Only 13% of US solar industry jobs are currently in manufacturing. The Biden administration hopes the sector will grow fast, but that might not be so simple.
An ethanol refinery in Chancellor, South Dakota.
AP Photo/Stephen Groves
Allowing the sale of gasoline that’s 15% ethanol year-round won’t have much impact on gas prices, but recent research shows that growing corn for fuel affects the climate – for the worse.
LED lightbulbs are just the start.
Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images
Bidirectional charging is the next big stage for electric vehicles. But storing power in your car and sending it back to your house involves more than flipping a switch.
Manufacturing a 300-ton nuclear reactor pressure vessel at a factory in Volgodonsk, Russia.
Pallava Bagla/Corbis via Getty Images
Russia isn’t a major producer of uranium, but it handles a large share of the steps that turn it into nuclear fuel. That makes it a major player in this globalized industry.
Moscow headquarters of Rosneft, Russia’s state-owned oil company.
AP Photo/Mikhail Metzel
Oil revenues are crucial to Russia’s economy. The US only accounts for a small fraction of them, so banning Russian oil imports has mainly symbolic value.
Surplus corn piled outside a farmer’s co-op storage facility in Paoli, Colorado.
Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images
The US has required motor fuels to contain 10% biofuels since 2005. As this program nears a key milestone in 2022, farm advocates want to expand it while critics want to pare it back or repeal it.
Aerial view of the 6-megawatt Stanton Solar Farm near Orlando, Fla.
Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
President Biden’s proposed solar power expansion would cost $350 billion in federal support over the coming decade. An energy expert explains where that money would come from and who it would help.
Solar panels on the roof of the Casa Dominguez low-income housing development in East Rancho Dominguez, Calif.
Lawrence K. Ho/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
A decade ago, solar power was a tiny sliver of the US energy supply. Today it’s expanding rapidly – and the Biden administration wants to make it much, much bigger.
Energy storage can make facilities like this solar farm in Oxford, Maine, more profitable by letting them store power for cloudy days.
AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty
The US is generating more electricity than ever from wind and solar power – but often it’s not needed at the time it’s produced. Advanced energy storage technologies make that power available 24/7.
Wind turbines near Glenrock, Wyo.
AP Photo/Matt Young
Ryan Wiser, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Bentham Paulos, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Dev Millstein, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Joseph Rand, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Fifteen years ago electric power generation was the largest source of US greenhouse gas emissions. Now the power sector is leading the shift to a clean energy economy.
Solar power is becoming more common for households at all income levels. These homes in Richmond, California, went solar with the help of GRID Alternatives.
GRID Alternatives
Galen Barbose, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Eric O’Shaughnessy, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Ryan Wiser, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Solar power doesn’t have to be just for the wealthy anymore. With the right kind of financial incentives, households at all income levels can benefit from affordable clean energy.
Fast electric vehicle charging stations at a rest stop on Interstate 95 in Maryland.
Earth and Main/Flickr
The Trump administration is opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas leasing – a step that’s as much about politics as it is about energy.
Flaring gas at an oil production site outside Williston, North Dakota.
Andrew Burton/Getty Images
Flaring, or burning, waste gas from energy production has sharply increased over the past decade. It wastes usable fuel, pollutes the air, and helps drive climate change.
A pump jack in the town of Signal Hill, California, which sits within the Long Beach Oil Field near the Port of Long Beach.
Frederick J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images
A new study finds an association between living near active oil and gas wells in California and low birth-weight infants, adding to findings elsewhere on health risks from oil and gas production.
Wind turbines in the first rays of sunlight at the Saddleback Ridge Wind Project in Carthage, Maine, March 20, 2019.
AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty
The Deepwater Horizon disaster set new records for holding polluters to account. But it had much less impact on laws regulating offshore drilling or US oil dependence.
A satellite image of the oil slick as it looked in late May 2010, a month after the Deepwater Horizon well exploded. The oil plume looks grayish white.
NASA/Goddard/Jen Shoemaker and Stu Snodgrass
Donald Boesch, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science
The BP Deepwater Horizon blowout on April 20, 2010 triggered the largest offshore oil spill in history. Ten years later, post-spill reforms are being undone and the Gulf of Mexico remains vulnerable.
The sun may be setting on the USA’s green economy leadership.
Jason Blackeye/Unsplash
The US President pledged ambitious growth in the fossil fuel industry on his 2016 campaign trail – but new data shows that the green economy was already growing almost three times as fast.
Dean’s Professor of Sustainability Science & Policy, Director, School of Public Policy & Urban Affairs, Global Resilience Institute, Northeastern University