The following is a detailed guest post by Dr Ted Trainer, University of NSW (http://ssis.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/). In it, he provides the most detailed critique I’ve yet seen of the recent IPCC renewable energy scenarios report. Now, I don’t agree with everything Ted says — in particular the conclusion that the only feasible alternative to large-scale renewables is “The [...]
Filed under: Policy, Renewables | 96 Comments »
Regular readers of BNC would know that I’m hardly the only climate change researcher to recommend serious deployment of nuclear energy to displace fossil fuels. (Although I’m often portrayed as an isolated [and presumably therefore ignorant?] voice on this point). One very prominent example of a colleague in arms is my fellow SCGI member, Dr [...]
Filed under: Emissions, Nuclear, Policy, Renewables | 88 Comments »
Most readers of BNC know the story — after the Fukushima nuclear crisis, the German government announced that Germany would phase out all of its nuclear generation capacity by 2022. In almost the same period, Germany also aims to cut its national greenhouse gas emissions to 40% of 1990 levels (by 2020). Their emissions have [...]
Filed under: Emissions, Nuclear, Policy, Renewables | 108 Comments »
A common lament of those analysts wishing to get to grips with the real-world performance of solar thermal power plants has been, well… an absence of data. Trainer noted, in ‘Solar Thermal Questions‘: It would be great to get some actual data on their year round performance. I have found it fiendishly difficult to get [...]
Filed under: Emissions, Renewables | 90 Comments »
Climate change and sustainability of the global human enterprise are two of the most critical issues of the 21st Century. If we are to tackle these problems effectively, we need to make prudent, evidence-based choices about energy. This is the story told by this short (2 min, 35 sec) animated video: ————————- Please share the [...]
Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Emissions, Nuclear, Renewables | 61 Comments »
The Equinox Energy 2030 Summit (2011) has now concluded, and I’ve arrived back in Australia. It was an enthralling and exhausting experience, and I befriended a wonderful group of people — members of the Forum (aged ~25 to 30 years), Advisors (including me — for generalist critiques and ), Quorum (advocates for specific technologies) and [...]
Filed under: Nuclear, Policy, Renewables | 65 Comments »
The following post is intended as a working paper for discussion. (It builds on work started by Peter Lang back in 2009, Does wind power reduce carbon emissions?) This current work is based on the methods and conclusions from the recently published work by Herbert Inhaber in the peer-reviewed journal Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, entitled: [...]
Filed under: Emissions, Policy, Renewables | 355 Comments »
Guest Post by Peter Morcombe. Peter has over 24 years experience in high tech telecommunications and computers, specialising in fiber optics. Before retirement he worked for 12 years at the Duke University Free Electron Laser Laboratory. His professional qualifications include IEE, IEEE and LEOS. He is known to BNC readers by his commenting moniker ‘gallopingcamel’. Florida [...]
Filed under: Renewables | 149 Comments »
This post continues directly on from Part 1 (please read that if you’ve not already done so!). I also note the flurry of interest in the new IPCC WGIII special report on renewable energy prospects through to 2050. I will have more to say on this in an upcoming BNC post, but in short, it [...]
Filed under: Future, Nuclear, Renewables | 184 Comments »
The modern world is caught in an energy-resource and climate-change pincer. As the growing mega-economies of China and India strive to build the prosperity and quality of life enjoyed by citizens of the developed world, the global demand for cheap, convenient energy grows rapidly. If this demand is met by fossil fuels, we are headed [...]
Filed under: Future, Nuclear, Renewables | 189 Comments »
My position on wind energy is quite ambivalent. I really do want it (and solar) to play an effective role in displacing fossil fuels, because to do this, we need every tool at our disposal (witness the Open Science project I kick started in 2009 [and found funding for], in order to investigate the real potential [...]
Filed under: Renewables | 368 Comments »
In the 1970s, two countries took two different paths in energy policy. Denmark pursued wind power, but failed to replace its fossil fuel power plants. It has among the highest carbon emissions per capita in Europe. France pursued nuclear power, and now has the lowest carbon emissions of any OECD country. Lesson learned. Nuclear power [...]
Filed under: Emissions, Nuclear, Renewables | 93 Comments »
Here is a selection of sustainable energy and climate change books I read in 2010. I’ve provided a few sentence summary of each book (from my perspective) and a Rating out of 5. Some books have been reviewed in more detail on BNC already — enter from the title of the book in this website’s search box [...]
Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Emissions, Future, Hot News, Impacts, Nuclear, Renewables | 20 Comments »
The Oz-Energy-Analysis.org project continues to hum away in the background, building momentum. For those who don’t recall what OzEA is, read these two posts from earlier in the year on BNC: OZ-ENERGY-ANALYSIS.ORG – open science for the new millennium OzEA modelling – large-scale wind power using a bucket storage model and gas backup After much [...]
Filed under: Renewables | 43 Comments »
Guest post by Dr Gene Preston. Gene has had a long career as a power system engineer, performing generation planning, transmission planning, and distribution planning for Austin Energy. He is currently doing transmission studies for wind developers. He wrote all his own modeling software including the current network model used to perform his consulting studies. His [...]
Filed under: Emissions, Nuclear, Renewables | 89 Comments »
Yesterday, The Australian newspaper published an Op Ed piece by Nicholson, Biegler & Brook, entitled Emission reductions are not blowin’ in the wind, which discusses our recent paper in Energy. The print (dead tree) version of the article even had the graph shown here included! However, the editor had to cut down our original version [...]
Filed under: Emissions, Nuclear, Renewables | 35 Comments »
This is a press release to accompany a new peer-reviewed paper by Martin Nicholson, Tom Biegler and me (Barry Brook), published online this week in the journal Energy. In subsequents BNC post, I will look at how the media has reacted so far to the story (the good, the bad and the ugly), and also [...]
Filed under: Emissions, Hot News, Nuclear, Renewables | 97 Comments »
In this post, I develop a hypothetical multi-energy-supply scenario for global low-emissions electricity in ~2060. The assumed energy mix is 75 % nuclear fission and 25 % non-nuclear sources, with fossil fuel use virtually eliminated except where it is used with carbon capture and storage. The % annual growth rate (GR) of energy supplied assumes [...]
Filed under: Nuclear, Renewables, Scenarios | 29 Comments »
I note that there has been some interesting discussion here on costs of electricity, especial the comparative value of fossil fuels versus nuclear (and renewables). This is a point I will revisit from a number of perspectives over the next few months, because I agree with commenters like Arthur Dent, Peter Lang and DV82XL that [...]
Filed under: Emissions, Nuclear, Renewables | 259 Comments »
Back in September, I visited UNSW in Sydney and debated Mark Diesendorf on nuclear and solar power. It was a useful night, with quite a few Sydney-based BNC readers attending. I was pleased with the outcome — I just hope the audio becomes available at some point. Now this “Brain Food” event comes to Melbourne. [...]
Filed under: Emissions, Nuclear, Renewables | 95 Comments »
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