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Saul Griffith, Renewistan And Energy Literacy
Big Gav, Peak Energy
The Long Now blog has a post from Stewart Brand on a talk by Saul Griffith (who I’ve mentioned before when talking about alternative wind power company Makani) and his vision of “renewistan” – the area of the world’s surface that we need to use to convert our energy systems to clean energy sources – Saul Griffith, “Climate Change Recalculated”. It also talks about the changes Saul has made to his own lifestyle to reduce his energy consumption, and notes the many side-benefits that have been accrued as a result. 
Engineer Griffith said he was going to make the connection between personal actions and global climate change. To do that he’s been analyzing his own life in extreme detail to figure out exactly how much energy he uses and what changes might reduce the load. In 2007, when he started, he was consuming about 18,000 watts, like most Americans.
The energy budget of the average person in the world is about 2,200 watts. Some 90 percent of the carbon dioxide overload in the atmosphere was put there by the US, USSR (of old), China, Germany, Japan, and Britain. The rich countries have the most work to do.
What would it take to level off the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at 450 parts per million (ppm)? That level supposedly would keep global warming just barely manageable at an increase of 2 degrees Celsius. There still would be massive loss of species, 100 million climate refugees, and other major stresses. …
(24 January 2009)
What happened to the much-hyped Pickens Plan?
Skip Hollandsworth, Texas Monthly
Gone With the Wind
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Remember T. Boone Pickens? In September, I wrote a flattering cover story (“There Will Be Boone”) on the Dallas billionaire and his plan to break America’s dependence off foreign oil. Basically, I gushed—and gushed.
Actually, back then, just about everyone in the media was gushing over Boone. With his newly published memoir and his $65 million advertising campaign to promote wind energy and natural-gas fueled automobiles, he was a genuine media sensation. On top of that, his energy-oriented hedge fund was raking in hundreds of millions of dollars in profits, leading some Wall Street experts to call him a financial genius. At the age of eighty, he was on top of his game.
Uh-oh. Since my article was published, Boone has been taking a shellacking. To begin with, he has taken a huge financial hit as the price of oil has collapsed. Since its peak in June, Pickens’s hedge fund has lost $2 billion, about sixty percent of its value, leading half of the fund’s investors to withdraw their money.
(January 2009)
Feed-in tariffs in Florida (audio)
Marc Strassman, Etopia News
Mike Antheil, executive director of the Florida Alliance for Renewable Energy, talks about the upcoming feed-in tariff workshop in Tallahassee and the coming of a feed-in tariff to Gainesville, Florida, recorded remotely on January 23, 2009
(24 January 2009)
Marc Strassman writes:
This is an exclusive remote video interview with a low-carbon footprint from Etopia News available now at: http://blip.tv/file/1698272
syndicate/embed renewable energy news video interviews from Etopia News Now on Blip.tv from this site: http://etopianewsnow.blip.tv/#syndicate
