Category Archives: Life after cheap oil

Fuel cell technology has come to a state where it is feasable to power an airplane, as recently has been shown in Germany. The Antares motor glider, equipped with a 25 KW fuell cell took off under its own power … Continue reading →

Using waste streams to generate fuels is a good idea. But human urine….? Researchers at the Ohio University have a rational approach: the energy needed to break hydrogen away from urine is lower than the energy you need to break … Continue reading →

Thermal solar systems have been around for years, a proven technology.  For mass deployment you need to focus on the manufacturing, installation and maintenance issues: total-cost-of-ownership drives the cost per KWh. Sandia Corporation and others unveiled their second generation thermal … Continue reading →

We humans have an innate tendency to overestimate the progress that can be made in the short term (leading to disappointment) and underestimate the progress that has been made or can be made in longer timespans. Take for instance sustainable … Continue reading →

New cars, motorcybles, boats, fork-lift trucs and scooters, there are a lot of vehicles that run on electricity instead of petrol or gasoline. A serious drawback of those electric vehicles is the charging time of the battery. A dutch company … Continue reading →

The proverb “where the rubber meets the road” points to the reality check one has to do with any concept: what will be the cost?  Altenergystocks has an interesting post on this subject: the available numbers (USA), the sensitivity for interest … Continue reading →

Is it a car, is it a motorcycle? Nowadays you see more and more hybrid designs, with 3 and 4 wheels. Like the Piaggio MP3, the Carver, the T-rex, the Aptera and many others (see a list of 3 wheelers … Continue reading →

Streetcar, the UK’s largest pay-as-you-go-car-sharing-club, has announced that it will offer members a specially adapted Toyota Prius. It can be expected that this is a success, since members of a car-sharing-club in general care about the environment. While a trial … Continue reading →

A recent article in The New Scientist touts a catchy header: “A plane can be worse for the climate than a train”. The header will most likely be found very soon in many newspapers and blogs, because hardly anyone will bother … Continue reading →