Small Needs to Get Big

August 15, 2009

Forget big wind farms with their pesky transmission issues. Locally produced power is the way forward. (See the richly detailed argument made almost a decade ago in the compelling treatise Small is Profitable). Floundering efforts to get transmission in place for big wind farms highlight the wisdom of Small. 

T. Boone Pickens' $8B wind program is mucked in a transmission tarpit (okay, maybe among other issues as well). This Fast Company article plumbs California's similarly large, expensive, mired, maybe-someday transmission project Green Path North, and arrives at the same "power locally" conclusion.

Big Wind and Big Solar may pencil out as cost effective renewable energy solutions, but adding variables like government agency and NIMBY can wreck the cost equation, or, in a time equation, put them in the way back (back there with Nuke and Big Fossil Plant). Priced holistically and in the real world, distributed renewables might be best, and what we should be focusing on. 

Distributed renewables: an old idea to make powr cleanr soonr.

Photo: Darren Rogers on flickr. Also, check out Darren's stuff at RedBubble.

The Corporate Director of Sustainability

July 12, 2009

What would you do if you were asked to fill the company's newly created role of Corporate Director of Sustainability for a worldwide manufucturing organization? There would be so much to do, starting from scratch as you are. Besides working on creating and setting a strategic vision, I would do two things right away: understand the business risks and opportunities of cap-and-trade and other looming programs, and, find something to pay my salary. I would cast around for actionable undertakings with quick paybacks, like making:

Forward Looking Infrastructure

December 23, 2008

   

We're getting ready to do lots of infrastructure. But exactly what "infrastructure" is has become a loosely defined, elastic territory at the critical juncture of being made firm. And while the shovel ready stuff is needed to create jobs quickly, more important for long term success is the transformative undertakings listed below. Some don't create lots of jobs right away, but they don't require as much capital either, and it makes sense to get them (and their big, long lead times) rolling now.

Here are some good bets for infrastructure that could unleash untold (and as of yet unimagined) waves of innovation and progress by creating abundant energy and transport (as computing and the internet created easy, abundant information):

• Smart Grid
• Urban renewables (to include enhanced geothermal)
• More transmission from the sunny, windy and watery places that can produce industrial scale solar and wind power
• Infrastructure needed to implement the Mileage Fee
  • at Gas Stations
  • the standard inclusion of GPS in vehicles
• the Electric Recharge Grid
• Batteries for hybrid and electric vehicles, at production scale
• Electric Rail

Photo: Steve Kelley on flickr

Dawn of the New Energy Order

October 26, 2008

How will America change the way it uses energy? Last month we offered a draft speech that would let the new US President to tell us how. Here's the speech updated with the most excellent insights of our readers.

8:00 p.m. EST January 21, 2009, Dawn of the New Energy Order

September 21, 2008

Here's a little speech we worked up for the next President to deliver at 8 p.m. eastern standard time on his first day in office. Say something good and we'll tuck it into the final draft which publishes before the election. We're told this speech could go viral, and with a few tweaks, be delivered by the next President. So, if you want to touch history, if you want a piece of the first democratically crafted presidential speech ever, jump in. (Like the democratically crafted movie "Snakes," only without the flop part). This speech could well be the marker for the dawn of the New Energy Order.

Click here to read the speech.