Posted by It is with the greatest sadness that I have to write about the sudden passing of a colleague, co-author, and most importantly, a friend, Abeeku Brew-Hammond, who passed away on March 25, 2013. Abeeku had an incredibly rich and interdisciplinary career in energy. At his passing he was an associate professor, and director of The Energy…
This past week I attended and had the pleasure to speak and debate at the 2013 World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. This was the sixth such summit, and the third I have attended. The stated goal of the meeting is to: bring together global leaders in policy, technology and business…
A debate is in full-swing in northwest Washington state about the energy, economic, and environmental future of the region, where coal export terminals have been proposed to send U.S., and potentially Canadian coal to Asia. A plan to build a sprawling $665 million coal terminal northwest of Bellingham, Washington has been the focal point of…
The most recent Conference of the Parties meeting (COP) conference in Doha has now come and gone. As has been dissected at necessary nauseam, more or less nothing was accomplished. Some will see this as a failure, as I do, and others will (correctly) note that this meeting, the 18th such COP (see historical note…
The Americas are undergoing a transition in the energy sector that will have global geopolitical ramifications. At the same time as the United States is touted to become the world’s largest oil producer by 2020, and a net exporter by 2030, Brazil, Nicaragua, and Panama show the most promise in becoming regional hubs not only for clean energy investment, but for sustained low-carbon economic growth.
One of the great frustrations to the climate science and environmental stewardship research community is that the steady advance of solid scientific consensus about the risks of climate change warrants very little coverage. On the other hand, disasters— mega-story Sandy, heat waves, fires, and drought— get a lot of attention, even if the risk assessment…
As China selects its new leadership this week, jobs, energy, and international relations will be very much on the minds of the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party. Over the past decade China has transformed its economy into the leading manufacturing power in the clean energy sector. This is a tremendous achievement, and one that…
U.S. Navy veteran Elmer Rankin, 71, has a failing heart, prostate cancer and arthritis that keeps him in a wheelchair. Last year, Rankin, who survives on his Social Security checks, could no longer afford the mounting costs to heat his home and power the oxygen tank he uses every night. He turned down the heat…
By Morgan Bazilian, Alan Miller and Daniel M. Kammen Out of the sighs of one generation are kneaded the hopes of the next. –Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, Brazilian novelist, poet, and playwright (1839 – 1908) The June 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development, commonly referred to as Rio+20, provides the global community an opportunity…
Over the past decade, plans for 160 new coal fired power plants in the United States have been scrapped, largely due to rising costs and an inability to compete in today’s energy markets. That’s because the cost of once-“expensive” clean energy has fallen dramatically, while “cheap” fossil fuels are increasingly expensive in economic, health, and…
The Solyndra uproar and the recent International Trade Commission decision to investigate Chinese solar panel manufacturers threaten to distract us from what we need most: a proactive, long-term clean and sustainable energy strategy. If you look beyond the partisan politics that have recently engulfed the solar industry, two irrefutable facts stand out. First, the solar…
What can be done to diversify our clean energy technology options? In recent years we have seen a number of seemingly “old” technologies undergo a reassessment, and a reinvention. Geothermal power, once assessed as “an excellent source of baseload energy, but likely limited in commercially exploitable capacity” has undergone a renaissance. Here’s the new view…
Wangari Muta Maathi, the Nobel Prize-winning environmental activist who founded the Green Belt Movement, died Sunday at Nairobi Hospital at the age of 71 after “a prolonged and bravely borne struggle with cancer,” her website announced. I got to know Mwalimu Maathai initially 20 years ago when working on stove and woodlot projects in rural…
Former U. S. President Dwight Eisenhower was particularly fond of the saying, “plans are nothing; planning is everything” to describe his desire for teams in his administration to carefully describe what they hoped to achieve, and how far and fast they were moving to actually achieve those goals. The analytic tools were useful, but what…
What will it take to foster and spread the ideas and practices needed for sustainable development? One thing that has stirred innovative thinking are the positive results of recent prize competitions. Perhaps the most notable of these–so far–has been the Ansari X Prize. The Ansari X Prize was a space competition in which the X…
Energy poverty cripples development prospects. Where people don’t have access to modern energy services, like reliable electricity, their ability to earn a livelihood is sabotaged. That’s why UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called — admirably — for “a revolution that makes energy available and affordable for all” in 2012, designated the International Year of Sustainable…
This weekend marked the beginning of an important new chapter of nation-building, with the celebration and formal launch of the world’s newest nation, the Republic of South Sudan. United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and a host of dignitaries were on hand. The decades-long civil war with the north ended in 2005, and the World…
Renewable energy: Scientists, governments, and significant elements of the business community now are in agreement that it is the basis around which we can build a low-carbon, sustainable, global energy economy. And yet, misinformation is being propagated by interests favoring the status quo. A June 7 op-ed, The Gas is Greener, by Robert Bryce in…
By now it is clear that climate change is an immediate threat as well as a problem that will affect our children in the distant future. At a meeting of the Clean Investment Funds Partnership Forum in Cape Town there was a telling comment in a session I chaired on climate change science when a…
An important series of meetings on the Climate Investment Funds, hosted by the African Development Bank, began June 20 in Cape Town, South Africa. At one of the first events, discussion focused on how individual households, communities, cities, companies, and nations find and use tools to develop low-carbon, pro-growth, gender-sensitive, pro-access energy solutions. A key factor…
In many parts of the world, a picture of a woman sitting in front of a smoky cookstove preparing a family meal remains an iconic picture of life today. For many families, the three- stone fire or a traditional stove as a cooking device has not changed over centuries. This need not be the case,…
Last month, I blogged about the Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), for which I was a coordinating lead author. In that report we found that by 2050, roughly 80 percent of global energy demand could be met by tapping renewable sources. The IPCC’s…
In a planet running out of resources, the most important public policy tool may be the measuring stick. This becomes important to remember amid the remarkable swings of pessimism and guarded optimism we’ve seen over the past two years on the ability of individual nations to scale-up the sustainable energy agenda. COP15 in Copenhagen 2009…
In Africa, where two-thirds of farmers are women, the potential of biofuels as a low or lower-carbon alternative fuel, with applications at the household energy, community and village level, to a national resource or export commodity, has a critical gender dimension. The key question is: how will increased biofuel production affect women? To look at the…
In just one day, the sun delivers about as much energy as has been consumed by all human beings over the past 35 years. So why haven’t we exploited more than a tiny fraction of this potential? There are many reasons: cost, storage, transmission, distribution, entrenched subsidies and technological challenges are but a few…
