This press release is basically saying the UK is at risk of not achieving its Biodegradable Municipal Waste (BMW) landfill diversion target for 2013. This means that energy from waste plants (using anaerobic digestion) are too slow and difficult to procure even with government support for the PFI credits and with the risk of massive fines […]
Read MoreUK Gas Storage Fiasco Illustrates Folly of Assuming That Markets Can Substitute for Strategic Planning
Headline in the Guardian article covering this, Jan 12th says it all “Plans to Increase Britain’s gas storage capacity left in tatters by credit crunch” What did the economists at Ofgem expect? Only an economist would have any faith in the Market’s ability to replace central planning. Having bemoaned the fact that UK only has […]
Read MoreNuclear energy can only make small impact by 2050 according to New Scientist report
Reporting on a communique from the OECD’s Nuclear Energy Agency in Issy-les-Moulineaux, France, published on 16 October New Scientist reports that nuclear power output could be quadrupled by 2050 rising to 1400 gigawatts from present 370 GW and supply roughly 12.5% of total world power use. This high projection assumes that renewables and CCS don’t […]
Read MoreNASA's Hansen urges Obama to abandon "inefectual" cap and trade
Reported in the Guardian, Friday 2 January 2009, by James Randerson, science correspondent, Professor James Hansen who heads Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and one of the world’s top climate scientists has written to Obama: calling for a tax on carbon which is fed back to tax payers, meaning no net burden on taxpayers he […]
Read MoreNew Titanic Disaster Discovery Points Way To Solving Global Warming And Fossil Fuel Shortages
Jodrell Bank radio telescope discovers faint radio echoes of last broadcasts from doomed ocean liner Titanic. World learns of hitherto unknown triumph of economic thinking with striking lessons for how to deal with global warming and predicted energy shortages! (Also see http://tx1.fcomet.com/~claverto/cms/professor-lowed-notes-similarity-between-birkenhead-disaster-and-complex-systems-such-as-politics-globalisasion-and-economics-the-banking-crisis-perhaps.html) By: Brendan “Lunchtime” O’Toady * Images courtesy Wikipedia. It is well […]
Read MoreBlackouts could hit Britain by 2015, says National Grid chief
Reported in The Daily Telegraph by Jon Swaine 22 Dec 2008, Steve Holliday, National Grid chief executive, said that Britain faces a severe shortage in power generation due to crumbling coal and nuclear plants being taken out of service and that the Government needs to cause the investment of Pounds 100 billion in new power plant.
This is the legacy of the deluded economic “thinking” of the Thatcher era which instituted the not widely admired market for electricity which was supposed to use market signals of supply and demand to cause an optimal delivery of the cheapest sources of power.
Read MorePotential demand management savings worth $3 billion/yr in USA
+ According to new reference in the Wikipedia article on Demand Response ” study carried out in 2007 by The Brattle Group for the United States showed that even a 5 percent drop in peak demand would yield substantial savings in generation, transmission, and distribution costs – enough to eliminate the need for installing and running […]
Read More"US government should fund massive public works projects" – Dennis Kucinich – Congress
On the Today programme this morning (Wednesday 18th Dec) there was an interview with Dennis Kucinich, chair of a US congressional committee (who stood for the Democrats presidential candidate in 2004), and he proposed that the US government should take over creating money from the banks, to fund massive public works projects, rather than borrow […]
Read MoreUttlesford – the most CO2 per household in England – "100% renewable is possible" says Altechnica study.
Dr Derek Taylor, Altechnica and OU Open University Energy & Environment Research Unit
The Altechnica study on Renewable Energy potential in Uttlesford (commissioned by Uttlesford Futures) study shows that it would be potentially possible to ultimately obtain all of the household electricity, space & water heating needs and power personal cars from 100% renewable energy from within Uttlesford.
Uttlesford is the East of England District located in the North West corner of Essex that borders Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire and includes Saffron Walden, Great Dunmow and Stansted Airport within its boundaries. – Prior to Uttlesford Futures commissioning the study, Uttlesford District had been reported as emitting the most CO2 per household in England.
This study showed that domestic heat provision, electricity and potentiall
Read MoreThe NASA Climate Scientist James Hansen – urgent warning
The NASA Climate Scientist James Hansen and an international team of researchers have very recently completed a paper for the Open Atmospheric Science Journal, concerning an in-depth analysis of Climate history at the Earth’s Polar regions, relating it to today’s warming conditions.
Published on 7th November 2008, the peer-reviewed research paper shows, by careful calculations on proxy data for the very distant past, that we should expect high Climate Sensitivity, the warming signal of the Earth in response to Greenhouse Gas accumulation above ground.
The team looked at the relative changes in Carbon Dioxide concentrations in the Earth’s atmosphere and showed that the rate of change showed strong negative “radiative forcing” clearly associated with the formation of the polar ice caps, and used that as a basis for calculating the Climate Sensitivity.
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