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Recent Posts
- A transition from fossil fuels to renewables could take a century – if it ever happens
- Electrifying freight trains in the U.S. is a bad idea
- Why Nuclear Power can’t replace fossil fuels
- Energy, Water, & Climate Change are interdependent
- Why fusion power is Forever Away
- Climate Change dominates news coverage at expense of other existential planetary boundaries
- Excerpt from “The Geopolitics of Resource Wars”
- Homes & Buildings
- Book Review “The Outlawed Ocean” by Ian Urbina
- Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future
- Motherboards: too complicated to make after oil
- “More and More and More” one of the best books on energy ever written
- The staggering destruction of knowledge by Christians in the Roman Empire
- Why the R/P Reserves to Production ratio does not show when oil will run out
- Catton on Collapse “Bottleneck: Humanity’s Impending Impasse”
Tag Archives: electricity
Why fusion power is Forever Away
Preface. When my husband Jeffery Kahn was a science writer at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, astrophysicists told him fusion was 30 years away and always would be. ITER was supposed to be ready in 2016, but the completion date for … Continue reading
Refrigeration uses up to 30% of world electricity
Preface. This is a book review of Twilley’s 2024 book Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves. It is a really great book, highly recommended. Refrigeration plays a much larger role in our lives than people realize. … Continue reading
Posted in Electric Grid, Energy Books
Tagged agriculture, air-conditioning, climate change, cold chain, electricity, peak food, refrigeration
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Trump & Project 2025 want to destroy energy efficiency & raise your utility bills
Source: (NYT 2017, LBL 2025) The Department of energy (DOE) under Chris Wright is proposing to get rid of energy efficiency standards that have saved consumers over 1.5 trillion dollars (CFA 2017). The average American home saves $321 a year … Continue reading
Posted in Demand Reduction, Electric Grid & EMP Electromagnetic Pulse, Politics
Tagged art rosenfeld, electricity, energy efficiency, project 2025
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Can Geothermal power replace declining fossil fuels?
Preface. Today the electric grid stays up because of months of backup power from natural gas, coal, and uranium. Most of all natural gas because it can quickly balance wind and solar as they suddenly appear or die out. Natural … Continue reading
Posted in Geothermal
Tagged EGS, electricity, Enhanced Geothermal, geothermal, heat, renewable
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69 Reasons why wind turbines cannot replace fossil fuels
Source: Leonard, T. 2012. Broken down and rusting, is this the future of Britain’s ‘wind rush’? Preface Last updated 2025-5-13 The most important problem to be solved is electrifying transportation, otherwise how can you deliver the 30,000 parts of a … Continue reading
European Power plants are burning American forests
Preface. More than half of Europe’s “green” energy comes from burning wood, a lot of it imported from America. Now Denmark would like to import methanol made from pinyon pines and junipers from hundreds of thousands of acres in the … Continue reading
Posted in CO2 and Methane, Deforestation, Wood
Tagged biomass, burning, coal, deforestation, electricity, methanol, pinyon-juniper, wood
4 Comments
The pillaging of Native American coal, water, uranium and more
Preface. This is a book review of: “Unreal City: Las Vegas, Black Mesa, and the Fate of the West” by Judith Nies. This book is about how stealing the resources of native Americans lands was made legal, despite enormous Native … Continue reading
Posted in An Index of Best Energyskeptic Posts, Biodiversity, Coal, Energy Books, Energy Infrastructure, Global Warming, Infrastructure & Fast Crash, Mass migrations, Peak Resources, Pumped Hydro Storage (PHS), U.S. Congress Energy Policy, Water Pollution
Tagged aquifer, Black Mesa, coal, electricity, Hopi, Las Vegas, Native Americans, Navajo
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The tremendous material and energy toll of the digital infrastructure
One minute on the internet around the world. Source Infographic by @LoriLewas and @officiallyChad, 2020. Preface. This is a book review of Pitron’s “The Dark Cloud”. Of note is the huge amount of electricity and rare earth and other critical … Continue reading
Posted in Microchips and computers, Mining
Tagged computer chips, data center, electric grid, electricity, internet
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Review of Lights out: the electricity crisis, the global economy, and what it means to you
Preface. My books and energyskeptic.com explain why the electric grid can’t stay up. This is a book review of Makansi’s “Lights out: the electricity crisis, the global economy, and what it means to you”. He explains why the grid is … Continue reading
Posted in Electric Grid, Energy Books
Tagged blackouts, electric grid, electricity, how it works, stability
1 Comment
Can we grow enough food postcarbon? Irrigation needs water & electricity
Preface. Irrigated agriculture over 58 million acres consumes the largest share of U.S. water. And it’s shrinking as aquifers are drained, reservoirs evaporate, and drought reduces snowpack and rainfall at the same time population and the economy are growing. My … Continue reading
Posted in Interdependencies, Where to Be or Not to Be
Tagged agriculture, aquifer, electricity, irrigation
1 Comment