In right now’s Electrek Inexperienced Vitality Transient (EGEB):

• Arizona’s Navajo Producing Station coal plant’s smokestacks have been toppled — VIDEO.
• The Company Electrical Automobile Alliance releases ideas to speed up US industrial fleet electrification.
• UnderstandSolar is a free service that hyperlinks you to top-rated photo voltaic installers in your area for customized photo voltaic estimates. Tesla now gives value matching, so it’s necessary to buy the most effective quotes. Click here to learn more and get your quotes. — *advert.

Coal smokestacks topple

Update12/18: The Navajo Producing Station smokestacks had been demolished this morning. Right here’s a video that captures the second they fell:

December 16: The two,400-MW Navajo Producing Station (NGS) in northeastern Arizona — the most important coal plant west of the Mississippi River — shut down over a yr in the past, in November 2019, as Electrek reported.

And this Friday, December 18, the 775-foot-tall smokestacks on the NGS shall be demolished with explosives as a part of the decommissioning course of at round 8:30 a.m.

The smokestack demolition is a logo of how dramatically the power panorama has shifted in a number of brief years. A number of months previous to saying in February 2017 that they might shut NGS by the tip of 2019, its utility homeowners had been in federal courtroom arguing for the appropriate to run the plant into the 2040s.

In simply three years, Arizona’s two greatest utilities — Arizona Public Service (APS) and Tucson Electric Power — have dedicated to abandoning all of their coal belongings and dealing towards 100% carbon-free electrical energy. On high of that, the Arizona Company Fee, which regulates the utilities, has additionally pledged to succeed in net zero by 2050.

Nevertheless, a lot nonetheless stays to be finished to make sure a simply and equitable transition for the Navajo and Hopi. Whereas APS proposed $144 million in November to help affected tribes and surrounding communities within the transition from coal and towards inexperienced power, different utilities haven’t but stepped as much as supply assist in the type of funding.

Navajo and Hopi neighborhood leaders not too long ago issued a report card that evaluated the state of the transition:

• Ending dangerous coal extraction and burning of coal: B-
• Securing company accountability with transition funding help from utilities: C
• Addressing land and water reclamation and restoration: F
• Growing clear power initiatives which are in concord with sacred tribal values: C+
• Making certain that neighborhood voices and neighborhood advantages are prioritized: D

You’ll be able to entry particulars of the report card here.

US industrial fleet electrification push

A bunch of 21 main world and US-based corporations, together with Amazon, AT&T, Finest Purchase, DHL, IKEA, Siemens, Nationwide Grid, and Uber, have banded collectively and known as themselves the Corporate Electric Vehicle Alliance (CEVA).

The group is led by the sustainability nonprofit Ceres. CEVA was shaped in January 2020 to speed up the enterprise transition to EVs in all automobile segments, from light-duty passenger vehicles to heavy-duty vans.

CEVA yesterday launched its first set of cross-sectoral fleet electrification ideas that present steerage on what auto and truck producers, regulators, policymakers, and utilities should do to advance the industrial EV market.

This timing of this motion to decarbonize the US transport sector isn’t any coincidence, with the election win and upcoming inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, who has pledged help for electrical automobiles and vowed to rejoin the Paris Settlement on the primary day of his presidency (cc Pete Buttigieg, who Biden has chosen for transport secretary).

Listed here are the Company Electrical Automobile Alliance’s ideas, and full particulars on every precept might be discovered here:

1. Higher selection and quantity of zero-emission automobile mannequin choices
2. Entry to cost-effective charging infrastructure and versatile charges
3. Extra transparency on new mannequin launch timing and availability
4. Upfront price parity with ICE automobiles
5. Built-in entry to renewable power
6. Improved coordination with and help from electrical energy corporations and utility regulators
7. Strategically sited and extensively accessible charging infrastructure
8. Know-how interoperability and streamlined charging requirements
9. Worker commute and regional transportation decarbonization

Badar Khan, the president of Nationwide Grid, US, mentioned:

To combat local weather change, we should deal with the transportation sector. That begins with corporations like us electrifying our personal fleets, thereby lowering GHG emissions in our on a regular basis enterprise, and serving to our prospects do the identical.

We’ll convert to a 100% electrical fleet by 2030 for our light-duty automobiles whereas additionally pursuing the substitute of our medium- and heavy-duty automobiles with zero carbon options.

Picture: Mark Henle/The Republic through azcentral.com

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