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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

PhotobucketGuest Blogger Geoff Nicholson writes:

I’d like to comment on your recent post about public sector support of renewables. 

I spent the better part of my aerospace career in R&D. My experience was that private entities couldn’t plan for longer than one product development cycle. For aircraft and jet engines that tended to be about 5 to 10 years. Their ability to create a basic research vision and hold to a technology development plan was not very good, except for corporate research groups that had lots of research ideas but couldn’t care less how or when the technologies were introduced into real world products.

 If it weren’t for government funding of critical, long-term research projects/programs, we would still be flying propeller airplanes. All of yesterday’s and today’s jet engines/aircraft were really developed under military government contracts from the ’40s through the ’80s. The commercial sector didn’t have the capital to individually or, for that matter, collectively fund the myriad of technology development programs necessary to field a jet aircraft. It was too big a hurtle for the private sector.

 Since the end of the cold war, government R&D funding for aircraft has all but dried up compared to before. And, arguably no revolutionary product innovation has occurred since — only incremental improvements. The most noteworthy development has been a painfully slow and halting move toward composite airframe structures to reduce weight. No wholly new propulsion schema has been innovated. No truly revolutionary airframe schema has succeeded. We still suck, burn and blow air in engines that have the same basic design since the 1940s. We still fly tubes with wings on them. We just do it more efficiently than before while trying to drive the cost of manufacturing down. In other words, aviation has slumped into the mature end of the product life cycle curve without the impetus of government R&D funding.

 And, the rest of the world has substantially caught up to us. What used to be dozens of US aircraft manufacturers have consolidated into less than a handful. Airbus, Embrear, Bombardier and others have taken market share from US companies, hand over fist.

So, is there a need for government involvement? Yes. Should the government fund basic R&D? Yes. Should government fund end product development? Maybe, but only for a few pilot programs but not for the vast majority of end products since the government doesn’t care too much about market demand for product features and functions and the various combinations of desirable product features.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

PhotobucketI encourage readers who may be interested in electric transportation to sign up for Paul Scott’s blog. Paul is a spokesperson for Plug-In America, and one the great forces for progressive environmental policy. He also happens to be a terrific writer.  I notice that he gathered a number of rave reviews to a recent post in which he concluded:

I don’t I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait till the day when it’s rare to see an internal combustion car. At some point, they’ll be anachronistic reminders of a day when people didn’t think twice about spewing poisons into the common airshed. Like smoking in line at the grocery store, you won’t believe people used to do it everywhere.

I responded:

Paul, I agree with the others — you really are one of the great writers on the subject. For what it’s worth, the analogy I use is women wearing mink coats — all the rage in the mid-60s, but completely gone from our culture a few years later, when we all gasped in the collective recognition that it was simply wrong. And this is exactly what I expect will happen with internal combustion engines: they will become regarded as something we used to do – something that no longer has a place in our world.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

PhotobucketFrequent commentor and all-around smart guy Larry Lemmert writes:

I whole-heartedly believe (that it’s business that’s causing the rapid migration to renewables) and for that reason, the role of government should be limited to cheerleader on the side-lines, offering only tax credits to lubricant the transition, but largely to just stand back and keep out of the way of this tidal wave of green development….”

Thanks for writing in, Larry.  I go back and forth on this. I ran that idea by George Douglas, spokesperson for NREL, in the interview I conducted with my him for my book on renewables, and he politely by firmly took my head off.

I asked, “Isn’t technology is typically developed in the private sector? What was the thought process behind doing this in a public agency?”

He responded, “Well, the first statement is not true. How did we get to the moon? Public sector development of technology. The Internet is public sector development of technology. Really, the model that people think about is the Bell Labs model – the long-term investment in technology. But after the Second World War business itself became much more increasingly interested in short-term returns.

“And the role of government in investing in high risk and long-term research was given a great deal of credibility during the Second World War. The development of radar, development of nuclear arms, and so forth — specifically aimed at harnessing nuclear power. So Oak Ridge National Laboratory, San Diego National Laboratory, Los Alamos, etc. all grew out of that. So, there has been, at least for the last 60 to 70 years, the divide between what research is generally pursued by private enterprise and what research is pursued by the government and in academia. It’s the difference between near-term results, and by near-term — I don’t mean tomorrow — but in the 10 to 20 year time horizon, and much longer-term problems and results.”

We’d all like to say, along with Jefferson, “That government is best that governs least.”  Try to find a politician who runs on a “big government” platform.  Even as he’s spending your money as fast as he can get hands on it, he’s telling you that he’s for small government.

But you have to admit that NREL’s position on this gives us something to think about.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

I was on a conference call this morning with people in Los Angeles, New York, Dublin, London, and Istanbul, trying to raise money for a large run-of-river hydrokinetics project in Turkey.  I’d have to go back a long way to recall a conversation representing that many time zones.

What I find noteworthy here are two things:

1) Sadly, most of the really important renewables projects are happening outside the US. I’m reminded of this constantly – normally accompanied by a warning that the US really cannot afford to take a backseat in terms of the development and implementation of alternatives to fossil fuels. We’ve done a good job in information and communication technologies, with companies like Microsoft, Google, Oracle, etc., but we need to be equally aggressive – and ultimately successful — in leading the way to clean energy.

Renewable energy legend Bill Paul, who has joined us here at 2GreenEnergy as a financial writer, points out the importance of the European, Asian — even African markets virtually every time we speak.  Bill keeps his finger on the pulse of 75 different sources of information every single day — many of which feature projects in some fairly exotic places.  When we first met over lunch, he mentioned that it’s likely the Sahara will soon be the site of enormous amounts of solar thermal, providing power for much of Europe, and that this heightens the importance of following the stock exchanges in Tripoli and Algiers.  Wow – that’s a lot of information to juggle. 

2) The financial mechanics behind deals of this size (the project we discussed this morning is 109 million Euros) are incredibly complicated. I was so lost on this call I didn’t know which end was up. Fortunately, I was able to introduce the parties, mute the phone, sip my coffee, and listen quietly until it was time to thank everyone for participating and hang up. I’m blessed to be associated with people 10 times better at the financial side of this than I’ll ever be.

Calls like this remind me of the first video I made when we started this site, where I asked: “What’s causing the rapid migration to renewables? It’s business. The world is figuring out that there are enormous profits to be realized from pushing toward clean energy.”

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

PhotobucketTomorrow morning, I need to rush home from dropping my daughter off at school to be on a live radio broadcast, in which I’ll be speaking on the imperative to move to clean energy. Also featured on the program is a representative of the National Resources Defense Council. I interviewed someone from the NRDC for my book on renewables, so I’m fairly familiar with the cut of their jib. You have to like people who stand up and do the right thing under incredible pressure to yield.

In preparing for this live discussion, I’d like to try to concentrate on the basics of clean energy; I’d like to make this is simple and as black and white as possible. But that’s not easy. The more I learn about this the more complicated I understand it to be. There is a lot to discuss about the subject of global warming alone, for instance. But discussions on the subject are usually 10 parts politics for every one part honest, objective science. I could prove that 2 and 2 are 5, using logic that I find in a lot of places.

The fact is that almost everything you read was written for a reason – and that reason is very seldom to inform you of the complete unvarnished truth. We’ve all come across the idea that global warming is a hoax. There is a paper being circulated now that takes this a step further, alleging that the hoax is aimed at creating enough fear in people that they will accept increased infringements in their liberties and ultimately a unified and tyrannical world government.

Personally, I’m a bit skeptical. I have to ask — in my mind, who has more credibility: thousands of research scientists – many of whom I’ve met and come to know as trusted friends — or a guy writing a paper with outrageous ideas and essentially no supporting evidence? Hmmm.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Hydrokinetics

Continued from yesterday…..

Another drawback of tidal energy is the dependence on location for a successful project. As with most of other water based methods of energy generation, the location plays an essential role in harnessing the potential power source; site procurement costs gets high increasing the cost of the entire project.

Currently there are very few tidal power stations in the world. The largest and oldest is located in northern France at the La France river mouth estuary. The other sites suitable for the utilization of tidal power exist in many places around the world majorly in France, the United Kingdom, Former Soviet Union (now Russia), Canada, and the United States. Before setting up the plant, it is important to have a proper feasibility study.
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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Hydrokinetics

Water covers about 70 percent of our planet, majorly composed of the oceans with endless waves and perpetual tides. Water is a source that lays the foundation for many forms of renewable energies like Hydro energy, Ocean energy, Tidal energy and Wave energy. With the advent of newer renewable energy sources, water is heavily counted upon as the source of green energy. The major advantage of water based energy sources is that water can be harnessed to create energy with almost zero carbon emission.
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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

PhotobucketA couple of readers have criticized me for not being specific in my rants on nuclear energy. It’s true that I do not perform independent research — and I suppose I can be taken to task for that.  But I do read a fair amount of others’ writing, and I try to be as specific as possible in supporting my beliefs. E.g., take my post on the Florida utility group FPL, in which I wrote the following. That was fairly specific, wasn’t it?

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.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

The Great Lakes of the United States and Canada, particularly Lake Superior, Lake Huron, and Lake Michigan, provide excellent opportunity for adequate and reliable green energy for the population near those lakes, as well, in a more limited form, of energy in the wider region. Lake Superior is the largest of the Great Lakes, and the deepest. And most of the water it receives comes from the North. This makes it a large reservoir of cold water. Thus, Lake Superior, of all the Great Lakes, has the greatest potential for the generation of green electricity. Northern Lake Michigan and Lake Huron also have potential, but I will concentrate on Lake Superior in this essay.
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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Energy Storage

It’s fast becoming apparent that large clean energy storage is needed for variable renewable energy integration into the grid, not only to stabilize that resource but to avoid inevitable curtailment due to transmission constraints. The resulting VERS (variable energy resources) losses incurred reduce the value of clean energy, particularly wind, in some cases by 50%. Detailed information of this nexus is spelled out in a subcontracted study by NREL released October 2009. (NREL/SR-550-46716)
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