Solar Thermal

Alternatives to absurdity

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Obama’s recent speech on energy policy, which rehashed nearly every cliché uttered in forty years of empty White House rhetoric on the subject, drove home the hard fact that meaningful responses to the predicament of industrial society will not be forthcoming from the American political class. Instead, the foundations of a very different kind of energy system – localized, small-scale, and based on diffuse renewable energy – will need to be laid by individuals, families, and community groups. Passive solar technologies offer one useful example of how the ecotechnic energy system of the future can begin to evolve.

As nuclear falters, here is a practical, affordable (and safe) clean electricity plan

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In the wake of the Japanese nuclear debacle, we need a practical and affordable clean electricity plan that does not rely on new nuclear power. This article presents just such a Plan. New nuclear is absent from the Plan not because of any safety concern, but simply because it fails the “practical and affordable” test. President Obama called for “80% Clean Energy” by 2035. This Plan presents how we can do it right.

The care and feeding of time machines

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The backyard organic gardens central to the current series of posts on The Archdruid Report — and equally central to most strategies for relocation in the face of looming energy shortages — have a lot of work to do in the period between the last frosts of spring and the first frosts of fall. Stretching that interval, by way of “time machines” drawn from appropriate technology, can help make growing part of one’s own food a more viable proposition.

The ways of the Force

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Luke Skywalker had to master the ways of the Force to save the galaxy. We face a similar challenge — mastering the ways of energy, which are surprisingly counterintuitive to people raised in current ways of thinking — in order to make use of the limited options still open to us in an age of declining energy supplies.

Merlin’s time

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People in the Dark Ages filled in the gaps in the very limited knowledge base available to them with the help of wizards and soothsayers. As we close in on a future for which most people are hopelessly unprepared, a new kind of wizard — a green wizard, adept in the forgotten arts of appropriate tech — may be one of the things that a deindustrializing world needs most.

The Logic of Abundance

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Too many discussions of the future after peak oil start from the assumption that the only alternative to collapse is maintaining the arrangements for energy distribution and use we have today. This kind of thinking, rooted in a logic of abundance shaped by three extraordinary centuries of unparalleled energy glut, forms one of the principal barriers in the way of workable responses to a challenging future.

Energy concentration revisited

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The difference between diffuse and concentrated energy sources, the theme of last week’s Archdruid Report post, means that some of today’s highly touted alternative energy schemes may be worth much less than currently claimed, while other technologies that receive much less attention may be the wave of the future. A closer consideration of energy concentration and its effects helps clarify which is which.

Improving the Performance of Solar Thermal Electrical Power

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Solar thermal is a way of harnessing the largest source of energy available to us, so in this post I’ll have a look at the upswing in interest in the use of this technology for electricity generation in recent years and look at some of the approaches being pursued to make it economically competitive with coal fired power generation.

An Exergy Crisis

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One of the least understood dimensions of the crisis of industrial society is the role of energy concentration, rather than the simple quantity of energy, in making the modern world possible. Renewable energy sources have much lower concentrations than fossil fuels, and that distinction can have critical impacts on what can and can’t be done with them — a lesson easily learnt from one of the few really mature renewable energy technologies we have at present.

Job Losses Push Need for Energy Bill

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Millions of job losses are pushing the U.S. Senate to consider a Jobs and Energy bill, even though Cap and Trade appears to be on life support. What are Five Key Measures that must be in a new Bill to avoid being a “half-ass..d” effort? (term from Sen. Lindsey Graham descrbing limited climate bill)

Throwing our energy at impossible dreams…

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“as mankind proceeded to get bigger and bigger we silently crossed a threshold”