Google's Clean Energy 2030

It is my opinion that moving our society's primary energy technologies away from carbon is one of the most urgent actions we need to take in reacting to carbon driven climate change. Solutions for transportation, solutions for households, solutions for industry and commerce.

The Google Blog released an analysis of the challanges presented by creating and deploying new energy technologies and found them to be surmountable and greatly reducing our carbon energy usage. The analysis was led by Dr. Jeffery Greenblatt, Phd, Google's Climate and Energy Technology Manager.

Right now the U.S. has a very real opportunity to transform our economy from one running on fossil fuels to one largely based on clean energy. We are developing the technologies and know-how to accomplish this. We can build whole new industries and create millions of new jobs. We can reduce energy costs, both at the gas pump and at home. We can improve our national security. And we can put a big dent in climate change. With strong leadership we could be moving forward on an aggressive but realistic timeline and an approach that balances costs with real economic gains.

Google's answer is a three front initiative.

The first, reducing demand by doing more with less. Going after what Google calls "the low hanging fruit". Developing and adopting energy efficient technologies and individual practices using less.

The second, develop renewable energy that is cheaper than coal. Wind, solar thermal and advanced geothermal. Google makes the call for massive funding of R&D efforts in these technologies, along with incentives like tax credit's to promote the swiftest adoption of new sources. Also raised, is the importance of putting the real cost of carbon into it's price through the use of carbon cap and trade or a carbon tax.

The third, electrify transportation and re-invent the electric grid. Battery technology is getting very close for the practical production of electric power plants for transportation. Google has a fleet of converted Toyota Prius and Ford Escape plug-in conversions. The converted Prius plug-ins get 90+ MPG. Google calls for a smart grid.

However, to successfully put millions of plug-in cars on the road and fuel them with green electricity, we need a smart grid that manages when we charge and how we're billed. A smart grid could also provide for the two-way flow of electricity, as well as large-scale integration of intermittent solar and wind energy. Much of the technology in our current electrical grid was developed in the 60s and is wasteful and not very smart. We are partnering with GE to help accelerate the development of the smart grid and support building new transmission lines to harness our nation's vast renewable energy resources.

I don't know if 2030 is soon enough, but we have little choice but to make these three initiatives an urgent priority. In order to do that, we must elect candidates who share these goals. While McCain and Palin have given lip service to developing greener energy technologies, I just don't think they have a real comittment to cutting carbon emissions, except as it serves the nuclear power industry (and I think they are a part of the solution) and the "clean coal" industry. The Obama campaign has a much more convincing comittment to developing clean energy, and an understanding that development of those industries is an intergal part of building an infrastructure for the future.

Sarah Palin - A "Know Nothing" in the Climate Debate

Sarah Palin is a know nothing. We can't afford another "know nothing" White House.

I don't make that charge lightly. I make it because she, like Bush and others on the right who have made a practice of expressing skepticism about human driven climate change, equivicates her answers by making note of the "controversy" surrounding the question of human activity as a driving force and brushing off it's importance as a cause for the climate change.

Paul Krugman recently defined Know Nothingism this way:

Know-nothingism — the insistence that there are simple, brute-force, instant-gratification answers to every problem, and that there’s something effeminate and weak about anyone who suggests otherwise — has become the core of Republican policy and political strategy. The party’s de facto slogan has become: “Real men don’t think things through.

Palin's evasive answers about her views on climate change show that it is unlikely that she could ever provide the kind of nuanced and urgent leadership that our climate situation demands. She comes from that group of people, for whom ignorance is not only not a problem, it's positively a virtue.

With the challenges of rapidly increasing carbon dioxide levels that we face, and climate becoming more and more unpredictable, we just can't afford even four more years of inaction and kowtowing to the carbon based energy industries. And that is, for a fact, what we will get if Sarah Palin ever has a hand in what happens in the White House.

Carbon Nanotubes - Transparent and Stronger than Steel

Talk about science fiction, a breakthrough in a commercially viable production method of carbon nanotube sheets was announced by a partnership of the NanoTech Institute of the University of Texas at Dallas and an outfit named CSIRO. The carbon nanotube sheets have uses as diverse as clothing to artificial muscles to electrical conductors.

The Physorg.com story on the announcement in the journal Science, mentioned a variety of uses for the carbon nanotube sheets.

Carbon nanotube materials have a number of potential applications in, for example: organic light emitting displays, low-noise electronic sensors, artificial muscles, conducting appliqués and broad-band polarized light sources that can be switched on in one ten-thousandth of a second.

"...Transparent sheets that are stronger than steel sheets of the same weight."

The Physorg.com story talked about a sheet production method and also a twisted yarn fabrication technology which could be easily commercialized.

I have to say, I'm a little bit intrigued. Artificial muscles for an artificial skin/super suit? Now that's something I've been looking for.