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As the cleantech revolution gathers momentum and environmentalist values command unprecedented influence on policy, it is more important than ever to have a vigorous global dialogue as to what constitutes clean technology, and what constitutes a legitimate continuum of environmentalist values.

How these questions are answered will have profound impact on the nature and speed of economic growth, as well as the quality of our lives and the quantity of our individual rights and freedoms.

There are two fundamental assumptions that govern environmental values today:

1. The use of fossil fuels should be phased out as soon as possible
2. Resource scarcity is an inevitable reality will not be escaped for generations.

To this end, massive reallocations of wealth are being enacted to subsidize alternatives to fossil fuel, and rationing of resource use is becoming policy in the areas of energy, water and land. But what if both of these assumptions are completely wrong?

Tomorrow’s leaders today, children at the slopes to Kilimanjaro.

There is a case to be made that resource abundance, not scarcity, is the immediate destiny of the human race, and that scientific innovation combined with free markets are the keys to realizing this optimistic scenario. In every fundamental area, energy, water and land, there are promising trends – unfolding with breathtaking speed – that provide humanity with the opportunity to realize global wealth and prosperity within a generation.

Probably the most difficult notion to intuitively fathom is that land will become abundant again, but for several important reasons, that is precisely what is going to happen. The primary reason for this is that human population growth is finally leveling off. From today’s total of 6.7 billion people, projections now indicate human population will peak at somewhat less than 9.0 billion around 2050, an increase of only another 30 percent. While this seems like a lot, it is important to remember that in 1970, the world population was only 3.7 billion, meaning the last 40 years has registered a human population increase of 80%. We have already seen the dramatic growth in population, and are now in the leveling off phase.

The reason this slowdown and leveling of human population will result in more abundant land is because as human population increase slows, human migration to cities continues to accelerate. In 1970 only 1.3 billion people lived in cities, 35% of the world’s population. Today over half the world’s population live in cities, 3.4 billion people. Over the past 40 years overall population has increased 80%, but urban population has increased by 160%. Urbanization is accelerating, and is depopulating rural areas far more quickly than projected remaining overall population growth will fill them. Forty years from now, there will be more open land in the world than there is today. And these twin phenomenon, urbanization and population stabilization, are completely voluntary, inexorable, and are occurring at rates that are, if anything, underestimated.

If land abundance on planet earth is going to be achieved by a stabilized population living mostly in megacities, how will we build these cities? How will we transform our cities, already swarming with far more people than they were originally designed to hold, into 21st century magnets for humanity, offering economic and cultural opportunities instead of merely a last destination for the destitute? Here is where Malthusian assumptions, combined with an overweening environmentalist ideology that condemns development, have conspired to stifle the building of next generation infrastructure. The good news is these delays have also allowed us the time to develop better-than-ever technology.

High-rise agriculture has the potential to greatly reduce the amount of land required for agriculture. (Photo: Vertical Farms LLC)

From high-rise agriculture to high-speed rail, from advanced water recycling to ultra-efficient energy conduits and appliances, from cars that are clean, smart and safe, to wide new roads that convert pavement heat into utility-scale electricity and convey luxurious mass transit busses that offer wi-fi and drive themselves, cities of the future can be built today – but not if the wealth we need to pour concrete and smelt steel is spent instead on environmentalist lawsuits, and not if the market incentives that animate billions of construction entrepreneurs are squelched because instead we gave the work to government bureaucrats. Creating abundance is human nature – but only individual liberty, property rights, and free markets will enable this nature to be realized. Governments enforce the rules, but only a free people can play the game.

Abundant water is just around the corner because of several interrelated technological opportunities. The most promising of all is the potential of smart irrigation. Primarily this means using drip irrigation instead of flood irrigation, but this also refers to no-till farming, new crops that consume less water, inter-cropping, and advanced irrigation management, where irrigation timing and volume are precisely coordinated with weather conditions. Smart irrigation techniques could reduce the volume of water required for global agriculture by 40-50%.

Other means to create water abundance span the gamut from traditional methods – contour berms to catch and percolate runoff, urban cisterns to harvest rainwater, or where necessary, massive new infrastructure projects to move large volumes of water from water rich areas to water poor areas. To save ecosystems and restore fisheries, why not build a gravity-fed canal connecting the Volga River to the Aral Basin, if the Caspian Sea is rising anyway? Diverting only 10% of the Volga’s 250 cubic kilometer annual flow would make a decisive contribution to restoring the Aral Sea. Why not divert a small percentage of the Ubangi River north to refill Lake Chad?

Finally, water reuse and desalination will guarantee water abundance in urban areas. High-rise agriculture, for example, can use gray water to irrigate hydroponic gardens at a commercial scale, and the transpiration these plants emit within these enclosed spaces can be harvested to yield pristine drinking water. Desalination is no longer a technology reserved for energy rich nations – it now only takes 2.0 kilowatt-hours to desalinate a cubic meter of seawater. Desalination already provides over 1% of the fresh water used world wide, over 30 km3 per year, and this total is rising fast. But water reuse is the most promising source of urban water of all – technologies now exist to create essentially a closed loop in urban areas. Water is used for drinking, then treated and piped back to use for irrigation and to refill reservoirs, then after percolating and filtering back into aquifers, is pumped up, treated, and used again for drinking.

Water abundance will enable us to grow all the food we want, using new strains of crops and new agricultural techniques that are enabling another revolution in yields, guaranteeing abundant food. Water abundance will allow us to finally begin refilling our depleted aquifers, restore our vanished lakes, and never have to wonder whether or not the next war might be fought to quench a nation’s thirst.

To create water abundance, however, and to build megacities, to create 21st century civil infrastructure, and to deploy advanced technologies, we will need wealth and prosperity, and more than anything else, the enabler of wealth and prosperity is energy production. Today global civilization produces about 500 quadrillion BTUs of energy per year, which equals an average per person of 75 million BTUs per year. But this energy consumption is not evenly distributed. In the European Union, per capita energy consumption is about 250 million BTUs per year; in the USA, the average is closer to 350 million BTUs per year. But energy consumption equals wealth. Even with extraordinary improvements in energy efficiency, say, twice what we enjoy today, for 9.0 billion people to average only half the per capita energy consumption of residents of the EU, i.e., 125 million BTUs per year, global energy production would have to more than double, to 1,125 quadrillion BTUs per year. And this is what needs to happen by 2050.

The challenge to achieve resource abundance is not impossible; it is within our grasp. Despite heartbreaking examples of lingering poverty all over the planet, the fact is the overall condition of humanity is remarkably better now than it was 40 years ago, 400 years ago, 4,000 years ago. Disease and starvation remain endemic, but by all objective measures, they are on the retreat; and this is the trend the future holds, if we seize the opportunity. But to achieve this bright future, we must ask these questions: What is clean technology, and what are legitimate environmentalist values?

To create prosperity, for example, given 80% of the world’s energy currently comes from fossil fuel, and given there is a staggering abundance of remaining fossil fuel reserves in the form of heavy oil, coal, and natural gas, do we really want to stop using fossil fuel? What if clean technology stopped at the point where harmful pollutants were reduced to parts per billion through advanced filtration and efficient burning, instead of having to make that gigantic leap beyond simply making emissions healthy, and requiring zero emissions of CO2? Given the certain and devastating price humanity will pay in the form of ongoing poverty and escalating tensions over resources – especially if we precipitously abandon developing new sources of fossil fuel – do we really want to stop emitting CO2? What if solar cycles indeed are all there is causing climate change? What if climate change isn’t anything but normal fluctuations? What if rainforest destruction and aquifer depletion, dried up lakes and misused lands are the reasons for regional climate change? What if we can’t do anything at all about climate change anyway? If you believe the worst scenarios, it is too late anyway – but what if the models are simply wrong? If they’re right, it’s too late, and if they’re wrong, it doesn’t matter. So why on earth would we consign humanity to much higher probabilities of poverty and war, instead of developing clean fossil fuel, at the same time as we systematically develop advanced, alternative sources of energy?

The challenge to achieve resource abundance in the world hinges on the role environmentalists play in influencing policy. There are vital environmentalist values that everyone should embrace, such as practicing sustainability, eliminating genuine pollution, and taking reasonable steps to protect species and ecosystems. But without the energy, without the mines, without the steel mills, without the paved roads and poured concrete and power plants and pumping stations and water treatment plants and countless other ecologically disruptive activities, humanity will struggle to realize their destiny of prosperity; humanity will struggle to find peace.

Does that get your attention? It should, because when that happens, the Silicon Valley will become the sister city of Detroit, with the only difference being Detroit gave way to union power fifty years earlier, and is still paying the price. Silicon Valley is a meritocracy, and as long as it stays that way it has a chance to maintain its high-tech dominance.

Unions in 21st Century America are not nearly the same creature they were fifty years ago. Back then unions legitimately fought for rights and benefits that have now largely become institutionalized – safe workplaces, reasonable work hours, competitive pay. Back then American heavy industry enjoyed nearly a monopoly position, and as a result businesses such as the Detroit automakers could afford to grant generous concessions to unions – including pension benefits whose financial sustainability relied on the assumption Detroit’s factories would always be hiring more people than they were retiring. When the world caught up with America, and the big three automakers no longer could experience annual growth in revenue and employees, the cost of these pensions became burdens that crippled them.

The only true monopoly left in America today, however, is in the government. In the public sector there is no global competition, and there is no problem growing revenues, since all you have to do is increase taxes and fees to increase revenue. As a result, unions who had ruinously wrung every dime out of America’s automakers, nearly killing them in the process, and who saw no percentage in trying to organize, say, Walmart employees, have taken over the public sector. And the pension debt now carried by public entities is the biggest liability, by far, most of them will ever face. Any politician who questions this reality is crushed by public sector unions, who collect mostly mandatory dues from millions of public employees and deploy this money to exercise nearly absolute control over elections at the state and local level.

At the same time as union power has shifted to the public sector from private industry – because, sadly, it is easier for unions to control the public sector – the financial epicenter of union power has become those pension funds who manage all the wealth they have confiscated from taxpayers (who have to retire on social security in their 60′s), to provide to unionized public sector workers who retire in their 50′s. These public employee pensions have become so generous, in most cases a private worker would have to have saved over a million dollars in their personal retirement fund for the annual interest during retirement to match the pension of even the lowest echelon of workers in the public sector. Since unionized public employees make far more in base pay than globalized private sector workers, amassing that million or more is problematic for most taxpayers, to put it mildly.

It is in this context that CALPRS, the retirement fund that manages pensions for California’s workers, and AFSCME, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, have launched a public relations assault on Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle. Unlike ordinary workers in the public sector, Ellison didn’t simply show up four days per week for 25-30 years so he could retire a millionaire. Ellison’s billions were earned because he rose to the top in the business ecosystem of the Silicon Valley, a place where merit still counts for something. A place where if an employee is productive they are rewarded, and if they are incompetent, they’re fired. A place wholly dissimilar to the unionized public workplace where the only way you can get fired is by being politically incorrect, and job security is furthered if you never solve problems.

CALPRS, along with other pension funds fueled by our taxes, have taken huge stakes in companies like Ellison’s Oracle, and, as reported yesterday in the Los Angeles Times, have suggested it is time for Oracle’s board to adopt a “say on pay” plan, wherein Ellison, a hero who has helped keep America competitive and created jobs for over 84,000 people, will have to periodically justify his compensation package.

This is not a moral crusade, or even a genuine initiative; it is a public relations stunt, part of an ongoing attempt to keep voters focused on the ultra-high pay of a handful of extremely successful private sector executives, instead of on the obscenely inflated pay and benefits of literally tens of millions of unionized public employees. This sort of propaganda is infantile, playing to emotions of resentment and envy, and relying on the utter financial ignorance of most journalists as well as the general population. The venal reality is public sector workers usually make 2-4x what private sector workers make, their retirement benefits are totally unsustainable, and instead of merging funds like CALPRS with Social Security, which would benefit the U.S. economy and protect the interests of ALL workers, they point the finger at people like Larry Ellison to cloud the issue.

Ultimately, public employee unions and their pension fund managers such as CALPRS, will hopefully be smart enough to leave Oracle alone. After all, by investing in the globalized private sector, public employee pensions have a better chance – still remote – of remaining solvent. But voters and investors should understand that public employee pension fund influence on the boards of major corporations represents union influence – and once they control the boards they will control the company. Instead of organizing from the bottom up, Silicon Valley risks becoming unionized from the top down.

For more read posts in our Public Sector Reform section. Also recommended is the website Pension Tsunami.

There is one animal on the island state of Tasmania with the traits of a monster. It is aptly named the ‘Tasmanian Devil’ (or Tassie). Devils are typically heard before they are seen, emitting obnoxious screeches while feeding which can be heard several kilometers away. The spine chilling cries are hard to describe but can be heard here. As if their disturbing wails aren’t enough, devils emit an incredibly offensive odor when stressed and are believed to be extraordinarily aggressive animals. (Even though this is mostly bluff as they tend to avoid confrontation with humans if possible.)

Sarcophilus harrisii

Devils are the largest marsupial in Australia and have an array of fascinating biological traits and behaviors: Unlike most other animals, fat is stored in the tail and a healthy devil will have a nice thick tail to go along with the squat black body. Their heads are disproportionally large for their bodies. This makes sense, since attached, are their huge jaws which have more crushing power than any other mammal on earth. In fact, devils can reduce a carcass to nothing, devouring everything from the skin and organs and chewing the bones, as well.

Unfortunately, half of the wild population of Tasmanian Devils has succumbed to a strange cancer that has run rampant within the species. Ecologists speculate that wild animals will be extinct in 20 years if the disease continues to spread like it has been. The species has made some adaptions, such as breeding at an earlier age before the inevitable cancer kills them. This is one of the reasons the population hasn’t declined even faster.

The cancer is even more aggressive than the Tasmanian Devil: Once tumors begin to appear on the face, the affected animal only has about three months left before either dying of starvation or its body completely shutting down. The cancer is spread by bites and is seen most often around the face. Being such an aggressive animal, devils are prone to being bitten at one point or another. The only current solution is to breed healthy animals in captivity to avoid exposure to the “Devil Facial Tumor Disease”. It is unknown how the infection started, but it is comparable to a sci-fi movie in its gruesome severity and rapid spread. “Save the Tasmanian Devil” is an extremely informative site dedicated to providing information about the disease.

Research is currently underway to find a cure and a way to test animals that may have been exposed to the disease, since tumors are not immediately visible after exposure. Tasmanian Devils have a terrible reputation, but there isn’t anyone who would not miss the creatures and the wonderfully unique behaviors that make them so fascinating.

For more information about the disease and potential solutions click here.

Industrial chemical manufacturers will be happy to know that a major venture is underway to produce cheap natural gas alternatives. In September, 2007 Synthesis Energy Systems, Inc.(SES), a company that builds and operates gasification plants, teamed up with the largest producer of bituminous coal in the U.S; CONSOL Energy. As stated in their first news release, the companies joined forces to “investigate the development of coal-based gasification facilities to produce feedstock for various industrial chemical manufacturers whose plants have been shut down due to high costs of natural gas.”

How clean will coal get? (Photo: Synthesis Energy Systems)

“Under the agreement, SES and CONSOL Energy will perform engineering, environmental and marketing activities to analyze the feasibility of projects that would use coal gasification technology to convert coal from preparation plant tailings provided by CONSOL Energy’s coal mining complexes located in the eastern United States into higher-value products including: methanol, ethanol, mixed alcohols, ammonia and SNG.”

SES uses their patented “U-Gas” technology to covert low-rank waste coal to synthesis gas, or syngas. Syngas is a carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and hydrogen mixture that is created by heating a carbon fuel and turning it into a gas. Syngas has half the energy density of natural gas, however, the low-rank coal used to produce syngas would typically end up in a landfill if not converted into this feedstock. High ash and high moisture coals are also used rather than the more expensive coals. Another benefit is that gasification occurs without many of the harmful emissions typically associated with the process.

Creating this technology wasn’t the easiest undertaking: The Gas Technology Institute spent three decades perfecting the process. It was well worth it, though. For example, the “U-Gas” technology will be used to convert some of the massive 20 million tons of waste coal produced by CONSOL per year into alternative fuels.

Tim Vail, President and CEO of SES goes on to state in an earlier 2008 press release that “Reaching the milestones necessary to proceed with this project marks SES’ entry into the United States gasification market, and we are proud to be working with CONSOL to jointly be the first domestic gasification provider serving the industrial consumer segment. Our U-GAS technology will not only economically and cleanly produce high-value chemical feedstocks and traditional fuels from CONSOL’s raw and waste coal feedstocks, but also reduce the region’s dependence on imported industrial chemical feedstocks and other petroleum-based fuels. We have made significant progress in just eight short months and are excited to move forward with the next steps of this project.”

SES operates primarily in Virginia and China, but is still expanding. In fact, SES was approved for expansion of their Hai Hua project in China this month which will increase production of syngas to 45,000 cubic meters per hour in the facility. All of SES’s current projects can be viewed here.

There are dozens of credible companies rolling out next generation cars. From the GM Volt, now barely two years away, to the start-up Tesla Roadster, the list of companies aspiring to deliver the next generation car is growing almost as fast as the denizens of newly minted green journalists rushing to cover their progress. But what about the components?

Three interesting companies provide a encouraging glimpse into progress occurring upstream of the finished vehicle, all of them working on ways to dramatically improve the performance of the internal combustion engine.

In Camarillo, California, Transonic Combustion is developing an engine that can allow “operating conventional reciprocating piston gasoline engines at ultra-high compression ratios.” Through a combination of innovations; advanced combustion chamber geometries, advanced thermal management, precise ignition timing, “revolutionary” thermal management and electronic valves, Transonic is designing an engine that will deliver extremely high fuel efficiencies. Also significant, if they are successful, will be the ability of their engine to operate on fuel blends, including biofuels, at efficiencies superior to what they deliver when fueling conventional engines.

Meanwhile, in Michigan, the automotive capital of America, EcoMotors International is developing an engine that also aspires to deliver extremely high fuel efficiency. On their website’s home page, EcoMotors has a fascinating animation that shows their engine in action. In this design, the engine cylinders lie horizontally, and each cylinder essentially has two pistons, one moving backwards and one moving fowards. These horizontal cylinders are constructed in pairs, so that when one of them is in an expansion stroke, the other one is in a compression stroke. The crankshaft is placed between the cylinders, and four sets of connecting rods turn the engine, one from the back of each piston, and one from the side of each piston that faces the crankshaft. Because every motion generated by the power stroke inside these cylinders is offset by a countermotion in this perfectly symmetrical design, far more of the power generated by the fuel combustion is passed on to the crankshaft, and far less material is necessary to construct the engine block. EcoMotors is a very interesting company.
post resumes below image

The Zajac engine – using conventional pistons with an external combustion chamber.

Returning to California, this time to San Jose, Zajac Motors is pioneering what is perhaps the most interesting twist yet on the internal combustion engine, if they can pull it off. The Zajac engine has removed the combustion chamber from the cylinders altogether, relying on an external chamber to burn the fuel, then through a complex set of electronic valves, releasing the gas into cylinders dedicated to the expansion stroke, and oxygenating the external chamber with a set of smaller valves that are dedicated to providing the compression stroke. If the Zajac engine works, it will also provide a leapfrog improvement to fuel efficiency, at the same time as the use of an external combustion chamber will allow far cleaner burning.

The automotive world is being transformed today at a pace not seen since the dawn of personal transportation over 100 years ago.

We are pleased to announce a new feature on EcoWorld’s Business & Services page, the proprietary stock indices compiled by Mark Henwood, Editor of the financial blog Camino Energy. Since January 2006, Henwood has compiled data on pure play publically traded renewable energy companies, and now manages five perpetually updated indices – Renewable Electricity, Solar, Biofuel, LED Lighting, and Fuel Cells. Featured below is the latest of Henwood’s weekly commentaries – we expect to bring you much more from this unique and very useful resource:

Solar and LED-Lighting rise sharply, BF Energy highlights risk and drags Biofuels down (week ending 8/15). Emerging markets, EAFA, and commodities (DJP) fell while the US market S&P 500) was flat.

While Biofuels is the fourth largest strategy behind Renewable Electricity, Solar, and LED-Lighting it highlighted a all too familiar risk for energy producers. Many energy producers seek to reduce their risk associated with volatility in commodity prices by entering into hedging strategies. The key point of these actives is to reduce risk, not profit from speculative positions. After all, the largest, professionally managed financial institutions are proof even the pros get burned by speculation and I certainly don’t want any sustainable energy companies I invest in engaging in speculative positions.

Apparently, even engaging in hedging involves a certain amount of skill. If management doesn’t get it right the hedging strategy can wipe out the value of a company faster than the worst operational decisions. BioFuel Energy (BIOF) is a case in point. On Tuesday the company opened at USD 2.60/share. After reporting at 12:46 pm that it had insufficient current liquidity to cover USD 46 million in hedging losses on corn contracts, roughly equal to its market value, the stock started plunging, 64% to close at USD 0.94/share. While the stock rebounded some late in the week, shareholders lost 38.5% of their value for the week. Coming after Aventine’s (AVR) February problems with the not so safe auction rate securities, I hope management of biofuel companies devote enough attention to their financial dealings to avoid crises.

Mark Henwood is the founder of Camino Energy, an information provider specializing in globally traded sustainable energy stocks.

Do you get the impression Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has reached a level of flippant frustration in his efforts to “fix Kaleefornya?”

The latest budget impasse may be the final, insulting reality that blew away any illusion he had that the nation’s most populous state, and one of the world’s largest economies, can be rationally governed.

His recent executive order to reduce state employees’ pay to the federal minimum wage level, and to lay off thousands of part-time state employees, might be an expression of peevish exasperation, but it does strike at the heart of California’s chronic budget problem, namely bloated staffing and overpaid government employees.

Not surprisingly, his actions were greeted with howling protests from the various International Brotherhoods of Public Treasury Pirates, i.e., public-employee unions, as well as by the mutiny of the state’s controller, a Democrat.

The largest union has filed suit against the governor in an effort to reverse his decree, and thus demonstrate, once again, that unions control state government, not the governor or anyone else.

Because Schwarzenegger was rushed into the governorship on the shoulders of voters disgusted with his feckless predecessor, Gray Davis, whom they had abruptly fired in a recall election, it was reasonable for Schwarzenegger to believe he had a mandate to repair state government – returning it to some semblance of fiscal sanity and honest representative democracy.

To that effect, he correctly identified the state’s fundamental problems and, through four initiatives placed on the 2005 ballot, sought voter approval of government reforms to address those problems.

To control spending, he wanted a line-item veto on the budget, something California governors had until 1983. He wanted an independent panel of retired judges, rather than self-interested politicians, to determine legislative districts, which are now unscrupulously drawn to secure sinecures for Democrats and some Republicans.

He wanted to improve the quality of education by improving the quality of teachers, awarding tenure after five years rather than just two. He proposed prudent budgetary restraints that would trigger spending cuts when necessary.

His ballot initiative to halt the growth of the outrageous public-employee pension liability by converting these pensions to defined contribution plans – like those in the private sector – was withdrawn under heavy fire from the public-employee unions.

He also supported efforts to curtail the devious practice of public-employee unions to make political contributions without the express consent of their dues-paying members.

Yet all of his ballot initiatives were defeated, and today, with the current budget impasse, and the usual partisan floundering in the Legislature, polls indicate the majority of Californians blame the governor. It is understandable, then, that Schwarzenegger might become grumpy and disillusioned with his job.

The real problem Schwarzenegger failed to identify was the neurotic capriciousness of California voters – a character flaw that makes them wholly unreliable in a struggle of the magnitude he was willing to lead. In 2005, he was counting on them to support his reform initiatives. He was disappointed.

Now, California has another budget lingering in limbo because Democrats and Republicans, the Shiites and Sunnis of state politics, cannot agree on how to address the irresponsible level of state spending that leaves California billions of dollars in debt every year.

The Democrats want to increase taxes and keep spending, which will ensure that the state maintains its position as the highest-taxed state in the union. Most Republicans want to reduce spending and not increase taxes.

That the state is seriously in debt is due to the profligate, irresponsible levels of spending that were established well before Schwarzenegger became governor. In the three years before he came to office, California state government increased its spending by 36 percent – more than double the rate of inflation and of population growth over the same period.

The most-favored recipients of legislated largesse are the state’s elected officials and government employees – the engineers of legal larceny. Thanks to the insidious symbiosis between these partners in piggery, public pay, benefits, and staffing continue to exceed prudent levels.

To accommodate its more than 200,000 employees, state government is riddled with redundancy, inefficiency and unnecessary bureaucracy.

With many of these employees eligible for retirement soon, funding California’s generous public-employee pension plans will become an even greater burden for California taxpayers to bear. Unscrupulous pension padding by some public employees only increases that burden.

All of this is what Schwarzenegger has tried to confront, but neither he nor any governor will be able to fix Kaleefornya alone. Sometimes things must totally collapse before they can be rebuilt.

I guess that is what Californians are going to let happen. Watch out for the wrecking ball.

Author Randy Alcorn is a columnist with the Santa Maria Times, where this editorial originally appeared on August 17th, 2008. Republished with permission.

Steam rises from the never-ending stretch of road ahead. What looks like water rolling over the street, is just heat escaping. Walking on the blacktop barefoot would leave anyone but a fire-walker grunting in pain.

Our planet is covered with a web of streets and this cement absorbs and stores an abundance of the sun’s energy. Researchers at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), are looking into ways of using this heat as yet another renewable energy source. They have already developed solar collectors that would transfer the energy into electricity.

The ball started rolling with the president of Novotech Inc., Michael Hulen, who funded the research project meant to prove the efficiency of Novotech’s patented heat absorbing design. Based in Acton, Massachusetts, Novotech is one of the biggest suppliers of infrared optical and semiconductor materials.

WPI’s research was presented at the Annual Symposium of the International Society for Asphalt Pavements August 18-20, in Zurich, but like most things in life, the presentations are not accessible for free so I have no information about WPI’s results as of yet. (In addition to the topic of ‘roads for energy production’, other areas of interest such as noise reduction, recycling, drainage and environmentally friendly maintinence on pavements were also discussed at the event.)

The idea of using already existing streets as solar panels is a promising one; Roads are reworked every few years and the technology can be incorporated when repaving is necessary. Not only that, but the unfortunate truth is that roads, parking lots and sidewalks are more common than anything else in many areas. With Novotech’s design, at least these concrete landmasses can be retrofitted as solar power generators.

The heat collectors would be located a few centimeters underneath the pavement, not changing the outward appearance. Cars will roll along on the roads, as usual, but now power will be generated right underneath the tires.

For more information, check out an in depth article at Science Daily.

There is nothing wrong with encouraging clean, renewable, domestically produced energy. But California’s proposition 7 “would, if approved, require California utilities to procure half of their power from renewable resources by 2025″ (ref. Ballotpedia). Currently California’s public utilities are mandated to generate 25% of their electricity by 2025, and this is an ambitious goal. Just getting to 25% renewable electricity by 2025 would require more than doubling renewable power generation in California. Getting to 50% by that time would require renewable power generation in California to nearly quintuple.

To understand why accomplishing such an ambitious goal is not necessarily practical, you don’t have to be an economist or a renewable power expert. You simply need to take a look at the current cost for renewable power technology. While you’re at it, write off hydropower, which constitutes most of the renewable energy in California. The chances any significant new hydropower generation ever gets built in California are slim and none – despite whatever sentiments you may hold for or against hydro. This leaves geothermal, solar and wind.

While geothermal holds exceptional long term potential, ala enhanced geothermal drilling, today there isn’t a single operating example of a power station employing enhanced geothermal technology. And most of California’s conventional geothermal power resources have already been developed. So now you are down to wind and solar energy. And since Californians by 2025 are going to be consuming about 1,000 gigawatt-hours per day, if proposition 7 is enacted, 500 gWh per day will have to come from wind and solar power.

Solar power, installed – not including transmission or storage infrastructure – costs about $7.0 million per megawatt of output; this equates to $7.0 billion per gigawatt. If this sounds expensive, it is, but to get a truly accurate price you have to also take into account yield. Even in sunny California, solar energy (in terms of full-sun-equivalent hours), can only be harvested on average for 4.5 hours per day, which means to get 500 gWh of solar generated electricity each day in California, you would need to install 111 gigawatts of solar arrays (500/4.5), which would cost $777 billion dollars.

Wind power, installed – is a better deal currently than solar – insofar as you can probably get costs down to around $2.5 million per megawatt of output, or $2.5 billion per gigawatt. But the yield figures are also not promising. In California there is widespread disagreement on the yield for wind power – credible estimates range from 10% (2.4 hours per day) to 25% (6.0 hours per day). Given the magnitude of what is being proposed, it would be prudent to project wind yields in California somewhere in the middle of this range, say 17.5%, or 4.2 hours per day. This means to get 500 gWh of wind generated electricity in California you would need to install 119 gigawatts of solar arrays (55/4.2), which would cost $297 billion dollars.

It is tempting, and not entirely implausible, to expect prices for solar power to drop significantly over the next several years. But given the cost of balance of plant and installation labor, it is unlikely solar electricity is going to get measurably cheaper than wind power no matter how inexpensive the actual collector materials become. Moreover, the costs for new transmission lines and grid upgrades, the costs for massive energy storage units (since the sun and wind are only producing power during small portions of the day), and the costs for land aquisition, permitting and fighting environmentalist lawsuits will be substantial. For these reasons, estimating the total cost for California to deliver 50% renewable electricity at $300 billion is probably the very best case, if not fantastically optimistic. This is $20 billion per year for the next 15 years. Readers are encouraged to critique these projections.

California has already mandated utilities to accomplish a 25% RPS (renewable portfolio standard) by 2025. It would make sense to see how this already ambitious process unfolds, giving solar and wind technology – along with future technologies such as enhanced geothermal – time to mature, before leaping to a 50% RPS mandate.

With the 2008 Olympics going on, we are bombarded with images of rippling muscles pushed to their limit by men and women in peak physical condition. Most of these champions spend hours a day at the gym, burning up to 5000 calories during a workout. Most people have had a gym membership at one time or another, in the hopes of staying fit by exercising at least three times a day. This idea, isn’t a novel one; but why waste all this energy, just sweating it out, rather than using it to generate electricity?

A California Fitness health club in Hong Kong, has already developed a gym with 13 machines that generate 300 watts when they are all in use. That’s enough to run three of the massive 30 inch TV screens looming above the machines. This project started when Doug Woodring, environmental entrepreneur, decided it was time to take advantage of all the potential energy that walked through the gym doors on a daily basis. Steve Clinefelter, president of California Fitness, jumped on the idea.

According to Clinefelter (quoted by inhabitat), “One person has the ability of producing 50watts of electricity per hour when exercising at a moderate pace… If a person spends one hour per day running on the machine, he/she could generate 18.2 kilowatts of electricity and prevent 4,380 liters of CO2 released per year.” To link to original article with video click here.

Parasitic generators are the newest line of devices meant to inadvertently capture human energy. The most ambitious of these projects involves a nightclub with a dance floor that generates an electric current when masses of people bounce around on top of it. The crystals inside the floor generate a current when compressed and power the lights that flash up at the happy dancers doing all the work.

A smaller scale generator in backpack form is currently being developed by Larry Rome, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. These backpacks generate power from the vibrations of the wearer’s footsteps, and may eventually power a small fridge, or relieve soldiers from needing to carry so many batteries in their already, cumbersome packs.

Many parents would love the idea of tv powered by an elliptical machine or stationary bike. You would have to work out to watch your favorite shows and that’s definitely better than sitting on the couch with a craning neck to watch the tv over the ever expanding belly. Just try not to compare yourself to a hamster in a wheel.