News & Blog

Currently I am on Sabbatical as the James M. Flaherty Visiting Professor hosted by the Trottier Institute for Sustainability in Engineering Design (TISED), at McGill University, Montreal. TISED, as its title indicates, is broadly interested in sustainability and recently hosted a workshop on Quebec’s resource recovery potential.  I attended this workshop out of interest and was pleasantly…

During the past year renewable energy has passed two important milestones.  The combined capacity additions of renewable resources exceeded those of any other resource, and both wind and solar reached price points where they are unquestionable competitive with traditional generation types and are the cheapest option in many locations.  Now all we need to do…

We have distorted memories about the good old days, but there is no denying that things keep changing. Take jobs, for example. The jobs of 200 years ago were based on farming and trade. Then there was a major structural transformation as manufacturing jobs became the norm, and this resulted in significant economic gains for…

Wind and solar integration studies have evolved tremendously during the past 10–15 years. When I came to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in 1992, my first “integration study” was really a value study: what would be the value of integrating 1,000 MW of wind capacity in California? I used a production simulation model that…

Nassim Taleb’s “Black Swan theory” is mostly the result of a long-term trader’s experience. It provides a glimpse on the consequences of ignoring the existence of black swans, where most money has been lost by continuing to “do like everybody else is doing” and looking only at an average (scores) while ignoring the extreme events.…