🌡 CLIMATE CHANGE

Europe poised for a warmer-than-normal winter, Copernicus says (quick read)

The European Climate Change Service, Copernicus, is predicting with 50-60% probability a warmer winter with less precipitation than normal.

The world will probably warm beyond the 1.5-degree Celsius limit. But peak warming can be curbed. (quick read)

While exceeding 1.5°C in global temperature increase is now inevitable, there may be ways to limit the overshoot by at least several decades. A set of 27 different scenarios have been modeled to forecast how and when countries’ can meet sufficient emissions reductions to bring the world back to, and eventually below, 1.5°C of increased temperature. The most extreme model allows for net-zero carbon emissions by 2057.

What can be done about urban heat islands? (quick read)

The addition of urban greenery such as parks and trees can reduce surface temperatures by 2-9°C; when plants are added to building roofs, the surface temperature drop can be as much as 17°C while also providing better thermal insulation for the buildings.

🔋 CLEAN ENERGY

Microgrid design & cost options (quick read)

Home-scale microgrids — solar > battery > house — are easy enough. But linking multiple homes’ microgrids to power a city are extraordinarily challenging not just technologically but financially. Xendee, a microgrid development platform, has produced a financing tool to design optimized microgrid solutions.

Solar-powered trains for france (quick read)

First solar parking lots, and now trains: the French National Railway Company SNCF now aims to have 40-50% of its rail network powered entirely by solar power by 2026.

Fossil vehicle bans are likely to hit mom-&-pop gas stations the hardest (quick read)

In California, the sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles will be banned from 2035 and privately-owned gas stations will suffer the hardest. The California Air Resources Board (CARB) predicts that the number of registered gasoline-powered vehicles will drop from 24 million today to 16 million by 2035. While larger stations can afford the $200K or so to purchase and install an EV charger, smaller stations likely cannot afford the cost; on the other hand, gas stations tend to sit on prime real estate, so if they own the land, they should be able to cash out nicely.

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🚗 AUTONOMOUS & ELECTRIC VEHICLES

Now anyone can hail a Waymo robotaxi in downtown Phoenix (quick read)

Following fast behind the likes of Cruise in San Francisco, and Waymo’s own services in San Francisco, anybody can now summon a driverless Waymo taxi ride, for a fee, along the streets of Phoenix, Arizona.

Tesla starts rolling wide Full Self-Driving v11 update: Exciting and scary (quick read)

The biggest update to Tesla’s infamous and inaccurately named ADAS merges the software stacks of Tesla’s highway and surface street functionality, presumably to provide improved performance.

Audis in Germany now have in-car VR gaming starting at 700€ (quick read)

In partnership with Holoride, Audi vehicles will now provide a VR headset gaming system that synchronizes with the vehicle’s motion to reduce motion sickness.