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The researchers caution that the warming applies to this particular region over a time when wind farms were expanding rapidly. The results are not directly applicable for other regions. They should not be extrapolated over a longer period of time. They also note that the warming is a local effect. It would not contribute to a larger global trend adding to global warming. This is not a situation where large amounts of heat are being generated and released into the atmosphere. What is occurring is the mixing of existing heated air.
[Linkage: Solar energy storage, waste heat conversion, fuel refinement, wind power.]
The problem is that there's a combination of a desperate hope for solutions to the global energy and climate predicament, and an interest in those who make small steps from overstating their case. Nobody likes to hear the hard news that small research breakthroughs, while absolutely valuable and worth pursuing, do very little in the scheme of things.
...it's up to us to realistically evaluate the options we have now...
1. Scalability and Timing.
2. Commercialization.
3. Substitutability.
4. Material Input Requirements.
5. Intermittency.
6. Energy Density.
7. Water.
8. The Law of Receding Horizons.
9. Energy Return on Investment.
A new report from the California Energy Commission indicates that California’s utilities are well on their way to meeting the state’s clean energy goals.
These days, an individual solar panel has a capacity of around 200 watts, so one gigawatt of installed capacity requires about 5 million solar panels. Distributed over tens of thousands of roofs across the state, it’s the equivalent of a coal-fired power plant or two, or a nuclear reactor.
But one gigawatt is a tiny fraction of the total amount of power needed to feed demand.
If there’s a market for clean energy, then we’ll get clean energy. And there is a market for clean energy—that’s why wind and solar are growing so quickly. It’s still small, but it’s possible to goose it with small-scale interventions with the goal of making clean energy more attractive and make customers more attracted to it.
...Texans, who learned long ago that you don’t need progressive state leaders or a broad-based environmental coalition to sell renewable energy. You just need the numbers to make sense.
Crucially, the study found, government support is most effective when it is dependable – both in duration and certainty.
A recently opened solar power plant near Seville in southern Spain, is the first of its kind to be able to generate electricity from sunlight during the day and still retain enough heat to continue generating energy all the way through the night. ...
The plant is of the heliostatic variety, meaning that it doesn’t derive its power from photovoltaics, but rather from the raw heat energy of sunlight. A series of concentric mirrors, 2,650 in this case, direct the sunlight at centrally located salt tanks. The heat melts the salt, which boils water around it, and the steam generated turns the turbines. The salt tanks’ ability to retain heat is what affords the plant up to 15 hours of sunless energy generation.
175+ countries. 2000+ events. A single day to move beyond fossil fuels. Check out the video to get a sense for what happened on September 24, 350.org's Moving Planet Day.
When given a source of organic material, the bacteria will harvest its electrons by oxidizing the carbon and convert their energy into the cell's main power supply, ATP. But they have to put those electrons somewhere.
...The bad news is that this highly efficient system requires an expensive, platinum-based cathode. The authors showed that it's possible to use a cheaper, Molybdenum-based cathode, but efficiencies dropped.
Whenever I mention government subsidies for solar power, people write in to complain about wasting taxpayer and ratepayer money. Living in a state (N.J.) that consistently subsidizes the rest of the country by paying more in taxes than we receive in Federal spending, I have some sympathy for this grievance. So, yes, let’s eliminate subsidies—starting with those that make electricity from oil, gas, and coal artificially cheap. ... Besides, the solar industry is already weaning itself.
...the Saturday beginning of what looks like it will be the largest civil disobedience protest in the history of the American environmental movement.
We’ve got 2,000 people signed up to come to Washington and get arrested outside the White House between August 20 and September 3, all in an effort to persuade President Obama not to grant a permit for a new pipeline from the tar sands of Canada.
...so many of us will be wearing our Obama ’08 buttons when we get arrested: we want desperately to conjure up the surge of joy that came with that campaign....
...photoactive molecules could be the ideal solar fuel, as the right material should be transportable, affordable, and rechargeable.
...tetracarbonly-diruthenium fulvalene, requires the use of ruthenium, which is rare and expensive. Furthermore, the ruthenium compound has a volumetric energy density (watt-hours per liter) that is several times smaller than that of a standard lithium-ion battery.
Alexie Kolpak and Jeffrey Grossman from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology propose a...design [that] combines an organic photoactive molecule, azobenzene, with the ever-popular carbon nanotube.
...there are potential drawbacks, and the fact that they haven’t actually created the substance isn’t even the most substantial.
"You don't get more oil by drilling more. You just get less efficient returns. You only get more oil by drilling thoughtfully."
But Hall's EROI work (and that of students and colleagues) unsettled the energy status quo. "We never got any money to do this," he reflects. "It all happened on weekends or pro bono. No government agency is interested in the information. Most science, to be honest, promises some form of candy. EROI doesn't do that and we don't do that."
[Science News]
New technique could yield self-assembling solar cells
[National Geographic News]
A new study challenges the belief that the globe holds vast stores of coal, the world's leading and most carbon-intensive electricity fuel.
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