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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

Renewable energy legend Bill Paul has recently agreed to write financial reports and newsletters for us at 2GreenEnergy. We’re delighted to have come across such good fortune, as there really is no one more qualified for the task. Bill retired from the Wall Street Journal after a 20-year stint as a staff writer covering the energy sector, and gave a great interview of the book’s chapter on business and finance.

According to Bill:

Energy is at the crux of all things financial. There is not a single business that does not have energy as a significant cost factor, there is not a single country that does not have energy as a significant national security factor, and there is not a single household that does not have energy as an important budgetary factor. With energy, you are operating on all levels in terms of finance, as well as national security, as well as health consequences. You have privacy issues, property rights issues, basically any personal choice issue on lifestyle and you have a perfect storm of political, economic, and social interests — all competing for “the right” approach.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

For 14 years, Rona Fried has worked hard to tell an important story: there are numerous, potentially profitable businesses and investment opportunities built around sustainable living practices. Her website, SustainableBusiness.com boasts over 100,000 unique visitors per month – each coming to learn more about this exciting subject. The interview here was the book’s chapter called “Activism and the Media in Clean Energy.”

Sustainable Business started in 1996, as one of the first websites at the dawn of the Internet. At that time, the state of the industry was completely different than it is now; it was fairly small, fragmented community of people spread around the world that were interested in this. What was most useful about using the Internet at that time was its ability to find people all over the planet who were not connecting with each other and bringing them together.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainable Building

If you believe that “The best way to clean energy is not to use it in the first place,” I can’t image that you’ll find a company doing a better job along these lines than Echelon — and its spokesperson Steve Nguyen, who helped me with this chapter of the book, called “Intelligent Energy Management in Buildings.”

Steve explores the subject of using information technology to drive up the energy efficiency of the world’s buildings.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

Rick Sikes manages the vehicle fleet for the City of Santa Monica – a municipality that has taken quite a progressive stance with respect to environmental stewardship. Rick did a great job in our conversation that became the book’s chapter called: Renewables and Clean Transportation at the Municipal Level.

Back in the late 1970’s early 1980’s the oil embargo from OPEC hit — there were actually two incidents way back then — everybody was affected by the same things, lines at the gas stations, and so forth. And yes, Santa Monica is progressive, and wanted to do its part. So we started looking at alternative fuel vehicles and REFP — Reduced Emissions Fuels Policy. They started buying some propane as a lot of people did, and natural gas, ethanol and whatever else was out there. In 1984 we had the first city Reduced Emissions Fuels Policy, and then about 1998, the city began a sustainability plan. And what you see here today is simply an extension of that plan.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

Matthew Simmons contributed to the book’s chapter on Peak Oil.  Simmons served as energy adviser to U.S. President George W. Bush. His landmark book Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy points to the idea of “Peak Oil” – the concept that we’ve passed the peak at which the world’s supply of oil can be extracted.

I’m deeply saddened that industry colleague and true visionary, Matt Simmons, passed away August 8th, 2010.  He will be sorely missed by all of us who follow this industry and care about the quality of the planet we will leave to our children.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

The Electric Drive Transportation Association’s president Brian Wynne contributed to the book’s chapter called “Lobbying for Electric Transportation.”

EDTA is a membership-based, not-for-profit, organization headquartered in Washington, DC. Its primary function is to advocate for, i.e. lobby for, federal policies. Its members are inter-industry; the group has members from the vehicle-manufacturing sector, utility companies and other energy providers, and component manufacturers such as battery makers. Also included are some of the newer business model folks like Better Place and GridPoint in the Smart Grid area, Coulomb in the charger area.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

The Electric Power Research Institute’s Mark Duvall helped out with the book’s chapter: Electric Transportation and Its Impacts on our Power Grid.  EPRI is an independent, non-profit company performing research, development and demonstration in the electricity sector for the benefit of the public. EPRI’s broad array of collaborative programs focuses on the many specific technology challenges of helping its members provide society with reliable, affordable, and environmentally responsible electricity.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

I had lunch last week with a senior engineer at SMUD (Sacramento Municipal Utility District), whose responsibility is managing the delivery of electricity while minimizing damage to air quality. “It’s terrible,” he told me over our salads.

“I thought it was actually pretty good.” I replied, a bit surprised.

“No, I mean what we were talking about a second ago. The clean air mandates in California are so onerous that they’re prohibitively expensive.”

“Oh. But don’t most other states face a different version of the same problem?” I asked naively.

“Not at all. To win popular appeal, our legislators have set the bar ridiculously high. You could replace every car on the roads with bicycles – and there would still be a few days in the year that you wouldn’t meet the targets. There were pictures of Los Angeles taken in the early 20th Century that show smog from decaying vegetable matter and wild fires. We have concentrations of ozone precursors that are simply impossble to deal with; it’s just the way the land is formed.

“So California has to do things to have clean air that cost far more per kilowatt-hour than any other state in the union. And how do we pay those costs? With taxes and regulation that drive the businesses out to states that simply haven’t gotten tough with air quality, or that are fortunate enough to have good air naturally.”

This got me thinking about my position on a federal Renewable Portfolio Standard that I’ve been recommending. Maybe this isn’t really a good idea after all. The southwest has sun, the plains have wind, the mountains have geothermal, the east has hydro, but renewable energy resources in some areas of the country are simply far more scarce than they are elsewhere. I suppose the fair thing to do is to rate each state on the availability of clean energy resources, and build mandates around those ratings.

Of course, the real solution (as I’ve often suggested) is simply to remove the subsidies that make energy from fossil fuels artificially inexpensive, and let the problem take care of itself in about a nanosecond.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

Plug-In America spokesperson Jay Friedland contributed the chapter on EV advocacy, discussing numerous thorny challenges it faces in the real world of politics.

Jay points out, “Big oil is trying to preserve the status quo. They are now the largest supporters of the hydrogen economy. They see hydrogen as a mechanism for them to continue to have a service station — to continue to provide a consumer with something they can pump.”

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

Steve is one of the most important spokespeople for hydrogen, and I was pleased to get his take on fuel-cell vehicles.

A hydrogen fuel cell vehicle can be a zero CO2 emission vehicle — just like a battery electric vehicle. A battery electric vehicle advocate should be saying, “Battery electric vehicles can be zero carbon emission vehicles…just like a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle can be too.”  There is no reason that the two should be attacking one another.

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