Entrepreneurs are bringing light to Nepal – and you
For the one in five people around the globe who currently lack electricity in their homes and businesses, available and affordable energy resources are critical to their community’s efforts to reduce poverty, improve public health, and increase educational opportunities. These are primary drivers behind the United Nation’s Sustainable Energy for All initiative. This initiative’s... Read More
The Power Is in the Data – reports reveal the status of global clean-energy transition
As any analyst will tell you, the power is in the data. To know where we are going, we first must know where we are. But, setting global energy baselines is anything but easy. This month, at the Clean Energy Ministerial meeting in New Delhi, the International Energy Agency released two reports – “Tracking Clean Energy Progress 2013” and the “Global EV Outlook.” The latter includes landmark... Read More
Solar Suitcases meet Fish with Human-Looking Teeth – Best of the Blogs, 3rd edition
The latest Scientific American “Best of the Blogs” video is now available online and featured blog posts from March 2013. Included are short videos highlighting topics that range from gluten intolerance to fish with human-looking teeth. And, starting at 4:28, one can find a section on Plugged In’s article “Saving Lives with a Solar Suitcase.” Thanks to Carin Bondar and... Read More
Guest Post: Burning Buried Sunshine
Oil – The Least Efficient Source of Energy By Scott McNally [This post was originally published on Scientific American's Plugged In on February 14] Solar energy is often criticized for its inefficiency – that only about 10% of the sunlight that hits a common commercial solar panel will be converted into electricity. Similar criticisms are voiced against biofuels, which have a solar energy to biofuel... Read More
Everything is (Old/New) Energy
The world’s energy is primarily rooted in fossil fuels – oil, natural gas, and coal. Add in nuclear power, and you have the fuels behind the vase majority of the world economy. And, we have not really changed the fundamentals of how we harness energy in over a century. But, according to Roger Duncan – the former general manager of one of Texas’s major utilities, Austin Energy... Read More
Guest Post: Export Shale Revolution Rather than Gas
By Kevin Jianjun Tu and David Livingston [This post was originally published on February 25 on Scientific American's blog, Plugged In] The so-called shale revolution is re-drawing the energy landscape in the United States and beyond. While the Obama administration is still trying to craft a strategy to manage this energy windfall, more than twenty liquefied natural gas (LNG) export applications... Read More
Fossil Fuels Compete for Generation
Today, power plants in the United States rely primarily on fossil fuels. In 2011, more than 2/3 of the electricity generated domestically came from coal and natural gas. But, the ratio of electricity production from coal to natural gas to petroleum has shifted over time. This month, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) published a report that explores this... Read More
Solar in Electricity’s Birthplace
New York City has been called the birthplace of electricity itself. In 1882, Edison’s Pearl Street Station in lower Manhattan became the country’s first central power plant, bringing 800 incandescent light bulbs to life. Today, New York City draws its power from a mix of far-flung fossil fuel, nuclear, and renewable (primarily hydroelectric) energy resources. But, this could change as the state’s... Read More
U.S. Solar PV Tops 3.5 GW
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), the nation’s solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity now exceeds 3.5 GW. This figure is the result of a new system at the EIA for estimating the lower bound on total installed PV capacity. The figure includes both utility and customer-scale installations. The latter was not captured in previous estimates. Of this 3.5 GW of installed solar PV,... Read More
The Energy Opportunity in Wasted Heat
For every one unit of energy that is converted into electricity in power plants today, two units of energy are thrown away. This wasted energy is primarily in the form of heat – or thermal energy – and, there is technology available today that can turn this waste into a usable energy stream. Combined Heat and Power (CHP) is a technology that combines power generation and usable heat capture... Read More
