Tag Archives: energy-ish

How Re-industrialization Now Works: GO Lab and Wood Fiber Insulation

Posted on January 15, 2022 by jlredford

I was driving through central Maine recently, and was struck by how dreary the landscape looked. The houses and towns looked run-down, and store fronts were vacant. This is an old story about industry leaving rural areas, and can be … Continue reading →

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Good News on Backstopping Renewables (3) – Eavor Advanced Geothermal

Posted on March 21, 2021 by jlredford

The last posts were about batteries and pumped-hydro storage, which will be used to handle excess energy from variable renewables. But what happens when there’s no sun or wind for weeks on end? There still needs to be something to … Continue reading →

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Good News on Backstopping Renewables (2) – Closed-Loop Pumped Hydro

Posted on January 31, 2021 by jlredford

The Ambri batteries mentioned in the last post are fine for storing some energy for a couple of days, but suppose you need a lot of storage for a week or more. That’ll be necessary when all the fossil fuel … Continue reading →

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Good News on Backstopping Renewables (1) – Ambri

Posted on December 30, 2020 by jlredford

Wind and solar at this point are cheaper than any other form of electricity, and are getting steadily cheaper still. Coal plants are getting shut down because it’s just not worth it to run them, and even natural gas is … Continue reading →

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The Carboniferous and the Anti-Carboniferous Eras

Posted on December 23, 2019 by jlredford

Here’s a cool recent discovery – the reason the earth has so much coal is that it took fungi 60 million years to figure out how to digest lignin, the compound that gives wood its strength.  Before that the trees … Continue reading →

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MIT On Climate Change

Posted on June 28, 2019 by jlredford

Every year MIT has a Technology Day on its alumni reunion weekend where faculty discuss what they’re working on.   These are consistently interesting, and I’ve written about them before: The Oceans Are Dissolved Information and Print Your House and … Continue reading →

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Warming Harms the US More Than the Northeast

Posted on December 10, 2018 by jlredford

I’ve been looking at the recently released Fourth National Climate Assessment, the US government’s considered opinion on what climate change will do to the country.  This program has been running since 1990, and is protected from hostile Administrations by legislation. … Continue reading →

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How Did Wind Get So Cheap?

Posted on January 30, 2017 by jlredford

Rather surprisingly, wind power is now the cheapest form of electricity in the US: This comes from the tree-hugging socialists at  Lazard Asset Management.  Unsubsidized wind comes in at $32 to $62 per MWh, depending on the site.   Natural gas … Continue reading →

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Rebecca Leaf, Engineer Heroine from MIT

Posted on May 17, 2016 by jlredford

I recently came across a striking set of stories about leftist women who attended MIT.  The school has had female graduates longer than any other major US university (their first was in 1873), and they’ve done remarkable things.  It turns … Continue reading →

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Solectria – Achieving Goals By Lowering Them

Posted on July 28, 2014 by jlredford

A few days ago some good news finally came to a guy who has been trying to save the world for a very long time.   James Worden is the founder of the Massachusetts company Solectria Renewables, and it just got  … Continue reading →

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