What would you do with an extra $5,443 a year? Converting all home appliances and cars to run on electricity could eliminate a third of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions while saving households $40bn a year by 2028, according to a new report. The report, Castles and Cars, by the new energy thinktank Rewiring Australia, found the average Australian household uses 102kWh of energy a day at a cost of $5,248 a year. Much of this cost comes from relying on petrol and gas to power cars, stoves, showers and heaters. - Guardian

The use of fossil fuels comes with a wide variety of externalized costs. The big focus tends to be on the carbon dioxide fossil fuel produces and its role in warming the climate. But fossil fuels also cause environmental damage when they're extracted, and burning them produces particulate pollution and ozone. Those substances have downstream effects on human health and agriculture. If all of these costs were included in the price of fossil fuels, then alternatives would be far more competitive.

There have been numerous attempts over the years to quantify these externalized costs. Some look at the issue from a purely economic perspective, and others look at efforts to inform policy. These efforts tend to be based on our best understanding at the time; however, as our knowledge improves, the figures can be worth revisiting. That's exactly what's been done by a team of researchers at Columbia and Duke Universities who use current climate scenarios and updated health data.

The researchers' results say that, even if you ignore the climate benefits, moving away from fossil fuels rapidly would lead to benefits that, in the US alone, can add up to trillions of dollars before the century is over. - ArsTechnica / CarbonBrief

NextEra is doubling down on green hydrogen, with plans to build a 500-megawatt wind project to provide power to a hydrogen fuel cell company, the company noted Wednesday in a third quarter earnings call with analysts. The Florida-based energy giant said it continues to expand its wind portfolio as well, announcing on Wednesday's call a deal by its NextEra Energy Partners limited partnership to acquire a 100-megawatt wind project in California for $280 million, including taking on $150 million in existing project finance debt. Overall, NextEra said it has added more than 5,700 megawatts over the first nine months of 2021 to its backlog of renewable energy and storage projects. A large chunk of that — 2,160 megawatts — came during the third quarter, divided up between 1,240 megawatts of new wind projects, 515 megawatts of new solar projects and 345 megawatts of new storage assets. - Utility Dive

Record levels of renewable energy drove down electricity prices across Australia in the September quarter, with prices zero or negative for one-sixth of the time, the Australian Energy Market Operator has said in its latest report. There was also little sign of the Morrison government’s much-touted “gas-led recovery”, with a supply disruption at Victoria’s Longford gas plant initially leading to record or near-record spot prices for the fossil fuel in Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne. Gas’s share of the power mix also slumped one-fifth from a year earlier for the quarter as a whole. - Guardian 

A 10.5 gigawatt (GW) solar and wind farm will be built in Morocco’s Guelmim-Oued Noun region, and it will supply the UK with clean energy via subsea cables. The twin 1.8 GW high voltage direct current (HVDC) subsea cables will be the world’s longest.  UK-based renewables company Xlinks is the project’s developer. The Xlinks Morocco-UK Power Project, as it’s known, will cover an area of around 579 square miles (1,500 square kilometers) in Morocco and will be connected exclusively to the UK via 2,361 miles (3,800 km) of HVDC subsea cables. They’ll follow the shallow water route from Morocco to the UK, past Spain, Portugal, and France. The project will cost $21.9 billion. Xlinks will construct 7 GW of solar and 3.5 GW of wind, along with onsite 20GWh/5GW battery storage, in Morocco. The transmission cable will consist of four cables. The first cable will be active in early 2027, and the other three are slated to launch in 2029. An agreement has been reached with the National Grid for two 1.8GW connections at Alverdiscott in Devon. - Elektrek & XLinks

What if someone told you that we have everything we need to decarbonize most of the economy?   We would just need to start electrifying every new car, furnace, water heater, drier, and cookstove, and industrial process starting right now. And yeah, and put solar on every roof that can handle it.  If we are on a wartime footing for decarbonizing the economy, our guest, Saul, could be considered a 5-star general of the “electrify everything” movement. He founded or co-founded around a dozen companies and organizations. And he has a PhD from MIT in materials science and information theory.  Saul is now trying to marshal the world around his “a defensible and believable” pathway for decarbonizing America with clean electricity. - Energy Gang

The world needs a “radical” shift towards renewables to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 and secure the 1.5C goal, says the International Energy Agency (IEA).  This would see renewable energy overtake coal by 2026, passing oil and gas before 2030. By 2050, it should go on to meet two-thirds of global energy supply and nearly 90% of electricity generation.  In a 227-page report, titled “Net-zero by 2050: A roadmap for the global energy sector,” the IEA calls for “a total transformation of the energy systems that underpin our economies”.  It says this is a “critical year at the start of a critical decade for these efforts”, which must start turning the world’s energy system from one dominated by fossil fuels into a future “powered predominantly by renewable energy like solar and wind”.  - Carbon Brief