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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

A lot of people (typically younger) want to work to save the environment, perhaps even dedicate their career to this pursuit. Unfortunately, it is often difficult to find a job that pays enough to let someone do so, especially when student loans, children, etc come into the mix, and many people interested in saving the environment have skills that can usually demand more income. Luckily though, there are many job opportunities that are both green and high paying – you simply have to know where to find them. It is essential to study current economic and employment trends though. If this sounds intriguing to you, here are five job opportunities for people interested in saving the environment. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

With countries across the globe supporting green alternatives and sustainable solutions, the green employment market is extending at dramatic rates. However, people trained and certified in this particular profession remain in scarce supply. To address this situation, colleges and universities are now providing multi- and inter-disciplinary courses related to renewable energy and tenability.

If you are fresh out of high school and planning to pursue a career in renewable energy, you should know that there are multiple relevant degree programs to consider. Each possible degree can vary in workload, difficulty, career options, and pay rates though. So, it is imperative to know the basics of each degree before actually choosing one that best fits your needs.  (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Photovoltaics

The fellow who publishes the blog No More Naked Roofs and I have been sending back and forth mutually complimentary emails. As I told him (I infer it’s a guy from the writing style, though there is no name connected with the site), I agree with everything he writes in terms of technology advocacy, and also his observations of the politics that stand in the way of renewable energy; for instance, we both have chopped up the Heartland Institute as aggressively as good taste will allow.

He’s also hilariously funny at times, which has inspired me to try to weave a bit more humor into my posts; I’ll try to pull it off as well as he does. I hope you’ll check out his blog.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

EPRI, the Electric Power Resource Institute, is a non-profit organization that functions to perform research and provide assistance in the development of advanced systems in generation, delivery and use of electricity.  I’m sure there was a time a few decades ago that there really wasn’t too much going on in this space, but that’s certainly not the case now.  That’s why I wanted to make sure I included an interview with a spokesperson from EPRI in my first book, Renewable Energy – Facts and Fantasies; Mark Duvall, whom I had met at numerous conferences, was kind enough to oblige.   (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Question:  We all know that gang violence is a scourge on our civilization.  Can you estimate the average cost to society of a typical criminal gang member? 

Answer: Can be found at http://2greenenergy.com/cool-guess-answers/8732 .

Relevance:  In many cases, the cost of cleaning up after a mess is far greater than preventing the mess in the first place, and this is certainly the case with gang membership.  There are numerous non-profit organizations, e.g., El Nido, that keep young people away from gangs far less expensively than dealing with the bloodshed they leave in their wake.  Thus the old adage: “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” 

Perhaps we should think about applying this wisdom to the damage we’re wreaking upon our environment with our continued and expanding use of fossil fuels. 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

As we bump along into a new year, perhaps it’s time to ask ourselves: What do the world’s scientists tell us about our course vis-à-vis sustainability?  Well, a lot of things, really.  For example, our oceans are over-fished and filled with mercury, and the natural mineral content of our farmland is so depleted that the chemical fertilizers and poisons we’ve chosen to mitigate the damage is crippling our environment, while leaving us with food increasingly lacking in nutritional content. 

This could be the beginning of a very long list, so I’ll skip ahead to the granddaddy of them all:  our society’s burning coal for energy.  In brief, the developing world expects to enable its huge and ever-growing populations to enjoy the fruits of cheap and abundant energy in the 21st Century, the same way the developed world did in the 19th and 20th Centuries. There’s a catch, though, as there often is.  If we pull all that carbon out of the ground and release it into the atmosphere, we’ll cause catastrophic climate change, not to mention other forms of ecologic collapse of monumental proportion.

Here’s a great article that speaks to where we are in terms of the construction and operation of coal-fired power plants. Note that in five years, the amount of coal burned around the globe every year will increase by an additional 1.2 billion metric tons — an amount roughly equivalent to the current annual coal consumption of the U.S. and Russia combined.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

As this article suggests, everywhere one looks in the new energy industry one finds references to disruptive technologies, not only in the various “flavors” of renewable energy, but in the basic ways in which electricity is delivered.  Take DG (distributed generation) as an example.  Everyone agrees that a larger number of points of generation, closer to their loads, will create less line loss and higher reliability. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

RiechesBaird is an advertising/branding agency in Orange County California with which I’ve had an extremely friendly and productive relationship, going back almost 15 years.  I happened to be on their website just now, and came across this interview in which Ryan Rieches speaks with author, business consultant and entrepreneur Verne Harnish.

Harnish notes that sadly, where the U.S. and Germany are similar in many ways, e.g., GDP per capita, Germany exports four times as much per capita as the U.S.; even Spain exports twice as much as we do here.  When the recession came in 2008, the U.S. bailed out only the largest corporate entities and paid people not to work.  Not Germany.  Angela Merkel focused on keeping everyone working, regardless of the size (and political clout) of the employer.

The point? Perhaps the U.S. can learn something from the Germans, and build products that people want outside our borders.  And here’s an idea, as if you didn’t see it coming: clean energy.  It’s true (amazingly) that we ourselves have little reach for clean energy solutions; we seem to have no problem amping up fossil fuel exploration, building pipelines with obscene environmental characteristics, etc.

But since the rest of the world doesn’t see it that way, let’s foster innovation in cleantech – renewables in particular – even if the focus is export.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

I’ve referred to my friend, Jim Boyden a few times here.  Jim got his Ph.D. in high-energy particle physics from Cal Tech the same year I entered kindergarten, and generously consented to an interview for my current book project, “Renewable Energy – Following the Money.”

In response to my piece on “fiddling while Rome burns” as an analogy to our lack of interest in addressing climate change, Jim sent me the picture to the left and writes:

Craig:  If you can’t read the caption, it’s: “My God, we’re out of gin!”  I had this on my office wall when I was working on climate change mitigation.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

Here’s a terrific piece by Renewable Energy World’s Jennifer Runyon explaining the need for and status of changes in the way that clean energy projects are financed.   As it turns out, master limited partnerships (MLPs) and real estate investment trusts (REITs), vehicles that are integral to the financing of traditional energy projects, due to a quirk in the law, are not available to solar, wind, and their cousins. 

Several bills are making their way through the U.S. Congress that would put an end to the unfair imbalance here, but none has come up for a vote.  Here, Jennifer explains how Richard Kauffman, Senior Advisor to the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy, who came out of the private sector, explains how such a move by Congress would dramatically reduce the cost of capital for large renewable energy projects, while simultaneously providing five other major benefits.

As always, this whole discussion goes back to the same old place: all we’re asking for is a level playing field. 

 

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