A plane taxis on the George airport runway in South Africa. It’s Africa’s first airport to be powered by solar energy. (© Getty Images) Airports around the world are looking sunward to electrify their facilities — and they find it makes good business sense. George Airport, on the southern coast of South Africa’s Western Cape ...
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By joneswl | 21 November, 2016 | Categories:
Environment, Featured Event
| Tags: Climate Partners, Energy 21
(© Shutterstock) Parity is a state of being equal. In the world of energy, grid parity happens when electricity from a renewable energy source, such as sun or wind, costs the same or less than electricity from traditional fossil fuels. Many people have never heard about it, but grid parity is important in countering climate ...
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By U.S. Mission South Africa | 9 November, 2016 | Categories:
Environment, Featured Event
| Tags: Climate Partners, Energy 21
(© AP Images) Part 4 Countries that are developing or expanding their energy infrastructure are well placed to be the renewable energy leaders of the future. Not only is that a good position, it is a good business strategy. “In many senses, [the developing world] is a clean slate. It can just leapfrog into the ...
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By U.S. Mission South Africa | 9 November, 2016 | Categories:
Environment, Featured Event
| Tags: Climate Partners, Energy 21
A man installs solar panels on a Honolulu rooftop. Hawaii is a U.S. national leader in solar power. (© AP Images) Part 3 Rooftops, great for shelter, can now make the homeowner money too. That’s because of renewable energy technology. People are able to generate their own electricity close to home, and in communities where ...
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By U.S. Mission South Africa | 9 November, 2016 | Categories:
Environment, Featured Event
| Tags: Climate Partners, Energy 21
This solar farm at the University of California Davis supplies 14 percent of power used on campus. There are solar installations on rooftops and parking lots too. (UC Davis) Decarbonizing the economy is an intellectually electrifying and energizing opportunity for California’s universities and students. It is abundantly clear to most people working in the energy field ...
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By U.S. Mission South Africa | 9 November, 2016 | Categories:
Environment, Featured Event
| Tags: Climate Partners, Energy 21
Part Two Necessity — and good business — is ushering in a new energy reality. And that energy is renewable. Large, energy-hungry populations; failures of outdated 20th-century infrastructure; and commitment to preventing global temperature rise are all reasons why cities, states and countries around the world are using renewable energy. So how are they doing ...
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By U.S. Mission South Africa | 9 November, 2016 | Categories:
Environment, Featured Event
| Tags: Climate Partners, Energy 21
(© AP Images) Part One By 2050, the world will get most of its electricity from renewable sources, like the sun and wind, and no longer rely on polluting fossil energy that contributes to climate change.
Angelina Galiteva (Courtesy photo) That bold prediction comes from Angelina Galiteva, who knows a lot about energy. She has ...
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By U.S. Mission South Africa | 9 November, 2016 | Categories:
Environment, Featured Event
| Tags: Climate Partners, Energy 21
If you’ve ever seen solar panels on the rooftop of a home or business, you were looking at “distributed generation.” And it’s a safe bet you will be seeing more of it. Distributed generation means generating electricity at or near the location where it is used. It is cheaper than conventional, centralized generation because it ...
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By U.S. Mission South Africa | 9 November, 2016 | Categories:
Environment, Featured Event
| Tags: Climate Partners, Energy 21
Myth #1. Solar power doesn’t generate enough electricity. Solar energy is now mainstream. Solar contributes substantially to electricity grids around the world. Globally, solar installations grew by nearly 30 percent last year and the industry is on an upward trend. Texas, Colorado and other U.S. states have successfully integrated solar and other renewables to the ...
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By U.S. Mission South Africa | 9 November, 2016 | Categories:
Environment, Featured Event
| Tags: Climate Partners, Energy 21
An invention by South African scientist Vivian Alberts that replaces expensive silicon used in photovoltaic solar panels promises to make solar energy more affordable than ever. It’s a thin-film photovoltaic coating for glass that uses no silicon at all. Alberts announced his discovery in 2007. Now he is poised to build an industrial-scale factory to ...
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By U.S. Mission South Africa | 9 November, 2016 | Categories:
Environment, Featured Event
| Tags: Climate Partners, Energy 21
Renewable energy comes from natural sources that don’t run out, such as the sun, wind, water or heat within the earth. Fossil fuels — coal, oil and gas — are traditional sources of energy generation that will eventually run out. Solar panels and wind turbines generate electricity from sun and wind. Geothermal plants harness heat ...
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By U.S. Mission South Africa | 9 November, 2016 | Categories:
Environment, Featured Event
| Tags: Climate Partners, Energy 21
What does greater use of green energy mean for workers in more traditional energy sectors? A Colorado initiative may have the answer: put the workers where the jobs are. Consider the findings of Michigan Technological University professor Joshua M. Pearce and associates: There are nearly 209,000 solar workers in the United States, compared to about ...
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By U.S. Mission South Africa | 9 November, 2016 | Categories:
Environment, Featured Event
| Tags: Climate Partners, Energy 21
(Shutterstock) In a bid to create more efficient and longer-lasting batteries for electric vehicles and the power grid, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have been testing ideas that could revolutionize the clean energy field. The latest research aims to improve upon rechargeable “lithium-air” batteries, a highly promising technology that can store up to ...
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By U.S. Mission South Africa | 9 November, 2016 | Categories:
Environment, Featured Event
| Tags: Climate Partners, Energy 21
One of the biggest challenges in the solar energy field is how to store electricity from the sun for use when the sun isn’t shining. One solution may be no farther than your salt shaker. SolarReserve, a California company, is pioneering a technology that uses molten salt as a medium for long-term energy storage.
Mirrors ...
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By U.S. Mission South Africa | 9 November, 2016 | Categories:
Environment, Featured Event
| Tags: Climate Partners, Energy 21
How can we reduce the greenhouse gases that cause
climate change when most developing nations need more energy than ever before?
Renewable energy sources emit far less CO2 than traditional fossil fuels. But critics argue renewables like solar and wind are too expensive. No more. Innovation and research have lowered the cost of many renewables to — and sometimes below — ...
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By U.S. Mission South Africa | 9 November, 2016 | Categories:
Environment, Featured Event
| Tags: Climate Partners, Energy 21
The big thing holding us back from wholesale use of renewable energy is a reliable long-term storage mechanism. But scientists are working hard to develop a battery that can make the most of solar- and wind-generated energy. This ClimateWire article describes a few of the promising technologies under consideration for storing electricity collected by solar ...
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By U.S. Mission South Africa | 9 November, 2016 | Categories:
Environment, Featured Event
| Tags: Climate Partners, Energy 21
How is the world going to reach the climate goals of COP21? Not with your grandmother’s wind turbines. “The truth is, if we adapt existing technologies … there’s still going to be a big gap to fill,” said President Obama about the importance of climate innovation. “Cool technologies” need to fill the gap, and fast, says ...
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By U.S. Mission South Africa | 9 November, 2016 | Categories:
Environment, Featured Event
| Tags: Climate Partners, Energy 21
Did you know small changes in your daily routines can make a huge difference to your health, the health of your neighbors and the future of the planet? Choose from among these simple steps and start today. (Adapted from the California Air Resources Board’s “Simple Solutions to Help Reduce Air Pollution”) When you run errands ...
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By U.S. Mission South Africa | 9 November, 2016 | Categories:
Environment, Featured Event
| Tags: Climate Partners, Energy 21
What if every month you got a report on how your electricity use compared to that of your neighbors? And personalized tips on how to save money based on your own usage patterns? New software is making this possible, says David Moore, senior market development manager at
Opower . His company has pioneered cloud-based software that ...
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By U.S. Mission South Africa | 9 November, 2016 | Categories:
Environment, Featured Event
| Tags: Climate Partners, Energy 21
In recent years, some communities around the world have pledged to meet all their future power needs with renewable energy. One notable example:
Costa Rica used only renewable sources to power itself for the first 75 days of 2015. The Central American country has made great strides in its use of renewable energy — mainly hydropower — which today generates more ...
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By U.S. Mission South Africa | 9 November, 2016 | Categories:
Environment, Featured Event
| Tags: Climate Partners, Energy 21
America is energized. In the last decade, U.S. energy production grew 24 percent, while energy consumption steadily declined. One reason for the shifts is changes made by
businesses ,
college campuses and
cities — changes that have helped the environment and reduced costs. Here are details about America’s recent progress and future plans.
This graphic shows changes in U.S. energy ...
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By U.S. Mission South Africa | 9 November, 2016 | Categories:
Environment, Featured Event
| Tags: Climate Partners, Energy 21
