burfman
burfman's JournalFisticuffs Over the Route to a Clean-Energy Future
Source: NY Times
Could the entire American economy run on renewable energy alone?
This may seem like an irrelevant question, given that both the White House and Congress are controlled by a party that rejects the scientific consensus about human-driven climate change. But the proposition that it could, long a dream of an environmental movement as wary of nuclear energy as it is of fossil fuels, has been gaining ground among policy makers committed to reducing the nation’s carbon footprint. Democrats in both the United States Senate and in the California Assembly have proposed legislation this year calling for a full transition to renewable energy sources.
They are relying on what looks like a watertight scholarly analysis to support their call: the work of a prominent energy systems engineer from Stanford University, Mark Z. Jacobson. With three co-authors, he published a widely heralded article two years ago asserting that it would be eminently feasible to power the American economy by midcentury almost entirely with energy from the wind, the sun and water. What’s more, it would be cheaper than running it on fossil fuels.
And yet the proposition is hardly as solid as Professor Jacobson asserts.
In a long-awaited article published this week in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences — the same journal in which Professor Jacobson’s manifesto appeared — a group of 21 prominent scholars, including physicists and engineers, climate scientists and sociologists, took a fine comb to the Jacobson paper and dismantled its conclusions bit by bit.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/20/business/energy-environment/renewable-energy-national-academy-matt-jacobson.html?&moduleDetail=section-news-1&action=click&contentCollection=Economy®ion=Footer&module=MoreInSection&version=WhatsNext&contentID=WhatsNext&pgtype=article
It's a good entry towards thinking big to clean up our environment.
Even if we can't see how to achieve 100% renewable energy right now, we need to be moving in that direction.
The storage technology is the key to making it all work, we need to push research into better battery technology.....
Burfman................
U.S. Reports a Major Milestone in Wind and Solar Power
Source: Scientific American
Ten percent of all of the electricity generated in the U.S. in March came from wind and solar power, marking the first such milestone in U.S. history, according to a new U.S. Energy Information Administration report.
The EIA estimates that wind and solar farms likely generated 10 percent of America’s electricity in April as well, which would be another first, according to the report.
This year’s milestone shows that renewables are becoming a major source of electricity in the U.S. and can no longer be considered “alternative” energy, said Christopher Clack, CEO of the power grid modeling firm Vibrant Clean Energy and a former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration researcher.
The report’s findings represent a marked increased from March 2016, when wind and solar generated 8.6 percent of total U.S. electricity. Overall, about 7 percent of U.S. electricity comes from wind and solar annually, up from less than 1 percent a decade ago. Texas is the country’s biggest wind power producer and California is the largest solar producer.
Read more: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/u-s-reports-a-major-milestone-in-wind-and-solar-power/
Looks like our electricity production is getting greener in a measurable way.
I'm expecting the trend to continue regardless of what this administration does.
burfman......
Mark Russell last summer singing about Trump at a birthday party....
Mark Russell at a birthday party for journalist and author Myra MacPherson last summer.
burfman........
article in the nytimes: India, Once a Coal Goliath, Is Fast Turning Green
So it may not matter too much what we do politically or don't do as far as greening the planet's energy production.
As far as the rest of the world is concerned, it's going to happen anyways, we can speed it up or slow it down a bit, not stop it.
So here's to the future with clean power.
burfman...................
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/02/world/asia/india-coal-green-energy-climate.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=b-lede-package-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
India, Once a Coal Goliath, Is Fast Turning Green
Source: NY Times
MUMBAI, India — Just a few years ago, the world watched nervously as India went on a building spree of coal-fired power plants, more than doubling its capacity and claiming that more were needed. Coal output, officials said, would almost triple, to 1.5 billion tons, by 2020.
India’s plans were cited by American critics of the Paris climate accord as proof of the futility of advanced nations trying to limit their carbon output. But now, even as President Trump pulls the United States out of the pact, India has undergone an astonishing turnaround, driven in great part by a steep fall in the cost of solar power.
Experts now say that India not only has no need of any new coal-fired plants for at least a decade, given that existing plants are running below 60 percent of capacity, but that after that it could rely on renewable sources for all its additional power needs.
Rather than building coal-fired plants, it is now canceling many in the early planning stages. And this month, the government lowered its annual production target for coal to 600 million tons from 660 million.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/02/world/asia/india-coal-green-energy-climate.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=b-lede-package-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
So it may not matter too much what we do politically or don't do as far as greening the planet's energy production.
As far as the rest of the world is concerned, it's going to happen anyways, we can speed it up or slow it down a bit, not stop it.
So here's to the future with clean power.
burfman...................
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