Continuations

For any billionaire out there: fund nuclear fusion now! Consider this: the people who fund successful nuclear fusion are guaranteed a spot in the history books. And that spot will be immediately followed by spots for anybody else who spent serious money ($100 million+) and did not succeed. Why? Because clean electricity is absolutely crucial to fighting the climate crisis. Is this realistic? Can we achieve nuclear fusion in our lifetimes? Having looked into the state of research, I believe it...

Last week I started digging into electricity as part of my posts the climate crisis. Today’s post continues that by looking at the potential increases in the demand for electricity from moving transportation to electric vehicles (EVs). To start with, it is quite difficult to wrap one’s head around just how much we drive in the US. In one year there are about 3.25 trillion (yup trillion) vehicle miles. I have found it difficult to find a recent breakdown of that by vehicle type, but in 2016 ab...

In order to understand solutions to the climate crisis, including the potential role of nuclear energy, it is essential to understand our current and future demand and supply of electricity. There are of course entire books that have been written about just small subtopics of electricity, so please consider this post as a guidance. Electricity is the most refined and concentrated form of energy available to us. We can adjust its use in extremely small quantities. We can store it. We can gener...

Much of the discussion of the real-time web has focused on content generated by humans, such as tweets. But the bigger growth over the next decade is likely to come from m2m interactions. One big source of data will be smart meters. For instance, the UK government recently unveiled a plan to equip every home with a smart meter by 2020. The real-time electricity usage data from these meters can be used for better management of consumption by individuals, companies and utilities. In addition to...