Prof. Kevin J. Kircher

@kevinjkircher.com

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Engineering prof (mechanical + electrical) at a big state school. Energy, climate, buildings, power grid, control, optimization, data science. He/him. https://kevinjkircher.com/ Email: my last name at purdue dot edu

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Reply to

Aarne Granlund

sure

Contrast this with the US's decades-long bipartisan expansion of oil and gas extraction. The US now extracts more oil and gas than any country. Worse than Russia, Saudi Arabia, Canada, Iran, Iraq. Policies to reduce US fossil fuel *use* are essential, but we really need to keep it in the ground.

Today in "everything old is new again:" ⚡Electrify everything ⚡ In 1985, 70% of *all new homes built in the US* used electricity for space heating, water heating, and cooking, and had no gas connections. Electrify everything pretty much means "undo our mistakes from 1986-1992."

Love to see the American Climate Corps kicking off with this mission at heart. grist.org/culture/barb...

Barbara Kingsolver explains how/why she wrote the pledge for the new American Climate Corps. “I pledge to bring my skills, respect, & compassion to work every day, supporting EJ in all our communities. I will honor nature’s beauty & abundance…” grist.org/culture/barb...

Reply to

Prof. Kevin J. Kircher

Reply to

Prof. Kevin J. Kircher

The solution to increased car-crash deaths from EV adoption is not "don't switch to EVs," it's smaller, lighter EVs; safer streets, especially for people on foot and active transit; and fewer cars in general -- denser neighborhoods, better infrastructure for active transit and public transit.

European progress on cleaning up the power grid is truly impressive, with less than one-third of electricity now from fossil fuel. For comparison, the 2023 US electricity mix was 60% fossil fuel. The US is moving in the right direction but still has a *long* way to go.

Fossil fuels made up less than a third of the EU’s electricity mix in 2023 as renewables advanced theprogressplaybook.com/2024/06/28/f...

Fossil fuels made up less than a third of the EU's electricity mix in 2023 as renewables advancedtheprogressplaybook.com Renewables were the largest source of electricity, accounting for 44.7% of the bloc's mix.

show me a picture on your phone that has your energy that’s not a selfie

Reply to

Prof. Kevin J. Kircher

One cool load coordination example: Stella Zhang, a PhD student I worked with as a postdoc, showed that interleaving air conditioner operation between homes, and ramping up fans when air conditioners briefly ramp down, can cut community peak demand by about 10%. kevinjkircher.com/wp-content/u...

As burning fossil fuels continues to heat the world, we're going to need a LOT more air conditioning. This will significantly increase peak loads on power grids, risking power outages in the hottest hours when people are most vulnerable. www.iea.org/reports/the-...

post a *perfect* album from the 90s that isn't nirvana, pearl jam, soundgarden, or alice in chains.

Reply to

David Weiskopf

There are ducted versions that draw in outdoor air, soak heat out of it, and exhaust it back outside. Those don't need much space since they don't cool down the surrounding indoor air. Rheem definitely makes one, but I think most manufacturers do.

if Switzerland is guilty of human rights violations for acting too slowly on climate, is the United States guilty too? note that the post-2005 emissions decline in the US graph is partially fictitious because the EPA systematically underreports methane pollution by oil and gas companies

NEW: For Wired, I covered the wide-ranging implications of the ECHR's massive climate ruling today. #greensky #energysky 💡🔌 🧪 www.wired.com/story/climat...

Europe Rules That Insufficient Climate Change Action Is a Human Rights Violationwww.wired.com In a landmark ruling, the European Court of Human Rights found that Switzerland had not done enough to protect its citizens from climate change—blowing open the door for further cases against governme...

Reply to

Prof. Kevin J. Kircher

For context, US power systems have had better options than coal for most purposes for a decade+, and yet coal power plants still generated 16% of US electrical energy in 2023. www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/f...

just remembering that time when right-wing terrorists shot up a transformer to stop a drag show in North Carolina, causing a blackout for 45,000 people for 5 days big centralized energy infrastructure is vulnerable to malicious attacks as well as natural disasters www.thenation.com/article/soci...

to avoid the worst consequences of climate change while poor countries get access to basic energy services like temperature control and clean cooking, rich countries must reduce emissions 80% from 2022 levels by 2035 this will take much more than EVs and clean power www.iea.org/reports/net-...

"We need answers for why 2023 turned out to be the warmest year in possibly the past 100,000 years. And we need them quickly."

I have a commentary in Nature on our disquieting inability to work out why 2023 was so warm. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Climate models can’t explain 2023’s huge heat anomaly — we could be in uncharted territorywww.nature.com Taking into account all known factors, the planet warmed 0.2 °C more last year than climate scientists expected. More and better data are urgently needed. Taking into account all known factors, the pl...

amazing Paris city government builds good public housing in desirable neighborhoods, rents for as low as $650 per month for a 2BR with Eiffel Tower view city can preempt sale of almost any property and convert to public housing city also rents shops cheap to small businesses with cultural value

"How Does Paris Stay Paris? By Pouring Billions Into Public Housing" One quarter of residents in the French capital now live in government-owned housing, part of an aggressive effort to keep lower-income Parisians — and their businesses — in the city. Gift link!

How Does Paris Stay Paris? By Pouring Billions Into Public Housingwww.nytimes.com One quarter of residents in the French capital now live in government-owned housing, part of an aggressive effort to keep lower-income Parisians — and their businesses — in the city.

Reply to

Prof. Kevin J. Kircher

the bill also guts diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts and establishes processes for students to report any professors who they think don't meet any of these five requirements

the EPA underestimates leak rates of methane (aka natural gas) from oil and gas infrastructure by about a factor of three and has likely done so since the rise of fracking under Bush and Obama accurate methane accounting makes much of the post-2005 pollution decline in this EPA graph disappear 😬

New research finds an average methane leakage rate in the US of nearly 3%, with some regions leaking at over a 9% rate 🔌💡: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

US oil and gas system emissions from nearly one million aerial site measurements - Naturewww.nature.com We integrate approximately one million aerial site measurements into regional emissions inventories for six regions in the USA, finding methane emission intensities that vary by more than a factor of ...

Reply to

Prof. Kevin J. Kircher

long-term health effects of CO2 poisoning also not great "He, his brother and cousin ended up taking oxygen tanks around with them for several months." brain injury from oxygen deprivation is also a risk anyway great reporting on an important issue by Julia Simon at NPR last year

today i learned: when CO2 pipelines fail, the (invisible, odorless, heavier than air) CO2 pools in stagnant clouds that can cause people to lose consciousness and eventually asphyxiate & make engines stop working (need oxygen to burn fuel) so rescue vehicles can't move www.wusf.org/2023-05-21/t...

POTUS to Deus Ex Machina: with no money please save as many American kids' lives as possible DEM: outlaws guns, bans cars from cities and towns www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....

the basic wealth and power divide today is between people who'd be fine no matter what and people whose food, health, housing, kids' school, etc. are precarious

Fantastic essay. Damn.

Reply to

Prof. Kevin J. Kircher

here's a pretty damning investigation by Mozilla on the topic of cars, data, privacy & security spoiler alert: it's not just BYD that utterly fails to protect your privacy, your passengers', or their own networked systems h/t @mrchrisadams.bsky.social foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/priv...

interesting/nuanced issue Chinese electric vehicles cost less than US EVs, so could improve access and adoption but Chinese labor and environmental practices are bad and Chinese EVs pose cybersecurity risks but Tesla labor/env't practices are also bad and Musk is also a security risk🤷‍♂️ 🔌💡

electrification of space heating in Europe (measured here via heat pump adoption rates) slows as fossil gas supply glut - substantially comprised of liquefied US exports - depresses European fossil gas prices 💡🔌 www.euractiv.com/section/ener... www.euractiv.com/section/ener...

recently fined $230 million for bribing Republican politicians in Ohio, FirstEnergy - one of the nations biggest utilities - has now scrapped its plans to cut emissions 30% by 2030, choosing instead to keep two huge coal-fired power plants running and polluting through the 2030s 💡🔌

After one of the most egregious corruption scandals in the modern history of the electric utility industry, how does FirstEnergy attempt to salvage its reputation? By dropping its 2030 emissions reduction goal. www.utilitydive.com/news/firsten...

power plant owners in places where electricity supply and imports are constrained make $$$ from high locational marginal prices they stand to lose $$$ if we build new power lines or rooftop/community solar good piece on NextEra's corrupt efforts to get government to protect it from competition🔌💡

Giving corporations full control of the reins of the energy transition will naturally lead to them setting whatever pace maximises their profits, not whatever pace minimises harms to us. We should expect more of this, particularly in the US

Why a clean energy giant based in Florida is battling a green project in New Englandwww.politico.com No one in the U.S. builds more solar and wind farms than NextEra Energy. It’s waging ferocious battles to keep the crown.

did you know that solar panel efficiency gets better when it's colder outside and worse when it's hotter outside? energy system models often leave out this effect here's the efficiency in 2022 of a solar panel in Indiana rated for 18% efficiency at 77 °F 🔌💡