A new paper in Energy in Buildings looks at the process of life cycle energy analysis of buildings. This is a topic close to my heart and I’m hoping to be working on it more in the coming few years. The paper showed that life cycle energy use of buildings is 80-90% from operating energy [...]
I saw an interesting video on edie.net earlier on today. In it the chairman talked about some forthcoming research on the lock-in effect. The lock-in effect is where once some basic energy efficiency measures have been taken, subsequent more comprehensive measures become less cost effective. The first time this came to my attention was while [...]
See also The EROEI of electricity generation. In a future with the huge increase in variable renewables predicted in such places as zerocarbonbritain, the Offshore Valuation, and Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air, it will be necessary to find ways of matching up supply and demand. Currently this is done by trimming the output of [...]
Firstly this isn’t (entirely) a post about EROEI. The EROEI of wind is generally very high so the embodied emissions of building wind turbines in unlikely to lead to more emissions than they avoid. No, this worrying suggestion is inspired by a recent study by Chien Wang and Ronald Prinn at MIT. They used a [...]
Not seeing, how shall he know What lies in the hand Of time to come?” Sophocles Wow. It’s coming true. Back when I was studying for my MSc at CAT, I wrote an essay about the precautionary principle. This is the principle which states that when someone proposes a new technology or a new chemical compound, [...]
As you may have read here before, wind energy can be captured very efficiently by large, offshore wind turbines. In fact, the larger the better. Despite this, there is still a place for smaller wind turbines – just so long as it’s the right place. So what is the right place to site a small [...]
See also The EROEI of energy balancing. I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about EROEI (energy return on energy investment) lately since Tim Helweg-Larsen at PIRC asked me for help with a report. The report, “The Offshore Valuation” was produced by the Offshore Valuation Group chaired by PIRC and it looks at the [...]