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Wind near-cost competitive with fossil fuels, says US Department of Energy 9 Aug 2013 | 10:19 pm
The latest data on US wind power provides some extraordinary statistics. During 2012 about 13 gigawatts of new capacity was installed, almost twice the UK’s total wind power. This provided about 43% o...
Poorer households disproportionately affected by rising energy prices 2 Aug 2013 | 08:42 pm
Rising energy prices have had a disproportionate impact on the less well-off. Data published by DECC shows that lower income households have cut back more on gas and electricity use than homes with...
Seven facts about Heathrow airport that need to be better known 19 Jul 2013 | 07:41 pm
The plaintive wails of BAA about the need for expansion at Heathrow are growing in intensity. This is understandable; Heathrow is a commercial airport, run for the profit of its Spanish owners and a b...
Stephen Emmott’s central mistake – human population growth isn’t out of control 18 Jul 2013 | 04:38 pm
The first chart in Stephen Emmott’s ‘10 billion’ shows the world’s population for the last twelve thousand years. The growth is concentrated in the last couple of centuries. The choice of axes mean...
’10 billion’: a strangely unscientific and misanthropic book 8 Jul 2013 | 08:50 pm
Stephen Emmott’s book on global ecological challenges is attracting much attention. The work is extremely short – perhaps about 15,000 words – and is in the form of notes that provide terse commentary...
A response to George Monbiot’s pessimism on solar PV 5 Jul 2013 | 03:46 pm
(This is a guest post from Dr Mike Page of the University of Hertfordshire. Mike saw George Monbiot’s article on the high costs of supporting solar power and wrote this note to him. I thought his lett...
Statistics so strange you don’t notice them at first 1 Jul 2013 | 02:39 pm
Green Deal assessors have visited ten thousand homes and written down recommendations for saving money on energy bills. Out of this group, 195 householders were told to install a roof-mounted wind tu...
DECC gives high guaranteed prices for large scale renewables. But the total amount of money available is unchanged. 27 Jun 2013 | 09:00 pm
Energy announcement piled upon announcement today. Alongside the expected news that zero (that’s a nought with a large number of noughts after it) households had completed the process of getting a Gre...
People who have stakes in wind farms don’t object to the noise. 12 Jun 2013 | 09:32 pm
The UK needs more onshore wind farms to meet emissions targets. Wind turbines on land currently provide the lowest cost low carbon electricity. A five fold expansion is envisaged by 2030, taking the U...
Look carefully and you can see solar PV output denting UK electricity demand 7 Jun 2013 | 08:35 pm
When the sun is shining, solar PV on roofs cuts apparent electricity demand and reduces the call on conventional generating stations. Can we see the effect in the national figures for power need? Yes,...
