The profit potential of the global nuclear industry is closely tracked by several financial services

The growth of nuclear energy over the next two-and-half decades will vastly shift energy use from carbon-based to carbon-free uses.  The key elements of this shift include significant change from fossil fuel sources for electricity generation to uranium for nuclear reactors.  It follows there will be greater use of electricity in industrial processing and heating.  Another aspect of the shift in energy use will be to use nuclear energy instead of natural gas for water desalinization.  especially in arid countries or those with high population growth and parallel pollution problems.  The transportation sector, which accounts for much of today's use of oil, will benefit with high speed electrified rail service for people and freight.  The growth of global markets for electric cars will depend more on battery technologies than electricity supply.

According to the World Nuclear Association, worldwide nuclear energy is expected to grow in substantially in 10 key countries by 2030. The World Nuclear Association outlook data ... read more >>

If you ask Jim Hansen to name the single most important thing required to avert catastrophic climate change, he’ll say this: don’t burn all the coal (nor unconventional fossil fuels, such as tar sands and oil shales). Ideally, we would also prefer to leave some of the oil, and much of the natural gas, in the ground — or at least use it for other purpose that didn’t require combusting it, such as for chemical feedstocks and lubricants. But the latter is, alas, unlikely.

As Described in Storms of Our Grandchildren (and elsewhere), if we accept that all the proven reserves of oil/gas will be burned (i.e., consumed up to the dashed line in the figure above), and yet also required that all coal combustion be phased out by the year 2030, then the level of atmospheric CO2 would likely peak at about 425 ppm. At that point, improved forestry, soil carbon sequestration and potentially geoengineering, could be used to gradually draw CO2 back down to levels of around 350 ppm — a value necessary to restore the Earth’s present energy imbalance of ~0.75 W/m2. In short, we’d have overshoot, but have a decent chance of recovering the climate system to a near-Holocene state before amplifying ...

I’m re-posting a very useful post by Congressman Ed Markey from last week on the impact of the stimulus package on clean energy jobs and industry in America.

The Recovery Act reoriented America to the future and refocused our efforts on our strengths. Our strength has always been our ability to innovate. Our weakness is our addiction to oil.

The tax credits and $90 billion clean energy investment in the Recovery Act has been a launching pad for job growth. This week, my Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming heard from businesses that are on the front lines of the economic turnaround.

In a recent blog post, former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Reed Hundt and I argued that America must follow the blueprint of the 1990’s telecommunications revolution. Our goal must not simply be to create jobs, but to launch entire new industries in efficiency, wind, solar, advanced batteries, and other critical growth sectors. Here are just a few examples of how the clean energy provisions in the Recovery Act are meeting this challenge head-on:

In WEATHERIZATION
The State of Ohio, whose Director of Department of Development testified today, has ...

[If you are a scientist wishing to sign the letter, please fill out the form on the this page.]

It is our intention in offering this open letter to bring the focus back to credible science, rather than invented hyperbole, so that it can bear on the policy debate in the United States and throughout the world.  We first discuss some of the key messages from climate science and then elaborate on IPCC procedures, with particular attention to the quality-control mechanisms of the IPCC.  Finally we offer some suggestions about what might be done next to improve IPCC practices and restore full trust in climate science.

That’s from a letter sent to federal agencies on March 13.  It has been signed by over 250 scientist already (full list here), the vast majority of whom are climate change scientists working at top U.S. universities and institutions.  “Additional signers include professionals from related disciplines, including physical, biological and social scientists.”

Here is the full letter:

An Open Letter from Scientists in the United States on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Errors Contained in the Fourth Assessment Report: Climate ...

Don’t you just love acronyms?  I do, which is a good thing since I write the Smart Grid Dictionary, which is loaded with them.  Acronyms are shorthand for common phrases, and there are certainly plenty of them in the Smart Grid business.    Imagine my delight when I encountered a new acronym last week – BUGS.  Everyone with a software background immediately thinks of coding errors, but in this case BUGS refers to Backup Generation Sources, and it is used in reference to Distributed Generation or DG for grid support.  

The Smart Grid Dictionary defines distributed generation as “Electric generation that feeds into the distribution grid, rather than the bulk transmission grid, whether on the utility side or customer side of the meter.   It includes customer-owned microturbines, wind-powered generators, hydro units, and PV arrays.  Customers who own generation resources usually want to reduce the amount of power purchased from the local utility or supply their own backup power needs, and this form of DG is sometimes known as on-site DG.   Excess power may be sold back to the utility through net metering.   ... read more >>

Here is our Nobel prize-winning physicist Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, in a San Jose Mercury News interview:

SJMN:  Are you worried that the political will to enact a national policy or somehow tax or price carbon emissions is gone now? If you look at recent polls, the number of Americans who believe that global warming is real and man-made is declining. The political trends are not in your favor.

Chu:  Americans were believing because of sound bites, and now they’re disbelieving because of sound bites. One can honestly say that if we don’t do this, we will not be economically competitive. Ten and 20 years from now, the price of oil will likely be higher — this is not a stretch of the imagination. The debate for whether smoking causes lung cancer and emphysema was actually in the first decade among scientists, but they muddied the waters for 2½ more decades. Climate change, on a global scale, is a much bigger deal, and people are trying to muddy the waters, particularly people who think they might lose. Unfortunately, it’s easier to propagate fear than seeing a vision of prosperity.

I prefer the phrase, “blow smoke in our face,” extending the tobacco ... read more >>

Southern Company and Turner Renewable Energy have acquired a 30MW solar photovoltaic (PV) power plant from First Solar, an Arizona-based manufacturer of thin film solar modules.

The solar project is said to be the first to result from the partnership forged by Southern Company and Turner Renewable Energy in January and will supply power to approximately 9,000 homes.

David Ratcliffe, chairman, president and CEO of Southern Company, said: "Expanding the role renewables play in our energy mix is a priority for Southern Company. Renewables, along with new nuclear, increased energy efficiency, cleaner coal technology and additional natural gas, all will be crucial to meeting this nation's growing energy demand."

Ted Turner, founder of Turner Renewable Energy, said: "It is great that large-scale solar photovoltaic power generation is becoming a reality in the US. Southern Turner Renewable Energy is excited to develop and own this project and we look forward to generating clean renewable energy in New Mexico."

The Southern Turner Cimarron I solar project is adjacent to Turner's Vermejo Park Ranch in northern New Mexico. First Solar is the contractor for both ... read more >>