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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Frequent commenter and all-around good guy Tim Kingston just sent me this wonderful article in Wired Magazine defending the oft-heard concept that modern society has greatly exaggerated the dangers of rising population, diminishing resources, climate change, etc.  Obviously, I hope the author is correct.  But I notice that most of his argument goes essentially like this: “All the people who predicted disaster in the past were wrong; therefore those who currently predict disaster will be wrong as well.”  That reasoning, of course, is specious.

Even George Will, the ultra-conservative journalist and climate change denier from hell, got it right when he told an audience at this year’s class reunion at Trinity College, “The future always looks like the past — right up to the point that it looks different.”

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

Those of us who maintain optimism for a future than includes sustainable practices in energy generation place a great deal of hope in “distributed generation” – the concept in which the model of buying electricity from huge utilities becomes increasingly irrelevant, and in which individual users generate more – or all — of their own.  Such a schema has many obvious advantages, especially that it encourages renewables; users will not be building their own coal-fired power plants, for example, but they will deploy solar and wind power.

Yet there are equally obvious challenges.  Though distributed generation has been with us since the dawn of time, it is just now coming back into the mainstream after a century in which centralized generation had become the norm, at least in the developed world.  That means a great deal of inertia that needs to be overcome, in several different forms, one of which is legal.

Suppose my friends at Continental Wind Power, for example, want to lease one of their 400 kilowatt wind turbines to a factory, or a farm, or a school.  Can the transaction be based on a standard lease agreement?  Not in today’s world.  A gaggle of lawyers is going to be involved on both sides for quite some time.  That’s not how established businesses and industries work; can you imagine telling a car salesman that you’ll have your lawyer redraft the lease agreement on that new Buick?

Distributed generation has a long journey ahead of it, but the destination will be more than worth the trip.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

Yesterday I had the pleasure of providing an interview for one of the key researchers of the Germany-based think-tank Borderstep Institute. Their mission:

Through scientific and applied research, the Borderstep Institute contributes to future-oriented solutions and innovations that are economically successful, supportive to climate protection and the conservation of natural resources, and embody the societal responsibility of economic actors.

One of its key players, Dr. Severin Beucker, co-founder of the institute, sat down with me in a lovely park in Santa Barbara that I use as a kind of outdoor office, and asked a series of questions designed to help Germany’s Ministry of Economy and Environment better quantify the amount of innovation in cleantech coming from start-ups. How many such start-ups are there in a given industry segment? Where are the sources of these numbers? How reliable are they? (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

 

Daniel Yergin, in his book “The Quest”, writes that a critical shift from carbon-based to non-carbon-based fuels has begun, along with a parallel movement towards higher levels of efficiency in industrial processes and energy movement. It seems we are shifting from a mentality of exuberant excess towards one of resource and energy conservation in light of our evolving understanding of ecosystems and health impacts, with a healthy push from markets to hedge against rising fuel costs. Will these critical shifts take place in time, before the oceans fill with toxins, before a gas mask and SPF 2000 will be required for your evening walk? How quickly can we optimize efficiencies? What are the major forces countervailing against this progress and how do we get to where many intelligent and passionate thinkers say we need to be in order to survive?

The biggest threats to this progress, to my mind, are infrastructure zombies. These are individuals, companies and governments that have over-invested in infrastructure that perpetuates our global addiction to fossil fuels and inefficient processes, and deride any alternative to the status quo, usually in the name of profits or politics. These entities are enemy number one to current and future generations. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Fossil Fuels

Oooh, it wasn’t a good day for those of you out there with lungs.  But it was an utterly fantastic day for those who are paid to obfuscate the dangers of the emissions of coal-fired power plants. 

Here’s a report on the landmark ruling in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit vacated the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR), finding that it violated federal law. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), whose career is based on campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry, and, believe it or not, serves as the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, said the courts had “reined in” the EPA on an “illegal, flawed rule.” 

The champagne corks are popping among the multi-billionaire energy barons tonight.  The health and safety of the rest of the world, however, has taken a significant step backwards.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

A gentleman by the name of Stephan Williams contacted me recently and asked if he could write some blog posts, communicating his ideas on renewable energy.  Of course, the answer was yes.  And after speaking with Stephan on the phone, I became even more confident that readers will find his viewpoints valuable.  I urge you to keep a watchful eye out for this guy’s insightful contributions.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

American theoretical physicist Michio Kaku offers both an ebullient and charming personality, as well as a penetrating insight into the situation in which humankind finds itself here on 21st Century Earth.  In this short interview, he explains that our civilization is in a “danger zone,” possessing the means to destroy itself without the minimum level of wisdom and restraint required to get through this period of our evolution.  He’s certainly not the first person to forward this concept, though he may be its most informed and articulate spokesperson. Enjoy.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

The rank and file tea party pretty much uniformly buys the idea that the theory of global climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the rising tide of socialist forces.  Zzzzzzzzzz.

Sorry, I must have dozed off there for a second.  That’s news?  Wouldn’t I be more surprised if the gigantic machine of right-wing political forces, with more money than God, had failed to mobilize a large constituency of people who can’t think for themselves around this message? 

Yet the concept that there are a few intellectuals who remain steadfast in their rejection of this theory is irksome to me.  And the idea that one of them is George Will, a fellow alumnus of Trinity College, is absolutely surreal.  Here’s an article on Will’s viewpoint on climate change that I think readers will find interesting. 

Those of you who checked out the link will be called upon to wonder: Is it fair to call his reasoning “ossified” (a participle of which the author is obviously quite fond)?  To be honest, I don’t know what to call this type of thinking; I guess “ossified” is as good a term as any.  But frankly, I don’t begin to understand what’s going on inside his head.  He’s an extremely bright guy.  Why he’s jumping out of his skin to contest a theory that is supported by virtually all climate scientists is anyone’s guess.  

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

Here’s a project invoking ocean wave energy off the cost of Oregon in the Pacific Northwest of the U.S.  I understand that getting a permit to put an energy-extracting device into moving water is anything but a slam dunk, so the fact that these guys received such approvals must be something of a feather in their hats.  But having a permit to do something does not mean that doing that thing is a good idea.

I’ve seen many dozens of ideas in this arena, but the bottom line is that I’m not a huge fan.  I like to reduce things to their most basic simplicities.  The kinetic energy in ocean waves came from the kinetic energy in the wind, which in turn came from the radiant energy from the sun.  The closer we can get to the source (the sun), the more efficient and ultimately cost-effective this whole clean energy enterprise is going to be.  When we have PV at $0.56 per Watt, I would think the ocean wave people would be having trouble getting investors on board.

As always, I invite comment; if I’m off base here, perhaps someone can correct me.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Biofuels

Here’s a good article on the military’s use of biofuels.  I remain concerned that: a) scaling these technologies to millions of barrels per day isn’t in the cards, and b) the risk to troops in the field guarding supply lines for liquid fuels is the same regardless of the source of the fuel.  To me, this latter point explains the military’s interest in electric transportation.

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