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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Biofuels

A friend asked my opinion on this high school kid’s experimentation with algae as biofuel.

Friend:  Hmmm.

Craig: Well, this IS exactly what algae researchers are doing…  And it DOES have promise, IMO. 

Friend: It certainly would give us a much more carbon neutral solution for the existing transportation infrastructure – and, effectively, it’s solar energy. 🙂

Craig: You’re absolutely right.  As long as we’re married to liquid fuels, there’s a lot to like here, including the fact that algae can be grown on non-arable land with salt water, and it’s 30 – 50 times more energy-dense that ANY terrestrial plant.

The problem is that it’s really hard to grow outside of carefully controlled laboratory conditions. If this is going to work, it’s going to take a lot of time and money, and a lot of that money is going to have to come from the public sector, since the private sector is so focused on short-term ROI.

The other issue is competition from electric transportation charged from wind and solar; i.e., we won’t be married to liquid fuels forever. 

Btw, what an impressive young lady she is! 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

I had lunch yesterday with a young attorney (more details on him soon) who will be researching and writing on the legal aspects of renewable energy for our readers at 2GreenEnergy.  I view this as a fantastic opportunity, since there are dozens of legal elements that need to be sorted out in order to accelerate the adoption of clean energy and, over time, phasing out the consumption of fossil fuels.  We discussed a few of these over our meal:

• Looking at the approach that countries like Germany have taken, i.e., standardizing the process of permitting, installing, and grid-tying solar PV such that lawyers are almost completely removed from the process

• Using the law to create a level playing field for renewables – and everything this implies: incentives, subsidies, carbon taxes, renewable energy credits, etc.

• Establishing Master Limited Partnerships (MLPs) – the same legal framework for capital formation of renewable energy projects as those in oil and gas exploration enjoy

• Getting rid of the U.S. Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” ruling that enables corporations to spend as much as they like influencing our elections

• Exploring the work of the NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) in using litigation to protect our natural environment

• Reporting on the work performed by the Environmental Law Institute, which “fosters innovative, just, and practical law and policy solutions to enable leaders across borders and sectors to make environmental, economic, and social progress.”

• Understanding the status of eminent domain law, as it may apply to establishing a build-out of our electrical grid with, perhaps, high-voltage DC power transmission.

There is a ton of extremely interesting and important material to be unearthed here, and I’m looking forward to the opportunity of presenting it here on our site. 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

I predict the next half-century will see a great number of reports like this one on islands of renewable energy that are generated and consumed off-grid.  This article explains how a region of India has built a large microgrid for Ladakh, its northernmost state – one whose communities previously had spotty electricity from diesel generators, or, in some cases, none at all.

According to the article:

The high cost of DG (distributed generation) in Ladakh, currently INR25-28/kWh (US$0.47-0.52), makes renewable energy very competitive. Off-grid solar PV-generated electricity worked out over 20 years’ system-life in Ladakh currently comes to INR16-18/kWh ($0.30-0.34). And the cost of solar keeps falling due to technological development and scalability.

Again, I predict that large regions of Asia and Africa will find that distributed generation using solar and wind will electrify parts of the world for the first time, improving the lives of hundreds of millions of people without installing a single fossil fuel plant.

 

 

 

by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

In response to yesterday’s post What Will It Take To Involve Americans In Global Climate Change? frequent commenter Arlene writes:

I stumbled onto the film “Cool It” a couple of nights ago. I understand the thesis, but in a way, the film makes it a bit easier to dismiss the subject matter by those who tend to view it in a superficial fashion….. I remain pessimistic regarding our country taking meaningful actionable steps. In one part of the film they even mentioned the moral hazard of speaking to solutions such as geoengineering, given the typical reception being “see, there’s no problem”. We live in interesting times.

Yes, we live in interesting times, but I often wonder, “Who didn’t?”  Even if by “interesting times” you mean the imminent destruction of the whole of human civilization, you wouldn’t want to count out the plague that happened along a few hundred years before modern medical science, or the nuclear stand-off of the early 1960s. 

My concern about our current situation is the nature of climate change as we understand it.  A build-up of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere that we have no way to disperse will cause a loss of farmland and a rise of ocean levels that will last a very long time; it won’t be like “point disasters” – epidemics, earthquakes, etc.  Yet the long-term nature of the problem is precisely what makes it tough for some people to embrace.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

Alysha Webb knows a great deal about the electric vehicle market and the role that China plays in it.  I’ve met her at numerous auto shows, and I look forward to reading her always-informative blog posts. 

But her current piece on Fisker Automotive and how the Chinese company Wanxiang’s buyout of bankrupt A123 (lithium ion battery manufacturer) might affect its future leaves me shaking my head.  

She writes:

Wanxiang’s purchase of battery maker A123 may turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to Fisker Automotive.  Huh? Yeah, now Fisker not only has a battery supplier, but I bet Wanxiang will give Fisker some kind of bridge loan to keep it afloat while it seeks a “strategic partner” i.e. some company with cash to invest in the struggling plug-in hybrid electric company.   But Fisker still needs cash, fast.  And it is sniffing around China to find some.

Development of its next model, the Atlantic, is stalled awaiting funding.  Production of its current model, the Karma, was also stalled as Fisker waited to hear the fate of its battery maker, A123.  (and it didn’t have any money…)  Now it knows A123 will survive. “We will start to re-negotiate the contract for batteries with Wanxiang in the very near future now that the sale is complete,” Fisker spokesman Roger Ormisher told me.

Alysha: do you believe that the answer to Fisker’s woes is tied to its inability to develop its next model?  What about its inability to sell and deliver its current model?  Or that the real issue here is battery supply?  What’s the matter with the far more obvious explanation: they’ve half-built a super-expensive, super-complicated car that virtually no one wants. 

But, as implied above, I respect you, and I’m listening.  If you can convince me of any fraction of your points here, drinks are on me, next time I see you in Los Angeles or Detroit.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

In response to my post earlier today on motivating Americans to take action on climate change, frequent commenter Larry Lemmert notes:

You can claim “Super” storm Sandy was a result of global warming but I think that you are skating on thin ice…..Mixing climate change into the argument is a distraction from the important issue of whether there should be federally subsidized flood insurance available in flood plains and whether zoning laws should even permit this construction in the first place.

Thanks, Larry.  I agree that it’s foolishness to attribute any one storm, or the temperature of any one year, to climate change. In fact, I used “many people think that…” precisely for that purpose; it’s certainly true that Sandy sounded an alarm bell on the subject to many millions of people who, up to that point, had been manipulated by the deniers’ paid propaganda.  Any alarm in an emergency, regardless of why it’s ringing, is a good thing, if you ask me.

Regarding the most important long-run issues in this arena, I predict that the discussion about the damage caused by climate change will dwarf the conversation around  federally subsidized flood insurance available in flood plains and related zoning laws.

I only hope I’m wrong.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

If you scroll to the bottom of this article on climate change, you’ll find a good video on an extremely important and interesting subject: getting Americans to embrace this as a major issue that requires urgent action.  The presenter points out:

• This subject is already at the top of the priority list for most of the world outside of the United States.

• Here in the U.S., this is a generational thing; those over 60 tend not be as concerned as those under 30 – perhaps since older people won’t be around a few decades hence, when the damage will become more severe. 

• Most people will require a reason that “hits home” in order to escalate this subject in their thinking, and thus in their voting behavior.  Even events that have already occurred which many people attribute to climate change, e.g., super-storm Sandy, did not affect people outside of a small region and thus had limited effect on most Americans. 

The guy quotes a number of surveys, so it’s hard to believe that this is simply an uninformed opinion.  Yet it’s awfully cynical in its assessment of human motives, isn’t it? Is it possible that we really care so little about other people?

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

Are the falling prices of natural gas “wiping out” coal and nuclear?  That’s what David Crane, President and CEO of Fortune-300 sized NRG Energy told the audience at a Wall Street Journal conference recently.  As if that didn’t astonish event attendees, Crane went on to describe the potential effects of distributed generation in the near future, saying:

All the natural gas industry needs is a gizmo in your house to convert natural gas into electricity. It could be a fuel cell, it could be a micro gas turbine…..If you have firm gas in your house and, say you want to be as green as possible, you [won’t] need to be connected to the grid at all.

Electricity customers making decisions based on being “green?”  From your lips to God’s ears, as they say, Mr. Crane.

From a practical perspective, let’s hope your words serve as a wake-up call for the utilities.  Let’s put it this way: If my customers were thinking in ways that would soon make me irrelevant, I’d be hard at work re-fashioning myself in such a way as to put a halt to that terrible process.

Your course is clear, folks: Your customers want clean energy.  Go get it for them.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

I came across this gem on The Writer’s Almanac a few days ago, and I present it here as a reminder of an imperative that faces all of us advocates of clean energy.  Don’t expect a sustainable future to be handed to you and to humankind; it will happen if and only if we insist on it. 

 

Demand It Courageously

      Make some room for yourself, human animal.
      Even a dog jostles about on his master’s lap to
improve his position. And when he needs space he
runs forward, without paying attention to commands
or calls.
      If you didn’t manage to receive freedom as a gift,
demand it as courageously as bread and meat.
      Make some room for yourself, human pride and
dignity.
      The Czech writer Hrabal said:
      I have as much freedom as I take.

 

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

Frequent commenter Tim Kingston, who requested my response to climate change denier Anthony Watts the other day, just sent me this much more detailed and compelling response from Dr. John Abraham, a thermal sciences researcher and professor at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota.

Dr. Abraham is armed to the teeth in his support of the notion of global climate change, though presents himself with the calm pragmatism one would expect of a scientist. 

I was particularly impressed with his response on the Keystone XL Pipeline.  When asked if the project will eventually be green-lighted and if it’s really needed, he said exactly what I routinely do, only with greater eloquence: 

In order to avoid the most serious and expensive consequences of climate change, we need to reduce carbon emissions. Expansion of Keystone is not consistent with that goal. The total amount of oil in the Alberta Tar sands is equivalent to six Saudi Arabia’s. Mr. Watts and others have claimed that the oil will be burned regardless but just because this statement is uttered doesn’t make it true. Approval of Keystone will increase production by about 35-40% and it will lock us into a long-term supply of the dirtiest of the dirty fossil fuels.  Not only are Alberta tar sands dirtier than conventional oil, but their by-product (petroleum coke) is being used as a dirty replacement of coal.   

Rather than approve this pipeline, and further contribute to driving society over the climate cliff, we should invest in long-term clean renewable energy production right here in the United States. If we did this, we would receive the economic benefits and the world’s climate would improve at the same time.

We don’t know what the Administration will decide: my personal belief is that it will be approved and the Obama Administration will propose a quid pro quo approach to the environment–approving Keystone but enacting other policies to reduce emissions. The problem is that a quid pro quo doesn’t help the climate. It changes a fast burn to a slow simmer. From a political standpoint, if the Obama Administration, with John Kerry as Secretary of State, cannot say “no” to the dirtiest of the dirty fuels, it would show that we cannot say no to anything. I hope I am wrong about this.

 

 

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