As I’ve mentioned, I’m one of more than 100,000 members of the Citizens’ Climate Lobby, whose purpose is to promote its approach to putting a tax on carbon called “Carbon Fee and Dividend.” The organization was formed in 2007 by Marshall Saunders, who passed away yesterday at the age of 80. He was such a terrific person that I feel compelled to reprint this, an excerpt of the death notification that I received: (more…)
I often use this space to comment on the probable trajectory that the U.S. is likely to take in global competitiveness over the coming decades. And, though I normally look at this from a number of different perspectives, the meme here really says it all. (more…)
About half of the people living in Africa do not have access to electricity, and that 50% figure rises rapidly when we look outside the urban areas. This results in poor health, limited education, large, unplanned families, and low personal productivity which means perpetual cycles of poverty. (more…)
In 1995 or so, following a very successful marketing program I had performed for Hewlett-Packard, my client spokesperson did a video testimonial in which he commented on the need to go outside his company’s own internal promotions team as follows, “If H-P were marketing sushi, we’d probably call it ‘cold dead fish.'” I was doing the interview with him personally, and I laughed out loud.
The photo here depicts the opposite end of the spectrum. You’re selling a cold, mushy portion of peas and carrots that were harvested and canned a decade ago, and you call it “Exotic Salad.” Love it.
Question: For how many consecutive years has Kansas managed to reduce its CO2 emissions?
Answer: Can be found at Clean Energy Answers.
Relevance: This is what happens when there is a rapid replacement of coal with wind. Bravissimo!
As shown in this fabulous piece of animation, there are two main theories that address the tendency of human populations to stand behind authoritarian regimes, but they both revolve around how people behave when they’re threatened by some sort of hardship or danger, whether real or perceived. Consequently, there are different ways of dealing with this challenge, to ensure that democracies, like the fragile one the United States has now, don’t revert to dictatorships.
Can energy be stored by pushing heavy stuff uphill? Of course. That’s what pumped hydro is, which represents over 95% of the utility-scale energy storage current implemented on this planet. It’s also what advanced rail energy storage (ARES) is, which represents 0%, as it never got off the ground, pardon the pun. (more…)
I’m sure most readers are aware that the President of the United States went on an unhinged rant against the wind energy industry recently which, as could have been predicted, was littered with untruths. (more…)
Whenever I visit Kauai to see my mom, brother and sister-in-law, which happens a couple of times a year, I’m always impressed with this solar array, which is quite visible from the main road that encircles most of the island. Yet I had no idea that there are times when it generates 100% of the electrical power demanded by the 100,000 residents and tourists. To know that everything that runs on electricity is doing its thing without consuming a single molecule of fossil fuels is quite heart warming.
The Kauai Island Utility Cooperative is moving towards a goal of 100% renewables by 2045, and clearly it is well on its way. Kudos.
Here’s a little piece of renewable energy fraud that I thought readers might enjoy. It relies on people’s abundant ignorance of solar thermal itself (aka concentrated solar power/CSP), a technology that has been around for decades, and is struggling to play a role in the future of renewable energy. On top of that, the perpetrators presume that these people really don’t get AI, and believe that the type of robotics we have currently is somehow insufficient to operate the heliostats that focus the sun’s rays.
