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  • From Dating to Dingoes

    Attention tree huggers Barking up the wrong tree when it comes to your love life? Branch out with DateforTrees.com, which donates an evergreen for every month you’re a hopeless loser paid member. Just lay off the acorny openers. Dropping the ball To protect a major reservoir from dangerous chemical reactions, L.A. water officials are going […]

    Grist staff Culture

  • Can your pocketbook save the planet? The author of Big Green Purse says yes

    Diane MacEachern. Mary Poppins may have had a giant carpetbag from which she could pull coat racks and potted plants. But author Diane MacEachern has something even better: A big, green purse that, she says, carries the power to influence the marketplace to “create a cleaner, greener world.” The concept behind MacEachern’s book Big Green […]

    Grist staff Culture

  • Lovins and Sheikh defend definition and record of micropower

    This is a guest essay from Amory B. Lovins and Imran Sheikh of the Rocky Mountain Institute. It is part two of a series; see part one here.

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    Part two of David Bradish's critical look at "The Nuclear Illusion" (PDF) raises two additional issues to which we respond here. As in his first critique, it appears that, unable to rebut and hence unwilling to address our paper's data and logic, Mr. Bradish must content himself with trying to manufacture an illusion of confusion.

    Does RMI's data fit their definition [of micropower]?

    Yes, precisely; it just doesn't fit various other definitions that Mr. Bradish has invented on his own. We clearly defines micropower (an Economist magazine term) thus at pp. 11-12:

    1. onsite generation of electricity (at the customer, not at a remote utility plant) -- usually cogeneration of electricity plus recovered waste heat (outside the U.S. this is usually called CHP -- combined-heat-and-power): this is about half gas-fired, and saves at least half the carbon and much of the cost of the separate power plants and boilers it displaces; [and] 2. distributed renewables -- all renewable power sources except big hydro plants, which are defined here as dams larger than 10 megawatts (MW).

    Mr. Bradish arbitrarily and wrongly assumes "that the size of 'micropower' plants is 10 MW or less," then claims this is our definition and contradicts our data. It's not and it doesn't. Our 10 MW limit applies only to small hydro, distinguishing it from big hydro using the most conservative criterion. Any power source except small hydro can be larger than 10 MW but still meet our micropower definition: WADE's onsite-fueled-generator definition, which we've adopted, includes onsite units up to somewhat over 180 MWe for gas turbines (though few actual units are over 120 MWe) and up to 60 MWe for engines, as well as onsite (nearly always cogenerating) steam turbines of any size if they're in China and India; however, WADE's database excludes steam turbines elsewhere, and all units below 1 MWe.

    Grist staff Climate & Energy

  • Billy Crystal and David Letterman spoof ‘we’ campaign

    David Letterman and Billy Crystal spoof the "we" campaign:

    Grist staff Culture