The 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 eCarbon Prices Drive Clean Energy Innovation
11 Mar, 2014
I want to point out something I see commonly missed. Carbon prices accelerate innovation that brings down the price of green energy. So do renewable energy portfolio standards, green energy subsidies, and a whole swath of other climate policies. They do this by increasing the scale of…
R e a d M o r eLess Water, Less Oil
14 Nov, 2013
Here in the US, we consume less oil per person and less water per person than we have in decades. Oil consumption per person per year, from the IEA. (The last bullet point is their projection for 2030): Water withdrawals per person, from the Pacific…
R e a d M o r eDo We Eat Oil? Farms Are More Energy Efficient Than Ever
14 Nov, 2013
A common refrain one hears about modern farming in the US is that it's too energy intensive. However, data from the USDA shows that US farms use only half as much energy per unit of farm output as they did in 1950. That includes energy…
R e a d M o r eSolar Power Prices Dropping Faster Than Ever
14 Nov, 2013
In 2011, I wrote a piece for Scientific American on the exponential price decline in solar power. I haven't had a chance to fully update that piece, but two quick notes. First, the price decline in solar cost per watt has, if anything, accelerated since then.…
R e a d M o r eIncome, Energy Use, and Life Expectancy
14 Nov, 2013
One of the best indicators of human well-being is life expectancy. High life expectancy often means low infant mortality and typically correlates with ample access to food, medicine, shelter, and education, as well as low levels of disease and violence. Interestingly, during an economic development…
R e a d M o r eEnergy Storage Gets Exponentially Cheaper Too
25 Sep, 2013
At MIT Technology Review today was an article on Sun Catalytix’s new flow battery intended for grid-scale storage, which Sun Catalytix believes will drop grid-scale storage prices in half. As the article notes, several other storage technology companies are also working on driving down the…
R e a d M o r ePieces I’ve Written Around the Web
8 Sep, 2013
Over the last few months (and a bit over the past few years) I wrote a number of pieces around the web, primarily on energy, sustainability, genetically modified foods, and economic growth. I did a poor job of linking to them on my own site.…
R e a d M o r ePricing Nature to Save the Planet
27 Jun, 2012
New Scientist, covering Rio+20, talks about putting a price on the natural world: Green economics, the theory goes, will work by quantifying nature and giving it a cash value. As Steiner put it: “Factoring natural capital into the bottom line will bring the real wealth…
R e a d M o r eCombining Current Tech Could Make Solar Cheaper than Coal
22 Feb, 2012
By the end of the decade, manufacturers in the United States could make solar panels that are less than half as expensive as the ones they make now. That would be cheap enough for solar power to compete with electricity from fossil fuels, according to…
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