North Queensland wildlife and the environment
This time last year we shared the Climate Stripes graphic, one of many visualisations of our warming climate. Its developers have now extended it to show changes in the atmosphere and the oceans, demonstrating that all of the earth’s systems are affected.
A Blog to Watch published this just over a month ago and I loved it. I’m quoting just enough of it to make sense of my own follow-up, below, but I encourage my readers to visit the original which is three times as long and with more pictures. Continue reading “Springing into action”
The first part of this overview of Electric Vehicles looked at the progress in electrifying everything from bicycles to cars, 4WDs and tradie trucks. Now for the heavy haulage!
As vehicle size and weight increase, batteries need to get bigger to maintain similar ranges; but bigger batteries increase vehicle weight, too, as well as costing more and taking longer to recharge. At some point the combined weight and range requirements seemed to be ‘too hard’ to achieve with battery-electric power. That is where everyone thought that hydrogen power would find its niche, but the latest studies show the point being pushed out so far that the niche has probably vanished.
The Brits already have plenty of vans to choose from, Continue reading “EV overview 2 – freight transport”
Green Path tries to keep up with what’s happening in the renewable energy sphere, since it’s so important to our battle against global warming, but so much is happening that we don’t often pause to take stock. Fortunately, the Climate Council has done that for us, producing a report, Fully Charged: Renewables and Storage Powering Australia.
Its key points are:
That is (nearly) all very good news, of course, but we need to keep it in perspective: 50% by 2030 is good but, globally, we need to reach zero carbon emissions before 2050 to avoid the worst of climate change, so there is still much more to be done. Continue reading “Renewable energy update”
Most of us know by now that we need to decarbonise the global economy – fast – if we are to have any hope of avoiding catastrophic climate change. Fortunately, the technology to do just that is booming, charging ahead so quickly that merely keeping up with the news is difficult.
Solar and wind power are demonstrating astonishing growth rates, with or without government incentives, now that their costs have dropped below the costs of new coal and (in many cases) gas; some time last year we even began hearing of cases in which it was cheaper to build and run new wind and solar power plants than just to run old coal plants.
Last year, for most of us, was the Year of the Battery. Tesla’s big South Australian battery did something its many little Powerwalls couldn’t, i.e., make battery storage seem like a serious option for the real world rather than just a cool idea. Bloomberg’s 2018 outlook report sees this continuing and allowing electric vehicles to undercut conventional, internal combustion engine cars on both lifetime and upfront cost by the mid-to-late 2020s.
The Green Path facebook page does its best to keep up with all this news but anyone wanting it all, and unfiltered, should bookmark or follow these sites:
Launched in 2012, RenewEconomy.com.au is an Australian website focusing on clean energy news Continue reading “Renewable energy – all the good news”