Green Energy

"Pakistan isn’t the first country you’d expect to crash the global solar party. But by the end of 2024, it quietly rocketed into the top tier of solar adopters, importing a jaw-dropping 22 gigawatts worth of solar panels in a single year. That’s not a typo or a spreadsheet rounding error. That’s the kind of number that turns heads at IEA meetings and makes policy analysts double-check their databases. It certainly made me sit up and take notice when I first heard about what was happening in mid-2024.

It’s more solar than Canada has installed in total. It’s more than the UK added in the past five years. And yet it didn’t make a blip in most Western media."

Global demand for lithium is expected to increase by nearly 500% over the next few decades, as countries invest more in batteries and electric vehicles meant to reduce their carbon footprint. But lithium also brings its own environmental concerns, putting stress on freshwater supplies in the desert areas where the mineral is most common.

Heat pumps are essential for ditching fossil fuels. The appliances are many times more efficient than even the best gas furnaces, and they run on electricity, so they can draw power from renewables like wind and solar.

But the very thing that makes them such an amazing climate solution is also their biggest challenge. A common refrigerant called R-410A pumps through their innards so they can warm and cool homes and offices and anything else. But that refrigerant is also liquid irony, as it can escape as a greenhouse gas over 2,000 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. (This is known as its “global warming potential,” or how much energy a ton of the gas absorbs over a given amount of time compared to the same amount of CO2.) Leaks can happen during the installation, operation, and disposal of heat pumps.

But this year the industry is rolling out alternative refrigerant formulations like R-454B and R-32, which have around 75 percent less global warming potential. That’s in response to Environmental Protection Agency rules mandating that, starting this year, heat pump refrigerants have a global warming potential of no more than 700. Manufacturers are looking even farther ahead at the possibility of using propane, or even CO2, as the next generation of more atmospherically friendly refrigerants.

As interest in nuclear power rises, startups are pursuing plans to recycle spent fuel and reuse its untapped energy to power reactors. Advocates tout new recycling methods as a breakthrough, but many experts warn it will extract plutonium that could be used for nuclear weapons.

cross-posted from: https://lazysoci.al/post/24083335

China’s solar panel exports rose by 10% in 2024, with imports by global-south countries rising by 32% and those to the global north falling by 6%

Scientists have developed a new resource to better protect seabirds from the impacts of offshore wind farms. The innovative modeling tool has the potential to save wildlife, while ensuring the effective and sustainable development of renewable energy sources.

Battery recycling provides economic, national security, and environmental benefits. But the United States is playing catch-up to Asian countries, particularly China.

As renewable energy installations multiply across the globe, the first generation of solar panels, wind turbine blades, and lithium ion batteries is reaching the end of its lifespan and coming offline. With a tidal wave of waste potentially slamming landfills worldwide — is it true that these technologies are un-recyclable? Or that these green initiatives are maybe worse for the environment? Or could emerging recycling and upcycling technologies redirect this flood of waste into a new generation of photovoltaics, wind turbines, and battery banks designed to be continuously recycled and regenerated? Just how close are we to “closing the loop”?