Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
England recently experienced its most severe blackout in more than a decade, leading to a cacophony of calls from the usual suspects to scrap windfarms and abandon plans to turn the country’s electricity supply from brown to green.
For more than two thousand years, windmills were built from recyclable or reusable materials: wood, stone, brick, canvas, metal. When – electricity producing – wind turbines appeared in the 1880s, the materials didn’t change.It’s only since the arrival of plastic composite blades in the 1980s that wind power has become the source of a toxic waste product that ends up in landfills.
Small wooden wind turbines offer additional benefits that are inherent to all decentralised power sources. The fact that they’re paid for by the same people that enjoy their benefits, increases their public acceptance.
On Solarcentury’s 21st birthday, an interesting question occurs to me. How many Solarcenturys would it take to stave off the climate crisis, at least where energy is concerned. The answer I arrive at might really surprise you.
Though there are still hurdles to leap, states basically know how to eliminate emissions from the electrical grid, said Mike O’Boyle, head of electricity policy at the think tank Energy Innovation in San Francisco.
Community or shared solar is broadly defined as a project where multiple participants own or lease shares in a mid-sized solar facility usually between 500 kilowatts and 5 megawatts, and receive credits that lower their monthly utility bills based on how much power the facility delivers to the grid.
At the same time, India is busily electrifying 18,000 villages, pushing forward on the electrification of transportation, and developing demand-side technologies that together are more likely to make India one of the world’s great success stories in energy transition than one of the world’s largest upcoming carbon emitters.
Unfortunately there appears to be little recognition that such a Green New Deal must address a much bigger set of issues than merely climate change.
We’re GOING to make the transition to renewable sources of energy. There is no scenario outside the dark mind of Dick Cheney where we continue to use depleting and polluting fossil fuels over the long run to power society. So how exactly are we going to make the transition?
I don’t know what will happen, because what will happen is what we make happen. That is why there’s a global climate strike. This is why I’ve started saying, Don’t ask what will happen. Be what happens. Today, you are what is happening. Today, your power will be felt.
The research team analysed the reasons behind changes in CO2 emissions in countries where emissions declined significantly between 2005 and 2015. The findings, published in Nature Climate Change, show that the fall in CO2 emissions was mainly due to renewable energy replacing fossil fuels and to decreasing energy use.
Direct heat production thus offers the possibility to save three times more greenhouse gas emissions and fossil fuels using the same number of windmills, which are also cheaper and more sustainable to build. Hopefully, direct heat production will be given the priority it deserves.
