A rendering of a 356 foot long plane designed by unicorn startup Radia to transport wind turbine blades. (Courtesy: Radia)
This Week in Cleantech is a new, weekly podcast covering the most impactful stories in cleantech and climate in 15 minutes or less. Produced by Renewable Energy World and Tigercomm, This Week in Cleantech will air every Friday in the Factor This! podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts.
This week’s episode features Heatmap’s Andrew Moseman who reported on a dilemma facing rooftop solar owners and the beleaguered industry: is it better to save your solar, or sell it?
This week’s “Cleantecher of the Week” is Sylvia Leyva Martinez, Principal Analyst at Wood Mackenzie!
1. How the World’s Biggest Plane Would Supersize Wind Energy — The Wall Street Journal
Unicorn startup Radia plans to build the world’s largest plane, at about 356 feet in length, to transport wind turbine blades the length of football fields. T
The massive blades used in offshore wind can generate twice the energy of onshore installations but are very difficult to move around on land. With these planes, developers could build a 6,000-foot packed-dirt runway at their project site and put up much more powerful turbines.
2. Bill Gates’ TerraPower plans to build first US next-generation nuclear plant — Financial Times
In a race with Russia and China to develop and export cost-efficient small modular reactors (SMRs), Bill Gates’ TerraPower plans to build nuclear power plants with reactors cooled by liquid sodium rather than water.
These liquid-sodium-cooled reactors, with a power capacity of 345MWe, could slash the cost of standard light water reactors in half because they are also built with simpler materials and operate at lower pressures, requiring fewer safety systems.
TerraPower plans to begin construction in June and bring the plant online in 2030.
3. The Zombies of the U.S. Tax Code: Why Fossil Fuels Subsidies Seem Impossible to Kill — New York Times
In a fourth attempt, President Joe Biden has requested Congress eliminate $35 billion in tax breaks over the next decade to oil and gas companies that are experiencing record profits.
The tax breaks have made new oil and gas projects worth billions more each year, and up to $20 billion more in high oil price years.
These decades-old subsidies continue even though last year, America was the world’s largest crude oil producer and expo
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