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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Here’s this month’s webinar, in which I interviewed my friend and colleague Andy Lower, Executive Director of The Eleos Foundation. I called the webinar “Eco-Capitalism,” as Eleos makes significant, carefully placed investments, focused on enabling entrepreneurs in developing countries to start companies aimed at some form of sustainability. As the fledgling companies in the Eleos portfolio take off, they employ an increasing number of local people, thus eradicating extreme poverty in certain target areas. I think you will agree that, thus far, their track-record has been quite impressive.

I’m quite proud of my association with Andy and his fine organization, and I hope you’ll enjoy the conversation.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Solar Thermal

Bechtel was one of my favorite clients, back in the day when I was a marketing consultant for the large tech companies.  That’s why I’m happy to see their participation in solar thermal; as discussed here, they’re building a $2.2 billion, 392 MW solar thermal (aka “concentrated solar power” or CSP) plant in the Mojave Desert. 

True to form, almost half of the commenters on this post look at the $5.60 cost per Watt (based on the nameplate capacity) and write it off as a “renewable energy boondoggle.”  I don’t see the relevance of the idea that, in its infancy, a certain clean energy technology costs more per Watt than fossil fuels.  In fact, I can’t recall an historical example of an innovation in any industry beating the cost of the incumbent technology in its first few implementations.  Was the first computer cost-competitive with the information technology of the day?  Did the first car cost less than a horse? 

These people’s argument really isn’t any better than this, and I think they know that; even the most simple-minded understand this intellectually.  But that doesn’t seem to keep the fossil fuel boys from riling up the crowd.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

Just a quick reminder about tomorrow’s webinar at 10:30 AM PDT (1 PM EDT).

Our September webinar, featuring my friend and colleague Andy Lower, Executive Director of The Eleos Foundation. Eleos is a dynamic non-profit, that, through its for-profit subsidiaries, invests in and partners with social entrepreneurs who effectively implement high impact, early stage, pioneering market based solutions in the fight to eradicate extreme poverty.

The relevance to 2Greenenergy’s participation in sustainability is obvious: creating jobs for the world’s poor is really the only way to make this huge segment of Earth’s population self-sufficient. The tie-in to renewable energy may be less apparent, but it’s nonetheless quite interesting. Eleos recognizes the importance of appropriate technology and its direct impact in dealing with poverty, and I’ve often pointed out the value of an investment in the manufacturing and deploying of clean energy products, e.g., solar panels, small wind turbines, electric vehicles, etc., that will: (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

I had a chat with a friend the other day on the likely future for humankind vis-à-vis global climate change.  He asked, “What do you think it will take, Craig, for us to muster the will to do something?  If there were a fire burning in a building across the street, it would be apparent to everyone, and we’d do what we could to put it out.  Here, we’re talking about a set of inexactly known consequences that are unfolding over a period of decades.  What will it take?”

Wow, that’s a good question; I wish I had a good answer.  All I can do is frame what I see as the big issues:

• Humankind applies a huge “discount rate” to situations like these; we place a much lower value on averting future pain than we do on enjoying current pleasure. 

• It’s not in mankind’s DNA to be good at future planning, as my friend Tom Konrad points out.  In the 100,000 years or so we have been here, if it worked last year, we do it again this year. 

• Big Energy money is doing today what Big Tobacco did half a century ago, i.e., spending a fortune on misinforming voters and manipulating the political system in its favor.  But eventually this will cease to work, as the lies become increasingly obvious. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

I had a talk last night with a gentleman in Atlanta who claims to finance clean energy deals in a very straightforward fashion.  We talked for about half an hour about the criteria he and his team use, the structure of the typical deal, etc.  As usual, I’m wondering: Is this guy for real?  Is there some element to this I’m not seeing?  What’s a quick and painless way to find out?  In any case, it was very much a “dog bites man” type of conversation; this is very much the daily grind for me.

Where it got interesting was when I happened to mention my take on the environmental picture as a whole, i.e., that our current consumption of energy resources, coupled with the growth of the urbanizing world population, is not sustainable.

Here, the caller jumped into a Cato Institute-like dismissal of the subject. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Here’s the main reason I couldn’t get within a million miles of an elected position in the US: I wouldn’t vote for the political grandstanding represented by legislation like the “No More Solyndras” Act.  I wouldn’t be a part of obscuring from the American people that energy sector loan guarantees from the federal government have resulted in a huge number of successes, many thousands of jobs, and the development of technology that will have a real and permanent positive effect on the world’s energy picture.   

Americans cheer on this type of nonsense, and that doesn’t speak too highly of us. We don’t seem to have our wits wrapped around a few basics, one of which is that the US is clearly and rapidly falling behind in the arena of innovation generally and in energy particularly. In 2009, for the first time ever, the US Patent Office granted a majority of its overall patents to foreign nations/companies. And nowhere is America losing faster and more obviously than energy.  This bill, if passed, will seal our fate, relegating us to the world’s scrapheap in terms of technology leadership. 

Another tragic failure of Americans is our inability to “follow the money.”  As shown here, oil and coal companies represented three of bill co-sponsor Fred Upton’s top five campaign contributors.   If you can think of something more shameful than this blatant conflict of interest, I hope you’ll write in and tell me what it is.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

With his latest in an epic string of gaffes, Mitt Romney let slip a bold admission of truth about who we are as Americans – or at least, who Romney and his campaign advisors think a majority of us are: people who have lost all capacity for kindness and all empathy for our fellow human beings.  Today, we came face-to-face with Romney’s belief that 47% of Americans are irresponsible and wish only to live off of the hard work of others — a viewpoint so outrageous and mean-spirited that it’s hard for me to believe I just heard it issue from the mouth of someone who wants to be taken seriously as a prospective leader of even a small group, say, Beverly Hills, not to mention a  nation whose population includes 46.2 million who live in poverty. 

One could argue that there are professions that don’t require even a basic level of compassion: maybe prison guards, pest exterminators, or traffic cops.  Whether or not that’s true, serving as the leader of a free and honorable country isn’t among those jobs. 

I often wonder: What’s happened recently that has brought us to the point that almost half of the U.S. electorate will go to the polls in November and vote for this guy to run our country?  How, in a period of just a couple of decades, could we have fallen so fast, and become so desensitized?  Is it just my imagination?  Weren’t we better, smarter people 20 years ago?  I have my own theories on this, but I’m more interested in hearing yours.

 

 

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

Joe Romm’s ClimateProgress.org has done a wonderful job of presenting the evolving science and politics of global climate change, including this article published a few months ago, when one of the few remaining credible deniers jumped ship and got on board with the theory held by the vast majority of the scientific community.  If you haven’t already done so, please check it out – and take a look at some of the comments, too and get a sense for what his followers believe to be the most probable future vis-à-vis climate change and energy policy more generally.  The consensus: big fossil fuel money will stall progress for some time to come.  I love the guy who wrote: “Money doesn’t talk; it swears.”

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Wind Energy

About once a month, I see a concept for a wind turbine that contemplates some sort of shroud to catch and funnel more wind through a turbine at higher speeds.  In principle, there is no problem with such ideas, other than, of course, the trade-off that is created by the cost of the materials and the room to site them.  Here’s a folksy article about an artistic shroud at a baseball field that has quadrupled the power output of the turbines.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

I began to write a private email to my colleague Stephan Williams who is helping out with our “Corporate Role Models” blog, when I realized there is really nothing private about it at all.  Here are notes on the industries I would like to include, and the potential bearing each has on clean energy, i.e., why companies in these industries should be interested in participating in the blog. (more…)

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