1. Home energy storage booms in the US

Learning: "Incentives for investment in solar now reflect much more accurately the value of new capacity to the grid. And because the price of power varies more by time of day, there is an increased incentive for customers to invest in home battery storage systems to shift their consumption."

Implication: "Solar-plus-storage installation for a Southern California Edison customer could pay back in 7.5 years, three years faster than the 10.7-year payback period for installing solar on its own.

Those incentives have led to surging demand for domestic battery storage, and companies have been moving to meet that demand. Sunrun, for example, last year launched a solar-plus-storage package called Shift, specifically targeted to maximize value under California’s new rules."

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2. How Do Neighbors of Solar Farms Really Feel? A New Survey Has Answers

Learning: "For people living within three miles of a large solar farm, positive attitudes about the development outnumber negative ones by about a three-to-one margin, according to a new national survey released this week by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Some of the results are likely to be encouraging for solar developers and could be used in local debates to show that community sentiment may favor solar more than is evident just from looking at often-contentious testimony at local public hearings."

Implication: "But solar opponents also can point to parts of the report that show serious concerns about development. For example, the survey found that people who live within three miles of projects that are 100 megawatts or larger have negative attitudes that outnumber positive ones by about 12 to one....

Emphasizing only positive or negative attitudes doesn’t tell us much about what aspects of facility siting create difficulties and unfairness for specific groups. Unless you dig in and cross-tabulate who has what specific reasons for being positive or negative with their income, location, home ownership and other demographic variables, you don’t really learn much that can help public policy-makers, community activists or public officials improve the siting process.”

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3. Chevron arm launches $500 million fund to invest in low carbon technologies

Learning: "Chevron's venture capital arm launched on Tuesday its third fund to invest in renewable energy technologies with a $500 million commitment, as oil majors look to diversify their business in the face of pressure to reduce their emissions.

Like the previous two funds, the Future Energy Fund III will focus on innovations in industrial decarbonization, emerging mobility, energy decentralization and the growing circular carbon economy, Chevron Technology Ventures said."

Implication: "The world's biggest oil and gas companies have set varying targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from their operations and the combustion of the products they sell."

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4. How climate vulnerability and the digital divide are linked

Learning: "Exclusionary practices like redlining, which long restricted access to loans and suppressed home values in many majority-­minority neighborhoods, have created generational inequity throughout the United States. Though redlining was banned decades ago, these areas are still more likely to be economically depressed, and their public services are more likely to be underfunded."

Implication: "Monica Sanders, an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University, ...believes the digital divide is another artifact of these policies. So are the additional difficulties communities may face in weathering the threats posed by extreme heat, flooding, and other hazards intensified by climate change."

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5. The U.S. Urgently Needs a Bigger Grid. Here’s a Fast Solution.

Learning: "One of the biggest obstacles to expanding clean energy in the United States is a lack of power lines. Building new transmission lines can take a decade or more because of permitting delays and local opposition. But there may be a faster, cheaper solution, according to two reports released Tuesday.

Replacing existing power lines with cables made from state-of-the-art materials could roughly double the capacity of the electric grid in many parts of the country, making room for much more wind and solar power."

Implication: "This technique, known as 'advanced reconductoring,' is widely used in other countries. But many U.S. utilities have been slow to embrace it because of their unfamiliarity with the technology as well as regulatory and bureaucratic hurdles, researchers found."