Posts Tagged by renewables
Renewables Are Cool, But Using Less Energy Is Far Better
| June 1, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Efficiency |
Frequent Commenter John F. Robbins writes this marvelous response to the 2GreenEnergy survey on renewables:
The most missing question or comment in your survey and most of this blog is how to move away from the current energy-guzzling nature of our culture. Almost all the old-wave renewable energy discussion (prior to 2000) was heavy and serious on how to use less prior to or while trying to convert to renewables. Yet now, under the mantra of “creating jobs” or “increasing profits and tax collection” or just “new-wave RE advocacy”, RE is being pushed with almost no inclusion or demand that energy guzzling be actually reduced.
If we cut energy use first, that would be the most cost-effective solution ranked according to $/energy. That first step would also reduce how much and what scale of RE and storage are needed, thereby lowering those costs substantially.
As long as we allow, tolerate or are part of a culture of ever-increasing energy demand and use, both the futures of conventional and renewable energy are diminished, even bleak. The current energy model cannot exist ad infinitum, simply because it is based on infinite supplies at perpetually low prices.
Even if we didn’t move more quickly to RE, the price of future conventional will certainly be erratic and inflationary, especially as certain sources like oil become more depleted sooner. Natural gas will likely be second to deplete or become super-expensive to deliver in the current scale of demand.
Deceased thinker Donella Meadows often wrote about how our culture was operating beyond its physical limits. We need solutions which go beyond specific technologies and deal with our culture, how to change it so we can use and demand far less energy. Then the prognosis for energy futures gets better faster.
Thanks, John. All this is completely true, and you’re right; I most definitely fall into a faulty manner of thinking re: conservation and efficiency. There is no doubt that, as a culture, we simply hog far too much energy.
This is why Vaclav Smil says, as he contemplates the effect that two billion more people will have on the Earth, “It depends. Will they use energy at the rate of the North Americans, or the Japanese?”
What I’ve noticed living here in the good ol’ USA is that virtually no one does anything that doesn’t benefit himself or his immediate friends and family. We’ve been programmed to ignore the needs of others, and that programming has been enormously effective. (It wasn’t always like this, btw. When we really became a consumer society after World War II, the idea that economics was an indifferent and often cruel taskmaster controlling all of us was vigorously drummed into our heads.)
Be this as it may, we live in a society in which the vast majority of people will not even consider sacrificing a pleasure for the good of someone else – regardless of how trivial the sacrifice or how enormous the benefit to the other. In the main, we turn off our lights, replace our incandescent light bulbs, and install low-flow showerheads (when we do), because of our utility bills. We buy more fuel-efficient cars because of the objectionable price of gasoline.
At the end of the day, if you want to save energy, you have to make it expensive. However, here in the US, we make it artificially cheap. If we had any sincerity about weaning ourselves off coal and oil (which we don’t) we would simply begin to force the producers and consumers of energy from those sources to pay the true and comprehensive costs. If we were to do that, you’d see an enormous change in people’s behavior – not next year, but this afternoon.
Here’s a start. Just take this list of subsidies we give the big oil companies and make them go away.
- Construction bonds at low interest rates or tax-free
- Research-and-development programs at low or no cost
- Assuming the legal risks of exploration and development in a company’s stead
- Below-cost loans with lenient repayment conditions
- Income tax breaks, especially featuring obscure provisions in tax laws designed to receive little congressional oversight when they expire
- Sales tax breaks – taxes on petroleum products are lower than average sales tax rates for other goods
- Giving money to international financial institutions (the U.S. has given tens of billions of dollars to the World Bank and U.S. Export-Import Bank to encourage oil production internationally, according to Friends of the Earth)
- The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve
- Construction and protection of the nation’s highway system
- Relaxing the amount of royalties to be paid – apparently, we get about 40% of revenues from oil on public land vs. 60% – 65% in most other countries
Then get the oil and coal companies to pay the increases in healthcare costs caused by aromatics, absorb the cost of the long-term environmental damage. All of this garbage would be gone in a heartbeat.
Again, thanks for your comment.
2GreenEnergy Discusses Renewables on Montana Radio
| March 13, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Business |
I was the guest on a really good hour-long radio interview this afternoon on KMMS-AM, a popular talk/news station in Bozeman, MT. Host Larry Stancil and I didn’t agree on everything (in fact, we agreed on very little) but we got along fine, and I think everyone learned a great deal. We only had one caller, and he was extremely civil.
To be honest, I was surprised; I was braced for a brouhaha, as I had been told that some of those folks don’t like environmentalists telling them they can’t shoot wolves, etc. But cooler heads prevailed. I’ll post a link to the show when I receive it.
2GreenEnergy — Talking Renewables in New York City
| February 24, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Business |
I’m back east again. The weather isn’t exactly nice, but at least this quadrant of the country isn’t paralyzed by two feet of snow like it was last time I was here.
My appointments on this trip are mainly attempts to refine my approach to raising investment capital for companies in various phases of development in clean energy and electric transportation. In particular, I remain convinced that I can put into place a financial instrument that will provide early-stage capital for a dozen or so promising ideas — all in one package — a kind of mutual fund for those who are looking for upward exposure from this sector, but do not wish to have all their eggs in one basket.
I have a number of high-powered “friends of friends” to see — within walking distance of one another in the “city that never sleeps.”
I’ll let you know how I do.
Advisory Committee on Renewables and Electric Transportation
| February 13, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Business |
I’d like to request your help in establishing an Advisory Committee for 2GreenEnergy.
In an average month, I get about a dozen business plans for my review, submitted by entrepreneurs all over the world. Fortunately, most of these represent business concepts are based on technologies that I understand fairly well, and thus it takes only a few minutes for me to evaluate the relative strength of most of these ideas.
Some, however, leave me wondering. Maybe the business is to be based on a claim to a “breakthrough” fuel additive, biomass-to-energy technology, battery chemistry, or any of several other regions where my knowledge base is thin and my “BS Meter” doesn’t function with sufficient accuracy.
I’d like to set up a small group of folks whose combined expertise could speak quickly but effectively to the entire gamut of technologies relevant to clean energy and alternate fuel transportation. If you know of someone who has a specific and fairly deep area of expertise and wouldn’t mind if I forwarded an occasional email asking for an opinion (in a sentence or two – nothing elaborate is required), please let me know.
Thanks in advance.
Radio Talk Show on Renewables and Electric Transportation
| February 13, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Business |
I was flattered to get a call last week from a guy wanting me to host a radio talk show. He asked me for a short write-up of some ideas; here it is:
Thanks for your inquiry about the radio show. Per your request, here is a short write-up of some preliminary ideas.
I believe I would simply make this an extension of the radio and television broadcasts – and live panel discussions – that I’ve done over the past few years. Folks ask me anything they care to about energy and transportation, normally pertaining to the many issues our civilization has with fossil fuels and internal combustion engines, and the cost/benefit of the different flavors of renewables and electric vehicles. Read More
Helping Power Utilities Migrate to Renewables, Electric Transportation
| December 30, 2010 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Business |
As I learn more about the electric power utilities, I’m surprised at their large range of readiness with respect to both renewable energy and electric transportation. Here’s a message that I’ll soon be aiming at senior executives in the power companies, hoping to target especially those that may be somewhat “behind the curve.”
Two questions, if I may:
1) Where will renewables be in your grid-mix in five years? What about 20?
2) What has your team accomplished with respect to the adoption curve of electric vehicles?
Hello, I’m Craig Shields. Over the past three decades, I’ve brought strategic business advice to IBM, H-P, Fedex, Sony, 3M, Xerox, GM, Microsoft, AT&T, and hundreds of other enterprises. Recently, I’ve dedicated myself to the migration to clean energy and electric transportation.
My team and I stand ready to:
- review strategic business concepts
- weigh in on brand identity and messaging
- lead senior management discussion with respect to these and other topics related to sustainability
If you’re interested in speaking with me, I hope you’ll write or call shortly.
[The Vector] Global Offshore Wind Sector Expanding Rapidly
| December 26, 2010 | Posted by Aedan-Kernan under Wind Energy |
The global offshore wind turbine market is expected to almost double this year after record growth last year, according to a report published in October by Danish consulting company MAKE. MAKE predicts the expansion will continue into 2015.
The decade-long struggle to approve and construct Cape Wind, the United States’ first offshore wind farm, looks to be reaching a successful conclusion. At the end of November, the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities approved a 15-year power purchase agreement for National Grid to purchase Cape Wind’s power and RECs. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar has promised to fast-track future offshore wind projects in the same way that he has fast-tracked solar energy projects on public lands.
But just as the US makes small beginnings in offshore wind development, onshore developments seem to have fallen off a cliff. SNL Energy estimates that the power generation capacity of onshore wind energy projects in the first three quarters of 2010 was 64% down on the capacity that came online in the first three quarters of 2009.
Old Friends Are Often Young At Heart; Check Out the Apollo Alliance
| December 21, 2010 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Business |
For those of you wishing to reconnect from old friends from highschool and college, I most certainly recommend setting up a website like 2GreenEnergy. It brings long-lost, but much loved old friends out of the woodwork. Perhaps the best aspect of all this new communication is that these folks seem so much more optimistic about our prospects for a bright future than most of the people I run into on a day-to-day basis.
Here’s a post from Bruce Wilson, with whom I attended kindergarten (just the other day, in 1960), and graduated from the same school 13 years later, who commented on a recent post:
Apollo Alliance as an organization that asks us to make a national agenda that is based on sustainability. They use the Apollo program as an example of how much we can achieve when we set an ambitious national agenda. Kennedy aimed for us to get to the moon in ten years and we got there in nine! A national agenda of achieving a sustainable energy future will produce innovation we can not imagine.
[The Vector] Biofuel Bounces Back
| December 8, 2010 | Posted by Aedan-Kernan under Biomass |
A trainload of biofuel in Sweden Source: Bjoertvedt, Creative Commons
In the US, the biofuel industry is undergoing something of a revival. Mothballed plants are reopening. Across the globe biofuel industry leaders are extremely bullish about their ability to bring down operating costs, to generate fuels from sources that don’t compete with food crops, and to design fuels for special purposes such as aviation. Will the industry live up to its promises the second time round?
Click to read more on Biofuel Bounces Back
Renewable Energy — Facts and Fantasies: Tales from Launch Day
| November 7, 2010 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Business |
A funny thing happened when we launched Renewable Energy Facts and Fantasies last week. Of course, I was hoping it would do well in the categories to which Amazon.com had assigned it: energy, engineering, and physics. And while it went to number one for a few days in both energy and engineering, it got massacred in physics.
It seems that Steven Hawking, by far the most famous physicist on Earth, had just launched his new book. And was there any controversy that may have spurred his book sales even higher than they otherwise would have been? Read More
