I often caution cleantech entrepreneurs to make sure they confine their business concepts to arenas in which much larger and moneyed competitors will not enter and immediately squash them. An example I often give (or gave) was electric transportation. If you offer a freeway-speed electric sedan, you’re competing with Nissan and the rest. However, it’s unlikely that these massive OEMs are going to want to enter the e-bike market.
Oops. Got that wrong. (more…)
Siemens, the German industrial giant, just completed the installation of a platform in the North Sea that will link two large offshore wind farms and transmit the power (ultimately 6.2 gigawatts) to the mainland, powering 500,000 homes with wind energy.
To summarize: While the Americans are saying that it can’t be done, or that it needn’t be done, the Germans are simply doing it. Meanwhile, I would say: Wir sehen lustig aus (we look silly).
Here’s a recent article by one of my true heroes, Annie Leonard, on How To Be a More Mindful Consumer. I met Annie after a talk she gave a few years ago, and congratulated her on the incredible work she’s done in popularizing the ideas in her “Story of Stuff” project – which, believe it or not, just celebrated its 6th birthday.
The seminal video (linked above) has many millions of views on YouTube, and, I’m happy to announce, it’s been shown to millions of kids in schools. (more…)
Those who think that federal subsidies for renewable energy are an unacceptable extravagance will be pleased to know that, by 2025, they will no longer be necessary, according to this report by the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Of course, this will create a certain irony: the tax-payer will have ceased supporting a public good (clean energy) but will still be sending tens of billions of his dollars annually to the oil companies, the largest and most profitable group in the known universe – one whose products cause climate change, ocean acidification, lung disease, and war.
Starting in September, I’ll be doing a great deal of work to promote ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) and the industry leader within it, aptly named Ocean Thermal Energy Corporation. Although I’m not at liberty to discuss our strategy in any great detail, suffice it to say that I propose to create massive public understanding of the energy industry, the role of renewables, the consequences to our environment and to human health of the status quo in energy, and the prospect of a future in which OTEC replaces diesel as the energy source of choice for the one billion people living near tropical oceans.
In other words, it’s rather like the campaign “Ethical Oil” (an attempt to legitimize the development of the Canadian tar sands), only without the lies. (more…)
I’m off on a hike that will ultimately take me to a vintage car show. I was explaining my viewpoint on the history of automotive design and engineering to my daughter just now, which I summarize as follows:
From the perspective of aesthetic design, the 1930s was the high-water mark (see 1935 Duesenberg pictured here). (more…)
I met a delightful woman at yesterday’s “boot camp” in preparation for the 2013 Clean Business Investment Summit. Barbara Kerr Condon, who has a great deal of experience in this arena, and is in the process of producing a film called “Three Times A Lady,” an uplifting romantic comedy. She believes that filmmakers have a responsibility to enhance our civilization, rather than to degrade it. Barbara quotes Frank Capra, who said: “Movies should be a positive expression that there is hope, love, mercy, justice, and charity…It is the filmmaker’s responsibility to emphasize the positive qualities of humanity by showing the triumph of the individual over adversities.”
Do you know what happens in the process of the fermentation of yeast and grape juice to making the 26.2 million tons of wine made each year on planet Earth? When this subject arose at today’s session in which my team and I helped coach the presenters at the 2013 Clean Business Investment Summit, I have to confess that I thought the emissions were limited to a relatively inconsequential amount of CO2, as I am (very vaguely) familiar with the Kreb’s Cycle. (Recommendation: Make sure you haven’t had a drop to drink if you expect to make any sense of this, as described here.) (more…)
Changes in the temperature in the past decades have brought the worst natural disasters that wreaked havoc everywhere in the world. From hurricane Katrina in 2005 that claimed more than a thousand lives in the country to cyclone Nargis in Myanmar where more than 100,000 lives were lost.
Scientists have been actively studying the effects of the changing climate since the 1960’s. Experts have determined that the average global temperature has risen about 1.4F (0.8 degrees) since the mid-1800’s. The numbers are not much to look at but the effects speak louder than the first glance at the statistics. (more…)
The world has suffered from several fatal disasters. News of earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, and other phenomena have shaken us. Most people say that it is nature’s own way of taking revenge against humans’ cruelties. However, could it be nature’s cruelty and not any form of revenge? We have this ecological concept about the balance of nature, and how true is it that humans are pushing down too hard on the other end of this balance? (more…)
