An editorial writer and columnist for the Washington Post wrote a screed attacking electric cars this week. His heavily slanted piece was filled with misinformation. Here’s the truth about driving an...
At the end of this past summer it looked like the pandemic was finally winding down. In celebration, we planned a two-week excursion to Northern California and Southern Oregon in October to see...[more]
Recently I fielded a query from friend seeking comment on a widely circulated article by Recurrent on winter range loss in EVs. The implication of the query was that this somehow implies that EVs are...[more]
The more electric cars come to market, the more the people who stand to be the biggest losers from the EV revolution (that would be the oil companies) are ramping up their attacks on them. The latest...
French colleague Philippe Bruyerre called my attention to an error I’ve been promulgating for at least four decades. He noted that I’d described the famed 1940’s era Smith-Putnam wind turbine as...[more]
Thirty years ago Cornish farmer Peter Edwards, his late wife Phillipa, and his son Martin installed Great Britain’s first wind farm despite the attacks of those who said it couldn’t or shouldn’t be...[more]
Several gigawatts of offshore wind capacity were added to the Chinese grid in the final weeks of 2021 to beat the announced scrapping of feed-in tariffs, according to Windpower Intelligence, the data...
The research for an article on the history of early wind turbines took me down one fascinating rabbit hole after another. Previously, I mentioned Dimitri Stein and his Nordwind turbine on the Island...[more]
A waterfront lantern festival powered by a 'wind tree' was the last gasp for a failing business. In the final in a three-part series, Jonathan Milne reports how Evan Price's chickens came home to...
With the exception of FloDesign/Ogin, shrouded turbines have fallen out of favor with inventors as well as the media. The buzz in 2013 was all about kites or as their promoters prefer to call them...[more]
The world record for the longest 'kite fly' is 180 hours.[more]
The decrease in wholesale electricity costs reflects falls in wholesale spot market prices. This fall in wholesale spot prices was driven by higher solar and wind generation, lower fuel costs for...
As wind and solar power have become dramatically cheaper, and their share of electricity generation grows, skeptics of these technologies are propagating several myths about renewable energy and the...
The cost of two nuclear reactors being built in Georgia is now $28.5 billion, more than twice the original price tag, and the other owners of Plant Vogtle argue Georgia Power Co. has triggered an...
If we are to meet the Paris climate targets, feed-in tariffs for renewable energy are needed now more than ever says a report by Toby Couture and colleagues at Proseu, Prosumers for the Energy Union....[more]
Guy Dauncey’s novel Journey to the Future: A Better World is Possible has been extolled by a who’s who of Canadian environmental thought leaders from Elizabeth May, onetime leader of Canada’s Green...[more]
David Toke's China’s Role in Reducing Carbon Emissions: The Stabilisation of Energy Consumption and the Deployment of Renewable Energy provides a valuable service in explaining--in English--China's...[more]
Germany’s Energy Transition is a compilation of articles on the progress of Germany's revolutionary transition to renewable energy from fossil fuels and nuclear power. It joins a growing list of...[more]
For those who've fought the wind wars and done battle with renewable energy skeptics, climate denialists, and the "wind turbines cause cancer" crowd, Wind Turbine Syndrome: A Communicated Disease by...[more]
Minnesota’s community solar program grew to 822 megawatts of operational capacity in November 2021. The chart above shows the progress of projects through the program since August 2015, and the...
Locals around Lockerbie in Dumfries and Galloway now own 5% of the £50 million, 46 MW Crossdykes park, thanks to the Holyrood government’s Community & Renewable Energy Scheme (CARES).
Born and raised in the German city of Schönau, Sebastian Sladek learned the meaning of the word “community” quite soon. Words like “energy”, “power” and “rebellion” immediately followed. . . They...
Overall, 106 projects totalling 5.6GW of wind capacity were in construction for a planned feed-in-tariff (FIT) of 0.098USD (€0.09) for offshore and 0.085USD for onshore wind.
The support plan is available to small-scale renewable energy facilities of up to 500 kW, which are incentivised through a feed-in tariff (FiT) mechanism, while installations larger than 500 kW will...
The facility was deployed with 25,000 solar modules on a former cooling pond owned by the steel manufacturer's unit ArcelorMittal Differdange, which operates an electric steel plant in the homonymous...
With Paris having retroactively reduced solar feed-in tariff rates guaranteed for 20 years in 2006 and 2010, developer Solar Electric Holding has been unsuccessful in a legal bid to force the...
The Swiss government will provide CHF 450 million (USD 487.47m/EUR 425.81m) in one-off subsidies to support the expansion of solar PV systems in the country in 2022, the Swiss Federal Office of...
While working on an article on the history of early wind turbines, I tumbled down a very deep rabbit hole. How was Dimitri Stein able to work on wind energy in Berlin during the height of World War...[more]
The York County History Center’s Virtual Exhibition of the Smith-Putnam wind turbine has gone live. Opening with a stunning photo of five men standing on one of the two blades after the giant turbine...[more]
19 October marks 80 years since testing began of the 1.25 MW Smith-Putnam turbine on Grandpas’ Knob near Rutland, Vermont in 1941. To mark the occasion, the York County History Center in York,...[more]
Chingshuei Geothermal Power (CGP) has inaugurated a geothermal power plant in Yilan County, northeastern Taiwan - the first established by private investors for commercial operation in Taiwan,...
The number of geothermal power plants in Japan has quadrupled since the 2011 nuclear disaster in Fukushima, northeastern Japan, according to industry data.
Earlier this year, we reported on plans of the Japanese government to push geothermal development with deregulation efforts. So together with great feed-in-tariff support, now it seems geothermal is...
Citing a market participant, Jenkins noted on Twitter that roughly 26 gigawatts of thermal energy is offline because natural gas is being diverted to provide heat instead of power. Only about 4...
Further confirmation of Bernard Chabot's "Silent Revolution" in large wind turbine design.
Contrary to the ideas promulgated by some opponents of wind generation, most of the substantial investment in wind farms in South Australia is not being paid for by taxpayers or electricity consumers...
France has announced a new 10-measure plan to facilitate solar deployment, featuring new and existing provisions. It is designed to support the installation of more than 3 GW per year throughout the...
Solar PV deployment on rooftops in the UK is forecast to exceed 500MWdc in 2022, representing a landmark moment for the UK solar industry.
Confusing Australia’s national solar rebate with feed-in tariffs is still pretty common – this explainer clarifies the differences between the two incentives and what they are worth.
This may be more than you want to know. I had my doubts about my upcoming surgery for a torn rotator cuff. It had been six months since I injured myself and I was beginning to think that maybe I...[more]
Preben Maegaard died 25 March 2021. He was 84. His death likely won't mean much to most North Americans. After all he wasn't a household name like reality TV stars Caitlyn Jenner or Kanye West. It...[more]
A "subsidy" is a straightforward allocation of taxpayer money by a public authority to prop up the production of a good or service by the private sector, used to offset market failures and...
