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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

Here’s a neat infographic that presents these folks’ idea of the car of the future.  No doubt there are some good, futuristic ideas here that differentiate this thing from what we have now, but I don’t believe this is the direction we’ll be taking.

In particular, this follows the auto paradigm of the 20th Century: a big heavy and bulky box on four wheels.  I envision a wholesale shift in paradigm, where car ownership becomes far less prevalent, and is replaced in the main by a network of transportation solutions: mass transit, car sharing, ride sharing, e-bikes, ultra-small vehicles for urban commuting and package delivery, etc.  Note that a few of our listings in our cleantech investment opportunities centers around transportation.

I also predict that, despite the stranglehold that the oil companies have on us, we will eventually break free.  The concept that the car depicted in the infographic runs on gasoline refined out of gooey, planet-killing tar sands seems absurd.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Efficiency

As we frequently discuss, the real low-hanging fruit when it comes to greenhouse gas reduction lies more in energy efficiency than it does in renewables.  Efficiency invokes largely proven and inexpensive technologies, and holds the promise of putting many millions of people to work deploying them. 

To make all this even more exciting, the modern Internet-driven world is making the results of these efficiency solutions more striking by the day.  This is largely a product of the use of information technology: sensors to gather data, and software to analyze it and make decisions based on it.  Sensors in our roads, appliances, cars, power generation equipment – in essentially every physical object in our daily lives — all collect data, the net effect of which is reduced power consumption. 

Here’s a good article describing GE’s transformation away from gadgetry and into analytics. 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

I just participated in a real-time webinar, a live broadcast from the COP-18 meetings in Doha, Qatar.  Here are my notes:

• In the past few years, over 30,000 peer-reviewed papers have been published on global climate change, only 24 of which challenged the notion that human activity is causing this phenomenon.

• We have seen substantial progress in renewable energy.  In 2006, only 3.5% of the world’s energy came from renewable resources; now that figure is 20%.

• We can and must embrace a low-carbon economy, putting people to work in building and deploying solutions in energy efficiency, clean energy, alternate fuel transportation, etc.  Certain industrial giants, e.g., GE and Siemens, are actively embracing this change.

• The world needs a vision of a future in which we consume 0% fossil fuels.  (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Here’s an interesting (albeit disappointing) article predicting a slowing in cleantech investment in 2013.  On the bright side, it points to a number of areas of growth, for example, agriculture: 

Big ag steps up and cleans up: …. after evaluating hundreds of companies around the world, we found and profiled 57 with important new clean agricultural science (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Efficiency

Fans of highly efficient internal combustion engines will be interested in this: a modern-day variant on a Wankel rotary engine of 50 years ago.  By firing 16 times per revolution, it achieves extremely high torque in a very small volume; thus the name “MYT” or “Massive Yet Tiny.” 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

When I walk along the beach and take in the beauty of the Pacific, it sure does look big.  Sure, the volumes of pollution pouring into our oceans is growing steadily, but won’t the sheer volume of water and abundance of aquatic plants and animals serve to hold all this in check?  

Not to the degree most people imagine.  

Here’s a picture I came across, done by Adam Nieman, whose aim is to get us to appreciate the environmental challenges we face, due to the fact that the volumes of water in our oceans and air in our skies really aren’t as large as we imagine.  The graphic depicts the actual size of the Earth’s oceans (the small blue sphere on the left) and atmosphere (if it were at sea-level air pressure, the small white sphere on the right).

Since everything seems to come down to dollars and cents nowadays, I’l close with this reminder:  It may be expensive to keep our planet clean, but it’s even more so to clean it up once it’s dirty.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

What wealthy folks are investing in saving our 750,000,000 acres of public trust lands? In housing for homeless? In cleaning up the plastic island in the Pacific larger than Alaska? In cleaning up the mercury from the oceans, the Great Lakes, the Chesapeake Bay, and the Caribbean Sea?  In cleaning up sewer and gray flush water? In getting rid of Africanized Bees? In finding solutions to the 20 million malnourished American kids who go to sleep hungry every night? In the 27,000 square mile Navajo Nation with 400,000 citizens that are 50% unemployed? In finding a cure for diabetes for 60% of the children on the 585 First American Nations?

What wealthy folks are investing in the rusting inner cities or the 23,000 rural communities at risk of extinction? In saving millions of homes in foreclosure? In Veterans Administration Hospitals? In our crumbling bridges and highways? In closing and protecting our borders? In soil restoration after prolonged drought? In 20,000,000 Americans who are unemployed or underemployed?

The fiscal cliff is an invention. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

Last night we published our 2500th blog post.  My sincere thanks to all of our contributors and supporters, and to the many dozens of fine friends I’ve made along the way.   

I smile sadly when I hear about people rushing into retirement, and at my age (57) I’m surrounded by them.  I want to be doing this until I take my final breath on this planet. 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Fossil Fuels

As those of us who are concerned about global climate change turn our attention to the COP-18 meetings in Qatar, we note that the host of these talks is among dozens of countries that keep gas prices artificially low through subsidies that exceeded $500 billion globally last year.  According to the article:

Renewable energy worldwide received six times less support — an imbalance that is just starting to earn attention in the divisive negotiations on curbing the carbon emissions blamed for heating the planet.

“We need to stop funding the problem, and start funding the solution,” said Steve Kretzmann, of Oil Change International, an advocacy group for clean energy.

Right on, Steve.  It’s really just that simple. As long as the world keeps dumping huge sums of cash into making fossil fuels financially attractive, we’ll keep running 100 miles per hour into a global catastrophe.  Thanks for your efforts to shine a light onto this tragedy.  Keep up the good work.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Biofuels

Here’s an article that presents the subject of waste-to-biofuels in a very readable, high-level way.  In the U.S., we’re converting about 3% of our organic waste to some form of useful energy, as compared to 37% in Europe.  Of course, this points to the huge potential remaining here, if we are able to assemble the public-private partnerships that are required to collect and process the waste. 

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