Why Energy Storage is About to Get Big – and Cheap
14 Apr, 2015
tl;dr: Storage of electricity in large quantities is reaching an inflection point, poised to give a big boost to renewables, to disrupt business models across the electrical industry, and to tap into a market that will eventually top many of tens of billions of dollars…
R e a d M o r eHow Much Land Would it Take to Power the US via Solar?
8 Apr, 2015
I’ve seen some pieces in the media lately questioning this, so allow me to point to some facts based on real-world data. tl;dr: We’ll probably never power the world entirely on solar, but if we did, it would take a rather small fraction of the…
R e a d M o r eA Simple Suggestion for the Hugo Awards
6 Apr, 2015
If you haven’t followed the Hugo Awards, some context. A slate of nominees backed by a voting block is dominating this year’s awards, so much so that the slate has every single nomination in some categories – like Best Short Story, Best Novella, and Best…
R e a d M o r e2014 Was a Good Year: Better Than You Remember
21 Dec, 2014
Eric Garner. Michael Brown. The Sony hack and surrender to fear. 2014 seems to be ending on a crappy note. My twitter feed is full of people expressing good riddance to the year. 2014 was better than that. I want to take a moment to…
R e a d M o r eThe Patents Argument Against GMOs Just Ended With the First Off-Patent GMO
12 Dec, 2014
I argued in my 2013 book, The Infinite Resource, that the “seeds shouldn’t be patented” argument against GMOs and specifically against Monsanto was invalid for a very specific reason: Patents end. As I wrote then, the patents for Monsanto’s first commercial genetically modified crop, Roundup Ready…
R e a d M o r eToday I Spoke at the Allen Institute for Brain Science
29 Oct, 2014
Today I gave a talk at the Allen Institute for Brain Science – “Neuroscience in the Year 2100: The View from Science Fiction.” Much of that, of course, comes from the research and decade-long interest that led to Nexus. It was an incredible honor for me, as…
R e a d M o r eSolar and Wind Plunging Below Fossil Fuel Prices
5 Oct, 2014
Asset management firm Lazard has a fascinating new analysis of renewable and other energy prices out. There are a huge number of insights in this, from an outside analyst whose primary interest is financial. (Those are, in my mind, the most objective analysts in this…
R e a d M o r eThe Learning Curve for Energy Storage
30 Sep, 2014
Energy storage prices are dropping fast. If you follow me, you’ve seen me write about this before. Energy storage prices have in fact been dropping exponentially for at least 25 years. Here’s a new piece of analysis – a model that uses a 20% learning…
R e a d M o r eThe Renewable Energy Revolution
29 Sep, 2014
Transforming the world’s energy supply will take decades. It is a very tall order. But it’s starting. The price of renewables – and energy storage – continues to plunge, putting them on a path to being cheaper than any other form of energy within the…
R e a d M o r eVideo: Brain Implants to Link and Augment Human Minds (The Science of Nexus)
21 Sep, 2014
Here’s video of my Le Web Paris talk, on Linking Human Minds. This is all about the current science of sending sights, sounds, and sensations in and out of human brains, and the frontiers of augmenting and transferring memory and intelligence. Le Web did a…
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