Cold Air from Wordpress

"It’s important to understand the nature of this EROEI limit. This is not a question of inadequate storage capacity – we can’t just buy or make more storage to make it work. It’s not a question of energy losses during charge and discharge, or the number of cycles a battery can deliver. We can’t look to new materials or technological advances, because the limits at the leading edge are those of earthmoving and civil engineering. The problem can’t be addressed through market support mechanisms, carbon pricing, or cost reductions. This is a fundamental energetic limit that will likely only shift if we find less materially intensive methods for dam construction. This is not to say wind and solar have no role to play. They can expand within a fossil fuel system, reducing overall emissions."

From Carol Goar's  Industry coaxes Canadian women to don hard hats : Image from Goar's article in the Toronto Star The electricity industry faces a major shortage of skilled workers in the coming years. It needs 23,000 new recruits by 2016 just to replace retiring baby boomers. When the imperative of upgrading Canada’s half-century-old power grid is factored in, the number balloons. Women are the sector’s largest untapped labour pool. Hoping to change that, the industry group has launched a $350,000 campaign called Bridging the Gap. It aims to persuade women to become engineers, electricians, power line technicians, construction millwrights, power station operators and industrial mechanics. Women currently make up 25 per cent of the electricity industry’s workforce, but they are heavily concentrated in administration and marketing. “We want to get them working on the technical side,” Branigan [chief executive of Electricity Human Resources Canada ] says.

A truly independent local paper is now a rarity in Ontario. The Wellington Times is the best I know of, so I was well flattered to see my name, and original content blog, in Rick Conroy's Wrong Way Round : Bit by bit, the Ontario government is recognizing the futility of its renewable energy strategy. Still, it can’t help but throw more public tax dollars at developers eager to cash in at our expense. This week, the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) announced it was letting five contracts worth a total of $42 million to develop electricity storage technologies. The money will be used to develop a dozen demonstration projects around the province designed to capture and release energy— schemes that use batteries, hydrogen, flywheels and even bricks. Yes, bricks. The problem is that none of these technologies work—certainly not on a scale sufficient to serve a regional electricity grid. Nor is Ontario the first to dabble in the search for this Holy Grail. Every jurisdicti...

A couple of articles I read today of interest: I thought John Michael McGrath's In Defense of Danish Tourists was terrific, although I suspect people like living in Ottawa more than most other places. We'd be better off concentrating on more pedestrian concerns more often. I didn't find George Monbiot's Sick of this market -driven world? You should be a pleasant read, but I am a fan of Monbiot and he's made a special request on this one. I'd like you to read this column. I think it's the best I've written. Though that mightn't be saying much. http://t.co/uq6LJJ1zhZ — GeorgeMonbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) August 5, 2014 This section struck me as relevant to what I'm usually writing on... If neoliberalism was anything other than a self-serving con, whose gurus and thinktanks were financed from the beginning by some of the world’s richest people (the US multimillionaires Coors, Olin, Scaife, Pew and others), its apostles would have demanded, as a precon...