Something you can do to help renewable energy....
Today’s post: Wednesday, 1-28-2009
We CAN have more renewable energy & jobs SOON.
Some of the things that impact our ability to have more renewable energy are out of your direct control.
But here are three things you can do.:
1. Write all of the politicians who are in your various districts and support feed-in tariffs and other kinds of financing for renewable energy installations. (See our last post on Weds, 1-21 for why that will also create up to 5,000,000 jobs and has been PROVEN to result in sharp increases in the amount of renewable energy actually installed and giving us energy.)
This is a bit more time consuming to do. But a lot of politicians don’t know this information yet; and some that do will only act on it if they think the voters will notice if they do or do not.
They also note personal letters more than mass efforts sometimes. So your one letter or email might actually work.
2. Do something little to save energy where you live, such as weather strip just ONE window that now either leaks a lot of cold air in the winter or hot air in the summer. You’ll not only save energy, you’ll be more comfortable too.
Or turn off the power on your TV by doing it at the power surge strip each time you leave or go to bed. Believe it or not, that cuts the total power your TV uses at least in HALF. Just remember to turn it back on at the power surge protector’s switch a few minutes before you want watch it.
If you can think up and do 20 such projects, by all means do. But it’s been proven over and over doing even ONE thing will help.
So do that during this upcoming week.
3. Start looking for opportunities to buy and install LED light bulbs & do it.
They are still a bit too expensive to be easy to buy upfront. But they are an unusually shrewd investment.
Even at today’s prices you’ll save as much as four times the upfront cost in savings on your electric bill before the bulb stops working.
LED lights save even more energy than compact fluorescents in any given size of light!
Even better, unlike compact fluorescents, LED lights contain no mercury.
Here’s why that’s important too. Since many of the people all over the world will simply dump compact fluorescents in ways that wind up adding their mercury to our waters and land, we already face increases in the mercury content of our food, particularly fish and seafood, from this source.
The sooner we can switch to LED light bulbs instead, we’ll not only save more energy, we’ll turn off this source of pollution of our planet.
Last, but far from least, now that incandescent bulbs are becoming illegal in many places, if we support the LED light bulb makers now, they may be able to make LED light bulbs that fit all the sockets in refrigerators and lamps all over the world BEFORE it becomes illegal to install incandescent bulbs in those sockets and nothing else will fit.
Try to buy even one LED light bulb within 30 days for where you live.
You can even make money selling LED light bulbs now.
See http://www.netprofitstoday.com/blog/the-perfect-time-to-go-and-sell-green/ .
Here’s a quote from that blog entry.:
“ For example, the prospect of saving up to 75% on lighting costs (typically representing approximately 25% of a home energy budget) convinced me to outfit 98% of the lights in my home with compact fluorescents when the product was first introduced. Now, 10-watt LED bulbs that last up to 50,000 hours and are equivalent to 100-watt incandescent bulbs are available for home use. Those who have already replaced 150-watt incandescent bulbs with the 10-watt LED spotlights are reporting better and brighter task lighting in addition to the benefit of increased savings.
Although the initial outlay of $60.00 to $100.00 per bulb seems pretty pricey, taking a longer-term view and applying some simple math reveals that each bulb $400 to $500 in electricity savings over the life of a bulb - based on a median cost of 10 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity. That’s not a cost — it’s a no-brainer investment. Replace ten incandescent bulbs, save $4,000.00 (or more), invest those savings in the solar retrofit and pretty soon the local hydro-electric utility will be sending you a check every month for the power that you send back to the grid!
Green Product Availability
Alas, not so fast. You can’t buy an LED light bulb that isn’t attached to a Christmas string for love nor money here in Backwater, British Columbia. So, this is where YOU come in. You can promote those bulbs as an affiliate. Do a search for “LED bulb” and “affiliate program” and merchants such as Smarthome (partnered with Linkshare) show up at the top of the Google search results. Smarthome reports that their average sale is over $200.00 and they pay 8-10% sales commissions.
Go beyond the bulbs and check out the plethora of energy-saving products that are available for promotion through those and other merchants with affiliate programs. Visitors who might be loathe to drop $70.00 on an LED light bulb can be sold a $34.00 sensor-activated switch that dims conventional and fluorescent bulbs by up to 50% and extends the expected lifespan by up to 35 times. While you’re at it, point that visitor to programmable thermostats that save 10 to 20% on the annual heating bill and cost as little as 40 bucks. For the still-skeptical, there are electricity usage monitors that display consumption by the kilowatt-hour and calculate electricity expenses by the day, week, month, or year and are an easy sell at $19.99. Put them on a list and they’ll come running back to your site for the real energy-saving tools once they gain perspective on their current usage and potential savings. “
I found lots of energy saving devices when I clicked on http://www.sarthome.com/ as Rosalind Gardner mentions above.
But to find the 10 Watt LED spotlights I had search on Yahoo.
I found this.: www.zgsm-china.com/LED-Spotlights.html .
Their site in English also pointed out that LED lights are far safer to use, particularly in uses where the light needs to be on and unattended for any length of time since they run dramatically cooler than compact fluorescents or incandescent light bulbs.
My hope is that major United States based companies that make light bulbs such as GE and Sylvania will make decent LED light bulbs available soon if only online & that fit all the existing fixtures that have been using the incandescent light bulbs for which they were originally designed.
Why should the Chinese companies make all the money?
The 10 watt spotlights use a fifteenth of the energy of a 150 watt incandescent and can light a whole room.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
We CAN have more renewable energy & jobs....
Today’s post: Wednesday, 1-21-2009
We CAN have more renewable energy & jobs SOON.
How soon? Maybe in a single year and for sure within 4 years – NOT 20 years -- and up to 5,000,000 jobs.
Archimedes once said given a fulcrum and a lever long enough he could move the whole earth.
I’d heard that such a lever to create more renewable energy had been invented in Germany &/or put into use there.
I’d also wondered why my state, California, and the United States weren’t both already using it.
Thanks to Craig Lewis of GreenVolts in San Francisco, I know now I was incompletely informed.
This renewable energy lever is about 100 times more effective than I’d realized or heard. It has the capacity to not only bring new renewable energy online, it has the capacity to add as much as 5,000,000 million jobs in the next two years if we do it well nationally here in the United States.
So why on earth aren’t we using it yet?!!
By the way, it also makes lending on renewable energy projects as safe for the lender as a 100 % cash backed loan -- just like lending you $2500 because you use your $2500 savings account as collateral.
It’s called a feed-in tariff. And the most effective version requires that the utility “must take” the power generated and “fed-into” the grid and pay what it cost the renewable energy provider to create it, which will often be more than what the utility pays now for power they already generate on a larger scale with fossil fuels.
Martin Roscheisen, CEO of Nanosolar has also suggested that the federal government mandate a rate paid for renewable energy from such must take feed-in tariffs must be at that rate or higher.
This rate can be set initially at a rate that is doable by most well run solar projects but gradually decreased as the costs come down to reward innovation and better technology and management. (My idea.)
Just how well does this work in practice?
I’d heard Germany did well with Feed-in Tariffs but I had NO IDEA how well.
It seems that Germany, which is about as far North as British Columbia and has about as much solar potential, has HALF of all the world’s solar power production now. It also gets 16% of its energy from renewable sources between the solar and the wind power they’ve installed because of their feed-in tariff.
Since the United States, between being farther South, much larger, and having deserts with more land area than Germany by themselves, has at least 20 times and maybe more like 100 times more solar potential between photovoltaic and solar thermal, AND has nearly that much more wind potential, we may be looking at more like getting 80 % of our energy from renewable sources here.
Germany did create about 250,000 jobs with their feed-in tariff according to something I read. So, if our solar potential is as little as 20 times bigger than Germany, I think it’s a good bit more, we will create 5,000,000 jobs or more if we adopt feed-in tariffs here!
It goes farther than that. Here in the Silicon Valley solar companies with solar projects that have been approved and contracted for are LOSING jobs and laying people off. One, OptiSolar laid off half its workforce. It seems that the banks won’t finance the projects now.
Mark Twain once said that if a cat sits on a hot stove once, it won’t sit on a hot stove again. But it won’t sit on a cold stove either.
So far the banks in the United States have not been any smarter than Mark Twain’s cat.
Because they lent money to high risk borrowers in large volume, they got burned. So now they won’t loan money to the low risk and low moderate risk borrowers, both individuals and businesses, they are in business to serve either.
For renewable energy projects, feed-in tariffs make lending on renewable energy projects so extremely safe even the most in-shock and brain dead banks will lend on it.
This means that feed-in tariffs can not only create jobs and new renewable energy installations on a very large scale, it can prevent job LOSS and might even turn the whole economy around.
So, why on earth hasn’t California and several other states already begun using feed-in tariffs? Why haven’t other states done it?
We know in part why the United States hasn’t done it. But that administration left yesterday.
The power of feed-in tariffs is so great that isn’t the entire answer though.
Most of the people in charge haven’t known we’d need to create 5,000,000 jobs to jump start our economy or that we’d need to create new renewable energy as badly as we now know we do.
And, none of them have had a clue that feed-in tariffs would do the job.
I’m writing this post because I want to publicize the fact that feed-in tariffs have proved they do the job in practice. They created half the world’s solar in Germany and added 250,000 jobs there.
Now our leaders on all levels know we need more renewable energy and jobs. I want them to know that it’s imperative they ensure we have feed-in tariffs for renewable energy to produce that renewable energy and jobs and that it’s virtually guaranteed to work.
Today’s post: Wednesday, 1-21-2009
We CAN have more renewable energy & jobs SOON.
How soon? Maybe in a single year and for sure within 4 years – NOT 20 years -- and up to 5,000,000 jobs.
Archimedes once said given a fulcrum and a lever long enough he could move the whole earth.
I’d heard that such a lever to create more renewable energy had been invented in Germany &/or put into use there.
I’d also wondered why my state, California, and the United States weren’t both already using it.
Thanks to Craig Lewis of GreenVolts in San Francisco, I know now I was incompletely informed.
This renewable energy lever is about 100 times more effective than I’d realized or heard. It has the capacity to not only bring new renewable energy online, it has the capacity to add as much as 5,000,000 million jobs in the next two years if we do it well nationally here in the United States.
So why on earth aren’t we using it yet?!!
By the way, it also makes lending on renewable energy projects as safe for the lender as a 100 % cash backed loan -- just like lending you $2500 because you use your $2500 savings account as collateral.
It’s called a feed-in tariff. And the most effective version requires that the utility “must take” the power generated and “fed-into” the grid and pay what it cost the renewable energy provider to create it, which will often be more than what the utility pays now for power they already generate on a larger scale with fossil fuels.
Martin Roscheisen, CEO of Nanosolar has also suggested that the federal government mandate a rate paid for renewable energy from such must take feed-in tariffs must be at that rate or higher.
This rate can be set initially at a rate that is doable by most well run solar projects but gradually decreased as the costs come down to reward innovation and better technology and management. (My idea.)
Just how well does this work in practice?
I’d heard Germany did well with Feed-in Tariffs but I had NO IDEA how well.
It seems that Germany, which is about as far North as British Columbia and has about as much solar potential, has HALF of all the world’s solar power production now. It also gets 16% of its energy from renewable sources between the solar and the wind power they’ve installed because of their feed-in tariff.
Since the United States, between being farther South, much larger, and having deserts with more land area than Germany by themselves, has at least 20 times and maybe more like 100 times more solar potential between photovoltaic and solar thermal, AND has nearly that much more wind potential, we may be looking at more like getting 80 % of our energy from renewable sources here.
Germany did create about 250,000 jobs with their feed-in tariff according to something I read. So, if our solar potential is as little as 20 times bigger than Germany, I think it’s a good bit more, we will create 5,000,000 jobs or more if we adopt feed-in tariffs here!
It goes farther than that. Here in the Silicon Valley solar companies with solar projects that have been approved and contracted for are LOSING jobs and laying people off. One, OptiSolar laid off half its workforce. It seems that the banks won’t finance the projects now.
Mark Twain once said that if a cat sits on a hot stove once, it won’t sit on a hot stove again. But it won’t sit on a cold stove either.
So far the banks in the United States have not been any smarter than Mark Twain’s cat.
Because they lent money to high risk borrowers in large volume, they got burned. So now they won’t loan money to the low risk and low moderate risk borrowers, both individuals and businesses, they are in business to serve either.
For renewable energy projects, feed-in tariffs make lending on renewable energy projects so extremely safe even the most in-shock and brain dead banks will lend on it.
This means that feed-in tariffs can not only create jobs and new renewable energy installations on a very large scale, it can prevent job LOSS and might even turn the whole economy around.
So, why on earth hasn’t California and several other states already begun using feed-in tariffs? Why haven’t other states done it?
We know in part why the United States hasn’t done it. But that administration left yesterday.
The power of feed-in tariffs is so great that isn’t the entire answer though.
Most of the people in charge haven’t known we’d need to create 5,000,000 jobs to jump start our economy or that we’d need to create new renewable energy as badly as we now know we do.
And, none of them have had a clue that feed-in tariffs would do the job.
I’m writing this post because I want to publicize the fact that feed-in tariffs have proved they do the job in practice. They created half the world’s solar in Germany and added 250,000 jobs there.
Now our leaders on all levels know we need more renewable energy and jobs. I want them to know that it’s imperative they ensure we have feed-in tariffs for renewable energy to produce that renewable energy and jobs and that it’s virtually guaranteed to work.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Mostly good news for renewable energy....
Today’s post: Wednesday, 1-14-2009
The news on renewable energy lately is mostly good.:
1. Yesterday, AP online news reported that Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Chu was “warmly received” at his Senate confirmation hearing to be Energy Secretary.
And, he “confirmed as energy secretary he will aggressively pursue policies aimed at addressing climate change and achieving greater energy independence by developing clean energy sources.”
He “appeared before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee where he received immediate support from both Democrats and Republicans.”
“Chu, …. told senators that climate change is "a growing and pressing problem" and the nation's dependence on oil represents a threat to the U.S. economy and security.
Of the risks from global warming, Chu said: "It is now clear that if we continue on our current path, we run the risk of dramatic disruptive changes to our climate system in the lifetimes of our children and grandchildren." “
So, if the Senate’s initial response is any indication, Chu will be confirmed; and renewable energy and a variety of means to improve our energy efficiency throughout our economy, and a commitment to reducing CO2 emissions will get a huge boost when he takes office.
Specifically this article quotes Chu as saying.: “ "Improvements in energy efficiency is the one single factor that can most reduce our dependency on foreign oil,"”
My main concern when he was appointed is that he would get derailed by the traditional energy industries due to his seeming lack of political background. But, between his experience running the Lawrence Lab and his preparation for the job, he seems to have the ability to deal well with that.
He is apparently willing to allow some offshore drilling in less environmentally sensitive areas which will keep the representatives of the oil industry from voting against him now or derailing his programs later.
(He is following the lead of President-elect Obama in so doing.) And, despite it not being the very best choice for global warming, it will slightly improve our ability to be energy self-sufficient and pay less to import oil which many help our national security which he knows is also important.
And, since the Lawrence Lab he ran is and was involved in nuclear matters, he is aware that it will likely remain part of our energy mix.
“Chu said nuclear energy produces a fifth of the nation's electricity and 70 percent of the carbon-free electricity and "is going to be an important part of our energy mix." “
I still have safety concerns about nuclear power; but I like that he is aware that it DOES provide” carbon-free electricity.” And, he clearly made points with those senators who back it.
He realizes that we are now dependent on burning coal for electricity now and that so are China and India. Plus he was aware that senators from states where coal is a key part of their economies will be voting on his confirmation. So, as a near term solution, he strongly favors work on developing effective methods to burn coal but to retrofit some kind of devices that prevent CO2 from entering the atmosphere.
As an optimistic scientist, he has more faith than I that this is doable at all, let alone soon enough or inexpensively enough. But within 10 years, there may be breakthroughs that do the job. And, in the near term, he keeps the support of coal state senators and of India and China.
(As regular readers of this blog know, I favor turning coal into substitutes for natural gas and for gasoline and diesel fuel that we would burn anyway, which would help us wean our economy from its unsafe dependence only on natural gas and petroleum and improve our energy self-sufficiency. And, I favor replacing ALL coal burning plants for generating electricity with renewable sources or at worst nuclear power instead. So I hope those approaches also make progress.)
But I still find it very reassuring to see that Steven Chu is politically sound and looking for global warming solutions that will avoid short term harm to our economy. So my expectations of his performance have gone from liking his support for renewable energy and fighting global warming but fearing he would be ineffective to now believing he will be quite effective as well once confirmed and in office.
2. And, which will fit right in with new Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s emphasis on renewable and sustainable energy research and research to fight global warming, also in the past few days, Stanford University added a new $100 million donation to an earlier $75 million dollar donation by one of Yahoo’s founders to create a new research group on renewable and sustainable energy research, which in addition to doing new research will also plug in ALL related work done at Stanford AND begin to help train new young people into experts in this new field.
Since I live near Stanford and am affected by the economy of the Silicon Valley, I’m personally very please with this announcement. But it looks to be easily as important to the developing field of renewable and sustainable energy research and research on fighting global warming. In addition to the short term benefit we get from the research, in the longer run, & starting in just a few years, the new experts in the field developed at Stanford will also be hugely positive.
3. And yesterday, Massachusetts governor, Deval Patrick announced he has set a goal for Massachusetts to produce2,000 megawatts of wind electricity annually by 2020, which is enough to provide 10 percent of the state's current energy needs.
Massachusetts only produces seven megawatts of power annually now.
And, the entire United States now only produces a bit more than 21,000 megawatts a year now. Texas, thanks in part to T Boone Pickens, now produces 6,300 megawatts a year from wind, which is the most of any state.
So, for Massachusetts to put a new 1993 megawatts of wind power electricity generation in place is a significant increase by comparison.
And, governor Patrick has a start on his goal because there are already
300 turbines in various planning and permitting stages in Massachusetts, which will generate an estimated 420 megawatts of power.
4. Lastly, as a fan of cost-competitive solar photovoltaic power, I’ve liked the upbeat and accurate supporting scientific facts the CEO of Nanosolar periodically posts on Nanosolar’s blog. (They print thin film photovoltaic cells on something like a high speed continuous roll printing press to help speed manufacturing and bring costs down.)
About 4 weeks ago, as I recently discovered, he posted this.:
"1kg CIGS = 5kg Uranium
December 16, 2008
By Martin Roscheisen, CEO
The notion of a kilogram of enriched Uranium conjures up an image of a powerful (amount) of energy. Enough to power an entire city for years when used in a nuclear power plant, or enough to flatten an entire county when used in a bomb - that's presumably what many people would say if one asked them about their thoughts.
In our new solar cell technology, we use an active material called CIGS, a Copper based semiconductor. How does this stack up against enriched Uranium?
Here's a noteworthy fact, pointed out to me by one of our engineers: It turns out that 1kg of CIGS, embedded in a solar cell, produces 5 times as much electricity as 1kg of enriched Uranium, embedded in a nuclear power plant.
Or said differently, 1kg of CIGS is equivalent to 5kg of enriched Uranium in terms of the energy the materials deliver in solar and nuclear respectively.
The Uranium is burned and then stored in a nuclear waste facility; the CIGS material produces power for at least the warranty period of the solar cell product after which it can then be recycled and reused an indefinite number of times."
To be fair, nuclear power also has a breeder reactor version that allows for a lot more of the energy in the Uranium to be used. But I like Martin Roscheisen and the way he thinks and thought this an upbeat way to end this post.
Today’s post: Wednesday, 1-14-2009
The news on renewable energy lately is mostly good.:
1. Yesterday, AP online news reported that Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Chu was “warmly received” at his Senate confirmation hearing to be Energy Secretary.
And, he “confirmed as energy secretary he will aggressively pursue policies aimed at addressing climate change and achieving greater energy independence by developing clean energy sources.”
He “appeared before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee where he received immediate support from both Democrats and Republicans.”
“Chu, …. told senators that climate change is "a growing and pressing problem" and the nation's dependence on oil represents a threat to the U.S. economy and security.
Of the risks from global warming, Chu said: "It is now clear that if we continue on our current path, we run the risk of dramatic disruptive changes to our climate system in the lifetimes of our children and grandchildren." “
So, if the Senate’s initial response is any indication, Chu will be confirmed; and renewable energy and a variety of means to improve our energy efficiency throughout our economy, and a commitment to reducing CO2 emissions will get a huge boost when he takes office.
Specifically this article quotes Chu as saying.: “ "Improvements in energy efficiency is the one single factor that can most reduce our dependency on foreign oil,"”
My main concern when he was appointed is that he would get derailed by the traditional energy industries due to his seeming lack of political background. But, between his experience running the Lawrence Lab and his preparation for the job, he seems to have the ability to deal well with that.
He is apparently willing to allow some offshore drilling in less environmentally sensitive areas which will keep the representatives of the oil industry from voting against him now or derailing his programs later.
(He is following the lead of President-elect Obama in so doing.) And, despite it not being the very best choice for global warming, it will slightly improve our ability to be energy self-sufficient and pay less to import oil which many help our national security which he knows is also important.
And, since the Lawrence Lab he ran is and was involved in nuclear matters, he is aware that it will likely remain part of our energy mix.
“Chu said nuclear energy produces a fifth of the nation's electricity and 70 percent of the carbon-free electricity and "is going to be an important part of our energy mix." “
I still have safety concerns about nuclear power; but I like that he is aware that it DOES provide” carbon-free electricity.” And, he clearly made points with those senators who back it.
He realizes that we are now dependent on burning coal for electricity now and that so are China and India. Plus he was aware that senators from states where coal is a key part of their economies will be voting on his confirmation. So, as a near term solution, he strongly favors work on developing effective methods to burn coal but to retrofit some kind of devices that prevent CO2 from entering the atmosphere.
As an optimistic scientist, he has more faith than I that this is doable at all, let alone soon enough or inexpensively enough. But within 10 years, there may be breakthroughs that do the job. And, in the near term, he keeps the support of coal state senators and of India and China.
(As regular readers of this blog know, I favor turning coal into substitutes for natural gas and for gasoline and diesel fuel that we would burn anyway, which would help us wean our economy from its unsafe dependence only on natural gas and petroleum and improve our energy self-sufficiency. And, I favor replacing ALL coal burning plants for generating electricity with renewable sources or at worst nuclear power instead. So I hope those approaches also make progress.)
But I still find it very reassuring to see that Steven Chu is politically sound and looking for global warming solutions that will avoid short term harm to our economy. So my expectations of his performance have gone from liking his support for renewable energy and fighting global warming but fearing he would be ineffective to now believing he will be quite effective as well once confirmed and in office.
2. And, which will fit right in with new Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s emphasis on renewable and sustainable energy research and research to fight global warming, also in the past few days, Stanford University added a new $100 million donation to an earlier $75 million dollar donation by one of Yahoo’s founders to create a new research group on renewable and sustainable energy research, which in addition to doing new research will also plug in ALL related work done at Stanford AND begin to help train new young people into experts in this new field.
Since I live near Stanford and am affected by the economy of the Silicon Valley, I’m personally very please with this announcement. But it looks to be easily as important to the developing field of renewable and sustainable energy research and research on fighting global warming. In addition to the short term benefit we get from the research, in the longer run, & starting in just a few years, the new experts in the field developed at Stanford will also be hugely positive.
3. And yesterday, Massachusetts governor, Deval Patrick announced he has set a goal for Massachusetts to produce2,000 megawatts of wind electricity annually by 2020, which is enough to provide 10 percent of the state's current energy needs.
Massachusetts only produces seven megawatts of power annually now.
And, the entire United States now only produces a bit more than 21,000 megawatts a year now. Texas, thanks in part to T Boone Pickens, now produces 6,300 megawatts a year from wind, which is the most of any state.
So, for Massachusetts to put a new 1993 megawatts of wind power electricity generation in place is a significant increase by comparison.
And, governor Patrick has a start on his goal because there are already
300 turbines in various planning and permitting stages in Massachusetts, which will generate an estimated 420 megawatts of power.
4. Lastly, as a fan of cost-competitive solar photovoltaic power, I’ve liked the upbeat and accurate supporting scientific facts the CEO of Nanosolar periodically posts on Nanosolar’s blog. (They print thin film photovoltaic cells on something like a high speed continuous roll printing press to help speed manufacturing and bring costs down.)
About 4 weeks ago, as I recently discovered, he posted this.:
"1kg CIGS = 5kg Uranium
December 16, 2008
By Martin Roscheisen, CEO
The notion of a kilogram of enriched Uranium conjures up an image of a powerful (amount) of energy. Enough to power an entire city for years when used in a nuclear power plant, or enough to flatten an entire county when used in a bomb - that's presumably what many people would say if one asked them about their thoughts.
In our new solar cell technology, we use an active material called CIGS, a Copper based semiconductor. How does this stack up against enriched Uranium?
Here's a noteworthy fact, pointed out to me by one of our engineers: It turns out that 1kg of CIGS, embedded in a solar cell, produces 5 times as much electricity as 1kg of enriched Uranium, embedded in a nuclear power plant.
Or said differently, 1kg of CIGS is equivalent to 5kg of enriched Uranium in terms of the energy the materials deliver in solar and nuclear respectively.
The Uranium is burned and then stored in a nuclear waste facility; the CIGS material produces power for at least the warranty period of the solar cell product after which it can then be recycled and reused an indefinite number of times."
To be fair, nuclear power also has a breeder reactor version that allows for a lot more of the energy in the Uranium to be used. But I like Martin Roscheisen and the way he thinks and thought this an upbeat way to end this post.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Why to RAMP UP renewable energy when gas prices are low....
Today’s post: Wednesday, 1-2-2009
1. We didn’t see the risks in the real estate lending industry’s high risk lending style and how they thought they had passed it on to third parties.
Then after these practices had become so widespread they involved much of the banking industry and an even bigger percentage of the real estate lending industry, something pushed the first domino or two in the row and our credit markets collapsed or very nearly did.
This has caused many people a good bit of pain and stress, even driven some to suicide.
It very probably was mostly avoidable.
But now the incoming administration will print money and try to do the things that will be effective in fixing it—both preventing it in the future and helping our economy recover to where it should have been at that time.
2. In many parts of the United States and the world, now that renewable energy is less directly competitive with burning fossil fuels, the adoption of renewable energy and enthusiasm has slowed.
It’s imperative if we want to avoid an economic collapse that would make the current one look easy & mild by comparison to RAMP UP renewable energy even MORE—NOT less now.
Here’s why.
a) The world’s economy will likely return to good health. And that economic growth will bid the cost of energy back up even higher than it was a few months ago. Over the decades after that more economic growth per capita and population growth will happen to keep the demand for energy high and climbing.
b) But, that can only happen if we have more energy to supply the demand. And, fossil fuels are running out. So most people in the world will become poorer if we don’t bring on-stream enough energy to supply the increasing demand at a reasonable cost.
(We will probably add some nuclear power to the mix & perhaps we should. But we should ONLY do so if we manage the risks of doing that to a failsafe level which means that governments will need to subsidize those costs to make nuclear power even close to economically viable price-wise. And, the likelihood that this risk reduction will be badly underfunded instead makes this a MUCH less safe alternative to renewable energy.)
c) Since fossil fuels are running out and only available in some places, continuing the current system that relies only on fossil fuels runs the risk of sudden and near total discontinuation of supply. So it is totally imprudent to rely only on fossil fuels while not realizing we are gambling with total economic collapse.
d) We likely already have passed the point of CO2 release from burning fossil fuels where we will have large scale economic costs because of global warming. And, particulate air pollution from burning coal and not adequately filtering the smoke is already causing health harm and costs and harm to agriculture in many parts of the world.
When you add all this up, it means that if we want to have prosperity and economic growth instead of economic collapse or economic decline and world wide increases in poverty, we need to MASSIVELY INCREASE our investments in adding renewable energy and energy efficiency infrastructure to our economy—worldwide.
That also particularly true and important for the United States.
We are the world’s largest economic power and will be one of the largest for many years to come. If we do a good job and lead in this area, the rest of the world will likely follow and add some good technologies not invented here.
But the rest of the world cannot get the job done without us and may do too little if we continue to do as little as we have been.
So, since these things are the case, it seems me that while energy prices for fossil fuels are temporarily too low and renewable energy now is less cost competitive than it should be, to get the progress we need will take very strong assistance from the federal government here.
The good news is that the incoming administration of Barack Obama already sounds like it will invest some of its economic stimulus package into increasing renewable energy and energy efficiency in addition to repairing infrastructure and tax relief.
My hope is that once they do what they already plan that they examine what investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency have worked best or will at that time; & then do a second round of economic stimulus aimed only at investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency.
My concern is that we might easily have even worse economic problems if they do not do both these things well.
Today’s post: Wednesday, 1-2-2009
1. We didn’t see the risks in the real estate lending industry’s high risk lending style and how they thought they had passed it on to third parties.
Then after these practices had become so widespread they involved much of the banking industry and an even bigger percentage of the real estate lending industry, something pushed the first domino or two in the row and our credit markets collapsed or very nearly did.
This has caused many people a good bit of pain and stress, even driven some to suicide.
It very probably was mostly avoidable.
But now the incoming administration will print money and try to do the things that will be effective in fixing it—both preventing it in the future and helping our economy recover to where it should have been at that time.
2. In many parts of the United States and the world, now that renewable energy is less directly competitive with burning fossil fuels, the adoption of renewable energy and enthusiasm has slowed.
It’s imperative if we want to avoid an economic collapse that would make the current one look easy & mild by comparison to RAMP UP renewable energy even MORE—NOT less now.
Here’s why.
a) The world’s economy will likely return to good health. And that economic growth will bid the cost of energy back up even higher than it was a few months ago. Over the decades after that more economic growth per capita and population growth will happen to keep the demand for energy high and climbing.
b) But, that can only happen if we have more energy to supply the demand. And, fossil fuels are running out. So most people in the world will become poorer if we don’t bring on-stream enough energy to supply the increasing demand at a reasonable cost.
(We will probably add some nuclear power to the mix & perhaps we should. But we should ONLY do so if we manage the risks of doing that to a failsafe level which means that governments will need to subsidize those costs to make nuclear power even close to economically viable price-wise. And, the likelihood that this risk reduction will be badly underfunded instead makes this a MUCH less safe alternative to renewable energy.)
c) Since fossil fuels are running out and only available in some places, continuing the current system that relies only on fossil fuels runs the risk of sudden and near total discontinuation of supply. So it is totally imprudent to rely only on fossil fuels while not realizing we are gambling with total economic collapse.
d) We likely already have passed the point of CO2 release from burning fossil fuels where we will have large scale economic costs because of global warming. And, particulate air pollution from burning coal and not adequately filtering the smoke is already causing health harm and costs and harm to agriculture in many parts of the world.
When you add all this up, it means that if we want to have prosperity and economic growth instead of economic collapse or economic decline and world wide increases in poverty, we need to MASSIVELY INCREASE our investments in adding renewable energy and energy efficiency infrastructure to our economy—worldwide.
That also particularly true and important for the United States.
We are the world’s largest economic power and will be one of the largest for many years to come. If we do a good job and lead in this area, the rest of the world will likely follow and add some good technologies not invented here.
But the rest of the world cannot get the job done without us and may do too little if we continue to do as little as we have been.
So, since these things are the case, it seems me that while energy prices for fossil fuels are temporarily too low and renewable energy now is less cost competitive than it should be, to get the progress we need will take very strong assistance from the federal government here.
The good news is that the incoming administration of Barack Obama already sounds like it will invest some of its economic stimulus package into increasing renewable energy and energy efficiency in addition to repairing infrastructure and tax relief.
My hope is that once they do what they already plan that they examine what investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency have worked best or will at that time; & then do a second round of economic stimulus aimed only at investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency.
My concern is that we might easily have even worse economic problems if they do not do both these things well.
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