Archive for January, 2008
Coal Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
A colleague forwarded an interesting Washington Post article and pro-coal propaganda site to us yesterday. Given that the coal industry (mining, transportation, and generation) represent an enormous slice of our economy and are being directly targeted with new coal plant construction being delayed or canceled, it’s not surprising that the industry is starting to fight back. Their use of statistics (accurate, but slanted) is effective. For instance, the “Facts Map” shows about California that 1.1% of California’s electricity comes from coal and that California has the 8th highest electricity prices in the US. Ohio by contrast, gets 87.2% of its power from coal and has the 23rd lowest electricity prices.
It’s worth visiting the America’s Power propaganda site simply to see the messaging. It’s true that 50% of our power comes from coal and we will be the first to support coal generation when it has the emissions of a geothermal plant. Until that time, we shouldn’t invest in more coal plants, we should invest in cleaner generation technology and retire (or retrofit existing plants) for substantially lower emissions. 3 comments
Another Wind Harvest Approach
Back in December, 2006 we first wrote about SkySails, the company that wants shippers to return to the age of sail. Well, since that time they’ve grown up a bit and now have commercial product. The idea is simple, harness a large ship to a kite/sail with a large area (~600 m2) about 300 m above the surface where the winds are stronger and more consistent. The result? Up to 15% savings on fossil fuel consumption by letting the wind help out.
Cleantech Investment up 10x
As you can see from the chart above, since 2003 investment in Clean Technology has increased an order of magnitude since 2003. While the bloom seems to be off the biofuel flower, the rest of the segment continues to garner huge capital infusions from the private marketplace. When will the ride end? Your guess is as good as ours, but it’s clear this is a cyclical business and that the present growth rate is unlikely to be sustainable without substantial financial return in the foreseeable future. Comments are off for this post
Solar Thermal Development Pipeline
Source: Emerging Energy Research
Emerging Energy Research released a report in November, 2007 detailing the state of the concentrated solar (or solar thermal) harvest development pipeline globally. This report is available for download at $3750 per copy. As you can see from the graph above there is a great deal of activity in the sector, though it’s backend loaded with respect to when the plants are due to come online. The other interesting aspect of this is the technology, parabolic trough is dominating, but linear fresnel and receiver type configurations are factoring into development to some extent. 1 comment
Business Opportunity: CFL recycling?
Have you ever wondered what to do with those energy efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs when they burn out? One shouldn’t just toss them into the garbage due to the small amount of mercury (~5mg) in each bulb yet it’s not really apparent what to do with them. Presently, there are a number of pilot programs that collect and hopefully recycle the bulbs, but a sustainable and clear recycling stream has really yet to emerge.
One has to wonder if this is a business opportunity? The Wall Street Journal online has a good article discussing the pros and cons of the current state of electronics recycling including cfls (ignoring the pejorative title “The Dark Side of Green Bulbs”.)
