Today’s Li-ion batteries are low-density by comparison, and renewable-storage systems also struggle to achieve density, convenience, and scale. The basic technology behind compressed-air energy storage goes back decades, and can involve pumping air into underground caverns, natural or artificial, then letting it out again. The first underground compressed-air facility was completed in 1978, in Germany; such systems can store and release vast amounts of energy. But, like pumped hydro, compressed-air facilities require the right geography and are expensive to build. They are also inefficient—typically, only half the energy put into pressurizing the gas can be retrieved.Just as you can store potential energy by lifting a block in the air, you can store it thermally, by heating things up. Companies are banking heat in molten salt, volcanic rocks, and other materials. Giant batteries, based on renewable chemical processes, are also workable. In so-called flow batteries, tanks can be used to manage electrolytes, which hold a charge. In hydrogen storage, electrolysis is used to separate hydrogen from oxygen in water; the hydrogen is then cached underground, or in aboveground tanks, as gas or liquid or part of ammonia. When it’s recombined with oxygen in a fuel cell, it forms water again and releases electricity. In one likely scenario, many technologies will proliferate, each solving a different problem. Some will ameliorate Dunkelflaute. Others will help the grid avoid congestion, or hold energy so that it can be bought and sold. Still others will assure “power quality,” smoothing out second-to-second electrical fluctuations. One smoothing technology currently in use is the flywheel: in advanced versions, masses of metal weighing a ton or more levitate in vacuums by means of magnets, as electric motors rotate them tens of thousands of times per minute. Generators then slow them down, retrieving their energy. (“The grid loves spinning metal,” one engineer told me.). he grid as a whole may never be perfected.                                                 We may never be able to get away from technologies with undesirable by-products; we may always rely in part on fossil fuels and nuclear power, backed up by Li-ion batteries and natural-gas “peaker” plants, used at times of high demand. But it’s equally possible to envision a future in which some of the technology works out, and the globe is reshaped by a combination of renewable energy and renewable storage. In such a world, wind turbines and solar farms will spread over fields and coastlines, while geothermal plants draw power from below. Meanwhile, in caves and tanks, hydrogen and compressed air will flow back and forth. In industrial areas, energy warehouses will thrum with the movement of mass. In rural places, water will be driven belowground and then will gush back up. When the sun comes out and the wind rises, the grid will inhale, and electricity will get saved. During the doldrums, the grid will exhale, driving energy to factories, homes, offices, and devices. Instead of burning dead things, in the form of fossil fuels, we’ll create and store energy dynamically, in a living system.                   https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/25/the-renewable-energy-revolution-will-need-renewable-storage?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_Magazine_Daily_041822&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_medium=email&bxid=5e2bb2c62a077c05ea0a9723&cndid=59734366&hasha=284acdf0ea1b080a3966b6c47b8c38c0&hashb=a4ccd8de508e6a2ad52eb405268d00c48cb0e5a6&hashc=7a51910293749398eff22b8bf795b4f5ed4d3ebff046adf7c9ebf33811a9eca8&esrc=Auto_Subs&utm_term=TNY_Daily             

Community Solar+ Reimagines the Potential for Community Solar to Advance Local Climate and Equity Goals........Community solar projects can do far more for communities than expand access to locally generated clean energy and create local solar jobs; with holistic planning using a new approach called “Community Solar+,” projects can also accelerate numerous other community-wide sustainability and equity goals......the first generation of community solar enabled greater access to locally produced clean energy while boosting local jobs and economic investments. A new report issued by RMI today introduces “Community Solar+,” a whole-systems approach to planning and deploying community solar projects to capture greater economies of scale and advance other community-wide sustainability and equity goals. Community solar projects have increased 10-fold in the United States since 2015.Community Solar+: How the Next Generation of Community Solar Can Unlock New Value Streams and Help Communities Pursue Holistic Decarbonizationshows how this continued growth presents an untapped opportunity for local governments and communities to use community solar projects to help achieve their climate action targets more strategically, comprehensively, and equitably. “At its core, Community Solar+ is doing more with less. So, rather than just focusing on the clean energy component, projects can be designed to also help build out electric vehicle charging infrastructure, align the grid for an electrified future, mitigate urban heat island effects, and more,” said Madeline Tyson, RMI manager and report co-author. “For local governments, this means being able to better manage competing priorities for limited city budgets.”The report provides analysis, guidance, and policy recommendations for state and local governments, utilities, developers, and community members to think more deliberately about full project value when planning, designing, and deploying new community solar projects. Additional values that can be achieved through a Community Solar+ project include.......Accelerating investment in EV charging infrastructure......Increasing energy resilience for critical assets and vulnerable communities.......Aligning evolving grid and customer needs for an electrified future......Creating a more equitable energy system......Providing covered parking and weather protection........Mitigating urban heat island effects. Continue to browse this comprehensive site for all aspects of ENERGY.                  https://rmi.org/press-release/reimagine-the-potential-for-community-solar/

Hastings Street was the center of Black business and entertainment in 1950s Detroit. But in the 1960s all businesses and shops were ordered to relocate to make way for I-375 — a giant, four-lane sunken freeway. Over a mile of Hastings Street and its surrounding land was turned over to developers, dismantling the once thriving epicentre of Black life in Detroit in order to create a high-speed thoroughfare from downtown to the surrounding suburbs. Hastings Street was home to more than 300 Black-owned businesses, including restaurants, doctors’ offices, and even eight grocery stores. Hundreds were forced to relocate or close permanently. Today, there isn’t a single Black-owned grocery store in Detroit, the Blackest big city in America. In cities across the U.S., these new freeways were disproportionately routed through communities of color. From Detroit to New Orleans to Miami, this construction helped contribute to the decimation of the culture, political power, and economies of Black America amidst the peak of the Civil Rights movement.  “Throughout the country, urban freeways were routed through Black neighborhoods, resulting in the malicious division and forced displacement of Black neighborhoods, as well as local Black economies,” said Regan Patterson, an environmental engineer and current fellow at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. But this infrastructure is hitting the end of its lifespan, and communities are now debating what to do with their legacy highways.   In Charleston, South Carolina, officials decided to double down, spending $3 billion to widen a freeway through predominantly Black and brown neighborhoods. Others, however, are questioning whether to remove them altogether, righting some of the wrongs done when communities were bifurcated so many years ago.  Detroit has chosen the latter. Rather than rebuild or repair I-375’s aging bridges, the Michigan Department of Transportation, or MDOT, announced in 2017 that it would replace the sunken, four-lane highway with a street-level boulevard lined with sidewalks and bike lanes. The initiative, called the I-375 Improvement Project, would reconnect the local neighborhoods along where Hastings Street once stood, as well as create a thoroughfare from Detroit’s downtown to two of its biggest cultural hubs: the RiverWalk area and Eastern Market, the largest historic public market in the country.  Detroit joins the ranks of cities including San Francisco, Seattle, Milwaukee, and Boston in choosing to remove problematic roadways. Even more cities could soon follow suit.                     https://grist.org/equity/a-freeway-ripped-the-heart-out-of-black-life-in-detroit-now-michigan-wants-to-tear-it-down/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=weekly      

Most people in the US, for example, spend about 90% of their time indoors. Climate change is fundamentally altering the environmental conditions in which these buildings are designed to function. Architects and engineers design buildings and other structures, like bridges, to operate within the parameters of the local climate. They’re built using materials and following design standards that can withstand the range of temperatures, rainfall, snow and wind that are expected, plus any geological issues such as earthquakes, subsidence and ground water levels. When any of those parameters are exceeded, chances are some aspect of the building will fail. If there are high winds, some roof tiles may be ripped off. If, after days of heavy rain, the water table rises, the basement might flood. This is normal, and these problems cannot be designed out entirely. After the event has passed, the damage can be repaired and additional measures can reduce the risk of it happening again. But climate change will breed conditions where these parameters are exceeded more often and to a far greater degree. Some changes, like higher average air temperatures and humidity, will become permanent. What were previously considered once in a century floods may become a regular occurrence. Some of these impacts are fairly obvious. Houses will be more prone to overheating, putting the lives of residents at risk, which is what has happened during the recent heat dome in North America. Flooding will happen more often and inundate greater areas, to the point that some places might have to be abandoned. To some extent, these impacts will be localised and containable, with fairly simple remedies. For example, overheating can be reduced by shading windows with awnings or blinds, good insulation, and ample ventilation. Perhaps more worrying are the insidious effects of climate change which gradually undermine the core functions of a building in less obvious ways. 

Termites and melting asphalt......More intense wind and rain will cause external cladding to deteriorate more rapidly and leak more often. Higher temperatures will expand the regions where some insects can live. That includes timber-eating termites that can cause major structural damage, or malaria-carrying mosquitoes which living spaces must be redesigned to protect us from. Extreme temperatures can even cause materials to melt, resulting in roads “bleeding” as the surface layer of bitumen softens. Subsidence – when the ground below a structure gives way, causing it to crack or collapse – is also expected to happen more often in a warmer world. Buildings with foundations in clay soils are particularly vulnerable, as the soils swell when they absorb water, then harden and shrink as they dry out. Changing rainfall patterns will exacerbate this. Over the next 50 years, for example, more than 10% of properties in Britain will be affected by subsidence. Perhaps the biggest concern is how climate change will affect reinforced concrete, one of the most widely used materials on Earth. Used in everything from skyscrapers and bridges to the lintels above windows in homes, reinforced concrete is made by placing steel rods within a mould and pouring wet concrete in. Once dry, this produces incredibly strong structures.But a warmer wetter climate will play havoc with the durability of this material. When the steel inside the concrete gets wet it rusts and expands, cracking the concrete and weakening the structure in a process sometimes referred to as “concrete cancer”......and more.

https://theconversation.com/most-buildings-were-designed-for-an-earlier-climate-heres-what-will-happen-as-global-warming-accelerates-163672?utm_campaign=Carbon%20Brief%20Daily%20Briefing&utm_content=20210705&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Revue%20Daily