Ed Ring

With many millions - if not billions - around the world believing today's U.S. Presidential election could be the dawn of a new age of peace and prosperity and international cooperation - with even this skeptic among them fervently hoping they're right - where are we with the dawning of the age of solar energy? How much solar power do we harvest from dawn to dusk, the world over? Having spoken or corresponded with more than a few experts on this topic over the past few days, here is the status of global solar energy right now:  The total installed base of photovoltaic capacity in the world as of 12-31-08 is estimated to be about 12.5 gigawatts. This is including both "inside the...

As the winds of change blow through America on this historic election day, here's an update on wind energy. The last two years have seen an astonishing growth in wind capacity worldwide, particularly since the installed base of wind generating capacity now constitutes a substantial denominator over which to calculate percentage growth.  Sometime this year, the installed base of wind generating capacity worldwide crossed 100 gigawatts. By comparison, the estimated total installed base of photovoltaic capacity worldwide at the end of 2007 was only about 10 gigawatts - and the yields from wind energy are now reliably over 25% - in some cases much higher - whereas the yields from solar average...

It is difficult to put both sides of any initiative into a few words and capture all the nuances, but here are some observations for voters to consider as we go into the last days before the election.  The points made here are based on very recent conversations with people intimately involved with the campaigns both for and against Prop 7.  While everything revealed here was on the record, sources will not be disclosed. Here is the Legislative Analyst analysis of Proposition 7.  If you wish to view for yourself the areas in the bill cited below, click here for full text of Proposition 7 (this is a .pdf and will not accommodate text searches, if you prefer to keyword search the text, please click here for the full text in a format that...

We have written about unions dozens of times, and have consistently acknowleged the contributions unions have made. But over the past fifty years, the role of unions in the United States has changed in two important ways. First, most of the initial grievances that inspired workers to organize have been met; second, union power has migrated out of the private sector and into the public sector. In our post "Unions - Ideals vs. Reality" we present a graph that illustrates the problem with unions in the public sector.  Unions in the private sector bargain with companies who have to compete globally, and this is a powerful self-regulating mechanism. If the union is too aggressive, the company goes out of business...

Last week EcoWorld posted a lengthy explanation as to why we endorse John McCain for President.  We were so careful and so reasoned that some commenters actually thought we'd endorsed Obama.  We tried to acknowlege Obama's strengths, and we criticized McCain's weaknesses, and from it all emerged a tepid endorsement of McCain.  But not tepid whatsoever is our fear of what an Obama Presidency could do to the United States. For years our commitment to free market and property rights based environmentalism has led us to publish countless reports on how adhering to these principles creates wealth, ownership, stewardship, and equitable and efficient allocation of resources.  All you have...

It is always interesting to read the ballot in California when there are a dozen or more citizen's initiatives.  Californians, despite being social liberals, still tend to vote against any new taxes of any sort.  During the internet boom and the housing boom there was so much revenue flowing into the state and local governments it didn't matter - Californians had the best of everything.  But as California's economy, along with the rest of the nation, returns to sustainable rates of economic growth, something's got to give.  California's state and local governments will either dramatically cut spending, or they will dramatically raise taxes. Muddling the issue is the issuance of...

If you think about the mission of enterprise resource planning software, in some ways it's surprising the modules for environmental health and safety compliance weren't integrated sooner.  It is also interesting that at the same time as the major ERP vendors - Oracle, Microsoft, SAP, IBM, and others - were systematically integrating the major business information systems that had evolved, one company, ESS, a 15 year old company based in Tempe, Arizona, was systematically integrating the environmental health and safety (EH&S) information systems that had similarly evolved as fragmented, tactical solutions.  In both cases, there were compelling reasons why these information systems needed to be welded...

RE Power's "5M" offshore wind turbine is definitely the King of wind turbines - a single unit that generates 5.0 megawatts of electricity at full output.  With a rotor diameter of 126 meters (412 feet) and a hub height between 90 and 120 meters, RE Power's 5M unit is the biggest wind turbine available in the world, with a total height up to 183 meters (max. hub height plus rotor radius - 600 feet).  It represents the next generation in large scale wind.  With this turbine, a 200 tower wind farm would generate 1.0 gigawatts at full output.  Wind turbines this big are game changers, because the fewer towers involved, the more efficient wind power becomes, especially offshore. RE Power's 5M is designed...

About four years ago the New Yorker Magazine endorsed a Presidential candidate for the first time in its then eighty year history. One should not doubt who they chose, John Kerry, someone who I also voted for. In their most recent issue, a bursting "theme issue" tome of erudite and addictive political commentary, the New Yorker has done it again, endorsing Barack Obama. So should Obama be the next President of the United States? And should EcoWorld be a platform to make an endorsement, anyway? Perhaps, since we do have a rather clear editorial position when it comes to what we consider agreeable environmentalist ideology - read Rational Environmentalism. EcoWorld, a publication examining environmental issues and...

If you want to imagine the Western Hemisphere's equivalent to China's Three Gorges Dam, look no further than the proposed Severn Barrage, which at peak output will deliver over 8 gigawatts of electricity, or about 50% of what the Three Gorges delivers. Even though the Three Gorges output decisively exceeds that of the Severn Barrage, if this massive civil engineering project is ever completed, it will dwarf every other power station in the world. Environmental groups bitterly oppose the Severn Barrage, and if they are to strive for consistency, they certainly should oppose this monstrosity. The ten mile long dam will connect the English coast to the Welsh coast across the Severn Estuary...