Alt-Energy Blog

You've heard me rant on our dependence on foriegn oil and how we need to invest in alternative energy sources to reduce that dependency. If not, read this, and this, and this.

Today, a reader emailed me about an alternative energy blog. I'll add it to my RSS reader and blogroll. Although I don't invest in alternative energy (because I don't know enough about it to do it well), I sure am interested in it.

Comments

[Jackson]

It's funny how Al Gore could talk about this until he was blue in the face and nobody listened. All he had to do was say; "Hey, you can make money here".

[Mandown]

You're a venture capitalist, put your money where your mouth is.

[hey]

look, energy development is a very very very hard thing to do well (i.e. make money off of)

the 2nd law of thermodynamics is a serious
buzzkill that quashes most good ideas, and
the mandatory losses and low "ideal" efficiency
limits suck even more...

it looks like thin film fuel cells could work,
but there have been "lots" of things that look
like they'll work.

the major problem with developing better
sources of energy is that it needs to be net
positive with respect to human intervention
(i.e. all energy forms are net negative, but
as long as humans get more out than we put in,
the human scale economics work), needs to be
energy dense, persistent, and have little nasty side effects

these are really major issues, and problems
crop up very easily and very quickly... an
electric car would seem to be 0 emissions, but
given the way that we generate power, not so
much (depending on your area, electric cars
can actually be more polluting than gas ones,
thanks to lovely coal fired power plants), especially given the existing constraints on the national electrical infrastructure

the other problem is that the people who would seem to be most supportive of new energy infrastructures are those who oppose and hinder the development of most new forms. nuclear? no
greenpeace, et al. is against. bioengineered algae for light, efficient, and cheap solar power? no, GM technology is bad. windfarms? no it destroys ted kennedy's view and kills birds.
solar farms in the desert? no it destroys the fragile desert ecosystem.

if you really want new energy infrastructure and to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, here are a few easy (i.e. from a technology standpoint) things to do: decrease the power of ATLA so that there are lower liability costs for nuke plants; tell the envirolobby to get stuffed, that they have to be actively pragmatic and look at cost benefits of tech and start helping with growth positive solutions; tell state and local planners to get stuffed, that yes some town is going to lose some beachfront, but that we'll expropriate you and give you compensation, but that refineries and natural gas terminal are necessary for the country.

these things are all hard and expensive politically, but they have to be done no matter what "new" energy solutions we use, so might as well do it now, since we don't know when, or if, we'll find an energy source that has better tradeoffs than the ones we currently use

[Adam Fritzler]

In reply to the rant above:

solar farms in the desert? no it destroys the fragile desert ecosystem.

This is really the least of the problems associated with centralized solar generation. At least at the plants I'm familiar with (a, b), the biggest problems were gross mismanagement, hassles with the regional energy commission, sustaining funding long enough to get into the black (or, alternatively, enough time-money to increase the efficiency of the technology to increase margin).

Somewhat ironically, the answer to making solar generation work is the exact opposite to the NIMBYism you mention... the solar generator must be precisely in each of our backyards. This is the only proven case where solar works.

Exactly-In-My-Back-Yard ideals also help people think about environmentalist ideals -- that is, having constant reminders of each human's impact on their environment. It's hard to neglect energy issues if the solution is part of your everyday environment, as opposed to some generic service which sends you a bill every month. (Yes, solar only works well this way if you live in, say, the sunnier parts of California.)

(And there's the economy of scale that works for solar: creating an industry that produces millions of solar panels for individual customers -- having a real market for the products -- is more conducive to innovation than a market that only makes panels and systems for solar fields that get built once every five years.)

I'm not an environmentalist wacko. Really. :)

But yeah, we do need to get rid of oil. If we don't stop living off fossils, some other species is going to be living off our fossils unreasonably soon.

There is more than energy to worry about. Keep in mind all the petroleum based products in our daily lives, especially in tech. Polypropylene and polyethylene plastics are (indirectly) coming from the Middle East, too.

[hey]

adam...

home grown is fine.. love the people that do that, as they really stand up for their beliefs. my issue is with people (a la the author and host) who say that we "need to do this" to get off of oil. a "Manhattan" project to develop this tech...

everyone knows and wants to replace oil (well except for bp.. but even they do, especially if it means they have to deal with weird governments less) cause it looks like it'll make the people involved as wealthy as the saudis and oil companies (how'd you like to be a trillionaire??) it just is very very hard to find new energy sources that work economically... hence why there's so much money in it.

it unfortunately seems like everyone who wants oil independence wants a new government program to do something (either taxes, regs, or an agency), and never thinks about how to change or cut back our current bureaucratic infrastructure that is putting limits on current technology that makes it even harder to develop these crazy hard technologies.

decentralised is best... but there are few situations where you can get an actual return on that investment or when it can be a superior solution... fuel cells look like they have good efficiencies to provide for economical decentralization, but we'll see...

and for the deserts... yes you do need large scale projects if you are going to use free energy (at least with current tech and not biogenetic solar) as very few people are in a position where they can rely on solar...

wind is even worse, cause you can't rely on it, and we have no good ways of storing energy (hydrogen would be great, but it leaks badly...) as we all can see from phones and ipods, battery tech is much less advanced than the rest of high tech!

i'm just trying to put some real hard engineering into a discussion by some fairly smart (if very liberal) people... cause when smart liberals start talking in the abstract, things go to hell very quickly (great society, etc)... you guys have your hearts in the right place and great intentions... success.. not so much

[brian]

Fred, speaking of alternate forms of energy... Check out what's going on in Toronto with the Deep Lake Water Cooling system... saving massive amounts of energy, and putting a big dent in annual C02 emissions to boot:

http://www.enwave.com/enwave/dlwc/

[brian]

One more reason why we need -- and why there's a business opportunity waiting to be exploited more fully -- alternative forms of energy, on a mass scale: China

Here's a rather alarming article on what an industrialized China means to the world:
http://www.sundayherald.com/43523

As China and other nations continue to industrialize, they're going to need huge amounts of energy. It behooves the whole world to make sure that energy is clean. Or we might just be doomed.

[Alternative Energy Blog]

hey,

"wind power is even worse because we can't rely on it"

Wind power has a cost at or below fossil fueled electricity generation. It's scalable and apart from a few objections from NIMBYers has no serious downsides. Yes, the wind doesn't blow all the time but current wind turbine technolgy allows electricity to be generated 70% of the time. That's 70% of the time we don't need to burn non-renewable fuels.

It is estimated wind power could generate 60% of America's electricity, currently it generates less than 1%. It has huge potential.

[James Norris]

There's too much beauty upon this earth for lonely men to bear.
-- Richard Le Gallienne
buy cialis Most Texans think Hanukkah is some sort of duck call.
-- Richard Lewis
cialis There's too much beauty upon this earth for lonely men to bear.
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[Ontario Hydro]

Unfortunately there are some opportunists who portray themselves as environmentalists when all they want to do if profit off of other people's misery.

Look at http://canadafreepress.com/ontario-hydro.htm

[Todd Morrill]

I have something interesting you might want to look at, I am making hydrogen from beer cans, water and sodium hydroxide. This isn't a new discovery but the direction I am taking it is. This is an opensource project and I am looking for input from anyone that wants to contribute. check out my site with videos and plans.
My hydrogen page

[Neal]

If you liked that one, check out mine http://cleantechblog.com.

What kind of investing do you do?

If you are interested in learning more about energy tech investing, most of the good investment conferences are coming up.

Neal

[rp]

Nov. 4, 2005--MEMS USA (OTCBB:MEMS - News) reports that in October its Gulfgate and Bott subsidiaries in Houston, Texas achieved record backlogs for energy equipment sales. MEMS USA, through its California engineering services subsidiary, is also progressing toward helping Canada make biorenewable ethanol. Canada is a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol and has among the world's highest tax incentives and ethanol fuel use mandates.

[Vincent Hatfield]

Possible wave of the future? What do you think? Have you heard anything about this? Info has been trickling down to me in the last few days that this might be something to pay attention to. Any thoughts?


I think that propane is a really interesting source of energy that you might devote some posting time to. It's an exceptional energy when you think about. Especially looking at the way it was utilized during the fallout from Hurricane Katrina. Propane is high energy that is reliable, and it is rather portable because of the way you can transport cylinders of it and be able to run just about anything.