Cipher News makes sense of the innovations, industries and people powering the clean energy future. Our global team of expert journalists and guest authors bring decades of experience and a shared commitment to accessible, no-nonsense reporting on climate and the energy transition.
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Kirkland , Washington , US
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From today's Weekly Bulletin: "Geoengineering quantified: Heat is deadlier than air pollution," by Cat Clifford for Cipher News: https://buff.ly/RNDEYDx. Want the latest SRM news delivered to your inbox each week? Subscribe here: https://buff.ly/14A9NaO.
The Earth is getting hotter. And heat kills. One way to quickly, inexpensively and temporarily cool the Earth is to inject sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere to reflect the sun's rays. It's a counterintuitive idea and often controversial. However, the risks of this adaptation strategy, solar geoengineering, can be quantified. Scientists recently compared the number of human lives lost to heat with the number of human lives that would be lost due to increased air pollution and ozone layer degradation. Learn more from Cat Clifford: https://nt-z.ro/423hSPB
The number of people without access to electricity dropped from 1.4 billion in 2010 to 737 million in 2024, finds the International Energy Agency (IEA). But progress has been unequal around the world, writes Anca Gurzu in a #DataDive. More: https://nt-z.ro/4iD9pK6
A recent peer-reviewed article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences quantified the risks of a type of solar geoengineering that involves intentionally injecting particles of sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere to reflect more sunlight back into space and temporarily cool the surface of the Earth. The study finds the cooling achieved by putting sulfate aerosols in the upper atmosphere would save more lives than would be lost due to the air pollution and ozone degradation. Read more from Cat Clifford: https://nt-z.ro/4hEbC6G
Check out our daily top reads & #HotTakes at https://nt-z.ro/4iOpLPD! A few highlights from this week: + Bill Spindle on Chinese EV maker shares jumping after unveiling new 5-minute charger. + Amena H. Saiyid on The Energy Department releasing funds to restart Michigan's shuttered Palisades nuclear power plant. + Anca Gurzu on an action plan to make Europe's ailing steel sector more competitive. + Cat Clifford on the race between China and the United States to commercialize fusion.
Cipher News reposted this
Nuclear has been getting a lot of column inches recently, so it was great to dig into the topic with Cat Clifford who covers the nuclear beat for Cipher News. We get into whether we're in a nuclear renaissance (spoiler: not right now we're not), the nuclear & AI bromance (just last week, Nvidia's Jensen Huang announced that the computational power needed for AI is now "easily 100 times more" than what was anticipated just a year ago). 😬 And then there's the politics of it. Which might be on a better footing than renewables...
Hundreds of millions of people gained access to electricity over the last 15 years, but population growth and tight financing have slowed this trend recently, writes Anca Gurzu in this week's #DataDive based on data from the International Energy Agency. Read more: https://nt-z.ro/4ipFDs9
Anca Gurzu snapped this photo of the delegates at the Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL) Forum in Barbados last week watching vibrant live music from artists performing on steelpans, a musical instrument popular across the island. Each week, we feature a photo that is somehow related to energy, the thing we all need but don’t notice until it’s expensive or gone. Email your ideas and photos to news@ciphernews.com.
“You have to play on the pitch as it is, not as you would like it,” Barbados Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley said at the Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL) Forum in her home country last week, referring to challenging geopolitical dynamics impacting climate aid and efforts to expand clean energy. Anca Gurzu shares five takeaways from the event: https://nt-z.ro/4iIWQfW
Cipher News reposted this
Nuclear power is back. Or is it? Small Modular Reactors, Fusion - they're all grabbing column inches, but is any of it going to put a meaningful dent in power requirements anytime soon? That's what Hannah Ritchie and I get into with Cat Clifford on the latest episode of Solving for Climate. Cat is Senior Science and Economics writer at Cipher News, and covers the nuclear beat in detail. Subscribe to the show here: http://bit.ly/4hll92h