By any standards, and compared to any speechmaking we’re used to in Canada, it was brilliant. Why, by contrast, are Canadian politicians so dull and pedestrian?
The open confession of Earth’s beauty: “That bright blue ball rising over the moon’s surface containing everything we hold dear, the laughter of children, a quiet sunset, all the hopes and dreams of posterity, that’s what’s at stake.”
Last month, Tesla dropped the ‘Motors’ from its name, sending out a tsunamic wave of speculation across the online tech and news sphere. Shortly after, low and behold, Musk reveals his Master Plan, Part Deux (a cheeky reference to Hot Shots! Part Deux), the first of several ‘big reveals’ Tesla and Musk have made in the past month.
The United States could run almost entirely on clean energy by 2050, with a larger economy, $5 trillion in savings––and no acts of Congress. That's a vision of the future as seen by Amory Lovins, a sustainability expert who talked about how to reach that goal in a presentation Tuesday at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass.
Electric vehicles, retrofits, the sharing economy and the rise of clean energy in Europe and China—all these technologies and trends show how a transition from oil, coal and nuclear power is possible, he said.
Oil prices might be very low, but that’s not going to take away from investments in renewable energy.
That’s at least the consensus from Citigroup, the latest investment researcher to say clean energy won’t be slowed by cheap oil, Bloomberg reported Monday. Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs have also predicted that the oil price slump won’t affect renewable energy growth.
The Independent Petroleum Association of America recently commissioned and funded a study, covered in The New York Times and elsewhere, which claimed that university endowments would suffer without fossil fuels in their portfolios. The Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed calling fossil fuel divestment a "Feel-Good Folly."
The third annual Sustainable Energy in America Factbook released today documents the continuing dramatic changes in how the U.S. produces, delivers and consumes energy, and makes some projections and predictions about the direction of the energy sector in the future. The report was researched and produced by Bloomberg New Energy Finance and commissioned by The Business Council for Sustainable Energy....
Since the collapse in oil prices began in the middle of last year, all eyes have been on how the oil industry responds. Already, some $200 billion of projects have been either axed or deferred, mostly because they cannot compete on costs.
The US shale oil industry is also suffering. This graph below from industry analysts Baker Hughes shows the dramatic fall in the number of rigs operating in the US shale industry.
Deutsche Bank says that solar electricity in the US is on track to be as cheap or cheaper than average electricity-bill prices in all but three states by 2016—assuming that the federal government maintains the 30% solar investment tax credit it currently offers homeowners on installation and equipment costs.
But even if the credit is reduced to 10%, solar power would still achieve price parity with conventional electricity in some 36 states by 2016.
How ice-making air conditioners can help balance Southern California’s grid
Ice Energy produces an Ice Bear rooftop air conditioning unit, which uses cheap nighttime power to turn water to ice, and then uses the ice to reduce the electricity needed for air conditioning during the heat of the day.
