I was happy to see that my little VW Jetta TDI (turbo diesel) won Motortrend’s top award in their “Hybrid and Diesel Cars: Fuel Efficiency Shootout.” Apparently, they got 39.7 MPG in their test; for some reason, I get 43 quite consistently, and I drive it fairly aggressively. Mine’s a few years old, though; it’s possible that they’ve made changes since. (more…)
For a very long time, we’ve had a basic fact in the palm of our hands: the temperature of our Earth a few meters beneath the surface is essentially constant, and if we can figure out some basic engineering, this phenomenon will cheaply and reliably bring us cooling in the summer and heating in the winter. (more…)
I had an encounter at dinner with my wife and friends the other night that I found funny. Someone asked me if I was aware that it was cheap energy that caused the improvement in the British economy in the Margaret Thatcher years. I was a bit muddled. Why the 1980s? Why Britain? For that matter, why energy? Cheap resources always drive economic growth. (more…)
As I’ve written many times, I believe we’ll be seeing several OTEC plants put into operation over the next few years, rapidly replacing diesel generators as the main source of electricity for the one billion people who live near tropical oceans. (more…)
In a state of utter exasperation, guest blogger Brian McGowan sent me this report on oil and gas exploration in the Bakkan, suggesting that 29% of the natural gas that comes to the surface of the Earth through oil drilling is flared off, as there is no economically attractive way to capture it. I have to admit that the photo, taken from space, really is shocking. Brian writes, “I swear they are trying to get me to blow an aneurysm. 29%? really?”
I hear ya, pal.
I hope readers will check out EmpowerTheOcean, a new website I helped establish. The content for its main “news” page is written mostly by a very clever woman in the Northern UK, Emma Websdale; I think she does a good job reporting on the top issues of the day in renewable energy and the related subject areas: climate change, job growth in the energy sector, the migration from fossil fuels, the top investors in clean energy, etc. (more…)
I have a few excellent prospects for summer interns in 2014, the latest of whom, a young man from West Virginia, just sent a resume and spoke with me on the phone this morning. Naturally, people wonder what this internship is all about, yet this is a hard question to answer, as it depends entirely on the person’s strengths and interests.
I direct “math/science” people into research on one of hundreds of topics that can be explored in emerging technologies, climate science, battery chemistries, projections for energy consumption by region, etc. (more…)
Frequent commenter and colleague Tim Kingston sent me this piece about the burden that environmentalism places on the poor and asks: Are things really this bad in CA?
I respond:
Of course, a tax on our consumption of energy hits the poor hardest. (more…)
Here’s another in a series of fairly sophisticated discussions on the LCA (lifecycle analysis) of electric vehicles versus internal combustion engines, showing the exact fallacies in the reports that conclude that EVs are worse for the environment.
At the end of the day, however, it really comes down to how EVs are charged, and it’s unclear if the author of this article understands this fully. From his comments about solar and wind, he seems to think that the average grid mix is important here, and that’s false. What matters is the typical response to incremental load onto the grid in the middle of the night when we charge our cars. If that’s met with coal, the results are far worse than if it’s met with anything else.
The Tennessee Valley Authority, the nation’s largest public utility, is shuttering eight coal-fired boilers at plants in Alabama and Kentucky, and more reductions could be in store over the next few years. At issue, apparently, is the high cost of retrofitting these plants with modern technology to minimize emissions.
I can understand that it’s emotionally hard to close plants and displace workers. (more…)
