Data Highlights on Solar Energy

March 11, 2010
 | by earthpolicy
No Comments

Concerns about global warming, rising fossil fuel prices, and oil insecurity have prompted calls for a new energy economy, one that replaces fossil fuels with renewables. The sun is an enormous reservoir of energy; in fact, the sunlight reaching Earth in just one hour is enough to power the global economy for a whole year. Harnessing some of this energy is an essential component of Earth Policy Institute’s carbon cutting plan, as presented in Chapter 5 of Plan B 4.0. Here are some highlights from the accompanying data on three types of solar energy: solar photovoltaics (PVs), concentrated solar thermal power (CSP), and solar water and space heating.

Annual production of solar photovoltaics reached nearly 7,000 megawatts in 2008. Although this technology for converting sunlight into electricity was developed in the United States, Japan took an early lead in production, surpassed only in recent years by China and Germany. Chinese annual production skyrocketed from 40 megawatts in 2004 to 1,848 megawatts in 2008, nearly five times the output of the United States. Currently almost all of China’s …

On Rooftops Worldwide, a Solar Water Heating Revolution

March 9, 2010
 | by earthpolicy
1 Comment

By Lester R. Brown

The harnessing of solar energy is expanding on every front as concerns about climate change and energy security escalate, as government incentives for harnessing solar energy expand, and as these costs decline while those of fossil fuels rise. One solar technology that is really beginning to take off is the use of solar thermal collectors to convert sunlight into heat that can be used to warm both water and space.

China, for example, is now home to 27 million rooftop solar water heaters. With nearly 4,000 Chinese companies manufacturing these devices, this relatively simple low-cost technology has leapfrogged into villages that do not yet have electricity. For as little as $200, villagers can have a rooftop solar collector installed and take their first hot shower. This technology is sweeping China like wildfire, already approaching market saturation in some communities. Beijing plans to boost the current 114 million square meters of rooftop solar collectors for heating water to 300 million by 2020.

The energy …

China’s Changing Energy Economy

March 2, 2010
 | by earthpolicy
No Comments

In Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, Lester Brown presents a plan to dramatically reduce carbon emissions by increasing energy efficiency and replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy. In the push to reduce emissions, all eyes are on China, the world’s most populous country and now also the world’s top carbon emitter. Here are some highlights from the Plan B 4.0 datasets on China’s energy economy:

Over the past several decades, China has largely relied on coal to provide energy for its rapidly expanding economy. Coal consumption has grown quickly in recent years, doubling from 2002 to 2008. Although it accounts for a smaller share of electricity production, natural gas consumption has been increasing even faster, nearly tripling over the same period. Oil, largely used for transportation, is also on the way up, growing by an average of 7 percent each year.

Graph on Coal Consumption in China, 1965-2008

Going forward, however, the picture may be changing, as China is investing heavily in renewable energy. Wind energy in China has grown …

Coal-Fired Power On the Way Out?

February 24, 2010
 | by earthpolicy
No Comments

Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save CivilizationBy Lester R. Brown

The past two years have witnessed the emergence of a powerful movement opposing the construction of new coal-fired power plants in the United States. Initially led by environmental groups, both national and local, it has since been joined by prominent national political leaders and many state governors. The principal reason for opposing coal plants is that they are changing the earth’s climate. There is also the effect of mercury emissions on health and the 23,600 U.S. deaths each year from power plant air pollution.

Over the last few years the coal industry has suffered one setback after another. The Sierra Club, which has kept a tally of proposed coal-fired power plants and their fates since 2000, reports that 123 plants have been defeated, with another 51 facing opposition in the courts. Of the 231 plants being tracked, only 25 currently have a chance at gaining the permits necessary to begin construction and eventually come online. Building a coal plant may soon be impossible.

What …

Smarter Grids, Appliances, and Consumers

February 17, 2010
 | by earthpolicy
1 Comment

By Lester R. Brown

More and more utilities are beginning to realize that building large power plants just to handle peak daily and seasonal demand is a very costly way of managing an electricity system. Existing electricity grids are typically a patchwork of local grids that are simultaneously inefficient, wasteful, and dysfunctional in that they often are unable, for example, to move electricity surpluses to areas of shortages. The U.S. electricity grid today resembles the roads and highways of the mid-twentieth century before the interstate highway system was built. What is needed today is the electricity equivalent of the interstate highway system.

The inability to move low-cost electricity to consumers because of congestion on transmission lines brings with it costs similar to those associated with traffic congestion. The lack of transmission capacity in the eastern United States is estimated to cost consumers $16 billion a year in this region alone.

In the United States, a strong national grid would permit power to be moved continuously from surplus …

Stabilizing Climate: Beyond International Agreements

December 21, 2009
 | by earthpolicy
No Comments

Lester R. Brown

http://www.earthpolicy.org/index.php?/book_bytes/2009/pb4ch0_pref

Note: the following was written in July 2009, before the Copenhagen climate change conference.

From my pre-Copenhagen vantage point, internationally negotiated climate agreements are fast becoming obsolete for two reasons. First, since no government wants to concede too much compared with other governments, the negotiated goals for cutting carbon emissions will almost certainly be minimalist, not remotely approaching the bold cuts that are needed.

And second, since it takes years to negotiate and ratify these agreements, we may simply run out of time. This is not to say that we should not participate in the negotiations and work hard to get the best possible result. But we should not rely on these agreements to save civilization.

Some of the most impressive climate stabilization advances, such as the powerful U.S. grassroots movement that has led to a de facto moratorium on new coal-fired power plants, had little to do with international negotiations. At no point did the leaders of this movement say that they wanted to ban new coal-fired power …

Plan B 4.0 by the Numbers – Data Highlights on Selling Our Future

December 17, 2009
 | by earthpolicy
No Comments

In Chapter 1 of Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, Lester Brown underscores important indicators of global stability and resource consumption.  The following are summaries of key datasets that inform these discussions.

Each year, the Fund for Peace and Foreign Policy magazine rank 60 “failing states,” countries which on some level fail to provide personal security or basic services, such as education, health care, food, and physical infrastructure, to their people.  The countries are evaluated using the Failed States Index, a ten-point scale for each of twelve political, social, economic, and military indicators (i.e., a state that is failing completely receives a score of 120).

Failing states have much in common.  Seventeen of the top twenty have high population growth rates (several close to 3 percent per year or twenty-fold per century); these countries have seen enough development to reduce mortality but not fertility.  In fact, birth rates in five of these seventeen states exceed six children per woman.  Soaring population growth puts strain on

…

Eco-Economy Indicator: China Challenging the United States for World Wind Leadership

December 10, 2009
 | by earthpolicy
No Comments

J. Matthew Roney

Leadership of the global wind market is about to change hands. The United States—the birthplace of the modern wind industry—has held the top spot in new installations since 2005, growing at 50 percent a year and adding a record 8,540 megawatts of wind generating capacity in 2008. But if the credit-crunched U.S. industry adds only 8,000 megawatts in 2009, as anticipated, China’s new installations of some 10,000 megawatts will make it the world leader in annual additions. Having doubled its installed capacity in each of the last five years, this relative newcomer is now poised to dominate the wind energy industry for years to come.

Nowhere is China’s bid for wind supremacy more evident than in its new Wind Base program. In 2008, the National Energy Administration selected six wind-rich locations as sites for wind mega-complexes of between 10,000 and 30,000 megawatts each. A seventh has since been added to the list. In August 2009 construction began on the first project, a 13,000-megawatt

…

The Localization of Agriculture

December 1, 2009
 | by earthpolicy
No Comments
Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization

Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization

Lester R. Brown

In the United States, there has been a surge of interest in eating fresh local foods, corresponding with mounting concerns about the climate effects of consuming food from distant places and about the obesity and other health problems associated with junk food diets. This is reflected in the rise in urban gardening, school gardening, and farmers’ markets.

With the fast-growing local foods movement, diets are becoming more locally shaped and more seasonal. In a typical supermarket in an industrial country today it is often difficult to tell what season it is because the store tries to make everything available on a year-round basis. As oil prices rise, this will become less common. In essence, a reduction in the use of oil to transport food over long distances—whether by plane, truck, or ship—will also localize the food economy.

This trend toward localization is reflected in the recent rise in the number of farms in the United States, which may …

Inferno on Earth: Wildfires Spreading as Temperatures Rise

November 19, 2009
 | by earthpolicy
No Comments

Janet Larsen

http://www.earthpolicy.org/index.php?/plan_b_updates/2009/update85

Future firefighters have their work cut out for them. Perhaps nowhere does this hit home harder than in Australia, where in early 2009 a persistent drought, high winds, and record high temperatures set the stage for the worst wildfire in the country’s history. On February 9th, now known as “Black Saturday,” the mercury in Melbourne topped 115 degrees Fahrenheit (46.4 degrees Celsius) as fires burned over 1 million acres in the state of Victoria—destroying more than 2,000 homes and killing more than 170 people, tens of thousands of cattle and sheep, and 1 million native animals.

Even as more people move into fire-prone wildlands around the world, the intense droughts and higher temperatures that come with global warming are likely to make fires more frequent and severe in many areas. (See table of regional observations and predictions) For southeastern Australia, home to much of the country’s population, climate change could triple the number of extreme fire risk days by 2050.

Although fires typically make the news only when they grow large and put lives or property at …

Page 1 of 212»