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Is Learning About Clean Energy Dangerous?

craigshieldsPosted on November 7, 2011 Posted in Renewables - Politics

It’s the birthday of the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, whose murder in 1940 I believe to be one of the most significant events in recent human history. Where Stalin was a vicious thug, Trotsky was an intellectual. Who knows what would have happened had the budding Communist Party been run with a kind of enlightenment, vs. the cruel and systematic oppression that eventually brought its demise?

Trotsky said, “Learning carries within itself certain dangers,” which, coincidentally, is a remark I echo near the end of my current book:

So should I “put a period” on this, walk away, and go enjoy the days I have left on this planet as it chokes, starves, and bombs itself to death? Even if I found that tempting, it’s not an option, since, now that I know the truth, I’ve fallen into the grasp of Emerson’s great adage: “You can have truth or repose, but you cannot have both.”

KPMG Energy Report Is Positively Orwellian

craigshieldsPosted on November 7, 2011 Posted in Nuclear

Only a few people, a dozen or so at most, have English language adjectives derived from their names them that are in common parlance: Jeffersonian (often modifying “democracy”), Keynsian (economics), Dickensian (England), etc. While I haven’t done a study on the subject, I would say that the term “Orwellian” is about as common a term formed like this as you’ll find, usually used to describe the self-contradictory (more…)

Tagged with: alternative energy, clean energy, George Orwell, green energy, KPMG energy report, Orwellian, Renewable Energy, Wind Energy, wind power, wind turbines

Arundo Donax – One of the Diverse Feedstocks Used To Create Biofuels

craigshieldsPosted on November 7, 2011 Posted in Biomass

A reader wrote in with a question about his plans to get in the ethanol business, using a certain feedstock in which he’s an expert. Indeed, one of the most interesting things about biofuels is the enormous diversity of feedstocks.

The plant pictured here, Arundo donax, a type of cane that is highly prized for its growth rate, and the diversity of soils and climates in which it grows. But the energy density of all terrestrial plants is at least 30 times less than algae, which is the main reason for the interest in the latter.

Tagged with: alternative energy, Arundo Donax, biofuels, clean energy, ethanol, feedstock, green energy, Renewable Energy

What the Great Patriots of History Would Say About Our Energy Policy

craigshieldsPosted on November 6, 2011 Posted in Renewables - Politics

It’s the birthday of John Philip Sousa, the “March King,” born in 1854. Best known for his patriotic music, the U.S. Marine Corps Hymn “Semper Fidelis,” and of course “Stars and Stripes Forever.” Sousa loved a rousing live performance, and generally reviled the phonograph, as he believed that it would result in people’s singing less. In fact, in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, Sousa performed at Willowgrove Park, a wonderful old amusement park that meant a great deal to me as a boy growing up in the Philadelphia suburbs. (Now, of course, it’s a shopping mall.)

I often wonder what the great patriots of history would say about what and whom we’ve become. Of course, I tend to look at the question through the lens of energy. Thus I ponder what Sousa might think about our de facto energy policy, blithely borrowing an incremental billion dollars a day and sending it offshore to buy another ten million or so barrels of oil, empowering our sworn enemies, and ruining our environment.

If Sousa had trouble with the phonograph, I can’t imagine he’d look on this self-destructive energy policy too kindly.

Tagged with: alternative energy, clean energy, energy policy, great patriots of history, green energy, patriotism, Renewable Energy, U.S. energy policy

The ROI on Solar Thermal – aka Concentrated Solar Power

craigshieldsPosted on November 5, 2011 Posted in Solar Thermal

I wrote recently that it’s impossible to predict the ROI associated with solar thermal (aka concentrated solar power or CSP).

What I was referring to was utility-scale CSP. Personally, I think the future will hold significant reductions in costs and improvements in effectiveness, making this technology quite workable at the multi-megawatt scale. It’s certainly not there now, but we need to keep in mind that it’s a fairly new technology, whose R&D lags PV and wind by several decades.

So what’s the ROI? (more…)

Tagged with: alternative energy, clean energy, concentrated solar power, CSP, green energy, Renewable Energy, ROI on solar thermal, solar energy, solar panels, solar power, Wind Energy, wind power, wind turbines

Will Investors Embrace Clean Energy and Help America Regain Her Strength?

craigshieldsPosted on November 5, 2011 Posted in Renewables - Business

I want to call readers’ attention to the post a few minutes ago by guest-blogger Don Harmon, who I think has nailed the issue.

It seems to me that this is the time for private investors, banks, and Wall Street to join in to make America once again a world leader in the Renewable Energy markets. Or, sit back and watch us all be downgraded to a third world country.

I’m sad to report that I hear this kind of thing all the time. One of my clients in New York who has a breakthrough in waste-wood pelletization doesn’t even attempt to push this technology in the U.S. “I’m through squandering (more…)

Tagged with: alternative energy, America regain strength, clean energy, green energy, investors, Renewable Energy

From Guest Blogger Don Harmon: How Do We Right the Ship on U.S. Renewable Energy Companies?

craigshieldsPosted on November 5, 2011 Posted in Renewables - Business

Here we go again!

Another major Solar Power company here posts record losses: http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20111103-727087.html

This comes on top of the Solyndra fiasco, and the news of Ener1’s bankruptcy and also Beacon Power! What is going on here in the U.S. with the renewable energy sector? How many more ventures will fail in the next year? Can anyone blame private investors for not wanting to invest in this market sector? What will it take to bring investors to the table in our own Country to build a stake in our renewable’s future? (more…)

Tagged with: alternative energy, clean energy, green energy, Renewable Energy, solar energy, solar panels, solar power, U.S. renewable energy companies

Old-time Republicans Made Real Commitments to the Environment

craigshieldsPosted on November 5, 2011 Posted in Renewables - Politics

Those of us who can’t wrap our wits around the Republican party’s indifference (some might substitute “antagonism”) to the environment need to remember that the GOP didn’t always take this stance. This post on Mother Nature Network documents 10 Republicans in the days of yore who made real commitments to environmental regulation and preservation.

How did we get here from there? What motivates Lindsay Graham and the other senate Republicans in their quest to dismantle the EPA and reverse half a century of progress in this space? I sure hope someone can help me understand that. Hey! Does the fact that the oil industry maintains the largest lobby in the known universe have anything to do with this? Hmmmm.

Tagged with: alternative energy, clean energy, environment, environmentalism, EPA, green energy, old-time Republican, Renewable Energy, Senate Republicans

Our Fantastically Poor Energy Policy Means an Unsustainable Future

craigshieldsPosted on November 4, 2011 Posted in Sustainability

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbJYGg9VjiI]In this short video, I speak to my level of optimism about the outcome for our society, based on its fantastically poor energy policy. In brief, if there’s hope it lies in a) people understanding the subject well enough to advocate for good ideas and against bad ones, and b) people actually caring, and believing that they can make a difference. In the absence of those two factors, we’re sunk.

Tagged with: alternative energy, clean energy, energy policy, green energy, Renewable Energy, sustainability, unsustainable future

What’s the Return on Investment on Solar Thermal?

craigshieldsPosted on November 3, 2011 Posted in Solar Thermal

I just received this terse question from a reader: “What’s the ROI (return on investment) on solar thermal?”

I responded, hoping to prompt more discussion: “That’s an interesting but impossible question to answer. What is the nature of your interest in the subject, if I may ask?”

I post this brief conversation because it’s indicative of two much larger and incredibly important issues:

1) Computing the ROI for investors in new technologies like these is impossible, as no one can pick the winners from the losers at this point. Personally, I’m betting on solar thermal, and, though many agree, there are far greater minds than mine that don’t see it this way.

2) Not to get too flippant, but what’s the ROI on saving our civilization from destruction? According to Lester Brown, whom the Washington Post calls “one of the world’s most influential thinkers,”

Ice is melting so fast that even climate scientists are scrambling to keep up with the shrinkage of ice sheets and glaciers. The melting of the earth’s largest ice sheets—Greenland and West Antarctica—would raise sea level dramatically. If the Greenland ice sheet were to melt entirely, it would raise sea level 23 feet. Melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet, the most vulnerable portion of the Antarctic ice because of its exposure to both warming air and warming ocean water, would eventually raise sea level 16 feet. Many of the world’s coastal cities would be under water; over 600 million coastal dwellers would be forced to move.

Solar thermal holds the single greatest promise of clean, abundant, inexpensive energy — in the absence of which mankind will be unable to make its way across these next critical 50 years.

I’m sure this latter point was not contemplated in the reader’s question, but some folks may find it worth considering.

Tagged with: alternative energy, clean energy, concentrating solar power, green energy, Renewable Energy, return on investment on solar thermal, solar energy, solar panels, solar power, Solar Thermal