gadgets – Page 2 – Alan Flurry

April 12, 2011

Clean Energy Race?

No, it’s not newly discovered caste of green humans.

Our research shows that the clean energy sector around the world has roared back from flat recessionary levels, increasing 30 percent from 2009 to achieve a record $243 billion2 worth of finance and investment in 2010. More than 90 percent of all clean energy investments were directed to companies and projects in the G-20. Excluding research and development funding, clean energy finance and investment in the G-20 countries totaled $198 billion, 33 percent more than was invested in 2009.

That’s from the Pew Charitable Trusts report, “Who’s Winning the Clean Energy Race?” You can guess the nature of part the next:

The Americas region is a distant third in the race for clean energy investment, attracting $65.8 billion overall in 2010. Investments in the United States rebounded 51 percent over 2009 levels to reach $34 billion, but the United States continued to slide down the top 10 list, falling from second to third. Given uncertainties surrounding key policies and incentives, the United States’ competitive position in the clean energy sector is at risk. Growth is sharper in Latin America, where private clean energy investment in Argentina increased by 568 percent and in Mexico by 273 percent, the highest growth rates among G-20 members.

That’s right. Growth is sharper in Latin America. I mean, God bless ’em and all, but this is actually too serious to be an embarrassment. Our competitive position in the clean energy sector, such that it is, is at risk in the toilet because of a failure to face up to the facts. Instead we just want to debate them. Opportunity knocking a plenty, but only others answering.

Godspeed you clean energy racers.

December 17, 2010

Too Things

1. This stuff is easy to miss: China learns at the knee(s) of the master… or do they?

Thanks to the Dandong plant and hundreds others like it, China is in the midst of unprecedented economic growth—and an unprecedented surge in the use of energy, primarily from burning coal. Coal is the fuel of China and that isn’t going to change anytime soon. As a result, China is now the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, along with all the other noxious by-products of coal burning. At the same time, the Chinese government has committed to reducing its CO2 emissions per economic unit by at least 40 percent by 2020. Tasked with ensuring that the nation delivers on that goal is the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the government agency that essentially sets Chinese energy and industrial policy.

“In Manhattan, lights are lit 24 hours and China will never do that,” says NDRC vice chairman Zhang Guobao via a translator, although the lights of this border town abutting North Korea blaze well into the night, illuminating businesses that tout their names in both Chinese and Korean characters. “China can never learn from the United States in terms of lifestyle. Per capita energy consumption is five times that of China and suppose, one day, that we learn from the U.S.A.: Can you imagine what the world will be?”

And then this talk, by Leslie Hazleton on reading the Qur’an.

December 13, 2010

Wind WIN

The Philadelphia Eagles are out to a big lead in renewable energy for their stadium, Lincoln Financial Field, below.

Stadium-Aerial-2-Revised-11-15

Lincoln Financial Field will convert to self-generated renewable energy w/ the help of Solar Blue! Solar Blue will equip Lincoln Financial Field with onsite wind, solar power and dual-fuel generated electricity.

Vertical axis wind turbines, solar panels, biofuel-fired cogeneration power plant… all bold in the original, if you know what I mean. It’s high-visibility because people watch this stuff and so could be very impact-y and go far beyond the direct generation of power – which is huge on its own. Signals, people.

Maybe with the new moonroof in the Minneapolis dome roof and the clamoring for a new, publicly-financed stadium there, someone in the process will get a clue and connect some possibilities to some needs, try to make these enormous, new projects into something more than a way to showcase the world largest flatscreen TV.

Go Iggles.

December 7, 2010

The Nature of Envy

There’s a non-sensical story in here somewhere about harnessing the friction between the world’s two largest emitters of GhG’s to generate electricity, but I either can’t find it or look past it too easily.

He noted that China has recently leapfrogged over the United States to become the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases. “They know the world’s radar is on them,” Mr. Ramesh said. “If transparency becomes the stumbling block, China doesn’t want to be blamed. If China is the only party holding out, they won’t collapse the negotiations.”

It’s Cancún, you see, anything can happen – unless december weekends are decidedly un-spring break-like. Actually, I don’t mean to be so flip. This is the United Nations – the group to which falls the tasks labeled ‘doing something’ when nobody wants to do anything. Nobody wanting anything done actually is another case entirely and has a conference of its own.

But another word, because something is escaping us here with all these willing and smart people gathered in one place, on envy, especially as the wrench ex machina of egalitarianism.

A different way in which envy might be thought to motivate broadly egalitarian thought is by appeal to the idea of envy-free allocations. A distribution of goods is said to be “envy-free” when no one prefers anyone else’s bundle of resources to her own.^[] The suggestion here is not that envy is the psychological motivation for the concern with equality, but rather that, where a distribution in fact produces envy, this is grounds to doubt the fairness of the distribution. But ‘envy’ in these contexts is a technical term for any situation in which someone prefers another’s bundles of goods, and does not refer to the emotional syndrome with which this entry is concerned.^[]

This is the chief virtue of resistance to economic changes and any greater changes in the way we power, light, ship and travel. The haves (look around you) are afraid that at the end of this dull day, we will all be reduced to just having the same things. When, really, taste, rather any kind of envy-free allocation, would never allow for such a thing – as this failure of imagination gainfully proves. So this brand of resisters really have nothing to worry about. Just not the way they usually expect to be beyond worry. Fear of the bottom, therefore, drives the refusal to alter any actions at the top. Let this be addressed.

October 19, 2010

How Slow Can You Go?

This Wall Street Journal article uses an example I’ve brought up before to say that guilt is the route to greener behavior. No, it isn’t.

Washington, D.C., imposed a five-cent tax on every disposable bag, paper or plastic, handed out at any retail outlet in the city that sells food, candy or liquor, effective Jan 1. But more important than the extra cost was something more subtle: No one got bags automatically anymore. Instead, shoppers had to ask for them—right in front of their fellow customers.

The result? Retail outlets that typically use 68 million disposable bags per quarter handed out 11 million bags in the first quarter of this year and fewer than 13 million bags in the second quarter, according to the district’s Office of Tax and Revenue. That may help explain why volunteers for the city’s annual Potomac River Watershed Cleanup day in mid-April pulled 66% fewer plastic bags from the Anacostia River than they did last year.

District Councilman Tommy Wells doesn’t believe it is the nominal cost that’s keeping shoppers from using bags, but rather the expectation—made clear in a very public way in every transaction—that they could make do without. “It’s more important,” he concludes, “to get in their heads than in their pocketbooks.”

This is a decent example that draws the wrong conclusions. Yes, there are measurable returns from using pricing to effect behavior – and we definitely should use them. But the green aspect of this is about as lame as you can possibly expect. Using guilt isn’t the best way to get anyone to do anything and so should be given no quarter here. Peer pressure is perhaps a different story. But invoking guilt makes this just another marketing campaign destined to lose steam after a while – or worse, avail people of a work around. Because we will find ways to feel good about who we are and what we do, even if denial is one of them. And this is a far more powerful force than any guilt that can be summoned to make you use less, walk more, take a train, turn someone instead of something on at night.

Here is our greatest possibility. We’re interested in sexy and are powerless before it. So when slow is sexy (deja, already!), and the two get connect (Hook up!*) in people’s minds, we’ve got a renewable hold on being green. We just don’t yet think about it that way.

But, take your time, fer chrissakes. With everything.

* Good grief – the bus and billboard campaigns literally write themselves – a young man, a nipple: “Turn it off – and Turn her On!”

October 12, 2010

Transformational Means

Also known as Getting Green(tm), or the means to transform the way a region (or country, or planet) is powered:

WASHINGTON — Google and a New York financial firm have each agreed to invest heavily in a proposed $5 billion transmission backbone for future offshore wind farms along the Atlantic Seaboard that could ultimately transform the region’s electrical map.

The 350-mile underwater spine, which could remove some critical obstacles to wind power development, has stirred excitement among investors, government officials and environmentalists who have been briefed on it.

Google and Good Energies, an investment firm specializing in renewable energy, have each agreed to take 37.5 percent of the equity portion of the project. They are likely to bring in additional investors, which would reduce their stakes.

So, in the span of a week PK writes about the non-existent stimulus spending, and the tunnel that won’t be built (not in a day, not in a year or 10) and so we should begin to get a genuine idea of what a lack of progress looks like by now – with more where that came from. But the problem is one of perception and purposeful misunderstanding. We’re basically using money as prism but seeing all the wrong things through it. Yes: projects are expensive. But they put people to work and we have no other choice but to constantly improve and fine-tune our physical infrastructure anyway. And while it’s easy to demagogue supposedly high-dollar fiascos like the financial bailout of last year, how about recognizing the fact that it will actually cost $0? Why, you ask? Now you’re getting green.

September 11, 2010

I’ll Second That

Atrios on 9/11:

A tragic day which brought out the worst in our country. Not right away, but once evil people saw opportunity to exploit it for their own dreams of destruction.

War, plus/too/and, all things Green got crammed with ‘energy-security’ sugar plums to dance in our heads, meanwhile… bombs. Even the renewables rhetoric had to go militant, presto/macho – we must envision a grand Manhattan Project to wean us off of foreign oil, instead of you know, just doing it.

Down here, the PTB have been talking about a brain-train from our burg to ATL for at least a decade, instead of just buying the rights-of-way and building a high-speed rail fun ride to the airport.

Stupid. Thanks, terrorists.

August 13, 2009

Science… So What?

principal drawing of a caisson. cc wikimedia

So Everything. Thus spaketh this fancy new U.K. site. Whether you’re wondering why the sky is blue or arguing with your friends at the bar over what a caisson is*, it seems like a good place to go for answers, as well as explanations for why science is important. As if anybody would possibly need that. The site seems to be predicated on being a destination/resource for kids, but I really don’t see how we’re availed of such distinctions.

*Actually, if your barman isn’t handy with a Webster’s Dictionary to settle such fraci – which can escalate – you should seek improvement in your level of watering hole.

April 1, 2009

Ugly Green Ties to the Past

Not that one, specifically, but not altogether different, either.

I’m as skeptical as anybody about clean coal, but as a fan, of sorts, of Energy Secretary Steven Chu, I’m willing to give him and cc its due when he goes to links to take it seriously. Following routes we ostensibly mistrust, after all, is what open mindedness is about, n’Green pas?

This is all concerns FutureGen, a public-private partnership to build a first-of-its-kind coal-fueled, near-zero emissions power plant.

The article somehow manages to wax agnostic about the merits of living with the contradictions of the above statement.

Stephanie Mueller, press secretary for the U.S. Department of Energy, issued a statement after Monday’s meeting leaving no doubt about Chu’s interest. “Secretary Chu believes that the FutureGen proposal has real merit,” Mueller said. “In the coming weeks, the department will be working with the Alliance and members of Congress to strengthen the proposal and try to reach agreement on a path forward.”

If the project is revived, it will have plenty of company internationally. Three similar IGCC projects figure among a dozen schemes that European leaders last month deemed eligible to compete for €1 billion in stimulus funds set aside to support commercial-scale application of CCS in coal-fired power plants. Of those projects, six will be selected to receive funding. Meanwhile, a consortium of Chinese power generators has initiated construction of the GreenGen project, which was inspired by FutureGen.

I cringed repeatedly about Obama’s invocation of cc on the campaign trail; it sounded exactly like the dreamy sort of pandering with which his critics have tried to paint him, to little effect thus far. But here comes the administration again, continuing to strike a serious posture with an expensive, non-serious solution.

The idea of outfitting new coal-fired power plants with carbon storage and sequestration technology should be a minimal point of entry into our energy supply; that the coal industry can and does tout this as the next greatest thing speaks to bar height for the industry and the candle power of politicians as much as anything. As we have said, the cheapest power plants are the ones we don’t have to build. Measures to flatten demand should at least accompany gargantuan efforts to make a dirty power clean.

And even on 4/1 this is not a joke.