Category: Uncategorized
Aeroponics: Boon to Organically Grown Produce
| February 24, 2012 | Posted by Craig Shields under Uncategorized |
While I’m in the studio next week shooting another round of videos, I plan to highlight 2GreenEnergy’s relationship with Waters Wheel, a company with a bright vision of the future of organic, local-grown farming. The secret sauce here, if there is one, is a clever, extremely inexpensive approach to aeroponics, growing produce in a minimum of space, using a tower (pictured here) in which the root systems receive a carefully maintained balance of air, water, and nutrients. Read More
Clean Energy Investors Want Some Level of Certainty
| February 16, 2012 | Posted by Craig Shields under Uncategorized |
In my quest to understand investors’ reluctance to assert themselves in the renewable energy space, a common theme continues to emerge: uncertainty. Where no one doubts that demand for oil and coal will continue for some time, and that the government subsidies that support them will remain a part of U.S. law, no similar confidence exists that the world will put a premium on clean (versus dirty) energy.
Quite the contrary. The investment and production tax credits that support wind and solar are as mercurial as women’s hem lines. These incentives may exist one year, only to be forceably removed the next. We have serious presidential candidates who proudly claim that, if elected, they will shut down the Department of Energy and dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency, and many are openly opposed to the entire concept of clean energy – certainly if that requires even an iota of public support. Read More
Cato Institute Speaks to “Renewables – Following the Money”
| February 9, 2012 | Posted by Craig Shields under Uncategorized |
I’m interviewing Jerry Taylor, Senior Fellow at the right wing think tank Cato Institute when I’m in Washington D.C. next week, and I’ve spent a good part of the day preparing, checking out a number of Mr. Taylor’s writings and speeches, like the one linked here.
Yikes. This guy is brilliant, and he’s a terrific presenter, but he and I disagree on practically everything. Of course, that’s the point; I selected him specifically because of my duty to maintain balance and fair-mindedness in my writing. I know I’ve interviewed a few economists and social observers whose perspectives are left of center, and I really want to get a few decidedly conservative viewpoints here.
But I can see that Mr. Taylor’s going to give me the whole nine yards of his attack-dog refutation of what we proponents of renewables are trying to do, and so I’m wondering how to play this conversation. I think I’m simply going to take his talking points one by one and just discuss them calmly. Here are a few:
Onshore Wind at Grid Parity by 2016
| December 6, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Uncategorized, Wind Energy |
According to Bloomberg, New Energy Finance, improved efficiencies and declining costs will make the average wind farm cost-competitive with coal, gas, and nuclear by 2016 (the best ones already are there). According to Justin Wu, the firm’s lead wind analyst:
The press is reacting to the recent price drops in solar equipment as though they are the result of temporary oversupply or of a trade war. This masks what is really going on: a long-term, consistent drop in clean energy technology costs, resulting from decades of hard work by tens of thousands of researchers, engineers, technicians and people in operations and procurement. And it is not going to stop: In the next few years the mainstream world is going to wake up to wind cheaper than gas, and rooftop solar power cheaper than daytime electricity. Add in the same sort of deep long-term price drops for power storage, demand management, LED lighting and so on – and we are clearly talking about a whole new game.
We’ll Have Clean Energy When We Have Justice
| December 2, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Politics, Uncategorized |
A wonderful gentleman, Peter Kusterer, blogger extraordinaire from North Carolina called me the other day, and we chatted for some time. At the conclusion, he graciously asked me to send him any concluding thoughts I might have before he published his report on our talk. I thought I’d put them online:
Peter:
I so enjoyed our talk the other day. At the close, you asked me to summarize my thinking on our prospects for clean energy and how this affects the trajectory for our civilization. In a nutshell: Read More
From Guest Blogger Jim Stack: Electricity Used to Make Gas
| December 1, 2011 | Posted by jstack6 under Uncategorized |
Did you know that is takes electricity and water to make oil into gasoline ? This is part of the refining process. The following facts are from a great article that Peder Norby did on oil refining. He walks the talk driving his MINI-E electric everyday and making the electric for it on his Solar system.
He shows how it takes more electricity to make a gallon of gas that you can drive in an EV! Read More
From Guest Blogger Jim Stack: Green Holidays
| November 25, 2011 | Posted by jstack6 under Sustainability, Uncategorized |
How can you have a Green Holiday ? It’s not easy since we often travel to visit friends and family. We also do a lot of cooking and eating.
You could travel less, take a greener form of transportation and of course car pool with others. Even calling to say Hi instead of traveling could be a smaller carbon footprint.
When eating we can eat healthier and a little less. Maybe just once piece of that great pie your aunt cooks special for you. Of course eating more fruits and vegetables is always greener and very healthy.
What are ways you use to be greener on Holidays ?
Geothermal Heat Pumps Face Strange Barriers to Adoption
| November 8, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Uncategorized |
Geothermal (Ground-Source) Heat Pumps (GHPs) make use of a completely different set of principles than the kind of geothermal we commonly discuss. Where the latter relies on the transfer of thermal energy from one fluid to another, like an egg placed in boiling water, the former relies on the principles of refrigeration, i.e., the evaporation and condensation of a substance in an enclosed space.
But considering that many people are unaware of this, how large an effect does public ignorance have? It’s huge, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, which dubs this effect a GHP “energy crisis” in their recent report: Read More
Please comment here:
| July 27, 2011 | Posted by adam under Uncategorized |
What’s your overall reaction?
| June 9, 2011 | Posted by adam under Uncategorized |
