Tag Archives: Energy
A Whale of Design: WhalePower Bumps into Engineering Innovation
Posted on 24. Aug, 2011 by Michael Chapdelaine.
The groundbreaking work of WhalePower: bringing new, high efficiency, tubercled airfoil designs to the marketplace. Stephen Dewar, VP of Business Affairs and Director of R&D, elaborates on their inspiration, discoveries, and practical applications in this exclusive, in-depth interview.
Continue Reading
Using Technology to Outsmart Human Behavior
Posted on 23. Sep, 2010 by AHA.
Simplicity will be a key driver in getting consumers to use smart grid technology—such as in-home sensors that provide real-time data—to cut back on energy usage, especially during peak times when demand can outweigh supply.
“70% of all thermostats remain unprogrammed,” said Nat Goldhaber, managing director of Claremont Creek Ventures, a panelist at this afternoon’s smart grid session.
Even if consumers have the technology to monitor their energy use, they’ll lose interest quickly, Goldhaber said: “They should be able to put it on autopilot. Don’t rely on the consumer to be proactive.”
Scott Ballantyne, senior vice president of marketing for Tendril, agreed. He said that in order to change consumers’ energy use habits, the technology “needs to change your mind instantly.”
Of course, a major upgrade of our existing electric grid is critical, panelist concurred. Our current one isn’t designed to handle the intermittent nature of renewable energy or the load of electric vehicles.
Written by AHA! for Opportunity Green.
Continue Reading
Interview with Paul Bunje, Exec. Director of the Center for Climate Change Solutions
Posted on 01. Nov, 2009 by Susanna Schick.
Paul Bunje is the Executive Director of the Center for Climate Change Solutions (CCCS) at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment
OG: So what are some of the projects you’re working on at the center? It’s a little hard to tell from your website.
Paul: We never have enough time to update the website, but you can find the most up-to-date information at UCLA’s Climate Change Portal, which is like one stop shop for all things going on in climate, energy, sustainability. It’s still in the beta phase, but it is live. We try to stay on the cutting edge of interdisciplinary studies, so this keeps UCLA people aware of what’s going across campus, to better learn from each other, and prevent redundancies in research.
Continue Reading
The Future of Biofuels: Can This Green Energy Pay Off?
Posted on 31. Aug, 2009 by Ben Upham.
Opportunity Green was drawn to the Milken Institute yesterday to attend a panel entitled “The Future of Biofuels: Can This Green Energy Pay Off — and Save the Planet?” Biofuels, such as ethanol, made from corn, other plants, like switchgrass, and even from algae, have been both touted and trashed in the last couple years. Heralded as a way to “grow our gasoline”, thus reducing greenhouse gas emissions and securing energy independence, and denounced for perpetuating heavily subsidized industrial farming techniques that harm the environment and, allegedly, contribute to food scarcity.
The panel featured three guests, Roger Conway, director of the Office of Energy Policy and New Uses at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Daniel Gardenswartz, a founding partner of The Sage Group LLC, a Los Angeles-based boutique merchant banking firm, and Richard Hamilton, president and CEO of Ceres, a company that is developing dedicated energy crops for a new generation of biofuels.
A Convincing Argument for Biofuel
Given the business background of the three speakers, the panel was clearly biased towards the industry, and it showed in the presentation. One by one, the panelists attempted to knock down most of the traditional complaints about biofuel:
It is heavily subsidized. Well, so is oil, solar, wind — every major industry.
It causes food prices to rise, most noticeably in 2008. Actually, food prices rose in ’08 because of the rise in the price of oil (backed up with an accompanying slide).
We don’t have the land. There is more than enough unused “marginal” farm land to produce all the biofuel we need.
It uses up precious resources, like water. Most corn and switchgrass (Hamilton’s preferred crop) is rain-fed.
It adds to global warming. Switchgrass is carbon negative, because the plants suck CO2 out of the atmosphere.
By the end of the Q & A the panel seemed to have the audience in the palm of its hand, especially Hamilton, who is 6’6″ and bears a striking resemblance to Brian Williams.
…But on the Other Hand
Opportunity Green remains skeptical. These men have made a career out of deflecting questions about biofuel, and have a lot of practice. While they have valid points on all the issues raised here, the information they provided was selective. For more detailed analysis, check out these articles from the New York Times and Treehugger.
Plus, there are other objections that were not raised. For instance, biofuel is most viable when oil prices are high, but if they are, people are not going to be looking to find a cheaper (but still not free) substitute for gasoline — they’re going to be looking for a way to avoid the stuff altogether. Why pay for liquid fuel when you can get electricity for little or nothing?
Over the long run, we think biofuels will provide a stop-gap between current internal combustion technology and widespread adaption of a green technology like electricity or fuel cells. Biofuels also have a future in aviation and shipping, and possibly diesel trucking, where alternative energies are not cost-effective or simply not possible.
One biofuel that did get short-shrift from the panel was the so-called third generation fuel made from algae. Hamilton and Gardenswartz agreed that those processes were still too untested and expensive for commercial use. This opinion seems to jibe with current sentiment. There’s been a lot of excitement about algae-based fuels in the last couple years, but a lot of high-profile failures too.
Despite our skepticism, Opportunity Green left the panel with increased open-mindedness about this much-maligned fuel source. But we’re still waiting for our electric car.
Continue Reading
Efficiency and Conservation: An Eco-Enthusiast’s Batman and Robin
Posted on 19. Aug, 2009 by JeffHorowitz.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock lately, you’ve probably heard about the detailed report released by McKinsey and Co. espousing the merits of energy efficiency as the cheapest and surest way to keep our lights on and clean up our planet. Their findings will no doubt inspire (and surprise): with a massive efficiency push over the next decade, the U.S. economy could save $700 billion and meet 23% of America’s future electricity demand by 2020.
Conservation versus Energy Efficiency
While I am a huge believer in the virtues of energy efficiency, I cannot help but question whether efficiency through technological improvements can, by itself, deliver all of the alluring economic and environmental benefits outlined in the study. Instead, I believe that a requisite to any strong and unified push for greater energy efficiency must be an equally aggressive push for energy conservation. Only when energy efficiency is combined with smart energy use practices — like turning off lights, computers, and electronics that are not in use — can maximum benefits be achieved at the lowest cost to society.
The terms “energy conservation” and “energy efficiency” carry different messages. “Energy conservation” concerns the personal choice to use less energy in the present, perhaps for less consumption for the future (think behavioral). In contrast, “energy efficiency” refers to using energy more productively and less wastefully, not necessarily going without (think technological).
