Energy Storage News

For around 10 years, the conventional wisdom in the energy sector has been that natural gas is ascendant. Coal is dirty, and it’s getting expensive, but it’s too early to jump all the way to renewable energy. To get from the fossil fuel present to the renewable future, we will need ... a bridge. Natural gas is meant to be that bridge, a way to reduce our emissions relative to coal while we work on scaling up renewables. (The shift from coal to gas is a big part of why US emissions have declined over the past few years.)

Millions of Floridians are ready to get on with their recovery from Hurricane Irma, which roared through the state earlier this week, pummeling homes and flooding streets. But for the moment, many are stuck anxiously waiting in the sweltering heat for the power (and the all-important air conditioning) to come back on. One of the largest Atlantic storms ever, Irma knocked out power to 6.7 million accounts in Florida, or about two-thirds of the state. As of Wednesday afternoon, state emergency officials estimated that one-third were still without power.

Once or twice a year, Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) founder Michael Liebreich posts a magisterial summation of some trend or set of trends in the energy world. His latest report (co-authored with BNEF editor Angus McCrone) is about electric vehicles. It’s worth reading the whole thing, but it was an aside about discarded EV batteries that caught my eye.