The Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions (AWED) is an informal coalition of individuals and organizations interested in improving national, state, and local energy & environmental policies. Our basic position is that technical matters like these should be addressed by using Real Science. It’s all spelled out at WiseEnergy.org, which is a wealth of energy and environmental resources.
A key element of AWED’s efforts is public education. Towards that end, every 3 weeks we put together a newsletter to balance what is found in the mainstream media about energy and environmental matters. We appreciate MasterResource for their assistance in publishing this information.
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Greed Energy Economics:
Maine high court overrules state PUC approval of huge wind energy deal
NJ PUC rejects offshore wind project as uneconomical
Denmark ready to scrap offshore wind farms due to cost
Spanish Utility blames renewables for €2.0bn loss
German Utility blames renewables for €2.7bn loss
Wind Energy: German data shows what the Dutch found out years ago
European Governments ripping up renewable contracts
2015 US Budget Plan includes permanent PTC
Bloomberg: PTC Dead This Year
Continue ReadingTo illustrate that the world is not in any meaningful way overpopulated, Julian Simon noted that if everyone in the world moved to Texas, each person would still have about 1,800 square feet of living space. Enough room for a family of four to live in an average size house with a front and back yard.
Since Simon made these calculations in The Ultimate Resource 2, the world’s population has grown. Recalculating for a world of 6 billion is 1,500 square feet per person, which still leaves 6,000 square feet for a family of four (a still comfortable 60- by-100-foot lot, with plenty of space for multiple story living).
But what about the roads, parks, lakes, shopping malls, my students ask? If I say everyone in the world could live in Texas, they want to know about the amenities.…
Continue Reading[Editor note: Robert Bryce, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, is a leading researcher and disseminator of the problems of ‘green’ energy. His February 25, 2014, testimony before the Senate Committee on the Environmental and Public Works was published yesterday and today.]
In discussing energy sources, we must cast aside the social marketing of renewable energy and discard pre-conceived notions as to what qualifies as “green.” Instead, we must focus on basic physics and math.
I am an ardent proponent of nuclear energy because of its negligible carbon dioxide emissions and its incredibly high power density. No other form of energy production can produce as much energy from such a small footprint as a nuclear reactor. This is due to basic physics. Allow me to explain this by using a common metric in physics: power density, which is a measure of the energy flow that can be harnessed from a given area, volume, or mass.…
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