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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Biofuels

A reader from Nigeria sent me a business plan on an ethanol plant that would provide a far cleaner way for West Africans to cook their food than their current approach, which is a combination of kerosene and wood gathered from rapidly disappearing forests.

There is no doubt that Nigeria, where 98% of the people are incredibly poor, and do, in fact, cook this way, represents a huge opportunity to improve the eco-friendliness of the average kilowatt-hour of energy generated and consumed.  Currently, their energy comes almost exclusively from burning hydrocarbons, with no emission controls whatsoever.  In fact, this is one of the points I made in my concept of “hitting the broad side of the energy barn.”

But, as I told him, I’m not a big fan of biofuel.  It’s one thing to put numbers on paper and make certain projections; in the real world, however, it becomes far more expensive than most people realize, and it tends to have horrific unintended environmental consequences.  I went on to say that I’m hoping to see Africa develop renewable energy in distributed, off-grid/micro-grid settings.

But I’m wondering if this is the equivalent of saying, “Let them eat cake.”  Am I being short-sighted here?

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Biomass

Late last night I was on a Skype call with a friend, a clean energy aficionado based in Central France.  He went on at length about some of the projects he’s pursuing, several of which are various types of pyrolysis plants that will invoke some extremely specific equipment that I never knew existed.  I learned about machines that process corn and miscanthus, as well as:

• Plastic bottles, includes delabeling and unscrewing the caps (which have more calorific value per gram than the rest of the bottle).  Who knew?

• Food waste, especially the byproducts from making chocolate that are particularly energy-rich.  Again, news to me.

• Dying pines trees my friend believes were victims of climate change, many of which were planted by Napoleon’s people who wanted to ensure France would always have enough wood to build war ships.  Wow, a free lesson in European history!

We also talked about equipment to chill solar panels to create better efficiency and longer life.  Can this be cost-effective?  Apparently he thinks so.

As we were talking I had two main thoughts:

(more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

It was 72 years ago on this date that a group of teenagers came across the now-famous cave paintings in Lascaux, France.  I’ve always regarded this discovery as integral to the path on which Homo sapiens finds itself: gradually coming to see that our common humanity is a far more important feature of our species than our surface-level differences. 

Here we find evidence that a group of people, whose ancestors had left Eastern Africa about 30,000 years ago, wound up in France about 13,000 years later. They huddled together, frightened of the unknown; they hunted for food; they told stories; they cared for one another; they looked into the heavens and wondered about what was out there; they formulated theories to explain the deep mysteries of what they saw. 

Hundreds of generations later, we have more sophistication in the way we go about our business, but we’re the same in so many remarkable ways.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

I’d like to invite you to our September webinar, featuring my friend and colleague Andy Lower, Executive Director of The Eleos Foundation.  Eleos is a dynamic non-profit, that, through its for-profit subsidiaries, invests in and partners with social entrepreneurs who effectively implement high impact, early stage, pioneering market based solutions in the fight to eradicate extreme poverty.

The relevance to 2Greenenergy’s participation in sustainability is obvious: creating jobs for the world’s poor is really the only way to make this huge segment of Earth’s population self-sufficient.  The tie-in to renewable energy may be less apparent, but it’s nonetheless quite interesting.  Eleos recognizes the importance of appropriate technology and its direct impact in dealing with poverty, and I’ve often pointed out the value of an investment in the manufacturing and deploying of clean energy products, e.g., solar panels, small wind turbines, electric vehicles, etc., that will: (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

I just sat down over lunch with a printed publication to which I subscribe called the “Green Money Journal.”  Fantastic stuff.  I loved the lead article, “From Growth Capitalism to Sustainable Capitalism,” by Joe Keefe, President and CEO of Pax World Management, which manages about $2.5 billion using an approach the company calls “sustainable investing.” 

I encourage everyone to read this excellent piece, as it does such a good job in pointing out that outside of a small niche of people operating in socially responsible investing (SRI), the world makes no distinction between a dollar made from selling Coca Cola or extracting oil or burning coal and a dollar made from installing a solar panel or thermal insulation on a building.  The author goes on to point out that this viewpoint had led, and continues to lead, to gross and obvious unsustainability in terms of resource depletion, climate change, and dozens of other symptoms.  He concludes with the notion that this must change radically if our civilization is to survive, i.e., that SRI must replace growth investment. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

Here’s a recently recorded hour-long interview with Fred Smith, CEO and Chairman of FedEx.  He’s always impressed me with his extremely astute viewpoints on world trade.

Obviously, I’m not as appreciative of his anti-regulation position as it applies to environmental issues.  He says, “Unfortunately when you talk about environmental regulation, that’s where the emotions come in, in addition to the pure quantitative data.”  Personally, I don’t think of that as “unfortunate” at all; in fact, I think that in the absence of people getting worked up about this stuff, we’re dooming ourselves to near-certain disaster by way of climate change, ocean acidification, lung disease, deforestation, plummeting biodiversity, etc.  If you can’t get emotional about that, I don’t know what to tell you.

Having said that, there is no denying that he’s doing a very good job with alternative fuel vehicles; there’s a good discussion on this subject in the course of the interview.

 

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Photovoltaics

The recent heat wave has brought the total electricity being generated by Californian solar power past 1,000 MW (1 GW) – about the same as two large power plants running on coal or gas. 

This was reported by California Independent System Operator Corp. (California ISO), which is in charge of the wholesale transmission grid. Steve Berberich, the CEO of California ISO, stated that they currently have an installed solar capacity of 1,160 MW. The recent achievement puts the state a big step closer to reaching their goal of 33% renewable by 2020, which is considered to be the most ambitious green power goal in U.S. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

During the industrial revolution of the early 18th century until now, significant advances have been made in technology, manufacturing, agriculture, mining and transportation. But at what cost? Our environment took and is still taking the hardest hit! The use of fossil fuels denuded our forests and polluted the air.

The aftermath of that revolution is global warming. Weather pattern changes and losses due to natural calamities have amounted to billions of dollars per year. In the wake of this global tragedy, you may ask how you can contribute on solving the crisis. Well, the answer is right outside your home. If you are thinking of the sun, then you are thinking correctly. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Fossil Fuels

Everyone needs fossil fuel; that is the actual truth. The government needs fossil fuel for public energy consumption, the military needs fossil fuel as oil for their heavy equipment, almost everyone in society understands the importance of fossil fuel. Unfortunately, fossil fuel reserves underneath the Earth is fast depleting.

According to recent surveys, there is only enough coal to last for 417 years, oil reserves will likely get depleted within 43 years, and natural gas will be gone from the Earth in 167 years. Due to this discovery, a lot of companies are now looking to harvest natural gas instead of coal and oil. Natural gas is a type of odorless and colorless fossil fuel that can be used as an alternate source of energy. Unlike coal and oil, which emit hundreds of dangerous chemicals into the air when burned or used, natural gas does not release as much harmful chemicals than coal or petroleum does. The only catch is that the natural gas reserves can no longer be reached by normal digging techniques and tools. When this happens, most natural gas companies resort to hydraulic fracturing, otherwise known as “fracking”.

What exactly is hydraulic fracturing? (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

I was a guest on a radio program this morning on socially responsible investing (SRI), hosted by a very amiable local woman, Robin Eschler.  The discussion was quite positive and uplifting overall.  How could it have been otherwise?  Robin is delightful, and there are many ideas in energy efficiency and clean energy that are such obvious slam-dunks that they couldn’t possibly fail as our planet’s population continues to grow and our remaining natural resources continue to vanish.  Who doesn’t want to make money and do the right thing at the same time?  Some of these ideas boil down to exactly that simplicity.

That’s where it gets tricky.  Some of these ideas boil down to that, but not all.  Or, to put it more precisely, some, but only a very few out of thousands of concepts, most of which don’t offer any real value at all to a civilization trying to solve a huge and potentially lethal problem.  (more…)

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