Arsenal football club have installed 3MW of battery storage. It’s the biggest energy storage facility in a stadium in Britain, and enough to run the Emirates on clean energy for a whole match. In between matchdays it will store power and sell it back to the grid at peak times.
It’s quite possible that nothing will come of this, but it’s notable for those keeping an eye out for the commercial development of carbon capture and storage: a company just signed the first lease for using the gas infrastructure of the North Sea for carbon storage.
Speaking of the sea, this week I made a modest investment in Orbital Marine Power on the Abundance Investment platform. They are building the world’s most powerful tidal power unit in Orkney, and will use it to make hydrogen. If like me you want to use your money for good, this is a nice opportunity to help fund something potentially significant.
Being married to a BBC journalist, how the media reports climate change is a regular topic in our household. Here’s an Al Jazeera article Lou sent me this week that sums up many of the challenges.
The recent California fires are another example of how the richest can protect themselves from the effects of climate change in ways that the poorest can’t – hiring private firefighters to protect their luxury homes.
This week I read Breitbart, which among other things attempted to justify the use of tear gas on children at the US border, and backed French fuel riots against ‘green tyranny’. It’s general editorial line is to call evil good and good evil, as the old testament prophet Isaiah put it, so one of the most sickening things about the site is its ‘Christian’ readership – see the comment stream below this climate change article on the Vatican, for example. Worth mentioning too that when compared to other alternative news sites, it’s streets ahead on professionalism and quality of presentation. That’s part of what makes it so poisonous.
Next week I’ll be reading the English edition of Spain’s El Pais.
The Earthbound Report 