San Jose State University and SolarTech conducted a study recently in Silicon Valley to understand consumer attitudes toward solar energy and solar power for home use. Silicon Valley (Santa Clara County) is considered a bell-weather county in a state that is more aware of solar and alternative energy than the typical American.
The goal of the survey was to analyze consumer awareness, preferences, perceptions and ultimate attitude to adoption of solar energy by homeowners.
The other day, a friend forwarded me an invitation to audition for a space in the Ted Talks. Wow! The notion that I have any “Ideas Worth Sharing” (their tagline) is more than little flattering.
In my mind, the only concept I have that is even remotely worthy of the Ted Talks is the concept I’m developing for my next book: the true reason that renewable energy really isn’t happening in the US. Without a doubt, the answer to that one would be quite worth sharing.
Yet, from what I’ve been able to gather, it seems that the answer is simple; in fact, it is summed up in a word: corruption.
The reason our energy mix is dominated by sources that carry with them environment ruin, never-ending wars, lung disease, and ballooning national debt is nothing other than the unlovely effect that Big Money has on the political landscape. It’s the same reason we can’t have meaningful reform in banking or healthcare. It’s what lies behind the declining levels of nutrition in our food, and the degradation of pop entertainment: money.
Again, I’m flattered that someone thinks I have a Ted Talk in the making. But even if I do, I’m not sure how the judges would respond to a talk whose answer to the question is exactly one word in length.
On a drive to pick up my son this afternoon, I caught an episode of The Bioneers, a radio show covering issues in sustainability. Clever name, don’t you think?
This week’s speaker began by mentioning that she’s from Illinois, a state in which every public school classroom features a portrait of Lincoln. To her, this serves as an important reminder to school kids that before 1863, the entire US economy was built on the back of slave labor, a practice that we now regard as “unthinkable.”
But now, she pointed out, our current economy is built on chemicals that are part of grossly unsustainable and ecologically disasterous processes. The way we grow our food, manufacture our products , power our transportation, and generate our energy for various uses – all rely on chemicals that are poisoning us. We have the skyrocketing rates of dread diseases to prove it, but lack the political will to do anything about it.
“It’s clear to me that when people 100 years from now look back on the early 21st Century,” she said, “They will use the same word to describe this era as we do when we think of slavery: “unthinkable.”
Quite a concept.
I often try to look at our times from the vantage point of the future. It may sound like a pointless or impossible task, but it’s not as hard as one might imagine. We look back at the Inquisition, at bloodletting and leeching, at the Third Reich as the moral and intellectual horrors they were. But aren’t there idiocies in our own times that will be regarded as just as gross?
In any case, I hope you’ll take a few minutes and check out The Bioneers.
Here, 2GreenEnergy Video Report host George Alger interviews me on the subject of electric transportation. We cover fuel-cell and battery EVs, the most likely consumer adoption curve, and the imperative on the part of the OEMs to begin to produce EVs.
The World Economic Forum says worldwide investment in green energy rose 30% in 2010. Investment reached $234 billion in 2010, up from $186 billion a year earlier. The WEF states that higher oil prices would most likely increase demand for more clean energy.
The WEF also announced that investment in small-scale energy projects took off last year, almost doubling from the previous year. More than $59.6 billion was invested worldwide, and the WEF said Germany’s rooftop solar capacity grew (more…)
In this episode of the 2GreenEnergy Video Report, host George Alger interviews me on the phenomenon known as “peak oil,” i.e., that the world has peaked in terms of its oil production capacity. I discuss my take on this, as well as its many social, financial, and political ramifications.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BNLOIQeH68]Here, 2GreenEnergy Report host George Alger interviews me on cold fusion. While I’m as skeptical as the next guy, I see no reason to throw the concept out the window, and dismiss it as impossible.
If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry. That’s the way I feel when I read something as stupid as this article in Automotive News Europe:
TURIN – Chrysler Group LLC will lose more than $10,000 on every battery-powered Fiat 500 it sells, Fiat-Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne says. That heavy financial hit won’t stop the automaker from launching the Chrysler-built electric version of the minicar in the United States in 2012, underlining the pressure automakers face to improve fuel economy and remain competitive in the race to offer alternative powertrains.
“The economics of EVs simply don’t work. On the 500 that (Chrysler) will begin selling in the U.S. next year, we will lose over $10,000 (per unit) despite the retail price being three times higher” than a version of the minicar with an internal combustion engine, Marchionne said on the sidelines of Fiat S.p.A.‘s general meeting on Wednesday.
“The economics of EVs simply don’t work?” Really? What could this guy possibly mean by making such an outrageous generalized statement? Maybe he means the economics don’t work at very low volumes, when the world is introducing its first ten thousand EVs onto a planet that has roughly one billion internal combustion engine-based cars and trucks in it, the result of over a century of automaking — dominance by a factor of 100,000:1 over EVs.
But this is so obvious. It goes without saying that IBM didn’t expect to make money on the first computer it sold. This can’t be news to the CEO of one of the world’s largest companies. Why wouldn’t he make himself clear? There must be something else going on here.
No. Sure enough, skipping down to the bottom of the article, we see: “Although the per-unit loss is high, the automaker’s total financial hit should be minimal because Fiat-Chrysler, without being more specific, said it would produce a low volume of the electric 500.”
Ah! Thanks for the clarification, Sergio! That’s information we could have used.
Here’s a short follow-up to my piece on synthetic fuels the other day, in which I mentioned that I would be driving up to San Jose for another “Craig Shields…At Your Service” session.
I spent the day with Dr. David Doty (http://www.dotyenergy.com/), the developer of a proprietary set of processes for formulating liquid fuels from off-peak wind energy, water, and carbon dioxide. Soon after he and his wife (also incredibly sharp), met me at the appointed place and time and exchanged a few pleasantries, we launched into a fascinating discussion on the issues associated with each of the major forms of energy generation and storage available now and for the foreseeable future.
I listened to their viewpoints on how even things that sound good to me (like CSP with molten salt) won’t scale and come down in cost effectively. I’m not sure I’m completely onboard with all of this — after all, the businessman in all of us tends to pull forward the facts that stand in the favor of our own ideas. Having said that, this was a terrifically compelling presentation — particularly when we got into a potential solution to all this: Doty’s unique and patented approach to synthetic fuels.
I suppose you could say it’s similar to what the “ammonia as fuel” folks are talking about, but
a) using CO2 (a greenhouse gas, but more difficult and expensive to acquire in high concentrations than atmospheric nitrogen), and
b) aimed at developing using a much higher-grade (energy dense) fuel.
His presentation makes a great deal of sense in terms of the chemistry and thermodynamics, and he’s gotten the endorsement of some of the other top researchers in the field.
Of course this still leaves us burning hydrocarbons, even if they’re carbon-neutral. But, as a pragmatist, I often ask myself: Even if we have millions of electric passenger cars on the road soon, how long before we have electric Class 8 trucks? Electric airplanes? In my estimation, this approach to eco-friendly liquid fuels may be a solution with a great deal of impact on our civilization for a century to come.
Yet we need to acknowledge that skeptics will dismiss the idea out of hand, given that so many other attempts to develop synthetic fuels scaleably and cost-effectively have failed outright – or at least languished in obscurity and unmet expectations. “You must run into people who write you off as a crackpot or a charlatan,” I ventured. Doty smiled graciously. “Only once or twice a day,” he grinned.
![[The Vector] Consumer Attitudes Revealed in Latest Solar Survey](https://www.2greenenergy.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/electric-from-renewables.jpg)
San Jose State University and SolarTech conducted a study recently in Silicon Valley to understand consumer attitudes toward solar energy and solar power for home use. Silicon Valley (Santa Clara County) is considered a bell-weather county in a state that is more aware of solar and alternative energy than the typical American.
![[The Vector] Large Rise in Green Investment](https://www.2greenenergy.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/green-energy.jpg)
The World Economic Forum says worldwide 
If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry. That’s the way I feel when I read something as stupid as this article in Automotive News Europe:
Here’s a short follow-up to my piece on synthetic fuels the other day, in which I mentioned that I would be driving up to San Jose for another “Craig Shields…At Your Service” session.
