Tag Archives: energy

EPA LCA study lithium-ion battery environmental impact, energy used, recycling issues

Posted on January 1, 2015 by

The future of both electric vehicles and utility-scale energy storage are depending on lithium-ion batteries because of their high energy-density (which is not important for energy storage, and there aren’t enough lithium reserves for even 4 hours of global electricity … Continue reading →

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Why You Should Love Trains

Posted on November 13, 2014 by

Why You Should Love Trains by Alice Friedemann    November 13, 2014 Trains rock! Trains are over 4 times more fuel efficient than trucks. On average it takes just 1 gallon to move a ton 473 miles, using just 2% of … Continue reading →

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Trains Rock! Trucks suck: 4x less efficient. Shift freight from truck to rail

Posted on October 26, 2014 by

A proposed National System of Interstate and Defense RAILROADS, as an infrastructure project for the next fifty years by J. William Vigrass To the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission, USDOT Bldg., L’Enfant Plaza, 400 7th St. N.W. … Continue reading →

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Almost half of Rail Freight is Energy, increasingly Crude Oil

Posted on October 8, 2014 by

Source: American Association of Railroads. 46% of all tonnage hauled by freight trains is Energy: In 2014, crude oil will likely be 650,000 carloads — 2% of all carloads, 2.2% of tonnage.  In addition 2.6% of rail tonnage was refined … Continue reading →

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A Century from Now Concrete Will be Nothing But Rubble

Posted on January 19, 2014 by

Photo: road abandoned since 1984 in the Florida Keys Concrete is an essential part of our infrastructure. And it’s all falling apart, as Robert Courland’s 2011 book Concrete Planet makes clear. The Romans built concrete structures that lasted over 2 … Continue reading →

Posted in Concrete, Infrastructure, Infrastructure, Predictions, Roads | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Oil and Gas infrastructure are falling apart

Posted on July 11, 2013 by

Beneath Cities, a Decaying Tangle of Gas Pipes March 23, 2014. Patrick McGeehan et al. New York Times It is a danger hidden beneath the streets of New York City, unseen and rarely noticed: 6,302 miles of pipes transporting natural … Continue reading →

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Climate change will cause blackouts & brownouts as energy infrastructure brought down

Posted on July 11, 2013 by

11 July 2013. John M. Broder. Climate Change Will Cause More Energy Breakdowns, U.S. Warns. New York Times. The nation’s entire energy system is vulnerable to increasingly severe and costly weather events driven by climate change, according to a report … Continue reading →

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Antecedents — too much oil needed to make wind, solar, batteries, and so on

Posted on December 31, 2012 by

Fossil fuels are used in every step of every process AND as a component of material objects from plastics to medicine and 500,000 other products. Any kind of alternative energy you care to name requires fossil fuels from the very … Continue reading →

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Drought affects Survival in many ways

Posted on December 14, 2011 by

Christian Parenti calls multiple crises “The Catastrophic Convergence” in “Tropic of Chaos, Climate change and the new geography of Violence”.  The problem isn’t that calamities happen simultaneously, it’s that they compound and amplify one another. Obviously drought reduces agricultural production.  … Continue reading →

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Why Oilsands (a.k.a. tarsands) can’t replace oil

Posted on July 10, 2011 by

Tar sand excavation images: trucks landscape tarsand refineries overhead video: Beautiful Destruction – Alberta Tar Sands Aerial Photographs The problems with oilsands (tarsands) are: 1)   In the tar sands open-pit mines, to produce one barrel of synthetic crude it takes … Continue reading →

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