DOE
The Energy Innovators Google Is Listening To
In its swanky San Francisco office, Google hosted an event on energy innovation with a slate of heavy hitters including Lynn Orr, head of Stanford’s Precourt Energy Institute, Berkeley’s Dan Kammen, MIT’s Ernie Moniz, and Google’s Dan Reicher. What do they see in the country’s energy future?
Two DOE Graphs: Historically Things Changed, But in The Future Nothing Will
The top graph shows constant change in the energy supply over the last one hundred years. The bottom graph shows no change in energy supply over the next 20+ years.
“While the Nation’s energy history is one of large-scale change as new forms of energy were developed,” the DOE writes, “the outlook for the next couple [...]
SERI Archive: 1979 Wind Energy Promotional Film
In the late 70s, Denis Hayes, then director of the Solar Energy Research Institute, was pushing hard to market solar, wind, and other renewable energy sources. Under his direction, SERI produced all kinds of people-friendly outreach documents as well as some films. I haven’t been able to track down many of them, but this one [...]
All You Need to Know About U.S. Energy R&D in Two Graphs
Both graphs are from Pacific Northwest National Lab analyst James Dooley’s excellent report, “US Federal Investments in Energy R&D.” It’s these ridiculously low levels of research spending that make me wary of writing off any particular technology. Say carbon capture and sequestration or enhanced geothermal or wave power. The truth is that we haven’t put [...]
Energy, the American Experience, Mid-70s Government Fiction
Here, we’ve just got a video produced by the Energy Research and Development Administration, the precursor to the Department of Energy. It’s actually quite a good summary of American energy usage up through the mid-70s while the film was made, but the pre-20th century bits are bizarre fiction. Watch for the little boy in period [...]
The Middle Ages of the Electric Utility Industry
The utility industry has been in decline for half a century, according to a mid-80s book by a Merril Lynch analyst, Leonard S. Hyman.
In America’s Electric Utilities: Past, Present, and Future (which, now would be distant past, past, and recent past, of course) Leonard S. Hyman lays out a narrative for America’s electric utilities that [...]
An Introduction to the Largest Interconnected Machine on Earth
The Department of Energy released a new, by-way-of-introduction report on The Grid, which as you can read below, can “appropriately” be called “an ecosystem.”
Our century-old power grid is the largest interconnected machine on Earth, so massively complex and inextricably linked to human involvement and endeavor that it has alternately (and appropriately) been called an ecosystem. [...]
World Oil Price Chronology – 1970-2007
Want to find interesting green tech innovations? Just look for periods with high positive acceleration.
Source: Energy Information Administration
The DOE’s Solar Photovoltaic Budget 1975-2002
I recently read Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute spouting nonsense about how much funding the Department of Energy has wasted on renewable energy.
“[Mr. Chu] is an indication that Obama really is committed to pursing renewable energy, which the Energy Department has been subsidizing and researching for 30 years,” Ebell told the Washington Times. [...]
Inventing Green by Alexis Madrigal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
