I have a very brilliant friend, Dr. Boris Monahov, who lives in Bulgaria and does a great deal of advanced battery research all around the world. I met him at the Energy Storage show a month or so back, and we try to stay in touch with one another. Here, he writes something interesting and funny that I thought I’d share: (more…)
My new friend the lawyer writes in:
I appreciate what you are doing. Somebody got me a subscription to Audubon magazine recently…maybe they are telling me I’m a birdbrain! I read a story in there yesterday which cheered the fact that huge solar development programs are being shut down and delayed to save some squirrels and turtles in the Mojave desert. We are talking a few dozen animals. (more…)
God only knows how many attorneys I insulted with my recent piece on the legal system. I’m pleased to note that one of them wrote me a very civil and insightful response: (more…)
When I met Stephen Lacey at Renewable Energy World a few years ago, I recall one of the first things he told me about his organization. “We advocate for renewables and against nothing,” he explained. I clarified, “So you don’t take positions counter to Big Oil, Coal, Nuclear, etc?” I asked. “Exactly.”
Well, that was the “old Stephen,” I’m happy to report. The “new Stephen” has a gig at ClimateProgress.Org, and trust me, these people call ‘em like they see ‘em. Here’s a recent piece based on materials acquired by Bloomberg News, showing how Koch Industries, Exxon Mobil, and numerous other corporations paid tens of thousands of dollars to write legislation for lawmakers that would repeal carbon pollution reduction programs in various states around the U.S.
When I spoke with Stephen a few months ago, he seemed very happy; he has the kind of exuberance that a dog experiences when it’s let off its leash. My hearty congratulations. And this new-found freedom will pay off very handsomely for the world of energy journalism; we’re all the better for your job change, my friend.
I know I’m not the only one who envies the generations that lived in a more innocent time. Sure, we appreciate the gifts that technology has brought us – both in terms of enhancing our lives – and in extending it. But who doesn’t long for the days of single wage-earning families, and a purer, more honest and authentic, less plastic way of life?
I bring this up only to show you this. A reader, obvious as hungry for those days as I, sent me this, a painting that was made into a postcard in the middle of the American Civil War, 1862 to be exact, which he sent to me with subject line, Early Renewable Energy. Ahhh, thank you my friend.
I hope you can make this month’s webinar, in which we’ll be covering a terrific new idea that could make a real difference in the integration of renewables onto the grid-mix.
Electrons, of course, have no color, nor do they possess any other characteristic that could serve to distinguish any one of them from their fellows. But that doesn’t stop us humans from coining phrases like “the color of the electron,” to remind ourselves that some sources of the flow of electrons on which we depend so desperately for our energy can be “green” (i.e., clean/renewable), or they can be “black” or “brown” (dirty coal or other fossil fuels).
Now, ask yourself: What would be the result if we could select the color of the electrons that powered our lives? (more…)
I just finished up my report on China and Renewables, in which 200 survey respondents did what I thought was a masterful job in answering the question: Why Is China Investing So Heavily in Clean Energy? I’ll have the report available for download shortly – certainly within the next day or two.
But no sooner did I hit “save” for the final time and send the report off to the proofreader did I realize that there is another factor that affects the calculus that, as far as I can recall, not a single person mentioned: the Chinese culture is not dominated by lawyers. (more…)
My first stop on my trip north (San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver) last week was to EV start-up Saba Motors. I had met CEO Simon Saba a few weeks earlier when he approached me after the talk I gave at the EV Summit in Los Angeles a few weeks ago.
I knew Simon had something interesting to offer the world when he handed me a brick of a substance that was perfectly rigid, but so close to weightless it was eerie. “Wow,” I said, “What is this?”
“Check this out,” he smiled, deliberately ignoring my question, as he built a small bridge out of the bricks, and proceeded to jump up and down on it. “Do you notice that my weight, about 170 pounds, hardly deforms the bridge?”
Simon showed me a sheet of this stuff that weighs 0.2 grams per square centimeter; it’s ridiculously light, yet super-strong. Of course, the implications for electric transportation are obvious, since every hundred pounds removed from a design means significantly better range, and Saba Motors is poised to take advantage of it; at 1750 pounds, their sports car will perform like a little rocket.
What’s this image, you ask? (Click on it view larger image.) It’s a screenshot from Amazon.com, showing that Renewable Energy — Facts and Fantasies had quickly risen to #1 in the “energy” category — thanks to you. (more…)
One of the lessons we learn as we go through life is how much tougher things actually are than they initially appear. I was a reasonably athletic person as a young man, and I thought surfing might come easy. Wrong. Designing electric transportation might be an example of a subject that would certainly be a piece of cake. What’s so hard? You have a battery pack and an electric motor. It has one moving part. Well…., no.
As you check out this electric bicycle, the Pi Cycle by Pi Mobility, think about a few of the design ideas that went into it. While you’re doing that, think about all the ways this could be done wrong; i.e., the thousands of different ways that E-bikes can be made too heavy, too expensive, uncomfortable, dorky-looking, prone to failure, requiring constant upkeep, hard or pricey to repair, requiring hard-to-source parts, easy for thieves to disassemble and steal, quick to discharge, slow to charge, dangerous, dirty, counter-intuitive, or unergonomic.
That’s the beauty of the Pi-Cycle. Nothing’s wrong! It’s the perfect design. When I met these folks at this year’s Clean Business Investment Summit, I knew I had a winner on my hands. And when I had lunch with CEO Marcus Hays at his factory in Sausilito (Northern California) last week, I knew I was in the presence of one of the true greats in this exciting niche space. He’s been hard at work creating the perfect e-bike design for over a decade. And it shows.
