Hawking Gives Humans 1000 Years to Leave Earth
There's big news this week. No, I'm not talking about the delayed opening of ski resorts out West because of the lack of snow. And, believe it or not, it has nothing at all to do with Donald Trump. I'm…
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A Big Difference Between Physics and Building Science
You can go into just about any introductory physics classroom and you'll see that the students learn the same stuff no matter which school they attend. They study forces and motion, momentum and energy, electrostatics, and a host of other…
Falling Electricity Rates, Bill Tracking, and Energy Efficiency
Like many energy geeks, I track my electricity usage and costs. I've been doing it for decades. (Unlike Danny Orlando, however, I haven't stayed in the same house and watched as the home energy improvements kept lowering that usage.) One…
The Cost of Solar Energy Keeps Dropping, But…
Solar energy has sex appeal. If you want to show the world you're doing something to reduce pollution, you put photovoltaic (PV) panels on your roof to generate clean electricity. Even better, you drive a plug-in hybrid or an all-electric…
Is Global Energy Use Getting Better?
Every day, I get updates on various energy data from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). Earlier this week I got one showing the graph below, indicating that energy intensity for the whole world is going down. That's a good…
In Praise of Those Who Do the Dirty Work
Drywall installers, plumbers, HVAC technicians. All those folks and more do a lot of the dirty work in the construction, maintenance, and renovation of buildings. It's often not fun. I've done it myself, so I know. As a teenager, I…
Pushing Through the Hard Parts
In the summer of 1981, my grandparents gave me a 1961 Volkswagen Bug. I had just gone through my sophomore year at Centenary College of Louisiana without having a car and really wanted to have one for my junior year.…
7 Wishes for a Green ’16
Niels Bohr, a Danish physicist, said "Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future." Bohr was a pretty smart guy, having been one of the folks who got the whole quantum physics thing going a century ago, and…
The World of Smart Begins to Grow Up
In 2005, I was deep in the throes of my peak oil obsession. I went to a couple of conferences that fall and at the big one in Denver, I met a guy who gave me a little glimpse into…
Electricity Demand and the Duck Curve
You may think there's no more boring topic than electric utilities. Power plants. Transmission lines. Engineers with flat top haircuts and pocket protectors full of pens in their white short-sleeved shirts. Well, let me say two words that might help…