Jeff St. John

2 days ago | canarymedia.com | Jeff St. John

Companies tapping smart thermostats and solar-charged home batteries to help the grid say funding cuts could undermine their efforts and cost customers. California’s biggest virtual power plant is facing over $100 million in funding cuts due to the state’s ongoing budget crisis, threatening the long-term viability of a program that can act as a crucial release valve for the state’s overburdened power grid.

3 days ago | canarymedia.com | Jeff St. John

The state’s regulators and utilities are working out a mutually beneficial way to share the costs of the grid upgrades required to build more community solar. A pesky question has long stalled efforts to expand U.S. power grids in the face of growing demand and surging renewable energy: Who should pay for the upgrades? An under-the-radar breakthrough in Massachusetts may finally provide a template for answering that question.

1 week ago | canarymedia.com | Jeff St. John

The decision will devastate ambitious efforts to cut emissions from heavy industry ranging from food production to chemicals. The Department of Energy announced Friday that it is canceling over $3.7 billion in funding for projects that would cut carbon emissions and toxic air pollution from power plants and industrial sites, ranging from cement kilns to ketchup-processing plants.

1 week ago | canarymedia.com | Jeff St. John

​ Startup OCOchem has built factory-assembled “artificial photosynthesis” cells to make formate, a widely used chemical now produced with fossil fuels. The global chemicals industry is big, and it’s dirty. Chemical plants consume lots of fossil fuels, both to power the high-temperature, high-pressure processes involved and often as a feedstock for the chemicals produced. And to maximize production, those plants are typically built to be as large as possible.

1 week ago | canarymedia.com | Jeff St. John

Startup Talusag says modular plants that make ammonia from green hydrogen could cut carbon and costs from fertilizer supply chains, in America’s heartland and beyond. Modern farming depends on massive amounts of ammonia fertilizer, almost all of it made from fossil gas in enormous chemical plants. These facilities use high heat and pressure to split that gas, mostly made up of methane, into hydrogen and carbon dioxide.