For Tomorrow's Show/Dr. Gavin A. Schmidt/Director of GISS and Principal Investigator for the GISS ModelE Eart/NASA

About

As the Director of GISS and Principal Investigator for the GISS ModelE Earth System Model, I am interested in understanding past, present and future climate and the impacts of multiple drivers of climate change, including solar irradiance, atmospheric chemistry, aerosols, and greenhouse gases. My specific research interests are outlined in more detail here.

Media and Outreach

Communications:

The Stephan Schneider Keynote Lecture at AGU (2013): What should a climate scientist advocate for? (YouTube video)

I was fortunate to be awarded the Inaugural AGU Climate Communication Prize in 2011. (AGU Press release, NASA press release)

I was also named EarthSky Science Communicator of the year in 2011. (EarthSky release, podcast)

Online resources:

• I gave a TED talk in 2014 on the emergent patterns of climate change.
• "Eating Salad with a Scientist" (YouTube). An illustrated conversation with me about science, advocacy and public communication.
• Comprendre le climat: un enjeux de notre siecle (FR) Presentation at the School of Mines, Albi France (May 2016).
• A talk on Chaos and the Climate at the NY Museum of Math (Oct 2015).
• I have appeared on a couple of recent documentaries by VICE media (HBO) and (mostly in Dutch) André op Aarde(NTR).
• Climate drivers, climate change and climate projections (Webinar) Kansas University Medical Center, Feb 2012
• Promise and Pitfalls of Blogging (YouTube). A chat with Andy Revkin, Pace University, Feb 2012
• What are climate models good for? (video) Dartmouth College, Dept. of Physics Colloquium, Nov 2011
• 19th Annual Kuenhast Lecture (video), University of Minnesota, St. Paul, Oct 13, 2011
• Thompson Lecturer April 2011, Advanced Study Program, NCAR Boulder (video soon)
• The Secret Life of Scientists PBS Nova online. Jan 2010
• Climate Forcings, Climate Models and Climate Change RSE Symposium, New Orleans, Oct 2009.
• The Physics We Know. Video interview for the Edge.org
• The Late Show with David Letterman: May 6 2009
• A new kind of scientist. Commentary on interdisciplinary collaboration (with E. Moyer). Nature Reports Climate Change, Jul 2008.
• The Uncertainty in Climate Modeling, A conversation with Claudia Tebaldi, Leonard Smith and James Murphy. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, April 2008.
• The Daily Show with Jon Stewart: April 23 2007
• This week in Science (podcasts). 24 April 2007 and 8 May 2007
• What good are climate models? Friday Colloquium at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (April 2007)
• How Much, How Soon, How Do We Know? Feb. 2006 Adler Planetarium Global Climate Change Forum
• What's driving climate change? Presentation at the Kavli Frontiers of Science symposium (2005)
• Understanding Katrina - Nov. 2005 Earth Institute Seminar
• Why Worry? The Threat of Abrupt Climate Change - Dec. 2004 eBriefing from the New York Academy of Science.
• Natural and Anthropogenic Drivers of Arctic Climate Change - Oct. 2003 Keynote presentation at SEARCH Open Science Meeting, Seattle.
• La fulgarante ascension de methane - Popular science article for La Recherche (English translation available).
• I am a contributing editor to the website RealClimate.org which tries to provide context and background on climate science issues that are often missing in popular media coverage (not an official NASA blog).

2018 Nissan Leaf what we know so far about new electric car (updated)

Updated news on one of our most popular EV's.

2018 Nissan Leaf: what we know so far about new electric car (updated)

John Voelcker

The Nissan Leaf is by far the highest-volume electric car ever sold, with total sales now having passed 250,000 units.

First launched in 2011, the Leaf got some updates for the 2013 model when production for North American sales moved from Oppama, Japan, to Smyrna, Tennessee.
It got a battery capacity upgrade for 2016, boosting its rated range from 84 to 107 miles. That aside, the Leaf has pretty much stayed the same for seven years.

We know an all-new, second-generation Leaf model is coming sometime soon.
At first, we'd expected it to be a 2016 model—in parallel with the second-generation Chevrolet Volt introduced that year—but a new Leaf didn't appear in 2016.
Or in 2017.

So here's what we know so far about what we're now calling the 2018 Nissan Leaf electric car.

This information is gathered from industry sources, Nissan executives, off-the-record chats with people who work with Nissan, and media reports from around the world.

DESIGN
The styling of the 2011 Leaf was certainly distinctive, but it was also polarizing.
In form, today's Leaf is an upright five-door hatchback that's either a large compact or a small mid-size car, depending on how you measure.

But the details—the rounded ends, the very long lights topped with little fins that stretched to the base of the windshield, and a Space Age-y interior—added up to a car that some loved but others clearly disliked.

Discussions since then have indicated that the next Leaf may be somewhat more conventional in appearance.

One possible indicator of styling direction is the Nissan Sway concept unveiled this month at the Geneva Motor Show, which the company said pointed toward its future small-car design language.

While widely presumed to be a lightly disguised version of the next Micra minicar, the five-door hatchback concept is a bit larger than that.
We suspect it has elements that will show up in the 2018 Nissan Leaf, or at least point in that direction.

Nissan design chief and senior vice president Shiro Nakamura said in the fall of 2014 that to expand the next Leaf's appeal into a larger market—beyond early adopters—would require to be be a nice-looking car.

Then, he said, designers could add more 'spice' in the design for those buyers who might want it—rather than starting with specific design traits that label the vehicle an electric car.
The next Leaf won't necessarily be more conservative, Nakamura argued during an interview at the Paris Motor Show, but simply a very stable, nicely-proportioned car.
And for buyers who want to emphasize the Leaf's electric-car nature, there will be trim, lamps, or gauges that do that if desired.

BATTERY RANGE
Perhaps the single most important facet of the 2018 Leaf will be its rated range, or the different ranges offered if there are multiple battery-size options.

Three years ago, Andy Palmer—who then headed Nissan product development—suggested that the next Leaf would have a range of perhaps 120 miles, possibly as high as 150 miles.
And he strongly hinted that the car might offer a range of battery options at different prices.

We expect the base model of the next Leaf to offer a range of about 120 miles, a slight increase on the 107 miles of the updated 2016 first-generation Leaf.

But with last month's launch of the Chevrolet Bolt EV, EPA-rated at 238 miles, Nissan knows it has to offer a version of the next Leaf with a U.S. rating of 200 or more miles.
(Some confusion occurs when Nissan executives, discussing projected range, fail to make it clear whether they're referring to tests conducted on the gentler Asian or European test cycle or the more demanding U.S. EPA cycle. The U.S. tests are viewed as producing lower but more realistic range ratings.)

Knowledge of battery chemistry, production technology, and management strategies has progressed considerably since 2009 and 2010, when the specs for the first Leaf battery were frozen.

The 2013 update boosted range from 73 miles to 84 miles (using consistent test parameters).

Three years later, the pack capacity increased for 2016 by 25 percent (from 24 kwh to 30 kwh) for a boost to 107 miles combined.

Ranges of 120 to 200 miles would likely make the Leaf a more viable alternative for some buyers who felt 70 to 85 miles was too little to accommodate their needs.
Until that happens, however, the current Leaf will face formidable competition from the Bolt EV, another five-door hatchback with slightly more interior volume and more than twice the Leaf's range.

Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn confirmed a model with 200 miles or more of range in comments at the Consumer Electronics Show held in January 2017 in Las Vegas.
He also noted that the new Leaf will come with Nissan's ProPilot technology, which permits the car to drive itself autonomously within a highway under certain circumstances.


BATTERY CELL SUPPLIER
Since the Leaf launched, Nissan has produced its own lithium-ion cells through its joint venture with NEC, known as Automotive Electric Supply Corporation or AESC.
But the company's alliance partner, the French maker Renault, has also used cells from leading producer LG Chem in its own lineup of battery-electric vehicles.

LG Chem not only supplies cells to the Chevrolet Bolt EV, it has supply contracts with more than a dozen other global brands across the globe.
Reports over the last three years indicate that Nissan has wrestled with sourcing cells from LG Chem versus its own partially-owned supplier.

It's possible that different battery options may use different cell suppliers. But it's widely expected that at least some Leafs will switch to LG Chem cells.
Now that technical specs are out for the 2016 Chevrolet Volt, the 2016 Toyota Prius, the 2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV, and the 2017 Toyota Prius Prime plug-in hybrid, the second-generation Leaf is the last member of that debut class missing in action.

We'd initially expected the 2018 Leaf to appear sometime last year as a 2017 model, but as New Year's Day 2017 rolled around, there was no sign of it.
The first-generation Leaf is thus dutifully enduring a full seven-year model cycle, with sales falling and not a hint of information about its successor.

That could possible be due to the quick two-year timeframe between the announcement of the Chevy Bolt concept car and the first sales of the Bolt EV.
It's not unreasonable to think that the quick announcement and launch of the Bolt EV threw a monkey wrench into Nissan's launch planning just as it locked in a second-generation Leaf—with a 150-mile range.

In any case, sooner or later we'll see the next Leaf. We're still betting it'll be sometime this year. Fingers crossed.

CLIMATE CHANGES HEALTH?

For us this is the main focus of any discussion around global warming and general climate shifts...Health of communities and people.

Here's one man's view.  Of course, all of this is hotly debated.  Some scientist argue, as an example, that higher carbon levels help the planet "green" as it accelerates the growth and strength of plants and forests.

We'll post some info on tomorrow's guest, Dr. Gavin Schmidt, Director of NASA Goddard Institute of Space Studies, who will have much to say on this.

Today we face a challenging political climate, but the climate crisis shouldn’t be political. It is not only the greatest existential crisis we face: it is also causing a global health emergency, where the stakes are life and death.

Because of the urgency of these threats, several partners and I are hosting a Climate & Health Meeting tomorrow at The Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia. The event will fill a void left when the Climate & Health Summit, originally to be hosted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), was abruptly cancelled last month. Watch live coverage of the Climate & Health Meeting here.

Experts who had been invited by the CDC felt the conference should definitely go forward because the science shows increasing direct impacts of warming temperatures and more extreme weather on public health. Increasing global temperatures are disrupting the global climate and the earth’s hydrological cycle, leading not only to record high air and sea temperatures, but also to more extreme flooding, deeper and longer droughts and more frequent and severe storms. In turn, these effects jeopardize our vulnerable global food system and exacerbate fresh water scarcity and the refugee crisis.

As the planet continues to warm, vector-borne diseases and the environments in which microbes and diseases multiply are also expanding. Mosquitos, ticks and other vectors now have wider ranges as warmer weather permits them to move to higher altitudes, provides them with a longer breeding season, speeds up incubation times for the viruses they carry and increases the frequency of “blood meals.”

In some parts of the world, the reemergence of malaria is directly related to increasing temperatures and disruptive rainfall; this is also true for increased instances of West Nile, Dengue and — most recently — Zika. Over the past two years we have heard from doctors and scientists something that we have never been told before: in regions of Latin America, doctors have advised women not to get pregnant for two years. And last year, the CDC advised pregnant women not to travel to Miami, marking the first time Americans have been cautioned not to travel to part of their own country to avoid infectious disease.

These particular manifestations may be new, but scientists have been warning us for many years that tropical diseases, extreme weather and risks to our global food system caused by the climate crisis are posing ever more dire threats to human health.

The need for science and health professionals to explore and discuss the impact the climate crisis is having on global health should not be a political issue. The time to act is now. M

Americans once moved away from forests. Now forests are moving away from Americans./Washington Post

More bad news on the eco-capital side.  Preservation of land, forest has amazing environmental and economic benefits.  They are well documented around the world.  Saving open space, vegetation, tree canopies, natural habitat for wildlife is a proven winner.  Why are we not listening and holding on dearly to our woods?

Of course urban forest are critically important to the long-term health of our cities.



Study co-author Sheng Yang shows an example of tree canopy loss and receding forests on the campus of the State University of New York at Syracuse. (Wendy Osborne/SUNY)

Over several decades in the past century, city populations swelled as Americans moved away from rural forests. Now the forests are moving farther away from Americans.

A new study of satellite images taken over 10 years starting in 1990 shows the rural forest canopy disappearing. Forest space disappeared from the United States in such big chunks that the average distance from any point in the nation to a forest increased by 14 percent, about a third of a mile.

While that’s no big deal to a human driving a car with a pine-scented tree dangling from the rearview mirror, it is to a bird hoping to rest or find food on epic seasonal flights across the globe, according to the study published Wednesday in the journal PLOS One.

But forests aren’t just for the birds. They improve the quality of life for fauna and flora, from bears to flowers. Altering forests can change the dynamics of ecosystems and can potentially “affect water chemistry, soil erosion, carbon sequestration patterns, local climate, biodiversity distribution and human quality of life,” a statement announcing the report said.

[The new California gold rush: Loggers see money sprouting from millions of dead trees]

Using forest maps over the continental United States, researchers Sheng Yang and Giorgos Mountrakis of the State University of New York at Syracuse marked tree canopy that disappeared over a decade in red to highlight the change. In one illustration included in the study, the page appeared to bleed.

“So if you are in the western U.S. or you are in a rural area or you are in land owned by a public entity, it could be federal, state or local, your distance to the forest is increasing much faster than the other areas,” Mountrakis said. “The forests are getting further away from you.”

One of the findings of the study is a twist that Yang, a graduate student, and Mountrakis, an assistant professor at the College of Environmental Science and Forestry, didn’t anticipate. The disappearance isn’t happening in cities, where people often complain about the uprooting of trees for development. It’s happening in rural America, where trees are falling and hardly anyone hears.

That finding turns conventional wisdom about forest loss on its head, Mountrakis said. “The public perceives the urbanized and private lands as more vulnerable, but that’s not what our study showed,” he said. “Rural areas are at a higher risk of losing these forested patches.”

“Typically we concentrate more on urban forest,” said Sheng, “but we may need to start paying more attention — let’s say for biodiversity reasons — in rural rather than urban areas. Because the urban forests tend to receive much more attention, they are better protected.”

While people in the sticks are losing their forests, the relationship between urban dwellers and trees is a love story. Dating back to when President Thomas Jefferson denounced the removal of trees that cooled the new capital city as “a crime little short of murder,” Jill Jonnes wrote in her book, “Urban Forests,” city slickers have fought to defend the little green space they get.

Rock Creek Park in the District of Columbia, Central Park in New York, Piedmont Park in Atlanta, Griffith Park in Los Angeles, and Golden Gate Park in San Francisco are examples of urban forests that are fussed over, pampered and protected by law. They are also cherished gathering places that help define their cities.

The remote areas that Americans have come to know as wild lands are being whittled away by farms, development and wildfire, particularly in the West, Mountrakis said. Arizona, Colorado and Nevada saw significant attrition or separation of forests, according to the satellite images.

[California’s drive to save water is killing trees, hurting utilities and raising taxes]

In California and Colorado, trees stressed by drought are being eaten to death by beetles, standing dead on mountainsides by the hundreds of millions, virtual ghost forests. Ecologists argue whether fires that might consume them are a good or bad thing, in that it would kill the beetles yet threaten homes too close to the forest edge. Human development is another grim agent of tree canopy loss.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation: Launch of 500 Cities Interactive Web Tool

We've enjoyed working with Green and Healthy Homes, and applaud them for their good work.  Here's their latest initiative.  We have no doubt this data will help shape our future in a smart way.

GHHI Partner Resource

GHHI has worked with our partners across the country around utilizing data to align efforts, braid funding streams, and coordinate activities across different departments and agencies. Having resources such as this new toolkit and web tool will be invaluable to understand the relationships between multiple factors that impact families, and allow programs to have the information they need to identify opportunities to best target their efforts. We encourage our partners to check out these new resources from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

500 Cities Interactive Web Tool

The launch of the 500 Cities interactive web application is on Thursday, March 2. The new interactive feature enables the retrieval, visualization, and exploration of city and census tract-level data.  

Join in the #500Cities social media Thunderclap to ensure the release of the new web interactive will rise above the noise of our social media lives when it releases Thursday, March 2. When you offer your support, you can decide if you'd like to share a simultaneous tweet or Facebook post that will automatically post on noon, March 2.

500 Cities Interactive Toolkit

This resource includes key messages, social media language, and other communication resources to help spread the word about the project. If you have questions or need assistance in customizing the press materials, please email 500Cities@cdc.gov.

Click here to access the toolkit.

More Information and Contact

For more information, please contact the project managers at 500cities@cdc.gov.

Newport closer to banning single-use plastic bags

We have been advocating, in every community, to ban retail use of plastic bags...which are an environmental nightmare.  Kudos to Newport, RI for teeing up to get the bags out of their city.

NEWPORT, R.I. (AP) — Newport city councilors have unanimously voted to approve an ordinance banning single-use plastic shopping bags in an effort to make the city more environment-friendly.

The 7-0 vote Wednesday came after a series of supporters of the ban addressed the council and no one voiced opposition.

The Newport Daily News reports that an ordinance must pass on two separate votes at two separate council meetings. The council will hold a second vote on March 8.

If approved, Newport would become the second municipality in Rhode Island to ban plastic bags.

Councilman John Florez says the world produces 1 trillion plastic bags annually, and studies have shown that 90 percent of all marine birds and 35 percent of all fish have plastic in them. Florez introduced the resolution.

___

Filed Under: Local News, Top Stories

Advanced Energy Economy: Who and Why?

This week the conversation at RN is converging around building the low-carbon economy.  Here's a group doing a great job shaping that conversation around shared contribution from business and government.  Look for them to join us soon on a radio segment.

In the meantime take a closer look at their work and the data on how big this financial transition is for each of us, and note the countries leading the way:

ABOUT AEE

AEE is an organization of businesses working to make energy secure, clean, and affordable

ADVANCED ENERGY ECONOMY (AEE) is a national association of business leaders who are making the global energy system more secure, clean, and affordable. Advanced energy encompasses a broad range of products and services that constitute the best available technologies for meeting energy needs today and tomorrow. Among these are energy efficiency, demand response, energy storage, natural gas electric generation, solar, wind, hydro, nuclear, electric vehicles, biofuels and smart grid. It's all the innovations that make the energy we use more secure, clean, and affordable.

AEE's vision is of a prosperous world that runs on secure, clean, affordable energy.

Our mission is transforming public policy to enable rapid growth of advanced energy companies.

AEE engages in policy advocacy at the federal, state, and regulatory levels; CEO-to-CEO convenings to identify and address cross-industry issues; and targeted outreach to key stakeholder groups and policymakers.

We also work with a growing coalition of state and regional partner organizations across states and industries to help the advanced energy industry succeed nationwide.

With global energy consumption projected to rise nearly 40 percent by 2030, future prosperity depends on meeting growing demand with energy that is secure, clean and affordable - that is, advanced energy. Advanced energy solutions create value for customers and for the economy. It is this value that contributes to long-term growth for the economy overall, and to growth of advanced energy companies specifically. Just as the Internet economy transformed society in unexpected ways, the advanced energy economy has the potential to create dramatic new opportunities for economic growth in the U.S. and around the world

Investing in Green: Corporate Strategies That Address Environmental Sustainability

Exactly what we discussed yesterday on the radio show--pushing into the low-carbon economy is a multi-trillion dollar investment opportunity, loaded with new co's, thousands of jobs and powered by incredible technology.  Our guest yesterday, Lynn Scarlett, is quoted here as well.

Green infrastructure...what it is...how big...is it a foundation for smart growth.  We thing it is.




Terry Tamminen, co-founder of the R20 Regions of Climate Action, speaks at the Scher Sustainability Forum on May 18, 2016.

Major financial investments - from both public and private sources, and guided by smart and equitable policies - are required to transition the world's economy to a low-carbon path, reduce greenhouse gas concentrations to safe levels, and build the resilience of vulnerable countries to climate change. But how can we manage this shift?

Three environmental leaders recently discussed these issues at the AU School of Public Affairs' Scher Sustainability Forum on Private-Public Financing for Global Sustainability. Held on May 18 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., panelists included Terry Tamminen, co-founder of the R20 Regions of Climate Action; William K. Reilly, former Administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency and member of the President's Global Development Council; and, Lynn Scarlett, Global Managing Director for Public Policy at the Nature Conservancy.

'We need trillions, not billions, if we're going to solve the world's environmental problems,' said Tamminen. 'There's an enormous amount of capital needed if we're going to move our economy from brown to green.'

Dan Fiorino, director of SPA's Center for Environmental Policy and event moderator, spoke about the importance of overcoming environmental challenges with relatively small global investments.

In his remarks, Fiorino described the need to identify smart public policy and innovative investments, noting that the United Nations reports that 'investing two percent of the global GDP into 10 key [green] sectors could kick-start a low-carbon, resource-efficient economy. That's a little under 2 trillion dollars. Is it doable? We'll find out.'

Lynn Scarlett talked about ways to put nature to work for the economy by investing in green infrastructure, such as increased greening to mitigate storm water runoff - which costs billions annually - or in coastal protection.

'We need better, cheaper, smarter, greener,' said Scarlett. 'The Nature Conservancy is looking at how we can put nature to work. For example, we've been looking at the role of oyster reefs in coastal resiliency and the role that restoration plays.'

When discussing the best scenario for climate change, insurance companies offer one opportunity to leverage change for governments around the world. Tamminen mentioned that British officials were alarmed in the 1980's when they discovered that insurance companies would no longer issue policies in the city of London because of climate risk and flooding. Working with the insurance companies, London officials were able to make a few billion dollars of changes to underground electrical lines and to add green space and natural flood barriers. According to Tamminen, these flooding and energy inefficiencies would have cost 10 times the amount to fix in the future if left unaddressed. And Londoners can once again buy insurance policies.

Bill Reilly talked about green infrastructure taking hold across the United States. Reilly said that in Chicago, the mayor asked what could be done in preparation for climate change. He worked with the city's universities and installed permeable concrete, expanded emergency services in preparation for heat related illnesses, increased green roofing, and planted trees that help to mitigate storm water runoff.

'A lot of very good things are happening at the local level, and undertaken even when Congress wasn't interested,' said Reilly. Investing in nature is not without its challenges. The panelists talked about how countries around the world work in different ways, with different politics and policies that can sometimes work against environmental solutions. There are many global challenges, but the panelists identified waste, transportation, and energy efficiency as opportunities ripe for investment and collaboration.

'Nature really does make a difference and investing in it properly can be a very cost effective solution,' said Scarlett.

The Scher Sustainability Forum was established by Peter Scher, a graduate of SPA, and his wife, Kim Tilley. Their passion for environmental responsibility in both the public and private sector inspired the founding of this series. The Forum explores the most pressing environmental and energy policy issues of our time.

Please visit SPA's Center for Environmental Policy for more information.

Making the Switch: Smart Technology and Grid Reform for the 21st Century/Nature's Conservancy

As promised, here's the first of Lynn Scarlett's work that we will profile over a couple of days:

by
LYNN SCARLETT

GLOBAL MANAGING DIRECTOR, PUBLIC POLICY, THE NATURE CONSERVANCY

It’s that time of the year again.

We’ve been having those tricky weeks here in the Southeast, where one day it’s mild enough for a fleece jacket and the next you have to put on a parka and tall boots. The house is too cold, so you adjust the thermostat; then it’s too hot.

Technology is reimagining all that, changing how we manage our daily routines. We have ‘smart’ thermostats that learn how we use heating and cooling and adjust to our preferences. We have refrigerators that will tell us if we are out of milk. And soon, we’ll have more cars on the roads that drive themselves (well, maybe).

As consumers, we are growing to expect that the technology we use will adapt in real time to how we live our lives. And technology companies are meeting the challenge.

So it’s surprising that the tech sector hasn’t applied these same expectations, with the same spirit of innovation, to how we generate, transport and use electric power. We are only just starting to see the types of storage technologies that enable and adapt to renewable sources like solar and wind, allowing these sources to truly replace traditional generation. Energy-efficiency technologies offer consumers, businesses, and governments the opportunity to save energy, emissions and money all at the same time. But despite their popularity, uptake and innovation are still slow.

lSoar panels adjacent to an elementary school in Antelope Valley. Photo © Dave Lauridsen/TNC

Technologies are available that can monitor and optimize our electric grid’s ability to deliver power where and when it’s most needed — and save consumers money.

Investments from the U.S. Department of Energy have led to the deployment of state-of-the-art grid technology, including 15 million smart meters, 8,500 automated feeder switches and over 1,000 phasor measurement units. But even with these initial modest successes, full integration of these technologies into our massive grid remains mostly an idea.

The Energy Department estimates that with an additional $100 billion investment by the industry as a whole — building off of the $10 billion DOE has already invested — we could fully modernize the grid, saving consumers $2 trillion over the next 20 years.

The electric power industry is as interested in grid reform as anyone. Industry leaders recognize we’re moving toward a world with more electricity generation sources — especially renewable sources — distributed more widely across the grid. Adapting to the new reality will require new technologies and functionalities that will make our grid more secure and efficient, but also save consumers money.

One of the most crucial first steps is visibility — enabling those managing the distribution of power along the grid to actually see, in real time, which sources are connected and what power is being drawn or produced from each source. Visibility is critical to managing a more distributed renewable generation-based grid from solar panels, wind turbines, storage batteries, electric cars and smart technologies.

This new, highly distributed, nimble grid will also be more reliable. More visibility not only allows generation to be deployed more efficiently, but also allows operators to see potential trouble spots and address them quickly and more effectively.

Visibility also empowers consumers by allowing users to see how their energy is delivered to them, including rate structures, costs and usage patterns. Consumers armed with such information gain an ability to alter their own usage patterns to reduce their consumption at critical times, saving themselves money and ultimately making the grid more efficient. Empowering consumers also, to some extent, means empowering innovation — giving entrepreneurs who are developing new energy delivery products and services the ability to access the grid and develop solutions at a reasonable cost.

None of these capabilities is so futuristic that they could not be realized in the very near term. In fact, some of this technology is already available, even if it is not yet widely used. Yet the smart grid of the future exists more as an ambition than an achievement.

Our focus as a nation on reinventing our electric power grid, much like the weather, has been running hot and cold. We need to make the switch — to turn up the heat on the demand for innovation. We need more capital, more research and development, and more commitment from policymakers at all levels of government.

The time has come for those of us who use electric power to demand more from our grid, those who manage it and the technologists who would take it to the next level.

Go to our main site to register/Renewable Now.biz

RN's first global webinar.  Please join us.

For Today's show/Lynn Scarlett Title GLOBAL MANAGING DIRECTOR, PUBLIC POLICY, THE NATURE CONSERVANCY

Tune in at 1p, ET, live as we interview Lynn.  You can also get registered for our webinar with Jeff Flath at 2p (only registered guest will participate).  See more details on our main site:  http://renewablenow.biz/renewable-now-headlines.html

We will post some of Lynn's excellent, thoughtful articles later today and this week.

Lynn Scarlett is the Global Managing Director for Public Policy at The Nature Conservancy. In this role, she directs policy in the United States and the 35 countries in which the Conservancy operates with a focus on climate and nature- based solutions.

Climate change is one of the world’s most urgent challenges and an immediate risk to our communities, economies, and to our conservation mission. Lynn believes that practical, innovative solutions can create a prosperous, low-carbon future that is cleaner, healthier, and more secure for everyone and that nature-based solutions are an essential component of controlling carbon pollution and protecting against climate impacts.

Most recently, she was the Deputy Secretary and Chief Operating Officer of the U.S. Department of the Interior, Lynn also served at Interior as the Acting Secretary of the Interior in 2006.

While Interior’s Deputy Secretary, Lynn initiated and chaired the Department’s Cooperative Conservation Working Group and its first-ever Climate Change Task Force. She established the Interior’s Ocean and Coastal Activities office to coordinate cross-departmental ocean and coastal work. She chaired the nation’s Wildland Fire Leadership Council. She served on the Executive Committee of the President’s Management Council. 

Lynn is author or co-author of publications on climate change adaptation; ecosystem services; large landscape conservation; and science and decision making. 

She chairs the Science Advisory Board of NOAA, co-chairs the Landscape Conservation Cooperatives Council established in 2014 by the U.S. Department of the Interior, and co-chairs the National Academy of Sciences Sustainability Roundtable. She also served on the US Global Change Research Program Committee and is a co-convening lead author of the National Climate Assessment. 

She is on the Dean’s Advisory Council of the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at UC Santa Barbara. She also serves on the boards of trustees of the National Wildlife Refuge Association and is a member of the Coordinating Council of the Practitioners’ Network for Large Landscape Conservation. 

Lynn received her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in political science from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she also completed her Ph.D. coursework and exams in political science and political economy.

Victory: These Two Cities Just Committed to 100% Renewable Energy

Commitment.  Tough on all of us, to make and keep.  Yet, without it we  so often fail,..and we fail others.

That is why are so happy to see cities 22 and 23, in the US, commit to 100% renewables.  In this case by 2032.  We applaud them.

For you, though, what commitments are you wiling to make as steps towards reducing your carbon footprint?  They can be very diverse--efficiency, pushing your house off the grid, EV's, bikes, walking....the list is almost endless.  Can you, too, get to 100% improvement over the next 10 years?  If not, why not?

We need your help.  If whole cities, states, nations pledge, it will be easy for us.

Victory: These Two Cities Just Committed to 100% Renewable Energy 

Sierra Club

Pueblo, Colorado and Moab, Utah, this week became the 22nd and 23rd cities in the U.S. to commit to transition to 100 percent clean, renewable energy. The Pueblo City Council approved Monday a measure committing to power the community entirely with renewable sources of energy like wind and solar by 2035. The vote was immediately followed on Tuesday by the Moab City Council approving a resolution committing Moab to 100 percent renewable energy by 2032.


"No matter who is in the White House, cities and towns across the country will continue leading the transition to 100 percent clean, renewable energy," Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune said. "Pueblo and Moab join a growing movement of communities which are charting a course away from dirty fuels."

Cities like Pueblo and Moab have long suffered the consequences of dirty energy and utility reliance on fossil fuels. Pueblo, for example, has a sizable low-income population that has been suffering from the high cost of electricity due to the local utilities' decision to build new gas infrastructure and saddle the cost with ratepayers. More than 7,000 people in Pueblo have had their electricity shut off due to the high cost of electricity.

 In Utah, Canyonlands National Park has been marred by haze pollution from two neighboring coal plants, which threatens the local Moab tourism industry—the economic lifeblood of the community. With this week's announcements, both communities are poised to confront these threats by transitioning away from fossil fuels to clean, renewable energy.

"The climate crisis is a global challenge, but many of our strongest leaders are at the local level," Ken Berlin, CEO of The Climate Reality Project, said. "We have a lot of hard work ahead, but it is encouraging to see more and more communities, businesses and universities understand that renewable energy is not only the right moral choice, but also the right economic choice."

SunGlacier’s X-Model Creates Water Out of Air With Climate-Friendly Solar Power

We love finding and reporting on new, green technology.  This a similar unit we profiled last year that is working well in Africa.

Water is our most valuable resource.  Finding inexpensive, clean ways of bringing large volumes to every community around the world will push us way ahead on our quest to build global social and economic equity.  Great innovation:

Based upon the Peltier technology, the SunGlacier team has designed a solar-powered water maker called X-model, which operates without any batteries and current inverters. It includes a photovoltaic panel and has the capacity to generate power for the 18W Peltier element minimizing the heat level in the aluminum block below the ambient dew point.

No Moving Parts Means Low Wear and Low Maintenance

The project was initiated by Ap Verheggen who wants to introduce positive signals related to changes in the climate. He believes that the climatic changes in different parts of the world is dynamic and has a deep impact the culture. With this rapid change in climate, there is a need to give a quick response to this issue.

This SunGlacier concept includes a unique and innovative artistic design. It has been tested and possesses great potential for further optimization. The temperature of the aluminum cooling element surface is beneath the dew point of ambient air because of which the water will start condensing on the surface of the element. 

Theoretically, X-model can produce water for decades until the solar panel or the Peltier element ceases to function

Experts in the field also claim that the project will be able to create ice and water in a desert environment through solar energy. It is only necessary to reduce the surface temperature of the aluminum below 0°C. Unfortunately, that requires a lot of energy due to the high temperature difference. On the other hand, the desert’s sun provides enough powerful solar radiation for the conversion of electricity in temperature differences by making use of the Peltier effect. However, there are some issues that need to be addressed as well like what climatic facts need to be considered in a desert environment, where water can be found in enough quantities and how will adequate freezing capacity be generated to create and sustain an amount of ice within the environment.