There is an interesting discussion going on in the scientific literature about the amount of reduction in global warming that might occur through switching from coal to natural gas for electrical power production. The rate of leakage of methane (CH4), a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 and the main constituent of natural gas, is [...]
The World Business Council for Sustainable Development has released a high-quality, 9-page brochure describing the technologies and policies we’ll need through 2050 to avoid exceeding a “budget” of 1 trillion tons of emitted (cumulative) CO2 since the Industrial Revolution. Despite its short length, the brochure covers a wide variety of topics, including the need to [...]
Every year, the International Energy Agency (IEA) puts out a report, “Tracking Clean Energy Progress,” which discusses the technologies and financing mechanisms needed to mitigate climate change. Their 2012 report was just released. You can see the whole report at: Tracking Clean Energy Progress – International Energy Agency Brad Plumer, writing for the Washington Post, [...]
Jeffrey Ball, the former environmental editor for the Wall Street Journal, has written an article in Foreign Affairs magazine on renewable energy. Ball provides an overview of the technology and the current state of economic policy regarding renewables in various countries. He concludes with a list of “tough love” recommendations for renewable energy policy in [...]
Hal recently gave a talk in Berlin on incentivizing clean energy development. He points out issues with the claim that a carbon price would enable the free market to solve the problem of carbon pollution, including the political difficulty of implementing a meaningful tax or cap on carbon and the challenge of split incentives (e.g. [...]
On Jan 26, 2012, the Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed signed by sixteen scientists skeptical of climate change. In support of their view, they cited the work of William Nordhaus, a Yale economics professor who has conducted studies on the economics of climate change. In an article published in the New York Review of [...]
Hal was interviewed for the Discovery Channel’s Curiosity Project, a series which aims to answer interesting and important questions about humanity and our world. Discovery produced 27 videos from Hal’s interview, which focused on climate change and energy. You can see the full set of videos at http://curiosity.discovery.com/user/hal-harvey/videos . In the video below, Hal discusses ten energy [...]
The graphic design team at Greentech Media (GTM) recently created the infographic above (click to enlarge). It summarizes key events and statistics from the U.S. Solar Energy Industry in 2011. There were some setbacks, including the Solyndra bankruptcy. However, the overall trend is very positive for solar, with PV system costs declining by 20% in [...]
Blogger Laurence Lewis assembled the following collection of quotes from respected, scientific bodies and associations regarding the reality of anthropogenic climate change. We feel it is worth highlighting these quotes to emphasize that there is no genuine scientific debate on this point. — In May of 2010, the Los Angeles Times reported: In a sharp [...]
On Saturday, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman published an op-ed on traffic and energy efficiency called “Take the Subway.” Friedman discusses the traffic jams which have clogged the streets of Moscow and China, and he predicts worse to come, as the world population is projected to grow by another 2 billion people by 2050. [...]
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