I just got off the phone with the John Gotthold, the Chief Technology Officer of HySolGenics, Inc., a San Jose CA start-up that is developing low cost electrolyzers and portable hydrogen refueling stations – largely for rural, off-grid applications. They’re looking for angel funding, and, although this is not the kind of thing the investors I know try to cultivate, it sounds like an interesting opportunity.
I try to read VentureBeat whenever I can, to see what’s happening in the world of capital formation for start-ups in green tech. Here’s an article that offers a summary of renewable energy trends that you may find useful.
It’s interesting how many different prognostications there are about the adoption curve for renewables. One reads some some really wild stuff. I’m finishing up another white paper along the “tough realities” theme, which concludes with 10 top questions — none of which is really amenable to a hard and fast answer.
To me, all this shows that the answer truly is “blowin’ in the wind.” I.e., it’s a function of how fired up we get and demand solutions. I’m reminded of Henry Kissinger recent statement, “If it weren’t for the wrath of the American people about our presence in Vietnam, we’d STILL BE THERE.” (emphasis added) That’s an amazing thing for a political leader to admit, isn’t it?
Never think for a minute that you have no voice.
Both of yesterday’s lead stories in the WSJ re-assert Rupert Murdoch’s ultra-right-wing position that the public sector needs to refrain from setting energy policy that would affect private enterprise – even as the ecological toll of business-as-usual continues to escalate. In particular:
The front-page lead story “Climate Panel Faces Heat” is another in a long-running series suggesting that global warming is a hoax, engineered presumably by greedy climate scientists all grabbing for grant money.
“US Wants Report Card for Cars,” is the headline story in the second section, (“Marketplace”). It begins, “The government proposed labeling each new passenger car with a letter grade from A to D,” and points out how the plan is criticized in that the government is making a judgement as to the value of cars.
Wasn’t there a time a when newspapers just reported the news?
In response to my white paper on The Tough Realities of Marketing and Sales, a reader points out a few of the economic realities that, in his mind, supersede the points I make in the report. In particular, he notes that there is currently no true market economy for things like biofuels:
All Sustainable businesses have a particular feature: they are always evaluated on a payback or IRR basis. We are in an oil based economy and not on a Sustainable Economy. Biofuels and energy are not marketable by any company but the utilities or distribution companies in each case. You can get biofuels from many technologies, but at the gas station you buy oil, not biofuels. Probably if you look, you will find a huge law on biofuels and how they can be marketed that is everything but compelling for biofuels to be used. Taxes alone make the business tough and customers are wary about using biofuels even in low percentages … Either taxes are on the side of biofuels or they always need incentives and subsidies to be competitive.
The reader goes on to point out that the same lack of liquidity exists for electricity: Read More »
I try to offer my observations and opinions on the widest possible range of subjects within the technology and politics of renewables. But, since I’ve been a marketing consultant for more than 25 years – largely to the Fortune-sized tech and industrial companies of the world: IBM, FedEx, Xerox, etc. — I tend to see marketing issues everywhere I look. Maybe I’m like the man with the hammer who views every problem as if it were a nail. My first inclination with my clients is normally to determine how marketing can be used to drive demand, revenue, and ultimately — profit.
I was thinking about this recently in terms of the “tough realities” theme, and decided to write down a few ideas in a short white paper I call The Tough Realities of Marketing and Sales in Green Tech Businesses.
I discuss a variety of things: how to build a business that transforms your customers’ lives, reaping the benefits of our wired world, how to identify your true target market, and finding cost-effective methods for generating demand.
Click the following link and download it – absolutely free:
The Tough Realities of Marketing and Sales in Green Tech Businesses.
All I ask is that you provide your honest feedback. If you find it valuable – or even if you don’t — please let me know. Thanks very much.
In his recent article on Renewable Energy World titled Electricity markets are weird: why a carbon price isn’t enough, Sean Casten provides several scholarly reasons that establishing a carbon tax is tricky business. I encourage everyone to read this; it’s really worthwhile.
But at the end of the day, Mr. Casten seems to be to be splitting hairs. Where we are now is a million miles from where we need to be in terms of providing a level playing field for renewables. I simply ask Congress to get us into the right galaxy – then we can start talking about Pareto-efficient markets and cost/price causality. As long as the fossil fuel energy industry receives multi-billion dollar government subsidies, favorable treatment from the Bureau of Land Management, and immunity from the costs of the environmental damage it’s causing, I can’t see the reason to get too heavily into the microeconomics here.
We need to make wholesale changes in the way we view the costs of energy. Until that time, the energy industry is looking on at this discussion and snickering as they continue on their path of rape and ruin.
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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