As my friend and transportation visionary Dan Sturges likes to say, “Car ownership costs the average family about $40 per day — a figure that most of us grossly under-estimate. I only wish there were a ‘car guy’ who came around every day, seven days a week, to each of these families, knocked on the door, and said, ‘Car Guy. $40 please.’ Most of us would soon start to ask about alternatives: car sharing, mass transit, ride sharing, small commuter cars, etc.”
In my estimation, this is exactly where transportation is going: a complete paradigm shift in the direction of a cleaner planet and a more affordable way of life.
I’m spending a bit of time this afternoon helping my daughter with an essay on Pride and Prejudice as a work of social satire. So many of the social conventions that Austen chops up so brilliantly in this masterpiece have changed or gone away entirely, and so much satirical literature written in the last 200 years, that it’s easy to forget how radical Austen’s novel was in its time.
Having said this, so much of this garbage about the social ladder remains in place, and we see this around us every day in pursuit of the things we want for our society — for example, a level playing field for sustainable energy solutions. Here, the will of the people is crystal clear: a huge majority of people – even Republicans – are concerned that our energy policy (or lack thereof) is ruining the planet. But the world is not run by the will of the people; it’s governed by a few extremely powerful elite who honestly couldn’t care less about the will of the people.
If you think that’s a rash exaggeration, try an experiment. Ask a few dozen people if they think that it’s a sound idea to provide the oil companies with the dozen-or-so different types of subsidies – from large sums of cash, to tax breaks, to preferential treatment of government land, to a transportation infrastructure, to a fabulously expensive military that protects access to crude around the globe. You’ll see very quickly that virtually no one supports this blatant corruption. But then realize that we’re still a million miles away from an end to these practices, and that all the satirical novels in the world won’t change that in the least.
When I was in Boston last week, I had dinner with Bridge Energy Group’s Director of Regulatory Strategy and Compliance David O’Brien. We were joined by an old friend of mine from high school, so we didn’t talk too much “shop,” but David said something I found interesting about his core area of expertise, i.e., the regulation of electric power utilities. “Remember, Craig,” he began, “We created the power utilities the way they are. Yes, they’re risk-adverse, but that’s a product of the structure we demanded: just give us reliable, low-cost power. We’re giving you as much money as you need to perform that service, and not a dime more.”
Good point. Like so many other things in life, when we look at things fairly and objectively and try to take full responsibility, we see that most of the things that are antagonistic to our aims are ultimately the result of our own manufacture. This is true at a personal level, but also on an international scale. Look at the current situation in Afghanistan (with the Taliban) and Iran (apparently aspiring to a nuclear weapon). If we hadn’t messed with their governments in the first place, it’s likely that neither of these situations would exist. More broadly, our military leaders tell us that our presence in the entire region is fanning the flames of terrorist sentiment.
Be this as it may, David is 100% correct about the power utilities, i.e., that we tend to blame them for everything that goes wrong, even though they’re doing precisely what we commanded. Even in the case of outages from storms, we somehow assume that the utility isn’t doing its job. Perhaps we need to stop blaming, and come to a better understanding of exactly what we’d like these folks to do on our behalf.
David and I have agreed to speak on the phone sometime soon, which will provide me an opportunity to really dive into this area.
If you are in a sustainable or ‘green’ business the odds are that you care passionately about what you are doing. For you, your enterprise may be a huge investment, but does it make your heart sing?
Business is normally not thought about as an emotional arena. Still there are some businesses I can get emotional about. There are two, I have in mind that aren’t much to look at, yet both of them warm my heart, get me so excited I glow and make the lives of others better. The reason why I find them so exciting, however, is that they are actively doing business and helping others do business in ways that are regenerative for the Earth.
What does it mean to be regenerative? It means acting in the same way Mother Nature acts. It means ensuring that what nature wants to happen in a place is supported by human endeavors and not blocked by them. This is news!!!
I’m on a mission to find more of these types of businesses, so if you have one in your backyard, please let me know.
The first one is the Permaculture Credit Union in Santa Fe, New Mexico. As their name indicates they use permaculture design principles when they consider loan applications. What this means is that they are more concerned and measure their success by impact and not profit. Profit is used to pay bills and expand their offerings, but the real measure of their success is impact.
They are concerned with supporting sustainability, so loans are cheaper for projects or purchases that move sustainability forward. They will give bikes loans, for example, and fund an organic farm before a non-organic one. A loan that would triple a business is preferred over a loan that would have a larger ROI (return on investment), is another example.
They seek to have multiple impacts from each loan, so community-based lending is preferred over individual loans. They partner with other organizations that are like-minded to increase their impact. They are flying in the face of the industry ‘wisdom’ that says financial institutions can no longer make money on loans, they need fees. PCU keeps their fees as low as possible or non-existent in some cases, and they can do this because they are not trying to out bid other financial institutions with lower rates in a race to the bottom. They are what banks used to be!
The other company is Regenesis Group Inc., with offices in New Mexico and Arizona, and Massachusetts. They partner with architects and land developers to help them listen to the story of the land and discover what nature wants to have happen, now and in the future, so, using permaculture principles, the development will support that aim. They were working with a developer in Mexico. The project was a beach hotel. There had been an estuary in the area, but it was degraded. As they worked together, the partners in the project got excited about making a difference, so the redesigned the project to protect and revitalize the estuary.
What happened was that as the land came back to health, wildlife returned, the drainage water was cleansed and the ocean water off of the coast was also cleansed. The result is projected to produce 500 metric tons of fish per hectare in an area where marine life had almost disappeared. This kind of thing warms my heart! I know that if you started your business to ‘do the right thing’ or to address the climate change issues in some way, that you have an emotional connection with your company. Looking at what these companies are doing, is there room for improvement in the how you do what you do? Yes, I’m excited when companies reduce their resource use in the first stage of sustainability. Yes, I get happy when companies begin to think systemically and take on zero waste in the second stage of sustainability, but it is the third stage, becoming regenerative that really makes me dance a jig! When we include the Earth as a partner and mentor, then we fulfill our own destiny and become shepherds of this living thing we call home. The two core values in the Sustainable Values Set® are: all actions create the conditions that support Life, and manage the integrity of the whole. When we do just these two things in our businesses, then we become partners in Earth’s evolution instead of blocking it. That warms my heart!!!!
A great deal of our objection to nuclear energy is based not on logical thinking, but on a kind of irrational hysteria that derives from our contemplating the explosion of hydrogen bombs, or how much more devastating accidents like Fukushima, Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island could have been. Here’s an article, one of dozens I’ve seen over the years, that makes this point.
I’m not sure what to make of this, however. That these accidents in nuclear power plant operation began and ended where they did are interesting data points, but they’re certainly not predictive of the future. And it’s hard to know what to make of the waste disposal issue, the outrageous costs, the huge tax-payer subsidies, nuclear plants as terrorist targets, and the threat that enriched nuclear fuel can be used in weapons of mass destruction.
I know Frank Eggers will be along here any moment with a comment that thorium reactors are the answer here. I don’t really object to that; in fact, my fondest hope is that he’s correct. My understanding, however, is that we’re a long way away, in terms of both years (decades) and dollars (tens of billions), from a viable implementation of that technology.
In my first conversation with Bridge Energy Group’s Director of Regulatory Strategy and Compliance David O’Brien, which took place by phone a few weeks ago, I became instantly aware that I was speaking with a true energy pragmatist. I could tell that, while he might wish as ardently as I do that the world of “big energy” had a fundamentally different relationship with its customers, he’s realistic in observing the facts as they actually are, and not too interested in discussing some sort of fantasy.
That’s absolutely fine with me. I want to make a difference in the world, and it’s clear that a necessary condition to accomplishing that is an honest appraisal of the true lay of the land. In fact, as the title suggests, the main concept behind my current book project, “Renewable Energy – Following the Money,” is that if we wish to wrap our wits around the behavior of business interests vis-à-vis energy, we need only understand the enormous sums of money that create extremely powerful motivating forces to maintain the status quo, i.e., to ensure that the same people who became rich in the 20th Century fossil fuels bonanza experience a repeat performance here in the 21st.
But “the natives are getting restless,” by which I mean that the world’s people aren’t going to sit still for much longer and watch the planet fall apart, merely so the energy barons can grow even wealthier, albeit at the health and safety of every living creature on Earth. In particular, it is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the ecological impact that our 20th Century energy policy is having on our physical environment. We already have cities in Asia with tens of millions of residents who can barely see across the street because of the pollution from their local coal-fired power plants, whose rates of lung disease are going through the roof. Over the coming few years, it will become impossible for the world to ignore this and continue with business as usual.
Even in the United States, we’re very close to a dramatic shift of viewpoint. The dominant American mindset, i.e., “I want it cheap and convenient – and outside of that, I don’t really care” will eventually give way to a recognition of exactly how childish and insensitive that viewpoint is.
In any case, I’m looking forward to speaking with David on his area of expertise, i.e., the regulation of power utilities and the effects these have on innovation, especially, the implementation of efficiency, conservation, smart-grid, and renewables. I want to expand my understanding of how the power utilities are regulated, with an eye towards suggesting a way in which that could be improved. In fact, I’d like to try to squeeze this into this book project, as I realized the other day that the book is a bit light in the subject arena.
My belief going to this discussion is simple:
Our current system of utility regulation is a hodge-podge of arcane rules that sprang up on a regional, ad-hoc basis over the last 125 years. These rules were designed to minimize the cost of electricity, especially to large, industrial customers, while guaranteeing the power companies extremely attractive and perfectly predictably streams of profit. These regulations need to be ripped out by the roots and replaced with something that’s simple, fair, and understandable, while encouraging all stake holders (generation, transmission, distribution, and load) to do the right thing, i.e.,
Invest in smart-grid as the enabler of a modern and efficient energy network
Offer incentives that minimize consumption, especially on-peak
Retire coal plants as quickly as practically possible
Replace them with a combination of renewable energy and storage.
From my initial conversations with Mr. O’Brien, I can see that we agree on a lot of that, but I fully expect to learn exactly why my assessment here is an oversimplification, or lacks other features that would make it pragmatically implementable. That’s fine; I’m here to learn.
Here’s something I wrote for my son when he was a little kid. It’s off-topic in the extreme, but some people have told me they think it’s funny, so I thought I’d post it.
Commas, And Their Correct Use
By, Daddy
This short essay, contains lots of errors with commas. Some are quite glaring don’t you think? Some others aren’t so obvious, you’ll have to look carefully to find them all. For instance is it proper to conjoin two independent clauses with just a tiny measly insignificant comma? I and I’m well over 40 years old don’t think so. Is it proper to separate, the subject from its predicate with a comma? Again I think not. All in all you have to be pretty sharp bright and quick-witted to know where to place those commas!
My 7th grade English teach Phil Maroney had plenty to say, on the subject of commas, and their correct use, once he roared at the class “Do you just throw in a comma because it doesn’t cost anything?” Even though we all were terrified of him we knew he had made a really good sound point one that we would remember forever.
Part of the issue here is there are multiple entities that have some regulatory influence over the grid: FERC, NERC, NRC, DOE, State governments, RTO’s or ISO’s, local governments (zoning), etc… But while there’s a maze of entities overlapping, there are few regulations that do anything other than help ensure constant reliable power – and I wouldn’t want to see those regulations unraveled without great care.
I hear you, but I’m unswayed – not that I favor unreliable power, only that I see a new day dawning in which value is placed on sustainability – and that, I believe, will come at the expense of a wholesale rethinking of who pays for what.
I fully admit that this is a horribly complicated situation, because there are so many moving parts. We have regulated and deregulated areas, and we have innovations like smart-grid and energy storage that offer many different types of benefits to different constituencies: generation, transmission, distribution, and end-customers – all coming with their own hard costs and other challenges.
It’s going to require a great deal of objectivity and honesty to make the adjustments that our society needs. But are there people/entities with a sufficient level of both fair-mindedness and the power to make it happen? I’m not sure.
Here’s a webinar called “A Dawn In Solar Investing” that I recorded with Esplanade Capital’s Shawn Kravetz when I was in Boston last Tuesday. Shawn is the founder of a hedge fund that focuses on the global PV world; he’s regarded as one of the foremost experts on the subject. His routine appearances on numerous business television programs make him one of the most visible faces in the solar industry, and I was pleased to have had him as a participant in our ongoing webinar series.
Not to give anything away, but Shawn sees many signs that the solar PV market may have seen its worst, and provides seven reasons that he is bullish, though cautiously so, on the future. I certainly learned a lot, and I hope viewers will too.
Note: The conversation is about 50 minutes in length, and there are 16 slides. However, the first slide is up for the first 12 minutes; viewers shouldn’t think that the presentation is broken just because we took so long to get to the second slide. That, incidentally, is “my bad,” as I kept peppering poor Shawn with questions.
Here in the UK the Green Deal is the coalition government’s flagship for enabling consumers to access energy efficient measures and also contribute to the drive for a green economy. Not only was it seen as a way for the government to assist people in finding a solution to ever increasing fuel prices, it would also provide a way for the UK government to meet European carbon reduction targets. As the first phase came into view in October 2012 renewable energy industries looked upon the initiative as a positive project that would allow residents and businesses alike to access green energy that they normally would not have the financial backing to invest in.
At the same time there was also an element of scepticism concerning government processes and whether it would stand by directives. The solar energy industry suffered badly in 2011 and 2012 as the government continued to change the goal posts and the benefits from the Feed In tariff. There was perhaps little surprise then when the Green Deal, as early as October 2012 was beginning to look an out and out failure.
Statistics being fed back to the Department of Energy and Climate Change showed quite clearly there was something wrong. The amount of people taking part in the first phase – assessing energy performance – appeared to be minimal – a response which, if it had occurred in the private sector, would undoubtedly have led to its collapse. However on closer scrutiny it is clear that the lack of interest it provoked was once again down to a poor oversight by the coalition government.
Although the Government has ring fenced £125 million for the Green Deal the fact that it needed marketing and promoting does not seem to have occurred to them. The result was furrowed brows and questionable glances when a survey asked “What is the Green Deal?” Just at a time when it was needed most – as the winter approached and weather reports offered stark reading nobody was aware of the Green Deal.
Now finally the government has made real efforts to promote the benefits of the Green Deal to both home owners and businesses by introducing a £2.9 million advertising campaign. The outcome according to a YouGov survey is very favourable. Statistics show that 39 per cent of people are now aware that the Green Deal exists, and this number is expected to continue to rise as further advertisement campaigns are launched. Also they suggest that public awareness has increased by as much as 20% over a period of a few weeks.
Questions have recently been asked in the media as to whether this maybe the greenest government ever. That is probably true but not because of a staunch feeling for green policies but more because they are in an age where to ignore it would not only be folly but dangerous. There is still a strong feeling in the UK that even though they are putting creative green policies in place, they are often short-sighted, carry little long term sustainability and often create hurdles for the renewable energy industries when they have to re-think principles. The next few months will give a clear idea in the UK as to whether the Green Deal is a great success or will herald another government U turn.
On my 
