Bibliologue by Elizabeth Cline / Seedmagazine.com / July 8, 2009 / The Coming Oil-Free Utopia
In $20 a Gallon, Christopher Steiner argues that rising oil prices will not unravel society, but rather change it for the better.
The price of oil has stabilized since last summer’s SUV-stalling spike, but our supply of oil—a finite resource being [...]
…the technology already exists to make huge reductions in greenhouse emissions from coal, allowing power companies to begin cutting the carbon footprint of coal today. Instead, advanced-technology coal power sits on the shelf while regulators wait to see what happens with a project that may be just an expensive boondoggle.
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?
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
With real clean coal plants using gasification there’s no ash sludge, no “wet dump” containment ponds, no soluble toxics, and no risk of billions of gallon of ash spills in Harriman or other town.
Continue reading about Clean Coal Says No To Future Ash Spills
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 [...]
