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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Nuclear

Because there are plenty of people writing on the Fukushima disaster, I tend to comment on it quite sparingly. But I just received an email from Areva (the French nuclear giant) that begins: “With the nuclear renaissance pushing ahead, I’m sure you’re aware …”

I always marvel when I see stuff like this. When large, industrialized countries are saying no to nuclear, and its costs are skyrocketing (while renewables are becoming more affordable every month), does it appear credible to anyone that the “nuclear renaissance is pushing ahead?”

And what about the fact that the whole world is learning more about the safety issues every day?  I’m not happy to have to say this, but I accept what this article suggests, i.e., that scientists believe Japan’s nuclear disaster to be far worse than governments are revealing to the public, but that it’s only a matter of time before this becomes clear to everyone. “Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind,” Arnold Gundersen, a former nuclear industry senior vice president, told Al Jazeera.

I’m not sure how any of this – and the decisions of Germany and Italy — squares with the “nuclear renaissance.”

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Efficiency

Here’s a very good article that explores the promise of Smart Grid, as well as the challenges it faces. 

Recently, I’ve taken to making predictions about our energy future.  To that end, let me go on record as forecasting that time-of-use metering (“TOU” — billing customers less for consuming off-peak power) will have a significant impact on consumer behavior when it comes to energy efficiency.  TOU is just one small facet of Smart Grid, but here’s why I believe that it alone will cause a large and very positive effect.  

Take this quick anecdote: A top business consultant was hired to improve the production in a steel mill which ran two shifts, both with output that had been stagnant for many months.  The consultant decided to take one single action:  at the end of each shift, he walked into a visible part of the plant whose floor was covered in deep sand, and, with a shovel, carved a number that represented the tonnage that this shift had produced.  For example, he’d etch “81” in numerals ten feet tall.  Immediately, the 81 went to 83, to 86, to 92.  All he did was provide a data point, the mere presense of which was enough to motivate a positive change. 

I’m predicting something similar with time-of-use metering, when combined with messaging in emails and printed utility bills that shows consumers the details of how wasteful their energy spending really is. Imagine reading something like this:

Hello, Craig. Your household did 41 loads of laundry in May, 37 of them during peak hours. If you had done them before noon or after 8 PM, you would have saved $50 — that’s $600 annually — on laundry alone.  And, as you can see in the graphic below, 8 of your 10 closest neighbors use significantly less energy than you do. You may want to ask them what they’re doing to save money and treat our planet more kindly.

I believe the results will be profound.


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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

I am among the millions of Americans who listen to public radio and believes that what I’m hearing is objective information that isn’t bought and paid for by corporate interests. Unfortunately, it appears that American Public Media may be making an exception for GMO giant, Monsanto.

Non-profit Credo Action writes:

Marketplace, a program of American Public Media, has provided a soapbox to opponents of organics with a recent report titled “The Non-Organic Future.” This poisoning of public radio programming — and news that’s assumed to be unbiased and fair — aired on a program that has received substantial sponsorship from Monsanto, the corporation responsible for producing roughly 90% of genetically modified seeds around the globe.

And it urges people to:

Tell American Public Media: Report the facts, not anti-organic propaganda paid for by Monsanto. Click here to automatically sign the petition.

I did so, adding: “I happen to remember hearing this when it aired, and wondered why the subject was treated in such a summary, one-sided fashion. Now I know. You should be ashamed.”

In the past, I have taken heat for suggesting that news shows shouldn’t take advertising dollars from companies whose industries they cover.  Many readers scoffed that the presence of sponsors doesn’t slant stories.  Bullcrap.  The practice is wrong, and this is the result.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

…continued from an earlier post…

Trends in Caring About Renewable Energy

Since the question was first asked in 2002, NMI has been tracking answers to the question, “I care about the use of renewable energy sources.” Those that completely agree with the statement have trended down from 56% in 2002-2003 to 43% in 2010; those that completely or somewhat agree has trended down from 90% in 2003 to 80% in 2010. However, the numbers evened off between 2009 to 2010, which may have indicated a bottom to the trending.

Power Purchase Options

Choice of renewable power purchase options is a very low awareness category, revealed the survey.

Only 14% of the respondents said they know of an option to buy from their electric company, and only 8% said they had the option to buy renewable power from someone other than the current electric company. There is, in fact, little change in consumer awareness on purchase options since 2006. There is a wide gulf between the number of people who say they care about renewable energy, and those who know they can buy it or have sought it out.

The Midwest had the lowest awareness in this area while the response from Texas was striking.

One-fourth of the consumers are aware of power purchase options there, and Texas markets are one of the most competitive in the U.S.

“If voluntary purchases are to be important to growing the renewable energy market, consumers obviously need to now they have the option of putting their money where their values are,” says the report.

Price Sensitivity Continues

A majority (69%) of consumers said they care about the environment but the purchase is determined mainly by price. Only 26% said they would spend an extra $5 to $20 to have some power come from a renewable source, and only 16% said they would be willing to pay more than $20. In 2006, more than 38% said they would spend an extra $5 to $20 – that category of consumers has consistently declined each year.

Regionally, 29% of those in the West said they would be willing to spend $5 to $20 more each month, while 25% in the South and Northeast said they would be willing, and only 23% in the Midwest said they would.

The report concludes that the renewable energy industry must do a better job of educating consumers, and that there is growth to be had if they are successful in consumer awareness. For instance, if consumers perceived that using renewable energy was not only good for the environment, but also better for their health and better for domestic energy security, they may be more willing to search out the local options to purchase.

The National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) web site is found here for further information.

　

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

If you’re trying to find an effective “onramp” to the multi-trillion dollar alternative energy industry, maybe it’s closer than you think.  Look!  It’s right there, next to your salad fork.

Seriously, if you’re free on Thursday, October 6th, 2011, I hope you’ll join us in New York City for a half-day working lunch – the first in a series of our high-level events that we call “The Clean Energy OnRamp.”  Here’s a vigorous, interactive discussion in which Green Chip Stock’s Jeff Siegel and I will walk you through what we believe to be the most important business trends in clean energy.

You have my guarantee that you’ll leave the session with a comprehensive understanding of the most important issues that will drive the biggest wins – and most stunning losses – in the renewables industry.

Check out the details on “The Clean Energy Onramp” here, and take advantage of our “early-bird discount” (57%), valid until the end of the month.

I very much hope to see you there.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Efficiency

PhotobucketWhat a great day I had today in San Francisco, starting with breakfast with Eutricity’s Brent Marsh.  Here’s a company with game-changing technology in intelligent building management.

Those of us who were around the development of IT over the last few decades saw countless struggles to define standards. In reaction to IBM’s dominance as a set of proprietary, “closed” architecture (for a time, a quite successful attempt to force the world to buy computing systems and networks from Big Blue) a set of standards for “open systems” came into being and evolved over time.

Now, predictably, that story is playing itself out in the energy industry as part of Smart Grid. The DoE has defined 77 standards that suggest how devices should talk to one another – all the way from the generator to the load. 12 of these 77 apply to what happens inside the building, i.e., once the power is within the walls that contain the load. Within this space, OBIX, “open building information exchange,” is a complex set of rules that govern the basis flow of information that deal with lighting, heating, air conditioning, etc. – all aimed at reducing the amount of energy we waste, using what we need to rationally, and responding intelligently to peak demands.

I hope readers will check out Eutricity; I’m betting on them in the race to further refine – and become part of – these critically important energy standards.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

A reader from Colorado writes in:

I have argued for a number of years that the fundamental problem with the conversion is the large amount of capital that everyone has to invest, and with considerable uncertainty. 　Some examples:

  • For a residential homeowner, insulation and electrification of heating is a major investment — $15-20K for a ground-source heat pump for an existing home, for example.  New windows at >$1K per window.  Such investments are generally NOT reflected in the price one gets when reselling and take a VERY long time, especially relative to the average time that the owner stays in the house, to recover the investment.
  • Building a wind farm can be a very uncertain thing. In most cases, I’ll be trying to negotiate construction of the transmission link to get my power to market. T. Boone Pickens’ grand adventure died when it turned out that the state wasn’t going to build a transmission system for him.　　There’s usually no guarantee that all of the power I can generate will be dispatched — consider the recent events in the Pacific NW where wind generators have been told to idle turbines.
  • Electrifying the freight rail network in the US is a very large undertaking — half of all freight tonnage in the US is coal, and it’s a long haul from Wyoming to the places that much of that coal is burned. Locomotives have to be replaced. Aside from coal, the railroads largely gave up on scheduled freight service years ago. To replace long-haul trucking, the railroads will have to go back to schedules, and that means more rolling stock.

The biggest risk, IMO, as to whether the US can weather the transition storm, is the availability of capital. And it’s not just the total, but the timing, and avoiding bad decisions.  Personally, I think ethanol is a dead-end (opinions vary, of course).  Billions of dollars put into ethanol plants is money that, again IMO, should be going into electrification of transportation.  In Colorado, where I live, fast convenient light rail in the Denver suburbs will almost certainly displace more gasoline usage than the construction of ethanol plants.  Having done that, we could worry about how to replace coal and natural gas.

It’s all about the capital and the uncertainty surrounding it.

You make some excellent points here. Lack of investor certainty is definitely a cause – perhaps the cause — of the slowness to move to renewables. But the question in my mind is: What’s causing investor uncertainty?

It seems to me that it lies in Washington D.C.

As we can all see, the cause of renewables is receiving precious little support from our elected leaders at the federal level. The politicians are hard at work, developing their strategies and sharpening their rhetoric aiming for victory in 2012, and are realizing that it is a piece of cake to sell voters the idea that clean energy is too expensive and too dangerous to the economic recovery. The fact that this is untrue does not come into play. Can you remember the last time that “the truth” vs. “the story” was prominent in political discourse? I can’t.

Thus:

1) Would-be investors in renewables remain nervous, as they simply cannot figure out what will happen here next. Understandably, they’re taking their capital elsewhere, or just keeping it parked safely on the sidelines. And,

2) The politicians’ buddies in oil and coal (note that the oil industry employs 7000 lobbyists) continue with business as usual, unhampered by the pesky competition that renewables represents.

Meanwhile, we have (or at least had) a few brave people in some of the state governments who have passed some significant legislation at that level. Thus, the clean energy industry can at least continue to limp forward.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

In April 2011 report, a new report was released by NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory).  It takes a look at American awareness, attitudes, knowledge and usage of renewable energy and the study further breaks down these views regionally. Some surprising results came from the study.

The data was taken from the Natural Marketing Institute’s Lifestyle of Health & (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Nuclear

A big part of my quest to understand the migration to renewables is wrapping my arms around the issue of costs. I’m headed for San Francisco on Tuesday to conduct two book interviews specifically on this subject; in one, I’ve engaged a true energy techie to walk me through the latest, most detailed reports that compare the costs of various forms of power generation.

Apparently, I’m not the only one struggling to make sense of this. And this subject comes up even more frequently now that nuclear is so prominent in our headlines. I’ve long predicted that, despite the rhetoric, we’d never see another nuclear power plant built in the US, and I based my belief on cost alone. Even if we can magically get a grip on operational safety and waste disposal issues, the costs of nuclear are scary – and unlikely to improve. It strikes me as unlikely that any amount of political and economic power has sufficient strength to sell a solution that – along with all the other things that people find repellant – actually costs more to boot.

Again, it’s not easy to get hard cost estimates, since the bidding for power plants is kept secret, and so most of the figures we have are generated by private institutions – many (all?) of which have their own certain biases.

But here’s an article on the cost of energy generated by various sources that quotes both an agency in the German government and the California Energy Commission, a public agency mandated with the task of periodically examining the costs of various electricity generation technologies that may be used in the state to meet demand.  Both suggest that I may be correct.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

I don’t have money burning a hole in my pocket that I can’t wait to get into the stock market, but I do think a well-timed investment in the electric vehicle space makes sense. To that end, I’m always looking for publicly traded companies that are about to enter the EV space in a big, strategic way with products that sound competitive.

Ever hear of Yulon? It’s a huge contract Taiwanese manufacturing company that does a great deal of auto work for the Asian OEMs, especially Nissan. They have their own brand, “Luxgen,” that’s just about to enter the EV space, using a drive train made by my good friends at AC Propulsion.

I was out at the AC Propulsion R&D facility last week, speaking with CEO Tom Gage, and he seemed encouraged about Yulon. Of course, there is a lot that he and his people can’t say, so I try to read between the lines. I ask questions like:

“So you must be working with a large engineering team over there. How’s that going? Are there bugs in integrating your product? I’m sure certain members of the team are brighter than others. Does that concern you? Does management seem engaged, or do they have bigger fish to fry?”

Overall, things sound positive.

And I find it quite credible that terrific EVs will be coming out of Taiwan. Of course, their own market is small, and, given their issues with Mainland China, it’s not easy for them to sell into that market either. But they’re brilliant technologists, as they’ve proven over the past couple of decades, and the whole rest of the world is champing at the bit for high-quality, reasonably priced EVs.

Sounds like a good bet to me.

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