There’s nothing like a big, heavy low tech solution to provide a shot of optimism that a mile deep gusher can actually be brought under control. So here it comes. A 125 ton (250,000 pound) reinforced concrete house that you plant over the gusher, connect a 5 mile pipe to its chimney and route all that crude up to surface ships for processing, storage and shipment ashore.
Continue reading about Stopping The Gulf Oil Spill – This Might Actually Work
Solar, wind and other renewables generating at least 25% of our electrical energy backed up mostly by natural gas fired turbines and maybe a few more nukes is the most likely scenario over the next 25 years. As coal plants retire, a mix of new renewables and gas fired plants will take their place.
The “tragedy of the commons” articulated by Garrett Hardin in 1968 is now being played out on a planetary scale on our ultimate “commons”, the global climate in which we all live.
Continue reading about Climate Change and Tragedy Of The Commons
If you accept that past is prologue when it comes to human behavior then we have all the data we need to know, and not just guess at, how much additional power we need each year over the next couple of decades if not beyond – 15,000 megawatts (“MW”) as it turns out.
Continue reading about USA Needs 15,000 Megawatts of Additional Power Each Year!
Is it futile for the U.S. to move away from fossil energy, at great economic cost and risk to ourselves, while the rest of the world ramps up cheap, carbon intensive energy, more than undoing any good we might have done, and use it to beat us senseless in the competitive global marketplace?
For real change to happen on energy policy, we need federally mandated energy portfolio standards, including one for clean coal, with big teeth and no safety valves. It will cost what it needs to cost in order get clean energy and we’ll all adjust to this new reality accordingly. Our newly minted President Obama has arrived in Washington at a time in our history when the country if open to changes, even big changes. Time will tell if the man from Yes-We-Can can turn his mandate into a Yes-You-Will for the energy industry.
Continue reading about Getting Clean Coal Done – Yes You Will
Notwithstanding some movement towards solar in states like California and to a far lesser extent New Jersey and Connecticut (the majority of which is small distributed roof-top projects), the vast majority of U.S. utilities have barely budged towards adopting solar in any meaningful way. Not that they aren’t aware of solar or aren’t sudying it mind you. They just aren’t buying into big megawatts of it. Why is that?
Continue reading about Why Utilities Aren’t Running Towards Solar Power
Now and then I will post items written by others because they are articulate, visionary and compelling and above all informative and practical. A few years back I had the pleasure of working for David Crane at NRG Energy where we pursued real clean coal development in the Northeast – IGCC with carbon capture and [...]
Continue reading about Putting the Common Sense into Sustainability
Is clean coal a fiction or half-truth that forms part of an ideology, i.e. a myth? As with most things, it depends on your point of view and your own ideology. If building a clean coal power plant is simply a matter of a fat check book, willpower and a room full of engineers, an [...]
The last weekend before the recent presidential election, a San Francisco Chronicle interview found Mr. Obama stating, “Build the coal plants if they want, but it will bankrupt them if they do.” Not surprisingly, the conservative herd quickly wolfed down this final slab of red meat and lept to the conclusion that the Obama administration [...]
