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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

I spent a bit of time on the website of the Bureau of Labor Statistics in preparation for today’s post, looking at some numbers surrounding employment in the US. Here are a few approximate numbers that I feel are relevant:

Unemployed people looking for work with skills appropriate to (or who could be easily trained for) designing and building renewable energy systems: 3 million

Highschool and college graduates entering the workforce over the coming five years with these skills who will find it hard to find work given the current and foreseeable economic climate: 12 million

People working in fossil fuel industries, e.g., coal miners, who may be well advised to look for work elsewhere as the world moves — at whatever pace — to clean energy: 2 million

Total of above: 17 million

Now, let me offer this high-level summary of the subsidies bestowed onto Big Energy in the US. It is estimated that the US oil and gas industry receives anywhere from $1 billion to $35 billion a year in subsidies from taxpayers. What, you ask? Don’t we know that number with any greater degree of accuracy? No. The exact number is extremely hard to nail down — even for those who try to do it honestly and objectively — given the 10-or-so different programs (loans, deliberately lax legislation and enforcement, tax breaks at many different levels, etc.) that could be referred to as subsidies for fossil fuels. But it’s substantial by any account.

And in some cases it’s more egregious than others. For example, we taxpayers pay up to 90% of the cost of building nuclear power plants; the nuclear industry couldn’t stand on its own for a nano-second. And to me, the mega-billion dollar subsidy for corn ethanol is even more galling. As I’ve written abundantly elsewhere, corn ethanol will down in history as one of the biggest rip-offs ever perpetrated on the American public.

So here’s a simple suggestion: if we’re going to subsidize something, why can’t it be something that contributes to the public good? Why does it have to cause cancer, jeopardize national security, promote terrorism, stimulate global warming, or cause a dangerous waste situation that will last hundreds of thousands of years?

Why not consider this: PULL the subsidies for oil, coal, corn ethanol and nuclear. Create a level playing field, and see how long fossil fuel businesses last in a fair, competitive environment (about 10 minutes).

Or, if you want to do something progressive, direct that money to renewable energy. Where do you think we’d be right now in the maturation of — you pick it — solar thermal, hydrokinetics, wind, etc. – if we had had the wisdom and the courage to send that money into research and development of those technologies, as opposed to merely making Big Energy even Bigger?

Let’s make a change here. Per the numbers above, there are 17 million people who will thank us immediately — not to mention the billions of other people on earth today — and those of future generations — who will be beneficiaries as well.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

As part of my travels to New York City and Bermuda last week I had the pleasure of meeting clean energy stock legend Bill Paul.  There were so many interesting facets to that meeting that I won’t even try to list them.  But one thing that struck me hard was his advice that 2GreenEnergy work harder at “thinking globally.”  The reference here was not the global impact of renewable energy or electric transportation, which is obvious; Bill was saying the the financial world outside the US is much more important to the migration to clean energy than than the workings of Wall Street. 

“Do you know what’s happening in the stock markets of Algiers or Tripoli?” he asked without expectation, as though the answer might be yes.  I wasn’t anxious to appear an ignoramus, but to be honest, I didn’t even know there were stock markets in those places; I guess I thought local commerce was limited to cous-cous, exotic rugs, and trinkets for tourists. 

Bill went on, “Do you realize that the northern Sahara is the site of what will be the largest solar thermal operation on earth?” That actually came as no surprise; I’ve seen numerous presentations in which a tiny square of the desert will someday generate the power for the entire European continent. 

In any case, as I mentioned in an earlier post, 2GreenEnergy is actively developing a tight relationship with Bill which will, if nothing else, provide more insight into the working of renewables outside the confines of the US. Stay tuned.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

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Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator, and he was removed from power, but it only came to pass because he happened to become the target of the hubris of G.W. Bush.  Just as Hussein’s ouster was a good thing that happened for the wrong reason, I predict that the migration to clean energy will come along similarly. 

Here’s a post to that effect that I put up on Renewable Energy World.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

I just got off the plane from Bermuda, and thought I’d write a quick post before bed.  What a reminder this trip was of the reason I got into this subject in the first place: the fascinating confluence of science, business, and politics.

Unfortunatley, renewable energy is something that won’t happen easily on Bermuda — for a combination of each of these three reasons.   Their power source, diesel, is quite dirty — and no one likes it; the smell of the fumes and the residue of the particulate matter sully what would otherwise be an immaculate setting.  But the 90 mW diesel plant does have the merit of ramping up and down nicely according to hour-to-hour demand. And we’re talking about 22 square miles of land — every acre of it quite valuable — so I can’t recommend huge solar farms.

They need offshore wind, but it will be expensive to implement, and politically, it will fly in the teeth of the power company’s monolopy, which is extremely well protected politically.

So the issues militating a switch to clean energy aren’t as straightforward as they may be in a different geography and cultural climate.  But even with all this, electric transportation is a slam dunk.  Even with the world’s dirtiest method power generation method, EVs will represent a significant net improvement in the pollution that befouls their air and contributes to the overall increase in global greenhouse gases.

But again, complicating matters are the business and cultural aspects of the problem.  As we have in the US, there are entrenched corporate interests desperately holding onto the status quo in terms of transportation and energy.  As I obseverved first-hand from my two days of meetings, they won’t be easy to dislodge.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

PhotobucketIt was an incredible day here on Bermuda – seven fast-paced 45-minute-long meetings on electric transportation with senior people in business and government.  Some folks were, perhaps, a bit stand-offish, but most were clearly appreciative of our ideas. 

I may have mentioned that I’m a partner in a consulting company called Island Green, whose purpose is to drive gasoline and diesel from island nations with the same ferocity that the Pied Piper rid Hamelin of its rats.  At issue in today’s talks is a 2010 event in which dozens of different kinds of electric scooters, passenger cars, trucks, ferries, etc. will be featured to approximately 300 participants from Bermuda and the Caribbean. 

Our proposal for sponsorship was received warmly by most of the organizations we met with in this tiring but satisfying day.  As the lady who scheduled the agenda for day told one of my partners and me at breakfast, “The last meeting ends at 5.  You boys’ll probably be ready for a cold beverage.”  She nailed that one. 

More later.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

I’m in Manhattan this week for several purposes — one of which is to drum up support for an idea that is so obvious to me that I can’t understand why some people in this business regard it as novel. Just like mutual fund managers and venture capitalist hedge their bets with a wide range of portfolio companies, I’m working with a 130-year-old investment banking firm here to set up the first in a series of “unit trusts” — raising a total of about $100 million to launch 15 – 20 of what I believe to be the best start-up companies I’ve come across recently, based on business plan submissions.

I want to take a position in the fund myself. I know this sounds immodest, but I’ve always liked to bet on myself. I know that my focus is limited, in that my viewpoint of renewable energy is, by design, so broad that I don’t have the bandwidth to become an expert in any one discipline. But I like to think that I can weed out ideas — and I see plenty of them — that have little or no merit, and focus on a few select business concepts that truly have something to offer.

I guess we’ll see. If you see a “Make a Donation to Craig” link on the site, I  suppose you can infer that I wasn’t as wise as I thought I was.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

Greetings from the Empire Hotel, right across the street from the Lincoln Center on New York’s West Side.

Today’s meeting with rewnable energy legend Bill Paul was amazing.  I’d have to go a long way back to find a time that I learned as much in three short hours.  Hate to use cliche’s, but it was truly like drinking water from a firehose. In brief, we planned a collaboration that will help clean energy investors make better sense of this world that seems to be changing so dramatically every day.

More meetings tomorrow and Wednesday, then off to Bermuda.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

PhotobucketAs I mentioned, I’m spending the week in New York City and Bermuda this week for a string of meetings that I believe will ultimately bring a great deal of additional value to that which 2GreenEnergy offers its readers and clients. 

I landed in Philadelphia last night to spend some time with my parents and brother’s family before these meetings began.  Driving around, listening to the radio, talking to people, and re-acquainting myself with the flavor of the area in which I grew up gave me a renewed appreciation for the scope of the task facing proponents of clean energy — it’s not at the top of the list of things that occupy people’s attention here.  In fact, very few conversations, advertisements — anything — focus on environmental topics.  A traveller’s tip for those wishing a sure winner as a subject of discussion: the terrible danger represented to us all by the recent failed terrorist attack.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

PhotobucketA few months ago I wrote a post about my consulting company’s relationship with the island nation of Bermuda, in which I mentioned how proud I am to be a part of an entire country’s movement away from fossil fuels.  A quick update:

This week, I’m on my way to Bermuda for a series of meetings with governmental agencies and private sector sponsors, each of which will be integral to making this whole thing happen.  And as I just happened to see this morning, this will be occuring in the context of a great number of governmental stimuli affecting this region of the world. 

It seems that virtually no one approves of the exact tack the Obama Administration is taking.  Progressives are disappointed with his pandering to entrenched interests and failing to take a hard line on things like healthcare reform, the war(s), and regulation of the big banks and Wall Street; conservatives, true to form, reject him as a socialist.  But let me tell you this: in terms of confronting the environmental nightmares that lie ahead of us if nothing is done to wean us from our oil addiction, far more has happened in the last few months than happened in the previous three decades.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Energy Storage

During my interview with Matt Simmons on “peak oil” for my book on renewables, I asked about suggestions for averting the imminent disaster he sees associated with maintain the status quo in energy generation and consumption. The response:

Large wind turbines will soon be built at the University of Maine and tested off the Maine coast, made from advanced composites with breakthrough characteristics in strength, weight, and cost. Once put into production, they can be used to produce large quantities of ammonia.

Matt pointed out that anhydrous ammonia (NH3), also known as “the other hydrogen,” is ultra-clean and energy-dense — the closest thing to a perfect transportation fuel.

He laid out a significant list of benefits:

  • Liquid at ambient temperatures and moderate pressures (~125 psi)
  • Has 52% of the energy density of gasoline, more than 50% more energy dense than liquid hydrogen
  • Can be used directly in internal combustion engines, using relatively straightforward conversions of gasoline and diesel ICEs
  • Easy to store and deliver in large quantities
  • Current worldwide annual production of ammonia is ~130 million tons
  • A storage and delivery infrastructure of pipelines, barges, rail and truck already exists for ammonia, with 3000 miles of pipeline in the US heartland; retail ammonia outlets exist in almost every state
  • Can be produced cleanly from coal and natural gas with carbon sequestration, and also from biomass, renewable energy sources and nuclear power, using nitrogen from the air
  • Contains no carbon, so releases no GHGs on combustion; also any NOx is easily neutralized

I propose to conduct a bit more research on this subject, and post my findings when they are available. In the meanwhile, please feel free to comment.

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