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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

It appears that our client Vision Motors may have succeeded in securing the capital it needs to begin soon manufacturing its uniquely attractive design of light-duty battery-electric trucks.  That will mean an important new set of responsibilities for me.  Vision’s CEO Brooks Agnew and I have become friends and colleagues over the last couple of years, and Brooks has repeatedly asked me to act as the company’s chief marketing officer.  In fact, he’s often quipped during our phone calls, “Hey, Craig, I turned down someone else for the marketing job today; I told ‘em, ‘No, sorry, that position’s reserved for Craig Shields.’”  I’m flattered. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

When I was a little boy, I recall a conversation with my father in which he told me his impressions about the characteristics of the people who lived in a few of the states within driving distance of us in Philadelphia.  I’ll never forget this one:  “If you’re not from Vermont, they don’t really want you in Vermont.” 

I laughed when I heard that, but I got a small taste of that concept this morning when I arrived at a local diner in bucolic Windsor, about 50 miles north of the Massachusetts border.  I had made the drive up from Hartford to meet a renewable energy investor I’ve known a few years, but had never met face-to-face. I arrived early, and since the hostess/waitress didn’t recognize me, and detected a notebook in my hand, she announced with a straight face, “If you’re here for a business meeting, there’s an extra charge of $30.”  I smiled to acknowledge the joke.  “Are you with the government?”  No, I assured,” my smile widening, eager to see how far she was willing to take this.  “He’s likely IRS,” a patron joined in.  “No, I promise.” 

I sat down, ordered breakfast, and eventually the mood lightened.  But I couldn’t help think of my father’s observation.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

As I hoped it would be, my college reunion was a feel-good mixture of nostalgia, immersion in some good thinking offered in a few seminars, and revelry with old friends.  But it was also quite productive, from the standpoint of what we’re doing here at 2GreenEnergy. 

I’m not one to glom onto successful friends, and exploit my relationship for my own gain.  In fact, through my 30 years as a business consultant to the Fortune-sized tech and industrial companies, I honestly can’t recall hitting up a single one of my friends for introductions. 

But if you tell your story to enough people, good things happen.  I had at least two dozen conversations with classmates in which they asked me what I’d been up to, and I told them that I write and speak on renewable energy, and try to bring together excellent clean energy projects with the investment community.  Two different people, both really well-heeled, replied, “Oh, I have a few people you should know.  I’ll send them your way.” 

Wow.  I’d regarded these reunions with a certain indifference.  No more.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

As part of my 35-year college reunion this weekend, I gave a short talk at our class breakfast this morning, in which I mentioned 2GreenEnergy, the cause of renewable energy and sustainability more generally.  I’m not sure how much this meant to certain of my classmates, though a few people came up to me afterwards, thanked me, and lamented America’s mysterious and tragic general lack of interest in the subject. 

Next thing I knew, I have been elected a Class Secretary (whose job it is to “blog” in the quarterly magazine and encourage others to do the same).  I suppose that’s the cost of opening one’s mouth.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

I had the pleasure of listening to the conservative columnist George Will deliver a talk yesterday here at my 35th reunion at Trinity College in Hartford, CT.  As I told a friend before we entered the auditorium, I disagree with a great deal of this guy’s conclusions, but I’d give anything to be able to think and communicate at his level.

(more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

Per this report,  Tesla is shooting for 20,000 units next year.  That’s a big number for a novel, specialty car with a big price tag.  Yet think about the consumer value proposition: I can buy an extremely high-end car with a 300 mile range that doesn’t use gasoline.  When’s the last time I drove 300 miles in a day?

That’s a lot different than a proposition that goes like this:  I get a low-end car at a premium price, and I have to make sure I stay local. I’m paying extra to be inconvenienced. 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

When I travel, I spend a fair amount of time in rental cars, which provides me with more opportunity to listen to radio programming on our civilization’s challenges and opportunities than I have when I’m home.  One of the themes I see emerging is the economic plight of today’s youth, and how likely it appears that this generation will be the first to fall short of its parent’s in terms of quality of life, at least defined in economic terms.  In particular, the feeble job market has made stable, high-quality careers in young people’s chosen fields extremely rare.  And where the situation for college graduates is tough, the outlook for kids entering the job market with only a high school diploma is, of course, even worse.  (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

Consider today’s report from the United Nations to the effect that we are doing a terrible job with respect to sustainability and that we’re nearing the “tipping point” re: global climate change.  Add to it this bundle of joy on the same subject from Scientific American.  Together they raise a few interesting questions:

1) Are they unbiased and scientifically accurate?  They certainly jibe with nearly everything I read about the combined effects of population growth and the consumption/destruction of natural resources, but they’re sure to be assailed by the forces that profit from our business-as-usual approach to transportation, energy, consumerism, etc.

2) More importantly, assuming for a moment that the reports provide accurate depictions of the declining health of our natural environment, what do they mean in practical terms?  Will they make a difference?  How, if at all, do they provide a mandate for citizens of Earth, aggregated as we are in the 200 +/- sovereign countries, to take real action?

The problem is that it doesn’t matter what reports like these tell us.  At so many levels within the realms of business and political reality, we live in a world where substantive change is as difficult as it is vital to our survival.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Efficiency

Frequent commenter Larry Lemmert waxes metaphorical with the respect to our clean energy targets:

We need to go after the low-hanging fruit before climbing the tree and going out on a limb to harvest energy that has a negative payback for our efforts. ….Craig has listed a number of these ill devised schemes.

There is no doubt that there IS low-hanging fruit – most obviously in the form of efficiency and conservation, but I think that solar and wind are fairly well proven technologies in which the costs are becoming quite attractive – and bound to fall even further in the near-term — especially if we can find a way of achieving some level of scale.

And yes, there are a lot of bad ideas being hawked by the large and ever-growing ranks of frauds and crackpots. Perhaps more dangerous, there are those whose MO is getting a few ambitious politicians to champion big (and terrible) ideas. “Clean coal” and corn ethanol come immediately to mind.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Biomass

Our guest for this month’s webinar is Robert Orr of Manchester, England, who will tell us about his quest to build a facility to turn buffalo dung in Southern Pakistan into fertilizer and energy.

We are talking about a huge amount of animal waste: 400,000 dairy buffaloes confined in a small area are creating, between solids and liquids, about 8,000 tons per day.  Today, most of it forms a river and flows south into the Arabian Sea, a body of water that is now so polluted that fishermen row their boats through five miles of sewage every morning before they encounter anything still alive.

I hope you’ll be able to join Robert and me for this lively presentation, Thursday, June 28, 2012 at 10 AM PDT (1 PM EDT).  Robert has a refined and gentlemanly demeanor, yet carries with him a raw passion for the project, as well as perhaps a thinly disguised level of disgust and contempt that mankind has been brought to this horrific place.

He’s also a man with a plan – and by my wits, it’s a heck of a good plan at that.  I hope you’ll join us.  Here’s the sign-up form:  

http://2greenenergy.com/free-webinar/

 

 

 

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