Michael Barnard is Chief Strategist with TFIE Strategy Inc. He works with startups, existing businesses and investors to identify opportunities for significant bottom line growth and cost takeout in our rapidly transforming world. He is editor of The Future is Electric, a Medium publication. He regularly publishes analyses of low-carbon technology and policy in sites including Newsweek, Slate, Forbes, Huffington Post, Quartz, CleanTechnica and RenewEconomy, and his work is regularly included in textbooks. Third-party articles on his analyses and interviews 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's available for consulting engagements, speaking engagements and Board positions.
March 18th, 2019 | by Michael Barnard
Smart cities aren’t IoT sensors for everything on every corner all of the time. They aren’t just dumb CCTV cameras everywhere providing post facto blame allocation for crimes and accidents. Sensors are just the start
March 15th, 2019 | by Michael Barnard
Fear of nuclear power is vastly overrated as an issue among pro-nuclear advocates. Like conservatives in the USA up to the Secretary of the Interior blaming non-existent eco-terrorists for west coast wildfires, it's a strawman, a convenient fiction that the nuclear advocates share among themselves to avoid the harsh truth
March 15th, 2019 | by Michael Barnard
There are two persistent and overlapping trends in American discussions of climate change, nuclear energy, and renewable energy. The first is American exceptionalism, the idea that the USA is doing better than any country in the world despite denying climate change and walking away from the Paris Accord. The second is that Germany is awful, choosing to shut down its nuclear plants, resulting in massive increases in greenhouse gases
March 14th, 2019 | by Michael Barnard
There are three problems with carbon capture and sequestration — capture, shipping and long-term disposal — and air carbon capture only deals poorly with the first of the three.
March 7th, 2019 | by Michael Barnard
Wind farms aren't universally accepted by communities where they are being established. It's important to provide care and feeding to those communities, to provide them the immunization that they often require from those irrationally or ideologically opposed to wind energy and to assist them in healing breaches that occur. Wind farms bring change, and change is often difficult
March 7th, 2019 | by Michael Barnard
Is America to blame for global warming? Yes, it has the single biggest slice of that ugly pie. It’s not alone in the blame, but you have to put the entire EU together to find someone that’s in the same ballpark of shame
February 26th, 2019 | by Michael Barnard
Ramping up renewable replacement of fossil fuels is viably scalable given the massive parallelization of deploying wind and solar and the proven scale of the industry today.
February 21st, 2019 | by Michael Barnard
Wind and solar generated more than double the electricity generated by nuclear in 2018. Wind and solar each generated more electricity last year than nuclear did. By 2030, the ratio is very likely to be 4:1 in favor of wind and solar.
February 20th, 2019 | by Michael Barnard
We would get triple the benefit with a saving of around 33 billion tons for wind and solar vs 11 billion tons for nuclear
February 20th, 2019 | by Michael Barnard
No yards, no golf courses, rutted roads, very expensive water and not being able to play outside at anything for most of the summer doesn’t sound like a lot of fun
February 17th, 2019 | by Michael Barnard
The US market isn’t growing particularly fast and the SUV and pickup market in China is a tiny fraction of the smaller EV market
February 16th, 2019 | by Michael Barnard
We have majority acceptance of the science, the remaining deniers are pretty motivated thinkers and the biggest problem is getting people to see the need for action right now
February 2nd, 2019 | by Michael Barnard
A fleet of 15 full-sized Tesla Model S taxis driven the same as a fleet of gas limousines would emit a sixth of the CO2 over the full lifecycle
January 23rd, 2019 | by Michael Barnard
It’s clear that shifting to a renewable economy is viable, will have economic consequences for a subset of industries, and will be economically beneficial in multiple ways
January 20th, 2019 | by Michael Barnard
Study finds 7/10 wind energy developers had no Facebook page for their projects. Only 2 were doing anything on Twitter
January 6th, 2019 | by Michael Barnard
There are 40 times as many new BMW 3 Series for sale used and 30 times as many Audi A4s as Tesla Model 3s as a ratio of 2018 new car sales. Tesla kicks butt in the used car division too
December 26th, 2018 | by Michael Barnard
This is a weak study in a predatory journal by a non-expert in soil volume which contradicts the systematic review of the IPCC, the most critiqued and carefully managed body of knowledge in the world. It is not something to base an argument on
December 25th, 2018 | by Michael Barnard
The world is changing. Some people aren’t cut out for change due to a combination of genetics and unfortunate choice of parents and place of birth (hint: yeah, not their choice)
December 23rd, 2018 | by Michael Barnard
Tesla won’t see its sales plummet in 2019. Quite the opposite. It's very easy to see that demand will only increase in the USA and globally through
December 20th, 2018 | by Michael Barnard
No, you shouldn’t buy a hydrogen fuel-cell car. Oh FSM no. Never. It's a terrible idea. Just don't do it. Stop even thinking about it.
December 20th, 2018 | by Michael Barnard
Does Peterson really believe that global warming and climate change are faked, or not an issue, or not understood? Yes, he’s that intellectually arrogant, and is rewarded richly for being so, so he’s sticking with it
December 19th, 2018 | by Michael Barnard
There are about 276.1 million cars in the USA in 2018. 77 million of them or about 28% could be fully powered by wind generation alone if they were electric and used full time
December 12th, 2018 | by Michael Barnard
Clearly, cities and countries should be promoting electric bicycles. What should that look like, and what's actually happening
December 12th, 2018 | by Michael Barnard
The potential for a reasonably easy to solve distribution network is part of what leaves the door open for hydrogen for trains. The other part is fossil fuel interests lobbying for a hydrogen future
