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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

My friend Cameron Atwood and I frequently discuss the underlying causes by which certain technologies are brought to market, where others never see the light of day. Here’s a small piece of a recent chat for anyone interested.

Cameron Atwood: Hey, Craig. Here is a link to YouTube videos featuring “free energy” inventions. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zu8LaVH-pn0.

Craig Shields: Thanks, but I’m deeply skeptical. It’s funny, I believe in certain conspiracy theories and not others.  Regarding “free energy,” I have lots of Ph.D. level friends in industry who share my rock-solid belief in the conservation of energy.  The world’s brightest minds have been trying to beat this law for centuries. The idea that some guy who also sells a Ginsu Knife or a Pocket Fisherman has made a breakthrough here doesn’t hold water with me.  The concept that this guy is a fraud seems a million times more likely.  

CA: Craig, do you know that there are studies that show hemp oil cures many types of cancer? The AMA isn’t beating a path to the fields to grow and process it — and neither are the pharma companies.

There are dozens of ulcer ‘treatments’ still being pushed on the market, even though bismuth salts (Pepto Bismol) kills the H. Pylori virus that is the main causative factor nearly all ulcers.

Carburation techniques and engine designs have been known for decades that would result in powerful vehicles running on the highways at 80 to 100 MPG, yet they don’t exist in this country because of the influence of Big Oil.

Los Angeles once had the best public transportation system in the world, and it was ripped out by competing interests including GM, Gulf and Firestone.

Cargill and ADM keep the government focused on corn ethanol when switchgrass and algae are proven superior – and as you’ve pointed out, solar-thermal is the very best form of entirely free energy just waiting to be harnessed.

In all these cases, We the People were and are quite effectively prevented, dissuaded, diverted from beating a path to the better choice.

I know there are millions of penny-ante charlatans out there hawking pie-in-the-sky, to-good-to-be-true solutions to all sorts of everyday challenges.

However, I also know that there are plenty of affluent and greedy bastards out there along with them who are constantly doing all they can to continue preventing, dissuading, diverting the public and concealing, bribing and destroying the best solutions to a wide array of life’s most troubling difficulties.

CS: If it doesn’t make them profit, the corporations are apt to suppresses it; I really don’t think there is no question about that.  But the world of venture capital is at least as anxious to make a profit as the execs in the corporate boardrooms. And then you have the world of angel investors, most of whom honestly care about the world around them — of which there are thousands all over the world.  Trust me, there are millions of people who would run 100 MPH towards clean, cheap energy.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

PhotobucketI happen to be looking through an issue of Car and Driver yesterday and noticed their discussion of the EPA’s struggle to measure and report MPG ratings for plug-in hybrids.  Apparently, there are people who fail to realize that this is a completely meaningless number. Those who never exceed the battery-only range never need gasoline, and thus experience an infinite number of miles per gallon. Those who never charge their cars experience whatever number is associated with the size and efficiency of the internal combustion engine as it operates their car, given its weight, wind resistance, etc. Of course, most people will experience a number in between – say between 100 and 1000.

But is that really helpful? Can’t we just note that this is metric that doesn’t apply? I had a friend in college who would ask, “How long is a piece of string?” and “Is it shorter to New York, or by car?” It seems to be that the people seriously pursuing MPG ratings for the Chevy Volt and the Fisker Karma are asking questions that have no more meaning than that.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

My blog at Renewable Energy World continues to garner some interesting discussion. In particular, we have an ongoing conversation about clean energy solutions at the individual (e.g., house rooftop) vs. the macro (utility) level.

As readers know, I favor aggressively implementing one or more renewables technology at the multi-gigawatt level on a regional basis, creating the financial incentive for this by removing the artificially low price associated with fossil fuels. The counter argument to this top-down approach, of course, is that it necessary involves corporate or governmental entities whose interests are not in sync with the health and safety of the common citizen.

Blogger Phil Manke articulates this nicely:

I appreciate your viewpoints, Craig, but why the favoring of concentrated solar thermal over the distributed variety? If individuals employed solar heating for water, space, and process heating over half of energy needs could be rechanneled and under personal control instead of paying utilities to produce and transport it, with attendant losses and profit structure.

It is grass roots and it works extremely well. This country is made up of people who want to control their own sources of wealth and energy. Like a farmer who grows their own food and food for others, solar farmers may well be the shortest route to energy independence instead of large corporate farmers that seem to be dominating the country and polluting it as well, and now you would advocate the same in the energy infrastructure also. Who do you really work for?

Good comments, Phil. I guess I’ve always favored the simplest approach to solving world problems. And, though I impute zero moral goodness to most corporations and government bureaucracies, it’s always struck me that providing energy to 7 billion people is a large-scale problem that needs a large-scale solution.

And here’s another way to look at it. I hate to sound cynical or condescending, but as I wrote the other day, most people really don’t care about this stuff. You and I and the readers of Renewable Energy World, 2GreenEnergy et. al. are simply not representative of the majority of the population. If we’re going to solve this problem, we cannot sit around hoping that masses of people wake up one morning and realize they need to rethink their energy-related lifestyles. I know how arrogant that sounds, but I’m afraid it’s true.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

I am new to the Blog section here so I will stick my toe in the water first with a short article about an event that happened this morning.  Mr. Obama in announcing his proposed government budget for the 2011 spending year will end some $36.5 billion in subsidies for oil and gas companies, saying it would help fight global warming.

I almost dropped my coffee when I heard him say this on CNN!  The changes would take effect on January 1, 2011, and save $36.5 billion over 10 years, according to the budget proposal.

Of course the Petroleum industry issued a statement immediately as follows:

“With America still recovering from recession and one in 10 Americans out of work, now is not the time to impose new taxes on the nation’s oil and natural gas industry,” said Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute.

“Imposing new taxes would reduce our nation’s energy security by discouraging new investment in domestic oil and natural gas production and refining capacity and pushing those investments — and American jobs — abroad,” he added.

Hogwash!  What is wrong with this statement above is there has NOT been a single new oil fefinery built in the USA in 25 years while this tax subsidy was in place and now that there is the threat of it being removed, BIG oil is saying there won’t be any new investment in oil refineries??

What they are really saying is that it is a different future we are talking about – not just changing how we get energy, but changing what we do with it. However, it means not only a radically different structure of the economy, but a change in who runs American industry. And this is what the Big Oil companies are fighting to the death. They want to keep the same people in charge who have driven things to crisis, because they are the people who they put in charge. The same bankers, industrialists, politicians, writers, lobbyists, and assorted other elites, who have wildly thrown away a generation on an orgy of consumption.

Today should be celebrated news for those of us who embrace the Electric Revolution and finally see some light at the end of the tunnel.  In future articles I will attempt to prove how Edison and Tesla were right, and how Ford and Standard Oil were wrong, and how the future of energy will shift away from the refining & burning of cheap Oil to the generation & storage of cheap Elecricity through renewable energy sources.

Until next time – celebrate today!

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Hey — some good news for a change! Progressive change in energy subsidies.

“Ask and ye shall receive,” as my father is fond of saying.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

PhotobucketI’ll never forget the first time I heard this expression — which is, of course, a rather crude way of asking if a certain product or service has appeal to one or more target market segments. I was sitting in a meeting with a few of my clients at IBM when someone asked me for my opinion on the subject.  I tried to conceal that I felt vaguely insulted, as I had built my career around the process of asking and answering this question – and I guess I wasn’t flattered by having it reduced to level of unrefined simplicity.

But I urge readers to develop and implement processes that get at these market basics. As yourself tough questions:

Who needs what I’m selling? Exactly why? What are the gut-wrenching needs of my target market that are addressed uniquely by my product or service?

Once those basics are in place, get at higher levels of refinement:

How should I position my product or service? I.e., how should I communicate my offering in a word or two that will generate an immediate and positive association in the mind of the market?  What exactly is my brand — and what’s the best way to express its meaning? 

An electric vehicle company near Atlanta called Tomberlin has a sport buggy called the “Anvil.” In the very name of the product, they’ve positioned it as a heavy, low-tech object – normally stationary – which, when it happens to be in motion, usually brings to mind falling to earth, causing injury. To say the very least, I would have recommended against that. (You may think I’m making this up. I’m not; check it out here.)

Yet the process of deriving correct (or incorrect) positioning is seldom as clear-cut as this. Excellence in this space is critically important, but it’s not a straightforward task. In any case, if you’d like help on this — or any other aspect of marketing your clean energy product or service, please don’t hesitate to call or write. CONTACT US HERE.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

PhotobucketWe see a great deal of social criticism, lambasting us Americans for being fat, lazy super-consumers. In that vein, frequent commenter Dan Conine writes:

Most of the electricity people get (including myself) isn’t necessary. Most of the activities we perform are useless to the future and only serve our entertainment … and our pollution of the world.

I don’t dispute that. But where’s the solution here? Change hundreds of millions of people’s way of thinking about their responsibilities and their overall lifestyle choices? Sounds like a challenge – getting through to a nation of people who are busy driving their SUVs out to Walmart to stock up on Budweiser and guacamole for the Super Bowl.

There is no doubt to you, me, and most other 2GreenEnergy readers that Americans’ indolent lifestyle cannot sustain itself. I think we’ve already proven that with our child cancer rates, financial bailouts, ceaseless wars, obesity, school test scores, etc.   And if you want to see some real social chaos, wait until you see what happens when the world (especially the US with its sense of entitlement) comes face-to-face with the impact of peal oil in the not-too-distant future.

But again, I ask: Where’s the solution? I like to think of myself as a man of action. I like to solve problems. So when I look at this energy problem and all its implications in public health, national security, global climate change, empowering evil, and so forth, I look for a big, broad solution – and that’s renewable energy.

All I’m asking is that *we the people* put pressure on our elected officials.  Force them to create legislation that levels of playing field on which renewables compete against fossil fuels. As I’m fond of saying, take away the subsidies and get everyone to pay to true and full costs of the energy we produce and consume — and see how long coal and oil last as industries.  They’ll be gone in an afternoon. 

In any case, we either make a lot of noise and create a difference in the trajectory of energy-related policy, or we’ll get exactly what will have so richly deserved.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

PhotobucketIn response to my rant on a few recent Supreme Court decisions, frequent commenter Dan Conine writes:

“… The government we have is the government we deserve. Though you are correct per se from your point of view, I disagree with both counts to some extent. First, the Supreme Court’s job is to interpret the legality of laws written by Congress, etc.. It is now up to Congress to right the wrong of 100 plus years of corporate personhood. Now that an impotent attempt at campaign finance has been shot down, Congress should look deeper into who the constitution is written to protect: individuals from bullies/mobs. They won’t, though, as long as we keep giving more money to corporations every day than we keep for ourselves (savings) or give to the constitutional power (taxes).”

You always amaze me.  You’re 100% right that Congress could do something about this, but won’t — and for the exact reasons you’ve named.  That is why this is such a terrible conundrum — and the reason that I blog; without a grassroots effort to call attention to our broken poltical processes, we’re doomed.  

Dan continues:

Second: The dependence of renewable energy’s future upon federal government intervention shows that renewable energy proponents are not much different than the corporate power proponents: both are trying to make profits through coercion of the government Gun.

“We will be ready for renewable energy when people stop using so much nonrenewable energy. Not before. Until then, local control of rights-of-way is the only way to counteract corporate control of rights-of-way because the corporations own the federal government. When you advocate for federal decisions over local decisions, you are advocating for the biggest corporation to decide your future. You might as well just go to Little Rock and ask Wal-Mart to start selling power grids.”

Here I’m not so sure. 

First, I’m not asking Congress to help renewables — only to level the playing field.  Remove the subsidies, force everyone to pay the full price of the power they’re producing and consuming, and see what happens.  We’ll have renewable energy in about 10 minutes.  Btw, you often mention that you’d like to see less consumption of power overall; this action will achieve that goal in a big way.

Secondly, I point out a matter of political philosophy.  Though I felt different about this as a younger man, I’m currently convinced that we need to impute some moral goodness to government — and make sure that goodness happens.  Without it, we’re really dead — worse than dead, actually; we have a dystopia along the lines of 1984 or Brave New World.  But you’re certainly right in what you said above: we get the government we deserve.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Earlier this week I wrote a post expressing my disgust over the US Supreme Court’s announcement that it had found major provisions of campaign finance reform to be unconstitutional.  This paved the way for corporate and union money to mute the voices of individual citizens like you and me.

Later in the week, the justices dealt another punch to the gut to the forces of progress.  This came with the decision that rendered the federal government impotent against state and local decisions regarding rights of way — for things like power lines.

Many of us are — or were — hoping for long-distance transmission of electrical power.  This would have made feasible the development of forms of renewable energy that are prevalent in certain areas of the country, e.g., solar thermal in the southwestern desert, wind energy in the plains, and geothermal in the mountains.  As of this week, however, such things will require the buy-in of dozens of state and local bureaucracies.

It hasn’t been a good week of news from high court.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

PhotobucketHere’s a post I wrote on Renewable Energy World on president Obama’s State of the Union address the other night.

I like to support Obama for his efforts along a number of lines, especially a progressive energy policy. But to me, all the pandering to the masses in that address served more to confuse people than to enlighten and motivate them.

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