solar power

Friedman: China beating US on low carbon energy

by Bryan Walker January 13, 2010

Thomas Friedman is now doubtful that China will follow an American lead towards a greener economy, as he suggested in his book Hot, Flat and Crowded reviewed here. He considers rather that it is more likely to pull ahead of the US. He writes from China in his recent column in the New York Timesthat [...]

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A sustainable energy future for NZ (without all the hot air)

by Phil Scadden November 30, 2009

This is a guest post by Phil Scadden, a regular commenter at Hot Topic (bio at the end of the post). Phil’s interested in energy issues, and has spent a considerable amount of his personal time developing an overview of New Zealand’s energy issues, inspired by the approach used by Cambridge physicist David MacKay in [...]

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Obama’s new pathways for power

by Bryan Walker October 29, 2009

Barack Obama is matching his words with action. Four days after his MIT speech on renewable energy he has announced, under the Recovery Act,  $3.4 billion in grants to improve the US electricity grid. The grants go to 100 partners with plans to install smart grid technologies in their area. The government money will be [...]

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Wind, water and sun are all we need

by Bryan Walker October 22, 2009

Wind, solar and water sources are sufficient to provide the world’s energy by 2030. Scientific American has a front cover article coming up in November to demonstrate that. Written by Mark Jacobson (left) and Mark Delucchi, it’s heartening information according to a Stanford University report. Turning away from combustion to electricity from renewable sources results in [...]

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US should aim for 80% by 2020

by Bryan Walker September 22, 2009

Renowned American environmentalist Lester Brown offers measured optimism in an article published in the Washington Post on Sunday. He claims a surprisingly dramatic 9 percent drop in US carbon emissions over the past two years and the promise of further huge reductions.  Part of this decline, he acknowledges, was caused by the recession and higher [...]

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Ten technologies to save the planet

by Bryan Walker December 10, 2008

As the news on climate change becomes increasingly serious it is all the more important to affirm that the problem has solutions provided the world applies them soon enough. Prominent UK environment writer Chris Goodall surveys some of those solutions in a well-researched fashion in his new book, Ten Technologies to Save the Planet.  In [...]

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Down on the farm

by Gareth October 19, 2008

An Italian olive grove and vineyard is on its way to becoming the world’s first carbon neutral farm (they claim). According to the BBC, the Castello Monte Vibiano Vecchio estate in Umbria is converting to electric vehicles (and biofuelled mini-tractors) and has installed a “solar filling station” designed by Austrian company Cellstrom, based on an [...]

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False equivalence and the climate “debate”

by Gareth January 4, 2008

One of the more bumptious of NZ’s tame sceptics is University of Canterbury philosopher and “eminent scientist” Associate Professor Denis Dutton. A key member of the NZ C”S”C, he is perhaps best known for creating the rather good Arts & Letters Daily web site – and selling it for a considerable sum. He has now [...]

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Clearing the decks

by Gareth October 11, 2007

A few quick links before I post on the government’s just announced energy strategy: cleaning out the tabs in my web browser… Professor Graham Harris of the University of Tasmania addresses the issues I raised in my “ecological overdraft” post a few days ago, in Sleepwalking Into Danger – an article for ScienceAlert: “It is [...]

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