Is it possible that Big Oil can morph itself into so many “energy companies,” in the sense that they offer an overhauled set of (cleaner) energy resources? Over the years, I’ve consistently denied that they are capable of this (even if they actually wanted to) on the basis of the age-old concept of “core competency.” (more…)
With legislation constantly changing and the ability to greatly reduce utility bills each month, every business can benefit from reducing their carbon footprint. Ultimately all businesses have a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to take responsibility of their company’s effects on the environment and impact on social welfare.
In the following paragraphs we’ll breakdown everything you need to know about adopting the correct CSR strategy, from the laws in place to driving delivery vehicles in a more environmentally friendly manner. (more…)
A few years ago, when the world entered its first stages of transitioning to solar and wind energy, it became apparent that cost would be the biggest impediment to the transition. Installing solar in homes meant that home owners had to invest a lot of money in solar equipment.
There has been a lot of progress in innovation of solar financing solution, which would make it easier for you to install solar systems in your home today. (more…)
Here’s an article whose message is simple: the political rhetoric surrounding energy is often misleading. I’m not sure that’s exactly news, but that’s the take-away nonetheless.
In this case, a guy with ties to the fossil fuel business, Koch Industries to be specific, wrote an op-ed in a newspaper in Utah telling seniors that the EPA’s Clean Energy Plan will cause skyrocketing electricity prices and offer no benefit. The article is a refutation of all this, including a concept that I would have hoped was too obvious to require presenting: some seniors have trouble breathing, and, for that reason alone, there is great value for them (and everyone else) in replacing coal-fired power plants with renewable energy.
We often talk about the “externalities” of the energy from fossil fuel resources; it’s a term in economics describing the costs involved in a certain transaction that are not captured by the parties involved in the transaction itself. In the case of energy, it refers to the fact that what we’re currently paying for a kilowatt-hour of electricity produced by coal, for instance, fails to take into consideration enormous costs to human health and the environment. (more…)
Last month, Jim Greenberg, Chief Sustainability Officer at Ocean Thermal Energy Corporation, lost a short but intense battle to a particularly aggressive form of cancer. Jim was a long-time client, a fine friend, and a consummate gentleman. He will be profoundly missed by all of us in the renewable energy arena, and by a much wider group of people who knew him through his work in law, and as a board member of numerous non-profits, where he had given a great deal of his time to philanthropy. (more…)
A colleague writes: Just finished Facts and Fantasies. Very informative, very readable. I dog-eared a bunch of pages to come back to later for reference. I’ll tackle “Doable” this week and eventually we’ll have a discussion about them. I suspect the series will show a progression in your thinking to your current position…
I responded:
Yes, the books do, in fact, represent an evolution in my viewpoints on the subject. (more…)
A colleague asks for my viewpoint on low-energy nuclear reactions (LENR, aka cold fusion). I wrote:
It’s funny you ask, as my belief has changed over the last few years. If you will read the short chapter on the subject in my first book (Renewable Energy – Facts and Fantasies) starting on page 171, you’ll see that my mentor on the subject, Wally Rippel (pictured), an extremely senior physicist, is (or at least was) a believer on the subject. Subsequently, however, he’s become far more skeptical. The problem I have with it is that there is no theory that explains how LENR could possibly work; the issue isn’t that there is insufficient energy potential, but that sustained reactions can happen at speeds much slower than 10^-22 seconds at temperatures much lower than hundreds of millions of degrees. As another high-ranking physicist told me, “It’s a subject better suited to séances than sciences.”
Here’s an excerpt from the remarks Steven Colbert made at an awards dinner honoring Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people shortly before our 2012 elections here in the U.S. The full transcript is linked above; it’s just too good…
Of course, all of us should be honored to be listed on the TIME 100 alongside the two men who will be slugging it out in the fall: President Obama, and the man who would defeat him, David Koch.
Give it up everybody. David Koch. (more…)
On top of what I wrote yesterday, here’s another reminder of what the Conservative (“Tory”) government in the UK has achieved vis-à-vis the environment. Of course, we can only speculate as to how progressive the Labor Party or the Liberal Democrats would have been, but the point is that the term “conservative” means something quite different in the UK than it does in the US. (more…)
