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.

I have to say that I wasn’t an instant convert to this idea; it seemed to me that the concept of growing plants in dirt, developed about 8000 years ago, was an idea that really didn’t require much innovation. But here are a couple of facts that bear on the matter:

1) If you’re an average American and you look in your pantry, the average item you’re looking at traveled 1200 miles by truck to reach you. That’s an appalling and completely unnecessary amount of diesel fuel that’s attached to what you’re eating.

This is even true of markets that pride themselves on some level of eco-consciousness. Trader Joe’s, for instance, encourages re-use of grocery bags, but ships tomatoes thousands of miles from Southern Mexico. When I asked why, I was told, “We need uniformity. We need to make sure someone buying a tomato in Pennsylvania is having the same experience as a tomato buyer here in California.” Of course, I replied, “No you don’t. Trust me, I would LOVE to buy locally grown tomatoes, and I couldn’t care a whit where you source tomatoes for your stores in Pennsylvania.” I got a smile, but that was about it; I really don’t think my sentiments are going to change corporate policy.

2) Plants grown aeroponically are fast growing, bigger, healthier, and tastier than those grown in dirt. They can be grown indoors, on rooftops, or in any of a great many other convenient places. Because of their density, they’re very easy to keep pest-free without insecticides, herbicides, and other toxic chemicals.

Good stuff all around.  

I don’t want to come off here as anti-business, because I’m not.  But let me conclude by saying that the real “win” here, as I see it, is gradually returning agriculture back to the hands of the people, wresting it from agribusinesses like Monsanto that have so clearly and often demonstrated their blatent disregard for the health and safety of the consumer — their interest in absolutely nothing other that profit at the consumer’s expense.

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. 

Given all this, is it any wonder that the formation of investment capital in clean energy is so feeble?  Even in the absence of an active antipathy to renewables, as long as there is no level of certainty for the market for alternative energy, investors can be counted to go elsewhere. 

So let’s look for a few good ideas that represent potential solutions. Here’s a concept my friend and colleague Steve Hellman, president of Eos Energy Storage, brought up in my meeting with him this morning in his company’s new offices in northern New Jersey:

There is no need for government to pick certain technologies to support; it’s tough to argue that government is wiser than the market in picking winners.  Instead, government need only to put a floor on the prices of gasoline and electricity, and then get out of the way and let market forces take over. Steve suggests that the federal government could say, “As of today, there will be a floor of $4 a gallon and $0.15 a kilowatt-hour for electricity.  Anything under that, we sweep up as a tax, and apply it against the deficit.” Now, for the first time, investors have a price they can shoot for.  They can have confidence that if they can deliver a transportation solution that is more attractive than $4 a gallon gasoline, or an electricity solution that beats $0.15 a kilowatt-hour, they have a position that is guaranteed to be appealing in the marketplace. 

That’s a heck of an interesting thought.  And it’s revenue-positive; that’s something of a rarity for ideas that support clean energy, isn’t it?  I promised him that I’d run this by our readers and ask for comments, so please feel free to let Steve and me know what you think.

In the meanwhile, let’s remember history.  For centuries, large, entrenched players have gotten even richer by strategically raising and lowering prices.  This was a favorite tool of John D. Rockefeller in the 1920s.  When small competitors would start to gain momentum, he’d lower the price of oil, driving them all out of business; when they had all gone belly-up, he’d raise the price to even higher levels, knowing that he’d regained his monopolistic position.

In hindsight, some would regard that kind of market manipulation as unethical, as “dirty pool.”  But here the stakes are much higher; the extraction and combustion of fossil fuels no longer threatens just the business aspirations of a few wildcatters, but the health and safety of all seven billion of us here on Earth.

As long as the price of energy can be manipulated to drive the competition out of business, the future of renewables will remain anyone’s guess, as investors will continue to be terrified, and completely unwilling to jump into the game.  And on and on we’ll go, until the last ounce of crude is sucked out of the ground, the last lump of coal is burned, and the environment is in ruins.

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:

• Renewable energy is more expensive than fossil fuels. True. If it weren’t, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. The reason to go to renewables isn’t because they’re cheap, it’s because it will bring about the cessation of a great deal of horrors, e.g., ecological damage we’re wreaking, and it has the potential to become cheap when scaled.  I note that Jerry didn’t mention the environment once in his talk linked above, and I wonder how  it’s possible that a man of this stature and intelligence could have missed that point.

• Renewable energy has limitations: it’s intermittent, diffuse, land-intensive, etc. All true. Again, there is no free lunch. You either put a value on human health, the natural environment, the lives of our soldiers, national security – or you don’t.  Of course, I’ll find a less insulting way to express this. But because of the way all these different points sum together and create enormous value for the U.S. as a country, I see the support of renewable energy as the single most patriotic act anyone could undertake.

• Renewable energy is only viable with subsidies. That’s true for now, but that doesn’t mean it’s of no value.  And let’s not forget that Big Oil gets several times more subsidies than renewables.  Can’t we knock this off?  Oil is a 90-year-old industry, and by far the most profitable one on the planet.  Does it really need the transfer of wealth from U.S. tax-payers to its shareholders to the tune of tens of billions of dollars per year?  This is another point that goes unmentioned in his speeches.

• Dependence on foreign oil is bad, but we don’t use oil to make electricity. True, but oil represents 98% of the energy we use for transportation, which is about 30% of our total energy consumption, and his arguments against electric transportation are spurious; e.g., the “facts” he presents on battery technology are incorrect.

• We’re not using any of these: renewables, energy storage, synthetic fuels, electric transportation, smart-grid, etc., to any appreciable degree. That is, to be sure, the sad truth, but, though lots of people say this, I’ve never been able to see the relevance. It’s like saying in 1950 that we shouldn’t build the interstate highway system because people aren’t very mobile. It’s the equivalent of saying in 1990 that we shouldn’t build the Internet because there are no users online. We built the highway system, and it created great mobility; then we built the Internet, and it has transformed the lives of billions of people. In both cases, the U.S. government made the right call — though for some reason we can’t conceive of that ever happening again.

• Job creation in renewable energy is overhyped, and tends to overlook all the “brown energy” jobs that will be lost. I haven’t read all the reports on this subject, but this doesn’t really seem true from what I’ve seen. The first interview in my book “Is Renewable Really Doable?” with Dr. Robert Pollin convinces me that there will be a huge net job boom associated with all this – especially energy efficiency.

• For the U.S. to come anywhere close to meeting its renewable energy targets, massive government support will be required, similar to our putting a man on the moon. I actually don’t deny that, but I’m not sure, given the imperative, that it’s such a bad thing.

I’m glad this is the first of my (three) interviews that day. I will remain calm, as I always do, but I’m going with decaf that morning, as it doesn’t appear that I’ll need a chemical stimulant to get my heart started.

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.

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:

Without an affirmative blow against corruption, we’re cooked. No one wants to hear this, but the truth is that the power that huge moneyed interests have over our lives lie in direct opposition to the interests of the common man. That power is used to pulverize ideas that might lessen the profit of corporate interest, and clean energy lies squarely in the cross-hairs.

But have I given up hope? Not at all. Witness the recent work of Jed Rakoff, United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York. He recently took a rather unusual tack in telling the SEC that they cannot mete out an obvious slap on the wrist that they were ready to hand to Citigroup.  Citigroup had offered to pay $285 million to settle allegations that the bank had misled clients into buying a mortgage-related security that its own traders were betting against, if it could do so without admitting wrongdoing.

Bargains like this one are reached constantly in which huge companies, whether they’re in finance, pharma or energy, who made billions of dollars in some criminal activity, harming countless millions of people, are happy to pay a paltry fine while not admitting guilt. Here’s a judge who somehow came into the middle of this disgusting scene, and found the SEC, eager to settle the case to get a “win” on their side, and the defendant, anxious to accept some form of settlement and sweep the case under the rug. To his credit (and my utter astonishment) he had the courage to say, “Sorry, no. We’re going to have a bit of actual justice here.”

How rare is this behavior? I’m more likely to be struck by lightening before I see the next one – or the outcome of this very case, whose appeals I’m sure will live in infamy for many years to  come.

You posed a good question when you asked when we’ll replace fossil fuels and nuclear with renewables. The answer is as simple as it is problematic: when we have justice.

He shows how it takes more electricity to make a gallon of gas that you can drive in an EV!

Article by Peder Norby, below.
It takes a lot of “Energy” to make gas… Part Two.
I used coal in the title of the previous post as a cheeky reference to the favored argument by EV naysayers that electric cars replace a tailpipe with emissions from a coal powered electricity plant.

They still might want to look in the mirror :)

The previous blog post has been picked up by Autoblog Green and by the Washington Post and dozens of other sites. This has led to well over 100 comments from individuals debating the statistic and offering input as to how much electricity and how much energy is required to make a gallon of gas.

Some agree with my conclusions some don’t. Some say it’s higher some say its lower. All kinds of data is offered in the comments usually with several zero’s behind it, cherry picked data depending on the point of view of the author pro or con.

I wish there were an Energy information Agency FAQ that answered this simple question, How much energy is used to make a gallon of gasoline?

Unfortunately there is not a simple answer and it’s very complicated to find the information to make a compelling case either way. The various nature and different qualities of crude and the various efficiencies of refineries add to the complexity.

So let’s keep this simple shall we?

Step 1
Let’s begin with the price of a gallon of gas and the percentage of that that goes to refining. According to the Energy Information Agency on this page http://www.eia.gov/oog/info/gdu/gasdiesel.asp
16% of the August 2011 gallon of gas cost of $3.64 goes to refining cost thus resulting in $0.58 a gallon in refining cost.

Step 2
According to the EPA and the Petroleum energy guide on this page

http://www.energystar.gov/ia/business/industry/ES_Petroleum_Energy_Guide.pdf.

(abstract page 3, first paragraph) Refineries spend typically 50% of cash operating costs (i.e.,, excluding capital costs and depreciation) on energy,

So we have 50% energy cost for a refinery, which would result in a cost of energy to make a gallon of gas of $0.29 per gallon.

From here we split off into energy types or feedstocks used to make gasoline.

Step 3
According to the Energy Information Agency, http://205.254.135.24/emeu/mecs/iab98/petroleum/expenditures.html
Just less than 50% of the energy cost come from Natural Gas and about 33% come from electricity, Also much energy is generated by co-generation, with an undisclosed amount of Natural Gas used to provide electricity for the refinery.
Using the energy cost to refine of $0.29 and dividing that by 33% gives you $0.10 of electricity cost per gallon of gas.

Step 4 What do refineries pay for electricity and energy? Good question. The most they would pay is the wholesale cost of electricity.

As an energy plant owner myself that has over generated for the year, SDG&E is paying me 3.7 cents per Kwh of generation . You can bet the power plants pay between two and three cents per KWH.
Congratulations, you were a net energy generator!
Account Number: 582687++++
You generated more electricity than you consumed when you trued-up earlier this year. As a result your Net Energy Metering (NEM) account will be credited for the excess generation.

Excess generation:
1607 kilowatt-hours (kwhrs)
Credit per kwhr:0.03692Amount Credited:$59.93

With a cost of $0.03 cents a kwh we can come to the conclusion that refineries use around 3 kwh of electricity per gallon of gasoline.
Furthermore, refineries have nearly 50% of their energy cost in Natural Gas, about $0.14 cents per gallon, If that Natural gas were used in a plant to make electricity, an additional 2kwh of electricity per gallon would result for a net total of 5 kwhs of electricity per gallon of gas.

Using these simple government non biased information websites of the US Energy Information Agency and the EPA, as well as my own payment from SDG&E, the information resulted in a 5kwh of electricity used to make a gallon of gas. Not to far off of my original estimate of 6kwh per gallon of gas. Throw in unknown energy cost to extract, pump, ship, store, truck and sell, I am confident an additional kwh or two would be added to that figure.

I stand by original conclusion that a gas car with an average fleet 22mpg will use more electricity (or if you prefer, electricity equivalent in energy) used just in the refinery process to drive 100 miles as compared to an electric car.

Cheers, Peder
Mini-E # 183, 34,000 sunshine powered miles.

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 (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:

The basics of GHP technology have changed very little over the decades but a geothermal identity crisis has been detrimental to fostering awareness, understanding, and acceptance of the technology. Depending on the perspective, GHPs have been cast as an energy source by many names (renewable, geothermal, solar, earth, alternative, recycled), as energy efficiency or energy conservation, or as an option within a broader category such as utility demand-side management.

There’s plenty to get excited about in GHPs, whose basic concept is that even very cold water or cold air contains an appreciable amount of energy that can be extracted and moved very inexpensively.

In the coming month or two, I hope to corral GHP expert and professional consultant Mark Metzner for a webinar on the subject. I’m sure listeners will be surprised and delighted to learn how simple, inexpensive and ridiculously underused this technology is. More soon.