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This week in buildings, land and industry decarbonization news, NetZero Insider’s John Cropley has the details on a report from the Environmental Defense Fund arguing heat pumps make a lot more sense than hydrogen blending to cut emissions related to heating in New York. The Empire State’s utilities want to blend 20% hydrogen and keep using their distribution system, but producing that much green hydrogen would require eight times more renewable electricity than cutting the same emissions with heat pumps.
Data centers continue to make news every week, with Energy News Network doing a deep dive on a push by Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin to grow data centers in Southwest Virginia. That is on the opposite end of the state from Data Center Alley outside D.C., and that makes it hard to supply such massive loads. In a related story, the Virginia Mercury published an op-ed from a Sierra Club volunteer looking into whether geothermal could be an answer to serving the growing electricity demand from data centers.
Software giant Oracle is planning on building a data center that would have 1 GW of demand, supplied by three small modular reactors, CNBC reported. CEO Larry Ellison announced the plan on its earnings call, but did not say where it would be built, though he did claim the three reactors have “building permits.” The only operating SMRs are in China, Japan and Russia.
In a story of overlapping “green” industries, the Colorado Sun has the details on how legal marijuana growers munched much of Xcel Energy’s $93.6 million budget to help local businesses become more energy efficient. The program exceeded its budget by 144%, driven by demand from the “indoor agricultural market,” so the utility is asking for another $34 million. The request for more money is opposed by consumer advocates who argue it would encourage utility profligacy.
In institutional decarbonization news, E&E News has a story on how New York is doing with its goal to decarbonize the buildings it owns. The state claims it is on target but, facing a 2025 goal some projects, it will not be done by then, and what progress has been made has come from shutting down electrically inefficient, old prisons.
And The Economist looks into new technology to make air conditioning more environmentally friendly, which is vital to a warming world where many in the Global South still lack access to electricity. The story notes that access to air conditioning helped avert 200,000 deaths in 2019 alone among those 65 years and older. But air conditioning on its own is responsible for more emissions than aviation, and the article looks multiple ways those emissions might be cut going forward.
Read all that and more in this week’s Intelligence Report:
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