Wired's New Nukes
(Small) Size Matters 
Wired Magazine calls out the need for nukes again in "Nuclear Now" in its Feb 2005 copy, saying renewables are pie in the sky and coal and oil are loading the greenhouse. Chart above shows how much land mass is used up to produce 1 Gigawatt of energy (enough to power one metric shitload of houses, factories, cars, etc.). Note: nuclear, in the bottom left, takes up .33 square miles.
posted by Andy Bochman at 8:56 PM
 
What it Takes to Win
Tom Friedman
No one sees the world more clearly today than this man. Check out Tom Friedman's recent analysis on how the US could right many wrongs in one swift shift in policy and economics. AE is not the only thing that wins in his world.
posted by Andy Bochman at 9:04 AM
Tepid Alt Energy Venture Capital Update
Cleantech Venture Network
Sustainable energy venture capital (VC) analysis and events firm Cleantech Venture Network just posted its investment trends review for the 3Q2004. AEman notes signs of life though no stampede. Investment in AE companies in the US Northeast is strong and getting stronger, the west is declining, Europe is coming online, and the number of first round financings is declining.
Clearly AE technology remains an emerging market with the attendant fits and starts. You'll know AE's coming on strong when the VCs pick up the pace and sustain it. For now, AE investors are just dabbling, dipping their toes in the water but not ready to dive in head first. That's because the business cases aren't firm enough. Until then, we're still an old power nation with an old power economy. Hello Washington ... you can help. Washington?
posted by Andy Bochman at 9:30 AM
Alt Energy 101 and PhD: Read or Die
Winning the Oil Endgame by Amory Lovins
This is one of those cases where the normally dispassionate AEman just shouts out a directive emanating from pure primal instinct. AEman was blogging "Oil Endgame" by Rocky Mountain Institute founder and freaking new power genius Amory Lovins in late 2004 and wanted to make sure new folks didn't miss this. It's an online book and/or a paperback you can buy and tote and markup and share. It's a learned and scholarly masterpiece that's fun to read and beautifully illustrated and painstakingly documented. If you want to have the slightest clue about what's going on with dinopower today, and how the world might best evolve, Lovins is the man for you.
posted by Andy Bochman at 10:52 PM
A Hybrid Double Double
Silverado Hybrid V8
AEman sees both good news and bad news coming out of Detroit's latest hybrid sales news. The good news is that the number of hybrid cars (and now light trucks) is doubling every year. It did in 2004, it's going to happen again in 2005, and it looks like it's going to keep happening.
The bad news is that part of that rapid increase is going to come in categories that have almost nothing to do with vehicle efficiency. For instance, the behemoth pictured above, even with a hybrid engine, gets less than 20 mpg. One could argue that that's better than the 14 or 15 it might get with a conventional gasoline engine. Pragmatic AEman know this is, percentage-wise, a substantial gain, especially when large pickups like this are used as trucks. You know, to haul large chunks of heavy stuff. But it's the other and more popular use, pickup as general purpose passenger car that pisses him off.
Detroit is pitching this as having your cake and eating it too: all the braun of a monster truck, with an environmentally friendly engine that sips gas. Sips gas AEman's ass.
posted by Andy Bochman at 9:29 PM
Go with the Flow
Underwater = No Angry Psychos
Virginia-based Verdant Power (www.verdantpower.com), working with DOE and with support from the city, is running an experiment in the East River that may soon bring some (not too much) extra power to Gotham. Unlike the Cape Wind hysterics still playing out off Nantucket with wind turbines, water turbines go down easier, even for the most sensitve neo-aesthete. May eventually be able to ramp up to 1 Gw if the economics and politics work out.
posted by Andy Bochman at 7:55 AM
Nuclear Power: Sleeping Giant Begins to Stir
Recent articles, like this one today in the Chicago Tribune titled: "After 30 years in exile, nuclear power is back", are indicators that something is up. The mainstream press doesn't seem to understand why nuclear is starting to come back, but it will report the events as they unfold and replay the history each time. This article misses the signifance of the emmissions difference between nuclear and coal plants, isn't aware of the requirement to generate substantially more power in the coming years, and also can't look forward into hydrogen generation because the reporter hasn't yet connected all the dots. But, increasingly, AEman says, they will.
posted by Andy Bochman at 9:41 PM
Wind Power Home Style
Windsave home turbine
OK so you want to play a part in the campaign against global warming and you want the home version and you want to spend some money now to save some money later? Does AEman have a deal for you. Oh yeah, you'll have to pay in pounds - one thousand of them plus VAT. You know, 5% value added tax. . And go to Scotland. And fill out a form. And wait till the wind hits 10 mph to create any electricity.
But other than these very few minor constraints, AEman believes this may be the ideal system for you. Visit the Windsave company site for more info, and if you go for it, may all your days be blustery.
posted by Andy Bochman at 8:53 PM
Molehills into Gigawatts
A recent edition of New Yorks "The City" Journal makes a clean case for going with the densest fuel around. You'll like this:
[Here's] the stunning thing about nuclear power: tiny quantities of raw material can do so much. A bundle of enriched-uranium fuel-rods that could fit into a two-bedroom apartment in Hell’s Kitchen would power the city for a year: furnaces, espresso machines, subways, streetlights, stock tickers, Times Square, everything—even our cars and taxis, if we could conveniently plug them into the grid. True, you don’t want to stack fuel rods in midtown Manhattan; you don’t in fact want to stack them casually on top of one another anywhere. But in suitable reactors, situated, say, 50 miles from the city on a few hundred acres of suitably fortified and well-guarded real estate, two rooms’ worth of fuel could electrify it all. If folks want to keep having reliable and affordable power to run the ever expanding list of electronic appliances and thing-a-ma-jigs including larger energy-sucking items like plasma screens and cars, it might be time to reconsider the stance vis-a-vis nuclear plants. Articles like this are a start.
posted by Andy Bochman at 8:23 AM
Can Coal be Kleaner?
Coal Stack
Publically traded newco KFx is refining a process to make its patented K-Fuel®, the result of transforming sub-bituminous coal and lignite into "clean, affordable, efficient energy supplies."
In addition to water, the process removes mercury, SO2 and NOX. AEman notes one compound the KFx web-site and the annual report fails to discuss in any detail in C02 - the primary culprit in human-induced climate change. At first blush it appears coal can be made cleaner in some important ways, but deep down it's still going to be coal, and coal is carbon and carbon is the C in CO2.
Still, KFx is an spritely innovator in an industry of dinosaurs and deserves its day in court (metaphor violation - sorry). Keep an eye on them.
posted by Andy Bochman at 10:12 PM
Plainly Spain is into Wind
Spanish Turbines
The conversation on wind power is so different in Spain today than it is in the USA, and not just because in Spain they speak Spanish. A current NY Times article (registration required) describes how Spain is moving quickly to make the most of this resource despite opposition.
Thanks to MN for this find.
posted by Andy Bochman at 9:28 PM
It's Greased Lightning!
GM H2 Prototype
Hydrogen, hybrid, hydrox, hysterical, hydromatic.
Good news abounds with new tech underfoot in the light vehicles category, even at tech laggard GM.
"Yeah, but where's the H2 going to come from?" AE
"Hey, enough with the negative waves, AEman."
"OK, you're right. It looks cool." AE
posted by Andy Bochman at 10:56 PM
The Great Escape
2005 Ford Escape Hybrid
Ford is making them and selling them now. AEman's brother owns a small Ford dealership and just got his first allotment of to Escape Hybrids ... one pre-sold before it hit the lot.
It's the first SUV hybrid and as such represents the best and the worst of what's available today. Best for its use of hybrid propulsion technology; worst for being a fucking SUV (AEman has issues, and one of them is large vehicles designed to look like one thing that really are used for quite another thing).
In a sense then, it's a perfect transition vehicle. Looking like old thing on the outside, carrying the future, invisible, on the inside. It's a hybrid and a hybrid.
Want more details? Don't ask Ford, visit the folks at hybridCARS and you will quickly get a feel for what this car is about and how to get one if you want one.
posted by Andy Bochman at 6:44 PM
US Getting Into Position on Clean Tech ... Left Out
While some US companies are making moves to take advantage of the pro-active climate change policies in other countries (like China), most are asleep at the wheel. This article describes what some co's are doing, and gives three main points investors and companies should be considering to maximize their return as many non US countiries and companies minimize their emmissions:
- First, investors must understand the financial risks for companies in which they own shares and companies must do a better job of analyzing and describing those risks in the public reports they file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. If companies don't do this, investors should demand it. A growing number of the nation's largest pension funds are filing shareholder resolutions requesting that companies disclose their risks from climate change and how they plan to avert them.
- Investment managers need to more accurately assess climate risk exposure in evaluating companies and industry sectors. More robust research practices are also needed to better analyze and model how businesses and sectors are threatened by various global warming scenarios, whether from weather impacts or regulatory changes.
- Finally, investors must channel their investment capital to take advantage of new clean technology opportunities. As more states and countries move to adopt carbon controls -- whether on vehicles in California or China, or on power plants in the Northeast -- markets for hybrid vehicles, clean-coal processes, and other clean technologies will only magnify. Investors should take advantage by investing in companies and portfolios that are well positioned.
In a few years this will all be mainstream. We're in a brief window of time where you might be able to profit off of the differences in climate change awareness among companies. It's hard to watch the US Fed. government move so slowly, but great to see some US states and companies do an end-around. That's what makes ours a great system of government. If one part of it is fucking up, the rest are under no obligation to do the same.
posted by Andy Bochman at 9:19 PM
MIT on Nukes
Several of the larger-brained folks at MIT have expressed their support for the return of nuclear power to ward off more CO2 emmissions in the future. Beyond issues of pure technology, they point out the four most significant hurdles to widespread new adoption:
- Cost/Efficiency
- Waste disposal/storage
- Safety
- Proliferation
More in the article; More to follow on AEman.
posted by Andy Bochman at 10:31 PM
Does "Clean Coal" Have Soul?
AEman's had a hard time finding good introductory sources on the current state of affairs in the coal industry. This piece from The Economist is over two years old, but seems a good place to start for the layperson. AEman will be digging for more on clean coal approaches in the coming months.
posted by Andy Bochman at 9:14 PM
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