[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mrq938qFp7w&w=420&h=345]
I’m not an auto manufacturing guy, but I’m closely connected with some of the top people in this field. They’ve come together with a business plan that, when implemented, will build high-quality but inexpensive light-duty electric pick-up trucks.
And they’ve pre-sold quite a few. How’s 10,000? That do anything for ya?
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MR2auHp7P8]
Here’s a summary of a business plan that would implement a unique approach to thermal anaerobic gasification, to extract the energy from biomass without creating harmful (carcinogenic) byproducts.
I find it interesting that many of these clean energy technologies are quite ancient. Wind turbines come to mind immediately, of course, but gasification and pyrolysis have been around for at least a century.
Having said that, the technology contemplated here is unique, and, I believe, capable of results that were heretofore unobtainable.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5DCsyoTejs]
Here, I summarize a business plan that contemplates the development of synthetic fuels from off-peak wind, water, and CO2. This is exciting stuff, as it uses entirely proven chemical processes, the thermodynamics make sense, and the demand to deal with issues like peak oil is considerable.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzR55f67UKg&w=420&h=345]
Here’s a one-hour radio show (minus commercials) I did the other day called The Outdoor Talk Network, with host Jim Slinsky. 53 stations in 24 states pick it up each week.
Jim is a deer hunter, and played a piece of music as an intro called “When the Bullet Hits the Bone.” Having said that, he’s a remarkably warm and passionate guy. I’m not sure I understand hunters, but that’s another issue…
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzOyhqJA7AQ]Here’s a summary of a business plan in which an entrepreneur hopes to implement compressed air energy storage (CAES) in conjunction with a set of wind farms. CAES shows some promise as an energy storage solution, though considerable work needs to go into finding the right caverns, to match the charge and discharge rate from the energy source.
In my estimation, the subject of energy storage doesn’t get as much ink as it should. At stake here, to a large degree, is the entire penetration of renewables onto the grid; at the utility scale, cost-effective storage will cause the intermittency issues associated with renewables to disappear. Simultaneously, storage will drive the adoption curve of electric transportation, as it will mean the end of range anxiety, and bring the cost of EVs to parity (or better) with internal combustion engines.
So are we close to a cost-effective energy storage solution? People commonly say that there is no magic bullet. But is that true?
I hope you’ll join us for our monthly webinar, scheduled for Thursday, August 25th, at 10 AM PDT (1 PM EDT) when my guest will be Steve Hellman, president of Eos Energy Storage. I’ve met Steve, I’m excited by the progress he’s made, and I look forward to the opportunity to share it with you.
Log-in instructions are here: http://2greenenergy.com/free-webinar/.
The 4th annual Solar Electric Power Association’s (SEPA) ranking have been recently published. SEPA tracks and analyzes solar electicity markets in the U.S. The growth measured in the last year has been impressive: the 2010 top ten ranked utilities integrated 561 MW of solar electric capacity, a 100% growth over the previous year (2009)!
Interesting facts and trends emerged from the study:
I had lunch with some local waste-tire-to-energy people this afternoon, one of whom I knew to be an ex-military guy, and something of an accomplished pilot. On the way back from the restaurant, as we were passing the local general aviation airport he said, “Oh, let me pull in here; I need to leave a door unlocked; a friend of mine needs to get into my hangar, and he doesn’t have a key.”
Seeing that I hadn’t gotten out of the car when he parked he asked, “Would you like to see the plane?”
“Sure,” I replied, more or less out of courtesy, thinking I was going to see some sort of Cessna or Piper Cub. “What kind is it?” I asked. “Oh, it’s a MiG-21.” I’ve linked to what this thing looked like, complete with rocket-launchers. My jaw was on the floor.
“This isn’t exactly carbon-neutral, Craig,” my host said with a wry smile. “And it would be wrong to say that it preserves the environment, as well. In fact, it’s designed to change the environment in a heck of a hurry.”
What an annoying time it is to be alive. I keep telling myself to join the millions of others who simply refuse to listen to the news. But no, I had to check out this video this morning in which presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann lectures Congress in great detail on carbon dioxide, insisting that there is no chance that CO2 causes climate change because it’s a natural gas.
Apparently she felt the need to trump her rival, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who led 30,000 people in prayer at a rally in Houston last weekend titled “The Response: A Call to Prayer for a Nation in Crisis.”
If either of these people become president, I may have to consider doing what so many others have before me: leave. Costa Rica’s very nice. Never been to New Zealand, but I have a few friends there and I hear it’s terrific; that’s a possibility too.
Glenn Doty is a vital part of Doty Windfuels, a company with a terrific future in synthetic fuels made from off-peak wind energy, water, and CO2. I’ve written about them extensively; they’ve been a wonderful client, whose business plan I frequently show to potential investors.
Of course, their industry position makes Glenn and his company a natural competitor to electric vehicles, and thus some may regard the statements he makes on the subject as suspect. Still, as a scientist, I’ve consistently seen that he maintains a total objectivity in his analysis.
In his recent comment here, he’s brought up some interesting and important fallacies in the analyses we’ve used in determining the validity of electric transportation as an eco-friendly replacement for internal combustion engines. Having said this, here are a few things to think about:
1) A significant amount of electrical energy from coal is dumped back to ground each night because the rapid ramping of coal plants is not feasible and the off-peak energy is too expensive to store. To that degree, of course, one could say that any of the energy that would go to charging EVs in that scenario would have no carbon content at all.
2) Some of the most EV-friendly parts of the world, e.g., the Pacific Northwest of the US with its massive amounts of hydro, and France with its nuclear, produce electricity 24 hours a day with very little carbon.
3) I look at this whole evolving arena in terms of decades of growth and change. Even the most optimistic among us understands that the adoption of EVs will take decades, during which the levelized cost of energy from several different flavors of renewable sources will continue to come down, which, of course, will drive higher levels of penetration. Simultaneously, aging coal plants will be decommissioned.
4) At the same time we are achieving significant penetration of EVs, I believe that we will be implementing energy storage and smart-grid technology (including V2G) at approximately the same rate, and that these items will mutually re-enforce one another, e.g., more EVs will enable a greater penetration of renewables.
In conclusion, I believe Glenn’s insight is correct, and that the DoE’s concept of applying the current grid-mix to determine the eco-value of EVs is fallacious to a certain extent. But here, I think you have four reasons that this is a bit more complicated and interesting, and that EVs do, in fact, have significant value today – and even more with each passing year.
