EVs, Solar, & Energy Storage: Ignoring The Science That Will Save Us
Ignoring the science that could save Planet Earth is rampant today. People can have empathy, function in society, and survive — even thrive — yet still reject basic premises of scientific climate reasoning. People want to be totally sure, for example, that the changes they make in removing themselves from reliance on fossil fuels, centralized electricity generation, and legacy autos are certain and solid decisions.
But ignoring the science disregards the facts about the climate crisis and the power of renewable technologies.
Cars, trucks, and other forms of transportation are a major producer of air pollution in the world. Climate scientists say vehicle electrification is one of the best ways to reduce planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions. A research team from MIT released data in an interactive online tool to help people quantify the true costs of their car-buying decisions — both for the planet and their budget. EVs are arriving much faster than anyone might have forecast.
The source of solar energy — the sun — is nearly limitless and can be accessed anywhere on earth at one time or another. Yes, it would take around 10 million acres of land, but that’s only about 0.4% of the area of the US to allow enough space for solar photovoltaics (PV) to supply all of the nation’s electricity.
Energy storage has been evolving and creating long-term benefits and reliability for consumers. It is critical for the entire grid as it augments energy resources and can act as a generation, transmission, or distribution asset – sometimes in a single asset. As an enabling technology, it can save consumers money, improve reliability and resilience, integrate generation sources, and help reduce environmental impacts.
If renewable energy technology is so great, then why do so many people deny its potential in our lives?
Ignoring the Science: Denial in Crisis
Public health expert Sara Gorman and psychiatrist/scientist Jack Gorman argue in a recent book that failure to adhere to scientific evidence can have dire outcomes. Their exposition can help us to unpack why well-meaning people hold to notions that sustainable energy methods like EVs, solar, and energy storage are bad.
Denying to the Grave: Why We Ignore the Science that Will Save Us updates a 2016 first edition book. The revision investigates the psychological factors that lead to self-defeating denial of facts; the authors conclude that normal, evolutionary, and adaptive tendencies act against us. If we extend their argument, the costs of wavering on renewable energy technologies are so enormous that we must make transparent theirs benefits — over and over — if we are to overcome denialism and create a citizenry who can sort out scientific climate facts from hype.
Here are some inroads to do just that offered by the authors of Denying to the Grave.
We want to think that charismatic leaders of anti-science movements are just people who hold incorrect ideas about health and well-being. The Gormans discount that notion and say, instead, that such individuals actually masquerade as selfless but gain considerable personal benefits from promulgating false ideas. Activist voices like Greta Thunberg and António Guterres have counterparts like Peter Duesberg, Andrew Wakefield, Jenny McCarthy, Gilles- Éric Séralini, and Wayne LaPierre. Such leaders have such an influence that audiences make decisions or hold beliefs that do not resemble decisions or beliefs they might otherwise hold on their own.
Confirmation bias refers to our tendency to attend only to information that agrees with what we already think is true. Just look at the world’s energy system, which definitely needs to be greened for sustainable development. However, green energy development is fundamentally established upon people’s knowledge about its comparative advantages over other types of energy development. Whether an energy candidate is truly ‘green’ depends on many factors that encompass costs and benefits in various dimensions and range from inputs to outputs along multiple lifecycles. Cognitive biases can lead to misleading language use and further result in entrenched decision-making that only leads to more ignoring the science of renewable technologies.
Ignoring the science of sustainable energy technology can often involve examining causality and filling in ignorance gaps, according to Gorman and Gorman. They say that it is highly adaptive to know how to attribute causality but that people are often too quick to do so. People have a difficult time sitting with uncertainty and accepting coincidence. Revealing ways to better comprehend true causality can be done by examining criteria for causal inference — strength, consistency, specificity, temporality, biological gradient, plausibility, coherence, experiment, and analogy. We might apply those criteria to early studies of demand response or smart grids demonstrated the effective matching of supply and demand in a region.Today, to fill in the knowledge gaps, such analyses can be expanded into linkages among carbon dioxide emissions, energy consumption, and economic growth.
Because it’s impossible to keep up with the enormous amount of scientific articles that are published, we rely on a variety of sources (like CleanTechnica 😀 ) to sift through them. Gorman and Gorman argue that the public needs to overcome an avoidance of complexity of science to judge independently what publications are important. In the world of EVs, solar energy, and energy storage, this means drawing upon a complexity science perspective in which an appreciation of the complex, dynamic, and interconnected relationships occurring within a complex system or problem. Renewable energy fundamental understanding and scientific breakthroughs in new materials and chemical processes make possible new energy technologies and performance levels — staying current with these innovations is essential to gaining renewable energy scientific literacy.
It’s common today to hear people problem-solve through a risk-cost-reward equation. Sometimes, we work through those equations based on skewed risk perception and probability. Risk perception is prone to change based on type of risk, and many people still consider renewables a risky venture. Yet over the last decade a surge in lithium-ion battery production has led to an 85% decline in prices, making electric vehicles and energy storage commercially viable for the first time in history. Comparing energy storage needs and priorities in 2010 vs 2021, important applications continue to emerge including decarbonization of heavy-duty vehicles, rail, maritime shipping, and aviation and the growth of renewable electricity and storage on the grid.
Ignoring the Crisis OR Zeroing in on Clean Technologies
The scientific process is slow and methodical. Analyzing claims can lead to peer-reviewed consensus so that, eventually, the scientific community converges on a shared reality that becomes scientific fact. Spread of misinformation is common in any time of social change and has produced much science denial in crisis over the last decade. Especially during times of political polarization, audiences tend to reject an entire body of beliefs, rather than examining each belief separately.
Surveys show that people in the US have a very high regard for science and its potential to accomplish much that will benefit individuals. When agencies like the EPA have their necessary funding, scientific expertise can be restored to full strength. Gorman and Gorman argue that “the science that is used to help guide policy must be unencumbered by political intrusion and represent solid, data-driven research. We need an end to censorship, banished words, and firing of scientists whose findings are inconvenient for politicians.”
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Environment
Volvo Penta teams up with e-power to equip Boels with next-gen Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS)
Veteran marine and industrial power solutions company Volvo Penta has joined forces with energy solutions provider e-power to build battery energy storage systems (BESS). Volvo Penta’s battery systems for energy storage will power BESS units built by e-power that can be catered to a range of applications, most notably construction rental clients like Boels Rentals in Europe.
Volvo Penta is a provider of sustainable power solutions that currently serves land and sea applications under the Volvo Group umbrella. As more and more of the world goes all-electric, the global manufacturer has also adapted, sharing cultural values with Volvo Group to engineer new and innovative sustainable power solutions.
Nearly 100 years later, Volvo Penta remains an industry leader in marine propulsion systems and industrial engines. As more and more of the world goes all-electric, the Swedish manufacturer has also adapted, sharing cultural values with Volvo Group to engineer new and innovative sustainable power solutions.
For example, all Volvo Penta diesel engines now run on hydro-treated vegetable oil (HVO), reducing well-to-wheel emissions by up to 90% across the marine and industrial power industries. On the zero-emissions side, Volvo Penta has expressed its dedication to fossil-free power solutions, including battery electric components to serve heavy-duty applications such as terminal tractors, forklifts, drill rigs, and feed mixers, to name a few.
To leverage its battery electric value chain, Volvo Penta has also ventured into battery systems for energy storage (or BESS subsystems). These energy-dense, purpose-built BESS subsystems can provide portable, sustainable energy for all-electric charging and reduce grid dependency.
Volvo Penta to deploy battery systems for energy storage
Volvo Penta recently announced a strategic partnership with e-power, a Belgian power solutions provider. Together, Volvo Penta and e-power will develop a scalable Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) for Boels Rental.
The collaboration continues a long-standing partnership between all three companies. Boels – one of the largest construction rental companies is a long-time customer of e-power generators that utilize Volvo Penta engines. As the company shifts toward electrification and sustainability, it will again turn to those companies to deliver reliable performance.
Volvo Penta’s BESS subsystem comprises battery packs, a Battery Management System (BMS), DC/DC converters, and thermal management, combining to offer a compact, high-density, and transport-friendly solution optimized for rental operations. The company shared that this BESS design is integration-ready, enabling other OEMs like e-power to adapt and scale systems to customer-specific needs. Per e-power business support director, Jens Fets:
We’ve built our reputation on reliability and efficient power systems. Working again with Volvo Penta, this time on battery energy storage, allows us to meet the growing demand for energy in a silent, low-emissions, compact and mobile design—especially in rental applications.
The deployment of these new battery energy storage systems will help Boels cater to its customers’ growing demand for clean, silent, and mobile energy solutions in construction and other industrial applications.
Aside from being more quickly adaptable to customer needs, Volvo Penta says its BESS architecture marks an overall shift in rental power systems. This is welcome news for all who support a cleaner, more sustainable future across all industries.
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That didn’t take long! Just a few hours after Mercedes revealed the screen-heavy interior of its upcoming 2026 GLC EV, photos of the new crossover’s exterior – and that controversial grille! – leaked on Instagram and Reddit. We’ve got them here.
Two days ahead of the GLC EV’s officially schedule global debut, images that reportedly show the new 2026 Mercedes undisguised have leaked on Instagram and Reddit. They show the blocky new light-up grille on the nose of a very smooth, jellybean-like crossover shape that, despite Mercedes’ insistence that it’s moving away from the EQ series’ design language, looks an awful lot like an EQ Mercedes.
Check out the leaked images from kindleauto’s Instagram account, below, and see if you agree with that assessment.
If you need to see more before you feel comfortable commenting on the new SUV’s looks, there’s a few more angles over on the r/mercedes_benz subreddit.
Leaked exterior pictures of the upcoming GLC EV
byu/Quick_Coyote_7649 inmercedes_benz
As with everything else on the internet, take those unofficial images with a grain of salt and maybe wait until the GLC EV’s official reveal in a few days’ time before casting your final vote on the new look – but there’s very little reason to believe the new Mercedes will look terribly different from what you see here.
Will the new grille and tech-forward interior with its massive, 39″ screen and MB.OS software be enough to turn the tide for Mercedes-Benz, enabling it to finally gain some traction in the electric crossover market? That remains to be seen, but the recently updated Tesla Model Y and crisply-styled new BMW iX3 with its 500 miles of range will make it an uphill battle, for sure.
We got a sneak peek at the new GLC back in July, when Mercedes-Benz Group CEO, Ola Källenius said that, “We’re not just introducing a new model – we’re electrifying our top seller.” Back then, we learned that the new GLC EV would have a wheelbase 3.1″ longer than the current ICE-powered model, as well as more head- and leg-room for its occupants and an extra 4.5 cubic feet (for 61.4 total) of cargo space.
Källenius also promised an innovative new 800V electric architecture and the latest battery tech, which will enable the electric GLC to add around 260 km (~160 miles) of WLTP range in just ten minutes thanks to more than 300 kW of charging capability.
SOURCES | IMAGES: kindleauto; Quick_Coyote_7649.
If you’re considering going solar, it’s always a good idea to get quotes from a few installers. To make sure you find a trusted, reliable solar installer near you that offers competitive pricing, check out EnergySage, a free service that makes it easy for you to go solar. It has hundreds of pre-vetted solar installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high-quality solutions and save 20-30% compared to going it alone. Plus, it’s free to use, and you won’t get sales calls until you select an installer and share your phone number with them.
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For more than 30 years, John Deere’s go-anywhere Gator has been a trusted tool for ranchers, landscapers, and hobby farmers. But the all-electric TE 4×2 version of Big Green’s little truckster rarely gets to steal the spotlight from its ICE-powered 6×4 cousins.
We’re going to change that.
Unlike some of those other UTV brands that just recently entered the electric vehicle game, John Deere introduced its first all-electric Gator way back in 1998.
That OG E-Gator was designed from the ground up for quiet work in places like golf courses, university and hospital campuses, luxury resorts, and corporate grounds – but its go-anywhere design and quiet running made it a favorite of hunters and ranchers, too. Fitted with eight heavy, 12V lead-acid batteries, the ’98 Gator could deliver 6 hours of runtime between overnight charges.
We haven’t come a long way, baby
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. That seems to be the mentality at Deere when it comes to the all-electric Gator. The TE 4×2 hasn’t chased trends or tried to reinvent itself with flashy autonomous tech. Instead, it’s relied solid, work-horsey reasons. Instead, the UTV has leaned on the formula that’s made it a winner for more than 25 years: bulletproof reliability, low maintenance, and a design that just works. Even the added weight of the low-tech batteries compared to more energy-dense li-ion deals makes sense in this application, providing weight over the drive wheels that delivers sure-footed traction on slippery grass or muddy trails.
That’s not to say the Gator hasn’t changed at all over the last few decades. The electrical system has been upgraded to 48V, and its high-capacity, deep-cycle batteries (12 kWh total capacity) give the TE 4×2 dependable, all-day runtime (up to 8 continuous hours) with the benefit of modern chargers, regenerative braking (!), and updated safety features.
The TE 4×2 electric Gator is available from your local Deere dealer with prices starting at $15,699. And, if you’re looking for an endorsement: my personal Gator is easily my favorite thing … maybe I should try to change my Twitter X handle to “GatorJo”?
Let me know what you think of that idea in the comments.
SOURCE | IMAGES: John Deere.
If you’re considering going solar, it’s always a good idea to get quotes from a few installers. To make sure you find a trusted, reliable solar installer near you that offers competitive pricing, check out EnergySage, a free service that makes it easy for you to go solar. It has hundreds of pre-vetted solar installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high-quality solutions and save 20-30% compared to going it alone. Plus, it’s free to use, and you won’t get sales calls until you select an installer and share your phone number with them.
Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisors to help you every step of the way. Get started here.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
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