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Do electric cars pose a greater fire risk than petrol or diesel vehicles?
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In Norway, which has the world’s highest proportion of electric car sales, there are between four and five times more fires in petrol and diesel cars, according to the directorate for social security and emergency preparedness. The Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency this year found that there were 3.8 fires per 100,000 electric or hybrid cars in 2022, compared with 68 fires per 100,000 cars when taking all fuel types into account. However, the latter figures include arson, making comparisons tricky.
How to kill clean energy transition in Canada
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The aggressiveness of Alberta’s moratorium and advertising campaign suggests that the government is following a plan that involves softening up Albertans to the idea that renewable energy is bad. Policies to further obstruct investment opportunities in renewable energy will likely follow.
Through misinformation, damaging policy measures and exerting influence on AESO, the Alberta government will attempt to steer the once-booming renewable energy industry towards the same fate orchestrated by Ford’s Conservative government.
Are independent power producers delivering for South Africa?
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Part of the solution, she suggests, could come from accelerating the rollout of feed-in tariffs, through which homeowners with rooftop solar systems sell the surplus electricity they generate at peak times to the grid.
Several municipalities have introduced feed-in tariffs schemes, which typically require homeowners to pay a monthly fee, though a national-level scheme is still on the drawing board. As well as increasing the supply of power to the grid, a feed-in tariff generates some revenue for municipalities and reduces the attraction of going completely off-grid for wealthy homeowners.
Incentives for rooftop solar panel should be raised: Civil groups
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With a government-convened review committee set to decide the renewable energy feed-in tariff (FIT) rates for next year later this week, several civil groups called for incentives to install solar panels on residential rooftops to be increased by raising the FIT for smaller installed capacity.
The FIT rate for rooftop solar energy capacity is currently divided into four intervals, with the smallest being 1kW to 20kW (approximately NT$5.8/kWh) and the largest being over 500kW (approx. NT$4/kWh).
A treasure beneath our feet’: How the Dutch went down the toilet looking for heat
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“The warmth comes from showers, the toilet, wastewater from washing, from the dishwasher, from the washing machine,” says Postuma. “Together it all gives, throughout the year, a temperature between 15 and 18 degrees. And we are going to make a bypass around the main sewer, put a heat exchanger around it and bring it to the houses in insulated pipes. We place it in an electric heat pump, and the water is heated up to 60 or 70C – medium temperature.”
New Guidance to Expand Access to Clean Vehicle Tax Credits
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Starting on January 1st 2024, new IRS provisions “will allow consumers to transfer credit to car dealers, reducing purchase price of new and previously owned clean vehicles at time of sale.” This is a fundamental shift in the clean vehicle tax credit idea. Currently, if the vehicle and buyer meet the criteria, the tax credit effectively deducts what the buyer owes in federal taxes. For example, if you were buying an EV that met the criteria to claim the max of $7,500 and you owed $5,000 in taxes to the federal government, you would owe nothing on your return, but lose out on the additional $2,500 left. Now, the credit becomes effective immediately, so buyers could use it as a down payment for their purchase, enabling the full amount to be claimed much easier.
‘Go hard and go big’: How South Australia got solar panels onto one in every three houses
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Tristan Edis, an analyst with the consultants Green Energy Markets, said the lesson for those watching on was pretty simple: the generous early subsidies worked. “It really was this fortuitous accident that happened,” he said. “The message from it is pretty clear: go hard and go big, or don’t bother.”
Factcheck: 21 misleading myths about electric vehicles
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Electric vehicles (EVs) significantly cut lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions in almost all circumstances and are the key technology for decarbonising road transport.
While not having a car has even larger climate benefits, many peoples’ ability to go car-free is limited by their circumstances and the availability of alternatives.
This means EVs are “likely crucial” for tackling transport emissions, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
EV sales are growing fast, accounting for one in every seven cars sold globally in 2022 – up from one-in-70 just five years earlier.
Yet EVs are also being subjected to relentless hostile reporting across mainstream media in many major economies, including the UK.
One worker reported dead and two critically injured in explosion at major wind industry supplier
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One worker has been killed, and three injured, in an explosion at a factory run by Danish wind sector supplier Welcon, according to media reports in Denmark.
The accident occurred at the company's recently-expanded factory in the Give area of Denmark, and resulted in the death of a 41-year old Portuguese national, according to a report by Danish news website Vejile Amts Folkeblad, which quoted Stig Simonsen, a deputy police inspector at South East Jutland Police.
Fox anchor and climate contrarian defend Trump’s unhinged comments about whales and offshore wind
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Fox anchor Martha MacCallum and anti-renewable energy activist Michael Shellenberger defended widely debunked statements former President Donald Trump made about whales and offshore wind farms at a recent campaign rally, instead crediting him for “shining a light” on the issue.
Lompoc Wind Farm Expects to Start Up This Month
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The fits and starts for a wind energy project in the hills east of Lompoc arrived at an unexpected finish line when current operator BayWa obtained a letter from U.S. Fish & Wildlife on September 25 stating that the agency expected to issue a golden eagle take authorization to the Strauss Wind Energy Project by next March.
Instead of tilting at turbines we should see them for what they are: beautiful
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But I would ask country dwellers still inclined to block them to see that they are in fact beautiful. They are prettier than power stations, less destructive than fracking, certainly lovelier than floods, fires, droughts and other effects of climate change. They enrich the nation with the help of its abundant wind, and make us less dependent on fossil-fuel despots. Wind turbines are in a long rural tradition of robust practical structures that also includes barns, mills, viaducts, canals and others that have become beloved and protected. On those same drives I was always happy to see an old windmill. It shouldn’t be too hard to love their modern equivalents.
