Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The Cost of Energy is a new grassroots energy education web site from American Lou Grinzo that is outlining the issues (and the jargon!) in an approachable question and answer format. We asked Lou to outline his starting assumptions and provide some background on the project and himself.
Research at Oxford University shows that intermittent renewables, combined with domestic combined heat and power (dCHP) could dependably provide the bulk of Britain’s electricity.
The growing consensus is that only new nuclear power can plug that gap without contributing to global warming.
But a new report indicates that a judicious mix of intermittent renewables – wave, wind, sun and tide – could supply over half of UK electricity.
The anticipated power crisis in Auckland can be circumvented by careful, innovative planning and the deployment of tidal-current turbines, claims retired Professor Dr Anthony Bellve.
GE shows its green colors, with full page ads full of .. imagination.
Penn State environmental engineers and a scientist at Ion Power Inc. have developed an electrically assisted process that enables bacteria to coax four times as much hydrogen directly out of biomass than can be generated typically by fermentation alone.
A conference on oil supply difficulties just held in Edinburgh, Scotland, witnessed a lively a debate about supply and demand in energy markets.
Wind farms, while necessary, are a classic example of what environmentalists call an “end-of-the-pipe solution”. Instead of tackling the problem – our massive demand for energy – at source, they provide less damaging means of accommodating it.
An interesting proposal for an ‘atmospheric vortex engine’, a variation on the solar chimney concept for channeling solar energy as wind to drive a generator.
A shift from burning wood to burning charcoal in African households could save millions of lives and substantially reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, say US researchers.
But even if [Cornucopian economists] are right about the miraculous and timely appearance of oil substitutes, are they right that the things we would do as a global society to prepare for world peak oil production are a “waste of resources?”
With their promise of environmentally benign power, fuel cells are widely promoted as the electricity generators of the future. Technological advances over several decades have demonstrated that they can certainly be made to work but their central claim of exceptionally high efficiency does not always stand up to scientific scrutiny. Expectations that fuel cells will be simple and cheap seem unrealistic.
Our world is so dominated by machines and motors (fifty in a typical home) that it’s easy to forget that most of human history has been powered by muscle.
