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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

As I’ve mentioned, I’m in New York City for the Renewable Energy Finance Forum.  The buzz of the first day here, which comes as no surprise, is the uncertainty that pervades the industry.  Though the world market for clean energy is growing at an impressive pace, in the US, the industry is at sea, due to the lack of clear direction from our elected leaders.

Falling costs for clean energy projects: good.  Global reaction to Fukushima and the 100+ GW gap produced by reduction in nuclear: excellent (mitigated by the sorrow we all feel for those affected). Limited EPA regulation of natural gas fracking: bad.  Republicans actively pushing away from clean energy in favor of Big Energy: even worse.

My morning conversations bore out that uncertainty, including one over breakfast with a high-powered but clearly stressed developer of utility scale (10—or-so MW) solar projects.  In response to my well-meaning but non-specific greeting: “How’s it going?” I got an avalanche that communicated the pressure on this poor guy.  “How am I ?  It depends on the status of SRECs (solar renewable energy credits), that’s how I am.”

Yikes.  Easy on the caffeine, my friend.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

Just settled into my hotel room here in Manhattan, in time to get a good night’s sleep in preparation for the two-day Renewable Energy Finance Forum at the Waldorf Astoria.  These guys do it right.  A great line-up of speakers, and many hundreds of like-minded attendees I’m looking forward to meeting.  More on this tomorrow. 

I’m in town for a great number of meetings in addition to The Forum.  If you’re in the area and would like to meet, please hit “contact” and let me know.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

Click “CONTACT” for more information.

    • Category
  • Electric Vehicles
  • Wind
  • Biomass
  • Solar
  • Sustainable Business Products
  • Sustainable Agriculture
  • Solar Thermal
  • Synthetic fuels
    • Summary
  • 1. Clever design on high-quality light-duty pick-up trucks, to be built in US; MSRP under $25,000. Click for Video
  • 2. Unique e-bike design with dozens of enthusiastic dealers already in place. Click for Video
  • 3. Breakthrough technology in vertical-axis medium-size wind turbines (100kW – 1mW)
  • 4. Wind farm in the southern US, will implement compressed air energy storage using top-flight engineering team. Terrific technology; perfect application. Click for Video
  • 5. Proven, low-cost modular technology for processing manure of chickens, turkeys, pigs, and cows into biofuels and
    electricity
  • 6. Pyrolysis of guaranteed stream of feedstock (waste auto/truck tires) to produce carbon black and biodiesel. World-class technology, proven team. Click for Video
  • 7. Plan to grow and pelletize babassu in northeastern Brazil with solid feedstock and take-off deals in place
  • 8. Plan to acquire and operate an existing B-100 biodiesel production facility, upgrading the plant and converting to crude corn oil from ethanol production (CCOE) feedstock
  • 9. Unique, patented approach to thermal anaerobic gasification. Click for Video
  • 10. Construction and demolition waste processing plant, using feedstock currently paying a tipping fee of $75+/ton
  • 11. Solar panel manufacturer with proprietary, super-efficient manufacturing process
  • 12. Paper (for copiers, notepads, letterhead, etc.) made from sugar-cane waste, with manufacturing processes 100% driven by renewable energy (wind). Click for Video
  • 13. Patented, modular LED lighting technology
  • 14. Proprietary technology for processing coal ash into building products: shingles, fence boards, etc.
  • 15. Contracted land/resources to grow 356 truckloads of organic tomatoes annually (approx. 12 million lbs) cost-effectively; contracts with buyers in place as well.
  • 16. Land management system/tool, building topsoil, controlling erosion, drought, and flooding
  • 17. Two small CSP plants in the western US, implementing a breakthrough in cost reduction. Attractive IRR. PPAs in place.
  • 18. Breakthrough in use off-peak wind energy to recycle waste CO2 into transportation fuels. Click for Video
    • Requirements
  • $12 million

 

  • $2 million

 

  • $20 million
  • $25 million
  • $2-$3 million
    per module

 

  • $30 million
  • EU 17 million
  • $8 million

 

  • $39 million
  • $35 million
  • $5 million
  • $2 million
  • $3 million
  • $5 million

 

  • $10 million
    ($6 to start)
  • Less than $1million
  • $15 million
  • $40 million

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

 As time goes by and I conduct more conversations in environmentalism and sustainability with people all over the world, I become more aware of the proliferation of wasteful garbage that we truly can live without. Here’s one I came across yesterday at a local winery. 

Want to keep wine safe and leak-free? I submit that this can be done without this plastic non-reusable planet-buster – and you’ll be $10 richer for having simply re-corked your wine and wrapped it in a towel.

Btw, Happy Fathers’ Day, everyone.  Here’s a pic of my kids.  I was going to use it as a Christmas card, but I didn’t get enough light on Val’s face. 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

I hope I can count on you to participate in June’s poll, which centers around the following:

Given the world’s rapid growth in both population and fossil fuel resource consumption, how optimistic are you for a sustainable future? And why? If you see a solution on the horizon, which direction are you looking?

As always, I’ll publish a free report in the next few weeks, in which I present an analysis of the results. The Survey Is Here. Thanks very much.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

I just returned from a fund-raiser hosted by dear friends Jez and Lynzie Blacker, who work tirelessly to improve the lives of the poorest of the poor – a great deal of their recent work in Haiti. Characteristically, they’ve been working their tails off over the last few months in an effort to raise money through their charity organization “U2U” to build a new hospital on the Haitian island of La Gonave, an overpopulated, drought-ridden place with horrifyingly few medical resources (one small, primitive hospital with 33 beds for a population of 160,000). Cholera is epidemic, and precious little is being done to stop the toll it’s taking, which is greatest among the children.

If you’d like to contribute, I can promise you that nowhere will you find an institution in which a larger percentage of your donations will go directly to providing help to those who need it most. More at U2Uworld.com.

On the renewable energy front, I met some people at the event from Zimbabwe who asked me if I wanted to get involved with U2U in a greater way than sipping wine and bidding on items in a silent auction. I explained that the main contribution I hope to make to the third world will come with the electrification of places that have never had it before – and that it will take the form of clean energy.

One could say that it’s a blessing in disguise that these nations don’t have tons of oil refineries and coal-fired power plants. We can try to provide for these places a kind of leapfrog effect, going directly to renewables – in much the same way that developing countries never had to incur the expense of building terrestrial telephone lines, and skipped directly into cellular telephony.

We’ll see what happens. But again, here’s that link to U2U.

by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Here’s an article that deals with a fundamental issue in sustainability: Can we innovate our way out of the mess we’ve created? Does the promise of abundant and inexpensive clean energy somewhere down the line – even if that promise comes true – allow us to continue consuming energy and other planetary resources at the same rapacious rate to which we Westerners feel entitled? The answer may surprise you.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

Here’s an article that describes “green jobs as the new job killer in America.” The logic is summarized in this piece of journalistic drivel:

When large utility companies implement systems like smart meters, meter readers have nothing to do, no job, no need for their skill. The job of 100 meter readers can be handled by one guy – the one who presses restart with a computer mouse. So what do we do with the other 99 workers? The smart grid could be the dumbest thing to do – if you are a member of a trade union in the utility industry.

Holy cow.  I’m always amazed when I see this type of stupidity parading as reporting. We’re supposed to keep people doing jobs that technology has made obsolete? And that will keep America competitive?

In the 19th Century, people made paperclips by hand, one at a time, with a pair of pliers. I guess one could argue that this business model shouldn’t have been scuttled when that manufacturing process was automated, and that we’d still have those jobs — except for the minor detail that they’d pay (according to my calculations) in the neighborhood of $0.000012 per hour.

The introduction of technology – in any century – makes certain jobs obsolete while it opens the door to others. If the author had no ax to grind in writing this article; if she (“Charlene on Green”) had spent 15 minutes researching the type and number of new jobs created in replacing 20th Century energy and transportation with 21st Century stuff, I have to think this could have been a more fair-minded and less idiotic piece.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

The Association of Energy Engineers (AEE), which is an association of more than 14,000 members, recently issued a survey to its members regarding Green Jobs. The Center for American Progress indicated in a March 2010 report that by 2020, clean energy should be one of the world’s biggest industries, at perhaps $2.3 trillion.  The AEE wanted to hear (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Frequent commenter Cameron Atwood writes:

What really astonishes me is when people who claim to support a free market solution then complain about subsidies to truly clean and sustainable renewable energy, but fail to even mention the sturdy government crutches used by both the undead nuke plants and the muscular and well-heeled (but doomed) oil firms.

Yes, this amazes me too.  The anti-socialists support the taxpayers shelling out tens of billions of dollars annually to support private enterprise (socialism). And it’s BAD socialism (supporting a public hazard, vs. a public good).

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