If this is your first time here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. You may also want to checkout our list of organizations and books if you want to learn more about what this site is about.

This evening I Stumbled Upon* an article at SolveClimate.com that gets my heart all pitter-patter and I thought I’d pass on quickly. I won’t explain it here, but let you read it and then if feel like getting my thoughts, return here.

In the article there is a link to a related SolveClimate.com article about Google’s RE <C initiative and Google’s press release. Check them out. Valid reasons to continue extracting coal are fewer and fewer all the time. And were minimal to begin with.

Okay, I can’t just leave it at that. I was going to try to be brief about it. But I have to stress something that I feel doesn’t get enough discussion. As I stated in my last blog post, hybrids and electric cars are laughable when put next to bicycling and walking. Similarly, renewable energy technology is less glamorous when all things are considered. We should always promote cleaner ways of creating energy. And solar-power is indeed such a thing. But it is far from a truly “green” energy source. This is from the Union of Concerned Scientists:

Since solar power systems generate no air pollution during operation, the primary environmental, health, and safety issues involve how they are manufactured, installed, and ultimately disposed of. Energy is required to manufacture and install solar components, and any fossil fuels used for this purpose will generate emissions. Thus, an important question is how much fossil energy input is required for solar systems compared to the fossil energy consumed by comparable conventional energy systems. Although this varies depending upon the technology and climate, the energy balance is generally favorable to solar systems in applications where they are cost effective, and it is improving with each successive generation of technology. According to some studies, for example, solar water heaters increase the amount of hot water generated per unit of fossil energy invested by at least a factor of two compared to natural gas water heating and by at least a factor of eight compared to electric water heating.

Solar power technology is awesome, but the greater solution (although less sexy) is always to consume less, and require less energy over all, plan better, and demand that our leaders do, too. Read more about the environmental impact of various renewable energy technologies. They’re not as scary as coal, nuclear or hydro, but they aren’t exactly a dream come true. Here also is information about Nanosolar.

* More about Stumble Upon

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed!