A note from a reader in Zambia:
Electricity should be safe, clean and affordable to all. Over 6 million people in rural Zambia rely on fuels such as kerosene and firewood for lighting and cooking. (more…)
Frequent commenter Tim Kingston sent me this piece called “Better Batteries, Better World,” and notes, “Interesting topic for Foreign Affairs magazine; they rarely talk about renewables.”
I don’t normally read Foreign Affairs; thanks for pointing it out. I’m delighted this subject, i.e., energy storage, is getting the attention it deserves in the larger community. Good article, with a clever title. (more…)
I was just telling frequent commenter Tim Kingston that I’m not sure how much I want to cover the dangers of fracking. There’s plenty of material on this subject — more every day, and I’m not sure I can add too much value here. I DO, however, want to make it clear that the concept of natural gas fracking as a gateway to clean energy is spurious for two independent reasons: (more…)
The growing concern for environment and greenhouse gases from the number of conventional energy production options has put forth the need to find a competent alternative. Fortunately you have a number of renewable or green energy sources, which can easily produce energy to run the wheels of life. These include solar, wind, hydro, biomass, tidal generation that are operated in a number of ways as compared to the traditional fossil fuel based technologies. (more…)
If you invest six minutes into the video in this article, you’ll learn that, unless something changes, 30 towns in West Texas will have run out of water by the end of the year. Not only are they suffering a terrible and long-lasting drought (that some believe is the result of climate change) but, ironically, they’re offering up a huge percentage of their water supply for use in fracking for oil and gas, a process that requires many millions of gallons per site. It has to come from somewhere, and it’s being sucked out from the dwindling reserve in their wells.
It’s hard to believe that the world is sitting around watching calamities like this unfold.
It’s always great to come across people who “get it.” The authors of this article begin their piece: While a clean energy future is inevitable, questions remain about how quickly we will get there.
Exactly. I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve said this. No one really thinks we’re going to be burning coal and driving Hummers in half a century. But with respect to how long it will take, there are important corollary questions, like: How much damage will we have done in the meanwhile?
Even Shell Oil predicts that solar will overtake oil by 2060. The problem, of course, is that 47 more years of accelerated greenhouse gas emissions (not to mention mercury, selenium, etc.) will have had devastating effects on the natural environment, as well as on all life forms here on the home planet. The race is on.
A friend who follows the world of transportation just wrote, bemoaning the horrible congestion on our freeways and suggesting that we need a paradigm for personal mobility, insofar as our current cars are so big and bulky, and that they’re used so inefficiently (average 1.1 occupants per vehicle). In passing, he mentioned the success of the Tesla Model S. “General Motors should have built the Model S. BMW should have built the Model S. But neither did, and it took someone with vision and the right resources to make it happen.”
I respond:
That’s certainly a good point. But are you accrediting GM and BMW with an interest in doing anything other than selling cars profitably? They want ‘em big and expensive, they don’t care if they’re empty, and they want as many as possible of them on our roads. Until they have an incentive to change that, we can all be looking forward to more of the same.
Here’s a terrific website dedicated to helping the world understand the true price of oil, i.e., that there are numerous “externalities,” or costs that are passed along to others associated with each gallon of gasoline we use. Who’s paying the costs to clean up the environment? Care for damaged lungs? Prosecute wars all over the globe to maintain access to oil?
A reader with a long position on Axion Power (AXPW) asked for my opinion. He notes from their 2012 10-K: “Our PbC energy storage device is a hybrid battery supercapacitor that combines the simplicity of lead-acid batteries with the faster recharge rate, longer cycle life and greater charge acceptance of supercapacitors.” Also, readily recyclable at end of life.
As it turns out, my friend and frequent 2GreenEnergy commenter Tom Konrad has written about Axion Power up one side and down the other. (more…)
Here’s another good reason that I wouldn’t last 10 minutes in politics: I just don’t have the required facility with the language. Who can compete on the podium with Ron Johnson (R-WI), who accuses the groups associated with climate change mitigation of “Environmental Jihad?”
That’s some seriously clever stuff. Most people would have said his position, i.e., climate change denial, is the more radical and extreme view, given the 97% of climate scientists who concur that anthropogenic global warming is a real and potentially catastrophic threat to our civilization. Apparently, Johnson’s thinking is simple: Label the enemy the extremist, before they hit you with it, and come up with the scariest, most defamatory name you possibly can. Again, that’s crafty stuff — and it’s totally out of my league.
