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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Ocean Thermal

I like a good Labor Day weekend barbecue as much as the next guy,  but I’m also very fond of remaining productive – which is why I’m happy to be able to meet my colleague Jim Greenberg, Chief Marketing Officer of Ocean Thermal Energy Corporation for dinner tonight while he happens to be out on the West Coast.  We’ll be meeting at one of my favorite restaurants, Le Café Stella in Santa Barbara, and discussing one of my favorite topics: driving interest in renewable energy — OTEC in particular.  Beats hot dogs and beer anytime.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

Profound thanks to Iban Etxeberria, Rebecca McKenzie, and Chelsea Dowell for their fantastic contributions to 2GreenEnergy and its sister site SustainabilityRoleModels.org.

Iban just left yesterday, returning to his home in Basque Country, after spending the summer here in the U.S.  We’ll miss you.

Rebecca lives in Columbia, and is producing fantastic work.

Chelsea (pictured here) is on loan from the University of Central Florida. Go Knights!

Again, please accept my deepest thanks.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Smart Grid

For 25 years, I made my living as a marketing consultant to the Fortune-sized tech and industrial companies: IBM, HP, FedEx, Sony, etc.  My company, Mueller/Shields, had a few defining characteristics in its approach that we tried to make a part of our brand, one of which was developing a profound understanding of the “hot buttons” of the customer base.  What caused people to be interested in a certain subject?  What were their aspirations?  Their fears? Their unmet needs?

My current career in renewable energy has an important commonality, namely, that customer audiences still react to marketing messages if and only if those messages are aligned with their hot-buttons.  And here’s a great example, from my colleague Jesse Berst of SmartGridNews writing about an initiative in Pennsylvania that would deploy smart meters to a customer base that may be skeptical of the cost/benefits: (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

According to the Writers Almanac:  It was on this day in 1837 that Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered a speech entitled “The American Scholar” to the Phi Beta Kappa society at Harvard University. …. (It) was the first time he explained his transcendentalist philosophy in front of a large public audience. He said that scholars had become too obsessed with ideas of the past, that they were bookworms rather than thinkers. He told the audience to break from the past, to pay attention to the present, and to create their own new, unique ideas. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Wind Energy

I’m excited to have been hired by Xzeres Corp. (microwind) to help out with some marketing actions.  I propose to start by compiling a few case studies, documenting on camera the success of residential customers and those in different industries (schools, farms, manufacturing, etc.) that have used the Xzeres small wind solution to offset the retail rate of electricity – which, in some parts of the world, is outrageously expensive.  (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

Senior energy analyst Glenn Doty (see Doty Windfuels) and I have been discussing the economic merits of novel approaches to hydrokinetics.  Re: my statement that I believed my clean energy business opportunity CycloOcean will provide a reasonable return on investment, he writes:  “I don’t doubt that the math (there) is more encouraging. You’re more careful about the economic plausibility of renewable energy than any other renewable advocate I’ve read…  That’s why I enjoy your blog (though we don’t always agree).”

I appreciate that, Glenn.  That, btw, is one area of many on which we totally agree: the whole discussion centers (or should center) around economics; solutions that are not economically competitive are not solutions at all.  (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

One of our interns who spent the summer working on our companion site SustainabilityRoleModels.com  wrote a good article on Southern California Edison’s numerous sustainability initiatives, and arranged for me to speak with one of SCE’s spokespeople, Evan Birenbaum.  Late yesterday, Evan and I talked about all the good stuff associated with how a utility, in this case, an IOU (investor-owned utility), goes about minimizing the ecological effects of delivering power to 14 million people, maintaining five million consumer and business accounts.

Of course, a big part of this is renewable energy procurement. In 2012, 20% of the electricity SCE procured came from renewable power sources. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

It’s the birthday of British philosopher John Locke, whose concepts of Natural Law and Natural Rights served as an underpinning to the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.  Locke believed that all people are endowed with rights to life, liberty, and property, and that the only valid use of government is to ensure that these rights are not violated.

This, of course, is why all Americans should be so completely infuriated by the developments over the past few years, in particular, (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Smart Grid

Here’s a free webinar on smart cities from research firm Frost and Sullivan that I think I’ll attend.  They see the subject growing in importance to a $3.3 trillion industry by 2025.

Needless to say, that’s a huge amount of money – yet, when you understand the hundreds of different sub-categories that all feed together into the overall “smart cities” concept, the number doesn’t seem so far-fetched.

I hope readers were able to catch the webinar that I did on smart cities in July with Jesse Berst, internationally known technology and business analyst, founder and chief analyst of  Smart Grid News.com, and founder and Chairman of the  Smart Cities Council.  If not, it’s archived here; I hope you’ll check this out, and discover what Jesse means when he says that the council’s motto is “Livability, Workability, and Sustainability.”

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Hydrokinetics

Of the many dozens of articles I’ve written on hydrokinetics over the past four years since the inception of 2GreenEnergy, I’ve expressed a whole bunch of skepticism.  Fans of run-of-river need to contend with the fact that, as least as far as when I do the math, the entire potential energy of the water that is falling downhill in U.S. rivers will give us about 1 terawatt (if we get every single watt), less than 20% of our total energy consumption (currently 5.4 terawatts).  Supporters of tidal and ocean current energy need to believe that we can somehow mitigate the unintended consequences of inserting our “stuff” into aquatic environments, and that we can deal effectively with the “survivability” issues that come from harsh salt water conditions.

In any case, here’s a new approach to hydro – underwater “kites” – that I though readers would find interesting.

In addition, I remind readers that I think the people at Cyclo-Ocean are barking up the right tree, which is why I include them in my list of renewable energy investment opportunities.

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