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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

We certainly see a great deal of the old “David and Goliath” metaphor in our conversations in this industry – especially in electric transportation. Though a number of EV start-ups have gone belly-up over the past few years, there are still many such Davids, feverishly ramping up to take on the Goliaths of Nissan, GM, and the other traditional automakers.

Bob Lutz, former co-chairman of GM, said on CBS’s 60 Minutes about a year ago that only experienced carmakers have the background to deliver electric vehicles. Horse hockey.  That’s self-serving garbage, and he knows it. Obviously they have an advantage – especially since they’re approaching the problem with $85 billion of your (taxpayers’) money. But we’re about to see exactly what a whole slew of nimble companies with good ideas and cutting-edge technology can do, in competition against the stodgy behemoths.

I know I’m not alone in wishing that this weren’t the worst period in history for capital formation since the Great Depression. But even in their hamstrung condition, we’re about to enter some exciting times in the electric vehicle market. In addition to Tesla – a company that garners an astonishing amount of ink each week, we have Phoenix Motorcars, Coda, BYD, Fisker, and many others right behind them.

I’m wondering what effect this new, competitive environment – and a true paradigm shift in driving – will have on the GM IPO. What’s investors’ forecast for a company like GM, selling into an auto consumer base that doesn’t think or act like the baby boomer generation? Where will the modern car-buyer go who wants a high-quality automobile that doesn’t make him a slave to the oil companies? I guess we’ll see shortly – but I see another rock to the head coming for Goliath.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

Dr. Bob Goldschmidt writes:

We are only fooling ourselves if we think electric cars won’t be charged during peak usage hours.

Bob: I’m interested to hear you say that. Why do you believe this? Even the people who don’t care about the environment are quite protective of their checking accounts. If offered a huge discount for off-peak charging, won’t almost everyone take it?

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

I like to post articles on Renewable Energy World, as they have pretty decent traffic among people interested in a wide range of clean energy topics.  Today, I commented on Stephen Lacey’s piece Is the Transmission ‘Problem’ Real? in which I indicated that he’s correct: to some degree, the argument that the grid needs to be upgraded in order to accommodate more clean energy is specious.

I go on to mention that I’m more interested in renewables on a national or continental scale. And, while I’m aware that Bill McKibben and thousands of other smart people see a future dominated by individual energy farmers, each, putting his unused electrons back onto the grid, I question whether this adequately addresses the matter of scale. With our growing population of energy-hungry consumers, utility-scale renewables appears to me to be the only way to get this done.

And this is where transmission really is an issue.  As we know, renewable resources are localized: the sun shines hottest in the southwestern deserts, the wind blows hardest in the plains, the mountains have the best geothermal resources, etc.  A significant upgrade to the grid — preferably to high-voltage DC — is required to make this happen.

Yet, as usual, the difficulty here is almost exclusively political. In particular, we’re being told that, for legal reasons, we can’t have a national high-voltage grid. And unfortunately, the US Supreme Court didn’t help the cause in its recent ruling, either.

I really don’t understand the problem.  We have national pathways for the transportation of automobiles, railway cars, natural gas, etc.  Can someone provide a reason — other than sleezy politics — that we can’t use our crystal clean eminent domain laws to get this done? There should be nothing new or scary about this.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Thirty-six industry and environmental groups signed and sent an urgent letter to the Senate, urging opposition to any amendment in the upcoming Energy Bill that would increase ethanol in gasoline. Some are apparently seeking approval in Congress to increase ethanol in gasoline from the current 10% up to 15%. The press  release pointed out that NPRA (National Petrochemical & Refiners Association) was among the signatories against such a move.

If ethanol is increased, fears include increasing emissions from engines using ethanol, hurting gasoline-powered engines, defeating emissions control devices and safety risks. The group cites Section (more…)

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Solar Thermal

I just got off the phone with an extremely professional company in Portugal with which 2GreenEnergy will be partnering to deliver renewables consulting and EPC (Engineering, Procurement and Construction) projects for our clients.

You’ll travel a long way to find a group of people with a deeper background in the guts of what makes large projects – especially CSP (concentrating solar power) work. Coincidentally, my main contact, Agostinho Miguel Garcia, knows David Mills, co-founder and chief scientist at Ausra – whom I interviewed for my book’s chapter on the subject. Check them out here.

I always expect the Portuguese to speak a number of languages, but this guy exceeded my expectations there too – a total of six including Mandarin. Holy smokes.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

I’m trying to get some “big ideas” for my next book on renewables.  The one I favor at this point is a take-off on the first book’s “tough realities” theme:

What, pragmatically, are we facing – technologically, economically, and politically — in terms of the migration to renewables?

I like to investigate the themes that I myself most want to learn about – in the belief that my own way of thinking is a reasonable proxy for others. To that end, I propose to explore ideas like:

  • Socially, how to you make this happen? I.e., How does one motivate people to deal with the financial pain of the front-loaded costs of renewables? In particular, how do we accomplish this in the real world of politics and public relations in which we live?
  • To what degree is efficiency important? What is the import of the fact that Europeans about one-half the amount of power per capita as Americans?  But again, how to do get people to deal with a certain amount of sacrafice?
  • I deliver consulting services to companies that take ecologically dangerous substances (e.g., chicken manure and coal ash) and turn it into clean and useful products (e.g., energy and building products, respectively) that have had a tough time selling their wares, since historically there has been no legal imperative for anyone to adopt new, cleaner business practices. How is that likely to change in the coming years, as the world sees an increasing need to protect itself from the lethal effects of pollution?  How will that change affect my clients’ business viability?
  • To what degree does society need to create millions of decentralized and localized “utilities” in the form of consumers with their own PV arrays, wind turbines, etc? Can this help us avoid making the same mistake we made last time in creating huge energy companies and centralized utilities?
  • Is there a way to do any of this without a significant increase in the price of fossil-fuel-based energy?  If not, as I currently suspect, how should that price increase come about?
  • What are the most likely scenarios for the increasing costs (economic, social, military) of our current course re: fossil fuels?
  • In turn, what are the most likely trajectories for the migration to clean energy, considering the growth in energy-hungry segments of the world’s population?
  • Will there be a gap, as some suggest, where the energy required to build and deploy renewables in a timely fashion is simply unavailable? What then?
  • And speaking of gaps, why is there such a huge chasm between most serious scientists and economists – and those who believe that “business as usual” is a reasonable course for mankind to pursue?

Please let me know what you think here.  Thanks.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

In my estimation, Scott Adams (of “Dilbert” fame) is one of the brightest people living among us. His sardonic observations on the realities of the workplace have amused – and, I dare say, enlightened — people for many decades.

For anyone who missed his piece on building a “green” house in this weekend’s weekend Wall Street Journal, I’ve linked it above. Of course, the only reason it wound up in the WJS is the fact that, to some degree, it lampoons those of us who care about the quality of the world we’re leaving to future generations. But true to form, Adams’ article gets so many things right – and provides so many chuckles – that that it’s more that worth your time.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Hydrokinetics

The Vector has written about Ocean Energy in earlier posts. Today we highlight some exciting domestic projects.

** The first U.S. Wave Energy farm launched a test program this spring in Oregon. Ocean Power Technologies (OPT) is running the test program, with floating buoys that harness the natural up and down movement of the waves. The ebb and flow movement causes the pump to move in a circular motion which drives an electric generator, with energy sent to shore through submerged cables. This farm is being financed by Oregon tax credits, Pacific Northwest Generating Cooperative and the U.S. Department of Energy.

** Verdant Power initiated the Roosevelt Island Tidal Energy (RITE) Project in New York City’s East River. It is a three phase project. Phase 1 (2002-2006) was proto-type testing, and Phase 2 (2006-2008) was demonstration. Currently it is in Phase 3 (2009-2012) with the MW Scale build out. Verdant operated six full-scale turbines, which successfully demonstrated the Free Flow System turbines as being (more…)

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

Here’s a discussion that those of you interested in marketing will find interesting. My friend Terry Ribb wrote to me extolling this video in which a brilliant Stanford Professor speaks on customer-focused marketing (which happens to be exactly what Terry and I believe). Do yourself a favor and check out this link.

I wrote back: Well, obviously this guy thinks like we do, with his customer-centricity. And he presents his ideas in a very cogent fashion, doesn’t he? I’ve heard this exact idea a few times through my career — though most people don’t get it at all. I feel like I’m a member of a cult – the cult of customer-centered marketing. 🙂

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

REN21 (Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century) has released its annual global report card on renewable energy, covering highlights and facts for 2009 and a cumulative overview.  The report comments that renewables are making headway into global energy use, cutting into some fossil fuel use, as illustrated by the graphic to the right.

The big theme of the report was that “the year 2009 was unprecedented in the history of renewable energy, despite the headwinds posed by the global financial crisis, lower oil prices and slow progress with climate policy. Indeed, as other economic sectors declined around the world, existing renewable capacity continued to grow…including grid-connected solar PV (53%), wind power (32%), solar hot water/heating (21%), geothermal power (4%) and hydropower (3%).”
(more…)

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