Three news stories summarized & contextualized by analytic journalist Colin Wright.
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G7 to target sixfold expansion of electricity storage
Summary: Representatives from the G7 countries, which includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK, and the US, have “agreed in principle” to a new goal that would expand global electrical storage capacity to 1,500 gigawatts by 2030.
Context: That’s up from about 230 gigawatts in 2022, and would represent a huge expansion in the deployment of battery storage, but also the use of other storage methods like pumped hydro, underground compressed air, and possibly even long-term heat storage and hydrogen conversion technologies; this is just one of several clean energy-related topics being discussed by these representatives at the moment, but widespread, reliable storage for the electricity produced by often intermittent renewable sources like solar and wind is vital if these sources are to replace existing, greenhouse gas-emitting fuels like coal, petroleum, and natural gas.
—Financial Times
Spain's Sanchez says he will stay on as PM despite wife's graft probe
Summary: The Prime Minister of Spain, Pedro Sanchez, has said that he will remain in office after several days of uncertainty following an announcement in which he said he might resign due to harassment he said his wife is facing from far-right opposition members and their followers.
Context: This post and the followup confirmation that Sanchez would not be resigning come in the wake of a preliminary probe into the prime minister’s wife for alleged influence peddling and corruption; this probe is the result of a complaint by a far-right political organization that has sparked a series of similar, and thus far unsuccessful legal moves against politicians they don’t like, and there’s reportedly no evidence of the PM’s wife’s alleged corruption, other than media reports that also offer no evidence; Sanchez’s Socialist party oversees a minority government that relies on far-left and separatist parties to get anything done, and some of the laws his government has passed to appease those further-left parties have consistently riled conservatives in the country, including a proposed amnesty for Catalan separatists.
—France 24
Philippines closes schools as heat soars to ‘danger’ level
Summary: Public schools across the Philippines were closed yesterday and remain closed today, classes moved online for the duration, due to incredibly high temperatures that have coincided with a nationwide strike by jeepney drivers.
Context: These high temperatures, which hit 45 degrees Celsius (which is about 113 degrees Fahrenheit) in Manila, follow a week of also high levels of heat, which have topped 40 C (100 F) in some parts of the country, the heat index even higher in most areas; jeepneys are open-air vehicles that make up the lion’s share of public transit across most of the Philippines, and the drivers of these vehicles are protesting a government plan that will see their rides replaced with expensive new minibuses, which would be more energy-efficient, comfortable, and safe, but also a big investment for the drivers—many of whom say they can’t afford to make the upgrade.
—The New York Times
The words we use to talk about our beliefs and politics matter, and a recent survey from Ipsos shows that “MAGA” and the “2nd Amendment” are among the most divisive terms in the American political lexicon, at the moment, while “National Parks” and “Honesty” are more likely to refer to shared, cross-spectrum values.
—Axios
3.6 million
Number of babies born in the US in 2023 according to the CDC.
That represents a decrease of 2% from 2022, and may mark the end of a small bump in the nationwide birthrate we saw from 2020 to 2022.
—The Washington Post
One Sentence News / April 30, 2024