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The Underground Infrastructure of Wind Power

Wind comes and wind goes. It’s feral power, part of a much larger natural system that humans are just figuring out how to domesticate. Coal, on the other hand, is a burnable rock. Like most rocks, these “solidified sunbeams” just sit there until you do something with them. They are their own storage. Gregor Macdonald has [...]

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Reading Amory Lovins’ Classic Soft Energy Paths

If you think or write about alternative energy now, there is no doubt that you’ve got some Amory Lovins in your DNA. He’s like the Genghis Khan of the alt energy tribe; almost every one of us is sort of a descendent. Hell, he even got made into a comic book character (above) in the [...]

What History Can Bring to (Green) Technology

Green technology is changing so rapidly, one can hardly keep up with all the new solar and wind projects planned across the world. So, what can history bring to the study of such a fast-moving, innovative field?

The Moral Dimension of the Skyscraper

The skyscraper is a monument to power and the money-makes-right moral triumph of the people who built it. And in an ascendant America, though the richest might have financed the construction, all who were living in the country could share in the pleasure of knowing that it was Americans who were able to spend the most money. Our rich could beat up their rich. In the salad days of Dubai, the same financial force was on display.

A Pilgrimage to the Solar Electric Generating Stations

Out there, where lots of things are happening at the scale of the global economy, it's just not that weird to have a 250 acres of mirrors making steam to turn a turbine. Or at least not much weirder than the Zappo's warehouse run by quasi-autonomous robots near Vegas.

“The Smoke Nuisance” and Copenhagen

"Viewed from the standpoint of the Smoke Inspector, the 1,600,000 people of Chicago are divided into two classes—First, those who create a smoke nuisance; Second, those who are compelled to tolerate a smoke nuisance. One class has radical champions who maintain that smoke is an irrepressible necessity; a concomitant of the commercial and manufacturing supremacy of Chicago; that smoke not only is not unhealthy, but that it is an actual disinfectant."

Asides

• After an exhausting weekend, I finished up my chapter on wind during the 1980s and 1990s. That marks the last wholly historical chapter as I move into the final phase of more forward-looking pieces. #
• The latest assessment by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory more than tripled the wind energy potential of the United States. Why? As I reported at Wired Science, wind speed generally increases with height, and most wind turbines are taller than they used to be, standing at about 250 feet (80 meters) instead of 165 feet (50 meters). Turbines are now larger, more powerful and better than the old designs that were used to calculate previous estimates. “Now we can develop areas that in [previous decades] wouldn’t have been deemed developable,” Michael Brower, chief technology offier with AWS Truewind, which carried out the assessment, told me. “It’s like oil reserves. They tend to go up not because there is more oil in the ground but because the technology for accessing the oil gets better.” #
• If the site looks different, that's because I switched from my old Wordpress theme to the much fancier looking The Morning After. I'm having themer's remorse, but I'm sticking it out for the time being. Caution, though, items could shift during this flight. #