Posts Tagged by Bermuda
Bermuda — Going Green
| January 10, 2010 | Posted by Craig Shields under Electric Vehicles |
A few months ago I wrote a post about my consulting company’s relationship with the island nation of Bermuda, in which I mentioned how proud I am to be a part of an entire country’s movement away from fossil fuels. A quick update:
This week, I’m on my way to Bermuda for a series of meetings with governmental agencies and private sector sponsors, each of which will be integral to making this whole thing happen. And as I just happened to see this morning, this will be occuring in the context of a great number of governmental stimuli affecting this region of the world.
It seems that virtually no one approves of the exact tack the Obama Administration is taking. Progressives are disappointed with his pandering to entrenched interests and failing to take a hard line on things like healthcare reform, the war(s), and regulation of the big banks and Wall Street; conservatives, true to form, reject him as a socialist. But let me tell you this: in terms of confronting the environmental nightmares that lie ahead of us if nothing is done to wean us from our oil addiction, far more has happened in the last few months than happened in the previous three decades.
The Domino Effect in Electric Transportation
| December 7, 2009 | Posted by Craig Shields under Electric Vehicles |
When I was a little boy, the concept of the domino effect occupied a large and scary part of the national consciousness. For those too young to remember, the idea at the time was that, if one country in Southeast Asia fell to communism, then surrounding countries — like tumbling dominos — would as well.
50 years later, we see the same concept applied to electric transportation. Examples of entire nations that are replacing internal combustion engines in favor of electric vehicles (EVs) will soon show the world that this migration process is achievable, and serve as working models for the numerous benefits of eradicating petroleum – engendering the envy of all other nations on earth.
Understandably, this transition is occuring first in places where the benefits of electricity vs. gasoline are most pronounced, e.g., islands nations. Witness Liuqiu, an island off the southern coast of Taiwan, which is in the process of spending $15.5 billion to effect this change. Closer to me personally, check out Bermuda and the actions they are taking, partially under my team’s direction, to do the same on a somewhat larger scale.
It won’t be long until the world can see how painless this transition can be, and how a nation can serve as a beacon of leadership to others in the quest for environmental sustainability.
The Greening of Bermuda
| September 4, 2009 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Politics |
Over the next few days, I’ll be posting a few articles on my company’s work with the island nation of Bermuda. From the standpoint of the raw facts, Bermuda is probably the best candidate on the planet to “go green” in a big way. As a people, they’re wealthy and enlightened. As a tourist destination, they’re anxious to make a statement. As a physical locale, they suffer from the pollution of their power plant’s historic reliance upon diesel. And as a candidate for electric transportation, can anything be more auspicious than expensive gas, high tariffs on internal combustion engine cars, short driving distances and low speed limits?
At this point, I would like to introduce you to the Bermuda Electric Light, Power & Traction Company or BELCO – the power utility that is wrestling with a great number of alternatives to fossil fuels: solar, wind, tidal, etc. I invite you to read the reports of the vendors that have been asked to create proposals for five different green technologies. As you read these documents, perhaps you’ll be thinking along the same lines that I am: How many do they really need? Isn’t one better (probably FAR better) than the other four?
I’m always amused by the pundits who say that we in the US need to blend many different alternative fuels. Outside of politics, exactly why? Given the configuration of our land mass vis-à-vis the sun’s path, our predominant wind patterns, the location and depth of our subterranean pockets of heat, the flow of our rivers, and the nature of our ocean currents, isn’t there one best solution? I think so.
