Posts Tagged by wind turbines
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
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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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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.
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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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Renewable Energy: Vision or Mirage
| December 12, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Wind Energy |
Think we advocates of renewables in the U.S. have trouble? Our friends in the U.K. are running into a buzzsaw of misinformation, like the report “Renewable Energy: Vision or Mirage”, published today by the Adam Smith Institute and Scientific Alliance. The report includes:
“Wind does little to reduce carbon emissions.”
and
“Nuclear and gas are the most viable energy sources for the near future.”
What a remarkable thing to say, when the U.K. has already installed enough wind turbines to provide clean electricity to more than 3.2 million homes, according to RenewableUK, the trade association representing the wind, wave, and tidal energy industries. RenewableUK also makes the point that I always do about nuclear: even if you consider it safe, it takes a minimum of eight years to permit and build a reactor, and the cost overruns are legendary. Referring to it as “viable” seems ridiculous.
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How Many Electric Vehicles Can Off-Peak Power Charge?
| December 11, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Electric Vehicles |
Does anyone know how many kilowatt-hours we in the U.S. dump back to ground each night? If so, please comment, and add a link to the source. Cycling coal plants shortens their lives and adds to the cost of maintenance, and is therefore unappealing. But I’m having the devil’s own time coming up with this datum.
The use of off-peak power is directly relevant to the case for EVs. Read More
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Onshore Wind at Grid Parity by 2016
| December 6, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Uncategorized, Wind Energy |
According to Bloomberg, New Energy Finance, improved efficiencies and declining costs will make the average wind farm cost-competitive with coal, gas, and nuclear by 2016 (the best ones already are there). According to Justin Wu, the firm’s lead wind analyst:
The press is reacting to the recent price drops in solar equipment as though they are the result of temporary oversupply or of a trade war. This masks what is really going on: a long-term, consistent drop in clean energy technology costs, resulting from decades of hard work by tens of thousands of researchers, engineers, technicians and people in operations and procurement. And it is not going to stop: In the next few years the mainstream world is going to wake up to wind cheaper than gas, and rooftop solar power cheaper than daytime electricity. Add in the same sort of deep long-term price drops for power storage, demand management, LED lighting and so on – and we are clearly talking about a whole new game.
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Professionalism and Courtesy — Good Things To Keep Handy
| December 4, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Business |
One of the big challenges in doing business in the 21st Century is that so many people seem to have forgotten the adage, of Asian origin I suppose, that “what goes around comes around.” Where the standards of professionalism 20 years ago required people to return phone calls and follow through on their commitments, that model has clearly gone out the window. We see examples constantly, where people behave so incredibly poorly — even where doing the right thing would have been completely painless and clearly to their own benefit.
But exactly why has this changed? Has there suddenly come an upside in being regarded as a flake or a liar? Sorry, I’m lost here.
As I told a friend in New York the other day, in description of a mutual acquaintance who has simply disappeared, falling completely out of touch, when all either of us represented to him was the possibility of raising investment capital for his company, “He appears to have been born with an appalling lack of both basic manners and common sense.” Again, I don’t see the upside to anyone in having people saying things like that.
In contrast, I like the approach of my fine friend Ward Rafferty, financial consultant with Wells Fargo Advisors in Santa Barbara. In his email signature is the phrase:
“There is one very powerful business rule. It is concentrated in the word courtesy.” – Henry Wells, 1864
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From Guest Blogger Joshua Okomo: Top Challenges to Develop Green Energy in Africa
| December 1, 2011 | Posted by okomo under Renewables - Politics |
Africa faces the greater challenge of energy access, energy availability and energy affordability than all the rest of the world. Assessment undertaken in 2008, Africa was the lowest per capita energy consumer averaging 0.66 tons of oil equivalents (TOE) compared to the global average of 1.8 TOE. The greater challenge to energy development especially renewable energy is weak or lack of policy and effective renewable energy development institutions, low technology acquisition, low investment and inadequate financing. Government policy and unfavorable political good will rank higher as factors.
Successful development of renewable energy requires strong political will, government regulatory and fiscal muscle, incentives for private sector, innovative financing, considering the opportunity in clean development mechanism and technical capacity building. Policy makers in African governments have not given adequate attention to the potential of meeting renewable energy challenges of Africa. The continent is endowed with vast renewable energy resources, the continent has 1,750 TWh potential for hydropower and 14,000 MW potential geothermal, and potential for solar throughout the year. Wind power potential is also abundant.
