Second Circuit rejects industry challenges to building electrification requirements. Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled in favor of New York City and New York State laws that prohibit fossil fuel-burning appliances in new buildings, affirming the judgments of two lower courts. Those laws are part of … [continued]
Cement decarbonization is a layered pathway: less Portland, lower clinker, better design, substitutes, recycling and selective CCS.
Cement decarbonization attracts miracle stories. One company has a new binder. Another has a carbon-negative aggregate. Someone else has an electrochemical process, a hydrogen kiln, a low-carbon limestone route, a supplementary cementitious material, a recycled cement process or a carbon-capture retrofit. Some of these ideas are useful. Some will become … [continued]
The transition does not preserve the fossil fuel pool and relabel it. Direct electrification removes most heat, motion, and storage work first, leaving molecules for narrower real jobs.
A lot of energy-transition arguments begin with today’s fossil fuel demand. Coal, oil, and gas still dominate global primary energy, so it is tempting to draw a straight line from the current fuel system to a future molecule system. Replace natural gas with hydrogen. Replace bunker fuel with ammonia or … [continued]
China’s infrastructure and property buildout was the materials event of the modern economy, and its decline changes the denominator for steel, cement, coal, freight, and fuels.
One of the easiest ways to get long-range energy and materials demand wrong is to treat first-build infrastructure demand as a permanent condition. Countries build their first stock of housing, highways, ports, rail, power systems, water systems, industrial parks, and concrete-and-steel cities once. After that, the demand structure changes. The … [continued]
France’s electrification plan treats clean electricity as energy security, industrial strategy and household protection, but the 2030 timetable turns delivery into the real test.
France has announced a national electrification push that is directionally correct in a way that a lot of energy policy still is not. It is not treating electrification as a side dish to climate policy, a consumer rebate program, or a decorative set of EV chargers beside the real business … [continued]
Steel decarbonization starts with demand, scrap, and electric arc furnaces, leaving new iron as the smaller residual problem.
Steel keeps getting framed as a hydrogen problem because hydrogen gives the sector a single shiny lever. Replace coal with hydrogen, keep making new iron, plug it into an electric arc furnace, and declare victory somewhere around the ribbon-cutting ceremony. It is an attractive story for governments, incumbent producers, electrolyzer … [continued]
The US startup Quilt is making its indoor and outdoor heat pumps more accessible to homeowners on a budget, in a new partnership with the energy platform Palmetto.
Ireland’s energy poverty problem is not an electricity access problem. Almost every Irish household is connected to electricity. The problem is whether households can keep a warm, healthy home without cutting back on food, medicine, transport, or other essentials. That makes Ireland different from countries where the main energy poverty … [continued]
In First Rooftop Demo, Startup, Investors, and Researchers Test Roof Coating’s Potential To Cool, Protect, and Lower Energy Bills for a New Jersey Warehouse What do a Texas data center, a New Jersey warehouse, and a police academy in Arizona have in common? They all have roofs. OK, not surprising. … [continued]
Polymodular by George Harvey. A drawing seems almost impossible to understand, so I made this out of special blocks I had made up.
Every once in a while, reading articles at CleanTechnica, I feel an urge to overcome my reluctance to put myself into the spotlight by writing about my own inventions. I am afraid that Steve Hanley, who happens to be one of my favorite CleanTechnica authors, put up the straw that … [continued]
