Energy

Electric cars and solar and wind energy alternative schemes have a few crippling limitations; low energy densities and unavailability when people need energy most. Batteries could help with that second one except current batteries are legacy technology that are held back by subsidies and mandates, not improved. If we aren't getting improvements over 1980s lithium-ion batteries any time soon, at least they can be optimized, and a recent study introduces a knee point prediction method based on neural networks. Understanding battery life and capacity degradation at each stage allows…

In politics, one way to make your belief in alternative energy seem feasible is to make its competitors expensive. President Obama did that when he began to subsidize the domestic solar energy industry at unprecedented levels.(1) He brought in Dr. Stephen Chu, who had advocated $9-a-gallon gasoline, from inside his high-paying job in academia to be in charge of energy policy for Democrats. He was right in his agenda, solar could be feasible if its conventional energy competitors were forced to be 300% more expensive. After $4 trillion in wasted subsidies and mandates, conventional energy…

With a 4th generation nuclear plant finally getting built in the U.S., 30 years after the federal government blocked all advanced energy research, there are so few old environmentalists still in power that alternative energy wishful thinking can make way for science. They aren't going without a fight, though. Solar and wind haven't improved in 50 years but have still gotten $4 trillion in subsidies - all to change conventional energy share by 0.1%. The biggest pollutes are not cars or airplanes, it is poor people burning wood and dung in homes for fuel, but the Obama administration and the…

Each year when air conditioners are needed, California has to ask EPA for permission to violate federal emissions standards and burn enough natural gas to keep the brown-outs that nearly got Governor Gavin Newsom recalled from happening again. Brownouts happen because the Governor and his bulletproof majority in the legislature mandated and subsidize solar and wind energy, and they have been complete failures. Mandates and subsidies for electric cars which require electricity from the grid add an additional strain. So they are scrambling to extend the life of the last remaining nuclear plant…

If you tell me an old white person in America opposes nuclear power, I can tell you how they vote. I can also tell you with alarming accuracy what they think about lots of science, like food and medicine. They think natural gas is why climate change happens. The reality is that climate change happened due to...them. Democrats gutted nuclear energy in America 30 years ago. Democrats cheered when Senator John Kerry and President Bill Clinton declared that any nuclear energy research could be a nuclear bomb. This was the capstone of a 30-year effort to undermine nuclear power in America, with…

If even a wealthy like Germany has to lie about emissions to placate government-funded environmentalists and burn wood and buy gas from Russia, it seems unfair to criticize a poor country like Congo, but the culture war on oil can't think about any of that. If you don't want to look like a rich, white progressive telling poor black people that the climate is more important than their children, the way to do it is to write...anonymously. And an ironically-named humanities journal like Critical Historical Studies will still publish it, uncritically.  In “Enclosed Futures: Oil Extraction in…

China has quietly overtaken France to become the world's second-largest producer of nuclear energy. The United States is still number one, despite President Bill Clinton, Senator John Kerry, anti-science environmentalists, and the rest of the Democratic Party creating a de facto ban on nuclear in 1994. That was the terminus of clean energy but Clinton was only fulfilling the goals of his constituents since the 1960s. He declared that any nuclear research could be weaponized, which was patently false, but science was not his strong suit, he is the same President who exempted alternatives to…

Decades before solar and wind took over green marketing dollars, back when environmentalists still promoted natural gas and hydroelectric power, heat pumps became an energy-saving fad. The problem with them became evident nearly as fast as that electric car range you think you'll get - it is only under ideal conditions in a lab. So if you bought one because you were told it is "400 percent efficient", you probably also bought organic food because someone told you it doesn't have pesticides. In other words, you were just believing in magic. A new meta-analysis of papers including, the authors…

Though there are science and engineering hurdles to overcome, governments are keen on using food for fuel. Corn is most common right now but sugar is also a target for legislators who want to pivot away from conventional energy. Brazil is understandably interested in getting out in front of the issue. Sugarcane is one of Brazil’s main tools for ethanol from sugarcane is one of the most important renewable biofuels that can replace fossil fuels.  A recent review of its importance to Brazil also discusses the history of sugarcane genetic improvement in Brazil from the arrival of the…

In pursuit of the ambitious goal of reaching net-zero emissions, nations worldwide must expand their use of clean energy sources. In the case of solar energy, this change may already be upon us. The cost of electricity from solar plants has experienced a remarkable reduction over the past decade, falling by 89% from 2010 to 2022. Batteries, which are essential for balancing solar energy supply throughout the day and night, have also undergone a similar price revolution, decreasing by the same amount between 2008 and 2022. These developments pose an important question: have we already crossed…