Yep it is that time again.
For the new folks, about every two weeks or so I post a giant thread of good news from all around the world.
The best way to view this is to click on the hashtag and then "pin" that column. So you can just browse it when you need to.
As usual, if the infinite doom loop is appealing to you just filter the hashtag, and you will remain... ya know doomed.
Watch out this is a long thread.....
#CoSoGoodNews
Shorts
To start things off, a lot of very bad climate news has been hitting us all over the head. So the first few posts in this thread will be short Good News about the climate.
A former coal plant in the UK is being transformed into the world's largest battery storage project;
#CoSoGoodNews
Shorts
European renewables giant Octopus is planning to invest $20 billion in offshore wind by 2030
#CoSoGoodNews
Shorts
Thyssenkrupp, Europe's second-largest steelmaker, has secured €2 billion from the German government for green steel investment
#CoSoGoodNews
Shorts
US regulators just opened the Gulf of Mexico to offshore wind leases.
https://cleantechnica.com/2023/07/21/biden-unlocks-wind-power-in-gulf-of-mexico
#CoSoGoodNews
Shorts
Egypt has brought its clean energy targets forward by five years and allocated land for a 10 GW wind project to provide electricity to 11 million households.
https://renews.biz/87031/acwa-signs-land-agreement-for-10gw-egyptian-wind-project
#CoSoGoodNews
Shorts
Israel now requires all new non-residential buildings to be covered in solar.
#CoSoGoodNews
Shorts
India is about to launch a staggering 20 GW tender for new battery manufacturing.
#CoSoGoodNews
Shorts
4.4 GW of rooftop solar has been installed in South Africa in the last year.
https://twitter.com/laurimyllyvirta/status/1683528165744885762
#CoSoGoodNews
Shorts
The Philippines just awarded a whole lot of new solar projects.
https://www.pv-tech.org/1-96gw-of-solar-pv-awarded-in-philippines-green-energy-auction
#CoSoGoodNews
Shorts
Brazil says its solar industry has created around 960,000 jobs since 2012.
https://renewablesnow.com/news/brazil-tops-32-gw-of-installed-solar-pv-capacity-828687
#CoSoGoodNews
Shorts
Barbados is now targeting a 100% carbon neutral economy by 2030.
In the last six months nearly every mainstream media outlet has pointed out that China is still building a lot of coal, implying that the country is hedging its bets on renewables. It's not. In the first half of 2023, around $5 billion has been invested in coal and fossil gas and a similar amount in both hydro and nuclear; $10 billion has been invested in wind, $18 billion in solar, and an astonishing $28 billion in transmission.
The IEA has a new report showing that renewables are on track to meet all the growth in global electricity demand over the next two years. This would represent a key milestone in the fight against climate change–once all new demand is met, renewables will start eating into fossil fuels' share of the power mix.
https://www.iea.org/reports/electricity-market-report-update-2023
The global price of polysilicon (the stuff they make solar panels from) has dropped by 78% over the past year.
https://twitter.com/barnettenergy/status/1681316806173270017
The US offshore wind sector is booming. There has been a 272% increase in the number of offshore wind supplier contracts since 2021, and 47% of that growth has occurred since the passage of the IRA. Nine in every ten contracts are going to companies that are either headquartered or have a presence in the US. Industrial policy FTW.
https://renews.biz/87088/us-offshore-supply-chain-sees-major-growth
The 12.5% royalty rate that oil companies in the United States have to pay for the use of federal lands has remained unchanged for over one hundred years. The government is now reforming that system, raising the minimum rate to 16.7% and prioritizing renewables development on federal lands over fossil fuel development.
https://grist.org/regulation/biden-blm-raising-fees-oil-gas-drilling-federal-lands
In the first half of this year, wind and solar generated more power than coal in the United States. Wind and solar produced 343 terawatt-hours (TWh) from January through June 2023, while coal produced 296 TWh. Five years ago, coal’s share was quadruple that of wind and solar combined. Next step: fossil gas.
California, the seventh-biggest US crude oil producer, has put a near-halt on issuing permits for new drilling this year. The state's Geologic Energy Management Division has approved seven new active well permits in 2023. Compare that with the more than 200 it had issued by this time last year.
Australia’s big banks have turned their backs on the country’s largest coal miner, refusing to refinance a billion-dollar debt in a major rebuff that will force Whitehaven Coal to source loans offshore, potentially speeding up the demise of the sector. Couldn't have happened to nicer people.
A reminder from Hannah Ritchie. 'The internal combustion engine is shockingly inefficient. For every dollar of petrol you put in, you get just 20 cents’ worth of driving motion. The other 80 cents is wasted along the way, most of it as heat from the engine. Electric cars are much better at converting energy into motion. For every dollar of electricity you put in, you get 89 cents out.
A new analysis from Global Energy Monitor, a San Francisco-based think tank, found that 43% percent of planned steelmaking capacity globally is now slated to use electric-arc furnaces, which use electricity to generate heat, up from 33% last year. 'Steel has moved from inertia to progress.
https://globalenergymonitor.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/GEM_SteelPlants2023.pdf
BUTDAMINERALZ?
A report from the Energy Transitions Commission concludes that 'there is no fundamental shortage of any of the raw materials to support a global transition to a net-zero economy: geological resources exceed the total projected cumulative demand from 2022-50 for all key materials.
https://www.energy-transitions.org/publications/material-and-resource-energy-transition
The UN just released its latest AIDS report, showing that deaths fell to 630,000 last year, a reduction of 69% since their peak in 2004. There were an estimated 1.3 million new HIV infections in 2022, the lowest in decades, with the declines especially strong in regions with the highest burdens, and only 130,000 new infections in children, the lowest since the 1980s. UNAIDS
https://thepath.unaids.org/wp-content/themes/unaids2023/assets/files/2023_report.pdf
Humanity is making steady progress in eliminating the awful, centuries-old practice of female genital mutilation. UNICEF just released new data showing that the percentage of affected girls aged 15-19 in the 31 countries where it is still practiced fell to 28% in 2021, down from 34% in 2016.
https://data.unicef.org/topic/child-protection/female-genital-mutilation
The WHO says that Bhutan and Timor-Leste have eliminated rubella, a highly contagious disease that causes serious illness and irreversible birth defects in newborns. The two countries eliminated measles in 2017 and 2018, respectively, and now join Maldives and Sri Lanka in achieving the elimination of measles and rubella in 2023.
Ghana's parliament voted on Tuesday to abolish the death penalty, making the country the latest of several African nations that have moved to repeal capital punishment in recent years. It is the 29th country to abolish the death penalty in Africa and the 124th globally.
https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/ghana-parliament-votes-abolish-death-penalty-2023-07-25
The poverty rate in Cambodia declined to 16% last year, down from 36% in 2014, according to a recent UNDP report. The number of poor people was halved from 5.6 million to 2.8 million during this time, meaning that one in five Cambodians has moved out of poverty in the last eight years.
Last month, the Australian state of Queensland passed new laws to remove barriers to updating birth certificates. The new legislation means transgender, non-binary and gender diverse people will no longer be forced to undergo surgery before being able to correct their gender identity documents.
Japan's Supreme Court ruled last week that its trade ministry violated a public service law by banning a transgender woman from using the women’s bathroom at work. The decision sets an important precedent, requiring employers in Japan to develop policies and practices that allow individuals to use a bathroom aligned with their gender identity.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/07/18/japan-supreme-court-ruling-victory-transgender-employees
A Peruvian high court has ordered same-sex unions to be legally registered, marking a victory for the LGBTQ community in a country that has been reluctant to recognize gay couples. Peru is one of the last remaining countries in Latin America that has not recognized same-sex marriage.
A win for reproductive rights in Australia, where the Therapeutic Goods Administration scrapped restrictions on access to medical abortion pills, which are used in the early stages of an unwanted pregnancy. Doctors and pharmacists without specialist certification will now be able to prescribe termination pills.
In April this year, Sierra Leone became the 16th country in the world to guarantee free schooling or adopt a law to provide or expand free pre-primary education since 2015. While progress is still too slow for the millions of children out of school, the trend is encouraging.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/05/09/legal-right-free-education-grows-globally
US citizens have 10-15% more in their bank accounts than before the pandemic, inflation has been cut by more than two-thirds from its peak, talk of a recession seems to have magically disappeared, the share of 25-54 year olds who are working or seeking jobs has risen to its highest level since 2002, and the number of Americans dying each day is no longer historically abnormal.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/07/17/bank-accounts-excess-cash-savings
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/19/business/economy/economy-soft-landing.html
Deb Haaland, the first Native person to serve as a US Cabinet secretary, has made extraordinary progress in her first two and half years. 'Every day, she’s fully representing our community in ways that have never been visible. Every time I see her, it hits me. And America is seeing her fill that space. She is the face of what America is trying to protect.
Podcast:
A recent conversation with Wanjira Mathai, the Managing Director for Africa at the World Resources Institute, left us on a high for days. She shares her story of growing up in Kenya and how she 'basks in the light' of her mother, Wangari Mathai, the first environmentalist to win the Nobel Peace Prize for her work with the Green Belt Movement.
https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/wanjira-mathai-a-new-story-for-africa/id1689195588
Deforestation in Colombia fell by 29% last year after new peace efforts put the environment at the centre of negotiations. The country, which has endured decades of internal conflict, saved 50,000 hectares of forest–the highest reduction in deforestation and forest fires in two decades.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/12/colombia-deforestation-amazon-rainforest-peace
Lion populations are increasing across Africa thanks to vast, protected landscape mosaics linked by natural corridors. After years of absence, the big cats have been spotted in parks in Mozambique and Chad, and in Senegal the population of the critically endangered West African lions at Niokolo Koba National Park has doubled since 2011.
@corlin good point but unless the electricity is renewable the calculation needs to contain powerplant efficiency. The best systems are 60% so electric car = .89×.6 = .53 0r 53% efficient at the vehicle. The average powerplant is 33% efficient so that calculates to 29% efficient at the electric vehicle.
All of this is better than the internal combustion engine - just not 4.5 times better.
I ignore wind and solar losses since the losses are not related to the burning of fossil fuel.
#CoSoGoodNews
The European Union has adopted new rules intended to make it easier for electric vehicle owners to travel across the continent. From 2025 onward, the new regulation requires fast-charging stations offering at least 150kW of power to be installed every 60km along the EU’s TEN-T system of highways, the bloc’s main transport corridors.
https://www.theverge.com/23806690/eu-ev-fast-charger-60km-law-regulation-requirements