October 2, 2023 - WorldOra Carbon News

The 'loneliest road in America' is getting a major upgrade: 'It feels … A new story in Bloomberg details the efforts to bring EV chargers to Route 50, also known as the “Loneliest Road in America.”

Having been given its nickname by a 1986 article in Life magazine, which described Route 50 (at least in Nevada) as having “no points of interest,” the “Loneliest Road in America” now has several points of interest for environmentally conscious drivers — namely, charging stations that allow them to travel its entire span from Sacramento, California, to Ocean City, Maryland (though two stretches in the Midwest remain a bit tricky, according to Bloomberg).

While that $900 million is being put to work immediately to build a network of EV chargers across 53,000 miles and 35 states, a total of $5 billion for EV charging stations has been earmarked as part of the Inflation Reduction Act.

The easier things get for EV drivers, the better for the environment and overall health of our planet, as more consumers could be moved to switch from a gas-powered car to an EV. According to the International Energy Agency, gas-powered cars, which run on dirty energy, produce more than twice as much planet-overheating pollution over their life cycles as EVs.

“It feels like the country is at, or about to be at, full coverage,” Steve Birkett, a marketing consultant and EV-related content creator, told Bloomberg. “At which point it just becomes about density.”

Solar and battery storage prices have dropped almost 90% in 10 years Berlin-based scientific think tank Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC) has released a new study in the journal Energy Research & Social Science in which the researchers compared the corresponding findings from innovation reports with the standard model-based scenarios on climate transition. They found that despite the ongoing use of fossil fuels and biomass in the near future, clean energy is ultimately going to change the energy game.

The study focuses on solar and battery storage, but the researchers note that wind power, heat pumps, and other clean technologies are also seeing a sharp drop in prices, too.

Technological advances are making solar and battery storage smarter and more efficient. Globally, production of solar components and battery storage are being ramped up commercially, and that’s being spurred on by both private and public financial backing and government policy support in response to the global effort to limit global warming to well below 2C. And as a result, the clean energy industry’s economy of scale is causing prices to plummet.

For example, the study notes, battery storage already cost less than $100 per kilowatt hour, which is significantly less than was predicted for 2030 in a study two years ago. They assert that the price premium for battery storage will drop from 100% at present to only 28% in 2030.

EU Plans to Ban Term Carbon Neutral In an attempt to stop consumer products greenwashing, the EU will ban claims such as “climate neutral” or “eco” unless companies can prove their accuracy. The rules are expected to come into force by 2026.

This change, which was agreed on Sept. 19, will also outlaw claims on carbon neutrality that are based on emissions offsetting, as well as green labels that do not come from approved sustainability programs. CO2 offsetting schemes have faced criticism for their lack of credibility, as some of those schemes allocate money to projects that do not effectively remove or store CO2 emissions over extended periods of time.