Silent Solar
Solar panels have, over the last months, suddenly gotten so cheap that they’re now appearing in massive numbers across much of the developing world.
Energy featured
Alberta’s Highest Court Jams Smith’s Coal Plans
Premier Danielle Smith’s efforts to revive a contentious open-pit coal mining project owned by the litigious Australian billionaire Gina Rinehart have met a major legal hurdle.
Urban futures, rural futures
Claims that existing (or augmented) patterns of urbanism are more pro-social and pro-nature than rural alternatives appeal to people’s contrarian nature. And since most people live in urban areas, especially in the rich countries, it also tells them what they want to hear…
Oil Kills: Inside the International Uprising Disrupting the Aviation Industry
The Oil Kills uprising and fellow movements around the world have placed their bodies between those tankers and our shared future to say, “here, and no further.”
Utilities rely on dirty ‘peaker’ plants when power demand surges, but there are alternatives
My research focuses on the economic and environmental costs and benefits of producing electricity. Here’s how the clean energy transition is changing the role of peaker plants and some other options for keeping the lights on during peak demand periods.
The Fracking Free-Market Fallacy
The way popular understandings of economics shape our ability to accurately perceive the role of government in the fracking boom is an extremely complex and nuanced problem. The small facet I attempt to tackle here is the role of our belief in the free market.
It’s the labor, stupid
We are stretching the material and labor limits of this planet to capacity merely to increase the complexity of our production methods, not to increase production, not to better meet our needs, not to create abundance or well-being for any body.
5 lessons from ancient civilizations for keeping homes cool in hot, dry climates
Retrofitting modern cities and their glass towers for better heat control isn’t simple, but there are techniques that can be adapted to new designs for living better in hotter and drier climates and for relying less on constant summer air conditioning. These ancient civilizations can teach us how.
Newsflash No.2: manufactured food update
Given the basically non-existent ‘transition’ into clean energy outlined in my previous post which is failing to meet even existing needs for energy, the vast increase in renewable electricity generation that would be required to fund the additional energy demands of manufactured food if it’s to play any major part in a sustainable future makes this technology a non-starter as a mass food approach.
Why Mississippi coal is powering Georgia’s data centers
The Southern Company has an official target of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 — but its regional affiliates disclaim any responsibility toward achieving that goal, leaving open the question of how the company as a whole can decarbonize while its subsidiaries are building new fossil infrastructure and delaying the retirement of existing coal plants.
Q: Are new liquid airline fuels good climate policy? A: Pigs might fly.
The only effective way currently available for emissions reductions from aviation to align with the 2015 Paris Agreement limits, is through a dramatic reduction in the number flights — an action not seriously addressed in the government’s transport emissions reduction roadmap.
Shining Light on Energy Equity
The energy transition represents the opportunity of a lifetime to invest in a more equitable and resilient future.