Solar, EVs and a big exit from coal: 2024’s good climate news
Solar capacity around the world was rolled out at a record pace, as bargain panel prices helped countries deploy cleaner energy.
Engineering work has begun at a coal-fired power station on the banks of the Thames in England, UK that could turn it into the world’s largest biomass plant with almost no carbon emissions. The owner of the Tilbury power station, previously scheduled for shut down in 2015 under new EU environmental regulations, says it hopes to produce up to 750 megawatts of green power by winter.
Last week it was reported that the approval of new rules for air pollution, water pollution, and waste disposal in the US could result in the retirement of between 35 and 70 gigawatts (GW) of coal-fired power generation throughout that country.
“No one has done anything on this scale before and we are confident that this will provide huge carbon savings but also reductions in other emissions such as NOx (nitric oxide) and SO2 (sulpher oxide),” said a spokesman for RWE npower, the UK arm of the business and a sponsor of the football league.”
Green Technology World reports:
“Speaking on May 24, James Wood, Deputy Assistant Secretary for the U.S. Department of Energy, said that new regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency mean a lot of coal-fired power plants will shut down soon—some of them, simply because it would not be feasible to find the materials and skilled labor to complete upgrades in time to meet tight EPA deadlines.”
Image of the Tilbury power station in 1973 reproduced under the Creative Commons licence. Tilbury ‘A’ station was commissioned in 1956 and Tilbury ‘B’ was opened in 1968 and assigned to Britain’s National Power on privatisation in 1990.
