Renewable energies need storage. This blog article describes lithium-ion batteries and their problems and gives suggestions on how to make them sustainable.
Newest Posts
With storage to 100% renewable power supply
This blog post describes the main problems and solutions on the way to a 100% renewable electricity grid in an easy-to-read format. It introduces the concepts that will help achieve a secure electricity supply from 100% renewables. It is the conceptual thinking that helps us most to be able to assess the upcoming changes.
Is wind energy sustainable?
In the last blog we looked at the sustainability of solar energy. Let’s briefly do the same here for a typical wind farm. Do wind farms really need rare earth elements? Are there realistically achievable conditions for wind energy to be sustainable?
Is solar electricity sustainable?
We cause most (85%) of CO2 emissions because we do not use appropriate technologies, and half of that comes from coal and gas-fired power plants alone. Renewable energy is on its way to replace fossil fuels. In this and the next blog article we ask the question: Are renewable energies really sustainable?
Part 3: Strategies to become Sustainable
How can we practice sustainability? Let’s look at both the limits that the physical world (physics) imposes on us, and at the freedom that the physical world gives us, and finally some quick tools to improve the effectiveness of your own sustainability measures.
Part 2: Ways to Monitor Sustainability
The first part was about how nature works fundamentally. Now you get to know a number of concrete formulations of sustainability. Normative formulations are widely used, but usually offer little practical help. Therefore, you learn more concrete formulations and test them on a failed example.
Sustainability Part 1: The Ways of Nature
You probably have a good intuition about what sustainability is. However, it can be difficult to apply this intuition in practice. To know better about sustainability, I think it is necessary to look at how nature works fundamentally and on a material level. The findings may surprise you…
Basic categories of greenhouse gas mitigation
Climate change is primarily caused by inadequate technologies. Can we solve the problem by changing technologies? Or are lifestyle changes or even systemic changes necessary? This is not obvious. In this blog article, you will get some categorical thinking to help you explore this question in your own field and evaluate it for yourself.
Allocating greenhouse gases for a solution-oriented mindset
There is no right or wrong to which categories emissions should be assigned, such as residential, consumers, industry etc. I argue for allocating CO2 emissions to where the major responsibility lies, because that gives us a mindset that is effective for CO2 mitigation.
