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Inhabitat has a post on a massive new wind farm planned for the North sea - OMA Plans Massive North Sea Wind Farm to Power Europe. This week Rem Koolhaas' Office for Metropolitan Architecture announced plans for an incredible array of oceanic wind farms that may one day produce as much energy as the Persian Gulf. Dubbed Zeekracht (sea power), the masterplan comprises a massive ring of wind farms centered around the Netherlands that spans seven adjacent countries. By calling for such a large network of communal infrastructure and knowledge, the plan takes a giant step towards ensuring European energy independency by 2025. Thanks to its high and constant wind speeds, shallow waters, and cutting-edge renewable industries, the North Sea is one of the world's most suitable areas for large scale wind farming. OMA states that "The potential magnitude of renewable energy in the North Sea in fact, approaches that of fossil fuel production in the Persian Gulf states today."

According to Eli Kintisch of Science Magazine and ScienceInsider, President-elect Obama will nominate Dr. John Holdren to be Science Advisor to the President and Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). Holdren currently serves as the director of the Science, Technology and Public Policy Program and the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, as well as Director of the Woods Hole Research Center.

One of the world's top climate scientists has written a personal new year appeal to Barack and Michelle Obama, warning of the "profound disconnect" between public policy on climate change and the magnitude of the problem. With less than three weeks to go until Obama's inauguration, Professor James Hansen, who heads Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, asked the recently appointed White House science adviser Professor John Holdren to pass the missive directly to the president-elect.

According to a new report from the generally pro-nuclear organization, Climate Progress, nuclear power is just about the most expensive carbon-free option on the table today. In response, the organization is considering completely eliminating nuclear power from it's plan to make the world's power generation carbon free. Nuclear power plants being built today are required to have strict safety measures as well as waste disposal plans that make them significantly more expensive than previous nuclear power plants. The result is that prices for nuclear power have increased, currently at around 30 cents per kW/h. Or, roughly three times the cost of today's average utilities, ten times the cost of reducing power use through efficiency and double the cost of solar thermal.

It will be announced today that Dr. Steven Chu, Director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, is President-elect Barack Obama's choice for Secretary of Energy. Dr. Chu shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on laser cooling and trapping of atoms. Prior to becoming director of LBL, he was a professor at Stanford University and also worked at the former Bell Laboratories in New Jersey. For a more complete overview of his work, there is this autobiography or a rapidly-updated Wikipedia entry. Reaching deep into The Oil Drum archives, commenter Step Back pointed to an audio presentation of a talk and interview with Dr. Chu in July 2005 at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, CA.: * Real Audio * MP3 Here is one excerpt:

The Norwegian-Russian project on replacing radioactive strontium batteries with solar panels in lighthouses along the White Sea and Barents Sea coast and islands is now completed. In 2009 the project might be adopted in the Baltic Sea. All of the Northern Fleet hydrographical service's 153 lighthouses along the White Sea and Barents Sea coast and islands, have now been modernized to use solar energy as power source, Russian TV company TV21 reports. The radioactive strontium batteries that used to supply these lighthouses with energy have been shipped to the Mayak reprocessing plant in Chelyabinsk, Siberia.

Energy-Secretary-Designate Steven Chu told a Senate Committee on Tuesday that the incoming administration would have an increased commitment to alternative energy sources like solar, wind and geothermal, but also made clear coal and nuclear would be part of the energy mix. Chu, who won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1997 and is currently director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, made the comments during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Chu is expected to win confirmation easily.

Among the names on the apparent short list for Barack Obama's all-important choice as Secretary of Energy is that of John Bryson, former head of Southern California Edison. As the embodiment of greenwashed corporate piracy and radioactive public bailouts, Bryson's appointment would send a terrible message. Bryson is now being hyped as "an advocate of hybrid cars." No doubt he is reinventing his image. On a personal basis, he may be the finest of individuals.

Hydrothermal Vents Are the Solution Hydrothermal vents are naturally occurring geysers of superheated water, found along Mid-Ocean Ridges. These are points along the Tectonic Plates, huge tracts of the Earth's crust that move continents around, found where the plates are pulling away from each other. As the crust stretches and weakens, new volcanic crust from the earth's molten core, the magma, rises to create new crust.

n the arguments against nuclear energy, critics have taken aim at the debt ceiling of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and the federal loan guarantee program for support investments in new nuclear power plants. These critics seem to have forgotten something very important. There are some jobs the government must do, and one of the most important is to take on the very large tasks that cannot and do not belong in the realm of the so-called "free market."

Bloomberg suggests, and Joe Romm reiterates, that McCain's plan to build 45 nuclear reactors by 2030 might cost the taxpayers almost a third of a trillion dollars, or $ 315 billion. Now that's not much these days, considering what is being racked up for the Iraq war and the Fannie Mae debacle, but to paraphrase Everett Dirkson, a trillion here, a trillion there, pretty soon you're talking about real money.

Recent allegations that a dash for wind would cause a big increase in fuel poverty crumble when you do the numbers, says Oliver Tickell. Nuclear is the real worry "Wind power could put another half million people into fuel poverty" - shock, horror! That was how BBC Radio 4 promoted last week's The Investigation into the future of wind power in the UK.

And I applaud the Financial Times and the World Energy Council for hosting this important summit together. There are few issues more timely and pressing than the need to secure our global energy future. The fact is, we face a new energy reality. The International Energy Agency's (IEA) most recent World Energy Outlook estimates the world's primary energy needs will grow by 55 percent by 2030. As we address this increased global energy demand, we must also address the environmental impact of our growing energy use. This creates for the world a set of unique energy challenges that no one nation - or sector - can meet alone.

A subsidy represents a transfer of Federal Government resources to the buyer or seller of a good or service that has the effect of reducing the price paid, increasing the price received, or reducing the cost of production of the good or service. Put simply, the Federal Government promotes targeted energy outcomes, such as production of a specific fuel or promotion of conservation and energy efficiency by energy consumers through incentives such as tax credits, grants, and low interest loans.

Bloomberg suggests, and Joe Romm reiterates, that McCain's plan to build 45 nuclear reactors by 2030 might cost the taxpayers almost a third of a trillion dollars, or $ 315 billion. Now that's not much these days, considering what is being racked up for the Iraq war and the Fannie Mae debacle, but to paraphrase Everett Dirkson, a trillion here, a trillion there, pretty soon you're talking about real money. And it would be nice if it could be done, but as Bloomberg and TreeHugger noted earlier, the only company in the world that can make the reactor vessels is already booked up to 2015. As we also noted in an earlier post, perhaps there is more energy to be made by fixing what we have, by eliminating waste, by increasing efficiency. Perhaps we don't have to Drill, drill drill! as some suggest, or Invent, Invent, Invent! as Tom Friedman calls for. Perhaps all we really have to do is Insulate, Insulate, Insulate!

With Congress about to jet out of town and a pile of more pressing legislation awaiting action, several measures that would directly affect Utah -- from mining safety law reform to a foreign nuclear waste ban to a federal crackdown on polygamy -- are being punted to next year. Congress is set to adjourn Sept. 26, and it's unclear whether lawmakers will return after the November election to tackle myriad items still left on the docket. What is clear, though, is that some legislation will remain stuck in committee.

On a Connecticut public radio program I listened to recently, two guests discussed their views of the growing energy problem overwhelming the US economy. Both pundits, who are political columnists for national magazines, agreed that in addition to conservation measures and an increase in renewable sources, nuclear power is a card that the US must hold in its hand in order to reduce our reliance on foreign oil and our consumption of fossil fuels. Both speakers agreed that nuclear was a good investment, as it was "clean and had almost no carbon footprint."

The measure is winning adherents from both sides of the aisle-and upsetting ideologues of both parties High energy prices have become a bitterly contested political issue. Republicans are bashing Democrats for standing in the way of drilling for more oil and gas at home, while Democrats retort that their rivals are misleading the American public by saying that such drilling would significantly lower prices. Yet amid the partisan bomb-throwing over America's future energy policy, Washington is actually making a rare effort to forge a compromise.

Norway may be planning on becoming Europe's battery, but based on what Reuters is saying about a new proposal from Greenpeace it won't just be Norway which supplies Europe with electricity, it will be the North Sea. The head of renewable energy for the European Commission, Hans Van Steen, has called the proposal "ambitious but realistic". 118 Wind Farms + €20 Billion Electric Grid There may be no actual plan in place, but the Greenpeace proposal goes like this: Build 118 offshore wind farms by 2030 in the North Sea off the coasts of Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway. Connect the 68 gigawatts of power these windfarms would produce to the mainland through a grid of power cables on the sea bed, the construction of which could cost €20 billion ($29 billion).

Efforts to develop a massive environmentally friendly power plant combining photovoltaic generators and windmills that will float on the sea are progressing well, according to a team of scientists at Kyushu University. The planned plant will measure two kilometers by 800 meters and will be equipped with light-emitting diodes that shine light into the sea to promote seaweed growth, which in turn will absorb carbon dioxide and attract fish.