Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
According to a recent, comprehensive study of the scientific literature (1), the average energy return on energy invested (EROEI) of the most common photovoltaic technology (polycrystalline Si) is 11-12. A far cry from the legend of the “EROI smaller than one” that’s making the rounds in the Web.
When we fit solar on community buildings, the buildings get cheaper and greener electricity, local people can obviously invest in what we’re doing, and we’ve set up a community fund that will cross-subsidise other energy projects, and indeed, community projects more generally.
A successful, publicly owned renewable energy company for London would not only give millions of people access to greener, cheaper energy. It would also demonstrate that privatization and profits aren’t the only way we organize society.
Yesterday, May 14th, was a windy, sunny, fairly cool day in California. As a result, records were set for the proportion of California electricity produced by renewables.
Peak oil, as a theory, has been downplayed, because models predicted that we’d hit peak oil production between 2000 and 2010, and we didn’t–instead, we plateaued.
"Back of the Envelope" calculations are a tradition in science and often turn out to be able to provide plenty of useful information, at the same time avoiding the common pitfall of complex models, that of being able to fit anything provided that one has enough adjustable parameters.
In my book, given the stakes, no novel can rival this epic real-life drama.
In today’s solar photovoltaic systems, direct current power coming from solar panels is converted to alternating current power, making it compatible with a building’s electrical distribution.
Where unions and greens coalesced around confronting rampant workplace safety issues in refineries — the kind that caused disasters like the Deepwater Horizon spill of 2010 — the former see cutting off fossil fuel supplies as an existential threat.
San Francisco is one step closer to its goal of transitioning to 100 percent renewable energy after the city’s Board of Supervisors unanimously voted on Tuesday to mandate solar installations on new buildings.
Electric vehicles are all the rage right now, and hopes are high that we might finally be able to transition off of oil and on to electric cars…preferably, cars powered by clean renewable electricity and not by coal-fired grid power.
It’s not looking good for the global fossil fuel industry. Although the world remains heavily dependent on oil, coal and natural gas—which today supply around 80 percent of our primary energy needs—the industry is rapidly crumbling.
