Ships in Port Belch Carbon Emissions. Solutions are on the Way.

Look out at the harbour in Singapore or other port cities and you’ll see lots of ships anchored offshore. Multiply what you see by the thousands of international and domestic ports in Southeast Asia, and the number of idle ships is huge. Every hour a ship is not transporting goods costs the owner money, and the engine that’s running to keep the ship operating is emitting greenhouse gasses. Start-ups and large companies alike are developing solutions to speed up turnaround, cut costs and reduce emissions.

Innovative Energy Storage Solutions Make Solar even more Attractive

One of the challenges of renewable energy is in ensuring consistent and reliable power generation, for example, solar panels cannot generate power during the night. Energy storage can overcome the difficulty by storing excess power for use when renewable energy is not available. Storage is growing rapidly, and innovations can make deployment easier, faster and cheaper. Click to read the full article or go to https://www.solarwa.org/innovative_energy_storage_solutions.

Electric Boats in Southeast Asia Cut Emissions – and Costs

While data shows that ocean-going ships create about 2-3 percent of global carbon emissions, what’s not counted in that data is coastal fishing boats, ferries, tugboats, tour boats and more. With ships plying the waters among thousands of islands and ports in Southeast Asia, emissions are likely to be huge. Regulator are cracking down, and small start-ups as well as global giants are designing electric boats that cut costs and emissions significantly.

AI Powers Regenerative Farming Solutions in Thailand

Living Roots revives degraded land through precision agriculture. Farmers across Southeast Asia face a troubling trend: declining yields and diminishing incomes, primarily caused by deteriorating soil health and the intensifying impacts of climate change. In Thailand, Living Roots is addressing this issue head-on, employing microbial fertilizers, artificial intelligence, and regenerative agricultural practices to reverse this damaging trajectory.

Data Centers need Solar Energy

Across the US, tech companies large and small are building data centers to handle generative AI, streaming, social media and myriad other activities that require massive amounts of data. In the past, Washington was a top destination for data centers, but data centers also require tremendous amounts of electricity. While there has been sufficient electricity so far, the scale of the expected growth of data centers and the difficulties with adding more electricity to the grid are reaching a point where there may soon be insufficient power. New solutions are critically needed.

Expanding Solar with Virtual Power Plants, Microgrids and Local Storage

“There is a general consensus that we've got an energy problem coming in Washington State,” Cascadia Renewables co-founder and managing partner Markus Virta said. We have to be very intentional about where solar goes, where energy storage goes, and those distributed energy resources.What we're looking at, Markus said, is creating utility systems with communication over all of our energy assets and can actively balance supply and demand via the virtual power plants (VPP).

Advancing Energy Equity and Justice

One of the most engaging panels at the 2024 Solar Summit in early October was about energy equity and energy justice. Solar Washington board member Charlee Thomson, who moderated the panel, said “these two topics, equity and justice, are integral to the clean energy transition and the advancement of solar energy. While we are reaching beyond the typical scope of what folks generally think of as solar energy, we wanted to put solar in the broader context of the clean energy transition.”

Electrify Everything to Save Costs and Decarbonize

“The decarbonization picture is that electricity is more efficient than fossil fuels in many applications, vehicles or cars as well as heating systems,” Solar Washington board member Charlee Thompson said as she kicked off the panel on “Decarbonization and Electrification” at the Solar Summit. Clean Energy Transition Institute Research Analyst Ruby Moore-Bloom, McKinstry senior consultant Scott Foreman-Murray and Rewiring America volunteer Wendy Ferry provided insights on how to make electrification happen and how to achieve Washington’s decarbonization goals.
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