Climate Clips: Pepco, Toyota researching ‘vehicle-to-grid’ potential in Maryland

Idle electric vehicles could be a source of energy for other uses when not being driven, and Pepco has partnered with Toyota to research “vehicle-to-grid” technology.

See the full story at WTOP News.

More DMV News

More Electric Vehicle Charging Could Come to Alexandria Parks and Libraries
ALXNow
Alexandria is applying for a U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) grant to deploy more electric vehicle charging stations and alternative fuel infrastructure.

Maryland Panel Pondering the Multibillion-Dollar Climate Question
Maryland Matters
An obscure but influential commission has begun to tackle a multibillion-dollar problem for the state of Maryland: How to pay for government’s ambitious climate goals.

Virginia Sees Increase in Forested Buffers, But Watershed Struggling to Meet Goals
Virginia Mercury
State and regional partners in Virginia saw an increase in forested buffers planted within the Chesapeake Bay Watershed to reduce pollution and sediment erosion in 2023 compared to 2022, according to the Chesapeake Bay Program.

Fort Detrick Unveils Advanced Renewable Energy System
DVIDS
Fort Detrick announced the newly completed advanced renewable energy system on June 18. This event marks the culmination of efforts to enhance the base’s energy independence, sustainability, and potential for energy resiliency.

National and International News

Billions of People Just Felt the Deadly Intensity of Climate-Fueled Heat Waves
Washington Post
The scorching heat across five continents in recent days, scientists say, provided yet more proof that human-caused global warming has so raised the baseline of normal temperatures that once-unthinkable catastrophes have become commonplace.

Aging Coal Plants are Increasingly Unreliable Due to Cycling Increases and Deferred Maintenance: NERC
Utility Dive
Forced-outage rates at conventional and wind generating facilities “remain at historically high levels, exceeding rates for all years prior to 2021,” the North American Electric Reliability Corp. said Thursday in its 2024 State of Reliability, which reviews the previous year’s grid performance.

U.S. EPA, DOE Announce $850 Million to Reduce Methane Pollution from the Oil & Gas Sector
Clean Technica
[On Friday], June 21, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy announced that applications are open for $850 million in federal funding for projects that will help monitor, measure, quantify, and reduce methane emissions from the oil and gas sectors as part of President Biden’s Investing in America agenda.

Extreme Heat, Wildfire Smoke Belong in FEMA’s Major Disaster Definition, Petition Says
Smart Cities Dive
As climate change makes heat waves and wildfire smoke events more frequent and severe, cities are scrambling to keep up with the public health impacts.

New Projects Aim to Break US Barriers to Digitizing the Grid
Canary Media
Smart Wires has spent over a decade putting its grid-boosting technology to the test in Australia, South America, and Europe. Now, the Durham, North Carolina–based company is finally getting a crack at projects in the U.S., backed by federal funds and policies supporting technologies that could unlock gigawatts of capacity on the country’s existing power grids.