R.E.preneur

Why The Downturn In The Economy Will NOT Kill Cars 2.0

If you haven't noticed lately, the blogs have all been clamoring with pessimistic talk about how scared they all are that the slide into recession will kill promising green transportation concepts. 

While this was a legitimate fear a decade ago (thanks C.A.R.B.) when oil was still $10-30 a barrel, the aberration of volatility that was 2008 has shaken the core of the auto industry. 

As the Big 3 fly into D.C. on their G5 and leave with their pockets full they know they must throw a hail-mary pass by going back to their days in the Ivy league MBA classrooms and whip up a promising new business plan for Cars 2.0. 

Detroit has resisted true innovation for... at least 50 years.  The fallout from this is unemployment in the metro area hovering just over 10%.

Thomas Friedman couldn't have said it better when he noted that if the Big 3 fail, the government auto bailout will be viewed as a massive government handout to the typewriter industry at the dawn of the computer. 

Whether the Big 3 succeed or fail, they will kill themselves trying (hopefully figuratively) and they will be well capitalized by the American taxpayer. 

The Detroit corner offices have taken notice of the throngs of start-up auto manufacturers with promising pre-production vehicles that are radically differentiated from the heap of turd, inefficient, stylistically-bland products that the Trifecta has been stamping out for the past two decades.

Project Better Place, Aptera, Tesla, Fisker, Th!nk (someone please give them some money), Smart, Mini E.  Each and every one of these companies has more swagger and a more promising business plan than any of the Detroit Trio. 

GM is the trio's lead singer with the 2010 Chevy Volt, a Plug-in Hybrid with a 40 mile EV range.  But if they don’t successfully mass market it and roll the technology out across all of their affiliates by 2015, they are up a creek without a paddle. 

Unfortunately, they've already blown through $1B+ wasting time on hydrogen fuel cells, a technology so completely over-hyped that we all smelled a rat.  Which is the same reason that corn-based ethanol will fall by the way side in 2009.

Ford has previously been leading with hybrids, but the brand is too closely tied to 15-mpg SUVs and trucks that made great sense when Bush was handing out $50,000 tax write-offs to small business owners to buy them.  Even with the return of $2 gallons of gas, the public perceives driving an urban assault vehicle as wasteful and moronic, not to mention removed from reality. 

The hope for Ford is that, although they are bleeding red ink just like the rest, their CEO had the presence of mind to pad the bank account upon his arrival by mortgaging the majority of their manufacturing facilities.  That bought him 18 months, still not much of a runway.

Chrysler is a distant third with out of touch brands like Dodge and Jeep.  The type of innovation it will take to save this company, without more federal handouts, has not been seen since the creation of the internal combustion engine. 

If the suspender-wearing management at Cerberus had two wits about them they would buy Project Better Place.  Seriously, they should buy PBP.  But they won't, because they can't wrap their head around the subscription service business model for personal transportation. 

I Hope Obama has the guts to rip the massive subsidies out of the corn ethanol farmers hands and then give it right back to them by placing an equally massive investment in green infrastructure.  But he must pick technologies that aren’t filled with fatal flaws, which was Bush’s giant green mistake.  Here’s my list in order of best bang for your buck: energy efficiency, solar, batteries, wind, smart grids, ocean, geothermal, and transmission period.  Make your voice heard Secretary Chu, and make your pocketbook green.

Electricity is the only answer to foreign oil independence.  The only rocket-science is in better batteries, which aren’t even a necessity for the industry to thrive, just an added bonus.  We can already see the light at the end of this tunnel.

When the capital markets return, 2009 will be the year that the massive cleantech investment sector shifts wildly to Cars 2.0 start-ups, each with a different way to change the world all over again.  The technology will leap frog with surprising speed.  Have you seen the crazy ideas the guys at EEStor are cooking up?  No one saw that coming, time will tell if it’s real. 

With 2010 already being evangelized as the year of the commercialized Plug-In Hybrid, 2009 will see green feeding the green beast, which equals a whole lot of green.  If you aren’t already dipping your toes in the automotive revolution, hop on board because this train is leaving the station. 

Need some inspiration?  Go watch the stirring documentary, “Who Killed The Electric Vehicle”.  It worked for me.

Tis the season for New Year’s resolutions; mine is to start/help a non-profit tasked with evangelizing the electric vehicle to the uneducated mass market.  Thesis statement: Check.  What's yours?  With any luck, we’ll be seeing green in no time at all.

Yucca Mountain: Last Resort? Best Option? Doomed to Disaster?

America has not built a new Nuclear plant in over a decade. But, currently there are 30 applications for new nuclear generating facilities permits (A process which takes 12 years).





Yucca Mountain was billed as the solution to the nuclear storage issue, but after being originally scheduled to open in 1998, the facility's current opening date of 2017 has been put on hold after the federal government slashed the facility's 2008 budget from $494M to $386M. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) led the fight against Yucca Mountain. State and Local Las Vegas authorities have also joined the legal battle against the project.

Should Harry Reid be to blame in the coming years when the federal government has to start paying U.S. utilities between $300-$500 million per year of taxpayer dollars in order to deal with the storage issues that the government themselves has failed to agree on.

What are the REALISTIC, or at least semi-realistic solutions? I only want to hear "shoot it into the sun" if it is feasible, economical, and moral.

To join in on the debate visit my LinkedIn question about the issue. I'll post the best answers here.

Resources:
Recent Las Vegas Review Article

Department of Energy: Office of Nuclear Energy

EUEC 2008 Renewable Energy Track: Abbreviated Notes, Info Bites and Loose Ends

I promised more insight from the Electric Utilities Environmental Conference 2008 conference so here it is.  These are my rough notes of any insightful info gleaned during a speaker's presentation or Q & A.

Jeffrey Michel, Ing.-Büro Michel, Germany
The United States has 460 different sets of regulations for solar power – Can you keep track?  Quoted from E & Y annual RE study.
    Believes that America needs designated solar energy parks where transmission can support a large amount of renewables located in the right places.

Jordan Fruge, NewPoint Energy:
A solar PV system in the U.S. costs an average of $7.84/watt installed
    - 50% of that is module cost, 20% is Balance of Systems, and 30% is Installation & Commissioning
    - Germany, who has 35K trained workers in solar has a lower installed cost despite higher module pricing
    - Emphasis is need for broad-based support to educate cleantech workforce

Return on Energy Investment:
    Silicon: 1.6 years
    Thin Film PV: 1 year
    Wind: Less than 1 year
    Palo Verde Nuclear: 14 years of energy out = the amount of energy used to build & fuel it

Allen Jay St. Clair, Windstone Capital Partners
    2.2B in private equity into cleantech in 2007, up 46%
    Green Construction is a $15B industry growing at 50%/year
    2007 brought America’s first reduction in miles driven since 1973

John O’Donnell, Ausra
    Ausra’s CLFR (compact linear fresnel reflector) technology uses 1-5% the water of conventional power generation
    They can produce energy right now at $0.12/kWh, with storage at $0.09/kWh
    31-33% efficiency @ converting solar thermal energy
    Two areas of innovation:
        40x concentration of the sun, 550 degree saturated steam
        Energy stored as pressurized water & “other”
    CA: Peak is Noon to 8pm
    16 hours of energy storage at a 60% capacity factor
    1 positioner controls 300-400 m2 of glass
    Glass is 8’ off the ground: size is 60’ x 8’
    The company’s Australian factory produced 1 module every 2.5 hours
    The company’s claims their Las Vegas factory using robotic construction will produce one module every 10 minutes
    Their glass covers 75% of the total land area

Xavier Baldwin, Burbank Water & Power
    PHEV Benefits:
    Reduce GHG, dependence on foreign oil, provide peaking capacity and reserves, help integrate (shape) wind power into the resource mix, improve system efficiency and load factor.

    Smart (Grid) means ability to communicate both ways.  Charge-up your PHEV at off-peak rate of $0.05/kWh.  Grid gets 8 kW of “spinning” reserve per PHEV. 

    How can we make this a reality?
-    Develop and integrate a Grid Control System
-    Plus a PHEV charging system
-    And a Smart Grid Communication System
-    Finish it off with a cross utility accounting system

Any entrepreneurs interested in building some solutions?

New Company V2Green partnered with Xcel Energy to test VCM on Ford Escape PHEV
The Cascadia Institute is working on smart grid technologies and applications

Interested in PHEV’s? You must read FERC Commissioner John Wellinghoff’s paper on PHEV’s. 

Thomas Jensen, Sonnenschein, Nath, & Rosenthal LLP
    Ocean Renewables: 800x denser than air @ sea level
    Not an intermittent power source
    The federal laws for ocean energy are a MESS!  It’s a public lands issue, since there are no private sites

Why Barack Obama will only solve half of America's energy problems

I began researching Barack Obama about a year and a half ago when a friend of mine getting a graduate degree in Political Science at George Washington University told me that if Obama runs for President he would go work for him.  That was a fairly bold statement and I wondered what had my friend so hyped up about the politician. 

From the start, I liked what I heard and saw.  Not from a wealthy, or prestigious family.  A graduate of Columbia and Harvard Law School where he was the first African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review.  He began his career as a community organizer, university lecturer, and civil rights lawyer. 

He served as an Illinois State Senator from 1997-2004, and is currently a member of the U.S. Senate in his first term. He has authored two bestselling books: a memoir of his youth titled Dreams from My Father, and The Audacity of Hope, a personal commentary on U.S. politics.  At age 46, he represents change for many Americans. 

I began listening to his weekly podcasts on iTunes.  The free downloads consisted of a 7-9 minute recording from Barack himself discussing what he considered to be the hot topic in the senate and/or politics at the moment.  He would often discuss specific bills (some that he had authored himself), how he planned to vote, and why he believed the issue was important for America.  I found this type of transparency and accountability noble for a politician.  I found him well-spoken and intellectual. 

Then, as I personally began ramping up my own environmental efforts and working in the renewable energy sector I made a dedicated effort to decipher how different candidates addressed the issues involved in climate change.  Slowly and surely, my skepticism grew. 

Barack Obama is my favorite candidate on the democratic side (Huckabee on the right).  But I believe that his focus as a President will only solve half of America's energy problems.  Here's why. 

George Bush is from Texas, he ran his family's oil company before becoming governor of Texas and then President.  Essentially, his blood runs thick with light crude.  So I was frustrated but not surprised to see that his presidency saw little legislative support for energy change at scale in America.  A lot of talk, a few great sound bites like "America is addicted to oil", but no real change. 

Barack Obama is from Illinois.  One of my extremely smart co-workers last summer informed me that Illinois is a coal rich state.  Which made sense when I thought of every environmental talk that I had heard from Barack. 

He loves to talk about the Healthcare for Hybrids bill that he introduced.  He is a huge proponent of raising CAFE (gas mileage) standards which hasn't been done in 17 years.  He supports mandating that all new cars be FlexFuel, which only costs $100 per car, as well as mandating that the government only purchase FlexFuel vehicles.  All of which I applaud his leadership on. 

Unfortunately, he is mostly focusing on the transportation sector, which I believe is important, especially for restoring our political and oil independence from the middle east.  However, I personally believe that when it comes to climate change and the environment, an equal amount of focus needs to be placed on removing America's dependence on one of its biggest assets: coal. 

Its been said that America is more coal rich than the middle east is oil rich.  Wonderful, we are blessed with natural resources that have helped make America a global power.  I've written about the effects on the environment that a coal plant has here.  Not to mention the effect on the natural landscape that the mining of coal creates, wiping out entire mountains in the name of cheap energy. 

Don't get me wrong, I've heard Barack state that he supports the adoption of more solar, wind, and geothermal (though few details have been provided).  However, whenever he mentions power generation he almost always mentions Clean Coal, an idea that most GeoGreens (Thomas Friedman's term for those who understand the global problem that the green movement addresses) are critical of. 

David Roberts over at Grist sums up clean coal well in his article, "Coal gasification, 'Clean Coal' or subsidy hungry boondogle?"

David writes: "In short, if you view coal gasification from the perspective of today's energy situation, it's an improvement. If you view it from the perspective of the optimal renewable-energy future, it's a big scam."

I tend to take the optimal RE future perspective, mostly because of the myriad of benefits that RE offers over coal, even clean coal.  So while I appreciate Barack for his leadership, and how seriously he takes the issue.  I worry that he may always buy-in to the big scam that is "clean coal". 

Want Renewable Energy in America? Contact your state and federal legislators!

One of my favorite classes in high school was my senior democracy and civics class.  For many maturing teenagers, this class represents the first time that they will intelligently debate issues that affect our society. 

Although I enjoyed the way I was challenged to uncover my beliefs on various social and economic issues, there was a sense in which our debate had minimal impact on the reality of our democracy.  Many Americans move onto college or start jobs and only get involved in their democracy every four years when they vote for their preferred parties selected candidate.

Many Americans don't realize that our democracy works, and with the advent of the internet age it has become much easier to participate.  At least that has been my experience concerning the role that legislators play in determining America's energy future. 

Of course, in order to be active in a democracy you have to be passionate about a particular cause.  For me, this is clearly renewable energy.  As an entrepreneur, I believe in the mantra that I have learned from Jim Jindrick over at Businessrulesofthumb.com, also my McGuire program mentor. 

    "Earn a profit solving customer problems better than the competition!"

Notice this doesn't say anything about competing on price.  It focuses on solving problems better.  That's why I love renewable energy.  Renewable energy is a superior solution to conventional fossil-fueled power generation.  It may not be cheaper, but it is a superior solution.

Just a few of the benefits of renewable energy include:
    - clean air

    - low/zero greenhouse gas emissions

    - greatly reduced water usage compared to conventional power generation

    - Higher number of technical jobs per MW

    - distributed generation which can improve quality of service

Compare this with the stats from a typical coal plant:

A Typical Coal Plant

A typical 500-megawatt coal plant produces 3.5 billion kilowatt-hours per year -- enough to power a city of about 140,000 people.

It burns 1.4 million tons of coal (the equivalent of 40 train cars of coal each day) and uses 2.2 billion gallons of water each year. In an average year, this one plant also generates the following:

• 10,000 tons of sulfur dioxide
• 10,200 tons of nitrogen oxide, equivalent to half a million late-model cars
• 3.7 million tons of carbon dioxide, equivalent to cutting down 100 million trees
• 500 tons of small particles
• 220 tons of hydrocarbons
• 720 tons of carbon monoxide
• 125,000 tons of ash and 193,000 tons of sludge from the smokestack scrubber
• 170 pounds of mercury, 225 pounds of arsenic, 114 pounds of lead, 4 pounds of cadmium, and other toxic heavy metals
• Trace amounts of uranium

Source: Union of Concerned Scientists

There are many more reasons that I am passionate about renewable energy, but my point is this.  Due to the advent of the internet age and some great advocacy organizations it has been simple to keep track of the progress that Congress has been making on new renewable energy provisions in the current energy bill.  I catch most of the details on this from reading the blogroll over at Renewable Energy Access. 

RE Access teamed up with SolarNation in order to enable their readers to contact their legislators during key decision points for Congress and weigh-in on why our public officials should support renewable energy. 

At least three times this year I have used SolarNation's online tools to write emails to my local legislators.  Plus, since I'm in college I can contact legislators from my home state of WA, my college address in Tucson, and my summer internship in Phoenix.  I have been able to call their offices, speak with energy staffers, and often they will have a staffer reply to my emails with a standard letter on how they plan to support these bills. 

Multiple stories have stated that legislators changed their actions, or placed more urgency on the matter due to the groundswell of support that they received from their constituents.  Of course, this could just be fodder to make the actions of a few look more effective, but I doubt it. 

Plus, I've been able to send invitations to my politically active and passionate friends to do the same.  As a follow up to the article by Thomas Friedman about the greenest thing you can do is elect new leaders.  I would add to that, you can demand that your legislators act in a way that reflects the desires of their constituents.  America wants more renewable energy.  But we need to make our voices heard in Washington D.C. 

Right now, the Senate is trying to water down a version of the Energy bill that the House passed last week containing $21 billion for renewable energy, a 15% national RES, long-term extensions of both the investment and production tax credits and various energy efficiency incentives.  These are all measures that would help to build a sustainable clean energy economy in America and establish the US as a world leader in Cleantech. 

You don't have to sit by and let this happen as our air and water quality continue to decline.  Contact your senators today and tell them that you want them to support the House version of the Energy bill. 

Solar Power 2007 Conference

Myself and two members from my entrepreneurship team just got back from Long Beach this week where we attended Solar Power 2007.  The conference was awesome and is essential for anyone trying to learn more about the industry. 

For me it was all about conversations.  Some of the sessions were informative and a great place to hear from experts in their field.  But the most intensive learning came from talking with industry insiders in different parts of the value chain.

Below is a link that contains a lot of coverage from the event.  There are a lot of webcast videos.  I highly recommend watching some that you are interested in.  For me, I am just finishing watching the Wal-Mart VP speak about their new format's and their effort's in sustainability. 

Ted Turner was hilarious so if you need a laugh today, watch him.  Otherwise, enjoy your weekend. 

Solar Power Conference Webcasts