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Chai Reddy

The Future of Nuclear Energy - Andrew Winston - Harvard Business Review - 1 views

blogs.hbr.org/...future-of-nuclear-energy.html

nuclear energy harvard

shared by Chai Reddy on 15 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Chai Reddy on 15 Mar 11
     
    " * The Future of Nuclear Energy 3:13 PM Monday March 14, 2011 | Comments (11) * Email * Tweet This * Post to Facebook * Share on LinkedIn * Print FEATURED PRODUCTS Guide to Persuasive Presentations Guide to Persuasive Presentations by John Clayton, John Daly, Isa Engleberg, et al. $19.95 Buy it now » Harvard Business Review on Finding & Keeping the Best People Harvard Business Review on Finding & Keeping the Best People by Harvard Business Review $22.00 Buy it now » HBR's 10 Must Reads: The Essentials HBR's 10 Must Reads: The Essentials by Clayton Christensen, Thomas Davenport, Peter Drucker, et al. $24.95 Buy it now » It's way too soon to say anything definitive about what's going on in Japan. Who really knows what the outcome might be from the frightening breakdown of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant (the radioactive releases could go on for months)? But the speculation about what this means for a much-touted nuclear "renaissance" in the U.S. has begun. As the New York Times reported Monday, "U.S. Nuclear Industry Faces New Uncertainty." Some quick background: For years, no new nuclear plants were built in the U.S. But nuclear power is now being taken seriously again. Roughly 30 to 40 applications for new plants or expansions to existing facilities are moving through the process with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). One of the main reasons nuclear is "back" is that it satisfies two very distinct interest groups: (1) pro-energy lobbyists and companies that usually sit on the right (although President Obama has adopted the rallying cry of "all-of-the-above" as an energy independence strategy as well), and (2) those who want to aggressively fight climate change, who usually camp out on the left. In the past, being an "environmentalist" of any stripe meant being anti-nuclear. More recently, however, some high-profile environmentally-minded people, such as Whole Earth Catalog founder Stewart Brand, have been promoting nucle
Chai Reddy

U.S. Said to Be Falling Behind in 'Green' Technologies - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...09subsidies.html

NYTimes.com u s green china japan korea

shared by Chai Reddy on 09 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • “The United States was a nearly untouched market with 120 million homes, most of them very energy-inefficient — it was a massive opportunity
  • Many European countries — along with China, Japan and South Korea — have pushed commercial development of carbon-reducing technologies with a robust policy mix of direct government investment, tax breaks, loans, regulation and laws that cap or tax emissions. Incentives have fostered rapid entrepreneurial growth in new industries like solar and wind power, as well as in traditional fields like home building and food processing, with a focus on energy efficiency.
  • A recent report by the Pew Charitable Trusts found that while the clean technology sector was booming in Europe, Asia and Latin America, its competitive position was “at risk” in the United States because of “uncertainties surrounding key policies and incentives.”
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  • The aggressive entry of Britain into the field over the last few years shows the power of government inducements to redesign a nation’s energy economy away from traditional fuel. The country’s Green Deal, as it is called, is currently being spearheaded by the Conservative-led coalition government. In Britain, reducing carbon dioxide emissions was one of the few policies supported by political parties of both the right and left, which both accepted that climate change was a serious problem and saw clean technology investment as a growth opportunity rather than an onerous obligation.
  • Dr. Arun Majumdar, senior adviser to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, said that the department’s $5 billion budget for research should be tripled as it currently financed less than 5 percent of proposed projects. He said the country needed better low-cost financing methods to bring companies into the market, as well as stricter energy-efficiency standards to stimulate customer demand.
Chai Reddy

Electric Avenue - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...10Fletcher.html

nytimes.com electric car oil Obama

shared by Chai Reddy on 10 May 11 - No Cached
  • the White House is standing behind a goal that could genuinely transform the nation’s automotive fleet: putting one million electric vehicles on the road by 2015.
  • But many of the electric vehicles that will count toward President Obama’s goal won’t run on electricity alone. They will combine batteries, electric motors and internal-combustion engines to use as little gasoline as possible while still doing everything Americans expect their cars to do. Electrification is not an all-or-nothing proposition
  • Department of Transportation statistics show that 78 percent of Americans commute 40 miles or fewer a day, so most people who drive a Volt won’t need to burn any gas on a normal day.
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  • Obama administration already supports incentives to encourage drivers to buy electric cars, and it has devoted $2.4 billion in stimulus money to the development of a domestic electric-car industry.
  • existing $7,500 tax credit
  • If we gut domestic clean-energy research, scientists in China or Germany or Japan will finish this work. But it would be far better to stick with the program we’ve begun — financing research into better batteries while deploying vehicles that replace gasoline with electricity as much as possible — and prove that when it comes to energy, America can, in fact, learn from its mistakes.
Chai Reddy

How Seawater Can Power the World - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...11Prager.html

NYTimes.com Seawater energy nuclear fusion

shared by Chai Reddy on 11 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • nuclear fusion
  • Fusion energy generates zero greenhouse gases. It offers no chance of a catastrophic accident. It can be available to all nations, relying only on the Earth’s oceans. When commercialized, it will transform the world’s energy supply.
  • What has been lacking in the United States is the political and economic will.
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  • Seven partners — the European Union, China, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States — have teamed up on an experiment to produce 500 million watts of fusion power for 500 seconds and longer by 2020, demonstrating key scientific and engineering aspects of fusion at the scale of a reactor.
  • A rough estimate is that it would take $30 billion and 20 years to go from the current state of research to the first working fusion reactor. But put in perspective, that sum is equal to about a week of domestic energy consumption, or about 2 percent of the annual energy expenditure of $1.5 trillion.
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