I spent a few happy hours walking around the wind power show here in Anaheim yesterday, put on by the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA). Whenever I go to the major wind and solar trade shows, I’m struck with a number of observations:
Scope: I find myself in a convention center where thousands of exhibitors sprawl over half a million square feet, but I realize that this very show, if it were held 10 years ago, could have fit neatly in my living room.
Geographic Diversity: Though everyone speaks some level of English, it’s certainly not the first language for a great number of exhibitors. Those without a working command of German and Mandarin are unable to take part in some of the richest conversations.
Business Diversity: Many hundreds of different business disciplines are represented – some with only tangential relevance to the subject at hand. Sure, there are tons of people with variations of the wind turbine theme: different sizes and materials, some with gears, some (more all the time) with direct drive, and unique approaches to efficiency, noise reduction, safety, reliability, etc. But in addition to the folks with the actual turbines, I met people whose products and services are not at all unique to the wind power industry: folks who protect people from falling off things, forge large (100-pound) bolts, lift stuff with winches, do the windings in generators, sell wrenches the size of golf clubs, and provide tape to repair the leading edge of the blades as they become damaged from sand, hail, and even rain over the years of constant operation.
It’s Bob Dylan’s 70th birthday, and I’d like to mention that I’ve been a fan for more than 40 of those years.
On the way to a meeting with a 2GreenEnergy client this morning, I was listening to an interview with one of Dylan’s notable biographers, who, with the host, got into their favorite, most meaningful lyrics from his more-than-500 songs.
I was tempted to do the same here in this post — and trust me, I could make a considerable set of suggestions. But I’ll simply point out that poet Allen Ginsberg literally cried when he laid eyes on the lyrics to “It’s a Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall,” shortly before the song was released in the mid-1960s, noting how Dylan had carried Ginsberg’s insights (and those of his contemporaries — the beat poets) along to a new generation who, he hoped, would share his concerns as to where we’re going as a civilization.
Though I’m sure some readers aren’t Dylan fans, I’d like to think we all share his concern for the survival of our species. In fact, I can’t image a reason that too many folks out there follow this blog other than an abiding belief that we need to work our way forward to a fairer and more sustainable society.
If you don’t feel like listening to Dylan sing (and didn’t click on the link above) here’s the last verse of “It’s a Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall.”
And what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son ? And what’ll you do now my darling young one ? I’m a-goin’ back out ‘fore the rain starts a-fallin’ I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest Where the people are a many and their hands are all empty Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten Where black is the color, where none is the number And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’ But I’ll know my songs well before I start singin’ And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.
Are there any of us who think that our current approach to energy, or so many of our other major pursuits here on planet Earth, are sustainable? Don’t essentially all of us think a hard rain’s gonna fall?
As we approach the two-year mark since the inception of 2GreenEnergy, I want to thank the thousands of you who have added comments and occasional posts; we couldn’t have grown at this pace without you. And thanks to the rest, simply for being here.
When I hired Aedan Kernan of Norwich, England to do a writing project for me a year or so back, I knew I’d get a great result – but I was pleasantly surprised when I made a friend as well. Aedan is a terrific human being, and next time I’m in the UK, a trip out to see him and his wife will most definitely be a part of my travel plans.
Price and costs seems to be holding back a majority from sustainable choices. “One trip to the grocery store and you would see that green products can have as much as a 100% price premium. It’s as if we are penalizing virtuous behaviors with a defector sustainability tax,” says Graceann Bennet, co-author of the report and Director of Strategic Planning. This same thought process applies to many green products like solar panels and other sustainable products. (more…)
I’ll be headed into downtown Santa Barbara tomorrow to continue my participation in a series of meetings leading up to this year’s Clean Business Investment Summit. Here, this August 12th, socially responsible entrepreneurs with emerging-growth clean business start-ups and later-stage clean business companies with fifth-year projected revenues exceeding $20 million seeking venture capital funding will meet with potential investors.
I’m a new-comer to the team, and tend to speak only when spoken to – the way children (about a million years ago) were taught to behave.
A new study by OgilvyEarth reveals that while 82% of Americans have good intentions towards being green, only 16% are really dedicated to the intentions. The study is entitled “Mainstream Green: Moving Sustainability from Niche to Normal” by Graceann Bennett and Freya Williams, sponsored by Ogilvy & Mather.
The authors make the case that while some people get the importance of sustainable living, it won’t matter unless the masses truly buy in. There are a number of barriers, small and large, psychological and economic, to these barriers. The report lays out the barriers and then offers solutions to breaking them down.
Most of the green dialogue and marketing for green sustainable living has been focused on the dedicated “super greens” on
I’m one of these people who’s always interested in product placement – you know, that Coors Light that the handsome and likeable guy in the movie you’re watching just happens to be sipping, or the United Airlines jumbo jet that brings his sweetheart back home to him. Advertisers pay substantial fees to have their products featured in various places – especially where viewers will subconsciously regard them as cool and appealing. The trick, of course, is to make the placement appear natural and uncontrived.
So I was amused by an article in this month’s Westways (American Automobile Association) magazine on electric vehicles, by journeyman auto writer Peter Bohr, featuring a graphic that depicts a number of EVs parachuting into our world. The biggest? Coda, of course. Not Tesla, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Peugeot, Smith, BYD, Renault, or Chevy (who actually sell and deliver EVs). No, it’s Coda, a company whose revolving door in the executive suite, track record of delays and dashed expectations, and juggling of business strategies has rendered it a farce, rather than a force, in the EV world.
It’s hard to believe that a journalist of Bohr’s caliber doesn’t know this. So I’m assuming that we have a case of product placement here – though again, I could caution Westways: guys, you gotta make it credible.
I just finished Michio Kaku’s 2008 book Physics of the Impossible, which left me with a renewed admiration and respect for this great mind and true master-communicator of popular science. So warm and inviting is the language and its presentation that the reader doesn’t at all feel condescended to at the hands of the considerable “dumbing down” he’s receiving on subjects like string theory, quantum mechanics, special relativity, particle physics, etc.
The central concept of the book is excellent: the word “impossible” is relative, and thus needs to be applied very carefully. The history of science consists of thousands of years of man deeming certain ideas impossible — only to have many of them fully developed and operational a decade or so later. And there are so many doozies in recent memory, e.g., the declarations in the late 19th Century that heavier-than-air flight was impossible and that all the great discoveries in the field of physics had already been made.
So Kaku cleverly breaks the world of the “impossible” down into grades: Class I, II, and III impossibilities. Class I means “impossible now, but conceivable in the next 100 years,” as compared to Class III at the other end of the spectrum, which means “this violates the current and all possible future laws of physics.”
I was interested that Kaku views ideas that are not in accord with the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics (which render perpetual motion unattainable) as Class III impossibilities. I.e., he thinks we’re more likely to travel in time or bend spoons with our minds than we are to build a machine that doesn’t consume energy.
I have to admit that I beamed with delight when Kaku discussed his experiences on this subject. He tells us that he has a stream of seemingly intelligent people in his life who bring him perpetual motion machines and ask him to check them out to verify that investors may be wise to back them.
Though I have about one-millionth the exposure to the people and concepts of physics as Kaku (not to mention the level of comprehension), I run into this kind of thing constantly. Just last week I had a discussion with an “inventor” of such a device who asked me to travel to New York to examine it, to whom I wrote:
I read your analysis, but it doesn’t show what you’re claiming it does. The energy lost in resistance will always be greater than the energy gained in regeneration. And there is no need for me — or anyone else — to see it physically to know that; it’s a condition imposed by the second law of thermodynamics, of which there has never been a valid counter-example.
I’ve seen dozens of attempts to prove that someone has worked around this, and they’ve all been bogus. In fact, I get assertions like this at the rate of at least one per week. Some of them (and I’m not suggesting yours in one) are bald-faced attempts at fraud; I ran into a guy out here in California trying to raise money from credulous investors to build a prototype of something that was theoretically impossible — and I believe he clearly understood that. He’s now under criminal investigation.
The relevance to all of us trying to develop clean energy solutions is clear: there is no free lunch. Having said that, there are many flavors of renewable energy whose efficiencies are improving steadily — as their costs are coming down. Depending on how you measure it, we’re only a few years away from “grid parity” — the point at which an incremental megawatt of energy from solar will be the same as that of a coal-fired power plant.
In any case, I hope readers will check out Kaku’s terrific book. It carries with it the master’s typical charisma, along with his characteristic sense of both humor and humility. It’s fast-moving and extremely well done — from its dramatic opening until its poignant closing remarks. Most important, it’s comprehensive in its dealings with dozens of things that curious people want to explore in addition to how we power our planet: UFOs, teleportation, time-travel, ESP, wormholes, parallel universes, the building blocks of the universe and its ultimate fate. Trust me: you won’t be disappointed.
Dr. Marie Corio, CEO of Applied Economic Research, was good enough to be my guest on this week’s Clean Energy Radio show.
Marie never fails to impress the heck out of me. Here’s a professional at the very apex of her field in terms of the analysis of coal-fired power plants, whose command of metallurgy, thermodynamics, chemistry, and several other related disciplines is hard to match – yet is able to present all this at a truly appropriate level for a non-technical audience. But isn’t that the mark of a true pro? They make it look easy.
Another aspect of Dr. Corio’s approach that I like is her stalwart pragmatism. “I’m not an advocate for coal,” she said, “But I am an advocate for keeping the economy from falling back into recession. Abruptly cutting off coal would cause a huge spike in electricity prices that would drive many businesses under. I think that concern has to trump our other worries.”
I’m reminded of Stephen Lacey, formerly the top industry analyst at Renewable Energy World (now at Climate Progress) who refers to himself with the following terse description: “I’m an energy pragmatist.”
This makes a lot of sense to me, and I try to follow along with the positions that I take myself. In fact, it’s a refreshing break from the doctrinaire narrow-mindedness that we come across so often on both sides: both the rabid environmentalists who fail to grasp the full consequences of what they’re espousing, and some of the rightwing extremists who don’t perceive any responsibility on our part to regulate business as necessary to take care of the only home we have.
Thanks again to Dr. Corio; I’ll post a link to the show as soon as it’s available.
On April 7th, General Electric (GE) announced it was purchasing PrimeStar Solar Inc., a thin-film solar panel manufacturer based in Colorado. GE also announced that it would build the nation’s largest solar panel manufacturing plant.
The thin-film products developed by PrimeStar Solar are apparently among the most efficient of all cadmium telluride (“cad tel”) on the market. The National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) verified the record-breaking efficiency, finding a 12.8% aperture (more…)
On April 7th, General Electric (GE) announced it was purchasing PrimeStar Solar Inc., a thin-film solar panel manufacturer based in Colorado. GE also announced that it would build the nation’s largest solar panel manufacturing plant.
