Here’s Tom Friedman’s op-ed in yesterday’s NY Times. As always, I agreed with most of it. But I point out two things: 1) He has a keen mind — one with which he has done quite well — but his …
Tag: renewables
When Politics Gets in the Way of Sane Energy Policy
I suppose I should have seen this coming, but the traditional energy industry, apparently starting to feel the heat, has recently ratcheted up the volume of its ongoing public relations efforts against the renewables industry. I had a wonderful conversation …
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Clean Energy Meetings on Both Coasts
Tomorrow night marks the start of a trip out of town for me. I’ll be headed to San Francisco for a couple of meetings, including coffee with my friend Fareed Sfard, CEO of solar thermal start-up Ahura Energy. Then it’s …
Predicting the Future in Energy Policy — Thanks to Survey Respondents
My thanks to everyone who has participated in the recent 2GreenEnergy survey. I note that Dr. David Doty, one of the greatest intellects I’ve ever run across, boldly predicted the following for the coming five years: Oil, coal, and gas will steadily …
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Energy Policy’s Difficult Choices
I recently wrote a post critical of radical environmentalists who take rigid positions and refuse to make the tough choices that confront us all in the real world. In particular, I stand in disagreement with people’s unwillingness to exile the …
What’s the Plan For Phasing Out Fossil Fuels? Which Do You Want To Hear First? The Good News or the Bad News?
Germany has installed enough photovoltaics that, at this point, coal-fired power plants are beginning to become unprofitable. This is driven by a combination of factors, e.g., that coal isn’t asked to provide power at the peak of the day, when …
Tagged with: big energy, coal plants unprofitable, coal-fired power plants, electric transportation, Electric Vehicles, energy storage, EVs, ExxonMobil Global Warming Denial Machine, future of power generation, Future of Transportation, Germany photovoltaics, Koch brothers, migrate from fossil fuels, Oil Companies Proposition 23 Junk Science, renewables, smart grid, solar power, sustainability, turn off coal, wind power
Santa Barbara Celebrates Earth Day
This afternoon I plan to take my daughter and a few of her friends down to the magnificent celebration of Earth Day that the city of Santa Barbara puts together each year. The show grows in scope each year; last …
Tagged with: clean transportation, cleantech, Earth Day, energy efficiency, reduce re-use recycle, renewables, Santa Barbara
Is Renewable Energy Growing Stronger? It Depends on How You Look At It
EVWorld has a wonderfully encouraging article on renewables that begins: Pop quiz time. The fastest growing energy sector in terms of percentage of growth in the United States between January 1, 2009 and December 31, 2011 was: A) natural gas, B) …
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Are Electric Vehicles Really a Boon to the Environment?
There are at least two kinds of “EV deniers” (as I call them), i.e., people who doubt that electric vehicles represent an improvement for the environment over gasoline. The first concept is that for the foreseeable future, an increase in …
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Tagged with: boon to the environment, boron, coal-fired power plants, cobalt, dysprosium, Electric Vehicles, Energy conservation, energy efficiency, energy storage, EV deniers, EVs, EVs batteries and powertrains, externalities of fossil fuels, lanthanum, lithium, national security, neodymium, renewables, shortage of non-ferrous metals, smart grid
How Green Are YOUR Electrons?
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_Xc7VM957U] Here’s a brief video in which I discuss a software platform that, for the first time, provides users — both consumers and businesses — the capability of specifying electricity that was generated from renewable resources. The result? Over …
