Wind power growing faster than coal in China: a zombie fact

In a recent Slate piece Ramez Naam argues:

In almost every way you cut it, China is already taking a much more aggressive approach toward climate change than the United States is.

This rather bold claim seems perfectly fitted to Carl Sagan’s statement “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

Solar and wind: the value of restating the obvious

George Orwell once said “Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.”

In this vain, here is Kevin Bullis in today’s MIT Technology Review

Oliver Morton on Vaclav Smil

One of the traits of a great writer is that he will reveal the extent of your ignorance. Vaclav Smil has this and more, in particular the rare coupling of an inability to write a dull book and an ability to produce them at a prodigious rate. And this month’s Intelligent Life has a piece by Oliver Morton which does a nice job of summarizing Smil’s style.

My bet with @keithkloor: The Countdown

US environment writer Keith Kloor was stupid enough to be me $100 that I could not spend a month without tweeting (with the exception of tweets related to this blog.) Since he seems to want to goad me into tweeting (he’ll fail) I have set up a countdown on the left of this blog. Like a prisoner in Alcatraz I am scrapping the days on the wall.

Is solar cheaper than nuclear?

Chris Goodall has a provocative new piece arguing that solar is now cheaper than nuclear power in the UK.

How many people oppose wind farms?

How many people support renewables or nuclear power, or for that matter fracking? To find the answer, most commentators will just pluck a value from the nearest opinion poll to hand, however a closer to look at these polls shows that they should be treated with caution.

An oddity from Bill McKibben on German solar

Bill McKibben is some regularly inveighs us to “do the math” on climate change. There are however two sides to this equation: where are emissions come from and what they do. Unfortunately McKibben too often makes statements about energy that betray an unwillingness to do the math on the whole equation.

Germany’s nuclear phaseout: the timetable

By the end of 2022 Germany will have no nuclear power plants remaining. I have covered why this policy is folly elsewhere, so won’t cover it again here. Instead let us consider in a little detail how things will pan out in the next decade.

The curious math of Amory Lovins

Do the math: simply repeating 2011’s renewable installations for three additional years, through 2014, would thus displace Germany’s entire pre-Fukushima nuclear output.

Or so claims Amory Lovins in a new piece about renewable energy in Germany.

How many mothballed gas plants are there in the UK?

The UK is facing a capacity crunch in its electricity market. In essence within a few years, around 2016, the available supply of electricity in winter, when demand peaks, may be dangerously close to demand. Blackouts may result. The situation is reasonably summed up by this graph from Ofgem. Basically we are going from about 13% to 5% excess capacity in the next three years.