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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Ocean Thermal

As the name suggests, Ocean Thermal Energy Corporation, which I visited on my last trip back to the East Coast, is one of the leaders in the development of OTEC (ocean thermal energy conversion), a technology with huge potential to change the world energy picture. Best of all, these folks, while they’re true business professionals and leading scientists, are acutely aware of the environmental benefits at stake here. More than one billion people live in the tropics, close to oceans that store vast amounts of energy in their warm surface waters that can be cleanly converted to electricity, or used in desalination, providing potable drinking water to large and growing populations where this commodity is scarce. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

Earlier today we had a very interesting guest-post on Religion and Renewable Energy, in which the author, Brian McGowan, begins:

Recently the subject of religion has come up several times. I try not to discuss it but it keeps coming up and it is hard to avoid.

I respond:

Thanks for this very interesting post. Yes, I try to avoid the subject as well, for fear of coming off as disrespectful to people’s beliefs. Having said that, someone needs to say something when we have elected representatives using a religious platform from which to make important decisions that fly in the teeth of science. For example, last year, Illinois Congressman John Shimkus,  (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

Glenn Doty points out a flaw in my recent piece about electric transportation. He writes:

(The Carnegie Mellon University study) assumes a life-cycle grid emissions profile of 615 g-CO2E/kWh. That is blatant BS.

The impact of new marginal electricity demand (as represented by shifting transportation demand from liquid fuel to electricity) can only be satisfied by spare generating capacity. There is no renewable spare capacity in most of the country, and in the places where there is spare capacity (TX, IA, MN, ND, IL…) there is no benefit to be had from a constant 8+ hour nighttime demand increase, as the spare renewable capacity in these cases is curtailed wind, and the constant 8+ hour night-time demand would be satisfied by not tamping down baseload power as much each night. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

Recently the subject of religion has come up several times. I try not to discuss it but it keeps coming up and it is hard to avoid.

There was a short blog entitled ”Doing the Right Thing About Climate Change – Regardless of Our Religious Beliefs” and also part two of Craig’s series “3 Brass Tacks” where Wally Rippel stated “A great deal of the evangelical world works against environmental friendliness. They seem to see fossil fuels as their allies and ecologically sound solutions as their enemies. I don’t see this as consistant with the idea that all we see around us was the creation of a loving God.” (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Hey – is there a glimmer of hope that some level of sanity may come to the process of energy policy-making in Washington D.C.?  I’ve often written about the folly of incentives for renewable energy that come and go, fluctuating with the volatility of women’s hem lines. There’s talk – and that’s about it, but it’s a start – of making clean energy incentives permanent.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

Woody Clark is another of these supremely visible figures who is impossible to miss when one attends industry conferences. He has a warm, approachable – and often hilariously funny speaking style that belies the depth of his understanding of complex, multi-disciplinary issues.

Woody is an applied academician, a long-time advocate for the environment and renewable energy, and an internationally recognized author, lecturer and advisor on sustainable communities. He was a contributing scientist on the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UNIPCC) that won the Nobel Peace Prize in December, 2007.

I am very grateful to Dr. Clark for his help with the project, and I know readers will find his insights quite enlightening.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

Is Renewable Really Doable, by Craig ShieldsIt’s time to launch my second book, Is Renewable Really Doable? on Amazon.com. The big day: March 15, 2012. I hope you will mark your calendar, and buy the book on that date.

To help generate interest in the subject, we have a giveaway: a hot new report called “Insights in LCOE – The Levelized Cost of Energy,” by industry analyst Mike Hess.

Before our society can decide on a certain course for its energy policy, we need to ask ourselves a central question: What Does It Cost?

Here’s a 32-page study, dealing with tough questions about land use, externalities, the safety of fracking, food and water shortages, climate change, transmission rights, smart-grid, efficiency, conservation, consumer incentives, carbon taxes, energy storage, health hazards, feed-in tariffs, subsidies – you name it. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

A reader asks my opinion of Envia Systems‘ lithium-ion battery. I reply:

If these claims are true, it’s a really important breakthrough — potentially even more significant than that of my friends at Eos Energy Storage.

The number one issue that electric vehicle nay-sayers throw in the face of us advocates is resistance of battery technology to rapid change: both in terms of cost and energy density. In particular, they say that where Moore’s Law (the idea that the functionality of technology increases exponentially over time) applies to things like integrated circuits, it absolutely does not apply to power systems like motors and batteries. I believe the truth is probably somewhere in the middle, and perhaps this is evidence of that. We’ll see.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

It pains me to hear people moan about how frightening and horrible these times are, while they actively dismiss their role in the outcome. When I hear people say, for instance, that our government is out of control, I immediately wonder whom they count on to bring it back to the way they think it ought to be. Perhaps they believe in miracles.

I happen not to believe in miracles; to the contrary, I assert that we hold our fates in our own hands.  United in our common humanity, we and we alone will determine whether the 21st Century will be the end of civilization, or the mere rounding of a scary corner. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

The investment opportunities we endorse on 2GreenEnergy are all “socially responsible” in the sense that each of them holds the promise to make the world a better place. But there is something about the business concept embodied in the aeroponics project I’ve been talking up recently that I believe is unique. This is an innovation in agriculture that has the potential to deal effectively with the shortages of water and food, while providing meaningful work for large numbers of unskilled people. (more…)

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