Articles by David Roberts

Intermittency and storage

One of the annoying arguments against solar and wind power is "intermittency" -- the fact that the sun doesn't always shine, and the wind doesn't always blow. This allegedly proves that solar and wind can't be anything more than add-ons to a more reliable coal-based grid.

I say "annoying" because I don't have a solid, easy comeback. But it something about it sticks in my craw.

The obvious way to address the problem would be storage -- store the energy and use it when the sun/wind isn't "on." But store it how? If we ever produced electric cars, or even plug-in hybrids, the batteries therein could be used as a kind of distributed storage, feeding into the grid when circumstances require it. Or we could develop industrial-scale batteries. I've heard some interesting stuff about using methanol to store the energy. And of course there's always hydrogen fuel cells.

Robert Rapier discusses storing wind energy as compressed air, based on this MSNBC story. Sounds promising to me.

Anybody out there know more about this stuff? What's the best way to overcome intermittency?

Will the ESA force Bush’s hand on climate change?

I've heard several times that the minute the Bush administration admits that a) an animal is endangered, and b) the endangerment results from climate change, the Endangered Species Act will kick in and force it to take steps to address the problem.

Not being a legal type, I don't know how solid this line of reasoning is. But apparently the Bushies just admitted that coral is endangered by the effects of global warming. So if the ESA is going to force their hand, we'll find out soon when all the lawsuits start coming in.

Beyond organic: A new label

If you haven't been following the discussion under this post about Wal-Mart selling organic food, I recommend you catch up. It's quite insightful, with a range of views well-expressed.

One note of consensus seems to be this: "Organic," at least as denoted by the USDA label, falls well short of genuinely sustainable agriculture. Tom is better qualified than I to give a comprehensive description of the latter, but one important element is locality. Food that is grown, sold, and eaten within a single regional foodshed is closer to sustainable than organic mega-farms.

So, as a couple of people have suggested, perhaps one step in the right direction is a new label, to supplement "organic." This raises two questions:

Wind power 101

Discussion of environment and energy issues is coming so fast and furious these days that I could spend all day simply reading it -- which would make me a less-than-useful blogger. So I'll try to pick a few good bits to share.

Jerome a Paris, who writes at dKos and its sister site, European Tribune, is the kind of writer I'd be if I'd studied something useful in school, with numbers and facts and such, rather than philosophy. I highly recommend two recent posts: one is a brief, cogent summary of wind power, listing its benefits and drawbacks; the second is an exhaustive, detailed rebuttal of wind-power skeptics.

Everything you've ever wanted to know about wind power but were afraid to ask.

(via EnergyBulletin, of course)