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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Fossil Fuels

Frequent commenter “Shivrat” writes:

Great that solar investment is increasing so rapidly, and agreed that many challenges lie ahead, but would you say that a paradigm shift to renewables is inevitable in the long term? After all, something like 80% of oil is produced in 6 countries, and 90% of natural gas reserves lie in 3 countries, right? Given that global energy demand is set to increase by 50% in the next few decades, wouldn’t market forces seem to make it futile for anyone to resist (fossil fuels’) decline in the long term?

This is an excellent question – one that surprisingly few people ask. The basic answer is the short-term focus of most people and entities.

I happened to ask a friend who runs a very successful hedge fund (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Last night, my daughter and I were studying her vocabulary words for her English final today, and encountered the word “concise,” i.e., “expressing a great deal in a few words.”  And speaking of concise, here’s a really neat photographic essay on the types and amounts of food we consume as a civilization. There are a few words here, but the pictures say it all.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Ocean Thermal

According to Bloomberg, new spending on solar energy jumped 36 percent to $136.6 billion in 2011, outpacing the $74.9 billion put into wind power.

It will be interesting to see what happens with clean energy investment in 2012, however, as big money lines up to head in the direction of cheap natural gas, and budget hawks chop subsidies for wind and solar. In any case, we’re a million miles away from a consensus that clean energy needs to succeed, and that fossil fuels need to go.

Early today, I had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Ted Johnson, one of the most visible forces behind the development of ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC). “The oil and gas companies won’t stop until we’ve burned the last molecule of fossil fuels, and they’re in the pockets of every member of Congress.” “Gosh, Doc,” I replied. “You sound a lot like me!”

by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

I had a terrific conversation with Scott Peehl just now, a talented young filmmaker who will be helping on the documentary we’ve been discussing. His main point: what makes documentaries “work” is a common point on empathy that the audience develops for a certain character and his quest, into which are plugged all the various pieces of content: interviews, infographics, voice-over B-roll, etc. The story should be long and arduous, with plenty of ups and downs, tragedies and rejection, tenacity and guts.

Scott suggested that the character could be me, given my ongoing quest to elucidate the energy picture, and get society’s wits wrapped around what will be required for a sustainable future — taking on the forces that profit from maintaining the status quo. I’m flattered, but, besides being too self-indulgent, it’s also too weak; I need another big idea. If anyone has a suggestion, please let me know. Thanks.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

A reader points out, “Given this map of electric vehicle charging stations, there is a serious shortfall, given that there will be over 30 models of electric vehicles available in 2013.”

I see the point, but I’m not particularly swayed. First and most obviously, we need to be more interested in the number of vehicles than the number of models; I’m sure the reader is aware of this. But we also need to keep in mind the driving style of these early adopters. To that end, note that there are 25 million multi-car, single-family homes in the U.S. alone where one of these cars travels less than 40 miles per day. In my mind, these are the perfect candidates. 25 million is a heck of a lot of low-hanging fruit – and note that this “fruit” doesn’t require ANY charger outside the home.

I’m not saying that charging at the workplace and marketplace won’t facilitate EV adoption, but it’s not truly required in the vast majority of these cases.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Journalist Chris Hedges’ op-ed “Why I’m Suing Barack Obama” provides the rationale behind his use of the U.S. court system to challenge Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, questioning the legality of the Authorization for Use of Military Force as embedded in the latest version of the National Defense Authorization Act. In it he writes:

The act authorizes the military in Title X, Subtitle D, entitled “Counter-Terrorism,” for the first time in more than 200 years, to carry out domestic policing. With this bill, which will take effect March 3, the military can indefinitely detain without trial any U.S. citizen deemed to be a terrorist or an accessory to terrorism. And suspects can be shipped by the military to our offshore penal colony in Guantanamo Bay and kept there until “the end of hostilities.” It is a catastrophic blow to civil liberties.

A catastrophic blow indeed. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

In my recent post, “Advice to Environmental Policy Makers: Limit Further Damage,” I quoted the late George Carlin: “I love these people who talk about ‘saving the Earth.’ Don’t worry about the planet; the planet will be just fine. It’s people who are going away.” This spawned a few comments about the Gaia hypothesis (the concept that life as a whole fosters and maintains suitable conditions for itself by helping to create a favorable environment on Earth for its continuity).

I’d be very interested to read further discussion on this. It sounds a bit too close to fantasy to have credibility with me — like one of mankind’s many pre-scientific explanations of which we continue to be so fond.  In particular, it strikes me as animism (the concept that rocks, thunder, mountains and rivers have souls) — on steroids. It also recalls the “pathetic fallacy,” i.e., attributing human characteristics to inanimate objects, as in “the cruel sea.”  Am I missing something?

Having said that, it is interesting to note that the output of every single living organism directly or indirectly becomes food for some other organism.   

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Wind Energy

When we think of wind energy, we generally think of those multi-megawatt farms in western Texas, the plains states, and California.  Conversely, when we think of solar PV, we normally conjure images of “distributed generation” — “DG” for short — rooftop mounts on thousands of geographically dispersed homes and commercial buildings.

Increasingly, however, wind is sporting a DG face, with smaller turbines appropriate for “campus” settings: schools, cities, counties, farms, factories, communities, and other large power users who want to stabilize their energy costs.

My colleague Jim Boyden acts as an advisor to a company called Continental Wind Power, which offers a range of campus wind solutions.  Considering that an incremental 8 gigawatts of new capacity will be installed in the U.S. alone this year, this may not be a bad place to be.

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainable Building

Here’s a product we support that may at first blush seem a bit far afield from 2GreenEnergy’s normal business arena: LifeCube. It’s on-demand emergency shelter for disaster response. In less than five minutes after arriving on the scene, a two-man first-responder team can assemble a sturdy, solid-floored space with food, water, medical supplies, communications, electricity and propane in which they can treat the wounded and conduct their operations.

The LifeCube people have been terrifically successful at telling their story (including coverage on the History Channel) and establishing manufacturing capacity in the United States. But, since disasters are an international affair, we at 2GreenEnergy are tapping our connections to help them establish business roots in the world’s most populous regions elsewhere around the globe. I spent a good part of the day today with the executive team, outlining some high-level strategies here, and I expect this to move very quickly.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Here’s a terrific article on China’s energy scene in Powermag.com.

The staggering rate of China’s economic growth in the recent past and foreseeable future makes them extremely interesting to those of us trying to understand the main challenges to creating a sustainable world. Not only is China the largest single polluter, but it’s the leading investor in renewable energy. Two-thirds of its electricity comes from coal (most of it imported over large distances, exacerbating the problem), and this is expected to diminish to only 58% by 2020 — but its current Five-Year Plan lays out clear and aggressive commitments in several forms of renewables.

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