New York Times: Want to Bring Back Jobs, Mr. President-Elect? Call Elon Musk
Donald Trump: Please think about calling Elon Musk.
President-elect Trump has spent a lot of time talking about how he plans to reinvigorate the manufacturing sector, repeatedly telling the public on the campaign trail, “We are going to bring back jobs that have been stolen from you.”
And yet the group of business luminaries he named on Friday to advise him on “job creation” -- which included Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, Robert Iger of Disney and Mary Barra of General Motors -- was missing a key name: Mr. Musk, the real-life Tony Stark behind Tesla, the electric car company; SolarCity, the solar power provider; and SpaceX, the rocket company.
Utility Dive: Inside Construction of the World's Largest Lithium-Ion Battery Storage Facility
In August, San Diego Gas & Electric tapped energy storage company AES to install two energy storage projects totaling 37.5 MW/150 MWh. When completed, the larger 120 MWh project is expected to be the single biggest lithium-ion battery in service on a utility grid in the world.
Both battery facilities are expected to be on-line by the end of January 2017 -- nothing short of miraculous in an industry where deploying assets, especially newfangled technologies, can take years.
And the companies are not alone. Southern California Edison and Tesla announced a 30 MW/80 MWh project in September that is expected to be on-line even sooner, and will be the largest operating battery for a time.
East Bay Times: Google’s Green Achievement Attacked by Group Closely Linked to Donald Trump
Google’s announcement Tuesday that it will soon power its offices and data centers with 100 percent renewable energy received applause from green-power experts, but was slammed by a group led by a member of President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team.
The Mountain View tech giant said it expects to achieve that green-energy goal by the end of 2017.
“Today, we are the world’s largest corporate buyer of renewable power...bigger than many large utilities,” Google senior vice president of technical infrastructure Urs Hölzle said in an online announcement.
“What Google is doing is green window dressing,” said Chris Warren of the Institute for Energy Research. “It’s a PR stunt, claiming 100 percent renewables when that’s not actually the case.
“You can’t pick and choose what source you’re getting your electricity from when you’re connected to the grid. The way they’re presenting it is misleading.”
Weather Channel: Earth Is Not Cooling, Climate Change Is Real and Please Stop Using Our Video to Mislead Americans
Global warming is not expected to end anytime soon, despite what Breitbart.com wrote in an article published last week.
Though we would prefer to focus on our usual coverage of weather and climate science, in this case we felt it important to add our two cents -- especially because a video clip from weather.com ("La Niña in Pacific Affects Weather in New England") was prominently featured at the top of the Breitbart article. Breitbart had the legal right to use this clip as part of a content-sharing agreement with another company, but there should be no assumption that The Weather Company endorses the article associated with it.
The Breitbart article -- a prime example of cherry picking, or pulling a single item out of context to build a misleading case -- includes this statement: "The last three years may eventually come to be seen as the final death rattle of the global warming scare."
In fact, thousands of researchers and scientific societies are in agreement that greenhouse gases produced by human activity are warming the planet’s climate and will keep doing so.
The Buffalo News: SolarCity Begins Its Hunt for Factory Workers
Nearly 2 1/2 years after plans were first announced for a solar panel factory in South Buffalo, SolarCity is starting to look for its first production workers.
The company is holding a series of information sessions over the next two weeks to try to drum up interest in entry-level positions at the massive solar panel factory on South Park Avenue.
The positions include manufacturing specialists, shipping and receiving clerks and material handlers, said Kady Cooper, a SolarCity spokeswoman.
The company isn't saying how much the positions will pay. It also isn't saying how many workers it plans to bring on in its first wave of hiring as the company prepares to begin production during the first half of next year.