With the value of fossil fuels remaining in the ground underpinning corporate and national economics, it's most interesting to see how volatile markets can be manipulated. This has not changed, other than there is more transparency today than 40 years ago. The toughest challenge ahead is that no one has found a way to commoditize sunlight and wind so that we can monetize that over the next 100 years.
40th anniversary of OPEC embargo highlights continued need for oil savings
"Forty years ago today, the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) restricted the United States’ access to oil -- triggering an oil crisis that caused severe economic instability but also led to the implementation of several conservation measures and public awareness campaigns that reduced our nation’s oil use.
These measures included a national maximum speed limit of 55 mph, the development of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, higher fuel efficiency standards for vehicles, and the eventual establishment of the Department of Energy."
A misreading of the most recent IPCC report is that climate change has stopped because air temperatures are increasing more slowly when compared with a selective time horizon. Our planet is comprised of two heat-holding systems: air and water. The changes to the water on our planet is more drastic than we had previously known.
Dramatic charts reveal climate change's effects on oceans
"We’ll leave the final word for the researchers: 'These results underline the need for urgent mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions if degradation of marine ecosystems and associated human hardship are to be prevented.'"
Energy purchasing continues to add wind at an accelerated pace. This level of investment shows that we are on the crest ready to drop into a wave of grid parity between renewably-based electricity and fossil-fuel based electricity.
Omaha Public Power District announces historic wind energy purchase
"OPPD estimated that construction costs for the Grande Prairie wind farm will total $700 million, which will provide significant economic development for the local community near O’Neill and the entire state of Nebraska. The Grande Prairie wind farm will be constructed by Geronimo Energy, a Minnesota-based developer of utility-scale wind and solar energy projects throughout the United States. OPPD noted that operation of the wind farm would create 15 to 20 permanent jobs."
As a country, we need to remove the barriers to solar installation that are the new obstacle to development. Ten years ago, the panels cost too much to make the technology practical. Now, the construction marketplace, utility interconnection, and municipal/state permitting are the problems. The good thing about this is: we have complete control over all of these and can change them immediately.
A staff of robots can clean and install solar panels
"In recent years, the solar industry has wrung enormous costs from developing farms, largely through reducing the price of solar panels more than 70 percent since 2008. But with prices about as low as manufacturers say they can go, the industry is turning its attention to finding savings in other areas.
'We’ve been in this mode for the past decade in the industry of really just focusing on module costs because they used to be such a big portion of system costs,' said Arno Harris, chief executive of Recurrent Energy, a solar farm developer, and chairman of the board of the Solar Energy Industries Association. Now, Mr. Harris said, 'Eliminating the physical plant costs is a major area of focus through eliminating materials and eliminating labor.'"
We already waste too much food, and with the Western philosophy of meat production, we inefficiently move nutrients from plants through animals to our plate. The key will be incentivizing a better mix of food plants to provide better nutrition, creating a culture that frowns upon throwing away food because of look (with no concern for the value), and spreading best practices throughout the developed and developing world.
How to feed the world without wrecking the planet
"That's the problem that Canadian journalist Sarah Elton tackles in her new book, Consumed: Food for a Finite Planet. The pitfall of our modern food system, Elton writes, is that it prioritizes maximizing output—while ignoring the ecology that healthy crops and livestock depend on. Farmers today produce 145 percent more food than they did just a few decades ago, but agriculture is also responsible for more than a third of greenhouse gases worldwide. It also drains our planet of water and pumps chemicals from pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizer into our land."
Happy Friday!
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