Over at Columbia University’s “Water Matters”, Debbie Cook has been making the case against desalination as a water supply solution. She has a number of lines of argument, but it all boils down (pardon the pun) to cost, and to a series of societal tradeoffs that flow from that. Consider Saudi Arabia’s decision to use …
I noticed yesterday evening a significant number of homes with outdoor Christmas lights still up and shining, far more than I remember in past years by mid-January. (No data here, just a hunch.) They looked like the new high-efficiency LED lights, which seems to be the Jevons paradox in action. The core of the paradox …
Continue reading ‘The Jevons Paradox and Christmas Lights’ »
For more than a decade, I’ve written about arguments over whether the United States is building, or could, or should build “new” nuclear weapons. They are frequently silly arguments. The “newness” debate was engaged in earnest in the late 1990s when the weaponeers fielded a nuclear bomb called the “B61 Mod 11”. The B61 is …
Continue reading ‘Apparently I’m Supposed to Write a Blog Post About This’ »
Osha Gray Davidson, writing about yesterday’s Blythe Solar Power Project announcement, highlights a key issue: [T]he project will now have a much smaller “water footprint” thanks to a decision to use air cooling, which consumes no water, at the cost of somewhat reduced efficiency. Cynthia Barnett, a noted water expert and author, calls the Blythe …
Continue reading ‘Energy and Water in the California Desert’ »
Investors need to take long term water supply risks into account as they think about municipal bonds, according to a new analysis by the environmental-investor group Ceres published this week: The report shows that some of the nation’s largest public utilities may face moderate to severe water supply shortfalls in the coming years, yet these …
Re Dan Sarewitz’s Nature column of last April about the value of “Pentagon pull” to drive energy innovation, here’s Elisabeth Rosenthal in the New York Times: Even as Congress has struggled unsuccessfully to pass an energy bill and many states have put renewable energy on hold because of the recession, the military this year has …
From this morning’s newspaper, a column (sub/ad req) about the reasons energy efficiency may not save as much as its advocates frequently claim: In a new paper, a team led by Tsao has drawn international attention by arguing that, instead of leading to reduced energy consumption, super-efficient bulbs may instead lead to people simply using …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: The Jevons Paradox’ »
Caltech prof David Rutledge’s “peak coal” argument is getting a lot of traction of late, and came up in a discussion on twitter this morning. The question was posed: if Rutledge is right, does this mean greenhouse gas regulation is not needed? Rutledge, in a talk two years ago here in Albuquerque, said the answer …
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It’s hard to know how we’re doing to be able to address large scale global energy decarbonization needs when we’re still dealing with problems like this: Rising electricity prices are increasing the use of wood for heating in South Eastern Europe to alarming levels, posing a serious threat to health and the environment, experts warned. …
Because of my interest in energy, I follow news about Sasol, the South African company that makes liquid fuels out of coal. Sasol news is a good tracer of what’s going on in the coal-to-liquids field, which is important because of CTL’s role as an economic backstop to petroleum as vehicle fuel. Lots of important …