🌞 8 Coal-to-Solar Makeovers to Make Your Day (& the World!)
🗞️ EXTRA, extra: a special solar-glow-up edition of Sunny Climate News
🌅 EXTRA, Extra— Ch-ch-ch-changes: On the Horizon
From your friendly neighborhood clean energy geek & climate poet, here’s a special edition of: Sunny Climate News
8 Coal-to-Solar Makeovers to Make Your Day (& the World!)
Obsolete coal plants across the country are getting a welcome revival: A second life as solar farms and other renewable energy ventures. —Sharon Udasin, “Equilibrium/Sustainability — Retired coal plants go renewable” The Hill
But the acceleration of coal’s economic decline is now being driven by fast-falling clean energy prices—and smart government policy. —Eric Gimon, “99% Of U.S. Coal Plants Are More Expensive Than New Renewables” Forbes
Get ready to join the revival stepping into a whole new world of blue-sky style and electric elegance. Cue the cutscene track (David Bowie’s “Changes,” included above) and let’s go!
1. In a First, Wind and Solar Generated More Power Than Coal in U.S
2. Illinois is turning 11 retired coal-fired power plants into clean electricity powerhouses
Illinois legislators recently unveiled installation sites for more than 200 megawatts of new solar power and battery storage projects that were mandated by a state law called the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act, which passed last fall. — Joseph Winters, “Illinois is converting coal plants to solar projects” Grist
Gotta love a good climate law. All my love to the policy advocates
3. West Virginia’s largest solar farm will sit on a former coal mining site
4. Solar Farms At Abandoned Coal Mines In Virginia
“We’re very proud to be an energy producing community,” she says when asked about the new solar farms being built on abandoned coal mines. “This is helping us to re-imagine how we produce the energy. So we’re still able to say we’re keeping the lights on somewhere.”—Lou Wallace via Steve Hanley, “Nature Conservancy To Build Solar Farms At Abandoned Coal Mines In Virginia” Cleantechnica
5. The world’s largest floating solar farm over a coal mine in China
“The coal mine was very hot and the air was bad,” says Sang. “But here I feel safe. The new energy is safe.” —Sang Dajie via Charlie Campbell, “The world’s largest floating solar farm”, Time
6. Florida’s largest power company is constructing a 75-megawatt facility with 300,000 solar panels on 500 acres atop where they blew-up their last coal-fired powerplant
7. Canadian Coal-Fired Power Plant Transformed into Solar Farm
8. Project Phoenix: solar facility atop coal ash pit in Kentucky
For reading to the end, you get a BONUS: $250 BILLION from the Department of Energy for more renewable makeovers.
That’s it! Thanks for reading— and doing your part to glow-up a gorgeous livable future.💖
Want to share more solar projects you know about that are planned, constructed, or in-progress, transforming fossil fuel infrastructure? Let us know:
Thanks for plugging-in & all you do! For tomorrow, today— the future thanks you, too.
Here’s last week’s edition:
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Their immune to your consultations
They're quite aware of what they're going through
