Does Rooftop Solar Actually Help the Climate? - Heatmap

Does Rooftop Solar Actually Help the Climate? - Heatmap News

Robinson is the founding executive editor of Heatmap. He was previously a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he covered climate change, energy, and technology. Read More

Read More

To continue reading

Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Welcome to Heatmap

Thank you for registering with Heatmap. Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our lives, a force reshaping our economy, our politics, and our culture. We hope to be your trusted, friendly, and insightful guide to that transformation. Please enjoy your free articles. You can check your profile here.

subscribe to get Unlimited access

Offer for a Heatmap News Unlimited Access subscription; please note that your subscription will renew automatically unless you cancel prior to renewal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. We will let you know in advance of any price changes. Taxes may apply. Offer terms are subject to change.

Subscribe to get unlimited Access

Hey, you are out of free articles but you are only a few clicks away from full access. Subscribe below and take advantage of our introductory offer.

subscribe to get Unlimited access

Offer for a Heatmap News Unlimited Access subscription; please note that your subscription will renew automatically unless you cancel prior to renewal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. We will let you know in advance of any price changes. Taxes may apply. Offer terms are subject to change.

Create a Free Account

Unlock your free articles

Welcome to Heatmap

Thank you for registering with Heatmap. Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our lives, a force reshaping our economy, our politics, and our culture. We hope to be your trusted, friendly, and insightful guide to that transformation. Please enjoy your free articles. You can check your profile here.

Subscribe to get unlimited Access

Hey , you are out of free articles but you are only a few clicks away from full access. Subscribe below and take advantage of our introductory offer.

Login

To continue reading login to your account.

Forgot your password?

Please enter the email address you use for your account so we can send you a link to reset your password:

Inside episode five of Shift Key.

For a few weeks now, Heatmap’s staff writer, Emily Pontecorvo, has been trying to figure out if installing rooftop solar panels on your home actually reduces carbon pollution in a systematic way. In other words: If you own a home, and install solar panels on it, are you doing anything to change how much fossil fuel gets burned in your region or around the world? Or — somewhat counterintuitively — will your panels just increase the cost of electricity near you while shifting demand for those fossil fuels around?

On this week’s episode, we try to answer these questions in a satisfying way. Princeton Professor Jesse Jenkins and I welcome Emily to the podcast to discuss the messy truth of distributed solar power.

Subscribe to “Shift Key” and find this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can also add the show’s RSS feed to your podcast app to follow us directly.

Here is an excerpt from our conversation:
Emily Pontecorvo: My question is, if you're taking this solar-shaped hole out of electricity demand and that's displacing a cheaper utility-scale solar project, how do we go from that to you're not having an effect on emissions? Why is displacing that cheaper option than meaning that it's not as an effective climate action?

Jesse Jenkins: Well, because basically there's a certain amount of demand for solar-shaped production in the electricity system, right? And if you're reducing demand for electricity at exactly the time that a utility solar project would produce, then you're making the economics of building more solar incrementally worse as you add more distributed solar.

We still get basically the same amount of overall solar power in equilibrium. Like, you know, that's the amount that's profitable for people to invest in. It's just that you've shifted it from, again, cheaper projects at larger scale to more expensive projects at smaller scale, particularly in the U.S. We can come back to why the U.S. market is so, I think, broken and so much more expensive than it needs to be.

But particularly in the US, it is much more expensive, like three or four times more expensive, to build a megawatt worth of solar panels in 10 kilowatt increments at a bunch of different homes than it is to build one megawatt of solar on a big landfill or in a farm or on a big box store.

Pontecorvo : So is the idea that, do you get less solar overall or is it?

Jenkins : No, you basically get the same amount. You just get the same amount of solar and it's just more expensive.

Pontecorvo : Why does it matter then? I mean, obviously it matters. It's a better outcome to have a cheaper clean electricity system. But ...

Jenkins: No, it's a great question.

So why does it matter? I mean, there's two questions.

You were asking before, like, does it amount to an effective climate action? Well, if it doesn't increase the overall supply of solar power in the regional grid, then no, it's not an effective climate action.

It might be fine for you to do it as a personal decision for other reasons like economics or feeling like you don't want to keep paying your utility because you don't like the utility and you want to generate your own power. Like there's lots of other reasons why you might do this. Or because you want to save land, right? We can talk about the sort of land-saving potential distributed generation, which I think is probably the best case for it.

But in terms of climate impact, it's null. If you're not increasing the supply of clean energy overall, you're just substituting one clean megawatt hour for another clean megawatt hour.

Why does it matter that we're making that megawatt hour more expensive? Well, at the end of the day, we have to keep our electricity supply affordable as we decarbonize. Both because it's important for equity reasons, because we don't want people who have a hard time paying their bills to have to pay a lot more. But from a climate perspective, because we have to radically expand the amount of electricity supply and decarbonize transportation and heating and industry and make hydrogen and do all these other things, that are going to require electricity to be relatively competitive against the fossil fuels that they're trying to displace in those sectors.

This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by…

Advanced Energy United educates, engages, and advocates for policies that allow our member companies to compete to power our economy with 100% clean energy, working with decision makers and energy market regulators to achieve this goal. Together, we are united in our mission to accelerate the transition to 100% clean energy in America. Learn more at advancedenergyunited.org/heatmap

KORE Power provides the commercial, industrial, and utility markets with functional solutions that advance the clean energy transition worldwide. KORE Power's technology and manufacturing capabilities provide direct access to next generation battery cells, energy storage systems that scale to grid+, EV power & infrastructure, and intuitive asset management to unlock energy strategies across a myriad of applications. Explore more at korepower.com.

Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.

Robinson is the founding executive editor of Heatmap. He was previously a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he covered climate change, energy, and technology. Read More

To continue reading

Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Welcome to Heatmap

Thank you for registering with Heatmap. Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our lives, a force reshaping our economy, our politics, and our culture. We hope to be your trusted, friendly, and insightful guide to that transformation. Please enjoy your free articles. You can check your profile here.

subscribe to get Unlimited access

Offer for a Heatmap News Unlimited Access subscription; please note that your subscription will renew automatically unless you cancel prior to renewal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. We will let you know in advance of any price changes. Taxes may apply. Offer terms are subject to change.

Subscribe to get unlimited Access

Hey, you are out of free articles but you are only a few clicks away from full access. Subscribe below and take advantage of our introductory offer.

subscribe to get Unlimited access

Offer for a Heatmap News Unlimited Access subscription; please note that your subscription will renew automatically unless you cancel prior to renewal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. We will let you know in advance of any price changes. Taxes may apply. Offer terms are subject to change.

Create a Free Account

Unlock your free articles

Welcome to Heatmap

Thank you for registering with Heatmap. Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our lives, a force reshaping our economy, our politics, and our culture. We hope to be your trusted, friendly, and insightful guide to that transformation. Please enjoy your free articles. You can check your profile here.

Subscribe to get unlimited Access

Hey , you are out of free articles but you are only a few clicks away from full access. Subscribe below and take advantage of our introductory offer.

Login

To continue reading login to your account.

Forgot your password?

Please enter the email address you use for your account so we can send you a link to reset your password:

On the long-awaited climate disclosure rules, El Niño, and Arctic summers

Current conditions: Texas’ Smokehouse Creek Fire is now 37% contained • Parts of Oklahoma and Texas could see large hail today • An excessive heat warning is in place for Bangkok where the heat index hit 107 degrees Fahrenheit.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is expected to issue a long-awaited, final rule today on what climate-related disclosures public companies have to make to their investors. The rules will cover a company’s greenhouse gas emissions and its exposure to climate-related risks, like extreme weather or future regulations. The SEC’s initial proposal has been the center of a lobbying firestorm. The most contentious aspect asked companies to disclose emissions indirectly related to their business, known as “scope 3” emissions. As Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo explained: “That means a company like Amazon wouldn’t just have to report the emissions from its warehouses and delivery trucks, but also an estimate of the emissions associated with producing and using all the products it sells.”

Lobbying groups pushed back hard on this, and probably won: The SEC is expected to drop requirements to report scope 3 emissions in the final rule. But it is also reportedly going to soften rules for disclosing scope 1 and scope 2 emissions, which are greenhouse gases produced directly by the company through its own operations, and through its electricity use, respectively. “The draft rule now under consideration would compel such disclosures only if companies deem they are material,” Reuters reported.

Over a dozen methane satellites are now circling the Earth — and more are on the way.

On Monday afternoon, a satellite the size of a washing machine hitched a ride on a SpaceX rocket and was launched into orbit. MethaneSAT, as the new satellite is called, is the latest to join more than a dozen other instruments currently circling the Earth monitoring emissions of the ultra-powerful greenhouse gas methane. But it won’t be the last. Over the next several months, at least two additional methane-detecting satellites from the U.S. and Japan are scheduled to join the fleet.

There’s a joke among scientists that there are so many methane-detecting satellites in space that they are reducing global warming — not just by providing essential data about emissions, but by blocking radiation from the sun.

The new rules are complicated. Here’s how to make sense of them if you’re shopping for an electric vehicle.

The Department of Treasury published new rules last year that will determine which new electric vehicles, purchased for personal use, will qualify for a $7,500 tax credit. They went into effect on April 18, 2023, and last for the next decade or so.

These new tax credit rules are complicated. The list of cars that qualify for the new tax credit can change from year to year — and even month to month. Many buyers in the EV market might have a few questions, including: Should I buy that new car now, or should I wait? Which cars qualify for the current tax credit, and which ones will earn the new one?