Latest update {Draft XI:05) of “Post-Carbon Australian Options for Railway Locomotives” has been released on the net for public comment from my website at http://www.auzgnosis.com/pgs/auzloco.htm (while the draft will still have the same file-name I will keep updating the actual file there to the latest version as any future improvement are made). I’d be real Continue Reading →
Economies of scale in manufacturing are causing rapid reductions in costs and solar energy has a bright
future
George Monbiot’s attack on solar energy and the government’s “cash-back” solar photovoltaic (PV) market-building scheme paints a distorted picture of the industry I work in, and government policy towards it (Are we really going to let ourselves be duped into this solar panel rip-off?, 2 March).
First, Monbiot gets the workability of solar wrong. He says: “The amount of power PV panels produce at this latitude is risible, [and] they also produce it at the wrong time.” Those who buy panels, therefore, will own a mere “fashion accessory”. The companies who manufacture solar PV in the UK have shown that putting solar panels on all available building surfaces would generate more electricity in a year, under typical cloudy British skies, than the entire electricity consumption of our energy-profligate nation. Some fashion accessory.
Batten down the hatches, a political storm is brewing Climate change in Australia — of the political variety — is real and happening now. As a fresh opinion poll rolls in every few days, the underlying trend is moving inexorably against Labor. Here’s a sampling over the past week: Federal: Newspoll, published today, shows little change in party polling (government Continue Reading →
by Lori Oliwenstein, Caltech
Using arrays of long, thin silicon wires embedded in a polymer substrate, a team of scientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has created a new type of flexible solar cell that enhances the absorption of sunlight and efficiently converts its photons into electrons. The solar cell does all this using only a fraction of the expensive semiconductor materials required by conventional solar cells.
“These solar cells have, for the first time, surpassed the conventional light-trapping limit for absorbing materials,” says Harry Atwater, Howard Hughes Professor, professor of applied physics and materials science, and director of Caltech’s Resnick Institute, which focuses on sustainability research.
The expansion of plantations has pushed the orang-utan to the brink of extinction in Sumatra, where it takes 840 years for a palm oil plantation to soak up the carbon emitted when rainforest is burnt
Using fossil fuel in vehicles is better for the environment than so-called green fuels made from crops, according to a government study seen by The Times.
The findings show that the Department for Transport’s target for raising the level of biofuel in all fuel sold in Britain will result in millions of acres of forest being logged or burnt down and converted to plantations. The study, likely to force a review of the target, concludes that some of the most commonly-used biofuel crops fail to meet the minimum sustainability standard set by the European Commission.
Under the standard, each litre of biofuel should reduce emissions by at least 35 per cent compared with burning a litre of fossil fuel. Yet the study shows that palm oil increases emissions by 31 per cent because of the carbon released when forest and grassland is turned into plantations. Rape seed and soy also fail to meet the standard.
A new report by a United Kingdom industry taskforce predicts steep oil price rises and gasoline supply shortages by 2014-2015, which will put the global economy at similar risk to the 2007-2008 rapid rise in oil prices that helped trigger the Great Recession.
“The time period would be 2014-2015 when the oil market would be starting to experience rapidly rising prices and tightening oil supplies…It is notable that the CEO of Total, Christophe de Margerie, is already warning of such an outcome in the 2014/15 period,” says the report, “Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil & Energy Security,” funded by Virgin Group, Arup Engineering, Foster and Partners, and Scottish and Southern Engineering.
What can cities, businesses and individuals do to prepare for such energy price volatility, buy hybrids? Actually, the report asserts, “there is real danger that the focus on technological advances in cars is making consumers and government complacent.”
More urgent steps need to be taken by policymakers in particular to avert this impending crisis: