2GreenEnergy’s Financial Wizard Bill Paul on Shale Gas

2GreenEnergy financial guru Bill Paul has a natural gift for looking at the macro issues affecting renewables. Here’s a high-level summary of his thinking on clean energy vis-à-vis shale gas, in which he summarizes:

There’s a distinct possibility that Wall Street’s going to start diverting big bucks away from green tech and into shale gas, if it hasn’t already. I see the billions going into shale gas infrastructure posing a huge impediment to developing clean tech.

When companies like ExxonMobil and Chesapeake Energy are betting their futures (at least through 2025) on shale gas, it’s definitely not good for renewables. Fortunately, solar technology will keep developing no matter what. Also, the Chinese look ready to bankroll renewables because of the air and water quality problems they’ve got in spades. Still, shale gas’s ascendancy is a real problem for renewables.

As always, Bill, thanks for the astute comments.

My position is that renewable energy is essentially about pure technology, whose prices are always coming down. Now, there is plenty of technology involved in the extraction of fossil fuels from the Earth, no doubt about that, but here, they’re “impure” technologies, i.e., those that are wrestling with the issue of constant, day-to-day depletion, not to mention things like the ecological cost of extraction and carbon footprint.

Clean energy will win in the long run, if we still have a civilization here in 2050 or so.  But the big questions remain:

• Who will get rich in the process?
• How much harm will have been done?