress, took into account grants from FEMA, HUD, and the Economic Development Administration, whose staffs collaborated with NIBS to produce the report. $27 billion spent in mitigation grants over the past 23 years has yielded $158 billion in societal savings, they found. Many of the interventions the grants funded were simple, like installing hurricane shutters, replacing flammable roofs, and clearing vegetation close to a structure.)

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The new Reuse Plastic Economy. Using recycled Ocean Plastics for new products. Now, what is needed, is to fish out the used plastic bottles, etc., already poluting the ocean, for these products.

Keeping Plastic Out of the Ocean by Giving it a Second Life

It is estimated that since 1950, more than 9.1 billion tons of plastic have been produced. Of that, 7 billion tons are no longer in use. While some of that was recycled or incinerated, the majority has made its way into landfills and oceans.

From article, (It is estimated that since 1950, more than 9.1 billion tons of plastic have been produced. Of that, 7 billion tons are no longer in use. While some of that was recycled or incinerated, the majority has made its way into landfills and oceans. According to a recent study, more than 8 million tons of plastic end up in the ocean each year.

The ever-growing deluge of plastic pollution in our oceans has a tremendous impact on human health and on the health of our natural environment. The ocean provides oxygen, absorbs carbon dioxide that would otherwise be absorbed by the atmosphere, and is a source of food for people across the planet. Pollution reduces the amount of oxygen the ocean can provide, limits the amount of carbon dioxide it can absorb, is dangerous for wildlife, and contaminates fish and seafood. Recycling and repurposing plastic keeps it out of the ocean and helps to mitigate many of these issues.

 At Humanscale we have three core missions about which we’re passionate: providing functional high performance work tools, making people healthier, and achieving a net-positive impact on the earth. Thus, the ocean plastic problem is a core area of concern for us. We’re eager to divert plastics out of the waste stream that leads to the world’s oceans and into our supply chain instead. To achieve this goal, we’re excited to be working with companies including Dell, GM, and others as a founding member of the Next Wave Initiative. Led by the non-profit Lonely Whale, this consortium is developing a distribution web that would support the reuse and repurposing of plastic before it ever reaches the ocean.

We first joined the initiative after forming a partnership with Bureo, a California-based company that collects plastic fishing nets from the ocean (comprising roughly 10 percent of ocean pollution) and repurposes the material to be used in new products such as skateboards and sunglasses. When Bureo and Humanscale both achieved Living Product Challenge certification in 2016, we started working together with the aim to develop ergonomic office tools made of plastics from Bureo’s fishing net recycling program. 

Following the debut of a prototype we showcased at NeoCon in 2017, we will be introducing a new task chair made from plastic fishing nets this spring. Our goal with Bureo is groundbreaking, as there are few manufacturers incorporating ocean plastics, such as discarded fishing nets, into their products. We want to help other companies figure out how to use this material in their manufacturing processes and help the group to find new ways of addressing the crisis.)

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Brackish Water Desalination: How is it different than Ocean Desalination? And is Brackish Water easier to desalinate into drinkable water?

California water supply gets $34.4M boost: 8 desalination projects get grants

California water officials have approved $34.4 million in grants to eight desalination projects across the state, including one in Antioch, as part of an effort to boost the water supply in the wake of the state's historic, five-year drought.

From article, (Water experts say it’s not surprising that the state is throwing more money behind projects that don’t rely on seawater.
“More communities are looking at brackish deals because it’s less expensive, it can have fewer environmental impacts and it isn’t limited to coastal communities,” said Heather Cooley, water program director for the Pacific Institute, a nonprofit research organization in Oakland.
Three projects were awarded $10 million each to help with construction. Among them is the Antioch Brackish Water Desalination Project, which is estimated to cost $62.2 million. The city already takes water from the San Joaquin River on the Antioch waterfront as it is flowing from the Delta into San Francisco Bay and uses it as part of the water supply for 110,000 people. But in the summer and fall months, when less Sierra snow is melting and less freshwater is flowing into the Delta, the water becomes too salty to drink.
In brackish desalination, salty water from a river, bay or underground aquifer is filtered for drinking, rather than taking ocean water, which is often up to three times saltier and more expensive to purify. Brackish desalination is growing faster. As of 2013, there were roughly 24 brackish plants in California, which produced about 96,000 acre-feet of water a year. Another three were in design or under construction, with 9,000 acre-feet more, and 17 were proposed with 81,000 acre-feet capacity.

The Alameda County Water District opened a brackish desalination plant in Newark that has been desalting about 14,000 acre-feet of water a year since 2013 — about 20 percent of the district’s supply.

“Technological advancements are happening all the time,” said Kelley. ” And the cost of water keeps going up, so the cost of desalinated water isn’t as out of proportion.”

Under the plan, the city would build a desalination facility at its existing water treatment plant to generate 6 million gallons a day of freshwater. The 2 million gallons of brine left over each day would be sent through a new 4-mile-long pipeline to the Diablo Wastewater Treatment Plant near Pittsburg, where it would be blended with treated sewage that already is pumped back into the bay.

The other projects that received $10 million each are the Doheny Ocean Desalination Plant in Orange County, which would drill slant wells under the ocean floor at Dana Point and is estimated to cost $110 million, and the North Pleasant Valley Desalter Project, a $32 million brackish water project in Camarillo, in Ventura County.

State officials still have $58 million in Proposition 1 funds to award for desalination projects. Among the projects looking for funding in the next round is a proposal by Cal-Am Water in Monterey County that state officials said needed more detail. The plan would drill slant wells under the sandy beach at Marina near a sand mining plant to generate drinking water.)

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NYC Congestion Report says of drivers who will be affected by congestion pricing they earn more than those using public transit, "Shocking!!" (Sarcasm)

Most NYC drivers won't be negatively impacted by congestion pricing: report

A new report released by the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, a research group, is looking to counter the claims that the recently-proposed congestion pricing plan will unfairly target low-income New Yorkers, the New York Times reports. The group mined census data and looked at commuting patterns in all the State Assembly and Senate districts that are served by the MTA to come up with their conclusion.

From article, ( A new report released by the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, a research group, is looking to counter the claims that the recently-proposed congestion pricing plan will unfairly target low-income New Yorkers, the New York Times reports.

The group mined census data and looked at commuting patterns in all the State Assembly and Senate districts that are served by the MTA to come up with their conclusion. What they found is that in most of these districts less than 4 percent of the drivers would be driving into the congestion pricing zone, and in other parts it was still a single-digit percentage of drivers commuting into the congestion pricing zone.

Their research also showed that generally speaking those commuters who used cars earned more than those using public transit within the boundaries of NYC. Elected officials like Mayor Bill de Blasio have previously expressed opposition to the plan on the grounds that congestion pricing might unfairly target commuters from Brooklyn and Queens; the Tri-State Campaign’s research however showed that most NYC commuters using cars and entering the congestion zone were from Manhattan, and the highest percentage came from the Upper East Side.)

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Ever heard of a Mole Rat? Its a small, think Gerbil or hamster, no fur Mammal, that apparently has a very, very, very, long life and are almost immune to cancer. Could Humans, who are also mammals, edit their DNA or a Medical Pill be devised to have the same Longevity and Health?

Is the Key to Immortality Hiding in Naked Mole-Rats?

There has already been a bunch of stories about how naked mole rats are almost immune to cancer (despite those two zoo specimens that did get cancer), but even more exciting is their apparent ability to live indefinitely.

 From article, (There has already been a bunch of stories about how naked mole rats are almost immune to cancer (despite those two zoo specimens that did get cancer), but even more exciting is their apparent ability to live indefinitely. That's right—along with lobsters, jellyfish, and tardigrades, naked mole rats may be the next animal to add to the pantheon of immortals ahead of humans. The question, of course, is how the hell a pink subterranean rat pulls off living forever.

"Over the 30-year-span they looked at, only around 400 mole-rats actually died of natural causes...They also seem to only very rarely develop other age-related diseases, like cancer...All of which suggests to Buffenstein and her team that naked mole-rats could theoretically live as long as they're lucky enough to avoid disease and injury. They also admit that there could be an upper limit where age starts mattering to mole-rats, but if there is, we haven't seen the number yet."

One quote in particular from Buffenstein sums up the situation nicely: "This is the first mammal in which there is a lack of intrinsic mortality with increasing age."

It's still unclear why mole rats possess this apparent immunity to aging, but once scientists at Calico (or other research institutions) are able to complete the full picture of their biology, we may be able to start talking about immortal, cancer-free humans.)

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Slag: "A Stony Waste Matter Separated from Metals During the Smelting or Refining of Ore", may be another solution in the fight to reduce Global Warming CO2.

The tech race to save Earth from CO2

In 2008, a young British ­researcher discovered something that might help us to slow down or even reverse climate change. Dr Phil Renforth, now a lecturer in the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences at Cardiff University, was analysing water seeping from the bottom of the slag heaps at the former steelworks in Consett, County Durham, when he found it had a high concentration of carbon.

From article, (In 2008, a young British ­researcher discovered something that might help us to slow down or even reverse climate change. Dr Phil Renforth, now a lecturer in the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences at Cardiff University, was analysing water seeping from the bottom of the slag heaps at the former steelworks in Consett, County Durham, when he found it had a high concentration of carbon. This might not sound like much, but it was evidence that the slag left behind by the iron and steel industry, and other similar industries, can remove carbon from the atmosphere in the same way that natural rocks can. In a process known as the “carbonate-silicate cycle”, the silicate rocks common on the Earth’s surface, such as granite and basalt, play a key role in controlling the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and oceans by removing CO2 from the atmosphere and turning it into carbonate rocks such as chalk and limestone.

Last summer, Renforth was back at Consett to drill boreholes 45m (148ft) deep to find out just how much CO2 the slag had absorbed – and, he says, “the data is looking pretty exciting. It is suggesting that our hypothesis is right. The slag heaps are capturing CO2, but not as much as we think they can because they are grassed over and sealed off from the atmosphere. This means that they have the potential to capture even more. “There are about 16 million tons of slag in that heap,” he adds. “The rate of capture is about half that, so one heap could store about 8 million tons of carbon. Globally, the iron and steel industry produces about half a billion tons of slag each year, so that means about a quarter of a billion tons of CO2 could be captured from the atmosphere.” If, that is, Renforth can find a way to turn the new slag heaps produced worldwide into giant carbon capture and storage machines on a scale that is “climatically relevant”. The use of the slag in this way is just one way in which carbon removal from the atmosphere might work. Renforth’s research is part of the £8.6m Greenhouse Gas Removal (GGR) programme run by the UK’s Natural Environment ­Research Council. It is one of the first such programmes in the world to explore the viability of the new technologies that are aiming at negative emissions of gases such as carbon and methane.
Dr Phyllis Lam, associate professor in microbial biogeochemistry at the University of Southampton, works closely with Redfern. She has been looking at whether friendly microbes could be used to speed up this process by enhancing the dissolution of CO2, by turning it into organic matter or even limestone. Lam hopes to build a pilot plant shortly. Speeding up this process may not be as difficult as it sounds. Last summer, on a brownfield site in Newcastle, Renforth and his team made another surprising discovery. “The demolition rubble that had been spread out over the site had absorbed 80 or 90 per cent of its carbon in five years.” “Some people have called carbon reduction a benign form of geoengineering, but I wouldn’t call it that,” says Dr Niall MacDowell, who leads the Clean Fossil and Bioenergy Research Group of Imperial College London. “We have been bad house guests and it is a way for us to clear up after ourselves.)

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When the government just hands out money to commercial space companies, there is no motivation to succeed, except to delay a program and get more money from the government. If commercial space companies use their own money, there is the will to succeed.

Foust Forward | Third time's the charm to return man to the moon? - SpaceNews.com

President Trump's directive is the third time in less than three decades that a president has formally called for a human return to the moon. The two Presidents Bush made similar declarations, 14 and a half years apart, only to see them falter, one undone when it was saddled with a $500 billion price tag and the other failing to survive a change in administrations.

From article, (The directive offers a hint of what might work, though. The new paragraph added to the space policy directs NASA to lead “an innovative and sustainable program of exploration with commercial and international partners.”

This third proposal, arriving as if on cue nearly 14 years after the second President Bush announced the Vision for Space Exploration, will have to be different. There’s no sign Congress is willing to significantly increase NASA’s budget to pay for a conventional, NASA-led approach, or for raiding funding from other agency programs.

International interest in lunar exploration has been growing in recent years, such as the campaigning by the European Space Agency’s leader, Jan Woerner, for his “Moon Village” proposal. Japan’s government recently endorsed cooperating on NASA’s proposed Deep Space Gateway as a way to send Japanese astronauts to the moon.

The commercial sector has demonstrated increasing capability for supporting a human return to the moon, and willingness in doing so. Blue Origin, for example, has proposed building a lander system for delivering cargo to the lunar surface to support human missions there.

Even SpaceX, which has long been focused on Mars, has a new interest in the moon. “If you want to get the public really fired up, I think we’ve got to have a base on the moon,” Elon Musk said this summer.

Translating that commercial and international support into a sustainable program to send humans back to the moon will be a key challenge for NASA, the National Space Council and the White House.)

Port Canaveral to improve facilities for the commercial space industry.

Port Canaveral OKs $17.9M contract to help develop its 'spaceport' for SpaceX, Blue Origin

Port Canaveral will be spending nearly $18 million on the first phase of a cargo berth project that will help provide facilities for the commercial space industry. That will include areas for the recovery and reuse of rockets.

From article, (Port Canaveral will be spending nearly $18 million on the first phase of a cargo berth project that will help provide facilities for the commercial space industry.

That will include areas for the recovery and reuse of rockets.

 Ajamil said the master plan "has built-in flexibility, which includes a dedicated area for spaceport operations to transfer rockets and equipment to nearby commercial space facilities, as well as provide berth space for marine vessels transporting space mission components. The plan provides for additional phases to accommodate growth needs of the industry, and represents the first East Coast seaport to have a spaceport component.")

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BP to install charging points at its petrol stations, while Shell, Ford, BMW, Tesla are in talks with National Grid about building infrastructure for rapid chargers.

BP to install charging points for electric cars at UK petrol stations

Further indication that oil firms are planning for growth of battery-powered vehicle market BP will add rapid charging points for electric cars at its UK petrol stations within the next two months, in the latest sign of an oil giant adapting to the rapid growth of battery-powered cars.

From article, (BP will add rapid charging points for electric cars at its UK petrol stations within the next two months, in the latest sign of an oil giant adapting to the rapid growth of battery-powered cars.

The British oil firm’s venture arm has invested $5m (£3.5m) in the US firm Freewire Technologies, which will provide motorbike-sized charging units at forecourts to top up cars in half an hour.

The move follows a bigger move by BP’s Anglo-Dutch rival Shell, which has been on a buying spree of electric car infrastructure companies and has already opened charging points at its service stations.

While BP would not put a number on how many forecourts would see the chargers, it confirmed the trial would start in the UK during February and March before expanding to European locations later in the year.

 National Grid, which runs the UK’s electricity transmission network, said that it was in talks with BP, Shell, Ford, BMW, Tesla and other companies about building infrastructure for super rapid chargers at motorway service stations.

Graeme Cooper, the project director of electric vehicles, said that the company had mapped traffic, population and roads and identified 50 sites to ensure most people are in reach of such chargers.

“Fifty strategic locations means to an extent that 96% of UK drivers would be able to drive in any direction from any location in the UK and be in 50 miles of an ultra rapid small charger … To an extent we can probably allay range anxiety,” he said.

The grid infrastructure for such a plan would cost £0.5-1bn, or around 60p a driver per year if all motorists shouldered the cost, Cooper said. He was dismissive of “doom-mongers” who suggest the UK energy system cannot cope with the cars.

Nissan, whose new longer range Leaf electric car arrives on UK roads in coming months, said on Tuesday that it would fit 1,000 charging points for a trial to test how plug-in cars’ batteries can help power grids, by returning electricity at times of need.)

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