Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
In this vast, burned continent, where the sun shines seven out of 10 days and anticyclones pump wind steadily out to sea in winter and on to shore in summer, Australians sate their rapacious hunger for energy by digging underground and fouling the air.
US: The vagaries of economics and energy policy have compounded those of the winds. After the oil embargo passed, tax credits for alternative power fell away in the mid-1980s. Many wind companies withered.
For a variety of reasons, we expect fossil fuels to provide about 80 percent of the energy used in 2020, and to increase — and I emphasize increase — in absolute magnitude by about 65 million oil equivalent barrels per day. Just how much is 65 million barrels per day? Well, it is close to eight times Saudi Arabia’s current crude oil production.
The province of Prince Edward
Island (PEI) plans to introduce renewable tariffs
later this year, the first jurisdiction to do so in
North America. The tariffs will be used to develop
community-owned wind generation on the island.
A 20 year experiment in renewable energy leaves some unclear answers. Has solar power worked here? Has it worked around the country? Can it help us get beyond our dependence on fossil fuels? Yes and no, to all three questions.
New forms of energy need to be developed quickly or else the world faces a cataclysmic economic and environmental future writes Jeremy Leggett
“We simply do not yet have the economic solutions or technologies that would permit us to meet future energy demands without carbon emissions growth,” Exxon Mobil chairman Lee R. Raymond said.
SCOTTISHPOWER chief executive Ian Russell has warned that the government’s ambitious targets for green energy are at risk unless other forms of renewable energy other than wind power are developed.
The cost of the upgraded Scottish grid, some £625m on current plans, is to be spread across the bills of all 25m electricity customers in the UK on the grounds that, while Scotland has a lot of the best wind, the pursuit of a low carbon economy is in the interests of all who live on these islands.
China declared on Friday that it would generate 10 percent of its power through renewable sources by 2010. However energy consumption in China is rising so rapidly that even a national campaign will barely reduce the country’s dependence on fossil fuels.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder declared energy efficiency and renewables the “best response we can give to rising energy prices — rational not just populist,” bringing cheers from participants at the Renewables 2004 conference on the third day.
Green activists fretted Wednesday that the outcome of a global conference here aimed at boosting renewable energy would be gutted by US opposition and European reluctance.
