The folks at Carbon Engineering in Squamish, British Columbia have been working on their process since 2009. Normally, this type of proprietary process remains concealed because of the vast possibility of massive revenue generation. In a bold move, Carbon Engineering has released their process in the journal Joule in a paper lead by David Keith…
The 45Q Carbon Sequestration Tax Credits: First Steps or Moral Hazard? Summary: The new enhancements to Obama’s 45Q carbon dioxide sequestration tax credits are widely seen as a boon to the oil industry. A deeper look reveals they could be the incentive that allows us to actually reverse warming, something that most people understand…
Simple Solution to Climate Pollution A must read: “Lackner and Jospe, Climate Change is a Waste Management Problem, Issues in Science and Technology, June 2017.” Times have changed. Delay has created a new climate that requires new strategies. The following is a summary of this must read article. Summary of “Climate Change is a Waste Management…
Batteries, Wind, Solar, The Paris Path Arrives – Excel Energy Across Central U.S. Xcel Energy, the dominant electricity and natural gas supplier in eight states from Wisconsin through the Dakotas to Texas, with $11 billion in 2017 revenues, and 3.3 million electric and 1.8 million gas customers, is proving that wind and solar energy…
Are We Really at Battery Parity Already? Let’s make an assumption. I do not believe it is valid based on the work of Mark Jacobson and team at Stanford and The Solutions Project, but for this discussion, let’s say it is. Climate reform culture says we can’t go beyond about 40 percent alternative energy penetration…
Yes, We Can Get 100 Percent of our Energy From Renewable Resources A comprehensive review of hundreds of studies on the feasibility of 100 percent alternative energy. In March 2017, Heard et al., published a study of 24 works on the feasibility of 100 percent renewable energy. Their findings were not favorable. But on April…
Are We Really On Track To Meet Paris Energy Generation Commitments Without Carbon Regulations? Paris commitments are generally about 80 percent emissions reductions by 2050 and net zero, or 100 percent emissions reductions by 2080. Because of the dramatic fall in costs of alternative energy construction, one could validly say that today we are…
Battery Storage Costs Plummet Lazard was founded in 1848 and is a financial advisory and asset management firm that caters primarily to institutional clients. They began preparing a global evaluation of the levelized cost of energy for new energy generation installations in 2009, and for energy storage in 2015. “Levelized costs of energy (LCOE)” are…
Most of us think a healthy climate will result from emissions reductions. Time and again however, the science says this is not so. The reason? Emissions reduction strategies are about 30 years old and we have emitted as much climate pollution in about the last 30 years as we emitted in the previous 200 years….
Global Environmental Sustainability and a Healthy Climate: Climate Policy 2.0 We all want a healthy climate and assume that emissions reductions will give us this healthy climate, but emissions reductions alone allow triple to quintuple the warming we have already seen. Today, the public and policy makers –almost completely– believe emissions reductions strategies can…
Emissions: We have the Technology From the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Nature Outlook An article review by Bruce Melton First published in the Austin Sierran in March 2018 Atmospheric carbon capture is not yet a mainstream topic in climate policy, but to meet even the goals of the Paris Agreement, it is something that…
Thirty Years of Warnings: Union of Concerned Scientists 1988 Thirty years of warnings and very little has changed. Except for a few numbers, this letter from the Union of Concerned Scientists could be dated 2018 instead of 1988. “Hottest Ever” or “________ of the last _______ years have occurred in the last decade” or “glaciers…
NOAA’s new sea level rise report in January 2017 is a dope slap that describes 17 inches of sea level rise in Florida by 2030. You can see the report here, or check out our review that summarizes the important parts here. The continuing publishing of sea level rise research on emissions reductions and resultant…
Healthy Climate Alliance and 300 ppm CO2 by 2050 (300×2050) The Healthy Climate Alliance asks, why aren’t we seeking to restore our climate to its original healthy state? The answer for 30 years has been that limiting emissions was enough. We could decarbonize our infrastructure, limit warming to 2 degrees C and let nature take…
The “moral imperative challenge” is that thing where we feel it is our duty to create a fossil fuel extinction in order address climate change. This is something our climate culture has been striving for since about 1990. It is ingrained in our emissions reductions psyche and emblazoned across our foreheads. For a generation, emissions…
The Yale Climate Opinion Maps are nothing but astonishing in their depth of coverage. The folks at Yale have accumulated climate opinions nationwide down to the county level in an easy to use interactive format. Their work is truly a fundamentally important way to understand what Americans really think about climate change. Pick your…
James Hansen, 32 year director of the U.S. national climate modeling agency, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (1981-2013, now retired), has had a new fundamental piece of climate work published. His team looks at the negative emissions required–in addition to various scenarios for emissions reductions–that are needed to achieve “non-dangerous” warming. Under Hansen’s…
New Climate Culture Our climate culture of the last two or three decades, very bluntly, not working out . Yes, carbon emissions are decreasing, or at least they are not increasing as fast a they were or as fast as projected. Possibly, they are even decreasing. But the bottom line is that current warming…
