Posts Tagged by solar energy
Infographic: The Pros and Cons of Renewable Energy
| February 5, 2012 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Science |
Whenever I speak on renewable energy, I’m careful to leave my audience with a sense of the “tough realities.” We all want simple answers to our questions, but in the case of clean energy, none exist.
There are dozens of different flavors of solar, wind, biomass, hydro, and geothermal, each improving in terms of cost and efficiency, but at different rates. There are economic issues, as none of these flavors can compete with the dirtiest form of coal, if we don’t take into account the “externalities” like lung disease and environmental damage. And Lord knows there are political issues, where we have serious candidates for president of the U.S. who, if elected, boldly pledge to dismantle our Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Energy. If this occurs, it would effectively end the efforts of the largest economy on Earth to migrate away from fossil fuels and nuclear. Read More
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Alain Clenet Brings Cleverness and Compassion to the People of Uganda
| January 21, 2012 | Posted by Craig Shields under Photo-voltaics |
Those whose interests including super high-end exotic automobiles may know the name Alain Clenet and the eponymous retro-designed “drivable art” he built in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In the meeting I had with him at his home this morning, I was taken by the keenness of his mind, as well as the breadth of his heart and spirit. Though he still builds cars as a hobby, he’s turned most of his efforts to helping the poorest of the poor, mostly in undeveloped places in Africa.
I thought I’d relate a quick story that blends Alain’s compassion with his skill for building things – and even a bit of clean energy.
When Alain and his people go to an area, they always ask what the people lack, but they also ask, “What do you have too much of?” Read More
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From Guest-Blogger Joshua Okomo: Green Energy and Human Rights
| December 28, 2011 | Posted by okomo under Nuclear |
Global nuclear capacity has remained flat in growth in the last decade, the worldwide operational installed capacity increased insignificantly from 370 GWe at the end of 2005 to 375 GWe at the end of 2010. Nuclear capacity in the OECD countries peaked in 2006 at 2,259 TWh and declined to 2,136 TWh in 2009. A severe earth quake and tsunami in March 2011 that ravaged the pacific coast of northern Japan resulted in devastating incident in Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Following this incidence several countries have announced safety reviews of their nuclear power programmes. Read More
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Electric Vehicles and CO2 Emission Abatement
| December 22, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Electric Vehicles |
Frequent commenter Glenn Doty writes:
What would really be nice is an infographic comparing the cost of mitigating CO2 with various alternatives… just to put the different alternatives into proper perspective.
For instance, how much more does it cost to abate CO2 emissions by setting up a rooftop solar panel in NJ as compared to installing additional insulation in an office building in Texas or setting up a wind farm in the Dakotas?
This would be extremely instructional to your readers in terms of what policies would make more sense… and it would be fun to look at how you graph the negative CO2 abatement value of EV’s.
I respond:
Ha! I was reading along here, wondering when you were going to make your point about EVs, and lo! (a good word for the season), there it was.
Seriously, please send me a high-level treatment of your reasoning.
At a minimum, there are two things I don’t get. Read More
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2GreenEnergy’s Financial Wizard Bill Paul on Shale Gas
| December 19, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Fossil Fuels |
2GreenEnergy financial guru Bill Paul has a natural gift for looking at the macro issues affecting renewables. Here’s a high-level summary of his thinking on clean energy vis-à-vis shale gas, in which he summarizes:
There’s a distinct possibility that Wall Street’s going to start diverting big bucks away from green tech and into shale gas, if it hasn’t already. I see the billions going into shale gas infrastructure posing a huge impediment to developing clean tech. Read More
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A Collaboration on Fuel Cell Vehicles — But Exactly Whose Interests Are At Stake? Not Yours.
| December 18, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Electric Vehicles |
Here’s an article that describes a collaboration between GM and BMW on fuel cell vehicles.
Wow, that’s remarkable. Just when I had started to trust the car companies based on the sincerity of Nissan/Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn and his people who build and promote the LEAF, I see this. A few basic points:
• The oil companies are the main supporters of the hydrogen economy. They see hydrogen as a mechanism for them to continue to retain a service station which will continue to provide the consumer with something they can pump. Electricity, on the other hand, is ubiquitous.
• Creating hydrogen suffers a 4:1 efficiency issue. I.e., generating hydrogen in a renewable way requires four times the number of solar panels that would be needed to make the electricity to put into my battery. Read More
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From Guest-Blogger Joshua Okomo — Green Energy and Human Rights Paradigm
| December 15, 2011 | Posted by okomo under Renewables - Politics |
Global nuclear capacity has remained flat in growth in the last decade, the worldwide operational installed capacity increased insignificantly from 370 GWe at the end of 2005 to 375 GWe at the end of 2010. Nuclear capacity in the OECD countries peaked in 2006 at 2,259 TWh and declined to 2,136 TWh in 2009. A severe earth quake and tsunami in March 2011 that ravaged the pacific coast of northern Japan resulted in devastating incident in Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
Following this incidence several countries have announced safety reviews of their nuclear power programmes. Many countries have cancelled nuclear power plans and some are considering closing current plants. While this nuclear meltdown is happening, the global growth in energy from solar, wind, biomass, geothermal and other renewable sources has been 30-40 percent per annum of recent. Currently global growth in deployment of solar PV is the highest standing at 60 percent, this is followed by wind power at 27 percent, then biofuel at 18 percent and then biomass at 7 percent. These trends predict the world will be a nuclear free world.
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Solar Goes Mainstream
| December 15, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Photo-voltaics |
Renewable Energy World’s Steve Leone published an article today on solar and its attempts to go mainstream, in which he mentions a great number of developments that will ultimately make solar far more appealing to consumers than it is currently. Some of these notions include transparent PV on windows, as well as PV roof shingles and other forms of building-integrated solar.
It was good to see he noted the role of electric transportation in the equation. I.e., there is clearly a growing number of people who want to control the source of electricity that charges their cars – and what better way to do that than to install that source on their roofs?
If we still have a civilization here in 2050, we will have “gotten there.” The questions are how much damage we will have done, and who’s going to get rich in the process.
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From Guest Blogger James Hawkins: Solar in the UK
| December 12, 2011 | Posted by James under Photo-voltaics |
In April 2010, the UK government introduced their own version of a feed in tariff scheme to help boost our renewable figures and to cut carbon emissions. It is a scheme where homeowners are paid 41.3p for generating electricity with photovoltaic solar panels on their roof, and they are then extra in the case that they don’t use the electricity. Combining the average bill savings with these payments amounts to approximately £1,000 per year at today’s prices. With the scheme lasting for 25 years, the panels will pay themselves off over time, usually 9 to 10 years, and then they will start to generate a healthy income. Our national solar panels company has seen demand for solar skyrocket by over 400% from before the FIT was introduced. Read More
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Geothermal Systems and GeoExchange Systems – What’s the Difference?
| December 10, 2011 | Posted by Mark Metzner under Geothermal |
PART ONE
General Principles
Traditional Geothermal
Geothermal technology and GeoExchange technology are often confused with one another in the mind of the public. This confusion is understandable as the term ‘Geothermal’ is often applied to both technologies – even by industry practitioners.
‘True’ Geothermal, also referred to as ‘hot rocks’, can be characterized as seeking a source of high – temperature heat from within the Earth with the goals of either producing electricity or providing space heating. Super-heated water or steam from Earth’s interior can be utilized to run turbines in a conventional power plant to generate electricity. Technologies currently in use include dry steam power plants, flash steam power plants and binary cycle power plants. Geothermal electricity generation is currently used in approximately 24 countries around the world. Geothermal space-heating involves harnessing a source of heat, most commonly hot springs, and distributing that source water to buildings via a piping network employing heat exchangers. Geothermal heating is globally in use in approximately 70 countries.
Geothermal power is considered to be sustainable because the heat extraction is minimal compared with the Earth’s heat content. The emission intensity of existing geothermal electric plants is on average approximately 122 kg of CO2 per megawatt-hour (MW/h) of electricity – approximately one-eighth that of a conventional coal-fired plant.
GeoExchange
In contrast Read More
