The Hydrogen Economy – Energy and Economic Black Hole
Hydrogen isn’t an energy source – it’s an energy carrier, like a battery. You have to make it and put energy into it, both of which take energy.
Hydrogen isn’t an energy source – it’s an energy carrier, like a battery. You have to make it and put energy into it, both of which take energy.
Renewable energy production is “an economic driver as well as a nice thing to placate tree-huggers,” according to an energy specialist with the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Flexible, cheap and easy on the environment, mini-hydropower generators are creating a buzz. You don’t have to change the course of rivers and move mountains to generate electricity.
A self-taught inventor has signed a contract with Country Energy, one of the country’s biggest power grids, to test a new source of clean and renewable electricity that will harness ocean currents and has the potential to drastically reduce electricity costs on islands.
Newsweek Middle East regional editor Christopher Dickey and Forbes.Com editor Paul Maidment respond to queries from Forbes readers about the future of energy.
German Environment Minister Jürgen Trittin recently inaugurated a large solar-powered energy plant in the eastern city of Espenhain, noting that Germany is the leading European country to install solar energy facilities.
If alternative-energy companies are so hot, why are their stocks so unpopular? Record-high oil prices make wind and solar increasingly competitive. Fear of climate change should brighten prospects for any alternative to fossil fuels, which release the greenhouse gases that cause global warming. Yet over the past two years, the worldwide stock-market value of companies developing renewable energy—which includes everything from wind and solar to recycling—fell from $13 billion to $10.7 billion, while the value of fossil-fuel companies surged to record highs of more than $1.2 trillion.
Tony Blair’s call on British businesses to take the moral lead on climate change is laudable and his encouragement to the UK renewable and low-carbon energy industry is welcome. But by tying renewables so closely to climate change, we are in danger of undervaluing them.
NEARLY three-quarters of the population agree wind farms are necessary to help meet the UK’s current and future energy needs, despite a vocal protest against their expansion.
In the blustery northwest corner of Cumbria, wind farms are becoming part of the landscape.
Renewable and low-carbon energy are not just the long-term solutions to climate change. They are indispensable today if we are to cushion the British economy against volatile oil and gas prices and the impending peak in world oil production – not least the dwindling reserves in the North Sea.
Rising oil prices and pollution are fueling interest in green power in Asia but experts see no prospect of a rapid switch from the region’s growing dependence on oil, coal and gas.