California, where earthquakes, droughts and wildfires have shaped life for generations, also faces the growing threat of another kind of calamity, one whose fury would be felt across the entire state.
This one will come from the sky.
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Energy storage systems with a large amount of capacity are being developed to cover five sites in California and Hawaii, including one of the largest solar-plus-storage projects in the world.
The energy storage systems, which have a total capacity of 500 megawatts (MW) and 2-gigawatt hours (GWh), are being supplied by Wärtsilä to clean energy company Clearway Energy Group. The largest of the projects is located in San Bernardina, California, where 482 MW of solar and 275 MW and 1.1 GWh of energy storage are being installed.
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California would add wine and liquor bottles to its deposit program under a bill moving through the Legislature.
Consumers would get a dime at recycling centers for a typical bottle from wineries in Modesto and beyond.
The authors hope to boost the current 30% recycling rate for the 500 million or so wine and spirits bottles produced in the state each year.
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Switching to low carbon fuels for transportation, cooking, heating, power generation and other needs would help fight climate change and also reduce racial and ethnic disparities in exposure to air pollution, according to researchers at the University of California, Davis.
Research published in the journal Science of the Total Environment found that differences in exposure to fine and ultrafine particle pollution could be reduced between 20 and 40% in 2050 if solar, wind and electric sources were used rather than fossil fuels.
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Power crises during California’s August 2020 heat waves raised questions about how reliable the state’s grid will be on the road to its target of 100% clean energy by 2045.
But new research provides clear answers: California can reliably achieve an 85% clean electricity grid by 2030 with a diverse mix of renewables and batteries, flexible demand, trade with neighboring states, and some existing power plants—under multiple build-out assumptions and possible future conditions. It turns out a cleaner grid is a more reliable grid.
State regulators and elected officials can achieve this important step toward the state’s 100% clean energy future through policy actions that accelerate diverse clean energy deployment, reduce gas generation dependence, incentivize demand-side resources, and improve regional electricity trading coordination with neighboring states.
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Three scientists trudged Friday through a riverside preserve near Modesto, in search of a certain kind of caterpillar.
Dos Rios Ranch has joined the effort to reverse the decline of the Western monarch butterfly. The staff last May planted about 150 acres of milkweed, where this species lays its eggs.
A year later, the plants are about 2 feet tall and the scientists have started to sample the stems and leaves for monarch eggs and caterpillars.
“The hope is that this habitat will support Western monarchs along with many other different pollinators,” said Angela Laws, endangered species conservation biologist for the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation.
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Renewable electricity met 100% of California's electricity demand for the first time ever on Saturday, most of it from large amounts of solar power now produced along Interstate 10, an hour east of the Coachella Valley.
While partygoers celebrated in the blazing sunshine at the Stagecoach music festival, energy demand statewide hit 18,672 megawatts at 2:45 p.m. local time, and 37,172 megawatts were available to meet it. Of that, 101% of the power provided came from renewables, according to a continuous tracker provided by California Independent System Operator, or CAISO, a nonprofit that oversees the state's bulk electric power system and transmission lines.
Two thirds of the 18,000 megawatts needed was provided by solar power loaded into the energy grid — or 12,391 megawatts. The milestone lasted almost 15 minutes before edging back down to about 97% renewables.
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LOS ANGELES — Onja Davidson Raoelison, a doctoral candidate in environmental engineering at UCLA, has been working to keep waterways safe.
Her research and studies focus on green infrastructure and how wildfires impact water systems.
“I think we all hear about air quality all the time,” she said. “Even at UCLA, we receive a lot [of news] about the air quality being bad when you’re not supposed to go outside. I never knew that the impact of wildfires on water quality would be an issue and how it impacts aquatic ecosystems and human health.”
Raoelison was born in Madagascar, where water-borne diseases are common. They drove her passion for protecting rivers, lakes, groundwater and surface water.
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Living in California, it's hard to ignore the impact humans have on the natural world. Between drought, wildfires, and the underlying threat of climate change that feeds these disasters, I'm constantly reminded of what's at stake if we don't all make a concerted effort to protect our planet.
Thankfully, there's a growing awareness in the business world that companies need to step up their commitments to eco-friendliness -- and that includes small businesses. A recent survey found that a majority of entrepreneurs around the world are willing to turn down an investor with a poor track record on sustainability. In theory, that kind of commitment is great, but how do those good intentions translate into everyday business practices?
Continue Reading on Inc.
MODESTO, Calif. (AP) — Between vast almond orchards and dairy pastures in the heart of California’s farm country sits a property being redesigned to look like it did 150 years ago, before levees restricted the flow of rivers that weave across the landscape.
The 2,100 acres (1,100 hectares) at the confluence of the Tuolumne and San Joaquin rivers in the state’s Central Valley are being reverted to a floodplain. That means when heavy rains cause the rivers to go over their banks, water will run onto the land, allowing traditional ecosystems to flourish and lowering flood risk downstream.
The Dos Rios Ranch Preserve is California’s largest single floodplain restoration project, part of the nation’s broadest effort to rethink how rivers flow as climate change alters the environment. The land it covers used to be a farm, but the owners sold it to the nonprofit River Partners to use for restoring wildlife habitat.
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