Jasmin Day is pregnant and when her girl or boy is born later this year—she’s keeping the gender a surprise—her baby will become the first child ever born in Babcock Ranch, Fla.
FOX NEWS -- “Almost all the boxes are undone,” she says while stepping over the just delivered new bed. She, husband Josh, and little kids, Judson and Elliot, just moved into their new house and this brand new community – dubbed the city of the future. The young couple from Memphis, Tenn. could not be happier. “To be able to be a part of a community of everyone that cares,” Josh Day said, “and wants that for them, not only for themselves but also for their children and their grandchildren, to have it be a more clean Earth whenever our children are older.” His wife added: "I think we’re pretty all in! We live here. We work here." Babcock Ranch, near Fort Myers on state’s west coast, was developed from the beginning with a massive solar power farm generating 100 percent of the electric needs. About 350,000 photovoltaic solar panels stretch across a swath of land the size of 200 football fields. When developer Syd Kitson, a former NFL lineman with the Dallas Cowboys and Green Bay Packers, bought the 17,000-acre property, it was all old mining and farmland. Babcock Ranch, near Fort Myers on state’s west coast, was developed from the beginning with a massive solar power farm generating 100 percent of the electric needs. About 350,000 photovoltaic solar panels stretch across a swath of land the size of 200 football fields. It’s now the country’s first, fully solar city, with a very low carbon footprint, a soon-to-open school, electric shuttles that will eventually be driverless, a cute town square with shops and an emphasis on the environment and preservation. Where most developers would build and sell as many homes as possible, for greater profit, Kitson’s vision from the beginning was preserving most of the open space, now encompassing several lakes and 50 miles of bike trails. The homes run from $190,000 to about $499,000. Residents can work in the town, but are not required to do so. The fully completed footprint will eventually be 19,500 homes. "We think about the way we develop differently…. It’s the most environmentally responsible, the most sustainable new town that’s ever been developed,” Kitson said. “And, it’s the first solar-powered town in America. And we’re very proud of that." In January, the first two people moved in. Now, there are 150 homes under contract with an expectation that will there will be 250 families moved in by December. Eight developers are now building homes. The vision is a unique creation of a 45,000-person small city. But first came the enormous solar farm. Kitson gave the land to Florida Power & Light for free, which then spent more than $100,000,000 installing all the panels, wires and storage batteries. That solar-generated power now is shared throughout FPL’s grid, as Babcock Ranch’s demand, at this point, remains very small. John Woolschlager, an urban planning professor at nearby Florida Gulf Coast University, said all cities can ultimately follow Babcock Ranch’s model, but it will take years. Babcock Ranch’s huge advantage was that it’s being built from scratch with the self-sustainability and pro-environment philosophy on the ground first. “I think, also, if you look to the distant future, it’s going to be a necessity,” Woolschlager said. “If we want to have a good life in the future, we have to think more sustainability, because if we don’t, we’re going to run out of energy, run out of water and run out of resources." For Josh Day, he’s landed a physical therapy job in the town square’s Life Wellness Center. So, if he doesn’t bike to work and home, he can just ride a solar powered, electric shuttle, in a town which – for now – has no traffic nor rush hours.
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Women make up about a third of U.S. wind and solar energy jobs, higher than other technology fields.
ENERGY NEWS -- Sarah Fischer’s journey into the renewable energy field began with a high school French teacher whose husband had been a child slave in Haiti. The couple opened Fischer’s eyes to human rights and international development issues and sparked a desire to make a difference in such situations. The more she learned about the role of deforestation and natural resource exploitation in creating poverty, the more she became interested in sustainability and renewable energy as ways to address injustice. Fischer, who recently graduated summa cum laude from Ohio State University with a degree in sustainability economics and business, hopes to work in renewable energy policy, first in the U.S. and eventually related to international development. She is among a cohort of young women whom an organization called WRISE(Women of Renewable Industries and Sustainable Energy) hopes will increase representation of women in the wind energy field. Fischer was among 11 women who received two different fellowships to attend last month’s annual WINDPOWER conference in Chicago. Fischer was among the Rudd Mayer fellows (named for a Colorado sustainability campaigner who passed away suddenly in 2002) who are considering a range of policy and other jobs in renewable energy. WRISE’s Wind at Our Backs scholars, meanwhile, are entering wind technology specifically, and received $2,500 scholarships along with attending the conference. The Wind at Our Backs fellows includes Ashley Hobbs, who became interested in wind energy seeing wind turbines along the drive to her high school in Arnett, Oklahoma. “I always wanted to know how they worked,” she said. For seven years, Hobbs worked in another heavily male-dominated field: as a corrections officer and dispatcher in the corrections system. Then Hobbs completed an advanced wind turbine technician certificate at the High Plains Technology Center in Oklahoma, and she recently accepted a job with GE that will see her not only knowing how wind turbines work, but helping them do so. She’s done all this while also raising two girls as a single mother. “My goals in wind energy are to work my way up over the next several years, as in lead tech and even site lead,” Hobbs said. “Wind is crucial for our future when it comes to clean energy and power. Sustainability is the biggest factor to me in wind energy; wind will always be here.” Numbers growing, slowly Kristen Graf entered the renewable energy field herself about 16 years ago. In college, she was “stunned” to see how few women were in her engineering classes, and that trend only continued once she entered the renewable energy technology and policy world. So after a stint with the Union of Concerned Scientists, Graf took the opportunity to become executive director of WRISE, previously called Women in Wind Energy (WoWE), to try to change that disparity. “There were tons of women in my high school calculus classes, but they didn’t appear in the college programs to the same extent,” said Graf. “There are lots of women in nonprofits, but not as many in the policy space making decisions on the energy side. And you look at public utility commissions, energy committees in Congress; I’d like to see more women there.” A 2017 Department of Energy employment report found that women make up 32 percent of the wind industry workforce, which it found had a total 102,000 jobs. Women also made up 32 percent of the solar energy workforce. Those numbers are higher than some other tech industries; one recent report found women hold less than 20 percent of U.S. tech jobs overall. The current numbers of women in wind could be seen as an improvement from five years ago when another study showed only about 20 to 25 percent of wind industry jobs were held by women. Graf said that various studies or ways of looking at employment data have placed women at 20 to 30 percent of the wind workforce over the past decade, with small gains likely made in recent years. “I’m optimistic this small increase we’ve seen will be something that continues,” she said. “For me it needs to be across the entire sector and every level of that sector, whether entry-level technicians, the manufacturing floor, C-suites, and boards. Some of those roles — admin, paralegal, marketing — are much further ahead in terms of having significant numbers of women in them. It’s the edges, the C-suite, the boardroom, the more technical roles, the highly financial roles that have struggled to get numbers of women.” The DOE report found similar proportions of women in other energy fields including biofuels, coal and combined heat and power. Energy efficiency and petroleum fuels each had about a quarter of jobs filled by women. Racial and ethnic minority women are likely even more under-represented, though Graf said there is no comprehensive data that looks at renewable energy jobs by both gender and race. When race alone was considered, the DOE report found Latinos to make up about 20 percent of the workforce and African Americans to make up about 10 percent, in a number of renewable energy sectors. Futures in Renewable Energy During college, Fischer, 22, interned with nonprofits including the Ohio Environmental Council, Clean Fuels Ohio and the Electrification Coalition. She focused for a while on electric vehicles. “Electric vehicles are great and more efficient, but Ohio runs mostly on coal power, so electric vehicles aren’t emissions free unless you can promote renewable energy and make sure electricity comes from those sources,” she noted. She recently began a new job with the DC Sustainable Energy Utility, and she plans to later go to graduate school focused on energy policy. While small-scale solar arrays are increasingly being used to improve the lives of people in developing countries, Fischer imagines wind power could also have a bigger role. “In the U.S. we developed through this incredible push for industrialization and fossil fuels, and it had all kinds of impacts on our environment,” she said. “We eventually cut back our impacts but something we need to focus on when looking at other countries developing is finding a way they can skip that [fossil fuel stage] and go straight to green renewable energy.” While she is emphatic that the U.S. “should not be telling other countries what to do,” she’d like to be part of such efforts. “We’ve seen oil pipelines and coal plants being developed on an industrial scale in developing countries, so I can’t see why we can’t develop wind there.” Hobbs, meanwhile, plans to later get her associate’s degree, thanks in part to the Wind at Our Backs fellowship, and continue working in wind energy. “There’s always a need for women in male-dominated fields such as wind energy,” she said. “All industries need equality for women. Every woman has to prove ourselves to the men in the industry. We have to show them that we can keep up with them and can do the same work that men can do.” Opening doors Even as employers — especially larger corporations that make up the bulk of the wind industry — make commitments to hire more women, “hiring managers appear baffled on how to meet this challenge, often citing a lack of qualified female candidates for positions,” Graf wrote on WRISE’s website. WRISE has an initiative called “Find Her Keep Her: Recruiting and Retaining Women across Renewable Energy” that is aimed at showing corporations how to bring women into their workforce, also highlighting the stories of women in renewable energy. WRISE notes that mentoring, developing leadership pipelines, transparency around salary, flexibility in schedule and other specific policies can help bring more women into the industry. WRISE also runs its own one-on-one and peer group mentoring programs, along with the fellowships. “It’s exciting to me to be able to help open at least a few doors for them,” Graf said of the Fellows. “And it’s incumbent on the industry as a whole to make sure they have the opportunities they need to flourish and grow and become an integrated part of the sector.” “The success of the sector is reliant on us doing a good job not just on gender but in all different aspects of race, ethnicity, ability, geography, background,” she continued. “We can’t just have all the same people talking around the same ideas all the time, or we’re not going to make the type of progress we want to make.” TESLA GETS GREEN LIGHT TO CREATE THE WORLD’S LARGEST VIRTUAL SOLAR PLANT IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA6/5/2018 The government of South Australia, which changed hands after an election this March, just announced that it would move forward with the previous regime’s agreement with Tesla to install solar panels on 1,100 houses, according to ABC. The original deal – to create what’s being called the world’s largest virtual power plant
ABC – was first struck in February between Tesla and South Australia’s then-dominant Labor Party. But when Steven Marshall of the Liberal Party was elected Premier of South Australia, it was unclear if the government would honor that agreement, or move forward with the Liberal Party’s own plan to subsidize 40 thousand home battery units to bring renewable energy to people who couldn’t otherwise afford it. In good news for clean energy innovation, the government decided to do both. The Tesla plan, funded by a two million dollar grant and 30 million dollar loan from the Australian state’s government, could scale up to 50 thousand solar-powered home batteries if the earlier stages are successful. In addition to the Liberal Party’s own 100 million dollar program — which would subsidize about 2,500 dollars of installation costs per household — this means that South Australia may have a grid of some 90 thousand solar-powered homes within the next few years. If everything goes as planned this could make South Australia a world leader. It could also be a major proving ground, not just for renewable energy, but also for decentralized “virtual” power plants – a new type of energy infrastructure that’s gained some popular traction lately. Right now, almost all of our electricity is generated in real time by power plants that produce enough power to meet demand, but can’t really store any extra for later. A distributed network of home-based generators hooked up to batteries would, advocates argue, be able to provide for the energy needs of that community without putting extra demand on the power plants in that area. And doing so with a network of solar panels hooked up to battery units would let them do so without any greenhouse gas emissions, aside from those given off while producing the solar panels themselves. The network of batteries would help the community stay powered even in spite of that annoying, anti-solar talking point “lol what happens if its cloudy,” and would also help distribute energy if one house needs (or produces) a little extra power. There’s a lot that needs to happen before South Australia gets off the grid and starts powering itself with Tesla’s solar cells, but the government’s continued support for low-cost renewable energy is a good sign for the environment and a future increasingly powered by clean energy. Google’s solar mapping tool Project Sunroof, which uses Google Maps’ satellite imaging software to gauge the suitability of individual homes for solar panels, is now available in the UK. ‘Project Sunroof’ was first launched in the US in 2015, originally covering Boston and San Francisco Bay before being rolled out to include tens of millions of homes across the country. It also launched in Germany earlier this year.
TECHRADAR -- Now Google has partnered with UK energy supplier E.ON to bring the online tool to the UK. Homeowners visiting the E.ON website are able to diagnose the suitability of their roof for panel installation, based on the roof’s size, pitch, and nearby obstacles such as other buildings or trees that could block sunlight. Can your gadgets really live off solar power alone? In one or two minutes you can be looking at a cross section of your roof tagged with your estimated ‘solar yield’ per year, and the predicted costs for standalone panels or those with in-built battery storage. All your friends are doing it. For an accurate quote, users are asked to input the number of residents in their home, as well as their average power usage and peak usage periods in the day. The mapping service can also show you which buildings nearby already have solar panels installed – possibly to prod your sense of social obligation. Unsurprisingly, E.ON is unable to install panels on rented properties, though you’re still able to get a quote for your home if you’re curious. The number of electric vehicles on the road around the world will hit 125 million by 2030, the International Energy Agency forecasts. The world's fleet of electric vehicles grew 54 percent to about 3.1 million in 2017. The IEA says government policy will continue to be the linchpin for electric vehicle adoption.
CNBC -- There will be enough electric cars on the road for roughly every person in Japan — the world's 11th most populous country — in just more than two decades, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Electric vehicle (EV) ownership will balloon to about 125 million by 2030, spurred by policies that encourage drivers, fleets and municipalities to purchase clean-running cars, the policy advisor to energy-consuming nations forecast on Wednesday. That marks a big jump from 2017, when the IEA estimated there were 3.1 million electric vehicles in use, up 54 percent from the previous year. IEA's 22-year outlook still leaves plenty of room for fossil fuel-powered vehicles. Forecasts put the world's total car count at roughly 2 billion somewhere in the 2035 to 2040 window. However, the IEA also sees a pathway to 220 million electric vehicles by 2030, provided the world takes a more aggressive approach to fighting climate change and cutting emissions than currently planned. While battery costs are falling, the IEA acknowledges that government policy remains critical to making EVs attractive to drivers, spurring investment and helping carmakers achieve economies of scale. "The uptake of electric vehicles is still largely driven by the policy environment," the IEA said in the report. "The 10 leading countries in electric vehicle adoption all have a range of policies in place to promote the uptake of electric cars." Policies in place today will make China and Europe the biggest adopters, in the IEA's view. In China, credits and subsidies will help EVs grow to account for more than a quarter of the car market by 2030. Meanwhile, tightening emissions standards and high fuel taxes in Europe will boost the vehicles to 23 percent of the market. As for the United States, the IEA sees electric vehicle deployment growing at two speeds. While it sees "rapid market penetration" in places like California and other states with zero emissions plans, relatively low taxes on fuels and the Trump administration's intentions to scale back vehicle emissions standards could hold back growth. China is already becoming a behemoth in the space. New electric car sales surged by 72 percent, or 580,000 units, in 2017, pushing total ownership over 1 million vehicles. The country is also driving growth in electric buses and two-wheeled vehicles, accounting for about 99 percent of the world's stock of the fast-growing categories. Still, Germany and Japan posted the biggest electric vehicle growth in 2017, with electric vehicle sales more than doubling from 2016. There are also regional differences when it comes to the type of electric vehicles consumers are gravitating towards. The IEA measured the strongest orientation to pure battery electric vehicles in China, France and the Netherlands. Meanwhile, Japan, Sweden and the United Kingdom have the highest share of plug-in hybrid cars. Norway remains the leader when it comes to market share. Electric vehicles accounted for 39 percent of Norway's new car sales last year, and 6.4 percent of the country's cars are powered by electricity. That makes Norway the leader in both categories. But in another sign of the importance of policy, Norway is the only member of the IEA's Electric Vehicles Initiative that saw annual sales volume and market share fall between 2013 and 2017. The IEA chalks up those declines to a change in the way the tax system treats private use of company cars and the end of tax incentives last year for plug-in hybrids. In a single day, the electric car boom may have scored hundreds of millions of dollars of additional investments in three states. First, New Jersey’s biggest utility owner Public Service Enterprise Group laid out a plan to spend $300 million on electric-car charging stations. Then California cleared utilities to invest a combined $738 million on projects promoting EVs.
BLOOMBERG -- And the New York Power Authority committed as much as $250 million on charging stations, including ones at airports. States are doubling down on efforts to replace gasoline-guzzling cars with emissions-free, electric vehicles, even as the White House moves to unravel automotive efficiency standards. Just as electric-car initiatives were gaining speed in California, New Jersey and New York on Thursday, the Trump administration was said to be seeking an end to California’s unique authority to set its own fuel efficiency limits to curb emissions. Despite federal efforts to save fossil fuels, the U.S. is on pace to have more than 1 million electric vehicles on the road by the end of the year. Bloomberg New Energy Finance estimates that figure will surpass 16 million in 2028. “It’s a watershed moment,” said BNEF advanced transportation analyst Salim Morsy. “There’s no longer any question that electrification is going to happen on a very large scale.” The plan approved by the California Public Utilities Commission on Thursday marks the largest-ever utility investment toward the adoption of electric vehicles in the U.S., laying the groundwork for a statewide electric car-charging network. It follows a 2015 California law that required utilities to invest in electrifying transportation to help curb greenhouse-gas emissions. American businesses are investing record amounts in solar, with the top corporate users adding 325 megawatts (MW) of installed capacity last year, according to the "Solar Means Business 2017" report from the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA).
CNBC -- The impact of corporate solar is significant: the solar installations analyzed in the SEIA report produce enough electricity to power 402,000 U.S. homes and offset 2.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide each year. Here, CNBC's Sustainable Energy looks at the top 10 corporations in the U.S. by their installed capacity of solar power. 10. Amazon.com — 33.6 MW It's not only solar power that Amazon is embracing. Last year, the business announced that its largest wind farm to date, Amazon Wind Farm Texas, was up and running. The facility, located in Scurry County, has more than 100 turbines and will add one million megawatt hours of clean energy to the grid each year. 9. Macy's — 38.9 MW As well as having installed almost 40 MW of solar capacity, Macy's wants to increase the amount of its waste diverted from landfills to 70 percent by this year. 8. IKEA — 44.9 MW By 2020, the IKEA Group wants to produce as much renewable energy as it consumes in its operations. On its website, the business says it wants to source all its wood from more sustainable sources, also by 2020. 7. General Growth Properties — 50.2 MW Real estate business General Growth Properties describes sustainability as "an integral component of GGP's long-term success." 6. Costco Wholesale — 50.8 MW Costco is embracing solar in a big way. The businesses states that at the end of the fiscal year for 2017 it was using solar photovoltaic systems at 100 warehouses, from New York to Japan. 5. Kohl's — 51.5 MW Department store Kohl's is not only turning to solar power to reduce its environmental impact. On its website, the business states that it recycles around 150,000 tons of materials annually, which represents more than 80 percent of waste generated. 4. Apple — 79.4 MW Tech giant Apple places fourth in the SEIA's list. Earlier this year, Apple announced that its global facilities were powered by 100 percent clean energy. CEO Tim Cook described the development as a significant milestone for the business. 3. Prologis — 120.7 MW Third placed Prologis has a little under 121 MW of installed capacity, according to the SEIA's report. The business is targeting a 20 percent cut in corporate greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, from a 2011 baseline. 2. Walmart — 149.4 MW With just under 150 MW of solar capacity installed Walmart grabs second place in the SEIA's list. Looking at the bigger picture, the retail giant wants to slash emissions from its value chain by one billion metric tons by 2030. 1. Target — 203.5 MW Target added over 40 MW of solar to its portfolio in 2017. The business now has more than 200 MW of installed capacity. On the White House lawn in June 2017, President Donald Trump announced his plan to pull the U.S. out of the historic Paris climate agreement — a deal he considers bad for the American economy.
MASHABLE -- The climate agreement, which is intended to limit the severity of climate change, will likely be a substantial benefit to most of the world's economies, argue researchers in a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature. Not placing limits on climate-warming carbon emissions, however, would be costly for nearly everyone. The plan — which was even signed by North Korea — hopes to limit warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius (about 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times, back in the 1800s when the atmosphere had substantially less carbon pollution. Until now, there's been an inadequate understanding of how nations might fare economically from collectively meeting these climate goals. To figure that out, researchers combed through both temperature and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) data from 165 countries between 1960 and 2010, finding that 90 percent of the global population will likely benefit from meeting the ambitious Paris carbon target of limiting warming to 1.5 Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit). Higher than average temperatures, they found, can drain economic productivity. "As temperature's warm, output level falls," Marshall Burke, lead author of the study, said in call with reporters. It's particularly important that scientists get some sense of how economies will respond in a warming world, in part, because the Earth's climate is already changing. The planet may soon breach the 1-degree Celsius benchmark above pre-industrial levels, although some scientists think it already has. It's unknown exactly how climate change will affect each and every country in the coming decades, said Burke, but he emphasized that "the benefits of meeting the stringent targets vastly outweigh the costs." And it appears humanity has underestimated how large the magnitude of these costs — which include pummeling storms, declines in crop yields, and the spread of disease — truly is. "As we further grasp the consequences of disrupting the fundamental environment on which modern civilization depends, projections of these costs continue to climb," Sarah Green, an environmental chemist at Michigan Technical University who was not involved in the study, said over email. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) found that in 2017 the U.S. "experienced a historic year of weather and climate disasters," with 16 separate billion-dollar disasters. The world's three largest economies — the U.S., Japan, and China — are all expected to benefit from meeting the 1.5 Celsius carbon target, although the researchers found the poorest nations in the world, which are generally also the hottest, serve to benefit the most. Overall, this means avoiding the nearly unfathomable losses of income associated with a warming climate. For example, if the world were to warm to between 2.5 and 3 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, the researchers project that global economic output would fall between 15 and 25 percent, which amounts to tens of trillions of dollars. Some of this loss is caused by the direct impact of heat on our bodies. "Humans function really well when the temperature is mild," said Marshall. He notes that heat makes us less productive, affecting labor output, cognitive abilities, and the fact that "people are more violent went you crank up the temperature." Transforming massive, complicated economies to meet the 1.5 or 2 degree Celsius targets certainly won't be a simple, nor cheap, task. Tearing down fossil fuel burning-power plants while constructing renewable energy infrastructure has a massive price tag, perhaps costing nations a considerable chunk the all the money they bring in each year, known more formally as Gross Domestic product, or GDP. (U.S. GDP in 2017 was over $19 trillion.) If a country wanted to cut emissions in an extreme way, it would need to spend the equivalent of a few percentage points of GDP, David Victor, a professor of international relations at the University of California, San Diego who had no involvement in the study, said in an interview. "That’s a lot of money," said Victor. "That’s the amount of money you spend on a war." But, he notes, politicians nearly always emphasize the costs of energy transformation, often ignoring the economic benefits illustrated in this study. Simply put, it costs money to make money. And even if nations don't meet the 1.5 Celsius target, these benefits can still be momentous. "It's not an all or nothing game," Kate Larsen, the former White House Council on Environmental Quality Deputy Director for Energy and Climate Change under the Obama Administration, said in an interview. "There's a spectrum of impacts that go from pretty bad to only minor," she said. "There will still be impacts if we meet the Paris goals, but we would have avoided some of the most damaging consequences." But not meeting the Paris goals, either the more stringent 1.5 degree or 2 degree Celsius targets, will likely hit nations in the place they care about most: their wallets. "Temperature affects the fundamental building blocks of economies," said Marshall. The city of Norman took an environmental leap Tuesday with a resolution to transition to 100 percent renewable energy in city buildings by 2035.
NORMAN TRANSCRIPT -- The resolution makes Norman the first city in Oklahoma to make such a commitment to renewables and will see the city tap sources like wind and solar for electricity. By 2050, the resolution calls for 100 percent clean energy commitment across the board, including heating and transportation. “We’ve already been taking baby steps toward this, and I think this is the public commitment to take us the rest of the way,” Ward 6 council member Breea Clark said. “We’re getting noticed for our efforts; now it’s time to follow through.” According to the Sierra Club, 69 cities have made the commitment to clean energy, and six cities have reached that goal. Ready for 100% is a national Sierra Club campaign whose Norman contingent was responsible for bringing the issue to the city. Norman campaign representatives presented recommendations to the Community Planning and Transportation Committee in March and have since been working with the city’s Environmental Control Advisory Board (ECAB) to further develop a plan. How the city will reach its energy goals is to be determined. There could be legislative hurdles, and the city is still negotiating a long-term franchise agreement with OG&E, but the resolution has received broad support from the community and some practical measures are already being explored. “It definitely makes our community a lot harder to get to renewable energy, but OG&E has stated they want to work with us, and we made it very clear where we want to go in the future,” Clark said. “I’m sure there are hurdles, but look at what our state has done in terms of [compressed natural gas] … I think Oklahoma is trying to get there.” During the Ready for 100% presentation before the Community Planning and Transportation Committee in March, Ready for 100% policy committee chair Katherine Trent suggested that a wind farm could be a viable option. At an estimated cost of $87.6 million and an annual upkeep of $14.1 million, a 22-turbine facility that generates 50 megawatts of electricity would be less labor intensive than a solar facility at $20.2 million for 25 megawatts, she said. Trent said a wind farm of that magnitude would generate enough electricity to meet 100 percent of the city’s current needs and could be supplemented with an expansion or solar energy as technology becomes more cost effective. If land availability is an issue, Trent suggested the wind farm could be constructed in Tuttle and electricity could be routed to Norman. Clark said that’s just one idea and the city will look at all its options, like solar panels on city buildings and possibly schools. A Mayor’s Climate Agreement Subcommittee of ECAB will be formed to develop an outline for the transition process, with the aim of completing it by Jan. 1, 2020. “What I’m excited about is there’s an ECAB subcommittee focused on it,” she said. “I think that shows that we’re moving forward on the issue and giving residents of Norman a chance to participate in the process.” One way or another, Trent said renewable energy is happening. In 2017, the World Bank made a commitment to no longer fund fossil fuel extraction, and some industry experts have predicted that oil prices will fall over the next 10 years as consumer demands change and supplies flood a market that’s increasingly saturated due to the U.S. shale boom. • Griffin land acquisition: The city has awarded a $900,000 contract to Lippert Bros. Inc. for the Norman Forward Griffin Sports Complex project. The city still hasn’t worked out a deal to acquire the land from the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse, but city attorney Jeff Bryant said both parties are inching toward a resolution that may take the form of a long-term lease. “They’re looking at new facilities … and it’s taken them a little more time for them to figure that out than we hoped,” he said. Bryant said one possibility is a collaboration between Norman Regional Health Systems and the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse to secure new facilities for the department. Meanwhile, Bryant said the city has submitted a lease term sheet to the department and is hoping to get a response soon, possibly by the end of the week. The city would have to pay the lease, but Ward 4 council member Bill Hickman said that could make a large portion of the $10 million allotted to the land acquisition available for other projects. Ward 1 council member Kate Bierman said though it’s reassuring that a deal appears imminent, it’s worrying that the city finds itself tied up in a project that was put together and approved without assurances regarding the land acquisition. “This is not the only Norman Forward project that we have run into this roadblock,” she said. “I hope we don’t do this again … I hope we’ve learned a lesson.” Ward 3 council member Robert Castleberry bemoaned the fact that the city has spent $1.4 million in sales tax on Norman Forward projects that could have been avoided, had the city found a way to exercise its tax-exempt status. “I think it’s ridiculous that we’re not using our tax-exempt status and we’re paying sales tax,” he said. “We only get half of it [back]. And the reason is that we don’t have the staff to manage it. This is why we need an internal auditor.” BP announced Tuesday it plans to invest $20 million in StoreDot, an Israeli startup that claims to offer 5-minute electric-vehicle charging with a new generation of lithium-ion batteries.
“Ultra-fast charging is at the heart of BP’s electrification strategy," said Tufan Erginbilgic, chief executive of BP downstream, in a statement. "StoreDot’s technology shows real potential for car batteries that can charge in the same time it takes to fill a gas tank." StoreDot is currently developing lithium ion-based battery technology that enables super-fast charging for both mobile and industrial markets. The startup demonstrated a proof of concept for 5-minute EV charging last year, showing investors how its new organic compounds combined with nanomaterials are implemented in the battery cell. The firm's new "flash batteries" are currently in the advanced stages of development. StoreDot plans to deploy the technology in mobile devices as early as next year. BP’s investment will help bring the technology to vehicles. StoreDot claims its batteries contain an eco-friendly electrolyte that's stable at high temperatures and allows an EV to travel for more than 300 miles on a single charge. The promise of StoreDot's technology recently caught the eye of Daimler's truck and buses unit, which led a $60 million investment in StoreDot in September of last year. StoreDot's “flash battery” departs from traditional lithium-ion batteries in the active materials it uses, according to Ravi Manghani, senior director of energy storage at GTM Research. Typical lithium-ion batteries use metal oxides, whereas StoreDot is commercializing the use of polymers. "This can improve the energy density, as well as allow less reliance on metals such as nickel and cobalt," said Manghani. "There are additional safety attributes, which may be important as well." Another company that's working on a polymer-based battery solution, Ionic Materials, has also been in the news for having recently scored an investment from the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance. "This technology has great promise. I don't really know how quickly it can be commercialized, though," said Manghani. "There's always a gap in battery technology R&D between lab or pilot results and actual manufacturing at scale. We project polymer-based chemistries have the potential to become mainstream sometime in the 2030 time frame." A strategic investor like BP can afford to wait. The company's Advanced Mobility Unit was set up to build material, sustainable businesses for BP’s downstream business in a low-carbon, digitally enabled future — giving the oil giant a foothold in the evolving cleantech market. BP significantly boosted its EV projections in its most recent energy outlook. Earlier this year, BP's venture arm invested in mobile EV charging company Freewire. “With our growing portfolio of charging infrastructure and technologies, we’re excited by our opportunities to develop truly innovative EV customer offers," said Erginbilgic. "We are committed to be the fuel provider of choice — no matter what car our customers drive.” |
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