Dan Gearino from Inside Climate News writes about an Oregon project that incorporates solar, wind, and storage in one project:
I highly recommend this publication to readers who want to follow the energy revolution in its early days. So exciting and a constantly moving target.
Check out Madeleine Fleischer’s blog, Climate Smart Handbook, which helps people and businesses plan for conversion to all electric renewable energy using the incentives provided in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
Guide to Decarbonization through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) climate mitigation funding and policies with Jessie Jenkins at Princeton University.
https://open.spotify.com/embed/episode/6QlVq75G6uoA0GLDvRXNre?utm_source=generator
10-29-22 Update
PBS also has a wonderful analysis of the clean energy policies and incentives in the IRA bill:
11-10-22 UPDATE: From David Roberts at Volts Podcast: Transcripts from his recent interviews with experts on the IRA funding and impact on pocketbooks and climate change goals. These are invaluable for keeping track of the IRA.
Today I learned about the Bicameral Electrification Caucus. Contact your representative if a member of the caucus, and alert them to join it if not.
A new Volts podcast with two experts discusses the relationships between EV charging and keeping the grid functioning well. This is an important component of the new EV world that is coming at record speed. A very enlightening discussion. EVs can be storage units of energy, too and potentially could help stabilize the grid during this change over from dirty fuels.
Yale Climate Connections: Lithium mining is much less impactful than coal mining. Video presents the Salton Sea as a huge reservoir of lithium in the U.S. Explains how the mining there is less polluting than other mining sites in the world due to how the lithium is geologically structured.
Because Virginia K-12 schools are allowed to purchase third-party solar, they lead in the U.S. for solar power generation. Also see Brighter Future 2022 Report on solar energy use among K-12 Schools nationwide.
Talking Through the Inflation Reduction Act: Volts Podcast: https://www.volts.wtf/p/talking-through-the-inflation-reduction#details
Diving further into the Inflation Reduction Act: Volts Podcast: https://www.volts.wtf/p/diving-further-into-the-inflation-d7e#details
Calculate savings with Rewiring America Calculator: https://www.rewiringamerica.org/app/ira-calculator
From EESI: How the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law Work Together to Advance Climate Action – September 13, 2022
Rewiring America; Electrification and the IRA
From RMI: How Contractors and Electricians are Tackling Emissions in US Homes.
New Volts Podcast: What’s up with Manchin’s plan to reform energy permitting. David interviews Abigail Dillen at Earth Justice. 09=07-22
U.S. Department of Energy: Newsroom
Check here for Sept. 8 Webinar re: Careers in Clean Energy
Come January 1, 2023 citizens will be eligible for tax credits for their homes and transportation. Each citizen can receive up to $2,000 in tax credits for energy saving purchases and installations of a heat pump, insulation, energy saving windows or appliances, and other weatherization costs. Tax credits for purchase of EVs is another investment that citizens can reap through purchase of a clean energy vehicle. The legislation invest in the industries producing the cars and trucks, and the infrastructure (recharging stations, battery production, etc.) to support it.
Axios article about these tax credits.
The tax credits will be refreshed each year for a decade. So, plan ahead: what do you need first, second, etc. Over the decade you may be able to greatly reduce the amount of energy you need to keep your home warm in winter and cool in summer. These improvements will increase the value of your home. By millions of citizens participating, it creates a wave in the right direction: rapid transition to a clean economy. But, we all have to participate for it to work. Spread the word and help neighbors and friend to invest in their homes and transportation.
I suggest also that you subscribe to Volts Podcast on Substack Publishing Platform, moderated by David Roberts. See podcasts 1 and 2 about the details in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) legislation. These are long but worth the listen as it includes estimates through modeling about how likely we are to meet the climate goals to reach carbon pollution reduction to the 2005 level by 2030.
There are still unknowns since each state may handle these funds differently. **If your state is not acting within the spirit of the funding, go to your state reps and local council to make sure they use the funding as it was intended. Call them out publicly, use social media — we have to make this happen. Every hour counts now as to how much we can put the brakes on climate-induced forces that are causing record floods, heat, fires and droughts here and abroad.
As I learn more details I will continue to post information for you and your family to take advantage of these savings programs. **I invite each of my readers to comment back with what they are learning with links if possible.
The success of this legislation is directly dependent on us participating as much as we can. There are provisions for offering communities without the resources to take advantage of these savings through nonprofits and other community programs which will assist families in weatherizing their homes and reducing energy costs.
One more thing: if effective programs to reduce climate risk are in danger of misuse or, not used, due to politics, shout it from the rafters! Generations are depending on us to do the right thing.
We are living in an unprecedented time of loss. Many forces in American culture align to prevent grieving that can deepen our insight into life and human nature.
The Center for Humans and Nature brings together creative minds from a variety of lifeways to answer questions relevant to all of us and that point us toward responses that reflect our true nature.
With this blog, which has recently been focused on issues such as electrification of the grid, and social justice issues, I am stepping back to find other windows into human nature, American culture, and my own personal path seeking a greater understanding of why we do what we do in the face of evidence to the contrary.
Take a breather from the horrible news coming in from all directions to recall the essence of being human and the long history of the Earth with a wonderful storyteller = Robin Wall Kimmerer presented on Emergence Magazine. The essay is Ancient Green.
See here my introduction to the new book for citizens, The Big Fix: 7 Practical Steps to Save Our Planet.
The first chapter, the first big lesson for us, is to understand what economists call the learning curve of a new technology. Theodore P. Wright was an architectural engineer with an inquisitive mind. Everyone knew that costs decrease as production increases but he wanted to know if there was a pattern that could predict it. The principle is rooted in economy of scale.
Wright eventually found that as production doubles, the cost of labor decreases by 20 percent. Production becomes more efficient as workers find better ways to do things and technology is improved. This formula is Wright’s Law.
In a graph of the production and cost of making the Model T Ford, Wright observed something else: as demand by the public grew, cost of production decreased and thus the price to the consumer. One drives the other.
When you plot the production by cost, you are measuring another principle that the business world knows well for any new product: the learning curve. The company and workers learn more efficient ways of making something further driving down the price.
An important idea is that the reverse is also true: if a new technology is left to linger, i.e. production is slow due to lack of demand, then the cost of production will not decrease and the potential will die.
It is not time that drives the learning curve, it is the amount of production.
Citizens can drive the learning curve for renewable energy to reduce humanity’s footprint on the Earth. We are not passive bystanders waiting for businesses and government to figure out how to make cheap EVs: we have to drive it with demand for it. And, the IRA funding will be available to you and your family or business to do just that! Go here to learn about the tax and price incentives available to all of us on January 1, 2023 and for the subsequent decade!
About a decade ago I put together seven book reviews of a group of novels with related themes. Seven Stories was never published except on this blog.
The book that inspired me to begin this project is The Loon Feather, Iola Fuller, published in 1940. Here is the pdf of that synopsis. The author shares a great love of the land and the original people. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings reviewed it as a book “of the rarest beauty”.
I believe the authors in the Seven Stories collection bring readers a certain kind of wisdom we sorely need now. Start with The Loon Feather located on Mackinac Island in the Great Lakes.
Update: In a discussion about the making of the film Lincoln, Doris Kearns Godwin, Tony Kushner, and Steven Spielberg identify their favorite scenes in the movie, Steven talks about the ability to accept a great idea from the “other side”: this illustrates the point of this post!
God rolls the dice, shuffles the deck for endless possibilities, knowing not how anyone of us creatures of Earth may respond – ignore, expire, excel. But, rolling and dealing endless possibilities is the key to God’s success.
Trees know this for through God each tree grows thousands of seeds in all shapes and configurations but in the end it releases them to the wind, to hitch a ride on the fur of a passing creature or fall into the fast moving stream nearby. Will a seed find rich soil? Will it be nourished to survive? Will it fall upon concrete? Or be gobbled up, later to be excreted with a wrapping of fertilizer?
With all the possibilities, each with its potential outcomes, some seedlings will grow. And, IF there is enough sunlight and just the right amount of moisture and warmth, it will grow into a mighty tree and someday throw its own possibilities into the winds of the future.
The Creator exerts patience and rationality: a kind of detachment that allows all possibilities to emerge.
That’s where we come in. Will we respond or ignore an opportunity, or more often, doubt ourselves? God observes. We might get another “hand” or not. I think the Creator must love the folks who take a chance knowing they might fail. Because that’s what the Gambler must do: keep rolling the dice, keep open all the possibilities for a winning hand! Indeed, all great things require it.
Therefore, let us consider all the possibilities rather than spend our time criticizing ideas, even despising the source of them; let us work broadly and earnestly to solve our common problems: climate change, war, peaceful relations. etc. by keeping many ideas and strategies in play.
What if together we just might play a winning hand?
The Crystal Beads is an award-winning new children’s book written by Pat Gould-Black. She is a successful author. This is her first book “for children” but folks, this book is a cautionary tale for all of us today in America where we are facing fascist forces moving through our political structures and sanctioning ideas in our public schools.
Here is an interesting podcast with Pat on David Edward’s Frequency 99 podcast. David is also an author. Take time to listen then order the book and share it with your family and friends. Pat provides an adult reader guide. She is a psychotherapist who counsels veterans experiencing PTSD. Please get a copy, and also suggest to your local library to add this book to their children’s and adult book collection.
Order a copy and support independent bookstores: The Crystal Beads.
Artists like Pat are powerful voices calling to us to be vigilant and to think for ourselves in a time when we are deluged by media. Turn it off. Read the book. Think. And Act!
Here is another author who was engaged by the American government in the rise of fascism in our country to write a fictional story about the pernicious ways in which fascism takes hold of a community: John Steinbeck’s The Moon is Down.
Susan Feathers 