Closing the deal and getting my signature on a contract should have been a slam dunk for NRG, one of the largest American energy companies and the developer of the project in my community. Instead, my three-month journey through its sales process turned me from a hot lead into an annoyed non-subscriber with a lower opinion of NRG than I had had when the process began.
The fact that many of the negative aspects of my experience are common across community solar marketing is cause for concern. For community solar to get to a breakout point for growth, developers (and their partners and contractors) should take a fresh approach to marketing and sales that’s focused on transparent education and clarity of information.
Sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) is an inorganic, colorless, odorless, non-flammable, non-toxic extremely potent greenhouse gas, and an excellent electrical insulator.SF 6 has an octahedral geometry, consisting of six fluorine atoms attached to a central sulfur atom. It is a hypervalent molecule. Typical for a nonpolar gas, it is poorly soluble in water but quite soluble in nonpolar organic solvents. It is generally transported as a liquefied compressed gas. It has a density of 6.12 g/L at sea level conditions, considerably higher than the density of air (1.225 g/L).
“Arctic fires—the combination of these two words is still an unusual term in my field of fire science,” says Guillermo Rein of Imperial College London. “Arctic fires are rare, but they’re not unprecedented. What is unprecedented is the number of fires that are happening. Never before have satellites around the planet seen this level of activity.”
Unprecedented, yes, but not unexplained. The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, leading to the desiccation of vegetation, which fuels huge blazes. Fortunately for us, these wildfires typically threaten remote, sparsely populated areas. But unfortunately for the whole of humanity, so far this year Arctic fires have released some 121 megatonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, more than what Belgium emits annually. That beats the previous Arctic record of 110 megatonnes of carbon dioxide, set in 2004—and we’re only in July.
All electric buildings were quite popular in the mid 1960s at the dawn of the nuclear age but they fell out of popularity during the 1970s. It's not particularly efficient to convert fossil fuels into electricity compared to burning them directly. It's a different calculation if your generating from renewables though. Also, most American homes are wired at too low of a voltage to be really efficient at using electricity to do very energy intensive tasks well - like quick, instant on heat generation or spinning large electric motors. 240 volt outlets are relatively rare and almost nobody in their home has 480 volt 3 phase electricity. If people had 480 volt 3-phase in their homes, then things like instant-on electric water heaters and electric cars would be a lot more pratical -- but higher voltages require greater separation of the wires, with more insulation, and greater issues with sparks due greater ability of electricity to jump.
July 2019 has replaced July 2016 as the hottest month on record, with meteorologists saying that global temperatures marginally exceeded the previous record.
The European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Programme, which analyzes temperature data from around the planet, said that July was around 0.56 °C warmer than the global average temperature between 1981-2010.
That's slightly hotter than July 2016, when the world was in the throes of one of the strongest El Niño events on record.
Bird boasts that its dockless electric scooters allow customers to “cruise past traffic and cut back on CO2 emissions—one ride at a time. Its rival Lime claims the vehicles “reduce dependence on personal automobiles for short distance transportation and leave future generations with a cleaner, healthier planet.”
But the mere fact that battery-powered scooters don’t belch pollution out of a tailpipe doesn’t mean they’re “emissions free,” or as “eco-friendly” as some have assumed. The actual climate impact of the vehicles depends heavily on how they’re made, what they’re replacing, and how long they last.