Renewable Energy Arrives

2011-09-21T14:15:00.000-07:00

Saving electricity with better lights....

Today's post: Wednesday, 9-21-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects.

And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with an economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post:

Saving electricity with better lights....

We need massive new installation of renewable energy sources including solar and wind and to become much more energy efficient soon to prevent economic collapse when oil prices surge sometime in the next decade or two.

That’s true even if global warming stops by itself. (The recent fires and drought and record temperatures in Texas suggest the reverse! The people there who don’t believe in global warming didn’t notice apparently.)

Since we don’t yet have massive installations of renewable energy sources, that means it becomes even more critical to find and install all kinds of energy saving and more energy efficient devices that use electricity.

We’ve posted on ways to make homes more heat proof in sunny, hot weather because it can cut air conditioning costs up to 100 %. Even worst case locations can easily save over 50% on air conditioning costs with doable heat proofing.

We’ve posted on how solar canopies or roofs over parking lots not only generate the most electricity on the same sunny, hot days, they save the air conditioning costs for the people who park under them.

Today, lighting uses as much as 25% of all the electricity we use. So if we cut the electricity used by our lights five to one, that gives us about 20% of the electricity we use now for things like electric and plug-in hybrid cars and more computers and severs – WITHOUT needing to add any more electricity generation.

LED lights use as little as 10 % to 12% of the energy incandescent light bulbs use to make the same amount of light. LED lights also use half as much electricity or less than compact fluorescent bulbs – AND, unlike compact fluorescent bulbs, LED lights contain no toxic mercury.

(Many people who have compact fluorescent bulbs don’t know they contain mercury. They are unaware that when one breaks, the mercury causes that room to have a hazardous materials problem and that failure to deal with this correctly can harm their health. And people often are careless in disposing of things. So putting lots of compact fluorescent bulbs into homes is guaranteed to cause lots of added mercury in household trash.)

LED lights also last something like a hundred times longer than incandescent light bulbs and many times as long as compact fluorescent bulbs.

That means that LED lights are dramatically better and more desirable to use.

So why haven’t LED light bulbs already replaced everything out there?

The reasons that has not already happened are these three.:

1. Like the early compact fluorescent bulbs, LED light bulbs that fit in the fixtures that were made for incandescent light bulbs have not been available. This one is beginning to be solved. There are some LED bulbs that make the same amount of light that do fit.

2. Even now when LED bulbs that do fit fixtures are beginning to be available, they can cost $60 each or more while incandescent light bulbs cost a dollar and compact fluorescent bulbs cost less than $10 often.

3. Even though over time LED bulbs last so much longer and use so much less electricity to make light, they are already a good deal on lifetime costs, few people have replaced their other bulbs with LED bulbs. If your house takes 20 bulbs now, replacing all 20 with LED bulbs takes over $1200!

So, the third thing we don’t yet have is financing to buy all the LED bulbs you need at one time. A five year loan for $1200 would be about $24 a month. Most people can afford $24 a month.

The good news is that more and more companies are already making LED bulbs that will fit in the fixtures that were made for incandescent light bulbs.

And, two companies I know of are already working to cut the cost of making LED lights at least in half, Bridgelux and GLO AB.

Once all three of these problems are solved, the only light bulbs that won’t be LED light bulbs are those that are specialty lights of some kind. LED lights don’t yet make some colors or very high intensity lights.

2011-09-14T13:21:00.000-07:00

Solyndra had problems but its federal backing was and is a good idea....

Today's post: Wednesday, 9-14-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects.

And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with an economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post:

Solyndra had problems but its federal backing was and is a good idea….

We need massive new installation of renewable energy sources including solar and wind and to become much more energy efficient soon to prevent economic collapse when oil prices surge sometime in the next decade or two.

That’s true even if global warming stops by itself. (The recent fires and drought and record temperatures in Texas suggest the reverse! The people there who don’t believe in global warming didn’t notice apparently.)

Solyndra proposed a way to install efficient solar photovoltaic cells quickly and on a large scale.

Had it worked, it would have helped produce the badly needed new solar power in the large amounts we need.

So the federal funding had the correct goal.

Their solution turned out to be overpriced as prices in their market dropped before they became established. Some companies have recovered from that.

But they also got too much funding before they got enough sales and feedback from buyers. They also got too much upfront funding instead of having funding contingent on meeting milestones and did NOT use the safer progress payment funding model.

Many very smart people with money and experienced venture capitalists have made these same mistakes.

But what they people trying to criticize the investment or make political capital of Solyndra’s failure don’t know is that success in backing new companies in growth industries does NOT require they all be successful.

If three of ten survive and one does really well investing in the ten often more than doubles your starting money. And, this can happen in few enough years to be interesting indeed!

Secondly, investing in new industry actually works BETTER if you invest quickly and fail quickly. That way, you learn enough to make more successful investments while that industry is still in high growth mode.

So, the federal government program that backed Solyndra invested in a potential solution for the problem that needed solving.

In this case, they failed quickly. They will be better informed for their next investments.

So even in the next few months, they should make better investments than they would have done had Solyndra not failed.

But there is far, far more to this story.

The government was working to get large scale solutions in place and build momentum for even more growth in these solutions.

Solyndra DID fail.

But the exact same program that gave Solyndra the money they lost also looks very much as if the whole program has ALREADY succeeded.

Tesla Motors has successfully created huge and unstoppable momentum in enabling us to power vehicles and transport without oil or while using dramatically less of it.

Moreover that’s true even if Tesla fails also. And, with Toyota as a partner it is increasingly unlikely Tesla will fail.

But thanks to Tesla and its initial success and genius for publicity, virtually every serious player in car manufacturing is working on plug-in hybrids and all electric cars.

In addition, thousands of charging stations for such cars are already in place and several companies are building more.

Solyndra did fail. But the federal program that lost money on it was doing the right things and has already succeeded in its underlying goal. And there’s more good news coming.

2011-08-10T15:03:00.000-07:00

Ways communities and utilities can create jobs and clean energy....

Today's post: Wednesday, 8-10-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects.

And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post:

Ways communities and utilities can create jobs and clean energy....

I see 3 ways this can be done.

1. They can sponsor homes and businesses they serve to do just a few things that will make a major difference if lots of the homeowners and businesses do them.

Such things as:

adding insulation

and weather stripping or heat proofing buildings with peaked roofs by adding well screened intake ports around their perimeter and convection powered turbines so that the spaces between the roof and ceiling stay very warm and cool off when the sun goes down instead of being much hotter than the air temperature and staying that way all night

or replacing all or most of the light bulbs with LED bulbs fit here.

2. They can sponsor a special program for homeowners and businesses to do all or add most of the energy saving or renewable or onsite power generation methods they don’t already have in place.

That would add doing things like double pane windows and adding solar power in addition to doing all three of the things above.

3. They can in addition sponsor a program for all local organizations and businesses that have parking lots that get sun now to cover them with solar photovoltaic canopies.

This one is a surprisingly large opportunity that has extra benefits.

Every community in the United States has from hundreds to thousands of parking lots where people park where they work or where they shop. With minor exceptions such as some breaks for daytime light or trees now in the larger parking lots, every square foot of those parking lots could be generating solar electricity for the businesses or shops involved.

But that’s not the only benefit. The canopies and the solar cells will make the cars and people in the parking lots MUCH cooler in the summer. On a 100 degree summer day, the cars will be up to 100 degrees inside instead of the 120 to 150 degrees they often are now. That will give the shops that offer them a competitive advantage. And it will save the energy now spent by the people running their car air conditioners to remove all that heat. Lastly, it will make getting in and out of their cars and going to and from their cars much drier and less of a hassle in rainy weather.

A. Given the sparse money currently available to the governments of communities from small towns to large states, their main role will likely need to be to:

Encourage the utilities serving them to offer and finance such programs.

Encourage the companies that now finance solar installations to offer similar financing to other energy saving work to new customers even without solar and to other energy saving work for their current solar clients.

Publicize to everyone in their communities that these programs exist as they become available so everyone who lives there knows they exist. This one they can do immediately because of the programs that already exist that companies such as Solar City and Sungevity offer.

Offer lower permit fees or fast track the project approvals or both for the work to install such projects.

B) Utilities have more to gain and more money available to promote such projects.

They can publicize the value of doing these things and the national and local companies that offer them in the areas they serve.

But in addition, they can offer to help finance all such upgrades that save energy in the summer or which add more solar power either for homeowners or businesses that have no other way to finance them or offer incentives for using other financing options.

Doing this would likely add more to their ability to meet peak summer demand than adding more fossil fuel or nuclear power plants, do it in a tenth of the time, and at far less cost.

Lastly, they could ask for small increases in rates to help pay to do even more in this area. Germany is doing extremely well using this technique, FIT or feed-in tariff, to add more solar and such energy saving upgrades.

Every one of these actions will improve the economy and add jobs in the communities that do them.

The money saved from the energy savings over time will also strengthen the local economy as the residents will have more money to spend.

And, it will give the utility companies a more diverse and stable way to generate and supply energy and meet peak demands.

2011-08-03T13:25:00.000-07:00

Clean and sustainable energy is beginning to add jobs

Today's post: Wednesday, 8-3-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects.

And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today's post:

Clean and sustainable energy is beginning to add jobs

We need more jobs to put people to work and boost the economy.

The more jobs we add, the better off we are.

And, the more reliable, sustainable, clean, and efficient our energy production and use becomes, the stronger our economy will be and the more jobs there will be.

So the recent uptrend in new solar projects and new solar financing is very good news indeed!

We recently did a post or two on this uptrend. And, today on www.greentechmedia.com is an article on the recent uptrend in solar and solar financing.

The two GreenTech Media stories that caught my attention were:

1. A company called Prologis apparently is of massive size and owns warehouses throughout the United States. They now have the financing to put photovoltaic cells on every one of the roofs of their warehouses that it can be placed on.

Why is that so important?

If that project gets done successfully, it will add as much PV electricity as ALL the PV electricity we had in place in 2010. (I hope they do a phase 2 to put up solar canopies over all the parking lots involved.)

2. A story highlights that solar thermal power can store the heat it collects to generate electricity for hours after the sun goes down and to be able to match the electricty they send to the grid to the demand for it.

BrightSource Energy with its solar thermal tower design says the higher temperatures of its design can do this better than thermal solar trough design. That may or may not be true. And it's less likely to be true for doing better per dollar spent since the trough design is far cheaper and faster to deploy.

But this is great to see either way since it begins to make solar more capable of replacing electricity made by burning fossil fuels or from nuclear power.

A thermal solar plant in Spain has even provided 24 hour electricity during the summer and other times of year with lots of sun.

At some point, larger solar power locations will also add batteries to enable 24 hour electricity supply as needed to match demand on the grid. The technology to make this doable and cost effective is coming I believe.

Clearly this will likely happen first at solar thermal locations.

2011-07-27T14:39:00.000-07:00

Several kinds of good news on solar....

Today's post: Wednesday, 7-27-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects.

And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post:

Several kinds of good news on solar....

1. For years now, the Germans have done the world’s best job on adding solar capacity. And they are now out to double that to help replace using even less nuclear power.

2. As we posted on last week, China is beginning to add significant solar capacity & the CEO we posted on then of Suntech Solar said that China was on its way to becoming one of the two largest solar markets.

3. He also said that the United States is also on its way to becoming one of the two largest solar markets.

For example, in California, where there is lots of sun, a lot of innovation driven companies, and a lot of voters who value renewable energy, three good things are happening.

Now that no upfront money needed financing is available to add solar, the number of homeowners adding solar to their homes has already about doubled since before that happened.

Solar City and Sungevity are two of the strongest players in that market; but there are many more.

Second and third, California Governor, Jerry Brown just announced a plan to also add about 12% of the state’s future electricity in medium to small sized solar locations near existing transmission lines (and near where people will use the electricity are living.) Nanosolar is a thin film solar company specializing in serving this market at lowest cost and fastest deployment. They have already been installing such systems in Germany.

The other part of his plan is to add large solar farms both photovoltaic and thermal in locations where there is room to put them and lots of sun to add another 10% of the states future electricity. Many of those projects also got federal support and are already being built.

There are three pieces of good news in this.

California is a state that because of its innovations is often copied by other states when the innovations work.

The cash going into solar companies that supply California will cause them to grow and gradually drive prices down so the day is near when solar is one of the cheapest ways to generate electricity per watt.

And, since almost all of Mexico has multiple times the solar potential of the sunniest part of California, Mexico will begin to copy California and initially buy from solar companies in the United States.

4. Many major corporations in the world are also increasing their investment in solar products.

Just this week DuPont bought Innovalight, a Silicon Valley company, that makes specialty inks that can increase the electricity produced in a solar cell or installation in a given area.

I also heard an ad on the radio a few days ago sponsored by Sharp Solar, a Japanese technology company. They were advertising adding their panels with a solar lease program to the people in our area.

Applied Materials in the United States is a large technology company in the Silicon Valley and already has millions of dollars a year in sales from its thin film solar related products.

5. And, this is the tip of the iceberg. The events I’m reporting here may be as little as a ninth or tenth of what is happening in real solar progress that I haven’t yet learned about.

Global warming related costs are already going up and the world wide recession and rising health care costs are still with us.

But in solar, there is increasingly good news!

2011-07-20T13:36:00.000-07:00

Positive comments from a world class solar CEO....

Today's post: Wednesday, 7-20-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects.

And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post:

Positive comments from a world class solar CEO....

Suntech Power is one of the largest solar companies in the world. Its CEO and founder, Mr. Zengrong Shi is a world class CEO and entrepreneur.

As his name suggests, he and Suntech are from China. (His quotes appeared yesterday in the San Jose Mercury News.)

They have cut the cost per watt of solar cells from $6 per watt to about $1.60. “This is all manufacturing innovation….along the supply chain.” “…it is not revolutionary. It looks more incremental, but it is very effective.”

He is visiting the Silicon Valley which he does about every month and a half to also check out innovations and new technology or potential joint venture partners here.

He said, “There is a lot of R&D activity going on in the Silicon Valley. Results are encouraging. But we need to see a viable commercial solution because with solar we are talking about scale, costs, and reliability.”

So far, the largest market in the world is in Europe and Germany in particular. But Shi thinks that will change. “In the future, the Chinese and American market will be the major markets.”

He also said that if a company drives the cost down and the solar panels are “cheaper, the market is bigger.”

He also said that “The installation of one megawatt of electricity….creates 35 jobs, most of them locally.”

“From that perspective, protectionism is not a winning policy.”

When the United States was often building the best and most innovative products, we felt the same way.

But he has an added point that local jobs are created no matter who provides the solar panels.

But there are still other reasons for not being protectionist against superior or as good but cheaper products from outside the United States in the areas of renewable energy.

1. The need for more and affordable sources of renewable energy is huge. If we do get a lot more, our economy will expand instead of shrink and there will be more jobs.

It’s hard to understate how important that is. When effective energy use goes up the economy grows. Recently, when the cost of gasoline shot up, it became one of the two triggers of our current recession.

Putting up protectionist barriers in renewable energy fields will reliably remove more jobs than it adds!

2. Here in the United States, we also have a second traditional competitive advantage that is still intact. Even if things are not invented here or made here, if they do a good job where there is demand for them, we tend to be the best in the world at selling them. The money from doing so ALSO creates jobs.

So, if protectionism cuts our access to the best products to sell or makes them cost more, that too decreases jobs.

So, I like the way Mr. Shi thinks. He understands exactly what the worldwide market needs from the solar industry. And I sincerely hope his optimistic forecast about China and the United States becoming the biggest solar markets comes to pass.

I think he is a world class CEO. And we would do well to emulate him instead of throwing roadblocks in his path.

2011-07-13T14:18:00.000-07:00

Lower your summer AC bills with Lowe’s Home Improvement....

Today's post: Wednesday, 7-13-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects.

And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post:

Lower your summer AC bills with Lowe’s Home Improvement....

(See our post: Slash summer air conditioning costs two ways….Wednesday, 6-22-2010 for why to do the things listed and more details.)

The summary:

1. You can dramatically cut the heat going into your house so that you have to pay far less to pump it out.

a) You can add regular insulation &/or buy radiant barrier insulation with styrofoam backing as little as one fourth inch thick at Lowes.

(Doing it both ways to also reflect heat back in the winter can be just a bit over a half inch thick and save on your heating bills too.) This does a good job of preventing the radiant heat from the sun from getting into your house.

b) You can add several well screened new ways to get air to the underside of your roof between it and your ceiling AND add convection powered roof turbines.

That way you stop having the space between your roof and ceiling as a solar heater with air between 160 & over 200 degree still air.

Instead, that air is just a few degrees warmer than the outside air because the extra heat leaves out of the spinning roof turbines. The air between your roof and ceiling can be 100 degrees when it’s 95 and sunny instead of 185! Even better, when the day gets later and when the sun goes down it can be 70 degrees there when it’s 70 outside instead of 170!

c) You can install ceiling fans in the rooms you spend the most time in. And, if mounted in the ceiling instead of hanging down, they don’t wobble all over as the hanging ones do.

Even on a moderately low and quiet setting, they cut the perceived temperature by about 5 degrees. You can set your AC for 75 degrees and with the ceiling fans it feels like 70. And if your utility wants you to set your AC to 78 on the hottest days, it will still feel like 73 with ceiling fans.

I just checked. Lowes sells the sheets of styrofoam backed radiant heat barrier insulation and the roof turbines.

But Lowes does NOT arrange installation of the roof turbines that leaves your roof watertight nor do they arrange for a contractor to add several well screened new ways to get air to the underside of your roof between it and your ceiling.

With the interior ceiling fans they provide both the ceiling fans and a local installer. (That local installer is prohibited though by contract from doing other work for you. So the other work has to be from a different contractor or two.)

d) You can also install more regular insulation if you have little or none now. And, you can install all double pane windows if you don’t already have them. Pella, Anderson, and Marvin all make good double pane windows. Marvin I think is the only one that offers wood both inside and out if you prefer that.

Once you have this heat proofing in place, you may well be able to cut 70 to 100 % on your AC bill. And, in most places hot nights after hot days will be a memory!

(We only had gotten to the added entry ports and roof fans plus ceiling fans. We hadn’t gotten yet to the double pane windows and radiant barrier insulation and more regular insulation.

On a day that was 95 degrees outside before, it would be about 85 degrees inside from 3 PM to 3 AM inside.

But after just adding the roof turbine system and the ceiling fans it was 75 degrees inside and felt fine with the ceiling fans. Then at night it dropped to below 70 inside.

If we had had AC, our bill would have dropped to zero since we would never have turned it on.)

In locations that get hotter than 95 and stay above 75 degrees at night, AC would still have been needed. But you begin to get the idea from our experience how much less you’d need to run it and pay the bill for.

2. You can also add solar panels to make extra electricity at your home. If you heat proof first, you may find your summer AC bill drops to zero since the solar panels provide enough for what you use in hot, sunny weather.

It’s not rolled out to all the Lowe’s stores yet. But you can work from your local store once it is to get accurate solar bids from your location and the satellite view of it AND a lease so you don’t need a lot of money upfront to have solar panels added.

In some cases the lease payment will be less than the savings on your AC bill!

Sungevity is the company that is partnering with Lowe’s to provide this.

3. If on days you do need AC, if you lower your inside temperature to 68 degrees in the morning and you have done this heat proofing, you get several benefits.

The outside air at that hour of the morning is coolest. So the AC is most efficient and produces cooler temperatures using less electricity. Even better, the rates at that time of day are lowest due to low demand.

It will stay cool inside your house so it will be comfortable to be in during the day and it will be cool at night so you can sleep in cool temperatures.

If after doing this you then set the AC to 75, it will only go on AT ALL on the very hottest days.

By combining these steps you can drop a several hundred dollar month bill for electricity to run your AC to less than $50 or even zero!

2011-07-06T13:53:00.000-07:00

Google research report shows clean energy adds jobs and grows the economy....

Today's post: Wednesday, 7-6-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects.

And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post:

Google research report shows clean energy adds jobs and grows the economy....

See the full report at:

http://leadenergy.org/2011/06/google-energy-innovation-offers-transformative-impact/

Here’s the key summary:

“Achieving breakthroughs in energy technology could have a “transformative impact” on United States, offering major benefits for economic growth, job creation, lower energy costs for American families, and reduced oil consumption and carbon emissions. By 2030, the economic analysis finds that key energy innovations alone could provide the following benefits over business-as-usual:

Grow the US economy by over $155 billion in GDP/year
Create over 1.1 million new net jobs
Save US consumers over $942/household/year
Reduce US oil consumption by over 1.1 billion barrels/year
Reduce US total greenhouse gas emissions by 13%.”

Research on such technology is a first priority based on this analysis. So, is using the clean technology we already have more than we have already done.

1. Such research has some support even from conservative groups:

"...there’s one tried and true method for the federal government to drive breakthroughs in technology: major investment in research and development.

That’s why a growing bipartisan group of think tanks and business leaders — including groups like the American Energy Innovation Council, American Enterprise Institute, Breakthrough Institute, Brookings Institution, Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, Association of American Universities, Third Way, President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, New England Clean Energy Council, and many others — have been calling on the federal government to increase its investment in advanced energy research and development from approximately $3 billion to $15 billion per year.

As David Leonhardt wrote in the New York Times last fall, “To put it another way, the death of cap and trade doesn’t have to mean the death of climate policy. The alternative revolves around much more, and much better organized, financing for clean energy research. It’s an idea with a growing list of supporters, a list that even includes conservatives — most of whom opposed cap and trade.”

One of Google’s key executives invested in a company working on battery technology enabling more electricity to be stored in a given size or weight of batteries.

(The report describes the importance of such technology well: “Breakthroughs in electric vehicle (EV) batteries could be transformative: cheaper and denser battery technology could enable mass adoption of electric vehicles and unlock much of the potential economic benefits. The report notes, “This leads to EVs, Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEV) and Plug-In Electric Vehicles (PHEV) achieving 90% market share for light duty vehicle sales, reducing oil consumption by 1.1 billion barrels per year by 2030 -- or more than Canada’s entire 2009 oil production.”

2. Google also has invested in expanding the use of clean technology we already have more than we have already done.

They have helped back solar thermal and solar photovoltaic large scale “farms” to produce clean electricity on a large scale.

They have supported a program to allow homeowners to install solar photovoltaic panels at no money down. (In some cases the savings on the energy bills of homeowners will start out being less than the payment for their solar system in the first year!)

And, Google has supported a major project to build more wind generated electricity.

Here’s my comment on this report:

“Very, very well done.

I most liked this part: "The alternative revolves around much more, and much better organized, financing for clean energy research. It’s an idea with a growing list of supporters, a list that even includes conservatives most of whom opposed cap and trade."

That potentially makes it politically doable.

I also like that the analysis says this policy will add jobs, add GDP, and save people money. Most people support those things. That too makes it doable politically.

That’s in addition to the reduction of our extremely dangerous dependence on the fossil fuels we are using up faster and faster.

And it’s in addition to halting excess CO2 release. That’s less salable now; but it is just as true and important.

Thanks much to Google and its key people for helping make this happen in so many ways.”

2011-06-22T13:23:00.000-07:00

Slash summer air conditioning costs two ways....

Today's post: Wednesday, 6-22-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects.

And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post: Slash summer air conditioning costs two ways....

I. The first way is for your home if you are a homeowner.

(In some areas you can save $2,000 or more in one summer.) And, in all areas, your home will be dramatically more comfortable to live in. This can be very important in having your home cool off at night on hot days!

II. When you go outside on a hot day and have to cool your car from over 120 degrees inside, it’s obnoxious and uncomfortable at first. But you also have to pay for the extra gas or electricity to do that job. The second part of this post has a way to prevent this that also actually generates electricity. (It’s just after the first part.)
I. This part of this post reviews some information that was in previous posts for those of you who didn’t see them or know the information otherwise.
1. In the Northern hemisphere we are now having truly hot summer temperatures in many places. And, in many parts of the United States, a major energy use is for residential air conditioning.
In fact, during the hottest days, it is exactly that air conditioning use that dictates what your utility needs to be able to deliver for peak demand.
Did you know that for many people you can drop your electricity use for air conditioning so much you do pay off the costs in one year and save literally hundreds to thousands of dollars on your summer electric bill for every year after that?
You can. And, it even has a bonus. Your home will be dramatically more comfortable. And the night time temperature in your home will be so much lower that you’ll sleep much better and have a good deal more energy each day!
Here’s our post on this method from April, 2008.:
Slash your Air Conditioning bills this summer....

Today’s post: Weds, 4-9-2008

How does cutting your bill to zero or by 70 % sound?

Hot weather is coming soon to where you live & work this year. In some areas you already have it!

(In our area, in the Silicon Valley, after below average temps recently, our first hot weather of this year just started a few days ago.)

Unfortunately, in many homes & buildings a huge amount of money & energy is spent on air conditioning to pump heat out of buildings it could easily never have gotten into to begin with.

For many buildings & most homes, moderately inexpensive fixes can keep enough heat from getting in to cut well over 50% from air conditioning costs & energy use or even eliminate them totally & do it each summer after they are installed.

In addition, the more people do this, the less new electric generating capacity has to be built to manage peak demand for electricity which is now driven by afternoon air conditioning use on the hottest days.

In climates where the temperature falls enough at night, you can let in cool night air to remove any left over heat from the day before by opening the windows &/or by using fans to pull in air from outside & push out the inside air. Often, if you have things well set up to prevent heat from getting in &/or have ceiling fans to lower the perceived temperature a few degrees, from 76 actual to 72 perceived, for example, on most days you then will need NO air conditioning use at all.

In climates where it is much hotter or only falls to a level where you still need to run the air conditioning, if you have things well set up to prevent heat from getting in &/or have ceiling fans to lower the perceived temperature a few degrees, you can get a triple play. You only will need to run your air conditioner at night on most days. That means you can get maximum efficiency per unit of energy as the AC works better with cooler temps to dump the excess heat into so your bill is less. And, you use the electricity at night when it often costs less per kilowatt than at peak times in the afternoon. Lastly, you no longer need to add a lot of load in the afternoon to overstress your local power grid. The idea is to have the house at or office at 68 degrees F or even a bit less in the early morning when it’s coolest outside & have it not set to turn back on until the inside gets to 76 degrees (or perhaps 72 if you don’t have ceiling fans yet. Then, if your heat proofing is good enough, your AC will rarely need to come back on. And, if it does, it will need to run a LOT less.

Well insulated buildings with a lot of thermal mass, ideally with few windows or with double pane windows, that also have good passive design to prevent heat from entering do this very well.

New buildings with part underground or with thick walls made of rammed earth or adobe or straw or well insulated concrete block & heat resistant roofs do this well.

But in most homes today & some commercial buildings, the main problem is in the roof crawl space.

Usually there is no insulation between the roof & the crawl space -- & in some areas not much below it. In addition, the crawl space has almost no ventilation. As a result, instead of the under the roof temperature being only slightly above the outside air, it can be as much as 70 or 80 degrees hotter. Then this trapped heat re-radiates into the rooms beneath acting as a solar heater all afternoon. Even worse, this heat continues to radiate well into the night making the people inside miserable or running up their AC bills like crazy.

My wife & I had a house like that which was also badly insulated and had no air conditioning. On sunny days much above 79 degrees for a high, it was often well over 80 or even 90 until about the time the next morning we had to get up to go to work. This was NOT fun. And, if we had decent air conditioning then, we would have run it a LOT.

We then discovered & installed a system that uses NO OUTSIDE ENERGY AT ALL which prevented this under the roof heat build up. And, we installed ceiling fans.

We didn’t even get to upgrading the insulation and got this result.:

After doing this, we experienced a day well into the high 90’s outside. It would have been over 100 inside from 3 PM to midnight before. After installing this system & adding ceiling fans, it only got up to about 75 inside & then only from about 3 to 6 PM – AND the 75 felt Ok with just the ceiling fans alone. It was in the high 90’s outside and we needed NO air conditioning at all. And, remember, that was before we upgraded our ceiling insulation to R19 or better.

Here is the magic trick we used that I cannot recommend more highly after this experience.:

Hot air rises. So, what we did is to install several very well screened air intake vents around the perimeter of our roof’s crawl space that were under the shade of the roof & we had a competent workman also install several convection powered turbines in the roof near its peak. Then we added ceiling fans to our bedrooms & living room. The entire project cost less than $1,000. And, this was a one time fee.

The very same hot air that was giving us such grief before now happily spun the turbines as it rose & drew the much less hot outside air in behind it. This was all solar powered. We needed no outside energy at all to run it.

If we had more money at the time, I would have liked to add the extra ceiling insulation & a radiant heat barrier in our attic and installed wood frame double pane windows.

Even better would have been to add a decent heat pump system also to deliver efficient air conditioning if we ever needed it for days above 100 degrees & install enough solar panels to run it all. And, added window shading on the west & south sides of the house would have also helped.

But, much to my delight, we got close to 100 % of the cooling we needed from this single inexpensive fix that still needs no energy bills at all to operate these several years later.

So, if you have a roof that traps heat the way our roof then did, you can add all sorts of useful extras as I would have liked to do. But for about $2500 or less you can heat proof your house better than you might imagine with this simple system.

(In our area we bought the convection powered turbines & ceiling fans at Home Depot.)

The next part is from our 7-7-2010 post.:

These relatively inexpensive fixes can save enough on electricity bills for air conditioning to pay for themselves in one summer in some places while in others, it may take more like 4 summers. But the savings start the minute they are installed. The increased livability and comfort start the minute they are installed. And, once installed, they save money and electricity use every year at virtually no added cost.

2. Consider adding solar photovoltaic cells to your roof. By using this electricity during the time when you are most likely to use your air conditioning, you save paying the higher costs for grid electricity at those times. Even better, at those same times, you will have extra sun to produce extra electricity.

This does cost more than heat proofing and venting the air from under your roof. But there are now some innovative programs to pay the upfront costs for solar installation.

Sungevity and SolarCity now have this kind of no upfront cost financing. And, Sungevity needs no in home appointment to know what solar you can build on your roof. (They have a website and are also available at Lowe’s stores.)

3. Best of all, if most homeowners in a community do both things, they can cut the peak use of electricity by a great deal on the hottest summer days.

II. When you go outside on a hot day and have to cool your car from over 120 degrees inside, it’s obnoxious and uncomfortable at first. But you also have to pay for the extra gas or electricity to do that job. The second part of this post has a way to prevent this that also actually generates electricity.

Quite often, particularly at work and at large shopping centers, you have this problem. BUT, in these large, open parking lots, it’s possible to install an inexpensive canopy or roof that will give you shade on hot sunny days. (These also enable you to get into and our of your car with far less hassle on rainy days.)

That means on hot, sunny days, your car will be LESS hot inside than the air outside instead of 20 to 40 degrees hotter.

This would give a competitive advantage to shopping centers that install them.

But here’s the great added value. In most cities and towns today, many such parking lots exist. That totals millions of square feet of such parking in most states!

If each owner of such parking lots of any size installed such canopies over these parking lots AND added solar cells, they could almost power their own air conditioners each summer at no added cost.

This would be great for the utilities too since this added electricity would peak just when their load on the grid peaks now. (This is so much so, it would pay utilities to help finance such solar canopies or give price breaks to companies who do it.)

Any shopping center owner or owner of real estate where businesses are located or businesses wanting to add more solar could do this. (Applied Materials in Santa Clara, California is the only company I know of to do this so far. There may be others.)

It would also pay states and cities and counties to make permits for such solar canopies easy to get or even offer financial incentives for building them.

2011-06-15T14:27:00.000-07:00

Google and SolarCity are building clean energy....

Today's post: Wednesday, 6-15-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects.

And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post:

Google and SolarCity are building clean energy....

Between the two companies, Google and SolarCity have invested several hundred million dollars to well over a billion dollars in bringing clean energy sources online.

These two companies were in the news together in the past few days.

SAN MATEO, Calif. & MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)—

June 14, 2011 09:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time

SolarCity® and Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), today announced the creation of a new $280 million fund to finance residential solar projects. The Google-backed fund is the first collaboration between the Internet giant and the nation’s leading solar power and energy efficiency service provider, and represents Google’s largest investment to date in the clean energy sector.

The fund is SolarCity’s largest project financing fund and the largest residential solar fund created in the U.S.

SolarCity has now created 15 project funds with seven different partners to finance $1.28 billion in solar projects.

(Homeowners who desire to have solar photovoltaic panels on their home but do not have several thousand dollars in one chunk to have them installed far outnumber those who would break even or better if they could finance the installation. That’s because many months of the year the monthly payment will be less than the savings on the bill for electricity from their utility.

SolarCity is literally installing five times as much solar with these partnerships with companies like Google backing up their financing. Note that they have 6 other such partners in addition to this new deal with Google.)

(Sungevity of Oakland, CA also finances solar installations in addition to giving you an accurate quote based on satellite views of your house. I don’t know how they back their financing. But as we recently posted Lowe’s home improvement stores are beginning to sell Sungevity’s service in their over 1700 locations!)

In addition to these increases in local and near or connected to local transmission grid photovoltaic sources of electricity or distributed generation, Google and its founders and just previous CEO have invested and will invest in many other kinds of clean energy technology, companies, and kinds of sources.

For example:

From http://googlegreenblog.blogspot.com :

"We believe the world needs a wide range of clean energy options in the future, each serving different needs. We’ve already invested in several large-scale renewable energy projects, so we’re excited that this new partnership with SolarCity helps people power their homes directly with solar energy, too. We think “distributed” renewable energy (generated and used right at home) is a smart way to use solar photovoltaic (PV) technology to improve our power system since it helps avoid or alleviate distribution constraints on the traditional electricity grid.

Our investment is a quadruple-win for Google, SolarCity, its new customers and the environment. We continue to look for other renewable energy investments that make business sense and help develop and deploy cleaner sources of energy. Whether harnessing the sun on rooftops like Michael’s or in the desert sands of the Mojave, it’s all part of building a clean energy future.

Posted by Rick Needham, Director of Green Business Operations"

From: http://www.google.com/green/collaborations/support-innovations.html :

"To date, we’ve invested over $350 million in innovative clean energy companies and projects through Google.org, Google Ventures and Google corporate investments.

Through Google.org we’ve supported cleantech companies with scalable and potentially breakthrough technologies that could produce renewable energy cheaper than coal.

At Google Ventures, we look for passionate entrepreneurs who are excited about building disruptive companies that address a range of market and technical problems in this sector and beyond.

And recently, we’ve made project investments that offer a solid return on investment and could have a transformational impact on the sector, such as:

A $280 million investment to create a fund, in partnership with SolarCity, to help the company finance more solar installations across the country. This is our first investment in "distributed" renewable energy (generated and used right at home). We believe our investment is a quadruple-win for Google, SolarCity, the environment, and new customers who get access to clean energy at a economic rates.

Providing $55 million to finance part of the Alta Wind Energy Center (AWEC), a new wind installation being built in several phases to generate combined 1,550 MW -- enough to power 450,000 homes. It'll use some of the first transmission lines being developed specifically to transport renewable energy from remote areas to major population centers.

A $5 million investment in a solar photovoltaic power plant near Berlin, Germany – our first investment in Europe. The 18.65MW facility will provide clean energy to more than 5,000 households.

A $168 million investment in BrightSource Energy's Ivanpah solar power tower plant in the Mojave Desert in California, one of the world's largest solar energy projects. Ivanpah will deploy a compelling clean energy technology and produce 392MW of energy, enough to take 90,000 cars off the road during the lifetime of the plant.

An approximately $100 million investment in the Shepherds Flat Wind Farm, anticipated to be the largest in the world. When completed in 2012, Shepherds Flat will produce 845MW of energy -- enough to power more than 235,000 homes.

An investment in the critical development stage of a project to build a transmission backbone off the mid-Atlantic coast to accelerate offshore wind development, with the potential to connect 6,000MW of wind, enough to serve 1.9 million households.

A $38.8 million investment in two North Dakota wind farms that generate 169.5 megawatts (MW), enough to power 55,000 homes. These wind farms uses some of the latest wind turbine technology and control systems to provide one of the lowest-cost sources of renewable energy to the local grid."

So Google, through these investments, has now invested in distributed photovoltaic solar generation of electricity.

They’ve invested in a large solar thermal farm to generate electicity.

And, they’ve invested in wind generated electricity.

The local paper added that they are looking at investing in geothermal power also and that their google.org investments in clean energy technology have totaled $45 million.

In addition, Google’s founders invested in Nanosolar which uses a rolled printing approach and a fast and easy installation method to install thin film solar cells at a low cost per kilowatt hour of electricity.

More recently, their just previous CEO, Eric Schmidt, invested in Amprius which looks to have a technology allowing for batteries for electric cars that store enough more electricity to be lighter or go farther on a charge or both.

We need a 100 times more such efforts soon. But even so, these things do help keep optimism alive. And, they are helping build the multiple part foundation we must have for a clean energy economy.

2011-06-08T13:02:00.000-07:00

Germany’s decision is very good news but for an unusual reason....

Today's post: Wednesday, 6-8-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post:

Germany’s decision is very good news but for an unusual reason....

A bit before I normally would have done this post last week, Germany announced that it will close its nuclear reactors and cancel plans to build more. They also plan to double their sources of renewable energy from 17% to 34%.

Because they experienced being downwind from Chernobyl, they already have done one of the world’s best jobs in adding renewable energy in general and photovoltaic solar in particular. Despite getting less sunlight than California they recently have been installing NINE times as much solar as California has!

In practice, since I think they were getting something like 25% of their electricity from nuclear power, that may mean buying electricity from France where 80% of it comes from nuclear power.

But here’s the really good news.

To keep our economies strong and continue having our earth support people with an OK quality of life, we must dramatically add more renewable sources for electricity and transport. AND we must sharply improve the energy efficiency in every way we use it.

Because of this decision, Germany will move even more to pioneering ways to add more renewable energy and to improve energy efficiency in every way we use it.

That will cause Germany to become perhaps the world’s best, first customer for improved generation of renewable energy and technologies that save energy.

To some extent that was already true for photovoltaic solar. Now it will be even more true for technologies that make renewable energy more usable and for every kind of technology that saves energy in any and every part of their economy.

That may wind up acting as a catalyst for the rest of the world to make better energy technology available. Old and new companies now have and will come to have even more of a ready market for products or services using such technologies.

By selling first to their best local markets AND Germany, it will make it economically more doable to develop and market clean energy technologies and products.

I think that will turn out to be very, very good news indeed.

2011-05-25T13:36:00.000-07:00

Energy Policy for the United States....

Today's post: Wednesday, 5-25-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post:

Energy Policy for the United States....

An energy policy for the United States ideally needs to meet several goals. In decision making, Peter Drucker called them boundary conditions.

1. The policy needs to support economic growth or at least not harm it too much initially. But at the same time, it needs to prevent serious harm or collapse to our economy due to our current overdependence on fossil fuels, particularly oil and coal.

2. It needs to lower our dependence on imported fuels from near 60% to 10 % or less.

3. It needs to begin to reduce our net CO2 release. We should stop all of it but cannot now do so because of the dependence of our economy on fossil fuels. But we can lessen the disasters in the future by making a start and then speeding up the solutions.

And, related to that, the policy in this area needs to be informed by facts. The scientists who have studied the matter have established the facts. And, events are beginning to show they have their facts right.

4. It needs to find a way to allow the existing fossil fuel companies to move from making money from providing energy from burning fossil fuels to providing energy in other ways or making money from the fossil fuels in other ways than burning them. At the same time, it needs to find a way to stop or penalize the industry for using their profits to prevent action on the established facts and their risks to our economy.

So far, so far the Obama administration has had a less than perfect track record on improving the economy and adding jobs and on selling their policies to the American people.

But otherwise, the Obama administration’s actual policy and actions have done well on this list.

They’ve backed the production of electric cars and plug-in hybrids. They have backed solar companies with capital to do large projects. And they have backed companies with technologies to lower the cost of solar electricity.

This was in several recent news stories.:

“President Barack Obama has called for a one-third reduction in oil imports by 2025 and wants to put 1 million plug-in electric vehicles on the road by 2015.

In a related announcement, the White House formalized a directive Obama issued in March ordering the government to purchase only fuel-efficient cars and trucks by 2015.

A memorandum issued Tuesday directs federal agencies to develop practices to move toward the 2015 goal and come up with a plan to determine the best size of their vehicle fleet.

Under a separate executive order, Obama has called on the government to reduce gasoline usage by federal vehicles 30 percent by 2020.”

This is in addition to beginning to move the federal government’s fleet of cars to plug-in hybrids and all electric cars and build charging stations in key cities that was recently announced.

He also hired a capable scientist with energy knowledge and management experience to be his Secretary of Energy. And, Secretary Chu has also performed relatively well. At the very least he bases his decisions on scientific facts and not incorrect beliefs that are less scary.

So far, President Obama is well ahead of the energy policies or lack thereof of the candidates for President next time that the Republican party might run that are now considered to be leading.

Today, however, the San Francisco Chronicle had a story about a possible Republican candidate who may have the chops to follow up with a good energy policy.

“Republican Jon Huntsman Jr., the former U.S. ambassador to China, has a political profile that sets him apart from the pack of possible 2012 GOP presidential candidates. For starters, he starred in a 2004 advertisement with California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger lobbying for congressional action on climate change.”

If he runs on that basis and finds a Vice Presidential candidate who supports good energy policy, that might work.

But, so far, it looks like the Republicans are likely to nominate much weaker candidates on energy in 2012.

If so, that leaves Obama as the best choice for President in 2012. His energy policy has actually been relatively good.

If he wins, and if his energy policy begins to add more jobs while gasoline and diesel prices continue to rise faster than new drilling could fix, maybe the Republicans will get some sense and nominate Jon Huntsman Jr for President in 2016.

That might work well.

2011-05-18T13:27:00.000-07:00

Four clean energy good news reports....

Today's post: Wednesday, 5-18-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post:

Four clean energy good news reports....

1. LED bulbs that can be used in existing lamps and light fixtures now in homes are very important. They use 11 to 14 % of the energy when compared to incandescent bulbs.

Compact fluorescent bulbs use about 15%. But compact fluorescent bulbs cause environmental mercury pollution when discarded as most people likely still do and may harm you if you break one in your home because of the mercury and mercury vapor released. Some are better now but often still take a bit to come on to fully bright after you turn them on. And, compacts like all fluorescent lights, often have a harsh tint.

LED bulbs are the most efficient bulbs. They contain no mercury! They now come in warmer looking colors. And they are truly instant on as well. LED bulbs also are notably cooler in their temperature than fluorescents and incandescent bulbs. So they warm a room less in hot weather and are less of a potential fire hazard in some uses. They also really do last dramatically longer than incandescent bulbs and also longer than compact fluorescents have done in practice.

The problem has been their too large size physically and great expense and the very low availability in stores and the low light sizes they were coming in.

**I read that you can now go to Home Depot stores and buy Philips 60 watt LED bulbs for just $40!

I’ve not yet bought one yet or seen one. But the report is that they do fit most fixtures and lamps designed originally for incandescent bulbs.

At that price, they begin to be affordable enough to replace all the incandescent bulbs & compact fluorescents in people’s homes.

If you have room on your credit card or enough savings to buy enough for your whole house once you’ve bought one and tested it fits everywhere, that can work for you.

Or, you can simply buy one a month until you’ve replaced all your light bulbs with them.

It’s still pricey. But I’ve read they last over 10 years or maybe even 20. And once those who can afford them now do this, the price will come down and more people will buy them.

In addition, utilities may yet realize it will pay them to finance people to buy them. For some utilities, even buying them for customers or selling them to customers for an 80% discount may save money compared with adding a new plant to generate electricity.

So this is extremely good news indeed.

2. The quick to charge but low range Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrids ARE resulting in quite large reductions in the gasoline needed to drive according to actual owner experience as reported a couple of weeks ago yesterday by GM.

**Here’s part of their press release and my comments.

“2011-05-03 DETROIT – Chevrolet Volt owners made fewer trips to the gas station in March, going an average of 30 days – or nearly a month – between fill-ups.

“Volt owners drove an average of 800 miles between fill-ups since the Volt launched in December, and in March they averaged 1,000 miles,” said Cristi Landy, Volt marketing director.

Steve Wojtanek, a Volt buyer in Boca Raton, Fla. “I have made it my goal to drive as efficiently as possible and I am seeing the results, with more than 3,417 miles under my belt – of which 2,225 are EV miles.” A Volt owner since December, Wojtanek is averaging 122 miles per gallon and visiting the gas station about once a month.”

That means he is using only about 35% as much gas as he would in a comparable gasoline only car of the Volt’s size.

So, we are on our way now, I think, to having a third of the drivers have short range plug-in hybrids like the Volt, a third having longer range hybrids that cut gasoline buying and use by more like 90% , and one third all electrics that cut back gasoline by 100 %.

Once that happens, we will likely get to the point we no longer need to import oil. So this initial report is good news indeed. It will also cut back on the CO2 released by driving and truck transport now. And, it will do so even more as clean energy production of electricity comes online more and more.

It may take more like 30 years than the 5 years I’d prefer to see. But this report shows it is on its way!

3. Solar thermal generation of electricity is very important for several reasons.

The Southwest United States has enough solar thermal potential to supply the total electricity needs of the entire country.

(Since virtually all of Mexico has that potential – about three times that much – that is quite significant. If even some of that potential solar thermal is built, there will be enough new jobs in Mexico to stop worries about people their going to the United States for jobs.)

In addition, solar thermal energy can be stored very efficiently for several hours. That means that sunshine in the afternoon in California can produce electricity for Chicago or Dallas that night. It certainly can be used that night in San Diego!

The good news is that there are several big players in building solar thermal electricity generation. Many of them are making progress around the world.

**Here’s the recent good news in California.:

BrightSource Energy is about to raise $250 million in an initial public offering which will likely help achieve its goal to use solar-thermal technology across the southwest United States at generators with the equivalent capacity of 11 atomic plants.

They are planning to build solar thermal large scale electric generation plants “that could potentially earn $4 billion of revenue and produce 11 gigawatts on 110,000 acres in California and elsewhere in the southwest United States.”

"BrightSource Energy, Inc. designs, develops and sells solar thermal power systems that deliver reliable and cost-competitive clean energy to utilities and industrial companies." (http://www.brightsourceenergy.com )

4. Although there are many companies also building large scale photovoltaic plants to generate electricity as well, the very valuable potential of photovoltaic solar is to have it put on nearly every roof of every building and on canopies over most parking lots. Those may be smaller. But tens of thousands of them or more will add up!

(SunPower is one of the companies building the large scale power plants and Sun Edison is helping large businesses install photovoltaic systems.)

But until now, it has been very challenging to install solar for homeowners. They had to be able to finance and be willing to pay large dollars up front to install solar AND arrange one or more in-home appointments with estimators etc.

What if all homeowners could simply give their address and be willing to make a modest monthly payment and have the solar installed by next week?

That would certainly launch large increases all over the country of photovoltaic solar installations.

What has been a well kept secret is that this has already been possible for a while!

Sungevity here in the San Francisco Bay area does just exactly that!

By using satellite technology and their knowledge of solar, they can give homeowners an accurate quote to install solar with no need for an in-home visit. And, their financing makes the solar easy to finance.

See http://www.sungevity.com .

**Here’s the news.

Sungevity is about to get a huge boost for its sales efforts as they just signed a deal with the 1725 store Lowe's home improvement chain and company to market their solar quote and financing service.

As this news gets out, solar installations all over the country will go up. And it will happen in every state.

It’s still early in the process and far too late for my taste, but the net result of news like these four reports is that the clean energy economy is really beginning to pick up momentum and accelerate!

2011-05-11T13:28:00.000-07:00

Why California should have an oil severance tax....

Today's post: Wednesday, 5-11-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post:

Why California should have an oil severance tax....

There are three reasons for this.

1. The most important reason is that in the current weakened economy, the State of California is planning to cut virtually every area of education spending.

Despite the fact that public education needs many other improvements besides more money, many parts of education do support both economic growth and a continuation of the economy we already have. And, severe cuts will make it work even less well than it has been.

Without adequate funding for education, more people will enter the workforce unable to read well enough or do a minimum of calculation to be employable for most jobs.

Without adequate funding for education, fewer people will get training at our community colleges for jobs that need those trained people.

Without adequate funding for education past high school, we will run short of people able to do many kinds of specialized work.

Clearly, if the money is short enough, this must be done. But it is extremely bad public policy. It will make California’s economy worse!

But California is the only oil producing state without a severance tax on oil. Even oil states such as Texas and Oklahoma have them. And, a comparable severance tax to theirs in California would make these added cuts to education unnecessary.

2. For the reasons we keep posting about, we need to begin to charge the oil companies for the true costs associated with using oil.

To avoid dramatic problems with price increases for oil caused by less of the cheap to extract sources and more energy demand by growing economies and populations, we need badly to begin to switch to other forms of energy to power transport. If oil begins to be charged for its consequences and to cost somewhat more in the short run, the alternatives will become economically competitive sooner.

To avoid making climate change worse, we need to use less burning of fossil fuels for energy. For this reason also, if oil begins to be charged for its consequences and to cost somewhat more in the short run, the alternatives will become economically competitive sooner.

A severance tax is one way to do this.

3. Many parts of California need somewhat more refined gasoline to avoid bad air pollution and many parts do better economically than many places in the United States. In those parts of the state, people pay more for gasoline since they can afford to do so.

So, gasoline costs more in California than elsewhere.

Meanwhile in those states where people pay less for gasoline, they get part of the money they spend back in taxes.

In California, we pay more for gasoline and get no money back. This is unfair and should be changed in my opinion.

2011-05-04T14:06:00.000-07:00

Oil company bills to drill more look to be ineffective and risky.....

Today's post: Wednesday, 5-4-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post:

Oil company bills to drill more look to be ineffective and risky.....

I just saw a story online that: “Congress considers West Coast oil drilling.”

May 4, 2011 by Susanne Rust Environment Reporter From: California Watch A Project of the Center for Investigative Reporting

“Nearly a year after a BP oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico and created one of the largest environmental catastrophes of all time, federal lawmakers are considering encouraging drilling off the West Coast, including the rich oil beds off Southern California.

Lawmakers say allowing the drilling would ease the burden of high oil prices and provide an alternative to foreign oil.”

“Critics say the bills (HR 1229, HR 1230 and HR 1231) set the stage for environmental disaster and will have little or no effect on oil prices.

“Not only will the bills expand drilling, they would leave oversight of offshore drilling weaker than it was before last year’s oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico,” said Bob Keefe, a spokesman for the Natural Resources Defense Council.”

The article also notes: “…. a study conducted by the federal government's Energy Information Administration, which showed that new drilling off the country's coasts would only reduce gas prices by a few cents.

The bills passed the House Committee on Natural Resources in April, and two of the three bills are scheduled for a vote on Thursday. The third bill, which some call the most sweeping, will likely go to the floor next week, Charter said.

That third bill, HR 1231, or “Reversing President Obama’s Offshore Moratorium Act,” would require the federal government to lease at least 50 percent of available unleased acreage off the West Coast, Alaska, the Gulf of Mexico and much of the East Coast, every five years.”

“Under existing law, the government decides which areas to lease. This new law would effectively double the current level of offshore drilling.

And states, such as California, would have no say in the matter.

“Earlier versions of bills like this generally allowed a state to veto projects,” said Regan Nelson of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

“Californians have consistently made it clear that they oppose new offshore drilling off their coast," she said. “This bill is so out of sync of what people want. They’re willing to put oil production over all other considerations.”

Supporters of the bills say the need for more domestic oil is urgent.

"Gas prices in California’s Central Valley have skyrocketed to above $4 a gallon and remained above the national average for weeks," said Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Calif., one of the three local congressmen who voted for the bills.

"We can no longer afford to rely on energy supplies from unstable foreign sources. The time for inaction is over. We must expand domestic energy production to get Americans back to work, bring relief at the pump and create jobs,” he said.”

Here’s my take.:

These bills are likely to be ineffective in lowering gas prices and are likely to cause billions of dollars of damages to the coast of California.

But there are some amendments that could upgrade them enough they might make sense

1. China is very likely to begin importing as much or more oil than we are quite soon. So, it looks like having more oil from offshore drilling will likely only cut back gasoline from $8 a gallon or $9 a gallon that looks to be coming by ten cents a gallon.

If, for every dollar the oil industry spent for offshore drilling had to be matched with three times that much money in switching transport to other fuels than petroleum and in converting existing vehicles into plug-in hybrids AND installing a more efficient gasoline and diesel engine, then that combination might have an effect.

We can deal with double the price of gasoline and diesel if we also begin to only need half as much of these fuels to drive the same number of miles!

2. Since billions of dollars in potential damages are at stake and the oil very irresponsible impression of the safety competence of the oil companies is at stake.

These bills should ONLY be passed if the safety managers on these new offshore drilling rigs are NOT prevented by trying to save money cutting corners on safety.

If the chances are literally one in 10 million of one problematic spill that will be stopped with less than 5% of the oil released by the BP problem in the Gulf, why not allow it?

(This hurry up and drill program looks like a spill about once every ten years and just as big as the Gulf oftentimes will occur if these bills are passed!)

But, if those two provisions are not forceful enough or included, these bills won’t protect our economy from the doubling of gasoline and diesel nor will they make more than the damages they will likely cost.

So, in their present form, it is essential they not be passed!

With these two amendments though, they might make sense.

The one last point is that any state that remains unconvinced of the safety programs for this new drilling should be able to say no to it off the shores of that state.

So, the third amendment is to add that or leave it as is. If the safety procedures are good enough and work in practice other places, states will OK drilling for the new money they get. But they should have the right to say no if the data they see are unconvincing.

These bills in their current form do not make that confidence at all likely!

2011-04-27T13:02:00.000-07:00

It IS about the economy but facts count too.....

Today's post: Wednesday, 4-27-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post:

It IS about the economy but facts count too.....

I once was extremely opposed to the Presidential candidacy of Democrat John Edwards since some of his economic policies if he became President would have truly horrible consequences if he actually did as he said he would.

His comments showed he simply didn’t understand economic facts. Following his policies would have been much like standing on the beach watching after warnings were posted for a large Tsunami later that day just because you thought you could control or ignore facts you didn’t like. As writer Robert Heinlein once put it, the actually possible events would have happened anyway. Ouch! No way was John Edwards qualified to be President of the United States.

Unfortunately, now, it’s many of the current Republicans that are willing to pretend away facts they don’t like.

There are two problems with that. It looks increasingly as if gasoline price will double from here by 2010. That’s about $8 or $9 a gallon or more!

If we try to pretend this isn’t so and pass laws to cause us to continue to use gasoline and diesel fuel for transport, our economy is in grave danger. Similarly, if we do NOT pass laws to increase mileage standards for vehicles using oil and move to alternatives other than oil for transport, the facts will begin to kill our economy.

In addition to peak oil, China plans to add nearly as many vehicles by 2020 as now exist in Europe.

Shai Agassi, the founder of Better Place, an electric-car company, said this and it was reported yesterday by TIME magazine.:

"Within less than this decade the No. 1 selling car in the world will be the electric car," he says. "It's the biggest financial opportunity the world has ever seen…..."

He added. "I'll put it this way: We have people from China here."

The TIME article said this: “The People's Republic has been busy creating a bourgeoisie, and the middle class does like to drive. Beijing's next five-year plan foresees at least 170 million new vehicles, or perhaps twice that, according to Agassi.

The lower estimate alone is as many cars as there are in Germany, France, Spain, Italy and Britain combined.

The 8 million barrels of oil that would be required every day to fuel them is about as much as the U.S. imports every day.

"Do you know what the price of oil will be in five years if they're not using electric cars?" Agassi asks.”

If that happens or even comes close to it, gasoline and diesel prices will go up. They may go up by more than double the current prices in fact.

A separate TIME article on China & its incentive to go to electric cars said this:

"China, like the U.S., also has worries about dependency on foreign oil -- half of its oil comes from abroad; and it's only likely to get worse. China's oil consumption is expected to rise from 7.6 million barrels a day in 2007 to 11.6 million barrels a day by 2020."

Second, we do need to protect our economy from relying on oil while its prices go up enough to stall out our economy.

But the scientists also have found clear and increasing evidence that to save our climate and possibly our ability to grow food and keep some of our coastal cities, we also need to dramatically switch away from much of our use of natural gas and close to all our use of coal. Or we need to find a cost effective way to turn the CO2 produced into Oxygen and Carbon compounds. Cutting back in several ways AND adding cost effective CO2 removal systems is likely best.

The current Republicans who think their wish this isn’t so will prevent the consequences are wrong. If they fail to act to help prevent the disasters we are headed for, their actions are not based on fact.

Unfortunately if they continue to do this in our Congress, the actually possible will happen anyway. And, the survivors will think of them in years to come as many people think of Hitler now. Their beliefs were not based on facts – so their actions had horrible consequences

Also, though many of the economic principles Republicans believe in are sound, as this becomes evident, Republicans will return to being a weak and minority party if they continue to act like ignorant fools. Facts do count. And, pretending or even believing otherwise is not a good idea! The facts always win the argument. As our past California Governor put it, they will return to “losing at the Box office.”

On a more positive note,:

Thermal solar power from the Southwest United States and Mexico, when developed, can come close to producing all the electricity we now use or more. BrightSource Energy, a thermal solar company, has filed for a $250 million dollar ipo. This will enable them to help begin the process of harvesting this potential source of renewable energy on a moderately large scale.

Miasole, a less known Silicon Valley thin film solar photovoltaic company, has just done a deal with Intel which already looks likely to enable them to use similar technology and methods to lower the cost of making these thin film solar panels and radically increase the volume they make. That means that larger photovoltaic solar plants in cool but sunny places and small photovoltaic solar systems all over the world will be more cost effective soon. That means we will build a lot more of them. This will also help.

So, even if the politicians fail to act enough or fast enough, some businesses are working out deals that may protect us anyway.

We just need ten times as much in a quarter of the time it’s taking to avoid real economic problems.

So, every kind of energy efficiency improvement we can put into use, will help us to overcome this. We’ll need a huge amount of them as things stand now!

2011-04-20T14:03:00.000-07:00

Earth Day is this Friday, 4-22-2011....

Today's post: Wednesday, 4-20-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post:

Earth Day is this Friday, 4-22-2011....

Earth Day is intended to inspire awareness and appreciation for the Earth's natural environment. Earth Day was founded in the United States and was first celebrated on April 22, 1970. In 2009, the United Nations designated April 22 International Mother Earth Day. (I found this information on Wikipedia.)

We live on earth. The sights we see, the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat all depend on the earth and on its weather and climate being safe for these things we need or enjoy.

Why have a day each year to set aside to remember this and appreciate what the earth does for us?

Why not remember it every day and be glad to have these things from Earth every day?

Because if they are not managed well, getting energy and raw materials for our economy and making things and then getting rid of used or worn out or obsolete things can damage every part of what make the earth valuable.

It’s easier and cheaper and takes less management skill to do these things in ways that harm the earth and those things that make our Earth so valuable for us.

If you do things on a very small scale a bit away from where you live, this is less critical. And, if you do things that are not very harmful that’s also the case.

Our economic efforts began when both of these things tended to be true.

When our economic efforts begin to be on a truly huge scale and generate toxins and poisons if not very carefully managed, management of them must be greatly more skilled and attended to in order to protect the earth and our use and enjoyment of it.

When energy acquisition and use and mining and manufacturing begin to make our air be harmful to breathe or putrid to look upon or cause disruptive climate change and severe weather events that cost more than it would cost to prevent these things, the managements involved have failed in their responsibilities.

Since it’s possible to make money and products without this management failure and to make money solving these problems, that is truly tragic.

Since this kind of management failure is still too often the case, it is good to take a day once each year to remember what is at stake.

That’s why we have Earth Day.

2011-04-13T13:26:00.000-07:00

Why California’s good news is so badly needed....

Today's post: Wednesday, 4-13-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post:

Why California’s good news is so badly needed....

Tuesday, 4-12, yesterday, Governor Jerry Brown signed into law a mandate that requires the state's utilities to get 33 % of their electricity from renewable sources like geothermal, wind, small scale hydro power, and solar by 2020.

In 2009, California generated 14 % of its electricity from renewable sources. Last year it was likely closer to 15 to 17 % & the largest California utilities were closer to 17 to 19%.

This was done at an event announcing a Department of Energy $1.2 billion conditional loan guarantee for SunPower and NRG Solar to build a 250-megawatt photovoltaic power plant in San Luis Obispo County.

And, this past Monday, BrightSource Energy closed financing for an even larger thermal solar power plant in Southern California near Ivanpah that included $1.6 billion from a DOE loan guarantee, a $168 million equity investment from Google, and a $200 million venture capital round.

Even better, this project is one of several they are committed to build in Southern California and the rest of the Southwestern United States.

Hopefully this will now be followed up by the utilities helping their commercial and residential customers install onsite photovoltaic solar and similar wind, small hydro, and geothermal plants as well reach the mandated level of 33%.

And, there is the potential, in California at least, of increasing energy efficiency and tripling that amount of renewable energy although population an economic growth will like mean that will be 60 to 75% of California’s energy at that time.

But this progress is very badly needed!

1. Because transport in California and the rest of the United States is so dependent on gasoline and diesel fuel now, the run up in oil prices recently has the potential to derail the economic recovery. An analytic essay by UPI says it has already created a 5 percent cut in discretionary income and shows signs of worse soon. Their article went on to say that since such a large percentage of the oil comes from outside the United States that money will create jobs elsewhere – NOT here. That decrease in consumer demand and job creation they say has the potential to derail the economic recovery or keep it very weak.

When we have far more clean sources of generation of electricity than now and the majority of miles driven in our cars and trucks comes from electricity, we not only will have far less impact from the coming doubling of oil prices otherwise, not only will it derail our economy less on the demand side, far less of our money will leave the country for foreign oil so more jobs can be created here.

Even better, once that happens, electric powered vehicles will cost less per mile to drive and will quickly go to an even larger percentage of our transport.

2. We open this blog with the idea that we need to cut fossil fuel use by 2050 by 80 % while actually growing our economy. In the book, Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth by Mark Hertsgaard, he says that because we are unlikely to get to 100% in time, we also will need to decide what part of our coastal cities we can afford to save from rising sea levels and plan ahead now how we will save the part we can afford to save.

We also will need to think through now how we can save enough farm output to feed ourselves.

So, this good news from California, though 20 to 40 years too late, is extremely good news indeed.

The more of this kind of thing we do and the faster we do it, the less we will have to plan how to lose our economic assets and food production and do it safely.

2011-04-06T14:38:00.000-07:00

Manhattan project or Moon shot approach to clean energy solutions....

Today's post: Wednesday, 4-6-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post:

Manhattan project or Moon shot approach to clean energy solutions....

This week’s post is about what conceptual approach is needed to get to clean energy solutions in time to prevent catastrophic problems from warming or severe economic disruption from that or fossil fuels becoming too scarce and expensive before we have enough alternatives in use.

Tom Friedman and others have suggested that we use the Manhattan project or the race to get a man on the moon as a conceptual model to get enough clean energy solutions in place soon enough. The Manhattan project or the race to get a man on the moon were things ignited the public imagination or get very serious government funding or both and got successful results. They also got successful results in the shortest possible time.

They do inspire the imagination; suggest speed of execution is essential, and by implication suggest a successful result.

But the massive size, multiple aspect, and complexity of the energy situation needs a comparable model to emulate that had these characteristics I think.

The Manhattan project or the race to get a man on the moon had complexities but not at the very multiple level of complexity that the energy crisis does.

However, there WAS a historical event that compared well with the energy crisis. It had multiple aspects and locations and kinds of stakeholders just as the energy crisis does.

That was the focused effort of the United States and its allies to win World War II. It was also successful. But even better, it had several models of the components of that success that also may be helpful.

Yes, it may have won the war to have had the Manhattan project. And, it certainly shortened the war and saved hundreds of thousands of deaths of the Japanese people and the soldiers and other military forces of the United States that an invasion would have produced.

But a review of the progress of the war shows that the war was close to irrevocably won by that time.

It was the strategies that won the war in Europe and were winning in the Pacific war until that time that truly won the war.

These included having the key interest groups work together and support each other at least to some degree. And, it included multiple and massive efforts to deploy effective technologies and make small but real improvements on the fly and multiple sources of innovation and in virtually every area needed at the same time. And a real spirit of public support across our society supported that and helped us win the war.

So, I think what we need is a world wide all out war level campaign to convert the world to a very energy efficient economy powered by clean and sustainable energy sources.

The good news first is that we are beginning to have part of this in place. We are beginning to have the needed, “multiple and massive efforts to deploy effective technologies and make small but real improvements on the fly and have multiple sources of innovation and in virtually every area needed at the same time.”

Here are just a couple of examples.

For example, if a safe and doable way to supply vehicles with hydrogen was developed. We could use wind, solar, geothermal, or nuclear power located close enough to water – lakes, rivers, oceans, etc to use the electricity from those sources to provide the hydrogen and release back into the air some the oxygen we’ve already used and the oxygen the fuels cells in the vehicles powered then use by turning the water into hydrogen and oxygen. (These renewable sources near oceans could desalt the water and use just part of that to produce hydrogen.)

Now it seems we may have that technology. This time I seem to have lost my notes on who developed it; but I saw a recent story that explained that there is a new way to store and deliver hydrogen by encapsulating hydrides from which hydrogen can be extracted for fuel cells and which uses nanotechnology. These encapsulated hydrides can be safely stored, transported, and even piped into vehicle fuel tanks much as gasoline and diesel fuel is now.

Another technology we have posted on before is by the Swedish company that now has an office in Sunnyvale, California in the silicon valley, GLO AB.

They use nanotechnology to make manufacturing LED lights something like a fifth as expensive as the manufacturing of LED lights now requires.

Now, I’ve replaced most of the incandescent bulbs we use for lighting with compact fluorescents which use only 25% of the energy of the incandescent bulbs they replaced. But so far, despite their far greater safety to me and my family and using only an eighth of the electricity of incandescent bulbs & half that of compact fluorescents I’ve only replaced two of the compact fluorescents with KED bulbs.

The reason is that I had to pay over a hundred dollars for just those two LED bulbs!

If they only cost a fifth as much. I would have replaced 10 compact fluorescents for the same money. And with only a bit over $10 each, by now I’d have replaced several more compact fluorescents with LED bulbs.

And, at that price level, utilities facing the need for electricity for electric cars or rising prices for electricity from fossil fuels could make LED bulbs available to their customers for ALL their lights at no charge to their customers and still be money ahead themselves.

There are literally hundreds or thousands of such efforts now in every part of energy savings and energy efficiency and clean energy production. Even nuclear may stay around though with much better and more reliable safety features. And, the venture capital firms are beginning to put some serious money into expanding the companies that are successfully deploying those technologies according to a story this week here in the Silicon Valley.

What we are so far missing is the spirit and energy and mulitple buy-in from all kinds of people that the United States, England, and Russia had during World War II.

We need more leaders with that vision and who know how to sell it to all of the stakeholders involved, not just some of them.

I’m out of time today but will list some potential ideas to solve that problem next time.

Until then I challenge you to commit yourself personally to do what you can for the world wide all out war level campaign to convert the world to a very energy efficient economy powered by clean and sustainable energy sources.

What can you already do in your home or at work?

How can you help get support from everyone for the world wide all out war level campaign to convert the world to a very energy efficient economy powered by clean and sustainable energy sources?

Even a single new LED light or more replacing a single energy using device with a more energy efficient one will help.

Even getting one other person to also commit to winning the world wide all out war level campaign to convert the world to a very energy efficient economy powered by clean and sustainable energy sources -- will help.

2011-03-23T14:37:00.000-07:00

Much safer nuclear or alternatives....

Today's post: Wednesday, 3-23-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post:

Much safer nuclear or alternatives....

This week’s post is on the nuclear situation.

There are two responses that make sense for nuclear energy now that the Japan quake and some checking of other reactors since have found safety issues.

I think the best answer is to do both. BUT they are both challenging to do. So we need to tackle them with a lot of brains, knowledge, energy and, unfortunately, money.

But the alternative of building a supposed to be safe nuclear facility near population centers and farms that was inadequately designed for effective safety cannot be allowed to continue. The situation in Japan shows this.

1. Germany was downwind from Chernobyl a few years ago. They already have done a close to best in the world job of adding energy conservation upgrades and renewable energy sources for electricity. And that experience is one of the reasons.

Now in today’s news, AP, in a story datelined Berlin reports that Germany now plans to begin to wean itself from nuclear power entirely. This is of interest for two reasons. One is that anything effective they manage to do can be used here and around the world. The second is that the United States in just California has more potential to generate renewable sources for electricity. So if Germany can even come close, the United States can do even better.

So what would doing without nuclear or adding very little more in the United States require?

Quite a lot which I’ll list. But the more we do, the less nuclear we will need and the more likely it is any nuclear we do add will be done safely instead almost safely but not really as it has been so far.

a) In the important and very well researched book, Addicted to Energy, by Elton Sherwin, Jr, he makes the point that simply retrofitting existing technologies or replacing things with the existing technologies to increase energy efficiency throughout the economy in the United States would save more energy than all the oil we now import.

The book should have been titled something like, “Massive savings from energy efficiency using already available technologies.”

Doing what he recommends at a flat out fast speed all over the economy right away will return more money than it costs. And, the improved GDP per energy used will arrive far sooner than we can add more renewable energy or nuclear that is actually safe or far closer to it can be done.

So, whether or not we build more nuclear, this set of things has to be the number one priority.

b) We need to do dramatically more building of renewable energy sources than we have.

Following Germany’s incentive system to ensure this happens is a first key. They have roughly a half to a third of California’s solar potential and have been installing nine times as much solar as California for many years. We must find locally effective versions of these incentives and use them very soon in California and across the United States.

We need to build close to the maximum that is even close to environmentally safe of large thermal solar plants throughout the Southwestern United States and most of Mexico. And, we need to build the transmission lines and make the upgrades to the current transmission grid to get that electricity to where it will be used.

We need to do the same with wind generated electricity from Minnesota to West Texas and add wind energy in most of the other places that have wind.

We need to add photovoltaic solar in moderate sized but inexpensive locations near cities and existing transmission grids and make the process of doing so easy, cheap, and quick where permits and grid connections are concerned.

We need to install photovoltaic solar on close to every rooftop and cover every parking lot of reasonable size with a canopy and install photovoltaic solar on every square foot of these canopies.

c) We need to continue our development and roll out of much better batteries so that homes, businesses, and cities can store the irregular supply of electricity from renewable sources for when it is actually needed.

d) We need to convert coal to gas and use that and natural gas to generate electricity in Bloom Energy’s fuels cells or those of a set of competitors if Bloom Energy isn’t up to the job; stop burning these fuels; and feed the CO2 released to algae to make biofuels.

e) We need to find out how to use far more geothermal energy including drilling much deeper to access it and to find out how to do this without causing earthquakes. Once we do that, we need to multiply our supply because like nuclear and natural gas and coal, geothermal delivers energy as needed.

The other good news besides the massive amount of usable electricity these steps can net our economy is that as expensive and time consuming as doing them all well is, it likely is cheaper and faster than building truly safe nuclear plants.

So, this is the better choice that we should rely on most and do the most and do the fastest.

2. But the recent TED talk by Stewart Brand supporting nuclear power make some good points.

Nuclear power uses dramatically less land than all of the renewable sources of any size and delivers power as needed as renewable energy sources do not – at least so far.

And, it deliver so much less air pollution and CO2 than burning coal it’s scary to contemplate.

To avoid having unbreatheable air as early London had and part of China do now, we need to burn dramatically less coal. (Gasifying it and using fuel cells to make electricity solves that problem.) But Brand has a legitimate point that so does using nuclear power instead.

And, if we really have already used up the safe limits of sending CO2 into the air as the evidence increasingly says we have, his point that nuclear can solve that problem and may well be badly needed to do so, is also legitimate.

So, I agree with Energy Secretary Chu and President Obama that we should keep nuclear power as an option.

But it’s only worth doing at all if it is done far more safely than it was recently in Japan and that level of safety likely is not in our existing reactors.

The reason is that the downside is so dreadful.

There are two problems that need to be solved every single time and solved far better than they have been.

Yes that will make nuclear far more expensive and slower to get more of. But no nuclear plant should be built or kept long in operation without it.

1. Nuclear plants should only be built in politically stable and relatively sane countries. Countries such as Iran and North Korea should have none based on their current politics. They should have nuclear power but from other countries that can afford to build safe reactors and won’t weaponize them. South Korea or China can supply North Korea and Russia can supply Iran.

In addition, every reactor should get extremely tight 24/7 security from the military of the country where they are located every single day they operate.

If that’s too expensive, don’t build nuclear. I think it is that simple.

2. Building safe reactors we are now seeing is much harder and expensive than was initially thought as the Japan experience has shown.

Here are just a few ideas I’ve had since the Japan situation has revealed the need for them.

Going forward, I think no reactor should be built that doesn’t have all of these needed steps in place that the Japanese reactors did not have.

a) Radioactive steam was released into the air and then spread out. They did not have a superfort sized building encasing the entire site that would have allowed that steam to enter there but not the surrounding community. The VAB, vehicle assembly building that was used for the Saturn moon rockets show we can build such structures.

That will be expensive to do for each reactor; but it can be done.

b) Many of the things the workers in these reactors could not do because of high radiation can be done by robots controlled from safer locations. Such robots are just now arriving in Japan to the stricken sites. That’s unacceptably unsafe, they should have already been inside and ready to use. Every nuclear site should have them & likely doesn’t now.

That will be expensive to do for each reactor; but it can be done.

c) The cooling that didn’t happen caused the problem in Japan and its severity.

Better reactor design and fuel rod storage design going forward can make this problem less likely. But dramatically better electric power backup within each site and of the coolants needed as well must be in every site.

They should have a mini-reactor that is even better protected than the main reactors that can supply the electricity needed to run the plant and its cooling systems – at least in shut down mode for the main reactors.

And, if that fails, they also need the natural gas and fuel cells to make electricity onsite with at least 3 weeks of supply necessary to maintain the controls, robots, and shut down mode cooling.

There would have been no problem in Japan if they had all these things ahead of time.

Doing all these things for every reactor built or retrofitted to those we will keep will be expensive to do for each and every reactor; but it can be done.

My position is that we need the nuclear reactors; but we should not use them or build more without these safe-guards. It will make them a lot more expensive and make them take longer to build.

But better that than nuclear accidents that happen near people and farmland. And, without these safeguards we run a very large risk.

2011-03-16T12:59:00.000-07:00

Current Republicans are misleading people....

Today's post: Wednesday, 3-16-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post:

Current Republicans are misleading people....

(Next week’s post will be on the nuclear situation. This week it may be a bit too early to know how bad it will get.)

In the important and very well researched book, Addicted to Energy, by Elton Sherwin, Jr, he makes the point that simply retrofitting existing technologies or replacing things with the existing technologies to increase energy efficiency throughout the economy in the United States would save more energy than all the oil we now import.

The book should have been titled something like, “Massive savings from energy efficiency using already available technologies.”

Since the majority of these changes improve energy efficiency for the use of electricity and natural gas, the savings he speaks of will only cut petroleum use if we also begin to use dramatically more plug-in hybrid and all electric cars and trucks.

But doing both these things well and soon and on a large enough scale will indeed increase the energy independence of the United States.

We will need far less oil from outside our country and the reduction in demand will cut the prices for fuel from petroleum to less than they would have been.

In fact, gasoline and diesel prices would be much higher now if Federal Standards had not mandated higher mpg standards in cars and trucks.

Tightening these standards now will help speed the adoption of plug-in hybrids and all electric cars – and increase the efficiency of new vehicles that still use gasoline and diesel.

Recently we had an increase of gasoline prices from close to $3 a gallon to close to $4 a gallon. This was due entirely to the growth in demand and the threats to supply and its increased costs.

So, the more we are able to reduce demand for petroleum fuels, the less we will pay for gasoline and diesel fuel.

In fact, gradually beginning to tax oil in some way for part of its real cost for climate change will help speed the changes that cut demand.

That means that adding something like 25 cents a gallon to gasoline and diesel from such taxes is a way to make the future price of gasoline closer to $6 a gallon instead of $12.

So, trying to cut back fuel efficiency standards or these carbon taxes is penny wise and twenty dollar bill foolish.

Meanwhile I got an email today from a conservative Republican source that said that the only way to energy independence was to drill for more oil within the United States and to trash or turn off the kinds of programs that will cut the long term prices of oil. It came right out and said that doing anything else was only boosting gasoline prices and cutting back our energy independence.

So, fight back against people who disagree.

Simply put, this is either total ignorance or deliberate deception – and it’s a campaign which many current Republicans openly endorse.

It deliberately leaves key parts of a solution off the table and only leaves solutions favorable to the oil companies and the oil industry instead.

They actually have a reasonable point that increased oil production and drilling within the United States would help, particularly in the short run once the oil starts flowing.

So, I was saddened by the recent offshore drilling disaster in our Gulf of Mexico since that’s the best place to do this increased drilling.

Before that, the support was there from most people for more drilling in the Gulf.

But their email was NOT about energy independence or keeping gasoline costs low. It SAID so but completely left out the large additional leverage of the ways to cut demand to achieve these things.

This is irresponsible and inaccurate. And, they are trying so hard with it, it’s clear they hope to fool a lot of less informed people into leaving out many parts of the solutions we need badly.

Some people believe it. Unfortunately, it’s dangerously wrong.

If the other solutions are blocked because of it, we will all be in worse trouble and gasoline prices will both be higher and increasing faster.

This is most unfortunate. But it also shows that the other side has not stepped up to the plate enough that most people getting these emails know it’s inaccurate and incomplete at best.

2011-03-09T14:13:00.000-08:00

Energy efficiency upgrades with already available technology is critical to do....

Today's post: Wednesday, 3-9-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post:

Energy efficiency upgrades with already available technology is critical to do....

In the important and very well researched book, Addicted to Energy, by Elton Sherwin, Jr, he makes the point that simply retrofitting existing technologies or replacing things with the existing technologies to increase energy efficiency throughout the economy in the United States would save more energy than all the oil we now import.

The book should have been titled something like, “Massive savings from energy efficiency using already available technologies.” Addicted to Energy is shorter but both misrepresents the content and is a bit negative.

His book, by contrast is quite positive. He points out that the work needed to make these energy efficiency upgrades will both create jobs and improve the economy from energy savings and less need for new electric power generation plants.

Yesterday, I found out the United States may be on its way to being behind the economy of the EU countries and left with increasing energy costs while they are NOT so burdened.

They actually have an EU plan to make these upgrades in every part of Europe.

AP ran a story yesterday titled, “EU plan to double energy efficiency by 2020.” Arthur Max wrote it.

The EU plans to boost energy efficiency dramatically by producing better household appliances, renovating public buildings and private homes, and driving more energy efficient cars. The plan to do this was adopted yesterday, Tuesday, 3-8, according to the article.

The EU aims to cut greenhouse gases 25 % below 1990 levels by 2020, outperforming its original 20 % target, with the resulting increase in energy efficiency in transportation, buildings, construction, and agriculture.

“"The good news is we don't need to wait for technological breakthroughs," said European climate commissioner Connie Hedegaard, because existing technologies are enough. "We need to start the transition toward a competitive low carbon economy now," she said….”

The principal goal is to cut emissions 80 % by 2050. This new plan also sets milestones of 40 % by 2030 & 60 by 2040.

The plan, called Roadmap 2050, will be presented to the European Parliament and member countries for creating legislation to implement the plan.

Environmentalists criticized the plan for not being even more ambitious. That’s unfortunate since implementing the plan can be accelerated later and an even more ambitious plan might be rejected as undoable. (The United States and the EU should both have done this 20 years ago too! I think the environmentalists should support this now; and find ways to add doable upgrades later once it is actually happening. That actually might get to the goals they seek. Getting in the way of putting this plan in motion now will jeopardize those goals.)

The plan targets investments of 270 billion Euros a year, or 1.5 percent of the EU's economic output.

That sounds like a huge amount of money and one that might slow their economy.

But that is totally misleading. It may save their economy and give them a significant economic advantage instead!

In the most important point in the article, it explained why that’s so!

Initially most of that will return and later all of it will return from the savings due to lower oil and gas imports. (If they also switch to plug-in hybrids and all electric cars and trucks as a part of this plan, they may do even better.)

The long term projection shows this plan reaping returns that would please a venture capitalist!

Check out this quote.:

“Over the next 40 years, fuel costs could fall by euro175 billion to euro320 billion a year, the commission said, but without action those bills will more than double.”

This means the investments of 270 billion Euros a year will begin to save 670 billion Euros a year or more. Their imported fuel bill will be 320 billion Euros a year or less instead of 990 billion Euros a year or more – and rising!

If the United States fails to do likewise, Europe will have a massive economic advantage.

They will prosper while we go broke!

The current good news is that the Silicon Valley and California have more knowledgeable people about science, technology, and the real energy situation, and the world economy than most of the members of the current congress.

If they succeed in doing as the EU is doing which they are working to do, eventually the rest of the country will follow along – if we are lucky.

If so, our economy will improve too instead of getting far worse!

2011-03-02T14:07:00.000-08:00

Electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids headed for the mainstream....

Today's post: Wednesday, 3-2-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post:

Electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids headed for the mainstream....

Even if we are not yet at peak oil or it’s more than 3 years off, relying on it for transport is becoming dramatically riskier.

The oil it is inexpensive to extract is mostly gone. And, as the population grows and the economies of the world’s countries improve, the demand for transport will continue to increase. While most transport has been powered by oil, that increase in demand has led to increased oil prices.

But now that we have added political turmoil in the oil producing countries in the Middle East and elsewhere, supply of oil may drop or suddenly be less available.

Five to ten dollar a gallon prices for gasoline and for diesel fuel in the United States are on their way.

Even without global warming considerations, that means that depending on oil to power transport is a very bad idea because it threatens sudden and continuing cost increases for transport throughout the world’s economy. It can even lead to rationing of fuel and periodic shut downs of fuel.

This will be economically disastrous if when that happens we have too little ability to power transport by other means.

Further, since the United States imports a huge percentage of its oil supply – and mostly from areas increasingly unstable politically, if we can manage to cut our use of oil in half or more by using other power sources for transport, our national security and economic stability will be dramatically better.

Lastly, the billions of dollars now leaving the United States to pay for imported oil will stop leaving.

The combination of these literally means that the future health of the economy of the United States quite literally depends on switching away from oil as a way to power transport.

All-electric cars and plug-in hybrids – and hopefully soon trucks as well – are rapidly on their way to becoming a solution to this and entering the mainstream.

Soon gasoline only or diesel only vehicles will become a tiny minority of those sold.

Increasingly, major car makers all over the world are well on their way to introducing practical all electric cars and plug-in hybrids. This has become so much the case that developments in this area are hard to keep up with as they are increasing and picking up speed and momentum. Tesla is leading the way. But nearly every other car manufacturer in the world is racing to follow on if not will all electric cars with plug-in hybrids. As this rolls out, the added costs for such cars will gradually decrease due to the increasing volume and economies of scale.

Technology to make such cars go farther and cost less with lower weight batteries and increases in efficiency in electric power grids and uses are in rapid development.

And, most of what were thought to be problems for deploying such vehicles are not serious or rapidly being solved.

Here are some examples:

Envia Systems Inc of Newark, California has a new joint venture deal with GM. (GM Ventures Makes Strategic Investment in Envia Systems Jan 26, 2011 This was part of a funding round of $17 million.) "Envia's advanced cathode technology uses inexpensive materials that store more energy per unit of mass than current cathode materials. Since the cathode is a key driver for the overall battery cost, the more energy the cathode delivers, the lower the battery cost because fewer cells are needed." Their website also notes this will allow for lighter weight battery packs.

D r. Yi Cui of Stanford University discovered that silicon nanowires could form a potent and reliable lithium-ion anode material with the ability to improve anode capacity by up to 10X. His breakthrough was published in Nature Nanotechnology and is one of very few readily implementable lithium-ion battery technologies. Use of silicon nanowires can immediately increase the energy capacity of batteries by 40% and more thus increasing the range of electric vehicles by a similar amount. "

Amprius Inc of Menlo Park, California is a development stage company working to turn this discovery into usable products to achieve this result.

This literally could mean battery packs providing a 20% longer range and nearly a 15% drop in battery pack weight at the same time.

What if we could suddenly add such dramatic increases in efficiency in transporting electricity and changing from alternating current to direct current or the reverse that we would add the equivalent of 300 new coal fired power plants without adding new plants to generate electricity of any kind?

That would certainly allow for powering a lot of electric and plug in hybrids!

Transphorm in Goleta, California near Santa Barbara is developing a technology to do just that.

"Transphorm is redefining power conversion. Leveraging breakthroughs in modern materials and unmatched expertise, Transphorm's ultra-efficient power modules eliminate up to 90% of all electric conversion losses. From HVACs to hybrids; servers to solar panels - Transphorm enables significant energy savings across the grid."

GreenTech Media's coverage of Transphorm notes that there are several steps not yet done that would be needed to move this technology into large scale use enough to achieve this result.

But since the technology works, the money to be made by doing so and the need to do it are such that I think these steps will be taken successfully.

What about other problems?

Here’s a recent article from the Sierra club and my comments on each of their points.:

Electric Vehicles: Myths vs. Reality

Myth 1: Switching to an electric vehicle will just mean that the same amount of pollution comes from the electricity generation rather than from the tailpipe — I'll just be switching from oil to coal.

Reality: According to a range of studies, an electric car leads to 35 to 60% less carbon dioxide pollution from electricity than the CO2 pollution from the oil of a conventional car with an internal combustion engine.[1][2][3]

In some areas, like many on the West Coast that rely largely on wind or hydro power, the emissions are significantly lower for EVs. And that's today. As we retire more coal plants and bring cleaner sources of power online, the emissions from electric vehicle charging drop even further. Additionally, in some areas, night-time charging will increase the opportunity to take advantage of wind power -- another way to reduce emissions.

A caveat to consider, according to some studies, is that when coal plants supply the majority of the power mix in a given area, electric vehicles may emit more CO2 and SO2….

(My comments on this point: That’s an air pollution and CO2 release objection which is valid in and of itself. But they leave out some key points. This still means moving away from oil to powering transport with other sources. And, although increased costs of operating coal fired plants due to regulation and the need to install less polluting systems to retrofit these plants will occur, it will be far more predictable and slower than the price run up in oil. And, the United States HAS enough coal and need not send money out of the country as it is now doing by importing oil. We can afford the regulations and these upgrades with the money electric cars and hybrids will save us in paying higher and higher prices to import oil that we no longer will need to pay.)

Myth 2: Plug-in cars will lead to the production of more coal and nuclear plants.

Reality: Even if the majority of drivers switched to electric, the existing electrical grid's off-peak/nighttime capacity for power generation is sufficient without building a single new power plant.

Studies have shown that electric vehicle owners will largely charge their vehicles at night when there is plenty of capacity on the grid. In some areas, new "smart charging" allows you and the utility to set up a system by which you and other electricity users distribute the load evenly during charging so that the system is not overwhelmed by increased demand.

(My comment: Mid-day charging also lends itself to using solar power for the source of the electricity and will be used to do so in my view. So much of the potential need for more coal and nuclear plants will be removed by this.)

Myth 3: Electric car batteries pose a recycling problem.

Reality: Internal combustion engine vehicles use lead-acid batteries, and their recycle rate is about 98% in the US.

The newer batteries for electric vehicles, such as those made of lithium-ion, include even more valuable and recyclable metals and will have a life well beyond the vehicle. In fact, a Belgian company plans to use Tesla Motor's electric vehicle battery pack material to produce an alloy it can further refine into cobalt, nickel, and other valuable metals as well as special grades of concrete. Technology will soon allow for EV batteries to store energy produced by solar or wind power.

Myth 4: My electricity bill will go way up.

Reality: While you'll spend more on electricity, the savings on gas will more than cover it. If you drive a pure battery electric vehicle 12,000 miles a year at current electricity rates (assuming $.12 per kilowatt hour though rates vary throughout the country), you'll pay about $389 per year for the electricity to charge your battery, but you'll save about $1200 in gas (assuming $3 per gallon, a 30 miles per gallon vehicle, and 12,000 miles driven). So $1200 minus $389 equals $811 in savings -a 68% reduction in fueling costs. Some utilities are offering EV owners lower off-peak/nighttime rates. The more we successfully advocate for these off-peak incentives, the lower your electricity payments will go.

(Gasoline is already headed to $5 a gallon and soon after that we may see $10 a gallon. That means the savings per month will begin to approach the monthly payment needed to by an electric or plug-in hybrid car!)

Myth 5: Electric vehicles will just fail again like they did before.

Reality: Manufacturers are serious this time -- rolling out more than a dozen new plug-in models in the next couple of years, starting now. With higher gas prices and climate change worrying many consumers, stricter fuel economy standards for new vehicles required of auto manufacturers, and billions of public and corporate dollars being spent on an EV infrastructure and research in the US, EVs are here to stay.

Myth 6: My battery will run out of juice.

Reality: The majority of drivers in the US drive less than 35 miles each day, sufficient for a fully charged pure electric vehicle (most can go 80 to 140 miles on one charge), and an extended range electric vehicle (that drives about 35 miles on electric and then the gasoline power kicks in).

Using a 220-volt outlet and charging station, a plug-in hybrid recharges in about 100 minutes, an extended range plug-in electric in about four hours, and a pure electric in six to eight hours. A regular 110-volt outlet will mean significantly longer charging times, but for plug-in hybrids and extended range electrics, this outlet may be sufficient. Most of the time, the battery will not be empty when you plug in, thus reducing charging time.

Most people will charge at home. However, some businesses and public entities are beginning to install 220-volt public chargers. Some are installing fast-charging stations along highways and in public places that can re-charge a car to 80% of battery capacity in less than 30 minutes.

(Increases in range compared with these numbers due to better battery technology and customer demand are also quite likely in my opinion – for both all electric and plug-in hybrid cars. And, for plug-in hybrids as gasoline prices go much higher or begin to be erratic in supply on occasion, the demand for increased range will also go up as well.)

Myth 7: Electric vehicles are much more expensive than traditional vehicles.

Reality: While the initial sticker price of EVs is higher than traditional vehicles, you need to do the math to account for a variety of factors. For individual consumers, there is currently a federal tax credit of up to $7,500 for the purchase of an electric vehicle, as well as a partial federal credit for the charging unit. Several states have additional tax credits on top of the federal ones. Additionally, the average EV driver will save more than $800 a year in fuel (the cost of electricity compared to gasoline).

Due to a cleaner, more streamlined system under the hood, an EV may save the average driver about 46% in annual maintenance costs, according to one federal government study.[5]

(Larger and larger savings for oil base fuel and less time and money spent each year in the shop, will begin to give “EV’s” a net cost ADVANTAGE. Meanwhile, they will begin to cost less!)

Myth 8: Electric vehicles are only available in California.

Reality: While EVs are not yet available for purchase in every state, they are quickly becoming available in many. The fully electric Nissan Leaf is being sold to customers in California, Washington, Oregon, Arizona, and Tennessee. The Chevy Volt, an extended range plug-in hybrid electric vehicle, is currently being sold at select dealerships in California, Connecticut, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Texas, and Washington, DC. Customers in nearly all states are expected to be able to purchase or lease a Leaf, Volt, or plug-in Toyota Prius by late 2011 or early 2012. The Tesla Roadster, a fully electric luxury sportscar, is available in several locations throughout the country. By 2012, many other models will become available nationwide, including the Ford Focus EV, Tesla Model S, and the Mitsubishi iMiev.

Myth 9: Charging an EV on solar power is a futuristic dream.

Reality: The technology to power your EV with solar power is already available. The investment in solar panels pays off faster when the solar power is not only replacing grid electricity, but replacing much more expensive gasoline.
According to Plug-In America, EVs typically travel three to four miles (or more) per kWh (kilowatt hour) of electricity. If you drive 12,000 miles per year, you will need 3,000-4,000 kWh. Depending on where you live, you will need a 1.5kW-3kW photovoltaic (PV) system to generate that much power using about 150 to 300 square feet of space on your roof. Utility credits for the daytime solar power can offset the cost of charging the car at night. If solar PV isn't feasible at your home, find out if your utility offers a green energy option.

(Here in the Silicon Valley, electrical engineers have already begun to retrofit existing cars to become all electric and powering them from solar arrays on their homes!

When gasoline prices recently spiked to over $4.60 a gallon they had no increased costs at all!

And, as solar and premade EV’s drop in cost, this will become a very popular option. 300 square feet (or even 600 square feet for two cars) is NOT that big a collector. 20 feet by 15 feet or 20 feet by 30 feet will fit on most roofs with space left over!)

It all adds up to an interesting ride as EV’s become the mainstream kind of cars and trucks people buy and drive!

2011-02-23T14:08:00.000-08:00

Current congressional Republicans are ignorant of the energy situation....

Today's post: Wednesday, 2-23-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post:

Current congressional Republicans are ignorant of the energy situation....

Or at least they act like it in congress.

Earlier this week TIME online news had this story:

Environmentalists Warn of Natural Debt as Budget Cuts Loom

TIME Tues 2-22-2011 By BRYAN WALSH

In his article, he presents the idea that we may be living beyond the level of the Earth and its biosystems to recover from our use and continue to work right in the same way that financially it can be damaging in the long run to use up capital gradually instead of only living on the interest or dividends.

Here’s a brief quote:

"....the very politicians who are so worried about the public debt - and who want deep spending cuts now to save our future, whatever the cost - utterly dismiss the idea that we could face an equal crisis of natural debt. Politicians like Boehner and Ryan order us to tighten our belts immediately, but they utterly deny the climate and resource crisis the world faces. In fact, the Republicans in Congress are going well beyond simple denial - they're now using their budget to erode America's ability to prepare for that very scary future.

The Republican budget would cut the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) budget by one-third - $3 billion - and would prevent the agency from setting any limits on CO2 and a number of other pollutants. It would eliminate U.S. funding for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - which would save all of $12.5 million.

It would cut Department of Energy budgets that promoted renewable energy by $1.7 billion - a 23% reduction at a time when the U.S. is in a clean-energy race with China. The National Science Foundation budget would be cut by $395.5 million.

"This is probably the single most irresponsible bill I have seen either Chamber of Congress pass in the more than 20 years I have been in Washington," wrote Dan Lashof, the director of the Natural Resource Defense Council's climate center.

To which the Republicans would respond, We face an unprecedented fiscal crisis, and tough choices have to be made.”

What this misses entirely is that cuts that increase the future costs for energy and which cut into the reliability of our energy supply are dramatically more dangerous to our economy than cuts elsewhere.

Cuts that reduce our increasing energy sources other than coal and particularly other than petroleum threaten to cause truly grave increases in costs and even catastrophic downturns in our economy.

Whatever is cut must NOT be things that will prevent increasing our other sources of energy.

We can cut elsewhere if we must though that won’t be popular either.

But we also must not only leave alone but increase spending on things that increase energy efficiency, increase our usable supply of sustainably produced energy and electricity, education for jobs actually in demand and which support the economy, and small business formation and venture capital.

If we continue to spend on those, we will create jobs and the economy will be strong and able to keep growing. That will enable us to restore the other cuts.

Here’s why cutting things that sharply decrease our dependence on oil and on coal to some extent and cutting things that decrease energy efficiency programs and increased production of renewable energy will cause economic disaster.

1. Bright, well educated, grade school children know that once scientists measure things enough and in enough ways, the conclusions they come to are quite reliable.

The work has been done to show that:

CO2 release from our vast and so far fast-increasing burning of fossil fuels is a primary driver for global warming and that global warming is real and continuing.

Global warming doesn’t just increase the mean global temperature, it produces increased numbers and severity of extreme weather events. (This means that both things like the recent floods in Australia and Pakistan and the heat waves and fires in Russia, Greece, and Oklahoma in the United States AND the recent and repeated massive snowfalls in the United States are all products of global warming.)

Further, such extreme weather costs lives, costs money to deal with, and disrupt the economy. Not stopping global warming means these costs will all increase.

If global warming continues, most countries in the world with important cities on their coasts, will face massive costs to relocate or to dam off the rising sea levels.

Lastly, if you can’t grow food, you starve. If global warming continues enough, our ability to grow crops will be threatened.

2. Even if we could somehow get away with pretending these events from global warming are going on and will get worse if we do nothing, our economy will still stay in recession or go back to it or even collapse if we continue to rely on petroleum for transport.

Much of the world’s oil is in the Middle East including a frighteningly large percentage of the oil those of us in the United States use for gasoline and diesel fuel now. The recent events may wind up improving things there in the long run if we are lucky and God is merciful. But, in the short term anywhere from a quarter to all of that supply may be shut off.

USA Today had a headline this week that gasoline prices of $5 a gallon will arrive by early summer, just 4 months from now, and may well happen because of the events in the Middle East.

Second, peak oil is predicted now by Kuwaiti scientists for 2014, just 3 years from now. There will still be oil available to be sure. But the combination of increasing costs to extract oil and increased demand from increases in population and attempted increases in living standards will combine very soon to drive the cost of gasoline even higher.

It’s well to remember that our recent sharp downturn was triggered by the increase of gasoline prices to about $4.50 per gallon.

If we don’t have transport SOON that either needs no oil or much less oil, we will be in serious trouble.

That means that for both preventing huge costs from global warming and for a reliable energy supply for all transport that avoids huge cost run ups, we need to continue programs that begin to limit the use of oil and to massively increase renewable energy and energy efficiency and the amount of all electric vehicles and of plug-in hybrids.

I understand that many Republicans take political contributions from the oil industry. Understandably, the oil businesses don’t want restrictions and increased costs.

But once all members of congress take the oath of office to serve in the congress of the United States, their JOB is to serve the interests of the entire country and to be well and accurately informed about the risks it faces.

The current crop of Republicans in congress flunks that test in my view. Every single one who voted for the cuts described above, should resign or change the votes they make.

They are either ignorant to the point of incompetence &/or failing their responsibility as members of our congress.

2011-02-16T13:48:00.000-08:00

Biofuels need not cause extra increases in food costs....

Today's post: Wednesday, 2-16-2011

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post:

Biofuels need not cause extra increases in food costs....

Earlier this week TIME online news had this story:

Food Prices: Crisis Deepens as Biofuels Consume More Crops

The article explains that while recently bad weather is much of the reason causing the currently higher grain prices, using corn for ethanol, may also have a price-boosting effect by cutting the amount of corn available for food use.

But using more and more of the corn for animal feed and the increases in world population and the resulting demand for food also drive up corn prices.

Since eating corn oil, refined corn meal, and high fructose corn syrup -- and meat from grain fed animals fed corn has recently begun to be increasingly found to be bad for people, using corn for ethanol might seem a better choice. In fact, once the corn is grown, this evidence suggests making it into ethanol may be a far superior choice due to the avoided medical care costs for obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.

But that ignores two more serious problems.:

Before the current corn monoculture, that same land was used to raise a variety of foods including fruit and vegetables of many kinds that WERE good for people to eat.

If we can make ethanol or other biofuels without this land, we WOULD be better off.

Secondly, by the time the corn is grown and turned into ethanol, it takes close to as much fuel to do -- or maybe even more -- than the ethanol produced.

That is NOT a wise solution to producing biofuels.

The much better news is that there are other ways to produce ethanol and other biofuels or to get similar effects that do not share these two problems.

1. If you make ethanol and other biofuels from agricultural waste or weeds grown on land not otherwise arable or from algae grown on land not useful for growing food or from feeding such algae the CO2 produced by power plants still using coal, or oil, or natural gas, you get biofuels, including ethanol, jet fuel, gasoline, biodiesel, and other carbon based chemicals now made from petroleum.

Brazil already grows quite a bit of sugar cane. The waste is used to make ethanol.

Further, the company Amyris now has biotech methods to convert this waste to ethanol more efficiently.

Solazyme now is making jet fuel for the US Navy from biofuels.

And, there are many more new experimental companies working on biofuels from a variety of sources that do not use farmland.

There are so many, due to the increasing demand expected, that it’s hard to keep track of them all.

I found one article tracking such biofuels.

Genencor has produced an enzyme process to make cellulosic alcohol. On their website,
http://www.genencor.com , I found they have a separate website, http://www.accellerase.com about that product and other biofuels. And, on that website, I found a story about what the current status is for many venture backed biofuel companies.

(See http://bit.ly/idABn7 And, if I succeeded in copying it all, see:
http://gigaom.com/cleantech/next-gen-biofuel-cheat-sheet-where-are-they-now/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+earth2tech+%28GigaOM%3A+Cleantech%29 .

If that doesn’t run, go to the previous website listed as their link works or did as of yesterday.

2. In their blog, the founder of Nanosolar once published an analysis showing that the electricity harvestable by Nanosolar’s thin film photovoltaic cells per acre of land was something like 100 times a great as growing a crop on it, turning that into biofuels, and then making electricity with them.

So, in the long run, sharply increasing the use of solar generated electricity to power transport instead of liquid fuels and biofuels is likely a better choice.

That IS beginning to happen. But the amount of vehicles now in operation that depend on liquid fuels is so great, that biofuels will remain extremely important for 30 years or more. And, for such uses as jet fuel, liquid fuels will still likely be needed.

The good news is that there are superior ways to produce the needed biofuels that do NOT need agricultural land -- or land that is currently forest that removes CO2 from the air at no charge to us.

We need to do far more to put those in place and to speed up the development and large scale use of transport powered by electricity made from renewable sources.

2011-02-09T13:54:00.001-08:00

US Government seed investments in energy technology are working....

Today's post: Wednesday, 2-9-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post:

US Government seed investments in energy technology are working....

Last week the San Jose Mercury News had this story:

“Cleantech companies off to a good start By Dana Hull dhull@mercurynews.com “

Here is her main point:

“Six cleantech companies that received a total of $23.6 million in seed funding from the Department of Energy's highly regarded ARPA-E program have, a year later, attracted more than $100 million in private capital investment.”

She noted that this announcement highlighted ARPA-E's success in making early and strategic investments in potentially game-changing clean-energy technologies.

She then quotes Energy Secretary Steven Chu:

"This amount of private capital support indicates that the business community is hungry to invest in truly innovative solutions to the country's energy challenges."

& "The goal of the ARPA-E program is to swing for the fences, to focus on truly transformative energy research, and that's exactly what we are seeing."

She then added: “Modeled after DARPA, the Defense Department program credited with helping to create the Internet, the stealth fighter plane and the M16 assault rifle, ARPA-E, or Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, was first funded in 2009 to provide money for "pie in the sky" and "moonshot" clean-energy technologies that venture capitalists typically avoid. Its competitive grants are relatively small, averaging about $3 million.

Envia Systems, a Newark startup that received $4 million from ARPA-E in December 2009 to develop advanced lithium-ion batteries for electric cars, announced last week that it had raised an additional $17 million in venture capital from General Motors Ventures, Bay Partners, Redpoint and Pangaea Ventures.

"ARPA-E stepped into the chasm and made an investment when VCs could not," Envia CEO Atul Kapadia said Wednesday.

ARPA-E has just over 20 employees, but many regularly travel to meet with grantees. Kapadia said ARPA-E performs a level of technological diligence beyond that of most venture capital firms.

"The guys at ARPA-E are incredibly smart, and they go head to head with our scientists," Kapadia said.

Arun Majumdar left his job at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in October 2009 to direct ARPA-E and has recruited high-caliber talent to work with him. He notes that several ARPA-E grantees beyond the six highlighted also have gone on to raise money from the private sector.

"It's good to see that VC investment has been unleashed," Majumdar said. "We're really looking for ideas that are game-changing and will make today's technology obsolete."

The second annual ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit, designed to showcase ARPA-E grantees as well as finalists, will be Feb. 28-March 2 in Washington. Several cleantech leaders from Silicon Valley, including Laura Ipsen of Cisco Systems, Will Coleman of Mohr Davidow Ventures and Codexis CEO Alan Shaw, are among those scheduled to speak.”

You can contact Dana Hull at 408-920-2706. O r email her at dhull@mercurynews.com .

She often writes stories about clean energy and the venture firms and companies in the field that for the local newspaper that is one of the two local papers read in the Silicon Valley. (David Baker writes similar stories for the San Francisco Chronicle.)

And, looking up her article online at the Mercury News I also found this.:

“Acorns to seedlings

Six cleantech startups that got new funding after getting seed money from the Department of Energy's ARPA-E program:

1. Envia Systems, Newark: Envia received $4 million from ARPA-E in December 2009 to develop lithium-ion batteries and raised an additional $17 million in venture capital funds.

2. 1366 Technologies, Lexington, Mass.: It's developing a new way to make silicon wafers for 20 percent of the current cost. The company received $4 million from ARPA-E and an additional $33.4 million from investors.

3. FloDesign, Wilbraham, Mass: The company, which is developing a new wind turbine, received $8.3 million from ARPA-E and raised an additional $27 million.

4. Sun Catalytix, Cambridge, Mass.: A startup spun out of MIT, it received $4 million from ARPA-E to develop technologies for combining sunlight and water to provide affordable solar energy. It has received an additional $9.5 million in venture capital.

5. General Compression, Newton, Mass.: The company is developing energy storage technologies for power grids and received an ARPA-E grant of $750,000. It then raised an additional $12 million in private funding.

6. 24M, Cambridge, Mass.: The startup was spun out of MIT and A123 Systems after getting $2.55 million from ARPA-E. It then raised $10 million in venture capital.”

Note that the majority of these companies are for allowing power grids or homes or businesses to take energy as electricity from solar or wind as it is available and to store it until it’s needed.

The more that becomes doable and cost effective and installed, the less fossil fuel or geothermal or nuclear power we will need and the more we can rely on wind and solar for our energy and electricity.

This is particularly true for wind as it varies even more than solar power does. And, in the United States, many states have abundant wind more than they have abundant sunny days. Iowa is a prime example. Of course some have both as Texas does.

These include: “1. Envia Systems” & “4. Sun Catalytix” & “5. General Compression” & “6. 24M” which has the real name of 24M Technologies I found out.:

“CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Aug. 16 /PRNewswire/ -- 24M Technologies launched today as a new venture focused on commercializing next-generation energy storage systems based on technology out of A123 Systems, a developer and manufacturer of advanced Nanophosphate™ lithium ion batteries and systems, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).”

With wind, the more efficiently you can tap it when it is available, the less space you need for the turbines, if you can avoid killing birds with them, the quieter their operation, & the lower the cost to make, install and operate them, the more we can install and benefit from. That’s particularly true if we add the storage for the electricity generated so we can tap wind generated electricity on demand.

“3. FloDesign” is a contract engineering firm that applies aerospace technology to new and needed applications. Their wind turbine work has a website with contact phone numbers and the email: inquiries@fdwt.com . But it has no information listed as yet as to which of these aspects of improving wind generation for which they have found a solution or are working on one or more.

2011-02-09T13:54:00.000-08:00

US Government seed investments in energy technology are working....

Today's post: Wednesday, 2-9-2011

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post:

US Government seed investments in energy technology are working....

Last week the San Jose Mercury News had this story:

“Cleantech companies off to a good start By Dana Hull dhull@mercurynews.com “

Here is her main point:

“Six cleantech companies that received a total of $23.6 million in seed funding from the Department of Energy's highly regarded ARPA-E program have, a year later, attracted more than $100 million in private capital investment.”

She noted that this announcement highlighted ARPA-E's success in making early and strategic investments in potentially game-changing clean-energy technologies.

She then quotes Energy Secretary Steven Chu:

"This amount of private capital support indicates that the business community is hungry to invest in truly innovative solutions to the country's energy challenges."

& "The goal of the ARPA-E program is to swing for the fences, to focus on truly transformative energy research, and that's exactly what we are seeing."

She then added: “Modeled after DARPA, the Defense Department program credited with helping to create the Internet, the stealth fighter plane and the M16 assault rifle, ARPA-E, or Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, was first funded in 2009 to provide money for "pie in the sky" and "moonshot" clean-energy technologies that venture capitalists typically avoid. Its competitive grants are relatively small, averaging about $3 million.

Envia Systems, a Newark startup that received $4 million from ARPA-E in December 2009 to develop advanced lithium-ion batteries for electric cars, announced last week that it had raised an additional $17 million in venture capital from General Motors Ventures, Bay Partners, Redpoint and Pangaea Ventures.

"ARPA-E stepped into the chasm and made an investment when VCs could not," Envia CEO Atul Kapadia said Wednesday.

ARPA-E has just over 20 employees, but many regularly travel to meet with grantees. Kapadia said ARPA-E performs a level of technological diligence beyond that of most venture capital firms.

"The guys at ARPA-E are incredibly smart, and they go head to head with our scientists," Kapadia said.

Arun Majumdar left his job at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in October 2009 to direct ARPA-E and has recruited high-caliber talent to work with him. He notes that several ARPA-E grantees beyond the six highlighted also have gone on to raise money from the private sector.

"It's good to see that VC investment has been unleashed," Majumdar said. "We're really looking for ideas that are game-changing and will make today's technology obsolete."

The second annual ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit, designed to showcase ARPA-E grantees as well as finalists, will be Feb. 28-March 2 in Washington. Several cleantech leaders from Silicon Valley, including Laura Ipsen of Cisco Systems, Will Coleman of Mohr Davidow Ventures and Codexis CEO Alan Shaw, are among those scheduled to speak.”

You can contact Dana Hull at 408-920-2706. O r email her at dhull@mercurynews.com .

She often writes stories about clean energy and the venture firms and companies in the field that for the local newspaper that is one of the two local papers read in the Silicon Valley. (David Baker writes similar stories for the San Francisco Chronicle.)

And, looking up her article online at the Mercury News I also found this.:

“Acorns to seedlings

Six cleantech startups that got new funding after getting seed money from the Department of Energy's ARPA-E program:

1. Envia Systems, Newark: Envia received $4 million from ARPA-E in December 2009 to develop lithium-ion batteries and raised an additional $17 million in venture capital funds.

2. 1366 Technologies, Lexington, Mass.: It's developing a new way to make silicon wafers for 20 percent of the current cost. The company received $4 million from ARPA-E and an additional $33.4 million from investors.

3. FloDesign, Wilbraham, Mass: The company, which is developing a new wind turbine, received $8.3 million from ARPA-E and raised an additional $27 million.

4. Sun Catalytix, Cambridge, Mass.: A startup spun out of MIT, it received $4 million from ARPA-E to develop technologies for combining sunlight and water to provide affordable solar energy. It has received an additional $9.5 million in venture capital.

5. General Compression, Newton, Mass.: The company is developing energy storage technologies for power grids and received an ARPA-E grant of $750,000. It then raised an additional $12 million in private funding.

6. 24M, Cambridge, Mass.: The startup was spun out of MIT and A123 Systems after getting $2.55 million from ARPA-E. It then raised $10 million in venture capital.”

Note that the majority of these companies are for allowing power grids or homes or businesses to take energy as electricity from solar or wind as it is available and to store it until it’s needed.

The more that becomes doable and cost effective and installed, the less fossil fuel or geothermal or nuclear power we will need and the more we can rely on wind and solar for our energy and electricity.

This is particularly true for wind as it varies even more than solar power does. And, in the United States, many states have abundant wind more than they have abundant sunny days. Iowa is a prime example. Of course some have both as Texas does.

These include: “1. Envia Systems” & “4. Sun Catalytix” & “5. General Compression” & “6. 24M” which has the real name of 24M Technologies I found out.:

“CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Aug. 16 /PRNewswire/ -- 24M Technologies launched today as a new venture focused on commercializing next-generation energy storage systems based on technology out of A123 Systems, a developer and manufacturer of advanced Nanophosphate™ lithium ion batteries and systems, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).”

With wind, the more efficiently you can tap it when it is available, the less space you need for the turbines, if you can avoid killing birds with them, the quieter their operation, & the lower the cost to make, install and operate them, the more we can install and benefit from. That’s particularly true if we add the storage for the electricity generated so we can tap wind generated electricity on demand.

“3. FloDesign” is a contract engineering firm that applies aerospace technology to new and needed applications. Their wind turbine work has a website with contact phone numbers and the email: inquiries@fdwt.com . But it has no information listed as yet as to which of these aspects of improving wind generation for which they have found a solution or are working on one or more.

2011-02-02T14:12:00.000-08:00

Good information on many clean energy topics....

Today's post: Wednesday, 2-2-2011

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post:

Good information on many clean energy topics....

The information I posted earlier on Skyonic’s process to remove CO2, and other pollutants, from the exhaust from coal fired plants was from a clean tech media company called GreentechMedia.

To see all their current articles, go to http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/ .

The article I just read on that site, described a company that made carbon based biofuels from CO2 and water as a way to store or use wind power during those times when the wind generated electricity was in excess of demand.

Since generating electricity by burning carbon based fuels, or using a Bloom Energy fuel cell produces both CO2 and water, locating a wind power generating location to a nearby plant making electricity from coal or natural gas might be worth checking out as one example of how this might be used.

Since this process also can remove CO2 from the air, locating such a wind-powered facility near a river or lake or ocean, might also be a way to remove CO2 and provide carbon based fuels that do NOT come from oil -- and which at some point do so such that these fuels cost less than those from oil.

I’m short on time today. But, if you want a large and regular amount of thought provoking ideas on clean energy and actual companies working in the field from startups to huge companies, check the articles on this site.

2011-01-26T14:26:00.000-08:00

Dramatically increase electricity from renewable sources....

Today's post: Wednesday, 1-26-2011

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post:

Dramatically increase electricity from renewable sources....

In providing electricity, there are several renewable sources we can dramatically increase. To some degree, many countries are finally beginning to do so. And, if it can be done at all and done safely, electricity from nuclear power at least does not release CO2. We can also make our use of electricity much more efficient in virtually all uses. We can gradually go to almost exclusively LED lights for lighting, for example.

We can use Bloom Energy fuel cells to generate electricity from natural gas and we may develop ways to make biogas from coal and do the same. We can then send the CO2 released to algae to make biofuels. And, we may be able to turn some CO2 from existing coal fired plants to minerals that are usable (Skyonic does that.); and we may feed the remainder to algae to make biofuels.

But the faster and more massive our build up of renewable sources for generating electricity, the safer we will be and the stronger our economy will be.

Similarly, adding to the grid and adding to our ability to use it to match demand and supply will help make renewably produced electricity deliverable on demand and when needed. So will advances in battery technology.

In an email based on his comments last night in the State of Union speech. President Barack Obama said this in part:

“Moving forward, America's economic growth at home is inextricably connected to our competitiveness in the global community. The more products American companies can export, the more jobs we can create at home.

This vision for the future starts with innovation, tapping into the creativity and imagination of our people to create the jobs and industries of the future. Instead of subsidizing yesterday's energy, let's invest in tomorrow's. It's why I challenged Congress to join me in setting a new goal: By 2035, 80 percent of America's electricity will come from clean energy sources.

Half a century ago, when the Soviets beat us into space with the launch of a satellite called Sputnik, we had no idea how we'd beat them to the moon. The science wasn't there yet. NASA didn't even exist.

But after investing in better research and education, we didn't just surpass the Soviets. We unleashed a wave of innovation that created new industries and millions of new jobs.

This is our generation's Sputnik moment.

That’s what Americans have done for over 200 years: reinvented ourselves. And to spur on more success stories like the Allen Brothers, we’ve begun to reinvent our energy policy. We’re not just handing out money. We’re issuing a challenge. We’re telling America’s scientists and engineers that if they assemble teams of the best minds in their fields, and focus on the hardest problems in clean energy, we’ll fund the Apollo projects of our time.

We need to get behind this innovation. And to help pay for it, I’m asking Congress to eliminate the billions in taxpayer dollars we currently give to oil companies. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but they’re doing just fine on their own. So instead of subsidizing yesterday’s energy, let’s invest in tomorrow’s.

Now, clean energy breakthroughs will only translate into clean energy jobs if businesses know there will be a market for what they’re selling. So tonight, I challenge you to join me in setting a new goal: By 2035, 80 percent of America’s electricity will come from clean energy sources.

Some folks want wind and solar. Others want nuclear, clean coal and natural gas. To meet this goal, we will need them all and I urge Democrats and Republicans to work together to make it happen.”

Here are my comments.

Clean coal IS becoming more doable from gasifying it where it is mined, moving it through pipelines, and then using Bloom energy fuel cells to generate electricity to gradually retrofitting existing plants that stay running to remove 100 % of the CO2 before it’s released and approaching removing 100 % of the other pollution. But this technology will cost money to install and will increase the cost of electricity from coal.

Nuclear power from breeder reactors maximizes the energy from the uranium that is used and largely solves the waste storage and transport problem since most of the radioactive material never leaves. But you can make nuclear bombs from the contents. So, providing close to fail safe security needs to be added to the cost. Nuclear from non-breeder reactors if used in volume will use up our uranium making it NOT a renewable energy source and does create waste that is potentially unstorable in any safe way. And nuclear is unfinanceable without government guarantees. I think we can build more and likely will do so. But if we do it and even approach doing it safely, it will be expensive.

Oil is likely to jump dramatically in cost as we approach and pass peak oil and it becomes more and more expensive to extract. In the near term while we still over-rely on oil for transport, demand will also increase driving up prices even more. Lastly, as J Paul Getty foresaw years ago, petroleum will gradually be more valuable as a petrochemical feedstock to the point that value will be greater than burning it. So, it should totally be discontinued as a way to generate electricity.

Meanwhile our economy depends on transport that now uses oil almost exclusively. Electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles and biofuels more and more together will gradually change that. But for this reason to some degree it may be too soon to stop the tax breaks for the oil companies. The oil companies will and have been spending megabucks on lobbying and on manipulating public opinion to prevent that from happening as well. Their subsidies clearly should be ended but this is clearly NOT the right time to do that and is likely undoable now anyway.

The one fossil fuel that does make some sense to use is natural gas. This is particularly the case now that there is a no to very low pollution and efficient way to use it to generate electricity using Bloom Energy’s fuel cells. The lower temperature and fewer pollutants from this process also will make it easier to capture the CO2 released and power plants can be built set up to do so which will lower the cost of doing it. We likely should be making this a short term priority as it will cost less than clean coal and nuclear and will provide a way to generate electricity on demand that will go well with more sporadic renewable sources.

Next, the one renewable energy that also generates electricity on demand that goes well with wind and solar is geothermal. It won’t be cheap. And, we need to find our more about how to tap it without triggering earthquakes or volcanic eruptions. But enough potential is there, we should do far more than we have to bring more of it online. And, if we can go deep enough and do it safely, there is a LOT of it available.

Meanwhile, it is clear that we only have about 1 or 2 % of the solar installed both photovoltaic and thermal and perhaps 4 to 7 % of the wind generation that we can clearly get to.

To the extent that we can get to 100 % on both by 2035 or by 2050 at least, it will pay us to do so. When you factor in safety and real cost per unit of electricity generated it may even be the cheapest in the long run.

So, we need to dramatically increase our electricity from renewable sources, particularly solar and wind.

Paying for it by ending oil company tax breaks and other subsidies may not be advisable or even doable right away.

But every bit of the rest of the quote by President Obama is right on the mark.:

“Moving forward, America's economic growth at home is inextricably connected to our competitiveness in the global community. The more products American companies can export, the more jobs we can create at home.

This vision for the future starts with innovation, tapping into the creativity and imagination of our people to create the jobs and industries of the future. Instead of subsidizing yesterday's energy, let's invest in tomorrow's. It's why I challenged Congress to join me in setting a new goal: By 2035, 80 percent of America's electricity will come from clean energy sources.

Half a century ago, when the Soviets beat us into space with the launch of a satellite called Sputnik, we had no idea how we'd beat them to the moon. The science wasn't there yet. NASA didn't even exist.

But after investing in better research and education, we didn't just surpass the Soviets. We unleashed a wave of innovation that created new industries and millions of new jobs.

This is our generation's Sputnik moment.“

2011-01-19T14:23:00.000-08:00

Heating with less fossil fuels....

Today's post: Wednesday, 1-19-2011

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post:

Heating with less fossil fuels....

In providing electricity, there are several renewable sources we can dramatically increase. To some degree, many countries are finally beginning to do so. And, if it can be done at all and done safely, electricity from nuclear power at least does not release CO2. We can also make our use of electricity much more efficient in virtually all uses. We can gradually go to almost exclusively LED lights for lighting, for example.

We can use Bloom Energy fuel cells to generate electricity from natural gas and we may develop ways to make biogas from coal and do the same. We can then send the CO2 released to algae to make biofuels. And, we may be able to turn some CO2 from existing coal fired plants to minerals that are usable (Skyonic does that.); and we may feed the remainder to algae to make biofuels.

We can move to transport with all electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles. We can make biofuels from algae and cellulosic alcohol from weeds and agricultural wastes in ways that preserve croplands for food and use less energy to make than they deliver.

We can make the plug-in hybrids with super-efficient diesel engines that run on biodiesel, turbines that run on biofuels, and maybe fuel cells from Bloom Energy that run on natural gas to make the electricity in plug-in hybrids.

So, if we do a good job with each of those, we can use less coal; stop using more coal; & we can use coal with less net CO2 and pollution released when we do use it.

We can use the same or less natural gas to make electricity and use what we do use more efficiently with less net CO2 and pollution released.

Doing all that successfully will slash the amount of oil we are using dramatically.

And, we can slash air conditioning use by doing more to prevent heat from entering buildings in the summer and getting access to local solar power for the remaining use.

But heating homes and businesses now often depend on burning natural gas, oil, or coal or firewood.

We can become dramatically more energy efficient to use less of these fuels by insulating homes and businesses better. We can retrofit their windows with Soladigm windows in double pane styles to both keep heat inside in winter AND to help keep heat out in the summer.

In some applications, we can retrofit heat pumps that run on electricity from renewable or clean or cleaner sources.

And, in new construction, we can design in “passive solar” designs to use more solar heating in winter and insulate dramatically better than we have done.

But for the rest, to stop burning natural gas, oil, or coal or firewood, we need more efficient ways to heat rooms with electricity than we now have.

Ways to do that will be developed or existing but little known ways will become more used. But we need to speed up both processes at lot and find ways to keep the cost down to get the job done.

2011-01-12T13:48:00.000-08:00

New solar plants to increase California’s electricity from solar....

Today's post: Wednesday, 1-12-2011

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post:

New solar plants to increase California’s electricity from solar....

This week Southern California Edison signed contracts with SunPower Corp for 3 solar plants producing 711 megawatts of electricity scheduled to go online by 2016 and with Fotowatio Renewable Ventures Inc for 4 solar plants producing 120 megawatts of electricity scheduled to go online by 2013 for a total of 831 megawatts.

The Los Angeles Times said that in 2009, Southern California Edison had renewable electricity which was generated by 3,296 megawatts of wind, geothermal, solar, biomass and small hydropower facilities combined, with solar contributing 382 megawatts of that capacity – “according to the utility’s website.”

So, adding this 831 megawatts of solar will increase Southern California Edison’s renewable electricity by about 25% and more than triple the amount it gets from solar based on those 2009 numbers.

Since these parts of the desert in Southern California also would work well for solar thermal plants, it’s worth noting that solar photovoltaic plants are now cost competitive even in such areas and not just in those where there’s too little sun and heat to make solar thermal work well.

SunPower’s press release had this on why it’s installation is cost effective.:

“At the sites, SunPower will deploy the SunPower Oasis™ power plant, the energy industry’s first modular solar power block that provides a cost-effective way to rapidly deploy utility-scale solar. Engineered to optimize use of available land, each SunPower Oasis power block uses high-efficiency, 425-watt SunPower solar panels with the SunPower T0 Tracker, which positions the panels to track the sun during the day, resulting in up to 25 percent more energy capture over fixed-tilt solar power systems. Additional SunPower Oasis features include pre-manufactured cabling to minimize on-site wiring, the Oasis smart inverter control system to enhance grid interoperability, and SunPower’s Tracker Monitoring and Control System for wireless control of the power plant.“

An article I saw also noted that photovoltaic plants do NOT need water as solar thermal plants do.

The 3 SunPower site contracts include:

110 MW in Los Banos, Calif., scheduled to be operational by year-end 2014.
325 MW in Rosamond, Calif., scheduled to be operational by October 2016.
276 MW in Rosamond, Calif., scheduled to be operational by October 2016.

The 4 Fotowatio Renewable Ventures Inc solar plants will produce 120 megawatts of electricity. But they are scheduled to go online by 2013.

These will be in Lamont, Arvin, Mojave, and Lancaster.

Similarly, in Sacramento, in November 2009, Aerojet, SMUD and Solar Power Inc. of Roseville inaugurated a 3.6-megawatt solar farm at Aerojet's Folsom campus. In June, 2010 the three completed a 2.4-megawatt expansion.

And, In October, solar thermal company BrightSource Energy started construction on a 392 megawatt solar thermal plant at Ivanpah, in southeastern California’s San Bernardino County, approximately 50 miles northwest of Needles, California, and about five miles from the California-Nevada border.

In such areas a very strong advantage of solar thermal, is that it can store the solar heat it collects and deliver into generated electricity on demand for several hours after sunset.

So, it is ideal that California is beginning to get both solar thermal plants and solar photovoltaic plants of decent size.

And, more is coming relatively soon.

“Ivanpah is just the first of BrightSource’s efforts. The company wants to build 14 solar power plants in the southwest by 2016, which will deliver projects meant to fulfill 2,610 megawatts in contracts with California utilities Pacific Gas and Electric Company and Southern California Edison.”

Nor is this all. Within 8 years, I think we will see much more solar at homes and businesses throughout the state. In addition, we may see thin-film solar from Nanosolar in many community locations as they are now building in Germany.

2011-01-05T13:31:00.000-08:00

Why gasoline, diesel fuel, and natural gas may soon cost much more....

Today's post: Wednesday, 1-5-2011

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post: Why gasoline, diesel fuel, and natural gas may soon cost much more....

Our post always begins with this:

“At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.”

Before the recent US credit crisis caused its severe recession, demand had gasoline well over $4 a gallon. The US economy is slowly recovering somewhat. But more than that, the economies of India and China are expanding -- AND, their demand for oil and natural gas is going up.

So, as this increase in demand continues, the increases in oil and natural gas production cost more for each measured unit of them than was true before as the cheap, easy to find supplies have mostly been found and many are running out.

In addition, some of this new oil and natural gas is coming from environmentally harmful extraction methods. Since there are influential people in the areas where this is being done who dislike the idea of where they live becoming an unhealthy to live in wasteland and like it or not, pollution and CO2 release will begin to cost more for many reasons, these costs may easily go up even more. (The technology does exist to minimize the environmental damage; and thanks to Skyonic we now have a way to remove CO2 from exhaust also.)

So gasoline at $5 or $6 a gallon is relatively likely within the next 3 years.

But what if it were to go up by an extra fifty percent too?

That would mean gasoline at $7.50 to $9.00 a gallon within the $3 years.

Yikes! In Europe, they already have gasoline in that range. But they have more effective rail transport and mass transit than we do; and many of their cities are more compact than those we grew in the United States due to cheap oil and gasoline.

It seems this scenario is possible and maybe even likely.

We still import about half the oil we use. But the high levels of debt the US government took on as Bush funded our military in Afghanistan and Iraq with it; and Obama used it to prevent the US from falling into a depression -- mean that the dollar may soon buy half as much outside the US as it does today.

Funding our military in the Middle East despite its mixed success and possibly mistaken stated rationale for being there, HAS helped us ensure that we continue to get oil from the Middle East. And, a true depression with double or triple the current unemployment rate was and is worth avoiding!

But, as long as we get half our oil from outside the US, if we must pay twice as much for that oil, using the oil will cost 50% more on top of any other increases!

Based on a very persuasive audio I recently heard online about why the dollar may lose value internationally, this is the most conservative and least scary likely scenario.

It could be even worse.

The only good news in this is that energy efficiency and using all electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles will get an enormous boost as this begins to take place.

It will also begin to dramatically increase the motivation of people in the United States to find ways to avoid having to import oil from outside the country.

Because most things everyone buys today are transported using oil, it also suggests that some inflation may well return within the 3 years.

It remains to be seen how all of this will play out. But on top of trying to recover from the current recession, it will be challenging.

2010-12-29T12:22:00.000-08:00

Tesla and selling its all electric sedan....

Today's post: Wednesday, 12-29-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just a bit over 3 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post: Tesla and selling its all electric sedan....

Tesla’s stock fell recently now that early investors and the like can sell the stock and some will do so.

Since it may have been over-valued, that may be a good thing.

But the analysts also said that they thought Tesla would be outdone by the wave of plug-in hybrids and cheaper electric cars.

That could happen. But I don’t expect it to happen.

Tesla does need to do some pretesting and quality control to help ensure the model S will have trouble free and bug free operation right away or within just a couple or three months of its initial release.

But if they do that, they have three markets that I think they can sell to or even dominate.

1. Because of the recession, people forget there are still people who can afford and want upscale cars and will pay for them. The Model S design is quite stylish and it has good acceleration for an upscale sedan. It appeals to buyers of BMW, Mercedes, Acura, etc. The cheaper electric cars are not really in the niche the Tesla Model S fits. Tesla already has some of these buyers and is known by them due to its Roadster which has upscale buyers around the world. The Tesla Model S can easily be competitive with BMW, Porsche, and Mercedes.

2. Many people who work in technology jobs are early adapters and like buying the latest technology. And, these people have incomes that are well above average. They will be a strong market for the Model S and all over the country or even the world, NOT just in the Silicon Valley.

3. Within 2 years or less after the Model is scheduled to be available, in 2014, the Kuwaiti’s have predicted peak oil. Plug in hybrids and cars still burning gasoline will have much higher fuel prices and maybe less availability of supply. With new renewable energy sources for electricity coming online and more efficient use of electricity, all electric cars may sell at a premium since they still will be able to get power and for less money. Plug in hybrids will be more competition than cars burning gasoline. But they too are not yet here. And, by the time they are, they may also have these fuel problems.

What if gas lines come back? What if gasoline goes to over $6 a gallon? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a car where you don’t have to worry about that? Tesla Model S owners will escape all that. And, it does look like these two things are on their way here!

So, my take is that working the bugs out of the Model S and selling it well to these three markets, will make it very competitive indeed.

In short, if Tesla does these things well, the analysts will be so wrong as to look a bit foolish.

We’ll see how Tesla does!

2010-12-22T14:39:00.000-08:00

Real LED light bulbs are now available....

Today's post: Wednesday, 12-22-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just a bit over 3 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post: Real LED light bulbs are now available

It’s nice to have some good news to report.

There are literally huge numbers of homes where lighting fixtures and various kinds of lamps are already there in these homes and designed to take incandescent light bulbs.

1. Incandescent light bulbs are still in a majority of those lighting fixtures and lamps.

2. More recently, compact fluorescent bulbs have become available. But with them, there is good news and bad news and some very bad news.

The good news is that they produce the same light as incandescent bulbs but use only a quarter of the watts of electricity to do so. That means that what was a 60 watt bulb or a 57 watt bulb can be replaced by an incandescent bulb of 14 or 15 watts but will deliver the same amount of light.

The bad news is that they cost about 14 times as much but although they do last longer, it’s only about four or five times longer with the bulbs I’ve had. And they burn slightly hotter and are slightly bigger than incandescent light bulbs. So you can’t put them in all the fixtures and lamps.

The very bad news is that they are a hazardous materials risk to have in your home and even more so when they wind up in the landfill along with regular trash. They contain mercury and release it into the air and nearby surfaces when they break.

Even worse, many if not most people who have installed compact fluorescent bulbs have no clue this is so and wind up with exposure to mercury when one breaks.

So, while compact fluorescent bulbs have been justified to some degree because they save so much energy, compact fluorescent bulbs get a very mixed review.

3. LED light bulbs have the by far the superior technology. They are almost twice as efficient as compact fluorescent bulbs. And, they last as much as 20 times longer than compact fluorescent bulbs which is 80 to over 100 times as much as incandescent bulbs.

For some time now, LED lights have been going into stop lights and overhead street lights and commercial Christmas light displays for both their energy savings and dramatic savings on the labor to install new bulbs that LED light bulbs eliminate.

But LED light bulbs have not been available that would work in most lighting fixtures and lamps in homes.

Not any more! Real LED light bulbs are now available.

Their distributor, so far as I know now, only sells to building contractors and lighting stores and other commercial accounts. And, they don’t disclose the company that manufactures the bulbs they sell.

I recently asked at a local lighting products store if they as yet had any LED light bulbs that would fit our lamps and fixtures.

They then showed me the two sizes they had. One produced the same light as a 75 watt incandescent bulb but only used 9 watts! That’s also about half the watts it would take to run a compact fluorescent bulb that produced that much light.

The LED light bulbs I bought turned out to be just a bit too long to fit all our lamps and fixtures. But it was close even there. Better, unlike compact fluorescents, it looks more like an incandescent bulb.

The downside is I didn’t have enough money to buy all the LED bulbs that would fit.

They were $57 for one and $107 for two. We need about 12 to 14. But I was able to afford the first two. They work great!

And, even though I hope the cost drops by at least 5 to one soon, on a lifetime basis they aren’t that bad. Each LED bulb will replace about 80 to 100 incandescent bulbs -- which would otherwise cost at least $60 to $75 per light over that time. That’s actually a bit better than the compact fluorescents we’ve had as well.

So, to help cut our electricity use without cutting back on your light at home, please consider doing two things.:

A. Buy as many LED bulbs as you can afford now.

B. And, write the person who is the main executive or director for your State’s Utilities commission and urge them to give permission and to have all the utility companies in your state buy all the LED lights that each home needs and then allow the homeowner or renter to pay back the cost over 20 years or even 10 years.

For example, the 7 pairs of LED light bulbs we initially needed would be $399 or a bit less. If we paid back the utility $480 over 10 years that would be $4 a month and our cost for the electricity saved would likely be that much or more! Plus even if someone lost all the LED light bulbs to a house fire, virtually everyone can afford $4 a month.

The utility would be spared the cost of building a new generating plant or two by doing this, so it would be a win for them too!

It’s early yet. But this is very promising news indeed now. And, it will get better soon!

2010-12-15T14:03:00.000-08:00

China seems to be winning on clean energy....

Today's post: Wednesday, 12-15-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just a bit over 3 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post: China seems to be winning on clean energy

In last Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle (Sunday, December 12, 2010), the Bottom Line column by Andrew S. Ross was titled:

“China has national plan for getting greener.”

He reported in part on the conference "Scaling Green Finance in China and the U.S.," put on by the Asia Society at PG&E's headquarters in San Francisco the previous Wednesday.

Main points:

China’s government has a national plan to increase clean energy in several ways. But the government of the United States does not yet have such a clear and focused plan.

One speaker said that China is beginning to outdo the United States on renewables, in harnessing wind and solar , particularly in solar panel production.

Ross reports the idea from this conference that unless the United States begins carbon pricing, with a carbon tax or cap-and-trade (which California is about to try), it will keep falling farther behind on clean energy.

The good news is that many US CEO’s are willing to compete and will likely do more when carbon pricing does show up.

For more clean energy China already has a 5 year plan to generate 15% of China's electricity come from renewable sources by 2020 and will directly invest $1.5 trillion in making this happen. They also plan to build more third- and fourth-generation nuclear power plants.

And, as of last month, China has an "Energy Efficiency Resource Standard" which will go into effect nationwide in January.

It will require China's electricity industry to both reduce energy and set up programs for factories, other businesses and homes to become more energy efficient.

Energy efficiency saves money and reduces emissions. It also allows economic growth with far less need for new electricity generation. It’s also potentially far faster to put into place than building more renewable energy sources of electricity and other energy.

As Elton Sherwin explains in his superb but mistitled book, Addicted to Energy, this can be done with massive and positive effects throughout the US economy. Further this can be done using already available and developed technology. His book literally lists dozens of ways policies by the US government and state governments can cause these ways to increase efficiency to be put into use.

For three reasons, I think his work will be used soon.

1. Since we need to increase economic growth while using less fossil fuels, particularly oil, and removing CO2 and air pollution where fossil fuels are still used, electricity from burning carbon based fossil fuels will inevitably get more expensive even without new government charges on carbon use. And, those are likely too at some point.

2. If China does do an effective job of this, far more pressure will be brought on governments at all levels in the United States to keep up.

3. His work will be used because energy efficiency literally saves money for the end user and because that market will drive new businesses and old businesses to produce more and more products that work and which are much more energy efficient.

The bad news for China is that it depends far too heavily on coal and oil and has the most polluted cities in the world as they have not yet begun to adequately capture air pollutants where these are burned to generate electricity.

Their planned and expected economic growth will make changing this on such a large scale quite challenging.

This heavy and massive use of fossil fuels also is beginning to generate the most CO2 released in the world, let alone if they add more yet.

The good news, as we posted last week about Skyonic, is that there is now a way to remove most of the pollutants and CO2 from burning fossil fuels in one step.

But whether or not China, which has been doing things on the cheap to gain market share with lower production prices will do this pollution and CO2 removal on their own or respond well to world wide pressure and do so is not yet clear.

The United States and China are world’s two biggest energy users and greenhouse gas releasers in the world

So it’s at least possible that if the United States uses this technology and others to stop releasing most of their air pollution and CO2 from fossil fuel use and begins to use less fossil fuels, that example and the products and services developed by companies that do this in the United States may cause China to do the same.

Based on their hard work to minimize the air pollution for the last Olympics, China showed that they are not that happy with having their cities covered with bad air pollution either. So I’m moderately optimistic they will do this eventually.

The ideal would be:

For the United States to do as well or better than China on building more much renewable electricity generation and to use far less oil and somewhat less coal plus doing as well or better than China at increasing our energy efficiency in every part of our economy;

&

For China to begin to do dramatically more to remove air pollutants and CO 2 from plants that burn oil or coal throughout China.

This certainly will not happen as fast as we need for it to. But I do think it has a good shot at happening eventually.

2010-12-08T14:40:00.000-08:00

Possible solution to the coal problem....

Today's post: Wednesday, 12-8-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 4 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post: Possible solution to the coal problem

For several reasons major players in the world’s economy now rely on coal to generate electricity. With cars beginning to switch to electricity for power and the current prediction for peak oil now only a bit over 3 years away, this may even get worse before it gets better.

But the way we use coal now pollutes the air and, on this scale, is a massive contributor to CO2 release and the related global warming.

We’re in a challenging situation to put it mildly.

We actually need the electricity we can get from coal more and that trend will increase as cars begin to run on electricity and oil becomes to expensive to use; but we need just as badly to stop dumping pollutants and CO2 into the air.

I’ve known these things. But even I had no idea of the massive scope and size of this problem. Nor had I known of anything more than somewhat better methods to use coal.

Since last week, I found both things.

I found an article detailing the massive current size of the problem and why a solution to keep using coal is imperative at this point. (Excerpts from the article are below.)

>>> The much better news is that I found that there actually may be a doable solution!

That information is in this post also!

Here’s the article: “December 2010 ATLANTIC MAGAZINE

….two ideas that are taken with complete seriousness by businesses, scientists, and government officials in China and America, and are the basis of the most extensive cooperation now under way between the countries on climate issues.

One is that coal can be used in less damaging, more sustainable ways than it is now.

The other is that it must be used in those ways, because there is no plausible other way to meet what will be, absent an economic or social cataclysm, the world’s unavoidable energy demands.

….the role that coal now plays around the world, and especially for the two biggest energy consumers, America and China.

Overall, coal-burning power plants provide nearly half (about 46 percent this year) of the electricity consumed in the United States. For the record: natural gas supplies another 23 percent, nuclear power about 20 percent, hydroelectric power about 7 percent, and everything else the remaining 4 or 5 percent. The small size of the “everything else” total is worth noting; even if it doubles or triples, the solutions we often hear the most about won’t come close to meeting total demand.

In China, coal-fired plants supply an even larger share of much faster-growing total electric demand: at least 70 percent, with the Three Gorges Dam and similar hydroelectric projects providing about 20 percent, and (in order) natural gas, nuclear power, wind, and solar energy making up the small remainder.

For the world as a whole, coal-fired plants provide about half the total electric supply.

On average, every American uses the electricity produced by 7,500 pounds of coal each year.

Coal will be with us because it is abundant: any projected “peak coal” stage would come many decades after the world reaches “peak oil.”

It will be with us because of where it’s located: the top four coal-reserve countries are the United States, Russia, China, and India, which together have about 40 percent of the world’s population and more than 60 percent of its coal.”

Possible solutions:

A. You can use coal to make methane by adding hydrogen to the carbon.

That has three advantages.

1. The gas can be shipped by pipeline -- which might be extremely useful for China.

2. The process removes some of the worst pollutants like metals BEFORE the gas is used to make electricity.

3. The gas can be used to make electricity in fuel cells that are more efficient and generate still less air pollution. Bloom Energy in the Silicon Valley is already selling these fuel cells for larger scale electricity generation. Pollutants are removed when the gas is made and only gas enters the fuel cells. Heat is generated; but only CO2 and water leave as exhaust. Particulates, metals, acidic chemicals, and oxides of nitrogen are NOT.

That would solve much of the problems except for CO2 release for new coal generated electricity plants.

B. For both existing plants and plants that burn coal gas or run it through a fuel cell, a company Skyonic, has a technology that both prevents CO2 from being released and also does a far superior job of removing pollutants from the exhaust of existing coal fired plants.

You can feed some of the CO2 to algae which can then be harvested for biofuel as a replacement for oil; but that just delays the CO2 release into the air.

With a few exceptions, "sequestration" of CO2 is both close to undoable on a large scale and if done in most places even if it were possible would add unbelievably to the costs. It's a nonstarter, in other words.

Skyonic's process will be expensive too. But it looks like a real solution unlike sequestration. And, the fact that it can be used to remove other pollutants and is usable on existing coal fired plants looks very promising.

Skyonic Corporation has this web address: http://skyonic.com/ .

They lead with this:

“At Skyonic, we believe that clean air and economic growth are not mutually exclusive. We believe that mineralizing CO2 emissions is the best-available method for reversing global warming.”

The technology even has some economically practical and doable aspects.

“THE SKYMINE PROCESS:
Skyonic’s SkyMine® technology removes CO2 from industrial waste streams through co-generation of saleable carbonate and/or bicarbonate materials. In addition to capturing and mineralizing CO2, the SkyMine® process cleans SOx and NO2 from the flue gas, and removes heavy metals such as mercury. Existing power plants and industrial plants can be retrofitted with SkyMine®. Successful implementation of the SkyMine® technology establishes pathways for mitigating CO2 in areas where geologic storage, the predominant competing CO2 sequestration technology, is not an optimal solution.

A SkyMine® plant can be retrofitted to stationary emitters to economically remove CO2 from the exhaust stream and transform it into solids instead of a gas. Solid carbonates and bicarbonates can be profitably sold to market and are ideal for long-term, safe storage such as minefill or landfill. Solid storage of CO2 means that there is no need for pipeline transport, injection, or concern about CO2 re-release, as with other CO2 capture and sequestration technologies.

Another key advantage of the SkyMine® process is its scalability, as it allows an industrial or power plant owner to configure the degree of CO2 removal anywhere from 10% to 99%. This is important because industrial plants and power plants around the world have unique designs requiring different CO2 removal configurations.

The SkyMine® technology can be operated at a profit, due to the sale of byproducts. The solid carbonates and bicarbonates are saleable for use in bio-algae applications. SkyMine® also produces green chemicals, such as hydrochloric acid, bleach, chlorine, and hydrogen, which are also profitable and can replace less environmentally-friendly products in market.

The fact that the SkyMine® process removes virtually all SOX, NO2, and mercury and other heavy metals that would otherwise be emitted by the plant means it can replace existing scrubber technologies and eliminate hundreds of millions of dollars in capital expense and tens of millions of dollars in ongoing expenses.“

They have $25 million in starter funding from a DOE Grant, apparently announced on July 29, 2010.

The only bad news is that the company is still in the very early stages.

1. But just as soon as their pilot projects and company building allow, it would make sense to contact the Governors of the “four corners” western states and the US Department of Energy to set up their process on several of the coal fired plants that are ruining the clean air in these Rocky Mountain states.

Many of these plants are now located near the “four corners” where the states of Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico come together. So those states which depend on the electricity from the plants but also benefit from tourism would be affected if those plants or some of the worst ones were cleaned up.

2. The air in the whole Eastern half of the United States has enough air pollution from coal to increase death rates and medical care costs according to a map I found.
So, similarly, just as soon as their pilot projects and company building allow, it would make sense to begin to retrofit their technology to the three or four most polluting coal fired plants in this area.

3. It would also make sense to involve the key coal mining states in beginning to retrofit this technology to existing coal fired plants.
Just 8 states mine 84.3 % of the coal mined in the United States according to an online source I just saw: (Here are those states and their percentages.)

“Montana 25.4
Illinois 16.5
Wyoming 14.4
West Virginia 8.0
Kentucky 6.3
Pennsylvania 6.1
Ohio 4.0
Colorado 3.6”

The other 19 states where coal is mined produce the other 15.7 %.

Montana, Wyoming, and West Virginia all have smaller economies which greatly magnifies the importance to their economies of continuing to mine coal. So they should be included in this effort. Kentucky also fits in this group to some degree.

Colorado is also one of the four “four corners” states and is often a progressive state. So it should be included for all three reasons.

And, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Ohio should be included since they have larger and stronger economies and can best afford to help fund the initial installations.

It seems to me that Skyonic and the Department of Energy would do well to launch these three projects as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, I’d like to see the stronger clean energy venture funds work together to get Skyonic something like $500 million in venture money to expand and perhaps an initial $50 million to do these three projects.

There are dozens of such funds but some of the bigger and better known are:

Kleiner Perkins; Kholsa Ventures; GE, Braemar Ventures; Nth Power; and Vantage Point Venture Partners.

2010-12-01T14:34:00.000-08:00

Mixed news on sudden increases in global warming....

Today's post: Wednesday, 12-1-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 4 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post: Mixed news on sudden increases in global warming

Last week we wrote about how the thawing of the permafrost could soon release up to 1.5 trillion tons of carbon, now locked into the tundra & permafrost, into the atmosphere – as methane. This could lead to dangerously rapid climate change or having this extra warming develop its own momentum and become unstoppable by us.

This week the other shoe dropped. It seems the tundra and the permafrost are just part of the earth’s surface that will release more methane as warming continues! Ouch !

The good news is that if we can at least sharply slow the increases in CO2 release soon, this will become a gradual and potentially reversible process instead of creating sudden flooding of coastal cities and developing its own momentum and become unstoppable by us.

The recession has temporarily slowed the increase in CO2 release and will not improve quickly, so if we can become more energy efficient in hundreds of ways and add thousands more sources of clean energy as the recession gradually ends, we may be able to catch this extra carbon release in time to be able to survive it and reverse it. This might actually be doable!

Here’s the story I found today on Livescience.com . They released a story today by their, writer, Jeremy Hsu.

It seems Earth's biggest store of carbon dioxide is locked within the decaying vegetation found in peatlands, from tropical peat swamps to Arctic permafrost – which is just a part of this problem. British researchers have calculated that a too fast-warming world would cause all these peatlands to dump huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.

A global warming rate of about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) per decade might well be enough to destabilize these peatlands compost, according to Sebastian Wieczorek, one of these mathematicians at the University of Exeter in England.

“Peat soils contain from 400 billion to a trillion metric tons of carbon, "which is about the same as the carbon content in the atmosphere," Wieczorek said. "A release of the soil carbon from peatlands into the atmosphere would therefore have an enormous impact on the climate system."

Peatlands cover just 3 percent of the world's land area, but they store almost 30 percent of all global soil carbon - about as much carbon as found in the atmosphere or in the total of terrestrial biomass (plants and animals). “

The article goes on to say, however, that slowing this rate of increase would allow the peatlands to release less carbon more slowly as the peatlands evolved relatively more stable ways to adapt to the warming.

This would allow people to take more like 30 years to dike off or abandon coastal areas before they are flooded and move people and businesses in an orderly way that will need to be moved.

If this process reaches a runaway stage because we failed to do this, we would have more like a year or two at most to do this. This would be quite catastrophic as it simply would cause much of the world’s population to become homeless and destroy much of the world’s economy that’s now located in these coastal cities in that year or two.

And, almost as bad, the process of global warming would get worse and become unstoppable even if we stopped adding CO2 to the air totally.

The only good news in this is that we may have enough of a start on implementing solutions to catch this in time.

At the very least, each of us can help contribute something to making our economy more energy efficient and adding more sources of clean energy. This can range from adding just one LED light bulb that saves a few watts of electricity each month or improving the ceiling insulation in your house to helping launch several billion dollar solar farms to generate renewably sourced electricity.

If everyone who can, does something productive, we have a shot.

What can you do?

2010-11-24T14:31:00.000-08:00

We may need the good news in Clean Energy more urgently than we thought....

Today's post: Wednesday, 11-24-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 4 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post: We may need the good news in Clean Energy more urgently than we thought

1. Progress is happening in almost every area of clean energy.

Every part of the transition to cars and other vehicles being powered mostly by electricity and less and less by oil is showing progress.

Some biofuels that do NOT need to take farmlands or cut down forests to produce are beginning to show progress.

We will have more nuclear power -- which I pray will be as safe as the nuclear power in France and Japan has been.

More wind power is coming online gradually.

Every part of solar generated electricity and hot water is making progress.

And, a start is being made on becoming a more energy efficient economy and in saving money that was being spent on energy unnecessarily.

We may even begin to see oil and coal companies have to be less polluting in use and begin to pay the true costs using their products actually incur.

So, clean energy will soon cost less than energy from fossil fuels in many parts of our economy.

2. It’s still 40 years late and going at one fifth the needed speed or less. But, finally, it IS beginning to pick up speed and momentum.

3. The scary news is that we may need this far more urgently than we thought.

Day before yesterday I saw an AP article titled :

“Leaking Siberian ice raises a tricky climate issue” By ARTHUR MAX, Associated with a dateline of: CHERSKY, Russia. I think I found it on NPR

Here are the key paragraphs:

“Gas locked inside Siberia's frozen soil and under its lakes has been seeping out since the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago. But in the past few decades, as the Earth has warmed, the icy ground has begun thawing more rapidly, accelerating the release of methane — a greenhouse gas 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide — at a perilous rate.

Some scientists believe the thawing of permafrost could become the epicenter of climate change. They say 1.5 trillion tons of carbon, locked inside icebound earth since the age of mammoths, is a climate time bomb waiting to explode if released into the atmosphere.

"Here, total carbon storage is like all the rain forests of our planet put together," says the scientist, Sergey Zimov — "here" being the endless sweep of snow and ice stretching toward Siberia's gray horizon, as seen from Zimov's research facility nearly 350 kilometers (220 miles) above the Arctic Circle.”

And:

“….global warming is amplified in the polar regions. What feels like a modest temperature rise is enough to induce Greenland glaciers to retreat, Arctic sea ice to thin and contract in summer, and permafrost to thaw faster, both on land and under the seabed.

Yet awareness of methane leaks from permafrost is so new that it was not even mentioned in the seminal 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which warned of rising sea levels inundating coastal cities, dramatic shifts in rainfall disrupting agriculture and drinking water, the spread of diseases and the extinction of species.

"In my view, methane is a serious sleeper out there that can pull us over the hump," said Robert Corell, an eminent U.S. climate change researcher and Arctic specialist. Corell, speaking by telephone from a conference in Miami, said he and other U.S. scientists are pushing Washington to deploy satellites to gather more information on methane leaks.”

And:
“Katey Walter Anthony, of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, has been measuring methane seeps in Arctic lakes in Alaska, Canada and Russia, starting here around Chersky 10 years ago.

She was stunned to see how much methane was leaking from holes in the sediment at the bottom of one of the first lakes she visited. "On some days it looked like the lake was boiling," she said. Returning each year, she noticed this and other lakes doubling in size as warm water ate into the frozen banks.”

“More than 50 billion tons could be unleashed from Siberian lakes alone, more than 10 times the amount now in the atmosphere, she said.”

“The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in its 2010 Arctic Report Card issued last month, said the average temperature of the permafrost has been rising for decades, but noted "a significant acceleration" in the last five years at many spots on the Arctic coast. “

4. If the rest of the arctic also emits methane as the permafrost is melted, the total could be 20 to 35 times the amount now in the atmosphere.

This could have rather severe repercussions.

In most places, the 2 inch to 16 inch increase in sea level many people now forecast by 2050 could wind up being five to eight times that. Since many of the most populated and the most economically productive cities are coastal, the several feet higher sea level this makes look possible, could be a rather severe problem.

The added warming it also may cause could increase disastrous weather events, cut the amount of food grown world-wide, and cause more tropical diseases in place that have not had them.

The article makes clear that despite the scary trends, it’s too early to tell for sure how bad this will actually get as we go forward.

a) If we do manage to stop putting out more CO2 or even cut back some on producing it and forces we do not yet completely understand slow this methane release, this may make things worse but not by that much.

b) If the economy improves and we fail to switch to clean energy fast enough and keep up some increase in CO2 release and this methane release is a bit less than it looks like now it will be, there might be a way to make this better. But the increased warming will cause problems.

By direct use or better by using it to generate electricity, if we capture this methane and replace using oil for transport, this might be economically helpful. If we also generate the electricity with Bloom Energy fuel cells instead of burning it and feed the CO2 release initially to algae to make biofuels, there might be a way to benefit the economy and make profits for energy companies in this methane release.

c) If this methane release begins to speed up as much as these report suggest it will, no one will disbelieve in global warming again! And, we will be in quite serious trouble.

So, the race is on!

Can we speed up clean energy and energy efficiency fast enough to improve our economy AND slow CO2 release soon enough to compensate for this effect?

We will see how it turns out.

2010-11-17T14:01:00.000-08:00

Good & much better news for Renewable Energy....

Today's post: Wednesday, 11-17-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 4 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post: Good & much better news for Renewable Energy

1. Two trends look to intersect soon. There is a consistent push now to make solar more efficient and cost effective. And, due to increased demand for natural gas to make electricity for many reasons and the increased cost of acquiring it from shale without grave environmental damage, natural gas will gradually increase in price.

One company of the many that will likely get into this side of solar that already has a developed technology is Cogenra Solar of Mountain View, CA. Of the solar energy striking solar collectors, most of the 80 to 85% of it NOT used to make electricity is heat and is wasted by most solar collectors. Cogenra arrays make electricity and use the heat to make hot water. And the company claims to produce five times the useful energy as other solar collectors by doing so.

This combination, CEO Gilad Almogy says, enables them to beat current utility prices at today’s rates!

They’ve also found a way to do this with off the shelf components and can already begin to deliver systems. Since this is the case, they charge for the electricity and hot water they deliver rather than for the systems they install.

2. The even better news is in two parts.

A. The Boston Consulting Group released a study, “What’s next for Alternative Energy, “ a week ago today that said that cellulosic ethanol, wind farms, and large scale solar power plants are very soon to be competitive with fossil fuels without the need for subsidies. They said that this point will be reached much sooner than many people yet realize it will.

Cellulosic ethanol will become cost competitive by next year to four years from now, 2014. And, by 2020, 10 years from now, they see electricity generated from natural gas close to 9 cents per kilowatt hour and rising with solar electricity from large solar plants or farms to be at about the same price and falling.

They also see electric cars being up to 10 % of all new car sales by 2020.

Hopefully they are right on the first set of things.

But I think they may be far too conservative about electric car sales, particularly since plug-in hybrids in normal use, are likely to be over 90% electric powered.

In addition to the very large numbers of auto makers gearing up to make such cars, the next news today, suggests this trend may well accelerate.

B. Two stories recently show that GE is already very actively acting as a catalyst to make this trend speed up.

1) Last Friday, they announced plans to buy 25,000 electric cars by 2015, just five years from now – starting with 12,000 from GM next year.

It seems that GE build natural gas-fired generators for utilities and a home charging station they call the WattStation. GE also makes advanced design electric motors and sees this combined group of products as bringing them $500 million in revenue in just the next three years.

2) Today, the San Francisco Chronicle business section has a story that GE and a group of venture capital firms will invest $55 million in several start ups with some kind of smart grid technologies. The companies chosen were judged on whether or not they would contribute to a smarter electric grid, reduce energy use in buildings, &/or recharge electric cars and plug-in hybrids. Further, this effort will total about $200 million with about half of it from GE and the other half from the venture firms.

These developments are quite significant for several reasons.

First, virtually all clean energy except biofuels and cellulosic alcohol is used to generate electricity – from solar photovoltaic, solar thermal, wind, geothermal, and even nuclear power. None of these releases CO2 while they generate electricity.

Second, Bloom Energy has a product that makes electricity from natural gas with fuel cells that is more efficient than burning it and that produces no air pollution.

Third, running an electric car using even electricity made in coal fired plants releases less CO2 than the same car would release while burning gasoline.

Fourth, none of these energy sources for the electricity for electric cars and plug-in hybrids requires oil!

For the strength of the economy of the United States and its national security, this is extremely important news.

2010-11-10T14:16:00.000-08:00

Good & bad news for Renewable Energy....

Today's post: Wednesday, 11-10-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 4 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post: Good & bad news for Renewable Energy

1. Due to the defeat of Proposition 23 in California, we will now see a good faith effort to put AB32 into practice. To the extent that this succeeds in creating new jobs, causing more renewable energy generation to be built, and cutting CO2 emissions without slowing the rest of California’s economy, this will provide a model for other states and for the nation.

It may not happen soon. But at some point, oil prices will again run up enough to slow the economy. And, we will begin to see more harm from global warming here in the United States.

When either of those happen, let alone both as I think likely, the country will follow California’s lead.

2. Even people who voted for leaders who say they think global warming is not happening or not caused by burning fossil fuels like to save energy and have more new jobs locally.

Such people also are fond of saving money personally. And, most people like useful new technology and products that contain it.

Clean energy advocates need to throw strong support to such programs because even these new leaders and the people who voted for them will support them.

3. President Obama suggested recently the new congress might be able to agree on and pass improved renewable energy standards, increasing the domestic supply and use of natural gas, increasing domestic production of electric cars, and building more nuclear power plants.

I give this hopeful suggestion a mixed review.

1. Improved renewable energy standards would be welcome and are extremely desirable; but I think he may be too optimistic – maybe far too optimistic. But even some progress in this area, even if just a little bit at first, would help. So, adding that to something that will fly on its own that has stronger support might work.

He might well have better luck though with improving the energy efficiency standards for buildings and products that use energy –
and for programs that create jobs by helping businesses that help do this make money and hire new people and use existing technologies and new ones to make much more energy-efficient products.

He might get backing for creating jobs to retrofit to more efficient technologies and products and to insulate and heat proof buildings to help them use less energy.

People want more new jobs and help saving money. So these efforts might work.

2. Increasing the domestic supply and use of natural gas has a shot. It would help us use less imported oil which would get the backing of conservatives and Republicans who see that as increasing our national security and a way to send less money out of the country when our domestic economy could use some help. Even better, the oil companies led by Exxon and Chevron will be on board. They have seen this coming and have invested heavily in increasing their ability to supply natural gas and make money doing it.

This also has clean energy and environmental value. It would help wean us from using oil before its price spikes or it simply runs out. And, it would generate less air pollution than burning coal, particularly if it’s used to run more efficient and dramatically less polluting fuel cells such as those already made commercially by Bloom Energy.

3. Increasing domestic production of electric cars also has a shot. The car makers are already onboard and are setting up to make both plug-in hybrids and all electric cars. Since this is happening in the rest of the world too, notably in Japan and Germany, doing more of it here, will help create US jobs that would otherwise be lost.

And, even when the electricity used is from burning coal, less CO2 is generated than would be by powering cars of the same weight with oil.

But, even better, as we generate more electricity from sources other than coal and oil from photovoltaic and thermal solar and wind to fuel cells using natural gas, geothermal, and nuclear, such cars give us a real shot at breaking our addiction to oil before it’s too late.

And, having more of such cars built here saves or create jobs here -- which for SURE has universal support.

4. Even conservative Republicans will find that with the recent Gulf oil spill that more offshore drilling may not fly, do quite often support building more nuclear power.

So that might work also. It has worked well in France.

But it does have some safety issues due to terrorism here.

And unless we switch to breeder reactors from use the uranium and then try to figure out where to put the radioactive waste method -- that we have been using, we will run short of uranium, have to transport these wastes with the terror risk that poses, and have it be more of a short term solution only.

That said, more nuclear that creates electricity as needed 24 hours a day, seven days a week, plus far more electricity from renewable sources that vary from day to day and hour to hour would create a viable replacement for burning coal to make electricity.

5. He did not speak of it. But a program for coal producing states to help them switch to a cleaner way of making electricity from it instead of simply abandoning it would get very enthusiastic support from those states.

And, like increasing our use of natural gas, doing so would get support from conservatives who want to increase our independence from imported oil and to stop sending billions of dollars a week out of the United States.

Coal can be use to make gas that can be used in fuel cells to make electricity and burning it also produces less air and water pollution than burning coal directly. Coal has already been used to make gasoline. The technology exists. And, last but far from least, when gas from coal is used to make electricity, the CO2 created can be fed to algae to make biofuels.

The next two years or more may be quite challenging. But good things are likely to happen more and more in California. And nationally, some productive things might yet come out of the next congress.

2010-11-03T13:53:00.000-07:00

Four wins for Renewable Energy....

Today's post: Wednesday, 11-3-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 4 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post: Four wins for Renewable Energy

1. Voters including me and perhaps you voted against Proposition 23. It LOST. That means that California will begin to work on a large scale to build more renewable energy, become more energy efficient, and begin gradually to cut the release of CO2.

The effort to do this will begin to add even more new jobs than it has in the last 3 years and do this every year. And, most of these jobs will be in California. The new sources of energy and the increased energy efficiency of California’s economy will also strengthen the California economy.

2. In California, the candidate for Governor who had actually taken action to protect renewable energy and supported No on 23 and the clean energy and jobs that AB32 will now create defeated the woman who was so clueless about this she would have suspended AB32 as being bad for the economy. He was qualified by this to be Governor despite his faults and she was NOT despite her good points. The candidate that will actually be most likely to bring new jobs and a strong economy to California won.

California’s economy and its ability to lead the transition to the new clean energy economy are now MUCH better off!

3. In the Senate races, two of the most valuable supporters of clean energy in the United States congress have been Senator Barbara Boxer from California and Harry Reid of Nevada. They both won reelection against candidates who also were unqualified to be in the US Senate because they were clueless about clean energy.

In either case to have lost a knowledgeable supporter and had an unqualified person to replace them who opposed clean energy would have had grave and negative consequences.

So, to have won both these races is a very important victory for clean energy.

And, since each of their states, California and Nevada, have such large potential for both photovoltaic and thermal solar power, it was extremely important that each of them win and they did.

4. Despite having less solar energy than California, Germany has been consistently building about 15 times as much solar every year as California.

If California built as much solar in relation to its available solar energy as Germany has been doing it would begin to build about TWENTY-FIVE times as much solar!

Since that’s exactly what we need now, it makes superb sense to use the proven incentive system that Germany has been using and that California has not.

This system is called the Feed-in Tariff or FIT. Companies, builders, and developers – even homeowners --who are willing to contract to supply solar electricity are offered a fixed contract and at just enough of a higher rate than other sources to guarantee the person or group building the solar capacity a reliable profit.

That in turn makes their project financeable even in today’s tough credit environment.

But if California cannot offer rates high enough to guarantee the person or group building the solar capacity a reliable profit, even a modest one, virtually no new solar will be built for many years or at all.

As of late last month, it was ruled that California now CAN offer rates high enough to do the job!

Since that literally may increase the amount of solar built here and producing clean electricity by as much as twenty-five times in just a few years, that IS a very significant piece of good news for clean energy!

I get news from CEN, the clean energy network and from the FIT Coalition by email. In the last one I got from CEN a few days ago, it had this news.

They also had a link to a story about it in the GreenTech Solar news. (They had the link; but I was unable to do a cut and paste to show it here. But you should be able to find the GreenTech Solar website and this article in it online.)

Their story was by Herman K. Trabish. And October 28, 2010 was its publication date.

“FERC Decision Boosts Renewables

Federal regulator’s ruling makes the price paid to renewable energy producers more competitive.
.
The federal transmission system regulator ruled October 21 that California can require its utilities to pay a price for renewable energy that will support its Feed-In Tariff (FIT) plan. The ruling resets the existing price standard and is expected to drive the deployment of renewable energy.”

The news for clean energy from yesterday’s election on a national basis was far less promising.

But these four things were quite good. And, since their combination strongly suggests clean energy in California will begin to do really well soon, once people see a stronger economy and more new jobs in California soon, the national picture should improve also.

2010-10-27T14:02:00.000-07:00

Two reasons for optimism on Clean Energy....

Today's post: Wednesday, 10-27-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 4 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post: Two reasons for optimism on Clean Energy

1. If you’ve not yet voted and can vote in California, be SURE to vote against Proposition 23 that would kill off new clean energy jobs and even some existing ones and increase air pollution in the state.

The very good news is that the polls have the NO side ahead by a healthy margin as of the most recent poll.

That’s a relief. But games and wars and political contests can be lost by the side that’s ahead at the last minute if the people who are ahead stop making an effort before they are over.

So while the news is good, be SURE to vote against prop 23 if you can but have not yet done so.

Also, the two state wide candidates for Governor and for the US Senate who would like to do as prop 23 suggests and suspend AB 32, Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, are also losing in the polls.

As a progressive Republican, I support more jobs in California and more participation by Californians in the major growth business sector of the next 30 or 40 years, clean energy.

The evidence for clean energy doing these things is clear enough that, despite the fact that Whitman and Fiorina are Republicans, they are not competent for the positions they are seeking due to their ignorance. That makes the issues on which I agree with them irrelevant.

Conversely, though neither is perfect, both Jerry Brown and Barbara
Boxer DO know and ALREADY have a track-record of taking action personally to support clean energy.

So, similarly, please be sure to vote for Brown and Boxer if you can vote in California and have not yet done so.

Still, the news that in the 3 races in California that can most impact clean energy, the good guys are clearly ahead is welcome news indeed.

2. The other news on clean energy is quite different. But it has HUGE implications.

To build the clean energy economy large enough and to get it done fast enough, we need most of the people helping get it done.

So far, that has NOT happened.

People who believe the science that global warming will cause huge and expensive problems beginning right now if it isn’t turned way down soon support clean energy and building it up fast enough and on a large enough scale.

Similarly, the people who see the reports saying fossil fuel availability will fall behind energy demand enough to cause severe price run ups within 15 or 20 years or even sooner, as I do, support clean energy and building it up fast enough and on a large enough scale.

Why the people who understand that science and the understanding it provides enables them to drive cars that work at least most of the time and use electronic communications that work even more reliably fail to believe in science when it reveals global warming and the likely problems it causes are real is not something I completely understand.

But between their wishing it wasn’t so and the disinformation they see from short sighted and badly managed companies that fear they will lose money unless they fight efforts to use less fossil fuels, a very large number of people DO disbelieve the science behind global warming.

To be fair one writer points out that the media have announced many problems that looked to be quite serious that never were a few years later. He thinks that global warming is real but will turn out to be no big deal as those previous problems did.

He has a serious point. Unfortunately, this time it looks like from the science that he is horribly mistaken.

So, what’s the good news about all this?!

It’s been recently proven that even people who disbelieve in global warming and running short on fossil fuels will support taking action on clean energy! Even better, they will actually take action on making clean energy happen!

That is extremely good news and is critically important to making clean energy happen soon enough and on a large enough scale.

What happened?

A woman realized that the climate warming deniers all still liked saving money, they all liked creating more local jobs, and they all were patriotic enough and knowledgeable enough about the risks of our extreme dependence on imported oil they ARE willing to take action on clean energy when it saves them money, creates more local jobs, and increases our freedom from dependence on imported oil.

She put together a program showing ways people could act on clean energy that would do these things and she added a religious faith based appeal for clean environment as a way of preserving God’s creation. That too is sound. Cleaner sources of energy and more pollution reduction do help keep their local environment in its original condition instead of having it get worse.

This was done in Kansas where there is significant wind power potential. Her program emphasized ways to save money, make money, and create local jobs by tapping wind power and by finding many other ways to save energy and become more energy efficient – and save money personally.

People were quite fond of these benefits and actually took action. Kansas landed a very large wind power equipment manufacturer and began to do more to harvest wind generated electricity there. And, there are many places in Kansas that are saving money still due to the increases in energy efficiency in those places.

In short, even people who don’t believe scientists and oil supply experts -- or don’t want to -- are happy to support clean energy if they see what it does for them in other ways that do not relate to those concerns.

The clean energy supporting people need to find more ways to build on these themes to make enough happen soon enough and to get the wide based political support needed to do so.

The very good news is that there is such a winning strategy and it has been proven to work!

2010-10-20T12:22:00.000-07:00

Why be SURE to Vote NO on 23....

Today's post: Wednesday, 10-20-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 4 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post: Why be SURE to Vote NO on 23

1. There are jobs in clean energy at stake if 23 passes. Not only that many of these are jobs where young people are wanted and can do well.

The backers say 23 will prevent jobs from being lost. But the people who actually did the study the backers pointed to came out in the paper saying that their study found that the number of old industry jobs would likely remain constant instead. The backers made up the lost jobs claim to scare the uninformed in other words.

2. The backers have refineries in California now that already release pollutants that the regulations now say they should not and refuse to pay to clean up the mess. Now, they ARE spending money on 23 to cut back on the regulations so they can spend even less and pollute more.

I live clear on the other side of the San Francisco Bay from the refineries and some mornings, they release so much I can smell the pollution now. If 23 passes that might get even worse.

3. Adding more clean energy will put more money into the economy by giving us alternatives to oil. So when oil begins to go way back up in price, we will still have energy sources and sources that are cheaper. And, when oil begins to run out, maybe our economy will survive without collapsing.

Voting against 23 makes sense. The people who think otherwise are mostly ignorant or believe the lies they've been told.

If enough of us vote and vote against 23, we can have a better economy, safer air, and more jobs.

2010-10-13T14:12:00.000-07:00

The backer's claims of job loss are FAKES -- Vote NO on 23....

Today's post: Wednesday, 10-13-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 4 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post:

The backer's claims of job loss are FAKES -- Vote NO on 23

I’ve already posted that the jobs California would LOSE if the current Proposition 23 were to pass ARE real while the jobs the backers of 23 said we would lose if it is not are not at all likely to be real.

Shortly after I got home last week after my last post, I found out the backers of proposition 23 completely FAKED the lost jobs. They have been lying on purpose and have been quite conscious of it.

Last Wednesday, 10-6-2010, the San Francisco Chronicle ran a story showing that the actual researchers who did the study the proposition backers have been quoting said four things:

1. If proposition 23 fails and AB 32 goes into effect, more new clean tech jobs will be created to go with those already created once AB 32 was passed. If Proposition 23 is passed, many of those jobs will either be lost or NOT be created. They noted that, “….jobs in the clean energy sector have grown by 5 percent during the recession while overall employment has fallen."

2. The increases in energy efficiency and supply from AB 32 will IMPROVE the California economy. But that’s ONLY if 23 fails and we can implement AB 32.

3. Businesses that are impacted will have some increased costs initially; but historically such changes mandated by changes in technology tend to increase jobs –NOT make them disappear. These industries will actually have to hire people to make the now necessary changes.

4. Passing Proposition 23 would decrease jobs and harm the California economy. It’s actually the enemy of having more jobs and losing fewer jobs – NOT the reverse.

In short, the people who actually did the study that looked at the issue were quoted as saying the reverse by the backers of Proposition 23.

Proposition 23 IS the enemy of jobs in California. The backers of Proposition 23 lied on purpose. Their credibility was based on this study. But the people who did the study actually found the reverse of what the backers of Proposition 23 said. Their argument was FAKED to scare people who have been concerned about jobs.

The good news is that many of these less educated people who now favor 23 based on those scare tactics tend to not always vote.

So please join me in voting NO on 23. And, be SURE to vote!

My wife and I did that by voting last weekend by absentee ballot.

Also, despite the fact that I think some of what Meg Whitman says is sound, the fact that she knows so little about today’s economy and what it needs that she would suspend AB 32 while the economy is bad means to me she is so ignorant that she is not qualified to be Governor of California. I voted against her for that reason.

Carly Fiorina talks a good game but actually came out in FAVOR of Proposition 23. Some of her backers are coal companies that promote the idea that global warming isn’t real.

The fact that she knows so little about today’s economy and what it needs that she would help suspend AB 32 means to me she is so ignorant that she is not qualified to be a United States Senator representing the state where I live. I voted against her for that reason.

Since the energy economy is to me the most important issue today, I suggest you join me in those two votes also.

2010-10-06T14:43:00.000-07:00

New technology for lower cost LED lights....

Today's post: Wednesday, 10-6-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 4 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post: New technology for lower cost LED lights

Late last week, it was in the technology company news for the Silicon Valley that there is a new company with a technology that may dramatically cut manufacturing costs for LED lights.

As many know, the two reasons that LED lights have yet to completely take over the market for homes and smaller businesses for light bulbs are

that almost none of them fit the lamps and sockets people now have that did fit their old incandescent light bulbs;

&

that LED light bulbs despite dramatic savings on the electricity to operate them of 4 or 5 to one over incandescent light bulbs and they last over 10 times longer, they cost almost 100 times as much per bulb.

Philips is rumored to have begun to make LED light bulbs that fit the lamps and sockets people now have that did fit their old incandescent light bulbs. And, as a company large enough to get an economy of scale, their bulbs may cost $45 instead of $75 or $100 apiece.

But only really serious people about supporting clean energy an energy efficiency will buy at that price.

But if the LEDs themselves cost a fifth or a tenth as much to make, they would rapidly take over the market for light bulbs once they come out in the right sizes.

Maybe that will happen in the next few years.

Here’s the announcement.

GLO-AB-Establishes-Engineering-Center-Silicon-Valley in Sunnyvale

Founded in 2005, glo AB is a venture-backed, development-stage company focused on development and commercialisation of entirely new, highly energy efficient and very low cost nanowire light-emitting diodes (nLED)

glo employs novel, cutting-edge semiconductor nanotechnology to dramatically lower production cost at the die level of Ultra-High-Brightness (UHB) light emitting diodes (LEDs).

A novel type of LED-chip - each with millions of nanowire LEDs or nLED - is expected to offer all the advantages of state-of-the-art conventional planar UHB-LEDs, including high lighting efficiency with very low energy consumption, long lifetime and good functionality,
but at radically lower manufacturing costs.

This is expected to open the door to solid state lighting (SSL) for general illumination markets worldwide.

Sweden's Glo Opens Sunnyvale Facility, Lands $25M and New CEO
Sunnyvale, Calif. -- Glo AB, a Swedish developer of nanowire semiconductor LEDs, said on Friday it has raised $25 million in new funding and established a new engineering center in Sunnyvale. The company also named Fariba Danesh as its CEO. New investor Wellington Partners joined previous backers Provider Venture Partners, Hafslund Venture, Agder Energi Venture, Teknoinvest and VantagePoint Venture Partners.

2010-09-29T13:50:00.000-07:00

New resource for energy solutions news....

Today's post: Wednesday, 9-29-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 4 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post: New resource for energy solutions news

Today my CEN National Update email came.

It had some potential good news and some bad news.

But then I noticed that it had a new resource for mostly good news about new projects on many kinds of topics.

The CEN description did not seem to match what I found on the website. BUT, the website was well enough done, I decided to post about it.

www.energyempowers.gov is the web address.

It has some headline stories of different kinds. It had a story about geothermal power, a story about wind power, and one on the new Porsche hybrid. And, it also featured 8 other stories.

But the part I liked best was that they also post stories by energy solutions category and by state.

In California there was a story about a Silicon Valley company that has a way of cutting silicon for wafers with dramatically less waste to cut costs and a Navy location in the Mojave desert to build carports for personnel that protect their cars and their paint from the sun and its heat while also generating photovoltaic solar power on their roofs.

The 3 main story areas are also subdivided. So the site is also useful to find articles on many different energy solution topics.

1. Renewable Energy contains stories by renewable energy source such as solar, wind, and geothermal.

2. Energy Savings has stories by in which area of the economy such as vehicles, homes, buildings, and industry.

3. Grants and tax credits lists those and has stories on people who used them to finance energy solution projects including 48C Advanced Energy Manufacturing Credit and WAP, the Weatherization Assistance Program.

These stories show that despite our inability to be as competitive with China and European countries in renewable energy and CO2 reduction due to organized political opposition by old energy companies, the current federal government is making a lot of small progress in dozens of areas that will gradually improve our energy economy and so is the entrepreneurial business community.

2010-09-22T15:01:00.000-07:00

An upcoming new way to use less oil....

Today's post: Wednesday, 9-22-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 4 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post: An upcoming new way to use less oil

Electric cars are coming soon. Soon there will be both all electric cars and plug-in hybrids available for sale.

That will be quite soon for the Nissan Leaf and GM’s Chevy Volt.

But if you can wait a couple of years or so, or if you only need a two-seater now and can afford to spend more on a car, Tesla Motors may be your best bet.

Their model S will be about as upscale a sedan as an Acura or a Lexus or car from Mercedes Benz.

And, it will get up to 300 miles on a charge. It looks great and will perform better than most upscale sedans that use tons of gas to perform well.

See www.teslamotors.com . Their two seat, tiny roadster will go up to about 200 miles on a charge and gets almost unbelievable performance. That only takes a bit over $100,000 a few months to get.

The model S will cost closer to $60,000 which is close to what comparable gasoline powered cars cost.

Driving these cars using electric power cuts oil use in many ways.

Electricity will increasingly be generated with solar thermal, solar photovoltaic, wind, geothermal, and even nuclear power. None of these sources use fossil fuels, let alone oil.

Electricity is already generated by natural gas. With Bloom Energy’s fuel cell technology, that will become even more efficient and create far less air pollution. And, the existing natural gas generation already uses no oil.

Coal is now used to generate electricity, particularly in the Eastern United States. Despite the air pollution and CO2 release problems with that, it uses no oil and thereby driving cars powered electricity from this source uses less oil than driving gasoline powered cars and increases the national security of the United States. Further, when coal is turned directly into natural gas and then fed to a Bloom Energy fuel cell to generate electricity and the CO2 resulting is fed to algae to make biofuels, this will be far cleaner and less polluting and generate less net CO2 than it does now.

So, in every case, driving on electricity, uses no oil and is more desirable than using gasoline.

But, that’s not all!

Electric cars use less energy per mile or per time you accelerate your car than is the case with gasoline or diesel powered cars.

That even means that driving an electric car powered by burning coal now, you cause less CO2 release than you would doing the same driving with a comparable car directly powered by gasoline or diesel.

Electric cars are far from perfect in any way and the technology is a bit new yet; but they will help us use far less oil and release far less CO2 by doing so.

2010-09-15T14:45:00.000-07:00

Proposition 23 and jobs....

Today's post: Wednesday, 9-15-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 4 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post: Proposition 23 and jobs

The San Francisco Chronicle had a special last Sunday, Sept. 12, 2010. They had one essay in favor of proposition 23 in California and one opposed to proposition 23.

The yes folks said that prop 23 would prevent AB 32 implementation from wiping out thousands or even more than a million jobs of jobs -- or even more than a million jobs.

The no folks said the reverse, that passing prop 23 and wiping out AB 32 implementation would kill new jobs.

Clearly, to voters in the November election, virtually all of whom would like a better economy with more available jobs, jobs are the key issue.

But both sides can’t be correct.

How people will vote depends on who they believe is right.

Since the Pipe Fitters union and a union group of fire fighters were backing 23 and a group of entrepreneurs and Silicon Valley business leaders saying to vote no, clearly the backers of 23 hope that blue collar workers will believe their side and vote in favor of 23.

The major backers of yes on 23 are, according to their official website, “major funding provided by Valero and Tesoro.” These two companies would have to pay more to better clean up the air pollution at their California refineries if 23 fails to cancel clean air provisions as they hope it will do. And, if AB 32 causes gasoline sales to fall a bit by helping provide alternatives and boosting the price of gasoline somewhat, their gasoline sales will fall.

Will that cause them to close their California refineries or layoff workers there? Maybe it might. If it did, since piping is used in their refineries, maybe the Pipefitters union will have some members get laid off too. Even if it happens though, this is hundreds of jobs at companies trying to cut costs by not paying up to clean up their own pollution. It is NOT many thousands of jobs all over the state.

Will a small boost to gasoline prices and utilities bills due to AB 32 being implemented cause the loss of millions of jobs beyond that as they say it will?

They say so just fine. It clearly would be recessionary if it were to happen and voters would prefer that not happen.

But do they present any kind of evidence for this assertion? Nope. Zero. Zilch. Nada. What jobs in what other places in California would be lost? They DO not say.

Conversely the new jobs in clean energy companies already created and likely to be created are verifiable.

In my regular job, I call new and promising companies in the Silicon Valley area. And, I follow clean energy companies from personal interest. I see the growth in clean energy jobs first hand. I know they are real. The solar part of Applied Materials; SunPower; Solyndra; and Nanosolar; and electric car maker, Tesla Motors; and smart grid companies like Trilliant and Silver Spring Networks together have created thousands of new clean energy jobs. And there are literally dozens of smaller clean energy and solar start ups each adding jobs.

If 23 is passed these larger companies will add fewer jobs and some of the smaller companies that would have survived and grown and added new jobs will go out of business instead with their current employees losing their jobs.

So, first of all to me the job losses predicted by the yes on 23 people look to me to be mostly smoke and mirrors while the jobs at stake in clean energy if it were to pass, I see directly.

Unless the yes on 23 people have some real data they are keeping secret and not publicizing, all they are doing is taking oil company money to hoodwink the public.

That’s what I believe is going on.

But what about the argument that increasing energy costs will slow the economy and thereby result in fewer jobs that way?

I agree that is a valid point.

But what the supporters for yes on 23 people fail to understand is that is a very strong reason to vote no on their proposition!

If AB 32 is implemented there will be small increases in gasoline and utility bills in the first year or two afterwards. But that will gradually become a nonissue as too much demand for natural gas and gasoline begins to hit decreasing supplies. In the near term those prices will go up soon anyway because of that supply-demand imbalance.

But if AB 32 is implemented and more energy efficiency efforts are made and more geothermal, solar thermal, solar photovoltaic, and wind power – maybe even nuclear power is added that would not have been without it, those prices will be moderated. They will still go up but much more slowly.

Conversely, if prop 23 passes and stops that from happening on that large a scale, both natural gas prices and gasoline will go up MORE and slow the economy more. And that’s on top of killing the new clean energy jobs that would have been created.

So, both groups have it right. The key issue is jobs.

Given the evidence I see, the yes on 23 people don’t have the evidence and the no on 23 people do.

Please vote NO on proposition 23.

2010-09-08T14:32:00.000-07:00

Very bad and very good news on energy....

Today's post: Wednesday, 9-8-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 4 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post: Very bad and very good news on energy

1. Here’s the mostly very bad news first.:

Since I am a moderate Republican and registered as a Republican, albeit one who believes in renewable and clean energy, I got on the email list of the "conservative action alerts."

Their most recent email says that there is a new government entity called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative that is taxing businesses that in some way contribute to the release of CO2.

It apparently is already in operation as they say that, "RGGI added a 0.9% increase in energy prices in New England."

They then decry this as an unnecessary tax and say that because global warming "ISN'T EVEN REAL!" the reader of the email should become angry enough to shout, "I Am Mad As Hell And I Am Not Going To Take This Anymore!"

And they recommend the reader take this attitude out on their local US Representative or Senators to have congress cancel the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.

I found the website for this Regional Greenhouse Gas Imitative to see what it is.

It's not a federal program but a program by a group of state governments in the Northeastern part of the United States:

"The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) is the first mandatory, market-based effort in the United States to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Ten Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic states have capped and will reduce CO2 emissions from the power sector 10% by 2018.

States sell nearly all emission allowances through auctions and invest proceeds in consumer benefits: energy efficiency, renewable energy, and other clean energy technologies. RGGI is spurring innovation in the clean energy economy and creating green jobs in each state."

So this program is funding small cuts in CO2 production AND green jobs in this area in adding renewable energy sources and in increasing the energy efficiency of homes and businesses in this area.

So, even if global warming was NOT real, it’s making these states more diversified in their energy sources, helping the homes and businesses there become more energy efficient, which SAVES money; and it’s adding new jobs to the area.

Since the increase is less than one percent of the utility bills in the New England part of the area, this “tax” is costing most people less than $5 a month.

For most homeowners and businesses in this area in fact, improvements in their energy efficiency could easily pay back their costs AND this tiny increase.

Unfortunately, the facts so far also indicate that global warming is real and will at the very least increase the number and severity of weather disasters and emergencies even if it doesn’t flood our coastal cities and severely cut back on the amount of food we can grow.

Here’s why I think this email is horribly bad news. It is designed to generate a large number of badly informed, hostile, and close-minded people to try to force our governments to move away from what to me look like reasonable and desirable changes in our energy policy.

A legitimate case can be made that the people and locations who depend on the jobs in the coal industry in this area need to be taken into account and that reasonable care needs to be taken while the country is in a severe recession not to go overboard on increased taxes and costs to the people in this area.

But the costs are relatively small and these added costs are funding new jobs and increases in energy efficiency that will create more economic benefit to these states and their people than the costs.

To be fair, I’ve seen Democrats deliberately mislead the uninformed and unthinking in this exact same way.

But, on the subject of energy, this is totally despicable and harmful.

The fact that some people will believe this email and push hard to end what so far looks like a mostly beneficial program based on the disinformation and hostility in this email is extremely bad news for the energy situation in this country.

I find this most unfortunate indeed & very, very bad news that this email even exists, let alone that such emails are going to people all over the United States.

Mercifully the very good news is dramatically better and will gradually begin to operate on a much larger scale than the deliberately deceptive people who composed this email and had it sent.

2. I just found out that the gains that can be made in increasing energy efficiency in ways that actually SAVE money to do can do some very large scale good.

It would create jobs while lowering costs and doubly strengthen our economy.

And, it goes far beyond the heat proofing of our house we once did that created a no energy needed way to cool our house BETTER than paying for air conditioning and the related energy use or just insulating houses in poor neighborhoods to lower heating costs and energy use.

It includes those on a nationwide scale. But like those, it simply employs ALREADY EXISTING TECHNOLOGY.

But what I did not know before is that almost every part of our energy use and economy has that much potential for energy and dollar cost savings.

We can make a huge difference in cutting CO2 release, in reducing our dependence on oil as peak oil approaches, in increasing our national security by sharply decreasing our imports of foreign oil, add new jobs, and save money and all at the same time!

This can be done without waiting for 200 times more renewable energy to be installed or new transmission systems built to deliver it or new energy technologies to be discovered, developed and put into widespread use.

We need to do all that as close to lightning speed as we can manage.

But we have had a horribly late start and are making too little progress. So it hasn’t been looking very good.

This new approach is much more promising. By using it, we can make progress fast enough to gain the time needed to do the other things even with the late start and too slow progress.

Best of all, everyone can get behind it. It adds jobs and saves money.

But, how do I know this and how can this be done in practice?

I would have had no clue this was so doable or had this vast a potential or how to get it done myself.

But someone did and does. He wrote a book about it. He was and is extremely well informed and covers almost every part of our economy in his book.

It’s one of the most important books published in the last 100 years.

I strongly recommend you read it and make sure all your political representatives know of it and how important it is.

The book’s unfortunate and not very fitting or descriptive title is “Addicted to Energy.”

“Energy salvation through energy efficiency IS doable” is or would be a more accurate title.

The author is Elton Sherwin, Junior.

He learned much of the information because his job is being a venture capitalist for clean energy companies.

How large scale is this?

We could end all imported oil and still grow our economy -- is just one example.

We could cut our nationwide CO2 release by up to 80%, need no carbon taxes to do it, and still grow our economy and save money and create jobs in the process.

To put it simply, I knew increased energy efficiency was an important part of the needed list of things to do about energy before. But I had no clue it was by far the biggest and most important part with the most doable and fastest payoff.

2010-09-01T14:37:00.000-07:00

California Proposition 23 backers are unethical....

Today's post: Wednesday, 9-1-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 4 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post: California Proposition 23 backers are unethical

As I’ve posted before, they wrote proof of this into their initiative!

They say their proposition is postponement or delay of AB 32; but they purposely wrote conditions into what would be needed to lift this postponement that, given today’s economic conditions are somewhere between totally impossible to meet and a one in a thousand chance. So, they deliberately call something a postponement when what they want it and know it to be is a permanent cancellation.

But I just found out, they also may have an ulterior motive besides.

If you live in either Los Angeles or near it or in the San Francisco Bay Area you have breathed in toxic pollution released by the refineries of the two companies backing Proposition 23. Since one of its effects will be to weaken pollution controls in California, they stand to save money and release more pollution if it’s passed.

Do you want to breathe extra toxic pollution or vote for something written by and supported by two unethical companies that want to cause that to happen just so it makes them a few extra bucks?

(To be sure, the poor and minority people living closest to their refineries are most likely to be harmed by this pollution.

But just in the last month, someone, & my bet is that it is one or both of their refineries in the San Francisco Bay Area, has been releasing huge amounts of pollution in the early morning hours just before 7 am. The smell was pervasive enough to come into our car on the freeway with the windows rolled up and to go into the place where I work even though the doors there had been shut all night and the windows don’t open. I smelled this years ago when I went to school and lived in Berkeley and the releases this time appeared from Menlo Park to San Jose. So this has been going on for over 40 years and the amounts released are massive indeed. I don’t know how toxic this pollutant is; but their oil refineries are one of the few places operating on a large enough scale in our area to generate that much pollution.

So, if it IS harmful, it covers so much of the Bay Area, it is NOT just the people nearby to their refineries who are being harmed.)

Also, here are excerpts from the press release I just found.:

LOS ANGELES – The Ella Baker Center and the California Environmental Justice Alliance released a study that reveals that Valero and Tesoro, the two Texas oil companies bankrolling Proposition 23 to repeal California's clean air and energy standards, have been repeatedly cited for producing deadly chemicals at their refineries that are exposing millions of California families to harm. The two companies have contributed more than $4 million to put Proposition 23 on the November ballot.

The report was re-released at a press conference at Los Angeles’ Vista Hermosa Park attended by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa; No on Prop 23 Campaign Committee Co-Chair Tom Steyer; Penny Newman, Executive Director of Center for Community Action & Environmental Justice (CCAEJ) and member of the California Environmental Justice Alliance (CEJA); Bill Gallegos, Executive Director, Communities for a Better Environment; and Martha Arguello, Executive Director, Physicians for Social Responsibility – LA.

The study, http://www.stopdirtyenergyprop.com/docs/Toxic%20Twins%208-31-10.pdf , titled “Toxic Twins: Soiling the Southland,” found that the two Texas-based companies’ oil refineries in the Bay Area and particularly in the Los Angeles regions “annually produce hundreds of thousands of pounds of toxic chemicals.”

The study went on to demonstrate that Valero and Tesoro have repeatedly violated pollution laws in California by releasing chemicals into the air. This January, “Valero disclosed that it had 29 outstanding Violation Notices from the South Coast Air Quality Management District,” according to the report. Over 44 violation notices within a three year window have been settled between Tesoro and the Bay Area Quality Management District.

This study builds on a report by the University of Massachusetts Amherst Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) “Toxic 100 Air Polluters” report (http://www.peri.umass.edu/toxic100 ) which named Valero and Tesoro as the #12 and #32 polluters in the nation.

I’ve posted before that proposition 23 will cut back on the job creation from clean energy companies if it’s passed.

So, if these two companies cared about California’s economy, they would have designed a proposition that only shut down parts of AB 32 to avoid that. The jobs just added by clean energy companies as other parts of the California economy just LOST jobs are a FACT.

Do you trust these two companies saying that passing Proposition 23 would improve the California economy given this significant omission?

I most certainly do not.

When implemented AB 32 will gradually lower their sales of their oil and increase the pressure on them to pollute less – both of which will cost them money.

The only certain economic winners if Proposition 23 passes are these two companies.

Please join me in voting against their proposition.

2010-08-25T15:06:00.000-07:00

California Proposition 23 even more harmful than it initially looked....

Today's post: Wednesday, 8-25-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 4 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post:

California Proposition 23 even more harmful than it initially looked.…

About a week and a half ago on Monday, 8-16-2010, The San Jose Mercury News ran a story titled:

“Global warming measure could suspend other landmark environmental rules”

It was written by their Paul Rogers.

Here’s a quote.:

“A November ballot measure that would suspend California's landmark global-warming law could also end up rolling back some of the state's other sweeping environmental standards -- including rules that require utilities to generate a third of their electricity from renewable sources and programs requiring oil refineries to make cleaner-burning fuels.”

Yes on 23 spokesperson Anita Mangels agreed with that assessment. :

“The two main rules that would be suspended, Mangels agreed, are Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's 2009 executive order requiring Pacific Gas & Electric and other utilities to produce 33 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020, and the state's "low carbon fuels standard," an executive order Schwarzenegger signed in 2007 requiring oil companies to reduce the carbon content of their fuel 10 percent by 2020.”

Combined these two rules are designed to cause the installation of enough solar, wind, and geothermal energy sources to begin to make a real difference in California’s energy mix and to begin to use less oil and natural gas as well. And, if it does work out well here, the rest of the country is likely to copy California at least in part.

(This is of course exactly what the oil companies paying for the Yes on 23 campaign hope will never happen. They could care less about California jobs. All they care about is maintaining our addiction to their oil.

They even wrote proof of this into Proposition 23. Proposition 23 is billed to the gullible who want to avoid slight increases in gasoline prices and utility bills as a “postponement” of these laws and rules until the economy is better.

Under Proposition 23, AB 32 & these 2 key rules would be suspended until unemployment falls below 5.5 percent for a year from the 12.3 percent it is now in California. But if I remember correctly, the proposition also says for four consecutive quarters. Note that it does NOT say until unemployment goes to 8.9 percent or below for two quarters – something that might actually happen in the next two to five years. Given the growing global economic competition, the increase in energy prices from peak oil and global increases in population, and the endemic and slow to fix increases in health care costs, the chances of unemployment falling to below 5.5 percent in California in the next hundred years approach zero, let alone doing so for four consecutive quarters.

Of course, despite being very short-sighted otherwise, the oil companies surely know this.)

We need to move to dramatically less use of oil and less use of natural gas although not to the same degree. AB 32 and these two rules that Proposition 23 would cancel would actually get us started to doing so enough to fight global warming a bit.

Even more important in my view, is that it will begin to protect our economy from the coming effects of peak oil. Those two rules and AB32 that Proposition 23 would cancel I believe may save us from economic disaster within 15 years from the economic threats posed by peak oil.

So, to put it mildly, passing Proposition 23 to ensure this never happens, will instead ensure economic disaster and massive job losses within 15 years instead in California.

We also will lose one of California’s best sources of new jobs in the clean energy industries affected.

In Paul Rogers’ article I found this.:

“"If we don't go forward with 33 percent renewable standard for California's energy supply, we undercut all those companies and entrepreneurs creating jobs in solar, wind, biofuels and other renewable forms of energy," said Carl Guardino, CEO of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, a San Jose organization that represents more than 300 companies and that opposes Proposition 23.

"We're saying let's take a U-turn to yesterday and be totally dependent on fossil fuels, rather than California leading the way to a renewable economy," Guardino said.”

But, that’s just the beginning. Passing Proposition 23 will also either suspend “60 state regulations, including rules to reduce smog from ships, certain chemicals in air conditioners and even a 2002 state law that requires automakers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 30 percent on new cars by 2016.

"Every measure to reduce greenhouse gases in California is at risk," said attorney Tom Adams, chairman of the California League of Conservation Voters. "All the regulations California has adopted for a clean energy future could be invalidated." “

Next in his article is the real motivation for the oil companies funding the Yes on 23 campaign.:

“Supporters of Proposition 23, which so far has been largely funded by oil companies Tesoro and Valero, acknowledge the measure would suspend several state regulations.

Most notably is the proposed "cap and trade" plan by the California Air Resources Board, which requires oil refineries, cement kilns, power plants and other large sources of greenhouse gases to limit their emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases that the majority of the world's climate scientists say are warming the planet.”

More proof of the oil companies intent is written into the proposition itself. Paul Rogers’ article has this.:

“Billions of dollars could hinge on one part of Proposition 23. It says:

"no state agency shall propose, promulgate, or adopt any regulation implementing (AB 32) and any regulation adopted before the effective date of this measure shall be void and unenforceable until such time as suspension is lifted."

Environmentalists say that means potentially any one of the more than 60 rules and laws that the air board is counting on to meet the global warming target could be tossed out.

One, for example, is a rule the air board passed in 2007 requiring large ships to shut down their engines and plug into the electric grid at port. The goal was to reduce diesel soot in towns such as Long Beach and Oakland where it has been linked to high asthma rates. But the rule also would reduce greenhouse gas emissions and is counted by the air board toward the plan implementing AB 32.”

The balance of his article basically says that the people with the Yes on 23 campaign say it won’t be that destructive and some of those things will be spared.

But, the article also makes clear that anything that is in that list that is spared will then be taken to court to postpone or stop with arguments that 23 says it should stop.

So, anything that is not clearly included will be slowed or stopped anyway.

In the end, only the attorneys handling these lawsuits and the oil companies will benefit if Proposition 23 passes.

It will reduce new job creation and increase unemployment over what it would have been otherwise.

That’s because for sure there will be fewer new jobs in California if 23 passes.

Clean tech, even with all the harm that befell its component companies from the recent credit freeze, actually has continued to ADD jobs during the recession while nearly every other sector of California’s economy was losing them.

That will get better if 23 is defeated and AB 32 is implemented. Even more clean tech jobs in California will be created.

So a vote against 23 is a vote for MORE California jobs.

How about lower gasoline and transport costs and utility bills?

Because of the coming effects of peak oil and population growth and more economic growth in the rest of the world, Proposition 23 is penny wise and ten dollar bill foolish, literally.

In the first year after it passed if that happened, gasoline might cost the same or 5 cents a gallon less than it does now, subsidized by the oil companies to “reward” us for our stupidity in their favor.

But within a year to ten years gasoline will cost from 20 cents to $3.20 a gallon or even MORE than it would have had Proposition 23 failed to pass!

We’ll feel the full effects of peak oil and rising world oil prices since we won’t have gotten a running start on creating alternatives and they won’t be in place to protect us!

This will cause more increases in unemployment and cut back further on new jobs.

If 23 fails and AB32 and the other related rules are implemented, gasoline may go up 10 or 15 cents a gallon more than it would have given the status quo – initially.

But the run up in gasoline prices from a year to ten years from now will be about HALF of what they would have been with Proposition 23.

So, if you want a strong California economy,vote NO on Proposition 23!

2010-08-18T14:26:00.000-07:00

National Oil Savings Plan of the Union of Concerned Scientists....

Today's post: Wednesday, 8-18-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 4 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post:

I subscribe to emails from 5 clean energy groups. I got an email this morning from the Union of Concerned Scientists asking me to forward a copy of their National Oil Savings Plan to President Obama.

I have two points to make in this post.

1. I think this is silly. President Obama believes in their goals; and he and the key people in his Department of Energy likely already have a copy of their plan. For example, they have already done well in supporting the development of electric cars and advanced battery design. They have acted to increase mileage standards.

What might help President Obama is a well informed enough and capable enough political consultant to show him how to sell the new jobs -- AND how overcoming the threat of peak oil slam dunking our economy is a critical job to PROTECT our existing jobs. This would be someone who would be effective enough and know how to test ideas well enough to enable him to promote actions to support clean energy AND win votes by doing so.

As long as the timid and short-sighted political consultants he has now hold him back or fail to do this, in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s words, he is “losing at the box office.”

In this economy, unless people realize and believe clean energy will add jobs and how much it will protect their jobs and lifestyles from the coming effects of peak oil AND that Obama is doing a good job on this issue, he will lose votes to others who voters think are promoting a strong economy better.

So, I decided to pass on writing him about their plan.

2. However, you and your Representative to the House in Washington and your Senators might not have seen it or understand how it important it is to put it into place.

So, I will post it here and add just after that why I think it is critical that it be adopted.

National Oil Savings Plan of the Union of Concerned Scientists

Scientific Solutions for America’s Oil Dependence

America's dependence on oil puts our environment, economy, public health, and national security at risk. But unless we create an oil savings plan that is based on sound science, smart policy, and good technology, we will repeat the mistakes of the past and stay reliant on oil.

That is why UCS is advocating for a plan that moves the country forward by boosting the fuel economy of our vehicles, producing clean biofuels, and investing in the next generation of advanced vehicles that no longer rely exclusively on oil.

If Americans were to do nothing to improve energy efficiency, or to invest in clean alternative fuels, and nothing to change the travel choices we make every day, our dependence could rise to more than 25 million barrels of oil each day by 2030.

If we instead secure the needed commitments from decision makers, automakers, fuel producers, and consumers, together, we can cut America's projected oil consumption by 2030 in half. This would save tens of billions of dollars at the gas pump; provide for a safer, more diverse, and more secure American energy future; and put the United States squarely in the driver's seat as a leader in addressing the urgent issue of climate change.

Working together as a nation we can finally start moving beyond oil. In addition to defending the hard-won victories on cleaner cars and fuel standards, UCS has developed a suite of policies that will transform our future:

Each point below lists these components:

Policy title
Description
Oil Savings (2030) in million barrels a day (mbd)

a) Improvements in Light-Duty Fuel Economy and Expanded Vehicle Electrification

Under existing authority, DOT and EPA can increase the fuel economy and reduce tailpipe emissions from light-duty vehicles. Tight standards and strong financial incentives can lead to an aggressive penetration of electric drive vehicles (plug-in hybrid, fuel cell and battery electric). By 2030, these vehicles would represent approximately 25% of all new vehicles sold.

5.8 mbd

b) Medium & Heavy-Duty Fuel Economy

Using existing authority from EISA and the Clean Air act, EPA and DOT can increase the fuel economy of medium duty vehicles to approximately 16mpg and heavy-duty vehicles to over 10mpg in 2030.

1.0 mbd

c) Improve Efficiency of Other Transportation Modes

Using existing authority, EPA can improve fuel economy and reduce emissions from non-road vehicles, including planes, trains, boats, and other non-highway vehicles.

0.7 mbd

d) Advanced Biofuels

Cellulosic biofuels made from grass, wood waste and even garbage can replace as much as 20 billion gallons of gasoline by 2030. But they are currently not projected to even meet the RFS mandates in 2022 due to a lack of capital. Adopting policies to launch a move from the lab into production would help reach and even exceed the RFS targets.

1.3 mbd

e) Industrial and Building Efficiency

Increase the energy efficiency in buildings and improve industrial processes, including an efficiency boost of boilers operating on fuel oil 50% by 2030

3.8 mbd

e) Smart Growth and Expanded Public Transit Options

Expanded public transit options, mode-shifting for freight, smart traffic management and other smart growth strategies.

1.3 mbd

TOTAL of these steps in OIL SAVINGS as contrasted to no action: 13.9 mbd

(These steps are listed exactly as they did. But I upgraded the format so they are clearer.)

The UCS oil savings plan is crucial to move our country forward. If we defend our current vehicle fuel economy standards and consumers and businesses meet oil consumption expectations, America’s oil use would simply remain at its current level.

We must go further, we must decrease our oil use, and that is what the UCS oil savings plan does.

The full suite of solutions will save more oil than the United States currently imports and will cut our total use of oil and other petroleum products to levels not seen since the 1960s. This would allow the transportation sector to emerge as the spearhead of a new clean energy economy.

Last Revised: 08/16/10 Clean Vehicles (plan)

My comments:

Their goals for expanding the use of electric cars and plug-in hybrids may be low. More may be achievable given the momentum building in the marketplace.

And, it would be a valuable addition to add goals for getting the new electricity for this effort from new wind and solar (both photovoltaic and thermal) electricity generation as well as from Bloom Energy’s natural gas powered fuel cells instead of by burning more coal.

Similarly goals for getting this natural gas from gasifying coal and getting some of the biofuels from the CO2 released when coal is used to generate electricity either with fuel cells or by burning in existing plants by having algae convert the CO2 to biofuels would be good. This would give the coal industry somewhere positive to go; and it would use our abundant coal deposits better to make us far less dependent on oil.

As you know if you have been reading this blog, peak oil is coming and to avoid having it slam dunk our economy which is now heavily oil dependent, taking these actions or at least doing the very best we can do to achieve them is truly imperative.

It would also make the United States a credible partner in fighting global warming with the rest of the world. It would be nice to lead by example instead of dragging our feet.

Doing these things also will clearly increase our National Security and improve our international balance of payments. The billions of dollars these actions can save in money spent to buy oil overseas times the coming increase in oil prices make this economically essential.

Simply put, if we take these actions, peak oil will challenge our economy but leave it functioning. If we do not, peak oil will slam our economy so hard the depression of the 1930’s will seem mild by comparison.

2010-08-11T14:59:00.000-07:00

Why the November, 2010 election in California is so important....

Today's post: Wednesday, 8-11-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 4 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post:

Since California passed AB32 & Governor Swarzenegger signed it showing that California was serious about cutting back on CO2 emissions and rapidly and massively increasing renewable and sustainable energy, literally millions of dollars of venture capital have gone into companies that will help do the job. Most of those have been in California and have added new jobs here that would otherwise not have existed.

Even more important, if AB32 says in place and is implemented two very desirable things will happen. These positive trends will continue and thousands of new jobs will be added. Secondly, when California pioneers a new trend that works, often the federal government and/or many other states will emulate California’s success.

That’s extremely important -- and I think may be critical for preventing economic collapse in the United States. Peak oil is predicted for 2014 & at today’s prices, production has already flat-lined. This trend towards very expensive and less available oil will keep growing rapidly now. Economic growth is expanding in the near term and even if it stalls, population growth will not stall and will keep increasing demand.

In addition, it turns out that more expensive oil comes from places like deep water oil drilling such as the well in the Gulf of Mexico that caused such severe problems. And, it comes or may come from oil from shale. It turns out that extracting oil from shale is one of the worst polluting ideas mankind has ever conceived. It manages to add strip mining to risks of pollution spills comparable to the recent oil spills in the Gulf and in Michigan. People who live in the areas affected are beginning to fight this, understandably. Their efforts are likely to decrease the amount of oil from these sources and make them cost more. This will NOT be a positive for the economy if we haven’t cut back on oil use and begun to bring clean energy alternatives online and on a large scale.

AB32 is not perfect. But given how important its goals are and that it has begun to make a real dent in this problem and will start to bring solutions online when little else of comparable size has yet been done, I think it is critical to put it into place and give it a fair trial. The good news is that the initial results have been quite good. In part because of the promise of AB32, solar and other clean technology companies have been the one sector in California that has consistently added jobs during the recession.

When you add in the facts that had the credit markets not collapsed to slow that job growth, it would have been two or three times as high and the credit markets are now in better shape, it seems clear to me that the LAST thing someone who cares about adding jobs in California would want to do is to stop AB32!

So, how does the upcoming November election in California relate to that?

Some people DO want to stop AB32 including some who SAY they want more jobs here in California.

If they succeed, none of this positive progress will happen or it will become an anemic, tiny part of what it would and should have been.

The buggy whip manufacturers went out of business when the market changed from buggies to cars by thinking of themselves ONLY in those narrow terms instead of as makers of useful components for vehicles. In almost the same way exactly, today’s oil companies think of themselves as oil and gas companies and have not really done the diversification they would and should have done into renewable energy had they actually realized they were in the energy business. The management at Exxon even heard this from most of their shareholders from the Rockefeller family and declined to do much. (They have added to their position in Natural Gas which I think will help them in the short run as that natural gas is used to make some of the electricity for electric cars. But I think of their stock as a long term sell unless their management improves.)

The problem is that in California, that management style has caused two Texas oil companies to fund Proposition 23, which is worded as if it is a postponement of AB32 but also includes a restart clause that is quite likely never going to happen. In essence, this means that they are funding a disinformation campaign to turn off AB32 entirely.

Please do job creation in California a favor and vote NO on Proposition 23!

Next, we have two races one for our next Governor and one for one of our two US Senators.

For Governor, we have Jerry Brown who, as our attorney general for California, thinks that increasing the solar part of renewable energy is important enough he just sued the Federal Agency that shut down an innovative funding plan to add the cost of building solar on your home to your property taxes.

Meg Whitman who is running against him said that even if Proposition 23 was defeated by the voters, one of the first things she will do if elected will be to suspend AB32. She can rationalize all she wants about this not slowing job growth in California. To me, it means she is so poorly informed she is not qualified to be our Governor.

I think that choice is quite clear, because even if you aren’t super sold on Jerry Brown in other ways, we will have more jobs in California and a more stable and secure economy if Jerry Brown is elected.

For US Senator, the choice is even clearer.

Barbara Boxer, the incumbent, has seniority and has been one of the strongest and most effective supporters in the country for clean and renewable energy.

Meanwhile her opponent, Carly Simon, is getting funded by oil and coal executives who not only are trying to avoid the needed changes in energy policy due to peak oil, they don’t believe that the data collected by scientists showing global warming is real.*

Here again, if you want more jobs in California and the United States and you want our future economy to be safe and secure, Barbara Boxer is dramatically more likely to deliver that.

*In my view, they are showing themselves to be close-minded, very poorly informed, and incompetent managers in so doing. I’d very strongly prefer we have a US Senator who they are not influencing with their money.

The data DO show global warming has been happening; and some of effects we are seeing are scary such as the current heat wave and fires in Moscow and the ones that happened not that long ago in Greece and near Oklahoma City in the United States. The percentage of CO2 in the earth’s air has been documented as going up and up and up.

I respect someone who says that there may be other reasons for these effects or that the CO2 burning fossil fuels has put into the air may not be the main cause. One book writer even has argued that global warming driven by fossil fuel burning may not wind up being that harmful. You often don’t find out the whole truth in science unless contrarians make you look for data that might fit these kinds of ideas. Even though none of the current data seem to support those views, some might exist. And, if we don’t look for that data, we may miss something real.

But these folks are certifiably incompetent managers. They may be not quite sane due to their lack of connection to reality.

Jack London once said that the contest is not always won by the strong nor will the victory in a race go to the swift, but that’s the best way to bet. The data show so far that it’s about 100 to one that global warming is real, has extremely dangerous effects, and is so far mostly triggered by burning fossil fuels.

If these executives said that they were holding onto some of the old ways in case the one chance in a hundred comes up, that’s fine. If they say that in their local community, the jobs doing it the old way are important and those workers and their local economy need some kind of protection, that’s reasonable and even responsible management.

But the ones that simply aren’t able to look at the data, understand they are likely real and make the best bets they can to move to a future they can be a part of if they are real are, in my view not competent managers and their connection to reality is suspect.

Since peak oil and global warming do look real and that dangerous and threatening to our economy and total amount of jobs, I strongly urge all voters in California to vote NO on Proposition 32 and to vote for Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer.

2010-08-04T13:38:00.000-07:00

Electric cars may be a key catalyst for renewable energy....

Today's post: Wednesday, 8-4-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 4 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post:

There will be a place for biofuels in an economy that is sustainable. Aviation fuels and for travel outside of areas with access to electricity and for the transition while very large numbers of vehicles still in use run on liquid fuels will all continue to need liquid fuels. So to stop using fuels from oil, we will need biofuels. And, biofuels from agricultural waste, from algae grown on lands not suitable for farming, and from algae fed CO2 from burning coal or oil or natural gas or from fuel cells using natural gas (see Bloom Energy), all will gradually become more available and more economically viable.

But, as the founder of Nanosolar showed in his blog, for harvesting energy from the sun, even our current technology for photovoltaic solar cells delivers many multiples of the energy that can be harvested from the same area through biofuels. Similarly, solar thermal, wind, and even nuclear as a CO2 and coal and oil free source of energy all output electricity.

So to the extent we wish to run our economy or the clear and large majority of our economy free from oil and coal, it will pay us to use these cleaner sources instead. And, they output electricity.

So, because of the large numbers of electric and plug-in hybrid cars now poised for sale in the next few months to few years, this enables a trend towards a more sustainable energy economy based on these renewable sources.

However, while oil and coal are not yet charged for the real costs of the pollution generated in extracting and burning them or for releasing CO2, it will take continuous drops in cost for electricity from renewable sources.

The good news is that I think over time they will be charged for these things. Further, due to the growth of population and economic growth the demand for oil will be greater than the supply again. That will drive costs up for drivers enough to make biofuels cost less and cause many people to switch to electric cars.

Then we will reach peak oil and the prices for oil will double and double again while the actual supply of oil will go down.

So, to change the majority of our transport to sustainable energy sources and to protect our economy, the majority of our transport should soon be powered by electricity. That means that the current surge of new models of cars that will be powered all or mostly by electricity, is not just good news but is in fact a critically important development.

2010-07-28T14:13:00.000-07:00

Act now to create jobs that save energy....

Today's post: Wednesday, 7-28-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 4 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post:

Yesterday, I got this in an email from the Sierra Club.:

“By passing Home Star, the Senate can create over 168,000 construction, manufacturing, and retail jobs in a new energy efficiency industry.

Home Star will create new jobs in hard hit industries, help consumers save money on their energy bills, and reduce our reliance on oil. But we only have two weeks to make our voices heard before the Senate breaks for the August recess.

Call your senators and urge them to support new jobs, lower energy bills, and oil savings by voting for Home Star.

Are you worried about the economy? Home Star will create new jobs in construction installing insulation and windows, in manufacturing producing equipment, windows and doors, and in retail selling insulation and air sealing products. And the program will pay for itself in less than eight years.

Are you worried about your bills? Home Star will save consumers $9.4 billion on their energy bills over ten years, and the program's accredited contractors and certified workers ensure that installations are done right.

Home star will help us break free of our oil addiction by saving over 40 billion barrels per year through home heating oil savings. That's equivalent to the entire Outer Continental Shelf oil production in Alaska and the Pacific combined.

Tell your senators that passing Home Star is the next step to ending our dirty, deadly, and dangerous addiction to fossil fuels and to building a clean energy economy.

The Home Star program is a win for workers, a win for homeowners, and a win for the environment. Now we need your help to make sure it passes before the August recess.

Time is running out -- will you make the call?”

My comments:

1. Both Democrats and Republicans should favor this bill. But if one or both of your senators does not yet support it for some reason or is on the fence, it could cause the bill to fail.

So, if you can, please phone your two senators and say you’d like them to vote for the bill.

For Democratic senators who mostly favor clean energy measures, this bill also can help them point to a job creating bill they voted for.

Also, many Republican senators want to reduce our dependence on foreign oil to make our country more secure which this bill would help do. And they say the most important task they have is to help create jobs right away. This bill would do that and voting for it can also help them point to a job creating bill they voted for.

2. Similarly, if you are a homeowner and this bill passes, I strongly recommend you take advantage of it. The tax free rebate repaying you a large part of the cost helps guarantee that the added savings will net you out more money than you pay. Even better, you can finance the energy savings upgrades and get the rebate and even may have the energy savings be more than the loan payment.

In the winter, you can use far less heating if you have good insulation and double pane windows in every window and glass door. Your utility bills will go down for that reason.

Even better, and worth knowing is that your home will be far more comfortable since it will stay at an about right temperature instead of going back and forth between too hot and too cold and will have far fewer cold drafts of chilling air.

In the summer, if you live in a home with a peaked roof that is not now well ventilated, adding insulation and double pane windows and adding extra ventilation intakes and convection powered exhaust fans in the roof will prevent heat from getting inside. Then you no longer need to run your air conditioner for hours to remove the heat. That can save even larger dollar amounts for some people than the winter savings.

Even better, and worth knowing is that your home will be far more comfortable since the number of times it will be too hot inside will be far less even on days you don’t run the air conditioner. And, by adding ceiling fans you will be even more comfortable and need even less air conditioning.

Best of all, your home will be dramatically less hot at night when you need to be home trying to sleep. Your energy levels and health and quality of life will be better during hot weather than it was before.

This bill is a win-win for our country and for you if it is passed.

2010-07-21T13:40:00.000-07:00

Electric Transport is beginning to happen....

Today's post: Wednesday, 7-21-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 4 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post:

Electric transport is beginning to happen.

1. Tesla is beginning to look like it will successfully become an established car company making upscale electric cars similar to what Audi or Acura or BMW does now for gasoline powered cars. They also have technology they will share with larger car companies.

2. Within five years it looks as if all the following major car companies will make all electric or plug-in hybrid cars that run over 90 % of the time as electric cars.:

Toyota; Honda; Nissan; and Mitsubishi from Japan.

Ford and Chevrolet in the United States.

And, just yesterday, I found out the Volkswagen is making a serious effort to become a leading manufacturer of electric cars.

3. And, if you didn’t see it, this was in our post 3 weeks ago:

And, that’s not all. Coulomb Technologies is developing multiple ways to support building networks of charging stations for electric and plug-in hybrids. They have a large deal with Ford and also are ready to support the Nissan Leaf and are working with Siemens to support an EV (electric vehicle) Siemens is developing.

A company called Better Place is setting up a combination of fast charging stations and electric cars that work with them in several places.

And, Amprius in the Silicon Valley says they have a technology to increase the charge lithium batteries can take and deliver by 40%. If they do and get it into production, that will either increase the range cars can drive using only electricity or lower the cost and weight of their battery packs or both.

And there are also many new advanced technology battery companies as well. These include A123 Systems and Boston Power both in Boston plus the high technology battery companies in China that venture capitalist, John Doerr says are doing well despite very little coverage here.

There’s good news and bad news in this.

The best news is that this will dramatically cut our dependence on and use of fuels from petroleum. It will lower the maintenance cost of transport and driving because electric cars are simpler and far less complex than internal combustion engines.

Since peak oil and price run ups in fuels from petroleum look likely within that same timeframe or soon after it, this transition will really help our economy.

The bad news is that it may make our transport systems vulnerable to solar electromagnetic storms which have melted telegraph wires in the past.

But the likely bad news is that it will put a lot of pressure on the utility companies to generate and deliver more electricity. Some powering of electric cars can be done with existing generation facilities at night when the demand for electricity for lighting, business, and air conditioning is far less.

But it also means that more natural gas and coal will be burned to generate electricity.

All of this makes development of clean energy sources of electricity such as photovoltaic solar, thermal solar, and wind –and -- cleaner and more efficient ways to generate electricity from natural gas and coal even more important than they are now. And, it will increase the demands to build more nuclear plants to generate electricity.