Volts Community Thread #06
Open to all free & paid subscribers
This is your monthly opportunity to share! Use the comments section in this community thread to:
CLIMATE JOBS & OPPORTUNITIES: Share climate jobs/opportunities
SHARE WORK, ASK FOR HELP, FIND COLLABORATORS: Share your climate-related work, ask for help, or find collaborators
CLIMATE EVENTS & MEETUPS: Share climate-related events and meetups
EVERYTHING ELSE: Discuss David’s Notes or anything else climate-related
MAILBAG QUESTIONS: Ask a question for this month’s Mailbag (anyone can ask a question but mailbag episodes are a paid-sub-only perk). We request that you ask questions via these community threads. Volts has a form for those who are shy, but David prioritizes questions posted in the community threads.
🚨 To keep organized, please only “REPLY” directly under one of Sam’s headline comments, which are in all caps. Anything not posted as a “REPLY” under a category may be deleted, as will anything inappropriate, spammy, etc. Be nice! Check out our Community Guidelines.
David’s Notes:
1. An update for paid subscribers: Spotify listeners can now add a RSS private feed. Check out last month’s community thread for instructions. This makes it all the more convenient to listen to April’s recent mailbag episode.
2. Canoo USPS delivery vans! This deal was struck back in January and apparently there are a few of them out in the wild now. I’m really rooting for this company.
3. I hope you’ve been enjoying these monthly threads as much as I have. I’ve already heard success stories of listeners finding jobs and project collaborators, and hopefully this is just the start! Speaking of which, Laura F. is looking for some help [edited for brevity]:
Sightline worked with legislators in 2023 to get a budget proviso passed to support transition planning for Washington's petroleum refineries. Here's a link to an article by Sightline on the proviso and some key considerations:
In response, the DoC in Washington State will be conducting a study to analyze the economic impact of oil refining in Washington and how decarbonization policies are likely to affect Washington's refineries, refinery workers, and refinery communities. This study is kicking off soon and we've heard from DoC that the likely scenarios that the analysts will examine are premised on the refineries retooling to produce alternative fuels like biofuels, renewable diesel and hydrogen. While these alternative fuel manufacturing scenarios are certainly plausible, they may fall short when scored for carbon footprint, high-wage job creation or sustained tax revenues for refinery communities. I'm reaching out to this community looking for other ideas (out-of-the box ideas welcome!) that might offer different outcomes along these three dimensions (carbon emissions, job creation, tax revenue) that Sightline could offer up for consideration in some of the scenario modeling that will be done under this study.
4. ✅ Community comments of the month: I loved Isabel R.’s question about heat pump cycling, which allowed Fred P. to flex his knowledge:
Isabel: I hear *all the time* from heat pump and efficiency advocates that cycling your heat pump temperature (e.g., pre-cooling) undermines heat pump performance and can negatively impact comfort more than cycling an AC. Is this true? Is cycling worth the sacrifice in COP because of the peak-shaving benefits? It is worth cycling in the summer, but not winter? Obviously if you have dual-fuel in winter that would assist with avoiding winter peaks and could enable heat pump cycling/interruption. But what if you have an all-electric system?
Fred: "Cycling," what's usually referred to as setback and setup, is absolutely preferable for summer AC. Most anywhere now, and more places going forward, AC customers should pre-cool during hot sunny afternoons with AC and let the indoor temp float up during early evening peak demand hours. The efficiency may be lower, and kWhs higher, but the powerplant GHGs will be lower, in many cases by a large amount because there will be way more PV and more efficient generation in the early afternoon. Where there is a decent TOU rate, operation costs may go down significantly by using cheaper mid day rates, and avoiding the evening penalty rates. Even in locations w/o a lot of daytime PV or TOU, doing this will "encourage" your utility, PUC or grid operator to utilize more PV, instead of screeching about peaker plants and nukes.
5. Want to see something cool? Volts episodes inspired some real legislation in California:
And they’re advancing along nicely — looks like they might become law!
Volts is making a real difference in the world. Please consider a paid subscription so we can continue doing this!
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