Solar thermal

Evolution demands short-term thinking focused on individual survival. Most attempts to overcome our evolutionarily hardwired absorption with self are selected against. The Overman is dead, killed by a high-fat diet and unwillingness to exercise. Reflexively, we follow him into the grave.

San Antonio's new Mayor Julian Castro, in office just three months, has inherited a dilemma. The nation's 7th largest city is suffering from almost 8% unemployment. With limited resources, the Mayor and City Council are searching for ways to create local jobs. At the same time, the City, through its municipal utility City Public Service (CPS), is burning through hundreds of millions of dollars on just paperwork, to prepare to spend billions on a new nuclear power plant project some 200 miles away at Bay City, TX.

For decades the "Holy Grail" of the New Energy Economy has been to find ways to store wind and solar energy. The answers are here, and they are much more plain and simple than we thought. Like Indiana Jones in his Last Crusade, we need to see the Grail that is right before our eyes. The means to enable solar and wind energy to serve as our primary energy supplies are at hand.

Although the SW sunshine resource is enormous and largely untapped, critics of solar energy routinely note the sun does not shine all the time. The implication is that power is needed all the time, and since the sun is not always available, solar opponents say it would be foolish to invest in generating electricity from the sun.

Just a year and a half after a breakthrough Solar Grand Plan study was published in the January 2008 Scientific American, the U.S. government has begun plans to implement major elements of such a Plan.

Message to Washington: You're not getting it - we're still out of work. WInd farms and energy efficient public buildings are important, but what about the housing industry? The recession started with the housing industry -- and can end if we bring back construction -- so lets focus on the real problem. That's the heart of the message to Congress and the Obama administration from a group of architects and builders who are promoting a plan to end the recession by revitalizing America's

Why Obama Should Take Notes from Cuba on a Green Energy Revolution
Solar Carbon Payback
Resourceful Guy Builds Solar House, Solar Power, Solar Car

Bringing efficiency to the infrastructure
Military embraces green energy
A potential breakthrough in harnessing the sun’s energy
The cost of wind, the price of wind, the value of wind

This content is no longer available. It was a pre-publication draft of a section of "Energy Limits to Growth," a report that will be published in expanded form by Post Carbon Institute and International Forum on globalization in May.

A new set of high definition videos are now online: Richard Heinberg on peak oil, Thaddeus Owen on permaculture, Ellen Brown on financial collapse, Tim Husdon on the four futures, and Kim Hill on the auto industry crisis, and more.

Ever since I read the Kinsale Energy Descent Action Plan I realised that the next step would be a detailed accounting of energy consumption for a town or region, and an analysis of potential local renewable supplies. The Mayo Energy Audit does all this and more and represents an important next step in the energy descent process for County Mayo in the West of Ireland.

Michigan's third peak oil conference of 2008 focuses on the specific challenges and solutions for Michigan and features 45 speakers including Richard Heinberg, Albert Bates, Michael Brownlee, Ellen Hodgeson Brown, Richard Gilbert, Stephanie Mills, Kurt Cobb, and Aaron Wissner. The event is schedule for the November 14 weekend.

Cooling applications use about 30% of power usage in US households and are a significant cause of peak demand. Replacing these systems with solar thermal powered A/C systems could save energy for other uses.

New rays of hope for solar power’s future
Will US solar businesses weather the coming storm?
Gail the Actuary: Biofuel conference call including a new biodiesel from algae

The waste-pickers of Delhi
Junk raft raises awareness of plastics despite adversity, challenges
Recyclers are cashing in on the fortune in your bin
Largest water solar heater with PET bottles installed in Parana, Brazil
A tall, cool drink of ... sewage?