Clean Energy Transition

This month sees the launch of the Elettrica, the first production electric car on the UK market with the option of a lithium power supply. The car is said to provide almost twice the range of other small electric cars at 70 miles.

Based on a Volvo C30, the ReCharge supports a 100 km (62 mile) battery-powered range before the four-cylinder 1.6-liter flex-fuel engine kicks in to power the car and recharge the battery. When driving beyond the 100 km battery range, fuel consumption may vary from 0 to 5.5 liters per 100 km (43 mpg US at full liquid fuel consumption) depending on the distance driven using the engine.

One of the images I use to explain what’s going on with cars is the TV analogy. Just a few years ago, buying a TV was pretty simple. You picked a size and brand, which features you wanted, and shopped for the best deal. Now, it’s far more complicated thanks to 720 and 1080 resolution HDTV, plasma vs. LCD vs projector vs. LED projector technology, etc.

It turns out that with peak oil here already, we are soon not going to have the cheap energy to maintain global trade or food production on today's scale. And renewable energy is not ready to step in as enough of a substitute, when the oil market will soon be handing us an unmanageable, exacerbated shortage

I just downloaded the whole of MIT’s 8.02 Electricity and Magnetism by Professor Walter Lewin and am just amazed. I had some good teachers at my schools but this guy is amazing.

The way this Icelandic investor sees it, the U.S. has the potential for a six-fold increase in its installed geothermal capacity, which would double existing global capacity. "Glitnir estimates that investments of $9.5 billion (U.S.) are required in projects currently under development, and that further $29.9 billion are needed between now and 2025 to develop and harness future resources,"

The Government has reduced electricity connection charges for rural areas by more than half, aiming to spur growth of small business and boost living standards.

In David Cay Johnston’s article in The New York Times (9/4/2007), “A New Push to Regulate Power Costs,” he writes about the fact that many states are rolling back their deregulatory initiatives. He says, “The main reason, he says, is price.

Renewables such as wind, solar and biofuels then start to look like fruits and vegetables: healthy components of a balanced diet, but not enough to live on, by themselves.

This first plug-in hybrid in the country will be able to run over 100 kilometers on electricity alone

Now Hayek -- widely credited with re-making the Swiss watch industry into the world's leader after a deep crisis in the 1980s -- is back with a new (and so far secret) plan, which my colleague Alain Jeannet and myself have revealed and detailed in recent issues of the Swiss magazine L'Hebdo (the most recent article, 5-pages, 1.3 MB PDF in French, can be downloaded here):

Back in 1998, Forbes magazine ran a story pooh-poohing the solar power industry. The article called the concept of spurring demand to increase production and bring costs down “an error in the history of solar energy” and brushed aside a million solar roofs proposal from then-President Bill Clinton with the line, “The religion of environmentalism dies hard.”

Under current law, from 1 April 2013 lines companies will no longer be statutorily required to provide a connection to remote rural, or any, customers. The most likely consequence is that, as lines become damaged after weather events or generally become unusable, supply will either be terminated or the cost to consumers in remote rural areas will increase significantly.

If utilities satisfy these goals, the plan would purportedly save California ratepayers $2.4 billion and cut about 3.4 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions in 2008.  Conversely, if the utilities fail to meet the base targets, the plan would impose monetary penalties on them

Its a video of William Kamkwamba, a young African boy who built a windmill to provide his house with electricity back when he was 14! If you look at the “ingredients” he used for his windmill, they are mostly junk parts which you will probably be able to find around your house. I don’t know how long it took him to build the windmill but it definitely doesn’t look like any easy feat. The windmill looks HUGE!!

New regulations governing the connection of distributed generation to lines company networks came into effect on 30 August 2007.