Tag Archives: Environment

Stuttering Energy Transitions: Germany – Storage

As I have mentioned before, electric utilities must necessarily store electricity in order to keep up with the fluctuations in consumer demands (July 29 – August 12 blogs). For example, all around the world (where people are connected to electrical … Continue reading

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Stuttering Energy Transitions: Germany – Producers

As I discussed in the in the last blog, the feed-in tariff that was introduced as a key element in the German energy transition has resulted in the Germans paying among the highest electricity rates in the world. It was … Continue reading

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Stuttering Energy Transitions: Germany – Consumers

The German Renewable Energy Act (German: Erneuerbare-Energien-Gesetz, EEG) was designed to encourage cost reductions based on improved energy efficiency from economies of scale over time. The Act came into force in the year 2000 and was the initial spark behind … Continue reading

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Stuttering Energy Transitions: Germany

2015 is knocking at the door. I just got The Economist’s “The World in 2015” special issue both in print and digital form. It’s full of numbers, predictions and stories. Most of its numbers and predictions are optimistic extrapolations of … Continue reading

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The Price of Wobbling

Thanksgiving is around the corner (at the time of writing – by the time this is posted it will be a few days after) and the semester is just about over. This time of the year the students are focusing … Continue reading

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Yes We Can 3: The Alcohol Debate

This will be the last in the series of blogs on EROI that started with John Morgan’s guest blog (November 4). The set of data in all three blogs was based on a paper by Weißbach et al. that suggested … Continue reading

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Yes We Can 2: The Weißbach Paper

A few weeks ago, John Morgan wrote a guest blog here (November 4, 2014) called “The Catch-22 of Energy Storage and EROI.” My conversation with him started by way of a Twitter discussion of David MacKay’s paper on the long … Continue reading

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Back to Sustainable Energy Transition: Scenarios and Progress

The IPCC’s original charge is as follows: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the leading international body for the assessment of climate change. It was established by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization … Continue reading

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Back to the Sustainable Energy Transition: The Physics of Sustainability and Some Tweets About it.

In the last blog I strongly advocated simplifying the conversation about climate change, focusing on how we can get from the present “business as usual” scenario to an “environmentally friendly” scenario that will not result in an environment inhospitable to … Continue reading

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Make it Simple, Please!

Many years ago, I was invited to a small gathering of scientists that did work on solar cells. The invitation came from the Department of Energy (DOE), which coordinates funding to these projects. The conference was focused on creating a … Continue reading

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