Commercial, Energy Efficiency, GHG Emissions, Industrial, Utilities, Regulation, Sourcing Renewables, Wind  -  September 2, 2017

Weekend reads: Harvey's wind impact; states adopting carbon costs; Tim Cook on renewables & more

Every Saturday, we'll bring you five of the most interesting — or quirky; it is the weekend after all — energy stories from around the web that you may have missed this week. This weekend's reads:

Harvey Pushed This Texas Wind Farm All the Way to the Max (Bloomberg): For a wind farm in the path of a hurricane, location matters. Pattern Energy Group Inc.'s Gulf Wind farm in Texas remained in operation even as Hurricane Harvey devastated the state with a deluge of rain and winds that reached 130 miles an hour. The 283-megawatt power plant is in Armstrong, about 85 miles (137 kilometers) from Corpus Christi, where the storm crashed into the coast.

Carbon calculus: More states are adding carbon costs to utility planning guidelines (Utility Dive) The Trump administration is abdicating Obama-era climate regulations, but a small — and growing — amount of states are taking matters into their own hands. The weapon of choice? The federal social cost of carbon, developed by the former Obama administration's interagency working group composed of federal scientists and economists.

Apple's Tim Cook Barnstorms for 'Moral Responsibility' (The New York Times): "The reality is that government, for a long period of time, has for whatever set of reasons become less functional and isn't working at the speed that it once was. And so it does fall, I think, not just on business but on all other areas of society to step up." ... Over the past several years, Mr. Cook has gotten all of the company's corporate facilities in the United States to run on wind and solar energy — in their entirety. 

GE Teaches Electric Power Plants to Self-React to Computer Hacks (The Daily Gazette): General Electric researchers are testing a new system designed to enable electric power plants to self-react to computer hacks that get past traditional cybersecurity barriers. The idea was inspired by the way the human immune system identifies and fights harmful micro-organisms.

The Future Is Now: Five Smart Building Features Transforming Today's Workplace (Forbes): To say that building owners are getting creative with the workplace would be an understatement. In the quest to create the coolest or most unique office buildings, we’ve seen a host of ostentatious building amenities: golf simulators, rooftop pool lounges, spas, dog spas, even rock climbing walls. These can certainly be attractive for a company looking for some extra perks in its office environment, and it makes for great fodder for social media -- but the savviest building owners are making strategic investments in upgrades that more broadly and consistently benefit both the owner and the tenant.

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