What's a fundamentalist?

A fundamentalist is a person who considers whether a fact is acceptable to their faith, before they explore it.

As opposed to a curious person, who explores first and then considers whether or not they want to accept the ramifications.

Seth Godin.
Incidentally, Wikipedia defines fundamentalism as 'strict adherence to any set of basic ideas or principles'.

From the world of energy The world of energy in 2007 and related posts, we've extracted 12 subjects.

We'd love to hear your views as to which of these stories you find most significant.

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In bioenergy, it's often difficult to see the forest through the trees. The many articles about 'truths' and 'myths' do not really help.

Meanwhile, biofuels are currently produced in volumes where they start to make a real contribution to energy security. An ethanol boom in the USA has led to a production of 16 million cubic meters, primarily based on corn. Brazil has a longer tradition and currently produces 15 million cubic meters of ethanol, using sugarcane. In Europe, Germany is leading with a 2 million m3 production of biodiesel in 2005.

Production cost for bioethanol has come down to 0.15 - 0.18 euro/liter (with one liter of ethanol equivalent to 0.67 l of gasoline in terms of energy content).

Are biofuels sustainable? Well, they are definitely not energy or CO2 neutral. The ethanol production process is energy intensive, consuming almost as much energy as it produces. Depending on the carbon emissions of energy used in production, the net CO2 effect can be a fine balance, rising a lot of debate.

Four reviews of the year 2007 in energy have more stories on which they differ than they have in common.

A common story is the fast rise of solar power, its new technology and approach to grid parity. All four reviews include one or more stories on solar.

Next comes the imminent electrification of transport through real hybrid and electric vehicles. All but one of the reviews carry this story.

Only 4 stories are picked up by more than one review:

• High energy prices, making the energy sector a more attractive investment target. As a result, more capital is flowing into the sector.
• A rise of biofuels
• The nuclear revival
• Milestone policy - the US Energy Bill and the EU's Energy Package

Battelle has a corporate programme promoting to bike to work.

The programme saves employees costs, gives them a workout and offers bike racks upfront near the office entrance. A few 100 people have entered the programme and use bicycles regularly to work.

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I'm no expert on climate. I do not have the earth's entire eco-system in mind, with all its interactions, and how they evolved over the past millions of years. But probably not too many people have.

And the media or blogosphere, where every weather event, glacier retreat or decline of a polar bear population is interpreted as a sign of pending doom, do not really help.

We could read the IPCC reports for clarity, but a consensus of 1,500 scientists doesn't provide light reading. So here's 3 lean resources, 2 with a bird's view, 1 with a worm's view, that summarise the issue in less than an hour of your time:

In their book Made to Stick, the Heath brothers introduce a practical tool to evaluate the power of 'sticky' communication messages along 6 criteria:

• Simple
• Unexpected
• Concrete
• Credible
• Emotional
• Stories

A textbook case of a sticky message is J.F. Kennedy's 'man on the moon within a decade' message, which meets at least 4 if not 5 of above criteria.

With last spring's auction of promises on energy by the European institutions, how sticky is a 20% by 2020 target?

Energyville is another simulation game allowing players to qualitatively explore tradeoffs in the choices we make for our energy system.

In the game, you need to ensure the energy needs (not just electricity, but also transport and heating) for a city of 3.9 million people, with a 2030 time horizon. And of course, you need to keep citizens prosperous and minimise impact to the environment.

This game is a bit mroe crude than Electrocity, which should not matter, since anyway the simulation is at best a rough approximation. The learning cycle is much faster, and play much easier, but at the expense of the higher resolution offered by Electrocity.

If you have 5 minutes, try Energyville. If you can spare half an hour, go for Electrocity.

A small eBook with overview of the most relevant articles this summer on Leonardo ENERGY.

More information  

Via WattWatt we learn about a new game with the name Electrocity offered by genesis energy in New Zealand.

You can become the mayor of a city of 10,000 people with 30 plots of land, on which you can build power plants, factories, amusement parks and so on. You start with a capital of 400, and play 150 turns to develop your city.

Looking at the completed cities players have built, some have ended up with huge wealth, and a large and happy population, while preserving the environment. But beware, it's not trivial the first times to play and not go bankrupt.

While the underlying assumptions of such game will always remain open for debate, Electrocity does a good job teaching its players that development is a balancing exercise between capital resources, # citizens, happiness of citizens, taxation rate, economic development, electricity supply and environmental performance. It's an education tool, not a simulation. Put in the words of its makers:

ElectroCity was developed to increase public awareness – particularly among students – of the basic "common knowledge" of these topics. That is, the general terms and concepts of the industry and the dilemmas that go along with them. Our goal is not to provide students with a sophisticated understanding of the controversies in the various energy debates. Rather, our goal is to spark an interest and lay an unbiased foundation for later learning.

Related

• WattWatt article
• Electrocity Game