Getting around cities is already tough. Roads are packed, and short-haul flights that are typically under 500 miles produce some of the most pollution per passenger mile. The VX4 aims to change that by replacing gas-powered flights and car commutes with zero-emission air travel. Rather than wasting time in traffic, commuters could fly across the city in just minutes. If these aircraft become widely used, they could do more than save time. They might also help reduce pollution in crowded urban areas.
A report from McKinsey & Company predicts that urban air travel could grow quickly.
Battery power is used during vertical take-off, after which the HAM III-2 switches to hydrogen power. Seating is available for two people, flight time is estimated at 40 minutes, range is set to 100 kilometers (about 62 miles), and cruising speed is about 112 miles per hour.
Skeptics of renewable energy development often point out that the wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine. True enough, but when the sun isn’t shining in one place, the wind is often blowing there, or somewhere else that’s not too far away.
These patterns open up the possibility of complementarity: using different renewable energy sources to balance each other out across time and space.
Scientists at Duke University and Florida State University conducted the study, building on their past research of lead’s impact on our health. They estimated that childhood lead exposure—particularly during the decades when it was most found in gasoline—has directly contributed to 151 million more cases of psychiatric disorder among Americans over the past 75 years. The findings indicate that lead has been even more dangerous to humanity than we knew.
Car manufacturers began to add lead to gasoline in the 1920s, aiming to reduce wear and tear on the engines.
The End of Oil (Ryan Kellogg, November 2024, NBER: Working Paper 33207)
It is now plausible to envision scenarios in which global demand for crude oil falls to essentially zero by the end of this century, driven by improvements in clean energy technologies, adoption of stringent climate policies, or both. This paper asks what such a demand decline, when anticipated, might mean for global oil supply. One possibility is the well-known “green paradox”: because oil is an exhaustible resource, producers may accelerate near-term extraction in order to beat the demand decline. This reaction would increase near-term CO2 emissions and could possibly even lead the total present value of climate damages to be greater than if demand had not declined at all. However, because oil extraction requires potentially long-lived investments in wells and other infrastructure, the opposite may occur: an anticipated demand decline reduces producers’ investment rates, decreasing near-term oil production and CO2 emissions.
First, renewable energy. Sometime in recent years, we crossed the point where solar energy became the cheapest form of energy. Cheaper than oil, gas and any other non-renewable energy source. This is quite incredible as it means that research has been driving down the cost per watt incredibly fast. In fact, the price of solar panels measured in watts per dollar follows Moore’s Law, meaning that the cost of solar energy is halved every 18 months.
We also have wind power, tidal power and several other forms of renewable energy. The cost per watt for all of them is dropping rapidly as well. Although humans naturally think linearly instead of exponentially, the cost of these renewable sources of energy is dropping exponentially toward zero due to technological innovation and economies of scale.
The main challenge is of course energy storage. Progress in battery technology is rapid but slower than for generation. But also here, the rapid electrification of vehicles is driving economies of scale that are driving down the cost of storage as well. Already now, battery systems are becoming available for stationary purposes that often have had a previous life as part of a vehicle. This allows for high cost-effectiveness as the economic life of batteries is extended significantly.
This brings us to the second main development in energy: nuclear is on the way back. New generations of nuclear reactors are available that are truly safe, much smaller and much more cost-effective than the traditional reactors. According to the research I’ve seen, nuclear actually has the lowest environmental impact of all energy sources, including solar and wind, and the lowest number of attributable deaths. Using nuclear to fill the gaps in energy generation by renewables and to address the storage challenges will be critical if we want to stop using fossil fuels.
Kind of amusing that MAGA think they can make everyone spend more on energy in perpetuity just because that hate Greens.
A core irony of climate change is that markets incentivized the wide-scale burning of fossil fuels beginning in the Industrial Revolution, creating the mess humanity is mired in, and now those markets are driving the Green Revolution that will help fix it. Coal, oil, and gas are commodities whose prices fluctuate. As natural resources that humans pull from the ground, there’s really no improving on them — engineers can’t engineer new versions of coal.
By contrast, solar panels, wind turbines, and appliances like induction stoves only get better — more efficient and cheaper — with time. Energy experts believe solar power, the price of which fell 90 percent between 2010 and 2020, will continue to proliferate across the landscape. (Last year, the United States added three times as much solar capacity as natural gas.) Heat pumps now outsell gas furnaces in the U.S., due in part to government incentives. Last year, Maine announced it had reached its goal of installing 100,000 heat pumps two years ahead of schedule, in part thanks to state rebates.
[T]he technology is more powerful than ever, with a single cell capable of producing over 400 watts. And get this: 97% of them do exactly that — another huge step up from just four years ago, when most panels performed below that mark, according to a marketplace report by EnergySage.
This colossal evolution of solar power is not just a cool fact. It has also fueled the adoption of solar energy on an unprecedented scale and had real impacts on the financial benefits of switching residential and commercial fuse boxes over to solar.
For example, the lifetime energy savings after installing rooftop panels can now be as high as $33,000, Forbes reported.
[W}hen the owner of one of those leased parcels decided to work with Acciona Energia to help site its High Point wind and solar farm, Gerlach initially was not enthusiastic.
“The thought of taking productive farm ground out of production with solar panels was not, in my personal opinion, ideal,” he said.
But Gerlach was determined to make the best of the situation.
Ultimately, that meant a win-win arrangement, where Acciona pays him to manage vegetation around the 100 MW array of solar panels that went online in early 2024. Gerlach does that with a herd of 500 sheep.
“We don’t own the land, we don’t get a say — that’s landowners’ rights, and I’m very pro that,” Gerlach recounted. “In U.S. agriculture, the biggest thing that gets farmers in trouble is saying ‘that’s how we’ve always done it so that’s what we’re going to do.’ Renewable energy is probably not going anywhere, whether you’re for or against it, it’s coming, it’s what’s happening. As an agriculture producer, we’re going to adapt with it.”
“Solar does continue to surprise us,” said Gregory Nemet, who wrote How Solar Energy Became Cheap, in an email. “It seems like it shouldn’t at this point. It’s been roughly 30 percent growth each year for 30 years. And costs continue to fall so new users — and new uses — continue to emerge.”
In the past year, solar power has experienced Brobdingnagian growth, even by solar standards. According to a new report from Ember, an energy think tank, the world is on track to install 29 percent more solar energy capacity this year — a total of 593 gigawatts — compared to last year, which was already a record year. This is more than one-quarter of the electricity produced by every operating coal plant in the world combined. In 2020, the whole world had installed just 760 GW of solar in total.
