Jonathan Koomey

16 May 2015 • 5 min read

The feasibility of meeting the 2 C warming limit

Dave Roberts of Vox recently posted an article about the climate problem titled “The awful truth about climate change no one wants to admit”, the point of which he summarizes as “barring miracles, humanity is in for some awful shit.” This conclusion is true even if we manage to keep

22 Apr 2015 • 1 min read

NY Times on smart homes

Steve Lohr of the NY Times wrote a nice article about smart homes that will appear in tomorrow’s NY Times business section (April 23, 2015). The issue for residential efficiency efforts like this is that the savings are often small in absolute terms, and transaction costs can be high.

17 Apr 2015 • 1 min read

“The stone age didn’t end because we ran out of stones, and the oil age won’t end because we run out of oil”

Sheik Yamani once famously said “the stone age didn’t end because we ran out of stones, and the oil age won’t end because we run out of oil”. Reed Landberg, writing for Bloomberg, describes the key trends that will lead to the end of the oil age, sooner

8 Apr 2015 • 1 min read

New Nature Climate Change article on recent progress in electric vehicle batteries

One of the biggest issues affecting the viability of electric vehicles is the cost of battery storage. A new article in Nature Climate Change explores the recent data on the cost of batteries, finding an average rate of decline of about 8% per year since 2006 and a learning rate

7 Apr 2015 • 1 min read

Our article, “Efficiency's brief reprieve: Moore's Law slowdown hits performance more than energy efficiency”, is in IEEE Spectrum this month

I and Sam Naffziger of Advanced Micro Devices just published a short article in IEEE Spectrum’s April 2015 issue, which happens to be the Moore’s law 50th anniversary issue. Here are the first couple of paragraphs: The graph posted above summarizes the main story, which is that peak

6 Apr 2015 • 1 min read

MIT short course on “Sustainability: Principles and Practice” is being offered July 27-31, 2015

A colleague of mine at MIT, Noelle Eckley Selin, along with some of her other colleagues, will be offering a 4 day short course on Sustainability: Principles and Practice on July 27-31, 2015. Here’s the course overview: This course will introduce participants to the goals, principles, and practical applications

24 Mar 2015 • 1 min read

A wonderful speech that calls out the incongruity of the oil industry’s position on climate

In perusing this recent post on Skeptical Science, I found a link to a terrific speech by a former UK diplomat (John Ashton) about the oil industry’s position on climate change. He is responding to a speech by Shell CEO Ben van Burden, and it’s really worth a

19 Mar 2015 • 2 min read

Energy efficiency is disrupting the traditional electric utility business model in the US

Here is a must read data analysis from my friends at CO2 Scorecard for those interested in what’s happening in the US utility industry. Electricity demand growth has slowed to zero in the past half decade, which is the culmination of long term trends associated with the implementation of

12 Mar 2015 • 1 min read

John Holdren’s keynote talk on climate change at the Carnegie Endowment, March 10, 2015

Me and John Holdren, March 10, 2015 (I should have fixed my tie!) The professor who had the most influence on me as a graduate student at UC Berkeley (after my main thesis advisors Art Rosenfeld and Tony Fisher) was John P. Holdren, who now heads up the President’s

12 Mar 2015 • 1 min read

Carnegie’s Oil Climate Index, unveiled yesterday in DC

My coauthors and I just released the initial report about our Oil Climate Index (OCI), which estimates using public data and open source models the total lifecycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from different oils. Where the oil is discovered, how it is extracted, how it is transported, and how it

5 Mar 2015 • 1 min read

The Tech Nation Interview on my book Cold Cash, Cool Climate from 2012

I spoke with Tech Nation host Moira Gunn about my book Cold Cash, Cool Climate: Science-based Advice for Ecological Entrepreneurs back in May 2012, and have finally gotten access to the recording so I can post it (it’s accessible via a Creative Commons license, but I had difficulties linking

2 Mar 2015 • 1 min read

Online class, starting September 14th, 2015: Management essentials for transforming enterprise IT

Photo credit: By Hugovanmeijeren (Own work) [GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0], via Wikimedia Commons Update: This class was originally scheduled for March 9th, 2015, but we haven’t met our student signup goals, so we’re postponing the class to Sept 14th 2015, and revisiting our marketing strategy.

2 Mar 2015 • 1 min read

Climate academic probed by Congress falsely charges colleagues with Conflict of Interest

Some colleagues and I wrote an article that appeared on the Huffington Post yesterday, responding to unfounded charges by one of the scientists from whom Congress has requested more information about his funding. The short summary: Don’t impugn the integrity of other researchers when you haven’t done your

26 Feb 2015 • 1 min read

Our new oil-climate index will be released in Washington, DC on March 11, 2015

Oil is changing. Tight shale oil, oil sands, heavy oils, ultra-deep oils, depleting oils, oil shale, and an expanding array of hydrocarbons are vying for market share. Consumers may not notice the transformation—aside from recent price fluctuations, little appears to have changed at the gas pump. But behind-the-scenes, the

22 Jan 2015 • 1 min read

New data on ocean warming: it keeps getting hotter

John Abraham has a summary post on the Guardian website describing the recent data on ocean temperatures, and it’s a doozy. Here’s the graph of ocean heat content since before 1960, and it shows substantial increases since 1990. About 90% of recent warming is stored in the oceans,