Paul Gipe
is an author, advocate, and analyst of the renewable energy industry. He has written extensively about the subject for the past four decades, receiving numerous awards for his efforts. Gipe has lectured before groups from Patagonia to Puglia, from Tasmania to Toronto, and from Halifax to Husum. He has spoken to audiences as large as 10,000 and as small as a private presentation for Vice President Al Gore. Gipe is well known for his frank appraisal of the promise and pitfalls of wind energy, including his stinging critiques of Internet wonders and the hustlers and charlatans who promote them. He led the campaign to adapt electricity feed laws to the North American market–the same policy that has stirred a renewable energy revolution in Germany.
Latest Articles by Paul Gipe
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Paul Gipe
Edmunds Confirms 2027 Bolt Has More Range than Advertised
Edmunds cars YouTube.com channel has confirmed that the 2027 Chevy Bolt has more range than advertised. The feature by Brian Wong, The Cheapest EV Is Back, is the most extensive review of the new Bolt that I’ve seen. Wong cover’s the Bolts features as well as its performance on the …
While giving a presentation on how to use EVs in front of an oil industry friendly audience of retirees, I was accused of being a free rider by not paying for maintenance of California’s roads because I drive an EV. For background, consider that Bakersfield is an oil town. Kern …
We just completed a 1,500 mile road trip in our 2027 Chevy Bolt and had plenty of opportunity to compare route planning with Google maps and A Better Routeplanner or ABRP. GM’s native navigation in the new Bolt is Google maps, which will direct the car to precondition the traction …
We just completed a 1,500 mile road trip to Oregon and back from Bakersfield, California. In comparison to the old days, it was a piece of cake. More DCFC choices and a better charging rate for the new Bolt made life so much simpler. As is our wont, we stopped …
Since receiving our 2027 Chevy Bolt 20 February, I’ve noticed an odd noise at low power levels, upon deceleration, or at neutral or zero power levels. I’ve been driving EVs for 12 years now and the noise is not a normal EV sound. It’s not the whine of the motor/generator, …
Dean Thomas, son of Robert Thomas, the designer of the Wind Harvest Vertical Axis Wind Turbine is still plugging away on the design. He’s built a 1/40-scale model of a guyed giromill. Based on published information, the optimum solidity for maximum efficiency is 16% so he’s using four blades, two …
I’ve previously written about the history of Wind Harvest’s Vertical Axis Wind Turbine from the mid 1970s. (See Wind Harvest VAWT—a Jungian Vision (the Backstory). Recently, Dean Thomas, the son of Wind Harvest’s founder Robert Thomas, contacted me with more on the history of the turbine’s development from someone who …
Other Articles
The analysis shows that the cost of firm renewable electricity has declined rapidly across all major technologies and markets. In high-quality solar and wind resource regions, co-located hybrid systems can already deliver round-the-clock electricity at costs competitive with – and in many cases below – those of new fossil-fuel generation. China currently defines the global cost floor, while costs in Brazil, India, South Africa, Australia, and the Gulf region are declining rapidly towards fossil-fuel cost parity.
The UK has avoided the need for gas imports worth £1.7bn since the start of the Iran war, as a result of record electricity generation from wind and solar, reveals Carbon Brief analysis. The surge in wind and solar output is cutting the need for gas-fired generation, which has been nearly a third lower than last year and fell to record lows in both March and April 2026.
The petroleum age is unlikely to end with one dramatic crash. It is more likely to enter a volatile decline, with each shock strengthening the case for electrification, and each wave of electrification weakening the future demand that once held the oil system together. The countries, cities, companies, and households that understand this will not wait for the last oil shock to pass. They will build around electricity because electricity is not just cleaner. It is more controllable.
Paul Gipe had spent four decades studying and writing about the clean energy transition. As a renewable energy analyst and author, he will tell you there has never been a better time to own an electric car. When Chevrolet delivered his 2027 Bolt in February 2026, he approached it the same way he approaches everything: with data. (Note that this is a sponsored piece. I was not paid by anyone. My comments are from my web site.)
The Hormuz crisis is a reminder of what concentrated energy dependence costs. The EV transition does not need it. The learning curve keeps falling, the platform keeps compounding, the economics keep improving. That is what makes this wave different.
Ontario’s return to renewable procurement is the clearest sign that one of Canada’s largest electricity markets has accepted a reality it spent years resisting. The timing is propitious as I prepare to provide an update to a global audience on North American wind energy through the World Wind Energy Association. Electricity demand is rising as transport, buildings, and industry electrify. Refusing wind and solar in that environment was never a long-term strategy. It was a pause wrapped in politics.
The following pages include some of the photos from my collection, including both digital and scanned images.
My photographs have appeared in Popular Science, Sierra, Solar Age, Alternative Sources of Energy, L’Espresso, Air & Space Smithsonian, Windpower Monthly, WindStats, Renewable Energy World, and other magazines, in several engineering and physics textbooks, on brochures and posters published by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, by Friends of the Earth (UK), by the Union of Concerned Scientists, and the World Wildlife Fund.
