The Jacobson debate: Distractions, detours and the Energy Transition
About six weeks ago, a think tank in London, Climate Policy Initiative, released a study on integrating high levels of renewable energy. It wasn’t the first such study; many others have been done,...
View ArticleVision is needed: a response to Julian Spector
Vision is needed: a response to Julian Spector Last week I found myself in a social media spat about the credibility of the main source cited in an article written by Julian Spector on Greentech Media....
View ArticleEnergy Transition update: 2016
My readers will forgive that a rather lengthy absence from this blog has meant that I have not updated my global renewable energy statistics yet with numbers for the full year 2015, most of which have...
View ArticleWhy I am not covering the Clean Power Plan lawsuit
If you follow mainstream climate and energy reporting, you would think that as a renewable energy reporter, I would be all over the arguments being made this week in the legal challenge to the Obama...
View ArticleThings I was wrong about
The delay in my posting is sufficient enough that there isn’t even much to say about it. However, this period of time has further established certain trends which to observers more savvy than I were...
View ArticlePostcard from the future: Solar and the Energy Transition in Kaua’i
Hawaii has been called a “postcard from the future” due to the high levels of renewable energy being deployed and technical work that is being done to accommodate this. But even for Hawaii the amount...
View ArticleVery high levels of renewable electricity: Geography and diversity in...
The last three posts on this blog have all dealt with the feasibility of reaching very high levels (80% or more) renewable energy in our electricity grids. Specifically, these posts were responses to...
View ArticleFlawed arguments: A critique of “Upper Limit to Variable Renewable Energy”
My readers will pardon that I am, for the third time in a row, writing a piece inspired by a post by David Roberts of Vox. Unlike most of the media David Roberts is writing intelligent articles about...
View ArticleThe Jacobson Plan: 100% renewable energy in the United States
This week a team led by Stanford Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Mark Jacobson presented the latest results of its work on the technical and economic feasibility of moving the United...
View ArticleJust because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there: A response to “The...
My readers will pardon that it has taken me a full week to respond fully to David Roberts’ post in Vox, “The Awful Truth in Climate Change”. I’ve been busy as usual with other matters this last week,...
View ArticleEnergy Transition in the UK
This morning I was shocked to read a report by the UK’s Renewable Energy Association which finds that the UK met 19.2% of its electricity demand with renewable energy in 2014. This is the result of a...
View ArticleEnergy Transition: Denmark, Spain and Portugal
IEEE Spectrum has published John Bernhardt’s and my article on the Energy Transition in Denmark, Spain and Portugal, the nations I consider to be leaders for the transition to renewables in the...
View ArticleNo new ideas here: A critique of Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything
Rarely have I seen so much uncritical gushing from both Climate Change activists and the American Left as on the release of Naomi Klein’s latest work, This Changes Everything, which aims at the...
View ArticleTransportation and the Energy Transition
I recently found myself a Twitter debate about transportation and greenhouse gas emissions, which started from the question of whether or not solar could replace oil. This is really a question about...
View ArticleMarch to nowhere: It’s (past) time to start pushing solutions to the Climate...
“Where there is no vision, the people perish” – Proverbs 29:18 The spectacle of 300,000-400,000 people marching in the streets of New York City on the issue of the threat we face from our changing...
View ArticleThe German Coal Myth revisited (2014)
I was greatly disappointed today to see Pricewaterhouse Cooper’s study, Two degrees of separation: ambition and reality: low-carbon-economy-index-2014, reprinted in an unquestioned form in multiple...
View Article350 Massachusetts lays out the case against natural gas
A few weeks ago 350 Massachusetts and Better Future Project published a report laying out exactly why natural gas is no solution for the climate. A Bridge Too Far was created by the 350 Mass Policy...
View ArticleThe great climate shell game, or Obama’s climate policy
I frequently find myself feeling somewhat schizophrenic in the world of the American media. I will be looking at a reality which has very clear features (to me), and I will find it being nearly...
View ArticleAnalysis of solar markets in Latin America
I hope that my readers will forgive a rather lengthy absence from posting. In the last few months, among other things I have completed an article for Solar Server (my day job) on Latin American PV...
View ArticleOutdated already: Distorted analysis, faulty predictions and mythology in...
Having just finished Energy Transitions, the work of widely lauded energy historian and polymath writer Vaclav Smil, I am left disappointed. I must admit that I had high expectations. The book was...
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