News & Articles on Renewable Energy
My specialty is wind energy, but I have worked with all forms of renewable energy. Over the years I’ve written about a number of renewable technologies, including solar and geothermal energy. In recent years I’ve focused on comprehensive renewable energy policies that develop a mix of renewable resources. I’ve also written about our use of fossil fuels and nuclear power.
Renewables provided over 90 per cent of the world’s increase in generation capacity in 2024. How is this happening?
By
David Toke
Solar and wind power are dominating new generation capacity around the world. This is to such an extent that, according to data from the International Renewable Energy Association (IRENA), 90 percent of the net increase in global electricity generation capacity came from wind or solar and 93 percent from renewable energy as a whole. Solar PV provided the lion’s share of this increase, at 72 percent, with wind providing 18 percent, fossil fuels 7 percent, hydro 2 percent, bioenergy 1 percent, and nuclear power less than 0.5 percent.
How the IEA is grossly biased against renewables – the IEA should be scrapped
By
David Toke
By contrast the IEA grossly underestimated increases in renewable energy generation. As can be seen in the Figure 1 below, reproduced from a recently published academic paper the IEA has had a consistent habit of projecting much smaller increases in world solar PV generation than has happened in practice. The vertical axis represents annual solar PV additions in GW. The IEA projections consistently have solar pv capacity more or less levelling off in the future, whereas in reality there has been exponential growth of the technology.
LA Times: Time for California to get serious about cheaper, cleaner energy
By
Sammy Roth
Californians pay some of the nation’s highest electricity rates. They’re also being devastated by the consequences of fossil fueled climate change, including more deadly and expensive wildfires, droughts and heat waves. Politicians need to stop promising they’ll confront these challenges and start doing it. The recent fires in Los Angeles County should serve as a political rallying cry to accelerate the phaseout of oil and gas. Instead, they’re threatening to derail Sacramento’s long-promised focus on more affordable energy.
US Cultural Revolution: Bonfire of NASA, NOAA, EPA, CDC, & USDA Climate Programs
By
Michael Barnard
During the Cultural Revolution, scientists and intellectuals were violently persecuted, universities were shut down, and research was labeled as counter-revolutionary, leading to a complete halt in scientific progress. In contrast, the Trump administration’s cuts to NASA, NOAA, and other research institutions so far represent a more bureaucratic form of suppression, targeting funding and dismantling programs rather than physically persecuting scientists. However, both cases reflect a distrust of intellectualism, a prioritization of political loyalty over expertise, and long-term damage to national scientific progress. While China’s purge created a generational knowledge gap, the U.S. risks ceding global leadership in multiple areas of scientific research and climate science to other nations, likely echoing the stagnation China experienced post-1976.
