Gareth Renowden • Sep 17, 2017 •
This will be the best hour you’ll spend in front of a screen this week, I promise. Tony Seba explains how the plunging costs of battery storage and solar power generation, coupled with the rise of electric vehicles and autonomous driving technologies are going to first disrupt and then transform both the transport and power industries worldwide, … Read More
Guest Author • Mar 13, 2017 •
By George Jones I have not been seen around Wellington for a while, so I think it is about time that I tell you what I am doing now. I have for many years been worried about the world and its problems, and in 2011 with the help of colleagues I delivered a copy of a book “World on … Read More
Lynley Hargreaves • Nov 10, 2016 •
Professor Ralph Sims We’ve got to get cracking – grow trees, stop wasting food, stop burning coal, electrify the vehicle fleet. That’s the message from Massey University’s Professor Ralph Sims, who chaired the panel which produced the Royal Society of New Zealand report Transition to a low-carbon economy for New Zealand. Six months after the report we still lack … Read More
![Featured image: 30 ways to sabotage the introduction of solar power [SPOILER – we’ve tried them all!]](https://sciblogs.co.nz/app/uploads/2016/08/Solar-Panels-000073384421_Small-e1471212981316.jpg)
Peter Griffin • Aug 15, 2016 •
by George Jones If for some reason someone wished to delay the introduction of solar panels into New Zealand, here are some ideas on how to do it. 1. Insist that the electrical industry eliminate any incentives that might inadvertently have been imposed in the past. Make sure that the Electricity Authority stamps out these incentives where it can, … Read More
Bryan Walker • Jun 22, 2014 •
Al Gore has written an impressive long article in Rolling Stone magazine. I read it with gratitude and wanted to recommend it to others. It’s a highly readable text packed with rich detail which reflects the wide spectrum across which Gore operates and the considerable intelligence which informs his thinking. It deserves wide readership. The […] … Read More
Robert Hickson • Feb 20, 2014 •
If fossil fuels are the figurative dinosaurs in the energy landscape, are renewables the agile rodents poised to take over the world? That’s an on-going and often intense debate. Will new technologies enable the fossil fuel industry to adapt and provide us all the oil (and gas) that we could possibly ever need? Will renewable sources of energy evolve rapidly … Read More
Gareth Renowden • Feb 08, 2013 •
In this week’s news-packed edition of The Climate Show we have an exclusive interview with Jim Salinger, probably New Zealand’s highest profile climate scientist, talking about extremes and the shape of things to come. John Cook discusses his new paper with Stephan Lewandowsky, Recursive fury: Conspiracist ideation in the blogosphere in response to research on [...] … Read More
Gareth Renowden • Sep 21, 2012 •
Powerful stuff, sunshine. Two square metres of mirror can generate 3,500ºC temperatures — enough to burn/melt anything. Let no-one tell you that solar power hasn’t got the potential to be a game-changer. Video from the BBC series Bang Goes The Theory a couple of years ago. Mirrors at the Solar Furnace Research Facility in France. [...] … Read More
Bryan Walker • Sep 20, 2012 •
A new study published in Energy Strategy Reviews this month affirms that sourcing 95 percent of our energy from sustainable sources by 2050 is possible, using already available technologies. The authors are from the Dutch renewable energy consultancy E... Read More
Bryan Walker • Jun 25, 2012 •
The International Energy Agency (IEA) continues to plug the energy transformation necessary if we are to have any hope of staying within a 2oC rise in global temperature. This month has seen the publication of Energy Technology Perspectives 2012 (ETP 2012) in which they explain the technologies and behaviours that according to the press release [...] … Read More