Lynne Kiesling As economic growth continues to drive up demand for petroleum-based energy, foreign supplies are fraught with geopolitical costs, and concerns about the environmental effects of fuel use increase, energy prices rise and we naturally seek out alternatives to the oil we’ve become accustomed to using over the past century. One potentially attractive option …
Lynne Kiesling Landfills, mines, and livestock give off methane, a form of natural gas that could be used as fuel if it were captured and recycled in some useful way. Methane is also a potent greenhouse gas, and some research shows that controlling methane may actually lead to larger effects than controlling carbon dioxide emissions. …
Landfill Gas and Bovine Flatulence: New Energy Supplies Read More »
Lynne Kiesling There was a blackout in Queens, New York late last week, and some customers are still without power. At City Journal, Nicole Gelinas pins responsibility right where it belongs: political institutions do not have a profit motive for investing in infrastructure: This neglect goes unnoticed when the electricity is actually on. But beginning …
Michael Giberson Tom Casten, CEO of Primary Energy, gave a rousing keynote speech to the International Association of Energy Economists last July in which he argued that about 30 years ago the economics of power generation tipped in favor of decentralized combined heat and power projects. Unfortunately, large centralized power generation is what power companies …
Lynne Kiesling Randall Parker had a great post on Friday about hybrid and electric vehicles as electricity generation sources. Think about it: you come home from work, plug your car into your house, and use it to augment whatever other source of electricity you have, whether it’s your own generator, a neighborhood combined heat and …
Future Pundit was full of all sorts of interesting news while I was gone, including this post on using bacteria to extract methane from coal (and a sidenote on carbon sequestration), and this post on new organic materials to make cheap solar panels. One remarkable thing to note in his discussion of the efficiency of …
According to this press release, the municipal utility in Austin, Texas has installed a natural-gas-fired fuel cell combined heat and power system. Austin Energy installed the 200-kilowatt fuel cell system, which also produces 900,000 BTUs of usable heat per hour, at the Rebekah Baines Johnson Health Center. Electricity produced by the unit is fed into …
Arnold Kling suggested that I explore the fuel cell future in more detail. I intend to delve further into the economics of such technological change, but for now, here’s a compilation of several articles on fuel cell research and how close they are to economic viability. Most current analysts predict about 20 years. This October …
Lynne Kiesling Sarah’s post here on manners (including her Freeman essay and Matt Zwolinski’s BHL post) and Mike’s observations on them open up a great discussion about the importance of seemingly superficial informal norms for enabling us to live together and generate civil society. Mike’s absolutely right that the road to anarchy is paved with …
Lynne Kiesling Some of the best environmental projects also save money. This post at The Atlantic’s Cities blog highlights urban green infrastructure such as permeable pavement projects, including a recent study finding that they can also be economical: Looking at 479 case studies of green infrastructure projects around the U.S., the report finds that the …
Green Urban Infrastructure Can Save Green(backs) Read More »
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