My coffeemaker, a 1995-vintage Hamilton-Beach automatic drip filter machine, takes roughly eight minutes to make four cups of coffee. The appliance is rated at 1000 watts (one kilowatt), which means that in those eight minutes it uses roughly 0.133 kilowatt-hours. Of course, I don’t turn off the power as soon as the coffee is ready:…
Electricity is an essential component of modern life. Without it we would be quite literally back in medieval times. The island nation of Sri Lanka is striving mightily to emerge from both the literal and figurative medieval times. Its population is around 21.6 million, and its electricity generation in 2011 is estimated at 11.5 billion…
Of all the countries on earth, France is the only one with the foresight, confidence, and discipline to have recognized and then immediately implemented the right energy strategy during the existential economic upset that resulted from the 1973 oil crisis. Like every other modern country, France realized instantly, when Saudi Arabia began dramatically raising the…
Infra-red water faucets are now a fixture (pun intended) in many public washrooms. Everybody appears to have bought in to the conservation mantra: use as little as possible. Chief among the purveyors of the conservation ideology are the mainstream environmental organizations. These groups also push for renewable energy in the form of wind turbines and…
Climate talks in Bonn, Germany kicked off two days ago with a warning from the head of the UN Climate Change body that atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) are about to reach the point of no return: 400 parts per million. That is recognized by scientists as the level beyond which mankind cannot hope…
A soirée is an evening event, meaning that most soirées held in non-polar latitudes take place at a time when solar photovoltaic devices are not experiencing very many photon interactions and hence are generating very little if any electricity. So if you are throwing a soirée and need electricity, it’s wise to make sure the…
Over my 52 years I have tried to stay fit. Years ago, I got into yoga, then hot yoga—that is a challenge, especially when done in a really hot room. You essentially give your body a dual challenge: do strenuous, mentally taxing exercise while maintaining a core body temperature of 37 degrees. That dual effort…
All Bruce Power nuclear reactors are running, as of just this afternoon. This is the first time since 1996 that the plant’s 8 units have all been running, and the first time in Bruce Power’s history. As I mentioned in early April, Bruce Power is a hugely successful public-private partnership that began in 2001 in…
I call myself an energy and environment consultant, a specialist and expert in the nexus of energy technology processes and operations and government energy and environment policy. That is the ostensible focus of most of my professional work. But there is “dark matter” and “dark energy” in this work. It involves the humans I work…
Loading ...