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About 1 year ago, I posted on BNC two important pieces by Peter Lang – “Does wind power reduce carbon emissions?” and a follow-up reply. Together, these stirred up considerable discussion (about 500 comments to date) and raised important questions about the ability of wind-energy to reduce emissions from burning fossil fuels, when natural gas usage for [...]
Filed under: Emissions reduction, Renewable planet | 56 Comments »
Download the printable 13-page PDF (includes appendix) here. By Peter Lang. Peter is a retired geologist and engineer with 40 years experience on a wide range of energy projects throughout the world, including managing energy R&D and providing policy advice for government and opposition. His experience includes: coal, oil, gas, hydro, geothermal, nuclear power plants, [...]
Filed under: Emissions reduction, Renewable planet | 220 Comments »
On Friday night, 13th August, I was awarded the 2010 Community Science Educator of the Year. On September 8, 2010, I will be speaking on nuclear and solar energy at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. The BraveNewClimate.com blog is 2 years old! Details below… —————————- I got back from China at midday [...]
Filed under: Climate change Q&A, Nuclear Energy, Renewable planet | 18 Comments »
‘Zero Carbon Australia – Stationary Energy Plan’ – Critique Download the printable PDF here [An addendum on wind farm and solar construction rates, by Dave Burraston] ———————— Edit: Here are some media-suitable ‘sound bytes’ from the critique, prepared by Martin. Obviously, please read the whole critique below to understand the context: They assume we will [...]
Filed under: Renewable planet | 265 Comments »
I’m about to hit the road once again, this time to take the great American road trip for 13 hours, from Sacremento to Idaho Falls, with Tom Blees, leaving bright and early tomorrow morning. Today I had a fantastic visit to UC Berkeley and the lab of Prof Per Peterson, and will have lots more [...]
Filed under: Emissions reduction, Future shock, Nuclear Energy, Renewable planet | 24 Comments »
A new report, Zero Carbon Australia 2020, has been released today. Its aim is to “show how Australia can reach 100% renewable energy within a decade, using technology that is commercially available right now“. From their website: The guiding principles of ZCA 2020 include: Australia’s energy is provided entirely from renewable sources at the end [...]
Filed under: Emissions reduction, Renewable planet | 560 Comments »
Guest post by John D. Morgan. John runs R&D programmes at a Sydney startup company. He has a PhD in physical chemistry, and research experience in chemical engineering in the US and at CSIRO. He is a regular commenter on BNC. A 10-page printable PDF version of this post can be downloaded here. ———————————– Beyond [...]
Filed under: Emissions reduction, Nuclear Energy, Renewable planet, TCASE Series | 106 Comments »
Below I reproduce our first serious modelling work on Oz-Energy-Analysis.org (see this BNC post for a description of OzEA, including its goals and Open Science methods). The work presented here is high level and abstracted, and will be developed in future rounds.We’re looking for hard-nosed comments/critiques, and suggestions for current and future directions (especially over [...]
Filed under: Renewable planet | 79 Comments »
In the Thinking Critically About Sustainable Energy (TCASE) series — currently up to 10 parts on the BNC blog — I consider the challenges we face in scaling up renewable or nuclear energy technologies to replace fossil fuels. The blog serialisation of TCASE will continue on BNC, but the format is now also moving into a [...]
Filed under: Emissions reduction, Nuclear Energy, Renewable planet, TCASE Series | 22 Comments »
This post follows on directly from part 1, which you can read here. Here, a list of frequently asked questions (FAQ) on climate change and nuclear energy are answered. These are quite deliberately not technical – you won’t find explanations of adiabatic lapse rates, actinide isotopes or Brayton cycle efficiency here! Nope… these are ‘big [...]
Filed under: Climate change Q&A, Emissions reduction, Nuclear Energy, Renewable planet | 281 Comments »
A recent BNC guest post, Public advocacy on nuclear power and climate change, stirred up some really useful ideas. In that post’s comments thread, it was discussed how we, as a concerned and engaged internet community (the BNC crowd, and similar groups like Energy from Thorium), could engage more effectively with the broader public domain on the [...]
Filed under: Emissions reduction, Nuclear Energy, Renewable planet | 174 Comments »
This is an invitation to BNC readers to join in, at an early stage, an Open Science experiment based around systems analysis of renewable energy. Okay, what’s all this about? Click here (or on the image above) to go directly to the front page, which currently says this: Once upon a time… We all wanted to understand renewables. [...]
Filed under: Emissions reduction, Renewable planet | 120 Comments »
Guest Post by Peter Lang. Peter is a retired geologist and engineer with 40 years experience on a wide range of energy projects throughout the world, including managing energy R&D and providing policy advice for government and opposition. His experience includes: coal, oil, gas, hydro, geothermal, nuclear power plants, nuclear waste disposal, and a wide [...]
Filed under: Emissions reduction, Nuclear Energy, Renewable planet | 100 Comments »
As I noted in a recent post, my new goal with TCASE posts is for them to be shorter, more targeted and more regular, with the aim being to break big problems in sustainable energy down into very focused questions (each of the new TCASE posts will be a maximum of 1,000 words — my [...]
Filed under: Renewable planet, TCASE Series | 58 Comments »
I note that the scalability and cost of solar thermal technologies, and it viability compared to nuclear power, has been a hot topic on the BNC comments forum (see especially here and here). While it is good to see this sort of ongoing discussion, I’d like to take a brief moment to offer a couple [...]
Filed under: Nuclear Energy, Renewable planet | 56 Comments »
In TCASE (thinking critically about sustainable energy) #5, I analysed a currently deployed technology for harnessing wave energy – the Pelamis device. If you haven’t read TCASE 5 then please do so now, since it explains some of the basic physical properties of wave energy, the extend of the global resource, etc. In writing the [...]
Filed under: Renewable planet, TCASE Series | 34 Comments »
Guest Post by Peter Lang. Peter is a retired geologist and engineer with 40 years experience on a wide range of energy projects throughout the world, including managing energy R&D and providing policy advice for government and opposition. His experience includes: coal, oil, gas, hydro, geothermal, nuclear power plants, nuclear waste disposal, and a wide [...]
Filed under: Nuclear Energy, Renewable planet | 128 Comments »
The previous BNC post, a guest contribution by Douglas Wise, provided an excellent and thorough review of the political and technical issues facing the UK energy scene. Douglas’ post was also timely, because, last week, the esteemed Royal Academy of Engineering released a new 27-page report on this topic. Although useful as a crystal-ball-gazing exercise, the report has [...]
Filed under: Nuclear Energy, Renewable planet | 36 Comments »
Although the BraveNewClimate science blog has an unashamedly Australian flavour and focus, the climate and energy issues covered herein are very much international problems. As such, I’m strongly convinced that the solutions I canvass will be required for most nations this century. In this spirit, I’d like to present a detailed guest post which provides a [...]
Filed under: Emissions reduction, Nuclear Energy, Renewable planet | 58 Comments »
As reported earlier on BNC, Dr James Hansen is currently in Australia (I had the pleasure of taking him out to dinner yesterday evening). Tonight he’ll be speaking on climate change and energy solutions at a public event at the Adelaide Convention Centre. There is still time to reserve a ticket and come along — [...]
Filed under: Emissions reduction, Nuclear Energy, Renewable planet | 89 Comments »
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![[1/5] Fitting the Steam Engine](http://static.flickr.com/4134/4947531347_120a565eaa_t.jpg "[1/5] Fitting the Steam Engine")
