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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

PhotobucketThe mission of the World Wildlife Fund is to “Speak up for those who can’t speak for themselves.” And certainly that’s the idea — standing up for biodiversity — that most of us conjure when we call the WWF to mind.

What most of us probably do not think of, however, is the passion with which this wonderful group embraces the issue of climate change. And I’m not sure of the reason for this gap in understanding. Perhaps it’s that when most of us think of the glaciers melting, the ocean levels rising, and storms rising to new record levels of destruction, we think of the human misery, and neglect the thousands of species whose habitat – and thus whose entire populations – will be wiped out in fairly short order.

To change this perception, the WWF’s Joe Pouliot, a hearty and dedicated young man, called upon me to urge readers to check out “Act For Our Future,” a robust section of the organization’s website that is focused on getting people by the thousands involved with climate change legislation. When you visit the site, you’ll notice that the intro video is warm and inviting. Any intimidation or fear of calling one’s senators and petitioning them for action is gently but effectively removed. And every aspect of social media from Twitter to FaceBook to blogging is addressed in an easy, engaging way.

Ironically, I was considering asking my web-guru partner at 2GreenEnergy what he thought about building all this functionality on our site (and I still may entertain the idea). But I really don’t know how we can top the WWF in terms of calling for action. Great job.

by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Nuclear

PhotobucketA colleague sent me an article that starts: “A nuclear renaissance needs government funding to move ahead,” and then goes on to extol the virtues of this horrifically dangerous and expensive technology.  (If you’re interested in reading it, you’ll have to find it with a search engine; I don’t want to empower it with backlinks.) I responded:

How utterly nauseating.  As Paul Scott (VP at Plug-In America) said in response to a question I asked him during the panel discussion I moderated at the AltCarExpo a few weeks ago, “Prepare yourself for a steady onslaught of lies from the nuclear and fossil fuel people.  If you thought it was bad in the 1990s with the Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) mandate, you ain’t seen nothing compared to what they’re about to throw against EVs and renewable energy in the next couple of years.”

Of course, this is an excellent example.  “Needs government funding?”  You bet your sweet $%^ is does.  Help will come only from people who have been paid off handsomely; the idea certainly will receive identically zero support from a fair-minded and informed citizenry.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

PhotobucketGuest Blogger Mike Brace comments on an article called “A nuclear renaissance needs government funding to move ahead.”

This is full-on garbage, written in a deliberate attempt to mislead readers. If you want to find it, use Google, as I don’t want to empower this evil cause by linking to it.

Principally, there are two things in this article that defy logic; one is plain as day: the author lists the cost as $10 billion for a 5,400 MW plant. That’s $1,800/kw. Not even coal is that cheap anymore. The last and best estimates by the DoE has nuclear at about $10K/kW.

The other lie here — this one a bit better hidden — is that large scale power generation no longer enjoys the economy of scale that it once did. In today’s economy it is seldom cheaper to go bigger unless you are at the lines in McDonalds. Large power plants lose that argument every time they stack up against localized power distribution. (This, btw, is what killed T. Boone Pickens’ plan, too).

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

In my mind, one of the most important chapters in my upcoming book on renewable energy is what I refer to as the Watchdog. There is so much pressure brought to bear on public policy by the big oil and coal companies that we’re very lucky to have advocacy groups that fight hard on behalf of the public interest.

For instance, what happened behind the scenes leading up to the Bureau of Land Management’s opening up a chuck of land for oil drilling? Was there an effort to circumvent the legal, democratic process? In many cases, the answer, sadly, is yes.

So then what happens? The answer is that the Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC) goes after them with its own lawyers.

In this chapter, an NRDC spokesperson will speak candidly about this brave organization’s victories, its defeats, and the greatest challenges it faces in the coming years.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

Last week, President Obama, as part of the Recovery Act, announced the dedication of $3.4 billion to further advancing smart grid development. This, of course, is good news for renewables in many different ways.

Smart grid technology facilitates integrated renewables into the mix, enabling solar, wind, etc. to replace a larger overall portion of our energy needs.

All grid improvements bring us closer to the day when high-voltage direct current (HVDC) removes the importance of the geographic location of the source of the power. Considering that we have solar thermal on the southwest, wind in the plains, geothermal in the mountains, and hydrokinetics mainly in the east, this is critical to our cause.

I’m happy to see the degree that the stimulus package is aimed at cleantech, and hope that millions of jobs will be created in this sector in the coming few years. I would like to think that the decision-making process re: the exact allocation of grants is as clean as the projects themselves – but that’s another matter.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

I urge readers to go through this excellent article explaining the costs of various means of generating electrical power.  This is a wonderful presentation of the most important ingredients in the calculus that we would like to think our leaders employ in establishing public energy policy.

To present a few of the basics on electric power:

  • The availability of renewables fluctuates during each 24-hour cycle, and thus it’s normally assumed that they are inappropriate for providing baseload power.
  • The cost of building the plant is independent of the cost of the fuel to operate the plant.
  • Where solar and wind can be switched on and off in seconds, fossil fuel and nuclear plants cannot.
  • The cost of pollution needs to be included in the calculations.

While I don’t dispute any of this, there are important aspects of the discussion that I feel need to be brought forward:

• The reason that we believe renewables cannnot provide baseload power is not intrinsic to the generation method per se, but to our perceived inablility to store energy inexpensively. However, molten salt technology, which stores energy as heat and coverts it to electricity on demand, is a proven method of removing this objection. I urge readers to note the work of Ausra, the US leading solar thermal company, based in Northern California. Yesterday, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. David Mills, the company’s founder, in preparation for my book on renewables.

• The actual cost of building these plants is almost never anywhere near the projected budget.  Readers may want to Google “nuclear plant cost overrun,” and read a few of the 54,700 articles they’ll find on the subject. Here’s one that refers to a certain nuclear project as “satanic,” based on the actual amount of the overrun ($6.66 billion). The Florida utility, FPL Group, now estimates the cost of building a new nuclear power plant at over $9 billion, nearly double their previous estimate.

• The nuclear industry and its lobbies have carefully confused us about the costs and safety of shipping and storing nuclear waste, which remains dangerous for as long as one million years.

• As noted, the author of the article above mentions the cost of the pollution, but does not suggest any real way of quantifying it. While I’ll grant that this is not a straightforward issue, it’s really crux of the matter.

As I’ve written many times in the past, if the price we pay per kilowatt-hour of electricity (or for a gallon of gasoline) included the cost of addressing the lung disease and long-term environmental damage to our skies and oceans, the math would be changed completely. Society’s desire to continue to mine, process, ship and burn coal and oil would be gone in the blink of an eye.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

I was just advising a friend on the development of a cogent business plan by which his energy storage invention can for monetized, emphasized in my 25 Tips for Renewable Energy Businesses.  I reminded him of these five central points:

  • Demonstrate an ironclad understanding of key industry trends.
  • Lay out an effective and efficient marketing plan.
  • Articulate your precise positioning statement vis-à-vis your most important competitors.
  • Present a credible cash flow projection based on realistic sales projections and cash burn-rates.
  • Show investors a full ROI analysis and exit strategy.

It’s funny to me how often I encounter the “build it and they will come” approach to business.  As a marketing guy, I’ve been vigorously recommending against this tack for decades — and nowadays, of course, I feel even more strongly about the matter.  Investors want to see a clear and compelling business strategy by which an idea can fill a gaping unmet need in a well identified target market — and do so profitably. 

Again, I’m happy to review any cleantech business plan with no cost or obligation, and provide high-level comment.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

PhotobucketI come across a great number of business plans each week, each soliciting investment in some aspect of clean technology — usually electric transportation or some form of renewable energy.  And in near every case, I find that a “second set of eyes” should review the text before it goes out to potential angel investors or venture capitalists. Almost without exception, I come across typos and grammatical errors that should be fixed — sometimes dozens of them. See my “25 Tips for Renewable Energy Businesses” for more on this.

I hope I can say this without offending anyone. At the base of it all, I’m really a professional writer by trade (direct mail copy-writing, blogging, research reports, etc.) and I know when I reread my own material I find outright errors — and, maybe more commonly, things that could be presented more clearly and professionally. (By the way, I don’t have these posts proofread, and I have no doubt that there are mistakes that get by; as a reader, I hope you won’t be shy about commenting when you come across errors.)

In addition, of course, business plan authors would be well-advised to request a second opinion on content: market trends analysis, sales and marketing plans, cash-flow analysis, etc.  I can tell instantly that many of the plans I see will never receive funding (or at least should never) due to a core misunderstanding of the marketplace. 

In any case, I’m happy to review any cleantech business plan with no cost or obligation, and provide high-level comment.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

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What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?  This paradox is most often discussed in the context of God’s omnipotence (“Can God create a stone so heavy it cannot be lifted, not even by God Himself?”).

I’m reminded of this ancient philosophic conundrum when I contemplate the future of the energy industry. The “Conference of Parties” (COP-15) summit is now only a  little more than a month away. . . and world-renowned economists are calling for it to create a market worth $1 trillion. . . per year. . . for decades. And to me, trillion dollar markets call to mind the notion of an force that is certainly very large indeed, if not irresistible.

Yet if there were ever an immovable object, it would be the traditional energy industry, dominated as it is by oil and coal.

I presume there are at least a few truly progressive, independent and honest people in Washington who are trying to stand up on our behalf against the force of the fossil fuel industries. Yet they are utterly powerless to defend us from the atrocities of these corporate giants. Want proof? We just came through eight years of an administration that consistently voted against funding of the development of lithium-ion batteries, against fuel efficiency standards, against mandates on renewable portfolios, against enhanced geothermal, and against the extension of tax credits for renewables. Looking for an immovable object? You just found one.

I know that sounds pessimistic, though my aim is not to depress readers. I don’t think of myself as a cynic; I think of myself as a pragmatist. And it’s that spirit of pragmatism that provides the motivation by which I write on this blog every day and spend a few hours on my book on renewables; it’s really all I can do to inform and, I hope, to inspire readers to get involved themselves.

In any case, I suppose we’re all about to see what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Here is guest blogger Mike Brace’s letter to his representative Geoff Davis (R-KY) on the Obama Administration’s choice of projects that received funding in this round under ARPA-E.  You’ll notice that he shares the many of the same sentiments that I wrote about yesterday.

 

 

Hon. Geoff Davis,

Geoff, I don’t know if you were aware of it but the DoE, ARPA-E has selected their grant recipients for this last round of funding and (to put it bluntly) you, I, the state of Kentucky and almost every American taxpayer got screwed.

If you recall, you wrote a well-versed letter on our behalf to ARPA-E expressing support for our hydrokinetic project, one of which is specifically designed to generate literally millions and millions of kilowatts based on the run-of-river current flow in the Ohio River. We all thought our technology to be a good fit for this ARPA-E grant of which I speak (DE-FOA-0000065) as it was specifically set up to do three things:

•           Reduce GHG and Carbon emissions

•           Enhance energy security

•           Restore science and technology leadership to the private sectors of America.

More specifically, none of this was to be done within the halls of our national federally funded laboratories, it was supposed to wean us off burning fossil fuels over due time, and (most importantly) it was to support technology that creates a lot of jobs and in a timely manner (24 to 36 months). This was spelled out in black and white so to that end we spent a great deal of personal time and money to apply for this grant.

With the exception of about $30M, none of this ARPA-E grant neither funded technology that is even remotely aligned with these goals, or (for the small share that they did fund) they gave the lion’s share to universities, gas/oil/car companies (or to national laboratories) all of which are already very well funded and shouldn’t have to ask for this kind of funding in the first place. It begs to be asked: what have they been doing for the last 20 years if not this?

I have attached the published list of recipients for the $151M that was given out for your review, and you can map out the distributions any number of ways, but I can break it out as follows:

Directly (or indirectly) a lot of the funded was divided up as follows:

•           $43M directly to universities (none in KY; and if you think that this amount will create in-so-much-as one additional job in this country think again)

•           $27.3M to Gas, Oil or Automotive companies (none in KY)

•           $15M to national DoE funded labs (none in KY)

Then, contrary to what they said they wanted to fund, most of the dollars were allocated to the following technologies:

•           $41.4M to Biomass fuels/technologies (which has no hope of displacing oil on a national level, still propagates internal combustion engines AND does not burn GHG or Carbon free)

•           $33.3M to Advance Battery Technology/Energy Storage (even if it offers any hope of being “transformational” none of them has a prayer of getting out of the lab in 36 months, not a one. And, aren’t we funding these already through other means?)

•           $15M to Building Efficiency/Technologies (I can’t help but ask “what’s transformational about that?” And who benefits? The power companies? The consumers? Public rates have never gone down despite the incredible amount of conserving already being done. Who are we helping?)

•           $11M to 5 different Carbon Capture projects (not a penny to KY or W VA, and [worst yet] this does nothing to reduce GHG or Carbon emissions, it only makes it worse. In the end it only stashes this problem away for our grandkids to figure out a way to deal with it.)

•           $10.2M to Gas/Oil/Automotive companies and their affiliates (didn’t the US Government already give them funds to help them become more ‘transformational’? How did these even get in there?)

Of the $151M handed out, only about $9.0M went to truly transformational technology, through private companies and towards technology that can possibly be mainstreamed in less than 36 months. Sadly, only $21M went to Wind, Solar and Geothermal energy technologies. Besides geothermal energy (which is spotty at best and not very scalable) none of these others can claim the peak performance power generation 24/7/365 that hydropower can. But here is the part I don’t understand: Not a dime went to hydropower or hydrokinetic technologies. Not one dime. (And I know that, besides ours, there were several others on the table worth considering.) We were very dissapointed in that fact.

Geoff, ARPA-E did announce that they will come out with another round of requests for funding proposals and [rest assured] that if we qualify for what they are asking for, we will pursue them as well, so please let this letter serve as a heads-up as a request for further support (if we need it). But, as someone desperately trying to believe in our government, and the choices that it makes for the welfare of its citizens, our group feigns to find anything good to say about this gross misuse of trust in those trying to make America a world leader in clean energy and advanced ‘transformative’ technology. We had so hoped it wasn’t going to turn out as it had. We are upset; you should be too.

A friend,

Mike Brace
Partner, EV World & Assoc, LLC
techeditor@evworld.com

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