Posts Tagged by wind power
Renewable Energy Is Not a Free Lunch, But That Doesn’t Make It Worthless
| May 17, 2012 | Posted by Craig Shields under Wind Energy |
Ryan Radecki, from The Green Room at Ohio University, writes:
I agree with some of your proposed ideas on the problems with environmentally friendly forms of energy, and I used your comments about having no free lunch for energy in my essay. I also feel that renewable energy forms by themselves are not helping, but the combination of many types of renewable sources is our future. Would you mind reading my blog at http://ryansfuturefuels.blogspot.com I would like to have your perspective.
Ryan:
I agree with the basic idea, i.e., the pros and cons / no free lunch concept. But I think your perspective here is too harsh and a little unfair. Read More
What’s the Plan For Phasing Out Fossil Fuels? Which Do You Want To Hear First? The Good News or the Bad News?
| April 29, 2012 | Posted by Craig Shields under Fossil Fuels |
Germany has installed enough photovoltaics that, at this point, coal-fired power plants are beginning to become unprofitable. This is driven by a combination of factors, e.g., that coal isn’t asked to provide power at the peak of the day, when both the sun and the price of electricity are at their zenith. Of course, most of us cheer when coal runs into trouble, but issues like this raise some fantastically interesting questions about the future of power generation – and transportation – as we migrate from fossil fuels into more sustainable modalities. Read More
Integrating Large Amounts of Wind Power Onto the Grid
| April 7, 2012 | Posted by Craig Shields under Wind Energy |
I wrote a piece a few months ago on nay-sayers to wind, in which I pointed out that the UK’s Duke of Edinburgh just may be the king. In it, I noted:
Here in the U.S., we have climate change deniers, and all manner of other opponents to renewable energy. In essence, they’re the oil and coal companies, the members of Congress they influence, and those who believe the torrents of propaganda they generate on “clean coal,” “safe nuclear,” and the other oxymorons that are creeping into our vocabularies.
In the U.K. however, they come in the form of certain members of the nobility. Read More
The Pros and Cons of Wind Power
| March 5, 2012 | Posted by Craig Shields under Wind Energy |
Here’s a short video I made explaining the basics of wind energy for young people, or newcomers to the subject. I explain why the wind blows, offer a brief history of man’s attempts to harness wind energy, and discuss our current efforts to use wind to generate large amounts of electricity with relatively little environmental impact.
Wind Energy — Playing a Role in Distributed Generation
| January 15, 2012 | Posted by Craig Shields under Wind Energy |
When we think of wind energy, we generally think of those multi-megawatt farms in western Texas, the plains states, and California. Conversely, when we think of solar PV, we normally conjure images of “distributed generation” — “DG” for short — rooftop mounts on thousands of geographically dispersed homes and commercial buildings.
Increasingly, however, wind is sporting a DG face, with smaller turbines appropriate for “campus” settings: schools, cities, counties, farms, factories, communities, and other large power users who want to stabilize their energy costs.
My colleague Jim Boyden acts as an advisor to a company called Continental Wind Power, which offers a range of campus wind solutions. Considering that an incremental 8 gigawatts of new capacity will be installed in the U.S. alone this year, this may not be a bad place to be.
Living Small — A Christmas Gift for Planet Earth
| December 26, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Sustainability |
To wrap our wits around where we truly are as a species and who we need to be to avoid the brunt of the catastrophes heading our way in the 21st Century, let’s observe: How do we actually behave with respect to our consumption of energy?
The answer, generally, is that only a very small minority of people have gotten the message that what they’re doing matters. Almost no one thinks before turning on a light: “I can flip this switch if it’s really too dark to see, and it’s OK to spend that energy if I need to. But if I don’t need to, I shouldn’t, because the world will be a slightly better place if I don’t.” Or: “I could open this (petroleum-derived) plastic container of creamer for my coffee, but isn’t there an open jug of milk within easy reach?” Or: “Walk or ride?” “Bike or car?” — or the dozens of other choices we make on a minute-to-minute basis. Very few people have gotten the message that their personal decisions to use energy actually matter — that they come at a cost to all of us — and worse, that this cost is far higher than we had previously imagined.
Perhaps we can liken this behavioral issue to littering. Read More
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
Renewable Energy in Europe
| December 22, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Business |
I’ll be in Europe from April 26th through May 10th, 2012, attending conferences, meeting colleagues known to me now only through Skype, and conducting interviews for my third book, “Renewable Energy – Following the Money.” In fact, including a robust European presence in the book is vital to telling the story. Where investors may be sitting on the sidelines in the U.S., this is most certainly not the case elsewhere in the world. Europe is proving to be a critically important part of the world in this regard — both for implementing existing clean energy technologies, and as a breeding ground for innovation as well.
Let me take this opportunity to ask you for suggestions. I’ll have plenty of time between conferences and strolls up the Champs Elysees. If you have any connections to people who are in the process of making a difference in the deployment of renewables in Europe, please let me know, and I’ll try to arrange to meet them.
I plan to start in Paris, then head east and south, winding up in Rome. Having said that, detours are always possible. I’d like to speak with entrepreneurs, investors, leaders in government, executives in the energy and automotive industries, top consultants and industry analysts, as well as those directly related to finance and the economy. Tres bien.
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.
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.
