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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Energy Storage

I always look forward to the Storage Week show each June, as the whole enterprise of energy storage is so important and so multi-varied. Over 95% of the world’s installed energy storage is pumped hydro, but there are a dozen or so chemical (e.g., battery), mechanical (e.g., flywheels) and thermal (e.g., molten salt) approaches to the problem. In fact, part of the problem that we as a society have in dealing with storage is the fact that it, in all its forms, provides no fewer than 22 different benefits to the four main energy stakeholders: generation, transmission, distribution, and load. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

Duke Brooks sent me this piece that attempts to answer the question: What Kills Tech Start-Ups.

I believe that good ideas often need expert timing, something that is not easy to predict.  If you’re one step ahead of the market, you’re a pioneer; you get the best land, and before you know it, that land is worth a fortune.  This problem is this: If you’re two steps ahead of the market, you get barbecued. 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Energy Storage

I’m up in San Jose for the 5th Annual “Storage Week,” a show I eagerly anticipate each year.  Not only do I like to keep up on the technologies that are important to integrating renewables into the grid mix, but for some reason, this is an extremely fertile environment for making new contacts in the industry. 

At lunch, I sat next to an attorney whose firm has over 600 clients in emerging technologies, a huge swath of which are venture-capitalized start-ups in clean energy.  Before I had my napkin in my lap, I had learned that he has an enormous number of connections to the investor world.  By the time I reached for my salad fork, he had expressed an interest in the work we’re doing in supporting a few business plans and “moving good ideas forward.” 

Not a bad contact to have made, and just one of several.

Great show, cool ideas, wonderful contacts.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

After a quick cup of strong coffee, I’m off to the energy storage show, the 5th Annual “Storage Week” in San Jose.  It’s only a bit over three hours from here, and it’s really worthwhile.  I’ll post something from the show that I think is worth-while, and that won’t be hard; traditionally, I’ve found that there are some magnificent new concepts presented each year.  

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

As I’m sure you’re aware, clean energy is under attack from the traditional energy industry; the oil and coal companies are spending a fortune on their PR firms and lobbyists to discredit the competition, i.e., renewable energy. And unfortunately, this has been quite effective, as evidenced by:

• The dramatic increase in the number of educated Americans who question (or ignore) the peril in which we’ve placed our civilization via our ever-expanding use of fossil fuels, and (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Fossil Fuels

I really can’t understand why more people, regardless of their political leanings, aren’t calling for the resignation of U.S. Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK). Haven’t his antics gone far past the point of our normal political theater? Inhofe is in office because of huge campaign contributions from the oil companies, and he’s trying to shut down the US military’s interest in alternative fuels. He wants Congress to enact legislation that would make it impossible for the US military to purchase alternative fuels if they cost a penny more than gasoline and diesel.

While I’m not a huge fan of war as a tool to resolve international differences, let me point out that our military: (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Photovoltaics

Thanks to my friends at the Tennessee Solar Energy Center for their kind words, and for redistributing my recent article Energy Policy — Looking for the Broad Side of the Barn. They write: “TSEA has been following Craig Shields, blogger on green energy, a battle-hardened veteran in the fight to bring in the Green Energy Age.  (We) strongly recommend his site.”

They then go on to explain: (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

This was announced by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon this Thursday on the “Sustainable Energy For All” Rio summit. The 2030 goal of the initiative is to double our renewable energy use and the rate of energy efficiency improvement – and maybe most important to ensure universal access to energy.

More than $50 billion of investments have been pledged by the private sector according to the U.N.

Dr. Kandeh K. Yumkella, Director-General of U.N. Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), and co-chair of Sustainable Energy For All, says that the initiative is meant to keep the sustainable talks going after the event in Rio is finished. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

There are so many different ways in which to regard human evolution. 11th Hour, the 2007 documentary narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio, expresses one of them with brilliant elegance: More than 99.99% of the species of life that have ever lived on Earth are now extinct, and we could be next.

Humankind considers itself the master of the Earth, and prides itself on how it’s subjugated nature for its convenience. But signs are starting to emerge that we’ve pushed nature too far, and she, a far more powerful force than perhaps we had imagined, is in the process of pushing back, making us yet another of the millions of life forms that simply came and went.

Does this sound like an idea from a bunch of wimp liberal Hollywood filmmakers? Humankind, the all-powerful masters of the universe could be undone? You may want to watch it and decide for yourself.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Fossil Fuels

When I wrote this piece yesterday by Inside Climate News’ Maria Gallucci, I had no idea that just a few hours later, a friend would send me this article by the same author, in which we can see how nasty and partisan the climate change legislation has become. Through the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a conservative policy group, huge forces including ExxonMobil, energy conglomerate Koch Industries, and Peabody Energy, the country’s largest coal producer are hard at work to roll back decades of regulations that act as a burden to their polluting our oceans and skies.  

 

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