Paul Gipe
is an author, advocate, and analyst of the renewable energy industry. He has written extensively about the subject for the past four decades, receiving numerous awards for his efforts. Gipe has lectured before groups from Patagonia to Puglia, from Tasmania to Toronto, and from Halifax to Husum. He has spoken to audiences as large as 10,000 and as small as a private presentation for Vice President Al Gore. Gipe is well known for his frank appraisal of the promise and pitfalls of wind energy, including his stinging critiques of Internet wonders and the hustlers and charlatans who promote them. He led the campaign to adapt electricity feed laws to the North American market–the same policy that has stirred a renewable energy revolution in Germany.
Latest Articles by Paul Gipe
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Paul Gipe
Balcony Solar Tops 1.5 Million Systems in Germany
Alexander Jacob reports in an annual analysis of Germany’s burgeoning balcony solar market that the total number of systems registered has topped 1.5 million. Balcony solar is now capable of generating more than one terawatt-hours of electricity per year or about 1.1% of the solar electricity produced in Germany. Also …
After more than six months of driving the 2027 Bolt, I feel comfortable with the car and have made all the adjustments necessary for the car to work the way I want it to. The software that controls the interface between the driver and the vehicle in modern cars is …
In what was once unthinkable, renewable energy from sun, wind, water, and biomass has generated 59.1 percent of German electricity during the first half of 2026. Renewables generated 136 TWh of the 221 TWh generated in Germany during the period. Wind turbines generated nearly 68 TWh, and solar generated 41 …
Balcony solar, or plug-in solar for us Yankees, may actually become a thing in California. The state legislature passed plug-in solar legislation this August and sent the law onto Governor Newsom for his signature. (See California Legislature passes balcony solar bill.) There’s no word from Newsom’s office on whether he will …
Because I write about our experience owning EVs, I sometimes get a query “over the transom” as we say, asking for help or for an explanation. Recently I got a query from someone who just bought a 2027 Bolt. It wasn’t just a new car to them, it was their …
Uptime Tech News (uptimetechnews@substack.com) recently reported bids for both onshore and offshore wind in Great Britain. “In what is expected to be a successful tactic to keep projects on track and “focus on competitive price outcomes,” the UK government announced that maximum strike prices in AR8 will be the same …
In response to Peter Fairley’s excellent historical review of UMass’ Wind Furnace project in IEEE Spectrum, (See This 1976 University Experiment Spun Up the U.S. Wind Industry: A nuclear submarine veteran turned a truck axle into a turbine) I’ve posted my historical photos of the machine to Wikimedia Commons. The …
Other Articles
The life-cycle emissions of battery electric vehicles in the European Union are estimated to be 73% lower than those of gasoline internal combustion vehicles. As presented in Figure 1, BEVs operating on the projected 2025–2044 average EU electricity mix had estimated life-cycle GHG emissions of 63 g CO2e/km. This is 73% lower than the emissions of gasoline ICEVs running on the average blend of fossil gasoline and ethanol, estimated at 235 g CO2e/km. These savings go beyond just tailpipe CO2 emissions: Emissions from fuel production are higher than those from electricity production with the EU average mix. Although BEVs were estimated to have about 40% higher production emissions than ICEVs due to emissions from production of the battery, these additional emissions are more than offset after about 17,000 km of use in the first one or two years.
188 months of US plug-in vehicle sales, December 2010 to July 2026, taken from the Department of Energy laboratory that publishes them. The share of the new-car market peaked at 12.94% in September 2025 — the month the federal tax credit closed — and has fallen in every month since, measured against the same month a year earlier.
The promise from ministers is cheaper, cleaner power with the money reinvested at home. The reality check comes with it: the company would not take over your gas and electricity supply, would not set the price you pay, and any saving on bills is a long-term hope rather than help for this winter. What is on the table is one national public energy company, bringing together the energy organisations Wales already has, and everyone in Wales is being asked how it should work before the plans are settled.
EVs are giant batteries on wheels. They could smooth out the daily and seasonal variations of energy flows on the electric grid, making the grid more reliable and everyone’s electricity cheaper. But a self-serving alliance of disparate interests is working hard to discourage EV adoption. One front of their many attacks involves apocalyptic tales of grid collapse.
Californians could soon put solar panel kits on balconies and in backyards to lower their electric bills — without utility approval. On Wednesday, state lawmakers passed the Plug and Play Solar Act (Senate Bill 868) to legalize balcony solar, a form of DIY clean energy that’s taken off in Germany. The bill, which garnered bipartisan support, now heads to the desk of Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom. His office declined to say if he’ll sign or veto it within the 30-day deadline; if he does neither, it would still become law and take effect Jan. 1, 2027. “Imagine being able to reduce your annual electric bill by $400, which is what is estimated here, simply by plugging in one of these devices and leaving it in the sun,” state Sen. Scott Wiener (D), who wrote the bill, said at a Monday press conference on the legislation. “This is a level of convenience in terms of installation and energy savings that we have not seen before.”
Solar farms given contracts by the British government to supply electricity to the grid are paying larger and larger sums to electricity consumers. Far from being given subsidies by consumers, they are subsidising the consumers. They will also act to depress electricity prices in general.
The following pages include some of the photos from my collection, including both digital and scanned images.
My photographs have appeared in Popular Science, Sierra, Solar Age, Alternative Sources of Energy, L’Espresso, Air & Space Smithsonian, Windpower Monthly, WindStats, Renewable Energy World, and other magazines, in several engineering and physics textbooks, on brochures and posters published by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, by Friends of the Earth (UK), by the Union of Concerned Scientists, and the World Wildlife Fund.
