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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Photovoltaics

Traipsing around the Solar Power International show just now, I was struck by the overwhelming scale of the event itself. I was one of a swarm of people – tens of thousands of them from countries all over the world — rambling over two gigantic halls hosting acres of displays.

Accompanying that impression of enormous scope is the feeling that this industry is here to stay, communicated by how many older and established industries have formed strong interconnections. In addition to the dozens of PV and CSP systems (different technologies, configurations, materials, etc.), we have:

Components (uncountable numbers of connectors and subsystems)

Testing and certification (Companies that test everything from bulldozers to Band-Aids now have business practices that specialize in the safety and efficacy of solar.)

Robotics (Machine tools that make cars and printed circuit boards now arrange PV cells into panels.)

Supply chain management. (SAP had its own booth, demo’ing its enterprise resource planning software developed specifically for the solar industry.)

Financing (equity capital, debt, tax, project financing)

State and local government (each extolling the virtues of their region of the world)

Media (online, print magazines, and events)

I’m thrilled to see a trade show of that scope – one which, if it had been held 10 years ago, would have fit nicely in my living room.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

I’m constantly amazed at how talented people are nowadays. Take the two folks who duked it out on this debate on California’s Prop 23 this morning on KPCC (Pasadena, CA) — both of whom did a terrific job of articulating their positions. 

Of course, as a renewable energy advocate and a fan of living things, I have to admit that I was rooting for the No position, but that woman on the Yes side handled herself pretty darn well — in the face of what many people would consider overwhelming rationale in favor of her opponent.  Not one but both gubernatorial candidates are against Prop 23, and 98% of the money funding the initiative comes from two Texas oil companies.  I’m glad they didn’t ask me to try to defend that one! 

If you have a few minutes, you may what to check it out.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

The motto of 2GreenEnergy is: “The Answer’s Always Yes.”  I.e., I don’t want to find myself in a position where I have to tell someone with a business in sustainability that I can’t help them due to my not having as associate in some particular business discipline.  Yet several people have noticed that I don’t (yet) have an associate practicing the types of law that would be most relevant to entrepreneurs in this space, e.g., intellectual property protection. 

I’ve been keeping my eyes open for a path to rectify this, and I think I’ve nailed it.  At the Renewable Energy Finance Forum a couple of weeks ago, I met a top-notch lawyer with a not-too-ridiculous billing rate from Santa Monica, and I’m trying to put together a working arrangement.  More soon.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business
Solar array

The Bell Group's New Mexico parking lot solar array was built by Schott, a local solar company

The Bell Group announced at the end of August that they have built the largest solary array in New Mexico at their company headquarters. The five-acre installation uses more than 5,000 solar modules and will generate in excess of 1,600,000 kWh of electricity annually. That is enough to meet 80 percent of the company’s electricity needs there. Bell’s solar arrays form a roof over what was previously an open parking lot, shading employee and visitor vehicles as well as providing power.

The Bell Group’s array will not be the largest in the state for very long. The Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) Health Care System in Albuquerque, New Mexico, announced it is installing a 3.2 MW photovoltaic system that will include a car port as well as roof-mounted arrays. (more…)

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

A guy called me yesterday hoping to meet me at the Solar Power International show and ask me about the industry.  I really don’t mind creating appointments to meet people; I have several lined up, as this is a major show — and right in my back yeard, too.  But I wanted to get a preview of what he wanted.

“Oh we plan events.  I want to know the most probably future for residential PV is — the precise adoption curve that the industry expects to see.  I just spoke with Stephen Lacey from Renewable Energy World.”

I laughed.  “I’ll be happy to talk with you.  But you’ve already gotten the scoop from the world’s foremost expert. Stephen is about half my age, but he knows 10 times more about industry details like this than I ever will. The young man is ‘nails’ – as I like to say.”

I’m not a walking encyclopedia, but I’ll be there as well.  If anyone wants to chat, please let me know.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

I’m having breakfast shortly with an inventor who claims to have perfected the hydrogen engine, optimizing the blend of gases that he adds to the hydrogen to maximize the energy output.  If this looks as solid as it sounds on paper, I have a very nice home for his idea, as my friends at the Ammonia Fuels Network has a huge appetite for all things hydrogen.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

Here’s a quick question for anyone aspiring to understand clean energy investors’ mentality.  Does capital formation usually favor:

a) certainty and confidence, or

b) the complete lack of clarity we find in Congress regarding an energy bill, a carbon tax, loan guarantees, and cash grants?   

If you picked “a,” you have what it takes to be a Wall Street wizard.

People write me constantly, expressing their bewilderment in investors’ lack of appetite for putting hard-earned cash into entrepreneurial efforts in the renewables space.  But given the impasse on energy policy in Washington and in most of our 50 states, is it really that surprising?

What’s the matter with simply making a decision to join the rest of the world and coming together with a decision to support clean energy?  What exactly is the worst that can happen if we put a tax on pollution and levelize the playing field for alternative energy?  Millions of new jobs?  A cleaner environment?  An end to the bleeding of $1 billion per day that we’re borrowing to buy oil from our enemies? 

Something to think about.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

In response to my recent piece on renewable energy politics, Ron Hill, very bright guy, writes some cogent stuff on his position as a climate change denier, and concludes:

The failure to insist on objective science is part of the problem with you folks who make your living in the “alternative” energy field. I do not make any money on either existing energy or alternative energy. Can you truthfully make the same statement?

The answer is no, I can’t.  And I agree that those who stand to profit from the world’s acceptance or rejection of global climate change (obviously) have an incentive to shade the data in their direction.  But, as I point on in my recent book on renewable energy: “What would you guess represents more money (and thus more incentive to bias one’s findings): the business of atmospheric research, or the business of selling of trillions of gallons of gasoline?”

I also point out that the vast majority of climate scientists who have studied global warming and published peer-reviewed papers on the subject support the theory.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

I always feel sorry for the people who live in swing states in presidential elections, as they are bombarded with messages around the clock for periods of several months leading up to November.  Of course, we all take the brunt of the chicanery and lies that goes into each one of the ads for state and local representatives and ballot iniatives, and, just like Christmas shopping season, it seems to start earlier ever year.

Campaign ads generally skirt the true issues and push voters’ buttons on emotionally sensitive areas that often have nothing to do with the subject at hand.  As an example, Prop 23 in California would destroy the progress that the state has made in the direction of clean energy, setting us back decades in our attempts to curtail emissions.  Yet the clever Yes on 23 people have taken the enormous funding that they’ve received from a couple of oil companies and have created a near dead-heat in the polls, convincing obliging voters that Prop 23 will result in jobs.  An attractive and apparently reasonable lady tells us (incessantly), “The economy should come first.  It’s just common sense.” 

No, it’s just heinous — that big money can manipulate millions of people into voting for a bill that so cleary benefits only one constituency: the oil companies who sponsored it.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

In 2009, for the second year in a row, both the US and Europe added more power capacity from renewable sources such as wind and solar than conventional sources like coal, gas and nuclear, according to reports by the United Nations Environment Programme and the Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century (REN21).

Renewables accounted for 60% of newly installed capacity in Europe and more than 50% in the USA in 2009. This year or next, the world as a whole is expected to add more capacity to the electricity supply from renewable than non-renewable sources.

(more…)

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