Friday Five: September 12, 2014

The UN meets to discuss climate change in NYC in two weeks, and the People's Climate March takes place on Sunday the 21st immediately before the summit. The movie Disruption provides insight into the reasons for the march and the perspective on our moment in history. If you are curious as to what all the talk is next week, this is what it's about.
Disruption
"This is the story of our unique moment in history. We are living through an age of tipping points and rapid social and planetary change. We’re the first generation to feel the impacts of climate disruption, and the last generation that can do something about it. The film enlarges the issue beyond climate impacts and makes a compelling call for bold action that is strong enough to tip the balance to build a clean energy future."

I have used the line for years that we know our military is full of tree huggers, but that doesn't mean they aren't right. It's good for a laugh, but next to the insurance industry (which also agrees that climate change is a threat), can you think of an entity that better assesses risk?
Republicans always listen to the Pentagon - except when they say that climate change is real
"At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, a Department of Defense representative laid out how climate change is exposing its infrastructure in coastal and Arctic regions to rising sea levels and extreme weather, and that it's even impacting decisions like which types of weapons the Pentagon buys. This is only the latest in a series of recent warnings from the military, which raised the issue as far back as George W. Bush’s second term. In March, the Pentagon warned, in its Quadrennial Defense Review, that the effects of climate change “are threat multipliers that will aggravate stressors abroad such as poverty, environmental degradation, political instability, and social tensions—conditions that can enable terrorist activity and other forms of violence.” In other words, increased drought and water shortages are likely to trigger fighting over limited resources. The military has pledged to cut its greenhouse gas footprint 34 percent by 2020—and it’s already well on its way to that goal."

I could not assemble a list of stories from this week and not include something about Apple. Truthfully, I looked for something about U2 instead, but there was nothing inherently about quality of life, so I picked something about the iPhone 6. Except, if your quality of life, like mine, is enhanced by more U2 music, then just go to the iTunes store and download the album for free instead of clicking on the article link.
How green in the iPhone 6?
"According to today’s live-streamed event in Cupertino, Calif., Apple’s commitment to the environment includes a mercury-free, arsenic-free, and beryllium-free iPhone 6, among other things. This follows the company’s official ban, a few weeks ago, of benxene and n-hexane — two toxic chemicals previously used in the final assembly of Apple products."

All of us who shepherd children in one way or another have a duty to them to be honest about possibilities. We have bubble-wrapped our children when it comes to their activities and where they can play and when, but most of us do not educate ourselves or them about other real risks. It's up to each of us individually, but if we do nothing, and we are wrong, then we will have ill-prepared them for the future.
Parenting, climate change, and solutions
"When our kids ask us about climate change, or better yet, when we engage them in a conversation about it, this is the story our ever-evolving resourceful selves should be poised to tell. It's the antidote to the fossil fuel industry's narrative that renewables aren't feasible or that society somehow can't afford to invest in acting boldly to stop the biggest threat confronting our kids. We should tell our kids that attaining 100 percent clean energy within the next two decades is technologically feasible, and that it's our job and theirs to push back on any and every political obstacle that blocks our path."

Moving beyond Audi's cool "Two Spocks" commercial, we will soon have a more reasonably-priced vehicle that has driverless car features. I told you, the driverless car revolution is coming, and sooner than you think.
GM will introduce hands-free, foot-free driving in 2017 Cadillac
"The system will allow drivers to switch the vehicle into a semi-automated mode in which it will automatically keep the car in its lane, making necessary steering adjustments, and autonomously trigger braking and speed control to maintain a safe distance from other vehicles."

Happy Friday!

Friday Five: July 18, 2014

This week has seen a great number of stories about increased numbers of earthquakes, water shortages, and fracking chemical disclosure. With my birthday coming up, I am using my author's prerogative to focus on the positive and forward-thinking...it also helps that almost every one of these supports statements I have been making for several years now.

We start with the electric car revolution, and how it will not only change transportation, but also the ways we produce and use power at home. Combined with smart-grid communications technology, it will also change the way grid operators manage distributed resources. We have heard so much about the cost of battery storage for solar, and assumed it had to be a stand-alone battery system in the basement. What if the battery is sitting in your driveway surrounded by soft, bucket seats and an eight-CD sound system?
Electric cars will change the way you power your home
"The most striking data was from EV owners who also had solar panels. From 7 a.m. to midnight, they used about one-fourth as much power from the grid as the typical household, because they were getting power from their rooftops and often selling power back to the grid. In other words, they took very little from the grid when demand was high — at times even helping to increase supply — and took much more from the grid when demand was low. They helped smooth out demand."

Of course, in the future I see, there isn't a car in every driveway...but maybe we can adapt the plan a little bit to store cars around the city so they can balance out the grid and provide the same benefit as if they were parked right outside ones house.
Helsinki's ambitious plan to make car ownership pointless in 10 years
"Subscribers would specify an origin and a destination, and perhaps a few preferences. The app would then function as both journey planner and universal payment platform, knitting everything from driverless cars and nimble little buses to shared bikes and ferries into a single, supple mesh of mobility. Imagine the popular transit planner Citymapper fused to a cycle hire service and a taxi app such as Hailo or Uber, with only one payment required, and the whole thing run as a public utility, and you begin to understand the scale of ambition here."

Creating a space like this, powered by low-to-no cost renewable energy, with ubiquitous, low-cost public transportation, and full of the culture and activity that urban areas provide...it might just bring back a whole host of cities that we had left for dead.
What's the key to turning around Rust Belt cities?
"Some cities effectively prepared for this change, Piiparinen said. Pittsburgh’s educational institutions, for example, produced developers with strong tech skills who could create start-ups in Pittsburgh, especially in the areas of robotics. Buffalo just completed a clinical sciences building, part of $4.4 billion of medicine-related development announced in 2012. Cleveland’s new strengths are rooted in medical device companies, largely because of the Cleveland Clinic, which started doing heart research and married manufacturing and health sciences."

We can even look past carbon to other destructive forms of energy extraction, and if we trust our ingenuity, we can make sure that when we use energy to improve our quality of life, we do not threaten anyone's life or quality of life in the process.
As more nuclear plants shut down can distributed energy fill the gap?
"In the last couple of years, five nuclear power plants in the U.S. have been put on the list for closure. These plants are getting challenged from two sides: competitive natural gas and renewables are eroding the economics of merchant projects, while technical challenges associated with age are making the plants more expensive to operate. In this week's show, we'll look at whether renewables and efficiency are capable of filling the gap left by retired nuclear plants, including the SONGS plant in southern California."

As I predicted, utilities are at the crossroads: either get behind distributed renewables and energy efficiency, or go down fighting - but you will go down. We are already seeing that play out. We cannot life in a country based upon liberty and the pursuit of happiness, then tell someone they have to support a monopolistic business enterprise if it does not make sense to them. Those enterprises do not have to exist in that fashion...and the successful ones are already changing their business model willingly.
Green Mountain is a perfect example of how utilities can embrace distributed renewables
"Enter, Green Mountain Power, the leading electricity provider in the state of Vermont. Rather than simply working against the (likely inevitable) spread of distributed generation, the utility has been transforming itself a company with a business model that puts renewable energy and distributed generation at its core."
In Iowa, solar is fighting back against utilities, and winning
"IPL, the local utility, noticed the solar panels going up, and promptly complained to the Dubuque City Council. The local utility board agreed with IPL in March 2012, but Eagle Point appealed, and in April of last year, the Polk County District Court overturned the utility board’s decision, partly because, as the ruling put it, “The customer will still be connected to the grid, will still be an IPL customer, and must continue to purchase energy and capacity from IPL. Eagle Point is neither attempting to replace or sever the link between IPL and the city. it is simply allowing the city to decrease its demand for electricity from the grid.” In other words, the solar panels weren’t any more illegal than an energy-efficient appliance would be."

Happy Friday!

Why we won't be driving into a green energy future.

Imagine a world where you step out your front door, walk to the curb, and step into a car that had waited for your arrival.  The car takes you to your office while you ride comfortably checking your email and reading the morning news.  You get out of the vehicle at your office, close the door, and step into your building.  Sounds like the story of a CEO making his way to the office, doesn’t it?  Except there are three differences:

1.              The car is not yours.

2.              You are not a CEO, you’re just a regular middle class worker.

3.              The car drove itself.

For fans of Star Trek, we have already seen this driverless technology in action in a commercial with Leonard Nimoy and Zachary Quinto in which the new prototype driverless Audi features prominently.  The development of communication technology, low-cost proximity sensors, and fast-acting computer technology combine to give us a car that will virtually eliminate accidents, completely eliminate drunken driving, and lead us to a future where the only vehicles are high-efficiency ones.

Although the first two benefits make sense – fewer chances for human error and no chance that someone who has been drinking will drive will certainly make life safer, the third might not be as apparent.  Why does a driverless vehicle necessarily mean that we will guarantee a fleet of higher-performing vehicles?  Truth is, on the surface it does not.  However a natural economic extensions of driverless vehicles will lead to higher efficiency: ubiquitous car-sharing.

Driverless vehicles will have some imbedded efficiency to them.  A control system that picks acceleration and velocity based upon the most efficient use of resources will top what most humans can consistently do.  Plus, the communication and navigation technology will always find the most efficient route instead of the one chosen by human habit.  Also, driverless vehicles will cause fewer traffic jams once fully adopted.  Without a minimal need for traffic signals, cars will self-regulate cross traffic, and without speeding and accidents, jams will occur less frequently if at all.  Some of the largest causes of inefficient vehicle operation fall to the wayside with driverless cars.

More importantly however, an industry replete with companies providing driverless car service will drive innovation for more and more fuel efficient vehicles.  Currently, the average car owner uses their vehicle less than 10% of the time they own it.  Most of the time it sits in their garage, driveway, or street parking idly waiting for use.  In a car-sharing, driverless vehicle economy, the cars run at about 60-90% of their capacity.  This has the effect of reducing resource consumption in the making of the vehicles, and it incentivizes a significant increase in efficiency.  When a business operates a vehicle for large portions of the day, the fuel costs increase dramatically from the use of the typical car owner.  Some average consumers see only a small benefit from an extra couple of miles per gallon, but a fleet operator will see even small percentages increase their bottom line.  One only need look at modern taxi service in our urban centers for proof of this.  The two most popular vehicle types are the minivan (for capacity) and the hybrid vehicle (for fuel efficiency).  If someone produces a hybrid minivan, I expect we will see them out there as well.  Taxis operate significantly more than the standard commuter vehicle, and the fuel savings signifies how the industry approaches efficiency differently from the average consumer.

We are over a dozen years away from seeing significant penetration of driverless technology and especially car-sharing systems associated with it.  When we get there, we will see the fuel use per GDP drop significantly, and with it, the prices of fuel.  That drop in price will reduce the ability of oil companies to drill for new, much more difficult-to-reach sources.  The sooner we can make this happen, the sooner we will have a higher quality of life, more lives saved, and better air quality.