Tidal Turbines

From Clean Technica comes news that Scotland is planning a tidal turbine farm sufficient to power 40,000 households:

ScottishPower Renewables will apply for planning permission next year to build the two farms in Northern Ireland’s seabed. The turbines will be manufactured in Scotland in an intentional boost to the country’s green-collar job market.

The 98-foot structures have been tested to operate in water as deep as 328 feet, and they spin slow enough to allow marine life to avoid the 66-foot blades. Most boats and ships would not be affected by the farms since the turbines won’t even reach 30-feet below the surface, but net-towing trawlers will be forbidden from the area.

“Tidal power is completely renewable, being driven by the gravity of the sun and moon, with no carbon dioxide emissions, plus the added benefit of being entirely predictable,” said Keith Anderson, the director of ScottishPower Renewables. The farms would help Scotland attain its goal to reduce its carbon footprint by 80% by 2050.

Maybe this is the answer to those wealthy folks like Walter Cronkite and the various Kennedys who are opposed to wind farms being placed in the waters off Cape Cod? Let's hope!

America Needs Engineers!

Mars may need more women, but America needs more engineers.

This impressive young man, William Yuan, is exactly what we need -- except we need his sort of talent, ingenuity and engineering know-how by the hundreds of thousands, if not the millions.

Oh, yes, he's only twelve years old:

...a 12 year old boy in Beaverton, Oregon recently developed a new type of 3D solar cell that makes other solar cells look inefficient by comparison.

William Yuan’s 3D cell can absorb both visible and UV light. According to his calculations, solar panels equipped with his 3D cells could provide 500 times more light absorption than current commercial solar cells and nine times more light than existing 3D solar cells.

Back in the 1950s and 1960s, a whole generation of future scientists and engineers were inspired by a potent combination of fear of losing out to the Soviets, and of science fiction inspiring them to believe that they, too, could make a better future.

If we're really serious about transforming energy and transportation in this country, we're going to need tons of engineers to do the hard, technical work involved. Hitting the math and science books may be less fun in the short run than playing games and chatting online, but the percentage of young Americans doing the former rather than the latter may well determine whether the United States remains a leading source of technological innovation, or becomes an also-ran.

Hybrid Cars on the Bleeding Edge

I've run across two great posts that feed into one another.

First, Thomas P.M. Barnett notes how higher gas prices have put Toyota in the catbird seat for now with their Toyota Prius hybrid. The next step is the plug-in hybrid market, and even beyond that, hydrogen fuel cell cars:

I know, I know. Amory Lovins is a nut.

But I see a lot of good coming from these high prices. The Middle East needed a big resource transfer to handle that 100 million young heading toward non-existent jobs. WE were going to pay that money one way or the other. Hybrids beat bullets and bombs.

Complementing the above is the news that, with our current energy set-up, mass acceptance of plug-in hybrids would mean a huge increase in water usage by existing power plants:

If 25% of the nation’s fleet converted to plug-in vehicles it would require an additional 1 billion gallons of water for electricity generation. For comparison, that’s almost half the total urban water used by the state of California in one year.

But no one, including the study authors, is saying that plug-in hybrids should be blacklisted. It just adds an important consideration for water-stressed areas that have plans for a grid-based automotive fleet. It also highlights the importance of using sustainable (wind, solar) sources of electricity for electric vehicles.

And as far as the alternatives go: PM pointed out that growing a bushel of corn requires 2200 gallons of water, which only makes 2.7 gallons of ethanol. I would take a fleet of plug-ins over a fleet of Flex-Fuel vehicles any day.

My take: once again we see that corn-based ethanol is a big dead end. Second, plug-in hybrids are great but we need a change in our energy generation so as not to engender a whole new set of water scarcity issues.

Long term, somehow the growing globalizing Core is going to have to come up with the low-carbon emissions energy to produce either mass quantities of electricity for the plug-ins, or the sort that can enable relatively low-cost, low-energy production of mass quantities of hydrogen for fuel-cell transportation. Probably both, with the latter being the long-term solution.

I share Tom Barnett's optimism and only hope that we take care to integrate the Middle East into the Core as we engage in this massive transformation.

Go Green! (and defeat Al Qaeda)

That's what Thomas Friedman says we can and must do, as part of an interview with Fareed Zakaria on the Amazon site.

First Friedman talks about the resentment rising countries feel about our holier-than-thou lectures, and how we should grab the window of opportunity this affords us, such as it is:

Every time I come to China, young Chinese say to me, "Mr. Friedman, your country grew dirty for 150 years. Now it's our turn." And I say to them, "Yes, you're absolutely right, it's your turn. Grow as dirty as you want. Take your time. Because I think we probably just need about five years to invent all the new clean power technologies you're going to need as you choke to death, and we're going to come and sell them to you. And we're going to clean your clock in the next great global industry. So please, take your time. If you want to give us a five-year lead in the next great global industry, I will take five. If you want to give us ten, that would be even better."

Friedman worries, however, that we in the U.S. are blowing the head start we've been given, and Zakaria offers up this following reason:

I think it's not about our economic system but our political system. The rhetoric we hear is that the market should produce new energy technologies. But the problem is, the use of current forms of energy has an existing infrastructure with very powerful interests that has ensured that the government tilt the playing field in their favor, with subsidies, tax breaks, infrastructure spending, etc. This is one area where the Europeans have actually been very far-sighted and have pushed their economies toward the future.

Friedman goes on to talk about how this affects our war against Al Qaeda, in a tactical sense:

They began with a marine general in Iraq, who basically cabled back one day and said, I need renewable power here. Things like solar energy. And the reaction of the Pentagon was, "Hey, general, you getting a little green out there? You're not going sissy on us are you? Too much sun?" And he basically said, "No, don't you guys get it? I have to provision outposts along the Syrian border. They are off the grid. They run on generators with diesel fuel. I have to truck diesel fuel from Kuwait to the Syrian border at $20 a gallon delivered cost. And that's if my trucks don't get blown up by insurgents along the way. If I had solar power, I wouldn't have to truck all this fuel. I could—this is my term, not his—‘outgreen' Al-Qaeda."

I argue in the chapter that "outgreening"--the ability to deploy, expand, innovate and grow renewable energy and clean power--is going to become one of the most important, if not the most important, sources of competitive advantage for a company, for a country, for a military. You're going to know the cost of your fuel, it's going to be so much more distributed, you will be so much more flexible, and--this is quite important, Fareed--you will also become so much more respected.

Oh, and Friedman makes this excellent point about the creative destruction that such a big change in energy technology will entail:

In the green revolution, everyone's a winner: BP's green, Exxon's green, GM's green. When everyone's a winner, that's not a revolution--actually, that's a party. We're having a green party. And it's very fun--you and I get invited to all the parties. But it has no connection whatsoever with a real revolution. You'll know it's a revolution when somebody gets hurt. And I don't mean physically hurt. But the IT revolution was a real revolution. In the IT revolution, companies either had to change or die. So you'll know the green revolution is happening when you see some bodies--corporate bodies--along the side of the road: companies that didn't change and therefore died. Right now we don't have that kind of market, that kind of change-or-die situation. Right now companies feel like they can just change their brand, not actually how they do business, and that will be enough to survive. That's why we're really having more of a green party than a green revolution.

On the first point, Friedman is absolutely right that we should make the most of every opportunity the rest of the world affords our country through their own unwillingness to face up to these challenges.

I part company with him when he endorses Obama's big-spending government subsidy approach over McCain's more free market approach. Still, McCain would be wise to emphasize more strongly that as President he won't let current low-cost subsidies for wind, solar and geothermal lapse, as all too many Republicans are currently willing to allow to happen.

It's interesting where Friedman concentrates on the purely tactical applications of green energy to the war against Al Qaeda. He's quite right that solar would be helpful powering our military outposts on the Syrian border, but at least in this interview he doesn't address the larger strategic considerations.

I'd love nothing more than to deprive the Ayatollahs, Putins, and Chavezes of their oil wealth when we transition to a new varied energy source that stems more from technical knowledge and innovation than from the luck of the geological draw. In any such contest, our open society model which puts a premium on talent regardless of country of origin will do very well indeed.

What I don't think anyone is addressing, however, is how such a green revolution might worsen the feeling of resentment against the West if the Muslim world is again left on the sidelines of this latest revolution. Given the widely-reported problems in education in the Arab world, combined with its dependency on oil as its leading export, this is a very-real possibility even in the event that the United States successfully leads such a technological transition.

This is not an argument against the environmental necessity of this transition, but I think it points up the fact that Thomas Barnett's grand strategy of "Shrinking the Gap" by more thoroughly integrating the Middle East into globalization's Core will be more relevant to the defeat of Al Qaeda than the green revolution alone will.

Hat Tip: Instapundit

Africa Ascendant

A great piece from Roger Cohen on good news from Africa (among other places) in the New York Times:

During a short stay in Ghana, which will hold free elections in December, Vodafone had bought a majority stake in Ghana Telecom for $900 million (entering a fiercely competitive mobile-phone market) and I’d heard much about 6 percent annual growth, spreading broadband and new high-end cacao ventures.

Accra, the capital, is buzzing. Russian hedge funds are investing. New construction abounds. Technology enables people in the capital to text money transfers via mobile phone to poor relatives in the bush.

I don’t think that picture is exceptional these days for Africa, where growth averaged close to 6 percent last year and I sense a fundamental change in attitudes to governance, trade, the private sector and political accountability.

His killer summation is, "Africa Ascendant is not yet a slogan that sells. It will be."

Read the whole thing.

The Imminent Decline of Chavez and Company

Andres Oppenheimer in the Miami Herald noted recently that Chavez's radical populist friends in Latin America are not doing as well as they say they are:

In Venezuela, Chávez's popularity has plunged, as growing numbers of Venezuelans are suffering from a 30 percent inflation rate, massive corruption and nepotism (about two dozen Chávez relatives hold senior government jobs). They also resent a president who gives away petro-dollars from the country's recent oil bonanza in ego-boosting trips abroad.

In Bolivia and to a lesser extent in Ecuador, opposition forces are displaying growing resistance to these countries leaders' efforts to become presidents for life.

In Argentina, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner's populist government lost its aura of invincibility when Congress -- led by her own vice president -- overturned a key government bill to further tax soybean exports. Political winds in Argentina are beginning to blow away from pro-Chávez populism and move toward the center.

And here is his bottom line, which really shows who is shrinking poverty in Latin America (hint, it's not Chavez):

In sheer numbers, Latin America's pragmatic-democratic bloc -- led by Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Chile -- already accounts for more than 80 percent of the region's economy, and more than 90 percent of its foreign investments.

This falls right in line with Thomas Barnett's observation that, when it comes to shrinking the Gap, foreign direct investment (FDI) is what it's all about. But to get the FDI flowing into your country, you need a) security and b) an investment-friendly environment.

Chavez and his imitators are doing all they can to provide the reverse of the second requirement, and as seen with Chavez's support for FARC in Colombia he is doing his best to ruin the security aspect too. In the end, Chavez is only perpetuating the misery in his country and that of his allies, while the rest of Latin America moves on.

Postscript: All the above is worth considering in light of our Presidential candidates' differing trade proposals for Latin America, to which I'll return shortly.

Wind Energy in Upstate New York

I just read two very interesting articles at the NY Times and Yahoo on wind energy in upstate New York.

One thing that jumped out at me in the Yahoo article was how it was the younger generation that was opposed to the installation of the wind turbines, while their literal parents were the ones embracing this new technology in the hopes of building a better economic future for their poor rural communities. In Tom Friedman's lexicon of the "Lexus and the Olive Tree," then, the young embraced the traditional olive tree while their elders embraced the futuristic Lexus. Quite the role-reversal!

The NY Times article focused more on the corrupting influence of Big Wind, showing that even green companies can be as wicked as traditional energy companies. Heh.

Good News / Bad News

In the good news dept. for fighting global warming, apparently China is rapidly ramping up various green energy technologies.

This is very good news from the standpoint of slowing down the rate of growth of future CO2 emissions, since China and India are the fastest growing sources of CO2 emissions, and China has recently passed the U.S. as the number one source of said emissions.

The bad news aspect is that China is getting more serious about this, perhaps, than the U.S. is! I hope this ends up spurring us even harder to push for nuclear, solar and wind energy generation.

Free Trade and Farm Subsidies -- Obama vs. McCain

The EU is one of the slowest to extend true free trade to Africa, and has been very resistant to reduce its farm subsidies in particular.

Unfortunately, the EU has also taken to making sure the tariff barriers to outside countries go over higher as they integrate more new countries like Poland into the EU itself. In France and Germany, there is ridiculous fears over "Polish plumbers" taking away jobs, so the EU tends to deal with this by making sure tariffs on goods coming from outside the EU are high.

Contrast this with the US, which recently was pushing for a global reduction in tariffs on farm goods, as well as a global reduction on farm subsidies, which in this country overwhelmingly favor the small number of large corporate farms and NOT, as their supporters would have you believe, the small family farms.

In that respect, support for the most 2008 Farm Bill was a vote in favor of a bill where 80% of the money goes to the top 20% wealthiest corporate farm interests. It was more about courting those wealthy farmers in Indiana and Illinois and Iowa than about really helping hard-pressed small farmers. And it certainly wasn't about helping feed people outside of the United States!

Don't take my word for it, Google "Farm Bill 2008" and follow the links and decide for yourself. But here's one essay from economist Greg Mankiw I found instructive:

http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2008/05/farm-bil...

It it worth noting that McCain voted against this pork-fest, and Obama voted for it.

Similarly, there is a debate in this country over switching to ethanol and away from gasoline as a means to achieving the dual goals of emitting less CO2 and also sending less money to those lovely Saudis, Iranians and Venezuelans who dig us so much. Not to mention just spending less money on filling up one's car!

Brazil has gone from having 3% of their new cars being flex-fuel in 2003, to 70% of their new cars being flex-fuel in 2006! Brazil has done this by investing heavily in cheap, plentiful sugar-based ethanol, so Brazil has now effectively achieved the elusive goal of being energy-independent.

But, because of the corn-growing ethanol lobby here in the U.S., there is a huge tariff on the import of sugar-based ethanol that amounts to 54 cents a gallon! This is not about helping the American consumer -- rather, it is all about protecting the Iowa and Illinois corn ethanol farmers from competition. Again, as with the farm bill, Obama sides with the giveaway for Illinois and Iowa farmers over lower ethanol prices for all Americans. Google "sugar ethanol tariff" for the relevant links.

My point is, and I know I've wandered all over the place in getting here, is that the tariffs and protectionism of the sort favored by both the EU and Senator Obama do NOT favor the customers that are supposedly being protected, nor do they favor the exporters in Africa, Brazil and elsewhere who simply want to get access to the big markets in the EU and the U.S. The best way the U.S. could help African nations grow and prosper is to drop all the ridiculous tariffs we have on the very export goods that African nations send our way.

In this respect, the U.S. is better than the EU, but that's not saying much at all. We still need to be far better than we've been thus far. Sadly, for all his rhetoric Senator Obama stands squarely in the way of lowering tariffs on African goods exported to the U.S., whereas old white Senator McCain has been a staunch opponent of tariffs against foreign goods, and an equally strong foe of the giveaways to the bloated farm lobby here.

This was cross-posted at JackandJillPolitics.com

This Could be Big

Since we're on a green tech roll here, here's excellent news from MIT about a possible electrolysis technique that will allow for 24/7 solar power.

If the follow-through tests on this new technique work out, this could make solar a much bigger and more cost-effective player in competing with nuclear power as an excellent alternative to traditional CO2-emitting energy sources!

To that end, I am trying to find a good apples-to-apples comparison of costs per megawatt hour for nuclear vs. coal vs. solar vs. wind. If any of my massive readership could tease out a good source of that information, I'd be eternally grateful.

Revolutionary Capitalism

Branching out from the Green Energy discussion of last time, there's this great interview with Vinod Khosla on the SF Chronicle site.

I am only now learning about Khosla, which means I must have not been paying much attention since he's a major venture capitalist in Silicon Valley.

In the interview, he puts forward the following important points, including many that pricked holes in my own personal preconceptions:

* Hybrids are not a real long-term solution, more a status symbol thing

* Solar thermal plants are cost-effective compared to natural gas-powered ones

* Food prices are going up more because of higher oil prices than biofuels

* Brazil adopted flex-fuel cars in three years! From 3% of new cars in 2003 to 75% of new cars in 2006

* over-regulation hurts: "the bureaucracy in California for permitting is so large that whenever we can, our companies for production move out of state."

I'm not saying he's necessarily right on all of the above, but the man has a proven track record of guessing right on a lot of new technologies through his venture capital firm, whereas I have no such track record. So that argues for giving all of the above a respectful consideration.

What I personally take away from his interview is this: the doom and gloomers are wrong again, and what will get us through the current price and energy disruptions is innovation and risk-taking that produces cheaper, more environmentally effective solutions. In short, capitalism!

Since I am a political geek whether it's an election year or not, I think this argues more in favor of McCain's generally free market, incentives-laden approach to the energy problem than Obama's big-spending government programs. But that's just me. Your mileage may vary.