Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Shared renewables is a democratic system, in which a community or neighborhood collectively owns or operates small-scale energy systems. The co-owners do not necessarily have to be neighbors — or even live near each other — depending on the type of system.
On Saturday, we reported that a leaked draft of Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s grid study obtained by Bloomberg debunks his attack on renewable energy. ThinkProgress has now obtained a copy of that draft, and it has many more surprises — or, rather, findings that are fairly well known to energy experts but may come as an unpleasant surprise to Perry and the White House.
Join Anya Schoolman of the Community Power Network and John Farrell of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance who will lead a discussion on how states and communities can push past Trump’s dirty energy agenda, drive down energy cost and boost renewable energy growth.
Masonry heaters are space heating devices which work on the principle of burning wood rapidly and storing the resulting heat in a large mass (usually at least 500 kg).
About 35 per cent of British Columbia’s 11,000 active oil wells, abandoned wells and water injection wells in the northeastern part of the province are leaking significant amounts of methane, according to a forthcoming new study. The report will be released later in the summer and submitted to the industry-funded BC Oil and Gas Commission.
Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) is behind both the Bayou Bridge project and the more infamous DAPL, but the parallels run deeper than a mutual stakeholder. Just like in DAPL, those who resist the project are drawing connections between past wrongdoings, conditions today, and a future climate.
In Germany, there is a strong movement to claim the gas, electricity and heating networks back from private corporations. Initiated by civil organisations, they are pushing the political arena to take action towards a remunicipalisation of the energy system. This is a very interesting process, which allows to explore key concepts such as the right to energy and democratic governance as well as the interplay between politics and the civil society.
“It’s all about the oil,” many commentators said about the US assault on Iraq in 2003. Attributing a war to a single cause is almost always an oversimplification, but protecting access to the 20th century’s most important energy source has been a priority of US foreign policy since World War II.
A managed decline of the tar sands isn’t a popular idea in Alberta, or in Canada for that matter. The idea of sunsetting the tar sands industry is about as polarizing as it gets. The problem is that people have been led to believe that a managed decline undercuts a booming oil industry that is on the cusp of bouncing back after a few bad years. It’s not. The only real alternative to a managed decline is something much worse: an unmanaged decline.
A hot shower, even where there is no electricity: low-income families in Argentina build their own solar water heaters using recycled materials. A non-profit organization hosts the workshops, gathers helpers and shows participants how to utilize renewable energy.
Is it really feasible to run the world on 100% renewables, including supply and demand matching at all times and places? Would doing so require vast amounts of seasonal storage? Are exotic new technologies like next-generation flexible nuclear power plants or coal plants equipped with carbon capture and storage (CCS) equipment needed to balance out variable renewables at a reasonable cost?
Of course, some scientific evidence of the technical feasibility of a ‘decarbonization’ of the economy is needed, as this decarbonization requires making policy choices that will have profound and lasting economic and social consequences. However, trying to elaborate detailed technical assessments, scenarios and roadmaps for a move to 80%, 90% or 100% renewables is probably somewhat futile at this stage, and may even obscure rather than inform the conversation that societies, in the U.S. and elsewhere, need to have.
