Costa Samaras: "For the 1st time since the mid-20th century, over 95 percent of this year’s planned new electric-generating capacity in the US is zero-carbon." Read that again. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law & the Inflation Reduction Act are enabling a clean energy economy. www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-...

"For the 1st time since the mid-20th century, over 95 percent of this year’s planned new electric-generating capacity in the US is zero-carbon." Read that again. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law & the Inflation Reduction Act are enabling a clean energy economy. www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-...

The Next Phase of Electricity Decarbonization? Planned Power Capacity is Nearly All Zero-Carbon | CEA | The White Housewww.whitehouse.gov For the first time since the mid-20th century, over 95 percent of this year’s planned new electric-generating capacity in the United States is zero-carbon.[1] Natural gas has long been relied on to en...

I mean just look at this! Nearly all the power plants installed in the US this year will be clean power. Folks said this was impossible. Let’s do more. www.eia.gov/todayinenerg...

One thing about the US power system that folks don’t know is that before the Biden Admin there wasn’t much grid battery storage. Now, battery installations have been growing like wildflowers. This year we will have about 16 Hoover Dams worth of total capacity! 16! www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-roo...

The Inflation Reduction Act & Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will double the amount of carbon emissions reductions & clean electricity we’ll get by 2030. This is awesome! We have to do more. Lets talk about what we need to do next & then go do it. I said more about this here: bsky.app/profile/cost...

This is the exact and correct message for US climate policy: Look how far we’ve come! Let’s do more! Listen for more details: www.volts.wtf/p/getting-re...

Getting ready for IRA 2www.volts.wtf In his recent role as Chief Advisor for the Clean Energy Transition in the White House Office of Science and Technology, Costa Samaras helped roadmap the cleantech future laid out by Democrats’ legisl...

i feel like this is the part I'm most relieved about. maybe high-voltage transmission will get moving too. on that day I may even start allowing myself to dream of high speed rail...

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law makes the largest investment in passenger rail since the creation of Amtrak, & includes some high speed rail. Making up for underinvestment. Now we need to ramp it up and build the map. But! If there’s no Pgh-DC HSR, I’m vetoing. www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-roo...

a rail line through Juneau is certainly, uh, interesting to consider

Route 66 line or GTFO

St Louis to KC only via Chicago seems like a miss

No connection between Buffalo and Toronto??

it’s someone’s Sci-fi map but in my future map there’s a Pittsburgh to Toronto one seat ride with a very brief stop In Buffalo

yes, Niagara Falls would like a word (both of them)

I can't support this.

This, tho

You would make the perfect the the enemy of the good?

One day, a train from Montreal to DC won't take three days and five transfers. When North America decides to be modern.

Having to switch trains twice in NYC is just wild

A significant part of my practice has been advising clients on clean energy projects eligible for incentives under the Inflation Reduction Act; it's been absolutely wonderful seeing how much that act alone pushed new zero carbon projects. The Act has done so much good.

yesssss!

I especially like the incentives for siting new projects in areas that have seen mines and coal-fired power plants closed in recent years. I think that stands to help avoid the rust-belt phenomenon we saw in the '80s and '90s with other industry leaving old locations behind.

Agreed. Investing in energy communities and in disadvantaged & overburdened communities is essential for a just transition. energycommunities.gov

Home - Energy Communitiesenergycommunities.gov The Interagency Working Group (IWG) was established to deliver federal resources to help revitalize America’s energy communities.

Holy moly! Having batteries makes renewable energy reliable. This is awesome!

Just reskeeting everything you post for the doomers

posting is policy

“For the first time since the start of the 21th century, over 95 percent of Costa’s planned posts are zero-carbon”

100% are bad still

right there with you man, let’s shoot for 110%

"doomers" being "people who know how to sift through the bullshit we're being sold to understand how little they are actually doing to stop climate change" in this case, I take it.

This is good news! And its not just the US. In fact, globally this has been the case for several years now. As early as 2013, renewable capacity additions exceeded 50% and have been increasing since. 🧪💡🔌

Vaclav Smil crying and heaving rn

Energy at the Coperoads

Moar! Moar! Moar!

the scale of California battery deployments is astonishing and the planned capacity is omfg — www.energy.ca.gov/news/2023-10... though they need to make this dashboard a little more live www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports...

Damn, that's a lot of batteries. All of a sudden they're there.

Of course it's not impossible. It's not even new technology, for Christ's sake.

Mid-20th century? That's post our big-hydro boom, so I guess it means nuclear?

yep

Cool. Is it enough?

It’s great. Now we need to do more. We can!

But it's not even close to what we need to be doing right now, which I think is the greater point, because the pace we're still setting for making the necessary changes is still far too slow, and will remain such under this system.

We need a faster pace. Our pace before was non-existent, now it’s moving. We can double the pace, then double again, if we demand it.

It’s not binary. There isn’t a single tipping point. The faster the better, but never give up regardless.

I'm not suggesting "giving up," I'm suggesting we stop being so happy when not even the bare minimum is being done. That seems no better than "giving up" to me.

Gonna suggest your audience takes your words as a suggestion to give up—if we can’t be happy about incremental progress then there’s not much point in doing the things individuals can do, right? That message is counterproductive.

climatenow.com/podcast/the-...

The solarcoaster: adoption curves and business modelsclimatenow.com Mitigating climate change is a race against time, requiring “rapid, far reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.”

Very cool. But: can someone explain the logic of this graph? A battery is not an energy source... 🤔 #battchat

I think they count batteries as a capacity source because once charged they can power things during low solar/wind generation - so having 15gw of battery storage = 15gw renewable power you can draw on (though it was already generated)

Thanks for explaining! That's an interesting one / tough choice. I get the impulse, but I'm still coming down on a hard "nope." That should really just be added to the cost of the renewable capacity in order to make said capacity dispatchable. (i.e. it is pitched as a good and virtuous ...

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