Bullish on Renewable Energy – Eleven Reasons Why Clean Energy Investors Can’t Lose
I spend a couple of hours every day working on my new book, whose working title is “Bullish on Renewable Energy – Eleven Reasons Why Clean Energy Investors Can’t Lose.” Would you like to help?
As the name suggests, it’s a project that enumerates all the reasons that the migration away from fossil fuels and nuclear is in the process of happening far faster than most people predict. Does that sound like an interesting effort?
There are a ton of issues that need to be researched and fleshed out. I have many dozens of beliefs based on things I’ve read, events I’ve attended, and conversations I’ve had. But are they correct? If so, how can we elaborate on them, perhaps finding quotes from subject matter experts, and supporting them with other types of content? I sure could use a right-hand man (or woman) in this effort.
If you know something about the science, economics, and politics surrounding cleantech (especially clean energy); if you’re good at online research, reasonably skilled with the written language, and sufficiently patient to spend a chunk of time fleshing out these issues, you’re perfectly well qualified.
Of course, you may want to know what’s in it for you—a perfectly reasonable question. Unfortunately, I don’t have a definitive answer; we’ll have to work it out.
If you’re interested, please leave a comment below, or get a hold of me via the contact button.
I would gladly help and already have some insights on the matter
Excellent. Please see the email I just sent you.
In Europe a sulphur directive SECA (Sulphur Emissions Control Area) will take effect on 1 January 2015. In Europe SECA covers the Baltic Sea, the North Sea and the English Channel. In North America SECA covers all US, Canadian and Carribian coasts.
Swedish merchant marine completed an ambitious project called Effship to find out the best solutions. Cleaning of exhausts is complicated, troublesome and expensive. Best option is a change to clean burning fuels as methane, methanol or DME, the project found out. The Swedish shipping company Viking chose LNG and Stena chose methanol. It is much easier to bunker methanol than LNG
Stena chose methanol after George Olah team’s recent breakthrough, oxidative bi-reforming of methane bypassing synthesis gas. At the same time both Wärtsilä (4-stroke marine diesel) and MAN (2-stroke) launched dualfuel methanol marine diesel engines. As methanol does not compression-ignite, 5 % regular diesel is kept for ignition and 95 % of the fuel´s effect is derived from methanol by means of a separate methanol fuel system.
The recent natural gas boom is driving global methanol production extension, growing now about 15 % per year, i. e. a doubling in 70/15≈5 years. Today about 60 Mton/y, in 2019 about 120 Mton/y globally.
Natural gas is fossil, yes. But much, much cleaner than coal and oil. In the long run the same Olah team has solved the CO2 problem by recycling it and produce the same metane, methanol or DME from captured CO2, water and energy, mainly solar energy.
Thus the shipping industry may profit by today´s cheap methanol and in the future, when also shipping perhaps must pay for “black” CO2 emissions, choose methanol made from “white” carbon atoms derived from recycled CO2. By the way we have also “green” carbon atoms from biomass. However, biomass must make it do for so much: Food, Feed, Fiber and so on. Biomass driving the transportation sector? Then we need more planets!
Butanol might be an even better solution as it is more easily compatible with diesel engines without the need for 5% diesel for starting, and less prone to absorbing water
Interested. I can send you a copy of an essay I have written recently, if you wish. It is not on the subject of renewable energy, but may serve as a sample of writing. Good luck with your effort.
Check with Buffet ($$$$$) to see what his ideas are about investing in renewable energies – he is making more billions on those investment – and more rapidly than offshore banking systems!
I’m all over this, Franklin. I contemplate a long chapter on the work of the billionaires.
Hi Craig,
Fossil fuel is not the evil itself but our consumption patterns. Neither is nuclear energy for technology is to do away with safety concerns. And there are also the thorium and the fusion routes.
Also, demand side management is upmost: around 2/3 of all energy consumption in the world can be curbed by both energy/material efficiency and changing life styles toward frugality.
Best,
Vicente Fachina
Brazil
The part about frugality seems to be virtually impossible for mankind to consciously adopt. Societies are only forced into that state — screaming and kicking — in times of high inflation, depression, etc. Neither a despot nor a democrat can persuade his/her countrymen to accept frugality for any significant length of time — unless of course there is a real or imaginary ‘national emergency’.
The part about frugality seems to be virtually impossible for mankind to consciously adopt. Societies are only forced into that state — screaming and kicking — in times of high inflation, depression, etc. Neither a despot nor a democrat can persuade his/her countrymen to accept frugality for any significant length of time — unless of course there is a real or imaginary ‘national emergency’.
For decades now the fossil fuel and nuclear lobbyists have been planting articles in outdoor magazines and publications citing why green energy won’t work. This has been going on for since the 1980s.
I for one believe that investors in any sort of energy can indeed lose out. When it comes to renewable and/or alternative energy; many investors are having a hard time understanding what makes a renewable energy investment opportunity truly opportune. For example why would anyone invest in a gasification technology when there is an investment opportunity to invest in a scalable & process flexible technology that can be switched between combustion, gasification and pyrolysis at the control panel in order to match the conversion process with the fuels available (wood or scrap tires or municipal trash for example) and one that can be scaled for a small town or a big city or a sparsely or highly populated county? That’s what I call an advanced conversion tech.
Advanced Alternative Energy Corp. (AAEC.com) has developed a new concept low-carbon energy technology we’ve designed for serving as the core technology for cleaner renewable energy production systems and energy efficiency improvements across the North American landscape and around the world. AAEC’s novel new concept technology consists of a novel biomass and/or waste combustion, gasification and pyrolysis conversion technology that can provide scalable heat and power requirements as well as biofuel production for stand-alone use or to back up other alternative energy systems that depend on solar, wind or other intermittent sources of energy, and in this way help double the deployment of alternative energy projects around the world in the coming decades.
At AAEC we believe humanity needs to urgently repower all human activities with cleaner energy on a much wider scale, and that innovation is our key to a better future and we aspire to offer home and business owners, towns, cities, counties and utilities our new concept low-budget, low-carbon pathway to greater energy efficiency, energy security, cleaner energy and economic development. We believe now that President Obama is moving the climate issue to the front burner will be a boost to what I’m offering an increasingly stressed planet.
AAEC’s product lines can be manufactured in the US and in most any locality on any continent for the local and regional market. This AAEC believes could create licensing opportunities and more jobs and these are among the things we propose offering to an alternative energy hungry world.
For further details please contact:
Les Blevins, President
Advanced Alternative Energy
1207 N 1800 Rd., Lawrence, KS 66049
Phone 785-842-1943 Fax 785-842-0909
Email LBlevins@aaecorp.com
For more info see
http://aaecorp.com
http://aaecorp.com/ceo.html
http://www.linkedin.com/profile/edit?trk=hb_tab_pro_top
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Advanced-Alternative-Energy/277213435730720
“It is in our vital interest to diversify America’s energy supply — and the way forward is through technology.”
– President George W. Bush, 2007 State of the Union Address
Why Biorefining?
The United States and world economies depend on fossil oil, a finite and nonrenewable energy and chemical feedstock source. Though the exact timing of fossil oil running out is debated, it is inevitable that supplies of fossil oil will decline in the future and will become more expensive. This puts tremendous pressure on already existing shortages and rising retail prices of energy sources, growing interest in national energy security, and concern about the diversity, health, and sustainability of our global ecosystems. We must find alternative energy and chemical feedstock sources to supplement the fossil oil supply in order to maintain sustainable economic growth and reduce our dependence on imported fossil oil.
One viable option is to derive energy, materials, and chemicals from biomass – an infinite and renewable source. A new concept “Biorefinery,” which is equivalent to a petroleum or oil refinery, is being widely accepted throughout the world. This concept suggests that a wide range of products such as fuels, materials, chemicals, etc., which are traditionally derived from fossil oil, can also be produced from biological resources.
Benefits of a Biobased Industry
The benefits of biobased products and bioenergy are summarized as follows according to “The Biobased Products and Bioenergy Roadmap” created in December 2002 by the USDA and DOE Biomass R&D Technical Advisory Committee:
• Enhanced national energy security
• Improved environmental protection
• Rural economic growth
• U.S. leadership in global markets
In addition, promoting the non-food area of agriculture biorefining will boost a new, diversified biobased economy where ever the concept is adopted.
Is it feasible?
Trends supporting the emergence of biobased products and bioenergy are identified as:
• Rapid progress in biotechnology
• Increasing potential of biobased products and bioenergy
• Growing interest in distributed production
• Emerging technologies for efficient biorefineries.
In the past two decades, tremendous efforts have been made to produce biological substitutes for petrochemical feedstocks. Some technically feasible approaches are available to convert biomass to fuels and biopolymers. However, no large-scale commercial facility is operating to date. This situation can be attributed to a combination of the following three factors: technical inadequacy, economic noncompetitiveness, and lack of understanding of the industrial need. Biobased production, or biorefining, is still largely unexplored territory where there are many business and research opportunities.
Biofuels require too much land to actually displace fossil fuels on the grand scale. We will need nuclear heat or wind and solar to electrode, to make ammonia or methanol. Even solar would require about a million square miles in the absence of fossil fuels to power ten billion at high standards (including the overbuild necessary for a days worth of storage).
However,it doesn’t hurt to learn more except that it should be illegal to convert wood to fuels (save the forests).
Biorefineries could turn all that wood Superstorms like Sandy and tornadoes like the one that hit Joplin MO leave behind instead of burning it in the open or landfilling it. And then there is all that land now being irrigated in the plains states with water being pumped from aquifers underground that are being pumped dry. All that marginal land might not be viable for corn without irrigation but it would grow a lot of biofuel crops that are drought tolerant. I for one not willing to discount county scale biorefineries and I’ve developed a biomass and waste to energy tech that would enable them.
Hi:
I would be very glad to help you in the area of renewable energy
Excellent. Can you tell me a bit about your background in this space?
I’m obviously willing to help, Craig.
I’ll be quite busy with church obligations for the next month, but then I can help out in my free time.
I trust you don’t need my credentials.
🙂
Glad to hear you’re available; I very much need and want a review from someone of your stature in the energy industry when I have this all together in a month or two.
RENEWABLE ENEGY IS OUR FUTURE! INVESTORS ARE INVESTING BIG TIME!