(old found draft post) Energy News

Dec 16, 2008 @ 8:35
This was just going to an energy links roundup.
–
Wireless Power Transmission test have been successful. Yeah for Tesla!
Suck it Al Gore: “Greenhouse Gas Comes from Solar Panels“
“Bjorn Lomborg Says Cool It!: Getting our priorities right on climate change and the world’s top problems“

West Allis (Milwaukee news): “Mini wind turbine proposal blows [...]

The US case for radical energy use efficiency and for switching to alternative energy sources

I have been looking to blog on this for sometime, but it came out in a comment at TDAXP:
The best case for the US to move to radical energy use efficiency and to switch a lot more to alternative energy (while sharing or selling the techniques and technology to the rest of the world to [...]

Energy Entrepreneurship: Plasma Gasification of Trash

I found this (with photos) via Slashdot:

Recently St. Lucie County in Florida announced that it has teamed up with Geoplasma to develop the United States’ first plasma gasification plant. The plant will use super-hot 10,000 degree fahrenheit plasma to effectively vaporize 1,500 tons of trash each day, which in turn spins turbines to generate 60MW [...]

More on the Hyperion Mini-nuke reactors

From The Guardian (via Instapundit):

Nuclear power plants smaller than a garden shed and able to power 20,000 homes will be on sale within five years, say scientists at Los Alamos, the US government laboratory which developed the first atomic bomb.
The miniature reactors will be factory-sealed, contain no weapons-grade material, have no moving parts and will [...]

“Hyperion Nuclear Power Generator”

I got the scoop from a post at NextBigFuture.com. This looks very cool:
Hyperion Power Generation, Inc., (HPG) with the assistance of Los Alamos National Laboratory, is developing and commercializing a small, factory-sealed, mass-produced, transportable nuclear power module that is uniquely safe and proliferation-resistant. The technology utilizes and builds upon similar features of the 60+ TRIGA [...]

Future Closer: Space Solar Power

Solar Power generated from orbital satelites and then beamed down to earth is one of the 2 great future energy sources (the other being fusion) – and the most likely.
It is one step closer:
A former NASA scientist has used radio waves to transmit solar power a distance of 92 miles (148 km) between two Hawaiian [...]

Energy/Incentives Idea That I Like

I can’t find where I heard this, but it was a neat application of incentives (economic thinking) to energy policy.
The suggestion was something like:
1) States That don’t allow drilling for oil and natural gas off-shore shall have their federal gasoline tax increased $1 (or $2 or $X) per gallon.
2) The collected money shall be redistributed [...]

A Tech-based Energy Idea That I Like – Municipal Plasma Furnaces

From Cringley:
The challenge of the Day Cycle is profound: to solve at once the problems of how to power our society and what to do with all of our garbage, all without making the world worse for the effort, which is to say without increasing the problems of greenhouse gas emissions and global warming.
[...]
Eric and [...]

“Huge penis engines are the answer”

How to generate cheap energy is the question.
Scott Adams writes:
As you can see from the story, big companies are building Stirling engine farms to capture the sun’s energy more effectively than photovoltaic panels. This could work, but it’s not the economic model that will set us completely free. Let me tell you what is: Giant [...]

Brainstorming Climate Engineering

Let me say, I am not convinced that there is global warming going on. I do believe having the ability to do positive planetary Climate Engineering or Geo-Engineering is an important survival skill for the human race especially since it looks like we will only have earth as are home for quote some time to [...]

Positive Effects of Higher Oil Prices Example: Floating Wind Farms

Via digg:
Huge turbines mounted on floating platforms could make wind power competitive with fossil-fuel-generated electricity. These advanced wind turbines, which are in development, could be situated far from the shore, too, avoiding battles with onshore residents who object to the presence of large wind farms.
read more
The positive effect of higher energy prices, is that the [...]