Jonathan Koomey

16 Apr 2013 • 1 min read

Europeans fail to correct the error of too many emissions allowances

The Associated Press reported that the European Union failed today to fix their emissions trading system. The price of emissions allowances has fallen to about 5 euros ($6.5 US) per ton of carbon dioxide, which is about one quarter of the value that has prevailed over most of the

11 Apr 2013 • 2 min read

Streamlining permitting for new photovoltaic installations can have big effects on costs

LBNL just released a report titled “The Impact of City-level Permitting Processes on Residential Photovoltaic Installation Prices and Development Times: An Empirical Analysis of Solar Systems in California Cities.” Here’s summary text from an email I just received from one of the study’s coauthors (Ryan Wiser): Business process

11 Apr 2013 • 7 min read

If we don't change our direction, we'll end up where we're headed

Joe Romm of Climate Progress did a great service for climate communications on March 8th, 2013 by publishing this graph of historical and projected global temperatures: Figure 1: Historical and projected global average surface temperatures on our current trajectory for fossil fuel emissions The historical data in the graph came

11 Apr 2013 • 1 min read

Disappointing article in Science about "greening" the Internet

In an article in a recent issue of Science, Diego Reforgiato Recupero discussed some aspects of reducing the environmental impact of the Internet, but muddled some key concepts, ignored others, and generally made a hash of things. It’s disappointing because those of us working on this issue for decades

2 Apr 2013 • 1 min read

Book review of Cold Cash, Cool Climate on Skeptical Science

The web site Skeptical Science posted a review of my book Cold Cash, Cool Climate: Science-based Advice for Ecological Entrepreneurs yesterday. Here are the first few paragraphs: Jonathan Koomey’s new book Cold Cash, Cool Climate: Science-Based Advice for Ecological Entrepreneurs puts forth an intriguing idea – entrepreneurs are one of

20 Jan 2013 • 1 min read

Just because we've always done it that way doesn't mean we still should...

At the end of November 2012 I met with Professor Rong Zeng of Tsinghua University, and he told me of his long-term vision of an electric power system that only used Direct Current (DC). There is much to recommend this vision if one were starting a power system from scratch,

17 Jan 2013 • 2 min read

Black carbon: a short-lived warming agent with big effects

Climate Progress reported yesterday on a new study about the warming effects of black carbon published in the peer reviewed journal Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres. The study reveals that black carbon (dark particles of soot emitted by various kinds of combustion) is roughly twice as powerful a warming agent as

2 Jan 2013 • 4 min read

The danger of disembodied "facts"

My friend Alex Zwissler, who heads up the Chabot Space and Science Center, published an interesting blog post today giving guidance about how to separate fact from fiction on scientific topics, with the promise of more to come. He focused today on determining the source of any claim, assessing whether

28 Dec 2012 • 1 min read

The National Center for Science Education highlights the book Cold Cash, Cool Climate

The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) states as its mission “defending the teaching of evolution and climate science. NCSE highlighted Cold Cash, Cool Climate: Science-based Advice for Ecological Entrepreneurs in a post on December 21, 2012, and it remains on their top page as of tonight. At their request,

27 Dec 2012 • 1 min read

An effective graph summarizing the climate conundrum

Bill McKibben of 350.org created a graph summarizing the picture for carbon in a particularly effective way. It’s part of a Washington Post compilation of the most important graphs of 2012. This graph summarizes the warming limit approach to the climate problem nicely (for more details, see my

4 Dec 2012 • 1 min read

More on causality and the national debt

As I pointed out in this post and this one, growth in the national debt can only be fairly evaluated by assigning causality to the different contributors to that debt. Simple-minded comparisons of debt when a president came into office with current day debt will be misleading if previous occupants

27 Nov 2012 • 2 min read

Energy harvesting in the news

The world is starting to pay greater attention to energy harvesting, through which ultra-low power sensors and controls can be powered by ambient energy flows (like light, heat, motion, or stray radio and TV signals). This week, Electronics Weekly reported on a study that estimated the current market for energy

11 Nov 2012 • 2 min read

A real-world example of how wrong "likely voter" screens can be

As if in reply to my missive about hazards in political polling, Politico has a great story today about just how far astray likely voter screens can lead even seasoned political professionals: For Republicans, one of the worst parts of the GOP’s 2012 trouncing was that they didn’t

2 Nov 2012 • 1 min read

My ARM Tech Con keynote ("Why ultra-low power computing will change everything") is now posted

I had great fun this past Wednesday (October 31st, 2012) talking at ARM’s Tech Con event, which is probably the world’s largest gathering of technologists devoted to low power innovation. Compared to my Authors@Google talk, I’ve added some additional examples of ultra-low-power computing and communications and

29 Oct 2012 • 3 min read

If political polls are driving you crazy, read this

As the election approaches, I’ve been musing over the nature of political polling. There are many folks who make a living reporting on poll results, and a few who actually do solid analysis using such polls (with Nate Silver at 538 being the most prominent and sophisticated example). Unfortunately,