It’s not only about sustainability, but it’s also about $. After all, eco- is a prefix in ecology as well as economy. Recently due to a comment on the blog a new site came to our attention, Cleantech Finance Insider. Since we happen to be acquainted with the author and the initial content has been such high quality, we thought we’d give it a plug.

So, you want to spin up a renewable energy project and change the world? Yes? Well, read the three part series on Renewable Energy Startups keys to Success on Cleantech Finance Insider. It’s a great place to start and the perspective painted by Bill in these entries certainly rings true to us. If you’re looking for a distinct voice on the finance part of the house, add Cleantech Finance Insider to your RSS reader.

Image Credit: LDS Church (Australia)

Recently, Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, advanced a theory that Moses was high when he received the 10 commandments from god on Mount Sinai. In fact, I think many of the myths recorded in the bible make much more sense when filtered through the lens of Dazed and Confused. It certainly paints a different picture of ancient life when we actually humanize the characters involved and make them party to the same failings witnessed by society today.

If the human race survives another five thousand years, it will be fascinating to know if some crack-head standing on a street corner in San Francisco could be viewed as a prophet and even messiah in retrospect. Kind of puts all this nonsense in perspective doesn’t it?

Not!

Let’s just make sure we’re getting this right. Both Michigan and Florida unilaterally decide to move their primaries forward without the consent of the Democratic National Committee. Both states were warned, if you do this, we will punish you by not recognizing your votes at the Convention. Despite that warning, the states moved their primaries ahead anyway and indeed the DNC follow-through with their warning that their votes wouldn’t count.

Now that their vote matters in the race, they want a do over? This reminds me of the Olympics where (no relation) Tanya Harding wanted a do over based on equipment deficiencies. It’s complete and utter horse hockey. To Florida and Michigan, tough luck, being accountable requires that you accept the consequences of your actions. Let’s see where your primaries are next election.

Meanwhile, DNC, if you’ve got a backbone, you’ll not change a thing. Let the governors whine, they’ve had their chance. Next!

Yesterday Canada’s Financial Post authored an interesting article about the nascent geothermal industry and how the stocks of several of the publicly traded North American companies are appreciating. It’s true investors are late to the party in this segment; geothermal has none of the sexiness of a solar or wind play (we maintain this is so because it’s difficult for an amateur to look at the earth and say “bet there’s some steam here, let’s build a plant.” Unlike solar or wind where most people can notice the natural resource “hey, it’s real sunny here” or “hey, it’s real windy here”…)

We like to think of geothermal as being the deep thinker’s renewable (pun intended.) The resource is most often hidden, it requires an understanding of basic thermodynamics, and it has the best yield in megawatt hours of all the renewables. (OK, we’ll listen to arguments about gravity hydro which is also quite good.) Here’s a quote from the article:

Sierra Geothermal, Nevada Geothermal Power Inc. (NGP/TSX-V), and Western GeoPower Corp. (WGP/TSX-V) are listed on the TSX Venture Exchange. Polaris Geothermal (GEO/TSX) and U.S. Geothermal Inc. (GTH/TSX) are listed on the main Toronto Stock Exchange.

The largest geothermal company in the world is Or-mat Technologies Inc., (ORA/ NYSE) with a market cap of almost US$2-billion. The seventh North American geothermal company is Raser Technologies Inc. (RZ/PCX), which trades on the ArcaEx.

This enumeration of companies is interesting, but there are some pretty major gaps in this analysis starting with the omission of the largest geothermal operator on the planet, Chevron with nearly 2,000 MWe of production power, mostly in Indonesia and the Philippines (and it sports a market cap of $184B.) Also, there is the omission of large private developer/operators like Caithness/ARCLight who have as large, if not a larger geothermal portfolio as Ormat (~370MWe) – Coso alone for Caithness/ARCLight is a set of 260MWe facilities.

That nitpicking aside, the tone of the article is encouraging and this kind of press can only help in getting the message out that geothermal is a large part of the solution in our march toward energy security and independence.

I could rail about the primary results last night (Ohio, a good place to be from, has shown yet again its inherent inability to select between better and worse – but I digress.) I could talk about the scary notion that Bush is trying to find some positive legacy by driving for a peace plan in the middle east in 10 months. I could talk about the bill coming due for the US (we import more than we export, we spend more than we make, our currency is being massively devalued, hyper inflation is right around the corner – sounds like a third world economy, doesn’t it?)

But in the spirit of and following the lead of other large media outlets, instead I choose to bring you a distraction from that boring stuff. I saw this clip this morning on Greta Christina’s blog and laughed my hind-end off. The sad part, truly sad, is that I recognize each of these scenes. Now, for those of you who simply cannot live without seeing Star Trek cut to Monty Python’s “Knights of the Round Table”, here’s your chance. It’s short, it’s brilliant, and I love it. Hat’s off to the creators, T.Jones and Killa. Between this and the ode to Gary Gygax post, my true freaky geeky colors are showing this week…