renewable energy

She will have Her way…

Manu SaundersLeave a comment

In news just in, climate change is real, and we caused it. Fancy that.

There’s also more food-for-thought on the environmental-selfishness of conventional electricity. Even though we still think there’s plenty of coal, oil and related substances lying around just waiting to be plundered, it seems Nature has other ideas.

A study published recently in Nature Climate Change looked at the water usage of thermoelectric power plants (those that are run on coal, gas or nuclear power) in the United States and Europe.  Together, these two continents/countries are responsible for 86% of global thermoelectric water withdrawals!! Continue reading →

Learning Danger

Manu SaundersLeave a comment

We may be taking our ability to learn for granted. It seems such an obvious thing…of course we learn! We went to school, started a new job, did a Masters in something, learned a new language…we can obviously learn.

Unfortunately, one aspect of our learning ability is falling short, mostly as a result of a very common trait – Complacency conveniently disguised as Confidence. We all know that most animals learn by conditioning – anyone who has trained a horse or owns a pet dog recognises that. A dog will eventually learn that going for the brush cutter’s head = smack on the nose. Training it to recognise other dangers (e.g. snakes) is then fairly straightforward. Continue reading →

Coal-fired nothings…

Manu SaundersLeave a comment

I didn’t post anything in January because I was in India for most of the month.  It was an amazing trip, but I came home to the same news from before I went away…Australia still hasn’t cottoned on to the fact that coal is on the way out.

I saw these while I was in India:

Wind farm near Ahmednagar, Maharashtra State, India

India is ranked 5th in the world in terms of wind power installed capacity, with almost 11,000 MW capacity, and they’re planning more.  The US and a lot of Europe are already on the fast-track to zero-emissions power generation.  Even China reached their 2020 target of 30,000 MW of wind power this year, and have now increased the target to 150,000 MW.  All this is compared to Australia’s current operating capacity of about 1,300 MW. Continue reading →