tumbledry

Energy

Maybe I’m grasping at straws, but this article the most optimistic thing I’ve read in a few years, though of course tempered by the current political disaster:

Instead of relying on scattered deposits of fossil fuel—the control of which has largely defined geopolitics for more than a century—we are moving rapidly toward a reliance on diffuse but ubiquitous sources of supply.

In fact, the sheer scope of that potential change seems to be motivating much of the current backlash against clean energy in the U.S.

Plus, I always love a bit on e-bikes; not only fun, but an excellent way to get around without burning things:

E-biking—best thought of as biking without hills—may prove to be an even more important innovation. The e-bike is almost unbelievably efficient: to fully charge a five-hundred-watt e-bike costs, on average, about eight cents. That charge provides some thirty miles of range, so it costs about a penny to ride five miles.

Tons of facts here that indisputably illustrate how the transformation of global energy that is not only under way, but accelerating:

The United Kingdom—where, after all, fossil fuel really began—now has so much wind power that in 2024 its carbon emissions fell below what they were in 1879

Worth a read. Let’s see if the optimism I felt while reading it is still there in five years.

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