tingilinde

an interesting potential energy storage scheme

Stored hydropower works well - assuming you have lakes well above your turbines and an over abundance of cheap additional electricity to move water uphill at times.  But this is neat .. an electric dump truck that goes downhill with a heavy load and goes back up empty.

a tip of the hat to Horace.

 

fundamental inefficiencies

It takes a lot of energy to make meat.

snip

...

"If all the grain currently fed to livestock in the United States were consumed directly by people, the number of people who could be fed would be nearly 800 million," David Pimentel, professor of ecology in Cornell University's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, reported at the July 24-26 meeting of the Canadian Society of Animal Science in Montreal. Or, if those grains were exported, it would boost the U.S. trade balance by $80 billion a year, Pimentel estimated.

...

a tip of the hat to Sukie

 

 

magnetocaloric refrigeration

About five years ago GE showed off its work towards a practical magnetocaloric home refrigerator.  It never happened, but the principal is interesting theoretically allowing high efficiencies and getting rid of the compressor and chemical refrigerants.   More recent work at Fraunhofer hopes to realize the high efficiency using better materials.  Don't look for it any time soon, but something to watch down the road.

 

quantifying the benefits of cycling

Utracht's Gross Cycling Product.

making subways even more efficient

Recovering waste heat to heat and cool buildings.

I'm guessing making the economics work may be a bit dicey, but a neat idea

 

from the depths of mordor

Raping the country has become a Republican specialty since the years of Regan (the elder Bush was a bit better, but it's been downhill mostly).  Now the plan even more to damage the land and people.   If the courses permit it, but many of them have been stacked too.

 

 

clear cutting and biomass

Biomass is used in Europe and Japan as a "carbon neutral" fuel.  There are issues with that -  clear cutting of large trees is taking place and many climate experts believe wood burning is far from carbon neutral.  Many countries are less green than the current accounting scheme suggests.

 

coal continues to drop

It's down to 21.55% of generating capacity, which is now below renewable capacity.  

There are caveats.  This is capacity rather than real production.  Also the drop of coal has largely been displaced by natural gas which, all things being equal, is better than coal, but still bad.  And leaks during mining transport and use can greatly increase the greenhouse gas contribution from natural gas.  The Trump administration has largely halted work on monitoring these leaks. And there's the issue of China which has been accelerating it's coal use in recent years.

Seeing coal use drop in the US is important, but it's a small part of the total picture.

 

 

california oil

Los Angeles was once quite a sight.

 

desalination

It's on the rise, but it's expensive with environmental costs.