Solarpunk Collective

Solar power is often discussed as one of the most promising forms of renewable energy, but it has a problem. It only generates energy during the day. This isn't too much of a problem, because a lot of our energy needs also happen during the day. However, there is a peak of energy consumption in the evening, when everyone gets home from work and sits down to watch Netflix and eat their microwave dinner for one. You can see the effect above, in the famous duck curve. So called because it looks like a duck. As well as a lack of energy in the evening, you can see that increased solar capacity leads to an excess of capacity during the day. My immediate thought is that we need to reschedule our day. Let's make sure we do all the high energy activities in the middle of the day, and accept that evenings are going to be an expensive time to plug in and play. But what if we could mitigate that problem a little? If we could extend the peak of solar by just a few hours, it ...

There's a very important graphic for understanding climate change which you need to see in order to have a chance of understanding what a solution might look like. On the left are the sources of Green House Gas emissions, sorted by sector. Energy is the biggest category, but land use change and agriculture is still very important. On the right are different kinds of gasses produced. It may seem that CO2 is the biggest worry, but don't forget that Methane is as much as 30 times more potent at trapping heat than CO2. Overall, GHG emissions are around 4 times higher than they were in the middle of last century. Rises haven't been universal though. Some regions have seen bigger increases than others. And some sectors have risen while others have fallen. When we think of GHGs, we imagine most of it to come from our cars and from power stations generating energy for our homes. We've been told that we are the problem, and if we'd just drive less and turn of...

Today I saw a very depressing picture on social media which seemed to show that wind turbines pose a serious danger to birds. This made me wonder about the real risks and how they compare to other dangers faced by wildlife. People are very bad at judging risk, especially lifetime risk: So let's look at the numbers: "Researchers estimate that 140,000 to 328,000 birds are killed every year in collisions with the turbines' spinning rotor blades and support towers." "The number of animals killed on roads in the United States has been estimated at a million per day ." "About 350,000 to 27 million birds are estimated to be killed on European roads each year." "Over 1 million seabirds and 100,000 sea mammals are killed by pollution every year." Obviously, there are many things which pose a bigger risk to birds than wind turbines. So what are the lifetime dangers for birds which we could contrast with human risks above?...