Wall Street Journal (February 10)
European scientists have set a “nuclear-fusion energy world record” and the “findings suggest this approach can be scaled-up for use in power plants.” The experiment successfully “generated 59 megajoules of fusion energy for five seconds,” but “the researchers weren’t able to overcome a major obstacle: generating more energy than they had to put into the experiment.” A scaled-up version looks set to do so as early as 2025. Currently “35 firms globally are racing to be the first to create net-energy machines and to commercialize them by delivering electricity to the power grid.”
Tags: 2025, Commercialize, Electricity, Energy, Europe, Net-energy machines, Nuclear fusion, Obstacle, Power grid, Power plants, Scientists, World record
New York Times (February 3)
In a move “that is unheard-of for an advanced economy…. Japan now plans to build as many as 22 new coal-burning power plants—one of the dirtiest sources of electricity—at 17 different sites in the next five years, just at a time when the world needs to slash carbon dioxide emissions to fight global warming.”
Tags: Advanced, CO2, Coal burning, Dirtiest, Economy, Electricity, Japan, Power plants, Unheard-of
BBC (September 29)
All of South Australia blacked out when a vicious storm struck, toppling approximately 20 transmission towers and leveling nearly 80,000 lightning strikes, some of these damaged power plants and facilities. The unprecedented weather “has very quickly turned into an Australian political storm, with the state’s dependency on renewable energy now being debated with the full force and bluster of a tornado.”
Tags: Black out, Damage, Dependency, Lightning, Political storm, Power plants, Renewable energy, South Australia, Storm, Transmission towers, Weather
LA Times (March 12)
“California leads the pack with the share of electricity from renewable sources, more than doubling from 12% in 2008 to 25% today. In that period, private companies invested more than $20 billion in new renewable power plants here. California is home to the largest geothermal, wind, solar thermal and solar photovoltaic power plants in the world.” By2030, California is aiming to reach 50% renewable energy, after which fossil fuels will become “the alternative energy.”
Tags: Alternative energy, California, Electricity, Fossil fuels, Geothermal, Photovoltaic, Power plants, Renewable sources, Solar, Thermal, Wind
