Dan, you are one of the new class of technology entrepreneurs who is moving into cleantech. Can you share some of your background, and why you chose carbon?
In 1995 I founded the first company to commercialize travel reservations over the net, GetThere.com. We went public in 1999 and sold to Sabre in 2000. If you've booked a ticket on United Airlines' website, you've used an example of the infrastructure we built.
I think that entrepreneurs by nature love big challenges. We like to find opportunities where key technologies, services or business transformations can make a profound difference to the world. We understand that the missing ingredient we provide is the vision and the sheer will to make those transformations happen. We are perhaps at our best when the odds are against us, and when most people say we're crazy.
A few years ago, I drove from here down to Buenos Aires. Somewhere along the way, I think I woke up and really fully realized that there were some extraordinary challenges out there facing us that were much more pressing than most people had been giving them credit for. Challenges that were much more important than whether people could book their travel online, for instance. GetThere was a powerful lesson to me that I could set my mind to something and achieve it, but it was also a little numbing at times too--sometimes I wondered just exactly what I was really contributing to the world.
By contrast, the energy and environmental challenges we face as a species are exactly the kind of thing an entrepreneur likes to tackle head on. Plus it actually makes a difference whether we succeed or not.
Tell me a bit more about the concept of ocean fertilization and how it could abate C02? Why iron?
Ocean Iron Fertilization (OIF) was first proposed nearly 20 years ago by an oceanographer here in California named John Martin, at the time he was the Director of Moss Landing Marine Labs. He was the first to discover that iron was the trace nutrient limiting photosynthesis, and hence primary production, in most of the world's oceans.
Photosynthesis uses freely available sunlight to convert CO2 to organic material, which higher level organisms consume directly or which sinks into deep waters of the ocean to be sequestered for up to 1000 years. Clearly we need to lower our emissions dramatically, and immediately, but if atmospheric CO2 that we have already put into the atmosphere is ever to decline, it will be photosynthesis that eventually does the work.
Over the last billion years, phytoplankton (the micro algae that grows ubiquitously in the ocean) have helped to concentrate over 80% of all mobile carbon on the planet into the deep ocean. This process is referred to as the Biological Pump, where after plankton bloom, mature and die, they sink to the deep ocean, carrying carbon along with them. The deep ocean recirculates over very long time periods. The lag between downward flux and eventual recirculation creates an extremely effective trap. This process is probably easily 20-30x more effective at storing carbon than plant growth on land, which returns most carbon back to the atmosphere on short time scales (10-100 years).
A tiny amount of iron can stimulate a lot of phytoplankton growth. 12 publicly-funded, open ocean experiments over 15 years have shown this. The science community is now proposing the next generation of experiments, at moderate as opposed to small scale and potentially funded by private sources. We hope to answer the question just how much carbon is sequestered (not just grown), at what scale can this be done safely, and whether this can fit in to the market mechanisms that have evolved worldwide to fund the mitigation of carbon dioxide.
Who else is doing this and what exactly do you do differently as far as ocean fertilization goes?
Up until now, it has been purely been a research effort, with cruises funded by public agencies such as the National Science Foundation. There are now a few companies proposing to do this, though the primary competitor, Planktos, appears to be winding down operations due to problems fundraising. We decided to pursue this because we feel like this is one of the largest potential tools mankind might have to address global warming. Perhaps our primary differentiator is that we want to make sure that if this is done, it is done credibly and scientifically.
Our Chief Science Officer, Dr. Margaret Leinen left NSF in January. She was the head of Geosciences there and managed a $700M research budget. Her research career was in paleoceanography and biogeochemistry. Our Science Advisory Panel includes people such as Dr. Rita Colwell, the former Director of NSF, Dr. Tim Killeen, the Director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the recent President of the American Geophysical Union, Dr. Bob Gagosian, the former President of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, Dr. Tom Lovejoy, the President of the Heinz Center, and so forth.
What is different about what is happening now is that the demonstrations of OIF will be larger, focused on different questions and also funded in part by the private sector. The carbon market is the mechanism that the world has chosen to fund emissions reductions and carbon mitigation, and so if OIF can be an effective way to safely remove CO2 from the atmosphere, that will probably be financed via the carbon market.
How will you verify that the abatement is happening?
To quantify the carbon removed, we deploy a range of sensors, the most important of which are called "Neutrally Bouyant Sediment Traps" to measure the amount of carbon falling past a certain depth in the ocean. Identical measurements are taken both inside the project area as well as outside the project area--this gives us an idea of what would have happened if we hadn't been there.
There are further nuances which are important to account for, such as how much carbon really ends up coming out of the atmosphere to replace that which is being used at the ocean's surface. Also, we will need to model the impact on nutrient stocks before they are replenished via deep winter mixing, etc. There many important other details, but this probably illustrates the basic concept.
Can you go into some more detail on the questions of permanence, always a major concern in new carbon reduction methodologies.
The permanence of storage is measured in choosing the depth we place the sensors at. This depth is determined by looking at what is called the ventilation or residence time of water at difference depths in the project area. Because the oceans circulate so slowly, most of the world's water mass, in fact the majority, has not seen the surface since before fossil fuels began being combusted in the late 1800s. I think that is a fairly surprising fact to most people. By sampling water at depth for signs of human activity which also have a known history, such as tritium from bomb testing in the 1950s or from CFCs that began being released in the 1920s, oceanographers can tell how long any cubic meter of water has been away from the surface.
Putting this to practice, if you sink carbon past water that hasn't seen the surface for 300 years, and if you know the directionality of circulation in that place in the ocean, you can be fairly sure that this carbon won't see the surface for at least 300 years moving forwards. This is how we understand permanence in addition to quantity.
The IPCC defines permanence as at least 100 years, so we will likely use this definition--but ultimately the carbon market will decide what that number is, not us. Keep in mind that significant amounts of carbon are stored for timeframes which are shorter as well, i.e. 75 years, 50 years, etc. This timeshifting of carbon is meaningful and helpful as well, but we won't claim credit for this. Also, the minimum (i.e. 100 years) is just that, the minimum. Much of the carbon will be stored for much longer--hundreds to even thousands of years.
Many people question the value of 'timeshifting' carbon. They wonder if we're creating a problem for ourselves later when this carbon comes back. There are several important things to consider here. First, we really have no other options--other than emissions reductions, which are important--but really separate. There is no other way to 'dispose' of the carbon that we've put up in the atmosphere already. Nature timeshifts carbon--at some point, nearly all carbon will see the atmosphere again, the question is on what timeframe. The effectiveness of sequestration in the ocean is the reason that the majority of 'mobile' carbon has ended up there over time. Second, this approach gives us time to address our emissions problem. People have likened this to a concept called 'oscillation damping', where if you have a pulse that takes time X (as in the number of years we have been adding too much CO2 to the atmosphere) then it may take you 2X or 3X or 4X to 'dampen' that pulse, depending on its amplitude. So if we've been creating this problem for 100 years, and it takes us another 25 years to solve, then we may have to mitigate for several multiples of that. This is an unscientific quantification, but perhaps a useful illustration--and I think it also serves to highlight what a huge challenge we have ahead of us.
Aren't you worried about the impact on the environment on "adjusting" ocean nutrients? I know that has been a concern of some environmental groups.
I think there are a number of distinct concerns rolled up in your statement. One is the fear that OIF is 'messing with mother nature.' Many people feel that humans simply can't get anything right, and that we if we try to fix what we've already broken, we're likely to make it worse. This is an unscientific attitude, and one that I think also fails to appreciate some of the unique aspects of this concept.
Other concerns are whether a change in the level of iron is potentially harmful, or whether the drawdown of existing macronutrients such as nitrates, phosphates and silicates (which is what the addition of iron triggers) could result in permanent shifts, or deplete productivity elsewhere--i.e. no net benefit. There are a number of answers for this.
First, this is already happening. Iron naturally fertilizes phytoplankton blooms--and these are the largest source of carbon sequestration happening as we speak. About three billion tons of CO2 is stored safely at depth in the ocean every year, and has been for a long time. Iron is a benign mineral. It in and of itself is simply not harmful.
Second, nature has already done more aggressive iron fertilization at scales much larger and for periods much longer than we are contemplating. During the last million years on at least five or six separate occasions between the major ice ages, natural iron inputs to the ocean increased by many times what they are now for thousands of years at a time. Productivity (i.e. plankton) increases appear strongly correlated with these times of increased iron. A recent paper by Cassar, et al this year has linked nearly 40ppm of the 80-100ppm swing of carbon in the last interglacial to increased iron enrichment of ocean waters by aerosol and other transport mechanisms. If iron fertilization simply removes nutrients that would have eventually been used elsewhere, then you would not have seen sustained productivity increases in the paleo record. Where we are now is a result of all of these previous episodes--and more than likely this will happen naturally again in the future, whether humans do it on purpose or not.
Lastly, OIF will be done gradually, over decades. It can be stopped at any time.
The key is to continue to explore this as a potential mitigation mechanism and to see whether it can be both effective and safe. Demonstrations run by scientists, and funded by the private sector which can deploy the capital required for the larger projects, are probably our best chance of this.
You intend to sell carbon credits based on this process. What standard will you use, and who do you expect will be the likely buyers?
Long term if this is to be meaningful it will need to be accepted in regulated markets, in the short term the voluntary market can help provide the bridge financing to get us there. We think the Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCS) is probably the best current standard, but there are others as well. We'll target as many standards as appropriate. The methodology we are currently developing is designed around the UN Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) specification--though since it takes place in the middle of the ocean it will never qualify for those credits without changes to the regulatory framework.
You mentioned you approached the problem from the science, standards and measurement & verification end first. That's an approach I definitely agree with. Can you go into some more detail? I know you had mentioned working with DNV, among others.
A number of things need to be done before larger demonstrations like the one we propose.
First, the key science questions that will to be asked of this next generation of experiments need to be asked. We will be proposing a series of science workshops with the community this year to help facilitate that. One of the conferences will be on long term modeling. Another will be on measurement and verification techniques. We will be announcing these over the next several months.
Second, a comprehensive Environmental Impact Assessment needs to be performed by an outside party that reviews concerns in detail and against the peer-reviewed literature, identifying which are likely not an issue, which are questions of appropriate project design, and which need more study. We will be initiating this process over the next several months.
After these processes are complete we will begin to structure our proposed cruise, and publish this ahead of time. This also involves applying for appropriate international permits, etc.
DNV, or a company like that, will be involved in validating the Project Design Document (PDD) after we select a specific operating site, and before we actually go to sea. They will also come on the cruise to provide direct verification of the results.
Many of these general activities are called for by a document we produced last year which we call a Code of Conduct. We think that it is vital that companies like ours operate in a scientific, responsible and transparent manner.
So this process is kind of like planting trees, except in the ocean?
Yes, except it happens faster and the storage is more permanent. Forests store carbon in the form of standing biomass--in other words, you get storage for as long as the forest is managed and preserved. If it burns down, or gets harvested, a large part of that carbon is returned to the atmosphere. Also, if the tree dies and is not replaced, nearly all of that carbon is returned on short time scales (< 100 years). This is not to say that we shouldn't be planting trees. We should, and we are--the UN just finished planting a billion trees the week before the recent Bali conference. We need to be doing a lot more of that. Two of the most attractive aspects of ocean fertilization are low cost and large scale. Can you give us some insight into where ocean fertilization fits on the spectrum of cost and potential abatement levels?
We think credits from OIF can be delivered for about $5-7 a ton long term. No one knows what the annual global capacity might be. Certainly three billion tons a year (CO2) are already being done naturally. It is possible that another billion tons annually might be able to be added to this number, but that is pure speculation. Some people have quoted numbers that are much higher than this, but I think that's probably not a constructive exercise right now.
And of course, when do you expect to be able to offer credits off of this platform, now that the VCS has been released?
We have just received the first draft of the methodology back from Ecosecurities and DNV (Det Norske Veritas) is in the process of a formal assessment. After their comments, and possible revisions, we will submit the methodology to the VCS steering committee. They have told us they will require a 2nd formal review by a qualified verifier, after which it would qualify to be accepted as a VCS methodology.
We will also be asking other peers in the science community to help us evaluate and refine the methodology. They will certainly be the most important check. We expect it will be refined many times as measurement and modeling approaches improve.
The credits of course will be dependent on the successful completion of our first cruise. We expect this in 2009.
Dan, your OIF approach is certainly exciting given the scale and low cost of the potential CO2 abatement, and I wish you the best. It is certainly not a easy task.
Neal Dikeman is a founding partner at Jane Capital Partners LLC, a boutique merchant bank advising strategic investors and startups in cleantech. He is founding contributor of Cleantech Blog, a Contributing Editor to Alt Energy Stocks, Chairs Cleantech.org, and a blogger for the CNET Cleantech Blog.
This is the traditional time when we visualize a better life in the upcoming year. We make resolutions for improved health and happiness for ourselves, our families and our friends. Career and financial goals are priorities for others. A better nation and brighter future top the list many. New Year's Resolutions can effectively start us on a better journey. Along the way, we may be detoured by interesting alternatives, and not achieve all resolutions. Yet, they are worth making.
Since I write about clean transportation, I have talked with many who travel with fewer emissions, often lower cost, and frequently with more fun. Learning from them, it is appropriate that I make some personal resolutions to improve how I travel. Hopefully, these will modestly help our nation to be more energy secure, the future to be a little more secure from a climate crisis, and even to save money. For the entire world to see, here are my personal transportation resolutions for the New Year. Some will be easy to keep, some challenging.
Easy Resolutions
1. Put the most miles on the car with the best fuel economy. My wife and I share a fuel efficient Prius.
2. Keep the second car (a Hyundai Accent) in the garage most of the time.
3. Walk more.
4. On freeways, drive 65 miles per hour, not 80. This can save over $1,000 per year and may improve fuel economy by 20% over high speed driving.
5. Live "carbon neutral" by offsetting all our emissions with a donation to carbonfund.org.
Challenging Resolutions
6. Fly less. Greenhouse gases per passenger mile are worse on airlines than driving solo in a gas guzzler. The car is a great alternative if two or four are in it. A train is even better.
7 . Move from suburbia to the city. Everything is closer in a city and transit is far better.
8 . Downsize from two cars to one.
9 . Join a car share program for the occasions where a second car is needed.
10 . Reduce our "carbon footprint" (less total greenhouse gas emissions).
Because I have published these resolutions, I feel more likely to keep them.
Thanks to wonderful non-profit organizations, it is easy to calculate our carbon footprint, and offset our damage with renewable energy, efficiency and reforestation programs. Reducing our carbon footprint takes more work. In 2007, we both reduced our total GHG emissions and lived carbon neutral. We will do our best to accomplish both in 2008.
Every success with your resolutions. May they bring you a year of health, happiness, and fulfillment. Do not underestimate your ability to make a difference and to inspire others.
Happy New Year!
John Addison is the publisher of the Clean Fleet Report.
The binder of information at our honeymoon cottage, Pink Sand, in North Palmetto Point, Eleuthera Island, Bahamas, reads (verbatim):
"Some do's and Don'ts 1. Please Conserve Water as all our water is from rain that is collected from the gutters and placed in our Cistern that is under the Cottage. 2. Please use A/C only when you are in the Cottage and do not have windows open when using the A/C.
Electric in Eleuthera is 3 times that of electric in the USA. If using the Washer/Dryer, please use only once if you are staying for a week and 2 times if you are staying 2 weeks."
The caretaker, while awaiting our arrival, had turned on the little Toshiba TV perched above the Ponsat Satellite receiver, and its noise overpowered the hum of the wall A/C. The honeymoon was off to a good start when Dave and I, once alone, chimed in unison, let's turn off that A/C and the TV; we came to Paradise to get away from all of that. The cottage is equipped not only with TV, A/C and washer/dryer, but with an on demand electric domestic water heater, a hair dryer and a cell phone. The binder told us where to purchase calling cards for the cell phone. Forgetfulness having its virtues, the laptop -- and access to iTunes -- was at home, and it meant we were limited to the few songs downloaded the night before onto the tiny iPod that my tech-loving husband had just bought me. Electri-tech'd to the gills, I wondered how much '3 times that of USA' meant. If any of the electrical appliances came with their own equivalent 'calling cards' and some kind of watt meter, I would have swapped time on the TV and A/C for additional loads of wash -- clean clothes trumping 400 channels of audio-visual garbage any day.
And I couldn't help but wonder: if electricity costs so much, then where were the solar panels, the small-scale wind turbines and the wave and tidal generators? I searched for them in the land of sea and sun, and saw not a one.
Tweaked that the USA and Paradise are so advanced in some technologies like iPods, cell phones and satellite TV, and so tediously stunted in others, like electricity, I dropped by the office the Bahamas Electricity Corporation (BEC) just north of Rock Sound to ask just how much '3 times' is...and churn up a little more information about how BEC services a tropical archipelago. Javan Rolle, a utility manager, was Family Island-gracious to entertain a random visit from a woman in a sundress and tennies, brandishing a business card and asking about residential tariffs. We had a good laugh that nobody at the office knew, readily, the per-kWh cost of electricity on the island: it's $.15 plus a surcharge for the fuel which is 100% diesel generated, bringing the cost to about $.30 per kWh. Coming from Maine, that's about '2 times;' coming from Colorado with its heavy reliance on coal, that's more than '3 times.'
The only customer with solar installed on the entire island, grid-tied, was an outfit called The Island School at Cape Eleuthera on the southern tip of the Island and its affiliate, The Island Institute which was under the auspices of a research and pilot project for grid-tied PV.
Dave and I wended our way out to the Island Institute and met with Andy Danylchuck, PhD, the Director of Research, and Graham Siener, a cleantech solutions consultant for Cape Systems, Ltd., another affiliate of the Institute. We lunched with the staff and students and spoke briefly with Chris Maxey the Founder and Director of the School, the Institute, Cape Systems and the Cape Eleuthera Foundation. The Institute evolved out of a need for additional facilities at the School which already had a bio-wastewater treatment plant, a battery-based Bergey 7.5kW wind turbine, about 17kW of solar panels, and biodiesel collected as waste vegetable oil from cruise ships. The Institute's offices and staff housing are located nearby, across an inlet and over a footbridge in curved- and vaulted-roofed concrete structures. These structures are built to withstand storms and hurricanes, to facilitate rainwater collection and to maximize air cooling. Interior furniture is made of a local, but invasive, hardwood; the floor is covered in recycled carpet tile. A breeze keeps the space, which is light and airy, cool; there is no need for the A/C which is quickly becoming an island status symbol (no different than in other locales like Colorado and coastal Maine that don't need it but for -- so the developers and builders claim -- consumer demand.)
Cape Systems, Ltd. has initiated a campaign called, Freedom 2030: Sustainable Eleuthera, A Model for the Caribbean and Beyond. (The name Eleuthera derives from the Greek word for freedom.) The campaign seeks to raise funds for making Eleuthera a self-sustaining island by 2030, asserting, "this is both an economic and national security issue that will set Eleuthera and The Bahamas as a leader in the inevitable shift away from fossil fuels." They are also underway with a joint venture with publicly-traded Bahamas Waste to establish biodiesel production from locally collected waste cooking oil from hotels, restaurants and cruise lines. The Institute and BEC are working cooperatively through net metering arrangements for solar PV, but there are kinks to iron out; for example, the metering for the Institute's 30kW of solar generation flowing into the grid shows up as a charge to the Institute on their BEC bill.
Support for clean energy from the Prime Minister of The Bahamas appeared in the Bahamian paper this past Friday, and local columnists like Larry Smith, posted on Bahama Pundit, are paying attention to climate change, oil pricing, tourism and alternative energy solutions for the Islands. (See "The Bahamas and the Political Economy of Climate Change" and "Bahamas Could Set Renewable Energy Pace").
In speaking to an international conference of the Caribbean Basin last week, PM Hubert Ingraham is reported in The Nassau Guardian to have pointed out, in reference to climate change and tourism, that the reduction of the import content of goods to service tourism, which is growing, needs to be a major economic policy, and that energy is a major factor requiring adoption of a serious energy policy: in 2001 domestic oil consumption in The Bahamas amounted to some $275 million or 15 percent of total merchandise imports of $1.856 billion; last year, 2006, it accounted for $706 million or 27 percent of total imports of $2.621 billion. Said Ingraham, "A reversal of this trend seems unlikely, and by the end of this year, the cost of domestic consumption of oil may well be at or close to one-third of total merchandise imports. This seems to be a level where alternative sources of energy make sense, and where it is sound economic judgment to revisit the energy efficiency of our lifestyles generally."
Javan of BEC and Graham of the Island Institute say that the Bahamas has lifted the 50% import duty tax on solar panels, and that the 7% stamp tax still applies. The Institute participates in the Chicago Climate Exchange, selling certificates for offsets from energy efficiencies and cleantech which provide another revenue stream. Without rebates or other incentives, however, solar is still out of reach for most.
As in Colorado and Maine, in Eleuthera I couldn't help but wonder, when are the builders and developers getting on board with sustainable building practices? Just a half-hour drive from the Island Institute, Dave and I walked a long stretch of pink sandy beach and broke inland at The Dunes of Eleuthera, a condomimium development midway under construction. Adorable rental cottages in blues and yellows and greens faced the water, wrapped in tropical landscaping. We were curious about these cottages and the new facilities; the developer smoothed through his pitch. Then I asked the question, the one that tends to set off developers and modular home builders: what is the energy rating of these buildings? Why, little lady, it's an Energy Star-rated home, with R-19 walls and R-11 floors! With central air! He said something about poured concrete forms, but the R-19 and the wood foundation posts didn't quite add up to ICFs or SIPs or even concrete block, the traditional island construction material.
Maybe it was the sun and the sand flea bites. Maybe it was knowing that $400K for a huff-and-puff condo was a travesty. Maybe it was knowing this developer from Louisiana intended to make enough money to retire at 55...that set me off: I work on an Energy Star program and those numbers mean nothing. I'd want at least an R-50. I'd want something that can handle a hurricane, and on a tropical island, I don't need air conditioning. The bride wrapped in a red and orange sarong, on the Island of Freedom, had become a Greek Harpie, stealing civility from the conversation.
Departing from the Governor's Harbour airport, I heard that these Energy Star houses were pre-fab and impounded at the docks by the State for failing to meet standards for tropical construction. I can't substantiate the comment, but impounding unsuitable imported building materials is a reasonable response to developers who build with such little regard for homeowner, investor and the planet.
It was a joy to meet with the Island Institute and its affiliate organizations who truly understand what sustainability is all about.
Turning to take in one last gulp of Bahamian heaven at the airport, I saw a billboard: Keep Central Eleuthera Clean, Green & Pristine...It Starts with YOU!
Heather Rae, a contributor to cleantechblog.com, is a consultant in cleantech market management and serves on the board of Maine Interfaith Power & Light. In 2006, she built a biobus and drove it from Colorado to Maine. In 2007, she began renovation of an 1880 farmhouse using building science and green building principles.
As with most things, there is a right way and a wrong way to go about electric vehicles. Last Friday, Ian Wright and I spent a couple of hours around my conference table discussing our philosophies on electric cars. Wright knows something about this topic, as he was formerly an executive at EV start-up Tesla Motors, and is now the founder and CEO of Wrightspeed, a Silicon Valley-based start-up whose first car is going to be a high-performance electric supercar, price tag just shy of $200,000. And as it's electric, Wright expects it should out-start, outrun, out-turn, and generally outperform anything in its class.
The Wrightspeed X1 prototype.
(Credit: Michael Kanellos/CNET Networks)Cleantech Blog has written extensively about EVs. I am known among my friends as being a real skeptic when it comes to EVs, but behind Wright's business plan he got my attention with two ideas that are worth repeating: payback and plug-ins.
First, Wright doesn't care about gas mileage per se; he cares about performance, power, and most importantly, payback. Focus on the vehicles actually burning the most gas, irrespective of fuel efficiency. That is, instead of making tiny, compact, fuel-efficient target cars more efficient with EV and hybrid technology--focus on the gas guzzlers. Wright's point is well taken. A small, fuel-efficient car that gets 35 mpg and drives a typical 12,500 miles per year only uses about 350 gallons per year. A large pickup truck that gets 12 miles to the gallon uses over 1,000 gallons for the same mileage--nearly 3 times as much. And if that truck is a work truck driven 25,000 miles per year, it would use over 2,000 gallons of fuel per year, nearly 6 times the little car. That truck owner may spend upwards of $50,000 in fuel over its life, where the commuter car owner may spend a small fraction of that.
When I asked him for comments on my example, Wright added: "The special case of congested city driving might be worth mentioning, since everyone thinks a lot of fuel is wasted there. But if you drive a Prius 10 hours per week in congested city traffic, it's only about 150 gallons per year! Not much point in trying to improve on the Prius for that use. (The arithmetic: Congested traffic is defined as 12 mph average; 10 hours per week would be 120 miles per week, or 6,240 miles per year. The Prius shines in this application, getting maybe 40 mpg, so 156 gallons per year.)"
Putting expensive hybrid and EV technology in the small car not only has a worse financial payback--compounding the perennial problem of EVs being too costly, but the same 20 percent efficiency improvement does very little to reduce overall fuel consumption for society compared to the same efficiency gains in a big truck that drives a heck of lot of miles.
So Wright asks, if we want to both find a way to save car owners money, and save the world--wouldn't we focus on applying technology to where the problem is the worst and the returns are the best?
When Wright looked at the automotive landscape and asked the question, where is the most fuel being burned, and how do we reduce that with technology? The answer? Performance cars and big work trucks. Not surprisingly, these are his target markets.
And why are high-performance vehicles like sports cars and Ford F350s so fuel-inefficient anyway? Take this as an example answer. If you need a big truck to have lots of power for short periods of time (for instance, in towing), then the truck engine and systems have to be sized to deliver the maximum power. But anytime you're not using all that power (i.e., most of the time), the truck is usually running well below its optimum--and burning lots of fuel for no extra gain. It's the same rationale for a sports car designed to run optimally at 90 mph, which performs worse at the average driver's speed of 50 mph to 60 mph.
Wright's more detailed explanation to me put it very elegantly: "Roughly speaking gasoline engines are most efficient at wide open throttle and the rpm that gives max torque. If you try to operate a supercar at wide open throttle, it will be doing 200 mph, and of course you'll be losing most of the energy to aero drag. The engine will be operating efficiently...but if you operate the car down where aero drag is reasonable--50 mph--then the engine will be operating at a few percent of rated power, and very inefficient. Why is it inefficient? The simple answer is that since the throttle is almost closed, there is almost a vacuum in the intake manifold, and the effective compression ratio is very low. You are trying to compress a vacuum. Engine efficiency is very dependent on compression ratio.
"Eighty years ago, there were cars that could transport a family of four at 50 mpg. The Austin 7 comes to mind. Engine technology has improved dramatically since the '30s, yet the best modern cars don't do any better than the Austin 7. Why is that? One big reason is that the Austin 7 had, well, 7 horsepower (actually about 10 hp--the "7" was "RAC hp"). So it was working hard most of the time. The family car that my wife drives makes 250 hp, and that's just an average family car these days.
The X1's license plate, which makes the car street-legal in California, indicates how it compares in energy consumption with a regular car.
(Credit: Michael Kanellos/CNET News.com)"So if you displace the Prius with an EV, you can get maybe a 2x efficiency gain. But if you displace a high-performance vehicle that operates most of the time at low power settings, you can get a 10x efficiency gain. That's the main reason that 18 wheelers aren't a good target. They have powerful engines, but their power/weight ratio is very low (when fully loaded) and the engines work pretty hard. So in fuel per pound mile, they are pretty good already."
To deal with this issue, Wright isn't all about the all electric. He's pushing plug-in electric hybrids, PHEVs, aka gridable hybrids. Electric motors powered off of batteries charged from the wall or with an onboard diesel generator. The generator also acts as a booster for those times when extra power is required. Hybrids are really good at solving these power versus efficiency problems, since you can essentially design a system that can optimize for either performance or efficiency much easier than a straight gas or electric engine could.
Wright's vision also addresses one of the long-running Achilles' heels of electric cars--the lack of fueling infrastructure. Regardless of your feelings on the matter, it's generally bad business to try to bet on an expensive infrastructure rollout. And if it means slower and lower uptake of fuel-efficient vehicles, then calling for infrastructure change that's not going to happen is bad for the environment, too.
That's why I've been such a big fan of plug-in hybrids. We can have our cake and eat it too. It's all about payback and plug-ins. And it's good to see electric car gurus finally getting this message.
I heard an interesting debate the other day on the topic of cities and skyscrapers. In a nutshell, when it comes to cities and buildings, is taller greener or is smaller better? In other words, should environmentally minded people like or dislike skyscrapers?
The Taller Greeners:
• Building up, rather than out, combats urban sprawl, means more concentration of people, means better for mass transit which equals fewer cars and lower emissions.
• Building bigger means more opportunity to use technologies like distributed generation, advanced energy efficiency, lighting and monitoring, which typically are more economic in larger projects.
The Smaller Betters:
• Smaller means more sustainable buildings and lifestyle, more trees and green space.
• Smaller means more neighborhood connectivity for all of us.
• Taller often means more nonsustainable steel, and lots of AC load, which we could avoid with smaller buildings.
• Smaller means less concrete and steel, which are often associated with the increased temperatures in cities.
Perhaps some of the environmentally friendly buildings in progress in places like Dubai or New York can bridge the debate, and make skyscrapers ultra green and ultra cool.
What do you think?
In the interests of full disclosure, I am writing this blog from the second floor of a skyscraper in my office in downtown San Francisco, and because of the lack of good public transport access where I live, I have to drive in to work every day.
In 1899 economist/sociologist Thorstein Veblen introduced the term Conspicuous Consumption to describe what he believed to be the evils of wealth accumulation in the nouveau riche upper class of the Gilded Age (Veblen was not exactly a "right wing" economist). You can best think of Conspicuous Consumption today as the notion that consumerism and "keeping up with the Joneses" drives economics.
One of my friends, Helen Priest from Meridian Energy, coined a new version of the term this week--conspicuous sustainability. She is here from New Zealand's largest (and all green) power company visiting Silicon Valley, and she's watching the torrent of activity around everything green and clean. It struck her that we are reinventing Conspicuous Consumption--keeping up with the Joneses in all things green. You have to wonder if solar panels or a LEEDs rating on a McMansion somehow doesn't miss the point.
So let's think: Al Gore's son gets arrested for doing 100 mph with marijuana in the car--in a Prius! (As I told one my friends, I didn't know they could go that fast.) Nouveau riche tech execs out here in Silicon Valley put ultraclean, and even more, ultraexpensive, solar power on their roofs. Buckingham Palace offsets the carbon footprint of the Queen's recent trip to the United States. Dell has Plant a Tree for Me Program, which I used when I bought a new Dell last month. There is an exponentially increasing number of examples of consumerism driving green.
But to be fair--conspicuous sustainability is pushing everything from the rapid growth in solar to the greening of corporate strategies like General Electric's Ecomagination, BP's Beyond Petroleum and General Motor's Live Green, Go Yellow. It's pushing hybrid electric sales, fuel cells to power our PDAs and carbon offsets--all good things for the environment.
I put the term to my friend, green business guru Joel Makower, and he quickly agreed that conspicuous sustainability is exactly the term for our age (We didn't discuss whether it was good or bad). Joel's response was, "I think the quintessential symbol for the conspicuous sustainability age would be the carbon-neutral Hummer." Or maybe Gore's carbon-neutral 10,000 (square foot) San Francisco home. He also said "And then there's Moskito, Richard Branson's privately owned Caribbean island, which he wants to be carbon neutral..."
In Veblen's mind, Conspicuous Consumption was a very bad thing, but for green tech and the environmental movement, is conspicuous sustainability a good one?
The green-tech sector is getting hot for stock investments these days, in part because of some very hot recent solar IPOs, such as that of First Solar. As with everything, personal investors need to do their homework. Here's a few places to get started.
I follow three Web sites (and have occasionally written for or been interviewed by each of them) catering to investors in the energy and green-tech sector.
RenewableEnergyStocks.com is a content-rich site run by financial public-relations firm Investor Ideas, a subsidiary of Econ Corporate Services. Since the company is typically paid by the companies, you should be wary of its stock advice, though it is an excellent resource for related content and news.
EnergyTechStocks.com is a new content-rich media site tracking energy technology stocks. Its founders are former reporters of The Wall Street Journal.
AltEnergyStocks features blog-style editorials, interviews and opinions on alternative-energy stocks written by a team that actively plays the market in this sector. It also maintains a paper portfolio. (I am a contributing editor.)
For those interested in benchmarking their favorite stocks, there are now several indices to track a favorite stock against.
The Clean Edge U.S. Index covers five major subsectors: renewable-electricity generation, renewable fuels, energy storage and conversion, energy intelligence, and advanced energy-related materials.
WilderShares has the WilderHill New Energy Global Innovation Index and the WilderHill Clean Energy Index, the latter of which has an exchange-traded fund designed to track it as well.
Finally, the Cleantech Index tracks a basket of leading clean-tech stocks.
I know the folks responsible for organizing most of these indices, and while each group has a different perspective on the sector, they are all serious about the future of next-generation energy investing.
Hope this helps, and as always, caveat emptor.
CNET HDTV reviews now include power consumption data and ratings.
(Credit: CNET)At CNET, we've been publishing information about HDTV power consumption for a year and a half in our Quick Guide, which currently lists the results of our tests of more than 50 televisions. Until now, this data has been restricted to the Guide, but it really belongs in each individual HDTV review. That's why we're pleased to announce the "Juice box," a new chart that summarizes the television's power consumption and scores it against other models.
You can check out an example here. Clicking the phrase "Juice box" takes you to an explanation of the terms, numbers and scores in the box, but we'll include a quick rundown here. First off, since calibration of a TV's picture settings for a dark room usually reduces power consumption, simply because the picture becomes less bright, we include measurements of average watts consumed for Default and Calibrated picture settings, as well as for when the TV's Power Save mode (if any) is engaged. We also include measurements of standby power -- how much juice the set sips when turned off -- and estimate the average yearly impact on your electric bill. Finally, we score the particular TV's power consumption compared to others we've tested according to both watts per square inch and overall watts consumed.
In addition to including the Juice box in all forthcoming HDTV reviews, we've added it to the following recent reviews (links go to the box at the bottom):
Current Juice box reviews
- Sharp LC-32D43U
- Samsung LN-T4661F
- Panasonic TH-42PZ700U
- Sony KDL-46S3000
- Vizio VP50HDTV
- Samsung LN-T5064
- LG 47LB5D
- Viewsonic N3235w
- HP LC4776N
- Samsung LN-T4665F
In case you're wondering, we do not incorporate power consumption ratings into our overall numeric ratings for HDTVs, which are still based strictly on design, features and picture quality. For environmentally-conscious shoppers and penny-pinchers alike, however, the energy efficiency of an HDTV can be a factor in deciding which model to buy, so we felt that presenting and contextualizing this information would be a valuable addition to our HDTV reviews. Please let us know what you think of the Juice box, and for the full scoop on HDTVs and energy, including more general info and power-saving tips, check out the Quick Guide.
GreenVolts, which builds utility solar power plants that feature high-performance concentrators, has signed a deal with Pacific Gas & Electric to build a 2-megawatt solar power plant near Tracy, Calif., in 2008.
When built, it will be the largest concentrator solar plant for utilities in the world.
In Germany, utility solar power plants--which essentially are large numbers of solar panels sitting in a field or on top of a roof--are a big deal. That's because the government subsidizes them. Sellers get 45 cents a kilowatt hour for electricity they send to the grid, far higher than the normal price. Farmers are ripping up pastures to erect solar plants.
In the U.S. the benefits aren't as great. Thus, most solar panels are sold to individuals, who put them on their roofs. In some states, however, utilities are required to start getting more of their energy from renewable resources. PG&E has a mandate to get 20 percent of its power from renewable resources by 2010. Hence, PG&E wants to build its own solar fields. (Las Vegas has strong mandates too.)
GreenVolts will try to stand out of the crowd with its concentrator, which was originally developed at the national labs. By concentrating vastly more sunlight onto the solar cell than would shine on it in ordinary circumstances, an individual solar cell can generate more electricity than they would in normal circumstances. According to Bob Cart, the light that his company's concentrator can deliver to a cell is the same amount that the cell would get if there were 625 suns in the sky.
The technology also has sort of a nice "Conan the Destroyer" ring to it. It could also be good for Tracy's image. The town has previously been associated with the Altamont concert and a large tire fire.
The Electric Power Research Institute has also kicked off research into the feasibility of building large--like 500 megawatts large--solar plants with concentrators.
The solar panels also rotate on what GreenVolts calls the CarouSol. There's no shortage of puns in the solar world.
