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Just before the holiday break, the US Energy Information Agency released data on the country's electrical generation. Because of delays in reporting, the monthly data runs through October, so it doesn't provide a complete picture of the changes we've seen in 2023. But some of the trends now seem locked in for the year: wind and solar are likely to be in a dead heat with coal, and all carbon-emissions-free sources combined will account for roughly 40 percent of US electricity production.

Tracking trends

Having data through October necessarily provides an incomplete picture of 2023. There are several factors that can cause the later months of the year to differ from the earlier ones. Some forms of generation are seasonal—notably solar, which has its highest production over the summer months. Weather can also play a role, as unusually high demand for heating in the winter months could potentially require that older fossil fuel plants be brought online. It also influences production from hydroelectric plants, creating lots of year-to-year variation.

Finally, everything's taking place against a backdrop of booming construction of solar and natural gas. So, it's entirely possible that we will have built enough new solar over the course of the year to offset the seasonal decline at the end of the year.

Enlarge / NREL has taken some of the hassle out of getting permits for projects like these. (credit: owngarden )

Can government agencies develop software to help cut bureaucratic red tape through automation? The answer is “yes,” according to the promising results achieved by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), which has saved thousands of hours of labor for local governments by creating a tool called SolarAPP+ (Solar Automated Permit Processing Plus) for residential solar permits.

“We estimate that automatic SolarAPP+ permitting saved around 9,900 hours of… staff time in 2022,” NREL staff wrote in the report, “ SolarAPP+ Performance Review (2022 Data) . “Based on median timelines, a typical SolarAPP+ project is permitted and inspected 13 business days sooner than traditional projects… SolarAPP+ has eliminated over 134,000 days in permitting-related delays.”

SolarAPP+ automates over 100 compliance checks in the permitting process that are usually the responsibility of city, county, or town employees, according to Jeff Cook, SolarAPP+ program lead at NREL and first author of the report. It can be more accurate, thorough, and efficient than a time-pressured local government employee would be.

Enlarge / Sisal is an invasive species that is also grown agriculturally. (credit: Chris Hellier )

Women and girls across much of the developing world lack access to menstrual products. This means that for at least a week or so every month, many girls don’t go to school , so they fall behind educationally and often never catch up economically.

Many conventional menstrual products have traditionally been made of hydrogels made from toxic petrochemicals, so there has been a push to make them out of biomaterials. But this usually means cellulose from wood, which is in high demand for other purposes and isn’t readily available in many parts of the globe. So Alex Odundo found a way to solve both of these problems: making maxi pads out of sisal, a drought-tolerant agave plant that grows readily in semi-arid climates like his native Kenya.

Putting an invasive species to work

Sisal is an invasive plant in rural Kenya, where it is often planted as livestock fencing and feedstock. It doesn’t require fertilizer, and its leaves can be harvested all year long over a five- to seven-year span. Odundo and his partners in Manu Prakash’s lab at Stanford University developed a process to generate soft, absorbent material from the sisal leaves. It relies on treatment with dilute peroxyformic acid (1 percent) to increase its porosity, followed by washing in sodium hydroxide (4 percent) and then spinning in a tabletop blender to enhance porosity and make it softer.

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Pirelli provided flights and accommodation from San Francisco to Las Vegas so Roberto could attend the Las Vegas Grand Prix. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

LAS VEGAS—It was cold this past weekend at the first Las Vegas Formula 1 Grand Prix. Winters in the desert are notoriously chilly, and it didn't help that the race organizers decided to start the spectacle at 10 pm local time.

The issue was the tires—they're not developed to handle frigid weather. Teams were tracking air temperatures and formulating plans to keep their cars on the road instead of sliding into a wall. There was some relief the night of the race, as the weather was warmer than it was during Friday night's qualifying session. At the start of the race ( according to Weather Underground ) it was roughly 60° F (15.5° C), and the actual lowest air temperature was still 10° F warmer than the historical average for November 18; turns out climate change is real and happening .

There's nothing subtle about Formula 1. Big egos, big money, big tracks, and thanks to a certain Netflix show, big-time fan growth in the United States. But at its core, the actual cars themselves, relatively speaking, don't have that big of an impact on the environment. Sure, they're loud V6 engines, and the tires get depleted quicker than a pizza at a children's birthday party; but transporting the cars and pit equipment and tires and team members to each race uses far more energy than the race itself. And of course, if you factor in fans flying in from all over the world for the 23 races per year, you get a larger carbon footprint than, say, your kid's soccer game.

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Humanity is on the cusp of radical changes in how we produce and consume energy, according to a new evaluation by the International Energy Agency. And that leaves us in a place where small changes can produce huge differences in the energy economy by the end of the decade—even a slight drop in China's economic growth, for example, could cut coal use by an amount similar to what Europe currently consumes.

Amidst the flux, governments are struggling to set policies that either meet our needs or reflect the changing reality. By 2030, the IEA expects that we'll have the capacity to manufacture more than double the solar panels needed to meet current policy goals. And those goals will leave us falling well short of keeping warming below 2° C.

In flux

The IEA's analysis focuses on two different scenarios. One of them, which it terms STEPS, limits the analysis to the policies that governments have already committed to. Those are sufficient to have energy-driven emissions peak in the middle of this decade—meaning within the next few years. But they stay above net zero for long enough to commit us to 2.4° C warming, a level that climate scientists indicate will lead to severe consequences.

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A decade ago, our present renewable energy situation was unimaginable. Most projections had wind and solar as niche players on the electric grid due to their relatively high cost. In the US, the reality is anything but. Combined, wind and solar have now passed coal; throw in hydro, and they've passed nuclear, too. In most areas of the country, they're now far and away the cheapest means to generate electricity; the same holds true for most locations around the world.

Despite the changed economics, most countries have fallen behind on their climate pledges, and fossil fuels aren't being pushed off the grid fast enough to get us back on track. While the entire globe is suffering the consequences of climate change, the factors that are keeping renewables from reaching their full potential vary from country to country. What should we be doing to get past these roadblocks?

Today, I'll be at the United Nations with the chance to get some answers to that question. The UN, as part of its General Assembly meeting, is hosting a series of events called Climate Week, which includes a Sustainable Development Goals Summit. Associated with that will be a series of talks and panels on relevant topics. I'll be hosting one called "Clean Energy Trends to Power the World" that will happen at 2:25 pm Eastern Time.

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Our atmosphere holds six times more water than you’ll find in all the rivers on Earth. The dew drops you see on grass and water droplets on a cold juice bottle are evidence of this natural reservoir of water. Despite its ubiquity, 2 billion people on Earth still don’t have access to clean drinking water .

A technique called atmospheric water harvesting (AWH) can allow us to extract some of this freshwater out of the air. But there are various challenges that have prevented us from implementing AWH on a large scale. In order to create an effective and continuous AWH system, scientists need to ensure two things. The first is that the water absorption from the air is fully reversible so that the water can be retrieved for use.

The second is efficient waste heat management . When an AWH system captures water from the air, the condensation of water releases heat. If this excess heat is not processed carefully, it can interfere with the entire process. However, it seems that we are now closer to a solution. Inspired by the structure of plant leaves, a team of researchers in China has created a core-shell structural cellulose nanofiber-based aerogel (called Core-Shell@CNF for short) that promises to overcome these challenges.

Enlarge / The Kariba Dam in Zimbabwe. (credit: Robert Holmes )

One of the big challenges we face regarding climate change is that we have to lower our emissions at a time when energy consumption is likely to grow. Many countries in the Global South will seek some combination of expanding access to the electric grid, increasing grid reliability, and expanding grid capacity to meet rising demand. It's estimated that demand in Africa will increase by roughly five percent a year for some time. Handling that increase while reducing emissions will be a challenge.

As things currently stand, African nations are primarily served by a mix of large hydroelectric plants—a number of smaller nations already have nearly emissions-free grids—and fossil fuels. Most plans for limiting carbon emissions going forward have involved expanding hydropower, and there are plans for adding about 100 GigaWatts of new capacity in the coming decades. But the rapid drop in the cost of wind and solar power raises questions as to whether those plans still make sense.

In many cases, the answer is no, according to a new study. Instead, it suggests that only about half of the hydropower projects make economic sense and that many African countries are better off moving ahead with other renewables. By 2050, it's estimated that half of Africa's electricity could come from wind and solar.

Enlarge / Airbus will be testing hydrogen power on a commercial airliner modified to carry an additional engine. (credit: Airbus )

A complete hydrogen fuel cell powertrain assembly occupied the pride of place in the pavilion of Beyond Aero at the recently concluded Paris Air Show. That a fuel cell system was the Toulouse-based startup’s centerpiece at the biennial aero event is an indication of the steps being taken by a range of companies, from startups to multinational corporations, toward realizing the goal of using hydrogen as fuel in the aviation sector.

“This 85 kilowatt subscale demonstrator was successfully tested a few months ago. Even though in its current form, it serves only ultralight aviation, the successful test of the powertrain is a crucial step in our technical development path for designing and building a business aircraft,” Beyond Aero co-founder Hugo Tarlé told Ars Technica.

Tarlé said that the business aircraft would have a range of 800 nautical miles and will be powered by a 1 MW powertrain. “For generating this power, there won’t be one big megawatt fuel cell. Instead, it will be multiple fuel cells. It will be based on the same technical choices that we made on the subscale demonstrator—i.e. gaseous hydrogen, fuel cell, hybridization of batteries and electric motors."