Recommended articles, books and other publications.

NEWSPAPER ARTICLES

I am a fan of many of the articles published on energy and the environment in the New York Times, the Washington Post and on the bbc.news.co.uk websites. Here are some recent articles that are worthwhile:

• A quest for batteries to alter the energy equation - NYT, July 27, 2009

  Good article about development of car batteries. Although the stimulus bill will push the battery industry in the US forward, we are already loosing the battle in this area, which will no doubt be very profitable in the (near) future, to China, Taiwan and Japan. The article does not discuss energy storage for wind or solar power plants. There is good news on that front also: the latest Gemasolar plant built in Europe will have molten salt storage that is good for 14 hours, which is in fact creating the first 24/7 solar power plant.

• Seeking growth market, chip maker eyes solar cells - NYT, July 13, 2009

  The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Ltd produces computer chips for companies like NVIDIA and Qualcomm. The company wants to start mass production of solar cells. They are not alone: many other semiconductor plants in Asia are extended or refitted to build solar PV equipment. My guess is that very soon solar PV prices will nosedive. Not a bad thing for a solar future. It's a very good time to start investing in this technology now because of investment tax credits as well as the downward price trend: it won't be long and we'll have grid parity in sun-rich areas such as California.

• Green power takes root in the Chinese desert - NYT, July 2, 2009

  Another article that shows the great urge and determination with which China is entering the renewable energy sector. It is rapidly building wind and solar projects in the Gobi Desert in an effort to offset its carbon emissions from coal fired plants, and to reduce its coal dependency. Still heavily relying on coal, China constructs around one new coal fired power plant a week, but that construction rate has gone down from an average of two per week last year partly because of large scale renewable projects. China has already exceeded its renewable megawatt goals that were originally set for 2020.

  I certainly cheer these developments, but boy, are we ever falling behind. The stimulus bill may very well be too little, too late. Why did we not decide on a Marshall plan for solar???

Books

I highly recommended publications from the International Energy Agency . The IEA is a trusted source for energy data and their analyses are generally worked out very well. I recently read with great interest:

• Cleaner coal in China

  The free executive summary is, unfortunately, in Chinese. I hope to provide a translation shortly.

  A short summary of the book:
  China’s coal, mined locally and available at a relatively low cost, has brought enormous benefits to energy consumers in China and to those outside the country who enjoy the products of its coal-based economy. Yet from another perspective, China’s coal use has a high cost. Despite progress, health and safety in the thousands of small coal mines lag far behind the standards achieved in China’s modern, large mines. Environmental degradation is a real and pressing problem at all stages of coal production, supply and use. Adding to these burdens, emissions of carbon dioxide are of concern to the Chinese government as it embarks on its own climate protection strategy.

  Technology solutions are already transforming the way coal is used in China and elsewhere. This study explores the context in which the development and deployment of these technologies can be accelerated. Providing a large amount of new data, it describes in detail the situation in China as well as the experiences of other countries in making coal cleaner. Above all, the report calls for much greater levels of collaboration – existing bi-lateral and multi-lateral co-operation with China on coal is found lacking. China’s growing openness presents many commercial opportunities. Establishing a global market for cleaner coal technologies is key to unlocking the potential of technology – one of ten major recommendations made in this study.

Web resources

There are many websites and blogs related to energy and the environment. I personally like these for background information and opinion articles:

• The International Energy Agency
• The Energy Information Adminstration of the Department of Energy
• The National Energy Technology Laboratory of the Department of Energy

Videos/blogs