Dr. Gerhard Knies, Project Director of the Club of Rome' s Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation (TREC), in an open letter describes the progress in the comprehensive TREC concept for energy, water and climate security in Europe, the Middle Eas
And we're finally hitting the sweet spot of the crucial one Substack 11.6.24
"So even amidst all the desperate news from climate science, I have some legitimately good numbers to update you on this morning. They come from the veteran energy analyst Kingsmill Bond and colleagues at the Rocky Mountain Institute, and they demonstrate that the world has moved on to the steep part of the S curve, which will sweep us from minimal reliance on renewable energy to—we must hope and pray— minimal dependence on fossil fuel. The angle of that curve may prove to be the most significant geometry of our time on earth, competing only with the slope of the Keeling Curve which documents the growing accumulation of co2 in the atmosphere above Mauna Loa"
The batteries will initially be manufactured at the electric car company’s factory in California, but will move production to its planned “gigafactory” in Nevada when it opens in 21017. The Nevada facility will be the largest producer of lithium-ion batteries in the world, and it is hoped its mass-production scale will help to bring down costs even further.
First released in 2005, REN21's Renewables Global Status Report (GSR) has grown to become a truely collaborative effort of over 400 authors, contributors and reviewers, and is today the most frequently referenced report on renewable energy market, industry and policy trends. It provides testimony of the undeterred growth of electricity, heat, and fuel production capacities from renewable energy sources, including solar PV, wind power, solar hot water/heating, biofuels, hydropower, and geothermal. Complementary country information can be viewed on www.map.ren21.net
All of this goes to reinforce a recent study by Joshua Pearce at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, who found that cost estimates for solar technology used by energy analysts are greatly inflated. The technology is changing so fast that many studies don’t reflect the newest realities. For instance, the cost of solar panels has dropped 70% since 2009, and their productivity only declines 0.1% to 0.2% per year, rather than the 1% per year that was the norm. The bottom line? Commonly used studies have listed dollars-per-watt of electricity as high as $7.61. According to Dr. Pearce, the real cost in 2011 is under $1 per watt.
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Extreme drought events have the potential to cause dramatic changes in ecosystem structure and function, but the controls upon ecosystem stability to drought remain poorly understood. Here we used model systems of two commonly occurring, temperate grassland communities to investigate the shortterm interactive effects of a simulated 100-year summer drought event, soil nitrogen (N) availability and plant species diversity (low/high) on key ecosystem processes related to carbon (C) and N cycling. Whole ecosystem CO2 fluxes and leaching losses were recorded during drought and post-rewetting. Litter decomposition and C/N stocks in vegetation, soil and soil microbes were assessed 4 weeks after the end of drought. Experimental drought caused strong reductions in ecosystem respiration and net ecosystem CO2 exchange, but ecosystem fluxes recovered rapidly following rewetting irrespective of N and species diversity. As expected, root C stocks and litter decomposition were adversely affected by drought across all N and plant diversity treatments. In contrast, drought increased soil water retention, organic nutrient leaching losses and soil fertility. Drought responses of above-ground vegetation C stocks varied depending on plant diversity, with greater stability of above-ground vegetation C to drought in the high versus low diversity treatment. This positive effect of high plant diversity on above-ground vegetation C stability coincided with a decrease in the stability of microbial biomass C. Unlike species diversity, soil N availability had limited effects on the stability of ecosystem processes to extreme drought. Overall, our findings indicate that extreme drought events promote post-drought soil nutrient retention and soil fertility, with cascading effects on ecosystem C fixation rates. Data on above-ground ecosystem processes underline the importance of species diversity for grassland function in a changing environment. Furthermore, our results suggest that plant–soil interactions play a key role for the short-term stability of above-ground vegetation C storage to extreme drought events.
The batteries will initially be manufactured at the electric car company’s factory in California, but will move production to its planned “gigafactory” in Nevada when it opens in 21017. The Nevada facility will be the largest producer of lithium-ion batteries in the world, and it is hoped its mass-production scale will help to bring down costs even further.
M. Cho, N. Cho, H. Sakashita, и Y. Miura. Abstract Book of the XXIII IUPAP International Conference on Statistical Physics, Genova, Italy, (9-13 July 2007)
G. Reinmann. (Arbeitsbericht Nr. 18). Augsburg: Universität Augsburg, Medienpädagogik. URL: http://www.imb-uni-augsburg.de/files/Arbeitsbericht_18.pdf, (2008)