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An amazing piece of statistical analysis produced this zoomable (down to the block level) map of energy consumption for New York City, based on Spatial distribution of urban building energy consumption by end use. [via]
posted by unliteral on Feb 5, 2012 - 30 comments

The heir to the Proctor and Gamble fortune has dropped a load of cash on a movie: Thrive: What on Earth will it take? The premise: We are killing the world because an invisible elite is withholding the secret of free energy, to prevent us from thriving. Transition Culture thinks it's dangerous tosh. Huffington Post thinks it's a reactionary, libertarian agenda that stands in jarring contrast with the soothing tone of the presentation. An Archdruid thinks it's what a narrative of progress must produce when the narrative no longer describes observable reality. But it's bound to be popular with the Consumer class. (Warning: evidence of toroidal energy devices that some viewers may find disconcerting).
posted by falcon on Jan 12, 2012 - 80 comments

Alain Goeppert, G. K. Surya Prakash, chemistry Nobel Laureate George A. Olah and colleagues have co-authored a paper (doi: 10.1021/ja2100005) in the Journal of the American Chemical Society describing a novel, cheap material that scrubs CO2 from ambient air, even at the very low concentrations of the atmosphere. The material is easily manufactured, and carbon captured is readily removed from the polymer, allowing recycling of the polymer and sequestration of the carbon. The researchers, co-authors of Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy regard this as more than simply a technique for decreasing the carbon emissions of industrial processes and fossil-fuel burning machines, but as possibly an energy-carrier, by using the "catalytic hydrogenation of CO2 with H2 where the hydrogen has been obtained from water electrolysis (wiki). Articles: ScienceDaily, SciAm.
posted by bumpkin on Jan 6, 2012 - 29 comments

Daylight Saving Time Explained - It is time to abolish DST? Russia did, and some Alaskans want to, while Indiana recently got on board (despite evidence that DST doesn't save energy), and Hawaii and Arizona just laugh. (previously (and more recently previously))
posted by mrgrimm on Dec 2, 2011 - 105 comments

Economic analyst Chris Martenson explains why he thinks that the coming 20 years are going to look completely unlike the last 20 years.
posted by mhjb on Dec 1, 2011 - 68 comments

The National Ignition Facility (and fusion power) has been in the news lately. (pdf) [more inside]
posted by Orange Pamplemousse on Nov 28, 2011 - 38 comments

MotherBoard TV: The Thorium Dream If, like many of the world's leaders, you are eager for a dependable and cheap energy source that doesn't spew toxins and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere -- and that doesn't result in terrible, billion dollar accidents -- you can end your search now. At least, that's the news from a tight-knit collective of energy blogs, dedicated to a common but relatively unknown metal called thorium. In the right kind of nuclear reactor, they say, thorium could power the world forever -- and without the problems that come with the nuclear energy we use today, from Fukushima-like meltdowns to the difficult by-products of plutonium that leave behind radioactive waste and weapons material. The idea certainly sounds like the stuff of fringe internet conspiracists, but it was actually born in the U.S. government's major atomic lab in the 1960s under the auspices of one of the country's most respected nuclear scientists, and the inventor of today's most common kind of nuclear technology, the light water reactor. - Thorium: World's Greatest Energy Breakthrough? [more inside]
posted by ninjew on Nov 28, 2011 - 58 comments

Some interesting things have recently happened in the world of solar power: Evergreen and Solyndra have gone bankrupt, panel cost has gone sub $1.00/watt, and China has vastly increased production capacities. [more inside]
posted by thewalrus on Nov 17, 2011 - 103 comments

The Great Debate: What's the most environmentally-friendly way to dry your hands in a public bathroom? Scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have completed what is believed to be the first major study to assess the greenest way of drying your hands.
posted by modernnomad on Nov 11, 2011 - 86 comments

Why not space? We've previously looked at Do The Math's assessment of energy use and economic growth. But could going to the stars allow us to escape?
posted by bitmage on Oct 27, 2011 - 31 comments

Oil prices remain stubbornly high. Daniel Yergin from CERA has an opinion piece published in the WSJ: There Will Be Oil. The Peak Oil community react in depth. Bonus : Robert McFarlane in the NYT on flex-fuel for energy security.
posted by bystander on Sep 21, 2011 - 85 comments

When we talk about dark matter and its alternatives, we are talking about no less a task than explaining the structure of every large object in the Universe. On the largest scales dark matter blows all of its competitors away. In terms of explaining the large-scale structure of the Universe, not a single one of dark matter's alternatives comes close to mirroring its success. But of course, that doesn't stop the sensationalist headlines from rolling in. We are understandably uncomfortable with the notion that we are not the most important thing in the Universe. We've just successfully figured out where the new material to form the Milky Way's young stars is coming from: high-velocity intergalactic gas clouds! About a Sun's worth of gas falls into the Milky Way (on average) every year, and this resupplies the Milky Way's gas reserves, which get eaten up as new stars form over billions of years. But what about the other, larger mystery? What about reproducing the structure of the Milky Way itself?
posted by 2manyusernames on Sep 5, 2011 - 17 comments

Researchers Find That Alligator Fat Could Be a New Source of Biodiesel. Alligator farming is alive and well in the United States and elsewhere but traditionally it's all about the animals' skin and meat. Now it seems that there may also be a use for the 15 million pounds of alligator fat that are currently being deposited in land fills every year: bio diesel.
posted by Hairy Lobster on Aug 18, 2011 - 58 comments

UCSD physicist Tom Murphy inaugurates his blog Do the Math with two posts on the thermal limits of energy use on earth and the related absurdity of infinite economic growth.
posted by adamdschneider on Aug 1, 2011 - 59 comments

Most of the talk about renewable energy is aimed at electricity production. However, most of the energy we need is heat, which solar panels and wind turbines cannot produce efficiently. To power industrial processes like the making of chemicals, the smelting of metals or the production of microchips, we need a renewable source of thermal energy. Direct use of solar energy can be the solution, and it creates the possibility to produce renewable energy plants using only renewable energy plants, paving the way for a truly sustainable industrial civilization. [more inside]
posted by Bangaioh on Jul 30, 2011 - 31 comments

Bill Gates on energy Nuclear is needed, home solar is cute, the rich are useful, and big batteries are very hard to do, among other things. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo on Jul 7, 2011 - 95 comments

Energy: the new thirty years' war; we are heading for a global succeed-or-perish contest among the energy big hitters – but who will be the winners and losers? Michael Klare; (via )
posted by adamvasco on Jun 30, 2011 - 60 comments

On June 7th the Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant in Nebraska briefly lost the ability to cool spent fuel rods after a fire at the site. The FAA issued a directive prohibiting aircraft from entering airspace in a two mile radius of the plant. Since last week the plant has been under a "notice of unusual event" because of the Missouri River flooding. Local news reports that the "facility is an island right now". The flight ban remains in effect. [more inside]
posted by thescientificmethhead on Jun 16, 2011 - 121 comments

Confessions of a Nuclear Power Safety Expert .
posted by - on Jun 14, 2011 - 76 comments

"Everything you've heard about fossil fuels may be wrong: The future of energy is not what you think it is"
Previously: fracking
posted by andoatnp on Jun 2, 2011 - 88 comments

Vorsong Feng Shui Iceberg Energy Water
posted by alopez on May 24, 2011 - 47 comments

Unusually for a spring season, gasoline prices have been steadily climbing in the US since the beginning of 2011, and have surpassed $4/gallon in many US states, largely due to political instability in many oil-producing African and Middle-Eastern nations. "Not so fast," says the Department of Energy. Although the price of crude oil has climbed steadily throughout the year, the price of gasoline has climbed much faster -- a disparity known as the crack spread, which has remained at its highest level in 32 months, even in light of a sharp decline in the price of crude oil at the beginning of the month. The DoE speculates that although crude oil is cheap and plentiful enough, the 2011 Misssissippi River Floods are currently more to blame for $4 gas than the uprisings in the Middle East.
posted by schmod on May 19, 2011 - 125 comments

-Only an 'energy internet' can ward off disaster
-We must electrify the transport sector [more inside]
posted by kliuless on May 19, 2011 - 58 comments

Big Becky has broken through. [more inside]
posted by sardonyx on May 13, 2011 - 58 comments

As you may know, Japan's prime minister Naoto Kan announced two days ago that plans for new nuclear power plants in Japan are to be scrapped (NYT). Meanwhile, a landmark study from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says renewable energy can power the world (Guardian - article includes many related links). Here's a summary of the IPCC Special Report.
posted by flapjax at midnite on May 12, 2011 - 118 comments

War is Boring's Steve Weintz has a two-part article up on mobile nuclear reactors, called Atoms In Motion: Portable Reactors (part two here). The links referenced cover planes, trains, and automobiles (though calling the last one an "automobile" might be stretching the definition a little.)
posted by Harald74 on May 10, 2011 - 8 comments

The 2010 Gulf of Mexico Oil Well Blowout: A Little Hindsight by Carl Safina.
posted by jjray on Apr 28, 2011 - 5 comments

One year after BP's Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, a hydraulic fracturing operation in northern Pennsylvania experiences a blowout resulting in the release of fracking liquids. The use and chemical content of fracking liquids is a point of contention when debating what role natural gas will play in the future of energy.
posted by nowoutside on Apr 20, 2011 - 84 comments

The German weekly newspaper Die Zeit shows Americans (and a few Canadians) what a Fukushima-sized evacuation zone might mean to them.
posted by rhombus on Apr 12, 2011 - 197 comments

The Economist is holding an online debate on nuclear power. These debates provide a great opportunity to get an overview of the different perspectives on an issue. If f you are so inclined, you can share your own views on the topic too. Today's discussions focus on a contribution by Amory Lovins.
posted by philipy on Apr 11, 2011 - 68 comments

Facebook's Open Compute Project aims to share with the public the social network's efficiency design improvements to its compute nodes. [ via ]
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Apr 7, 2011 - 11 comments

Fukushima Dai-ichi status and potential outcomes The Oil Drum has begun posting daily threads about the Japanese nuclear plant event. As during the last energy crisis, the comments there tend to have a good signal-to-noise ratio.
posted by mediareport on Mar 17, 2011 - 1789 comments

Around one year ago we saw some of the recent events in solar power. At that time solar panels topped out at a peak efficiency of around 290W for a 1.99 x 0.99 meter 72-cell module, with a lone rare and expensive 315W module that was used to build team Germany's solar decathlon winning house. Since then prices have dropped a lot, and China is advancing in commodity tech. [more inside]
posted by thewalrus on Mar 3, 2011 - 80 comments

Green electricity from the artificial, tethered ray (the fish, not the beam). Video here.
posted by megob on Mar 2, 2011 - 21 comments

AP photographer Kevin Frayer moved to New Delhi in 2009. Here he captures a community of coal scavengers who live and collect coal illegally for a few dollars a day in the village of Bokapahari, India
posted by maiamaia on Feb 17, 2011 - 13 comments

In September, a privately held and highly secretive U.S. biotech company received a patent for a genetically adapted E. coli bacterium that feeds solely on carbon dioxide and excretes liquid hydrocarbons. Joule Unlimited, co-founded by George Church, appears ready to forever alter the way we produce fuel. [more inside]
posted by Baby_Balrog on Jan 18, 2011 - 140 comments

Get the Energy Sector off the Dole - Why ending all government subsidies for fuel production will lead to a cleaner energy future—and why Obama has a rare chance to make it happen.
posted by kliuless on Jan 12, 2011 - 42 comments

Have we hit 'peak travel'? Recent studies have suggested we may be approaching the limits of global capacity to sustain growth in human movement at current rates, or that we may already be at the structural limits of that capacity: the theory of "peak travel." Does it matter? What is our responsibility as travelers? Is there an upside? [more inside]
posted by spitbull on Jan 8, 2011 - 49 comments

The final hours of the Deepwater Horizon.
But this was a disaster with two distinct parts — first a blowout, then the destruction of the Horizon. The second part, which killed 11 people and injured dozens, has escaped intense scrutiny, as if it were an inevitable casualty of the blowout.
It was not.
David Barstow, David Rohde and Stephanie Saul report for the New York Times on the Deepwater Horizon disaster. [more inside]
posted by spitbull on Dec 27, 2010 - 72 comments

Corexit [Bing cache] is mostly what BP has used on the spill. There are a few things to know about Corexit. One is that is was banned in U.K. over ten years ago because it is so toxic, as in poisonous to humans and sea life. ... Corexit was also used on the Exxon Valdez spill. Now read carefully: Almost all the clean up workers who worked on the Exxon Valdez spill are dead. (previously)
posted by Joe Beese on Dec 7, 2010 - 45 comments

Dirty Coal, Clean Future
To environmentalists, "clean coal" is an insulting oxymoron. But for now, the only way to meet the world's energy needs, and to arrest climate change before it produces irreversible cataclysm, is to use coal—dirty, sooty, toxic coal—in more-sustainable ways. The good news is that new technologies are making this possible. China is now the leader in this area, the Google and Intel of the energy world. If we are serious about global warming, America needs to work with China to build a greener future on a foundation of coal. Otherwise, the clean-energy revolution will leave us behind, with grave costs for the world's climate and our economy. (more here and responses here, here and here)
posted by kliuless on Nov 12, 2010 - 49 comments

Recent exploration drilling and 3-D seismic surveys reveal the U.S. Geological Survey's optimistic 2002 assessment of Alaska's untapped oil reserves is actually off by about 90 percent. Oil and Gas Online explains the new geologic analysis and difficulty predicting petroleum reserves.
posted by Chinese Jet Pilot on Oct 27, 2010 - 54 comments

Four is a premium alcoholic beverage that features 12% alcohol and a serious (but undisclosed) dose of caffeine. While the original "energy beer" dropped the caffeine from their formula in 2008, Four Loko has become a hit on college campuses. Now, nine students were sent to the hospital after a party at Central Washington University where the "black out in a can" was on hand. The FDA is mulling a general ban.
posted by chrchr on Oct 26, 2010 - 144 comments

How Business Can Lead us Beyond Fossil Fuels: a Techonomy presentation by Amory Lovins, followed by comments from Chevron CTO John McDonald and audience questions.
posted by flabdablet on Sep 5, 2010 - 18 comments

Over fifty years after Los Angeles' first nuclear meltdown, the State of California is finally getting around to decontaminating the radioactive fallout.
posted by Chinese Jet Pilot on Sep 3, 2010 - 35 comments

The world's largest solar power plant will probably be cleared for construction in California. At 1GW it is the size of a nuclear power plant and nearly doubles the US installed base of commercial-scale solar power. It will take 6-years, $6-billion and 7,000-acres. Proposed site (on Google maps). It will use parabolic trough's (video). It is being built by a German company (construction video / operation animation). There are many other CSP (Concentrated Solar Power) projects.
posted by stbalbach on Aug 27, 2010 - 71 comments

Energy shortages and poor sanitation are two of the most serious problems in refugee camps. Now engineers say they can solve both problems by harvesting energy from human excrement.

Refugee camps to use gas from human waste.
posted by Lutoslawski on Aug 16, 2010 - 35 comments

Small amounts of sound can now be harvested by this special fabric to produce very small amounts of current. And what if there was a clever, logic-defying way to possibly greatly enhance the conversion capabilities of such piezoelectric materials? Then maybe I'll get that "Power Suit" I always wanted.
posted by cross_impact on Jul 22, 2010 - 18 comments

Magma Energy Corp. sets to acquire HS Orka (shareholders) for about 40 canadian millions. HS Okra owns the rights to most of Iceland's natural ressources for the next 65 years. Renewable. Some MP's consider suing the Icelandic government. Björk asks some questions(PDF).
posted by CitoyenK on Jul 14, 2010 - 57 comments

Microsoft introduces "an amazingly obvious tweak to battery tech that should save us some headaches, as well as several trillion hours of head-scratching and peering into dark holes." The innovation, called "Instaload" is a simple, low-tech battery contact design that allows cylindrical batteries (disposable and rechargeable) to be inserted in either direction, so users don't have to worry about which end is positive or negative. How? It puts a set of positive and negative contacts at both ends of a battery compartment. (From Microsoft: Press Release / Overview / Technology Brochure (pdf)) [more inside]
posted by zarq on Jul 7, 2010 - 113 comments

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