About Michael Barnard
Michael Barnard For the past several years Michael has been analyzing and publishing reports and articles on decarbonization technologies, business models and policies. His pieces on electrical generation transformation and electrification of transportation have been published in CleanTechnica, Newsweek, Slate, Forbes, Huffington Post, Quartz, RenewEconomy, RenewablesInternational and Gizmag, as well as included in textbooks. Third-party articles on his analyses and interviews with Mike have been published in dozens of news sites globally and have reached #1 on Reddit Science. Much of his work originates on Quora.com, where Mike has been a Top Writer annually since 2012. He also has published a climate-fiction novel, Guangzhou Future Tense.
October 15th, 2017 | by Michael Barnard
Hydrogen seemed like a viable contender to displace a lot of fossil fuels in 2000. But in 2017, it’s not credible for as many applications. We now know very well what it takes to get useful power from fuel cell applications, what it takes to store hydrogen, and what it takes to distribute it. And we know very well the trajectory of battery electric applications, its primary long-term competitor in most situations
October 14th, 2017 | by Michael Barnard
There’s a lot more to replacing a grid than just solar and storage. Tesla can certainly help Puerto Rico rebuild, but it will be one of many participants in that process. It could easily make a lot of individual residences and office buildings more resilient with rooftop solar and PowerWalls. It could easily double or triple the amount of solar generation Puerto Rico has today. It could easily set up grid storage that would smooth the use of more renewables
October 7th, 2017 | by Michael Barnard
Musk might have something which would make the world even smaller and be more carbon neutral. The price and logistics might kill it, but not the speed and probably not the carbon footprint. Of course, if it took off and more people hopped to the other side of the world than do today, the net result would still be more greenhouse gases. Having traveled across the equator and international dateline several times, the duration, I can assert that the duration of travel is as much an inhibitor as the cost
September 30th, 2017 | by Michael Barnard
Dyson might succeed. They might fail. But at 2.7 billion pounds and with their success points, they are one of the more interesting new entrants
September 17th, 2017 | by Michael Barnard
Electric cars and other vehicles continue to gain momentum, just as autonomous features are becoming mainstream. But while potential job losses due to autonomy are a strong focus, the multitude of impacts electrification will have on road transportation aren't as clearly stated
September 15th, 2017 | by Michael Barnard
Hurricanes Irma and Harvey will cause some people to start accepting the science of climate change
August 16th, 2017 | by Michael Barnard
A set of questions tends to circle around human-caused global warming and climate change. Will it be bad for us? Won't it be good for anything
June 13th, 2017 | by Michael Barnard
GE, among others, is hoping to build a 320 MW tidal generation plant in Wales. How much will it actually generate at what cost and will it actually reduce CO2 emissions
June 13th, 2017 | by Michael Barnard
Filling up a hydrogen car at home would require about a million dollars of equipment and a three-car garage sized space for it. Or you could just plug an electric car into the wall
June 10th, 2017 | by Michael Barnard
Most people don't understand most of global warming or climate change and that's okay. They just have to accept the science just as they do for gravity, GPS and airplanes
June 10th, 2017 | by Michael Barnard
The world has an overheating problem, and prioritizing where the money gets spent to solve it is important. What are the choices and what's the best short-term priority
June 9th, 2017 | by Michael Barnard
Virginia is about to receive approval for a nuclear plant that would cost 3-5 times what the equivalent wind and solar generation would cost. And it's only 80 miles from Washington
May 18th, 2017 | by Michael Barnard
The percentage of fully electric and autonomous vehicles on the road will be much higher in 2030 than today, but the majority will still be owned by individuals
May 15th, 2017 | by Michael Barnard
Major urban low-carbon innovations include net metering, vehicle fleet emissions standards, complete streets zoning, wind-powered trains and electric buses, all driven by regulation and policy
May 13th, 2017 | by Michael Barnard
Cities aren’t energy islands but can still take advantage of more wind, solar, hydroelectric, geothermal and other forms of clean energy
February 12th, 2017 | by Michael Barnard
Recently, Elon Musk was interviewed by CNBC and made an assertion that ran shivers up a few spines: "There is a pretty good chance we end up with a universal basic income, or something like that, due to automation."
February 7th, 2017 | by Michael Barnard
There will be some jobs in the region due to wind, solar and geothermal energy. It's probable that they could provide tens of thousands of jobs for workers in the region. But there are never going to be close to the 785,000 coal jobs of
December 17th, 2016 | by Michael Barnard
How much potential does biological carbon capture and sequestration offer? How much effort would be required to implement a large scale fix? Reasonable questions, so I went hunting for answers
November 29th, 2016 | by Michael Barnard
Many people are writing opinion pieces about the Chevy Bolt now that the Bolt is available for test drives. There have [&hellip
November 21st, 2016 | by Michael Barnard
NET Power is building what it claims is a no-carbon form of gas generation that's better than all the rest. It's broken ground on a 10 MW Texas plant in a consortium with Exelon Generation and Chicago Bridge & Iron (CB&I) to prove its technology.
November 19th, 2016 | by Michael Barnard
Just prior to the result that trumped all news stories for a week, Tesla announced that it Supercharging would no [&hellip
