Energy

Bloomberg reports that wholesale solar energy costs are falling 8% a year and may already rival coal in sunny climes like the Middle East and Japan. They’re expected to be halved in the next decade. Bloomberg writes, “Installation of solar PV systems will almost double to 32.6 gigawatts by 2013 from 18.6 gigawatts last year, […]

All the power the world needs could be provided by alternative energy sources within 20-40 years if the political will could be found, according to Stanford researchers. Note that they do not include nuclear energy in their calculations. Part of their technique is to include ‘externalities’ of hydrocarbon fuels in their cost estimates, such as […]

If the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant had been a bank of wind turbines, we wouldn’t all be on hanging on every item about radiation release. The talk would just be about rebuilding the turbines. Germany is hoping to replace its aging nuclear reactors with offshore wind farms… Euronews reports that reactor number 3 may already […]

Fears over possible nuclear reactor meltdowns have complicated Japan’s attempt to recover from the tsunami that hit northern prefectures on Friday. Japan, which has no oil or gas of its own, gets about a third of its electricity from nuclear power as a result of a government push to build nuclear reactors after the energy […]

One of the problems with new green energy installations is the need to funnel the power, facility by facility, into the existing electricity grid. Google is trying to resolve that problem on the Atlantic seaboard by starting with an “Atlantic Wind Connection” that “will be able to connect 6,000MW of offshore wind turbines.” Networking the […]

This week’s award for bad environmental reporting goes to John Spear of the Toronto Star for his article on the cost of wind power in Ontario “when we don’t need it.” Spear manages to write the entire article as though the only comparison between wind power and other energy should be about the conventional pricing, […]