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Solar and Wind Energy: Value in Restating the Obvious about Renewables
George Orwell once said “Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.”In this vein, here is Kevin Bullis in today’s MIT Technology Review:Siemens says it would make sense to build solar power plants in sunny...
Wind Energy Growing Faster than Coal in China: False Math
In a recent Slate piece Ramez Naam argues:In almost every way you cut it, China is already taking a much more aggressive approach toward climate change than the United States is.This is a rather bold claim seems perfectly fitted to Carl...
Renewable Energy's Popularity: Support for Wind Farms?
How many people support renewables or nuclear power, or for that matter fracking? To find the answer, most commentators will just pluck a value from the nearest opinion poll to hand, however a closer to look at these polls shows that they should be...
Bill McKibben Mistaken on German Solar Energy
Bill McKibben is someone who regularly inveighs us to “do the math” on climate change. There are however two sides to this equation: where emissions come from and what they do. Unfortunately McKibben too often makes statements about energy that...
Germany’s Nuclear Energy Phaseout: The Timetable
By the end of 2022 Germany will have no nuclear power plants remaining. I have covered why this policy is folly elsewhere, so won’t cover it again here. Instead let us consider in a little detail how things will pan out in the next decade. To put...
German Coal and Solar Energy: A Self Defeating Scenario
8.4 GW. This is the total capacity of coal plants under construction in Germany today. Add this to what was opened last year and we have a total of 10.6 GW of new coal online in the years 2012-2015.These numbers probably don’t mean too much to...
Bill McKibben Gets the Math Wrong on Fracking
Gas is leaking from pipes beneath New York City and Bill McKibben has confidently informed us that this is simply more evidence that the climate benefits of shale gas are much worse than many claim. Unfortunately the only real message from the...
A Rough Guide to Offshore Wind Energy and Geography [VIDEO]
It has become a cliche to call the seas around the UK the “Saudi Arabia of offshore wind.” The reasons for this are relatively straightforward. The ideal conditions for an offshore wind farm is a lot of wind and a not particularly deep stretch of...
The Limits of Biomass: UK Energy Needs
A simple thought experiment. What if instead of building the 3.2 GW Hinkley C nuclear power station, the UK built a biomass plant instead? We would need to do two things: build the power plant and gather up the biomass for the plant. The first is...
Wind vs. Nuclear Energy in the UK: A Question of Scale
Occasionally the Google search referrals I get for this blog give me ideas for a post, and today I got a rather topical one. The UK government has just given planning approval for the first new nuclear power plant in almost 20 years, and evidently...
Climate, Energy, and Dangers of Fear-Mongering
Do wind farms make you sick? Not so, according to new research out of Australia. It appears more likely that “wind farm syndrome” is caused not by the turning of wind turbines, but by scaremongering about wind turbines. What’s quite notable...
Debunking Claim that Wind Energy Increases Emissions
“Wind farms do not reduce emissions.” A commonly used talking point by those opposed to wind farms. This talking point is evidently enjoyed so much by some that this week the Global Warming Policy Foundation reposted a story from Natural News on the...
