Humanity is graduating from burning fossil commodities to mastering manufactured technologies—from hunting scarce fossils to farming the inexhaustible sun, from consuming Earth’s resources to merely borrowing them.

archived (Wayback Machine)

cross-posted from: https://futurology.today/post/6471896

"Pakistan, which has for years treated gas generation as the backbone of its power network, has been asking suppliers to defer shipments of liquefied natural gas after a surge of solar imports suppressed grid demand. Saudi Arabia is facing one of the fastest declines in petroleum usage anywhere as photovoltaic farms replace fuel oil generators."

Analysts are talking about a supply glut of oil for 2025/26 lowering oil prices. Are we finally at the point oil use is going to start declining? Fingers crossed, let's hope so.

Meanwhile, China is almost single-handedly building the world's replacement.

China’s Marshall Plan is running on batteries: Beijing’s green energy projects are bringing jobs, growth and cheap electricity to the developing world

We’re in the midst of a global solar revolution. Don’t believe it? Just look at the latest numbers.

In the first six months of this year, the world built 64% more new solar energy capacity than it did in the first half of 2024, according to think tank Ember. The 380 gigawatts’ worth of solar installed through June of this year is roughly equal to the amount of solar installed in all of 2021 and 2022 combined.

Find local events here

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/49027814

China has connected to the grid a 100 MW hybrid energy storage facility that integrates supercapacitors and lithium-ion batteries

Touted as the world’s largest supercapacitor-based installation, the facility combines a 58 MW/30-second supercapacitor array with 42 MW/42 MWh of lithium-ion battery storage, spanning a footprint of approximately 16,800 square meters.

Supercapacitors provide ultrafast response times – specified at 0.001 seconds – and maintain over 85% capacity at –40°C, significantly outperforming lithium-ion batteries in extreme cold. By offloading rapid-response tasks to the supercapacitor, the system is expected to extend battery lifespan and reduce lifecycle costs by around 30%

• Norway’s $1.6 trillion government pension fund is divesting its $6.8 million stake in French miner Eramet after its ethics council found “unacceptable risk” of severe environmental damage and human rights violations at the PT Weda Bay Nickel mine the company operates in Halmahera, Indonesia.

• Weda Bay Nickel sits in the Wallacea Biodiversity Hotspot and has already cleared about 2,700 hectares (6,700 acres) of rainforest since 2019, far exceeding its plan, threatening endemic species and risking extinctions before they’re documented.

• The case highlights growing investor scrutiny over whether nickel for electric vehicle batteries and other clean-energy technologies can be sourced without destroying tropical forests or violating Indigenous rights.

Note: Btw I don't endorse this ruling. I just thought it was important news to share

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/27368195

• Numerous villages in Indonesia’s Halmahera Island face extensive compulsory purchase actions for farming land by mining companies with extraction permits issued by the government.
• One farmer said he faced sustained pressure from local authorities to accept offers of $1.22 per square meter of land, which did not account for the recurring revenues earned from multiple coconut harvests per year.
• The South Wasile’s police chief sent an emphatic denial to Mongabay Indonesia when asked whether local police were involved in company efforts to persuade farmers to sign contracts of sale.
• Mongabay has reported this year from Halmahera on a rise in respiratory disease and high levels of mercury present in blood samples in communities living alongside Weda Bay Industrial Park (IWIP), the giant nickel smelting center on Halmahera.

archived (Wayback Machine)

Edit: I thought of editing the title, as well as mentionning that I didn’t like the tone of this article in the sense that it presents it ok to clear out forest for solar panels, and personally I believe it’s criminal, or something. I just thought it had some important info. And thank you Tobberone for your comment!

The study: Solar Power or Forests? A Cost-Benefit Analysis of Forest Land Conversion in the Northeastern United States

It’s increasingly common to hear from experts and the general public that the global shift away from fossil fuels is glacially slow, or even nonexistent.

As the view goes, the meteoric rise of clean energy is only supplementing fossil fuels rather than pushing them out. Repeated with increasing frequency by many – including the fossil fuel lobby – this view is not only incorrect, but dangerous. If accepted as truth, it will encourage climate fatalism.

In reality, we’re living through the fastest energy transformation in human history. Every previous large-scale shift in energy – from muscle power to wood to coal to oil – has taken decades or even longer. But the “renewable revolution” is happening far faster.

It’s only in the past ten years that renewables have become cheap and reliable, and only in the past five that energy storage has become cheap and widely available. Solar farms, wind turbines and grid-scale storage can be built remarkably quickly. Net-zero cities are becoming possible. The iron laws of economics have kicked in. These cheap forms of electricity generation are already displacing more and more fossil fuels.

A common criticism of heat pumps is that they do not work in cold weather.

However, the Nordic region – particularly Sweden, Finland and Norway – offers a rebuttal to this assessment, as our research at the Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP) shows.

These three European countries have the highest heat pump sales per 1,000 households in the continent.

Sweden, Norway and Finland also have the coldest climates in Europe. In all three countries, there are now more than 40 heat pumps per 100 households, more than in any other country in the world.

At RAP, we have analysed the driving factors that led to this Nordic success story, as part of the development of our heat pump policy toolkit, which we launched at the COP27 climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh last year.

As the Trump administration grows increasingly hostile to renewable energy, we speak with acclaimed environmentalist Bill McKibben about his new book, Here Comes the Sun, in which he lays out a hopeful vision for the future that includes avoiding climate catastrophe, reshaping the economy and saving democracy. He says the key to unlock that future is fully embracing renewable energy over the fierce opposition of the fossil fuel industry and its political enablers. He notes that solar and wind are already the cheapest and fastest-growing power sources in history, with more green energy coming online every year.

“It’s not that we’re going to stop global warming. It’s too late for that. It’s that we really have a chance to reboot the way the world and its economy and its geopolitics works right now,” says McKibben.