Reports that Landis + Gyr may be going public shortly is big news. No offense to Itron — another great company — but I believe Swiss-based Landis + Gyr has the best prospects of any smart meter manufacturer in the world. The number of smart meters worldwide expected to hit 250 million in 2015 vs. under 50 million in 2008.
The press office at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) announced this week that a team of researchers has made a breakthrough on battery technology in the form of lightweight lithium-air batteries could have three times the energy density of current models.
Lithium-ion batteries currently dominate the field of small electronics — and are the prime candidates for electric vehicles. Lithium-ion batteries use a light metal (lithium), and they don’t suffer power loss when they are charged up time and time again. However, for such applications as in an electric vehicle, they are still heavy, and researchers have been working hard to improve energy density – the amount of energy stored by kilogram. Lithium-air batteries use the same general concepts, but replace the heavier compounds found in lithium-ion batteries, which makes them lighter. In fact, the research team says that their breakthrough could lead to batteries with three times the energy density of existing batteries.
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Many of us were saddened to hear of the retirement of US Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. In no way am I qualified to comment on the breadth of his career and the numerous positions he took on the thousands of cases he heard over 35 years on the bench. I will, however, mention three aspects of his legacy that affect every one of our lives:
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I’m delighted to see the flurry of recent activity from a few guest bloggers. I note that Kathy Hershelow writes volumes on Peak Oil. It’s good, well-constructed stuff – but I simply can’t get excited about it. In my discussions on the subject, I just try to make sure I’m hitting the broad side of the barn.
As I note in my blog on Renewable Energy World, I think the issue is moot. Regardless of whether Peak Oil happened a couple of decades ago, or won’t for a couple of decades to come, there are five or six excellent reasons to curtain our use of petroleum. It’s the single most important imperative facing mankind today.
Oxford University’s Smith School of Enterprise and Environment recently released a report that indicates the ‘tipping point’ is now here for world oil reserves, and that demand will start to outstrip supply of oil as we head to the middle of the decade. They state that the need to accelerate renewable energy resources is urgent.
It seems the peak oil situation is starting to be noticed and recognized more generally, though alarms have been sounded for decades from some very notable sources. The stress of the situation includes:
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I received an email from renewable energy rock star Bill Paul just now:
just fyi — following is from tom friedman’s column this morning.
Obama-ism posits that we are now in a hypercompetitive global economy, where the country that thrives will be the one that brings together the most educated, creative and diverse work force with the best infrastructure — bandwidth, ports, airports, high-speed rail and good governance. And we’re in a world with a warming climate that is growing from 6.8 billion people to 9.2 billion by 2050, so demand for clean energy is going to go through the roof. Therefore, E.T. — energy technology — is going to be the next great global industry.
…to which I respond:
It’s funny, I read the bottom before reading to the top, and I thought, “Gosh that sounds like Tom Friedman.” As you know, I read his books, I try to catch him on Charlie Rose, and I greatly admire him overall. But this predictability is what slightly irritates me about him: when you look at exactly what he’s saying, it’s pretty non-controversial. “We are now in a hypercompetitive global economy, where the country that thrives will be the one that brings together the most educated, creative and diverse work force with the best infrastructure?” Wow, I don’t know Tom; you’re really going out a limb there, my friend.
From today’s Tom Friedman column in the New York Times:
Obama-ism posits that we are now in a hypercompetitive global economy, where the country that thrives will be the one that brings together the most educated, creative and diverse work force with the best infrastructure — bandwidth, ports, airports, high-speed rail and good governance. And we’re in a world with a warming climate that is growing from 6.8 billion people to 9.2 billion by 2050, so demand for clean energy is going to go through the roof. Therefore, E.T. — energy technology — is going to be the next great global industry.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb-Bg5DfPzI&w=445&h=364]
Craig Shields predicts a paradigm shift in American consumers’ driving habits, based on increasing sensibilities re: sustainability. Citing the backlash against the fur industry in the 1960s, Craig predicts a larger-than-expected demand for electric vehicles based on his belief that people are re-thinking their identification of themselves with the car they drive.
In his blog, my friend Paul Scott has written a marvelous post on calculating the pollution caused by charging electric vehicles with energy from fossil-fuels. He makes several astute comments and suggestions regarding how the EPA should, in fact, make this determination fairly.
He asks such questions as:
How do you compute the amount of pollution generated from coal and natural gas? Do you take the national average for a kilowatt hour of energy? I’ve read it’s just over one pound of CO2 per kWh. Or do you allow for regional variation? California is among the best in terms of per capita efficiency and a low CO2 grid, and we’ll be the first state to mass adopt EVs. Oregon and Washington have an even cleaner grid and will match CA in per capita EV ownership. Seems only fair to allow for our cleaner grid in the calculations.
In my estimation, a far bigger factor here is that the vast majority of the energy used to charge EVs comes off-peak, where it would largely be wasted (dumped back to ground) anyway. Therefore, even EVs powered by the dirtiest of coal-fired power plants represent very little additional pollution. We could put an estimated 90 million EV on the road this afternoon without the need for a single additional power plant — coal, nuclear, or whatever. Thus this issue, I believe, is largely moot.
But don’t expect the EPA to grasp this point too quickly. These are the same people who are still trying to determine the MPG ratings for a plug-hybrid like the Chevy Volt. Apparently, the fact that this is number that has no possible definition (it could be 50, 500, 5,000 or 50,000 depending on how the car is driven) does not deter them from spending many man-years studying and debating the issue. It makes just as much sense to argue about the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin.
In any case, I applaud Paul for his incisive and fair-minded article, and I encourage readers to check it out here.
I just spoke with Omar Passons — a terrific young man with a novel idea aimed at sustainability — a shuttle bus that would connect parts of cities that contain two or more islands with great deal of foot traffic, but whose islands are sufficiently far apart that people would not walk between them. The first such instance of this is San Diego, as described on his website: Park-2-Park. He describes the shuttle as a fun, new, convenient way to see and do more when you’re in North Park, South Park, Normal Heights or University Heights. The “Park-2-Park” connects these communities with 9 shuttle stops at local restaurants, bars, studios, and music venues.
Great idea.
