Green Energy

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/24136514

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• Argentina is trying to position itself as a global hub for clean energy, attracting private investment in lithium mining while marketing new battery factories in the region.
• The World Bank has framed some of the lithium projects it backs as “climate action” that will help advance the clean energy transition.
• But critics say lithium mining is hurting local and Indigenous communities and depleting freshwater resources.
• The race to buy up private land for lithium mining has also allowed an influx of international corporations that may contribute to increased carbon emissions rather than help lower them, critics point out.

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Imagine this. You’re living in a remote rural hamlet in the forested hills of Mysore, in the southern Indian state of Karnataka. You’re miles from the nearest doctor, a day’s journey by foot and bus to the nearest hospital. And there’s no mains electricity. If you suddenly fall ill and need urgent medical help, what are your chances?

A few years ago, they’d be slim. Today, though, you make your way a couple of hundred metres down the track to a minor miracle: a small, gleaming white building topped with solar panels. Inside, a specially trained health worker checks you out, runs a few tests, takes your blood pressure, even does an ECG, maybe gives you some lifesaving treatment or medicine. Then she connects you to a doctor in a distant hospital, who’s right there on the screen, giving you the sort of specialist consultation that would normally be far out of reach.

It sounds like one of those rosy scenarios beloved of futurists, but this isn’t speculative fiction. The Climate Smart Health Clinic, as the sign over the door declares, is here and now, in the village of Basavanagiri Hadi.

It’s part of an ambitious programme that is using a combination of solar power and mobile connectivity to revolutionise the prospects for healthcare across swathes of rural India. It springs from the Selco Foundation, an independent not-for-profit, which is a sister organisation of Selco India, the country’s leading solar company specialising in small-scale, decentralised systems.

With the backing of the Ikea Foundation, the scheme is designed to provide reliable, clean and affordable electricity to 25,000 of the country’s state-run primary health care (PHC) centres, as well as to explore entirely new ways of delivering health services – like the ‘tele-clinic’ in this Mysore village.

Critics of the 'green transition' argue it is imposing an unacceptable cost on ordinary working people. But is it really renewable technologies that are causing our bills to go up, or are there other forces involved? We scratch the surface and take a look.

On a vast property in Lee County, in the heart of southwest Georgia, Tyler Huber raises sheep.

As the flock grazes, the sheep need somewhere to take a break from the Georgia sun.

“It is incredibly hot, the sun is just unavoidable, and the fact that they’ve got shade every fifteen feet out here — it’s just the ideal environment, to have shade so close,” he said on a recent hot day.

The shade comes from solar panels, using that same relentless sunshine to generate energy. The sheep, in turn, cut down on mowing costs for the solar farm. The flock loves chowing down on the vegetation under and around the panels, Huber said.

Before solar developer Silicon Ranch bought this land, it used to have row crops — mostly corn and cotton — and beehives. Farmers can’t grow corn and cotton under solar panels, but this is still farmland for sheep and bees.

Scenes like this are increasingly common as power companies add more and more solar energy to keep up with rising demand for renewable electricity. Many of those solar panels are being built on farmland. The American Farmland Trust, which tracks the conversion of farmland to other uses, projects that 80 percent of the acreage needed to scale up solar energy could be agricultural land. The trend has given rise to a wave of opposition from local activists to state legislatures and the White House.

LG Energy Solution’s new lithium-iron phosphate (LFP) battery plant in Holland, Michigan, marks a significant step for clean energy in the US. Opened in early May 2025, this facility shifts focus from electric vehicles (EVs) to energy storage systems (ESS) as EV demand cools. This article explores the plant’s impact on jobs, the economy, clean energy, and how policies like the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the One Big Beautiful Bill, tariffs, and competitors shape its future.

The newest, hottest power couple doesn’t live in Hollywood. It’s actually the marriage of solar panels and water reservoirs: Known as floating photovoltaics, or floatovoltaics, the devices bob on simple floats, generating power while providing shade that reduces evaporation.

One primary advantage of the technology is that you don’t have to clear trees to make way for solar farms. As an added bonus, the water cools the panels, increasing their efficiency. Research has shown that if societies deployed floatovoltaics in just a fraction of the lakes and reservoirs of the world, they could generate nearly a third of the amount of electricity that the United States uses in a year.

As floatovoltaic systems rapidly proliferate — the market is expected to grow an average of 23 percent each year between 2025 and 2030 — scientists are investigating how the technology might influence ecosystems. The shading, for instance, might stunt the growth of algae that some species eat — but at the same time, it might also prevent the growth of toxic algae. The floats might prevent waterbirds from landing — but also might provide habitat for them to hide from predators. By better understanding these dynamics, scientists say that if companies are willing, they can work with manufacturers to customize floatovoltaics to produce as much electricity as possible while also benefiting wildlife as much as possible.

“Renewable energy, low-carbon electricity, is a really good thing for us, but we shouldn’t be expanding it at the cost of biodiversity loss,” said Elliott Steele, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Davis, and co-author of a recent paper about floatovoltaics and conservation in the journal Nature Water. “This is a great opportunity for us to increase our research and develop smart design ideas and better siting practices in order to have this happy marriage between a healthy, biodiverse ecosystem and renewable energy expansion.”

The ongoing political turmoil and bottlenecked federal funding have prompted the widespread development of solar-plus-storage systems across the island that are privately financed via leases, loans, or Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs). Each month, the island sees around 4,000 solar-plus-battery storage systems come online, Rúa-Jovet says. These installations are connected to the grid but can also operate during blackouts.

At the end of March, LUMA reported over 1.14 gigawatts of grid-connected distributed solar capacity, with an additional 2.34 gigawatt-hours of distributed batteries connected to the grid. Solar power produces over 2 terawatt-hours of electricity each year, which accounts for more than 12.5 percent of Puerto Rico’s total residential electricity consumption annually. The majority of that power is generated from residential solar, and capacity continues to grow as more residents install systems with private financing.

Adjuntas, which has a population of about 18,000, took a more experimental approach. The town’s local environmental nonprofit Casa Pueblo teamed up with researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn., to develop a way to connect multiple microgrids to exchange power with one another, all without having to be hooked up to Puerto Rico’s grid. The strategy, called grid orchestration, ensures that if power is knocked out on one of the installations, the others aren’t compromised. It’s what kept multiple areas in Adjuntas electrified during April’s island-wide blackout.

During the blackout, Casa Pueblo and the Oak Ridge researchers were completing the testing of the orchestration strategy with three of the five microgrids connected in Adjuntas. These three microgrids are connected to the grid via net metering. The remaining two grids are isolated.

“By decentralizing, it’s creating a more resilient and redundant energy setup,” says Arturo Massol-Deyá, Casa Pueblo’s executive director. “Engineers will say: If you have redundancy, that’s more resilient; that’s better.”

The teams demonstrated trading energy from one microgrid to the other, and vice versa. This kind of transfer enables the system to overcome energy limitations during peak demand times and draw from additional storage at night when the sun is down. Together, the town’s five microgrids provide 228 kilowatts of photovoltaic capacity and an additional 1.2 megawatt-hours of storage, which serve residences and 15 commercial businesses. It’s a small amount of power, but an example of a way for systems to operate independently from the grid.

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Swiss company Meyer Burger has filed for voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy relief in the United States, the solar panel manufacturer said in a court filing on Wednesday.

Defying the headline-making bankruptcy of a yet another nationwide solar installation firm, many long-time solar installers have learned that staying in business requires remaining loyal to their local communities. Rather than over-extending their resources by expanding too broadly too quickly, these companies have grown steadily by relying on customer referrals and word-of-mouth.

These companies exemplify an adage Barry Cinnamon, host of The Energy Show podcast, calls “Cinnamon’s Law.” The bigger a solar installation company becomes, the less money it makes. The bigger its revenue and the more layers of management it needs to serve multiple jurisdictions, the bigger its losses. Some of these companies never recover.

pv magazine USA recently spoke with numerous small- to medium-sized installation companies to get a sense of how important remaining local has been to their success.

Nigeria recently proposed a ban on importing solar panels to boost local manufacturing, but some climate and renewable energy experts worry this move may impede the country’s transition to cleaner energy sources.

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Whisper Valley is a peek into what the future could look like.

The sweeping community in the Austin suburb of Manor is filled with modern homes, small manicured lawns, quiet streets and rooftops outfitted with solar panels. Hidden beneath it is a network of pipes and man-made reservoirs that heat and cool hundreds of households via geothermal technology — a source that currently provides less than 1% of the U.S. electrical demand.

When completed, Whisper Valley will consist of approximately 7,500 owner-occupied and rental homes and multi-family units ranging in price from $350,000 to $750,000; three schools; 2 million square feet of commercial space; and 700 acres of park and outdoor community spaces. Habitat for Humanity is set to build affordable housing, which will hook up to the geothermal network.

Zac Turov, business development manager for EcoSmart Solutions, which runs the community’s geothermal system, says savings on utility bills for residents here with geothermal-powered heat pumps that cool and heat buildings can run up to $2,000 a year — based on a third-party verified Home Energy Rating System.

Octopus Energy and BYD have launched the UK’s first vehicle-to-grid (V2G) bundle. The all-in-one package includes a V2G-capable BYD Dolphin, bi-directional charger and smart tariff – offering drivers completely free home charging and turning EVs into flexible energy assets.

Without more social and economic justice, the green transition will be a “mirage”, Climate Action Network’s Anabella Rosemberg said,

Negotiators are today [June 26 2025] expected to decide to forward an informal note to COP30 in Belém, which says that the green transition should be fair to workers and protect nature, as well as advancing clean energy access and clean cooking for all. It should also promote gender rights and human rights, particularly for Indigenous, disabled, migrant and young people, the text says.