By Michael Booth , The Colorado Sun.  Excerpt: Colorado’s electric grid has winter capacity “headroom” to power millions more clean energy heat pumps to replace natural gas furnaces, a transformation that would ease consumer bills and expand the global warming fight, according to a new study. The energy analysis nonprofit RMI, formerly Rocky Mountain Institute, says Colorado’s electrical demand peaks tend to come in summer from air conditioning, and that in winter the state could handle 1.6 million more heat pumps, or 17 times more than currently installed.  Heat pumps run on electricity instead of natural gas, and provide both winter heating and summer cooling. As Colorado’s electrical grid transitions to clean solar and wind generation, state officials and environmental groups see home and commercial furnaces as a key opportunity to cut greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning.  Switching that many heating and cooling systems to heat pumps could lower expected ...

By WARREN CORNWALL , Science.  Excerpt: Steelmaking, the fiery process that undergirds modern life, comes with a huge cost to the climate. Greenhouse gases gush from the burning fossil fuels that drive 1600°C blast furnaces and melt raw iron ore. Purifying the molten ore by mixing it with refined coal, or coke, releases a second, bigger surge of carbon dioxide. A third stream comes when the resulting pig iron is turned into steel by cooking it a bit further—baking off most of the remaining carbon—and alloying it with additives such as chromium or titanium. In the end, the emitted greenhouse gases weigh roughly twice as much as the steel itself. Nearly 2 billion tons of steel is produced worldwide each year, accounting for about 7% of human greenhouse gas emissions, more than Russia or the entire European Union. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is now hoping to change that. In March, DOE announced $1.5 billion in grants for low-carbon ironmaking, and last month, the agency’s Adva...

https://climateworks.org/press-release/statement-on-the-historic-6-billion-for-industrial-decarbonization-in-the-u-s/ By ClimateWorks Foundation .  Excerpt: Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) took a huge step to accelerate  industrial decarbonization  and transform polluting heavy industries to clean production. The $6 billion investment is the largest ever made in industrial climate solutions. ...In the U.S., the industrial sector emits  30% of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions . This funding will accelerate emissions reductions in all of the most polluting industries: steel, cement, chemicals, aluminum, and food processing. The new technologies that come out of these investments will be used across the country and around the world. In addition, heavy industry is a leading cause of health-harming air and water pollution. Many of the projects receiving DOE funding will also dramatically reduce this pollution and improve the health of all Americans....