Tag Archives: Nuclear

Back to the United States: Smaller Scope, Bigger Hope?

Lately I have been looking at Canada’s progress in the stuttering energy transition, however the United States might be a better focal point for assessing the impact that bottom-up policies (from smaller regions below the level of sovereign states) can … Continue reading

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Back to the Stuttering Transition – One Scale Down from Sovereign States: British Columbia

One of the lessons that I learned at the Vancouver conference was to start thinking a bit smaller when talking and writing about the global energy transition. From the beginning, I have referred to this as a stuttering energy transition … Continue reading

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Back from Vancouver

I have just returned from Vancouver, Canada, where I attended the Seventh Climate Change Symposium. This is the same forum held in previous years in Reykjavik, Iceland (July 2014), Mauritius (July 2013) and Seattle (July 2012). I attend these conferences … Continue reading

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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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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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Yes We Can! :(

Yesterday (November 4th) was Election Day in the US. It ended in a big victory for the Republicans, with a matching defeat for the Democrats and President Obama. It will be much more difficult for the President to push an … Continue reading

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The Missing Link – Energy Storage

In my last blog (July 8, 2014), I tried to summarize my goals for this blog, and take account of my progress to date. I ended with a short paragraph that described my efforts to educate my readers on the … Continue reading

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