Posts Tagged by CSP Today
Earth Day Lunch with Belen Gallego, Director of CSP Today
| April 22, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Solar Thermal |
I’m in New York City for a few days, and I’ve scheduled my lunch today with Belen Gallego, the Director of CSP Today (Concentrated Solar Power, aka solar thermal). When I interviewed Belen for my “Clean Energy Radio” show a few weeks ago, she impressed me as a wonderful, knowledgeable person, quite enthused with her cause.
I can’t think of a better way to spend a few hours on Earth Day, celebrating a technology that really does have the potential to transform the way we generate our electrical power. I hope readers will learn more about this on the CSP Today website, and sign up for the free newsletter.
CSP Today Director Discusses Solar Thermal on Clean Energy Radio
| April 5, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Solar Thermal |
This morning, I recorded next week’s Clean Energy Radio segment for WebTalkRadio, in which I interviewed Belén Gallego, director of CSP Today.
With offices in London and Hoboken NJ, CSP Today provides comprehensive, cutting-edge information online and through trade shows on concentrated solar power (aka solar thermal) in all its varieties – and Belén did a great job as a guest.
Although the CSP industry lacks the political muscle of the fossil fuel and nuclear people, Belén remains quite positive about the future. Of all the forms of energy, clean or dirty, safe or dangerous, CSP is the most dispatchable. While PV and wind are intermittent, and coal and nuclear run 24 hours a day, CSP, with low-cost energy storage in the form of molten salt, can be turned on and off by grid operators when needed.
As I’ve said hundreds of times, if I were king of the world, we’d be doing solar thermal in a very big way.
If you’re interested in their free newsletter, I encourage you to sign up (like I did) on the website: CSP Today.
My thanks to Belén for her terrific job on the show, and for her continued work to bring about a healthy, safe, and sane world.
Solar Thermal/CSP Bravely Swims Upstream
| July 17, 2010 | Posted by Craig Shields under Solar Thermal |
Though the Intersolar show in San Francisco last week was represented far more heavily by PV than solar thermal, there are indications that concentrated solar power (CSP) is enjoying a significant up-tick in public attention. In particular, CSP, rather quiet in the last decade, is expected to experience 46% CAGR in the coming 20 years.
As Heidi Hafes of CSP Today writes in Renewable Energy World, almost 11 gW is “under development.” The problem appears when we pull apart exactly what Ms. Hafes means by that. As she points out, this is a minefield full of delays and blind alleys — in many cases, created by the forces that oppose renewables. She writes: “Three out of four Americans support putting solar power plants on public lands. Yet while oil and gas companies have received more than 74,000 permits to operate on federal lands in the past two decades, utility-scale solar developers have received zero.”
The political supremacy of the fossil fuel industries, achieved in large part through the work of its 7000 lobbyists, has successfully extorted enough votes in Washington to make the migration to renewables very difficult indeed. And if you think they’re good at corruption inside the Beltway and in our state capitals, they’re even better at covering their tracks with public relations. Unfortunately, most people will never even notice the outrageous doubletalk of the oil companies’ vigorously repositioning themselves as “energy” companies – to be perceived as “part of the solution” — to use Chevron’s obscene language. Most people will find it perfectly credible that BP wants to take us “Beyond Petroleum.” And they’ll fall in love with Shell’s extensive new ad campaign, launched directly into the teeth of public outrage of the entire oil sector.
As EnvironmentalLeader.com reports:
The campaign, which Shell is calling “Let’s Go,” repositions Shell as an energy, rather than oil, company, with one television spot implying Shell is investing more money on cleaner-burning natural gas than any other oil company. The campaign will be rolled out across TV, print, and online mediums, and also features two new websites: shell.us/letsgo and energygalaxy.com.
That’s simply nauseating.
It’s hard to encounter this and not be reminded of the famous words of Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” Of course, Goebbels didn’t exactly meet a happy end; he remained loyal to Hitler until the end, and, in April 1945, he killed his family and himself while Berlin was falling to Soviet troops. Maybe there’s some sort of lesson to be learned there.
