IEA World Energy Outlook 2011 – Nov 9
-Link to the Executive Summary
-World headed for irreversible climate change in five years, IEA warns
-Arab Spring disrupts energy investment-IEA
-Energy Costs to Rise ‘Viciously’ Without Nuclear, IEA Says
Electricity
ODAC Newsletter – Nov 4
In a year when chaos is beginning to feel like the norm, Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou’s out of the blue announcement calling a referendum on the latest Euro bailout plan caught even the most jaded observers by surprise. Although it looks as if the idea has now been abandoned, the likelihood of a still more serious financial crisis has surely moved a step closer…
Green, cheap, now
Sonoma County can have both green energy and lower rates. The key is to focus on building local solar, wind, geothermal, and other renewable resources, and focusing on making all aspects of the energy system, from generation to con sumption, more efficient.
Review: Songs of Petroleum by Jan Lundberg and Diamonds in my Pocket by Amanda Kovattana
At first glance, Jan Lundberg and Amanda Kovattana seem like unlikely kindred spirits. He’s a former oil analyst turned whistleblower and rock musician, while she’s a British-educated Thai émigré who makes her living helping people become organized. Yet their similarities run deep, beginning with a profound concern for the planet and a flair for writing. Indeed, both are indispensable contributors to one of the top news sites on energy and the environment, Energy Bulletin. Both also happen to be accomplished memoirists, and their memoirs offer rare insights into family relationships, the vicissitudes of wealth and the quandary of being an environmentalist in an environmentally apathetic age.
ODAC Newsletter – Oct 28
Markets jumped on Thursday as the Eurozone patched together yet another deal to relieve its debt crisis. The high spirits saw 3% added to the FTSE amid hope that the deal will buy time to develop a permanent solution – if that is possible. Meanwhile the turbulence in the markets is being increasingly reflected in the streets through the growing Occupy movement, and continuing demonstrations in Spain and Greece…
ODAC Newsletter – Oct 21
As temperatures dropped in Britain this week, the political heat over rising energy bills intensified. Prime Minister David Cameron hauled in the utility bosses and demanded action. Cameron claimed “everything that can be done will be done to help people bring their energy bills down…
Community renewable energy finance 2.0
In a world where income disparity is increasing and social regression is inherent in the current structure of the UK’s Feed-In Tariff (FIT), we need to rethink how community renewable energy projects are structured & financed to ensure full community benefit lies at the heart of the process and that energy reduction is still focused upon as part of a community “power down” process.
Jeremy Rifkin: The Third Industrial Revolution
The world is doomed to repeat four-year cycles of booms followed by crashes if we don’t get off oil, Jeremy Rifkin warned a Climate One audience in San Francisco on October 3. The solution, what he calls the Third Industrial Revolution, is the “Energy Internet,” a nervous system linking millions of small renewable energy producers.
How Germany became Europe’s green leader: A look at four decades of sustainable policymaking
Over the last 40 years, all levels of government in Germany have retooled policies to promote growth that is more environmentally sustainable. Germany’s experiences can provide useful lessons for the United States (and other nations) as policymakers consider options for “green” economic transformation.
Daly’s steady-state economics
In this post I’d like to begin to review Herman Daly’s notion of how to build a steady-state economy (which were ahead of their time—the first edition was written in 1977). His ideas are both deep and simple at the same time, and should be a foundation for any future economic system.
The renewable revolution, III – the Jevons paradox
I received an interesting comment today on my first post on the renewable revolution. In answering it, I thought that the exchange was worth publishing as a post in its own, so here it is.
The renewable revolution – II
After I published in “Cassandra’s Legacy” a post titled “The renewable revolution” I was surprised at discovering that many of the commenters reacted negatively to it, taking for granted the fact that renewables, in the form of photovoltaics or wind, “have a low EROEI” and, as a consequence, are unable to exist without a subsidy from fossil fuels. This view has its origins in the 1990s, when it was commonplace to state that “A renewable plant cannot provide enough energy to repay the energy needed to build the plant.” That is, the EROEI of renewables was supposed to be smaller than one.
Perhaps the “low EROEI” of renewables was true in the 1990s, but it is not true any longer.
