Germany gets only 3.3% of its energy consumption from wind and solar. Ignore the headlines « Carbon Counter. Germany gets only 3.3% of its energy consumption from wind and solar. Ignore the headlines Posted on Updated on “Give a man a reputation as an early riser and he can sleep til noon” – Mark Twain. There is apparently no greater leader on climate change than Germany. Here is some evidence. But where does Germany’s climate change reputation come from? This planet saving reputation instead comes from what Germany has supposedly achieved with renewables.
Counting is instructive about the realities of renewables in Germany. Does that sound like a revolution? The 3.3% figure above tells us that renewables are in fact marginal to Germany’s energy system. The answer is easy to find by googling and searching social media. Germany Just Got 78 Percent Of Its Electricity From Renewable Sources Another popular variant are headlines about German solar output exceeding 50% of electricity demand.
Let’s quantify this. How often does this happen? I have done this in the graph below. Note on data Like this: Big Hydro. Renewables. Leslie Dewan. About 19% of the electricity in the U.S. today is nuclear-generated—enormous plants that generate power by way of uranium fuel rods, which heat up water to create steam and drive turbines. The downside: the risk of a meltdown or radioactive leak, plus lots of toxic waste. Leslie Dewan, along with colleague Mark Massie, designed a "molten salt" technology, wherein the uranium is dissolved in a hot salt mixture. A molten salt plant could ideally run on spent nuclear fuel (solving the latter problem) and neatly eliminate risks of steam explosions (solving the former). Dewan, who holds a PhD in nuclear engineering, has spent the past year raising $6 million in financing to get the company through its experimental stage, which was tricky, she says, given that "our returns were 10-plus years out.
" Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund made a large investment. Bonus Round Where or how do you seek out creative inspiration? What is one thing about your job that you think would surprise people? The Death of the Green Energy Movement. Elon Musk wants to revolutionize our energy system — with batteries. Most people think of Tesla as a company that builds flashy — and expensive — luxury electric cars. But now Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, has even bigger plans than vehicles. He wants to make batteries a core part of Tesla's business, with the not-so-modest goal of transforming the world's electricity system.
There's a certain logic to this idea: Tesla is already making batteries for its electric cars. But batteries could potentially have broader applications, too. They could help homes and utilities make better use of solar power, charging up when the sun's out and saving power for when it's needed later. "Our goal is to fundamentally change the way the world uses energy" Toward that end, Musk has launched Tesla Energy to promote new uses for his batteries. Musk unveiled a new lithium-ion battery that people can buy for their homes, called the Powerwall. This isn't a brand-new type of battery. Batteries could boost rooftop solar — though most people likely won't go "off grid" The hitch? Germany’s energy policy is expensive, harmful and short-sighted.
How the Electricity World has Changed. In the very near future (maybe even as early as even next week), the U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether or not to hear a case known as EPSA v. FERC. Hidden within these dueling acronyms is a vitally important resource known as demand response. Although few people even know this tool exists, it invisibly benefits the life of many Americans. Simply put, demand response is an innovative tool that rewards people who use less electricity during times of peak, or high, energy demand. This may sound simple, but in a world where the arrow has pointed in one direction for over 100 years (from energy provider to user), saying it is a change from business as usual would be an understatement. As a result, demand response and a court case involving the clean energy resource, EPSA v.
The agency behind the curtain The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) sits in a nondescript building on a nondescript street in the heart of the Washington, D.C. Which brings us back to FERC. The old guard. German Companies Take Back the Power. A Thorium 'Battery' Startup. What is the definition of a nuclear battery? A new MIT startup wants to empower remote locations with their nano-nuclear battery at a price competitive with today’s dirty diesel generators.
Out of MIT comes another interesting nuclear startup, UPower Technologies. The company was founded by three nuclear engineers and is targeting off the grid heat and electricity markets, aiming to replace dirty and expensive diesel generators which is today’s solution for this type of remote locations. The reactor is a container-sized, plug-and-play nuclear thermal battery producing 7MW thermal or 2MW electrical energy for 12 years without refueling. Not too much is known about the core technologies except that it is fuel agnostic; it can use thorium, uranium or recycled fuel, and does so in a solid form they call nano-nuclear. UPower has won funding from MIT Clean Energy Prize and the Boston accelerator program MassChallenge, and is now in the hands of the famous Y Combinator for further funding. Power Generation & Storage. Renewables and Feasibility. When discussing the growth of renewable energy there are two rather common mistakes. First, thinking that the capacity of a renewable power plant is directly comparable with that of a fossil fuel or nuclear power plant.
Second, thinking that energy consumption and electricity consumption are the same thing. The first mistake can lead to incredibly uninformative headlines. "New renewables capacity greater than fossil fuel capacity," and so on. Now, what do these headlines mean? And we can even be looking at order of magnitude differences. The second mistake is equally common. How much can stating renewables growth in terms of capacity, generation of electricity or energy consumption make a difference?. Looking first in terms of capacity, using EIA's data for installed capacity. We can then move things things up a level, and think about electricity generation. Finally, consider primary energy consumption, that is all of the energy we consume. Connect: Authored by: Robert Wilson. Nuclear power: Environmentalists need to view nuclear power realistically - latimes. What a strange turn of events. Instead of uniting the environmental movement in renewed opposition to nuclear power, the Fukushima disaster in Japan has divided it still further.
An increasing number of green advocates, including some very prominent voices, have declared their support for nuclear power as a clean energy option, even as radioactive water accumulates and the timeline for cleaning up the contaminated areas extends by decades. Can they be serious? They can. The irony of Fukushima is that in forcing us all to confront our deepest fears about the dangers of nuclear power, we find many of them to be wildly irrational -- based on scare stories propagated through years of unchallenged mythology and the repeated exaggerations of self-proclaimed "experts" in the anti-nuclear movement. The science on radiation tells us that the effects of Fukushima are serious but so far much less so than some of the more hyperbolic media coverage might suggest.
Is Renewable Energy looking like a ‘new religion’? | Brave New Climate. Guest Post by Martin Nicholson. Martin studied mathematics, engineering and electrical sciences at Cambridge University in the UK and graduated with a Masters degree in 1974. He published a peer-reviewed book on low-carbon energy systems in 2012: The Power Makers’ Challenge: and the need for Fission Energy Firstly, what does renewable energy (RE) actually mean? Wikipedia says renewable energy refers to the provision of energy via renewable resources which are naturally replenished as fast as being used. In “The myth of renewable energy” (Dawn Stover, published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists), Stover believes that “renewable energy” is a meaningless term with no established standards.
RE certainly needs to deliver energy that we can readily use – more than just the RE resources (sunlight, wind, etc.). Renewable energy converters require the use of steel, copper, concrete and rare earth elements plus all the land on which to build these converters. Don’t get me wrong. Like this: E06 Is Nuclear Power Safe. What’s the most energy-efficient kind of light? Q. Does it save energy to burn candles instead of running an eco-bulb? I currently have one 18W compact fluorescent in my lounge. Please don’t say this is a burning question. Dave C. Dunedin A. Working, reading, or relaxing by candlelight? To answer your question, we must turn to math (and a little conjecture).
Now we need to figure out how much carbon is required to gin up those .036 kWh. Still with me? Still, these questions can be fun, so on to candles. But wait, Dave: We can still do better. Both light bulbs and candles have some impact associated with their production, naturally. One more thing to add to the scale here: LEDs last a looooong time. In short, David, switching your current CFL to an LED is the biggest-impact change you can make in that lounge of yours. Ambiantly, Umbra. Nuclear Power in the United Kingdom |UK Nuclear Energy. (Updated 22 October 2015) The UK has 16 reactors generating about 18% of its electricity and most of these are to be retired by 2023.The country has full fuel cycle facilities including major reprocessing plants.The UK has implemented a very thorough assessment process for new reactor designs and their siting.The first of some 19 GWe of new-generation plants is expected to be on line by 2025.
The government aims to have 16 GWe of new nuclear capacity operating by 2030, with no restriction on foreign equity.Each of three major projects involved in new nuclear build has a reactor vendor involved – with 10%, 60% and 100% of equity respectively. In the late 1990s, nuclear power plants contributed around 25% of total annual electricity generation in the UK, but this has gradually declined as old plants have been shut down and ageing-related problems affect plant availability.
Total capacity at the end of 2012 was 94.5 GWe (according to International Energy Agency data). Reactor life extensions. The Left vs. the Climate. Ever since Marx’s day, leftists have been straining to spy the terminal crisis of capitalism on the horizon. It’s been a frustrating vigil. Whatever the upheaval confronting it — world war, depression, communist revolution, the Carter administration — a seemingly cornered capitalism always wriggled free and came back more (and occasionally less) heedless, rapacious, crass, and domineering than before. Now comes global warming, a cataclysm seemingly so dire that it cannot be finessed with reformist half-measures, so all-encompassing that capitalism would have to leave the planet to dodge it. For many on the Left, capitalism is at the heart of climate change: the crisis of over-combustion stems from the capitalist dynamic of overproduction and overconsumption, all driven by the logic of over-concentration of profits in the hands of the wealthy few.
It was almost inevitable that Naomi Klein, the Left’s preeminent celebrity journalist, would make herself the mouthpiece of this mind-wave. The true costs of our electricity. Electricity production in Germany | Energy Charts. The Role of Nuclear Power in a Low Carbon Economy · Sustainable Development Commission. Prepared as the SDC's input to the UK Government's 2006 Energy Review, The role of nuclear power in a low carbon economy draws together the most comprehensive evidence base available to find that there is no justification for bringing forward a new nuclear programme at the present time.
Based on eight new research papers, the SDC report is a balanced examination of the advantages and disadvantages of nuclear power. We recognise that nuclear power has many benefits, among them its status as a low carbon technology, and its impressive safety record in the UK. We also acknowledge that nuclear could generate large quantities of electricity, contribute to stabilising CO2 emissions and add to the diversity of the UK's energy supply. However, the research establishes that even if the UK's existing nuclear capacity were doubled, it would only result in an 8% cut in CO2 emissions by 2035. 1.
On balance, the SDC finds that these problems outweigh the advantages of nuclear. » Is nuclear the answer? Broadcast Yourself. The Energy From Thorium FoundationNuclear Ammonia - The Energy From Thorium Foundation. The liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) has the potential to make electric power cheaper than from coal. Typical costs for electric power bought by US utilities average around 5-6 cents per kilowatt hour generated by coal, hydro, and natural gas sources. Government regulations are requiring utilities to buy solar- and wind-generated power at 20-30 cents/kWh. LFTR’s potential cost advantage of 3 cents/kWh is the economic incentive to stop burning CO2-emitting coal, without economically injurious carbon taxes and politically obscured feed-in tariffs.
In this way LFTR can improve both the environment and the economy. Petroleum’s high energy density and a century of engineering experience in its use have made it essential to the US economy, and our thirst for it runs to 260 billion gallons per year, of which we import 65% at a cost of $400 billion per year. Hydrogen has been touted as the perfect fuel, burning cleanly and emitting only water vapor into the atmosphere after combustion. David MacKay FRS: : Contents. Off-the-grid. Introduction to NH3 Fuel | NH3 Fuel Association. NH3 Fuel Bus, Belgium A Brief History An early utilization of liquid NH3 as a fuel for motor-buses took place in Belgium during 1943.
Emeric Kroch developed these ammonia / coal gas hybrid motors to keep public transportation in operation despite the extreme diesel shortages of World War II. This motor-bus fleet logged tens of thousands of miles (and there’s anecdotal evidence that some individuals used the ammonia pumps built for the bus fleet to fuel their personal cars during this period). NH3 Fuel, X-15 The X-15 rocket plane set speed and altitude records in the 1960s, powered by NH3. NH3 Fuel Truck, USA In the summer of 2007 , this NH3 vehicle drove across America, from Detroit to San Francisco, powered by a mix of ammonia and gasoline. Practical Today NH3 is everywhere: huge amounts are shipped, piped, and stored in every industrial country around the world. New Jobs Practical alternative energy solutions are also economic solutions.
Safe and Sustainable The Stick NH3 Fuel Chart The Carrot. WEO2014SUM. Pro-nuclear greens ‘dare not speak out’ When you talk too much for Twitter. Time To Stop Funding Climate Change — BLUEdot register. In 1949 the United States consumed 32 quadrillion BTUs of energy. By 2013, our total energy consumption grew to almost 98 quadrillion BTU’s. Per person, that is an average of 314 million BTU’s, almost 50% increase in per capita consumption. Over that 64 year time span, that works out to an annual increase of 0.6%. Considering all of the technology driven lifestyle changes that have taken place in those 7 decades, the increase actually seems pretty reasonable. What might surprise you is that throughout that entire time frame, renewable energy has played a role in powering our country. With the veritable explosion of clean forms of energy over the last few decades you would expect that the share of renewable energy in our national mix of power would be rapidly rising.
Statistical Review of World Energy 2014 | About BP. 20140221_DraftOpinion.pdf. Compact Fusion. Last Hours.
Wind. Solar.