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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

It’s always interesting to get out and interact with different groups who have specific perspectives on the energy industry.  And, to that end, I’ve commited to a certain travel schedule that will take me — either as a speaker or as a participant — to a decent number of conferences over the next 12 months. 

I enjoyed my trip to Boston earlier in the week, in which I listened to talks and spoke with the engineers at the IEEE Energy Innovation show (though they use the word “innovation” in a far different way than you or I; many of the presentations were so dry that some of their own people visibly had trouble staying awake).

But, even though I like working through the technology of renewables, I find the business practicalities far more interesting.  At the end of the day, the precise photovoltaic wave form produced by a breakthrough voltage regulator doesn’t matter if large PV projects can’t get financed and remain dormant at the proposal stage. 

By contrast, the Renewable Energy Finance Forum is a conference with dozens of different big ideas on which I’d like to present in a short series of posts. 

The first such “big idea” is that we talked extensively about subsidies for renewables:  the future of the Section 1603 cash grant, fixing the broken program of loan guarantees, and especially, carbon legislation.  For instance, many of the presentations included (parenthetically) the idea that we need a pollution tax.  The concept was an unaccented, glossed-over bullet on many of today’s presentations. (more…)

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

I’m up at the Renewable Energy Finance Forum in San Francisco today and tomorrow, with hardly a moment to breathe between the most interesting presentations I’ve seen in quite a while.  To be honest, this subject matter is really hard for me; I’m more comfortable talking about photon energies and thermodynamics, but I really do try to make the effort to learn to speak the language of tax equity and internal rate of return. 

Just wanted to remind anyone in the Bay Area who might be able to come to the SF Ritz Carlton and say hi to hit “contact” if you’d like to meet me.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Fossil Fuels

I sometimes glance back through my old posts here, to try to see 2GreenEnergy as I would if I were doing so through the eyes of the typical reader who had come across us Googling “renewable energy” or some such. Reading my own stuff, I might say, “Man, that guy sure is angry. He seems to disapprove of 100 times more people and organizations than he likes. Who is he? The Simon Cowell of the energy industry?”

I often think of the editors on another popular site on clean energy who told me when we first talked, “We advocate for renewables. And we advocate against nothing.” The implication, of course, is that a business website cannot afford to make enemies. I understand that; I feel some of that pressure myself.  But if the core purpose really is moving the world to clean energy as soon as possible (i.e., before it’s too late), I see a central problem with this innocuous approach. (more…)

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

Have you ever had the experience of getting to the end of a long day, looking back to breakfast, and thinking that it seemed like a week ago?  That was today for me.  The IEEE Energy Innovation meeting in Boston, a drive to Albany to meet with Canefields (paper from sugar cane waste), and a flight to San Francisco for meetings to that start early tomorrow morning . 

This morning in Boston seems like another lifetime.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

As I mentioned, I’m back in Boston for a couple days, attending the IEEE Energy Innovations show, and meeting a few industry colleagues who happen to be in the this part of the world.  In a nutshell, the show itself has less relevance to our world than I hoped it might.  The breakout sessions are extremely technical – as I suppose I would have predicted.  But the main sessions are also a bit strange.  Here’s an example:

Victor Reis, Senior Advisor, Office of the Undersecretary of Energy for Science, spoke for 30 minutes this morning on the future of energy.  His principal message (actually his only message) was how appealing small modular nuclear reactors are: how safe, scalable, and relatively inexpensive.  He explained at great length how the DoE itself could be the first customer—going into elaborate detail about how they had been the first customer of massively parallel computing many decades ago—leaving the audience scratching its head to ferret out a meaning.  When he ended his talk half an hour later, in which he had projected the future of energy in the US out 40 – 45 years, we all realized in collective horror that he had done so without ever mentioning renewable energy once!  Not a world about solar, wind, geothermal – nothing.  Just a steady drone on SMRs.

After a smattering of polite applause, I asked another presenter how this was possible, and he just smiled, as if to say, “If you can’t figure out that this guy has an ax to grind, I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

Bizarre times.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Photovoltaics

We are very glad to see that the solar industry is developing fast in the US. It is now a major economic driver for the country. When generating great amount of electricity, the solar industry is also creating many job opportunities for the US. As for this solar industry I mean PV, because most of equipments use electricity rather than thermal energy, so you will see solar street light rather than solar Thermal Street light. All states are trying to improve their local solar deployment. It is obvious that the California is leading the solar development of the country, accounting for about 50% of the PV install in the country.

America is Becoming a Solar Nation

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

One of my reasons for coming back to Boston is to meeting various folks from the industry who happen to make this wonderful town their home.  Today I bought a birthday lunch for industry colleague Kevin Gulley, publisher of GreenCollarEcomony.com, an enterprise that I’ve admired for some time.  It’s always fun sharing observations.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

PhotobucketI was listening to an interview with Pulitzer-winning columnist Nicholas Kristof just now, probably best known for his coverage of Darfur.  In the discussion, he said that when he was first given a column, he thought he could change people’s minds, but soon realized that the best he could do was to shed light on certain ideas that otherwise would not have received any attention at all. 

First, let me say that I do not compare my writing — its quality nor its importance — to Kristof’s.  But I do have to say that I smiled when he made that remark.  I’m sure I haven’t changed anyone’s mind on the imperative to break our addiction to oil, the validity of global warming, etc.   If I’ve done anything here, it’s to provide a forum for discussion — and I thank the many people who have been a part of that forum with their questions, their comments, and their guest blogs.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

I’m one of those people who constantly tries to see into the future – not that I have any eerie talent for things like that. The future of energy and transportation, for example, is clear as a bell. Does anyone think we’re going to be driving Hummers in 40 years? Could a reasonable person believe there’ll be plenty of cheap oil in 2050 when the world population has increased 22% from today and the number of cars on the world’s roads has doubled?

Alternative energy will become a reality; that’s not in question. The question is: who’s going to get rich in the process?

Here’s a fact: the people who made the last fortune in energy (1910 – 2010) want to make damn sure they’ll be the ones to do it again.

And here’s my prediction: Unless something unforeseen and incredibly dramatic happens, that’s precisely what’s going to happen.  Here are some details, lest you think I’m one of these tawdry fortune-tellers who speaks in fortune-cookie generalities: (more…)

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

My friend Bruce Severance called last night and announced his availability to rejoin the ranks for those who are engineering tomorrow’s electric vehicles.

I can’t even begin to list this guy’s credentials – both in terms of formal training at one of Southern California’s leading design schools – as well as tons of industry experience.  If anyone’s interested in hiring a top-notch thinker, engineer, and futurist – as well as a first-rate human being, please let me know and I’ll hook you up with Bruce.

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