Tag Archives: Renewable energy

The world is transitioning from a carbon-intensive to a metals-intensive economy. Low-carbon technologies use much larger amounts of metal than traditional fossil fuel-based systems. Demand for metals is thus rising exponentially, fuelling a boom in mining and production.But this creates an environmental challenge. Metals extraction and processing is a significant contributor to global warming and a major pollutant. Unless more environmentally-friendly ways of generating energy from...

It’s now cheaper to invest in renewable energy than coal in all major markets around the world—and more than half of existing coal plants are also more expensive to keep running than building new renewables, according to a new report. By 2030, the think tank estimates that new renewables will be cheaper than existing coal plants in all major markets.... Milestone.Fast CompanyFrom U.S. to Europe to China to Russia, renewables are now cheaper than coal Adele Peters

Oil prices will need to trade at around $9 to $10 per barrel in the long run if gasoline is going to be able to compete with electric vehicles and renewable energy. That startling conclusion comes from BNP Paribas, which warned in a new report that crude oil is facing an existential and likely mortal threat from renewable energy and EVs.... Oilprice.comThe Threat That Will Send Oil Down To $10 Nick Cunningham

Think "money" is the biggie. Think again. Energy is real game changer.  "Money" is to the fore right now, but soon it is going to be energy. Keep your eye on energy technology. The world is in the process of scaling down carbon-based energy use and scaling up alternatives.  The industrial revolution took off with the coal-fired steam engine that powered steam ships, and railroads and factories. The harnessing of electricity and coal-fired power plants enabled the proliferation of...

Image: NASA “How is this even a business?” my late father asked when I described a notional model for human space colonization. “How are you going to make money? What product are you going to sell?” Admittedly the model — developing a swarm of self-replicating , self-repairing decentralized, solar-powered construction automata and using them to mine asteroids and produce more such automata as well as habitable colonies— is not monetizable in the same fashion that building a picture-sharing...

I don’t need to tell anyone of the importance of Tesla’s expansion into home battery technology. A home battery lets you store solar energy to use when the sun isn’t shining, which is a really, really major thing in terms of power distribution. As I’ve been pointing out for years, this is the crucial missing link between photovoltaic cells being a rapidly, rapidly cheapening technology with a lot of rollout potential, and photovoltaic cells being the major source for the world’s power. As I...