Energy Companies to Watch

A list of Top Energy Companies to Watch was just published in the MIT Technology Review. Check it out.

This Week's Readings

Renewable Energy in Germany (Wikipedia) | link
German Renewable Energy Law (Wikipedia) | link

Passivhaus
No Furnaces, But Heat Aplenty in "Passive Houses" (NYT) | link
Passivhaus Standard for Energy Efficient Design (100k House) | link

Nuclear
Viewpoint: The German Nuclear Phase-Out (BBC) | link

The Future
Next German Government to Cut Solar Subsidies (NYT) | link
Why Solar Won't Topple in Germany (Grist) | link

New Online Energy Networking Platform "Skipso" Launched

Skipso, a new online platform designed to connect different stakeholders in clean energy and clean technology to each other to accelerate sustainable innovation, is online and is currently in beta testing. Check it out.

In his presentation at the weekly meeting on September 23, David Cushing posited that $1 of consumption is approximately equal to 1 lb. of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere. From Mr. Cushing: "It is interesting to note the calculation below, which suggests that a cheeseburger is estimated to emit between 6 and 7 pounds of CO2, which is about the average price of a cheeseburger in dollars."

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In a report titled The Cheeseburger Footprint, Jamais Cascio estimates that the average cheeseburger generates between 6.3 to 6.8 pounds of CO2 emissions. He references Fast Food Nation, among other sources, to approximate the number of cheeseburgers consumed per American annually- roughly 150. Multiply that by a population 300,000,000, and the resulting collective carbon footprint of the American appetite for cheeseburgers is (conservatively) 195,750,000 metric tons of CO2 equivalent (remember cows create methane which is a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2).

Cascio goes on to calculate the global warming impact of driving SUVs in comparison to eating cheeseburgers. He concludes, “the greenhouse gas emissions arising every year from the production and consumption of cheeseburgers is roughly the amount emitted by 6.5 million to 19.6 million SUVs. There are now approximately 16 million SUVs currently on the road in the US.”

All things considered, our food choices may be as important, if not more, than our transportation choices when it comes to climate change.

Excerpt from the IEA's World Energy Outlook 2009

Following IEA discussions with national governments, the UNFCCC Secretariat and a number of key climate change experts, Executive Director Nobuo Tanaka has taken the decision to exceptionally release a special early excerpt of the World Energy Outlook 2009 climate change analysis, and to make this available to all governments participating in the international climate change negotiations.

Check it out here.

Announcement from the Collegiate Energy Association

Open call for volunteers - International policy research project

The Collegiate Energy Association (http://collegeenergy.org/) is conducting a multi-disciplinary international policy research project under the guidance of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Association of American Universities. This approximately one semester long project will:

(1) Provide an overview of practices employed by universities around the world to support energy R&D, education, and technology commercialization in order to identify promising university approaches to these problems,
(2) Provide an overview of R&D and innovation policies being employed by various governments in order to identify promising practices at the national level, and
(3) Provide a rationale for government support of university R&D and innovation in energy in order to motivate recommendations for policy changes and/or new policy directions

The CEA has secured interest in the product of this project from various universities, the White House OSTP, the AAU, the US Department of Energy, and staffers from various Congressional committees. Participation in this project is open to all energy club members around the world (non-US students are especially encouraged to join!). If you wish to participate, please contact Kevin Huang at kjhuang@mit.edu by October 14.

This Week's Readings

This week our conversation topic is "Energy Poverty."

1) Energy Poverty 101 (Center for American Progress) | link

2) International Energy Outlook 2009 (Energy Information Administration) | link

3) Rural Energy & Development for 2 Billion People (World Bank) | link