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Sam Smith explained the mission of EV World Associates on a recent episode of the 2GreenEnergy report. The organization provides consulting services to a wide range of companies in renewable energy and electric transportation.
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Sam Smith of EV World Associates spoke with me on the 2GreenEnergy Report recently, and began by explaining how conservatism and environmentalism are compatible.
As I mentioned on Renewable Energy World, I take great pleasure in announcing a victory for the good guys in energy over the bad. California voters – I among them – defeated “Proposition 16” – signifying our outrage at Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E — a utility serving about 20 million people) to attempt to buy further monopolistic control of the state energy marketplace. The attempt was so brazen that voters easily saw the truth: the sole supporter and sole beneficiary of Prop 16 would have been PG&E itself.
“PG&E is a force for evil,” a San Francisco graduate student said. “I bundle up. I wear three sweaters, two hats and do jumping jacks before I will turn on the heat. I hate them. They are awful. And I’m a Buddhist. I don’t usually talk like this.”
Well, my friend, I’m not a Buddhist – in fact, I talk and write like this pretty-much constantly. And you’re right; they really are awful.
But despite the cash, justice has been served – at least this one time.
The chapter of the book Renewable Energy — Facts and Fantasies entitled “The Role of the Media in Clean Energy” is a transcript of the interview with Stephen Lacey on this subject.
Quote:
I’m a renewable energy pragmatist.
Bio:
Stephen Lacey is an editor with RenewableEnergyWorld.com. He produces and hosts the Inside Renewable Energy podcast, a weekly news program that gets over 60,000 downloads each month. Covering new technologies, international markets and business trends, Inside Renewable Energy gives a comprehensive overview of the latest developments in clean energy. The podcast was a finalist in the “best webcast” category for the 2009 NEAL awards — considered the “pulitzer prize of business journalism.” Stephen also writes features, posts blogs and produces multi-media stories for RenewableEnergyWorld.com and contributes articles to various magazines.
About Renewable Energy World:
RenewableEnergyWorld.com was started in 1998 by a group of Renewable Energy professionals who wanted their work to relate to their passion for renewable energy. With this passion and the desire to create a long term sustainable business, we have created perhaps the single most recognized and trusted source for Renewable Energy News and Information on the Internet.
At RenewableEnergyWorld.com we do our best to provide you with access to Renewable Energy-focused services, including: news, products, events, jobs and brand building.
By offering extraordinary services via the Internet, our foremost mission is to inform our readers about the use of Renewable Energy worldwide and, in the process, assist you with decision making when it comes to anything related to Renewable Energy.
A “Must-Read”
Here’s a really good critique on how journalists cover climate change.
Other Links:
Here are a few links where those interested can lean more:
Podcast: http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/podcast
Video: http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/video
Stephen’s personal page at Renewable Energy World:
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/u/StephenLacey
As I noted in today’s Writer’s Almanac by Garrison Keillor, it’s the birthday of the biologist E. O. Wilson, who reminds us: “Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal.”
Ask and ye shall receive. I happened to mention that I’d like a bit more information on ammonia as fuel – and moments later I got that information in spades. In particular, I had been wondering why more people weren’t studying this subject, given its potential to resolve so many of our energy problems — and the floodgates opened.
The nature of the opportunity is coming into focus — but so is the scope of the challenges: the clean energy “triumvirate” as I call them – the technology, the economics, and the politics surrounding the migration to renewables. It’s clear that ammonia must find its way across significant hurdles in all three.
Helping me come to a better understanding of all this was John Holbrook, a man who wears many hats when it comes to this fascinating subject, including his role as the executive director of the non-profit Ammonia Fuel Network. Though John is acutely aware of the challenges presented by big money and big politics, his main focus is the technology – in particular, the development of Solid State Ammonia Synthesis or SSAS – a process of creating ammonia out of water and atmospheric nitrogen such that no expensive, energy-intensive electrolyzers or high pressures are required.
But the clean and inexpensive formulation of ammonia is just one of a few important chasms to be crossed. What about distribution and consumption? There are thousands of miles of ammonia pipeline already in place — and there are 800 NH3 “fueling stations” (fertilizer outlets) in Iowa alone — but, like hydrogen or EV charging stations, we’re not exactly right around the corner from having safe and ubiquitous dispensers to fill up our cars with liquid ammonia.
And let’s not ignore the political challenges. Imagine for a moment that John and the other high-level minds working on this problem are successful, that the technology is fully in place, and that we could, if we wanted to, formulate huge supplies of safe and inexpensive ammonia. Now, realize that this fuel you will be producing is regarded by neither the US Department of Energy nor the Environmental Protection Agency as a fuel at all. DOE recognizes NH3 as a hydrogen carrier — not a direct fuel. But, since DOE has discouraged the idea of on-board vehicle generation of H2 (“on-board reforming), DOE has no use for NH3, which is the universe’s best hydrogen carrier — all punctuated by DOE’s dismissive white paper of 2006.
Bottom line: You have a product with no demand. Your breakthrough — even when you make it happen — is like launching the I-Pad — in 1958. You have a world in which there is very little capital — financial or political — behind ammonia as fuel — in both the public and private sectors.
But John remains upbeat: “I’ve learned to be patient. And hey, we’re making progress. Matt Simmons is a great example.”
Though he’s right, what we have here in essence is a huge educational challenge. My fondest hope is that John and his people align themselves with someone with a proven track-record in marketing, which I define as “the ability to communicate value.” We can formulate and deliver ammonia. But can we formulate and deliver the story that will make this breakthrough meaningful? We’ll have to wait and see.
[blip.tv http://blip.tv/play/hed1geTESQA]
Here’s the full 30-minute show in which Paul Scott of Plug-in America appeared on the 2GreenEnergy Report, and discussed electric transportation and renewable energy in great depth. We did our best to pack the conversation: consumer acceptance, the changing role of the power utilities, pushback from the oil companies, the level of sincerity of big auto, etc.
Thanks again, Paul.
I have a great deal of respect for PBS, but in many ways they’re no better than CBS’s 60 Minutes – whose every story is about one thing: convincing us of something. Pick an item – normally an emotionally explosive one – and then gather, twist, and force-feed every piece of evidence possible to convince us of whatever the editor has decided that we must believe.
A recent episode of the PBS program SoCal featured California’s poor, neglected Occupational Safety and Health Administration — OSHA, and documented that a few companies in Southern California had been neglectful of some of their workers. For 30 minutes, viewers had one idea rammed down their throats: government needs to have more power to investigate companies’ facilities, business practices, and records — and to impose harsher fines for safety violations.
I think pretty-much everyone accepts that cases of corporate malfeasance happen every day. But mightn’t viewers here have been interested in a voice from another point of view – even if it lasted on the screen only a few brief seconds? Instead, we received a half-hour drumbeat: business owners are selfish monsters, and only more intrusion of government into the private sector can protect us from their callous disregard for our safety.
It might have been instructive to examine — if only for a moment — the mass exodus of business from California, much of the cause of the $42 billion state budget deficit, and the crash of real estate values as millions of workers are laid off from companies that are failing — or pulling up roots and going to more business-friendly parts of the country. Can’t we hear even a suggestion that the world of hurt in which we live may be due to too much government intrusion, in the form of onerous taxation and regulation?
I was amused to learn that SoCal received an award for its journalistic excellence. If PBS wants to know what would have represented even greater excellence, it would have been a bit of fairness, e.g., a tiny bit of the other side of the argument.
When I think of what 2GreenEnergy represents, I think of that fairness. We all want clean energy, but we acknowledge that we live in a world of tough realities. Outside of the shareholders in the fossil fuel companies, no one wants oil, coal, and gas. But, unfortunately, the world is just a wee bit more complicated than simply shutting off the pumps.
Let’s advocate for renewables, but let’s push even harder for a fair and level-headed discussion.
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Here’s a clip of Paul Scott of Plug-In America talking with me about auto OEMs on the 2GreenEnergy Report.
Full 30-minute show on electric transportation here.
Last week I warned about the danger of not anticipating the “what ifs” of energy, specifically, what if there is a deepwater drilling disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Here’s a “what if” for electricity that should be keeping everyone up at night. What if there’s even a minor accident at nuclear power plant? In wake of Gulf oil spill, every one of the US’s 100+ commercial reactors would be have to be inspected, which likely would reveal brittle fracture and other problems brought on by age that Washington has been trying to avoid dealing with because the US has no substitute for nuclear power. Perhaps as many as 5 or 10 plants might have to be shut down for safety reasons, some maybe permanently, creating a power crisis.
