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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

Here’s an article about a breakthrough in solar power efficiency, which serves as a reminder of an important fact: the cost of renewable energy can only fall, while the cost of fossil fuels can only rise.

I’m not saying that there is no technology involved in extracting fossil fuels and building nuclear power plants; in fact, quite the contrary. But renewable energy is completely based on technology, principally materials science and engineering, focused mainly on developing more efficient ways of converting the energy from the sun, in one form or another, into useful work.

Insofar as the Earth receives 6000 times more energy from the sun each minute than all 7 billion of us are using, it’s only a matter of time until breakthroughs like the one above get us to the point where we have an abundance of clean, cheap power.

 

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

A recent comment:

If I were an atheist I would not care about the state of the world after I’m gone so I would rather pollute more so as to maximize my pleasure while I am here – so it follows I should be a Republican climate change denier…

I’m always surprised when people say things like this. Though I have my own point of view on religion, I avoid discussing it here. But whether I’m going to disappear upon my death, or sit at the right hand of God, I feel it’s my duty to do the right thing during this blink-of-an-eye in geologic time that I’m here on Earth. Fortunately, I think most people agree.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Fossil Fuels

I was delighted with the discussion pursuant to my piece on moral philosophy and energy policy. I note that most comments support my beliefs that a) young minds should be exposed to man’s great questions, b) we all do, in fact, share a set of duties and responsibilities, and c) the way in which we generate and consume energy figures prominently here, as the externalities of burning fossil fuels are causing a considerable number of harmful effects – both to us here on Earth now, and to future generations.

The discussion was by no means unanimous, however. Someone wrote in, taking a run at me for my position that government needs to play an important role.  I’ve lost the email, but as well as I can remember, it read:

“No, impressionable minds should NOT be exposed to your braying about the importance of big government.” (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

I spoke at the Mark Taper Auditorium in downtown Los Angeles (pictured here) yesterday, introducing 2GreenEnergy to an audience of entrepreneurs, each of whom came with an idea, looking for investment capital. It’s always exciting to get behind a microphone and belt out the message:

• Figuring out where we’re going vis-à-vis energy is fascinating, but it’s not easy. We face tough realities in terms of the technology, the economics, and the politics.

• I’ll do everything I can to take good ideas forward, presenting solid business plans to an ever-growing set of investors, each hungry for exposure into clean energy and electric transportation.

This went really well; I got a lot of compliments on the talk, and met some terrific people on some fantastically important missions.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

Whenever I speak on renewable energy, I’m careful to leave my audience with a sense of the “tough realities.”  We all want simple answers to our questions, but in the case of clean energy, none exist.

There are dozens of different flavors of solar, wind, biomass, hydro, and geothermal, each improving in terms of cost and efficiency, but at different rates.  There are economic issues, as none of these flavors can compete with the dirtiest form of coal, if we don’t take into account the “externalities” like lung disease and environmental damage.  And Lord knows there are political issues, where we have serious candidates for president of the U.S. who, if elected, boldly pledge to dismantle our Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Energy.  If this occurs, it would effectively end the efforts of the largest economy on Earth to migrate away from fossil fuels and nuclear.  (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Biomass

Farming energy is a global reality. While biomass fuel wood is still the energy of peasants, used by nearly 2 billion people living on the planet earth, biological fuel is rapidly becoming popular in the developed countries. Modern agriculture is for food, industrial raw materials for manufacturing consumer goods, biological fuel feed stock and biomass for cogeneration. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Here’s an item from the file “It would be funny if it weren’t so tragic.”

Yesterday, Hillary Clinton told the UN Security Council, “The evidence is clear that (Syrian President Bashar al-) Assad’s forces are initiating nearly all the attacks that kill civilians, but as more citizens take up arms to resist the regime’s brutality, violence is increasingly likely to spiral out of control.”

Isn’t it obvious that, in any situation where a nation’s military is killing its own people that the situation has already spiraled out of control? Is there a sense in which a government’s violence against its own people is “in control?”

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Fossil Fuels

Last week, my son, a college freshman, sat down to his first class in philosophy.

First, can someone tell me why philosophy isn’t taught in high school?  Is there some reason we think we need to shelter kids from life’s great questions until they’re older? I never taught the subject formally, though I tutored quite a few undergraduates while I was in graduate school, which often caused me to wonder how I would construct my own “101” course if I happened to be in that position, and at what age group I would present it.

What happened when mankind evolved to the point, about 10,000 years ago, that we had a solid grasp on basic agricultural principles, and so no longer needed to roam, hunting for and gathering food in a nonstop life-and-death struggle? What happened when we started to look up into the heavens — and the questions started to flow: Who made all this stuff? Why are we here? What happens when we die? (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Frequent commenter Greg Chick writes:

I am not sure why good leaders are not in politics. Possibly good leaders can make lots of money (in the private sector) …

The single best answer I can provide is that the political process as it exists today is utterly repugnant to good people. I’m sure there are many fine people with noble aspirations to make a difference in our world, but they immediately meet with the cruel reality: getting elected and staying in office is about raising money and repaying it in favors, not voting one’s conscience and doing what’s right for the majority of the people. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainable Building

A keyword, which tends to have a consistent impact upon our lives today, is indeed ‘Environment’. Not only has it become a topic of extreme contemporary relevance but it has also begun to invade the genres of our regular lives! Right from offices to homes and from parks to restaurants, everything has suddenly gone eco-friendly. This is especially so, in the case of furniture. (more…)

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