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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

A friend from China writes:

A pleasure speaking with you on Skype. I believe that with your connections we should be able to develop cleantech companies in China and more renewable energy projects in this part of the world.

The city of Beijing government on the 15th of June 2011, during a closed meeting with Embassies, Consulates and some of the top 100 foreign companies in China announced that the City of Beijing has RMB60 billion (US$10 Billion) to support foreign cleantech companies in China, to make Beijing the first truly green city in the world. I have attached a brief article on China’s Green Technology Program.

Thank you for the book. I appreciate it very much.

My reply includes:

Thanks. I’m sorry for not having sent the book to you earlier. As we discussed, there is much for Americans to worry about re: IP protection in dealing with China. But you folks out-invested us by a factor of 24:1 last year in solar alone ($34B vs. $1.3B). So, while there is much to fear, there is much to be gained.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainable Building

Noted environmentalist and energy expert Bruce Severance will join me for December’s webinar: How to Increase the Energy Efficiency of Existing Structures – and WHY.

Now, if that title carries with it a certain feeling of mystery, that’s not an accident. From his vast experience as a design engineer, Bruce will offer us tips on eco-friendly construction and retrofit. But it is from his life-long advocacy for the environment that he proposes to tell us exactly why what we’re doing here and now has such a dramatic effect on the quality of the planet we’ll inhabit in a few years.

Hope you can join us. Sign-up information will be available soon.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Are you one of the many Americans jacked out of shape by this country’s supposed “slide into socialism?”  If so, there may be far better places to look for evidence of this trend than whatever differences may divide present-day Democrats and Republicans. In particular, have you ever thought about the G. W. Bush Administration’s No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 – whose very title and mission statement suggests a wholesale redistribution of educational resources onto the least talented kids?

Think of what Darwin would have asked us from his grave:

Are you idiots thinking about taking the very law that governs life in the universe, turning it upside down, and thinking this will somehow represent an improvement? And now, a few years later, you’re complaining that you’re profoundly ill-equipped to compete economically in the 21st Century?   Sorry, but if that’s the depth of your understanding of the natural laws, one of which I handed you 150 years ago, you’ve gotten exactly what you deserved.

Kidding aside, who but a politician would suggest that no child be left behind? Out of tens of millions of schoolkids, shouldn’t the lowest 10% or so be deliberately left behind, out of favor to the other 90%?  This isn’t a philosophic argument; we seem to have lost grasp on the most basic concepts of science.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

A reader from the U.K., Derek Deighton, writes:

I’m sorry, am I missing something?  Does it matter what America thinks and does? Assuming no doomsday, America is not going to be more than at best an equal partner in a world centered on Asia.

Speaking from the UK, you seem to have an inflated sense of your importance as a society, as we did with the Empire, and are still wont to do on occasion.

I reply:

Touche! (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Fossil Fuels

We’ve all seen comparisons of the virtues of electric vehicles to their internal combustion counterparts, and noticed that they seem to exclude the many different externalities of oil: lung disease, environmental damage, national security, etc.  Most people believe that we fight wars over access to oil, and I happen to be one of them. What value do you think that I, as the father of the boy pictured here, now 18, who could wind up killed or maimed, would place on that externality?  Let’s just call it “significant.”

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

In response to my recent piece on electric vehicles, a few readers sent me  John Peterson’s position on the subject. Thanks, but I’m already quite familiar with it.  John’s a brilliant, honest, and levelheaded guy; in fact, I plan to visit him in Switzerland when I’m in Europe next spring. Having said this, I disagree with him here.

For starters, the concept that EVs are overhyped and destined to failure because “Cheap Beats Cool” does not ring true of the auto market generally. Since the dawn of the automobile, and certainly since World War II, cars may be about sex, or about the wish to appear affluent, but they certainly aren’t about getting around as inexpensively as possible; “cheap” really isn’t the motivating force here. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyrehx520so]In November’s webinar, I discussed some of the best business plans I’ve encountered in renewable energy and electric transportation. This is part of an ongoing project in which I review an incoming stream of clean energy business concepts, apply five criteria to each, and present to investors the small fraction (2.7% thus far) that meet all the conditions that I impose.

In the webinar, I chose a smattering of these plans and presented them to a live audience. Many of those listening wrote in questions, which I fielded as they came across.

Represented here are investment opportunities in electric transportation, wind, biomass, solar thermal, synthetic fuels, hydrokinetics, and concepts in energy storage, both batteries and compressed air.

I hope you enjoy.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

A quick reminder that we come from a long line of alternative fueled vehicles: It’s the 116th anniversary of the first automobile race in the United States.  89 had entered, but only six actually started, of which half were electric cars.  And, as noted in the biofuels section of our History of Renewables piece,  Henry Ford built the Model T to run on ethanol.

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

My nephew Garrett continues to reflect lasting credit on all of us in the extended Shields family — not only with his scholarship, but also with his participation in incredible activities like this Public Health Brigade, centered around global health and sustainable development. As part of his college major in the subject, he’ll be spending a week in January in rural Honduras, helping people who haven’t had the advantages that most 2GreenEnergy readers enjoy. He’ll be working together with the indigenous people, building a bridge to a world of better sanitation. I hope you’ll check out the video linked above.

This is not the first time, nor will it be the last, that this young man has made me so intensely proud.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgKgc_Oo1fI]As part of my series of basic videos for newcomers on the main renewable energy technologies, I lay out the basic forms of clean energy and say a few words about photovoltaics, solar thermal (aka concentrated solar power or CSP, biomass, hydrokinetics, and geothermal.

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