Latest Articles
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Demand destruction is driving prices down, but is that a good thing?
As Joe says, Americans are driving less: "Americans drove 53.2 billion fewer miles November through June than they did over the same eight-month period a year ago…" Consequently, demand for oil is down to a five-year low, according to the American Petroleum Institute. Not hard to figure out what’s going on here — as Matt […]
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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.
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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‘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 […]
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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 […]
