Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
A hot shower, even where there is no electricity: low-income families in Argentina build their own solar water heaters using recycled materials. A non-profit organization hosts the workshops, gathers helpers and shows participants how to utilize renewable energy.
Is it really feasible to run the world on 100% renewables, including supply and demand matching at all times and places? Would doing so require vast amounts of seasonal storage? Are exotic new technologies like next-generation flexible nuclear power plants or coal plants equipped with carbon capture and storage (CCS) equipment needed to balance out variable renewables at a reasonable cost?
Of course, some scientific evidence of the technical feasibility of a ‘decarbonization’ of the economy is needed, as this decarbonization requires making policy choices that will have profound and lasting economic and social consequences. However, trying to elaborate detailed technical assessments, scenarios and roadmaps for a move to 80%, 90% or 100% renewables is probably somewhat futile at this stage, and may even obscure rather than inform the conversation that societies, in the U.S. and elsewhere, need to have.
The UN’s World Heritage Committee has once again demanded that the federal government conduct a proper assessment of the downstream impacts of British Columbia’s controversial Site C dam on Wood Buffalo National Park. In addition, the committee has asked the Trudeau government to immediately implement recommendations to protect the park, home of the Peace-Athabasca delta — the largest inland freshwater delta in North America — from industrial development..
We now have to take into account that depletion means that, at well heads around the world, the energy to produce energy is increasing. It takes energy to prospect for oil and gas and if the wells are smaller and more difficult to tap because, for example, they are out at sea under a huge amount of rock. Then it will take more energy to get the oil out in the first place.
People soon realized it was not enough to just say no. They needed to offer a better alternative and say yes to something. So the Germans demanded what has since become known as energy democracy: the right to make your own energy.
The staggering drop in the cost of clean energy has already upended the global power market over the past two decades — and that trend will only continue for the next two decades, according to new analysis from Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF).
AB 32 fostered a host of new regulations and green policies, from California’s cap-and-trade industrial carbon emissions law to rebates for solar power installations and electric or fuel-cell car purchases.
In this episode, we have a wide-ranging talk with Dr. Benjamin Sovacool of the University of Sussex about a tiny fraction of his voluminous research on energy transition topics, with a focus on the speed of energy transitions; the ways that the Nordic countries of Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway and Iceland are going about their transitions; his outlook for CCS technology and nuclear power; and the potentials and pitfalls of nuclear power and the potential for distributed energy resources to displace nuclear…
A federal judge has ruled that the Trump administration’s approval of the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline violated federal law in certain critical respects and has ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to reconsider parts of its environmental analysis. The decision marks the first legal victory of the Trump presidency for the Standing Rock Sioux, which have been fighting the pipeline for nearly a year.
What does this downgrading of likely carbon emissions mean for climate change modelers, climate activists, policy makers, and concerned citizens? According to Ritchie, the implication is clearly not as simple as “don’t worry, fossil fuel depletion will solve climate change for us.”
Here’s what the Trudeau government definitely knows about the science of methane. The gas accounts for more than one-quarter of all global warming, and reliable data from satellite and airplane surveys show that emissions are increasing, largely from the oil and gas industry.
