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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

Just got off the phone with Brooks Agnew, CEO of Vision Motors, with its unique, low-cost design for electric pick-up trucks. I really enjoy Brooks; he’s got a terrific temperament for dealing with the frustrations that are inherent in getting a project like this off the ground. And fortunately, he was able to provide good news on a number of fronts.

In particular, the GSA (General Services Administration) has placed an order, and the Department of Defense is looking at 41,000 units. The DoD’s reasoning is simple: saving lives. Fuel in Iraq and Afghanistan is kept in portable bladders that have to be guarded 24×7. On average, one life is lost every time one of those bladders is moved around in the field.

As I told Brooks, “I’m not sure our government is too motivated by issues like climate change, ocean acidification, peak oil, or even the respiratory health of the world population, so I wouldn’t expect the EV push to be based on any of those factors – or even a reduction in fuel cost. But our military most certainly cares very deeply for the safety of its soldiers. I’m very glad to see this moving forward.”

Still, the company needs to raise equity capital, to enable the debt financing, that will in turn, get them out of their modest quarters and into mass manufacturing.  “We have some terrific prospects here too,” Brooks said cheerfully.  You gotta like a guy with this type of spirit.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Biomass

2GreenEnergy Business Director George Alger sent me this interview in which Bill Gates speaks on renewable energy.

George:  Yes, he makes some good points, and he’s a fan (as am I) of Donald Sadoway’s work at MIT.

But as you can see from the comments, not everyone agrees with a lot of what he says.  I, for one, completely disagree with a great deal of this.  His position that biomass holds huge promise while solar is “cute” and “for rich people” is pretty far out there on the fringe.

It’s as if he said that Dorothy Hamill was his favorite ice hockey team.  But when you have a guy of that stature, he can say that 2 and 2 are 5, and it will garner huge amounts of attention.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

Here’s the 2GreenEnergy July survey – this one with a twist: it only applies to people with business aspirations in clean energy and electric transportation.  If you’re a hobbyist, an observer, or a fan, that’s absolutely fine, but you’ll want to skip this one.  But if you are, in fact, striving to establish or expand a profit-making entity in this arena, please go here:

http://2GreenEnergy.com/Survey/

… and provide your viewpoints of one of the most critical issues facing you (and me): how to deal with the incredible promise – and challenge – associated with doing business with China.

Thanks in advance.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

Every day we read about the global dominance that China is achieving in cleantech, and wish the US could get on the stick as well. Here’s a link to a wonderful presentation by HSBC that explicates China’s commitment to green technologies nicely.

China’s 12th Five Year Plan includes seven Strategic Emerging Industries (SEI), six of which are related to clean energy and sustainability.  While we in the US are arguing about trivia and eviscerating our environmental regulations, the Chinese will be investing as much as $1.5 trillion between now and 2020 in: (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Nuclear

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reports that renewable energy rose to a historic high in the first quarter of 2011 – now producing at a greater rate than nuclear power. Renewable energy sources (biomass/biofuels, geothermal, solar, hydro, and wind) provided 11.73% of U.S. energy production (vs. nuclear’s 11.10%).

Of course, most of our renewable energy is large hydroelectric dams and corn ethanol, which have their own ecological issues; less than 2% is solar, wind, geothermal, run-of-river hydro, algae, etc. But hey – one takes good news where one finds it.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Only once in a blue moon do I comment on the idiocies of the US Congress, and even less frequently that I extol the wisdom of conservative columnist David Brooks. But he has most certainly gotten this one right.

In his discussion of the debt ceiling issue, Brooks scolds the mean-spiritedness and riducles the ignorance of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell as follows: “(They) have no sense of moral decency” and “have no economic theory worthy of the name.” He goes on: “(If the deal blows up) Independents will conclude that Republicans are not fit to govern. And they will be right.”

I’m reminded of the line that the late Kurt Vonnegut wrote (I’m guessing) a dozen times in several of his novels: “Wow, that’s strong stuff.”

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Fossil Fuels

For those of you trying to wrap your wits around the cost of the externalities of fossil fuels, here’s a report by Dr. Paul Epstein, the Director of Harvard Medical School Center for Health and the Global Environment, who has spent the last 20 years trying to nail this down. He and his 11 co-authors peg the cost of coal at $300 – $500 billion per year in increased healthcare costs and long-term environmental damage.

It will be interesting to see how the coal industry responds. Typically, reports that expose the damage done by Big Energy are met with an immediate spate of ads that feature soothing music, pretty scenery, and assuring voice-overs extolling their virtues – just one of the reasons I try to avoid commercial television wherever possible.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Photovoltaics

In this short video, MIT Professor of Energy Dan Nocera makes several interesting points about bringing electric power to the third world using solar energy and fuel cells. His analysis of how much energy will be required by the year 2050 is fascinating.

In it, he asks the question: How can we prevent three billion additional babies from being born into poverty?  The simple answer: educate poor females.  When you do that, the birth rate drops like a rock.

Thus the extraordinary value of organizations like the Turimiquire Foundation, which I hope readers will put on their Christmas giving list; I know it’s on mine.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

I’m speaking at an Electric Transportation conference in Los Angeles in a few weeks, in which I’ve been asked to take on the issue of the EV adoption curve – a subject near and dear to my heart. Here’s Boston Consulting Group’s take on the matter, in which they expect to see pure (battery) EV and plug-in hybrids growing 5% globally by 2020. It’s a bit unclear what this means. 5% more EVs on the road than today? 5% of new car sales? 5% of total cars on the roads?

In any case, they’re looking at some of the right variables: oil prices, battery energy densities, consumer willingness to pay a bit more for an eco-friendly car, and improvements in the economy of internal combustion engines. But what they’ve missed is what I would call the “sociological phenomenon” of EVs.

I predict that the power of the “word of mouth” that takes place when we get more than a few hundred LEAFs and Volts on the road (not to mention EVs from BMW, Ford, Chrysler, Mitsubishi, etc.) will be enormous. We’ve seen countless times that consumer demand – even for stupid products – can explode in a short period of time. I predict that in spades for EVs.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

Dan Nocera at MIT is amazing, in my opinion. I have written about him before: Dr. Nocera is a chemist and Dreyfus Professor of Energy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) also runs the SunCatalytix company. He has been working on the problems of energy for the future, solar power storage, transforming photosynthesis to applications humans can use and more and has made break-through discoveries.

He has a close eye on what the energy problems of today are, and how we are headed to disaster if we don’t address the issues. But he has solutions.  However, he is not a “big (more…)

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