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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

As we scour our civilization in an effort to identify and rid ourselves of all things unsustainable, perhaps we should look past cleantech for a moment and examine a wider circles of our lives – perhaps including our involvement with medicine.  Rightfully, we’re all very grateful for the advancements in medical technology that are enabling us to live longer and healthier lives. But don’t we have an inkling that, just as we look back on the standards of medical practice 100 years ago with a mixture of pity and horror, the world even a few decades hence will regard what we’re doing here and now in the same way?

In particular, posterity will remember our generation for its fanaticism with the diagnosis of “disease” and the over-prescription of drugs for an enormous and ever-growing set of physical and mental conditions.  This morning, 8 million school children in the U.S. alone received a dose of Ritalin, an extremely powerful psycho-active drug given to quiet the child’s mind – and thus his body, creating greater docility in an effort to address the effects of an ostensible disease, ADHD.  Elsewhere today, tens of millions of adults will pop pills to deal with a wider range of other “diseases” — from restless leg syndrome to sexual dysfunction. For more on this, Google “pharmaceutical companies invent diseases” and check out some of the 1,120,000 sites that offer additional detail.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

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If you’ve ever wondered if there really are high net-worth individuals who happily invest their own money in start-up ventures, and calmly allow the entrepreneur to pursue his business, I’m here to tell you that such creatures do, in fact, exist. Here’s a picture taken a few weeks ago in Seattle, in which a friend and I are standing on either side of this glorious couple, Mr. and Mrs. William Eberlin, the angel investors in the ETM (Energy Transfer Merchant), a high-end EV charging station.

Note the Nissan LEAF and Tesla Roadster in the background of this ribbon-cutting ceremony for the ETM.  

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

Here’s a grainy but clearly audible video in which EVWorld editor Bill Moore interviews me over a Skype session on my book, Renewable Energy — Facts and Fantasies.   He’s a good guy, and asked some terrific questions.

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

It would be nice to make sense of the current trend in private investment in renewable energy. This article in TechCrunch, speaking on venture capital in particular, suggests that it’s quite robust:

“The Energy and Utilities industry raised $635 million for 33 deals, an increase from the same period last year when 23 deals raised $381 million. Renewable Energy companies claimed almost all of the industry’s investment as 30 deals raised $621 million.”

Yet other data seem to point in the opposite direction. Can anyone help sort this out?

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Fossil Fuels

For those interested in keeping up with the debate on natural gas fracking, here’s a terrific article by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.  Perhaps most disturbing is the underlying message: it’s impossible to know whom and what to believe.   

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Biomass

Ben Thorp is one of the true gentlemen in the biofuels industry, humbly but energetically chairing the non-profit BioEnergy Deployment Consortium. Retired from business after an enviable lifetime of successful engagements, he’s dedicated himself to the proposition that biomass needs to be a) understood, and then b) implemented on a pragmatic basis. Yet this represents a considerable challenge.

“There are 11 definitions of the term ‘biomass’”, he told me. “What fits for a business plan to a VC firm might fail completely in an application for a loan guarantee or a permit application.  And how about this: is MSW (municipal solid waste) really ‘renewable energy?’ In some places it’s regarded as such, but not in others.” (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Nate Hagens is a well-known authority on global resource depletion. In my quest to come up to speed with his thinking on the subject, I interviewed him for my next book, and make an ongoing attempt to read the specific articles to which he directs me. Here’s one that seems to encapsulate his thinking, which I would summarize as follows:

Human evolution has brought us to a place where we “feel good,” i.e., get a hit of dopamine, when we come to own stuff, e.g., fast cars, big houses, etc. While this phenomenon worked nicely when energy and capital were abundant, it’s hit the wall in the 21st century where both these commodities have become scarce.

Hope you enjoy the article; it’s excellent.  

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

Here are a few thoughts on the migration to electric transportation, submitted by a reader.  I understand his dilemma, and note that he’s certainly not alone. In fact, I can’t think of an EV visionary who doesn’t share his frustration. But a great deal of private capital, in the US at least, is sitting on the sidelines — and it’s also not moving out of banks. A tax on banks’ cash reserves is in order.  He writes:

The trouble I’m having is getting people with the resources to get it done fired up enough to invest. There is only one way to do this and make money. Go Big! Conversions, Kit cars and Gliders all suffer from the same inherent problem…low volume production.

“Total Cost Involved” manufactures, chassis and parts for the Hot Rod industry, as one of the oldest in the business they recently bragged on having produced their 1000th 1929 T-Bucket body.

I have worked for a Hot Rod shop, and 4 to 5 bodies a week was an exceptional week, usually only one or two…..and they don’t have to be made to pass FMVSS. It has never been a good model. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainable Building

The response to my request for more cleantech business plans has taken me to some fantastically interesting places, as I knew it would.

Here’s Smarter Flush, a consumer product I really love. For $19.95 and an investment of 10 minutes to install (no tools needed), anyone can retrofit a toilet so that it uses as little of 50% of the water it’s currently consuming. Depending on where you live and your utility rates, the payback period for this can be as short as 90 days. Try that with solar panels! (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

I just came across two chance references to the same thing in the last couple of days:

1) In his memoir, Christopher Hitchens writes that his father said of World War II, “It was the only time in my life that I felt I really knew what I was doing.” and

2) In today’s Writer’s Almanac, Garrison Keillor quoted the great newspaper critic A. J. Liebling, also referring to World War II: “The times were full of certainties: we could be certain we were right — and we were — and that certainty made us certain that anything we did was right, too. I have seldom been sure I was right since.”

Interesting coincidence – one that makes me think of what we’re trying to accomplish here with clean energy. For what it’s worth, I get up every morning pretty darned certain that what we’re doing is right.

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