I’ll be headed into downtown Santa Barbara tomorrow to continue my participation in a series of meetings leading up to this year’s Clean Business Investment Summit. Here, this August 12th, socially responsible entrepreneurs with emerging-growth clean business start-ups and later-stage clean business companies with fifth-year projected revenues exceeding $20 million seeking venture capital funding will meet with potential investors.
I’m a new-comer to the team, and tend to speak only when spoken to – the way children (about a million years ago) were taught to behave.
A new study by OgilvyEarth reveals that while 82% of Americans have good intentions towards being green, only 16% are really dedicated to the intentions. The study is entitled “Mainstream Green: Moving Sustainability from Niche to Normal” by Graceann Bennett and Freya Williams, sponsored by Ogilvy & Mather.
The authors make the case that while some people get the importance of sustainable living, it won’t matter unless the masses truly buy in. There are a number of barriers, small and large, psychological and economic, to these barriers. The report lays out the barriers and then offers solutions to breaking them down.
Most of the green dialogue and marketing for green sustainable living has been focused on the dedicated “super greens” on
I’m one of these people who’s always interested in product placement – you know, that Coors Light that the handsome and likeable guy in the movie you’re watching just happens to be sipping, or the United Airlines jumbo jet that brings his sweetheart back home to him. Advertisers pay substantial fees to have their products featured in various places – especially where viewers will subconsciously regard them as cool and appealing. The trick, of course, is to make the placement appear natural and uncontrived.
So I was amused by an article in this month’s Westways (American Automobile Association) magazine on electric vehicles, by journeyman auto writer Peter Bohr, featuring a graphic that depicts a number of EVs parachuting into our world. The biggest? Coda, of course. Not Tesla, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Peugeot, Smith, BYD, Renault, or Chevy (who actually sell and deliver EVs). No, it’s Coda, a company whose revolving door in the executive suite, track record of delays and dashed expectations, and juggling of business strategies has rendered it a farce, rather than a force, in the EV world.
It’s hard to believe that a journalist of Bohr’s caliber doesn’t know this. So I’m assuming that we have a case of product placement here – though again, I could caution Westways: guys, you gotta make it credible.
I just finished Michio Kaku’s 2008 book Physics of the Impossible, which left me with a renewed admiration and respect for this great mind and true master-communicator of popular science. So warm and inviting is the language and its presentation that the reader doesn’t at all feel condescended to at the hands of the considerable “dumbing down” he’s receiving on subjects like string theory, quantum mechanics, special relativity, particle physics, etc.
The central concept of the book is excellent: the word “impossible” is relative, and thus needs to be applied very carefully. The history of science consists of thousands of years of man deeming certain ideas impossible — only to have many of them fully developed and operational a decade or so later. And there are so many doozies in recent memory, e.g., the declarations in the late 19th Century that heavier-than-air flight was impossible and that all the great discoveries in the field of physics had already been made.
So Kaku cleverly breaks the world of the “impossible” down into grades: Class I, II, and III impossibilities. Class I means “impossible now, but conceivable in the next 100 years,” as compared to Class III at the other end of the spectrum, which means “this violates the current and all possible future laws of physics.”
I was interested that Kaku views ideas that are not in accord with the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics (which render perpetual motion unattainable) as Class III impossibilities. I.e., he thinks we’re more likely to travel in time or bend spoons with our minds than we are to build a machine that doesn’t consume energy.
I have to admit that I beamed with delight when Kaku discussed his experiences on this subject. He tells us that he has a stream of seemingly intelligent people in his life who bring him perpetual motion machines and ask him to check them out to verify that investors may be wise to back them.
Though I have about one-millionth the exposure to the people and concepts of physics as Kaku (not to mention the level of comprehension), I run into this kind of thing constantly. Just last week I had a discussion with an “inventor” of such a device who asked me to travel to New York to examine it, to whom I wrote:
I read your analysis, but it doesn’t show what you’re claiming it does. The energy lost in resistance will always be greater than the energy gained in regeneration. And there is no need for me — or anyone else — to see it physically to know that; it’s a condition imposed by the second law of thermodynamics, of which there has never been a valid counter-example.
I’ve seen dozens of attempts to prove that someone has worked around this, and they’ve all been bogus. In fact, I get assertions like this at the rate of at least one per week. Some of them (and I’m not suggesting yours in one) are bald-faced attempts at fraud; I ran into a guy out here in California trying to raise money from credulous investors to build a prototype of something that was theoretically impossible — and I believe he clearly understood that. He’s now under criminal investigation.
The relevance to all of us trying to develop clean energy solutions is clear: there is no free lunch. Having said that, there are many flavors of renewable energy whose efficiencies are improving steadily — as their costs are coming down. Depending on how you measure it, we’re only a few years away from “grid parity” — the point at which an incremental megawatt of energy from solar will be the same as that of a coal-fired power plant.
In any case, I hope readers will check out Kaku’s terrific book. It carries with it the master’s typical charisma, along with his characteristic sense of both humor and humility. It’s fast-moving and extremely well done — from its dramatic opening until its poignant closing remarks. Most important, it’s comprehensive in its dealings with dozens of things that curious people want to explore in addition to how we power our planet: UFOs, teleportation, time-travel, ESP, wormholes, parallel universes, the building blocks of the universe and its ultimate fate. Trust me: you won’t be disappointed.
Dr. Marie Corio, CEO of Applied Economic Research, was good enough to be my guest on this week’s Clean Energy Radio show.
Marie never fails to impress the heck out of me. Here’s a professional at the very apex of her field in terms of the analysis of coal-fired power plants, whose command of metallurgy, thermodynamics, chemistry, and several other related disciplines is hard to match – yet is able to present all this at a truly appropriate level for a non-technical audience. But isn’t that the mark of a true pro? They make it look easy.
Another aspect of Dr. Corio’s approach that I like is her stalwart pragmatism. “I’m not an advocate for coal,” she said, “But I am an advocate for keeping the economy from falling back into recession. Abruptly cutting off coal would cause a huge spike in electricity prices that would drive many businesses under. I think that concern has to trump our other worries.”
I’m reminded of Stephen Lacey, formerly the top industry analyst at Renewable Energy World (now at Climate Progress) who refers to himself with the following terse description: “I’m an energy pragmatist.”
This makes a lot of sense to me, and I try to follow along with the positions that I take myself. In fact, it’s a refreshing break from the doctrinaire narrow-mindedness that we come across so often on both sides: both the rabid environmentalists who fail to grasp the full consequences of what they’re espousing, and some of the rightwing extremists who don’t perceive any responsibility on our part to regulate business as necessary to take care of the only home we have.
Thanks again to Dr. Corio; I’ll post a link to the show as soon as it’s available.
On April 7th, General Electric (GE) announced it was purchasing PrimeStar Solar Inc., a thin-film solar panel manufacturer based in Colorado. GE also announced that it would build the nation’s largest solar panel manufacturing plant.
The thin-film products developed by PrimeStar Solar are apparently among the most efficient of all cadmium telluride (“cad tel”) on the market. The National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) verified the record-breaking efficiency, finding a 12.8% aperture (more…)
All Americans should be aware of what’s happening in Washington in this critically important area that affects every one of us. Earlier this week, 48 Senators, including three Democrats and all but two Senate Republicans voted to defeat a bill that would have ended tax breaks for the five biggest oil companies.
What could cause such outrageous behavior? How about the $39.5 million that the oil and gas companies spent lobbying Congress in the first quarter of this year alone? Or might it be the fact that the industry donated nearly $18 million directly to the political campaigns of Senators who voted against ending these subsidies — five times more than to Senators who supported ending them?
Yet the measure to end these handouts to the oil industry came fairly close to passing (we needed 60 votes, and got 52). The message: if you care about things like this (and I have to think that most readers here do indeed), I urge you to exercise your rights as a citizen and let your elected leaders know where you stand on this.
I hope readers are following the discussions in Washington DC in which lawmakers are quizzing the CEOs of the five largest oil companies concerning the subsidies they receive from US taxpayers. Several senators have asked the industry to defend this transfer of wealth from taxpayer to shareholder, given that we live in a time of massive profits – and record gasoline prices.
But the oil company execs are armed for bear, vigorously attacking the hearings themselves. Here’s John Watson, CEO of Chevron, criticizing the Senate:
Singling out five companies because of their size is even more troubling. Such measures are anti-competitive and discriminatory. After all, our five companies are providing the technical, operating and managerial expertise that is allowing the global energy industry to operate at the forefront of energy development.
ConocoPhillips responded similarly, pointing out that it would be “Un-American” to end billions of dollars in subsidies to the oil industry.
I want to take lessons in salesmanship from anyone who can convince us that we as a country should continue to deny basic human services in favor of boosting oil company profits to new heights.
There is no doubt that car-sharing in dense urban environments like Boston and San Francisco is going to do quite well. I only wish that it existed when I lived in Washington DC in the 1970s, and spent half my life trying to find a parking space into which to shoehorn my car.
While there is a natural fit for EVs in the car-sharing space (as some of the motivation for not owning a car is eco-friendliness), there are significant problems associated with charging. Unlike filling up one’s car with gas, charging takes time, thus disabling the car from the network for hours at a time. While the EV owner can simply charge at home every night, this is tricky in the car-sharing environment.
I’m afraid this may be one of these ideas that sounds good on paper, but may prove tricky in the real world, given the charging infrastructure that exists here and now. Good article though; I hope you’ll check it out.
I was speaking earlier today with a friend whose current business life revolves around making sense of the auto OEMs’ embrace of electric vehicles. “If I were a cynic,” he began, “I wouldn’t see too much sincerity in what these folks are doing. I read what you wrote recently in the 2GreenEnergy blog about the BMW’s stalled electric vehicle plans, and it seems to echo what I see with the Mitsubishi i-MiEV, and the dozens of other players who claim that they’re running as fast as they can in this direction.”
My friend went on to make a couple of points:
1) There is nothing in it for the OEMs to rush into the EV space. From the standpoint of making and selling a profitable car, they all win from dragging this out as long as possible. The lifetime profit associated with a customer who purchases an EV is a small fraction compared to that of one who buys a gas-powered vehicle, since EVs last a relative eternity, and require virtually no maintenance and replacement parts.
2) From the standpoint of overall risk-management, the idea of the OEMs rushing to offer EVs is even more idiotic. Suppose you’re Mitsubishi, with the super-cool i-MiEV whose introduction into the US , for some reason (wink, wink) you keep postponing. Why not put it off as long as possible? If Nissan wants to lead the way with its LEAF, fine. But what’s the incentive for you (or Ford, or anyone else) to be a leader here? Surely, you have no obligations to anyone but your shareholders; you’re not in the business for any other reason than immediate profits — and that means one word: delays. Why not let the government, at the peril of those in charge, bring down the costs of batteries and charging infrastructure , and enter the market at your leisure?
I see my friend’s point here, and thus advise this spring’s graduates: If you think you may want a job with the top auto OEMs so you can make the world a better place, you may want to look for work elsewhere.
On April 7th, General Electric (GE) announced it was purchasing PrimeStar Solar Inc., a thin-film solar panel manufacturer based in Colorado. GE also announced that it would build the nation’s largest solar panel manufacturing plant.
