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
2027 Chevy Bolt Reading Car Scanner ELM OBD2
Previously, I explained how I find the kWh used during a discharge cycle on our 2027 Chevy Bolt. (See Finding kWh Consumed on 2027 Chevy Bolt EV.) Car Scanner ELM OBD2 is an app for your smart phone that with a compatible dongle reads data from the car’s CANbus (the …
I’ve been driving EVs for more than 12 years now and never been stranded nor “gone turtle.” Sure, I’ve had some close calls in the early days. And I nearly ran out of gas one night in the middle of Wyoming–in winter–with nary a gas station in sight. But I’ve …
On 11 July we drove our 2027 Chevy Bolt to Bald Mountain to lead a Sierra Club hike. This is a three-hour, 97-mile drive from Bakersfield on serpentine mountain roads into the Sequoia National Forest. Speeds were often—at best—40 mph. This was not a drive at freeway speeds! Why it …
Since delivery of our 2027 Chevy Bolt in February, I’d noted an occasionally annoying noise from the drive train. (See 2027 Chevy Bolt Odd Noise at Low Power Levels.) This didn’t affect how we used the car, but it was annoying after driving EVs for 12 years without any similar …
GM has our 2027 Bolt again to replace a mystery part that presumably will fix the odd noise issue with the new model. For the interim, the Chevy dealer has given us a loaner, a 2024 Chevy Blazer EV AWD with the RS trim. At least it’s an EV, the …
In a recent article about the history of the modern British wind industry, I featured photos of the Wind Energy Group’s MS-2 and MS-3 wind turbines. (See In the Wake of Wind—the British Wind Story.) I thought that was the end of that. WEG died decades ago. But no, keen-eyed …
We’ve driven the new Bolt nearly 6,000 miles in almost four months. Traction battery capacity has held steady at ~70 kWh. However since returning from a trip to Oregon on the 2 May, the estimated range has dropped to GM’s EPA range of 262 miles on a full charge. Prior …
Other Articles
Last Friday extreme heat forced early closure of Donald Trump’s Great American State Fair. Fortunately, the fair was sparsely attended. As some wags put it, tens of people had to be evacuated from the National Mall. Even so, 44 people received health assistance and 11 were taken to hospitals due to the heat. OK, shutting down Trump’s shabby, dreary exercise in self-aggrandizement was no great loss. Yet the disruption of Trump’s festivities is a harbinger of many disruptions to come. The brutal heat wave in the northeastern US — an event that would have been “virtually impossible” without climate change — followed an even more brutal heat wave in Europe.
Morris explained that the main benefit he sees with plug-in solar is that consumers are taking greater control of their energy costs and becoming participants in the transition to clean energy. He views this as part of creating and maintaining a political consensus that supports the transition, which is good for everyone. He also sees land-use benefits, with plug-in solar occupying otherwise unused spaces in yards and on roofs and balconies. His organization has calculated that widespread adoption of plug-in solar would meet about 2 percent of Germany’s electricity demand, which would reduce the need to build new power plants on undeveloped land.
The IEA projects $2.2 trillion will flow into clean energy this year versus $1.2 trillion into fossil fuels, a nearly 2-to-1 split of total global energy spending. Conflicts disrupting oil and gas supply chains, from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to the latest U.S. and Israeli military action, are pushing governments toward power sources that can’t be embargoed.
The global market for electric vehicles (EVs) is growing much faster than expected. In just six years, sales have increased tenfold, with around 21 million electric cars sold worldwide in 2025. China and Europe are leading the charge, but the market is growing rapidly in other parts of the world, too.
The whole world now knows that relying on imported fossil fuels is a major economic and security risk. By contrast, the sun will shine and the wind blow whatever may be happening overseas. Renewables were already rapidly becoming cheaper than fossil fuels. Now it’s clear that they are also far safer. Thus Donald Trump has in practice become the world’s green energy champion.
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.
