I just came back from a walk around the ranch, disappointed at the condition of the 12 acres of pasture that had been so difficult and expensive to prepare when we expanded my wife’s horse breeding business a few years ago. We had used tractors to harrow the soil, removed (by my calculation) over 300,000 rocks, planted grass, and tried to keep it irrigated, mowed, and fertilized. But a few short years later, with the help of horses grazing and cavorting all over it, there are bald spots and erosions — not to mention gopher holes and weeds. In short, entropy – the tendency of the universe towards disorder — is trying to take it back where it was before we started.
To me, it was a reminder of a couple of things. 1) When man makes an adjustment to a naturally balanced system for his own pleasure, that system is very likely to react in ways he couldn’t have foreseen. 2) As suggested above, the system ultimately rejects the order and structure that was imposed and returns to its former more chaotic state.
Think of how recently it was in terms of earth’s history that man’s greed led to systemic human behavior that aggressively exploited nature. And then realize that, in that exact period of time, we have skyrocketing rates of cancer, never-ending wars, AIDS, and a billion people who can’t get a drink of clean water. We have genocides, widespread drug abuse, Ponzi schemes of unprecedented proportion, campus shootings and suicides, financial collapse, deepening droughts and famines, and increasingly severe hurricanes.
It’s almost as if this earth is trying to expel us — rather like a landlord evicts bad tenants.
As far as I’m concerned, there is only one way through this: to become good tenants once again. And the rent isn’t cheap: it means restraining growth; it means making sacrifices; it means taking care of one another; it means understanding that future generations have the same rights to a rich and verdant planet that we do. But I think we’ve all seen that the landlord here is most unhappy with us, and isn’t likely to put up with our behavior too much longer. I wish I could reach out to the world and make a deal: I’ll pay my share of the rent if you pay yours.
To my utter astonishment, we in the US and Europe are begieged with renewed interest in hydrogen. I urge readers to arrive at their own understanding of the merits of hydrogen as a carrier of energy. But for those who may be unwilling to go through the process and are looking for a readers’ digest version, here are three simple data points (as usual: the science, the business, and the politics) that clarify what I think everyone ought to know about hydrogen.
The science: Hydrogen in its pure form is rare, because it combines so readily with other substances, releasing energy in the process. It can be burned (combining it with oxygen to form water) or used in a fuel cell, (i.e., pulling the electron off and moving it through a separate electrical path from its proton, again, ultimately combining with oxygen). But energy is required to create this pure hydrogen such that we can then harvest useful work from these processes. And the mechanisms by which hydrogen is generated (e.g., electrolysis) and then the energy is gathered from burning or fuel cells are three times less efficient than the standard mechanisms by which electrical energy is generated, stored in batteries, and then converted back into useful work through electric motors.
The business: It is true that civilization will face issues in building out the electrical grid to provide ultimately a complete network of convenient and safe charging stations for electric vehicles. But the electrical grid has a 130-year headstart on whatever delivery mechanism is proposed to serve up hydrogen over the enormity (3.5+ million squares miles) of a place like the United States. In addition to being far more efficient, electrical energy is already available in the vast majority of homes and work places.
The politics: In my opinion, the idea that we should take an inefficient carrier of energy and use to to create “hydrogen highways” could only have come from someone who really doesn’t want alternative fuels ever to see the light of day, and is disguising this malice in a not-too-clever way. And those of you who have seen “Who Killed The Electric Car” will recognize that this is hardly an original idea.
Not too long ago, it appeared that the powers of reason and decency had made their case effectively, and this distraction had been shelved; in fact, Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s DoE defunded hydrogen at the federal level earlier this year. But it’s back with a vengeance. For example, California, while teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, is subsidizing the hydrogen highway with public funds.
And ask yourself why this is happening, and who will be delivering this hydrogen (assuming it ever happens). ExxonMobil and Chevron. Hey, guys: You make $10 billion in profit each quarter. If you really want this to happen, do you mind paying for it yourselves? How dare you ask the taxpayers to pay for this folly, when you and only you will profit from it — on the off chance that it ever happens?
There you have it, the 1-2-3 of hydrogen energy. If only it were that easy to make it go away.
As I’ve noted in numerous posts, it is clear to me that the political aspects of renewable energy are far more important than the science in actually making this happen. I just had a phone conversation with a friend in which I discussed how my viewpoint on the subject has changed over time. 15 years ago, I was a libertarian: I saw nothing but corruption in government, and I didn’t see many activities that the private sector couldn’t perform better and more efficiently than the public sector. I remember taking my five-year-old son to the polls. He sat on my shoulders, looking down as I voted, announcing to the room, “Libertarian! Libertarian! Libertarian!” I hated to curb his enthusiasm for the democratic process, but I had to give him a big “shhh!”
But look around you. The government has probably not gotten any less corrupt. But if we don’t have some power that is forceful enough and honest enough to rein in corporate malfeasance and greed, it’s very clear where we’re going. Do you think Chevron will voluntarily stop pumping oil until the last drop is sucked out of the earth? Do you think BP is going to leave a trillion barrels of profit down there unless they’re forced to? It’s just simply not going to happen.
I know we’re all worried about moving in the direction of socialism – a concern that I share. But, like most things in life, it’s just not that easy — regardless of what Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck tell us. Unless one has the same lack of regard for the health and safety of the 6.8 billion people who live on this planet as the oil companies most obviously do, it’s clear: we need a solution that looks beyond unbridled free-market capitalism.
Readers of this blog – and all others who are trying to pay attention — are reminded of this pickle several times a day. And we who are enjoying the PBS special on the National Parks are realizing that the reckless over-industrialization of America is a traditional that has continued unabated since the 19th century.
But can’t we see the reason? For every John Muir, who, for whatever reason, was not that enamored of money, there were thousands of people who didn’t see it that way, and either led the charge for industrialization, or profited from it less directly and looked the other way at the human and environmental devastation it wreaked. Then, as now, there was no equalizing force, restraining the greed of powerful, ruthless people.
Again, we need a solution. May we work together to find one. As always, I welcome comments.
Frequent contributor Sonny Carri wrote a long and eloquent comment about the coal industry, which I summarize here:
Let’s work to get them on board, not be an adversary. Change requires coming together, not schism.
Very thoughtful stuff as always, Sonny. In response, let me say that I honestly don’t see change without push-back; I see entrenched interests that are braced for the fight of a lifetime, and I doubt there is any sincere interest in “coming together” whatsoever. It’s funny you mention this, as we’ve had numerous internal discussions about not positioning the HyPEG as a replacement for coal, so as not to create any more enmity than possible. After going ’round and ’round on the subject, I just don’t see this. It’s not that I’m a combative person by nature; I’m not. It’s just this: The coal industry may be evil (or whatever you would call “profits first, people a distant second”), but they’re most definitely not idiots. In fact, big energy has hired some of the brightest minds on the planet — and guess whom they’re gunning for?
As I may have told you, I moderated a panel at the AltCarExpo out here in CA, and I stayed on the floor both days, talking ultimately with hundreds of people. Most telling to me were conversations I had with expatriated Europeans about electric vehicles, several of whom told me, “Sorry, not for me. As long as your power here in the US is so heavily rooted in coal — and even worse, nuclear — EVs really aren’t green at all.” Now that’s not completely correct, but it sure does show the difference between the Europeans — who are working hard to clean up the energy business — and us in the US, who, while we may we working hard, have yet to make much progress.
Let’s just call a spade a spade, and get everyone to pay the true cost of his power source. I don’t want subsidies for hydrokinetics; I just want coal to pay the true cost of ripping up our planet and poisoning our people. Once that’s in place, I’m happy to just let the chips fall where they may.
I functioned as the moderator of the “Charging Infrastructure” panel before a full and enthusiastic audience at the 4th annual AltCarExpo last Friday, October 2nd. For the first hour, AC Propulsion’s CEO Tom Gage, Plug-In American’s Paul Scott and Clean Fuel Connection’s Enid Joffe did a wonderful job with the questions I had prepared. At that point, I turned the questioning over to the audience for the last 30 minutes, and was pleased to see a steady slow of clear, solid questions that got at some really good issues that I had not built into my dialog with the panel.
As one might have expected, the content was mostly technical: Exactly what are the challenges that the utilities face in preparing for the coming ubiquity of electric transportation, and how are they going their work? What does the advent of V2G (vehicle to grid) mean in terms of both the quality and quantity of power available on the grid at any point in time? What type of planning needs to occur such that charging stations provide adequate opportunity to ensure that motorists feel confident that they won’t run out of charge in their day-to-day driving?
I knew in advance that Tom Gage would be impossible to stump with questions like these (not that I was trying), insofar as he’s one of the best-informed people on the planet in this regard. But I was blown away with the expanse of technical knowledge that Enid and Paul had brought to the table as well.
I made sure we addressed the political issues too, and I’m happy to say that no one pulled any punches. Apparently, the oil companies are not going to take this without a fight. “You’re about to see a campaign of lies like you’ve never witnessed before,” Paul Scott intoned solemnly. “In the last wave of hearings that could have threatened their monopolies, they hired hundreds of people to show support for their positioned who had never even heard of the issue the day before and didn’t know the first thing about it. They have absolutely no concept of fair play – and that was just a warm-up for what is about to come.”
I closed by thanking the panel — and the audience in particular, with my reference to Henry Kissinger that readers may have seen in other posts. “Henry Kissinger said recently,” I reminded the group, “that if it weren’t for the intensity of the opposition to the war in Vietnam of the common American, we’d still be there. That’s an utterly amazing thing to admit, isn’t it? It shows me several things, but the most obvious is the raw power of people like you, who take their time to come together and stand up for something you believe in. I thank for you that. And I ask you to give yourselves a hand.”
In preparation for the book I’m writing on renewable energy, which I hope to publish sometime this winter, I’ll be interviewing my colleague and friend Wally Rippel. Readers of “The Three Brass Tacks” will remember Wally’s comments on cold fusion. In the book, I think it’s important that I offer a chapter tentatively called “Cutting-edge Physics, Fact and Fantasy,” enabling readers to see where the energy industry might be 50 years or so from now.
In my call with Wally just now, I was encouraged that he was so enthusiastic about the book, on the basis that he believes that public ignorance is what’s holding all of this back. There are currently an average of 385 parts per million of CO2 in our atmosphere, and the consensus in the scientific community that that this needs to come down at a maximum of 350 PPM to prevent global warming. But the oil companies and others who would profit at the expense of the destruction of our earth are pointing us into technologies that are clearly unworkable, most notably hydrogen — and most people don’t understand enough about science to see that is simply a hoax. The theoretical limit on the efficiency of hydrogen fuel cells is below 30%, compared with electric motors that are already in the high 80s. Yet Wallt points out that people are thoroughly confused on this issue; many even believe that hydrogen is a form of energy — rather than a carrier of energy — like a battery or the driveshaft of your car.
The thing I love about our talks is that I learn something – normally pertaining to both science and philosophy — from almost everything that comes out of Wally’s mouth. Here’s a great example, from my 10-minute phone conversation earlier today:
The breakthroughs of 19th century physics turned into useful tools very quickly. E.g., when Faraday and Maxwell nailed electricity and magnetism, we had electric motors and generators within a few years. With modern physics, by contrast, it takes many decades for breakthroughs for such ideas to affect our lives — if they make any difference at all. For instance, look at the work going into quantum entanglement, the concept that certain pairs of particles, no matter how distant from one another, seem to know each other’s state instantaneously. Obviously, like so many other things about quantum physics, this is very weird and counter-intuitive, if only that it violates the theory of special relatively that would have us believe that nothing (particles, information, etc.) can travel faster than the speed of light. In any case, the world of advanced physics is working hard to make use of this phenomenon, certainly in communications—and perhaps one day in energy — but at best, it will be many decades before any of this happens.
That was worth 10 minutes of my time any day of the week.
I think that one of the hardest questions we face when considering the technology paths of tomorrow is which one we chose. There are many great, novel and truly workable ideas for new ways to harness the natural energy flow of this planet and generate energy, motion and work from it. With this many choices the question then becomes which one we chose to pursue en masse.
The answer will be based on a myriad of inputs: conversion factors, collection means, cost-effectiveness, environmental impact, energy source and availability, and so on. The one input that many people miss is that of scalability. In terms of green energy I define scalability as “the technology’s ability to meet a significant percentage of the demand for the energy (or work) in which it produces.” It is a combination of power density, affordability and durability. Think of it as the formula for global acceptance. All of the grants I have worked on considered ‘scalability’ to be a major factor in their decision making process as to which technology to invest in.
Scalability is the means by which to gauge a technology’s ability to grow in the marketplace. Take steam for instance. Converting water to steam is still considered one of the most powerful means by which to generate force. When the automobile first hit the road 100 years ago some were actually powered by steam. But it wasn’t very scalable in that application. In other words, the mechanics of generating work through extracting the heat energy from steam wasn’t good in that application.
Yet today steam produces better than 2/3rds of the electricity on this planet, and more so everyday. (Yep, it’s true; all coal and nuclear plants heat up water to make steam to drive turbines.) And even though we don’t use it to drive our cars it is still the power of choice to throw a 30-ton aircraft off the edge of an aircraft carrier (60 years after it was invented!). We discovered that the mechanics by which to generate steam AND convert it to electricity were very scalable. When you look at a coal-fired or nuclear power plant all you really see is a giant steam boiler. There’s no magic going on in there. And because water is an inexhaustible mechanical power source all we need is fuel to make steam.
Now we have come to realize that while the mechanics were very scalable, and that the mechanical power supply (water) was inexhaustible, the fuel to convert it is not scalable because the environment is overwhelmed by our ability to convert it and Mother Nature’s ability to replace it. A clever investor will discover that while carbon-based fuel is lowering the scalability factor [for steam power] efforts in solar power may be doing just the opposite. A good investor is also part soothsayer. Thomas Edison, in conversation with Harvey Firestone and Henry Ford, once remarked “I’d put my money on solar energy. I hope we don’t have to wait till oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”
In order to be scalable in today’s world an ‘energy conversion device’ (e.g. the hydrokinetically-powered electric generator or “HyPEG”) needs to achieve a ‘positive’ balance between the product (in this case electricity) with the mechanics (an underwater paddle wheel) and the energy source (river currents) as well as the environment (aquatic) in which it operates to achieve the desired scalability. Windmills worked great for grinding flour 400 years ago, but when the world needed more flour we had to abandon them because they weren’t scalable for what they were designed to do (grind flour). Here in the US, our forefathers ground flour with mills along streams. Now we no longer use either of those energy sources (wind and hydropower) to make flour but instead we use them to make electricity. When it comes to making a useful amount of electricity, and in a global environment, it is important to understand the scalability of the mechanics. For a layman and/or investor this can be tough to do, especially when you don’t see it in front of you (like you can with coal and nuclear plants). For the average investor this myopic vision becomes a ‘safe’ means to determine if a technology is scalable; the more you see the more we have made, therefore it must be scalable and a safe investment. While it may be a logical means by which to invest, it is not the smartest. I don’t imagine that the last investment banker which held the most stock in buggy whips is still around today, and the case of Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin also comes to mind here.
Scalability needs to be looked at in a historical perspective to be understood. When we built dams we turned a blind eye to their effects on the river’s eco-system, thinking only about the scalability of large hydro-turbines and the economics of using them to make electricity. Now that the dams are too expensive (compared to other means of generating electricity) and mankind understands the negative impact they have on the environment, very few utility companies want to build them anymore (with the exception of those in China and Africa). But we did like the hydro-turbines; so many companies are designing new energy conversion technologies around them and many investors consider them a safe haven. However, not many are looking closely enough at the scalability of the hydro-turbine design.
Underwater run-of-river and ocean current turbines are a viable means of turning current flow into electricity, but considering that most of the usable current flow that we have access to lies in relatively shallow waters, turbines are not very scalable; to make a lot of power (more than 4 MW in 13 knots of current) you need a very large turbine diameter (30+ ft), so you need ‘deep water’ (more than 60 feet deep). There are not a lot of usable river currents that run that deep. We can put really big turbines along the bottom out in the deep ocean, but there is not much access to the grid along the coast so all of that power doesn’t do us much good. (T. Boone Pickens ran into this problem with his wind-turbine strategy.) Besides, large turbines need to stick up a long way from the bottom thus making them an even larger target for fish, dolphins and whales to run into. Rightfully so, you don’t see a lot of effort being put into those really large turbines because of their ‘scalability’ problems.
The technology exists to build smaller turbines for run-of-river electrical production, but you would have to build [literally] millions of then to even start to make a dent in world’s current demand for electricity. The idea of making millions of them may be appealing (from an investment point of view) but the problem is that they are not very scalable. They are expensive, not very robust, not very fish-friendly, and we would run out of rivers long before we could use enough of them to replace coal. Some states are even doing their best to steer clear of them for all of the reasons mentioned above. However there are other hydropower technologies out there that may not appear to use the latest in technology but do offer a design approach that is far better suited to larger scalability than some of the more familiar efforts. These are factors that need to be considered when investing in hydrokinetics.
Long term investment strategists that desire continuous high-yield results for years to come need to look forward and make decisions based on more factors than just what is popular (or what has been done before). Companies such as Emerson usually shun innovation, and only invest in proven technology regardless of its forecasted future. A shrewd investor can always make 15% on investments by doing this but [like Emerson] you’ll find your market-share dwindling over time. It can be a profitable pattern, but it is not usually a growth pattern; especially in transitional times like these. Companies like the kind that Henry Ford started were successful because he knew that even though the horse was responsible for over 90% of the personal transportation market it was not scalable beyond that market. He also knew the automobile could go beyond personal transportation. When asked “Why the automobile?” he responded “If I had asked them what they wanted they would have said ‘Faster horses’”.
Before you decide on what to invest in (and what not to invest in) first decide how long you are willing to let your investments grow. If the technology has a high scalability factor, then your investments in such will have not only have a high growth rate, but a growth rate that can be maintained for years and years to come. Think of ‘scalability factor’ as an investment potential in not only your children’s future, but your grandkid’s future as well. If that growth pattern is appealing to you, make the smart investment — not necessarily the popular one.
I’m hoping that I can get Matthew Simmons to help me with the “peak oil” section of the book I’m writing on Renewable Energy. Though I’ve never met Matt personally, he’s a friend of numerous friends, and I have a good feeling that this will ultimately happen. And to stimulate discussion on the topic, I’ve begun writing posts on a variety of blogs in which the subject is discussed.
Here’s what I wrote on the distinguished R-Squared, in response to a heated discussion on Mr. Simmons’ credentials as a scientist:
I strain to understand the fascination for the fine points of this subject, i.e., exactly when the world experienced – or will experience – peak oil. Whether or not you agree with Matt Simmons’ analysis and conclusion (which I happen to, personally), I think you have to concede that CO2 levels of 385 ppm and climbing means taking an unacceptable risk with the future of our planet – in terms of both global climate change and ocean acidification. I’m less interested in the rhetoric surrounding peak oil — and more interested in beginning to create what I know will be a monumental effort to build legislation that establishes a level playing field for renewables, as I’ve written in numerous blogposts at 2GreenEnergy.com, e.g., this morning’s.
The 2GreenEnergy mantra “It’s business” is played out in this interview with General Electric’s Energy Infrastructure CEO John Krenicki on the company’s investment in renewables. As with most such interviews, the content here is extremely broad, general, and at times evasive; I find it funny when I see someone on camera answer a direct question in a way that has absolutely nothing to do with the query. But to be fair, I suppose that’s part of the skill-set of the CEO of any Fortune 25 company: staying on-message.
It’s important for us all to understand that a company with the global footprint of GE has (apparently profitably) invested billions of dollars of resources into solar and wind. The wind business that they bought from Enron for $300 million did $6 billion in high-margin revenue last year. That gets a lot of attention from Wall Street.
And let’s not forget that all this is being done in the context of renewable energy that comes with a price tag that is significantly above that of energy from fossil fuels. So exactly when will the price of renewable energy fall to the point that it’s competitive with fossil fuels — and coal, etc. can become a thing of the past? A friend of mine recommends this 83-pager on wind power that purports to answer that question. But I can see from its synopsis that it boils down to this: with natural gas demand factors falling and the supply factors skyrocketing, renewables will not be directly cost-competitive for some time.
Of course, here is the real problem that advocates for renewables face: customers of fossil fuel-based energy are not paying anywhere near the true costs. When we buy a tank of gasoline, the manufacturer simply passes the cost of cleaning up the mess on to future generations — and they’re so powerful that no one even thinks of taking them to task. What would happen if we were to close that loophole? What if the price of a gallon of gasoline rose to include the cost of the healthcare to deal with the lung disease that is caused by burning it, and to include the cost of pulling the CO2 and other garbage out of the atmosphere?
The answer is obvious: We’d have a level playing field on which electric vehicles and renewable energy would be rightly perceived as the bargain of the millennium. And that, in very short order, would be the end of internal combustion engines and the oil companies in very short order. But as long as the oil and coal companies retain the power to defecate on the health of future generations and nothing happens to change the way we deal with them, renewable energy will continue to fight an uphill battle.
I intend to make only a minimum of remarks about the ethics of environmental stewardship, for fear of preaching to the choir, as well as offering opinion on a site otherwise devoted to fact. Yet occasionally, experiences call upon me to write such a post.
The first experience on which I’d like to comment is one that I know I share with many readers: the PBS special on the National Parks. I know we are all deeply moved to learn about the discussions between John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt and how, at the beginning of the last century, our world was transformed forever with the establishment of protection for many of the national treasures.
The second experience is a far more personal. I took my 13 year-old daughter (pictured here) and one of her friends to the Santa Barbara Art Museum last Sunday for a docent-led tour of the travelling exhibit of Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. I happened to join another tour an hour or so later in the day for a discussion of a piece of contemporary art: a huge piece of pale grey and pink with almost no content; it was like looking out on a dense fog. The docent asked the crowd, perhaps 25 of us, what we felt the artist had intended to communicate. I didn’t answer, as I’m by no means an art expert, and I certainly didn’t want to pontificate in front of this group of strangers who couldn’t hit their “back” button and shut me up.
But in fact, the artist’s message was very straightforward me: ambiguity. We struggle to assign meaning to the people, the things, and the events in our lives. We live in a cold and uncaring world, one that is quite indifferent to your and my happiness. Our presence in this universe is the only thing that confers meaning upon it.
And with this fact comes responsibility. Exactly what meaning do we confer? What decisions and actions do we make, and what are their consequences? What difference will we make in our own lives, in the lives of those around us, and in the lives of generations yet to come? It’s up to each of us to create lives of true meaning – and preserving the natural purity and beauty of our planet is a great place to start.
I just came back from a walk around the ranch, disappointed at the condition of the 12 acres of pasture that had been so difficult and expensive to prepare when we expanded my wife’s horse breeding business a few years ago. We had used tractors to harrow the soil, removed (by my calculation) over 300,000 rocks, planted grass, and tried to keep it irrigated, mowed, and fertilized. But a few short years later, with the help of horses grazing and cavorting all over it, there are bald spots and erosions — not to mention gopher holes and weeds. In short, entropy – the tendency of the universe towards disorder — is trying to take it back where it was before we started.
To my utter astonishment, we in the US and Europe are begieged with renewed interest in hydrogen. I urge readers to arrive at their own understanding of the merits of hydrogen as a carrier of energy. But for those who may be unwilling to go through the process and are looking for a readers’ digest version, here are three simple data points (as usual: the science, the business, and the politics) that clarify what I think everyone ought to know about hydrogen.
As I’ve noted in numerous posts, it is clear to me that the 
15 years ago, I was a 
Frequent contributor Sonny Carri wrote a long and eloquent comment about the coal industry, which I summarize here:
I functioned as the moderator of the “Charging Infrastructure” panel before a full and enthusiastic audience at the 4th annual 
In preparation for the book I’m writing on renewable energy, which I hope to publish sometime this winter, I’ll be interviewing my colleague and friend 
Investing in Green Energy 
I’m hoping that I can get Matthew Simmons to help me with the “peak oil” section of the book I’m writing on Renewable Energy. Though I’ve never met Matt personally, he’s a friend of numerous friends, and I have a good feeling that this will ultimately happen. And to stimulate discussion on the topic, I’ve begun writing posts on a variety of blogs in which the subject is discussed.
The 2GreenEnergy mantra “It’s business” is played out in this interview with General Electric’s Energy Infrastructure CEO John Krenicki on the company’s 
I intend to make only a minimum of remarks about the ethics of environmental stewardship, for fear of preaching to the choir, as well as offering opinion on a site otherwise devoted to fact. Yet occasionally, experiences call upon me to write such a post.
The second experience is a far more personal. I took my 13 year-old daughter (pictured here) and one of her friends to the 
