Rethinking Renewable Energy with Professor Susan Krumdieck

What is Energy Transition Engineering and why it is imperative, with Sus...

I had a really interesting conversation with Jason Marmon of US Energy. He has worked in Oil and Gas and then decided to work on energy transition. We had a nice time brainstorming what energy transition means for oil and gas industry. Like everything these days, the go-to framework for debate is opposites positioning. In energy and climate change the position used to be "I'm not worried about climate change" vs "I'm freaked out about climate change". That framing didn't get a lot done, and it was masking the real issues, questions and potentials. The opposites positioning has moved on a bit and now the "it's not happening" people are off in their own bubble cooking up conspiracies. Now the opposites positioning is "Energy transition is switching to renewables" vs "energy transition is hydrogen and CCS". These two positions usually argue about the other not being able to replace fossil fuels at scale. That is correct ...

What about that Michael Moore Movie?

How dare they cast doubt on the sanctity of Renewable Energy? Why am I feeling like this about that movie? I have been asked by a LOT of people what I thought of Planet of the Humans ? Of course the movie has its story to tell and its own perspective that makes it interesting - it is a movie. The facts about renewable energy weren't off the mark. I don't know about the implied corporate handshake of our esteemed environmental leaders. I have only worked with Richard Heinberg, and have found him to be straight up. What it is that is disturbing for people is that their perspective is being shifted. You find out about climate change and climate destruction and you get over your shock and horror and denial, and then you want to bargain. You want to save the world. We will be good. We will use only good energy. We need wind and solar. We are good pe ople. And so the narrative is formed and the story begins to become impervious to facts. You can find a talk that I...

Economics, Nonsense and the Emperor's New Clothes

A bit of history Economics is a social and political understanding of production, distribution and consumption of goods and the roles of prices and policies in ensuring that production and distribution are sufficient to meet consumption and to generate wealth. Before the industrial revolution, the main issues were managing the use of common land and water, and fairness in the marketplace. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274 AD) was a philosopher but wrote some arguments about the responsibility for businesses to establish just prices. In the 17 th and 18 th Centuries, economic thought reflected the dominance of agriculture as the source of wealth, and ownership of productive land by the aristocracy. In this view of economics, the labor of workers is related to the value of things workers produce. The American Revolution and the French Revolution coincided with new economic ideas about free markets and production. Adam Smith (1723-1790) made the well-known invisible hand argument, that ...

Energy Transition Engineering

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