A Warm Welcome to Fabio Porcu
We here at 2GreenEnergy welcome our newest intern, Fabio Porcu, a bright young Italian fellow who comes to us fresh from his master’s degree in engineering. During his three-month stay here in Santa Barbara, Fabio will be working with me to research and report on a number of different subjects, a few of which I’ve listed below to facilitate our initial discussions. I’ve also arranged for the two of us to attend the Solar Power International conference next week, which happens to be a fairly easy drive from here.
A few topics to consider:
Renewable Energy Technologies
Challenging the limits of PV efficiency with concepts in quantum physics
Materials sciences breakthroughs that affect the cost-effectiveness of PV and wind
Building integrated PV: make it light, strong, efficient, easy to install, and, most of all, inexpensive
The relevance of nanotechnology
Direct drive vs. gear boxes in wind turbines
High voltage power transmission: AC and DC (500KV+ AC can be run on top of the same poles that currently run 30KV)
Power transmission from Northern Africa into Europe
Humanitarian concerns: More than 4000 people die from air pollution in China every day
Energy is the key to ending poverty and limiting population growth; examine distributed generation in developing countries. Note: giving it away destroys the potential marketplace where vendors can succeed and a business landscape can be established.
Myanmar has very little electricity (<20% of the population has access), but this is about to change for the first time. Sadly, they’re leaning to coal. What should they be doing?
Unfortunately, it appears that humankind will not be banishing war anytime soon. A bright side could be that our military is 100% committed to renewables. Why is that? What are its implications?
How practical is it to power a world with solar and wind that is consuming 15 TW—especially when this power usage will hit 40 TW by the middle of this century, due to urbanizing populations and the growing middle class in Asia?
Why are oil prices so low right now?
Energy and War: How low oil prices affect Russia/Putin
CO2 levels and ocean acidification: the basic chemistry at work and how it affects the biosphere
Exploring ocean-based CO2 sequestration: basalt, limestone, etc.
Smart grid / smart cities — the ultimate energy efficiency solutions
How the oil companies plan to remain relevant in the 21st Century as our dependence on fossil fuels disappears
“Advanced nuclear” – how close are we to clean, safe, and inexpensive nuclear energy?
Cost reductions in wind and solar – how much further can all this go?
Energy Storage: the most viable technologies. How long will mechanical concepts have a chance against batteries?
The upheaval of the power utilities: what it means to all of us
Google, Apple, Etc. – Extremely wealthy forces of super-innovation will not let 20th Century energy policy destroy the planet
International Panel on Climate Change: its prospects for success
The Tipping Point: How close are we to the point at which the forces that are driving us to renewables become irresistible, and our fossil-fuel paradigm evaporates?
What can we learn from trade shows and site tours: Solar Power International, Diablo Canyon, utility scale solar plants, Fort Hunter Liggett (Army base, soon to be off the grid entirely via its 4 MW PV array)
General Issues on Energy and the Environment
The business aspects of cleantech—where the true profit potential lies
The macroeconomics of the energy future—job growth and prosperity
The geopolitics of energy
Understanding the “externalities” of fossil fuels—putting a price on climate disruption, ocean acidification, loss of biodiversity, etc.
Oil and terrorism
Technologies that, due to their cost-effectiveness, are most likely to replace fossil fuels
China’s and India’s energy future, and why little else matters
Corporate Sustainability
Research and report on what people in large, multinational corporations are doing vis-à-vis sustainability: deploying renewable energy, reducing carbon footprint, improving the lifecycle analysis of their products, and ensuring that everyone associated with the supply chain has decent living conditions.
Batteries
The history of deceit (or, at least, over-setting of expectations) in this space
The truth about lithium carbonate shortages
The practical limits to gravimetric energy density of lithium ion
What we can rationally expect from air batteries, e.g, zinc air
Other promising battery chemistries
What lies behind the steady decline in the price of lithium-ion batteries, and how this squares with the prediction that pundits made a few years ago to the effect that this was impossible
What the trends in batteries mean to electric transportation, in a world where EVs seem to be struggling
Batteries as a component of smart grid
The capability of utility-scale batteries to compete against the construction of new gas-fired peaker plants
