Category Archives: Energy

by Peter Davies

China has big plans for low-carbon electricity, primarily to reduce air pollution but also with the intent of reducing CO2 emissions and building a true 21st century power grid. Is it going to succeed?

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by Planning Engineer and Rud Istvan

Just because something works in one place’s circumstances does not mean it will work elsewhere under different circumstances.    Continue reading →

by Peter Lang

A revolution could be achieved with nuclear power if we remove the factors that caused the large cost increases during and since the 1970’s, i.e. return to the learning rates demonstrated before 1970.

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by Evan Hillebrand

Energy security is complicated, and multi-dimensional.  It goes beyond over-simplified notions of energy self-sufficiency or energy independence. It’s about where our energy comes from and its the cost, reliability, sustainability, and scale of our energy use. Technical, economic, geopolitical and other factors all play a role, and one needs to understand how they interact. Energy security is not just a matter of energy; it’s about how energy affects national security.

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by Yousaf Butt

Current nuclear technology is not a sensible solution to the climate change challenge – but research on “new-nuclear” and renewables infrastructure should be aggressively pursued.

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by Peter Lang

The cheapest way to decarbonize the British electricity system is with all or mostly nuclear power.

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by Davis Swan

There is a consensus in many countries that burning coal to generate electricity is something that needs to be phased out as quickly as possible. The Clean Power Plan in the U.S. has that as one of its most likely outcomes and there have been explicit commitments to retire coal-fired generation plants by governments all over the world.

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by Davis Swan

There is an ongoing debate regarding the value and/or wisdom of the German Government’s implementation of an energy transformation – the Energiewende.

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by Peter Lang

J. P. Morgan recently published an excellent report ‘Deep de-carbonisation of electricity grids‘. Below are excerpts from the report and some comment added by me.

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by Rud Istvan

From the utility grid perspective, a fundamental problem with wind and solar is intermittency.

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by Judith Curry

How driverless cars will change our lives.

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by Judith Curry

More wood being burnt from British woods than since industrial revolution. – David Rose

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by Rud Istvan and Planning Engineer                                                 

There are many journal articles, media stories, NGO papers, and blogs claiming solar already has, or soon will, reach general grid parity. Grid parity  is when the cost of solar equals the cost of conventional electricity alternatives. It should also mean equal without subsidies like feed in tariffs (FiT), net metering, and tax credits.

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by Planning Engineer and Rud Istvan 

Wind turbines have become a familiar sight in many countries as a favorite CAGW mitigation means. Since at least 2010, the US Energy Information Agency (EIA) has been assuring NGOs and the public that wind would be cost competitive by now, all things considered. Many pro-wind organizations claim wind is cost competitive today.  But is it?

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by Planning Engineer

Some of the denizens have requested an introduction to transmission planning and a discussion of how the transmission system is impacted by renewable resources.

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by Peter Lang

Wind turbines are less effective and CO2 abatement cost is higher than commonly assumed.

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by Planning Engineer

There is a lot of public debate around the rates utilities charge solar customers, but very little of it shows an awareness of the embedded technical and philosophical issues.

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