Climate research and advocacy organization Action for the Climate Emergency (ACE) has rebranded as GoodPower, a shift timed with Climate Week NYC. The move reflects the group’s ambition to confront rising energy costs and climate impacts while accelerating the global transition to renewable power.

Led by CEO Leah Qusba (pictured above), GoodPower combines grassroots organizing, empirical research, and digital communications to engage everyday people around the economic and social benefits of decarbonization. The organization’s work is rooted in the idea that renewable energy is not only vital for addressing the climate crisis but also essential for reducing household energy costs, creating jobs, and strengthening economic security.

The relaunch comes at a moment when energy costs are surging in the United States and globally. US electricity prices have risen more than 30 percent since 2020, driven in part by the growing energy demands of artificial intelligence and data centers. Families also face compounding financial pressures from extreme weather events, rising insurance premiums, and broader economic instability. This Green Prophet article here explores how AI can help improve grid stability.

GoodPower argues that solutions already exist. Renewable power is now the most affordable and fastest to deploy worldwide, while complementary technologies such as electric vehicles and regenerative agriculture offer additional benefits for communities and economies.

A Record of Impact

The organization has built its platform over 17 years of work as ACE. Among its achievements:

• Delivering more than 3 billion ads, videos, and organic impressions to key audiences.

• Building a network of 1.4 million climate advocates.

• Helping secure local support for 6 GW of renewable energy projects now moving into construction.

• Running more than 115 research trials through its Good Data Lab.

• Registering over 350,000 under-represented voters since 2020.

• Expanding international operations to Brazil, Canada, South Africa, and the UK.

This history, Qusba said, positions GoodPower to address both the climate crisis and the economic pressures facing households worldwide.

Strategic Vision

GoodPower’s new identity is paired with its 2030 Strategic Plan, “Upward Spiral.” The plan calls for scaling proven programs, investing in breakthrough technologies, and deepening work in communications, research, and grassroots field organizing. A key emphasis will be the use of AI and other tools to reach broader audiences and accelerate adoption of clean energy solutions. (Related: The UN is building a coalition to explore how AI can save the planet).

GoodPower’s relaunch has drawn praise from funders and partners. Joel Clement of the Lemelson Foundation called the rebrand “deeply aligned with what this moment demands.” Funders including the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation highlighted GoodPower’s evidence-based methods and ability to reach new audiences with creative, research-backed strategies.

With a redefined mission and an expanded toolkit, GoodPower aims to build the cultural and political momentum needed to accelerate the renewable energy transition. The organization frames its work as unlocking a better economy — one with millions of new jobs, lower bills, healthier communities (why was Ivanpah shut down?), and a more secure energy system.

For more information, visit goodpower.org.

The post She Rebrands ACE as GoodPower to Accelerate the Energy Transition appeared first on Green Prophet.

We all want to live in a home that is warm, comfortable and relaxing, and being able to keep temperatures at the right level forms part and parcel of your home environment. However, there are many people who end up spending a fortune on their energy bills, not just in terms of heating their home but also with their various other appliances and devices.

If you want to reduce the amount of energy you use at home, there are various ways in which you can do this. It is important to remember by reducing your energy usage, you will not only be able to do your bit for the environment, but you can also slash the amount you pay on your energy bills. So, this is something that is well worth doing. In this article, we will look at some of the ways you can cut your energy usage.

What You Can Do

The good news is that there are various ways in which you can reduce your energy usage at home, as the infographic shows. A lot of different things contribute to the amount of energy that you use each day, and by looking at these, you can then make cutbacks. Some of the ways you can reduce energy usage include:

Getting Insulation

One of the ways in which you can make a big difference in energy usage is by getting insulation. It is particularly important to consider insulation in areas such as your crawl space and your attic, as this can slash the amount of energy you use considerably by providing you with enhanced thermal efficiency. This means that you will not have to use your heating or air cooling systems as much in order to maintain a comfortable temperature in the home as seen in this guide to efficient heating and cooling.

Turning the Thermostat Down

Another thing you can do during the colder months is to turn down the thermostat, even if it is only by a little. Turning down the thermostat by just a couple of degrees can make a big difference to your energy usage as well as your energy costs. In order to keep warm, make sure you layer up instead, and you will be able to reduce your energy usage and reduce your bills.

Getting Double Glazing

If you do not already have it, it is well worth considering double glazing for the windows and doors of your home. These provide you with a great way to reduce your energy usage and maintain and comfortable temperature in your home. In addition to helping to cut your energy costs, double glazing can provide other benefits such as reducing noise pollution from outside and giving your home a modern new look.

These are all ways in which you can reduce the amount of energy you use in your home. By doing this, you will be amazed at how much you can save as well as being able to do your bit for the green cause.

The post Tips to Reduce Energy Usage at Home appeared first on Green Prophet.

India’s weather was hot and humid during the early morning hours of July 30, 2012, but nothing out of the ordinary for late summer in this part of the world.  There were no typhoons, earthquakes, solar flares or computer glitches to be blamed. A circuit breaker tripped on a power line between Bina and Gwalion, nothing out of the ordinary– the sort of problem electrical grids are designed to solve.

No, the biggest electricity blackout in human history appears to have been caused by “overdrawl.” In other words, the people of northern India simply used more power than the utilities could supply.

On the surface it appears that Egypt’s power problems are more complex.  The outage which struck southern Egypt earlier in the month was blamed on a failed power plant.  A failed power line, hot weather during Ramadan and Aswan electricity thieves have all been blamed for contributing to Cairo’s outage.

But modern electrical grids are designed with an excess capacity margin and enough redundancy to work around small problems.

Both the Indian and Egyptian power problems are larger and deeper than they appear.  The root of these problems is that demand for electricity is outpacing supply, leaving precious little margin for error.

Image of desert mountain sun from Shutterstock

The post Egypt’s Electricity Suppliers Struggle to Meet Demand appeared first on Green Prophet.

The sun, our most important source of natural energy, light, and even nutrition could one day also become our worst enemy if intense solar magnetic ‘super storms’ cause massive power blackouts. Whether these storms, which appear to come in 11-year cycles, could melt down nuclear reactors  as  might have happened earlier this year, is still a matter of speculation. These intense solar storms have in the past been so severe that they are said to have been responsible for severe damage to power grids and communications networks.
In the end they may be even more damaging than giant, mega hurricanes like the 2005 Hurricane Katrina that devastated much of the US Gulf Coast.NASA photo of solar storm

The recent massive power blackout in India, caused mainly by too much demand on an aging, overloaded power grid network
is only an example of what can happen when a mega power grid blackout occurs in an area where hundreds of millions of people are sweltering in summer temperatures often soaring past 45 degrees Celsius or 133 degrees Fahrenheit.

Although India’s massive power blackout has not been attributed to a solar super storm, it does give a sobering example of what could happen if even a percentage of world power grids would become disabled by an intense solar storm, over which we on earth have virtually little protection from.

Solar flareups and even mega storms, caused by intense nuclear fusions at the sun’s core, often come with little warning. Providing protection of power grids, communications networks and many other networks we humans depend on, has still not been perfected as yet. I

n a report, Solar Storms: Protecting Your Operations Against the Sun’s ‘Dark Side’,prepared by two Swiss risk engineering experts, A.V. Riswadkar and Buddy Dobkins, the conclusion was that a better assessment of the implications of such storms on our entire energy and communications networks:

“Better understanding of the technical aspects of this threat and interconnected vulnerabilities in various industry segments, such as electric utilities, power distribution, oil and gas pipelines in the energy sector and technology exposures should be a top risk management priority. This must be followed by an assessment of their awareness of this threat, readiness, prioritization of their mitigation strategies and action plans.

“This will require opening a high-level dialog with a variety of stakeholders and participation in workshops and other forums,” they advise.

These sun-caused power outages are something to think about when ascending to the 150th floor of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa tower. Scary.

::National Geographic

More about solar super storms and their effect on our planet:

Solar Flare and Geomagnetic Storm Spares Earthlings

Could Intense Solar Flares Melt Down Nuclear Reactors Reactors

Israel’s Gridon Keeps the Midnight Oil Burning

The post Solar Flare Super Storm Could Put Middle East in Darkness appeared first on Green Prophet.

Arothron was established in 2011 as an enterprise focused on underwater compressed air energy storage (UWCAES).  Arothron is named after a type of pufferfish which can inflate its body into a spherical shape. This Israel-based company’s mascot helps us understand how underwater compressed air storage works. Underwater compressed air energy storage has several advantages. The first is that it can be used wherever there is a deep body of water. Some large Mideastern cities meet this criteria. The second is that because deep water is under high pressure, the containers needn’t be made of high strength steel or rock.  Ordinary concrete or even plastic bladders can be used as an underwater compressed air storage tank.

But first, let me explain how electrical storage can make our grid more efficient.

The World Factbook estimates that Egypt’s per capita electrical consumption averages 154 Watts.  For Saudi Arabia it is 733 and for Qatar it’s 1263.  Since solar panel prices have fallen to less than $1/Watt, an investment of  $150-1500 in solar panels per person should meet demand.  But now we’re comparing peak solar output with average consumer demand. 

What happens if a hot night raises consumption at a time when solar production is zero?

Ask any utility expert whether they prefer wind, solar or coal power and they’ll probably tell you that the first two have a lower capacity factor and are impractical for base load generation. 

The output of wind, solar and other renewable energy sources varies over the course of a day and across a year.  Consumption also varies in an unpredictable manner.

Energy storage can help fill the gaps between varying energy production and consumption.  Many techniques have been tried. Batteries, flywheels, superconducting storage rings and other exotic methods have not yet proven themselves mature enough to compete in the real world.

Pumped storage hydro-power is promising, but it requires that a mountain and lake are conveniently located near the power plant.

Compressed air energy storage (CAES) is also a mature technology.  It has been used in cities such as Paris, Dresden and Buenos Ares since the late nineteenth century. But scaling CAES to modern electricity demand is most practical when caverns, salt mines, or other large hollow geological structures are conveniently located.

Toronto based Hydrostor already has a bladder based UWCAS system under development as envisioned in this video:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWBQn7xVcwM&w=420&h=315]

Arothron intends to use ordinary concrete for the underwater pressure vessels.  One advantage of UWCAS systems is that expanding air rising from the bottom of the sea should be cooler than ambient summer temperatures.

Because of this the “pollution” from a UWCAS storage plant could provide our cities with clean, cool air.

::Arothron

Image of pufferfish from Shutterstock; other schematics of underwater compressed air energy story from Arothron website

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