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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Biomass

Ben Thorp is one of the true gentlemen in the biofuels industry, humbly but energetically chairing the non-profit BioEnergy Deployment Consortium. Retired from business after an enviable lifetime of successful engagements, he’s dedicated himself to the proposition that biomass needs to be a) understood, and then b) implemented on a pragmatic basis. Yet this represents a considerable challenge.

“There are 11 definitions of the term ‘biomass’”, he told me. “What fits for a business plan to a VC firm might fail completely in an application for a loan guarantee or a permit application.  And how about this: is MSW (municipal solid waste) really ‘renewable energy?’ In some places it’s regarded as such, but not in others.” (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Nate Hagens is a well-known authority on global resource depletion. In my quest to come up to speed with his thinking on the subject, I interviewed him for my next book, and make an ongoing attempt to read the specific articles to which he directs me. Here’s one that seems to encapsulate his thinking, which I would summarize as follows:

Human evolution has brought us to a place where we “feel good,” i.e., get a hit of dopamine, when we come to own stuff, e.g., fast cars, big houses, etc. While this phenomenon worked nicely when energy and capital were abundant, it’s hit the wall in the 21st century where both these commodities have become scarce.

Hope you enjoy the article; it’s excellent.  

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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…)

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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…)

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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…)

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