General
Efficiency and Micropower for Reliable and Resilient Electricity Service: An Intriguing Case-Study from Cuba
Cuba’s decrepit electricity grid suffered 188 days of significant blackouts in 2004, 224 in 2005, 3 in 2006, and 0 in 2007. This dramatic improvement was due to a nationwide efficiency program, a crash program of switching to a majority of distributed generation, and reorganizing grid architecture around islandable netted…
Smart Planes Save Oil
This article, published in the Japanese Nikkei Ecology, explains how the next generation air traffic control technologies could save 10–12% of the oil consumed by air travel by 2030.
Nuclear Power: Climate Fix or Folly?
This semitechnical article, summarizing a detailed and documented technical paper (see “The Nuclear Illusion” (2008)), compares the cost, climate protection potential, reliability, financial risk, market success, deployment speed, and energy contribution of new nuclear power with those of its low- or no-carbon competitors. It explains why soaring taxpayer subsidies haven’t…
“New Nuclear Reactors, Same Old Story”
The dominant type of new nuclear power plant, light-water reactors (LWRs), proved unfinanceable in the robust 2005–2008 capital market, despite new U.S. subsidies approaching or exceeding their total construction cost. New LWRs are now so costly and slow that they save 2–20× less carbon, 20–40× slower, than micropower and efficient…
Four Nuclear Myths: A Commentary on Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Discipline and on Similar Writings
Some nuclear-power advocates claim that wind and solar power can’t provide much if any reliable power because they’re not baseload,” that they use too much land, that all energy options including new nuclear build are needed to combat climate change, and that nuclear power’s economics don’t matter because climate change…
