David MacKay to become DECC’s Chief Scientific Advisor

The UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change might just be moving in the right direction, and Prof. David MacKay’s rise to world domination continues apace.

Electricity costs and carbon emissions, by technology

The European Commission has issued a technical document that rounds up cost and emissions data for the principal electricity generating technologies. It’s likely to be used as a reference document in E.U. energy policy discussions, so let’s see what’s in it.

Global warming: blast from the past

It’s the summer of  ’53. Elvis makes his first recording, Watson and Crick publish the structure of DNA … and Time magazine and Popular Mechanics report the very latest research findings:  it turns out that man-made carbon dioxide emissions are causing the Earth to heat up.

The external costs of electricity generation

The ExternE project has done the sums on the external costs of electricity generation. Wind has the lowest external costs, coal has the highest.

David MacKay, energy star: “How many light bulbs?”

Prof. David MacKay’s book, “Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air”, has been published, and it’s an instant success. Now there’s a video, a radio interview, a Guardian editorial singing his praises … and a bafflingly inscrutable criticism from the Sustainable Development Commission.

The capacity credit of wind power

What happens when the wind doesn’t blow? How much of a wind farm’s output can be relied on as “firm” capacity, and how much backup generating capacity is needed? The answer is in a measure called the “capacity credit”.

Rooftop solar power in the UK – real world data

Twelve building-integrated PV (BIPV) projects in Britain were monitored under a UK government contract. Here are the cost and performance data.

A second look at solar power on roofspace

How much solar power will fit on England’s roofs? Here’s a second try at the question, this time with better data for total roof area.

How much solar power will fit on Britain’s roofs?

As the cost of solar photovoltaics falls, solar panels may well become ubiquitous on all domestic roofspace. How much energy would that give us?

Steven Chu is new U.S. Secretary of Energy

U.S. President-Elect Obama has named Dr. Steven Chu, Nobel Laureate and Director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to be Secretary of Energy.

ExternE national implementation reports: lost and found

Lightbucket is suffering from link rot. Thankfully, there’s the Wayback Machine and WebCite^®.

Carbon emissions from electricity generation, by country

This post lists the CO₂ emissions from electricity generation alone, rather than from total energy use, and presents the data on a country-by-country basis.