Climate Climate & Energy

China releases energy white paper, plans to boost renewables R&D

China has released its first-ever white paper on energy policy, stating that the country “attaches great importance to environmental protections and prevention of global climate change” and plans to give “top priority to developing renewable energy” as a long-term pollution solution. That includes wind, solar, natural gas, and nuclear, as well as a continuation of […]

New developments in solar power make ‘clean coal’ look even dumber

Let me be the last in the greenosphere to note that Nanosolar has shipped its first panels, and it’s no exaggeration to say that this moment will likely be seen as a historical turning point. For a taste of the breathless anticipation around Nanosolar, read "innovation of the year" over on PopSci (or this recent […]

Plenty of reading to occupy you over the holidays

It’s been a hectic few months in the climate/energy world, so I’ve got a lot of leftover bits and pieces waiting for attention. As in … about 35 open tabs in my browser. The last thing I want when I get back from the holidays is a browser full of guilt, so I’m dumping ’em. […]

‘Stop using so much oil’

A great little story today in Tom Rick's Inbox, from the Washington Post's military correspondent:

Renewables are pulling two directions, nationwide and local

Recently a study found that wind can serve as reliable baseload power. The key is to link wind farms together with a high-speed transmission grid. "This study implies that, if interconnected wind is used on a large scale, a third or more of its energy can be used for reliable electric power, and the remaining […]

Storage helps the sun keep shining even on cloudy days

New project and technology announcements have kept solar energy in the news lately. But, as with wind, the issues of intermittency and the grid still lurk in the shadows. Some still argue that intermittency isn't a problem, or that it can be solved without storage.

In a new piece in the Arizona Daily Star, reporter Tom Beal talks about those issues. As we've previously argued here, here, and here, energy storage has a big role to play in enabling solar and wind to compete with the big boys -- coal, gas, and nuclear.

The engineers that actually operate the grid on a minute-to-minute, day-to-day basis know that intermittency is a technological problem that must be solved one way or another if solar and wind are to generate more than a token percentage of our electricity. Storage needs its own day in the sun, and now that sun is in the limelight, maybe storage will finally get some respect as well.

Full piece below the fold:

Me on Hannity & Colmes

Here I am on Hannity & Colmes, 21 Dec. 2007. Mark Steyn was sitting in for Sean Hannity. The other guest is Chris Horner of CEI. There’s some satisfaction in taking shots at Horner and CEI. God knows they get off too easy most of the time. And watching Horner bumble around and make no […]

NYT’s Revkin gives Inhofe a pass

So Sen. James "global warming is a hoax" Inhofe (R-Okla.) issues a report in which he claims:

Over 400 prominent scientists from more than two dozen countries recently voiced significant objections to major aspects of the so-called "consensus" on man-made global warming.

"Padded" would be an extremely generous description of this list of "prominent scientists." Some would use the word "laughable" (though not the N.Y. Times' Andy Revkin, see below). For instance, since when have economists, who are pervasive on this list, become scientists, and why should we care what they think about climate science?

I'm not certain a dozen on the list would qualify as "prominent scientists," and many of those, like Freeman Dyson -- a theoretical physicist -- have no expertise in climate science whatsoever. I have previously debunked his spurious and uninformed claims, although I'm not sure why one has to debunk someone who seriously pushed the idea of creating a rocket ship powered by detonating nuclear bombs! Seriously.

Even Ray Kurzweil, not a scientist but a brilliant inventor, is on the list. Why? Because he apparently told CNN and the Washington Post:

These slides that Gore puts up are ludicrous, they don't account for anything like the technological progress we're going to experience ... None of the global warming discussions mention the word "nanotechnology." Yet nanotechnology will eliminate the need for fossil fuels within 20 years ... I think global warming is real but it has been modest thus far -- 1 degree f. in 100 years. It would be concern if that continued or accelerated for a long period of time, but that's not going to happen.

And people say I'm a techno-optimist. So Kurzweil actually believes in climate science -- rather than the reverse, as Inhofe claims -- but thinks catastrophic global warming won't happen because of a techno-fix that stops emissions. If wishes were horses ... everyone would get trampled to death. In the real world, energy breakthroughs are very rare, as we've seen, and it's even rarer when they make a difference in under several decades.

Then we have the likes of this from Inhofe's list:

Safe, energy-efficient holiday lights

I hope you've all bought LED lighting for your trees -- they are much more efficient and safer, too, because they generate less heat! We have, and so has the White House and Rockefeller Center (see below).

Here is an Electric Power Research Institute fact sheet (PDF) to answer all your questions on LED vs. conventional Christmas lights (PDF).

Happy Holidays!

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

British duo’s carbon-negative road trip fueled by chocolate

This weekend, while you’re finishing up the last of the chocolates in your advent calendar — oh admit it, you ate them all already — Britons Andy Pag and John Grimshaw will be rolling to the end of a chocolate-fueled road trip. The duo claim that their trip from Poole, England through the Sahara desert […]