By: Chandu Visweswariah Key Take-Away Energy systems of the world are facing steep challenges including urgent growth in electricity demand, limited grid resources and decarbonization imperatives. Thanks to improvements in solar panels and battery storage, pairing solar farms with batteries is now the cheapest, fastest and cleanest way of ramping up electricity generation. Best of all, this energy can be…
By: Chandu Visweswariah The last few centuries have seen dominance on the global stage by Britain, and then the United States. It is no surprise, therefore, that English has become the world’s lingua franca. In the remote villages of Africa and India, parents tell their children to learn English because it opens up a world of opportunities. Alas, global energy…
By: Chandu Visweswariah Lead image: Based on 2023 emissions, courtesy of Visual Capitalist. Source: Carbon Majors Introduction For anyone who cares about our planet’s climate stability, things are not going well. CO2 in the atmosphere continues to rise, the clean energy revolution is facing significant headwinds, extreme weather events are becoming more common and violent, and we are edging ever…
By: Chandu Visweswariah Executive Summary The dire, urgent and existential climate crisis we face is well-understood, with a concomitant desire to reduce Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions from transportation. California has replaced nearly 65% of its diesel consumption with Renewable Diesel (RD). UPS has been transitioning a significant share of its nationwide fleet to RD. New York City now uses RD…
By: Chandu Visweswariah The oil giant Saudi Aramco recently published an article on Carbon Capture which got my attention. Is Carbon Capture the holy grail to solve the climate crisis? The fossil fuel industry is pushing carbon capture as a panacea to our greenhouse gas emission problems. Fossil fuels are wonderful and essential to our way of life, they say….
By: Chandu Visweswariah [Mount Rushmore image acknowledgment: By Thomas Wolf, www.foto-tw.de, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=90107110] Dear Mr. President, If this letter gets to you, I hope you read it because it describes the single most important thing you can do to boost your legacy. More on this a bit later in this letter. Earlier today, I received a renewal notice…
By: Subbu Upputuri, Dr. Chandu Visweswariah, Dr. Thomas N. Theis, Dr. Anjali Sauthoff Executive Summary The transition from fossil fuel vehicles to electric alternatives is a critical step towards reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and combating climate change. However, the localized impacts on air quality, specifically fine particulate matter (PM2.5) emissions, are more nuanced. In some electricity zones of the…
By: Chandu Visweswariah In India, a billion people went to the polls over a 6-week period ending on June 1, 2024. Meanwhile, a scorching heat wave raised temperatures in New Delhi, the capital city, to an unbearable 120oF (49oC). Despite this juxtaposition of intense political and climate activity, climate change was not a plank in the platform of any of…
By: Dr. Anjali Sauthoff, Dr. Chandu Visweswariah, Dr. Thomas N. Theis Authors’ note: The CURE100 Carbon Tracker tool, available here, now has full support in the latest version 288 for PM2.5 (Particulate Matter 2.5 microns or smaller) emissions and implements the models described in this article for light duty vehicles. The CURE100 BEST (Bus Electrification for Student Transportation) tool, available…
By: Chandu Visweswariah Dear human race, Congratulations on centuries of progress and triumph (albeit bumpy at times). Your intellectual, artistic, medical and scientific progress in the last few centuries has been impressive. You have also made incremental progress on injustice, bigotry, discrimination and exploitation of all kinds, be it slavery, racism, colonialism or elitism. Failure However, it pains me to…
