Green Tech

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--Al Gore, a self-described "wanna-be geek," is on the road talking about solutions to multiple problems.

The former vice president gave a speech at the First Parish Cambridge Unitarian Universalist church here on Saturday to promote his latest book, "Our Choice." Whereas "An Inconvenient Truth" documented the reasons for global warming, his latest book is focused almost entirely on ways to address climate change, Gore said.

But don't expect only a discussion of solar, wind and biofuels. In outlining the contents of "Our Choice" on Saturday, Gore said he consulted hundreds of experts in different fields to develop a comprehensive approach. The book includes discussions on carbon-capturing farming practices, word population projections, social psychology, and the political challenges to cutting fossil fuel use.

Al Gore signing books after his talk at the First Parish Cambridge Unitarian Universalist church in Cambridge, Mass.

(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET)

Rather than limit his remarks to climate change, Gore argued there are political and economic reasons to make a transition to a less-polluting society. "There is a common thread running through the discussion of climate, (national) security, and the economic crisis, and that is our ridiculous dependence on foreign oil and coal," he said.

The hundreds of billions of dollars a year the U.S. spends on importing foreign oil is one reason the military remains involved in the Middle East. It also undermines the country's finances, he said.

The economy, too, can be revived by developing emerging industries in the U.S. Among them are products and services to retrofit buildings to be more efficient; solar, wind, and enhanced geothermal power; a "super grid" that's able to transport solar and wind power efficiently; and plug-in electric cars.

"When put together, we have the tools and technologies to solve three or four climate crises," he said. "But the missing element is political will."

He predicted that the U.S. Senate will get a climate and energy bill through committee before the Copenhagen round of international climate negotiations next month. Despite the "odds and the pessimism," he said there is a chance for a binding political agreement from Copenhagen next month and a roadmap for a comprehensive treaty.

Gore said that an Internet-aided grass-roots movement is the way to influence political change on this issue.

As speculation mounts over the shape of president-elect Obama's energy policy, Al Gore laid out a multifaceted plan to make the U.S. electricity system carbon-free in 10 years.

In an opinion column published Sunday in the The New York Times, Gore said the federal government should fund projects to upgrade the nation's aging power grid and install renewable-energy sources.

"It is a plan that would simultaneously move us toward solutions to the climate crisis and the economic crisis--and create millions of new jobs that cannot be outsourced," wrote Gore, the former vice president and the co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize last year.

The column comes fresh after Gore's talk at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco on Friday, where he said the social connections that the Web allows should be channeled toward mitigating climate change.

It also comes days after the Gore-founded Alliance for Climate Protection launched an advertising and awareness campaign called Repower America, which advocates for carbon-free electricity in 10 years.

The five elements of the plan are:

• Incentives for construction of concentrating solar-thermal power plants in the southwest, wind farms in the Midwest, and plants in geothermal "hot spots."
• A $400 billion investment over 10 years to build a "national smart grid" to distribute renewable energy, which he said would quickly offset the annual $120 billion loss from power grid failures. The power grid can be outfitted so that consumers have better tools and information for conserving energy.
• Aid to automakers to convert to the production of plug-in hybrids. Smart-grid technology that enables the cars to be charged during off-peak hours.
• A nationwide effort to retrofit buildings, which account for 40 percent of carbon dioxide emissions, to be more energy-efficient.
• Climate regulations to cap carbon dioxide emissions.

Gore also argued that alternative fossil fuel technologies--notably so-called clean coal, where carbon dioxide emissions are stored underground--are not yet viable options.

Unrealistic or inspirational?
Gore and many others have likened an ambitious clean-energy program to the Apollo Project to launch a successful moon landing in 10 years. The Apollo Alliance, for example, is one of several groups advocating an upgrade to the electricity distribution network and policy incentives to create jobs around clean-energy industries.

Climate reporter Andrew Revkin explored this energy "moon shot" approach last week. Analyzing federal research money on energy technologies, he noted the spike in energy research in the 1970s after the oil embargo but said "no subsequent administration or Congress took energy innovation seriously, (and private-sector research investments have dropped even more)."

Gore's original call for an Apollo-style program came in July, when he delivered a speech at Constitution Hall in Washington.

Although clean-tech investors and entrepreneurs generally favor policies that create incentives for clean energy and put a price on pollution, Gore's 10-year energy plan was received with a good dose of skepticism in July.

Clean-tech blogger and entrepreneur Neal Dikeman wondered if Al Gore was "nuts," saying the program was so ambitious that it risked failure. Similarly, Technology Review took issue with the July speech, calling the goals laudable but the time frame "unachievable."

My initial reaction was similar: converting a electricity system that gets half of its electricity from coal today to carbon-free sources in 10 years is exceedingly ambitious by any measure.

And even with a stimulus plan in the works, the country's economic problems tie the hands of the next administration and Congress. Also, falling fossil fuel prices and the credit squeeze are throwing sand in the gears of clean-energy businesses.

That said, there is no shortage of plans to rapidly clean, or "decarbonize," the energy sector. What varies isn't the technologies that need to be adopted--energy efficiency, renewables, plug-in electric cars--but rather the pace and particulars of the policies.

Google, which is spearheading a plan to make renewable energy cheaper than coal, published an analysis last month concluding that the United States could wean itself from coal and oil for electricity by 2030. The country could cut its oil use in cars by 40 percent in the same time period.

The Pickens Plan, launched earlier this year by oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens, calls for a massive investment in wind energy and natural-gas-powered cars (two areas in which he is investing) in order to cut oil imports.

There are also energy experts who maintain that Gore's 10-year challenge is feasible or, at least, an approachable goal.

The left-leaning New Republic's energy and environment blog summed up the Gore opinion piece nicely, calling it "an attempt to broaden the discussion of what's possible in building a clean-energy economy, rather than presenting a specific plan of action."

Energy czar?
Gore's column comes at a time when there is speculation about the Obama administration's cabinet and whether there will be a dedicated "energy czar."

Another key position is the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, which is expected to be charged with implementing climate regulations. (One rumored possibility is environmental activist Robert Kennedy Jr.)

It's unclear, however, that Gore, who calls himself a "recovering politician," would want to be part of the Obama administration.

In his speech in Constitution Hall this week, former Vice President and renewable energy investor Al Gore extolled a stretch goal challenging America to achieve 100% renewable power within 10 years.

The quote: "Today I challenge our nation to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years." And my favorite part: "When President John F. Kennedy challenged our nation to land a man on the moon and bring him back safely in 10 years, many people doubted we could accomplish that goal. But 8 years and 2 months later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the surface of the moon."

That statement is about like challenging your 2 year old to finish college by the time she is 12. Not exactly practical, more than a little crazy, and likely to be either ignored, or if you push it, to cause lots of therapy sessions by the time she is 8. I will, however, credit him with getting almost every renewable energy platitude I've ever heard into one succinct speech.

He does raise lots of good points about the need for a new energy policy not built around shipping dollars to the MidEast for oil (a definite must), for long term support for renewables (it is critical for us to get off our fits and starts mish mash idea of renewable energy policy), and for moving faster and larger to fight climate change (a topic near and dear to my heart, and one that is only partially helped by making broad statements about how fast the sky is falling, I mean, the glaciers are melting). In fact, there is no better way to give anti renewable energy and climate change naysayers fuel and ammunition than to make statements like these. Any path we go down, I'd still rather challenge that two year old to do something they can achieve, not try and make it through college by age 12 - especially if I'm asking her to pay for it. Slow and steady wins the race.

The core of Al Gore's argument in his speech on the practicality of a 10 year all renewable energy goal boils down to this quote from his speech on fuels:

"What if we could use fuels that are not expensive, don't cause pollution and are abundantly available right here at home?

We have such fuels. Scientists have confirmed that enough solar energy falls on the surface of the earth every 40 minutes to meet 100 percent of the entire world's energy needs for a full year. Tapping just a small portion of this solar energy could provide all of the electricity America uses.

And enough wind power blows through the Midwest corridor every day to also meet 100 percent of US electricity demand. Geothermal energy, similarly, is capable of providing enormous supplies of electricity for America."

And this one on costs and technology:

"To those who argue that we do not yet have the technology to accomplish these results with renewable energy: I ask them to come with me to meet the entrepreneurs who will drive this revolution. I've seen what they are doing and I have no doubt that we can meet this challenge.

To those who say the costs are still too high: I ask them to consider whether the costs of oil and coal will ever stop increasing if we keep relying on quickly depleting energy sources to feed a rapidly growing demand all around the world. When demand for oil and coal increases, their price goes up. When demand for solar cells increases, the price often comes down."

These quotations, while partially true and very seductive, are highly misleading in this context. The effective conversion rates of that energy to usable electric power or liquid fuel is still horrendously low, and requires lots and lots of capital expenditures, and thousands of miles of new transmission lines to implement. And that's not taking into account the state of technology - as an industry we really are the two year old in my analogy.

So given those conversion rates and the current high capital expenditures per unit of energy, the cost is still 5-20x (depending on what you count) the cost of conventional electric power generation (yes I know, unless you add in the carbon price and environmental externalities, but that's still extra cost any way you slice it . . . unless you'd like to subsidize mine). Frankly no serious analyst is suggesting that within 10 years, given the state of technology and the best case forecast capacity, that solar can make up more than a small single digit fraction of even electricity needs or that wind can make up more than a meaningful minority share (let alone after doubling the global power demand by replacing liquid fuels in cars with electricity, which Al Gore also suggests), especially given lead times on power plants and transmission lines.

Most likely even if the technologies were already cost comparative, which they are not - if you need evidence, just look at our wind and solar industries in their current tizzy because their biggest subsidy programs are up for renewal this year - most analysts wouldn't project a fabled grid parity on cost for renewables for at least the next decade, and certainly not at scale. So Mr. Gore's statements on cost and technology are in part true, but imply a maturity level in these industries that just doesn't exist yet. Given manufacturing scale up issues on the technology, transmission infrastructure requirements at least as large as the new generation requirements, and long lead times on building projects of this size (industry executives point to seven year time frames just to build a single transmission line), probably reaching even significant low double digit percentages of carbon free power within ten years is a stretch (excluding large hydro and nuclear which we already have but are hesitating to expand) across the whole nation. Notwithstanding that California has managed to come close to its target 20% number over the last decade, that's one state leaning on the resources of many states, using the best available sites, federal subsidies paid for from all of our pockets, and that took a decade. When it comes to carbon capture and storage for coal fired generation, a concept with lots of legs - if it works - 10 years just isn't enough time to achieve scale. The first big pilots are scheduled over the next several years, and there are too many unknowns to bet the farm on, without the lead time and capital cost issue. Though still definitely worth trying.

And as far as paying for it, there was an article in the San Francisco Chronicle today calculating our Federal government long term liabilities at $450,000 per American already mainly for Medicare and Social Security. Actually trying to replace our entire fossil fuel infrastructure within 10 years would push that to how much? Somebody please do the math before we launch a government funded mission to the moon, or legislate that our citizens pay for it instead. On costs, Mr. Gore made the statement in his speech "Our families cannot stand 10 more years of gas price increases." I agree, but Mr. Gore, your 10 year, hell for leather, man to moon race for 100% renewable energy would guarantee just that.

So while extolling stretch goals for a two year old is probably a good idea, let's keep it within the realm of possibility, and not just make grandiose statements for media effect. Now if Al Gore's silly challenge on renewable energy was simply a trojan horse to get people talking about how to move forward on fighting climate change and addressing our long standing energy policy issues, I'm all for that and am happy to help. After all, the words Al Gore and climate change make for very searchble blog articles! But personally when I make outlandish statements, I do like to bring an modicum of practicality to the discussion.

I will leave you with one final note, and please remember, I am actually a proponent of the ideals in Al Gore's speech, I just prefer to get there in one piece. One theory on the effect of the history of the man on the moon driven space race that Mr. Gore challenges us to copy basically says that we pushed for a single high profile goal so fast and furious that we effectively skipped ahead and outran our infrastructure and capabilities to get a nonscalable shot at the moon in the target time frame. The theory goes on to suggest that's why after reaching the moon so fast we haven't progressed at the same rate in space since, and had we taken it slower, we would have gotten there a few years behind, but might be on Mars by know. Akin in a military campaign to outrunning your supply chain, and then getting your army surrounded and destroyed - or perhaps invading a country half way around the world, winning the war in weeks and forgetting to prepare for the peace. And just to show that I can deliver as many platitudes in one article as Mr. Gore, that's why you never get involved in a land war in Asia.

Energy and environment are the two pillars of everything in our lives. Mr. Gore and I want the same thing, but he thinks we can't afford not to swing for the fences - I think we can't afford to mess it up.

Neal Dikeman is a founding partner at Jane Capital Partners LLC, a boutique merchant bank advising strategic investors and startups in cleantech. He is the founding CEO of Carbonflow, founding contributor of Cleantech Blog, Chairman of Cleantech.org, and a blogger for CNET's Green Tech blog.

Shellenberger: Most are wrong about how to stall global warming.

(Credit: Elsa Wenzel/CNET Networks)

PALO ALTO, Calif.--Al Gore is wrong about how to stave off ecological catastrophe. So is President George W. Bush. But don't look to Europe or clean-tech entrepreneurs to save the planet either; neither regulations nor free market capitalism alone will prevent the fast and furious acceleration of global warming.

That's according to Michael Shellenberger, who with Ted Nordhaus in 2004 proclaimed the "Death of Environmentalism" in a notorious essay that infuriated people of nearly every political stripe and argued that the tactics of mainstream "green" groups were off the mark.

Shellenberger and Nordhaus run the Breakthrough Institute, a progressive research group. In October they published Break Through, which urges the public and private sectors to invest every effort to boost the clean-energy sector.

"We do have to get rid of the mythology of Silicon Valley a little bit here. How did it start? "Well, it all started in Bill Hewlett's garage. The reality is HP wouldn't exist if they hadn't gotten a Pentagon contract for their radios."

Speaking at the Energy Crossroads conference at Stanford University Thursday, Shellenberger cited recent figures from Australian economist Peter Sheehan suggesting that greenhouse gas emissions must level off or begin to decline as soon as 2020. That's a much more ambitious goal than that of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which pegged 2050 as the time frame in which global emissions need to be under control.

To achieve the goal of the Nobel Prize-winning IPCC, every year the world would need the equivalent of 30 new nuclear plants; 17,000 wind turbines; 400 biomass plants, two Three Gorges-sized hydroelectric dams, and 42 coal or natural gas plants that capture and store carbon, according to the International Energy Agency.

Sheehan says those developments need to happen, but at a faster pace, saying emissions grew more than 3 percent between 2000 and 2005, not by 1.6 percent as the IPCC estimated.

The carbon pollution set to rise from China, India, and other developing nations within the next several decades is likely to dwarf improvements made by the developed world, Shellenberger noted. For instance, energy use in China in 2006 was 15 percent higher than its government projected for 2010.

And don't give Europe too much credit for being clean and green. Its emissions rose 1 percent per year between 2000 and 2005, double the speed of those in the United States. Plus, Europe's greenhouse gases jumped a staggering 10 percent between 1990 and 2005, not counting Britain and Germany, where cleaner forms of energy emerged through reasons unrelated to ecological policies.

Making clean energy cheap is key, Shellenberger said.

"You might pay more for that iPhone because it's a great piece of technology, but most people aren't going to pay more for energy that comes from clean sources."

What's the right idea? A trillion-dollar, decade-long investment in a clean-energy portfolio by the world's leading economies, according to Shellenberger.

Among the encouraging signs, in his view: Google.org's campaign to make clean energy cheaper than coal; newfound attention from Congress to support "green" jobs; the call in December by Nobel-winning scientists to create a $30 billion per year "Manhattan Project" for clean energy.

That's a pretty short list if Shellenberger is right about the world needing grand schemes within a tiny window of time.

Can Web 2.0-style collaboration halt climate change? Well, not entirely, but it can certainly help.

Former Vice President and Nobel laureate Al Gore and Cisco CEO John Chambers spoke on a virtual panel on Wednesday to discuss the role of business technology in environmental matters, most notably climate change.

The event was organized to showcase Cisco's videoconferencing technology and, overall, it performed very well.

Gore spoke from a location near his home in Nashville, Tenn., while Chambers was in San Jose, Calif., and the moderator of the event--ITN science editor Lawrence McGinty--spoke from outside London. People could watch over the Web and audiences listened and watched from the VoiceCon conference in Orlando, outside London, Warsaw, Dubai, and Paris.

The multi-location format drove home the basic point of the event: the Internet can help more people collaborate, something that is essential to solving the difficult challenge of climate change.

And of course, videoconferencing, telecommuting, and online collaboration can replace face-to-face meetings that require people to fly, which is very polluting.

Gore said that he is exploring whether Cisco's videoconference technology can be used in the international deliberations to establish global carbon regulations to follow the Kyoto Protocol treaty which is set to expire in 2012.

Not surprisingly, Gore characterized climate change as an urgent crisis, a situation where "scientists are practically screaming from the rooftops" to tell governments and citizens to take action.

He said that he is optimistic that a "tipping point" is nearing in government, where rapid changes in policies could take place.

Specifically, he said it is essential that the United States take the lead in instituting worldwide regulations that put a price on carbon emissions.

He noted that all three presidential candidates are committed to carbon regulations and predicted that fast-growing countries such as India and China--which are fast becoming the largest polluters in the world--will participate in the follow-on to the Kyoto Protocol if the U.S. participates.

"For so long, the United States has been dragging our feet and even pulling the world back from progress it so greatly needs. (That) lets China, India, and every other nation off the hook" from reducing their own greenhouse gas emissions, he said.

He noted that corporations are actually ahead of governments in addressing climate change in concrete ways. Gore last year joined Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which has invested in several clean-technology firms.

"Most business leaders are way ahead of political leaders, and that's good news because once the market shifts, that really starts to make a difference," Gore said.

Chambers agreed, saying that there has been a "market transition" where many business managers and government leaders are trying to reconcile economic growth with environmental stewardship.

"For the first time, the environment is not just hitting (leaders') radar screen; they also know this is doable with economic growth," he said.

The company's chief marketing officer, Susan Bostrom, who spoke on the panel from Orlando, said that Cisco's use of videoconferencing at 185 locations has saved the company about $100 million in travel expenses, eliminating about 15 million cubic tons of carbon emissions.

Former Vice President and Nobel Prize winner Al Gore has joined venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers as a partner to concentrate on green technology investments.

(Credit: CNET News.com)

To date, Kleiner Perkins has had something of a mixed record when it comes to clean tech. The firm has invested in Miasole, which recently swapped CEOs and has had to delay products. It is also an investor in EEStor, a mysterious supercapacitor company that has delayed its product and is going through some management changes. The firm has also not been part of some of the early, successful IPOs in clean tech like EnerNoc or First Solar.

On the other hand, it has placed money in some companies that many believe have a lot of promise: Ausra, the Australian solar thermal company and Mascoma, a cellulosic ethanol company that has laid plans to build three plants in the U.S. (with millions in state subsidies). It also has a stake in Amyris Biotechnologies, one of the early companies in synthetic biology. Amyris makes compounds for treating malaria and wants to get into feedstocks for synthetic fuel.

So who knows. Compared with these guys, I live in abject squalor.

Gore is one of a number of "name" individuals the firm has recruited over the years. Others include heir Will Hearst III, former Oracle honcho Ray Lane, and Sun Microsystems scientist Bill Joy.