Last week America's energy secretary cheered the startup of a fourth nuclear reactor at a Georgia power plant, calling it "the largest producer of clean energy, and the largest producer of electricity in the United States" after a third reactor was started up there in December.

From the U.S. Energy Department's transcript of the speech: Each year, Units 3 and 4 are going to produce enough clean power to power 1 million homes and businesses, enough energy to power roughly 1 in 4 homes in Georgia. Preventing 10 million metric tons of carbon dioxide pollution annually. That, by the way, is like planting more than 165 million trees every year!

And that's not to mention the historic investments that [electric utility] Southern has made on the safety front, to ensure this facility meets — and exceeds — the highest operating standards in the world....

To reach our goal of net zero by 2050, we have to at least triple our current nuclear capacity in this country. That means we've got to add 200 more gigawatts by 2050. Okay, two down, 198 to go! In building [Unit] 4, we've solved our greatest design challenges. We've stood up entire supply chains.... And so it's time to cash in on our investments by building more. More of these facilities. The Department of Energy's Loan Programs Office stands ready to help, with hundreds of billions of dollars in what we call Title 17 loans... Since the President signed the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, companies across the nation have announced 29 new or expanded nuclear facilities — across 16 states — representing about 1,600 potential new jobs. And the majority of those projects will expand the domestic uranium production and fuel fabrication, strengthening these critical supply chains...

Bottom line is, in short, we are determined to build a world-class nuclear industry in the United States, and we're putting our money where our mouth is.
America's Energy Secretary told the Washington Post that "Whether it happens through small modular reactors, or AP1000s, or maybe another design out there worthy of consideration, we want to see nuclear built." The Post notes the Energy department gave a $1.5 billion loan to restart a Michigan power plant which was decommissioned in 2022. "It would mark the first time a shuttered U.S. nuclear plant has been reactivated."

"But in this country with 54 nuclear plants across 28 states, restarting existing reactors and delaying their closure is a lot less complicated than building new ones." When the final [Georgia] reactor went online at the end of April, the expansion was seven years behind schedule and nearly $20 billion over budget. It ultimately cost more than twice as much as promised, with ratepayers footing much of the bill through surcharges and rate hikes...

Administration officials say the country has no choice but to make nuclear power a workable option again. The country is fast running short on electricity, demand for power is surging amid a boom in construction of data centers and manufacturing plants, and a neglected power grid is struggling to accommodate enough new wind and solar power to meet the nation's needs...

As the administration frames the narrative of the plant as one of perseverance and innovation that clears a path for restoring U.S. nuclear energy dominance, even some longtime boosters of the industry question whether this country will ever again have a vibrant nuclear energy sector. "It is hard for me to envision state energy regulators signing off on another one of these, given how badly the last ones went," said Matt Bowen, a nuclear scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, who was an adviser on nuclear energy issues in the Obama administration.
The article notes there are 19 AP1000 reactors (the design used at the Georgia plant) in development around the world. "None of them are being built in the United States."

America "is now adding less wind capacity each year" than it was before the passage of a climate-protecting bill in 2022, according to the New York Times.

Since then "solar panel installations are indeed soaring to record highs in the U.S., as are batteries that can store energy for later. But wind power has struggled, both on land and in the ocean." Some factors behind the wind industry's recent slowdown may be temporary, such as snarled supply chains. But wind power is also more vulnerable than solar power to many of the biggest logistical hurdles that hinder energy projects today: a lack of transmission lines, a lengthy permitting process and a growing backlash against new projects in many communities... [M]any areas are now crowded with turbines and existing electric grids are clogged, making it difficult to add more projects. Energy companies want to expand the grid's capacity to transport even more wind power to population centers, but getting permits for transmission lines and building them has become a brutal slog that can take more than a decade... Because they can reach the height of skyscrapers, wind turbines are more noticeable than solar farms and often attract more intense opposition from local communities.

The wind industry has also been hampered by soaring equipment costs after the pandemic wrecked supply chains and inflation spiked. While those factors initially hurt solar, too, the solar industry has adjusted much faster, with China nearly doubling its manufacturing capacity for panels over the past two years. Wind supply chains, which are dominated by a few manufacturers in China, Europe and the United States, have yet to fully recover. The cost increases have been devastating for offshore wind projects in the Northeast, where developers have canceled more than half the projects they planned to build this decade. Wind isn't languishing only in the United States. While a record 117 gigawatts of new wind capacity came online last year globally, virtually all of that growth was in China. In the rest of the world, developers weren't installing wind turbines any faster than they were in 2020...

It's still possible that wind power could rebound. In fact, some experts argue that the recent slowdown is only a temporary artifact of tax policy... [John Hensley, vice president for markets and policy analysis at the American Clean Power Association, a renewable industry trade group] said that U.S. wind manufacturing was beginning to ramp up thanks to new tax incentives, while costs were starting to come down. Last year, orders for new turbines increased by 130%, although many of them won't be delivered until 2025 or later. Some states are now trying to make it easier to build renewable energy: Illinois, Michigan and Minnesota have all passed laws making it harder for local governments to restrict wind and solar. The federal government has issued new rules to accelerate the planning of transmission lines.

Demand for wind could also rise as a growing number of states, tech companies and hydrogen producers are trying to secure clean electricity around the clock, rather than just a burst of solar power in the daytime.
Many plans for moving America off fossil fuels "envision a large expansion of both solar and wind," the article points out, "because the two sources generate electricity at different hours and can complement each other. A boom in solar power alone, which runs only in daytime, isn't enough."

HP is facing something of a challenge as the number of printed pages has decreased by 20% since the pandemic. "On the office space, clearly, the amount of pages that is being printed is lower than before the pandemic," HP boss Enrique Lores told tech investors at Bernstein's 40th Annual Strategic Decision Conference last week. "And this is really driven by what we call hybrid work. There are less people in the office every day, and this has driven the amount of pages down." The Register reports: "I use pages as a proxy because, depending on what happens with pages, happens eventually with devices. Before the pandemic, our estimates were that we were expecting to see a 20 percent reduction of printing. And actually, we were looking at the numbers ... and this is more or less where we are." In terms of users printing at home, "during the pandemic, we saw a spike of pages printed, and since then, the number of pages has been declining," Lores added. The levels are not unexpected, though, he said. The industrial customer base was "impacted during the last two or three years by a reduction of capital investments," but recovery is showing up, with those customers printing more labels and packaging. Previous research by IDC showed around 450 billion fewer pages were printed in homes and office worldwide in 2020 versus the year before the pandemic, equating to a 19 percent plunge. It merely accelerated the long-term trend. [...]

Michelle Lewis reports via Electrek: The world's largest solar farm, in the desert in northwestern Xinjiang, is now connected to China's grid. The 3.5-gigawatt (GW), 33,000-acre solar farm is outside Urumqi, Xinjiang's capital. The state asset regulator's website cited the Power Construction Corp of China and said it came online on Monday. The solar farm will generate about 6.09 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity annually. Assuming an EV consumes about 3,000 kWh per year, 6.09 billion kWh could power 2.03 million EVs annually.

The world's largest solar farm in Xinjiang is part of China's megabase project, a plan to install 455 GW of wind and solar. The megabase projects are sited in sparsely populated, resource-rich areas and send their generated energy to major urban centers, such as on China's eastern seaboard. China now boasts the three largest solar farms in the world by capacity. The Ningxia Tenggeli and Golmud Wutumeiren solar farms, each with a capacity of 3 MW, are already online.

Apple is secretly developing robotic devices powered by generative AI, including a table-top robotic arm with an iPad-like display and a mobile robot for household chores, Bloomberg News is reporting, citing people familiar with the matter.

UPDATE 6/4/2024: Google has changed its repair policy in response to the controversial clause that was brought to light. Google says it will not keep phones sent in for repair and that it's changing the wording of its ToS agreement to reflect this. Here's a statement from a Google spokesperson: "If a customer sends their Pixel to Google for repair, we would not keep it regardless of whether it has non-OEM parts or not. In certain situations, we won't be able to complete a repair if there are safety concerns. In that case, we will either send it back to the customer or work with them to determine next steps. Customers are also free to seek the repair options that work best for them. We are updating our Terms and Conditions to clarify this."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Android Authority: Like many other phone makers, Google has a self-repair program for servicing your damaged or malfunctioning Pixel device. As its support site explains, there are options to get repair tools, manuals, and certified parts so you can fix up your Pixel like new. Owners can also choose to simply send their device in to have it repaired professionally. As replacement parts can be expensive, some DIYers choose to use parts from third-party suppliers. But if you go down this route, you may want to avoid sending your device to Google if there's a problem you don't have the skills to fix on your own.

As YouTuber Louis Rossmann discovered, Google's service and repair terms and conditions contain a concerning stipulation. The document states that Google will keep your device if a non-OEM part is found. Apparently, this rule has been in effect since July 19, 2023, as marked on the page. Last week, iFixit said they are parting ways with Samsung because the company "does not seem interested in enabling repair at scale."

A separate report from 404 Media found that Samsung requires independent repair shops to give them the name, contact information, phone identifier, and customer complaint details of everyone who gets their phone repaired at these shops. "Stunningly, it also requires these nominally independent shops to 'immediately disassemble' any phones that customers have brought them that have been previously repaired with aftermarket or third-party parts and to 'immediately notify' Samsung that the customer has used third-party parts," reports 404 Media.

Solar power in California has reached a new record output, briefly surpassing 100% of power demand. It comes just days after the state exceeded 100% of energy demand with renewables (wind, solar and hydro) over a record 45 days straight, and 69 out of 75. CleanTechnica reports: As you can see [here], at its peak, solar power was providing 102.1% of electricity demand in California. Together, wind, water, and solar peaked at 136.4% of electricity demand! [...] The best news is that California seems to quickly be chopping the duck curve down to size. [...] The solution for the duck curve is clear: energy storage. Store that bursting solar energy produced in the middle of the day and gradually use it in the evening as the sun goes down and electricity demand rises. The good news is that California has been making progress on this very fast! Look at the graph [here] regarding electricity generation from natural gas and note the line for 2023 versus the line for 2024. [...]

The overall story is that California renewable energy continues to lead the way forward. Solar power is now peaking at more than 100% of electricity demand, renewables as a whole are peaking at 134% electricity demand, the duck curve has been shaved down to basically no duck curve at all (but you could now call the battery charge/discharge curve a duck curve), and the whole state (and world) is benefitting. Get ready for more records in the days to come. We're still a few weeks away from the summer solstice. Further reading: Battery-Powered California Faces Lower Blackout Risk This Summer

Today, Raspberry Pi introduced a new kit that adds AI functionality to the Raspberry Pi 5. ZDNet reports: The Raspberry Pi AI kit combines an M.2-format Hailo 8L AI accelerator with the Raspberry Pi M.2 HAT+ to create a powerful yet power-efficient solution. The Hailo-8L NPU (Neural Processing Unit) chip, capable of 13 trillion operations per second (TOPS), is built into an M.2 2242 form factor module that attaches to the M.2 HAT+. When connected to a Raspberry Pi 5 board running the latest Raspberry Pi OS, the NPU is automatically available for AI computing tasks. The AI module also has direct access to the Raspberry Pi's camera software stack and works with both first-party and third-party cameras.

The NPU allows the Raspberry Pi 5 to perform AI tasks such as object and facial recognition, human pose analysis, and more. Using an NPU frees up the Raspberry Pi 5's CPU, allowing it to focus on other tasks, making your projects more efficient and powerful. The Raspberry Pi AI kit is also compatible with the Raspberry Pi Active Cooler, ensuring optimal performance without overheating. Additionally, you can purchase a clear protective layer to prevent damage to the board, giving you peace of mind while working on your projects. The AI kit is priced at $70. It's available from Raspberry Pi Approved Resellers, including PiHut, PiShop.us, and CanaKit.

AMD is reverting to a simpler, more traditional numbering scheme for its laptop processors, abandoning its recent complex "decoder ring" system. The new system for Ryzen AI laptop processors will use a three-digit model number to denote generation and SKU, aligning more closely with industry norms. Ars Technica reports: For its new Ryzen AI laptop processors, codenamed "Strix Point," AMD is still using the same broad Ryzen 3/5/7/9 number to communicate general performance level plus a one- or two-letter suffix to denote general performance and power level (U for ultraportables, HX for higher-performance chips, and so on). A new three-digit processor number will inform buyers of the chip's generation in the first digit and denote the specific SKU using the last two digits. In other words, the company is essentially hitting the undo button.

Like Intel, AMD is shifting from four-digit numbers to three digits. The Strix Point processor numbers will start with the 300 series, which AMD says is because this is the third generation of Ryzen laptop processors with a neural processing unit (NPU) included. Current 7040-series and 8040-series processors with NPUs are not being renamed retroactively, and AMD plans to stop using the 7000- and 8000-series numbering for processor introductions going forward. AMD wouldn't describe exactly how it would approach CPU model numbers for new products that used older architectures but did say that new processors that didn't meet the 40+ TOPS requirement for Microsoft's Copilot+ program would simply use the "Ryzen" name instead of the new "Ryzen AI" branding. That would include older architectures with slower NPUs, like the current 7040 and 8040-series chips.

Desktop CPUs are, once again, totally unaffected by this change. Desktop processors' four-digit model numbers and alphabetic suffixes generally tell you all you need to know about their underlying architecture; the new Ryzen 9000 desktop CPUs and the Zen 5 architecture were also announced today. It seems like a lot of work to do to end up basically where we started, especially when the people at AMD who make and market the desktop chips have been getting by just fine with older model numbers for newly released products when appropriate. But to be fair to AMD, there just isn't a great way to do processor model numbers in a simple and consistent way, at least not given current market realities [...].

"Few computer keyboards are as iconic, as influential, or as beige as the IBM Model-M," writes the blog OMG Ubuntu adding that it's "no surprise then that it's been given a modern reimagining by 8BitDo." Following on from their Nintendo NES and Famicom and Commodore 64 homages, 8BitDo has unveiled its latest retro-inspired mechanical keyboard. This one pays tribute to a true computing classic: the IBM Model-M keyboard.

Lest anyone familiar with the real thing get too excited I'll mention up front that 8BitDo's Keyboard-M is a mechanical keyboard, using Kailh Box V2 white switches (swappable, of course) and not the buckling spring mechanism synonymous with the original. On Linux you can enable a buckling spring sound effect for every key press though, should you buy this and want the clatter to accompany it...!

Like 8BitDo's other retro keyboards you can use this over Bluetooth, 2.4G wireless (USB adapter sits underneath), or wired. It has a built-in rechargeable 2000mAh Li-on battery that's good for 200 hours between charges.
"It certainly looks the business," writes the Verge, "especially with the slick new wireless numpad / calculator combo pad 8BitDo will sell alongside it for another $44.99."

And Ars Technica adds that "The M Edition's color scheme, chunkier build, and typeface selection, including on the Tab key with arrows and elsewhere, are nods to IBM's Model M," (noting that the Model M first succeeded the Model F keyboard in 1985). "Of course, the keyboard's naming, and the IBM behemoth and floppy disks strategically placed in marketing images, are notes of that, too..."

"The M Edition also comes with the detachable A and B "Super Buttons" that connect to the keyboard via a 3.5 mm jack and are programmable without software."

"The paint job is pretty faithful to the original," notes Windows Central, "with a combination of gray and white throughout, right down to the accurately recreated LED status panel in the right-hand corner. There are even two key caps with an IBM-inspired blue font on them. It's just tremendous."

Ars Technica offers this advice to unconvinced purists: If you want a real Model M, there's a market of found and restored models available online and in thrift stores and electronics stores. For a modern spin, like USB ports and Mac support, Unicomp also makes new Model M keyboards that are truer to the original IBM design, particularly in their use of buckling spring switches.

"There is one big thing holding the United States back from a pollution-free electricity grid running on wind, solar and battery power," writes the Washington Post. "Not enough power lines... the nation's sagging, out-of-date power lines are being overwhelmed — slowing the transition to clean energy and the fight against climate change." But experts say that there is a remarkably simple fix: installing new wires on the high-voltage lines that already carry power hundreds of miles across the United States. Just upgrading those wires, new reports show, could double the amount of power that can flow through America's electricity grid...

Most of America's lines are wired with a technology that has been around since the early 1900s — a core steel wire surrounded by strands of aluminum. When those old wires heat up — whether from power passing through them or warm outdoor temperatures — they sag. Too much sag in a transmission line can be dangerous, causing fires or outages. As a result, grid operators have to be careful not to allow too much power through the lines. But a couple of decades ago, engineers designed a new type of wire: a core made of carbon fiber, surrounded by trapezoidal pieces of aluminum. Those new, carbon-fiber wires don't sag as much in the heat. That means that they can take up to double the amount of power as the old lines. According to the recent study from researchers at UC-Berkeley and GridLab, replacing these older steel wires could provide up to 80 percent of the new transmission needed on the electricity grid — without building anything new. It could also cost half as much as building an entirely new line and avoid the headaches of trying to get every state, city and even landowner along the route to agree to a new project...

If stringing new lines is so easy — and cheap — why hasn't it been done already? Part of the problem, experts say, is that utilities profit more from big infrastructure projects. Routine maintenance or larger-scale upgrades of the electricity grid don't help utilities make a lot of cash compared with building new transmission lines... Duncan Callaway, a professor of energy and resources at UC-Berkeley and one of the authors of the recent study, said that many transmission engineers are not used to thinking of rewiring as one of their tools. "But it's a much faster way," he said. Some changes are already underway to encourage this approach. For a long time, utilities had to undergo lengthy environmental reviews if they were rewiring a line longer than 20 miles. Earlier this month, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission announced that those would no longer be necessary if utilities are simply replacing wires.

Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shares the announcement of a new report from the International Energy Forum: The seemingly universal presumption persists that the copper needed for the green transition will somehow be available... This paper addresses this issue by projecting copper supply and demand from 2018 to 2050 and placing both in the historical context of copper mine output...

Just to meet business-as-usual trends, 115% more copper must be mined in the next 30 years than has been mined historically until now. To electrify the global vehicle fleet requires bringing into production 55% more new mines than would otherwise be needed... Our main purpose... is to communicate the magnitude of the copper mining challenge to the broader public that is less familiar with upstream resource issues.
"On the other hand, hybrid electric vehicle manufacture would require negligible extra copper mining..." the report points out.

Wikipedia describes the non-profit as a 73-country organization promoting dialogue about the world's energy needs. The group's announcement ends with a hope that the report "will promote discussion and formulation of alternative policies to be certain the developing world can catch up with the developed world while global initiatives advance with the green energy transition."

This week the Washington Post reported that Americans "are more hesitant to buy EVs now than they were a year ago, according to a March Gallup poll, which found that just 44 percent of American adults say they'd consider buying an EV in the future, down from 55 percent last year. High prices and charging worries consistently rank as the biggest roadblocks for electric vehicles," they write, noting the concerns coincide with a slowdown in electric car and truck sales, while hybrids are increasing their market share.

But something else happened this week. The chair of California's Air Resource Board and the chair of the state's Energy Commission teamed up for an op-ed piece arguing that "despite negative hype," electric cars are their state's future: When California's electric vehicle sales dipped at the end of last year, critics predicted the start of a new downward trend that would doom the industry and the state's broader effort to clean up the transportation sector, the single largest source of greenhouse gases and air pollution. But the latest numbers show that's not the case. Californians purchased 108,372 new zero-emission vehicles in the first three months of 2024 — nearly 7,000 more than the same time last year and the highest-ever first-quarter sales.

Today, one in four new cars sold in the Golden State is electric, up from just 8% in 2020...

California is now home to 56 manufacturers of zero-emission vehicles and related products, making our state a hub for cutting-edge automotive technology. Soon even raw materials will be sourced in-state, paving the way for domestic battery production...

Challenges persist, and chief among them is the need for more widely available charging options. Many more charging stations need to be built as fast as possible to keep up with EV adoption. To address this, California is investing $4 billion over six years to rapidly build out the EV refueling network, on top of billions in investment by utilities. Equally essential is improved reliability of the EV charging network. Too many drivers today encounter faulty charging stations, which is why the California Energy Commission is developing the strongest charging reliability standards in the country and will require companies to be transparent with the public about their performance.
They also point out that California "now boasts more EV chargers in the state than gasoline nozzles."

And that it's become the first U.S. state whose best-selling car is electric.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Digital Trends: HP researchers have published a paper detailing a new modular monitor design they call "composable microLED monitors." Using advancing microLED tech to make smaller screens with no bezels, they imagine a Lego-like system that allows customers to buy different monitor modules and slot them together at home. In the paper, diagrams show "core units" with a direct connection to the host computer being expanded both horizontally and vertically with multiple extensions. The idea is that by choosing from flat or curved extension pieces and connecting them to the core unit, you can make a monitor in whatever size or shape you want. To keep assembly simple and effective, the design uses jigsaw-like connections alongside magnets to ensure each module automatically aligns correctly. And to prevent the number of possible configurations from getting out of hand, the design only allows extensions to attach to the sides or bottom of the square-shaped core unit. Once your strangely shaped monitor is complete, you would be able to choose how your operating system treats each part -- either as an extension of the core unit or as a separate screen. These settings would be controlled with physical switches on the modules that you could change whenever you wanted.

As for the sizes of the modules, HP proposes a range of different possibilities, some more complicated than others. In an ideal situation, customers would be able to choose from either flat or curved core units and add flat or curved extensions of varying sizes. If that proved too difficult, curved monitor elements could be taken out of the picture completely, and customers would just add flat extensions to a flat core unit. As cool as this all sounds, there is a glaring problem -- how would the seams between each module look? Thanks to the bezel-less design, there at least wouldn't be a thick black divider between each part. However, a thin line or visible distortion would be inevitable. One approach HP proposes is minimizing the gap between each panel as much as possible and just accepting the thin line it creates. Alternatives include complicated techniques to disguise the joints using hardware or software solutions that modify the display of edge pixels to minimize visual joints. HP would have to find a balance between technical viability, cost, and customer feedback to determine the best overall solution.

Last than two weeks after it was announced, "Windows enthusiasts have managed to crack Microsoft's flagship AI-powered Recall feature to run on unsupported hardware," reports The Verge. From the report: Recall leverages local AI models on new Copilot Plus PCs to run in the background and take snapshots of anything you've done or seen on your PC. You then get a timeline you can scrub through and the ability to search for photos, documents, conversations, or anything else on your PC. Microsoft positioned Recall as needing the very latest neural processing units (NPU) on new PCs, but you can actually get it running on older Arm-powered hardware.

Windows watcher Albacore has created a tool called Amperage, which enables Recall on devices that have an older Qualcomm Snapdragon chip, Microsoft's SQ processors, or an Ampere chipset. You need to have the latest Windows 11 24H2 update installed on one of these Windows on Arm devices, and then the tool will unlock and enable Recall. [...] You can technically unlock Recall on x86 devices, but the app won't do much until Microsoft publishes the x64 AI components required to get it up and running. Rumors suggest both AMD and Intel are close to announcing Copilot Plus PCs, so Microsoft's AI components for those machines may well appear soon. I managed to get Recall running on an x64 Windows 11 virtual machine earlier today just to test out the initial first-run experience.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: California expects to avoid rolling blackouts this summer as new solar plants and large batteries plug into the state's grid at a rapid clip. The state's electricity system has been strained by years of drought, wildfires that knock out transmission lines and record-setting heat waves. But officials forecast Wednesday new resources added to the grid in the last four years would give California ample supplies for typical summer weather.

Since 2020, California has added 18.5 gigawatts of new resources. Of that, 6.6 gigawatts were batteries, 6.3 gigawatts were solar and 1.4 gigawatts were a combination of solar and storage. One gigawatt can power about 750,000 homes. In addition, the state's hydropower plants will be a reliable source of electricity after two wet winters in a row ended California's most recent drought. Those supplies would hold even if California experiences another heat wave as severe as the one that triggered rolling blackouts across the state in August 2020, officials said in a briefing Wednesday. In the most dire circumstances, the state now has backup resources that can supply an extra 5 gigawatts of electricity, including gas-fired power plants that only run during emergencies.

Apple prioritizes device durability over easier repairs, according to John Ternus, the company's head of hardware engineering, in a recent interview with YouTuber MKBHD. "It's objectively better for the customer to have that reliability," Ternus stated, adding that it is "ultimately better for the planet" due to significantly lower failure rates. Apple tests over 10,000 units of each product before release and incorporates real-world concerns into its testing suite.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: When used to generate power or move vehicles, fossil fuels kill people. Particulates and ozone resulting from fossil fuel burning cause direct health impacts, while climate change will act indirectly. Regardless of the immediacy, premature deaths and illness prior to death are felt through lost productivity and the cost of treatments. Typically, you see the financial impacts quantified when the EPA issues new regulations, as the health benefits of limiting pollution typically dwarf the costs of meeting new standards. But some researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab have now done similar calculations -- but focusing on the impact of renewable energy. Wind and solar, by displacing fossil fuel use, are acting as a form of pollution control and so should produce similar economic benefits. Do they ever. The researchers find that, in the U.S., wind and solar have health and climate benefits of over $100 for every Megawatt-hour produced, for a total of a quarter-trillion dollars in just the last four years. This dwarfs the cost of the electricity they generate and the total of the subsidies they received. [...]

As a result, the environmental and health benefits of wind in 2022 are estimated as being $143 for each Mw-hr, with solar providing $100/Mw-hr in benefits. Given the amount of power generated by wind and solar that year, that works out to a total of $62 billion and $12 billion, respectively. For the entire 2019-2022 period, they total up to $250 billion. Due to the uncertainties in various estimates, the researchers estimate that the real value for wind is somewhere between $91 and $183 per Mw-hr, with solar having a proportionate uncertainty. For comparison, they note that the unsubsidized costs of the electricity produced by wind and solar range from $20 to $60 per Mw-hr, depending on where the facility is sited. So, in some ways, the companies that own these plants are only receiving a very small fraction of the benefits of their operation. Wind and solar do receive subsidies, but even the most generous ones provided by the Inflation Reduction Act max out below $35/Mw-hr -- again, far less than the health and environmental benefits. The researchers note that most of these benefits (about 75 percent) come from the reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. Still, the nitrogen and sulfur emissions reductions were also substantial: They displaced the equivalent of roughly 20 percent of the power sector's total emissions of these chemicals. That translates into avoiding about 1,400 premature deaths in 2022 alone. The researchers acknowledge a number of limitations to their work. "One big one is that they don't include distributed solar at all, meaning their totals for that form of production are a significant underestimate," reports Ars, noting that the Energy Information Agency estimates that, in the U.S., distributed solar accounts for over 30 percent of total solar production. "It also, as mentioned, doesn't account for the use of storage such as batteries, which are increasingly used to offset the tail-off in solar production in the evenings."

"In addition, their work doesn't account for the intermittency of renewable power sources, which can sometimes result in the use of less efficient fossil fuel plants and so offset some of these benefits. The drop of wind and solar prices are also influencing decisions on what types of fossil fuel plants are getting built, disfavoring coal and increasing investments in natural gas plants that can respond quickly to changes in renewable output. Over the long term, this will result in additional benefits that can't be captured by this sort of short-term analysis."

The study has been published in the journal Cell Reports Sustainability.

Data centers could use up to 9% of total electricity generated in the United States by the end of the decade, more than doubling their current consumption, as technology companies pour funds into expanding their computing hubs, the Electric Power Research Institute said on Wednesday. From a report: Depending on the adoption pace of technology such as generative artificial intelligence, which is fueling the expansion of data centers, and the energy efficiency of new centers, the estimated annual growth rate of electricity use by the industry ranges from 3.7% to 15% through 2030, the institute's analysis said. The institute is a U.S.-based research organization funded by energy and government organizations.

Data centers, along with expanding domestic manufacturing and electrification of transportation, are lifting the U.S. electricity industry out of two decades of flat growth. The centers require massive amounts of power for high-intensity computing and cooling systems, with a new large data center requiring the same amount of electricity needed to power 750,000 homes, according to numerous energy company earnings calls this year.

IP core designer Arm announced its next-generation CPU and GPU designs for flagship smartphones: the Cortex-X925 CPU and Immortalis G925 GPU. Both are direct successors to the Cortex-X4 and Immortalis G720 that currently power MediaTek's Dimensity 9300 chip inside flagship smartphones like the Vivo X100 and X100 Pro and Oppo Find X7. From a report: Arm changed the naming convention for its Cortex-X CPU design to highlight what it says is a much faster CPU design. It claims the X925's single-core performance is 36 percent faster than the X4 (when measured in Geekbench). Arm says it increased the AI workload performance by 41 percent, time to token, with up to 3MB of private L2 cache. The Cortex-X925 brings a new generation of Cortex-A microarchitectures ("little" cores) with it, too: the Cortex-A725, which Arm says has 35 percent better performance efficiency than last-gen's A720 and a 15 percent more power-efficient Cortex-A520.

Arm's new Immortalis G925 GPU is its "most performant and efficient GPU" to date, it says. It's 37 percent faster on graphics applications compared to the last-gen G720, with improved ray-tracing performance with intricate objects by 52 percent and improved AI and ML workloads by 34 percent -- all while using 30 percent less power. For the first time, Arm will offer "optimized layouts" of its new CPU and GPU designs that it says will be easier for device makers to "drop" or implement into their own system on chip (SoC) layouts. Arm says this new physical implementation solution will help other companies get their devices to market faster, which, if true, means we could see more devices with Arm Cortex-X925 and / or Immortalis G925 than the few that shipped with its last-gen ones.