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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

PhotobucketI don’t know the extent to which most readers are aware of the frequent comments of Dan Conine, whom I would characterize as irreverent but incredibly bright. Here, in response to my piece on James Woolsey, he writes:

Ask him about shadow government agencies, Iran Contra connections to 9/11, and why he thinks Obama has not followed through on releasing government documents. Nothing is more renewable than ex-gov employees’ hot air.

LOL, as usual. Sorry, but I think I’ll take another tack with this interview. Yet you suggest a good point that I do intend to pursue — one that will make this such a fascinating experience for me: How does it happen that a true patriot comes to hold a position that seems to challenge the very integrity of an entire presidential administration — or maybe several? Unless I’m missing something, Mr. Woolsey is saying — or at least implying — that our leaders have acted more in their personal interests (as oilmen) than in the national interest, protecting the safety and security of the people who elected them.

In my opinion, what makes Mr. Woolsey so valuable to the cause of sustainability is his position as a frequent presidential appointee — combined with his lack of willingness to blunt his words. It’s easy for people (like me) on the outside to take potshots; it’s quite another thing for such assertions to come from within.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

PhotobucketI want my book on renewables to feature a few chapters on the public sector – what our government at various levels is doing to promote clean transportation and energy. To knock out the piece on municipalities, this morning I’m on my way to interview Rick Sikes, the manager of the fleet of the city of Santa Monica (CA).

I may have mentioned that I moderated a panel discussion at the AltCarExpo this fall. Rick was assigned a different panel — and he certainly has the “creds”: 87% of the fleet he controls is alternative fueled. He was recommended to me as something of a legend among city planners and managers; I’m certainly looking forward to the interview.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

PhotobucketThe trajectory for completing my book on renewables just received a major shot in the arm this morning as James Woolsey, one of the most vocal and credible proponents of alternative energy, agreed to an interview for my chapter on oil independence and national security. Mr. Woolsey’s role as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 1993 to 1995 was one of his four Presidential appointments across two Republican and two Democratic administrations.  In my mind, he is the best-qualified person on the planet to speak to these issues. 

Over the past few years, I’ve availed myself of a great deal of Mr. Woolsey’s writing and speaking, so I can anticipate what I think he’ll probably say on these issues – the manifold threats to US interests that oil addiction represents: the funding of enemy states, possible terrorists strikes, embargoes, and other potential disruptions in supply, the economic duress created by our borrowing $2 billion per day, etc. I also expect to hear about the remedies – many of which I’ve tried to cover in this blog over the past many months: alternative fueled vehicles (especially electric transportation) and renewable energy.

The current “debate” about global warming underscores the importance of having people like James Woolsey present in our world – people who cut through the political gamesmanship that is so common in public discourse, dispense with opinion and rhetoric, and focus on hard-hitting, well-researched facts.  I eagerly anticipate the conversation.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

PhotobucketIn my quest for a well-balanced presentation of clean energy in my upcoming book, I just spoke with someone whose work I’ve admired for quite a while — Stephen Lacey of Renewable Energy World. We discussed the subject of media, and the optimum approach to developing and distributing unique content in a space that’s changing every minute.

I think of Stephen the way I do PBS’s Charlie Rose: a guy who can conduct an intelligent conversation on hundreds of different subjects.  And as I told him, the aspect of his publication that I find most striking is its bandwidth; there are so many things happening every day on this front, and these people never seem to miss a single one — nor do they simply regurgitate junk news from other sources.

Stephen has invited me to blog on his site, and I’ll certainly be taking him up on that offer. Right now, I plan to confine my remarks there mainly to business-related subjects – perhaps offering tips for his readers on the commercialization of renewable energy business ideas: raising capital, public relations, SEO, Web 2.0 marketing, positioning, branding, sales channels development, and so forth. These are topics that don’t seem to be treated with as much depth and frequency as some other aspects of the migration to clean energy, and I hope they’ll find some resonance with his readers.

If you haven’t yet subscribed to their excellent (and free) newsletter, there’s no time like the present.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

I’m always delighted when I come across supporters of the idea that I’ve referred to as the “level playing field” for renewable energy. That is, I’m not asking for a subsidy for solar, wind, geothermal, etc. Rather, I’m asking that producers and consumers of fossil fuels simply pay the full cost of these forms of energy, including the costs of healthcare (caring for victims of the mercury, arsenic and other pollutants that cause lung damage and birth defects) as well as cleaning up the vast environmental damage. If we were somehow able to get such a system in place, we’d make the migration to renewable energy in the blink of an eye.

Here’s an op-ed piece in today’s New York Times that speaks to the very issue. Given the watered down discussions in Copenhagen, I think it’s more than a little relevant.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

PhotobucketWhen I was a little boy, the concept of the domino effect occupied a large and scary part of the national consciousness. For those too young to remember, the idea at the time was that, if one country in Southeast Asia fell to communism, then surrounding countries — like tumbling dominos — would as well.

50 years later, we see the same concept applied to electric transportation. Examples of entire nations that are replacing internal combustion engines in favor of electric vehicles (EVs) will soon show the world that this migration process is achievable, and serve as working models for the numerous benefits of eradicating petroleum – engendering the envy of all other nations on earth.

Understandably, this transition is occuring first in places where the benefits of electricity vs. gasoline are most pronounced, e.g., islands nations. Witness Liuqiu, an island off the southern coast of Taiwan, which is in the process of spending $15.5 billion to effect this change. Closer to me personally, check out Bermuda and the actions they are taking, partially under my team’s direction, to do the same on a somewhat larger scale.

It won’t be long until the world can see how painless this transition can be, and how a nation can serve as a beacon of leadership to others in the quest for environmental sustainability.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

PhotobucketA quick comment on California’s governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s presence at the Los Angeles Auto Show. My friend Steve Ellis at Honda, who also spoke, submitted this video to EVWorld.

If you watch the first few minutes, you’ll see great political speechmaking at work. The governor introduced the car companies and the state EPA as if they were friends, working hand in hand to preserve the pristine California skies.

Of course, anyone who knows anything about the last 15 years of the state’s history knows that this is utter tripe. Not that anyone’s asking me to run for office, but this is the very reason I couldn’t get elected dogcatcher: I simply wouldn’t be able to pronounce a statement as patently absurd as this.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Hydrokinetics

PhotobucketWe’ve seen a marked increase in the attention — and the funding — given to hydrokinetically-generated energy by the Obama Administration’s Department of Energy. Personally, I’m gratified by this; until recently, I had been concerned that this subject was being badly neglected; I’m glad to see this turnaround.

I happened to be working on my book on renewables yesterday, and had the good fortune to knock out the chapter on hydrokinetics, which is based on a talk with Dr. Brian Polagye at the University of Washington. Brian is part of the DoE’s Northwest National Marine Energy Research Center for Tidal Energy; I was referred to him by an expert on the subject at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) who told me, “In my opinion, Dr. Polagye is the nation’s leading researcher on hydrokinetic energy.” Good enough for me!

A few highlights:

I think – or I guess I should say I thought – of hydrokinetic energy as being essentially constant. The sun doesn’t shine 24 hours a day, but rivers never stop flowing. Yet there are significant variations in the extractable power from flowing rivers. As I suppose I should have surmised, rivers, based on rainfall as they are, experience significant seasonal variations. And tidal currents, of course, have periods of relative calm in cycles during the day. So there is nothing unique about hydro as a renewable source from this perspective.

As I noted in the white paper I wrote on the subject last summer, those wishing to submerge power generating devices in the rivers or oceans — in the US, at least — face a considerable battle in terms of regulation. As an advocate for renewables, that rankles me — yet Brian helped me put this in perspective. According to what he told me, the DoE is far more involved in expediting approval for such projects now than they were when the original devices were developed — but it’s still not easy – nor should it be. “If both sides aren’t screaming, regulators probably aren’t doing their job,” he said. “Environmentalists should probably be concerned that regulators aren’t sufficiently aggressive in protecting aquatic ecosystems, and entrepreneurs in power companies should be yelling that regulators are too sheltering and too slow to grant approvals.”

When I asked for an example to illustrate the point, Brian replied, “Easy. I’m up here in Puget Sound. If I have a turbine in the water and an orca washes up with its belly cut open – even if that was really caused by a ship’s propeller, it would set this operation back a decade – if it wouldn’t kill it completely.”

For my money, the real issue with hydro is scale. The theoretical limit to the amount of hydrokinetic energy that can be generated in our rivers, for instance, is the potential energy of the water in the first place, i.e., the weight of that water times the vertical distance it will fall. That is, by reports I’ve seen, insufficient to generate more that a few percent of North America’s power needs. “That may be true on a continental basis,” Dr. Polagye agrees. “But on a regional basis, hydro can make an extremely significant contribution.”

Fascinating stuff. My sincere thanks to Brian for his time, and for the dedication that he and so many others make to such a wonderful cause.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

PhotobucketWriting about the political process, Bob Goldschmidt notes:

The system will never allow campaign finance reform or term limits. However there is a way — individual contributions made to move election results.

It’s interesting that you say this. I personally never contribute to campaigns; I don’t even ask the IRS to send along $2 for me. If I were king of the world, I would reform the election process so dramatically that it would have virtually no resemblance to its current form.  My very first action would be to abolish corporate lobbying.  10 minutes later, I would make political advertising illegal, and force the media to cover all candidates equally and neutrally. 

Frequent guest blogger Dan Conine says, “The people are somnambulant ‘consumers’ who couldn’t care less who lives or dies as long as there are Cheez Doodles on the shelves at WalMart and gas to go get them.” Sadly, this is 100% true — and I can’t change that.  But at least with this reform, these somnambulists would occasionally be bumping into the truth — versus the corporate-controlled garbage that they’re currenly being fed.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

PhotobucketA couple other thoughts on the global warming (GW) “debate.” In the interview that I conducted with eminent physicist Bruce Allen for my book on renewables, he pointed out that there are numerous climatologists who do not support the anthropogenic GW theory but who have not published their ideas for fear of ridicule or reprisal. He claims that once this is taken into account, there is a healthy number (though still a minority, he admits) of skeptics in the ranks of serious scientists.

For the record, Bruce isn’t claiming that GW doesn’t exist; his real beef is that scientists who don’t toe the line on this subject are being suppressed, i.e., that politics is superceding science. This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this, and if it’s true, of course I agree that this is unacceptable. Again, we seem to see simple corruption at work. Just like the oil companies have bought favoritism for fossil fuels, anyone can see that there is the potential for corruption here. No GW problem = no money to fix it.

Having said all this, my response is unchanged from my earlier post on the subject:

The only real issue is the level of certainty with which accept the theory. Are we “100% sure” or “sure beyond a reasonable doubt” that human activity is causing GW? Perhaps not. But do we really need to be? If the majority of the oncologists examining me told me that I had early stage cancer and a prompt operation would save my life—even if a minority weren’t sure—I’d have the operation every day of the week.

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