Category Archives: GetRealList
Using Solar to Produce Oil
We’re all familiar with solar as a way to generate electricity and hot water, but now it is being tested as a way to produce oil in one of America’s oldest oil fields. I recently took a Chevron-sponsored trip to their demonstration plant near Coalinga, in California’s Central Valley. The plant is the first in [...]
Have Renewables Surpassed Nuclear in the U.S?
The latest EIA Monthly Energy Review caused a bit of a stir this week, as a few observers noticed thatUSrenewable energy had exceeded nuclear power. Cleantech bloggers werequick to seize on the 2.44 quads (quadrillion BTU) of renewable supplyin Q1 2011 vs. the 2.13 quads from nuclear generation as a sign thatnuclear power had entered [...]
Storage: A $200 Billion Cleantech Market in the Making
On the first day of this year, I wrote: “The intermittency problem of wind and solar will be largely solved this decade, as new storage solutions come tomarket.” Yet the pace of progress in storage during just the first quarter has surprised even me. Readers of this space are well familiar with storage technologieslike pumped water, [...]
Political Momentum and Public Dialogue Shifting from Brown to Green
Every once in a while, the tone of the energy market shifts in a waythat seems subtle at the time, but is a major turning point inhindsight. I believe one is happening now. January 2007was such a moment, a time of palpable excitement around renewableenergy. Solar, wind, and other renewable plays exploded that year, andFirst [...]
Senators, Congressman Push to Keep Solar Jobs in U.S.
Following closely on the heels of Evergreen’s decision to outsource to China,a quartet of legislators representing three different states and bothsides of the political spectrum introduced earlier this week a bill intended to bolster solar manufacturing jobs in the United States. A bipartisan piece of legislation supported by the Solar Energy Industries Association, the Solar [...]
Can Renewables Replace Fossil Fuels?
With peak oil already upon us, sustaining oil supply is akin to running up a down escalator. Or, as Nate Hagens put it at the ASPO peak oil conference earlierthis month, “Technology is in a race with depletion and is losing (sofar).” The urgent question then is: Can renewables fill the gap of oil depletion? [...]
Why The Energy Revolution Needs China
If we want an example of good long-term resource planning, we might want to look to China. While the first world spent the last decade taking on debt andlevering up dubious assets like dot-com startups and subprimemortgages, then suffering the inevitable fallout, China kept its debtrelatively modest and its currency depressed while it accumulated avast [...]
Hard Questions and Sustainable Solutions
Human Nature, Not Technology, Is The Challenge The more I probe the hardest questions about the future of energyand our best shot at sustainability, the more I am convinced that thereal questions are not about technology, but about human nature. We have all the technology we need to make homes that produce theirown energy. We [...]
Utility Scale Solar Heating Up
Utility scale solar got a big boost this week as Interior Secretary KenSalazar announced a new plan to designate 24 tracts of public landadministered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) as study areas fordevelopment of solar power plants. Theeffort is in support of President Obama’s target to generate 10% ofU.S. electricity from renewable sources [...]