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I no longer blog on this site. You can now find me, my general blogs, and the work I am doing researching my forthcoming book on imagination, on my new blog.
Come find me at robhopkins.net
Archive for “Energy” category
Showing results 356 - 360 of 360 for the category: Energy.
28 Nov 2005
**A Review of “Energy and the Common Purpose – descending the Energy Staircase with Tradable Energy Quotas (TEQs)” – David Fleming. The Lean Economy Connection (2005)**
*Here is a review of David Fleming’s new book. It is highly recommended.*
On the surface, the issues of climate change and peak oil call for very similar responses. It is, after all, about reducing the use of fossil fuels. However, there are differences, highlighted in the Government’s recent announcement that it will begin a new programme of nuclear power plant building. On the face of it a good solution to climate change, it brings the UK’s carbon emissions in line with international agreements and business-as-usual can continue. From a peak oil perspective however, it is no solution at all. Nuclear power plants take 20 years to come on stream, peak oil is
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24 Nov 2005
**The Kinsale Energy Descent Action Plan** is now available on this site as a pdf. file. This plan was produced at Kinsale FEC by myself and the college’s second year students, and was, as far as we know, the first attempt by a community to design an intentionally designed way down from the oil peak. You can read more about how it was carried out in the article called **”Designing Energy Descent Pathways”** in the Articles section on this site. We printed 500 copies, and they are already very scarce.
We heard the other day that the Action Plan has been awarded Cork Environmental Forum’s prestigious **Roll of Honour Award** for 2005. It is wonderful for the Plan and for the town of Kinsale to be recognised
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24 Nov 2005
**The Hubbert Peak**. It’s that thing you draw on napkins in cafes and gesticulate wildly in the air when trying to tell people about peak oil. You know the one, looks like a nice gently curving hill, up one side, down the other. It is of course a stylised version of what the peak will actually look like, but it gets the idea across. It turns out however that it may not actually end up looking quite like that. Colin Campbell has estimated that once decline sets in it will be at a rate of 2-3% each year. That is an alarming enough prospect. A new report just published deeply questions this, and makes for more sobering reading.
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21 Nov 2005
I want to draw your attention to the excellent and deeply important work that has been undertaken by Richard Douthwaite of FEASTA and Phoebe Bright of VividLogic under the banner Energy Scenarios Ireland. They looked at how peak oil would affect Ireland through the examination of four scenarios, Business as Usual, Enlightened Transition, Localisation and Fair Shares.
In essence, under the Business As Usual scenario, oil continues
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8 Nov 2005
The free energy argument is picking up momentum as the implications of peak oil kick in. At every talk I have given or been to on peak oil there is always a token free energy advocate, who once read a book by Viktor Schauberger or Nikolai Tesla, and who thinks that the US Government has had ownership of this technology for decades but has kept it secret, while at the same time, alongside powerful US corporations, it buys up the patents on any free energy machine developed anywhere, popping the plans in a drawer never again to see the light of day. It is a nice idea (and probably a convenient interpretation of the fact that actually no-one ever actually came up with a free energy machine because it is impossible…). It is reassuring to think that what Richard Heinberg calls ‘the magic elixir’ is out there somewhere, almost ready to go into production. We can all keep driving, business as usual will continue forever.
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On the surface, the issues of climate change and peak oil call for very similar responses. It is, after all, about reducing the use of fossil fuels. However, there are differences, highlighted in the Government’s recent announcement that it will begin a new programme of nuclear power plant building. On the face of it a good solution to climate change, it brings the UK’s carbon emissions in line with international agreements and business-as-usual can continue. From a peak oil perspective however, it is no solution at all. Nuclear power plants take 20 years to come on stream, peak oil is 
