The world’s best solar power schemes now offer the “cheapest…electricity in history” with the technology cheaper than coal and gas in most major countries. That is according to the International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook 2020. The 464-page outlook, published today by the IEA, also outlines the “extraordinarily turbulent” impact of coronavirus and the “highly uncertain” future of global energy use[Read More…]
Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources (“DOER”) will finalize by July 15 regulations doubling the size of MA SMART solar photovoltaic program from 1,600 to 3,200 megawatts (MW). On the surface this is a reasonable, if limited, step forward. But like most things, the devil and long-term consequences are in the details. Unless changed by DOER, or the legislature, the latest[Read More…]
Energy analysts have long assumed that, given time, growing international concern over climate change would result in a vast restructuring of the global energy enterprise. The result: a greener, less climate-degrading system. In this future, fossil fuels would be overtaken by renewables, while oil, gas, and coal would be relegated to an increasingly marginal role in the global energy equation.[Read More…]
“Kingsmill Bond” certainly sounds like a proper name for a City of London financial analyst. He looks the part, too: gray hair expertly trimmed, well-cut suit. He’s lived in Moscow and Hong Kong and worked for Deutsche Bank, the Russian financial firm Troika Dialog, and Citibank. He’s currently “new energy strategist” for a small British think tank called Carbon Tracker,[Read More…]
A simple but important study by Luciano Celi shows what is the real energy return that oil companies manage to attain. Much smaller than you would have believed, in several cases it is today well below 10. Which means that renewable energies already produce a larger EROI than oil and gas. No more excuses for not switching to renewables as fast[Read More…]
Sometimes it happens that you are asked a question that forces you to reflect. So, a few days ago, I was at a public meeting on energy and climate and I was telling about the work we do at the university and with the Club of Rome. In the debate, someone asked me: “But, professor, from all these models of[Read More…]
Rapid progress towards clean energy is needed to meet the global ambition to limit warming to no more than 1.5C above pre-industrial temperatures. But how are countries doing so far? In our Energy Revolution Global Outlook report, written with colleagues at Imperial College London and E4tech – and published by Drax– we rank progress in 25 major world economies. Our report provides a league table of their efforts to[Read More…]
Recent ups and downs of petrol and diesel prices have made a large impact on people who depend upon them in their daily lives in most parts of the country and the world. The over- dependence on fossil fuels is not only depleting resources but also driving towards a major crisis, especially in transportation of both commodities and people. Hence,[Read More…]
An oilman, a green techie and a sperm whale walked into a bar. They got to drinking and, inevitably, boasting. The oilman looked at the whale and declared that if it hadn’t been for fossil fuels, all 75 species of whales would have been hunted to extinction for oil. “My industry and its technology saved your large ass.” The greenie[Read More…]
Many people, including myself, fear that the great acceleration (1, 2) of our consumption and destruction of resources such as land, biodiversity, soil, minerals, and fossil energy sources, could lead us into a catastrophe. Other people point out the positive side of near-exponential growth in various fields: renewable energy production, “biotechnology and bioinformatics; computational systems; networks and sensors; artificial intelligence; robotics;[Read More…]
I was truly amazed to see so much opposition to wind farms, a necessary and desirable part of any renewable energy future. Scientist Carl Safina questioned whether this is the right way to go. Well, there is a wrong way, which is to continue to allow unchecked development and construction and more people without planning a sane energy policy. If[Read More…]
We watch in horror as the damages from climate change continue to mount. Last year, Hurricane Harvey dropped more rain on Houston than any storm has ever dropped on any American city, ever. Hurricane Maria set back development in Puerto Rico 25 years, according to early estimates. And the tab keeps mounting: in 2017 alone, the economic cost of hurricanes[Read More…]
Stanford professor Mark Jacobson and his colleagues have written yet another paper purporting to show that 100 percent of energy demand can be fulfilled by wind, solar, and hydroelectric generation. This latest study, which comes in the form of a manuscript accepted but not yet published by the journal Renewable Energy, seeks to show how that goal can be met in 139 nations.[Read More…]
Last month the Power Finance Corporation of India (PFC) issued a so-called green bond in London. It is a 10-year green bond and raised USD 400 million, paying a 3.75 per cent semi-annual coupon and listed on London Stock Exchange’s new International Securities Market (ISM). The cost of money therefore, ignoring the semi-annual payment, is 3.75% of USD 400[Read More…]
At the end of last month, Tesla boss Elon Musk held a party in South Australia’s mid-north. It seemed premature, but Musk was typically confident. Construction on what will be the world’s most powerful lithium ion battery was going well. It had to. Musk has made a self-testing gamble with the South Australian government: complete the project within 100-days and[Read More…]
At the People’s Climate March back last spring, all along that vast river of people, the atmosphere was electric. But electricity was also the focus of too many of the signs and banners. Yes, here and there were solid “System Change, Not Climate Change” – themed signs and banners. But the bulk of slogans on display asserted or implied[Read More…]
The Indian economy is heavily dependent on coal. Infamous as the world’s fourth largest polluter, India’s current energy mix has an enormous proportion of coal. Close to 60 % of power supply is derived from coal fuelled power plants. Consequently, in 2016, half of the country’s emissions – 805.4 million tonnes – came from the power sector. However, for the[Read More…]
Illustration from the recent paper by Olivia Judson on “Nature Ecology & Evolution (2017) “The Energy Expansions of Evolution”. Olivia Judson published a very interesting paper this March on “Nature Ecology & Evolution“. It is a wonderful cavalcade along 4 billion years of the history of the Earth, seeing it in terms of five “metabolic revolutions.” It is an approach that goes in[Read More…]
Scientists unanimously agree that massive quantities of greenhouse gases released from combustion of fossil fuels are primarily responsible for global warming and have unleashed an internecine cycle of melting polar ice and thawing permafrost which greenhouse gases and further warm up the earth’s temperature. They warn that the present fossil fuel based economy is unsustainable and if efforts are not[Read More…]
Aspects and Causes of the Crisis The climate crisis is only one aspect of the global crisis. Yet, generally speaking, Western governments, media, politicians, NGOs, and publicists have been trying to make us believe that it is the only dangerous and the only global crisis. It appears that for them all other crises in the world are only partial or regional problems of secondary[Read More…]
“Energy is the golden thread that connects economic growth, social equity, and environmental sustainability”.[1] This is how ex- Secretary General Ban Ki Moon described energy in an event address at Washington DC. This single statement reflects how access to energy can be vital in bringing positive change to lives especially for the marginalized. Studies have shown a strong correlation[Read More…]
Two emails come in simultaneously into my email box. One almost chortling that California breaks energy record with 80% of state’s power generated using renewable methods. The Golden State generated 67% of its energy from renewables in one day. I stare at the text, truly amazed at California’s drive to get clean. Meanwhile, the second email which is a Greenpeace[Read More…]
How relocating energy in the commons helps scaling-up renewables & saving energy Is energy a mere commodity, or is it a common good? Why is this relevant in the first place? Here we look at why energy is part of our commons, from the sources to the product itself. In a second time, we will see that relocating energy in[Read More…]
A lively debate is ongoing on what should be the minimum energy return for energy invested (EROEI) in order to sustain a civilization. Clearly, one always wants the best returns for one’s investments. And, of course, investing in something that provides a return smaller than the investment is a bad idea. So, a civilization grows and prosper on the net[Read More…]
The milestone is a first for the UK and reflects a collapse in coal generation, which contributed just 9.2% of UK electricity last year, with 11.5% from wind. The coal decline saw its output fall to the lowest level since 1935. It also means CO2 emissions from UK power generation will have fallen by around 20% in 2016, as coal was largely[Read More…]
Some time ago, I found myself trying to explain to a journalist why I opposed CO2 mining in Tuscany. I said something like, “it makes no sense that the regional government spends money to reduce CO2 emissions and, at the same time, allows this company to extract CO2 that, otherwise, would stay underground.” “But”, the journalist said, “I have interviewed[Read More…]
Renewable energy capacity is growing more rapidly than expected, says the International Energy Agency (IEA), overtaking coal for the first time. The IEA also says it has “significantly increased” its forecasts for the growth of renewable capacity over the next five years. Yet its forecasts continue to show future growth slowing down. Carbon Brief looks at the latest IEA renewable[Read More…]
It’s been a long run, coal, but your reign is over. Renewable energy sources have passed coal as the largest new source of electricity in the world, according data released Tuesday by the International Energy Agency (IEA). The transition of the world’s energy sources is critical for avoiding a 2°C rise in global temperatures. Coal, for instance, represented about a[Read More…]
In the 1950s, during the high times of the “atomic age”, someone had the unfortunate idea of claiming that nuclear technologies would give us, one day, “energy too cheap to meter.” We might call it “the mother of all promises” and, of course, it was not maintained. But, as propaganda often does, it stuck in people’s minds and it seems[Read More…]
From the time when energy became a state ambition and the central, almost paranoid platform of security, its messiness became apparent. Energy reserves needed to be controlled; corrupt regimes with access to such resources needed to be placated, or, if not, overthrown and replaced by compliant puppet governments. The world of energy is one governed by invasion, acquisitive brutality and[Read More…]
Scientists have reached a near unanimous agreement that the earth has entered a new geological era – anthropocene – characterised by human induced climate change. The resulting super floods, typhoons, and heat waves have caused several thousands of deaths in the past ten to fifteen years. However, climate change not only claims its victims through the occurrence of these mega[Read More…]
I have been following the development of airborne wind energy (AWE) for more than 10 years and I keep following it. This summer, I visited the campus of the Technical University of Delft, in Holland, where I met the people of “Enevate”, the university spinoff dedicated to kite power, a field in which the university of Delft has been active[Read More…]
Predicting the future is a fool’s errand, but everybody does it. As long as we’ve had language—for tens of thousands of years, at last estimate—we’ve been able to formulate the question, “What will tomorrow bring?” The answers have ranged from idyllic to hellish, though the reality has been, more often than not, “a lot like today.” Since the Industrial Revolution,[Read More…]
Although futurists aren’t supposed to make predictions, the notion that our energy system is switching much more quickly than expected from fossil fuels to renewables, and that solar energy will be at the front of that change, suddenly doesn’t seem so controversial. Of course, the speed of the change still matters, certainly in terms of global warming outcomes. And yet[Read More…]
On Sunday, July 24, a day before the opening of the Democratic National Convention amid turmoil in Philadelphia, the U.S. climate justice movement seized the moment to convene and march in large numbers for a clean energy revolution. Despite sweltering temperatures exceeding 95 degrees (an uncomfortable irony lost on no one), as many as 10,000 people or more demanded a[Read More…]
Picture a small village somewhere in rural Kenya. Darkness has fallen and there is no light to even go to the fields to relieve yourself. The only succour are kerosene lanterns, that are proven health hazard for the people living in the home. It was several years ago when UNEP, Nairobi, took us selected journalists from around the world to[Read More…]
Here’s the good news: wind power, solar power, and other renewable forms of energy are expanding far more quickly than anyone expected, ensuring that these systems will provide an ever-increasing share of our future energy supply. According to the most recent projections from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the U.S. Department of Energy, global consumption of wind, solar, hydropower,[Read More…]
In early May of this year, Portugal ran on renewable electricity alone for four consecutive days. And later that same month, on May 15, Germany filled almost all its electricity needs with solar, wind, and hydro power. This is good news: it tells us we’re making progress toward a zero-carbon energy system. But it also helps us see the challenges to a full renewable[Read More…]
Costs to utility companies from the introduction of distributed solar PV are somewhat balanced by the fact that added solar capacity helps reduce the strain on electric grids on summer days when demand soars and utilities must buy additional power at high rates. Nevertheless, as more residential and business customers install their own PV systems, revenues to the utility industry are starting to decline.[72] Industry-sponsored studies warn that the trend could eventually lead to a radical transformation of energy markets, on a scale similar to the restructuring of the telecommunications industry following the advent of the Internet and cell phones.
Energy Policy recently published a study conducted on the EROEI of Photo-Voltaics (PV) technologies installed in Switzerland. The end result is a remarkably low figure of 0.8:1, well below any EROEI assessments ever conducted on this energy technology. Such a figure naturally made the delight of those campaigning against renewable energy, who take at face value any hints of negative[Read More…]
Charles Hall is known for his multiple and important contributions in the field of sustainability, and in particular for having introduced the concept of Energy Return on Energy Investment, EROI or EROEI. He is now emeritus and still active in research; among other things as chief editor of the new Springer journal: “Biophysical Economics and Resource Quality, BERQ. Here, he[Read More…]
I am reporting here the results of a small survey that I carried out last week among the members of a discussion forum; mainly experts in renewable energy (*). It was a very informal poll; not meant to have statistical value. But some 70 people responded out of a total of 167 members; so I think these results have a[Read More…]
Joe the plumber is a real person, but also an abstraction for the troubled American blue collar worker. In a previous post, I argued that a global transition to 100% renewable energy would be very expensive, but possible and that it could also be fast enough to avoid exceeding the emission targets set by the COP21. This opinion triggered the[Read More…]
Ed. note: This is the introduction to Richard Heinberg’s and David Fridley’s new book, Our Renewable Future, now available from Island Press. Post Carbon Institute’s companion website, ourrenewablefuture.org has also just been launched.The book is available to order and also to read on the website as a complete set of online chapters. By Richard Heinberg & David Fridley The next[Read More…]
I spent the last year working with co-author David Fridley and Post Carbon Institute staff on a just-published book, Our Renewable Future. The process was a pleasure: everyone involved (including the twenty or so experts we interviewed or consulted) was delightful to work with, and I personally learned an enormous amount along the way. But we also encountered a prickly[Read More…]
Some time ago, a colleague of mine told me the story of when he had been in charge of the installation ofone of the first photovoltaic plants in Italy, in 1984 (shown in the figure, on the right). He told me that, shortly after the installation, a high-ranking politician came to visit the plant. As a demonstration, my colleague connected[Read More…]
Stumbling Towards Old Age And Looking for Someone to Lean On 
Tolstoy’s Dilemma 
Ukraine Peace Activists Protest During Zelensky White House Visit 
“Our world is becoming unhinged”: Antonio Guterres 
How Chances of Direct War between the USA and Russia Are Increasing 
G20 Biofuel Alliance threatens Food security 
Thousands Of Auto Workers Strike In Three U.S. Plants, Face Financial Hardship 
Submission To Australian National Anti-Corruption Commission, NACC: Mainstream Media Lying 
In The Name of Decolonization 
Is This the End of French Neo-Colonialism in Africa? 
Tel Aviv’s Losing Brands: Israeli ‘Coup’ and the Death of False Democracy 
Tackling Global Emergencies – UN International Day of Peace 
The Futility of Feudalistic Democracy 
Bayer over-riding Bhartiya Krishi 
Pulwama Bombing 14th February 2019: Unanswered Questions 
Himalayan Apple Growers Worried Over Increasing Threat from Imports 
After protests in flood-hit Derna, Libyan officials order journalists to leave 
International Day of Peace: Fostering Harmony and Unity in a World of Diversity 
More Butterflies, Fewer Billionaires — Unrigging the Global Economy 
Veganic Farming: How My Tiny Plot Produced 5,000 Pounds of Food Without Using Manure 
Fighting the Diaspora: India’s Campaign Against Khalistan 
CAIR Files Lawsuit to End Islamophobic No Fly List 
N.D.Mahanor, The Poet Who Taught Us to See Culture in Agriculture 
Dark and light streaks in India-China relations 
Why the Central Government Should Rush Special Aid Package for Himachal Pradesh 
Special Session: Another Image-Boosting Move? 
Eddelu ( Wake up) Karnataka: The Great Citizen’s Wall Against BJP 
Urgency of Improving Dam Safety Re-Emphasized in Libya and Ukraine 
Climate Crisis Threatens Largest U.S. Cities 
Little Amal Entertains and Informs on Refugee Children’s Strife 
Google Trial Must Fuel the Global Movement Against Digital Capitalism 
Linking Aadhaar With NPR Records: Is it Based on Informed Consent? 
In the debates before 2024 Elections in India, Agenda for Justice, Peace, Democracy and Environment Most Needed 
US imperialist hypocrisy and the Libyan flood 
Some Remarks on Russia in Global Politics Today 
A climate of Insanity 
Brief for Murder: Pinochet’s Apologists Five Decades On ‘Epidemic’ or Revolution: The Other Side of the West Africa Upheaval 
White Nationalism and Donald Trump 
How Arab Leaders Betrayed Islam and Defied the Logic of Political Change, Peace and Security? 
My Amma (Malayalam word for Mother) passed away on August 22, 2023 at 3.10 AM. It is always difficult to deal with the passing of a parent, that too one’s mother. I thought the grief would go away. No it didn’t. All those bitter sweet memories won’t go away. At night I lie awake for hours. My friend, guide and[Read More…]
