December 13, 2019 by NREL, via Energy Post A great deal of the cost reductions in wind energy have come, pure and simply, from bigger turbines. Their rotors have a greater swept area and access higher wind speeds at elevated heights. But there are practical limits to the size these blades can reach. Challenges include weight, fatigue, manufacturing, reliability, transport and logistics. To push the boundaries of design, teams from the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory and San

January 31, 2020 by Meredith Fowlie, via Energy Post The issue of carbon taxes is under debate in the U.S. Congress. The fear is a new tax will destroy jobs and hinder growth. Will it? Meredith Fowlie at the Energy Institute at Haas says the U.S. should see Europe as a very useful carbon tax laboratory experiment: half the countries have some sort of tax, the other half don’t. She’s pulled together evidence to answer the simple question: does a carbon tax affect aggregate employment and growth.

December 11, 2019 by Samantha Hood, via Energy Post Around 95% of the world’s solar modules are made with silicon. It’s stable against temperature and humidity fluctuations and we’ll never run out of it. But it’s quite inefficient at absorbing sunlight, and very brittle. So the silicon layers in PV have to be quite thick to capture sunlight and resist cracking, leading to heavy and bulky solar panels. The remaining 5% of solar modules are “thin film”, opening the way for game-changing lightweight and flexi

January 13, 2020 by David Chandler, via Energy Post Natural gas, because it’s low-carbon, is being used as a bridge fuel away from the old fossil fuel world. But there are two main problems. The infrastructure leaks methane (the main component of the gas) which is 25 times more potent than CO2 over a 100-year period (and 86 times over a 20-year period!). And, crucially, nobody is properly measuring those leaks. That means policy makers are growing the gas mix without knowing by how much it’s reducing emiss