I’ve signed a heck of a lot of petitions circulated by The Sierra Club over the years, but strangely, I’m ambivalent about this one on solar energy. They point out, “As part of a nationwide attack on solar, California utilities are proposing to change the rules for existing solar customers. If they succeed, solar customers could stop getting full credit for all the clean power they produce and put back into the grid. Not cool.” (more…)
If you have a few extra minutes today and wish to invest them wisely, I urge you to check out Yiming Hu’s amazing collection of photographic works of nature. Hu writes: “To me, landscape photography is not merely a documentary of the splendid scenery of our magnificent national parks. It is not just going to the iconic locations waiting for the perfect sunset. Landscape photography can also be an expression of one’s inner feeling about the Mother Nature, and can be poetic instead of objective.”
As you’re scrolling along, keep in mind that the subject matter here is the very thing we’re endangering with our reckless and selfish behavior here on Earth.
Apparently, comedian Bill Maher (pictured here) plans to use his talents and stature as a celebrity to identify and remove “the worst member of Congress.” Though there are dozens of excellent candidates, I suppose I would nominate Jim Inhofe, (R, OK) for his aggressive actions against clean energy (most notably biofuels) while being on the receiving end of enormous sums of money from the oil companies; more than 80% of his campaign contributions come from Big Oil. (more…)
Working from his office in Argentina, 2GreenEnergy supporter Alejandro Manrique has been helping us tell our story to the Spanish-speaking people of the world for many years. Not too long ago, he wrote this article on my second book: “Is Renewable Really Doable?” and had it published in a local newspaper.
Now, Alejandro is hard at work translating a great deal of the content on the site into Spanish. Over the coming weeks, readers can look for notes that read “Click Here for Spanish Version,” like this one on our “About” page.
Needless to say, I feel quite indebted to Alejandro for his excellent work here.
Here’s a fun little tool – a real-time wind chart for the continental U.S. To me, it validates a couple of ideas that I hear often:
• When the wind isn’t blowing at point A, the chances are much more likely that it will be blowing at point B.
• The Southeast U.S. really doesn’t have good wind (or other good renewable) resources.
• We tend to over-estimate the wind resources in which we live. We often think that we consistently have 20 MPH winds, and, in almost all cases, this is not true.
Again, a cool little site.
Every month or so, someone sends me this concept: the Solar Wind Energy Tower, with its claim that it will generate energy cost-effectively, and asks me to comment. I defer to more senior minds in the physical sciences, but I will be utterly amazed if the cost of energy generated by this device isn’t astronomical. These guys seem to be taken seriously, and I simply can’t understand why. Note to those interested in cleantech investment opportunities: the fact that the government will grant a patent for a mousetrap that will retail at $2 million does not mean that it’s a good idea.
Perhaps Glenn Doty or one of the other top energy analysts can weigh in here.
Here’s an article on “following the money” in cleantech that speaks to a troubling fact in renewable energy: venture capital would far rather chase arenas that are less capital intensive. In fact, Ray Lane, then managing partner at Kleiner Perkins, told me this in no uncertain terms when I interviewed him a couple of years ago for my second book, “Is Renewable Really Doable?”
One could argue (and I do) that it is this issue that provides the imperative for government, perhaps under the auspices of programs like ARPA-E, to invest in stimulating R&D in this space.
In early march, my colleague Jim Boyden and I are headed up to Berkeley for the annual meeting of the American Physical Society. We’ll be checking out some of the breakthroughs in the application of physics to solving the problems of providing the world with abundant and inexpensive clean energy. I’ll try to talk Jim into hanging around an extra day and taking a tour of various facilities where such products are under development.
One such stop is Natel Energy, specializing in low-head hydrokinetics; their concept is explained nicely by the video on the home page. Hard to believe this could be cost-effective, but I’m looking forward to the presentation.
2014 will be a year that I help my friends at Ocean Thermal Energy Corporation (OTECorp) expand their web presence, chiefly by popularizing their sister site, EmpowerTheOcean.com. My main strategy is video, brought along by social media. Everyone loves video — and search engines respond very well, particularly when it’s sufficiently relevant to its audience that it attracts a good following. And in this case, there is no end to the good ideas that we can deliver for using motion pictures to capture the most exciting aspects of the company and its technology. (more…)
Here’s an article for those trying to keep track of the ongoing fight against the migration to renewable energy. For those 40% – 45% of 2GreenEnergy readers who reside outside the U.S. who may be scratching their heads, trying to make some sense of this, here’s a brief summary: we have a powerful faction here that is radically opposed to progress in the energy sector. It’s funded by the wealthiest people in our fair land, and its purpose is to destroy anything that would cause a shift away from fossil fuels. (more…)
