According a new analysis from Wood Mackenzie on the levelized cost of electricity for the Asia Pacific region, the cost of renewables reached a historic low in 2023. Renewable energy costs in Asia last year were 13% cheaper than coal and are expected to be 32% cheaper by 2030. Utility solar is now the cheapest power source in 11 out of 15 APAC countries. New-build solar project costs are expected to fall by another 20% by 2030.
This year’s Super Bowl was the first ever to be fully powered by renewable energy, thanks to the host stadium’s agreement with a solar farm. More than 621,000 solar panels found in a barren area of the Nevada desert help power Allegiant Stadium, home to the Las Vegas Raiders and host of Super Bowl LVIII. According to CBS News, the Les Vegas stadium entered into a 25-year agreement with NV Energy to buy power from its new solar installation.
A remarkable pilot project installed on a 787-ft. container ship has proven it’s possible to capture emissions from the smokestacks of cargo ships with 78% efficiency and convert the CO2 into limestone pebbles, which can be offloaded and sold. London startup Seabound, funded by a US$1.5-million grant from the UK Government, partnered up with global shipping company Lomar to install the carbon capture equipment on one of its older and dirtier-burning ships, a medium-sized vessel capable of carrying more than 3,200 shipping containers.
Mining company Rio Tinto has signed a contract to buy all the electricity from what will be the biggest solar project on Australia’s main grid – a 1.1 GW facility near Gladstone in Queensland. Rio Tinto is seeking up to 4 GW of wind and solar to provide clean power to and guarantee the future of its three main assets in the region – the Boyne Island aluminium smelter, the Yarwun alumina refinery, and the Queensland alumina refinery. All three assets are now supplied by coal.
The vaccine- developed by Dr. Thomas Wagner of U.S.-based Orbis Health Solutions – has already been tested in hundreds of patients with advanced forms of melanoma in Phase 2 clinical trials. The most recent data showed nearly 95% of people given only the vaccine were still alive three years after starting treatment and 64% were still disease-free. Among the most advanced forms of melanoma, disease-free survival after three years for people with stage III disease was 60% in the vaccine-only group, compared to about 39% in the placebo group.
Building on a previously announced 2.5GW module supply agreement signed in January 2023, Qcells will supply Microsoft with 12GW of solar modules over an 8-year period. Equivalent to powering more than 1.8 million homes annually, the solar modules will be produced in the United States at a fully integrated solar supply chain factory in Cartersville, Georgia.
The team from U.S. biotech firm Novelna wrote: “At stage I (the earliest cancer stage) and at the specificity of 99%, our panels were able to identify 93% of cancers among males and 84% of cancers among females.” It believes its cheaper, less invasive multi-cancer screening test could be a ‘gamechanger.’
The U.S. Department of Energy has announced that four additional heat pump manufacturers successfully produced heat pump prototypes as part of the Residential Cold Climate Heat Pump (CCHP) Technology Challenge. Launched in 2021, this initiative brings together public and private sector stakeholders to address technical challenges and market barriers to adopting next-generation cold-climate heat pumps—a key clean energy technology that can potentially save households $500 a year or more on their utility bills while also slashing harmful carbon emissions.
In December 2023, Danish wind energy developer Ørsted and the utility Eversource announced that their first turbine was sending electricity from what will be a 12-turbine wind farm, South Fork Wind, 35 miles east of Montauk Point, New York. Now, the joint owners of the Vineyard Wind project have announced the first electricity from one turbine at what will be a 62-turbine wind farm 15 miles off the coast of Massachusetts.
Following promising results from this recent trail, the combination of Moderna’s new mRNA-4157 and KEYTRUDA has been granted Breakthrough Therapy Designation by the FDA in the U.S., and accepted into the Priority Medicines scheme by the European Medicines Agency, for the treatment of high-risk melanoma.
