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Solar watch, radio, calculator

Sure you’ve heard about them. Our cities use them. Many countries use them. They’re the energy source of the future. But did you know that they’re right next to you? In your desk drawers, and on your own wrist as you are reading this? As you turn to look and figure out what they are, they are increasing. They’re photovoltaic cells, and their worldwide market is bigger than it has ever been before and it’s growing.

Photovoltaic cells are the technology that converts sunlight into electricity. As the website California Solar Center (www.californiasolarcenter.org) informs us, “The term photovoltaic is derived by combining the Greek word for light, photos, with voltaic, named for Alessandro Volta, a pioneer in the study of electricity. The smallest systems power calculators and wristwatches. Larger systems provide electricity for water pumps, highway signs, communications equipment, satellites, mobile homes, medical purposes (to power medical equipment, water purifiers, and refrigerators holding vaccines), navigation buoys, streetlights, and even for lighting homes and running appliances.”

Atlantis Energy’s PV roof shingles

California currently has a high demand for photovoltaics. In a recent phone conversation with the North American Sales Director Joe Morrissey of Atlantis Energy, a company which is the world’s leader in integrating photovoltaics (PV’s) into tinted glass and roof shingles, he stated, “as of two months ago, California is one of the largest single markets on the planet for photovoltaic products.”

California is just one of the worldwide markets paving the way for PV’s to become a major energy source in the future. According to Mr. Morrissey, Germany and Japan are the world leaders in PV manufacturing in terms of both quality and quantity. There are strong markets for PVs in both of these countries, as well as in Switzerland. A recent study of the global PV market by Strategies Unlimited, a technology research firm, puts Europe (Germany) and Asia (Japan) as the largest markets worldwide, at 29.5% and 25%, respectively. North America trails not too far behind at 14.8%.
The Consumer Energy Center reports on its website (www.consumerenergycenter.org) that “the PV market is worth $2 million today, but is expected to grow to $10 billion by 2010.”

Cara Eisenberg, Senior Marketing Associate for BP Solar, one of the world’s largest PV manufacturers, noted some important points regarding California’s current PV market, saying, “It is looking like the market size is anywhere from 7 to 25 MW for 2001 [in California]. This strong market should continue, at least in the near future, since the energy generation capacity shortfall in California is believed to be at least 10,000 MW and there is plenty of money being committed to invest in PV.”

Ms. Eisenberg provided information about some of the government programs in California that have helped to encourage the growth of the PV market. Two of these are the Reliable Electric Services Investment Act (RESIA) starting in 2002, and the Self-Generation Incentive Program, Assembly Bill 970 approved by the CPUC in March 2001. Through the Reliable Electric Services Investment Act, $135 million per year is to be collected from ratepayers and transferred to the renewable trust fund. The Self-Generation incentive Program provides $138 Million annually for distributed generation using PV, wind turbines, fuel cells and micro turbines through 2004. An interesting fact by the Consumer Energy Center states, “A study by U.S. Department of Energy showed that, if covered with solar PV panels, the roofs of California’s city and county buildings could generate 200 megawatts of clean electricity, and school roofs covered with solar PV could add another 1,500 megawatts to the state’s peak power supply”

Although energy provided by PVs in California is currently less than 1% of the total energy produced, Ms. Eisenberg stressed several very important points about the potential that PVs have in the future for continuing market growth in California. First, California presents favorable conditions for PVs through state support, electricity demand, and sunshine. Second, solar energy produces the most electricity when the solar radiation is at its strongest, during the day, which is also when electricity demand is at its peak. Finally, solar generating capacity is modular, can be scaled to different sizes, and can produce energy near its consumption point, thus eliminating the costs of transmission to far away consumption areas, an important point considering the bottleneck problems which plagued California last spring.

The Consumer Energy Center reports that “according to the Department of Energy, the costs of photovoltaics have dropped 200 percent over the last three decades. Costs today range from 10 to 40 cents per kilowatt-hour.” This downward price trend, as well as the growing market for PVs in California and world, shows the tremendous potential for photovoltaic energy production both in the near future and in the long term.

The next generation of products in the world will be green. But what is “green?” Green can mean earth-friendly, green can mean a political movement, but for lack of a better term, green can also be the label given to the most significant economic transformation in the history of humanity; the transition from a civilization that contends with nature in a struggle for survival, to a civilization that nurtures the environment, and creates technologies that exist in harmony with nature. In the year 2001 we sit poised on the brink of this momentus shift, and already the staggering economic opportunities are being identified and invested.

Sacramento California’s role in this worldwide shift to a green economy could be huge. Sacramento’s electric power company, SMUD, for example, is a pioneer in nurturing distributed power, where the utility buys back extra power that homeowners produce using wind or photovoltaics. Just how radical and courageous this stance really is can be appreciated when one studies the resistance other utilties, across most of the United States, are raising against “net metering” and other embracings of distributed power. But it’s in Sacramento’s start-up world where you’ll find the real green excitement. Across a variety of disciplines, from renewable energy to soil remediation, start-up firms in the Sacramento area are breaking new ground.

In Roseville, entrepreneur Jonathan Brewer at EarthWorks Environmental has taken the expertise he gained with mining enterprises and come up with an innovation that promises to make treatment of toxic soils better, faster, and a lot cheaper. He has taken giant hammer mills that are typically used to pulverize mining ore, and uses them instead to pulverize soil that has toxic contaminants. The atomized soil is then easily treated with chemical reactants to render it safe enough to use in a child’s sandbox.

Earthwork’s soil remediation machine

“We can treat any toxin for which there’s a chemical methodology to degrade,” says Brewer, and that’s almost anything. Most current treatment options require moving the soil to a toxic waste dump, a much more expensive procedure that doesn’t solve the problem, only relocates it. Brewer’s company is going to turn segments of the industrial waste processing industry on their ears.

In downtown Sacramento, in a lab in an old brick building by the railroad tracks, for six years entrepreneur and inventor Rex Hodges at Anuvu Inc. has been perfecting a revolutionary automobile design. A former Aerojet scientist, Hodges has taken a variety of technologies used in aerospace; fuel cells, carbon epoxy composites, and hydrogen/oxygen fuel tanks, to design the car of the future.

Anuvu’s Concept Car

This vehicle runs on a hydrogen/oxygen fuel mix that car owners can produce themselves using a garage unit that runs on electricity and water that is sold along with the car. Modeling the performance of this car indicates that for $20 worth of electricity the car can go 700 miles, and Hodges believes they can sell the four-passenger sedans for under $30,000. Detroit, watch out.

Just west of Sacramento, in Fairfield, BP Solar has built one of the largest photovoltaic manufacturing plants in the world. Mac Moore, BP Solar’s Director of Building & Utility Markets for North America, said that the installed price for photovoltaic panels produced at this plant will be as low as $6.00 per watt, which is less than one-third what they cost just ten years ago. Already photovoltaic cells are cost-effective power solutions compared to utility prices during peak demand, and BP and other photovoltaic manufacturers are selling them as fast as they can make them. Costs for photovoltaics will continue to drop, and eventually will yield power that is not only clean, but cheap and abundant. Texas oilmen, take note.

In North Highlands, Atlantis Energy is taking raw photovoltaic panels from manufacturers such as BP Solar, and integrating them into roofing materials and tinted windows. Joe Morrisey, Director of North American Sales for Atlantis Energy, sees this as an essential step towards photovoltaics becoming ubiquitous in the landscape, since, as he puts it, “we can’t have every neighborhood looking like a 15 year old’s science project.”
Not only do photovoltaics integrate well into windows and roofing, but they can, ultimately, be cheaper that way, since they are then filling the function not only of supplying power, but are also replacing roofing material and window panels that the builder would have to purchase anyway. Atlantis is working with major national home and commercial construction companies, and photovoltaics routinely integrated into the skin of new buildings is just around the corner.

California is a land of dreams. Before there was the dream of going to Los Angeles and becoming a movie star, or the dream of going to Silicon Valley and becoming a high-technology billionaire, there was the gold rush and dreams of riches, in Sacramento. Now a new dream can belong to California, with the epicenter back where it all began 150 years ago, the dream of a planet where nature and technology exist in harmony. Green technology companies, nurtured by the trend-setting political consciousness of Californians, and the creativity of local start-ups who have products that could change the world, can make the Sacramento a green boomtown. The destination of dreamers. The Green Valley.

WildAid anti- poaching poster

San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown had proclaimed August 2nd, 2001, “WildAid Day.” All four of WildAid’s original band of warriors were gathered in that city to announce the North American launch of the group’s Asian Conservation Awareness Program (ACAP). Later in the day, WildAid supporters would have a chance to meet the group at the Film Center at the Presidio.

I parked early at the Commercial Street garage, and exited on foot to the north. Directly across the street was an alley with a winding path through tall Redwoods and open pavilians of benches, sculpture, fountains and reflecting pools. The western wall of this forest-like elongated acre-sized nook was the stretched pyramid of the 60 story Transamerica Building. In the branch filtered summer sun sat lunching dozens of San Franciscans on this weekday, mostly workers and bike couriers, as we on errands marched past.

About one hour before they were to leave for the WildAid day festivities I arrived at WildAid’s headquarters on Pacific, notepad in hand, to conduct some quick interviews. At that moment three of the four original WildAid Warriors were present in the office, co-Founder Suwanna Gauntlett based in Phenom Penh in Cambodia, Steve Galster based in Bangkok, and Steve Trent from London. Feeling fortunate to get three of these globetrotters together in an office at once, I got right down to business:

Left to right: Steve Galster, Suwana Gauntlet, Steve Trent

Suwana Gauntlet

Phenom Penh, Cambodia

Working to curb illegal wildlife trade and strengthen protected areas.

Steve Galster

Bangkok, Thailand

Working to curb illegal wildlife trade and strengthen protected areas.

Steve Trent

London, UK

Coordinating worldwide public awareness campaign to reduce consumption of illegal wildlife products.
“When the buying stops, the killing can too.”

INTERVIEW

EW

How is WildAid different?

Suwanna Gauntlett

WildAid is focused on protecting the supply of wildlife through law enforcement. Also we commit 100% of donations to go directly to equipping and training local wildlife law enforcement organizations. Our overhead is completely supported through the Barbara Delano Foundation, so 100% of every contribution goes directly to action in the field.

Vials of dried bear heart.

EW

Why are you, Steve Trent, based in London?

Steve Trent

London is the World’s media center. From there we can most effectively coordinate worldwide awareness campaigns. Most of our campaigns are focused in Asia, though, and WildAid also has an office in Beijing, the capital city of China.

WildAid also works on international legal initiatives, such as a worldwide fisheries management plan for sharks. International agreements are enforced by signer nations other commercial fish such as Tuna or Cod. Because Sharks do not reproduce nearly as quickly as those fish, sharks now face extinction, even though there are still relatively vast numbers of them. Currently over 100 million sharks are killed each year, according to WildAid figures.

EW

Why isn’t WildAid in India, after all, they’ve got a billion people, too?

Assam State, India, in yellow

Steve Galster

Lots of groups are already working in India. We have worked in Assam to help establish a Rhino park.

Suwanna Gauntlett

“In many countries there is an epidemic of poaching. One of the reasons we chose Cambodia was because unlike many countries there still is lots of forest cover.”

EW

Who is helping you with your campaigns?

Suwanna Gauntlett

In Cambodia we are working with the Environmental Ministry, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, and the Royal Gendarmie. For example, so far we have trained over 50 officers for Cambodia’s Department of Forestry. We try to empower governments and local organizations to take charge of wildlife law enforcement and patrol protected areas. Thailand’s Royal Forest Department asked us for help after hearing about our successes in Russia.

EW

How would you describe the most serious threats to wildlife in the world today?

Steve Galster

There are two kinds of direct threats to wildlife, subsistence poachers, local inhabitants who kill a few animals to provide for themselves and their families, and serious poachers with global networks of illegal wildlife smugglers and traders.

EW

What do you think about fee hunting, where massive of wildlife can be nurtured on commercial estates?

Steve Galster

We’ve tried to involve the local community. It hasn’t helped to curb poaching. Management plans of any kind for most of these regions is a long way off. People and wildlife can survive together, but poor people for the most part still view wildlife and forests as a resource and not as rare bastions of biodiversity.

EW

Are there reliable data on how many tigers are left?

Confiscated tiger rug.

Steve Galster

We’re collaborating with wildlife measurement agencies. Tiger numbers are down, right now we think there are about 5,000 of them left in the wild. The Java, the Caspian and the Bali Tiger are already extinct. In the near term that can happen elsewhere in Asia.

EW

What is an example of a WildAid program that worked?

Suwanna Gauntlett

The tiger population in Siberia is an example of recovery of a species. That population has stabilized for now, and effective protection programs are working.

Steve Trent

Our awareness campaigns are proving successful because we have enlisted people who have cultural resonance. In China, for example, we have signed on Jackie Chan, Michelle Lao, and Coco Lui. Our ongoing campaign “When the buying stops, the killing can too,” has been effective in getting agencies and companies to voluntarily stop selling or consuming shark fin soup, for example.

EW

It’s unusual for an NGO to be working so closely and cooperatively with the local governments. How has WildAid accomplished this?

Steve Trent

Most of the local groups we talk to are not used to having an NGO like WildAid coming in saying ‘we want to help’ and taking time to earn their trust. But people in these countries do realize they have a long-term economic interest in protecting wildlife and forests,. Wherever we go, we take time to build trust with the local people and organizations who are already involved in wildlife protection. We ask the people in these countries ‘do you want us here?’ first, and then work with them directly to provide training and equipment.

The photographs below were on display at the WildAid Day event show containers of pills taken from Bear Gall and Tiger Bones. These medicines are reputed by traders to effectively treat a variety of serious ailments including cancer and heart disease. There was also a confiscated rug made from the coat of a full-grown Bengal Tiger.

Bickford Ranch The Sunny Future of Home Developments? By Ed “Redwood” Ring July 24, 2001

Bickford Ranch location in Northern California

With California’s population increasing by 500,000 per year, land development is inevitable. It isn’t a question of whether or not to build new homes, new streets, new industrial parks, new water & power infrastructure. It is only a question of where and how. A case in point is the “Bickford Ranch” a luxurious new community planned in California’s Sierra foothill country, one that will sprawl across nearly four square miles of grazing land. But along with mega-sprawl comes mega-watts; Bickford’s homes will generate more power than they consume during critical periods of peak demand, because nearly every home in the development will have photovoltaic panels integrated into their rooftops.

Depending on who you ask, the Bickford Ranch (www.BickfordRanch.com) is either the one of the best examples of land use to come along in a long time, or one of the worst. The Sierra Club gave Bickford Ranch the ingnominious distinction of being one of what they’ve named “the two most badly planned projects in California.”

Bickford Ranch Site

To make this claim, Sierra Club points to other developments more to their liking, such as Ohlone-Chynoweth Commons in San Jose, and Village Green in Los Angeles, which are pedestrian-friendly, transit-friendly, and, most important, accomodate a high-density of residents in a development that is within an existing urban area. If you accept the premise that all new developments need to be high-density and surrounded by existing city, then Bickford Ranch is indeed the Great Satan of developments. If you don’t, then taking a closer look at how Bickford Ranch is slowly becoming a reality can exemplify how to make new developments as ecologically sound as possible.

As Bickford Ranch spokesperson Kevin Slagle says “we looked for logical places to develop where we wouldn’t stretch the infrastructure.” The area was designated by Placer County officials in 1994 as one of only two places in the county where development was to be approved. It runs along major transportation corridors and is adjacent to another development many times larger.

Unlike new developments in the past decades, the Bickford Ranch property will remain 58% undeveloped. Since currently the entire property is cattle rangeland, the areas that are slated to remain open will actually be improved, since grazing has destroyed many of the native oaks which can now regenerate. This is being done by Bitterroot Restoration (www.BitterrootRestoration.com), a restoration firm based in Covallis, Montana with offices in Northern and Southern California. Spokesperson Laurie Riley said, “we were contracted to collect acorns on the Bickford Ranch and grow oaks; we’re currently growing 23,000 oaks to replant on the property.

Most remarkable about the Bickford Ranch however is that the rooftops of the development will produce two megawatts of electricity whenever the sun shines. Over 900 of the homes to be built will have solar-electric panels on their roofs. These “building integrated photovoltaics” are being installed by Atlantis Energy (www.AtlantisEnergy.com) and the homes of Bickford Ranch will become, by far, the biggest “grid-connnected” development of their kind to date.

According to Bickford spokesperson Kevin Slagle “the cost of the home is $8,000 to $12,000 higher than average, but includes $15,000 to $25,000 in hardware.” US Homes works collectively with the homeowners to collect the rebates available, something that is a first of its kind. Moreover, US Homes intends to put in place a program for neighboring homeowners, outside of the Bickford Ranch, to also be able to purchase photovoltaic systems at the same volume rates, and streamlined rebate claims procedures. “US Homes wouldn’t have done this,” said Slagle, “if it didn’t make economic sense.”

Is Bickford Ranch an upward trend? Using electricity generating roofing materials certainly qualifies. Setting nearly 60% of the land aside to become restored oak woodland is also laudable. Like many environmental and land-use questions, there is no certain answer. But unless one believes our increasing population simply has to fit into existing urban areas, the Bickford Ranch is the next best thing.

John Gavitt: WildAid’s Newest Warrior Interviewed by Ed “Redwood” Ring July 19th, 2001

When one considers the size and scope of the environmental movement, the organizations, the institutions, involving hundreds of thousands of people and hundreds of millions of dollars, it can come as a shock to realize only a handful of groups actually operate on the front lines.

John Gavitt of WildAid (photo: Scott Mason)

One of these groups, WildAid (www.WildAid.org), headquartered in San Francisco, has distinguished itself for years as a group not afraid to get into the thick of the fight to save endangered species. (see EcoWorld’s “WildAid…”) They are responsible for funding and training anti-poaching patrols in the Russian Far East, Southeast Asia, the Galapagos Islands, and elsewhere. WildAid has also made a specialty of tracking down and arresting traders of endangered species, such as a recent sting in Cambodia where two Asian sun bears and seven rare Indochinese tigers were rescued from wildlife traffickers.

About six months ago, WildAid added a potent weapon to their arsenal with the hiring of John Gavitt, a 52-year-old Virginian who has devoted his entire career to wildlife law enforcement. Just returned from a five week trip to Cambodia and Thailand to train wildlife rangers, EcoWorld caught up with Gavitt for a brief interview.

EcoWorld: Are there any other organizations like WildAid?

(photo: WildAid)

Gavitt: I’m not familiar with all of them, but I know of no others that focus on wildlife law enforcement and on-the-ground on-site assistance. We’re small, mobile, and attack problems. We don’t spend lots of resources on research studies instead of doing something. If it’s obvious something’s going on we try to go out and tackle it head on.

EcoWorld: What would you consider to be your most significant accomplishment so far with WildAid?

Learning to read maps (photo: John Gavitt)

Gavitt: It’s a little too soon to tell. So far I’ve been helping set up law enforcement training programs, drawing on 26 years of involvement with wildlife law enforcement programs in the U.S. and abroad. The approach is to put the recruits through practical training exercises that are as realistic as possible. In the latest training 20 people from the community role-played, from trader to bodyguard to concerned citizen to police officer. This made it more realistic.

EcoWorld: What do you think of using hunting fees to fund community development and the expenses of maintaining a game reserve, as was done with some success in Zimbabwe?

Gavitt: Not speaking for WildAid, personally I support fee-hunting provided it’s under a properly controlled wildlife management program. In the U.S. hunting license fees bring in millions per year. Anything that will preserve wildlife and habitat in the long term I’m for, because it really comes down to economics in those countries, and hunting is a good way to justify preserving wildlife from an economic basis.

EcoWorld: How do you think consciousness can be changed among consumers, particularly in Asia, to end using animal parts for medicinal purposes?

On Patrol in Bokor Nat’l Park, Cambodia (photo: John Gavitt)

Gavitt: Often groups that are consuming these products don’t link the animal with the product. Through information and education they become aware that they are contributing to the endangerment of a species. It can make a difference simply when people realize the consequences of their actions. The vast majority of people have a good conscience and will change their behavior.

EcoWorld: Who is behind the logging operations in Cambodia and Thailand?

Gavitt: We know that the military is involved in the large-scale illegal logging concessions that are resulting in major destruction of wildlife habitat. Because of that we’re trying to get the military involved in the training itself. One of the things about corruption is that it’s often caused by a lack of understanding. When they see the problems this (logging) is creating it can change attitudes even among the powerful decision makers. The consequences from political pressure from other countries also helps. Hopefully it won’t be too late.

EcoWorld: So you think there’s a good chance for reform from within?

Gavitt: In the vast majority of situations the local government makes the right decisions but they make them too late. Trying to get governments to move in a timely manner for wildlife conservation is a big challenge.

EcoWorld: What else would you like to say, based on your recent experiences with WildAid in Southeast Asia?

Gavitt: All I can say after being over there is that time is running out to really make a difference in wildlife conservation. We must put our resources together to change the existing situation while there is still time to save wildlife and habitat in a significant way.

Saving the Family Farm: Steve Schwartz & California Farmlink by Ed “Redwood” Ring July 16, 2001

FarmLink Founder Steve Schwartz

How do you save the family farm?

The question is not new, for over a century the American family farm has been a dying breed.

And it is more than a sentimental question. It is also a question of preserving cultural identity, preserving open space, and preserving biodiversity.

In the latter case, the many small family farms guarantee an output of pioneering high-quality foods, the special strains and breeds of organic produce, for example, that out-nutrient and out-variety the best that consolidated corporate agribusiness has to offer. It is healthy to maintain such diversity in agricultural output, and the family farm plays a vital role.

The National Farm Transition Network is trying to save the family farm. This relatively new organization is a loose collection of non-profit entities in 18 states matching aging farmers without successors to motivated individuals or families that want to buy a farm. To find out more about this noble undertaking, we looked no further than Sacramento, California, where in a nondescript downtown victorian several nonprofits share space, including California FarmLink (www.CaliforniaFarmLink.org), which matches old farm sellers to young farm buyers. California FarmLink was founded by and is directed by Steve Schwarz, a pleasant 35 year old EcoWorld Hero who brings a lifetime of agricultural and political experience to his work.

Juan and Rosie Chavira sign papers to become farm owners.

EcoWorld visited California FarmLink one morning on a brisk weekday in mid-June, on one of Sacramento’s last spring days. It was sunny and fresh and the leaves of the giant sycamore trees lining the street were still getting their second wind. Schwartz told us that farming runs in his family, his own father had a small farm in the former Czechoslovakia before emigrating to the U.S. in 1954. Schwartz himself worked in agriculture in Thailand with the U.S. Peace Corps from 1987 till 1989. He then got an M.A. in Public Affairs from the University of Southern California. After receiving his M.A., he dealt with many agricultural issues as a legislative assistant to the California Assembly and has over 14 years experience working on rural policy issues.

By 1995, after furthering legislation such as the Biologically Integrated Orchard Systems Bill, or BIOS, which created incentives for farmers to reduce pesticide use, Steve was ready to leave government, and so when he heard about a FarmLink program operating in Nebraska, he decided this was something that California needed and made the plunge.

“During the last ten years in California, from 1987 to 1997, there has been a 51% decrease in the number of farmers under 35 years old,” said Schwarz. “Right now 30% of all California’s farmers are over 65 years old, and that percentage is increasing.”

California wheat field

FarmLink in California spends much of its time locating small farm owners who have no identified successors and helping them find a new owners who will operate the farm instead of consolidating it into an agribusiness concern or giving the land over to development. “When farms change ownership there are a limited number of outcomes,” said Schwarz, “they can go to the farmer’s children, they can go to another family that purchases the land, they can sell the land to a neighbor or to an agricultural corporation, or they can sell out to a developer.”

Often the farm is not large enough to support both the incoming and outgoing families during the transition in ownership. This is where California FarmLink comes in as well, helping the families by coming up with creative financial techniques that allow the sellers and buyers to survive during this crucial period. For example, conservation easements on the farm property, guaranteeing that portions of the property will remain agricultural or become a nature preserve in perpetuity, can often bring significant money into a farm owner’s estate.

FarmLink also coordinates workshops throughout California to get the word out on ways to ensure that a “farm transition” results in preserving the family farm whenever possible. Since establishing FarmLink in early 1999, Schwartz’s organization has become directly involved in about a dozen farm transitions, and has done dozens of workshops.

Schwartz hopes FarmLink can increase its visibility in the agricultural community so more farmers can use the techniques they have developed to keep the farms family-owned. There are 22,000 farm owners in California who are over 65 years old, and many of them will soon be needing the information FarmLink can provide.

FarmLink is funded by private foundations, as well as state and federal grants.

An amazing aspect of recent political history is how Newt Gingrich and his ilk, up to the present day, convinced themselves and the American public that Government can do nothing successfully. This ‘Newtering’ of American political thought has huge implications for the nation’s energy policy and overlooks that, repeatedly, the Federal Government has taken a leadership role in energy development. It needs to do so again, to create the Hydrogen Backbone of the New National Energy Plan that will benefit all citizens and enterprises for the next 50-100 years (and also provide huge and legitimate benefit to the energy industry). Some aspects of the national interest, such as utility services, transcend private profit motives.

Are there two sides to this story? Can the ‘bumbling’ Federal government take a leadership stance? Should we always rely on ‘swift, efficient, private industry’ to work not only for reasonable profit but also for the national interest? Consider history, and the creation of America’s natural gas industry.

Take a trip back in time . . .

It is 11 December 1941, four days after Pearl Harbor. Hitler has directed Admiral Doenitz and his U-boats to attack the tankers carrying virtually all the oil from loading docks in the Gulf of Mexico to consumers in the Northeast. Attacks on tankers carrying oil across the North Atlantic for the Royal Navy and aviation gasoline for the beleaguered Royal Air Force have reduced fuel reserves in England to a few days. The outcome of the war itself is in the balance. Backlit by Miami’s lights, where hotel owners have refused to douse the lights during tourist season, the easily recognizable tanker profiles stand out like arcade targets for the waiting U-boats. On the Atlantic City beaches, people watch for the explosions and massive glare of blazing tankers. The U-boats are sinking tankers at four times the rate at which they can be replaced. Brave men are dying. Disastrous shortages on all war fronts seem inevitable.

President Roosevelt calls on Interior Secretary Harold Ickes, a man hated by the oil industry for his anti-monopoly stance, to solve the problem. Blackouts are imposed and coastal convoys formed. But the brilliant stroke is the wholesale change of the industry’s means of transportation. Authorizing use of crucial steel supplies for a project the petroleum industry says is doomed to fail, the government builds two pipelines—”Big Inch” and “Little Inch”—to carry oil from Texas to the East Coast, in one of the great, unsung engineering feats of WWII. In less than one and a half years, “Big Inch” is carrying more than half the East Coast’s oil 1,250 miles from the Texas oil fields; soon “Little Inch” is carrying gasoline and refined products to New England. Ickes is promoted to Petroleum Administrator for War, the “Oil Czar”. By the war’s end, over 42% of American oil moves through government-owned and -financed pipelines.

Inching Forward. More Government energy action-and success

The government is not finished with “Big Inch” and “Little Inch” to rationalize the energy industry. As the war ends, the House Armed Services Committee decides that the risk of depending on foreign oil is unacceptably high, presaging OPEC-created crises, Saddam Hussein and Desert Storm by half a century. They see the solution in the thousands of plumes burning across Texas night skies, as annoying and ‘worthless’ natural gas, a ‘waste’ by-product of oil production, is flared off. They tell the industry to collect and sell the natural gas to reduce dependence on foreign energy. Led by Defense Secretary James Forrestal, the government sells “Big Inch” and “Little Inch” to the Texas Eastern Transmission Company on the condition that they carry natural gas to East Coast markets. They also allocate scarce steel to build “Biggest Inch,” the El Paso Natural Gas Pipeline from Texas and New Mexico to Los Angeles (the very same pipeline so controversial in the energy crisis of 2001).

The birth of the natural gas industry

Did it matter? Was an industry created? Commercial natural gas, long considered an orphan waste product, went from virtually zero until by 1950—just three years after the program started—the market for natural gas was 2.5 trillion cubic feet per year, saving nearly a million barrels of imported crude oil per day. And enriching private industry in the process.

History shows that Government led the energy industry effectively. Winston Churchill, in his “History of the English Speaking Peoples,” credits much of America’s success on the Federal Governments willingness to invest in infrastructure to create new industries and markets. That is what the Government must do now. Just as it created the pipeline industry and the natural gas industry, it must lead the way to a sustainable energy infrastructure for the Millennium.

By taking the lead in promoting the Hydrogen Backbone, (www.ptreyeslight.com articles of February 8, 15 and 22, 2001, and EcoWorld: National Energy Plan) the Government will create a whole new aspect of the energy industry, as they did with the “Inch” pipelines and natural gas. Much of the technology exists, delivering surprising economic advantages which we will discuss in the next installment. Implementation is merely a matter of leadership and management.

‘Dirty Harry’ wins a small battle but loses (along with us) the war

Meanwhile, on the energy insider front, Clint Eastwood went to Sacramento recently to get the government to “make his day” on a fair shake for photovoltaics, such as those he installed at his Monterey Peninsula golf course. They did so, but vigilant utility lobbyists got the legislators to make sure the fair treatment lasts only until 2002. If the State had let the rules stand, so that PV could be financed over a 10-year period, we might have ended the energy crisis without the IOU’s (Investor Owned Utilities) or the State spending a cent. But then the utilities wouldn’t get to profit. Clint, go on back and explain to them in words they can understand.

Does PV really haul the freight? For a fascinating article on how PV power is competitive under the existing rate structure with a combination of net metering and time-of-day purchase, see the current (June/July) issue of Homepower entitled “Practical Solar” by Phillipe Habib. It is a well documented, fascinating story that gives details of rates, metering and structuring a system to make PV pay, along with a between-the-lines look at the perfidy of certain utilities . . .

‘Deep Volt’ strikes again, to the heart of the matter

Back to Deep Volt and the computer-controlled grid. The New York Power Authority is installing a FACTS-type technology to enable the State Independent System Operator to balance two major power lines feeding from Quebec Hydro to New York-one through Albany and one through the Catskills-moving hundreds more megawatts through a system at near capacity with the obsolete control technology. Even San Diego Gas and Electric is purchasing four units (from Mitsubishi, in Japan) to bring hundreds of extra megawatts into Southern California. Both these systems are still a far cry from the promise of FACTS/computer-controlled national grid , but they’re a step in the right direction. But the technology players are all foreign-Siemens, ABB and Mitsubishi-despite the technology signposts erected by EPRI in Palo Alto, California and by thyristor technology owned by General Electric. Do we really want to let others lead the way on this technology?

For more history of the oil and gas industry, read Daniel Yurgin’s excellent, Pulitzer Prize- winning book, The Prize, the Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power. For more information on the computer control of the grid, including information on the New York project, see MIT’s Technology Review magazine July/Aug issue, “A Smarter Power Grid,” which shows how deregulation will bring ever larger numbers of independent power generators, who will not collaborate effectively, to create even more instability on an already overloaded grid.

First Solar: Production Line PVs “Model T” of Photovoltaics By Ed “Redwood” Ring June 27, 2001

In our continuing search for the company that will provide breakthrough price reductions in Photovoltaic cells, EcoWorld has discovered First Solar, (www.FirstSolar.com) based in Toledo, Ohio. If they live up to the rumors about them, First Solar Inc. may become the Ford Motor Company of photovoltaics. First Solar Inc., based in Toledo, may be the first company to actually mass produce photovoltaic panels. According to Pamela Ryan, First Solar’s Director of Communications, “First Solar has developed a high volume, low cost process for manufacturing photovoltaic modules that promises to be economically competitive with conventional energy alternatives.”

If that’s true, than first solar will have to get the installed price of photovoltaics down to about $6.00 per watt. If one assumes an average of eight “full-sun equivalent” hours of sunlight per day and a system lifetime of 30 years, fairly reasonable assumptions, $6.00 per watt installed equates to $.068 per kilowatt hour. Such a price is just under California Governer Gray Davis’s new long-term contracted prices for electricity, which are pegged at $.069 per kilowatt hour, and in the period from mid-2002 onward, after the current bottlenecks get fixed, that price will probably be on the high side for “conventional” sources of electricity. Why? Because coal power costs $.02 per kilowatt hour, and anybody who doesn’t think that’s going remain a big part of the USA’s energy mix is not reading the newspaper.

Toledo Edison test facility

Can First Solar do it? If they manage this feat, it will mean they will have to sell photovoltaic panels at a factory wholesale price of well under $2.00 per watt, since inverters and other hardware, plus installation labor, will eat up at least $4.00 per watt, and that low figure for other costs will only be after great volumes and standardizations are achieved. The cheapest photovoltaics available in the US currently come from BP Solar and cost about $3.50 per watt at the factory gate. The cheapest photovoltaics in the world that we’ve ever heard of come from mainland China and run about $2.50 per watt wholesale.

First Solar officials were pretty careful with what they’d say when we interviewed by telephone last week, and their website doesn’t volunteer much, either. As Ryan put it “we are very sensitive to the fact that the solar industry has been particularly plagued with unfulfilled expectations over the years.”

The “break-through” technology that First Solar has developed relies on a “proprietary high-speed deposition process that deposits uniform semiconductor layers in a matter of seconds, with little material waste.” This means that First Solar may be the first photovoltaic manufacturer to actually utilize a non-stop production line. Every other photovoltaic manufacturer in the world still has to perform this crucial step in batches, which is much more costly and time-consuming.

To research First Solar based on their reputation among others in their industry, we talked with Steve Coonen, VP of Business Development at Atlantis Energy (www.AtlantisEnergy.com). Atlantis Energy builds “building integrated photovoltaics,” which means they convert raw solar panels into standard sized window and roof materials. In this value-added business Atlantis Energy needs to know who can supply them the best raw photovoltaic panels at the best price. Coonen was impressed with First Solar. “I’ve been to their factory a couple of times,” he said, “First Solar can do eight feet per minute to lay thin film in continuous motion. Other photovoltaic manufacturers are doing something like 8 feet per hour.” “They’ve got some ramping up to do,” he continued, “but this could be the real thing, they have UL approval and 4-10 year testing already done.”

The company’s roots date back to 1986, when Dr. Harold McMaster founded First Solar’s predecessor, Solar Cells Inc. McMaster had prior experince as the founder of Glasstech, Inc., one of the world’s leading manufacturers of glass bending and tempering systems. Building on this expertise, while at Solar Cells Inc. McMaster led development teams who created the technology that First Solar is now using to build a high volume commercial production facility.

Toledo Mfg Centre

First Solar’s photovoltaic semiconductor fabrication plant began commercial operations last January. They aren’t saying exactly when, but they claim “upon achieving full utilization, yields and targeted conversion efficiency, the facility will be capable of producing nearly 100 megawatts of photovoltaic panels per year.” When one considers that the PV output worldwide is currently about 300 megawatts per year, First Solar is poised to make an enormous impact on the world of solar electricity.

It is probably worth noting that in terms of photovoltaics making an impact on overall global energy supply, however, 400 megawatts is pretty small potatoes. Humanity consumed roughly 20,000 gigawatts (or gigawatt equivalents) of energy last year, meaning that if yearly photovoltaic production went up to 400 megawatts, that would represent about 2/1000ths of one percent of world energy consumption. EcoWorld estimates that the current total installed base of photovoltaics worldwide produces under 5 gigawatts of energy, meaning that to get PVs up to just one percent of world energy consumption would require the number of PVs in the world to increase by a factor of forty! Long, long, long way to go.

In 1999 First Solar was formed out of Solar Cells, Inc. to develop their pilot production line into the plant that now stands poised to take photovoltaics to a new level of cost-competitiveness. They are a majority-owned subsidiary of True North Partners, a private equity investment company.

To speak exclusively of conservation,” said U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney in early 2001, “is to duck tough issues.” It’s hard to argue with that statement, whether or not you agree with anything else Cheney may have to say about energy. The tough issue is that energy production must increase, and conservation will only slow that increase but can’t stop it. Energy production is a global issue, and in a world where populations are increasing and economies are industrializing, the idea that global energy usage can remain flat through conservation is ridiculous. Here’s why:

Using 1995 figures provided by the World Bank, in that year, the world’s energy consumption totaled 316 quadrillion BTUs. A BTU, or British Thermal Unit, is a standard measure of energy that can be used regardless of the type of energy being produced. For example, there are 3,413 BTUs in a kilowatt hour of electricity. A barrel of oil contains 5.8 million BTUs.

Imagine that through conservation and increased energy efficiency, every citizen in the United States were to consume half the BTUs they currently consume. This is certainly possible, though very unlikely in the near term. In 1995 the U.S. citizenry consumed, on average, 327 million BTUs per year, (BTUs by Nation) which is more than twice what many developed countries use per capita, including the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Germany and Japan. In 1995 there were 28 countries in the world (North, BTU’s per $1 GNP) with per capita incomes over $15,000 per year. Let’s call these the developed nations. They numbered 787 million people and they consumed on average 216 million BTUs per person. They represented about 15% of the world’s population and they consumed 68% of the world’s energy. No surprise there.

The problem with thinking that energy production worldwide does not have to dramatically increase in the next ten years is to forget about the rest of the world. Countries with huge populations such as China and India, along with most of Latin America and the rest of Asia, are industrializing with astonishing speed, yet their total energy consumption right now is only at the beginning of a rapid increase. In 1995 the per-capita energy consumption of the 85% of humanity with average incomes under $15,000 was only 23 million BTUs per person, barely 10% of the average for the developed world.

If the per capita energy consumption in the developing world were to reach only 50% of that consumed by the citizens of industrialized nations, and if everyone in the prosperous industrialized nations were to conserve themselves down to that same level, energy production worldwide would have to double. That is to say, if everyone on earth got by on 100 million BTUs of energy per year, that would require 600+ quadrillion BTUs of energy, compared to only 316 QBTUs produced worldwide in 1995. To try to prevent this process is to impinge on the sovereignty of nations, slowing their progress towards prosperity. It’s not a good choice.

That is the tough issue of which Cheney speaks, and the algebra to prove it is conservative. If, for example, everyone on earth consumed as much energy as U.S. citizens currently use, worldwide energy production would not have to go from 316 QBTUs to over 600 QBTUs, but instead to over 1,900 QBTUs! This is absurd, but again demonstrates that the above example assumes radical conservation measures worldwide, and no population growth! Conservation should be a very important option in the United States (whose per capita BTU consumption is only exceeded by the oil rich enclaves of Brunei, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Qatar) but conservation cannot begin to solve the world’s energy challenges alone.

Another way to evaluate energy consumption worldwide is to look at the correlation between BTU consumption and GNP. That is, how many BTUs correspond to each dollar of GNP in various countries? Or put another way, how efficiently do various countries convert energy into wealth? The six largest consumers of energy in the world are the United States, China, Russia, Japan, Germany and India. But whereas the United States only requires 12,000 BTUs per dollar of GNP, which is only slightly higher than average for industrialized nations, China requires 46,000 BTUs per dollar of GNP, and India requires 31,000. (South, BTU’s per $1 GNP) This means that as these countries industrialize, unless they adopt more efficient technologies, they will consume far more energy per capita in order to create wealth for their citizens, and energy consumption worldwide will not double or triple, but will go off the chart.

The prevailing energy issue worldwide is how will global energy production more than double in the next twenty years in a way that is clean and sustainable. Because even with highly efficient energy usage and conservation worldwide, that’s what it’s going to take for all the countries of the world to stay on the course of increasing prosperity.

Can “non-hydro renewables” provide this much energy? Maybe, but it would take a transformation in the world energy infrastructure of unimaginable speed and scope. Environmentalists can hope that such will happen, but they will need to back up hope with technological innovation, solid business plans, and arguments that rely on reason along with passion, if hopes are to become reality.