It’s a frustrating time for those of us who follow the international energy news and try to get the big picture on the slow migration to renewables. The biggest single problem, of course, is that we live on a planet with almost 200 sovereign countries each with autonomy to create of its own energy policy — or simply avoid the issue entirely, like we’ve done here in the US. And often, failure of a big country to act responsibly in this space is taken as an invitation for another country to behave irresponsibly as well.
Today we learned that Japan has postponed or even scrapped its national cap-and-trade plan, due to go into effect in 2013 because of intense lobbying by powerful business interests and because the measure has yet to make headway in other key countries.
Where is all this taking us? Are we to blame the Australia’s flood “of biblical proportions” (waters 30 feet above normal) on global climate change? I honestly don’t know. But as usual, I urge any of the new GOP administration in Washington who may be climate change deniers simply to adopt any of the other five or six good reasons to accelerate the pace at which we move away from fossil fuels.
I’ve gotten a great number of fascinating comments on my piece on science’s coming under attack from politics and religion, for example:
Like you, I am worried about the religious campaign to undo hundreds of years of scientific development. Unfortunately, history tells us that politics and religion have been closely linked since the earliest civilizations. The Egyptian pharaohs were the high priests of their polytheistic religion. During the decline of the Roman Empire, emperors were gods and today we not only face the threat from the religious right but also the Muslim jihadists.
This is true. But at least in the West, have a couple hundred years of history that has begun to build a separation here. Starting with the Enlightenment in the Eighteenth Century, and the principles of the French and American Revolutions, our civilization has seen fit to identify independent roles for scientific inquiry versus belief systems that are not amenable to evidence or proof. For my money, this is a vitally important ingredient in building a world that is capable of sustaining itself going forward.
This is a continuation of The Vector’s coverage of James Woolsey’s position in the imperative to move to renewable energy based on national security concerns.
You’ve got both the terrorism and enhancing of the bad guys — What Tom Friedman calls “Fill ‘er up with dictators,” and all the issues associated with that.
First of all, oil, like gold before it, has the effect that Paul Collier at Oxford, and Tom Friedman cite sometimes called the “oil curse.” Generally it’s just that an autocratic state, when it depends for a huge share of its income on a commodity that has a lot of economic rent attached to it, that rent accrues to the central power of the state essentially. (more…)
Tucson Electric Power has signed up to solar photovoltaic array projects with capacities of 35MW, 25MW and 5MW; single-axis tracking PV arrays with capacities of 12MW, 4MW and two of 5MW each, a concentrating PV plant with capacity of 12MW and two of 2MW each; a 50MW wind project; and a 2.2MW landfill gas generator project. The desert city company emphasises that none of the projects require water. The utility company expects to be buying power from the first of these renewable energy projects in 2012.
New York and the New England states produce about 14 million tons of waste from the construction and demolition (C&D) of buildings. And one of my clients is in the process of building a gasification plant to process with as much that tonnage as he can possibly get his hands on.
He’s latched onto an interesting opportunity to turn lemons into lemonade, as they say. Insofar as a great deal (up to about 30%) of this waste is wood, biomass-to-energy processes can be brought to bear to extract and make use of the chemical energy, while reducing the financial and environmental costs of shipping this material off to landfills.
But, as I’m learning, many of the flavors of waste-to-energy technology are inappropriate here, as the introduction of oxygen to the gasification of wood that has been waterproofed with copper compounds or creosote creates a carcinogenic slag. Also, no matter how you presort the materials, you’ll wind up with a non-negligible amount of the guts of ballasts from fluorescent lights, which contains PBCs. (more…)
I accidentally came across a high-priced Deutsche Bank report on the future of electric transportation, sold to hedge fund managers and other heavyweight investors willing to pay big bucks for solid, well-researched advice. When I opened the piece, I expected to find what I do in the mainstream news: the systematic downplay of the importance of EVs based largely on erroneous calculations on their environmental impact, news about possible shortages of lithium, demagoguery on the “socialist” agenda of the Obama administration, etc.
But this piece was much more in line with reality as I see it, predicting steep declines in the cost of batteries, and the consequent rapid adoption of EVs by a public anxious to cut its spending on gasoline. The predictions were far more bullish than what most people are reading, and suggested impressive EV sales volumes in the coming decade — even if federal and state government subsidies go away.
It certainly served as another reminder of the adage popular a century ago, “Don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers.”
I try not to write posts that are completely off-topic, but occasionally I come across ideas on vaguely related subjects that I believe are worth sharing.
Traveling back East for Christmas, I came across the musings of a writer: “When I hear people say that life is hard, I wonder – compared to what?” The holidays truly are an opportunity for us to be thankful for what we have, and to be mindful that many of our fellow travelers on planet Earth are not so lucky.
If you’re looking for a book recommendation that makes this point with the power of a speeding freight train, I’d like to suggest Steven Galloway’s critically acclaimed The Cellist of Sarajevo, a short novel about the siege of the 1990s – a passionate and potent reminder of our humanity and what it truly means.
James Woolsey was Director of the United States Central Intelligence Agency from February 5, 1993 until January 10, 1995, and stands among the most vocal and credible proponents of renewables, making arguments touching on national security, global climate change, and economics. Featured in Thomas Friedman‘s Discovery Channel documentary Addicted to Oil, and in the 2006 documentary film “Who Killed the Electric Car?“ he makes a series of powerful statements on the imperative for the US to move away from fossil fuels. Here are few of the highlights of his position. (more…)
One of the many things I like about the community here is that we are most certainly not “preaching to the choir.” There are many people here whose viewpoints, while divergent from my own, are stimulating to the conversation, and, more likely than not, constitute the principal reason that people like to be here.
December 21, 2024: 1) The development of relevant technology, and 2) the natural resilience of the biosphere.
November 13, 2024: Of the 900+ pages document outlining the Republic’s “Project 2025,” 150 of them are dedicated to dismantling the EPA.
November 12, 2024: The energy and commitment of young people, and the rapid development of technology.
September 19, 2024: The development of new technology and the tenacity of young people.
June 22, 2024: 13.58 billion, or about 1.68 for every man, woman, and child on Earth. See more here.
May 28, 2024: Partially. When the man leaves the diving board, he has the same velocity at the truck. So, if this were taking place in a vacuum, or if we neglect air resistance, he would land in the pool, the same if this were taking place on solid ground. In the real world, the force of the still air would pull him backwards with respect to the truck.
March 5, 2024: The post was made by the “seriously unintelligent” one, but again, the two are indistinguishable in the way they think about politics are communicate those thoughts publicly.
February 6, 2024: Scotland
January 19, 2024: A leather jacket.
October 18, 2023: No. Per the WSJ: Any climate policy that can hurt cherished farmers or increase food prices is politically risky.
November 30, 2021: The Fossil Fuel Industry Was More Represented at the UN’s Climate Summit Than Any Country. There were 503 fossil fuel lobbyists there.
November 1, 2021: Sea-level rise.
September 20, 2021: First, people don’t walk around with their sexual orientation tattooed on their foreheads. Even more to the point, HIV is a sexually transmitted disease; people aren’t having sex in restaurants and on planes. COVID-19 is extremely transmissible via close contact with infected people.
August 11, 2021: These figures are almost exclusively driven by the volume of resources, which drives the cost of the energy generated. There is almost no correlation with the predominant political philosophy of the people living in the state.
July 28, 2021: 9%, according to this piece in Bloomberg Green.
July 18, 2021: Since 2015, the United States has experienced an average of 14 disasters per year that cost at least $1 billion, according to this piece in Science Magazine.
February 25, 2021: $28 billion, according to this piece in the Wall Street Journal.
February 1, 2021: 672.
January 29, 2021: From this article: “After 13 years, justice!” tweeted Friends of the Earth Europe. These folks react following the court ruling in the case that the organization, along with four Nigerian farmers, filed against Shell over oil leaks that have allegedly polluted their villages, in The Hague, on January 29, 2021. The Nigerian branch of Shell has to pay compensation to some farmers from the African country. The company has been found liable for two oil spills. The amount must be determined later, the court in The Hague ruled.
November 16, 2020: 1) Bridges either span waterways or land masses. If they span waterways, they’re no higher off the water’s surface than necessary, where wind currents are low. If they span land masses, the land itself tends to blocks the wind. 2) Wind turbines need to be able to turn to address the wind. 3) There is no consistency to the construction of bridges, thus each project requires a huge amount of one-off engineering.
September 28, 2020: The energy required to pull a volume of air down to the bottom of the container will more than offset the amount of energy associated with lifting the load.
September 15, 2020: 1845 (175 years ago this year). James Knox Polk (shown in post).
August 25, 2021: Since we need to convert mass into volume, we need to know the density of water, which is 1 g/cm3. Therefore, let’s get everything in centimeters, and round things off to make it easy.
Now, let’s calculate the area of the Earth oceans in cm2, using the formula for the surface of a sphere, which is 4πr2, and factor in that the oceans account for 70% of the Earth’s surface.
Earth’s radius in cm: 4*103 miles * 1.4 km/mile * 105 cm/km = 6*108 cm
Plugging into the formula: 4 * 3 * 7*10-1 3.6*1017 = 3 * 1018 cm2
Since the volume of a rectangular solid is its height * the area of its base, or height = volume / area, we get:
Height (in cm) = 6*1017 cm3 / 3 * 1018 cm2 = 0.2 cm = 2 mm.
Not huge, but not insignificant.
August 21, 2021: It’s Singapore’s Public Utilities Board new 60 megawatt-peak (MWp) floating solar photovoltaic farm. It’s on the Tengeh Reservoir in the Western Water Catchment in the West Region of Singapore.
August 11, 2021: During a pandemic, of course!
August 2, 2021: These are not chemicals you want flowing into your home or seeping into your drinking water, but they are the chemicals found in a superfund site that was flooded during Hurricane Harvey, according to a new UCS report released today, A Toxic Relationship: Extreme Coastal Flooding & Superfund Sites.
July 10, 2020: Thawing permafrost due to global warming.
June 20, 2020: The small town of Verkhoyansk, home to 1,000 people in Russia’s Yakutia region, broke the record on Saturday for the highest temperature ever recorded within the Arctic Circle, hitting a maximum of 38 degrees Celsius. Verkhoyansk already held the record for the place with the greatest temperature range on Earth. Prior to today, temperatures in the small town have ranged between -68 and +37 degrees Celsius – a 105-degree difference. In Fahrenheit, that’s between -90 and +98.
May 27, 2020: About 4000.
February 11, 2020: about 1600, most notably social scientists, soil conservationists, hydrologists and experts in the physical sciences — chemistry, geology, astronomy and physics,” according to a recent Washington Post investigation.
September 30: Just shy of 18,000 BK outlets. McDonald’s restaurants are found in 120 countries and territories around the world and serve 68 million customers each day. McDonald’s operates 37,855 restaurants worldwide.
September 25, 2019: It’s an underpass for a freeway in Croatia, built every 5 kilometers or so, each one perhaps 300 meters wide, put in place such that populations of wildlife, in this case bears and foxes, are not separated off from one another.
August 28, 2019: Today is the 170th anniversary of the first issue of Scientific American, the oldest continuously published magazine in the United States.
August 18, 2019: They weren’t there of their own free will. Workers at a new Shell plant in Pennsylvania say were told they had to attend a speech by President Donald Trump in order to get paid, according to a report from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
June 29, 2019: A rough answer is one in 24.3 million. The probability of an one such occurrence is 20 in 600, or 1 in 30. The probability of all five, therefore, could be said to be one in 30 raised to the 5th power.
To be precise, one needs to realize that once one event has taken place, there are only 19 remaining out of 599, once the second event has taken place, there are only 18 remaining out of 598, etc. The exact probability, therefore is one in (600*599*598*597*596)/(20*19*18*17*16), or one in 41,103,125.
June 16, 2019: Steffen Olsen, a climate researcher at the Danish Meteorological Institute, snapped this photo of Greenland sea ice that had melted into a large lake of aqua water, pooled atop the icy surface.
June 1, 2019: Have one fewer child, which has a far bigger effect than any other single action one can take. See article linked here. Wow. I’m sure this is true, but I’m guessing it’s an extremely rare person who make this decision based on carbon footprint. Maybe if you already have four?
May 25, 2019: There is a huge disparity, as discussed here. The formerly pristine Cocos Islands are near Australia, and now feature 400 million pieces of plastic. The photo in the post is from the Cocos.
May 13, 2019: 30%, molten salt energy storage. Malta is building a grid-scale energy storage technology that stores electricity from renewable energy sources as heat inside large tanks of high temperature molten salt and as cold in large tanks of chilled liquid. The system can discharge electricity back to the grid when energy demand is high – effectively “time shifting” energy from when it’s produced to when it’s most needed.
May 11, 2019: $200 million, based on this. BP has the highest annual expenditure on climate lobbying at $53 million, followed by Shell with $49 million and ExxonMobil with $41 million. Chevron and Total each spend around $29 million every year.
March 9, 2019: No one knows. Sorry for the bait-and-switch, but there is no way to know the truth.
February 24, 2019: According to the Associated Press, 50 millions of gallons of water per day filled with arsenic, lead, and other toxins are flowing from mining sites in to U.S. streams and ponds without being treated. The financial onus for cleaning up this mess has been transferred from the poisoner to the poisonee (you and me). Details here.
February 22, 2019: They’re all either under attack or have already been dismantled by the Trump administration. Some say that the purpose here is to save money so as to afford the border wall, though this flies in the teeth of the fact that wealthy donors see these as impediments to their business models which include polluting the environment with impunity.
January 29, 2019: East Antarctica. Now, a study using 40 years of satellite imagery finds that the East Antarctic Ice Sheet is losing a substantial quantity of ice as well as the unstable west side. See this.
January 20, 2019: Gothenburg, Sweden. Wonderful video here.
January 3, 2019: From NPR: When coal is burned it releases mercury into the air, where it can cause health risks to people including neurological disorders, heart and lung problems and compromised immune systems. Babies developing in the womb and young children are especially at risk. The main source of exposure is through eating contaminated fish and seafood.
December 18, 2018: Pathogen-carrying mosquitoes, allergy-causing plants that pollinate through longer seasons, and floods that spread disease. Here’s a cool video on the subject.
December 7, 2018: 150 acres per hour, the size of a championship golf course.
December 5, 2018: The Zephyr platform is a new class of unmanned air vehicle that operates as a high-altitude pseudo-satellite (HAPS) enabling affordable, persistent, local satellite-like services. , the Zephyr aircraft holds world records for endurance as well as altitude, flying at 70,000 feet or higher. This stratospheric platform can fly for months at a time and combines the persistence of a satellite with the flexibility of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The platform is expected to be used in a wide range of emerging applications, including maritime surveillance and services, border patrol missions, communications, forest fire detection and navigation.
Amprius, Inc., a leading manufacturer and developer of high energy and high capacity lithium-ion batteries, announced today that the company is supplying advanced lithium ion cells to the Airbus Defence and Space Zephyr Program. Using Amprius’ cells, which contain a 100% silicon anode, the Zephyr S flew more than 25 days, setting a new endurance and altitude record for stratospheric flight. Amprius batteries enable the Zephyr to fly uninterrupted in the stratosphere which would not be possible with lower performance batteries.
November 15, 2016: A group of over 15,000 scientists from over 184 countries.
August 13, 2018: Mercury is emitted from coal-fired power plants, falls into rivers or oceans, sinks, is absorbed by algae, is eaten by little fish and other small aquatic life, is eaten by (and bioaccumulates in) successively bigger fish, then finally by you. Damages the nervous system; explained beautifully in the video linked above.
January 29, 2018: The Koch brothers are going to get at least $1 billion a year from the Trump tax bill, 50 times (5000 percent of) their investment according to Americans for Tax Fairness.
January 22, 2018: All of the above.
January 16, 2018: $90 billion total, $52 billion (58%) from Germany, from GreenAutoDigest.
January 11, 2018: According to the CDC, 75% of the contiguous United States has become, due to climate change, suitable breeding habitat for mosquitoes that are capable of transmitting deadly viruses.
December 15, 2017: 83%, five our of six, of people surveyed by the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy said they are against the move to get rid of net neutrality.
March 31, 2017: I’ll offer two comments that may be of service.
I would rethink featuring the quote of the inventor himself to the effect that this invention is the most important event in diesel history since the catalytic converter. Imagine my having on my website:
“Craig Shields is positively the best author/consultant in the renewable energy industry.” – Craig Shields
The name “alchemist” suggests that the invention is snake oil. You don’t want that, especially because the diesel industry has been sold TONS of snake oil over the years. They’re very jaded and skeptical as a result, which will make this a tough challenge on a good day.
December 20, 2016: 22%
December 14, 2016: 45,000 per minute.
November 18, 2016: Zero. He (and thus the American people) is in a class by himself.
November 19, 2016: 36 degrees F.
July 14, 2016: Solar PV ground screws, one of the fastest (thus less expensive) ways to get the job done. Linked above is the approach used by a company called Krinner.
December 8, 2015: Six years (as of next month); the decision was made in January of 2010.
October 6, 2015: Renewable Energy Test Center is a third-party certification testing provider for photovoltaic and other renewable energy products.
August 17, 2015: According to this article, farmers spray as often as every five days during the growing season. 10% of this spray drifts to other areas.
May 2, 2015: According to the “new” EnergyFactCheck.Org, environmentalist good guy Tom Steyer’s net worth is $1.4 billion,
April 19, 2015: The world could have saved $38 trillion if it had been at peace since 2006.
April 11, 2015: 40% of our planet’s coral reefs have died over the last 30 years due to the warming of the oceans; 25% of ocean species live on these reefs.
This destruction happens when the sea temperature reaches roughly a degree warmer than the long-term summer maximum and stays there for four to six weeks. Corals can survive it, but if the event goes on longer, or the temperature climbs higher still, you get mass mortality. Over the last 12 months seas have come very close to that threshold. We’re on the brink of a major, worldwide bleaching event, says the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Coral Reef Watch programme.
April 10, 2015: Yes, it’s three times more destructive, as explained in this video.
February 18, 2015: One bequerel means one radioative decay per second. My colleague Mike Conley writes: The Fukushima Cs-137 in California coastal water adds about 5 becquerels per cubic meter of seawater. Clean seawater normally contains 1400 Bqs. per cubic meter. Therefore, Fukushima increased the natural radioactivity of CA coastal water by 0.00357%. Cs-137 is actually slightly less energetic than K-40, the naturally occurring radioactive isotope of potassium in our food, and our seawater. A 155-lb adult eating a typical American diet has a fairly constant internal Becquerel count of 9,360 Bq from the potassium stored in his fat cells.
February 6, 2015: 4.5 million, by far the greatest outpouring of support for anything in U.S. history.
August 29, 2014: The price of wind energy in the plains states of the U.S., if we are to add storage from Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES), is estimated to be approximately four cents/kWh–still less than that the price of energy from burning coal.
February 28, 2014: Domestic dairy production of animal waste exceeds one billion ninety four million (1,094,000,000) lbs a day. This figure parallels hog waste production which is estimated to be over one billion eighty three million (1,083,000,000) lbs a day.
October 22, 2013: Curitiba is among the greenest cities on Earth. Their 1.9 million residents purchase 1.45 million round-trip bus fares every day (76%).
August 6, 2013: Over its twenty-year lifetime, an average sized solar system offsets the same amount of carbon as planting six acres of trees.
December 18, 2012: The average cost to society, over his lifetime, of the typical gang member, including hospitalizations (his own and his victims’), criminal justice / imprisonment, car wrecks, thefts, vandalism, etc. is approximately $2 million. Apiece. Multiply that times the large and growing population of gang members, and you have quite a number.
October 15, 2012: 20 tons of mine waste results from the production of one gold ring.
April 11, 2012: PCBs are known as “biologic timebombs.” Of all the PCBs ever produced, 70% of them are still in use, stored in aging electronics, and will require significant amounts of time to work their way through our environment.
July 5, 2012: Approximately 40,000 gallons of water is wasted every year by EACH urinal in men’s bathrooms around the world.
September 26, 2012: In the late 15th century Leonardo Da Vinci conceived of an industrial use of solar power by employing concave mirrors to heat water.
August 3, 2012: Last year represents the first time in the history of the world that the total private investment in research and develop for renewable energy exceeded that for fossil fuels.
August 14, 2012: A 501(c)(4) is a non-profit organization, given its name for its section of the tax code, that doesn’t have to disclose their donors to the public.
April 10, 2012: There are TONS of cases in human history in which changes made in environmental regulation have made a dramatic and measurable positive difference. Between 1976 and 1986, the concentration of lead in the bloodstreams of Belgian adults and the level of DDT in the milk of Japanese mothers fell by a factor of two, while the level of the insecticide dieldrin in the adipose tissue of Dutch citizens fell by a factor of three.
April 9, 2012: 65,000 industrial chemicals are in regular commercial use.
January 26, 2012: It is estimated that the Amazon rainforest alone is vanishing at a rate of 20,000 square miles a year, or 1.5 acres a second.
December 9, 2011: The cost of generating electricity from coal with no scrubbers is about $0.03 / kWh.
November 21, 2011: The average American generates 4.6 pounds of trash daily. About half that goes into landfills; the other half in recycled or incinerated.
November 18, 2011: Approximately one million trees are ground up each year to make junk mail.
November 17, 2011: some plastic bottles last 1000 years in landfills. 500 billion – 1 trillion plastic bags used year year world-wide.
October 12, 2011: The city of San Pedro Sula, Honduras, which hosts “Expo Energía.” The expo has had an unprecedented success with over 100 exhibiting companies and over 700 visitors from 16 countries that have participated in the event. Many Latin American and European companies have held pre-arranged business meetings that are finalized as new business ventures.
February 7, 2011: It’s free; they’re happy to get rid of it. This provides a huge cost advantage for Canefields, providing the business with some incredibly attractive operating margins.
February 3, 2011: About 15 terawatts, or 15,000 gigawatts, or 15,000,000 megawatts. That’s the equivalent of 150 billion 100-watt light bulbs, which equates to 20 100-watt light bulbs for every man, woman and child. In the US, we use about 8 times the international average, or 160 100-watt light bulbs per person.
January 30, 2011: Babassu is a palm tree that grows in the Amazon region of South America. It produces a clear, light yellow, non-drying oil used in food, cleaners and skin products. This oil has properties similar to coconut oil and is used in much the same context. In addition, the fruit iself has a very attractive energy density, and thus the trees are beginning to be cultivated as a biomass feedstock.
January 20, 2011: Approximately 60% — far more than most people guess.
January 19, 2011: There are approximately 1 billion 2’ X 2’ fluorescent lighting fixtures in the ceilings of US office buildings, and approximately 34 million lamps lighting US streets.
January 12, 2011: About 14 million tons of C&D (construction and demolition) waste annually is shipped through a transfer station in Staten Island, almost all of which is taken by rail to land fills in Kentucky and Ohio.
January 11, 2011: 7.6 billion chickens, producing 2 trillion tons of manure annually
I’ve gotten a great number of fascinating comments on my piece on science’s coming under attack from politics and religion, for example:![[The Vector] James Woolsey on Renewable Energy and National Security – Part Two](https://www.2greenenergy.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/r_james_woolsey15.jpg)
This is a continuation of The Vector’s coverage of James Woolsey’s position in the imperative to move to renewable energy based on national security concerns.
I try not to write posts that are completely off-topic, but occasionally I come across ideas on vaguely related subjects that I believe are worth sharing.![[The Vector] James Woolsey on Renewable Energy and National Security](https://www.2greenenergy.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/r_james_woolsey14.jpg)
December 24, 2024: 
