It’s the birthday of John Philip Sousa, the “March King,” born in 1854. Best known for his patriotic music, the U.S. Marine Corps Hymn “Semper Fidelis,” and of course “Stars and Stripes Forever.” Sousa loved a rousing live performance, and generally reviled the phonograph, as he believed that it would result in people’s singing less. In fact, in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, Sousa performed at Willowgrove Park, a wonderful old amusement park that meant a great deal to me as a boy growing up in the Philadelphia suburbs.  (Now, of course, it’s a shopping mall.) 

I often wonder what the great patriots of history would say about what and whom we’ve become. Of course, I tend to look at the question through the lens of energy. Thus I ponder what Sousa might think about our de facto energy policy, blithely borrowing an incremental billion dollars a day and sending it offshore to buy another ten million or so barrels of oil, empowering our sworn enemies, and ruining our environment.

If Sousa had trouble with the phonograph, I can’t imagine he’d look on this self-destructive energy policy too kindly.

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I wrote recently that it’s impossible to predict the ROI associated with solar thermal (aka concentrated solar power or CSP).

What I was referring to was utility-scale CSP. Personally, I think the future will hold significant reductions in costs and improvements in effectiveness, making this technology quite workable at the multi-megawatt scale. It’s certainly not there now, but we need to keep in mind that it’s a fairly new technology, whose R&D lags PV and wind by several decades.

So what’s the ROI? (more…)

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I want to call readers’ attention to the post a few minutes ago by guest-blogger Don Harmon, who I think has nailed the issue.

It seems to me that this is the time for private investors, banks, and Wall Street to join in to make America once again a world leader in the Renewable Energy markets. Or, sit back and watch us all be downgraded to a third world country.

I’m sad to report that I hear this kind of thing all the time. One of my clients in New York who has a breakthrough in waste-wood pelletization doesn’t even attempt to push this technology in the U.S. “I’m through squandering (more…)

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Here we go again!

Another major Solar Power company here posts record losses:  http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20111103-727087.html

This comes on top of the Solyndra fiasco, and the news of Ener1’s bankruptcy and also Beacon Power!  What is going on here in the U.S. with the renewable energy sector?  How many more ventures will fail in the next year?  Can anyone blame private investors for not wanting to invest in this market sector?  What will it take to bring investors to the table in our own Country to build a stake in our renewable’s future?  (more…)

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Old-time RepublicansThose of us who can’t wrap our wits around the Republican party’s indifference (some might substitute “antagonism”) to the environment need to remember that the GOP didn’t always take this stance. This post on Mother Nature Network documents 10 Republicans in the days of yore who made real commitments to environmental regulation and preservation.

How did we get here from there? What motivates Lindsay Graham and the other senate Republicans in their quest to dismantle the EPA and reverse half a century of progress in this space? I sure hope someone can help me understand that.  Hey!  Does the fact that the oil industry maintains the largest lobby in the known universe have anything to do with this?  Hmmmm.

 

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[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbJYGg9VjiI]In this short video, I speak to my level of optimism about the outcome for our society, based on its fantastically poor energy policy. In brief, if there’s hope it lies in a) people understanding the subject well enough to advocate for good ideas and against bad ones, and b) people actually caring, and believing that they can make a difference. In the absence of those two factors, we’re sunk.

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I just received this terse question from a reader: “What’s the ROI (return on investment) on solar thermal?”

I responded, hoping to prompt more discussion: “That’s an interesting but impossible question to answer. What is the nature of your interest in the subject, if I may ask?”

I post this brief conversation because it’s indicative of two much larger and incredibly important issues:

1) Computing the ROI for investors in new technologies like these is impossible, as no one can pick the winners from the losers at this point. Personally, I’m betting on solar thermal, and, though many agree, there are far greater minds than mine that don’t see it this way.

2) Not to get too flippant, but what’s the ROI on saving our civilization from destruction? According to Lester Brown, whom the Washington Post calls “one of the world’s most influential thinkers,”

Ice is melting so fast that even climate scientists are scrambling to keep up with the shrinkage of ice sheets and glaciers. The melting of the earth’s largest ice sheets—Greenland and West Antarctica—would raise sea level dramatically. If the Greenland ice sheet were to melt entirely, it would raise sea level 23 feet. Melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet, the most vulnerable portion of the Antarctic ice because of its exposure to both warming air and warming ocean water, would eventually raise sea level 16 feet. Many of the world’s coastal cities would be under water; over 600 million coastal dwellers would be forced to move.

Solar thermal holds the single greatest promise of clean, abundant, inexpensive energy — in the absence of which mankind will be unable to make its way across these next critical 50 years.

I’m sure this latter point was not contemplated in the reader’s question, but some folks may find it worth considering.

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Like it or not, our civilization finds itself past the point of cheap energy and easy credit — confronted with a future that simply will not look like the past.

Here’s a short video in which I mention that we as a society need to redefine ourselves, that the “rich getting richer” is not sustainable. Moreover, this isn’t a bad — or even a painful thing, since when we are able to look past the thin veil of materialistic pleasures and begin to see our lives in grander terms, we find joys that we never knew existed.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h4W0fYcYrY]

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This month’s webinar is a parade of good, solid concepts in renewable energy and electric transportation, and a discussion of the criteria that qualify a business plan as such. 2GreenEnergy co-founder George Alger will interview me, enabling me to discuss the process by which I’ve  reviewed more than 700 cleantech business plans over the past 24 months, from which I’ve selected 19 opportunities I consider to be excellent. Each has a solid team, proven technology, and a large, protectable target market.

We hope you can join us on Tuesday, November 22 at 10 AM PST, for this fast-paced discussion, during which we’ll field your questions live.

Here’s the sign-up form.

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Earth Policy Institute’s Lester R. Brown credits the Sierra Club and other activist groups for creating the conditions under which U.S. carbon emissions have fallen precipitously over the last couple of years – largely due to our new-found distaste for coal. The campaign Beyond Coal has resulted in an environment in which virtually no new coal plants are being built, and the oldest and dirtiest are likely to be decommissioned soon. Simultaneously, wind energy has grown dramatically, to over 40 gigawatts, lead by Texas, Iowa, California, Minnesota, and Illinois.

The obvious question, however, is this: If the U.S. economy heats back up, what precisely will we do to power it? Depending on the degree to which coal is regulated and taxed, it’s still the least expensive form of energy – and by far the least expensive form of non-intermittent “baseload” energy. If we do not force ourselves to pay for the externalities of coal (and other forms of energy), we will never create a climate in which renewable energy ultimately dominates our energy policy. But do we have the political will to do this?

 

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