May 24th, 2018
Courtesy of The Economist (subscription required), a look at how Australia’s biggest river is running dry, despite plans to use market mechanisms to save it: PADDLE steamers once chugged up and down the Darling, the main tributary of the Murray river, ferrying wool from remote farms to the port of Adelaide. The Murray-Darling basin, which […]
Read more »What If People Were Paid To Use Less Water?
May 11th, 2018
Via CityLab, a look at several innovative pilot programs in Morocco and California that are rewarding people financially for conserving water, rather than charging them for excessive consumption: From Sao Paulo and Cape Town to Beijing and San Diego, water demand in cities around the world is outstripping supply. Urbanization, developing economies, and shifting precipitation patterns […]
Read more »April 24th, 2018
Courtesy of WIRED, an interesting look at Ohmconnect: WE ALL KNOW we should use less electricity. It would save us some money each month, and in the long run, it just might save the planet, reducing our collective carbon footprint. But sadly, that’s just not enough incentive for most of us. Ohmconnect hopes to provide more. Launched […]
Read more »How Location-Based Prices and Utility Rewards Could Help California’s Electric Grid
April 14th, 2018
Via The Energy Collective, interesting commentary on the potential of location-based pricing and utility rewards to help grid operators: Distributed energy resources, from rooftop solar panels to smart well-weatherized homes and timed electric vehicle charging, are vital pieces of the clean energy puzzle. Coordinating how and where to encourage them in a way that benefits […]
Read more »April 10th, 2018
Via Water Deeply, a look at how the Rosedale-Rio Bravo Water Storage District plans to set up procedures for land retirement and water trading with the goal of putting property owners in the driver’s seat on groundwater management: COMMUNITIES ACROSS CALIFORNIA are struggling to comply with the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), the state’s first comprehensive attempt […]
Read more »Using Blockchain To Streamline Transactions Along the Utility Value Chain
April 3rd, 2018
Courtesy of McKinsey, a report on how blockchain technology can streamline transactions along the utility value chain via six emerging applications: Bitcoin has attracted wide interest in recent months, but it’s blockchain—the technology that underpins bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies—that has the potential to remake important aspects of the utility industry. Leading utilities have begun to ask […]
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