u/Tortoise4132

The article describes how Beaver Island, Michigan, is becoming an important test site for freshwater wave energy, with researchers from the University of Michigan developing wave energy converters that can generate electricity from Lake Michigan’s waves. Unlike ocean environments, the Great Lakes provide a lower-cost, less corrosive setting for refining the technology while still offering realistic operating conditions. The project was co-designed with island residents to improve energy reliability for the remote community, which currently depends on underwater power cables and diesel backup generators. If successful, the technology could eventually provide a new renewable energy option for isolated coastal and island communities around the world.

From the Executive Summary of the report:

The 2026 NEO presents BloombergNEF's long-term energy and climate scenarios for the transition to a low-carbon economy. One important note about the NEO is that it is quite pessimistic, in that it generally assumes technologies not being greatly utilized as of 2026 will not further develop much. The result of this is that assumes solar will become the dominant energy form with large additions for grid storage batteries. However, reaching net zero by 2050 becomes difficult as firm power sources such as nuclear (except in Asia where success is currently being demonstrated), geothermal, and hydro do not develop much to add capacity, as well as other variable renewable sources. This results in coal and oil declining, but gas continuing to be heavily utilized.

Other items to note is that grid upgrades, new installations, and flexibility become highly critical as reaching net zero is very reliant on variable renewables in the NEOs estimation. It also acknowledges AI and datacenters as a wildcard that may greatly increase power demand.

The report concludes that annual investment in net zero worldwide will likely need to be doubled in the short term to stay on track with climate goals.

The 2026 Global Energy Talent Index (GETI) shows that both demand for workers and salary growth are expected to rise in the coming years. This is primarily due to the current workforce aging and an expected growth in demand for labor, contributed to by both current energy infrastructure aging and requiring replacement, as well as new energy infrastructure to keep up with energy demand growth and to accommodate renewable generation.

Here are some of the other key insights:

>Only around half of energy professionals have a Personal Development Plan (PDP), reinforcing the persistent gap between career expectations and employer-provided development support.

>AI adoption has nearly doubled across multiple sectors, reshaping job roles, skill pathways, and entry-level opportunities.

>Global mobility continues to decline, with several sectors reaching record lows in willingness to relocate. This is occurring at the same time organizations need experienced talent more than ever.

>Engineering and technical roles remain the hardest to fill, compounding hiring challenges as ageing demographics intensify.

Although there appears to be a gap between employee career expectations and employer development support, wage growth remains strong regardless. The energy sector looks to be an overall great place to make a career out of for those under 25 entering the workforce.

28 GW of hydropower capacity was added in 2025 for a total of 1.469 TW worldwide. Of this, a record 11.7 GW capacity of pumped hydro storage was installed for a total of over 200 GW now.

As economies transition toward decarbonization, hydropower and pumped hydro storage is seen by many energy researchers as a keystone for decarbonized energy system. This is due to the fact they provide a firm source of energy and can storage huge amounts of energy for long durations.

This is not without its challenges though. In recent years, although these are renewable sources of energy and one of the cheapest forms, debates have occurred around the ecological and environmental impacts of hydropower and pumped hydro due to impacts on water tables and the ecosystem. These impacts affect not just the location of the site, but also down and upstream.

The Darlington Refurbishment was completed four months ahead of schedule and $150 million under budget.

The Bruce Refurbishment was completed seven month ahead of schedule and also $150 million under budget.

The Darlington SMR project is running smoothly.

Further down the line lined up is a reburishment for the Pickering Plant, life extensions into the 2060s, and scoping for a new build at Bruce.

These successes and future plans show a major revitalization of the Canadian nuclear industry, which is incredible considering the recent struggles of the industry in the western world. Hopefully, the United States can take a page or two from the Canadian playbook if V.C. Summer Units 2 and 3 construction resumes along with other potential new builds.

This INL study shows huge potential for cost reductions in AP1000 construction, possibly dropping the price of a NOAK to < 1/3 of a FOAK based on the Chines (C)AP1000 builds. It has been out for about a year, but I don't see it's been shared here before. With Brookfield Renewables and The Nuclear Company looking to come together to finish VC Summer units 2 and 3 and the braoder interest in AP1000 builds, it's still highly relevant.

This IEA report shows geothermal has massive potential as a clean and firm power source.

Hi community. I put my study tips in the comments of a recent post, and since then, the comment has been relevant to a few other posts requesting study tips, so I believe it's worth its own post. The tips below allowed me to graduate with a stong GPA in MechE with two minors. Wishing you all the best of luck!

Personally, I studied much less effectively in my dorm/apartments than I would in a library or another designated academic space. It’s a pretty well known phenomena at this point that the mind has a hard time getting into study mode when a certain place is used for also watching Hulu and sleeping or whatever. Senior year my roommate basically wouldn’t see me for two weeks during finals because I spent so much time is the library or other academic specific spaces. Another important note to add to this: don’t pollute your designated study spaces mentally by just pulling out your phone and scrolling reels. I found training my brain those spaces are not for that helped a lot.

Take advantage of your resources. At the beginning of the semester make a chart of when all the office hours are and don’t be afraid to use them. If you’re doing homework and get stuck on something, know when to call it quits and bring it to the next office hours you can make. You don’t have to bring everything you done get immediately to office hours, since it’s a good exercise to try and figure things out on your own. I found the sweet spot for when to just bring it to office hours was when I started to get frustrated. You don’t want to burn yourself out when you could have just moved on to other things and stayed productive. Also - since a lot of the basic intro STEM courses have 100s of people taking them each semester, the departments often offer tutoring that isn’t part of office hours. This of course implies you don’t want to start your homework the night before it’s due if at all possible.

Look for alternative resources for your class at the start of the semester. Maybe your professor works out of a hard to read textbook with TAs who are hard to reach. It especially helps in these situations to find a YouTube series that’s easy to follow that matches the content of your class. As an example, my calc 3 professor had a thick accent which made lectures hard to follow sometimes. Luckily there’s this great guy on YouTube called Professor Leonard who is an amazing math teacher and has a whole calc 3 series.

Just because you use Chegg doesn’t mean you’re circumventing the learning process as long as you use it right. Don’t just copy answers to finish your homework. This will just bite you in the ass on the exam when you didn’t take the time to understand the method. It’s important to try and take the time to understand the theory and Chegg should be a tool to enable that, not just to give you the answer to your homework.

When doing practice, I ended up usually not working with the actual numbers at all, but just the variables. The theory is worth the most points on exams anyways and I take it you already know how to use a calculator. Fumbling around with numbers in practice problems will make take up time and add another cognitive task that’ll make your mind tired. A notable exception to this are if you have fast paced exams, it’s important to practice punching in numbers in your calculator fast. Also if your doing something and you know what your final answer should be, punching in the numbers will be how you check your work on of you did the method correctly of course.

Study buddies and study groups are also useful, but personally I preferred office hours and alternative resources before that. If you’re into that though, it’s definitely helpful.

Some extra pro tips:

Make efforts to attend lectures in person, sit near the front, and stay off your phone. Get in the habit of answering the asked questions since this will keep you engaged and gain you favor with the professor. You’ll get more out of your lectures and have to study less. The best way to study is to not have to. Making an effort to engage with the professor before/after lectures and in office hours is also great. I can’t say this with 100% certainty, but I feel I had some curved classes where I did this and we’ll just saying my curve seemed a bit more generous than the rest of the class sometimes. If the TAs get familiar with you they may also throw you a bone when they’re helping you and grading your assignments.

Also - the other people sitting at the front of the class are typically going to be the most engaged and have the best understanding of the material. I also find if the class is curved, they may be relevant to help everyone out in the GroupMe since they’d be hurting their own curve by doing that. If you make small talk with those people before and after classes and they take a liking to you, they may help you (and just you) out.

If the class is curved based on average grades at the end of the semester, there’s no such thing as “extra credit”. Consider it an assignment that is a 0 of you don’t do it. Of course sometimes with those the effort isn’t worth the reward though.