Latest Articles
-
-
-
Colbert on offshore drilling
As you can see toward the end there, everything comes down to the fact that nobody — outside of rarefied energy experts — believes that alternatives to fossil fuels are here, ready, and reliable. Everything hinges on getting that message out.
-
Cleveland brewery attempts energy recyling yet is foiled by regulation
Last week Cleveland Scene wrote about a local brewery that is recovering its waste heat. They set out to convert the heat into electricity and useful steam for their brewery. In a great quote, the owner Patrick Conway says: “When our engineer explained this technology to us,” says Patrick, “it was like putting wheels on […]
-
Ginormous solar plants to be built in California
Two gigantic solar plants will be built in California under deals announced Thursday between utility Pacific Gas & Electric and companies OptiSolar and Sun Power. Together, the plants could generate 800 megawatts of electricity at peak capacity, enough to power 239,000 homes. (Perspective: The total peak capacity of every photovoltaic panel in the U.S. as […]
-
-
The hybrid solar home, part 2
My thoughts have turned lately to the challenge of heating and powering residential homes in the Pacific Northwest with renewable energy. My goal was not to just find a way to reduce fossil fuel use, but to eliminate it. When I started this exercise I wasn’t at all sure it could be done (in an […]
-
‘Clean’ coal pollutes more, finds new study
This should be obvious, but of course you never hear it mentioned in stories about carbon capture and sequestration (CCS): capturing and sequestering carbon requires lots of energy; thus, plants that do it have to burn more coal to create that extra energy; thus, the other pollutants created by mixing, transporting, and burning coal will […]
-
Why do more men than women support nuclear power?
One other bit from the recent Rasmussen results caught my eye: More than twice as many likely McCain voters (73%) like his idea of building more nuclear plants versus 35% of potential Obama voters. Similarly, 72% of men favor building more plants as opposed to only 40% of women. More women (43%) are against the […]
-
Number of ocean dead zones increasing dramatically, study says
As if fish didn’t have enough to worry about, now those near coastal areas are threatened by an unprecedented number of dead zones, says a study being published Friday in the journal Science. The number of dead zones — oxygen-deprived areas that can no longer support marine life — has doubled every decade since the […]
