by Mary Eiserman | Sep 27, 2024 | Clean Energy, Eminent Domain, Environmental Impact
Running modern societies on clean electricity rather than burning fossil fuels will require improvements to our electric grid. Building new power lines is costly and involves time-consuming processes to acquire new land, rights-of-way, and other permits.
“Reconductoring” – replacing existing steel-cored power lines with advanced conductors with composite cores – can carry twice as much power at a given diameter compared to conventional lines. Reconductoring could provide 80% of the transmission capacity increases needed to achieve 90% clean energy generation by 2035. Upfront costs are higher, but $180 billion in generation and transmission costs would be saved by 2050, compared to building new power lines.
This would result in far fewer cases of eminent domain on private property to build new power lines
Read more from the article at anthropocenmagazine.org
An elegant and affordable solution to expanding the grid
Summary by Susan McSwain
by Mary Eiserman | Feb 2, 2024 | Clean Energy, Environmental Impact
New Jersey enacts EPR for EV batteries (resource-recycling.com)
New Jersey is the first state to make producers responsible for electric vehicle batteries and other, similar propulsion batteries. In three years, a ban on disposing of propulsion batteries in landfills [in N.J.] will come into effect. A consumer complaints and public education program is being established by the N.J. Department of Environmental Protection. Battery producers will be required to create and submit management plans to the state Department of Environmental Protection
Other states have used similar extended producer responsibility (EPR) bills to manage other kinds of batteries. Vermont did so in 2014 for single-use household batteries. In 2021, Washington D.C. enacted the U.S.’s first single-use and rechargeable battery EPR law, followed by California in 2022 and Washington state in 2023.
Banning EV batteries from landfills could help build the battery recycling industry.
