Energy

A BIG BUSINESS SUBSIDY IN A GREEN DRESS:

How Big Agriculture Mislead the Public About the Benefits of Biofuels: Michael Grunwald on the Cascading Impact of Ethanol Production on Climate Change (Michael Grunwald, July 21, 2025, LitHub)

Searchinger’s spidey-sense kept tingling, though. His father, another question-everything guy, liked to quote H. L. Mencken: “For every complex human problem, there’s a solution that’s clear, simple and wrong.” That’s what ethanol felt like. And the more he thought about the study, the less he understood its conclusions.

Yes, corn soaked up carbon as it grew. But it soaked up just as much carbon whether it was grown for fuel or food! Why would growing corn for ethanol and burning it in an engine be any climate-friendlier than growing that same corn for food and burning an equivalent amount of gasoline in an engine? The carbon absorbed in the field wouldn’t change; neither would the carbon emitted from the car. If the only difference was that producing ethanol emitted much more carbon than producing gasoline, where were ethanol’s benefits?

That led back to his original concern: If more corn was diverted from food to fuel, how would the lost food be replaced? Presumably, Midwest farmers would plant more corn, converting more wetlands into farmland that would get blasted with more chemicals. Again, he wasn’t focused on the climate impact, just the environmental impact of losing habitat and increasing pollution. But he had a hunch the Argonne researchers and their spiffy analytical tools were also understating the climate costs of using grain to fuel our cars instead of ourselves.

ECONOMICS TRUMPS IDEOLOGY:

Has Maine learned how to make heat pumps lower electricity costs for all? (Sarah Shemkus, 14 May 2025, Canary Media)

Maine has been an aggressive adopter of home heat pumps in recent years. In 2019, the state set the goal of deploying 100,000 heat pumps by 2025, a target it blew by two years ahead of schedule. The state now aims to get another 175,000 heat pumps up and running by 2027. Maine is also a member of a five-state coalition that is collaborating to boost heat pump adoption, lower prices, and train installers throughout New England.

The state’s new energy-efficiency plan is geared toward continuing this progress. It is centered largely on the idea of ​“beneficial electrification,” a somewhat jargony term that refers to switching from fossil fuels to electricity wherever the move would save money and cut emissions. There are plenty of opportunities to make that swap in Maine, where roughly half of households keep warm with heating oil, which can be pricey and inefficient.

Over the next three years, the incentives in the plan are forecast to support 38,000 new whole-home residential heat pump systems — including 6,500 in low-income households — and weatherization for 9,900 houses. A low-income household can get rebates of up to $9,000 for heat pump installations, and homes at high income levels qualify for up to $3,000. The incentives do not offer any money for residential fossil-fuel-burning equipment.

This strategy should decrease annual heating costs by more than $1,000 each for homes that switch to heat pumps from oil, propane, or electric baseboard heat, but it is also expected to lower electricity prices across the board, Stoddard said. Efficiency Maine Trust estimates the plan will suppress electricity rates by more than $490 million over the long term.

AS LABOR AND ENERGY COSTS TREND TOWARDS ZERO…:

Driverless freight trucks begin barreling through Texas (Abhimanyu Ghoshal, May 02, 2025, New Atlas)

The next time you spot a long-haul truck on the I-45, crane your neck to see if there’s anyone in the driver’s seat. If it’s empty, it’s all thanks to Aurora.

The Pittsburgh-based autonomous vehicle tech startup has just launched its self-driving trucking service in Texas, starting with deliveries between Dallas and Houston. The company’s driverless tech suite has already covered more than 1,200 miles (1,930 km) on public roads.

ECONOMICS TRUMPS IDEOLOGY:

Farmers are making bank harvesting a new crop: Solar energy: In California’s water-stressed Central Valley, farmers are fallowing land and installing solar, providing financial stability and saving water (Matt Simon, Apr 30, 2025, Grist)

Around the world, farmers are retooling their land to harvest the hottest new commodity: sunlight. As the price of renewable energy technology has plummeted and water has gotten more scarce, growers are fallowing acreage and installing solar panels. Some are even growing crops beneath them, which is great for plants stressed by too many rays. Still others are letting that shaded land go wild, providing habitat for pollinators and fodder for grazing livestock.

According to a new study, this practice of agrisolar has been quite lucrative for farmers in California’s Central Valley over the last 25 years — and for the environment. Researchers looked at producers who had idled land and installed solar, using the electricity to run equipment like water pumps and selling the excess power to utilities.

On average, that energy savings and revenue added up to $124,000 per hectare (about 2.5 acres) each year, 25 times the value of using the land to grow crops.

THE FUTURE ALWAYS HAPPENS FASTER THAN PREDICTED:

Fusion Energy: No Longer “30 Years Away”? (Noah El Alami, 4/28/25, IDTechX)

The largest funding rounds for commercial fusion occurred largely in the last 5 years. There are now around 50 private companies pursuing commercial fusion, with leaders in the industry demonstrating substantial progress towards generating net positive energy and securing major public and industrial partnerships. But what has changed to bring fusion from research projects to a serious commercial industry?

The commercial fusion market has been catalyzed by recent developments in three areas: a better understanding of the science of fusion, growing global demand for clean energy, and the maturation of enabling technologies.

First, consistent academic progress in understanding plasma physics over multiple decades has now reached the point where fusion technology is becoming ready for commercialization. Research reactors around the world, such as the National Ignition Facility (NIF), the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), and Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X), all produced record-breaking results in recent years such as increasing the energy gain from fusion or sustaining a stable plasma for a longer time.

Secondly, growing global demand for continuous green energy is essential for decarbonizing data centers and industry. Fusion energy avoids intermittency or the need for energy storage, with fewer radiation-related safety risks than its nuclear cousin, fission, which has also seen renewed interest in powering data centers and microgrids.

Finally, a range of specialized materials, components, and software solutions have reached maturity simultaneously to enable innovative fusion power designs. These include high-temperature superconductors, high-energy short-pulse lasers, and surrogate models for plasma simulations. IDTechEx’s report focuses on the value chain for key materials and components and their applications beyond fusion, which startups can pursue to set up secondary revenue streams.

PITY THE POOR PETROPHILES…:

No more fossil “gasplaining” – going electric is past the tipping point and guaranteed to slash cost of living (Sophie Vorrath, Mar 31, 2025, Renew Economy)

The electrification of Australian homes and vehicles is no longer trade-off between climate action and cost, but a guaranteed way to drive down the cost of living – and a economic policy imperative.

A new report from Rewiring Australia says Australia has passed the “electrification tipping point,” where replacing gas appliances and petrol cars with electric alternatives works out cheaper over a 15-year period, even accounting for any higher up-front costs.

This means, for example, that while an electric heat pump hot water system might cost around $4,000 compared to $1,900 for a gas hot water system, a gas system would spend up to $8,000 on fuel over 15 years, compared to $3,900 on grid electricity for the heat pump, or just $1,000 with rooftop solar. […]

Electric driving, too, is now the lowest cost way to drive including upfront costs, according to Rewiring Australia, offering savings of $1,500 per year in driving costs in 2025, or $2,500 with solar.

Over a 15-year period, electric vehicle drivers could expect a saving of $17,000 with upfront costs included, compared to a similar petrol car, or $35,000 when charging with solar.

YOUR NEXT PLANE WILL BE A VOLT:

Electric air taxis could soon replace short-haul flights — here’s how they’re moving closer to reality: One study recently estimated that urban congestion costs the U.S. nearly $120 billion per year in lost time and fuel (Rachel BeyerFebruary 20, 2025, The Cool Down)

Getting around cities is already tough. Roads are packed, and short-haul flights that are typically under 500 miles produce some of the most pollution per passenger mile. The VX4 aims to change that by replacing gas-powered flights and car commutes with zero-emission air travel. Rather than wasting time in traffic, commuters could fly across the city in just minutes. If these aircraft become widely used, they could do more than save time. They might also help reduce pollution in crowded urban areas.

A report from McKinsey & Company predicts that urban air travel could grow quickly.

That was easy.

IT’LL NEVER FLY, ORVILLE:

This innovative flying taxi could completely transform city travel — here’s the surprising energy source that makes it possible (Simon Sage, February 1, 2025, The Cool Down)

Battery power is used during vertical take-off, after which the HAM III-2 switches to hydrogen power. Seating is available for two people, flight time is estimated at 40 minutes, range is set to 100 kilometers (about 62 miles), and cruising speed is about 112 miles per hour.

…AND CHEAPER…:

Researchers took the key weakness of renewable energy and made it a superpower: When they analyzed renewable energy supply and power demand at an ultra fine scale, the team discovered tremendous new opportunities for a low-cost, reliable green grid. (Sarah DeWeerdt, December 10, 2024, Anthropocene))

Skeptics of renewable energy development often point out that the wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine. True enough, but when the sun isn’t shining in one place, the wind is often blowing there, or somewhere else that’s not too far away.

These patterns open up the possibility of complementarity: using different renewable energy sources to balance each other out across time and space.

NOTHING COSTS MORE THAN FOSSIL FUELS:

Lead Exposure Drove a Hidden Mental Health Crisis in the U.S., Study Reveals (Ed Cara, December 4, 2024, Gizmodo)

Scientists at Duke University and Florida State University conducted the study, building on their past research of lead’s impact on our health. They estimated that childhood lead exposure—particularly during the decades when it was most found in gasoline—has directly contributed to 151 million more cases of psychiatric disorder among Americans over the past 75 years. The findings indicate that lead has been even more dangerous to humanity than we knew.

Car manufacturers began to add lead to gasoline in the 1920s, aiming to reduce wear and tear on the engines.