Technology

"Since December 2019, the sun has been moving into a busier part of its cycle, when increasingly intense pulses of energy can shoot out in all directions. Some of these large bursts of charged particles head right toward Earth. Without a good way to anticipate these solar storms, we’re vulnerable. A big one could take out a swath of our communication systems and power grids before we even knew what hit us."

"The energy storage industry is shattering records for battery deployments, underscoring its growing role in decarbonizing the economy."

"The Texas blackout is another reminder that more frequent, climate-driven extreme weather puts stress on the country's electricity grid. It came just months after outages in California aimed at preventing wildfires."

"President Joe Biden’s plan to crank up electric vehicle infrastructure is short on publicly available details, but electric vehicle advocates already have a long list of ideas on how the administration can make it a reality."

"Even as Texas struggled to restore electricity and water over the past week, signs of the risks posed by increasingly extreme weather to America’s aging infrastructure were cropping up across the country."

"Scientists have cloned the first U.S. endangered species, a black-footed ferret duplicated from the genes of an animal that died over 30 years ago."

"Bitter cold and icy conditions in Texas showed that wind farms are built for yesterday’s climate and often not winterized to withstand changing weather due to climate change."

"Systems are designed to handle spikes in demand, but the wild and unpredictable weather linked to global warming will very likely push grids beyond their limits."