Installing a Solar Energy System. Like many of you reading this article, I am fairly new to the realization that our future may not turn out the way we originally planned. A little over two years ago, after the financial turmoil set in, I began to wake up from my comfortable, relatively uncomplicated life and take a closer look at what was going on around me.
I was first introduced to the Crash Course by an attendee at the 2009 CPAC Liberty Forum in Washington, DC where I had gone to hear Ron Paul speak. Little did I know how dramatic an impact that one conversation would have on my life. After watching the Crash Course a couple of times, many pieces of the puzzle started to fall together, and I quickly progressed to Stage 4 - Fear. (See The Six Stages of Awareness for more on that topic). I hope reading about the thermal and photovoltaic solar systems we have installed will encourage you to think about actions you can take to prepare for our uncertain future. Our House – NOT a Model of Sustainability The Panic Goals. Why Bill Gates is wrong. Bill Gates is sad that David Roberts thinks he’s wrong.Photo: redmaxwell via FlickrBill Gates, the Microsoft founder and philanthropist, made waves last week when, at the much-celebrated tech conference TED, he proclaimed that climate change is the most important problem facing the planet.
Wo0t! Obviously having someone of Gates’ stature supporting the clean energy race is an unqualified good. (See Alex Steffen on Gates’ talk.) That said, Gates has burst on to the energy scene with some rather ill-considered thinking. To get a flavor, see his blog post, “Why We Need Innovation, Not Just Insulation.” Now: it’s incontestably true that the U.S. investment in R&D is lower than it should be. There are two problems with Gates’ dichotomy between innovation and insulation. 1. I don’t know if Heinberg’s right. 2. The deeper and more pernicious problem with Gates’ framing is the implication that technology is where we innovate; in all other areas of life, we just … manage. Cool, right?! The Emerging Climate Technology Consensus. Update (Jul 16, 2010): Expanding on a Washington Post op-ed, Vinod Khosla delineates his argument "about the deficiencies of an isolated cap-and-trade or carbon-pricing bill," and joins the climate technology consensus.
Khosla writes, "If we want to make a significant difference, we need to get on the path to reducing carbon worldwide by 80 percent now by focusing on what I call "carbon reduction capacity building" -- in other words, we need to develop radical carbon-reduction technologies. A utility cap (or a carbon price) won't build capacity -- it will just increase our utility costs and decrease our manufacturing competitiveness without any increase in our technological competitiveness. Update (Jul 14, 2010): Other observers have reached similar conclusions about the faltering pollution paradigm. Walter Russell Mead and Clive Crook weigh in on "The Big Green Lie" but can't agree on what it is. By Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger (Click on a topic below to expand...)
No. We the Six Billion: The Ammonia Economy. Greencajun.com. SunPowerPort. Update! 15 PowerPoint Slides That Shook the Earth : Greentech Media. If you attend enough cleantech events or are pitched by enough startups, you start to see the same few PowerPoint slides over and over again. Here is a collection of the best or at least the most notorious and historically significant slides in our industry. This collection has been one of our most popular pieces and I'm taking the opportunity to update some of the charts and add some additional commentary. After publishing this list to an overwhelming response, we heard from the original architects of some of these iconic greentech slides and we made sure to give them their overdue credit. From the BP Statistical Review of World Energy -- here's a painful reminder of what we pay at the pump. It's a chart of Crude Oil Prices From 1861 to 2010.
Make sure to contrast that with the Price Trends in Solar Modules in this slide with data from IPCC and Paula Mints of Navigant. By the way, Americans are using less total energy and more renewable energy, according to LLNL. EPRI's Prism Chart. Greentech Media: Green Light » Blog Archive » Alberta’s governme.
Searching for a Miracle - The Conservation Imperative. Thoughtful Solar Guy. Bloom Energy Revealed on 60 Minutes! : Greentech Media. After almost a decade of development and hundreds of millions in investment, Bloom Energy is coming out. Until now, all we've been able to garner were "no comments" from their marketing people. But this weekend, there's a Bloom piece airing on 60 Minutes that will feature none other than Greentech Media editor-in-chief Michael Kanellos.
And next week is the official press conference and unveiling. Over the years, we've heard news and rumors on Bloom that included: Bloom customers include eBay, Google, Lockheed, Wal-Mart, Staples and the CIA. Backlog and sales are in the $2 billion range.There are rumors of an enormous government contract and a multi-million dollar order backlog from Coca-Cola and FedEx.eBay ordered four of the company's 100-kilowatt units. That customer list is certainly impressive, as is the alleged backlog.
According to the CBS News article: Stahl is the first journalist to be allowed into the Bloom Energy lab and factory where currently one box a day is built. And: Business | Solar energy giants discovering Ontario. A coming green-energy law and the promise of long-term incentives for producers of renewable power have put Ontario on the radar of some big-name solar companies looking for certainty in a volatile marketplace. This month alone, Tempe, Ariz. -based First Solar Inc., one of the world's leading suppliers of next-generation solar modules, and solar power supplier Recurrent Energy Inc. of San Francisco have acquired and plan to develop multi-megawatt solar projects in Ontario.
Meanwhile, San Jose, Calif. -based Nanosolar Inc. tells the Toronto Star that it is seriously eyeing Ontario as the location of a regional assembly plant for its thin-film solar modules. Nanosolar is also working with French energy giant EDF Energies Nouvelles to map out project potential in the province. "The Ontario policies are very promising and we are now actively tracking this," said Nanosolar founder and chief executive Martin Roscheisen. As systems grow larger the feed-in tariff declines. Solar Incentives: Could Ontario Be the Next Germany? - Renewable.