David JC MacKay

The potential of tidal power

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The New York Times Green blog published a great article about a recent report from IHS Emerging Energy Research on tidal wave. Even if it has been starting very slowly, the energy source could bring up to 10 GW by 2030 globally.

“The global ocean energy sector is at a turning point,” the company’s report says. More than 45 wave and tidal prototypes are expected to be ocean-tested in 2010 and 2011. Only nine were tested in 2009.”

Here is another renewable energy source that could power all our wildest dreams. But as I stated before: we should better rely on several of them as none of them is perfect.

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Twice the energy, half the emissions…

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This is the title of the first article published on a new blog dedicated to energy issues launched Friday by the UK newspaper The Independent. Titled New Energy Future, it is already in my RSS aggregator and should be in yours too.

The blog begins with a great albeit short video introduction by David JC McKay (left), Professor of Physics at the University of Cambridge and author of Sustainable energy – without the hot air.

” Twice the energy, half the emissions “ sums up perfectly what we should be working on in the next four decades. The task seems daunting but we can do it.

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An overview of future fission nuclear technologies

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Nuclear plant in NorwayAfter my articles on the 10 reasons to support nuclear power and the one the past and present of nuclear energy it is time to have a look at the main future technologies.

David JC MacKay on his website mentions two main fission possibilities : fast breeders and thorium and fusion. We will have a look at thesemost promising solutions as well as to other technologies.

The needs for safer, cheaper and cleaner nuclear solutions are important as the IAEA forecasts the demand for nuclear is to increase by 60 percent in the next twenty years.

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Why heat pumps are a fantastic idea

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a Viessmann Heat pump As Eurobserv’ER published a market barometer for heat pumps I thought it might be the occasion to have a look at this most interesting and promising technology which already accounts for nearly 9 GW th of capacity in Europe.

With over 100,000 systems installed every year throughout the European Union, heat pumps can both heat and cool houses or buildings in an efficient and environmentally friendly way.

With ten percent of growth the market already represents 780,000 systems installed in the 27 country-members. No doubt it will continue to expand.

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Book Review: Sustainable energy – without the hot air

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I finished reading this weekend a book I strongly recommend to anyone interested by sustainable development and energy as it is packed with figures and findings that are due to start discussions among CleanTechies.

One of the main findings of this book is that electrifying our cars and installing heat pumps in our buildings would enable us to cut significantly both our greenhouse gases emissions and fossil fuels consumption.

Both solutions are much more efficient than current ones and could benefit from massive electrification to answer all our energy needs.

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