After a brutal 2023, offshore wind looks to overcome growing pains

ATLANTIC OCEAN — Three huge blades spin hypnotically overhead, illuminated by the morning sun shining through cotton-ball clouds. Our vessel cruises over gentle waves past the yellow foundation of a 600-foot-tall wind turbine, one of five rising from the waters off the coast of Rhode Island. A cable buried six feet…

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Suddenly, US electricity demand is spiking. Can the grid keep up?

For the past two decades, demand for electricity across the United States has hardly increased. But those dynamics appear to have dramatically reversed — and U.S. electric utilities, regulators and power grid planners aren’t prepared to deal with this new paradigm of surging electricity demand. That’s the key…

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Seattle and other cities mull creative workarounds to ditch gas

This story was first published by Grist . A new law in Seattle marks the latest in a wave of local efforts to electrify homes and other buildings. Under the city’s Building Emissions Performance Standard , signed into law last week, all existing commercial and multifamily residential buildings over 20,000 square…

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5 lessons from Portugal’s 6-day renewables streak

Years of renewables development set Portugal up for stunning success this fall when the country met all of its electricity needs with renewable sources for six days straight . For five of those days, no fossil fuels had to be burned at conventional power plants to keep the grid humming along. I recently joined the…

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