Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The U.S. Senate has rejected taking action on a significant climate or energy bill this year. Heads are hanging in despair, moans of anguish are rising, and arguments are breaking out about who is to blame. While Washington has failed to act, the Earth is showing accelerating strains from our continued dumping of warming pollutants to the atmosphere.
Another week on and there has been no further leak from the BP Macondo well. Officials are now “optimistic” about preparations for a new attempt at a, with the initial step of pumping mud into the top of the well likely to begin as soon as Sunday. With the leak apparently under control, BP chose this week to announce the inevitable departure of its CEO Tony Hayward, whose replacement by the American Bob Dudley was vital for the company’s damage limitation efforts in the US…
-2050 Pathways Analysis
-UK energy scenarios: working with a flawed model
-DECC publishes plans for achieving 2050 targets
-DECC lays out six possible futures for low-carbon energy
-Councils key to meeting UK’s green energy target, report warns
-Property prices soar in the desert
-Clean Energy and the U.S. Handicap: One Man’s Story
Over the past decade there has been considerable debate on corn ethanol, most focused on whether it is a net energy yielder…On one side are Pimentel (2003) and Patzek (2004) who claim that corn ethanol has an EROI below one energy unit returned per energy unit invested, and on the other side are a number of studies claiming that the EROI is positive, reported variously as between 1.08 and 1.45 (Wang et al. 1997; Wang 2001; Shapouri et al. 2002; Graboski 2004; Shapouri 2004; Oliveira et al. 2005; Farrell et al. 2006; Wang et al. 2007). Even with numerous publications on this issue, disagreement remains as to whether corn ethanol is a net energy yielder.
As elsewhere in western Europe, the advanced liberal consumer democracies are ever more unable (politically unwilling) to implement genuine change. Deutschland’s rulers in Berlin firmly believe that techno-managerial innovation (and a hefty dose of financial risk-taking) will continue to provide cures for current ideas of what is unsustainable. As has happened time and again in Europa’s history of nations, from the mid-19th century onwards, the costs of such ‘revolutions’ will be externalised elsewhere (east and south), and the ecological sustainability that Germany’s admirable network of communes have long been admired for will remain out of reach of the country’s policy and practice.
The project of a “green wizardry” based on 70s-era appropriate tech requires a clear understanding of matter as well as energy. With the help of dog slobber, nuclear waste, and several other unmentionable substances, the Archdruid explains.
In many resource discussions, biomass emerges as a solution that allows us to continue many activities currently powered by fossil fuels: First, to move cars, trucks, machinery and planes when oil runs out or becomes too expensive. Second, to provide flexibility in electric power generation, i.e. when other sources are stochastic and inflexible, biomass would provide the necessary gap-filling power. Third, to heat our homes, after natural gas production declines. There are many estimates of future uses for biomass, and many new technologies that are making their first baby-steps, quite a few of them promising and worth trying.
“Energy Return on Energy Investment (EROEI) is calculated as the ratio between energy inputs and energy outputs for an energy generating technology. A process that uses more energy than it produces is by definition unsustainable in the long term. Technologies which require fuel generally have a lower EROEI than those which can extract “free” energy from the environment (wind, waves, tides, sunlight). As part of this study we have a carried out a review of published EROEIs and have found a high EROEI for marine technologies, lower EROEIs for solar and nuclear power, and still lower for coal and gas.
-Germany targets switch to 100% renewables for its electricity by 2050
-Report sees need for 500 additional biofuels plants
-No link between wind turbines and health: report
-Residents reject wind farm health findings
-Locally Owned Wind Power: Quaint it Ain’t
Luke Skywalker had to master the ways of the Force to save the galaxy. We face a similar challenge — mastering the ways of energy, which are surprisingly counterintuitive to people raised in current ways of thinking — in order to make use of the limited options still open to us in an age of declining energy supplies.
New technologies, feed-in tariffs, and tax credits are helping propel the small wind industry, especially in the United States. Once found mostly in rural areas, small wind installations are now starting to pop up on urban rooftops.
