Greta vs the Fossil Fuel Industry

"You don’t listen to the science because you are only interested in solutions that will enable you to carry on like before"

-- Greta

Information Overload is the Bane of my Life

My daily struggle is to understand what is important, to my situation, in the constant barrage of information on the Internet.  

What can and should be ignored?  

Is my purpose to seek distraction, novelty and entertainment? 

Or is the goal and purpose to my Net Surfing to gain valuable knowledge?  

What do I hope to accomplish?

“There are things that attract human attention, and there is often a huge gap between what is important and what is attractive and interesting."

- Yuval Noah Harari   

  

And Donald Trump has not helped make being informed easy with all his mixed messages.

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.”

― William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Snow

Kazuko M. ‏@EstherHawdon

 

"Within

A light snow

Three thousand Realms

Within those realms

Light snow falls"

Ryokan Taigu (image: Hasui Kawase)

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams, who looks inside awakes. ~ Carl Jung

We have art so as not to die of the truth.    Friedrich Nietzsche

 

"Our notions about happiness entrap us. We forget they're just ideas. Our idea of happiness can prevent us from actually being happy." TNH

 

“The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

 "I never change, I simply become more myself." Joyce Carol Oates

Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something. ~ Plato

The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us. ~Voltaire

 

   

Living with a sense of purpose in life

Conclusion:

A sense of purpose in life also gives you this considerable advantage:

"People with a sense of purpose in life have a lower risk of death and cardiovascular disease."

The conclusions come from over 136,000 people who took part in 10 different studies.

Participants in the studies were mostly from the US and Japan.


The US studies asked people:

• how useful they felt to others,
• about their sense of purpose, and
• the meaning they got out of life.

The Japanese studies asked people about ‘ikigai’ or whether their life was worth living.
The participants, whose average age was 67, were tracked for around 7 years.

During that time almost 20,000 died. 
But, amongst those with a strong sense of purpose or high ‘ikigai’, the risk of death was one-fifth lower.

Despite the link between sense of purpose and health being so intuitive, scientists are not sure of the mechanism.

Sense of purpose is likely to improve health by strengthening the body against stress.

It is also likely to be linked to healthier behaviours.

Dr. Alan Rozanski, one of the study’s authors, said:

“Of note, having a strong sense of life purpose has long been postulated to be an important dimension of life, providing people with a sense of vitality motivation and resilience.

Nevertheless, the medical implications of living with a high or low sense of life purpose have only recently caught the attention of investigators.

The current findings are important because they may open up new potential interventions for helping people to promote their health and sense of well-being.”

This research on links between sense of purpose in life and longevity is getting stronger all the time:

• “A 2009 study of 1,238 elderly people found that those with a sense of purpose lived longer.
• A 2010 study of 900 older adults found that those with a greater sense of purpose were much less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease.
• Survey data often links a sense of purpose in life with increased happiness.

No matter what your age, then, it’s worth thinking about what gives your life meaning.”



Read More:

Find out what kinds of things people say give their lives meaning.

Here’s an exercise for increasing meaningfulness

And a study finding that feeling you belong increases the sense of meaning.

The study was published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine (Cohen et al., 2015).




A sense of purpose in life
Link: http://www.spring.org.uk/2015/12/here-is-why-a-sense-of-purpose-in-life-is-important-for-health

Future Solar Panels Will Generate Energy From Raindrops

  April 9, 2016

A new solar cell prototype developed by a team of scientists in Qingdao, China may change the way we use solar panels in the not so distant future. 

Solar panel technology has changed the way many people bring energy into their homes, but this type of technology has always posed one concern: panels cannot output optimal power without ideal weather conditions. When you have rainy days or a lot of cloud cover, there is only so much energy that panels can store for later use. While engineers and material scientists have been able to make their efficiency far better over the years, with solar panels that store decent amounts of energy to be used when sun is not readily available, there has never quite been a development like the one discovered this year.

Chinese scientists are now able to create electricity with the assistance of raindrops. This is thanks to a thin layer of graphene they use to coat their solar cells during testing. Graphene is known for its conductivity, among many other benefits. All it takes is a mere one-atom thick graphene layer for an excessive amount of electrons to move as they wish across the surface. In situations where water is present, graphene binds its electrons with positively charged ions. Some of you may know this process to be called as the Lewis acid-base interaction.

These new solar cells can be stimulated by incident light on sunny days and raindrops when it’s raining, yielding an optimal energy conversion efficiency of 6.53 % under 1.5 atmosphere thickness irradiation and current over µA, along with a voltage of hundreds of mV by simulated raindrops.

The salt contained in rain separates into ions (ammonium, calcium and sodium), making graphene and natural water a great combination for creating energy. The water actually clings to the graphene, forming a dual layer (AKA pseudocapacitor) with the graphene electrons. The energy difference between these layers is so strong that it generates electricity.

These new all-weather solar cells are discussed in depth in the Angewandte Chemie journal.




 Link: http://sciencenewsjournal.com/future-solar-panels-will-generate-energy-raindrops/

Was Jane Jacobs right?

Lloyd Alter (@lloydalter)
Design / Urban Design
May3, 2016

May 4 would have been Jane Jacobs' 100th birthday. We look at her impact.

 

Was Jane Jacobs right?

In Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs took on New York's Master Builder and transformed the American City, Anthony Flint summarizes her philosophy about how cities work best:

Jacobs made four basic recommendations for successful neighborhoods: a street or district must serve several primary functions; blocks should be short to make the pedestrian feel comfortable; buildings must vary in age, condition, and use; and population must be dense. Hudson Street—unplanned in contrast to the grand housing developments of urban renewal—was a perfect example of diversity and strength in numbers, what Jacobs referred to as “eyes on the street.” Whether neighbors or strangers, people are safer in dense areas because they are almost never alone.

Jane also became a touchstone for architectural preservationists; again Flint, writing about the Penn Station battle:

Jacobs was leery of the idea of trying to freeze a neighborhood in time and put it under a kind of museum glass, but she did object to the wanton demolition of historic buildings. ...But the demolition was a turning point, as it forced many New Yorkers to recognize what Jacobs was saying: that new was not necessarily better, and that there was value—human and cultural capital—in the built environment that already existed around them.

Jane also became a touchstone for architectural preservationists; again Flint, writing about the Penn Station battle:

Jacobs was leery of the idea of trying to freeze a neighborhood in time and put it under a kind of museum glass, but she did object to the wanton demolition of historic buildings. ...But the demolition was a turning point, as it forced many New Yorkers to recognize what Jacobs was saying: that new was not necessarily better, and that there was value—human and cultural capital—in the built environment that already existed around them.

But her words are an anathema to many in the so-called market urbanist school, who see all of this preservation of older buildings as an impediment to development; as Steve Waldman explains, these market urbanists...

...argue that cities should eliminate restrictive zoning and other regulatory barriers to development, then let the free-market create housing supply. In a competitive marketplace, high prices are supposed to be their own cure. Zoning restrictions, urban permitting, and the de facto capacity of existing residents to veto new development are barriers to entry that prevent the magic of competition from taking hold and solving the problem.

Which is where we are today, with economists like Ed Glaeser, Ryan Avent and writers like Matt Yglesias and Alex Steffen persuading many that Jane Jacobs was wrong, and Felix Salmon defending crappy towers filled with rich people by saying "Better we have a living city with a couple of less-than-perfect buildings, than a stifled one governed by nostalgists and Nimbys." Glaeser has written that "An absolute victory for Jacobs means a city frozen in concrete with prices that are too high and buildings that are too low."
Nothing but banks and chain stores to be seen on this street/ Google street view/Screen capture
In fact, in Toronto, the city where Jane Jacobs lived the last 37 years of her life, you can see what happens if you let this happen. Yes, there is a boom in housing, with lots of relatively affordable small units that are full of a monoculture of childless young people, with the ground floor plane filled with a monoculture of chain restaurants, banks and drugstores. Because as Jane wrote in the Death and Life of Great American Cities,

[Businesses] that support the cost of new construction must be capable of paying a relatively high overhead. If you look about, you will see that only operations that are well established, high-turnover, standardized or heavily subsidized can afford, commonly, to carry the costs of new construction. Chain stores, chain restaurants and banks go into new construction. But neighborhood bars, foreign restaurants and pawn shops go into older buildings. Supermarkets and shoe stores often go into new buildings; good bookstores and antique dealers seldom do.

CC BY 2.0 Jane Jacobs/ Wikipedia
May 4 would have been Jane Jacobs' 100th birthday. We look at her impact.
In Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs took on New York's Master Builder and transformed the American City, Anthony Flint summarizes her philosophy about how cities work best:

Jacobs made four basic recommendations for successful neighborhoods: a street or district must serve several primary functions; blocks should be short to make the pedestrian feel comfortable; buildings must vary in age, condition, and use; and population must be dense. Hudson Street—unplanned in contrast to the grand housing developments of urban renewal—was a perfect example of diversity and strength in numbers, what Jacobs referred to as “eyes on the street.” Whether neighbors or strangers, people are safer in dense areas because they are almost never alone.

Jane also became a touchstone for architectural preservationists; again Flint, writing about the Penn Station battle:

Jacobs was leery of the idea of trying to freeze a neighborhood in time and put it under a kind of museum glass, but she did object to the wanton demolition of historic buildings. ...But the demolition was a turning point, as it forced many New Yorkers to recognize what Jacobs was saying: that new was not necessarily better, and that there was value—human and cultural capital—in the built environment that already existed around them.

But her words are an anathema to many in the so-called market urbanist school, who see all of this preservation of older buildings as an impediment to development; as Steve Waldman explains, these market urbanists...

...argue that cities should eliminate restrictive zoning and other regulatory barriers to development, then let the free-market create housing supply. In a competitive marketplace, high prices are supposed to be their own cure. Zoning restrictions, urban permitting, and the de facto capacity of existing residents to veto new development are barriers to entry that prevent the magic of competition from taking hold and solving the problem.

Which is where we are today, with economists like Ed Glaeser, Ryan Avent and writers like Matt Yglesias and Alex Steffen persuading many that Jane Jacobs was wrong, and Felix Salmon defending crappy towers filled with rich people by saying "Better we have a living city with a couple of less-than-perfect buildings, than a stifled one governed by nostalgists and Nimbys." Glaeser has written that "An absolute victory for Jacobs means a city frozen in concrete with prices that are too high and buildings that are too low."
Nothing but banks and chain stores to be seen on this street/ Google street view/Screen capture
In fact, in Toronto, the city where Jane Jacobs lived the last 37 years of her life, you can see what happens if you let this happen. Yes, there is a boom in housing, with lots of relatively affordable small units that are full of a monoculture of childless young people, with the ground floor plane filled with a monoculture of chain restaurants, banks and drugstores. Because as Jane wrote in the Death and Life of Great American Cities,

[Businesses] that support the cost of new construction must be capable of paying a relatively high overhead. If you look about, you will see that only operations that are well established, high-turnover, standardized or heavily subsidized can afford, commonly, to carry the costs of new construction. Chain stores, chain restaurants and banks go into new construction. But neighborhood bars, foreign restaurants and pawn shops go into older buildings. Supermarkets and shoe stores often go into new buildings; good bookstores and antique dealers seldom do.

Lloyd Alter/ market in Florence/CC BY 2.0
Jane Jacobs did her research just by looking around and watching the sidewalk ballet, but others are now using more sophisticated methods to show that she was right. at the University of Trento and his team have examined six cities in Italy to test Jacobs' four conditions of multiple functions, small blocks, mixed age and relatively high density. Instead of eyes on the street, they used big data: Technology Review explains:

De Nadai and co have come up with a much cheaper and quicker alternative using a new generation of city databases and the way people use social media and mobile phones. The new databases include OpenStreetMap, the collaborative mapping tool; census data, which records populations and building use; land use data, which uses satellite images to classify land use according to various categories; Foursquare data, which records geographic details about personal activity; and mobile-phone records showing the number and frequency of calls in an area.

Their conclusions: “Active Italian districts have dense concentrations of office workers, third places at walking distance, small streets, and historical buildings.” Denise Pinto of Jane's Walks in Toronto tells Luke Simcoe of Metro News:

When Jane wrote about her observations of the street, she was working from her own opinions and experiences. We often don’t look at those as rigorous, but we should. The way people experience their cities is important. It comes down to how we all co-exist in this messy system of the city.

Marco De Nadai
It should be noted that one can build new buildings at reasonable density, keeping Jacobs' four conditions in mind. Rome and Milan and other European cities are quite dense without going tall. New buildings don't all have to be sparkly towers but can be midrise, infill, transit oriented development. Who knows, perhaps even the nostalgists and NIMBYs will welcome it.

Related on TreeHugger.com:

• Ryan Avent's The Gated City: Are NIMBYs Killing The Economy? (Book Review)
• Cities Need More Jane Jacobs, Less Marc Jacobs
• Walking Home: Ken Greenberg On How Jane Jacobs Was Right (Book Review)

Tags: Urban Life | Urban Planning

Source: http://www.treehugger.com/urban-design/was-jane-jacobs-right.html?utm_content=buffer881ba&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Trends shaping the grid of the future

A Deloitte study finds 'alternative energy’s shift to the mainstream is largely complete and likely irreversible'

By Herman K. Trabish | February 11, 2016  

If there were any lingering doubts about renewable energy's emergence as a mainstream resource on the grid, recent numbers for renewables growth in the U.S. should help dispel that notion.

Nearly three-quarters of major energy deals made in 2015 were for renewables assets, and nearly three-quarters of the new generation capacity built in 2016 will be renewables, according to Marlene Motyka, the Deloitte U.S. Alternative Energy Team Leader. “Renewables are becoming mainstream and a big part of the U.S. energy portfolio.”

A newly released study, "Trends to Watch in Alternative Energy," from the Deloitte Center for Energy Solutions outlines 8 key trends driving renewables growth in the U.S. power mix. “Alternative energy’s shift to the mainstream is largely complete and likely irreversible,” the report said.

U.S. clean energy investment hit a record $329 billion in 2015, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF). And the long term extensions of federal tax credits for wind and solar just approved by Congress will add an estimated 37 GW of wind and solar capacity to previous expectations over the next five years, 56% more than without the incentives, representing $73 billion in additional investment.

“Utilities need to look at these trends as opportunities and not as disruptions,” Motyka said. “They can grow the utility’s platform and increase its revenue.”

The momentum behind renewables is accelerating. Growth is now regularly bigger than expected and “new sources of support are broad-based,” Deloitte reports. 

This, too, was verified in BNEF numbers. Investment in U.S. wind bounced back from a 2014 drop-off to hit $11.6 billion in 2015 and investment in U.S. solar was $30.2 billion, the second biggest buy-in ever.

The Deloitte paper is directed at investors but utilities and system operators still dubious of the potential of renewables might want to take note, too, Motyka said.

​Deloitte drew upon on these conversations to identify 8 trends driving renewables growth and shaping the grid of the future.

1. Renewables acquisition

Deloitte’s list of trends came from two sources. The first was ongoing conversations the consultant continues to have with clients that include private equity firms, utilities, independent power producers (IPPs), small developers, and financial institutions.

The second source was feedback Deloitte got at its 2015 Alternative Energy Seminar, Motyka added. “What was brought to our attention in those two ways helped us formulate these trends.”
The first trend, renewables acquisition, is clear: 2015’s 163 deals was up 42% over 2014 and represented a 17% capacity increase to 19.7 GW.

YieldCos boosted acquisition activity by independent power producers (IPP) in the first part of the year. As concerns about the tax credits grew and increased the volatility of stock values in Q3 and Q4, YieldCo values dimininished. But that drove an asset sell-off, with financial institutions and utilities acquiring 7.6 GW of solar and wind capacity.

With the extended tax credits now locked in, this year’s activity should be bigger, Deloitte reported. “Renewables are expected to account for 73% of the new generation that will be added in 2016.”
Utilities, private equity, and infrastructure funds continue to be the players, but the deal-making is no longer centered around natural gas, oil and coal.

“When you look at the asset acquisitions and corporate deals and exclude utility mergers, renewables accounted for 74%,” Motyka said. “Investors now see renewable energy technology as proven and the long term fixed price power purchase agreements they offer reduces risk around fuel volatility.”
With  the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan and other policy drivers now firmly in place, “utilities will likely continue to demonstrate a strong appetite for solar and wind assets…[that will] propel merger and acquisition activity through 2017,” Deloitte reported.

2. Community solar

There are three reasons for community solar's appeal, the second trend Deloitte identified. First, it makes consumer ownership of solar available to those without suitable roofs for rooftop solar. Second, it allows utilities a way to offer solar to their customers. Third, utilities, financing institutions, and customers can all benefit from economies of scale.

“Each installation typically generates 1 to 2 MW, making them large enough to tap project financing and other efficient sources of capital,” Deloitte reports. "These funding sources can reduce the cost by as much as 50% compared with individual rooftop solar installations.”

Once again, the numbers speak loudly. “In 2010, only two shared solar projects existed,” the paper reports. “By 2015, there were more than 50 projects across 19 states, with a combined capacity of more than 170 MW.”

That could grow to as much as 11 GW by 2020, Deloitte reports from a National Renewable Energy Laboratory study. It depends on how many states work through the policy complexities and add to the 14 supportive regulatory standards now in place.

Some utilities are already seeing a new market opportunity in community solar and some solar developers are already finding a niche in it and both are pushing for better policy support, Motyka said. A new Deloitte profile already in the works will detail best practices in states like Massachusetts and Minnesota where community solar has taken hold, she added.

3. Integration of renewables

A big change in the attitudes of utilities and grid operators is revealed in Deloitte's third trend, grid integration of renewables: System operators are increasingly confident of mechanisms to manage renewables’ variability.

“Five years ago, they were reluctant to allow renewables on the grid to exceed 10% of overall capacity. Now, the level is 20% or more, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory predicts it could exceed 50% by using more supply and demand flexibility options,” Deloitte reported.
Motyka said grid engineers are starting to recognize the system is flexible enough to handle higher penetrations of renewables.

“As penetrations grow, engineers are realizing the system can be pushed,” Motyka said. “But the pushing has not created any major issues and that is something investors should notice.”

Utilities and system operators have more accurate forecasting tools, planning processes, and grid automation that comes with new technologies like smart inverters, sensors, advanced analytics, and electricity storage. This allows new control over the voltage and frequency fluctuations that coincide with relying on variable renewables.

Hawaii and Japan are two places where grid flexibility is being tested. Hawaii lawmakers mandated 100% renewables for the island by 2045 and an assessment of Japan’s system found 100% renewables feasible there by 2030 with improved grid resiliency, Deloitte reported.

Both island grids have significantly higher electricity costs than in the overall U.S. system. That makes a big build-out of variability-smoothing storage more economically viable, the paper added.
“To get to 50% or higher, there may have to be changes to the overall grid and some of the technology behind it,” Motyka said. “Getting the U.S. to 100% renewables in the near term would be a technology challenge.”

An economic challenge could arise because of the huge U.S. fleet of baseload power plants varying in age, she pointed out. While they continue to operate cost-effectively, the sunk costs to shutter them would be prohibitive. “But, in the longer term we could have a much higher percentage of renewables," Motyka added. "It is an evolution.”

4. Leveraging renewables for grid resiliency

The fourth trend, a new role for renewables in grid resiliency, is already adding to utility interest. While grid modernization is the path to reduced outages, renewables can also "speed recovery times after an outage occurs,” Deloitte reports.

Extreme weather propelled policymakers to consider more about resilience. Microgrids incorporating distributed generation and energy storage don’t necessarily go down with the system and consequently can “provide electricity during outages as well as valuable grid services year-round,” Deloitte explained.

Microgrids are already serving small interconnected systems like college campuses, hospitals, and downtown areas and “can separate from the main grid if a disruption occurs,” the paper reported. “This independence improves both grid resilience and local ability to deal with an emergency.”
ABB and other companies have added micro-grids to their business platforms and it is “an emerging investment opportunity,” Motyka said.

The bigger question is whether the U.S. evolves away from centralized generation to distributed infrastructure, she added. “One could imagine that homeowners could become their own little systems, with rooftop solar and net zero efficient homes and backup natural gas generation. But a lot would have to happen to support it, like more cost effective battery storage.”

5. The Clean Power Plan

Under the Clean Power Plan, the power sector must cut 32% of its carbon emissions nationwide by 2030 from 2005 levels. In getting there, “renewables will account for as much as 400 GW of generation by 2040, a projection some analysts in the industry see as conservative,” Deloitte reports, according to the Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA).

Under the rule, plans must be submitted by September of this year and enacted by 2022. They will move the utility and energy generation industries “toward renewable energy, energy efficiency, and other low- or no-carbon emission alternatives,” Deloitte predicts.

But how big a role the CPP will play in the future remains to be seen. Earlier this week, the Supreme Court froze implementation of the plan, leaving its fate in limbo until litigation challenging the legality of the regulation is over. While states are mulling their next options, most utilities say it will be business as usual, according to EnergyWire.

The CPP and other policies are already influencing some corporations’ decisions about energy use because it has convinced them “a price on carbon is increasingly inevitable.”

6. Regulatory reforms

Several states are leading the way with regulatory reforms expected to crucially affect utility business models. The most extensive is New York’s Reforming the Energy Vision (REV), Deloitte said.

The REV will overhaul the New York’s grid and regulatory syste in pursuit of “system-wide efficiency, reliability, resiliency, fuel diversity, affordability, carbon reduction, and increased customer choice and value…[and] promote greater use of wind and solar power and reshape the utility business model to deploy more distributed energy resources," according to the report.

State and regional cap-and-trade systems like California’s AB 32 initiatives and the Northeast’s Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative are also driving renewables growth.

The third element in state-level policy is increasingly aggressive renewables mandates, Deloitte reporteds. In addition to Hawaii’s 100%-by -045 mandate, California increased its 33% by 2020 mandate to 50% by 2030 last year. Vermont changed its nonbinding 20% by 2017 to 75% by 2032.

And California mandated its Big Three investor-owned utilities to deploy 1.3 GW of electricity storage by 2024.

7. Corporations buying renewables

The seventh trend, corporations buying renewables, is one of the biggest. Last year, Deloitte identified a shift in the private sector to capital-intensive efforts to meet sustainability and renewables targets. The survey found 39% of companies had solar or other distributed generation and 26% had electricity storage.

Apple, Intel, and Kohl’s have committed to 100% renewables by 2035, the paper noted, with Amazon, General Motors, and Facebook also inking major renewables offtake agreements last year. Google just committed to power all its operations with renewables through an 842 MW investment in wind and solar.

“As of November 2015, corporations had signed power purchase agreements for large-scale, off-site renewables covering 2 GW of power, up from 1.2 GW for all of 2014,” Deloitte reported.

Though the trend is toward corporate renewables goals, efforts like Rocky Mountain Institute's Business Renewables Center (BRC) are needed to streamline corporate investment, the report pointed out.

“For every successful corporate deal to source energy from large-scale off-site renewables projects, 5-10 deals fail or experience significant delays."

To facilitate such deals, the BRC-backed Buyers’ Principles have defined what 49 leading corporate signatories want in a renewable energy contract.

8. Finding and training the renewable energy workforce 

Finding and training people to sustain renewables growth is Deloitte’s eighth trend. Its Global Human Capital Trends 2015 Report identified the key “people-related issues that keep energy executives up at night: learning and development, organizational structure, culture, performance management, and workforce readiness.”

Working through these issues will reveal ways to support and engage the kind of personnel that meet leadership needs now and in the future, Deloitte suggests.

Looking ahead

A "key pivot point" for growth will be integrating more renewables and distributed generation into the grid, Motyka said. “A lot of people are studying it from a technical perspective but we don’t know yet if it is a deal breaker.”

The thing utility leaders and system operators must understand, she added, is that “it is getting very hard to ignore alternative energy now. There is not a hierarchy among these trends. They form a web of interests woven together by renewables becoming a larger part of the U.S. generation strategy.”

---

Top Image Credit: Depositphotos

Filed Under:

Generation Solar and Renewables

 

 Source: http://www.utilitydive.com/news/8-trends-shaping-the-grid-of-the-future/413441/

 

 

 

Solar Deities

Construction for the first phase of Morocco’s Noor 1 power plant is nearing completion. Once complete in 2020, the solar farm will be the largest of its kind in the world. 

But even now, the plant’s half-million solar mirrors are already visible from space.

There’s no question that solar power is the future, an energy trend that’s fueling the development of massive solar farms in such places as California, China, and elsewhere. 

And where better to put these plants than in the desert—areas that feature plenty of sunshine and vast expanses of land that are otherwise useless and inhospitable. 

Morocco’s up-and-coming Noor 1 CSP plant is a prime example. 

The first phase of this concentrated solar power plant, which is being built in the Sahara Desert near the town of Ouarzazate, is almost finished. 

In the middle of nowhere: the plant is 10 miles from the closest town.

 

A view from the ground (Credit: AP)

http://gizmodo.com/watch-a-massive-solar-power-plant-take-shape-in-the-sah-1752261396

Sun Gods and Sun Goddesses

Is it any wonder ancients worshiped the Sun?

In ancient cultures, where you find gods with specialized functions, you'll probably find a sun god or goddess.

Many are humanoid and ride or drive a vessel of sort across the sky. It may be a boat, a chariot, or a cup.

The sun god of the Greeks and Romans rode in a 4-horse (Pyrios, Aeos, Aethon, and Phlegon) chariot.

There may be more than one god of the sun. The Egyptians differentiated among the aspects of the sun, and had several gods associated with it: Khepri for the rising sun, Atum, the setting, and Ra, at noon, who rode across the sky in a solar bark.

The Greeks and Romans also had more than one sun god.

You may notice that most sun deities are male and act as counterparts to female moon deities, but don't take this as a given. There are goddesses of the sun just as there are male deities of the moon.



Is it any wonder ancients worshiped the Sun?

Name  Nationality/Religion  God or Goddess or ?

 Amaterasu Japan Sun Goddess 

Arinna (Hebat) Hittite (Syrian) Sun Goddess 

The Iconography of Religion in the Hittite, Luwian, and Aramaean Kingdoms PDF

Apollo Greece and Rome Sun God 

Freyr Norse Sun God Not the main Norse sun god, but a fertility god associated with the sun.

Garuda Hindu Bird God

Helios (Helius) Greece Sun God Before Apollo was the Greek sun god, Helios held that position.

Hepa Hittite Sun Goddess The consort of a weather god, she was assimilated with the sun goddess 

Arinna.Huitzilopochtli (Uitzilopochtli)  Aztec Sun God 

Hvar Khshaita Iranian/Persian Sun God Earlier than Mithras.

Inti  Inca  Sun God  

Liza West African Sun God

Lugh Celtic Sun God 

MithrasIranian/Persian Sun God"Mit(h)ra(s) and the Myths of the Sun" David H. Sick. Numen (2004)

Re (Ra) Egypt Mid-day Sun God An Egyptian god shown with a solar disk. Center of worship was Heliopolis. Later associated with Horus as Re-Horakhty. Also combined with Amun as Amun-Ra, a solar creator god. 

Shemesh/Shepesh Ugarit Sun goddess 

Female solar deities (Jürg Eggler) PDF

Sol (Sunna)Norse Sun Goddess She rides in a horse-drawn solar chariot.

Sol Invictus Roman Sun God

The unconquered sun. A late Roman sun god. The title was also used of Mithras

Surya Hindu Sun God Rides the sky in a horse-drawn chariot. 

Tonatiuh Aztec Sun God

  

Utu (Shamash) Mesopotamia Sun God 




http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/sungodsgoddesses/a/070809sungods.htm

Anxiety: “My life has been full of terrible misfortunes, most of which never happened”. –Michel de Montaigne

Have you seen a happier #elephant before? Meet #Chanchal ! Read more about her here; http://bit.ly/1RvTbmJ