Climate Climate & Energy

Global energy demand will grow 50 percent by 2030, says EIA

The world isn’t going to kick its energy-sucking habits anytime soon, the U.S. Energy Information Administration predicted Wednesday. By 2030, global energy demand will grow 50 percent, says the EIA report, mostly in China and other developing countries. Some 124 new nuclear plants will be built worldwide by 2030, and natural gas will be in […]

Hansen’s message to the planet

Maybe it was the thought of two decades of climate-crisis exhortation, little more heeded than words shouted at a hurricane.

Maybe it was the temporizing of the Democrats and the obstructionism of the GOP. Or it might have been the images of cities, houses and farmland of his native Iowa drowned by the latest "500-year" floods.

Perhaps it was all three. Whatever the reasons, the climate crisis' Paul Revere turned it up a few more notches in a speech yesterday (PDF) at a Congressional staff briefing in Washington D.C.

Yet James Hansen's headline-grabbing broadside against Big Oil and Big Coal CEOs may prove less significant than his full-throated advocacy of carbon tax-and-dividend as the highest priority for reducing carbon emissions and abating global warming:

A price on emissions that cause harm is essential. Yes, a carbon tax.

Climate change may force California endemic plants to migrate or die

Climate change is expected to significantly affect California’s endemic plants over the next century as temperatures rise and rainfall patterns change, according to a new study published in the journal PLoS One. Up to two-thirds of the state’s unique plants could be wiped out in their current ranges by century’s end and will have to […]

Offshore drilling has an ‘insignificant’ effect on oil prices

I am glad that so many in the energy debate have picked up on one of the two messages from my previous post (see "EIA to McCain: Drop offshore [drilling]").

But in listening to the radio and TV debates, I realize that some people have the impression that U.S. Energy Information Administration said offshore drilling might eventually lower oil prices. It did not. It found that allowing offshore drilling would have no significant effect on prices as far out into the future as the analysis projected.

Business consulting firm projects robust growth for solar and grid parity in many locations by 2020

McKinsey has a great new analysis piece: “The economics of solar power.” Overall it’s extremely optimistic, saying that despite uncertainties around technology and policy, growth in the solar sector is all but certain to be robust. Here’s a interesting chart. The size of the yellow ball is the size of the solar market in TWh. […]

Even U.S. government says human emissions are changing climate

The U.S. Climate Change Science Program (a.k.a. the Bush Administration) has issued a must-read report, Weather and Climate Extremes in a Changing Climate. It wouldn't be must-read or even big news if it weren't for the fact that

• Many environmentalists stopped talking about the extreme weather/global warming link a decade ago.
• The deniers, the delayers, and of course the Roger Pielkes of the world have pushed back against any claims that climate change is driving the extreme weather we see today. (as Chico Marx (dressed as Groucho) said "Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?")
• The media has been brow-beaten by the deniers into downplaying the connection. The journalist Ross Gelbspan has a long discussion of this in his great 2004 book, Boiling Point -- I will blog on this later.
• The Midwest is experiencing the second "500-year flood" in 13 years. (Don't worry, big media, it's all just a big coincidence like the deniers keep saying.)

CNN and clean coal

Virginia’s disappearing mountain Eden

As I reported last week, I'm in Appalachia, Va. to attend a hearing by the Virginia Air Resources Board about whether or not Virginia will permit Dominion Power to build a dirty, coal-fired power plant. It's Eden in the Mountains here -- miles and miles of green, forested mountains in every direction. Inside the forests, it's even better. My wife and I went on a hike through old growth hemlock groves (and did a trail-cleaning service project in the nearby Jefferson National Forest) with naturalist and activist Anna Hess of the Clinch Coalition and learned that this region is the most bio-diverse in the mainland United States, with different little endangered salamanders creeping around the top of every mountain and old growth hemlock groves around many corners.

Development in waste-heat-to-electricity technology

Here's a 200 year old idea with merit: A Stirling engine, modified to capture the waste heat of industrial processes to make electricity. Gar noted Stirling Energy Systems' efforts in this vein to make electricity from solar thermal collectors using a Stirling engine a year ago, but instead of the sun, a startup in my neighborhood, ReGen, is developing a Stirling that will specialize in using the low to moderate heat generated by landfill gas systems, paper mills, steel mills, chemical and petroleum refining facilities, glass ovens, cement plants, and similar locations:

Refrigeration without electricity

Here’s Adam Grossner’s brief TED talk, on his effort to create a refrigerator that doesn’t use electricity: (thanks LL!)