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Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and more severe as climate change accelerates. Advances in modeling now make it possible to more quickly and reliably determine to what extent global warming causes individual events, offering greater opportunities to educate the public about climate change impacts.
Solar power plays an essential role in the clean energy transition, but its land-use requirements put it in direct competition with agriculture. New research on agrivoltaics demonstrates the benefits of combining both solar and agricultural production including increased productivity, water conservation, and local economic development, while also bolstering public support for clean energy.
Research shows increasingly frequent, more intense wildfires in the Western U.S. will dramatically shift the landscape over the coming decades, resulting in the conversion of forests to shrublands, grasslands, or hardwood-dominated ecosystems before 2100, but strategies such as prescribed fires, managed wildfires, and silvicultural treatments could help protect forests.
The United States Energy Policy Simulator 3.3 update builds on the previously released version 3.2.1 by adding demographic breakdowns of premature mortality, improving the user interface, and adding policies to address domestic manufacturing and nitrous oxide emissions, among other improvements.
A critical tipping point for the Earth’s climate is the potential transformation of the world’s largest tropical forests from carbon sinks into net sources of emissions, which has been challenging for researchers to predict. But now, groundbreaking studies analyzing observations from Amazonian and African tropical forests find these forests have already reached or are nearing their “saturation points.” Halting deforestation and degradation of forests, while cutting global emissions is critical.
Given the long lifespans of power system investments, planning should start incorporating climate change effects. A new study provides a valuable example of an approach to more comprehensively integrate climate risks in long-term electricity planning. This work also illustrates an important win-win in that solar power is both an effective adaptation (helping to reduce summer peak) and carbon mitigation strategy, highlighting positive, no-regret investments.
This visual interactive feature allows users to explore the major findings of the Coal Cost Crossover 2.0 report. Users can scroll to view interactive maps showing the specific locations of uneconomic coal plants and regions where new solar or new wind resources would be cheaper than existing coal.
This dynamic online data explorer supports the 2035 2.0 research by allowing anyone to explore how all-electric vehicle sales by 2035 impact vehicle cost, sales, and stock over time, as well as associated job creation and reductions in carbon emissions, and impacts on the power sector.
Soil scientists disagree about whether soil carbon sequestration can effectively help decarbonize the atmosphere, but this debate does not undermine the substantive body of science supporting immediate, widespread adoption of practices protecting and restoring soil carbon.
Statement from Energy Innovation CEO Hal Harvey on Sonia Aggarwal’s appointment to serve as a climate policy advisor in the Biden administration.
