Now Canada is trying a basic income, Britain can ignore it no longer. If he lives up to his promises – and the early signs are good – Justin Trudeau is shaping up to one of the most ambitious liberal premierships in modern history.
He has welcomed refugees into Canada while EU nations have begun a backlash against them, stood up to Putin over land grabs in the North Pole and, in a show of respect across the ideological divide, has confirmed he will work with Donald Trump should the situation become necessary. He’s even been photographed with two Canadian baby panda bears this week. Little practical impact there, but sterling PR work; he knows how to polish a reputation, the perfect veil under which to smuggle policies so radical that they had previously been cast adrift. If you thought solar was going to hurt utilities, get a load of solar+storage. As I wrote in my previous post, power utilities are pushing back against rooftop solar, but by doing so they are only accelerating the development of solar+storage, which may prove to be an even bigger threat.
Residential solar+storage (my main focus in this post, rather than commercial or utility-scale versions) refers to a) an array of rooftop solar panels connected to b) some means of energy storage, usually a battery or batteries, controlled by c) smart software that enables the system to communicate with the grid. Adding storage to solar radically expands its value — the whole is more than the sum of the parts. The ability to store energy gives the solar homeowner more control over her energy; she can shift her time of use, storing power when it's cheap and selling it when it's more expensive. And she can potentially participate in larger markets, as we'll see later. It's pretty cool. Switzerland will be the first country in the world to vote on having a national wage of £1,700 a month.
1/29 29 January 2016 Kashmiri Muslims pray at the shrine of noted Muslim preacher and saint, Sheikh Syed Abdul Qadir Jeelani as the head priest of the shrine (unseen) displays his relics following the annual Urs (anniversary) of the saint in Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian Kashmir.
Scientists Create A Potential High-Efficiency Wireless Power System. Current wireless power transfer (WPT) systems, the system that allows for wireless electricity, remain limited to charging cradles for phones and other gadgets.
The Future of Jobs. A Future Without Jobs Does Not Equal a Future Without Work I recently spoke at the first World Summit on Technological Unemployment that took place in the Time Life Building in New York City on September 29, 2015.
I was not the only one. Very well known names like Robert Reich and Joseph Stiglitz were also there to speak, and others just as well known like Larry Summers and John Markoff spoke via Skype. Solar & Wind Reach a Big Renewables Turning Point : BNEF. Wind power is now the cheapest electricity to produce in both Germany and the U.K., even without government subsidies, according to a new analysis by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF).
It's the first time that threshold has been crossed by a G7 economy. But that's less interesting than what just happened in the U.S. To appreciate what's going on there, you need to understand the capacity factor. Half of Australian homes to adopt solar power and move 'off grid' from 2018. A report by The Climate Council, a non-government organisation, found that improvements in battery technology could make homemade electricity cheaper than buying it within three years and could allow half of the nation to start moving “off the grid”.
The panels have led to big electricity savings for the 1.4 million householders who have installed them Photo: Alamy Australia already has the highest rate of household solar panel use in the world. About 15 per cent of homes have panels installed, roughly double the rate in Belgium, which is believed to have the second highest usage. It said a household which spent £5,000 on a battery would make back the money within ten years and that, at such a cost, about half the nation could start adopting solar panels with battery systems.
“By 2018, going off-grid by installing battery storage could be cost-competitive with staying connected as the price of battery storage falls and grid electricity remains expensive,” the council’s report said. America is an oligarchy, not a democracy or republic, university study finds. America is no longer a democracy — never mind the democratic republic envisioned by Founding Fathers.
Rather, it has taken a turn down elitist lane and become a country led by a small dominant class comprised of powerful members who exert total control over the general population — an oligarchy, said a new study jointly conducted by Princeton and Northwestern universities. One finding in the study: The U.S. government now represents the rich and powerful, not the average citizen, United Press International reported. In the study, “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups and Average Citizens,” researchers compared 1,800 different U.S. policies that were put in place by politicians between 1981 and 2002 to the type of policies preferred by the average and wealthy American, or special interest groups.
The study also found: “When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose.”