The Cleantech Revolution Sweeps Through America

By Peter Madden and Polly Ghazi

The wind of change is sweeping America – literally. Take Texas. Synonymous with the nation’s oil boom era, for the past century its wealth has been powered by gushing geysers and giant oil companies. But green gold is now competing with black, as Texas establishes itself as a powerhouse of wind energy.

And the Lone Star State is not alone. During 2008, the US wind industry almost doubled in size, reaching 25,369MW, and passing Germany as the world leader. Across 30 states, from heartland Minnesota, Iowa and Kansas to the crowded northeast seaboard, giant wind farms are becoming an accepted part of the landscape.

Nor does this clean energy revolution end with wind. America’s solar power sector has tripled in size since 2000. And with a dozen large concentrating solar power (CSP) plants under construction around the country, the industry aims to provide half of all new electricity generation by 2025.

Investors, meanwhile, are betting on a cleantech future. Bucking the recession, venture capital investments in cleantech soared to a record $7.6 billion in 2008, double the 2007 tally, with solar and algae-based biofuels among the big winners. “Only a few years ago, cleantech was barely a sector at all,” says Joel Makower, Editor of GreenBiz.com, in The State of Green Business 2009 report. “Now it represents 20% of the entire venture capital asset class.”

It’s not just start-ups and VCs. Some of the country’s household name corporations are also jumping on the bandwagon. General Electric is now the biggest wind turbine manufacturer in the US, and the fifth biggest worldwide. Duke Energy, a Fortune 500 coal company which has not exactly been the darling of the green movement in the past, has built nine wind farms around the country and is planning more. And the likes of Ford, General Motors and Chrysler are racing to produce the first mass market electric cars [see ‘Spark plug’]. All of a sudden, corporate America seems to be surging towards a new frontier of innovation.

So just what is generating all this enthusiasm? Can it reach critical mass? And does President Obama’s outspoken advocacy of clean energy and climate action really mean America is poised to lead the world down the sunrise path?

The first question is easiest to answer. The relentless rise of concerns over energy security, peak oil and looming carbon curbs, means cleantech is both smart business and smart policy.

Many of America’s leading corporations now see a clean energy future as inevitable – and they want to be sure to have a share in it. Take the list of companies supporting a ‘cap and trade’ approach to regulating carbon. It reads like a litany of corporate America: GE, Dow Chemical, Duke Energy, Shell, BP America, Ford, General Motors… They have lined up alongside the green lobby in a titanic PR battle with the coal industry and the Republican Party, who claim a carbon cap will cost jobs and raise energy bills.

A second ingredient feeding green industry growth has been the steady trickle of action at state level. In the absence of federal leadership under President Bush, many states quietly took steps to facilitate cleantech development, drawn by its potential to generate jobs and reduce fossil fuel dependence. They typically did so through a mix of carrots (tax breaks, and grants for energy efficiency and clean energy projects) and sticks (mandatory targets for renewable generation, and regional cap and trade programmes). Now such efforts are starting to bear fruit.

In Massachusetts, for example. Here, a solar rebate programme launched a year ago is pouring $22 million into 539 new photovoltaic projects. Combined with a Green Jobs Act, which provides taxpayer funding for R&D, business start-ups and workforce development, this has spurred a quadrupling in statewide solar installation contractors – from less than 50 a year ago to nearly 200 today. One company, Evergreen Solar, has taken on 700 new staff alone. Massachusetts has now set itself a target of becoming a green industries hub, with 250MW of solar generation by 2017 and 2,000MW of installed wind power capacity by 2020 – up from a mere 7MW at present.

Philip Giudice, Commissioner for the state’s Department of Energy Resources, makes it all sound very simple. “We created market opportunities, and companies responded. Some are regular electrical contractors who expanded their business model [to include solar or wind]. Others are contractors that used to build people’s porches and now also install solar panels. It’s the natural evolution of emerging markets, and it’s very exciting.”

A third key factor powering America’s green enthusiasm is long overdue federal action, boosted by Obama’s characteristic clarion call to action. “The choice we face is not between saving our environment and saving our economy”, he said. “It’s a choice between prosperity and decline. The nation that leads the world in creating new sources of clean energy will be the nation that leads the 21st century global economy.”

Fighting talk, which prodded Congress into allocating $112 billion of economic stimulus spending to green programmes (compared with a meagre $2 billion spent by Britain). By 2017, nearly $20 billion in tax incentives will be poured into the wind and solar industries, along with $54 billion into direct support for energy technology schemes. A large chunk of the latter will be spent improving the country’s ageing electricity grid to support renewable energy transmission and electric cars.

Investors have particularly welcomed the rollout of federal loan guarantees for green energy projects. “These should provide a real starting gun to get renewable schemes, which have been stalled by the credit crisis, off the ground all over the country,” said Jennifer von Bismarck, President of renewables financier Towpath Partners.

Introduced with less fanfare – and less cost – a second presidential initiative may prove almost as effective. By 2016, national fuel economy standards will be raised significantly to 35.5 miles a gallon, forcing the car industry further down the road to leaner, cleaner vehicles. According to the White House, the greenhouse gas savings will be equivalent to taking 177 million cars off the road.

So what does all this amount to? The US economic juggernaut is undoubtedly greening – but how far and how fast?

Short term, the news is good. Thanks mainly to the dramatic economic slowdown, but also to state and federal green stimuli, US carbon emissions fell by 3% last year and are predicted to fall a further 5% in 2009. This should present an enormous opportunity for the world’s richest country to start the transition toward a low carbon economy.

But hold on. The bulk of the American economy remains resolutely ‘grey’. Almost 90% of US electricity is still supplied by fossil fuels, primarily coal-burning power plants. And while clean energy companies are finally receiving sizeable federal subsidies, so too are the coal plants and other smokestack industries. Unlike the European Union, the US has no carbon cap and trade programme, however flimsy, in place to stimulate green investment. Unlike China, which has set a target of 15% renewable generation by 2020, the US has no national Renewable Energy Standard. Only one of the world’s five largest wind turbine manufacturers is American (General Electric), and only one of the top ten solar panel makers.

“The US is in danger of being left behind in the new global economy,” concludes Jennifer Morgan, Climate and Energy Director at the World Resources Institute (WRI), and she lays the blame squarely on Washington. “Business hates uncertainty, and the Federal Government’s failure to act is holding back US business innovation and leadership.” Jeff Immelt, CEO of General Electric, agrees. “Right now, the US has no long-term market signal to tell companies and consumers that it values low carbon energy. But good policy can flip this dynamic.”

But what form will or should such “good policy” take? The American Clean Energy and Security Act, narrowly approved by the US House of Representatives in June, would reduce US greenhouse gas emissions by 17% by 2020, and 80% by 2050. Based around a cap and trade programme similar to the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, the bill would regulate utilities, coal plants and other outlets accounting for 85% of US greenhouse gases. By putting a price on carbon, says WRI President Jonathan Lash, this would send “a clear market signal… The President’s signature on a cap and trade bill would unleash a flood of investment in, and deployment of, clean energy technologies across the United States”. Or as one seasoned observer put it, could “transform the steady stream of clean energy funding and R&D into a tsunami”.

But prospects for the next steps required to make such a bill law – Senate passage of sister legislation, reconciliation with the House bill and the President’s signature on the dotted line – are looking uncertain at best. A Senate vote may be postponed until 2010.

Should Congress ultimately reject cap and trade, however, the President has a trump card in his back pocket. The Environmental Protection Agency has already laid the groundwork to regulate and cap greenhouse gas emissions as an air pollutant, under the Clean Air Act. While such a move would raise furious cries of foul from Republicans and the coal industry, environmentalists are confident the President will order the EPA to act if he has to.

A critical complement to an emissions cap – and politically easier for either the President or Congress to implement – would be a national Renewable Energy Standard, setting a baseline for the proportion of electricity to be generated renewably. According to the Sierra Club, sourcing 20% of US energy from renewables by 2020 would create 820,000 jobs and generate a whopping $66.7 billion in capital investment.

So will America “lead or lag in the world’s next great global industry, green technology?”, as Jeff Immelt put it in a recent New York Times editorial. Certainly, the groundwork has been laid for US leadership. But will industry and, especially, Government demonstrate the steely political will required to follow through? Will black gold win or green? The jury is still out.

Billions ventured

Leading cleantech recipients of venture capital (VC) investment, 2008:
• concentrating solar power
• ‘thin film’ solar photovoltaics
• next generation biofuels (especially algae-based technologies)
• geothermal and tidal energy
• fuel cell applications.

Atlantic divides

The British have the policies and commitments, says Peter Madden, but the Americans are stealing a march with the action

On this side of the pond, there is also great excitement about the benefits of moving to a low-carbon economy. The Government recently launched its ambitious and interventionist ‘Low Carbon Industrial Strategy’, while Prime Minister Gordon Brown has just promised that “we will create over a quarter of a million new green British jobs”.

Britain has a much firmer policy framework in place than the US. As well as the European Emissions Trading Scheme, the UK has a ‘Low Carbon Transition Plan’ and a Climate Change Act setting firm carbon budgets for the economy as a whole and for individual Government departments. However, despite the blizzard of policy initiatives, rather less is happening on the ground. The credit crunch has turned off the financing tap for many big projects, and this has not been offset by the kind of sizeable green fiscal stimulus package seen in the US. And planning difficulties and delays have stymied major projects and led to big investors putting their money instead into the US and continental Europe. The UK will really have to raise its game to turn the fine words into deeds – and give some substance to Gordon Brown’s recent claim that “we are already global leaders in wind power, green cars, clean coal and carbon capture”.

This piece originally appeared in Green Futures. Green Futures is published by Forum for the Future, one of the leading magazines on environmental solutions and sustainable futures. Its aim is to demonstrate that a sustainable future is both practical and desirable – and can be profitable, too.

Image Credit: MAErtek via Shutterstock, Creative Commons License

Eskom tariff application in spotlight

THE National Energy Regulator of SA (Nersa) has set the ball rolling for the interrogation of Eskom’s recent application for tariff increases.

Nersa on Friday released an “issues paper” in which it has set the tone for future comments on the application by zooming into what are likely to be key talking points during the mandatory public participation process. These include rising operating expenditure, primary energy, and the effect of the increase on the economy and the poor.

Public comments on the application close at the end of this month . The public hearings will be held from January 11-22 and Nersa will, for the first time, hold public hearings in all provinces, it said, saying this was due to “unprecedented” public interest in the application. The body has said it would decide on the application on February 24, in time for the increase to take effect on April 1.

Eskom’s application for steep electricity price increases has provoked a public outcry.

Nersa said it had not yet formulated any opinions on the issues in the application and was only raising them so that stakeholders could give their opinions, the regulator said in its 25-page paper.

One issue that Nersa puts in the spotlight in the paper is Eskom’s soaring operating expenditure. Rising primary energy costs because of higher coal costs, increased utilisation of more expensive power plants, and logistical costs were key features in Eskom’s application.

“What are your views on these costs as presented in Eskom’s application?” Nersa asked.

The regulator also asked the public to comment on Eskom’s assertion that its capital expenditure programme would lead to an average annual increase in operating expenditure of 12,7% in the next five years, starting in the 2010-11 financial year.

Eskom has in the past come under fire for its handling of coal procurement as the utility has increasingly relied on coal bought through the more expensive short- term contracts. Eskom has also incurred logistical costs as the coal usually has to be transported by road from mine to power station.

Nersa said interested parties should comment on the feasibility of increasing mine production above contractual levels “for a few years” when contracted production is unable to meet the burn requirements of a power station.

Meanwhile, Nersa has approved the renewable energy feed-in tariffs phase 2. The approved tariff for a concentrated solar power trough without storage is R3,14/kWh, large- scale grid-connected photovoltaic systems (R3,94/kWh), biomass solid (R1,18/kWh), biogas (96c/kWh) and a concentrating solar power tower with storage of six hours a day (R2,31/kWh).

Nersa said it had excluded concentrating photovoltaic “at this stage” because of its high costs.

The regulator said the proposed power purchase agreement that was part of the feed-in tariff guidelines would be revised to be in line with the electricity regulations on new generation capacity, published in the g overnment g azette in August.

Among others, the regulations determine how a buyer and an independent power producer enter into a power purchase agreement.

njobenis@bdfm.co.za

Taking a Tip from Floor Tiles: Solarmation Makes Concentrating Solar More Modular

Concentrating photovoltaic technologies, which magnify sunlight and direct it onto solar cells, hold potential to increase the efficiency of a solar-power system. But several analysts — including Jenny Chase, head of solar research at New Energy Finance — say that CPV is likely to be more expensive than conventional solar-panel systems, which have been rapidly falling in price. And because CPV systems have a shorter track record and include moving parts to track the sun, some industry insiders are concerned about reliability. Spokane, Wash.-based startup Solarmation thinks it has come up with a technology that can help solve these issues.

The 2-year-old startup has taken processes from the light-emitting diode and automotive industries, including optical elements from LEDs and vehicle headlights, and applied them to CPV, Solarmation Chief Executive Ed Caferro told us. The result is what Solarmation calls Quasar modules — basically 1-square-foot building blocks (pictured above), which each include nine Fresnel lenses with lightweight reflective aluminum (from Alanod Solar) instead of glass. The Quasar modules concentrate sunlight 1,000 times and deliver the highest electrical efficiency per square foot in the industry, Solarmation claims. The technology could cut the total cost per kilowatt-hour of solar electricity in half, Caferro said.

While the technology comes from LEDs and vehicles, it is reminiscent of modular flooring tiles. In fact, Solarmation even says the modules are made up of “parquets” of lenses. Like floor tiles, the modules give developers more design flexibility because they can be put together to make up whatever size system is best suited to the tracker being used. Solarmation modules can accommodate different widths or heights and can be used with any two-axis tracker, Caferro said.

While putting together small panels often reduces system efficiencies, which is why several photovoltaic solar panel manufacturers are increasing panel sizes to reduce costs, Caferro said that the ability to maximize the use of the trackers more than makes up for the efficiency losses from the spaces between the parquets. Solarmation is targeting systems of around 5 MW.

The company is keeping quiet about the specifics of its technology until two of its patents are in place, but Caferro said that it is using both a different design and materials than other CPV players. It is also using well-established processes from other industries, which it expects will make its systems easier and cheaper to manufacture in high volumes than other CPV systems. “We’re not only reducing cost but scale; we’re not creating any processes,” he said. Solarmation plans to offer a 20-year warranty for its Quasar modules.

Founded in July of 2007, Solarmation has been self-funded so far, but plans to start raising its first round of funding in the beginning of next year. The company, which is in the beta testing process at this point, plans to begin production in the second quarter.

In a sign of confidence for the technology, Solarmation has already attracted at least one high-powered partner, Siemens. At Solar Power International in Anaheim, Calif., last week, Solarmation modules were displayed in a system with a new hydraulic tracker from Inspired Solar Technologies and Siemens technology to predict where the sun would be and to control the tracker accordingly. Solarmation’s web site also lists manufacturers Device Semiconductor (widely known as DSEM) and Pentamaster Corporation Berhad as partners.

But Solarmation still has plenty left to prove. Chase said that while CPV stands a better chance in the U.S. than in Europe long-term because Americans tend to be less risk-averse, she believes that “the vast majority of CPV companies will get precisely nowhere.” The difficulty is that CPV currently seems to be more expensive than crystalline silicon and definitely is pricier than thin-film solar per kilowatt-hour, she said. While the prices for CPV are falling, so are the prices for regular PV, she added, and developers will likely favor more established technologies.

Graphic courtesy of Solarmation

Dry Cooling for Consentrated Solar Power a Must in Desert Climates

Dry Cooling for Consentrated Solar Power a Must in Desert Climates Concentrating solar power (CSP) “farms” use a lot of water. This is doubly distressing for many environmentalists because they are frequently sited in desert or near-desert areas, which offer limited habitability for humans but – as a result – are excellent wildlife refuges.CSP sites can use upwards of 500 million gallons of water a year for cooling, or about 800 gallons per megawatt hour, and there are currently 34 such projects slated for development in the California and Nevada deserts – one, in the Mojave Desert having already been successfully blocked by Dianne Feinstein (D-CA; a move which prompted California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to note: “If we can’t put solar in the desert, I don’t know where the hell we can put it.”There are several types of CSP. One is the parabolic trough, which uses long sections of curved reflective material oriented toward the sun. These troughs don’t need to orient on the vertical axis, since some portion of the sun is always hitting some part of the trough. They do orient horizontally, or perpendicularly, from morning to evening to match the sun’s crossing the sky (as in the case of Andasol 1 in Spain).The reflected sunlight then heats a medium (i.e., oil) inside a pipe running the length of the trough, which in turn is used to produce steam to drive a turbine generator. Some plants also use molted (melted) salt to store heat for nighttime or cloudy-day electricity generation.A second type is a power tower, which uses heliostats (mirrors) to concentrate solar energy on a collector tower. This method can require less level ground, and generate higher temperatures than parabolic-trough solar collection.A third type, called a dish design, uses the same mirror principal, as a collection of mirrors in a roughly circular shape, to focus solar energy on a central receiver located close to the center of the dish but extended by about 20 feet on an armature.Fresnel reflectors adopt the parabolic design, using slightly curved or even flat mirrors, in rows, to focus solar energy on a receiver, which may or may not have its own intensifying reflector. Linear Fresnel reflectors offer an adaptation of this technology using long tower receivers.Perhaps the most efficient design to date is the Stirling engine/solar dish, which has a reported conversion rate (from solar insolation to electricity) of 31.25 percent. However, none of the designs mentioned is especially good at conserving water used to remove heat produced in the steam cycle.The alternative is air, or dry, cooling, which BrightSource is using at its Ivanpah installation in the Mojave. These indirect dry cooling systems (Heller systems) can reportedly reduce water usage by a whopping 97 percent. Unfortunately, air cooling reduces efficiencies, by up to 5 percent; not a huge loss, until one considers the cost/benefit ratio of CSP plants. The loss is greater in very hot climates like the Mojave, and less so in climates where the nights are cooler (New Mexico, for instance).Efficiencies can also be improved, according to energy consulting firm WorleyParsons, by creating a larger collector field or device to provide greater steam cycle performance.Unfortunately, many developers are skeptical of these alternative-to-water cooling systems, and even view hybrid (air-water) cooling systems askance, which has so far prevented their support among environmentalists and legislators seeking to conserve precious water resources for a thirsty constituency.

Heat from Africa to help sustain Europe's electricity demand

"The time has come to turn this vision into reality. That implies intensive co-operation with many parties and cultures, to create a sound basis for feasible investments into renewable energy technologies and interconnected grids. The move is pivotal in the transition of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East to sustainable energy supplies," said Paul van Son, chief executive of the energy consortium, Desertec Industrial Initiative.

D eutsche Bank, Siemens and the energy provider E.On, aim to produce solar-generated electricity with a vast network of power plants and transmission grids across North Africa and the Middle East. Massive solar energy fields would be built across North Africa’s Sahara desert, utilizing concentrated solar power technology (CPS), which uses parabolic mirrors to focus the Sun’s rays on storages of water.

The heavily-heated water will power steam turbines to generate electricity 24 hours a day, 52 weeks of the year, and the electricity will then be transported great distances to Europe, using hi-tech cables that suffer little conductive loss of power. According to prognostics, the project is expected to supply Europe with its energy needs by 2050.

A statement released by the Desertec Foundation indicate that some of the power generated by the Sahara solar energy fields will also be used by domestic African consumers.

A number of North African countries have expressed a strong desire to join the project, that utilizes the Sun, North Africa’s main sustainable natural resource. The initiative has also gained the support of the German government of Angela Merkel, who has already expressed a desire to offset her country’s dependence on Russian gas supplies.

The concept was first announced in 2007 by the Desertec Foundation, with small pilot projects based in North Africa, and is in line with the demands of the Sustainable Energy Coalition (SEC). SEC brings together more than 60 national and state-level business, environmental, consumers, and energy policy organizations to promote increased federal support for energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies and reduced federal support for unsafe or polluting energy resources.

Sustainable Energy Coalition members advocate federal energy policies that will lead to a cleaner environment, safe reliable energy technologies, and a secure, prosperous future for all Americans. Avenues for Coalition activity include policy decisions on the federal budget, electric utility restructuring, pollution prevention, Climate Change, and tax policies.

2050: For $400 Billion, Solar Energy Can Provide 2/3's Of US Electricity

By Loyd Eskildson

'Plugging Into the Sun' by George Johnson in National Geographic, Sept. 2009 tells of 182,000 gently curved mirrors lined up in 760 arrays spread across 250 acres in Nevada that focus sunlight on long-steel pipes filled with circulating oil, heating it up to 750 degrees F. The steam generated produces as much as 64 MW (14,000 households). The plant belongs to Acciona (Spanish co.) and the mirrors were made in Germany. On a clear summer day with the sun directly overhead about 21% of the sun's energy is converted to electricity. A 30% federal tax credit helped offset its construction costs; motivation also came from a state deadline requiring utilities in Nevada to generate 20% of their power from renewable sources by 2015.
 
Efforts to further lower costs of solar power from steam generators such as this one include making

mirrors from lightweight polymers instead of glass, and implementing methods of storing power for release at night. One way of accomplishing the latter is through using heat during the day to melt salt and store it until evening; this is already in operation at a site in Spain. The Solana Generating Station in Arizona (also Spanish built) will also use the same technology. When it goes online in 2012, three square miles of parabolic troughs will produce 280 MW for Phoenix-Tucson. (Heliostats operate similarly, except the sunlight is concentrated on a sphere and doesn't need long-steel pipes to transport the hot oil. The 10 MW demonstration facility at Daggett, CA. produced an eerie star-like glow when it was operated.)
 
Solar panels convert sunlight directly into electricity, but are expensive and provide efficiency of only 10-20%. Layering different semiconductors to capture different colors from sunlight has produced 41% efficiency - at a cost of $10,000/square cm. Thin-film solar cells (10% efficiency) cost about $1/watt - close to competitiveness with fossil fuel. Both the U.S. (Solar First) and China are competitive in manufacturing these films.
 
Germany is the largest producer of photovoltaic power in the world.
 
Man's power needs in 2020 are expected to reach 20 terawatts (TW; tera = trillion). The energy of sunshine on the Earth's land mass is 120 thousand TW. Experts believe renewable resources could provide 975,000 TWH, with 76% coming from solar. Solar now produces only 0.02% of the earth's total electricity. One expert believes the sun can provide two-thirds of U.S. electricity by 2050 for about $400 billion - including high-efficiency power transmission lines. Comparisons: Hoover Dam - 2,080 MW; Palo Verde Nuclear Plant (outside Phoenix - largest in the U.S.) - 3,200 MW. The West Texas 36,000 acre wind farm (one of the largest in the U.S.) will produce 600 MW of electricity beginning in 2011; its 240 turbines will be made in China, and receive a $450 million stimulus grant.

Loyd Eskildson is retired from a life of computer programming, teaching economics and finance, education and health care administration, and cross-country truck driving.  He's now a reviewer for Basil & Spice.

President Barack Obama's Grandmother Joins the 'Solar Generation' in Kenya China Spends $115 Billion On Foreign Acquisitions, $4B In Afghanistan

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The must-read solutions book — “Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis ...

asked me (and several others) to suggest three books to read ahead of the Copenhagen conference.  Of those, they then asked me to review Gore’s new book, Our Choice:  A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis:

When your last work led to an Oscar and Nobel Prize, anticipation is high on the sequel. And former US Vice President Al Gore’s new book delivers. Our Choice, due out in November, is a wonderfully readable treatise on climate solutions.Whereas An Inconvenient Truth framed the crisis that climate negotiations are tackling, this followup spells out what needs to be done.

Based on 30 of Gore’s ‘Solutions Summits’ as well as one-on-one discussions with leading experts across multiple disciplines, the book aims, in Gore’s words, “to gather in one place all of the most effective solutions that are available now”. Gore naturally focuses on energy, the source of most anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, and discusses many underappreciated strategies such as concentrated solar thermal power and cogeneration. He also devotes a full chapter to soil, a major carbon sink that is gradually degrading. Farming strategies for restoring soil carbon are described, including biochar, a porous charcoal that can potentially enhance the soil sink while providing a source of low-carbon power. And like its PowerPoint-based predecessor, Our Choice is replete with lush photos and simple but powerful charts. This [is] a must-read book for those who want a primer on all the key solutions countries will be considering at Copenhagen.

I was at one the Solutions Summit, as long-time readers know (see “My Al Gore story“).   I was interviewed by Newsweek about that Summit for their cover story:

Gore assigned each speaker at the summits a half dozen or so questions: Is nuclear power a viable solution? How can new photovoltaic technologies enter the market? He moderated every discussion, and no one remembers him ever glancing at his iPhone during even the most eye-glazing PowerPoint slides (”differentiation of value chain strategies”). Every panel at the New York meetings ran late, recalls Joseph Romm, who oversaw the Department of Energy’s renewables program from 1995 to 1998, as Gore asked question after question. “It was a fire hydrant of information,” says Romm, and it taught even experts things they didn’t know “about the latest technologies and strategies for clean energy.” Gore also hosted a reception afterward, where he betrayed no doubt that everyone would find everything as fascinating as he did. “Have Tim tell you all about soil carbon!” he said to one scientist. “Gore bothers to come talk to us,” says climatologist Gavin Schmidt of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. “Most other politicians are too busy: ‘Just give us the talking points.’ He’s the only politician who’s interested in the nuts and bolts of the science—and the only one who knows what a hydroxyl radical is.”

[Note:  I typically say I helped oversee the DOE's energy efficiency and renewables program from 1995 to 1998, as principal deputy assistant secretary and then acting assistant secretary.  I was in charge of technology and market analysis for the office during much of that time.]

Like Gore, I learned a lot from the summits.  Here is what I wrote in January 2008:

For the last three days I attended a small climate solutions summit hosted by the former Vice President and current Nobel Laureate. It was off-the-record, so I can’t report on presentations directly, but they have made me a lot smarter about the latest technologies and strategies for clean energy, which will inform my blogging this year on climate solutions. I will say now as an aside that I have become much more bullish on the potential for large-scale solar photovoltaics as a result of attending these meetings. The VP asked me to speak for seven minutes on hydrogen at dinner Wednesday. Before dinner, I gave him a copy of the brand-new paperback edition of — warning, shameless product placement — Hell and High Water. He looked it over for a few minutes and said, deadpan,

I have only one problem with this book — this blurb on the back here that says, “If you buy only one book about global warming, make it Hell and High Water.” I just can’t agree with that.

When he introduced me that night, he repeated the line to great laughter.

BTW, in case it wasn’t obvious from his movie, the VP has a terrific sense of humor — and not just in his delivery timing of canned jokes, but in quick, impromptu one liners, like the one above, many of them self-deprecating (one of the speakers from a web-based company thanked him for his work accelerating the Internet, and he said something like, “You heard I had something to do with the internet?”).

And in case this wasn’t obvious from his movie, he has an encyclopedic knowledge of all things related to climate, energy, science, and technology.

I didn’t realize until I read the Newsweek piece that the VP had a similar reaction to the PV panel:

By all accounts, Gore was open to changing positions he brought to the summits. He originally thought that concentrated solar thermal power, in which the sun heats liquids that then power an electric generator, is superior to photovoltaics, in which sunlight produces electricity directly (PVs are the solar panels sprouting on rooftops these days). But “the PV industry surprised people over the last three years with the speed at which costs dropped,” says Cornelius, who is now at Hudson Clean Energy, a private-equity firm. Gore came around. “We are at or near a threshold beyond which photovoltaics will actually have a cost advantage” over concentrated solar as well as fossil fuels, Gore writes. He likes the fact that they can be deployed in small installations—those rooftops—whereas solar thermal projects are immense; he’s impressed that the price of photovoltaics is dropping while their efficiency is rising, thanks to new materials and manufacturing techniques. “Photovoltaics are a prime example of where the developmental pathway had a big impact on my conclusions,” Gore said at his home last month. “The rate of cost reductions and increases in efficiency for PVs is very impressive. PVs probably overtakes concentrated solar thermal within the next half year.”

I’m not certain one can directly compare PV and solar thermal.  And I still think solar thermal will deliver more kilowatt-hours this century than any other form of low carbon electricity — see Concentrated solar thermal power Solar Baseload — a core climate solution — particularly because it is so much cheaper and efficient to store thermal energy than electricity, and there are no obvious production bottlenecks for CSP.  But this summit did convince me to include a full wedge of PV in “How the world can (and will) stabilize at 350 to 450 ppm: The full global warming solution,” along with 3 wedges of CSP.

The Newsweek article is by Sharon Begley, a journalist who definitely gets global warming — see Newsweek’s Science Editor explains why climate change is “even worse than we feared” and how “a consensus has developed during IPY that the Greenland ice sheet will disappear.”

And for those who want to learn about soils and biochar, the book has a good chapter:

Gore loves plants and soils as only a former farm boy can (well, a summertime farm boy: as a kid he spent the school year in Washington, where his father was a senator). He regales you with numbers: more CO2 is emitted from burning and destroying forests—20 to 23 percent of the annual total—than from all the world’s cars and trucks; only by the 1980s did CO2 from fossil fuels overtake that from deforestation, which accounts for 40 percent of the CO2 increase since the 1800s.

The potential for soils to absorb more of the CO2 that our utilities, factories, and vehicles spew poses a dilemma for Gore, one of two where his scientific and political instincts collide. With better management, soils could sequester much more carbon than they do now. The question is how much more. Soils scientist Rattan Lal of Ohio State University was surprised to get a call last summer (”Vice President Gore would like to talk to you”) that began, “I have 15 or 20 questions about soils and climate for you.” Lal calculates that if more farmers adopted mulching, no-till farming, and the use of cover crops and manure, 3,700 million acres worldwide could sequester 1 gigaton per year of CO2, roughly 12 percent of annual global emissions. Other experts are even more sanguine. “If we feed the biology and manage grasslands appropriately, we could sequester as much carbon as we emit,” says Timothy LaSalle, CEO of the Rodale Institute, who presented at two summits. The political clash is this: if you tell people soils can be managed to suck up lots of our carbon emissions, it sounds like a get-out-of-jail-free card, and could decrease what little enthusiasm there is for reducing those emissions—as one of Gore’s assistants told LaSalle in asking him to dial down his estimate. (He didn’t.)

To his credit, Gore sides with the science, letting the political chips fall where they may. He writes that soils could sequester an additional 15 percent of annual global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels. That could cut 50 parts per million of CO2 from the atmosphere over the next 50 years. (We are now at 387, up from 280 before the industrial era, with 450 ppm or even less a dangerous level.) To encourage changes in agriculture that would foster carbon sequestration, Gore advocates moving away from price supports and toward paying farmers for “how much carbon they can put into and keep in their soil,” he says. Paying farmers to sequester carbon might jump-start the use of biochar, which Gore calls “one of the most exciting new strategies for restoring carbon to depleted soils, and sequestering significant amounts of CO2.” Biochar, which he learned about during a 1989 trip to the Amazon, is basically porous charcoal. Made by burning switch grass, corn husks, and other waste, it can absorb CO2 like a charcoal filter in a cigarette absorbs gases. Gore estimates that biochar could sequester 40 percent of annual CO2 emissions.

Begley notes one especially unexpected chapter in the book:

But because of one sentence, and one chapter, it does surprise. The chapter is an astute analysis of the psychological barriers that keep most Americans from taking the threat of climate change seriously, his acknowledgment that emotion, not just reason, drives the decisions people make. The sentence is this: “Simply laying out the facts won’t work.”

… Gore is a canny-enough politician to know that change of this magnitude takes time, and that politics tends to trump science. A new poll by the Pew Research Center found sharp declines in the numbers of Americans who believe there is solid evidence that the world is warming (57 percent, compared with 71 percent in April 2008), and in how many believe it is because of human activity (36 percent vs. 47 percent). Gore blames this on the boatloads of money the coal and oil industries have spent to muddy the science and confuse the public…. His favorite quote in Our Choice is from the philosopher Theodor Adorno (1903–1969): “The conversion of all questions of truth into questions of power … has attacked the very heart of the distinction between true and false.”

The piece concludes with Gore’s native optimism:

“You know, the political system is [like climate] also nonlinear,” Gore says. “I’ve been waiting a long time for that tipping point,” when politicians and the public recognize the threat of climate change and act to avert it. “But I think we’re closer than ever. Reality does have a way of knocking on the door.”

Walking back through the house, I ask Gore again whether he believes the sanguine vision of Our Choicewill come to be. He points to solar panels on his roof, and to his driveway, 300 feet beneath which seven geothermal wells gather the planet’s warmth to heat and cool his house. “I have to,” he says.

Our Choice is really the anti-Superfreakonomics.  I’m sure it will be widely attacked by the deniers and delayers, so no doubt I’ll be blogging about it more this month.  The bottom line is that besides being informative, Our Choice is a truly beautiful book page after page, and I highly recommend it, particularly for those who want a broad overview of the key strategies for preserving a livable climate.

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