This page explores the technologies, policies, and politics of renewable energies.

Out of Eden: A Christian Study and Action Guide to Food and the Environment

A practical Study and Action Guide for use by small groups discussion or personal reflection. The guide covers topics that are actionable on the personal and policy levels: sugar’s impact on our bodies and sugar corporations’ truth-telling and accountability, corn and corn subsidies creating over-supply, plastic and its biological impact on animals and humans, the true cost of meat in terms of soil depletion and air pollution, and food waste and the practices which can diminish it.

Radcast:  monitoring radiation levels across the country 24x7 (website)

Laura Italiano and Kerry Murtha, Navy Soldiers Have Radiation Sickness After Japan Rescue. New York Post, Dec 22, 2013.

Rob Wile, Endless Electricity: Here's A Way Of Turning America's Roads Into Gigantic Solar Panels. Business Insider, May 14, 2014.

Jon Major, Japan: "Solar Islands" Replace Nuclear Power. Ecologist, Sep 13, 2014.

William Pentland, Lockheed Martin Claims Fusion Breakthrough That Could Change World Forever. Forbes, Oct 15, 2014.

Fairport Electric (website) On municipal electricity company using hydro power.

Umair Irfan, Europe is Building More Wind and Solar — Without Any Subsidies. Vox, May 31, 2018.

David Roberts, Solar and Wind Are Coming. And the Power Sector Isn't Ready. Vox, Jun 22, 2018.

Nicholas K. Geranios, The Trump Administration Plans to Reclassify Nuclear Waste, Arguing It Could Save Billions. Critics Say That's Because Much of the Waste Could Be Left in the Ground. Business Insider, Dec 10, 2018.

Mindy Lubber, After The Pandemic, Massachusetts Can Build A Climate-Smart Recovery. WBUR, Jul 24, 2020.

Neel Dhanestra, Clean Energy is Buried at the Bottom of Abandoned Oil Wells. Vox, Apr 19, 2022. Geothermal energy: “The US, in the wake of an oil and gas boom, just so happens to have millions of oil and gas wells sitting abandoned across the country… So, the DOE asks, why not repurpose them? That’s exactly what the agency’s pilot program, called Wells of Opportunity: ReAmplify, aims to do, awarding a total of $8.4 million to four projects across the country that will each try to tap into some of those old wells to extract geothermal energy rather than gas or oil. If they work, they could be the key to not only reducing the country’s use of planet-damaging fossil fuels, but also helping answer the question of how to transition many of the more than 125,000 people who work in oil and gas extraction across the country into clean-energy jobs.”

Siddarth Kara, Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives. St. Martin’s Press | Amazon page, Jan 2023. See interview by Amy Goodman and Nermeen Shaikh, "Cobalt Red": Smartphones & Electric Cars Rely on Toxic Mineral Mined in Congo by Children. Democracy Now, Jul 7, 2023.

CNBC, How Sodium-Ion Batteries May Challenge Lithium. CNBC, May 10, 2023.

60 Minutes, California’s Lithium Valley Could Power Electric Vehicle Industry.  60 Minutes, May 9, 2023.  “As the U.S. auto industry goes green, companies are developing lithium extraction for batteries in California’s Imperial Valley,” which is next to the Salton Sea in Southernmost part of CA.

Gerry Shih and Lorenzo Tugnoli, Rich Lode of EV Metals Could Boost Taliban and Its New Chinese Partners. Washington Post, Jul 19, 2023. “The Pentagon dubbed Afghanistan ‘the Saudi Arabia of lithium.’ Now, it is American rivals that are angling to exploit those coveted reserves.”

DW Documentary, The Cobalt Challenge - The Dark Side of the Energy Transition.  DW Documentary, Jul 20, 2023.  An 85 minute video documentary. 

Deutsche Welle Planet A, How to Cool Our Homes (Even Without AC’s). Deutsche Welle Documentary, Aug 5, 2023. Some solutions include: Trees and greenery; traditional architecture as opposed to glass that lets in natural light; district cooling where cool water is underground.

Noah Smith, Our Climate Change Debates Are Out of Date. Noahpinion | Substack, Sep 7, 2023. Solar and batteries are going to win.

CNBC, Could Deep-Sea Mining Fix The Global Minerals Shortage?  CNBC, Sep 20, 2023.  A corporation called The Metals Company asserts that this would be a better way to mine nickel, copper, cobalt, manganese, etc. than in Indonesian rain forests and using Congolese forced labor.

Shannon Osaka, What the World Would Look Like Without Fossil Fuels.  Boston Globe, Sep 30, 2023.  “A thought experiment shows the complexities of phasing out oil, gas and coal.”

Matt Ferrell, Is This Accidental Discovery The Future Of Energy?  Undecided by Matt Ferrell, Oct 10, 2023.  Hydroelectric energy, or electric energy in humid air.

Matt Farrell, Why Hydrogen Does Have a Future.  Undecided with Matt Farrell, Dec 5, 2023. 

Tim Newcomb, A Tiny Town Is Betting on a Sand Battery to Heat Homes. It Could Revolutionize Energy. Popular Mechanics, Mar 13, 2024. “Finland is doing sand batteries big. Polar Night Energy already showed off an early commercialized version of a sand battery in Kankaanpää in 2022, but a new sand battery 10 times that size is about to fully rid the town of Pornainen, Finland of its need for oil-based energy. In cooperation with the local Finnish district heating company Loviisan Lämpö, Polar Night Energy will develop a 1-megawatt sand battery capable of storing up to 100 megawatt hours of thermal energy. “With the sand battery,” Mikko Paajanen, CEO of Loviisan Lämpö, said in a statement, “we can significantly reduce energy produced by combustion and completely eliminate the use of oil.”" See also Deutsche Welle News, Innovations for a New Era of Energy Storage. Deutsche Welle News, Jun 25, 2024. Features sand batteries.

The Electric Viking, U.S Company Reveals Revolutionary Battery That Destroys Sodium & Lithium. The Electric Viking, Aug 21, 2024.

CNBC, Why All Eyes Are on Arkansas’ Lithium. CNBC, Sep 11, 2024. The Smackover Formation stretches from Texas to Florida’s panhandle, with its center in southern Arkansas. It is the largest concentration of lithium in North America.

Geopolitical Economy Report, Ukraine Sits on Trillions Worth of Minerals. US Politicians Want Them. Geopolitical Economy Report, Sep 17, 2024. Quotes from Vincenzo Bove, Kristian Skrede Gleditsch, and Petros G. Sekeris, “Oil above Water”: Economic Interdependence and Third-party Intervention. Journal of Conflict Resolution | Sage Journals, Jan 27, 2015. We explore economic incentives for third parties to intervene in ongoing internal wars. We develop a three-party model of the decision to intervene in conflict that highlights the role of the economic benefits accruing from the intervention and the potential costs. We present novel empirical results on the role of oil in motivating third-party military intervention. We find that the likelihood of a third-party intervention increases when (a) the country at war has large reserves of oil, (b) the relative competition in the sector is limited, and (c) the potential intervener has a higher demand for oil. See summary article by Vincenzo Bove and Petros G. Sekeris, Fueling Conflict: The Role of Oil in Foreign Interventions. Global Observatory, Mar 5, 2015. “One of these studies provided statistical evidence that Central Intelligence Agency covert operations during the Cold War resulted in increased imports of United States goods from target countries, without the same holding true for exports.”