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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Biofuels

I had a Skype chat yesterday with a well-heeled investor/entrepreneur in Dubai whose family has numerous business operations in Africa and the Middle East – including Pakistan, the country in which one of my favorite projects is located.  Readers may remember last June’s webinar, which featured a clean energy project in Landhi, a large industrial town in the eastern part of Karachi, which, when fully developed, will convert the dung of 400,000 tightly confined buffaloes into biofertilizer and biogas.

Currently, there is a plant there running 24 hours a day, but it’s very small, a tiny fraction of the size required to implement the concept fully. To my surprise, when I described this to my contact in Dubai, he told me that he’d been there, and knows the people who run it.

I tried to talk up the value of the project, both from a financial and humanitarian perspective, and I’m hoping that these folks will invest.  If they put up $5 million, the organization’s CEO Robert Orr will be able to raise an additional $13 million in project financing, and within a year, he’ll have the entire plant operational, mitigating one of the most egregious environmental catastrophes on the planet, while creating a solid profit stream to pay off the investors.

 

 

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

The enemies of renewable energy are having a field day all over the world.  Here’s an article about clean energy in the UK, and how it’s getting pounded with the same hammer that it is over here, i.e.,  uncertainty: removal of feed-in tariffs, varying taxes, changing priorities, all brought to you in living color with vitriolic arguments in the British press, as only they can do it with such splendor.  In this one short article, the  word “uncertainty” occurs four times, as well as “flex,” and – my favorite – “unfathomable twists and turns.”

It’s a circus. 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

Here’s some good news in the photovoltaics world:  the first about a new record in solar efficiency and the second about a super-absorbent solar cell.

I’m reminded of a conversation I have frequently with clean energy nay-sayers.

As renewable energy is built squarely on high-tech, what is the certain outcome?  Ever-improving performance and steadily declining costs.

Does anybody think we’ll still be burning coal and driving Hummers in the year 2050?  Of course not.

Why?  Among other things, because the trajectory for solar, wind, and the others is so rapidly pushing the cost per Watt down.

Then why aren’t we embracing the future, working on these technologies full-bore, while doing the right thing for the environment at the same time?

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

Here’s a cool infographic called “The Fastest Electric Vehicles on Earth” that I thought readers would enjoy, from these folks.  What they say here is certainly true: we tend to think of EVs as slow, glorified golf carts.  Yet those of us who have driven Teslas have quite a different impression; they’re little rockets, with better acceleration than Porsches.

There is also a good discussion of the Catch 22 facing the EV adoption curve.  They’ll be expensive until they’re common, but they’ll be uncommon until they’re inexpensive.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

What is a society? Is it merely an assortment of separated and competing drives of short-term self-interest, and rights of possession? Is it an orchestra of individuals cooperating to achieve the enlargement and preservation of the Common Good?

Anthropologists tell us that in the dawn of our history, our species consisted of small bands of hunter-gatherers surviving by predation and forage. Even for these small bands to sustain life by that crude approach, it was essential that they share resources and the fruits of their labor and talent.

From our beginnings, sharing has been a basic aspect of even the simplest of human kinships. Over thousands of years, we slowly transformed our strategy with agrarian techniques that expanded upon that sharing. This wiser strategy granted humanity a stability and permanence of settlement that advanced through African and Semitic cultures and flowered in the European Renaissance, when something like the scientific method began to aid in the decisions we humans make. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

Concerning Poland’s 24 billion euro investment in the energy sector, the country’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk told reporters: “These investments have a strategic dimension; today, energy is the key to politics.”

What a candid remark – one you’d hardly hear from a senior level of the U.S. government.  And how tragically and shamefully true it is. 

If you’re looking for the cause of lack of interest in clean energy, I’m not sure you need to go too much further.  That’s where groups like ACORE (The American Council on Renewable Energy) come in.  The real mission here is to establish clean energy as an industry, rather than an interest group, an advocation, or whatever.  Only when there is political might behind renewables will we begin to see its emergence into the mainstream. 

 

 

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Nuclear

Looks like the Obama Administration wasn’t kidding about an “all-of-the-above strategy,” i.e., the deployment of every available source of energy; the U.S. DoE announced the implementation of small modular reactors (SMRs). For me to see value here, in addition to being convinced of safety issues, I’d have to see a compelling cost per Watt, which I don’t. 

 

 

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

I wrote a piece yesterday about the struggles of Project Better Place, the attempt to sell large populations of car drivers on the concept of adopting electric vehicles, and paying a certain price per mile driven, using leased batteries that, when discharged, are swapped out for fresh ones.

The entire concept has never appealed to me, frankly, except under ideal logistical, economical, and political conditions, e.g., Israel.  OK, you’re a small country that desperately wants to disallow another ounce of gasoline within your borders?  All right, I get that.  But most of the places that Better Place wishes to sell its solution boast far from these optimal conditions. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Photovoltaics

According to the DECC (Department for Energy and Climate Change) the UK is committed to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050. This emissions target, outlined in the Climate Change Act 2008, is legally binding. But judging from the behaviour of the British Government you’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise. David Cameron’s pledge to lead ‘the greenest government ever’ is in stark contrast to the recent Government cuts to renewable energy subsidies. Coupled with the Chancellor’s rhetoric which blatantly undermines green issues, and Tory Kowtowing to back bencher ‘Nimbies’ intent on disrupting the necessary growth of on shore wind power, Government intentions appear anything but green. The British public are losing faith too: according to a recent poll by Green Peace, only one in fifty members of the British public believe in Cameron’s pledge. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

Thanksgiving is by far my favorite holiday of the year.  It’s pretty much non-commercial, and it celebrates some of the basic virtues we find in all of us, e.g., the capacity for kindness and appreciation, while providing an opportunity to acknowledge the love and support that others have brought to us.  

At 2GreenEnergy, I traditionally take this moment to thank the hundreds of contributors to the blog and to my books, the thousands of commenters and signers of our petitions, and the hundreds of thousands of readers who have helped make us what we are today.  I’m also grateful to the businesspeople – both the clean energy investors and the entrepreneurs — who work so steadfastly, often against great odds, to move renewable energy into the mainstream.  I’m confident that your efforts will be rewarded. 

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. 

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