It should surprise no one to learn that Elon Musk, a master of promotion, is capturing worldwide media attention Friday for Tesla’s selection as the winning bidder for a project to install “the world’s largest grid-scale battery” in South Australia. It also shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who pays attention to claims made by…
A pernicious myth was forcefully attacked in June when the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published a paper titled Evaluation of A Proposal for Reliable Low-Cost Grid Power with 100% Wind, Water, and Solar. The abstract of the new paper, which was developed during the past year by Christopher Clack and a team…
Deepwater Wind has completed attaching blades to the last of five massive, 6 MWe peak capacity wind turbines that make up the 30 MWe Block Island Wind Farm. That is one of the final steps in the process of installing and commissioning the facility. By the end of 2016, the developer expects that the project…
Some people who are not well versed in human history believe that fossil fuels are inherently evil, costly and harmful to human health. They ignore the side of the accounting ledger that documents the incredibly beneficial effects concentrated fuels have provided to overall human freedom, happiness, self actualization and reduction of dependence on nature. Those…
On April 3, 2016, Mark Lynas met with David MacKay, the author of Sustainable Energy: Without the Hot Air, to give him the Breakthrough Institute’s 2016 Paradigm Award. After the brief ceremony, the two influential British thinkers chatted about David’s career, his love of arithmetic, his concerns about humanity and his famous book. Perhaps the…
On April 4 and 5, I had the pleasure of attending the 9th annual The Future of Energy Summit organized by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) and held at the Grand Hyatt next door to New York’s Grand Central Station. The organizing theme of this year’s event, The Age of Plenty, the Age of Competition…
Tim Dickinson wrote a lengthy piece for Rolling Stone titled The Koch Brothers’ Dirty War on Solar Power: All over the country, the Kochs and utilities have been blocking solar initiatives — but nowhere more so than in Florida. Though the Koch Brothers got top billing in the headline for fairly obvious reasons, the real…
On January 25, 2016 the NOAAnews (National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency news) web site published a brief article with the following alluring headline: Rapid, affordable energy transformation possible NOAA, CIRES study: Wind, sun could eclipse fossil fuels for electric power by 2030 As the headline creator hoped, I couldn’t resist reading more. I was shocked,…
As a native of South Florida, I’ve probably logged at least a million miles driving on its interstate and U.S. highways. Most Americans have probably had at least a small taste of that experience. The contrast between Florida’s highways and those in Vermont is stark; Florida’s are littered with billboards. They often advertise products or…
Many advocates of unreliable power sources like wind and solar blithely toss out the concept of “storage” as the panacea that makes their favored energy sources viable competitors in the potentially lucrative business of supplying on demand power. I’m skeptical because I have some experience with operating and budgeting for power systems that use batteries…
Naomi Oreskes is the Professor of the History of Science and Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University. She is also the author of the December 16, 2015 opinion piece published in the Guardian titled There is a new form of climate denialism to look out for – so don’t celebrate yet….
I’m opposed to subsidies that encourage the cultivation of plants and trees for the sole purpose of converting them into heat or electricity. Often sold under the “renewable energy” brand, such programs can result in substantial harm by paying people to bulldoze rain forests to plant soy or palms for their oil content or by…