There are those who think that renewable energy is overhyped, won’t scale, is doomed if federal incentives get whacked, etc. Just don’t tell Siemens. One of the world’s 50 largest companies, Siemens shows no signs of curtailing its commitment to wind; in fact, they’ve recently opened two major research & development test facilities for wind turbine technology in Denmark, including test stands for major components of wind turbines: generators, main bearings and complete nacelles (i.e., the housing that contains all of the generating components in a wind turbine, including the generator, gearbox, drive train, and brake assembly). Together, the two facilities form the world’s largest R&D test center for wind turbine technology.
Those who accept my recommendation to “follow the money” may want to ignore the disinformation on clean energy being circulated by the fossil fuel industry and realize that most of the world’s industrial giants: Siemens, General Electric, ABB, Johnson Controls, Schneider Electric, Honeywell, etc. – are driving ahead full bore.
I love to meet smart people for breakfast while my mind is sharp and so many hours remain in the day to think through the implications of the discussion. I just got back from coffee with an eco-journalist who left me with plenty of stuff to process. Here are some notes:
• The U.S. investment scene is Fabian, i.e., marked by delay. We understand that energy is the industry that will define success in the 21st Century, but we’re steering clear of it. The political machinery is owned by a traditional energy industry that sees no reason to do anything but milk the status quo. “We have the best Congress that money can buy,” my guest said with a smile that told me he knew that I had heard that hundreds of times before.
• Things are happening in Asia and the Eastern Bloc, however. When I suggested Bulgaria, my guest looked amazed. “Yes, exactly,” he replied with eyes noticeably widened, and went on to describe what they’re doing, especially with improvements in diesel technology.
• One of the non-renewable resources that goes overlooked is topsoil. Half of the topsoil in Iowa is gone, and the erosion due to mismanagement and overuse in Central California is following right behind.
• My guest does not think that renewable energy can scale effectively to deal with the planet’s needs, and I saw no reason to argue with him over the point. I know he’s a proponent of nuclear, and, in my experience, debating this subject is a sure loser. He points out, as most do, that today we have 4th or 5th generation nuclear. But, he quips, “We also have 4th or 5th generation anti-nuclear protesters, as well.”
Here’s one of a few articles I’ve come across recently that reminds me of an important, if unsettling fact: in many cases, environmentalists are their own worst enemies. The most obvious cases of this may be here in California, one of the most progressive states in the union. Anyone would look at the political demographics here, and the sheer number of people who care about the quality of our natural environment, and think that getting a permit to build something with a net positive environmental impact would take about 15 minutes. Wrong.
Want to convert the municipal solid waste that’s filling up our landfills and leaching into our groundwater into fuels or electricity? Want to build a large solar or wind farm? You better be prepared to spend a mint in legal fees, and steel yourself to battle a bureaucracy that will fight you – not for weeks or months, but for years or decades.
One would think that anything that creates 10 pounds of good for an ounce of bad would be something of a no-brainer. Now yes, of course, this is an oversimplification; I’m aware that there are important subtleties at play in certain cases.
But most of these ideas don’t strike me as at all subtle. Want gigawatts of solar, displacing the same amount of electricity from coal and gas, at the ecological expense of repatriating some desert tortoises? If that sounds like a slam dunk, think again. Such initiatives are met with the same type of vitriol as the mountaintop removers face back east.
Not to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I don’t find it credible that intelligent and well-meaning people can think and behave like this. In fact, this subject came up in this morning’s breakfast meeting with an eco-journalist. He said something that I find eerily reminiscent of my current book project: “Just follow the money.” In particular, he suspects that the biggest donors to the Sierra Club, for example, are actually traditional energy folks who are totally thrilled to see alternative energy projects being stalled for years on end.
I need to look into this. In the meanwhile, if readers have any thoughts on the matter that they’d like to share, please have at it.
Sometimes it’s hard to believe our yards and gardens could be any greener, especially in late spring when everything is in full bloom. Nevertheless, when it comes to the environment looks aren’t everything and properties everywhere could stand to be a little more eco-friendly.
After all, what we do around our homes not only affects the immediate surroundings but as a community can have serious repercussions for the local ecosystem.
That’s why as the cool weather subsides in the coming weeks and we start spending more time outside why not try implementing a yard and garden eco-upgrade so the growing season has a deeper shade of green.
Consider the following:
Chemicals
Just because something is a chemical doesn’t mean it’s dangerous. However, there are certain substances homeowners often employ in the yard to kill insects or stop the weeds from coming up and these insecticides and herbicides are dangerous in several ways:
They contain ingredients that can cause health problems in people and interfere with children’s development.
They may get sprayed on edible plants and eaten by people or by other animals.
They may get absorbed into the earth and washed into underground aquifers.
They usually kill beneficial insects and plants as well as those which are unwanted.
That being the case there are a lot of alternative methods for dealing with unwanted pests and vegetation. Some products can be bought over the counter and others mixed together using baking soda, lemon juice, salt and a host of other household staples.
Once you find what works best for you remember it may still cause harm to beneficial bugs or plants so use carefully.
Emissions
The yard and garden is the last place you’d probably be thinking about exhaust but believe it or not if you use gasoline powered lawn mowers, weed whackers, or trimmers the chance of polluting your living room’s indoor air from just feet away are great. How so?
Studies have shown that an hour of mowing the lawn can equal as much pollution as a 100 mile car ride only worse: the person mowing is standing in the cloud. This may not be an issue in urban centers but in more rural places like outside of Inianappolis where landscapers may have to mow larger front and back yards that’s a lot of fumes to be around.
For this reason it’s important both for the environment and the health of the operator to take care of yard work with manual tools as much as possible.
Yes, there will be times when gas powered machine are necessary but outside of those occasions get excited for a little extra exercise moving your arms and pushing. Also, when it comes to yard maintenance try to keep a schedule so the lawn, bushes, and other parts of the yard don’t grow wild and out of control because then using manual tools may be more difficult.
Repurpose
Eliminating or at the very least cutting down on noxious chemicals and emissions in the yard and garden is one thing but another way to to bring out the eco-friendly colors of the season is to repurpose things for use in the garden.
Some examples include:
Food containers: Reuse cardboard food containers for planting and transplanting into the ground. They are great because they biodegrade.
Plastic pots: If you purchased plants and they came in plastic trays or pots wash them off and set them aside for future use.
Organic matter: Instead of tossing organic matter such as leaves and cut grass into the trash use it for composting.
Tree branches: Wood from fallen branches or trimmed back bushes can be turned into homemade mulch.
Jakob Barry is a green living journalist for Networx.com. Networx.com helps homeowners save time, money and frustration by connecting them with home improvement professionals. From plumbers and roofers to exterminators and handymen, Networx simplifies the process of locating a reliable professional.
I happen to have read this article the same day I edited the transcript of my interview with Jerry Taylor of the Cato Institute for my upcoming book, “Renewable Energy – Following the Money.” Jerry and I discussed this subject of costs in some depth, and I have to say that I was amazed at how many different philosophies there are competing with one another. I admit that I was taken by a few of them, whereas others seem to make no sense at all. Here’s a quick summary of two of the latter category:
The result of the damage that is currently being done to our planet via the consumption of fossil fuels is very small right now, though we know that it will be extremely painful in 100 years. Therefore, we should do very little about it now, but be prepared to address it aggressively 100 from now. (Say what? Here’s what I told Jerry when I heard that: Even if you accept the premise, which I don’t, if we know the damage we are doing now is going to have enormous repercussions in 100 years, shouldn’t we be doing something aggressive about it now? It strikes me that the person who proposed that solution doesn’t understand that preventing a problem of global proportion is far easier than fixing it once it’s wreaking vast devastation. Either that, or he simply doesn’t care. It’s the equivalent of an oncologist encouraging someone with stage one skin cancer to continue to sun-bathe, on the basis that the condition isn’t terminal at this point.
Here’s another that starts with the same premise: The damage that is currently being done to our planet via the consumption of fossil fuels is very small right now, though we know that it will be felt in the extreme in 100 years. But so much can change in the next 100 years that dealing with this subject now requires guesswork. (Yes, it requires guesswork, but that hardly justifies doing nothing. Again, and no offense intended, it sounds rather like the guy who propounded this concept really is looking for any idea, regardless of how far-fetched, to rationalize a “business-as-usual” approach to energy.)
On we go. Do we as a species have what it takes to apply our “big brains” to this problem, and kill it before it kills us? Or will specious arguments like these keep us all fat, dumb and happy until it’s too late? We’ll see.
He points out that we run our factories, heat and cool our buildings, and transport ourselves and our cargo with the decomposed remains of plants and animals that lived and died millions of years ago, and concludes that “it’s time (America) stepped out of the Carboniferous and Mesozoic Periods, and stepped into the 21st century.”
The problem is that doing so will require achieving a political consensus to make a tough decision. The American people will have to understand that it’s not acceptable for our country to have a de facto energy policy that is built around extracting the last molecules of hydrocarbons from the Earth’s crust and burning them. How close are we to that level of agreement?
Let’s just say we’re not exactly knocking on the door. We had a presidential election a few months ago in which a central tenet of both campaigns was an energy strategy built around becoming even more aggressive about the harvesting of coal, oil, and natural gas. At a certain point, it appeared that the president might lose his re-election bid because he was not sufficiently uncompromising in his support of the fossil fuel industries.
Fortunately, the voices calling this into question are growing louder by the day – at least that’s the way it seems to me.
About a year ago, I had lunch with the top two people from Forester Media, whose publications include Distributed Energy, and during our conversation I expressed my interest in co-promoting one another’s content. For my money, anyone who’s concerned with the subject of distributed energy, whether that means distributed generation (DG), energy storage, vehicle-to-grid or whatever, ought to be interested in what we’re doing here at 2GreenEnergy.
I’ve always felt that DG is the real ace-in-the-hole for renewable energy. Of course, the power utilities are praying that this doesn’t happen, but I think there is a more-than-likely scenario under which the paradigm of centralized generation, transmission, and distribution evaporates over the coming century. We’ll see what happens.
I’ll find out Tuesday morning over breakfast if I’m able to strike some sort of win-win deal with the fine people at Forester. Again, we’ll see.
Here’s an article from Smart Planet on carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) that brought a few basic ideas into alignment for me. There may be more scholarly treatments of the subject out there, but the author’s central point is one that I can’t imagine will prove false as this concept is taken forward. That is, with the acknowledged costs of CCS so outrageously high and the cost of renewable energy falling steadily, it’s hard to conceive of a world in which it makes sense from a financial standpoint to continue to burn coal and attempt to contain the effluent.
If anyone has data to the contrary, please share it.
Many of us are trying to understand the complex dynamics of energy, including the technology, the economics, and the politics that surround our ever-changing mix of coal, gas, oil, hydro, nuclear, and renewables. There are so many factors that enter into the equation, both known and unknown, that predicting the future of this industry is arguably more difficult than it’s even been.
One wild card here is nuclear, and our reaction to things like:
• Carbon emissions and climate change • Fukushima / public safety • Reluctance of Wall Street to get behind nuclear with its consistent delays and cost-overruns • The availability of a new wellspring of loan guarantees from the U.S. federal government
The comments in these articles are great; I especially love the guy who wrote, “It is mind-boggling that you can’t take deceitful strategy, terrible design, incompetent auto industry re-treads and make a great car.”
Btw, I’m not implying that there is no room for start-up EV companies; in fact, as I proved just last week, investors still have an appetite for companies like Vision Motor Cars. What’s different here, however, is a cool design and a price-point that makes sense, given the nature of the product offering.
Sometimes it’s hard to believe our yards and gardens could be any greener, especially in late spring when everything is in full bloom. Nevertheless, when it comes to the environment looks aren’t everything and properties everywhere could stand to be a little more eco-friendly.
Here’s a good discussion of what I call the 
