I’m always a bit cheesed off when my Monday morning calls to my business partners reveal that they had more exciting weekends than I did. While I was getting a bit of exercise and catching up on my writing, my partner at EVWorld, Bill Moore, was hanging out with one of the world’s most influential people: Wang Chuanfu, BYD’s founder and chairman, whom he met and interviewed at the Berkshire Hathaway shareholders’ meeting in Omaha.
I would have ridden my bicycle there to meet Chuanfu. In 1995, he built a company from scratch that now employs more than 200,000 people, and aspires to be the world leader in electric cars.
And I’m not betting against him, even though the company takes a very interesting and controversial approach to business: vertical integration, taken to the max. They do the mining, build the battery cells, assemble the packs, and then integrate the packs into the cars. On top of that, they’re all over the clean energy required to charge the batteries in the most eco-sensitive manner possible, investing heavily in renewables — especially solar.
Does this extreme level of verticality seem improbable in a world of global commerce where micro-specialization is the order of the day? So it would appear to me. But I’m not one of the world’s wealthiest people — nor did I spend the weekend with one. Grrr.
In light of the vitriol and partisan game-playing in Washington that seems to stall decision making, perhaps a bipartisan group can make an impact on the energy discussion?
A think-tank established by former Senate Majority Leaders Howard Baker, Tom Daschle, Bob Dole and George Mitchell, the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC), aims to do just that. It was formed to develop and promote solutions that can attract public support and political momentum for real progress. It engages top political figures, advocates, academics and business leaders in the art of principled compromise.
BPC already has a number of projects and initiatives under way, including the Economic Policy Project, National Security Initiative, National Security Preparedness Group, Nutrition Initiative, and the Debt Reduction Task Force.
Now, the Energy Security Project is being formed. Senators Trent Lott (R-MS) and Byron Dorgan (D-ND) along with former National (more…)
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x94CSE4IQEA&w=425&h=349]
In this episode of the 2GreenEnergy Video Report, I discuss one of the dozens of different kinds of biomass to energy technologies — in this case, processing chicken manure.
Oakland, CA-based BrightSource will soon be raising $250 million in an IPO to complete a 393-megawatt solar thermal project in the Mojave Desert. The project is under attack, however, as the land involved in the deal is home to the desert tortoise. In fact, BrightSource has already shaved 500 acres (and about 50 megawatts) off of its original blueprints to accommodate concerns from environmentalists.
But don’t we need to weigh the environmental impact of the project – equivalent to taking 90,000 gas-powered cars off the road, against the plight of a certain number of desert tortoises? It seems ironic that we’re so compassionate towards our reptiles when we don’t seem as adamant in our dealings with coal-fired power plants, the noxious output of which causes the premature death of tens of thousands of human beings every year.
EV buff Dick Schoen argues: “EVs, the 110 models coming into the US from forty or so manufacturers worldwide, cannot successfully commercialize without free public solar charging.”
I reply:
Dick: Thanks for writing. I have a great deal of respect for you and your thinking, and I would love to live in a world in which EVs are commercialized with free public solar charging. But personally, I don’t see it. In fact, though I’m not happy about this, I see the grid-mix as being pretty much incidental to the success of EVs in the marketplace. I’m betting that we’ll see something like this:
2020: 10% penetration of EVs
Early adopters, corporate fleets
Charging mainly at private or semi-private locations: home, workplace, corporate facilities
A few “opportunity-charging” locations, mostly Level 2, and even fewer (far from ubiquitous) fast-charging (Level 3) locations
Slightly cleaner grid-mix brought about largely by state RPSs (renewable portfolio standards).
2050 – near 100% penetration of EVs in every class of land vehicle except the largest trucks
Battery packs completely affordable, as we experience scale and incremental improvement in performance over a 50-year period (currently 8% per year, compounded; this adds up mightily of 50 years)
Design standards for batteries that are optimized for fast (Level 3) charging
Thousands of such stations deployed in all “developed” countries
A much cleaner grid-mix, as old coal plants are decommissioned and the cost of renewable energy continues to fall
As I’m fond of saying, the issue isn’t “Will it happen?” It’s “Who’s going to make a buck in the process?” I aspire to be one of them, and I’m rooting for you too! Thanks for writing.
In this week’s 2GreenEnergy Video Report, I discuss a potential trap for investors and business people more generally — the gap in funding necessary to achieve momentum and successful commercialization of a new electric vehicle product.
A reader writes in about my blog post on John Hofmeister’s “Why We Hate The Oil Companies.” In it, I point out that the author, the ex-CEO of Shell Oil, though hardly a radical, calls upon the oil industry to act in better conformity with the needs of “grass-roots Americans.” The inquiry reads:
He (Hofmeister) questions why oil companies act only with self-interest. Isn’t it because their role is to make money? Does he think that selfishness is going to be eliminated? It seems to me that selfishness is the driving force in everything I can think of (unfortunately). Please enlighten me.
I respond:
You bring up an interesting point. It seems to me that the history of our society is really about finding a balance between selfishness and its ultimate catastrophic effects. At any time until the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215, the king/pharaoh/you-name-it could imprison, torture, and kill anyone he wanted, for any reason. Before the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, Americans could legally own slaves. Until the US Civil Rights Act of 1964, we had laws that cut across the rights of US citizens to vote and take part in many other activities that we all take for granted today. Clearly, the last few thousand years have taught us that selfishness needs the moderation that is brought along by the forces of reason and decency, and that this moderation cannot be an option taken only by the enlightened; it needs to be made a part of our laws.
Now there is no doubt that the self-interest that lies at the base of free-market capitalism does certain things very well. It sets prices and supply/demand curves, and, in most cases, rewards people who work hard. All of these are good. But we need to recognize that there are things that capitalism doesn’t do at all well – some of which we’ve seen emphasized in the recent financial meltdowns. Witness Enron, Bernie Madoff, and the devastation wreaked by the present-day Wall Street bandits, which has ruined the lives of countless millions of Americans and turned our financial markets upside down. Perhaps most horrifying in all this is the realization that it’s only a matter of time until this exact same stream of events recurs.
As much as we love the efficiency with which capitalism creates the markets that set our prices and determine the range of products and services we offer, we need to accept that it fails to deal well with at least two main issues:
1) Sustainable Wealth Distribution. As we observe every day, unbridled capitalism ensures that the rich get richer while the poor get poorer. And, as much as some people may think this is just fine, this eventual dissolution of the middle class will ultimately lead to collapse. We actually had this a few centuries ago; it’s called “feudalism,” and it really wasn’t all that good.
2) Environmental Protection. The economic self-interest of our day has led us to a point where our planet is in real danger. It is a sad truth that leaving each of us more or less on our own to self-regulate the level of toxins we dump into our environment has brought us to the brink of disaster. Not everyone agrees with me here, but it is, according to my research, alarmingly true.
There is more at stake now than an inequitable distribution of wealth that causes miserable lives for the impoverished majority of Earth’s seven billion current inhabitants. We’ve reached the point at which we’re sentencing huge levels of suffering on even more of us to come.
It is for this reason that I believe we need enlightened government — one that will force compliance with critical environmental issues — an important one of which is our renewable energy portfolio. But goodness knows from where this government may derive; we certainly seem to be a million miles from it in what we have in Washington DC today.
I hope that you’ll support us in our search for solutions. Thanks so much for writing.
Courtesy Jeff Stahler, The Columbus Dispatch, 1 April 2011
“We’ve run into the same political gridlock and inertia that’s held us back for decades. That has to change,” said President Obama in his speech on March 30th, 2011. He seems to have finally turned his attention to energy, but now with the budget fights in Congress, will green energy be a loser?
On March 30th, Obama gave a focused energy speech, followed it up with a few points in radio talks, and then continued the discussion on April 6th, speaking at a wind turbine plant in Bucks County, PA. Unfortunately, more (more…)
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzAL0W9I4u8&w=425&h=349]
In this episode of the 2GreenEnergy Video Report, I discuss the use of market research to gauge the overall size of a target market.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VvCB8ijr0M&w=425&h=349]
The world is embracing electric vehicles in a big way. But that doesn’t mean all companies offering EVs will succeed. Here, I make some predictions about the probable losers in the EV space.
I’m always a bit cheesed off when my Monday morning calls to my business partners reveal that they had more exciting weekends than I did. While I was getting a bit of exercise and catching up on my writing, my partner at EVWorld, Bill Moore, was hanging out with one of the world’s most influential people: Wang Chuanfu, BYD’s founder and chairman, whom he met and interviewed at the Berkshire Hathaway shareholders’ meeting in Omaha.![[The Vector] Renewable Energy News from Washington: Bipartisan Policy Center and New Energy Project](https://www.2greenenergy.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/senator-trent-lott.jpg)
![[The Vector] Energy Policy and Obama](https://www.2greenenergy.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/jeff-stahler-the-columbus-dispatch-april-1-20111.jpg)
