… Continue Reading“I am writing to urge you to attend the upcoming United Nations Conference on Environment and Development [‘Earth Summit’] scheduled for early June in Brazil and to support the concept of establishing a reasonable, non-binding, stabilization level of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions.”
– Ken Lay [CEO, Enron Corp.] to George H. W. Bush, Letter of April 3, 1992.
“The United States fully intends to be the world’s preeminent leader in protecting the global environment. Environmental protection makes growth sustainable…. [This] recognition … by leaders from around the world is the central accomplishment of this important [United Nations] Rio Conference.”
– George H. W. Bush, “News Conference in Rio de Janeiro, June 13, 1992.
“[Enron was] the company most responsible for sparking off the greenhouse civil war in the hydrocarbon business.”
“Even with more wind and solar power, coal will continue to supply around two-thirds of the power for China’s expanding electric car users.”
“Think in terms of opportunity cost. The resources for installing 12,000 charging stations could have been used to modernize Chinese coal power plants instead of catering to already-subsidized electric car buyers.
Electric cars are popular with investors, and the New York Times reports on booming market value as “Tesla Passes Ford in Market Value as Investors Bet on the Future,” (April 3, 2017). Tesla’s Elon Musk wants all future engines (except rockets) to be electric:
… Continue ReadingIn his vision, Tesla is going to change the world, and is primed to cash in on the two transformative trends in the industry: the shift to electric vehicles as part of a broader societal move to cleaner energy, and the advent of automated driving.
“If the purpose is to show fuel consumption by various fuels in electricity generation, the correct measure is not the electricity produced but the fuel consumed with the impact of erratic and unreliable wind and solar generation accounted for.”
This is the second post in a series reviewing Power magazine’s article on the International Energy Agency (IEA) paper, the recent World Energy Outlook. Part I yesterday dealt with installed capacity projections to 2040 and showed that this was a misleading measure. This post will show that in understanding fuel consumption, simply reporting the electricity produced is also misleading.
To illustrate the trends in fuels for electricity generation, the Power magazine article shows a more complex chart of electricity generation flows (compared to the installed capacity in Part I), reflecting such things as the net effect of plant closures and new plant construction to arrive at a result for 2040.…
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