This Substack was inspired by the work of Sir David MacKay. I wrote about this on the blog’s About page. Debates around climate, energy and sustainability are often charged with emotion. That’s fine. But we also need to put the numbers on these problems. This is what David MacKay did for energy: in his book […]
Can solar and wind power Britain? An update of David MacKay’s numbers Read More »
Back in January, I published a post looking at the amount of minerals that were required for the low-carbon energy transition. This came from projections in the International Energy Agency (IEA)’s The Role of Critical Minerals in Clean Energy Transitions. It projected that the world would need to produce between 27 million tonnes in its
A low-carbon energy system will need a lot less fossil fuels, but a lot more of other minerals and metals. One concern is that we’ll run out of these materials. Is that something we should be concerned about? In a paper earlier this year, Seaver Wang and colleagues published a paper in the journal Joule
The world has enough minerals for low-carbon electricity Read More »
Countries in the European Union (EU) have made progress over the past decade toward Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG 7), which calls for ‘access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all’ by 2030, according to a new study. * This article was originally published here
EU countries have seen a decade of progress towards their 2030 sustainable energy goal Read More »
You might have seen the following image from a recent paper from Heather Mirletz and colleagues, published in Nature Physics.1 It has been shared a lot in my circles on social media. The authors estimate that solar waste in 2050 will be very small compared to other waste flows. Between 2016 and 2050, solar waste
How much waste do solar panels and wind turbines produce? Read More »
In a recent article, I looked at the mineral requirements for moving to low-carbon electricity systems.1 In short: we have enough to decarbonise our electricity systems. But that work didn’t include electric vehicles, grids, and other smaller parts of the transition. This could make a big difference to the results: EVs, for example, are large
Small update: Note that in the original version of this newsletter, figures for cobalt, lithium and neodymium were given in thousands rather than millons of tonnes. This doesn’t affect the comparisons of supply and demand, but has been corrected so units across all minerals are consistent. The world has enough minerals to move to a
It’s been a hot year. The warmest year on record, with several months 1.5°C above pre-industrial temperatures.1 Next year is likely to be even warmer as the El Niño (the ‘warm’ phase of the natural ENSO cycle) continues into Spring. It could be the first year that we temporarily pass 1.5°C (although probably temporarily). Food
Are global harvests keeping pace in a warming world? Read More »
Lefties tend to be more concerned about climate change than right-wingers. I think the media often exaggerates this gap, but it’s still a consistent finding in surveys. One country where this divide is strong is the United States. Pew survey data shows that 88% of Democrats were “Sad about what was happening to the Earth”.
Republican states are going strong on solar and wind, but not for the climate Read More »
An often-overlooked water plant that can double its biomass in two days, capture nitrogen from the air — making it a valuable green fertilizer — and be fed to poultry and livestock could serve as life-saving food for humans in the event of a catastrophe or disaster, a new study suggests. * This article was
Common plant could help reduce food insecurity Read More »
