It looks like Bloomberg New Energy Finance has concluded the same thing that I did in Bullish on Renewable Energy, i.e., the plummeting cost of renewables and the rising costs of coal and natural gas have brought us ever closer to the point that building new plants to generate electricity from fossil fuels is simply no longer competitive.
Readers who don’t read the comments to these blog posts are missing out on some ferociously entertaining and edifying conversations. Here, a cynic taunts a political activist with a note suggesting that there is little interest in sustainability and environmentalism: I’m sorry that your hopes of leading a movement of Woodstock-size proportions seems to have downsized to hosting a vegan Pete Seeger tribute band in your back yard.
I have to admit that this is a funny line, but its author is completely incorrect about the realities of what is happening on this planet. (more…)
Those of you following the “Keep It In the Ground” campaign, focused on encouraging a migration away from fossil fuels at the maximum practical pace, should be aware of the commitment that Burundi made in this regard. Here’s an African nation two-thirds of whose population lives in poverty, a land where conditions were recently made even more miserable by way of an attempted political coup, that is bravely headed in the direction of solar energy to address its horrific blackouts and general failure to provide electricity to its people. (Pictured here is a typical hospital; its primitive technology doesn’t work most of the time due to the lack of electrical power.)
From the article linked above: (more…)
Question: Are the manufacturers of renewable energy products at liberty to make any claims they wish, or is there a third-party organization that validates these claims?
Answer: Can be found at Clean Energy Answers.
Relevance: SolarCity claims to have built the world’s most efficient rooftop solar panel, with a module efficiency exceeding 22 percent. If this is true, the new panel would generate more power per square foot and harvest more energy over a year than any other rooftop panel in production, and would be the highest volume solar panel manufactured in the Western Hemisphere.
My friend Bob Huff (of Brazilian run-of-river hydro fame) sent me this incredible piece on the status of the migration to cleantech in Brazil.
I respond: This is a wonderful production; I’m really impressed with the idea and its execution, and especially the content itself. Let me share it with my readers. Surprisingly, the translation into English isn’t very good. If you have any contacts to its creators, I could offer them our 2GreenEnergy copywriting and proofreading services. (As I’ve told you, there is literally nothing we overlook in the space of taking good ideas in cleantech forward.) 🙂
“If there was one decision I would overrule, it would be Citizens United. I think the notion that we have all the democracy that money can buy strays so far from what our democracy is supposed to be.” ~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg, September 28, 2014
More information and a petition to sign are linked above.
We know a great deal about climate change, but there remains a great deal outside our grasp, of which the role of water vapor is an excellent example. As discussed in the article linked above, water vapor is the single most important greenhouse gas, but it has characteristics that the others (CO2, methane, NO2, etc.) do not; in particular, it condenses at the temperatures and pressures that are present in our atmosphere. (more…)
Often when we talk about Smart City, the focus falls on the role of technological factors: innovations in energy efficiency, communication and information platforms, and so forth. However, this list often omits the human factor: aspirations, interests and abilities of the people in an intelligent city, many of whom work for companies whose products help meet the global challenges of modern society. In this context, we’ll investigate the “smart citizens” who populate a Smart City, focusing on the human factors that characterize it. (more…)
With respect to my recent piece on climate science, a reader points out: What is today’s “consensus” may not be tomorrow’s.
Yes, the consensus can be wrong. In fact, it always is, in one way or another. (more…)
Frequent commenter/contributor Cameron Atwood asks: What are your thoughts on this? Here’s how much of the world would need to be covered in solar panels to power Earth.
There are three main issues that this analysis overlooks: (more…)
