After a fisheries seminar this morning, someone asked what key issue the research and conservation community was missing. The immediate answer from a senior colleague was meat consumption.
Given how growing feed and raising livestock is responsible for a large proportion of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, it is quite amazing that we don’t talk about it more.
the West Virginia Department of “Environmental Protection” (seems like a misnomer today!) granted Massey Energy a permit to begin blasting away Coal River Mountain as soon as the company is ready. Massey plans to decimate the mountain to extract coal using a destructive mining practice know as mountain top removal
Negative electricity prices and wind energy curtailment are occurring with increasing frequency in several regions of the country, a telltale sign that expansion of the nation’s electricity transmission infrastructure is lagging behind the rapid growth of wind energy.
Whenever I talk to utilities about Smart Grids and Smart Meters they always trot out the same speech. They want to use Demand Response for peak shaving and they want to implement it by having a mechanism whereby they can come in to their customer’s houses at times of maximum demand and turn down the settings on the aircon, immersion heater, etc.
Unfortunately this kind of traditional top-down, command and control attitude is more likely to turn people off Demand Response programs than to sell it to them.
I know that as a consumer I want to be able to program my appliances myself so that I decide when they turn on/off in response to price signals from the grid. The same is true for fridges/freezers and water immersions - I want them to change thermostat settings to take in electricity at times when energy is cheap and not when it is expensive by MY definitions of cheap and expensive.
I want control of my appliances. I do not want the utility deciding to come in and adjust or turn them on/off for me because it suits them.
Demand Response programs will be hugely beneficial to the utilities and consumers alike but they are complex to explain. If you couple that with the utility having control of your appliances they suddenly become a far harder sell.
Give customers more control of their electricity bill. Allow them reduce costs without reducing usage, by owner controlled, programmatic, time-shifting of consumption and suddenly Demand Response programs becomes an easy sell.
And when you couple that with how Demand Response will stabilise the grid facilitating greater penetration of variable supplies (i.e. weather-based renewables like wind and solar) and you have a win, win, win!
The video explains, far better than I could ever do, why Smart Grids are a good idea - and to get full value, you need to watch it until the “Dinosaurs ARE pretty cool” comment!
Engineers and entrepreneurs are rushing to explore alternative sources of efficient and renewable energy in New Jersey and elsewhere in the country. A Rutgers School of Business—Camden professor has strong words of caution as projects involving wind farms and photovoltaic cells proliferate.
Better Place (formerly Project Better Place) has scored a coup in the California Bay Area. The electric vehicle startup has struck a deal with the region, including the cities of San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland, to set up a $1 billion charging network for electric cars, with car availability beginning in 2012.
Scientists have developed a material made out of a mixture of silica and water which can soak up large quantities of methane molecules. The material looks and acts like a fine white powder which, if developed for industrial use, might be easily transported or used as a vehicle fuel.
An unexpected drop in U.S. electricity consumption has utility companies worried that the trend isn’t a byproduct of the economic downturn, and could reflect a permanent shift in consumption that will require sweeping change in their industry.
The US Geological Survey released a report estimating that 85 trillion cubic feet (TCF) of technically recoverable gas hydrates are accessible on the Alaskan North Slope. If produced over 20 years and combined with the conventional gas supply from the North Slope, which has been waiting for a pipeline south for many years, this deposit could supply up to a third of total US natural gas consumption. But that barely scratches the surface of the overall potential of gas hydrates.
The reason this announcement is so significant lies in the words “technically recoverable.” Geologists have known about gas hydrates for a long time, and estimates of global hydrate deposits have been refined to a range of between 100,000 and a million TCF, with the best estimate of US hydrate deposits currently at 200,000 TCF. To put that in perspective, one TCF of natural gas represents about 1% of US annual total energy consumption and contains the same energy as 180 million barrels of oil or 10 billion gallons of ethanol. In other words, that 200,000 TCF estimate is the equivalent of a 2,000-year energy supply for the US, at current consumption levels, of a fuel with half the greenhouse gas emissions of coal.
Reliant operates in a competitive, deregulated electricity market. If homeowners get cool technology that helps them avoid the unpleasant surprise of a big electric bill, Jacobs believes Reliant will retain more customers. And then there’s the green angle. “We as an industry are the single largest emitter of greenhouse gas, and our goal is to help our customers use less, spend less, and emit less,” says Jacobs
The chief executives of General Motors Corp. (GM) and Ford Motor Co. (F) said Wednesday they wouldn’t accept a $1 salary in exchange for government aid to their imperiled companies, as the head of the former Chrysler Corp. did a generation ago.
During a hearing Wednesday, a member of the House Financial Services Committee told Rick Wagoner of GM and Alan Mulally of Ford that reducing their annual salaries to $1 would be an important symbolic gesture as they lobby for $25 billion in loans funded by tax dollars. Chrysler’s Lee Iacocca worked for that wage when his company was bailed out by the government in the 1980s.
Greenmonk is a new line of business for RedMonk, the first open source analyst company.
GreenMonk offers advisory services to help a range of organisations better understand how sustainability issues will affect them.
Home from Reyes Magos (Wise Men) parade in Seville. Kids asleep in bed and wise men have delivered presents for tomorrow morning!!!
about 1 hour ago from Tweetie
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