[Oct 16-23 ‘22] Solar payback time = 1 year
Climate anxiety is a global phenomenon, solar payback time drastically reduced, ocean plastic is a climate problem too and climate deniers invited to “Green Davos”.
Welcome to this week’s edition of The Weekly Climate 🎉
References: [1], [2], [3], [4] and [5].
‼️News you can’t miss
Here’s one important scary/bad (🙀), good (😻), interesting (😼) and fossil (💩) news item.
🙀 Climate anxiety is a global phenomenon now
😻 Energy crisis is reducing payback time for solar rapidly
😼 Plastic in the ocean is a climate problem too
💩 Two prominent climate deniers invited to spread their misinformation at the “Green Davos”
📰 The 7 Grand Challenges
⚡️Decarbonize Electricity
Clean electricity is the one do-or-die challenge we must solve.
[#energycrisis] — The positive side of the energy crisis is that assuming electricity prices rises above 350$/MWh then the payback time for solar installations in countries such as Italy, UK, and France will reach 1 year 😳. *runs out the door and buys solar panels before anybody else reads this*
[#renewables] — This blew my socks off to say the least. The IEA released a new forecast which predicts that the speed of renewable deployment is now so fast that it effectively has succeeded in reducing global emissions growth to less than 1% 🤯. Last year global emissions increased 6%. Could we really already be so close to 0% emissions growth?! However, one thing to remember is that last year emissions did increase an extra ordinary amount and that a 1% increase is 300Mt of carbon emissions.
[#waterbatteries] — San Diego get plenty of sun, and it also has a lot of solar power. Problem is of course that when the sun goes down the city still needs power. So now the San Diego Water Authority is proposing to use the San Vincente Reservoir as a so called water battery to store energy from the excess solar energy. Speaking of water related power generation, the climate crisis brings drought to some areas and more rainfall to other areas. The Grist dives into what this increasing drought mean for our hydropower resources.
🏘 Reduce impact of urban and rural areas
Lowering the impact of urban and rural areas.
[#rooftopwind] — Rooftop wind has long been a dream, but now the company Aeromine is claiming that there new rooftop windturbine can generate 50% more electricity at 10% the area of a similar solar array. Sounds really cool!
[#plastic] — This article seems to miss that the biggest issue with plastic products in terms of climate is that it’s a product made by the fossil fuel industry thus every plastic product is helping support an industry that must die. But it talks about an interesting startup that has invented a way to make regular fossil plastic biodegradable. If you need reminding why plastic pollution is in fact a climate problem, this article in Grist does a great job of explaining why. In short: When plastic breaks down (even if takes time) it release greenhouse gases and it is also inhibiting one of the planet’s most important carbon sinks: The ocean.
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