| Washington Post | - |
Showing posts with label Data. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Data. Show all posts
Monday, June 24, 2013
Sunday, March 17, 2013
STREIGHTENING TITANIC'S DECKCHAIRS: Solar Power Soars in United States; Top 10 Solar Projects Under Construction Forbes
| Forbes | - |
To put the scale of solar power's rapid and relentless expansion in perspective, the solar power capacity added in 2012 was greater than all of the solar power capacity added for the three previous years combined. If you're not impressed yet, consider ...
***** Report: Human 'Progress' May Be Reversed By Climate Change. CleanTechnica
The Poor and Climate Change
| Energy Collective | - |
"Environmental inaction, especially regarding climate change, has the potential to halt or even reverse human development progress.
See realtime coverage »
| CleanTechnica | - |
The report notes that while climate change
will affect the whole world, the more equatorially located developing
world will experience the worst of it, within the near future anyways.
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
The Earth Is Warming Faster Now Than It Has in 11000 Years. Slate Magazine
| Slate Magazine (blog) | - |
Mind you, this is the rate of warming, how quickly the global temperature is increasing. But they also showed the actual temperature of the planet is warmer now than it has been for 70-80 percent of the past over that time period. There have been times ...
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Friday, March 1, 2013
Way too little... Sierra Club Says 142 U.S. Coal-Fired Plants During Drive. Bloomberg
| Bloomberg | - |
With the agreement announced by American Electric Power Co. this week that it will shut three of its coal plants, the Sierra Club said its Beyond Coal campaign is more than halfway towards its goal of retiring 30 percent of the U.S.
All that's lacking - your Heart. 8,000 times our current power requirements - amount of sun reaching earth. ExtremeTech
| ExtremeTech | - |
Solar power has the potential to solve all of humankind's energy problems. The amount of solar
energy that reaches the surface of the Earth, per year, is somewhere in
the region of 8,000 times higher than our current power requirements.
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Wind growing 80% per year in China
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Wind Surpasses Nuclear in China J. Matthew Roney www.earth-policy.org/data_highlights/2013/highlights35 |
Earth Policy Release
Data Highlight February 19, 2013 |
Wind has overtaken nuclear as an electricity source in China. In 2012, wind farms generated 2 percent more electricity than nuclear power plants did, a gap that will likely widen dramatically over the next few years as wind surges ahead. Since 2007, nuclear power generation has risen by 10 percent annually, compared with wind’s explosive growth of 80 percent per year. 
Before
the March 2011 nuclear disaster in Japan, China had 10,200 megawatts of
installed nuclear capacity. With 28,000 megawatts then under
construction at 29 nuclear reactors—19 of which had begun construction
since 2009—officials were confident China would reach 40,000 megawatts
of nuclear power by 2015 and perhaps 100,000 megawatts by 2020. The
government’s response to the Fukushima disaster, however, was to suspend
new reactor approvals and conduct a safety review of plants in
operation and under construction.
When
authorities finally lifted the moratorium on approvals in October 2012,
it was with the stipulation that going forward only “Generation-III”
models that meet stricter safety standards would be approved. China has
no experience in operating these more advanced models; several of the
Generation-III reactors it has currently under construction are already
facing delays due to post-Fukushima design changes or supply chain
issues.
Over
the course of 2011 and 2012, China connected four reactors with a
combined 2,600 megawatts of nuclear generating capacity, bringing its
total nuclear installations to 12,800 megawatts. Although officials
still claim that China will reach 40,000 megawatts of nuclear capacity
in 2015, the current pace of construction makes this appear increasingly
unlikely. China's inexperience with Generation-III reactors also casts
doubt on its prospects for achieving what the government now sees as a
more reasonable 2020 goal, some 70,000 megawatts.
The
outlook for wind in China is much more promising. Wind developers
connected 19,000 megawatts of wind power capacity to the grid during
2011 and 2012, and they are expected to add nearly this much in 2013
alone. An oft-cited problem for China’s wind energy sector has been the
inability of the country’s underdeveloped electrical grid to fully
accommodate fast-multiplying wind turbines in remote, wind-rich areas.
Recent efforts to expand and upgrade the grid have improved the
situation: by the end of 2012, 80 percent of China’s estimated 75,600
megawatts of wind capacity were grid-connected.
China should easily meet its official target of 100,000 megawatts of
grid-connected wind capacity by 2015. Looking further ahead, the Chinese
Renewable Energy Industry Association (CREIA) sees wind installations
soaring to at least 200,000 megawatts by 2020. With the seven massive
“Wind Base” mega-complexes now under construction in six
provinces—slated to total at least 138,000 megawatts when complete in
2020—the CREIA projection seems well within reach.
China’s
overall wind energy resource is staggering. Harvard researchers
estimate that China’s wind generation potential is 12 times larger than
its 2010 electricity consumption.
Wind
power clearly has its advantages. The immense wind resource cannot be
depleted; wind farms can be built quickly; they emit no
climate-destabilizing carbon; and no costly fuel imports are needed to
run them. (China spends billions of dollars each year importing most of
the uranium needed to fuel its reactors.) Wind power is also ideal for
countries such as China that face severe water shortages: unlike coal
and nuclear power plants, wind farms need no water for cooling. As
concerns about climate change and water scarcity mount, wind becomes
increasingly attractive compared to conventional electricity sources.
# # #
For more information, see Earth Policy Institute’s Wind Indicator and the Plan B Update “Fukushima Meltdown Hastens Decline of Nuclear Power,” or visit our Data Center at www.earth-policy.org .
Feel free to pass this information along to friends, family members, and colleagues! Media Contact: Reah Janise Kauffman (202) 496-9290 ext. 12 | rjk@earthpolicy.org Research Contact: J. Matthew Roney (202) 496-9290 ext. 17 | jmroney@earthpolicy.org | |
Earth Policy Institute 1350 Connecticut Avenue NW, Suite 403, Washington, DC 20036 | |
Chinese Companies Projected To Make Solar Panels for 42 Cents Per Watt In 2015
Posted: 17 Feb 2013 07:00 AM PST
Future
cost drops from Chinese crystalline silicon solar producers will not be
as steep as recent years, but they will still be significant.
***** Infusing moral urgency to the climate debate
Infusing moral urgency to the climate debate.
Behind complicated terminology is a simple
question that affects every aspect of society and business: How much
time do we have before the burning of fossil fuels pushes the climate
system past tipping points? Perhaps 11 years at current fossil fuel use,
according to an influential paper stoking urgency for climate action.
Inside Climate News
Renewables Deploy Fast
Posted: 14 Feb 2013 12:00 AM PST
Here’s another great post from the always thoughtful Karl-Friedrich Lenz, reposted from his site, Lenz Blog (image added):
Wind turbines in Spain via Shutterstock
These technologies scale faster than any other. No form of traditional generation — coal, gas, or nuclear — scales nearly as fast as efficiency, solar, and wind. Gigawatts of solar and wind can be added in months — not the years to decades required for traditional power plants. Cloudy Germany installed three gigawatts of solar in the month of December 2011 alone. That is 1.6 times more than was installed in the entire U.S. Germany’s scale-up has cut its solar-system costs to half of ours.
At what 'time' does the winning b'ball team let up? Solar & Wind Cutting Fossil Fuels Off At The Kneecaps In Coming Years In ... CleanTechnica
| CleanTechnica | - |
The
story that has really captured the imagination of our readers this year
has been on the Bloomberg New Energy Finance analysis that demonstrated
that wind energy was already cheaper than new coal and gas plants in
Australia, and solar PV was not all ...
Thursday, February 21, 2013
The Slowing Pace Of Growth For The Global Solar Market. Forbes
| Forbes | - |
The global solar industry saw the slowest growth in a decade when it wrapped up 2012 by selling 29 gigawatts of solar panels and other gear that make up solar electric systems, according to NPD Solarbuzz on Thursday. That 29 gigawatts created a 5% ...
Sunday, February 17, 2013
GAO warns of global warming's cost
| Columbus Dispatch | - |
Barbara
Boxer, D-Calif., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., introduced a bill on
Thursday to curb carbon-dioxide emissions, levying a $20 tax for each
ton of the climate-warming substance over a set limit. That limit would be 5.6 percent annually over 10 years ...
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
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