Our short attention span for news caused us long ago to bid goodbye to Fukushima as a story of interest and importance, yet the situation is quite dire – in fact, probably more so now than it was a few months ago. Here’s a good summary, including a piece on Fukushima Reactor #4 — well worth the six minutes.
Traditional methods of generating energy are giving way to new environmentally-friendly ideas. Instead of stripping the land for coal mining and clearing miles of land for oil fields or natural gas pipelines, the concept of renewable energy is evolving. The term “renewable energy” is an often-used buzzword, but how does using green energy affect animals in their native habitat?
Global warming is the biggest threat facing the planet today but sustainable energy is a cleaner and safer way to generate needed power. Everyone has seen the sad images of birds living near the ocean with their feathers matted with slick black oil after an oil spill, or thousands of dead fish washed up on the shore because of water pollution. The use of renewable energy from the sun and wind gives animals a second chance at life. (more…)
Here’s a good article on the solar photovoltaics industry by consulting giant McKinsey and Company. Not to give anything away, but they share my belief that the PV industry is in a momentary lull, not a swan song. Best of all, they defend this belief in an extremely cogent and well-reasoned way. I hope you’ll check it out.
Here’s a press release (dressed as a news article) from Aerovironment, a company with a division that makes electric vehicle chargers. And here’s a line from it that reminds me of the adage: “If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail”:
The consumer is just looking for something that works and allows them to charge fast.
Wrong.
The consumer is looking for a reasonable business proposition in terms of price and range. He won’t pay twice as much for a car, only to be limited, inconvenienced, and fearful that he’s investing in a dead-end technology.
You can see lots of attention is focused towards alternative and renewable energy systems. This is due to the soaring energy costs and the need to decrease the climate change effects over earth. Though these solutions may seem complicated for the homeowners in their daily chores, however, the fact is that they are now becoming more accessible to common man. There are number of options available for homeowners which can prove pretty affordable financial investment. Also, by treading these paths, you can benefit from state and federal tax and avail the utility rebates and incentives. The below are the top seven ways which the home owners can heat and power their homes via renewable energy systems.
A reader from the San Francisco Bay Area sent me this article, which he said, “was buried within an article on other SF subjects. Thought you might be interested.”
Green vs. green: San Franciscans’ enthusiasm for going green with “clean energy” in their own homes appears to be about as flat as the economy. (more…)
Each week I receive several emails requesting my advice on career paths within the clean energy space. I thought I’d take a few minutes and jot down a few of the ideas that I normally try to express in response.
First, I congratulate people who want to work in this industry, especially if their interest is rooted in a love of the natural environment and perhaps a sense of duty, or at least a wish, to do something good for mankind and the other 8.7 million species of life forms here on our home planet. But regardless of motive, clean energy is one of few arenas in which there exists a beautiful confluence of the profitable and the philanthropic; we’re helping mankind whether that’s our aim or not. (more…)
Here’s a good article on a recently completed solar thermal tower (aka concentrated solar power or CSP) in the desert between Las Vegas and Reno, NV.
The thing to like about solar thermal, as we’ve often discussed here, is that it affords us a fairly low-cost way of storing energy and delivering it when the sun isn’t shining. This is due to the fact that in today’s world, we can store heat energy (in vats of molten salt) far less expensively than we can store electrical energy (in batteries). Thus solar thermal installations can be treated as baseload, delivering power on a consistent 24X7 basis.
That’s the good news. (more…)
Frequent commenter Duke Brooks writes in:
Americans who rail against U.S. polluters should probably spend a few days in the world’s most polluted city, Beijing. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, as they say. But the lack of outrage from the American left over China’s mass particulate output would tend to expose them for what they are: A political, not ecological, movement.
I don’t think anyone argues that China’s building coal-fired power plants at the rate of one a week is anything other than an abomination; there isn’t too much controversy there — regardless of where one stands politically. Yet China is the world’s leading investor in renewable energy, and they face a far larger challenge than we do in terms of supplying energy to a skyrocketing number of energy-hungry consumers; it’s one that dwarfs ours here in the U.S.
I don’t know whether you saw this report I wrote a few months back in an attempt to make sense of this paradox: China Is Investing in Renewable Energy — But Why?
For amusement only….
Today I cooked mashed potatoes in my solar oven. The oven is made of one of those shiny windshield shades, a rack from an old countertop oven, a very large clear plastic pretzel container and a 2lb 13oz Prego spagetti sauce jar which I painted black with high temperature paint except for a stripe I left so I could look at what was going on in there. I peeled and cut potatoes to fill the jar and added water and put the arrangement out in the sun around 12:30. About 6:30 I retrieved the arrangement and brought the jar in to see what I had.
