Saudi America and a Nuclear Future?
We spoke with Chris Nelder in Extraenvironmentalist episde #76. This is the first part of a transcript prepared by EE listener Scott.
We spoke with Chris Nelder in Extraenvironmentalist episde #76. This is the first part of a transcript prepared by EE listener Scott.
The Koch brothers, the much-maligned fossil fuel titans, were in the news last week after their legislative stalking horse, the innocuously named American Legislative Exchange Council, was discovered pushing legislation in the states that would establish new fees on solar energy.
It’s the end of business as usual for fossil fuels. That’s according to the latest report from the IPCC, released on Sunday.
How are we going to meet the challenge of functioning without fossil fuels?
It is well to remember that none of people making forecasts can know the one thing they all desperately want to know: the future.
Despite the row about green levies the bulk of household energy costs are dictated by the cost of wholesale fuel, and investments in upgrading network infrastructure.
George Osborne, the newly appointed minister for shale gas development, might have expected some rough headlines this week, but he could hardly have guessed who would supply the fuel.
•The global outlook for renewable power in one graph •US joins elite 10GW solar club •Behind the Tea Party Push For Solar in Georgia •China Raises Target for 2015 Solar Power Capacity •Delivering Stability in the Renewable Energy Transition •U.S. court says biofuel producers must face carbon emissions rules •MEPs deal a blow to crop-based biofuels •Re-Engineering Energy: A Dutch Perspective •Geothermal Plants Can Cause Earthquakes, Say Scientists
Renewables will surpass natural gas for electricity generation globally by 2016, doubling nuclear output and coming in second only to coal in power generation.
The various obstacles to alternative energy compound the fundamental challenge of how to supplant a fossil fuel–based supply chain withone driven by alternative energy forms themselves.
Smil’s mantra is this: "All of the past shifts to new sources of primary energy have been gradual, prolonged affairs, with new sources taking decades from the beginning of production to become more than insignificant contributors, and then another two to three decades before capturing a quarter or a third of their respective markets."
Energy intensity — energy use per dollar of GDP — is the last refuge of fossil fuel proponents. Instead of measuring real improvement in energy efficiency, it hides the outsourcing of dirty, coal-based manufacturing to developing countries and changes during times of economic growth or recession, irrespective of efficiency.