What is Community Wind?
More than 1,800 homes in Northwest Ohio are powered by wind thanks to Ohio’s first large scale community wind project—part of a new, growing trend in alternate energy.
Consumption & Demand
Zero Sum Game
Some of you may know that over the last 3 or 4 years, I wrote extensively about our precarious oil supply. Since then I’ve broadened my outlook in so far as it’s hard to choose among all the potential disasters on our doorstep.
Peak Oil Review – Feb 22
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Prices and production
-The Iranian standoff
-Nuclear power for the U.S.
-Quote of the week
-Briefs
It isn’t gridcrash that makes the lights go out
Electricity for private homes is something that was not necessary through most of human history, and is not truly essential today.
Into the Widening Gyre: Social Marketing Meets Peak Oil (book review)
While reading Gerald Zaltman and Lindsay Zaltman’s Marketing Metaphoria: What deep metaphors reveal about the minds of consumers, (MM), I recalled a healthcare consultant who told me, “You really should market peak oil, but you’ve got to give folks some good news to win them over.” I laughed and replied, “Are you kidding? I’m not selling whiter teeth”…
Commentary: The Redundant Subsidy
Even for staunch proponents of U.S. biofuel policy, it is hard to argue that the current subsidy on grain ethanol serves the purpose it was designed to serve. With ethanol mandates now in place in the form of the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), there is a mechanism – with penalties for non-compliance – to ensure that gasoline blenders use the mandated amount of ethanol. Maintaining a subsidy on top of a mandate would be like paying people to obey the speed limit.
Transition – Feb 21
– Diversity
– Solidarity
– A former urbanite puts down green roots
– The easy pleasures of a simplified living space
Peak oil notes – Feb 18
A midweek roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Prices and production
-Iran
U.S. – a new nuclear nation? – Feb 18
-In Bid to Revive Nuclear Power, U.S. Is Backing New Reactors
-The Nuclear Energy Debate
-Obama’s Nuclear Giveaway
Biofuels – Feb 18
-Controversy mounts in EU over fall-out from biofuel
-British Airways to fly jets on green fuel made from London’s rubbish by 2014
-BA’s biofuels plans mean a lot of garbage: the problem of “peak waste”
Renewables & efficiency – Feb 18
-What’s stopping us getting solar power from deserts?
-Norway plans the world’s most powerful wind turbine
-It’s Green Against Green In Mojave Desert Solar Battle
San Francisco commits $150 million to green homes
Monday night I was having drinks in downtown San Francisco with some seriously smart people—top-level IBM scientists and strategists involved in Big Blue’s Smarter Planet initiative. Given the room’s collective interest in creating smart electrical grids, smart water systems, advanced electric car batteries and other green technologies, the talk naturally turned to how to create sustainable cities.
