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Or maybe you want to go electric? Because yes, they are different.
Have you given much thought to the inner workings of your stove? Me neither. Your home probably came with one already installed, and so long as you can turn it on, boil some water and simmer up a sauce, perhaps that’s reason enough not to second guess it.
But if you’re cooking with gas, we’re here to let you know that, culinary connoisseur or not, there are undeniable benefits to switching to either electric or induction cooking. First and foremost, neither relies directly on fossil fuels or emits harmful pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide into your home, making the switch integral to any effort to decarbonize your life — not to mention establish a comfortable living environment. Second, both electric and induction are far more energy efficient than gas.
“So on a gas range, about 70% of the heat that is generated from the gas goes into your kitchen,” DR Richardson, co-founder of the home electrification platform Elephant Energy, told me. “So it's very inefficient. You get hot. The handle gets hot. The kitchen gets hot. Everything gets hot, except your food. And it takes a really long time.” With an electric or induction stove, you can boil water faster and heat your food up quicker, all while reducing your home’s carbon footprint.
Convinced yet? If you’re reading this guide, we sure hope you’re at least intrigued! But even after you’ve decided to make the switch, confusion and analysis paralysis can still loom. Are your needs better suited to electric or induction? Will expensive electrical upgrades be required? How will this impact your cooking? And where are all the stove stores, anyway? So before you start browsing the aisles and showrooms, let’s get up to speed on all things stoves… or is it ranges? You’ll see.
Friday Apaliski is the director of communications at the Building Decarbonization Coalition, a nonprofit composed of members across various sectors including environmental justice groups, energy providers, and equipment manufacturers, seeking alignment on a path towards the elimination of fossil fuels in buildings.
DR Richardson is a co-founder of Elephant Energy, a platform that aims to simplify residential electrification for both homeowners and contractors. The company provides personalized electrification roadmaps and handles the entire installation process, including helping homeowners take advantage of all the available local, state, and federal incentives.
It depends on the cookware you currently own, but you will almost certainly need to replace some items. Induction stoves work with pots and pans that are made of magnetic materials like cast iron and stainless steel, but not those made of glass, aluminum, or copper. You can check to see if your cookware is induction compatible by seeing if a magnet will stick to the bottom, or if the induction logo is present on the bottom.
Everyone has their own affinities, but what we can tell you is that both traditional electric stoves and newer induction stoves are more energy efficient than gas stoves, and when it comes to temperature control, induction stoves are the clear winner. They allow you to make near instantaneous heat adjustments with great precision, while gas stoves take longer to adjust and are less exact to begin with.
Cooking on a new stove will undoubtedly come with a learning curve, what with all the new knobs and buttons and little sounds to get used to. Many cooks are used to relying on the visual cue of the flame to let them know how hot the stove is, but now you’ll be relying on a number on the screen, instead. Especially if you go with induction stove, be assured that you’ll be in good company among some top chefs.
This is indeed a key question — more on this one below.
If you don’t know already, it’s not too hard to find out. When you turn on the stovetop, is there fire? That, folks, is a gas stovetop. It will have a gas supply line that looks like a threaded pipe that connects to the back of the appliance. Gas stovetops are tricky to clean, not particularly sleek, and most prevalent in California, New Jersey, Illinois, Washington DC, New York, and Nevada.
If you have an electric range, the stovetop will be flat with metal coils either exposed or concealed beneath a ceramic glass surface. The coils will glow bright when they’re on. Electric ranges plug directly into 240-volt outlets (newer versions have four prongs, older ones have three), with a cord that looks like a heavy vacuum plug or a small hose. Electric stovetops are always paired with electric ovens — this is the setup that the majority of Americans already have according to the Energy Information Administration.
“So if you have an electric range and you like it, that's wonderful. You should keep it. But generally, when we're talking about transitioning from a gas experience to something else, induction is a much more analogous cooking experience,” Apaliski said.
If you have an induction range, it was probably a very intentional choice! According to a 2022 Consumer Reports survey, only about 3% of Americans have an induction range or cooktop, so big ups if you’re a part of that energy efficient minority. But if you just wandered into a new home and are wondering if it’s got the goods, you might have to turn on the stove to tell. Unlike an electric stovetop, you won’t see the cooking area glow because the surface isn’t actually getting hot, only the cookware is. Induction stoves also plug directly into 240-volt outlets.
But wait! There’s a chance you’re cooking with both gas and electric on a dual-fuel range. The telltale sign will be if your range connects to both a gas supply line as well as a 240-volt outlet (remember that plug?). But if it’s difficult to determine what’s going on back there, here’s what else to look out for: A metal device at the bottom and/or top of the oven’s interior that glows bright when the oven is on indicates that it’s electric! Sometimes these heating elements will be concealed, though. In that case, look for telltale signs of gas: An open flame when the oven is on or a visible pilot light when off. Newer gas stoves might not have either, but rather use an electronic ignition system that you can hear fire up about 30-45 seconds after turning on the oven. If you’re still confused, there’s always your user manual! (You kept that, right?)
If you’re going from an all-gas range to electric or induction and your stove is located on a kitchen island, for example, this could make installing the necessary electrical wiring more complex. It’s something to ask potential contractors about when you get to that stage.
Whenever you add a new electric appliance to your home, there’s the possibility that you’ll need to upgrade your electric panel to accommodate the new load. A new panel can cost thousands of dollars, though, so you’ll want to know ahead of time if this might be necessary. First, check the size of your current electric panel. You can find this information on your main breaker or fuse, a label on the panel itself, or your electric meter.
According to Rewiring America, if your panel is less than 100 amps, an upgrade could be necessary. If it’s anywhere from 100 to 150 amps, you can likely electrify everything in your home — including your range — without a panel upgrade, although some creative planning might be needed (more on that here and below, in the section on finding contractors and installers). If your panel is greater than 150 amps, it’s very likely that you can get an electric range (as well as a bevy of other electrical appliances) without upgrading.
As of now, federal incentives for electric and induction ranges, cooktops, and ovens are not yet available. But Home Electrification and Appliance Rebates programs, established via the Inflation Reduction Act, will roll out on a state-by-state basis over the course of this year and next, with most programs expected to come online in 2025. These rebates could give low- and moderate-income houses up to $840 back on the cost of switching from gas to electric or induction cooking.
While many details have yet to be released, it’s important to note that qualifying customers won’t be required to pay the full price and then apply for reimbursement — rather, the discount will be applied upfront. Once the program becomes available, your state will have a website with more information on how to apply. If you’re cash-strapped today, it could be worth waiting until the federal incentives roll out, as rebates will not be retroactively available.
Many states and municipalities already have their own incentives for electric appliance upgrades though. Unfortunately, there’s currently no centralized database to look these up, so that means doing a little homework. Check with your local utility, as well as your local and state government websites and energy offices for home electrification incentives. If you happen to live in California or Washington state, you can search for local incentives here, via this initiative from the Building Decarbonization Coalition. The NODE Collective is also working to compile data on all residential incentive programs, so keep checking in, more information is coming soon!
Assuming you currently have a gas stove or a dual fuel range, this is the first big choice you’ll have to make. For customers interested in upgrading from electric to induction, let this also be your guide, as an induction stove is indeed the higher-end choice. Here are the main differences between the two:
Electric
Induction
*According to Rewiring America
** According to this paper
Heatmap Recommends: Spring for the induction stove if you can. Not only will it provide a superior cooking experience, but it’s safer too. Induction stoves only heat up magnetic pots and pans, so if you touch the stove’s surface, you won’t get burned. Most will also turn off automatically if there’s no cookware detected.
“Induction is definitely the upgrade in basically every sense, if you can afford it. Induction is a way better cooking experience. It's got way more fun heating and cooking control. It's much more energy efficient. It's much faster,” said Richardson.
If you’re curious about what it’s like to cook with an electric or induction stove, you can buy a standalone single-pot cooktop for well under $100; it will plug straight into a standard outlet. Additionally, Apalinksi says that many libraries (yes, libraries!) and utilities allow residents to borrow an induction cooktop and try it out for a few weeks, completely free of charge.
New electric and induction ranges and cooktops will only be eligible for forthcoming federal incentives if they’re certified by Energy Star, a joint program run by the Environmental Protection Agency and the DOE that provides consumer information on energy efficient products, practices, and standards. You can check out what models of ranges and cooktops qualify here. But to get a handle on the actual look and feel of various options, you should try and find a showroom or head to a large retail store.
“Go to your local big box retailer, whether it's a Home Depot or Best Buy or Lowe's, they tend to have a bunch of models on the floor. Their representatives can talk to you about all the different options out there. But you have to research a little bit ahead of time, otherwise they're going to point you to the latest gas appliance,” said Richardson.
If you learn that making the switch is going to entail particularly cumbersome electrical upgrades, Apaliski said there are some innovative companies such as Channing Street Copper and Impulse Labs that make induction ranges and cooktops that plug into standard outlets. They’re much pricier than your standard range, but if you can afford it, one could be right if you’re looking for plug-and-play simplicity and sleek design.
“So this is great, for example, if you are a renter, or if you are someone who has limited capacity on your electrical panel, or if you are someone who has one of these kitchen islands that is just impossible to get a new electric cord to,” Apaliski said.
If you buy your new range or cooktop from a big box retailer, they’ll typically haul away your old appliance and deliver and install the new one for you at either low or no cost. Don’t assume this is a part of the package, though, and be sure to ask what is and isn’t included before you make your purchase.
But if you’re moving from an all gas range or cooktop to an electric or induction range or cooktop, the complicated part isn’t the installation process, it’s everything that must come before. That includes capping and sealing the gas line for your old stove (this is a job for a plumber) and installing the requisite electric wiring to power your new stove (this is a job for an electrician).
As noted, making the switch could also mean a costly electric panel upgrade. You should ask potential electricians about this right away, as well as about creative solutions that would let you work with your existing panel. If you’re running out of space, you could buy a circuit sharing device like a smart splitter or a circuit pauser, which would allow multiple loads, such as an EV charger and your stove, to share a circuit, or ensure that specific appliances are shut off when you’re approaching your panel’s limit. Richardson recommends getting opinions from a couple different electricians, seconding the idea that if your panel is 100 amps or more, an upgrade is likely not necessary.
Above all, you should make sure that the gas line and electric work is taken care of before the stove installer comes to your home. Richardson said that occasionally, retailers will provide plumbing and electrical services as an add-on option, so it never hurts to ask. But most likely you’ll be sourcing contractors and compiling quotes on your own. If you don’t already have a go to person for the job, ask friends, family, and neighbors for references. Google and Yelp reviews are always there too.
New electric ranges do not usually come with a power cord. You must purchase your own power cord prior to installation.
Once you get time on the calendar with a trustworthy, knowledgeable and fair-priced plumber and electrician, it’s time to schedule the installation of your new range or cooktop. And after that it’s time to metaphorically fire up those resistive coils or electromagnetic fields and make yourself an electrified meal for the ages.
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On betrayed regulatory promises, copper ‘anxiety,’ and Mercedes’ stalled EV plans
Current conditions: New York City is once again choking on Canadian wildfire smoke • Torrential rain is flooding southeastern Slovenia and northern Croatia • Central Asia is bracing for the hottest days of the year, with temperatures nearing 100 degrees Fahrenheit in Uzbekistan’s capital of Tashkent all week.
In May, the Trump administration signaled its plans to gut Energy Star, the energy efficiency certification program administered by the Environmental Protection Agency. Energy Star is extremely popular — its brand is recognized by nearly 90% of Americans — and at a cost to the federal government of just $32 million per year, saves American households upward of $40 billion in energy costs per year as of 2024, for a total of more than $500 billion saved since its launch in 1992, by the EPA’s own estimate. Not only that, as one of Energy Star’s architects told Heatmap’s Jeva Lange back in May, more energy efficient appliances and buildings help reduce strain on the grid. “Think about the growing demands of data center computing and AI models,” RE Tech Advisors’ Deb Cloutier told Jeva. “We need to bring more energy onto the grid and make more space for it.”
That value has clearly resonated with lawmakers on the Hill. Legislators tasked with negotiating appropriations in both the Senate and the House of Representatives last week proposed fully funding Energy Star at $32 million for the next fiscal year. It’s unclear how the House’s decision to go into recess until September will affect the vote, but Ben Evans, the federal legislative director at the U.S. Green Building Council, said the bill is “a major step in the right direction demonstrating that ENERGY STAR has strong bipartisan support on Capitol Hill.”
A worker connects panels on floating solar farm project in Huainan, China. Kevin Frayer/Getty Images
The United States installed just under 11 gigawatts of solar panels in the first three months of this year, industry data show. In June alone, China installed nearly 15 gigawatts, PV Tech reported. And, in a detail that demonstrates just how many panels the People’s Republic has been deploying at home in recent years, that represented an 85% drop from the previous month and close to a 40% decline compared to June of last year.
The photovoltaic installation plunge followed Beijing’s rollout of two new policies that changed the renewables business in China. The first, called the 531 policy, undid guaranteed feed-in tariffs and required renewable projects to sell electricity on the spot market. That took effect on June 1. The other, called the 430 policy, took effect on May 1 and mandated that new distributed solar farms consume their own power first before allowing the sale of surplus electricity to the grid. As a result of the stalled installations, a top panel manufacturer warned the trade publication Opis that companies may need to raise prices by as much as 10%.
For years now, Fortescue, the world’s fourth-biggest producer of iron ore, has directed much of the earnings from its mines in northwest Australia and steel mills in China toward building out a global green hydrogen business. But changes to U.S. policy have taken a toll. Last week, Fortescue told investors it was canceling its green hydrogen project in Arizona, which had been set to come online next year. It’s also abandoning its plans for a green hydrogen plant on Australia’s northeastern coast, The Wall Street Journal reported.
“A shift in policy priorities away from green energy has changed the situation in the U.S.,” Gus Pichot, Fortescue’s chief executive of growth and energy, told analysts on a call. “The lack of certainty and a step back in green ambition has stopped the emerging green-energy markets, making it hard for previously feasible projects to proceed.” But green hydrogen isn’t dead everywhere. Just last week, the industrial gas firm Air Liquide made a final decision to invest in a 200-megawatt green hydrogen plant in the Netherlands.
The Trump administration put two high-ranking officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on administrative leave, CNN reported. The reasoning behind the move wasn’t clear, but both officials — Steve Volz, who leads NOAA’s satellites division, and Jeff Dillen, NOAA’s deputy general counsel — headed up the investigation into whether President Donald Trump violated NOAA’s scientific integrity policies during his so-called Sharpiegate scandal.
The incident from September 2019, during Trump’s first term, started when the president incorrectly listed Alabama among the states facing a threat from Hurricane Dorian. Throughout the following week, Trump defended the remark, insisting he had been right, and ultimately showed journalists a weather map that had been altered with a black Sharpie market to show the path of the storm striking Alabama. NOAA’s investigation into the incident concluded that Neil Jacobs, the former agency official who backed Trump at the time and is now nominated to serve as chief, succumbed to political pressure and violated scientific integrity rules.
In March, North Carolina’s Republican-controlled Senate passed a bill to repeal the state’s climate law and scrap the 2030 deadline by which the monopoly utility Duke Energy had to slash its planet-heating emissions by 70% compared to 2005 levels. Governor Josh Stein, a Democrat, vetoed the legislation. But on Tuesday, the GOP majorities in both chambers of the legislature plan to vote to override the veto.
Doing so and enacting the bill could cost North Carolina more than 50,000 jobs annually and cause tens of billions of dollars in lost investments, Canary Media’s Elizabeth Ouzts reported. That’s according to a new study from a consultancy commissioned by clean-energy advocates in the state. The analysis is based on data from the state-sanctioned consumer advocate, Public Staff.
For years, a mystery has puzzled scientists: Why did Neanderthal remains show levels of a nitrogen isotope only seen among carnivores like hyenas and wolves that eat more meat than a hominid could safely consume? New research finally points to an answer: Neanderthals were eating putrefying meat garnished with maggots, said Melanie Beasley, an anthropologist at Purdue University. “When you get the lean meat and the fatty maggot, you have a more complete nutrient that you’re consuming.”
Oregon’s Cram Fire was a warning — the Pacific Northwest is ready to ignite.
What could have been the country’s first designated megafire of 2025 spluttered to a quiet, unremarkable end this week. Even as national headlines warned over the weekend that central Oregon’s Cram Fire was approaching the 100,000-acre spread usually required to achieve that status, cooler, damper weather had already begun to move into the region. By the middle of the week, firefighters had managed to limit the Cram to 95,736 acres, and with mop-up operations well underway, crews began rotating out for rest or reassignment. The wildfire monitoring app Watch Duty issued what it said would be its final daily update on the Cram Fire on Thursday morning.
By this time in 2024, 10 megafires had already burned or ignited in the U.S., including the more-than-million-acre Smokehouse Creek fire in Texas last spring. While it may seem wrong to describe 2025 as a quieter fire season so far, given the catastrophic fires in the Los Angeles area at the start of the year, it is currently tracking below the 10-year average for acres burned at this point in the season. Even the Cram, a grassland fire that expanded rapidly due to the hot, dry conditions of central Oregon, was “not [an uncommon fire for] this time of year in the area,” Bill Queen, a public information officer with the Pacific Northwest Complex Incident Management Team 3, told me over email.
At the same time, the Cram Fire can also be read as a precursor. It was routine, maybe, but also large enough to require the deployment of nearly 900 fire personnel at a time when the National Wildland Fire Preparedness Level is set to 4, meaning national firefighting resources were already heavily committed when it broke out. (The preparedness scale, which describes how strapped federal resources are, goes up to 5.) Most ominous of all, though, is the forecast for the Pacific Northwest for “Dirty August” and “Snaptember,” historically the two worst months of the year in the region for wildfires.
National Interagency Coordination Center
“Right now, we’re in a little bit of a lull,” Jessica Neujahr, a public affairs officer with the Oregon Department of Forestry, acknowledged to me. “What comes with that is knowing that August and September will be difficult, so we’re now doing our best to make sure that our firefighters are taking advantage of having time to rest and get rejuvenated before the next big wave of fire comes through.”
That next big wave could happen any day. The National Interagency Fire Center’s fire potential outlook, last issued on July 1, describes “significant fire potential” for the Northwest that is “expected to remain above average areawide through September.” The reasons given include the fact that “nearly all areas” of Washington and Oregon are “abnormally dry or in drought status,” combined with a 40% to 60% probability of above-average temperatures through the start of the fall in both states. Moisture from the North American Monsoon, meanwhile, looks to be tracking “largely east of the Northwest.” At the same time, “live fuels in Oregon are green at mid to upper elevations but are drying rapidly across Washington.”
In other words, the components for a bad fire season are all there — the landscape just needs a spark. Lightning, in particular, has been top of mind for Oregon forecasters, given the tinderbox on the ground. A single storm system, such as one that rolled over southeast and east-central Oregon in June, can produce as many as 10,000 lightning strikes; over the course of just one night earlier this month, thunderstorms ignited 72 fires in two southwest Oregon counties. And the “kicker with lightning is that the fires don’t always pop up right away,” Neujahr explained. Instead, lightning strike fires can simmer for up to a week after a storm, evading the detection of firefighting crews until it’s too late. “When you have thousands of strikes in a concentrated area, it’s bound to stretch the local resources as far as they can go,” Neujahr said.
National Interagency Coordination Center
The National Interagency Fire Center has “low confidence … regarding the number of lightning ignitions” for the end of summer in the Northwest, in large part due to the incredible difficulty of forecasting convective storms. Additionally, the current neutral phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation means there is a “wide range of potential lightning activity” that adds extra uncertainty to any predictions. The NIFC’s higher confidence in its temperature and precipitation outlooks, in turn, “leads to a belief that the ratio of human to natural ignitions will remain high and at or above 2024 levels.” (An exploding transformer appears to have been the ignition source for the Cram Fire; approximately 88% of wildfires in the United States have human-caused origins, including arson.)
Periodic wildfires are a naturally occurring part of the Western ecosystem, and not all are attributable to climate change. But before 1995, the U.S. averaged fewer than one megafire per year; between 2005 and 2014, that average jumped to 9.8 such fires per year. Before 1970, there had been no documented megafires at all.
Above-average temperatures and drought conditions, which can make fires larger and burn hotter, are strongly associated with a warming atmosphere, however. Larger and hotter fires are also more dangerous. “Our biggest goal is always to put the fires out as fast as possible,” Neujahr told me. “There is a correlation: As fires get bigger, the cost of the fire grows, but so do the risks to the firefighters.”
In Oregon, anyway, the Cram Fire’s warning has registered. Shortly after the fire broke out, Oregon Governor Tina Kotek declared a statewide emergency with an eye toward the months ahead. “The summer is only getting hotter, drier, and more dangerous — we have to be prepared for worsening conditions,” she said in a statement at the time.
It’s improbable that there won’t be a megafire this season; the last time the U.S. had a year without a fire of 100,000 acres or more was in 2001. And if or when the megafire — or megafires — break out, all signs point to the “where” being Oregon or Washington, concentrating the area of potential destruction, exhausting local personnel, and straining federal resources. “When you have two states directly next to each other dealing with the same thing, it just makes it more difficult to get resources because of the conflicting timelines,” Neujahr said.
By October, at least, there should be relief: The national fire outlook describes “an increasing frequency of weather systems and precipitation” that should “signal an end of fire season” for the Northwest once fall arrives. But there are still a long 68 days left to go before then.
On China’s Paris pact with Europe, Trump’s mineral geopolitics, and Google’s CO2 battery bet
Current conditions: The record-setting heat roasting more than 100 million Americans in the central U.S. is now headed for the densely populated Northeast • The American Samoan capital of Pago Pago faces “imminent” flash flooding on Friday amid days of rain • China just set a record for the highest number of hot days since March in its history.
The Palisades nuclear plant on the shore of Lake Michigan.Holtec International
Three years after the Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan became the country’s last atomic power station to permanently close, the facility is set to become the first in U.S. history to reopen after a final shutdown. On Thursday afternoon, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued its formal approval for the plant’s operating license, putting the single-reactor station on track to restart later this year, the plant’s owner, Holtec International, told me. With just 11 days to go before its license expired, Palisades’ previous owner opted to close down May 2022 rather than make necessary upgrades to continue operations. The Biden-era Loan Programs Office at the Department of Energy put up more than $1.5 to fund the effort. Despite freezing funding for other projects, the Trump administration shelled out the money to Holtec.
The project still faces obstacles. Holtec still needs to finalize repairs at the plant, which are subject to another NRC review. Anti-nuclear activists, meanwhile, vowed to appeal the NRC license. Still, Holtec’s President Kelly Trice said the NRC approval “represents an unprecedented milestone in U.S. nuclear energy.”
As the U.S. seeks to dismantle its climate regulations, China and the European Union signed a pledge Thursday to work together on cutting emissions. The document, dubbed “the way forward” following the 10-year anniversary of the Paris climate accords, called the 2015 pact brokered in the French capital “the cornerstone of international climate cooperation” that “all parties” should implement “in a comprehensive, good-faith and effective manner.” The two global powers also reached a deal for the emergency export of rare earth metals from China, which dominates their global trade, to European factories facing shortages of the materials, according to The New York Times.
The diplomatic communique comes as the U.S. goes through the process to quit the Paris Agreement for the second time. In 2017, Trump waited weeks to initiate the exit, and the protocol completed around the time of the 2020 election. That allowed then-President-elect Joe Biden to signal his plans to rejoin immediately, rendering the American withdrawal a brief hiccup. This time, however, the rules allow the U.S. to leave in about a year, and Trump started the process on his first day in office.
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Just over a week after the Pentagon made a landmark investment in the United States’ only rare earths mine, President Donald Trump elevated his minerals adviser to the Nation Security Council. While the Trump administration did not confirm what Copley’s new position would entail, an industry source told E&E News the job change was a promotion for the military veteran and former mining executive, who would now serve as “both the White House mineral and supply chain czar.”
The move comes as China has sought to leverage its grip over global supplies of minerals such as rare earth metals and graphite by tightening export restrictions. While Trump’s military investment into California rare earth producer MP Materials may mirror China’s strategy of government funding for critical materials, Beijing has another thing going for it: Strong demand from electric vehicles. Therein lies what Heatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin recently called the “paradox” of Trump’s mineral policy: He’s making it easier to mine but eliminating the demand pull of electric vehicles and wind turbines.
Google has invested in small modular reactors, nuclear fusion, and even old-fashioned hydropower to shore up a steady supply of electricity for its reactors. This morning, the tech giant announced a strategic investment into carbon dioxide batteries, as I reported earlier today over at Latitude Media. The startup Energy Dome houses its technology in white, inflatable shelters similar to what you see over the courts at professional tennis tournaments. But inside is equipment that compresses and liquefies CO2, stores it in carbon steel tanks, then turns the liquid back into pressurized gas when energy is needed. Once reheated, the carbon dioxide is pumped through turbines to generate electricity for up to 24 hours at a time.
Headquartered in Milan, Energy Dome already had a deal for pilot plants in Wisconsin, Sardinia, and India, about eight hours west of Hyderabad. But Google said it plans to deploy the technology across the U.S., Europe, and Asia.
Maine is speeding up approvals for nearly 1,600 gigawatt-hours of renewable energy to make sure projects can tap into federal tax credits before the Trump administration cracks down, Canary Media's Sarah Shemkus reported. State regulators gave developers a July 25 deadline to take part in the fast-tracking program. The state is seeking enough bids to meet about 13% of its annual electricity demand. The program will give preference to projects sited on property where water or soil is contaminated by toxic PFAS, the cancer-causing substances known as “forever chemicals.”
Not all states are as welcoming of renewables. In Ohio, as Heatmap’s Jael Holzman reported yesterday, 26 out of 88 counties have “established restricted areas where wind or solar are prohibited.” The key to getting around local opposition is early community outreach and building a base of support for a project.
Consider the lobster, but listen to the shrimp. A new study in the journal Royal Society Open Science found that listening to the high-frequency sounds snapping shrimp produce “can be used as a real indicator of coral resilience,” Xavier Raick, postdoctoral fellow in bioacoustics at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, said in a press release. “Snapping shrimp’s abundance is a mirror of coral cover. So if you have more corals, especially very big colonies, you have more snapping shrimps, and then you can use their sound as a proxy for the reef, structure, and health.”