“Now — the water is boiling,” says Jen Hamilton, calling attention to the pot on her stove. She lifts the pot and places her other hand flat on the cooking surface. She remains uninjured. “It’s safer!” she exclaims, explaining that her cats used to inadvertently turn on the gas on her old stove by bumping
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The year is 2050. On every street across the wide expanse of the United States, nearly every vehicle that goes by emits only the quiet whine of an electric motor. A few folks still ride by in antique, gas-powered cars, but in many places such vehicles are greatly outnumbered even by electric bikes. The houses
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In 2020, members of POWER Interfaith, a grassroots social justice organization with a mission to “shine a light on broken systems,” organized to push PECO, Pennsylvania’s largest electric and gas utility, to incorporate long-term contracts for renewable energy into its Default Service Program (DSP). The DSP is essentially the company’s “house special,” and about 75%
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Founded in 2020, Rewiring America is the nation’s leading nonprofit for helping Americans electrify their homes. Their task is a challenging one. Electrification can be a confusing endeavor, with homeowners often left on their own to figure out what to electrify first, when to do it, how to get started and what financial incentives they’re
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Several times a week, John Boyle, research director for the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, rides the power of electricity to work. A resident of Edgewater Park, New Jersey, Boyle rides a foldable e-bike to the Beverly Rail Station, which he takes aboard NJ Transit’s River Line to Camden. If the weather is nice, he’ll
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A search for real estate under $200,000 in Philadelphia yields mostly fixer-uppers and condominiums. Marc Rowell’s mission with Deep Green Retrofit, launched in 2021, is to develop energy efficient, move-in ready housing for working-class families, putting affordability and sustainability ahead of personal profit. Growing up in public housing in North Philadelphia, Rowell came to believe
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When Weavers Way Co-op started building their new store in Germantown, they realized its roof was the perfect site for a solar array. Members had long hoped to power their operations with clean energy. There was only one problem: There was little chance the co-op would be able to pay upfront for installation. “We’re consuming
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Since former Mayor Jim Kenney set a goal three years ago of making Philadelphia carbon neutral by 2050, City government has been busy. It has replaced street lights with efficient LEDs, electrified its vehicle fleet and improved the energy efficiency of City buildings. All those initiatives can only go so far to help Philadelphia become
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What’s the size of a toaster and uses three times the energy of an average Pennsylvania household? That would be a cryptocurrency mining machine — a computer that runs 24/7 and spits out numbers in an attempt to solve complex problems, creating proof-of-work cryptocurrency, like Bitcoin, as a result. “We have companies that have 80,000
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The title of Austin, Texas-based journalist Jeff Goodell’s 2023 book, “The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet,” should leave no doubt as to the topic and its urgency. Grid spoke with Goodell at the end of May about the most lethal and least visible natural disaster on the planet.
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It’s clearer than ever that cities must finance more green projects as the impacts of climate change intensify, but many are struggling to make progress towards their climate goals. Unsurprisingly, funding is among the biggest obstacles. Urban sustainability overhauls — like transitioning to renewable energy sources — can be expensive up front, though they present
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