Home › Blog › Page 1574

by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

Here are a few thoughts on the migration to electric transportation, submitted by a reader.  I understand his dilemma, and note that he’s certainly not alone. In fact, I can’t think of an EV visionary who doesn’t share his frustration. But a great deal of private capital, in the US at least, is sitting on the sidelines — and it’s also not moving out of banks. A tax on banks’ cash reserves is in order.  He writes:

The trouble I’m having is getting people with the resources to get it done fired up enough to invest. There is only one way to do this and make money. Go Big! Conversions, Kit cars and Gliders all suffer from the same inherent problem…low volume production.

“Total Cost Involved” manufactures, chassis and parts for the Hot Rod industry, as one of the oldest in the business they recently bragged on having produced their 1000th 1929 T-Bucket body.

I have worked for a Hot Rod shop, and 4 to 5 bodies a week was an exceptional week, usually only one or two…..and they don’t have to be made to pass FMVSS. It has never been a good model. (more…)

Tagged with: , ,

by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainable Building

The response to my request for more cleantech business plans has taken me to some fantastically interesting places, as I knew it would.

Here’s Smarter Flush, a consumer product I really love. For $19.95 and an investment of 10 minutes to install (no tools needed), anyone can retrofit a toilet so that it uses as little of 50% of the water it’s currently consuming. Depending on where you live and your utility rates, the payback period for this can be as short as 90 days. Try that with solar panels! (more…)

Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,

by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

I just came across two chance references to the same thing in the last couple of days:

1) In his memoir, Christopher Hitchens writes that his father said of World War II, “It was the only time in my life that I felt I really knew what I was doing.” and

2) In today’s Writer’s Almanac, Garrison Keillor quoted the great newspaper critic A. J. Liebling, also referring to World War II: “The times were full of certainties: we could be certain we were right — and we were — and that certainty made us certain that anything we did was right, too. I have seldom been sure I was right since.”

Interesting coincidence – one that makes me think of what we’re trying to accomplish here with clean energy. For what it’s worth, I get up every morning pretty darned certain that what we’re doing is right.

Tagged with: , , , ,

by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Fossil Fuels

The other day, a friend referred to the $70 billion provided annually to the fossil fuel industries as a “mosquito bite,” i.e., a negligible bit in the scheme of things. That is certainly one way of looking at it.

But here’s another. $70 billion is 7000 times $10 million. What seems like a better way to drive energy innovation in a world in such desperate need? Transfer $70 billion in wealth each year from U.S. taxpayers to the oil companies? Or give 7000 deserving clean energy entrepreneurs a $10 million head-start in developing their technologies?

Tagged with: ,

by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

Here’s a wonderful presentation that everyone should see, EVWorld editor Bill Moore’s 30-minute talk called The Future of Mobility. What happens when we double the number of cars on the roads — from one billion, which we just hit, to two billion by 2030? Not too long ago, Beijing had a traffic jam that involved 75,000 cars and took five days to clear.  Is this just going to get worse?  And where is all the oil going to come from?  

Automakers sure must be licking their chops at that growth curve.  But are they doing some “out of the box” thinking here? 

Here are Bill’s observations on everything from new drive trains to alternate fuels to rethinking the concept of owning a car. You won’t be disappointed.

Tagged with: , , , , ,

by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

Here’s a TechCrunch video in which venture capitalist Vinod Khosla talks about some of his observations, including cleantech. Actually, as you’ll see, he prefers the term “venture assistant” and eschews terms like “capitalist” and “deal,” as they don’t imply what he believes to be essential to his craft, i.e., helping entrepreneurs succeed.

His new fund is 50% IT and 50% cleantech, and he takes issue with those who say that cleantech has been a disaster. He’s made over $1 billion in profits in three IPOs in this space, and says there are  six or so others that are likely to happen in the next 12 months.

Tagged with: , , ,

by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Fossil Fuels

To make good on my promise to write something about Daniel Yergin’s talk the other night at UCSB, he’s obviously a very bright guy whose travels and studies are quite impressive, and the talk was interesting to a point. But what I found shockingly absent was a single word on any of the controversial issues that surround our world energy policy.  Can’t we at least mention the idea that Big Money and politics are conspiring to preserve the status quo and make the migration to renewables extremely difficult and slow?  How about an update on those 7000 lobbyists who work for the oil industry?

I say I was shocked, but let’s not be too dramatic here.  His clients are oil companies.  Wouldn’t it have been even more surprising had the reverse been true?

Tagged with: , , , ,

by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Efficiency

Mankind is literally at an energy crossroads.  He has just about half depleted his fossil fuel reserves, and while half does not sound bad, his present rate of consumption is higher than ever.  What that means is while his supply is halved, his useable time is much less than half.  And it took over ten million years to make all of this stuff! Can we wait in the dark for ten million years for another batch to cook up? Hardly. There is a real sense of urgency in regard to our energy needs today, and the laws of supply and demand prove this every time we fuel up our automobiles, heat our houses, or buy food at the store.  And without a real solution, we are going to begin suffering some serious setbacks for humanity very very soon. (more…)

Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,

by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

I’ve been preparing to make a few videos for newcomers to the subject of clean energy that answer basic questions on renewable energy, fossil fuels, nuclear energy, and the energy-related challenges we face.  I’ll be recording a series of short talks, aided by graphics, that point out that all our energy sources go back to the Big Bang, and come forward through time to us as follows:

Solar power is nuclear, of course, as all that hydrogen that became our sun billions of years ago undergoes fusion and emits enormous amounts of energy. That which we accumulated over hundreds of millions of years as fossil fuels (ancient biomass) we extract and burn as oil, coal, and natural gas. That which we receive right now, or in the very recent past, we have the potential to harvest as renewables: photovoltaics, concentrated solar power, wind, new biomass, run-of-river hydro, ocean current, and wave. (more…)

Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Question:  Since 2005, what has been home to the most important Renewable Energy event in Central America?

Answer: Can be found at http://2greenenergy.com/cool-guess-answers/8732.

Relevance:  Many smaller countries, whose activities may be less important to the world  economy, routinely make extremely robust contributions to global sustainability — a game in which all players are winners.

Tagged with: ,