There are some good explanations for the mismatch between regional support for climate action and the areas where renewable energy is making the biggest inroads.
There’s a bridge over this Michigan waterway and a precarious pipeline beneath it.
AP Photo/Al Goldis
A big spill in Michigan’s Straits of Mackinac could have devastating consequences. But does replacing the pipeline running beneath it make sense in a warming world?
The spix macaw is considered to be extinct in the wild.“
Rapid environmental decline is a major threat, yet education is not mobilised to empower children. Fortunately, many initiatives explore how to make students actors of the ecological transition.
Hydrogen fuel is just one opportunity for Australia in a clean-energy future.
Sebastian Kahnert/AAP
The latest UN climate report makes it clear that the task of limiting climate change is urgent and huge. We must start to transform our economy today, but it will bring rewards as well as challenges.
Monitoring the flow of electrical power at the California Independent System Operator grid control center.
AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli
The hydrogen economy has been touted for decades as a way to navigate the clean energy transition. Now a new CSIRO roadmap sets out how hydrogen power can become a major energy player.
Most garages can double as EV charging stations.
Shutterstock.com/riopatuca
Australia needs to accelerate its transition to clean energy, and not prolong the use of high-polluting, coal-fired infrastructure. Otherwise it risks missing out on an economic windfall.
Solar panels being installed in new housing under construction in Sacramento, Calif.
AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli
Environmentalists and climate hawks are cheering, but many experts aren’t excited about the state making rooftop solar panels mandatory on most new homes beginning in 2020.
Tesla is installing one of the world’s largest solar arrays at its Gigafactory 1 in Nevada.
EPA
Will the renewable energy transition end up creating yet more greenhouse emissions, as we ramp up the manufacture of wind turbines and solar cells? Not if their manufacture is itself powered by renewables.
Solar photovoltaics are now the world’s leading source of new electricity generation.
US Air Force
Solar photovoltaics and wind power are on track to supplant fossil-fuel-based electricity generation by the 2030s. The only thing holding back the renewable revolution is politics.
Grid-scale energy storage systems may make it easier to rely completely on renewable energy.
petrmalinak/Shutterstock.com
Saving power to use later lets consumers, businesses and utilities generate energy when it’s cheap and deliver it when they need it most. There’s not much of it today, but the industry is growing fast.
Looking through semitransparent cells – one day these could be big enough to make windows.
UNSW
Solar windows would need to trap enough light to generate power, while letting through enough to keep buildings light. Thankfully, newly developed semitransparent cells offer to do just that.
Most of the growing number of jobs in the solar industry have more to do with maintaining and installing panels than manufacturing them.
only_kim/Shutterstock.com
New modelling suggests that Australia could use renewable energy to hit its 2030 emissions reduction targets, without it costing any more overall than maintaining the status quo.
Transportation is the biggest contributor to greenhouse gases by sector. Converting the U.S. fleet to cleaner electric vehicles would likely take decades.
AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin
What if the world really got serious about meeting global climate goals? Doing the math on current emissions and the pace of energy transitions shows how quickly fossil fuels need to be phased out.
The new energy policy could potentially function to preserve black coal’s place in the energy mix.
AAP Image/Dan Himbrechts
By rebranding coal as ‘dispatchable’, the government’s National Energy Guarantee looks set to preserve demand for coal-fired power by giving it a new role – one it’s not well equipped to fulfil.
Business as usual is not an option.
CSIRO/Wikimedia Commons
A new CSIRO roadmap outlines the options for oil and gas companies to keep pace with the clean energy transition, including solar-powered hydrogen fuel production.