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<node CREATED="1202572499609" ID="Freemind_Link_1945865515" MODIFIED="1213978603400" TEXT="Earth: The Sequel&#xa;">
<node CREATED="1202572684814" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1694044019" MODIFIED="1217727575744" POSITION="right" TEXT="Chapter 1 (Introduction)">
<node CREATED="1205463876345" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1380026779" MODIFIED="1205463878100" TEXT="Context">
<node CREATED="1202578576481" ID="Freemind_Link_1587602659" MODIFIED="1202578622748" TEXT="&quot;The innovators you will meet in the chapters that follow are wildly inventive and ambitious. Risk-take is their favorite sport, &quot;disruptive&quot; their favorite word.&quot; Many actually relish the prospect of going up against the biggest companies in the world.&quot; (p. 10)"/>
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<node CREATED="1202584224276" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1102679863" MODIFIED="1217726413037" TEXT="A challenge with stakes almost unimaginably high">
<node CREATED="1202584235512" ID="Freemind_Link_420989136" MODIFIED="1205463586356" TEXT="&quot;While you read about those inventors and get a glimpse of what is possible, imagine what it will mean if even a fraction of these high-risk ventures fulfill their promise--if clean, abundant energy becomes a reality. The stakes are almost unimaginably high.&quot; (p. 13)"/>
<node CREATED="1202578026355" ID="Freemind_Link_1971227163" MODIFIED="1213974278875" TEXT="&quot;Given enough time, many of the technologies described in this book might ripen on their own. But time is the one thing we don&apos;t have. Late in 2007, scientists noted that emissions of greenhouse gases were growing considerably faster than expected, and they also dramatically revised downward their estimates of how much pollution the planet can tolerate. The new numbers mean that we most not simply stop the annual growth of emissions. Worldwide, nations must cut emissions in half over the next fifty years. To reach that goal, the United States will have to cut emissions by 80%.&quot; (p. 9)"/>
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<node CREATED="1202583446047" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_859299927" MODIFIED="1217727051867" TEXT="Vast opportunities for economic growth">
<node CREATED="1205950014446" ID="Freemind_Link_917613941" MODIFIED="1205950026923" TEXT="Is there any way to quantify the economic growth that would come from cap-and-trade?">
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<node CREATED="1202583452073" ID="Freemind_Link_1747147197" MODIFIED="1202583495294" TEXT="job growth, profits, international competitiveness that would be unleashed by the proper regulatory framework. (p. 12)"/>
<node CREATED="1202583545008" ID="Freemind_Link_982314409" MODIFIED="1205949979623" TEXT="&quot;Technological progress driven by innovation is responsible for fully half the growth of the U.S. economy.&quot; (p. 12) "/>
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<node CREATED="1205952972972" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_996860474" MODIFIED="1217727370879" TEXT="Lessons from the Clean Air Act">
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<node CREATED="1205950778427" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1390693782" MODIFIED="1217726423957" TEXT="The discovery of acid rain">
<node CREATED="1205950170794" ID="Freemind_Link_172719953" MODIFIED="1205950834122" TEXT="&quot;Thirty years ago, scientists and fishermen began noticing a startling decline in animal and plant life in lakes and forests throughout the eastern United States. In 1981 the National Academy of Sciences issued a report documenting the cause: sulfur dioxide pollution. Originating mostly from coal-fired power plants, sulfur dioxide was causing rain and sow to turn acidic, and that acid rain was killing aquatic life and damaging forests. The discovery sparked bitter debate over how to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions and at what cost.&quot; (p. 4)"/>
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<node CREATED="1202573373148" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_230646160" MODIFIED="1217726430741" TEXT="Why the 1977 Clean Air Act was a failure">
<node CREATED="1205950286572" ID="Freemind_Link_996503907" MODIFIED="1213974694307" TEXT="The key instrument then available for tackling acid rain was the 1977 Clean Air Act, which had established a &apos;command and control&apos; approach to air pollution. Not only was every newly built electric generating unit required to meet a uniform ceiling on its emissions rate, but it had to do so by installing a &apos;scrubber,&apos; or flue-gas desulfurization unit, an expensive piece of capital equipment that added tens of millions of dollars to the cost of the power plant. It didn&apos;t matter if a power plant could cut emissions more cheaply by burning cleaner coal or by making its boiler more efficient-- it still had to install a scrubber. Meanwhile, overall emissions continued to rise: old plants were largely exempted until they modernized, and new plants, even if in compliance with the law, still added new emissions to the total.&quot; (p. 4)"/>
<node CREATED="1205950504192" ID="Freemind_Link_1925726194" MODIFIED="1205950573054" TEXT="&quot;The one-size-fits-all solution failed to take advantage of the local knowledge and experience of plant operators. It actually impeded quick adoption of new technologies. And it made the whole process far more expensive than necessary: some existing plants could cut pollution cheaply but weren&apos;t asked to, while other plants spent a fortune to comply.&quot; (p. 4)"/>
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<node CREATED="1202573720660" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1011471278" MODIFIED="1217726458782" TEXT="Why the 1990 Clean Air Act was a success">
<node CREATED="1205951383096" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1306153630" MODIFIED="1217726444616" TEXT="The theory of cap-and-trade">
<node CREATED="1205951040962" ID="Freemind_Link_319016000" MODIFIED="1213974681392" TEXT="&quot;The key was to mobilize the market: to make far deeper cuts in pollution and at a much lower cost. [...] The law started with the scientific bottom line. It required a 50 percent cut in sulfur dioxide emissions from the total volume released by fossil fuel-fired power plants--the minimum reduction that atmospheric scientists believed was necessary to begin bringing lakes and rivers back to life. It set a permanent upper limit--a cap--on these emissions, then divvied up the quantity (in tons) of pollution allowed among the plants. Even as new sources of pollution came on line, the cap was ratcheted down over time so that the total amount of pollution fell. That declining cap, guaranteeing that environmental targets would be met, was unprecedented. But it was the second part of the law--the emissions-trading system--that completely transformed the paradigm that had historically pitted environmentalism against economic growth.&quot; (p. 5)"/>
<node CREATED="1205951264599" ID="Freemind_Link_1060858034" MODIFIED="1205951363173" TEXT="&quot;The trading mechanism allowed a power plant that cut its sulfur dioxide pollution more than required to sell those extra allowances, and permitted plants that could not find a better way to cut their own emissions to buy them. A new commodities market was born. A plant that could beat its emissions target had a profitable new asset to sell, and financial incentive to develop ways to cut emissions even further. The buyer had the flexibility to find the cheapest way to meet the cap; it was now the power plant operator--not the regulator--who decided how to integrate emissions control into an overall business plan.&quot; (p. 6)"/>
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<node CREATED="1205952302156" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1098758758" MODIFIED="1217726449685" TEXT="Success stories">
<node CREATED="1205951778195" ID="Freemind_Link_1407675268" MODIFIED="1205951898801" TEXT="&quot;Two months after the law was passed, Richard Clark, then CEO of Pacific Gas &amp; Electric, America&apos;s largest publicly owned utility, sat next to Fred Krupp at a dinner for the President&apos;s Commission of Environmental Quality. &apos;When you were talking teh the president about this cap-and-trade idea, I frankly thought you&apos;d lost it,&apos; he said to Fred. &apos;But now that there&apos;s a way to make money from cutting pollution, I have a dozen proposals for emissions reductions from my own employees on the shop floor, and a dozen more from outside consultants. The environment isn&apos;t just a money loser--it&apos;s a profit center. I have to admit it&apos;s a powerful law.&quot; (p. 6)"/>
<node CREATED="1205951973559" ID="Freemind_Link_1181811653" MODIFIED="1213974754475" TEXT="&quot;One company that jumped on the new market opportunity was General Electric (GE), whose scrubber technology--in the absence of strict caps on emissions or any rewards for overachievers--had not advanced much since the passage of the 1977 law. For years, GE had been selling clumsy units that clogged up so frequently that operators had to build two parallel scrubbers to make sure one was always running. [Eli Gal] recalls how quickly that all changed once the cap-and-trade mechanism became law. GE began devoting serious resources to clean-up technology, and Gal&apos;s team had its breakthrough: it devised a scrubber that turned the sulfur dioxide into gypsum, which does not gum up the works and is itself a marketable product.&quot; (p. 7)"/>
<node CREATED="1205952170903" ID="Freemind_Link_941229746" MODIFIED="1205952297518" TEXT="&quot;Elsewhere, the new law inspired innovative thinking about low-tech solutions. For decades, conventional wisdom held that low-sulfur coal from Wyoming could not be mixed with high-sulfur coal from Appalachia--at least, not in quantities large enough to significantly reduce sulfur dioxide emissions. The new incentives made it worthwhile to take a second look at that belief--and before long, scientists and engineers proved the conventional wisdom wrong. Capital and ingenuity were suddenly flowing to solutions both high tech and low, for there was profit to be made.&quot; (p. 7)"/>
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<node CREATED="1205952321450" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_319685979" MODIFIED="1217726457350" TEXT="The Results">
<node CREATED="1202574927080" ID="Freemind_Link_1660693368" MODIFIED="1202575082196" TEXT="&quot;Within five years, U.S. utilities cut emissions 30 percent more than the law required, even while increasing electric generation from coal by 6.8 percent and reducing retail electricity prices. [...] Dire predictions that the program would eventually cost more than $6 billion a year proved wildly off base; recent studies peg the actual cost at between $1.1 and $1.8 billion. And by 2000, scientists were documenting decreased sulfates in Adirondack lakes, improved visibility in national parks, and widespread benefits to human health.&quot; (p. 7)"/>
<node CREATED="1202575083456" ID="Freemind_Link_1997665782" MODIFIED="1202575125825" TEXT="&quot;By the time the program is fully carried out in 2010, it will provide more than $100 billion in annual health and environmental benefits, preventing numerous deaths, hospitalizations, and emergency room visits while restoring the vitality of natural systems.&quot; (p. 7)"/>
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<node CREATED="1202575266325" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_411968463" MODIFIED="1217727366617" TEXT="Why global warming is a market failure">
<node CREATED="1205952634042" ID="Freemind_Link_1114875083" MODIFIED="1213974800197" TEXT="&quot;As well as markets have worked over the years--spurring the production of electronics of higher and higher quality and lower and lower prices, for example--they have failed the environment because they have failed to account for the cost of pollution. No cost attaches to the global warming pollution emitted by power plants, factories, and cars, and no benefit flows to those who reduce that pollution.&quot; (p. 8)"/>
<node CREATED="1205952712589" ID="Freemind_Link_1923727012" MODIFIED="1205952752339" TEXT="&quot;Every single day, we dump 70 million tons of carbon dioxide into our atmosphere like it&apos;s an open sewer, like it&apos;s entirely free to do that. It&apos;s really hard to change consumer behavior when consumers don&apos;t know how much their behavior costs.&quot; --John Doerr (p. 8)"/>
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<node CREATED="1202577750089" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1976835934" MODIFIED="1217727550477" TEXT="The solution to global warming">
<node CREATED="1202577753528" ID="Freemind_Link_997115126" MODIFIED="1202577949004" TEXT="&quot;The U.S. Congress must set a legal and steadily declining limit on global warming pollution. The allowances will be divvied up among emitters, or auctioned by the government to raise revenues-- or some combination of the two. Polluters who emit more will need to pay for the extra pollution reductions achieved by others; those who can reduce global warming pollution will profit by selling those reductions in an open market.&quot; (p. 8) "/>
<node CREATED="1202577950473" ID="Freemind_Link_296559495" MODIFIED="1205952520582" TEXT="&quot;We can, in short, use the power of the market system to climb out of the hole created by flawed markets. We can offer a pot of gold to those who develop new ways to generate carbon free energy and new technologies to remove carbon from our smokestacks and atmosphere. And we can channel the full range of human impulses--ingenuity, idealism, ambition--into undoing the damage and healing our planet. America&apos;s greatest strength has always been its boundless capacity for invention. In the words of one energy entrepreneur, &quot;The beautify of this country is that every time we&apos;re pressed to the wall we come up with new things-- we become the most creative force in the world.&quot; (p. 8)"/>
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<node CREATED="1202582878350" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_176417887" MODIFIED="1217727569911" TEXT="Current rules stacked against energy entrepreneurs">
<node CREATED="1202582893882" ID="Freemind_Link_563278505" MODIFIED="1202583034388" TEXT="$5 trillion energy business is a rigged contest (p. 10)"/>
<node CREATED="1202582908243" ID="Freemind_Link_761439577" MODIFIED="1202583030090" TEXT="Energy entrepreneurs up against the most powerful companies in the world (p. 10)"/>
<node CREATED="1202582934386" ID="Freemind_Link_1077052759" MODIFIED="1202583025032" TEXT="Companies have spent decades pushing subsidies, trade agreements, and regulatory structures that favor their businesses. (p. 10)"/>
<node CREATED="1202582955400" ID="Freemind_Link_746648744" MODIFIED="1202583016676" TEXT="&quot;Oil and gas companies spend some $60 million a year lobbying for policies that favor their industries and receive, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, benefits worth $6 billion a year.&quot; (p. 11)"/>
<node CREATED="1202584132100" ID="Freemind_Link_1793622955" MODIFIED="1202584185036" TEXT="&quot;A level playing field. That is what these venture capitalists and innovators require-- not assurances of profits but enough of a fighting chance to make the huge risks they are taking reasonable. Many still will not succeed. Those who do will need enormous ingenuity and doggedness to make their inventions work at a marketable price.&quot; (p. 13)"/>
<node CREATED="1202578518697" ID="Freemind_Link_1773692126" MODIFIED="1202578544060" TEXT="&quot;No single technology will stop global warming, but there is a silver bullet: a cap on carbon that will launch all these solutions into the mainstream.&quot; (p. 10)"/>
<node CREATED="1202583278523" ID="Freemind_Link_1886578267" MODIFIED="1213974862871" TEXT="&quot;The history of the development of wind and solar power-- booming in times of high oil prices and subsidies, busting when those disappear-- reinforces the necessity for long-term policies that do not require Washington to pick winners, but that allow the United States&apos; best handicapper-- the market, freed of existing flaws-- to sort out who really can deliver the goods.&quot; (p. 12)"/>
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<node CREATED="1202584081952" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_978442699" MODIFIED="1217727573318" TEXT="Using a shadow carbon price to investment risk">
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<node CREATED="1202583962666" ID="Freemind_Link_1186187743" MODIFIED="1202584072187" TEXT="Google will &quot;set an internal cost of carbon voluntarily by using a &apos;shadow price,&apos; the theoretical cost of carbon that we expect under a regulatory market. This will allow us to make operational decisions as if there were already a price on carbon. That in turn enables us to include the true cost of power as one of the key criteria in site selection for our data centers-- a cost not yet being recognized by the market, but one that will soon become real through carbon legislation. This is an important tool to reduce the financial risk that our energy investments face, and when evaluating power options, it will also put renewable energy on a level playing field.&quot; (p. 13)"/>
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<node CREATED="1202583611661" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_818406632" MODIFIED="1217727366616" TEXT="Companies calling for cap on carbon emissions">
<node CREATED="1202583786842" ID="Freemind_Link_440142390" MODIFIED="1205463672898" TEXT="What dire consequences do these companies see? Why are they in favor of taking action?">
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<node CREATED="1202583619719" ID="Freemind_Link_1117030164" MODIFIED="1202583670624" TEXT="General Electric, Alcoa, Duke Energy, Big Three US automakers, Shell Oil, etc."/>
<node CREATED="1202583687491" ID="Freemind_Link_1770279859" MODIFIED="1202583711145" TEXT="&quot;They found allies in a number of the country&apos;s workhorse companies, which noted that not taking action would almost surely have dire consequences for their business.&quot; (p. 12)"/>
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<node CREATED="1202578223618" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_279015816" MODIFIED="1217727366616" TEXT="Predicted consequences of climate change">
<node CREATED="1202578233767" ID="Freemind_Link_856464974" MODIFIED="1202578256820" TEXT="&quot;Flooding and dislocation of millions of people in South Asia&quot;"/>
<node CREATED="1202578257659" ID="Freemind_Link_297414404" MODIFIED="1202578269237" TEXT="&quot;Chronic drought and malnourishment in Africa.&quot;"/>
<node CREATED="1202578269921" ID="Freemind_Link_312732681" MODIFIED="1202578291862" TEXT="&quot;Wildfires, deadly heat waves, and coastal destruction in the United States.&quot;"/>
<node CREATED="1202578292750" ID="Freemind_Link_927706632" MODIFIED="1202578303928" TEXT="&quot;Extinction of half the world&apos;s living species.&quot;"/>
<node CREATED="1202578304916" ID="Freemind_Link_1768481740" MODIFIED="1202578343507" TEXT="&quot;Unprecedented waves of refugees, threats to national and global security from wars over resources.&quot;"/>
<node CREATED="1202578346515" ID="Freemind_Link_1345564444" MODIFIED="1202578372058" TEXT="&quot;The wholesale reinvention of the way we make and use energy is not a choice but a matter of survival.&quot; (p. 9)"/>
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<node CREATED="1202583148067" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_258962924" MODIFIED="1217727186032" TEXT="Quotes">
<node CREATED="1202578518697" ID="Freemind_Link_133336259" MODIFIED="1202578544060" TEXT="&quot;No single technology will stop global warming, but there is a silver bullet: a cap on carbon that will launch all these solutions into the mainstream.&quot; (p. 10)"/>
<node CREATED="1202583278523" ID="Freemind_Link_491598396" MODIFIED="1213974920093" TEXT="&quot;The history of the development of wind and solar power-- booming in times of high oil prices and subsidies, busting when those disappear-- reinforces the necessity for long-term policies that do not require Washington to pick winners, but that allow the United States&apos; best handicapper-- the market, freed of existing flaws-- to sort out who really can deliver the goods.&quot; (p. 12)"/>
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<node CREATED="1202584534017" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1992381418" MODIFIED="1217728463367" POSITION="right" TEXT="Chapter 2 (Photovoltaic Solar)">
<node CREATED="1202586138656" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1687532605" MODIFIED="1217727022779" TEXT="Solar facts">
<node CREATED="1205959314973" ID="Freemind_Link_467806536" MODIFIED="1205959429971" TEXT="What are the advantages and disadvantages of photovoltaic solar compared to thermal solar?">
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<node CREATED="1202584859560" ID="Freemind_Link_1379108722" MODIFIED="1202584889483" TEXT="&quot;Photovoltaic cells convert sunlight directly to electricity.&quot; (p. 14)"/>
<node CREATED="1202585978221" ID="Freemind_Link_1767891448" MODIFIED="1202586032727" TEXT="&quot;At just 10% efficiency-- that is, if only 10 percent of that solar energy were converted to electricity-- no more than a square of land 100 miles on a side would be needed to produce enough electricity to power the entire United States.&quot; (p. 16)"/>
<node CREATED="1202586061458" ID="Freemind_Link_874488625" MODIFIED="1202586118792" TEXT="&quot;In 2007, the total solar capacity worldwide was just 6.6 gigawatts, compared to more than 1,000 gigawatts for coal; in the United States, solar cells provided less than .05% of the electricity supply.&quot; (p. 16)"/>
<node CREATED="1202686628610" ID="Freemind_Link_1946345232" MODIFIED="1202686650353" TEXT="&quot;Crystalline silicon ingots cost one-tenth today what they did thirty years ago.&quot; (p. 20)"/>
<node CREATED="1202686674867" ID="Freemind_Link_894156593" MODIFIED="1202686708727" TEXT="&quot;With improved processes for sawing wafers, the cost per peak watt has dropped further still, from $100 in the 1970s to $4 today.&quot; (p. 20)"/>
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<node CREATED="1202584561710" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_977397456" MODIFIED="1217727016890" TEXT="Growth statistics">
<node CREATED="1205959393881" ID="Freemind_Link_962999273" MODIFIED="1205959419393" TEXT="What is the potential of photovoltaic vs. thermal?">
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<node CREATED="1202584567598" ID="Freemind_Link_124036495" MODIFIED="1202584707323" TEXT="&quot;In 2005 the world&apos;s solar energy-generating capacity grew by 44 percent.&quot; (p. 14)"/>
<node CREATED="1202584711519" ID="Freemind_Link_299538851" MODIFIED="1202584810862" TEXT="&quot;If that pace can be sustained over the next few decades, by 2050 the sun could supply ten times as much energy as the earth needs.&quot; (p. 14) "/>
<node CREATED="1202584812043" ID="Freemind_Link_161470194" MODIFIED="1213974967454" TEXT="&quot;Such a growth rate might seem like wishful thinking. But it is worth remembering that the semiconductor industry has grown at an even faster rate for a similar length of time. Innovators and investors took the personal computer industry from zero machines to almost a billion in thirty years, doubling processing speeds every twenty-four months or less and cutting costs in half each time the speed doubled.&quot; (p. 14)"/>
<node CREATED="1202584756676" ID="Freemind_Link_840126703" MODIFIED="1202584777803" TEXT="&quot;If Silicon Valley can apply Moore&apos;s law to the capture of sunshine, it could change the world again.&quot; (p. 14)"/>
<node CREATED="1202686745326" ID="Freemind_Link_125735523" MODIFIED="1207408700850" TEXT="&quot;Industry research firm Clean Edge predicts that revenues in the solar photovoltaic industry will grow to $50 billion a year by 2015, reaching a total installed base of 75 gigawatts, a tenfold increase from today.&quot; (p. 21)"/>
<node CREATED="1202686861775" ID="Freemind_Link_1988756764" MODIFIED="1213974979912" TEXT="&quot;But that would supply just .5 percent of the total amount of electricity needed for 2015. A more rapid expansion will almost certainly require the second-generation photovoltaic technologies now emerging from labs into the commercial market.&quot; (p. 21)"/>
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<node CREATED="1202586326737" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_288222063" MODIFIED="1217726970304" TEXT="Solar challenges">
<node CREATED="1202586331112" ID="Freemind_Link_1448706032" MODIFIED="1202586374593" TEXT="&quot;Behind every electrical outlet there is a vast and interconnected web of resources, and introducing new technologies onto that web has cascading and sometimes counterintuitive impacts.&quot; (p. 16)"/>
<node CREATED="1202586382329" ID="Freemind_Link_1640600724" MODIFIED="1202586446992" TEXT="&quot;The sun does not shine twenty-four hours a day or every day of the year--far from it in some regions. And that creates the need for cost-effective storage: some way to capture and save that intermittent energy so that it is available on demand, even when the sun is not shining.&quot; (p. 16)"/>
<node CREATED="1202686525438" ID="Freemind_Link_80162026" MODIFIED="1202686567389" TEXT="&quot;Though solar cells do not require the same high levels of purity as semiconductors, until very recently they have relied on the same supply chains, and in 2006, for the first time, more than half that supply went to photovoltaics.&quot; (p. 20)"/>
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<node CREATED="1202588100171" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1486664480" MODIFIED="1217726974936" TEXT="Three paths to scale up photovoltaics">
<node CREATED="1202588296915" ID="Freemind_Link_46918125" MODIFIED="1202588317667" TEXT="What are the ways to scale up photovoltaics to the scale necessary to slow global warming?">
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<node CREATED="1202588107296" ID="Freemind_Link_1981139332" MODIFIED="1202588216909" TEXT="Increase efficiency of first generation crystalline-silicon cells, while lowering costs"/>
<node CREATED="1202588127842" ID="Freemind_Link_1008078057" MODIFIED="1213975077895" TEXT="Next-gen tech that can be produced in quantity: printing miles of photovoltaic foil, fabric, paint, or Astroturf even if it generates less electricity per square foot"/>
<node CREATED="1202588223095" ID="Freemind_Link_1609570125" MODIFIED="1202588273490" TEXT="&quot;Pay a price premium for quality: cramming the most efficiency onto the smallest possible cells, then wrapping those cells in optics that concentrate the sunlight, multiplying its intensity five hundred or one thousand times.&quot; (p. 17)"/>
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<node CREATED="1202684766455" ID="Freemind_Link_337946933" MODIFIED="1202684773049" TEXT="Photovoltaics basic principles"/>
<node CREATED="1203442322080" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_506668419" MODIFIED="1217726955760" TEXT="Nanotech safety">
<node CREATED="1205959563782" ID="Freemind_Link_1667689439" MODIFIED="1205959576600" TEXT="How can we take advantage of nanotech safely?">
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<node CREATED="1203442326959" ID="Freemind_Link_657845132" MODIFIED="1203442401739" TEXT="&quot;In general, regulators treat these materials as if they were identical to the same chemicals in bulk form, despite the fact that the nano-scale versions are valuable precisely because they behave in radically new ways, meaning they could also behave differently in the human body and ecosystems. The limited data now available suggests that some nanomaterials may be both persistent and mobile, in the environment and in living organisms, and may be capable of damaging brain, lung, and skin tissue.&quot; (p. 27)"/>
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<node CREATED="1202684875783" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1761691557" MODIFIED="1217727409832" TEXT="Price per peak watt">
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<node CREATED="1205959222670" ID="Freemind_Link_1260704477" MODIFIED="1205959260498" TEXT="What is real time pricing and why is it important?">
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<node CREATED="1202684883469" ID="Freemind_Link_1261271572" MODIFIED="1202684947703" TEXT="&quot;Maximum output of cells during peak sunlight. In 2007 the peak watt price averaged about $4 (or just under $7 installed-- a price that includes the cost of all hardware, mounting and electric systems, engineering, and installation.)&quot; (p. 17)"/>
<node CREATED="1202684960134" ID="Freemind_Link_1399132859" MODIFIED="1202684986242" TEXT="In some places the sun shines more and brighter so the same system will produce more energy and therefore cost less per kilowatt-hour (p. 18)"/>
<node CREATED="1202685086123" ID="Freemind_Link_1568461117" MODIFIED="1202685126342" TEXT="Whether or not solar is cost competitive depends on two factors, how many peak sunlight hours you have and the cost of energy during peak sunlight. (p. 18)"/>
<node CREATED="1202685512717" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1588775103" MODIFIED="1202685560630" TEXT="Real time pricing">
<node CREATED="1202685179548" ID="Freemind_Link_943323924" MODIFIED="1213975176647" TEXT="&quot;Though solar power is generally judged on the basis of whether it can beat the retail price of coal-generated electricity, the comparison is in some ways misleading. The true value of solar power lies in the fact that it is most productive when the weather is sunny and hot-- precisely when consumer demand forces a utility to operate at full throttle. According to PG&amp;E, peak demand is growing 25 percent faster than overall electricity needs, but the last quarter of capacity is needed less than ten percent of the time. &apos;Peak shaving&apos; with electricity produced by rooftop solar panels relieves that pressure on utilities, damping the prime driver to build new gas-fired plants. It also reduces costs. Utilities &quot;turn on&quot; power plants in order of their variable cost, often called &quot;dispatch cost,&quot; starting with the least expensive plant to operate and moving to the most expensive as demand rises. Solar installations produce electricity at virtually no extra cost at just the same time when units with very high variable costs are called upon to run. By displacing these high-variable-cost units, solar units can provide tremendous savings for the utility and the consumer-- and the atmosphere.&quot; (p. 19)"/>
<node CREATED="1202685384161" ID="Freemind_Link_1843963978" MODIFIED="1207409228277" TEXT="&quot;To date, however, most owners of solar photovoltaic systems owners do not get the discount they deserve on their electric bills. Typically, utilities charge customers using a weighted average of the cost of generating electricity over the course of a day. Some jurisdictions are now experimenting with a different rate structure-- &apos;real time pricing&apos;-- charging customers hour by hour for the true cost of the electricity they use, and thus allowing them to reap the full value of avoiding the cost of peak power on the grid.&quot; (p. 19)"/>
<node CREATED="1202685587471" ID="Freemind_Link_1771558651" MODIFIED="1202685621423" TEXT="&quot;Given all that, almost everyone in the industry agrees that when the price per peak watt falls to $1 and the storage problem is solved, solar-generated electricity will compete with coal-fired electricity virtually everywhere.&quot; (p. 19)"/>
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<node CREATED="1202685685405" ID="Freemind_Link_1477485897" MODIFIED="1202685719575" TEXT="When will photovoltaic solar be competitive with coal (IN MY AREA)">
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<node CREATED="1202685722754" ID="Freemind_Link_1565877609" MODIFIED="1205959484928" TEXT="A) Peak solar hours in your area"/>
<node CREATED="1202685733502" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1770666995" MODIFIED="1202685736611" TEXT="B) Cost of electricity">
<node CREATED="1202685737548" ID="Freemind_Link_1983477157" MODIFIED="1202685774887" TEXT="Real time pricing"/>
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<node CREATED="1203443436465" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1917729516" MODIFIED="1217727421745" TEXT="Power purchase agreements">
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<node CREATED="1203444082336" ID="Freemind_Link_1577809864" MODIFIED="1203444121706" TEXT="How can consumers save money buy using solar electricity without the huge initial expense of installing solar panels?">
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<node CREATED="1203443446083" ID="Freemind_Link_1160230929" MODIFIED="1213975206280" TEXT="&quot;Various financial institutions have adapted &apos;power purchasing agreements,&apos; a common financing instrument for conventional electricity generation, to solar power.&quot; (p. 31)"/>
<node CREATED="1203443684776" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_181614929" MODIFIED="1203443698489" TEXT="Wal-Mart">
<node CREATED="1203443501518" ID="Freemind_Link_397072718" MODIFIED="1203443614847" TEXT="&quot;Morgan Stanley, for instance, is financing the installation of SunPower solar arrays on the roofs of twenty-two Wal-Mart facilities. Wal-Mart will make no capital investment and will not own the solar panels. Instead, it has committed to buy the electricity generated by the panels at favorable rates, which will be locked in for twenty-years. The arrangement suits Wal-Mart, which does not particularly want to own power-generating equipment but does want a very high rate of return on capital investments, Pearce explains. &apos;But plenty of investors are happy with a 10 percent return, which they can easily make by financing one of these systems.&apos;&quot; (p. 31)"/>
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<node CREATED="1203443708180" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1147845590" MODIFIED="1203443711329" TEXT="Bank of America">
<node CREATED="1203443719246" ID="Freemind_Link_801078112" MODIFIED="1213975267316" TEXT="&quot;Bank of America has made a similar arrangement with Chevron Energy Solutions and the San Jose public schools. The bank will finance and own the solar installation, earning state and federal subsidies and tax credits. Chevron will install and operate the modules, and the school district will buy the green energy at below-market rates, reducing its demand for utility-supplied electricity 25% and saving $25 million over the life of the equipment.&quot; (p. 31)"/>
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<node CREATED="1203443816259" ID="Freemind_Link_1349829537" MODIFIED="1203443872498" TEXT="&quot;A number of companies offer the full range of services. SunEdision, for instance, finances, builds, owns, and operates rooftop solar installations for customers like Whole Foods and Staples. Industry insiders call it a &apos;distributed utility.&apos;&quot; (p. 32)"/>
<node CREATED="1203443898317" ID="Freemind_Link_1450996736" MODIFIED="1203443956932" TEXT="&quot;To make such arrangements available to smaller businesses, SolarTech is creating an online marketplace to match consumers with financing and solar suppliers. Eventually, the group envisions individual homeowners being able to switch to solar without any front-end cost, cutting both their global warming impact and their electricity bills.&quot; (p. 32)"/>
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<node CREATED="1203446007166" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1326224445" MODIFIED="1217726920390" TEXT="How much power do you need?">
<node CREATED="1203446015064" ID="Freemind_Link_1576435790" MODIFIED="1203446016915" TEXT="&quot;To power your building you typically need a watt per square foot, and at 15 percent efficiency, as much roof as floor. For instance, at Idealab we have forty-five thousand square feet, so we need 45 kilowatts, and we can get that if we cover our whole roof at those efficiencies. But if your roof is pitched, you can only cover the south half. We think there are enough big, flat roofs out there for us to make a big impact on peak demand. You can&apos;t turn off the coal plants but you can make it possible to build no new ones.&quot; --Bill Gross (p. 39)"/>
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<node CREATED="1203446455571" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_661783564" MODIFIED="1217727585391" TEXT="Market reform to encourage entrepreneurs">
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<node CREATED="1203446458049" ID="Freemind_Link_502265037" MODIFIED="1203446522324" TEXT="&quot;The challenge is how to get capital to flow to the best ideas and the most promising technologies. Subsidies and mandates cannot do this effectively, since they depend on a degree of detailed knowledge and prescience about technology beyond the reach of government and regulators. Rather, policy must harness the most basic and visceral impulses of capitalism: the pursuit of profit.&quot; (p. 43)"/>
<node CREATED="1203446623234" ID="Freemind_Link_1885015206" MODIFIED="1203446736069" TEXT="Bill gross: Since &quot;there will be 99 failures for every one success,&quot; it will not be large, established companies that achieve the &apos;disruptive innovations&apos; that are necessary: &quot;It&apos;s a question of small and nimble versus big and powerful.&quot; (p. 44)"/>
<node CREATED="1203446764760" ID="Freemind_Link_1697989144" MODIFIED="1203446784155" TEXT="&quot;How best to encourage the small, nimble risk-takers?&quot; (p. 44)"/>
<node CREATED="1203446801919" ID="Freemind_Link_646531946" MODIFIED="1213975313636" TEXT="&quot;That brings us to the cap-and-trade system-- the best way to harness market forces to fix a market failure. Instead of forcing polluters to pay certain prices or to back particular technologies, cap and trade mandates only the pollution limit, then lets the market figure out the cheapest, most efficient way to get there. Mobilizing the market insures that the hunt for the cheapest technologies will be as broad as possible, ranging as far as the human imagination; only with such a far-reaching search will we be able to reach the 80 percent reductions in U.S. global warming emissions scientists tell us are necessary to stabilize the climate. That broad hunt, in turn, sets in motion a valuable cascading effect: As the market finds the most efficient technologies, and quickly brings down the cost of reducing pollution, that builds the political will for even steeper carbon cuts-- without the backlash that inevitably follows when the government tries to pick technologies and too often makes the wrong choice.&quot; (p. 45)"/>
<node CREATED="1203447007492" ID="Freemind_Link_317743218" MODIFIED="1203447106910" TEXT="Green Technologies task force: &quot;Climate change policies must internalize the environmental cost of emitting greenhouse gases, thereby reducing or eliminating the price differential between high carbon-emitting activities and more environmentally sound activities. A cap-and-trade system built around market mechanisms will be the most powerful driver of demand for new technologies.&quot; (p. 45)"/>
<node CREATED="1203447113573" ID="Freemind_Link_1119191691" MODIFIED="1213975329341" TEXT="&quot;That dollar-a-watt threshold for solar energy to compete with fossil-derived energy, in other words, assumes that coal plants are not required to clean up their global warming pollution. Put a cap on carbon, and it has a price for everyone, including coal burners-- and solar power becomes competitive in much less time.&quot; (p. 45)"/>
<node CREATED="1203447181633" ID="Freemind_Link_1255461645" MODIFIED="1203447228112" TEXT="John Doerr: &quot;If a carbon cap were enacted in 2008, Miasole&apos;s thin-film technology would achieve &apos;grid-parity&apos;--make electricity for the same average price charged by utilities-- by 2010.&quot; (p. 46)"/>
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<node CREATED="1203444886769" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1489694828" MODIFIED="1203444891049" TEXT="Solar concentration">
<node CREATED="1205959645890" ID="Freemind_Link_887557565" MODIFIED="1205959685688" TEXT="What are the advantages of solar concentration? What is the potential? Have there been success stories so far?">
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<node CREATED="1203444933176" ID="Freemind_Link_147256168" MODIFIED="1203445239047" TEXT="&quot;The sun radiates 1,00 watts per square meter of the earths surface. A hair dryer is 1,000 watts per square inch. So the sun is sixteen hundred times more diffuse than a hair dryer.&quot; -- Bill Gross, Energy Innovations (p. 35)"/>
<node CREATED="1203445112566" ID="Freemind_Link_1777228639" MODIFIED="1213975364947" TEXT="&quot;To make 1 gigawatt of power using traditional photovoltaics requires for square miles of silicon, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Concentration reduces that area by orders of magnitude. Under Energy Innovations&apos; sun concentrators, Gross says, 1 square centimeter of photovoltaics will produce as much energy as 800 square centimeters without concentration.&quot; (p. 35)"/>
<node CREATED="1203445208512" ID="Freemind_Link_1412638855" MODIFIED="1203445342903" TEXT="&quot;Concentration is also, he believes, the cheapest of all options because it leverages the scarce supply of purified materials. &apos;If you concentrate the sun a thousand times, a gigawatt&apos;s worth of silicon will get you a terrawatt.&apos; Optical devices for concentrating light, and trackers to follow the sun across the sky, are cheaper than the photovoltaics themselves.&quot; (p. 35)"/>
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<node CREATED="1203442557153" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1806325880" MODIFIED="1217726861413" TEXT="CIGS vs Silicon">
<node CREATED="1205959692857" ID="Freemind_Link_557216737" MODIFIED="1205959736056" TEXT="Why do companies still use CIGS even if there is only enough indium to provide less than 1/20th of one percent U.S. energy needs?">
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<node CREATED="1205959751091" ID="Freemind_Link_864784992" MODIFIED="1205959775122" TEXT="Will the ultra-high efficiency solar panels made by spectralab ever be made mainstream if they require indium?">
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<node CREATED="1203442595423" ID="Freemind_Link_1090937055" MODIFIED="1203442603962" TEXT="Copper, indium, gallium, selenium"/>
<node CREATED="1203442614498" ID="Freemind_Link_1116651583" MODIFIED="1213975418710" TEXT="&quot;A CIGS film as thin as 1 micron has the same photovoltaic effects as crystalline-silicon wafers 200 to 300 millimeters thick, translating to savings both on expensive semiconductors and on weight.&quot; (p. 28)"/>
<node CREATED="1203442676160" ID="Freemind_Link_917198060" MODIFIED="1203444420832" TEXT="&quot;CIGS also works better than silicon at low angles of the sun and on hazy or cloudy days. And, as Innovalight learned, using a think film rather than a wafer allows roll-to-roll manufacturing, enabling cheap mass production.&quot; (p. 28)">
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<node CREATED="1203444316129" ID="Freemind_Link_908767196" MODIFIED="1205942163125" TEXT="In July 2006 International estimated that the global indium supply was enough for just 4 gigawatts of CIGS. (p. 30)">
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<node CREATED="1203444439564" ID="Freemind_Link_1048973827" MODIFIED="1205942168253" TEXT="&quot;Scarcity has already affected the semiconductor&apos;s price, which in 2007 was triple what it had been in 2002.&quot; (p. 30)"/>
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<node CREATED="1202585463728" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1239611084" MODIFIED="1217726863724" TEXT="Overlap between semiconductors and solar power">
<node CREATED="1202585476919" ID="Freemind_Link_1556940575" MODIFIED="1202585542111" TEXT="&quot;For investors who made their first fortunes from semiconductors and the Internet, the learning curve on photovoltaics is not terribly steep. Solar power has grown up alongside the chip industry, borrowing its materials and processes and, increasingly, its talent.&quot; (p. 15)"/>
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<node CREATED="1202588009968" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1271323092" MODIFIED="1217727001529" TEXT="Alternative storage technologies">
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<node CREATED="1205767252040" ID="Freemind_Link_420712672" MODIFIED="1205767262016" TEXT="What is the future of alternative (non-battery) energy storage?">
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<node CREATED="1202588019560" ID="Freemind_Link_1506691286" MODIFIED="1202588057412" TEXT="ex. &quot;Using excess electricity to pump water up into reservoirs for use later in hydroelectric generators, for instance.&quot; (p. 16)"/>
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<node CREATED="1203444809101" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_116066037" MODIFIED="1217726998321" TEXT="Energy Innovations (company)">
<node CREATED="1203444815059" ID="Freemind_Link_692192418" MODIFIED="1203444872805" TEXT="CEO Bill Gross: &quot;Energy drives 50 to 75 percent of our economy. It&apos;s embedded in everything.&quot; He picks up a water bottle. &quot;It&apos;s embedded in this. And it&apos;s a complete commodity market. All electrons coming out of the wall look the same.&quot; (p. 35)"/>
<node CREATED="1203445864766" ID="Freemind_Link_1347752521" MODIFIED="1203445972794" TEXT="&quot;To power your building you typically need a watt per square foot, and at 15 percent efficiency, as much roof as floor. For instance, at Idealab we have forty-five thousand square feet, so we need 45 kilowatts, and we can get that if we cover our whole roof at those efficiencies. But if your roof is pitched, you can only cover the south half. We think there are enough big, flat roofs out there for us to make a big impact on peak demand. You can&apos;t turn off the coal plants but you can make it possible to build no new ones.&quot; --Bill Gross (p. 39)&#xa;"/>
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<node CREATED="1203449717451" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_173870211" MODIFIED="1217727588992" POSITION="right" TEXT="Chapter 3 (Thermal Solar)">
<node CREATED="1203450185786" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_997061575" MODIFIED="1203450193825" TEXT="Context">
<node CREATED="1203450052403" ID="Freemind_Link_1828842125" MODIFIED="1203450177950" TEXT="&quot;If photovoltaics are the offspring of the Information Age-- riding on the shoulders of advances in quantum physics and solid-state electronics-- solar thermal electricity remains rooted in the Industrial Age: big and centralized, built of concrete and steel, with lots of moving parts and belching boilers and cranes and mechanical engineers. Yet it is the only clean-energy technology with the near-term potential to match coal not only in price (which some windmills can do) but also in scale, which is why-- after nearly two decades of dormancy-- solar thermal start-ups are scoring major, long-term contracts with utilities, gaining access to core transmission lines and beginning to secure giant amounts of money-- hundreds of millions of dollars.&quot; (p. 49)"/>
<node CREATED="1203535663690" ID="Freemind_Link_1948339704" MODIFIED="1203535725613" TEXT="&quot;An analysis by Sargent &amp; Lundy, an independent engineering firm, forecasts that by 2020 towers will produce the lowest-cost solar thermal electricity, down to 5.5 cents per kilowatt-hour, but as yet, no one has successfully pushed a tower to the superhot temperatures BrightSource seeks.&quot; (p. 56)"/>
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<node CREATED="1203450653774" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_197028745" MODIFIED="1205959886738" TEXT="What are the advantages?">
<node CREATED="1203450661031" ID="Freemind_Link_988210448" MODIFIED="1203450777849" TEXT="&quot;A key advantage of solar thermal over photovoltaics is the capacity to store energy as heat, which is far cheaper than storing electricity. (Consider, for instance, the low cost of a lunch-box thermos--about $7-- compared to that of a laptop battery-- about $150. Both store about the same amount of energy, assuming the thermos is filled with boiling water. But while the filled thermos is mostly useful for keeping that boiling water hot, the laptop battery can be used to make light, turn a motor, or even to boil water.)&quot; (p. 51)"/>
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<node CREATED="1203535493631" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1075642649" MODIFIED="1217727519068" TEXT="Cap-and-trade vs targeted subsidies">
<node CREATED="1203535609715" ID="Freemind_Link_305257301" MODIFIED="1205959941886" TEXT="Example of how cap-and-trade is better than pick-a-winner subsidies">
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<node CREATED="1203535502806" ID="Freemind_Link_472598066" MODIFIED="1213975590666" TEXT="&quot;Goldman thinks utilities ultimately may get the most from their infrastructure investment by using the plants as &apos;hybrids.&apos; Like a car that can switch between its battery and its combustion engine, the BrightSource plants could switch between gas and solar, allowing them to operate day and night and all year long. For now, though, utilities want &quot;pure play&quot; solar systems to meet mandates for renewable energy, so BrightSource is limiting gas use to &apos;brief periods of passing clouds or cold mornings.&apos;&quot; (p. 56)"/>
<node CREATED="1204475972016" ID="Freemind_Link_974935102" MODIFIED="1213975615192" TEXT="&quot;Many utilities have a statutory obligation to use solar power. &quot;Renewable portfolio standards&quot; now in place in more than half the United States require utilities to buy a set percentage of their total power from clean sources; some specify that a fraction must come from solar. But this approach shares the same basic flaw as the European feed-in tariffs mentioned in the last chapter. It focuses on the wrong thing: on process (how utilities generate power) rather than on performance (how much pollution they emit), which is what ultimately counts. In essence, renewable standards, subsidies, and other mandates assume that the government has all the answers, rather than letting the market figure out the best way to produce clean energy at the lowest cost.    And if the government doesn&apos;t have the answers-- if it picks the wrong approach--then results can be astronomically costly for consumers.&quot; (p. 61)"/>
<node CREATED="1204476259953" ID="Freemind_Link_1504788917" MODIFIED="1204476291864" TEXT="&quot;The power of a cap-and-trade system is that the government doesn&apos;t need to know any of this. Rather, it establishes the legal limits on pollution and lets the market do the rest.&quot; (p. 61)"/>
<node CREATED="1204477467027" ID="Freemind_Link_239158509" MODIFIED="1204477529229" TEXT="&quot;A federal cap will increase the price of baseload power coal to about 8 cents per kilowatt-hour.&apos; At which point, he says, &quot;solar kills coal.&quot; --Khosla (p. 63)"/>
<node CREATED="1205960117258" ID="Freemind_Link_960336496" MODIFIED="1205960148399" TEXT="C.f. example of Luz going bankrupt (p. 49)"/>
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<node CREATED="1203536725965" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_38037985" MODIFIED="1217727528940" TEXT="Hedging risks for utilities">
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<node CREATED="1205960047726" ID="Freemind_Link_1257985905" MODIFIED="1205960061702" TEXT="How can utilities use renewable energy to hedge their risks?">
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<node CREATED="1203536729675" ID="Freemind_Link_212206977" MODIFIED="1203536861937" TEXT="&quot;Utilities also see in solar thermal energy a hedge against an expanding array of financial uncertainties: the volatile price of natural gas, the rising cost of importing electricity from other states, and the expected cost of carbon. &apos;Utilities are prepared to pay more to hedge their commercial risks,&apos; says Le Lievre. &apos;It&apos;s like a derivative, a financial instrument against the risks they face. They&apos;re buying this stuff because it adds real value to their portfolio mix. It&apos;s not about saving the planet but about doing what they&apos;re charted to do-- provide least-cost power.&apos;&quot; (p. 61)"/>
<node CREATED="1205254417801" ID="Freemind_Link_1859244962" MODIFIED="1213975661027" TEXT="&quot;&apos;Carbon dioxide is a big risk hanging over the head of utilities,&apos; says Berzin. &apos;After Al Gore, they feel like everyone sees them as villains. But they need to provide more electricity, because we all keep adding demand. So what do they build? If they build coal, in five years when they have to pay to clean up their carbon they&apos;ll look like idiots. If they build natural gas, which is expensive, they&apos;ll look like idiots now. But what if they clean up their carbon dioxide, and for every ton of carbon dioxide they get half a ton of algae worth $300 in biofuels? Well, now they&apos;re American heroes. If they clean up 20 percent of the carbon dioxide effluent from every power plant in the country, they&apos;ll create enough fuel to replace 20 percent of imported oil.&apos;&quot; (p. 110)"/>
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<node CREATED="1204476431113" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1809700249" MODIFIED="1217727492996" TEXT="Cost of reducing emissions">
<node CREATED="1204476474011" ID="Freemind_Link_744006217" MODIFIED="1204696439069" TEXT="Price of reducing emissions through solar photovoltaic / solar thermal / biofuel / etc. vs price of reducing emissions through buying CFLs / energy star / etc.">
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<node CREATED="1205259387083" ID="Freemind_Link_1987356431" MODIFIED="1205259410441" TEXT="How much money could be made in carbon markets using each method, at different prices per ton of carbon">
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<node CREATED="1204476332426" ID="Freemind_Link_1540630320" MODIFIED="1204476427585" TEXT="&quot;Jay Pat of Carnegie Mellon Electricity Industry Center estimates that at current economics, the cost of reducing emissions by generating electricity using photovoltaics rather than fossil fuels amounts to $400 to $650 per ton of carbon dioxide--ten times what the study predicts it would cost to capture and sequester carbon dioxide emitted by a coal-fired power plant, and nearly a hundred times the estimated cost of reducing carbon dioxide through energy conservation.&quot; (p. 61)"/>
<node CREATED="1204696422693" ID="Freemind_Link_72869714" MODIFIED="1204696423513" TEXT="&quot;With the United States alone spending $7 billion a year on ethanol, the OECD calculated, each ton of avoided carbon dioxide costs more than $500. As long as environmental values are not adequately priced in the market, there will be powerful incentives to replace natural ecosystems such as forests, wetlands, and pasture with dedicated bio-energy crops.&quot; (p. 82)"/>
<node CREATED="1205259107638" ID="Freemind_Link_936401829" MODIFIED="1205259226607" TEXT="&quot;For Brazil, getting paid to keep forests standing would generate more profits per acre than most of the cattle and illegal logging operations, and create a stream of revenue for financing conservation and protecting forests far beyond what Brazil&apos;s government and international aid could ever supply. In late 2007, Daniel Nepstad of the Woods Hole Research Center and colleagues determined that over the next thirty years, Brazil could prevent emissions of 6 billion tons of carbon at a cost of less than $2 a ton. In a market that priced carbon at $10 a ton, those avoided tons would net Brazil $40 million in profits; at $30 a ton, Brazil would earn $168 million.&quot; (p. 202)"/>
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<node CREATED="1204477048607" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_945725561" MODIFIED="1217727534916" TEXT="Risk costs money (for entrepreneurs)">
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<node CREATED="1204477964444" ID="Freemind_Link_1032365984" MODIFIED="1205960182720" TEXT="How does risk cost money for entrepreneurs, and how can reducing their risk make them more money?">
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<node CREATED="1204477072420" ID="Freemind_Link_1364646100" MODIFIED="1213975725565" TEXT="&quot;A cap-and-trade system will also provide the long-term predictability needed to fuel investment. &apos;Regulations have to fit with the time frame of the industry,&apos; says Arnold Goldman of BrightSource. &apos;Investors have to know that if it&apos;s going to take five years to site, get permits, and construct a plant, the economic environment will work five years hence. We&apos;re building something we hope to operate on a meaningful scale for thirty to forty years, so we need predictability over the long term.&apos; That is exactly what declining caps, legal limits on global warming pollution, provide.&quot; (p. 63)"/>
<node CREATED="1204477584785" ID="Freemind_Link_1549346772" MODIFIED="1213975741665" TEXT="&quot;Perhaps a better way to think about the eventual mix of power sources is that solar energy is getting cheaper, while the cost of using fossil fuels will inevitably rise as its true costs are built into the system through a carbon cap. A cap, in short, would help flatten the biggest obstacle for these start-ups: getting the hundreds of millions of dollars they need to build their power plants ad fulfill their agreements.&quot; (p. 63)"/>
<node CREATED="1204477817647" ID="Freemind_Link_1157655595" MODIFIED="1204477938655" TEXT="&quot;For companies that haven&apos;t yet deployed their technology anywhere, the question is how they&apos;ll attract construction finance,&apos; says Le Lievre. &quot;A big power deal with a utility is a great financial instrument, but only if you&apos;ve price it high enough to carry both the commercial costs and the risks of your project. Risk costs money. If you&apos;ve got a high risk, you need to demonstrate good return on investment, to get people to park money in your projects. If you price your electricity too cheaply to make a good return and still have high technology risk, then it doesn&apos;t matter how many gigawatts you&apos;ve promised to sell. It becomes worthless from a bank&apos;s point of view.&quot; (p. 64)"/>
<node CREATED="1204651327568" ID="Freemind_Link_1395657531" MODIFIED="1204651426990" TEXT="&quot;&apos;When Xcel financed the Comanche 3 coal-fired plant in Colorado,&apos; said O&apos;Donnell, &apos;they got 90 to 90 percent debt at 5.5 to 6 percent, and equity guys looking for 11 percent returns. If we could finance our plant with those terms, we could provide power at under 8 cents per kilowatt-hour. Then we&apos;d be competitive not only with gas but also with pulverized coal. How fast renewable energy becomes an export crop for western states depends on how fast we deal with risk protection and risk-adjusted cost of capital.&apos;&quot; (p. 66)"/>
</node>
<node CREATED="1204651480302" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_911071974" MODIFIED="1217727523676" TEXT="Integrating into transmission grid">
<node CREATED="1205960207115" ID="Freemind_Link_1127202257" MODIFIED="1205960292417" TEXT="What three power-grid obstacles do new large-scale centralized electricity projects face? How can they be solved?">
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<node CREATED="1204651484502" ID="Freemind_Link_1274639183" MODIFIED="1204651560890" TEXT="&quot;The other remaining obstacle to large-scale centralized production of solar thermal electricity is effectively integrating it into the regional transmission grid. This is a problem of access, cost, and system reliability. The best sites for largescale solar thermal plants are in the middle of nowhere, exactly where major transmission lines are not. Major new investment in the interstate transmission grid is needed to bring the power solar thermal plants generate from the desert to demand centers hundreds of miles away.&quot; (p. 66)"/>
<node CREATED="1204651582732" ID="Freemind_Link_341466670" MODIFIED="1204651692692" TEXT="&quot;Now the second problem: cost. It is expensive to build major new transmission lines (more than $1 million per mile) and it is hard to earn a decent return on this kind of investment unless the line is used constantly. Because solar is intermittent and reaches maximum output only in peak sunlight conditions, a transmission line dedicated to serving solar thermal power plants will often sit idle or underused, like an empty toll road, failing to collect revenue for its owner. Which means that either the owner must charge a lot for the use that does occur, or he doesn&apos;t build the transmission lines at all. That is why new transmission lines for distantly located wind and solar generated electricity are so hard to get built, and why it is so expensive when they are.&quot; (p. 67)"/>
<node CREATED="1204651725790" ID="Freemind_Link_145589535" MODIFIED="1213975810167" TEXT="&quot;The third issue is reliability. Managers of regional transmission grids worry that too much unpredictable supply connected to their system will make maintaining the crucial balance between supply and demand impossible, especially since demand is already hard to predict. There is much debate within the utility industry as to the magnitude of this challenge, but few deny it is there and needs to be addressed.&quot; (p. 67)"/>
<node CREATED="1204651823522" ID="Freemind_Link_1582052711" MODIFIED="1213975847323" TEXT="&quot;Viable storage systems would help overcome many of these challenges. David Mills of Ausra calculates that with the kind of hot water storage tanks he and his colleagues propose adding to Ausra&apos;s power plants, solar thermal energy could meet 96 percent of U.S. electricity needs. Such a high percentage will be possible, he argues, because of the close seasonal match between supply and demand (solar energy is most plentiful precisely when electricity is most needed for cooling; in winter, the main need is for heating, which is mostly provided not by electricity but by oil and natural gas.)&quot; (p. 67)"/>
<node CREATED="1204651934930" ID="Freemind_Link_80024673" MODIFIED="1204652023175" TEXT="&quot;In his &apos;portfolio&apos; model, utilities would fill transmission lines with power from a wide variety of renewable energy sources-- wind, solar, biomass, and others--drawn from diverse geographic regions, thus greatly reducing intermittency and, in the process, reducing transmission costs. The renewable sources would provide the main power; existing fossil fuel plants would fill in when needed, turning today&apos;s model--in which renewables are the gap-fillers-- on its head.&quot; (p. 68)"/>
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<node CREATED="1204652336444" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1708265843" MODIFIED="1217727499244" TEXT="Land required (statistics)">
<node CREATED="1205960300787" ID="Freemind_Link_810451887" MODIFIED="1205960307883" TEXT="What is the energy potential for solar thermal?">
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<node CREATED="1204652345372" ID="Freemind_Link_962685272" MODIFIED="1213975879474" TEXT="&quot;A March 2007 study for the Department of Energy found that Arizona, New Mexico, California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and Texas are the top states, in that order, and together have the resource and land to make more than 16,000 terawatt-hours per year from solar energy (total U.S. electricity generation in 2007, was about 4,000 terawatt-hours). In California, solar energy systems covering a 30-by-30 mile square could make 300 terawatt-hours, enough to supply the entire state&apos;s needs; 11 percent of New Mexico&apos;s land could be used to power the entire U.S. grid.&quot; (p. 69)"/>
<node CREATED="1204652913905" ID="Freemind_Link_198574590" MODIFIED="1204652952915" TEXT="&quot;The resource is particularly good close to big and fast-growing cities, including San Diego, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Denver.&quot; (p. 69)"/>
<node CREATED="1204652954463" ID="Freemind_Link_1543590001" MODIFIED="1204653016287" TEXT="&quot;Southern Europe and North Africa have equally valuable solar resources: 3 percent of Morocco could power the entire European grid. China, too, has rich solar resources, with some of the largest deserts in the world; in 2007 it committed to invest $200 billion in utility-scale solar power.&quot; (p. 69)"/>
<node CREATED="1204653026003" ID="Freemind_Link_626031843" MODIFIED="1204653092515" TEXT="&quot;In terms of the amount of land required, solar power plants are more efficient than wind farms, which need about six times the acreage per watt produced. Solar energy is also much more efficient than biofuels, which even with improved feedstocks and conversion processes will need more than thirty times the land per watt--although liquid fuels can do many things solar energy can not, an issue Chapter 4 explores.&quot; (p. 69)"/>
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<node CREATED="1204653108869" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1179021874" MODIFIED="1217315240392" TEXT="Economic benefits">
<node CREATED="1204653112138" ID="Freemind_Link_1287237590" MODIFIED="1204653205743" TEXT="&quot;The economic benefits of solar farming are also impressive. A 2006 study by engineering consultant firm Black &amp; Veatch found that solar thermal plants create twice as many jobs as coal and gas plants and produce eight times the retained revenues in the states in which they are located. Each gigawatt of solar thermal-generated electricity, according to the National Renewable Energy Lab, will create 3,400 construction jobs, 250 permanent jobs, and $500 million and tax revenues.&quot; (p. 69)"/>
<node CREATED="1205960312934" ID="Freemind_Link_1825642287" MODIFIED="1205960319081" TEXT="What are the economic benefits of solar thermal?">
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<node CREATED="1203450310191" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_331059912" MODIFIED="1203450311502" TEXT="Companies">
<node CREATED="1203450312430" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1123868827" MODIFIED="1203450313554" TEXT="Luz">
<node CREATED="1203450313909" ID="Freemind_Link_10323856" MODIFIED="1203450316829" TEXT="Israeli-American"/>
<node CREATED="1203450321447" ID="Freemind_Link_1801404469" MODIFIED="1203450370614" TEXT="&quot;Between 1984 and 1990, Luz built nine solar thermal plants in California&apos;s Mojave Desert with a total capacity of 354 megawatts, enough to power 350,000 homes.&quot; (p. 49)"/>
<node CREATED="1203450371832" ID="Freemind_Link_746883525" MODIFIED="1203450417661" TEXT="&quot;The plants are still operating today. In two decades, they have supplied more than 11,000 gigawatt-hours to Southern California Edision and have generated almost $2 billion in revenue.&quot; (p. 49)"/>
<node CREATED="1203451034132" ID="Freemind_Link_884359501" MODIFIED="1203451040594" TEXT="Bankrupt because of a change in tax subsidies"/>
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<node CREATED="1203450565838" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_462554876" MODIFIED="1203450567958" TEXT="Ausra">
<node CREATED="1203450568687" ID="Freemind_Link_656035165" MODIFIED="1203450574026" TEXT="CEO: Mills"/>
<node CREATED="1203450801011" ID="Freemind_Link_893359405" MODIFIED="1213975977012" TEXT="&quot;Again, Ausra will opt for a lower-efficiency, lower-cost solution than its competitors: where most thermal electric plants use molten salts as their heat storage medium, which can go to 1,000C, Ausra simply condenses steam into hot water-- lots of it. To get the lowest-cost energy, in fact, the company will build its solar field three times larger than its turbines peak input, so that on summer afternoons two-thirds of the energy will go &quot;into the tank,&quot; allowing Ausra to run generators more hours of the day and more days of the year. (Ausra says it will incur capital costs of just $15 per each kilowatt-hour it stores, but has not yet proved that the system works at a commercial scale.)&quot; (p. 51)"/>
<node CREATED="1203450986334" ID="Freemind_Link_1016098936" MODIFIED="1203451026854" TEXT="&quot;Ausra could even &quot;host&quot; other renewables, like wind, which is often abundant at night when there&apos;s no demand. Converted to heat, wind energy could be stored overnight in company tanks and dispatched on demand.&quot; (p. 52)"/>
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<node CREATED="1205960091874" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_579144097" MODIFIED="1205960093695" TEXT="PG&amp;E">
<node CREATED="1204476760250" ID="Freemind_Link_249297991" MODIFIED="1204476806427" TEXT="&quot;PG&amp;E is writing business to almost everyone who steps up. They understand that you don&apos;t get to 10 cents a killowatt-hour without reaching-- we need partners willing to take the early risks. And once utilities move, they are very heavy, bring a lot of weight to the table and have a lot of money.&quot; (p. 62)"/>
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<node CREATED="1204654671741" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_641006297" MODIFIED="1217727828002" POSITION="right" TEXT="Chapter 4 (Conventional Ethanol)">
<node CREATED="1204655015857" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_949500926" MODIFIED="1217727598367" TEXT="Smaller role than photovoltaics">
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<node CREATED="1205961364207" ID="_" MODIFIED="1205961390531" TEXT="Why do biofuels have a smaller role to play than solar?">
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<node CREATED="1204655020130" ID="Freemind_Link_262176281" MODIFIED="1213976064626" TEXT="&quot;Biofuels may play a smaller role than photovoltaics or solar thermal electricity in reducing global carbon emissions, for one simple reason: plants are far less efficient at converting an acre of solar radiation to usable energy. They did not evolve, after all, to optimize energy production, but to adapt, survive, and reproduce. Even switchgrass, a cutting-edge energy crop, is only one-twentieth as efficient as the cheapest solar cell. It converts just .3 percent of incoming solar energy into chemical energy; Spectrolab&apos;s solar cells, by contrast, convert 42 percent. It also has ongoing needs for nutrients and requires all the work of growing, harvesting, and processing. The amount of water demanded by biofuels production alone is immense, with most crops requiring about a thousand tons of water for each ton of biomass.&quot; (p. 76)"/>
<node CREATED="1204658526045" ID="Freemind_Link_1384373988" MODIFIED="1213976100756" TEXT="&quot;The amount of land required to grow enough biomass to displace significant amounts of petroleum with biofuels is daunting. The United States uses 140 billion gallons of gasoline and 40 billion gallons of diesel fuel each year. Converting the nation&apos;s entire soy crop to biodiesel would meet just 6 percent of diesel demand-- and would increase pressure on producers like Brazil, where rainforests continue to be cleared at a furious pace to plant soy to meet global demand. At current average yields, according to the biomolecular engineering professor Kyriacos Zygourakis of Rice University, replacing just 30 percent of the gasoline consumed in the United States with ethanol made from switchgrass would require 200 million acres, equivalent to about half the total cropland in the United States.&quot; (p. 80)"/>
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<node CREATED="1204656814395" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1965767968" MODIFIED="1217727601272" TEXT="Why new biofuels are needed">
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<node CREATED="1205961436358" ID="Freemind_Link_153868247" MODIFIED="1205961457441" TEXT="Who are new sources of biofuels needed even though the energy potential is so much less than that of solar?">
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<node CREATED="1204655289571" ID="Freemind_Link_1947384622" MODIFIED="1213976132759" TEXT="In a civilization as centered as ours on the automobile, however, and a global economy so dependent on transport, fluid fuels will necessarily play a crucial part. While there are many clean ways to make electricity, and while electricity may in the future become the prime power source for transport, there is simply no immediate substitute for liquid fuels, which, as currently produced, inflict a heavy burden: the U.S. vehicle fleet pumps 1.3 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year, and $820 million in capital is exported every day for the oil needed to do so.&quot; (p. 77)"/>
<node CREATED="1204656817394" ID="Freemind_Link_1823498646" MODIFIED="1213976141488" TEXT="&quot;The biofuels start-ups have much in their favor. The global oil supply is increasingly problematic. As easily accessible reserves mature, oil companies are forced to seek new supplies that are more difficult and expensive to develop and often contain more impurities, particularly sulfur; finding and developing these new oil reservoirs, then refining the &apos;cruder&apos; crude they yield, means rising prices at the gas pump. With fully 50 percent of the world&apos;s oil reserves now owned or manages by state-controlled oil companies, it becomes even more difficult for oil giants to replace their reserves. Meanwhile, it becomes clearer every day that the United States&apos; overwhelming dependence on foreign oil is a direct risk to national security, and that we must expand and diversify our sources of energy.&quot; (p. 78)"/>
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<node CREATED="1204658211885" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1834840574" MODIFIED="1217727618143" TEXT="Unintended consequences">
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<node CREATED="1205961465379" ID="Freemind_Link_87942283" MODIFIED="1205961483663" TEXT="What are the unintended consequences of biofuels? How can they be fixed?">
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<node CREATED="1204658216094" ID="Freemind_Link_1650411550" MODIFIED="1213976196827" TEXT="&quot;Relying on biology has its costs, however, including impacts on food supplies, water resources, biodiversity, and local economies as land is cleared to farm fuel. The United Nations predicts that global demand for both food and fuel will double by mid-century, and warns that a boom in biofuels could reduce food production and drive up prices, particularly in famine-ridden regions like Africa. In Brazil, where millions of citizens are poor and hungry, half the sugar crop already goes to make fuel.&quot; (p. 80)"/>
<node CREATED="1204658297171" ID="Freemind_Link_245845606" MODIFIED="1213976215527" TEXT="&quot;The unintended consequences of the biofuels boom have been even more severe in the case of biodiesel made from palm oil. Several European countries were heavily subsidizing palm oil diesel to meet their greenhouse gas targets until they discovered that rainforests were being felled across southern Asia to meet that demand, producing a net increase in atmospheric carbon. Friends of the Earth estimates that 87 percent of the deforestation in Malaysia from 1985 to 2000 was caused by new palm oil plantations. In Indonesia, those plantations expanded tenfold over the past twenty years, in large measure through the draining and burning of peatlands. But peatlands, when intact, are among the world&apos;s greatest carbon &apos;sinks&apos;--naturally soaking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and sequestering it in the ground. So the expansion of Indonesia&apos;s plantations has had a decidedly adverse effect, releasing billions of tons of carbon stored over time back into the atmosphere each year.&quot; (p. 80)"/>
<node CREATED="1204658871716" ID="Freemind_Link_1194074665" MODIFIED="1213976286460" TEXT="&quot;Land use issues have led some to argue that the conservation and restoration of forests and savannahs should precede any move toward biofuels. Like the peatlands of Indonesia, soils and vegitation around the planet store an enormous amount of carbon; when cleared for agriculture, that carbon is released into the atmosphere. In an August 2007 article in the journal Science, Renton Righelato of the World Land Trust and Dominick Spracklen of the University of Leeds calculated the amount of carbon released to the atmosphere when forest is cleared to plant crops for biofuels, then compared that to the amount of carbon saved by substituting those biofuels for gas and diesel. Even after thirty years, they concluded, the &quot;up-front emissions cost&quot; would exceed the emissions avoided by switching to alternative fuels. In fact, preserving and restoring forests and grasslands would sequester up to nine times more carbon, while also preserving biodiversity and reducing nutrient runoff and soil erosion. If landowners could then sell those carbon offsets in a global market, many farmers-- especially in rainforest nations-- would come out well ahead, an idea discussed in Chapter 9.&quot; (p. 81)"/>
<node CREATED="1204659097403" ID="Freemind_Link_865854134" MODIFIED="1204659262584" TEXT="&quot;Perversely, the current state of affairs not only fails to reward landowners for sequestering carbon but also subsidizes &apos;solutions&apos; that create more problems than they solve.&quot; (p. 82)"/>
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<node CREATED="1204659267004" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_812942371" MODIFIED="1217727629289" TEXT="Corn ethanol">
<node CREATED="1205961520344" ID="Freemind_Link_862054425" MODIFIED="1205961541446" TEXT="What are the problems with corn ethanol? How do they exemplify the need for cap-and-trade rather than pick-a-winner subsidies?">
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<node CREATED="1204659271354" ID="Freemind_Link_1193324770" MODIFIED="1204659273024" TEXT="&quot;Perversely, the current state of affairs not only fails to reward landowners for sequestering carbon but also subsidizes &apos;solutions&apos; that create more problems than they solve. Corn-based ethanol has proved particularly problematic on this count. For political reasons, it has captured the lion&apos;s share of federal subsidies in the United States and comprises more than 90 percent of the nation&apos;s biofuels production. But it has distinct drawbacks. It puts two vital human needs--energy and food--in competition with each other. And it is a relatively poor energy producer. To fill one 25-gallon tank with corn ethanol requires enough grain to feed one person for an entire year.&quot; (p. 82)"/>
<node CREATED="1204695956020" ID="Freemind_Link_1934779071" MODIFIED="1204696027482" TEXT="&quot;In 2006, 20 percent of the corn produced in the United States was converted to ethanol but it displaced just 3.5 percent of gasoline demand. The carbon reductions of corn ethanol are also negligible, given all the energy needed to plow the fields; grow, harvest, and transport the corn; and then turn it into fuel.&quot; (p. 82)"/>
<node CREATED="1204696029800" ID="Freemind_Link_884722585" MODIFIED="1204696172169" TEXT="&quot;According to a report for the National Academy of Sciences, ethanol producers get just 25 percent more energy out than the fossil energy they put in. As a result, measured over its whole life-cycle, corn ethanol is not very good at reducing greenhouse gas emissions.&quot; (p. 82)"/>
<node CREATED="1204696173876" ID="Freemind_Link_1799815802" MODIFIED="1205961498211" TEXT="&quot;Alex Farrell and Daniel Sperling of the University of California, who helped develop the state&apos;s low-carbon fuel standard, assign a number called &quot;global warming impact&quot; (GWI) to each fuel. The GWI for gasoline is 92; corn ethanol, 76; Brazilian sugarcane-based ethanol, 36; and cellulosic ethanol, just 4.&quot; (p. 82)"/>
<node CREATED="1204696184720" ID="Freemind_Link_1846662488" MODIFIED="1213976381852" TEXT="&quot;The nitrogen fertilizers used in industrial agriculture also boost emissions of nitrous oxide, a persistent and potent greenhouse gas. Switching to &quot;no-till&quot; farming, which keeps carbon stored in the soil and reduces the need for added fertilizer, helps the energy and carbon balance, but not enough to warrant a long-term commitment to grain ethanol.&quot; (p. 82)"/>
<node CREATED="1204696303377" ID="Freemind_Link_145868921" MODIFIED="1204696391013" TEXT="&quot;With the United States alone spending $7 billion a year on ethanol, the OECD calculated, each ton of avoided carbon dioxide costs more than $500. As long as environmental values are not adequately priced in the market, there will be powerful incentives to replace natural ecosystems such as forests, wetlands, and pasture with dedicated bio-energy crops.&quot; (p. 82)"/>
<node CREATED="1204900400128" ID="Freemind_Link_453309745" MODIFIED="1213976403386" TEXT="&quot;The Amyris researchers dismissed corn-based ethanol as too flawed: its energy density is just 70 percent that of gasoline; it requires huge amounts of energy to separate the 10 percent of ethanol (the grain alcohol) produces from the 90 percent fermentation steep (the beer); and because it is miscible with water, and there is always some water in pipelines, it must be transported in fuel-burning trucks to avoid dilution. &apos;If you put it in a pipe, by the time it gets from the Midwest where it&apos;s made to the coasts where it&apos;s used, it isn&apos;t even a martini,&apos; says Newman. &apos;It&apos;s a gin and tonic.&apos;&quot; (p. 86)"/>
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<node CREATED="1204900001411" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_372630831" MODIFIED="1204900004882" TEXT="Sugarcane ethanol">
<node CREATED="1205961552285" ID="Freemind_Link_248881718" MODIFIED="1205961576827" TEXT="How does ethanol from sugarcane compare to corn ethanol? How does it compare to cellulosic ethanol?">
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<node CREATED="1204900005351" ID="Freemind_Link_1786446620" MODIFIED="1204900073622" TEXT="&quot;Because sugarcane is much better than corn at &quot;fixing&quot; carbon (that is, using photosynthesis to turn atmospheric carbon dioxide into carbohydrates), and growing and harvesting it requires less input of fossil fuel (for fueling tractors and fertilizing), the net reductions in carbon emissions from Amyris fuels exceed 85 percent, around seven times those of corn ethanol.&quot; (p. 83)"/>
<node CREATED="1204900562964" ID="Freemind_Link_530345013" MODIFIED="1213976431250" TEXT="&quot;They began with sugar, either from cane (selling in 2007 at 7 cents a pound) or-- better yet--from cellulosic materials such as straw and wood chips. (Other innovators are working to &apos;crack&apos; cellulosic materials with enzymes or thermochemical processes to obtain sugar at one-tenth the price.&quot; (p. 86)"/>
<node CREATED="1204900670652" ID="Freemind_Link_336641580" MODIFIED="1204900756723" TEXT="&quot;&apos;Yeast catabolyzes sugar,&apos; explains Newman. &apos;It extracts energy for its own use and excretes ethanol. What we&apos;ve done is reroute the enzymatic steps to get it to excrete more of the energy-- tricked the yeast so that it&apos;s in its own best interest to do so. It&apos;s what the ancient Greeks did when they sampled two different bottles of wine and chose to make more of the wine that got them drunker-- they selectively bred yeast that produced more kick per unit of sugar. We&apos;re just synthesizing that process, and radically accelerating it.&quot; (p. 87)"/>
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<node CREATED="1204900836755" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_213224825" MODIFIED="1204900843257" TEXT="Accelerating change (biofuels)">
<node CREATED="1204900843604" ID="Freemind_Link_96405392" MODIFIED="1213976467046" TEXT="&quot;Essentially, we reprogram the yeast the way you&apos;d reprogram a computer, and with the same increase in speed. Just a few years ago, to get an organism you wanted, you had to make millions of variations and try each. And it took six or seven years to do a single iteration. Now, I can do a targeted design of five promising genetic modifications, write code in the form of DNA, order it online, and have it by FedEx within a week. We make a strain, test it in a shake flask, then move it to a larger vessel and simulate the pressure of scaling up. Along the way we debug it, like an operating system. It runs and hangs up and we use one of our plug-and-play fixes to get it going again.&quot; (p. 87)"/>
<node CREATED="1204901721529" ID="Freemind_Link_1199975566" MODIFIED="1204901861406" TEXT="&quot;&apos;None of us really knows yet how to lower costs. We engineer organisms to do our bidding, but they don&apos;t have high enough productivity. And switching out genes is like writing Moby Dick by pulling discrete paragraphs off the Web; you end up with a kludgy design.&apos; Arnold&apos;s researchers have developed strategies for using evolution as an &apos;editor&apos; to smooth out any inelegant passages in the genomes they write. They design a genome for their desired organism, but then introduce thousands of random changes in the DNA. From those mutations, they select the best, then do it again. The approach is called &apos;directed evolution&apos; or &apos;semi-rational design,&apos; because it mixes the high-peed, directionless shuffling of mutations with the conscious writing of genetic code.&quot; (p. 88)"/>
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<node CREATED="1204901019195" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_302462202" MODIFIED="1217727639033" TEXT="Changing DNA to control emissions">
<node CREATED="1204901032511" ID="Freemind_Link_1962723846" MODIFIED="1204901137084" TEXT="&quot;By 2007, Amyris researchers had produced gasoline and diesel from sugar, powered a diesel truck engine, and begun emissions testing. Because they control all the inputs, says Neil Renninger, they can also control what is emitted when Amyris&apos;s crystal clear, mild-smelling fuels are burned. They emit none of the smog-forming combustion products that come from burning aldehydes like ethanol and butanol. And if any troubling emissions do emerge, Renninger claims, they can tweak the organism to take the bad stuff out.&quot; (p. 88)"/>
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<node CREATED="1204901183969" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_700822415" MODIFIED="1217727634504" TEXT="Amyris &amp; cap-and-trade">
<node CREATED="1204901189968" ID="Freemind_Link_1024870128" MODIFIED="1204901253612" TEXT="&quot;Because their fuels have much lower net carbon emissions than petroleum-based fuels, a cap-and-trade system will significantly improve their competitive position. According to board member John Doerr, a cap on carbon will increase Amyris&apos;s profit potential by at least 25 percent-- and thus also increase the incentive to get the new fuels to market.&quot; (p. 88)"/>
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<node CREATED="1204654763435" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1335581344" MODIFIED="1205960345192" TEXT="quote about entrepreneurs">
<node CREATED="1204654768030" ID="Freemind_Link_1798091814" MODIFIED="1204654799566" TEXT="&quot;Most of all, there was the buzz, the crackling energy that comes from the mix of youth, world-changing ideas, and lots and lots of money.&quot; (p. 75)"/>
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<node CREATED="1204654992133" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1742496541" MODIFIED="1204655008084" TEXT="Companies">
<node CREATED="1204654867167" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1003472636" MODIFIED="1204654871026" TEXT="Amyris">
<node CREATED="1204654871554" ID="Freemind_Link_1386422681" MODIFIED="1204654981854" TEXT="&quot;Using a platform they developed when they were postdoctoral students at University of California Berkeley, the founding scientists have reengineered the metabolism of yeast to ferment sugar into a pure hydrocarbon fuel. Unlike the ethanol usually made from sugar, this fuel is as energy dense as gasoline, and can be shipped through existing pipelines and pumped into any car now on the road. The young scientists also have engineered &quot;plug-and-play&quot; genetic modifications they can pop into their yeasts to make them produce, from sugar, everything we now get from a barrel of oil, ranging from industrial chemicals and plastics to diesel and jet fuel.&quot; (p. 76)"/>
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<node CREATED="1204919030416" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_195655810" MODIFIED="1217727976023" POSITION="right" TEXT="Chapter 5 (Cellulosic Ethanol &amp; Algae)">
<node CREATED="1204919090990" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1101006870" MODIFIED="1204919096879" TEXT="Context">
<node CREATED="1205961664763" ID="Freemind_Link_422850104" MODIFIED="1205961716636" TEXT="What is the potential of cellulosic ethanol to supply our energy? What are the benefits over other forms of ethanol? How long until it becomes profitable?">
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<node CREATED="1204919097318" ID="Freemind_Link_843910104" MODIFIED="1204919200920" TEXT="&quot;Sugar is the very simplest biomass to turn into fuel: it can be fermented directly into the high-octane moonshine that is ethanol, or into the new, improved liquid fuels Amyris is designing. In Brazil sugar is converted to ethanol at a cost of 60 cents a gallon, getting 8 BTUs out for every 1 BTU put in. The second easiest plant material to convert is starch. A few cents&apos; worth of enzymes turns the stuff inside a kernel of corn to sugar, and from there to ethanol, but with a far worse energy balance: just 1.3 BTUs for every BTU put in. The hard stuff is nearly all the rest: the tough, fibrous material that makes up grasses and stalks and husks and cobs and tree trunks and branches and leaves.&quot; (p. 93)"/>
<node CREATED="1204919215374" ID="Freemind_Link_1371105121" MODIFIED="1204919365964" TEXT="&quot;Cellulose is the single most prevalent form of carbon in nature. It is well suited for biofuels precisely because it is not food-- and because when it is turned into fuel, its energy balance is excellent: up to 36 BTUs for each BTU put in. But it is also the most difficult to use. The crystalline structure of cellulose-- very long chains of six-carbon glucose molecules-- makes it hard to dismantle. Breaking those strands requires special enzymes: proteins that catalyze a chemical reaction without being used up. In 2007 the enzymes required to turn cellulosic material into fuel cost more than 50 cents a gallon, about twenty times the price of the enzymes needed to convert corn.&quot; (p. 94)"/>
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<node CREATED="1204919682150" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_798494498" MODIFIED="1217727836616" TEXT="Local economic benefits">
<node CREATED="1205961723606" ID="Freemind_Link_8424422" MODIFIED="1205961744389" TEXT="What are the expected economic benefits of cellulosic ethanol? How do they compare with the economic benefits from corn ethanol?">
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<node CREATED="1204919686889" ID="Freemind_Link_607917782" MODIFIED="1204919729339" TEXT="&quot;Because feedstocks are bulky and transporting them is costly, biofuels producers try to build refineries adjacent to the fields. Verenium is locating plants so that sufficient biomass will be available within ten miles, providing both a new market for local farmers and industrial jobs.&quot; (p. 95)"/>
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<node CREATED="1204920365059" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1246476138" MODIFIED="1217727839728" TEXT="Native grasses">
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<node CREATED="1204920370387" ID="Freemind_Link_1841283777" MODIFIED="1204920469751" TEXT="&quot;In the United States, researchers are focused on the native perennial grasses that once extended across the Great Plains. For thousands of years those grasses wove their roots through the soils, creating a dense mat extending ten feet deep. They built those root systems out of carbon dioxide drawn from the atmosphere, storing about a thousand pounds of carbon per year in each acre of soil while improving soil structure, water infiltration, and fertility. The soils those grasses created were so rich, in fact, that when the first sodbusters arrived, their oxen could scarcely get a plow through.&quot; (p. 99)"/>
<node CREATED="1204920491254" ID="Freemind_Link_861242450" MODIFIED="1213976610193" TEXT="&quot;Just 1 percent of that original tall-grass prairie, and just half the carbon originally stored in prairie soils, now remains. But David Tilman, a University of Minnesota ecologist, has for several decades been investigating the possibility of restoring the American prairie, both to take carbon back from the atmosphere into the soil and to produce biomass for energy. These native grasses are in many ways an ideal fuel crop: they are perennials, and can be harvested several times a year for a decade without reseeding-- in fact they require little attention but harvesting, which does the necessary work of periodically razing the grass, work once accomplished by wildfires and herds of bison.&quot; (p. 99)"/>
<node CREATED="1204920656338" ID="Freemind_Link_970355080" MODIFIED="1213976583929" TEXT="&quot;Reduced energy input means more net energy output, and much greater reductions in carbon emissions. Tilman calculates that biofuels made from mixed prairie grasses could actually be carbon negative, putting more carbon into the soil and roots than would be released during biofuel production and combustion. Because the grasses can be grown on agriculturally degraded lands, they would not displace food production. And rather than diminishing biodiversity, they would enhance it. A move away from fertilizer-intensive agriculture would reduce the nitrogen runoff that now contributes to the creation of immense &apos;dead zones&apos; in the nation&apos;s estuaries. And the restoration of a diverse mix of native grasses--big bluestem, sundial lupine, rigid goldenrod, tall blazing star-- would have a happy side effect, providing a habitat for imperiled birds like the grasshopper sparrow, meadowlark, dickcissel, sedge wren, and other grassland species.&quot; (p. 100)"/>
<node CREATED="1204920818004" ID="Freemind_Link_1437285281" MODIFIED="1204920883557" TEXT="&quot;Converting such diverse biomass into fuel, however, will be enormously challenging. Enzymes are specific to particular feedstocks; with some three hundred different plant species per acre in these native grasslands, no one is even close to developing the kind of microbial consortium, or superbug, required to digest the whole mix-- one reason why some companies are turning to non-biological approaches.&quot; (p. 100)"/>
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<node CREATED="1204920938319" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1742644011" MODIFIED="1217727851105" TEXT="Advances in genomics">
<node CREATED="1204921247705" ID="Freemind_Link_134988287" MODIFIED="1204921264790" TEXT="How will advances in genomics speed up the development of cellulosic ethanol?">
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<node CREATED="1204921271328" ID="Freemind_Link_205939169" MODIFIED="1204921311658" TEXT="What techniques did the food industry use when researching grains, and how will these techniques prove useful for developing cellulosic ethanol?">
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<node CREATED="1204920941560" ID="Freemind_Link_385050840" MODIFIED="1204921026757" TEXT="&quot;Advances in genomics may help in choosing and developing the best feedstocks. Scientists are sequencing the genomes of crops like eucalyptus and foxtail millet (a genetically simpler relative of switchgrass) to enhance selection of nature strains, engineer improvements, and tailor conversion processes; they are also sequencing &apos;biomass degraders&apos; like button mushrooms, which feed off other plants by breaking down their cell walls into sugars.&quot; (p. 101)"/>
<node CREATED="1204921099175" ID="Freemind_Link_1374530858" MODIFIED="1213976643658" TEXT="&quot;Grain ethanol got a head start by piggybacking on decades of research in the food industry, and the same sophisticated analytics are now being applied to cellulosic crops. Department of Energy chemist Emily Smith, for instance, is exploring the potential of spectrometry-- measuring the interaction between light and other kinds of radiation and matter-- to determine the ideal time to harvest crops(for instance, when their lignin content is lowest). &apos;Just as vintners monitor and test the sugar content of their grapes in the field, biofuel producers could potentially use this technology to determine if their crop was at optimal development for conversion to ethanol,&apos; she explains.&quot; (p. 101)"/>
<node CREATED="1204921441231" ID="Freemind_Link_227349388" MODIFIED="1204921512673" TEXT="&quot;A few companies are experimenting with genetically engineering plants to produce the enzymes needed to break down their own cellulose. To make sure the plants do not eat themselves alive in the field, they introduce enzymes that become active only at high temperatures (for instance, those produced by bacteria that evolved to survive in hot springs).&quot; (p. 101)"/>
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<node CREATED="1204921629189" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_601348315" MODIFIED="1204922780591" TEXT="Thermochemical">
<node CREATED="1205961779959" ID="Freemind_Link_1972436208" MODIFIED="1205961822867" TEXT="What are the pros and cons of Fischer-Tropsch vs. using enzymes to create ethanol?">
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<node CREATED="1204921635037" ID="Freemind_Link_1475460781" MODIFIED="1213976751624" TEXT="&quot;Several companies are skipping enzymes and fermentation organisms entirely, relying instead on conversion technologies using catalysts, heat, and pressure. The most common, Fischer-Tropsch, was invented in Germany in the 1920s to turn coal to liquid fuels-- a process that is highly controversial today because of the high amounts of carbon dioxide released. But low-carbon biomass, too, can be liquefied using Fischer-Tropsch. It is gasified by heating it in an oxygen-starved environment; the resulting &apos;syngas&apos; is then reacted over a catalyst to make liquid hydrocarbons. The technology is expensive, in both capital investment and operating costs, but it has some key advantages: facilities can be built today and can use a wide range of biomass inputs.&quot; (p. 102)"/>
<node CREATED="1204922361195" ID="Freemind_Link_1839162814" MODIFIED="1204922399236" TEXT="&quot;Eric Larson, a research engineer at the Princeton Environmental Institute, estimates a production cost competitive with $70-a-barrel oil.&quot; (p. 102)"/>
<node CREATED="1204922645410" ID="Freemind_Link_83440945" MODIFIED="1213976675673" TEXT="&quot;Though thermochemical systems may have the advantage of being able to handle a range of feedstocks without having to remix the enzymes and organisms for each, the biocentric companies remain unconvinced. &apos;It takes billions to build a Fischer-Tropsch plant,&apos; says Jack Newman of Amyris. &apos;You have to amortize those costs over the amount of energy the plant will ultimately make, which turns out to be too expensive. You&apos;re in effect simulating the forces that made biomass into petroleum in the first place, that intense pressure and heat. But the original forces were tectonic: the weight of mountains plus the core heat of the earth. We can just retrofit an ethanol plant; which costs orders of magnitude less.&apos;&quot; (p. 103)"/>
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<node CREATED="1204922531294" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1559358604" MODIFIED="1204922533944" TEXT="Feedstocks">
<node CREATED="1204922540781" ID="Freemind_Link_612681758" MODIFIED="1204922547260" TEXT="What are the pros and cons of different feedstocks">
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<node CREATED="1204922494015" ID="Freemind_Link_483686100" MODIFIED="1204922528056" TEXT="&quot;Wood has many advantages as a feedstock: it does not rot easily, it is available year-round, and it is much denser than light grasses, make it easier to move around.&quot; (p. 103)"/>
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<node CREATED="1204922844261" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1072900138" MODIFIED="1217727973901" TEXT="Enzymes">
<node CREATED="1204922976862" ID="Freemind_Link_261443634" MODIFIED="1204922991269" TEXT="Which is more efficient, enzymes or thermochemical?">
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<node CREATED="1204922851429" ID="Freemind_Link_1159932428" MODIFIED="1204922975234" TEXT="&quot;John Howe of Verenium concedes that &apos;the approach we&apos;re taking is costlier right now, no doubt, but there&apos;s a lot more room for improvement given that F-T [Fischer-Tropsch] is pretty mature while industrial biotech is still in its early stages of development.&apos; He also believes that fuels made with enzymes will ultimately have a much better net energy-and-carbon balance. By definition, enzymes lower the energy required for a chemical reaction to take place. That&apos;s their function in organisms, and &apos;that&apos;s their magic,&apos; says Howe, &apos;in making biofuels.&apos;&quot; (p. 103)"/>
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<node CREATED="1204923276495" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1763991158" MODIFIED="1217727858881" TEXT="Energy tour">
<node CREATED="1204923285453" ID="Freemind_Link_1208364870" MODIFIED="1204923466142" TEXT="Blog post about where one would go on a cross-country energy-tour road trip?">
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<node CREATED="1204923317293" ID="Freemind_Link_1754360279" MODIFIED="1204923435221" TEXT="&quot;Flying in from the north, over the Four Corners region where Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico meet, you look down on mile after mile of broad desert mesas, each one&apos;s top scraped flat and bare and all linked together by a web of rutted and barren roads. It might take a minute to understand what you are seeing: coal-bed methane rigs atop each denuded mesa, furiously pumping up the natural gas that will soon be burned to make electricity. The seemingly endless sprawl of Phoenix, lights blazing, air conditioners churning, provides a further review-- of where that electricity goes.&quot; (p. 104)"/>
<node CREATED="1204923471759" ID="Freemind_Link_251199333" MODIFIED="1204923643582" TEXT="&quot;But the most surreal part of the journey begins thirty miles west of the city, where brand-new housing developments and emerald-green golf courses give way to saguaro cactus and dusty mesquite. Here, in this desiccated landscape, is one of the greatest electricity-generating hubs in the world. First to rise up on the horizon is the nation&apos;s second-biggest power plant, the Palo Verde nuclear facility, each of its three 1,270-megawatt reactors marked by a hulking cooling tower. A bit farther on, Duke Energy&apos;s 500-megawatt natural gas plant emerges, then Sempra Energy&apos;s 1,250-megawatt plant and another 1,000-megawatt facility operated by the town of Gila Bend. Altogether, more than 9,000 megawatts of electricity is generated in this bleak reach of the Sonoran Desert. Overhead, massive towers strung with 500-kilovolt lines carry a big chunk of that electricity straight to Southern California.&quot; (p. 104)"/>
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<node CREATED="1204925004418" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_816475709" MODIFIED="1217727871177" TEXT="Algae potential">
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<node CREATED="1205962736527" ID="Freemind_Link_1183040901" MODIFIED="1205962790369" TEXT="What is the potential of algae to create biofuels? How does algae compare to cellulosic ethanol?">
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<node CREATED="1204923780562" ID="Freemind_Link_1715986808" MODIFIED="1213976883120" TEXT="&quot;Under the right circumstances, however, these microscopic single-cell creatures turn out to be a dream feedstock for making liquid fuel cells. They are the fastest-growing plants on earth-- doubling their mass in a few hours&apos; time. They are the most adaptable, thriing not only in cooling towers but also in sewage, boiling water, ice, Antarctica, and the Dead Sea. They are the richest in high-energy oils ideal for making biodiesel--producing thirty times more vegetable oil per acre than sunflowers or rapeseed-- and are rich in carbohydrates that can become and proteins for animal feed. They filter many air pollutants, neutralizing acids and splitting nitrogen oxides--precursors to smog--into harmless nitrogen and oxygen. Most important, they are the world&apos;s most efficient converters of carbon dioxide to oxygen and biomass. Algae have few higher-order functions: They don&apos;t need to leaf, flower, produce seeds, or bear fruit. All they do is consume carbon dioxide and divide. &apos;It is photosynthetic life reduced to its essence,&apos; says Ray Hobbs, who runs APS&apos;s Future Fuels Program.&quot; (p. 105)"/>
<node CREATED="1204925013835" ID="Freemind_Link_940461865" MODIFIED="1204925216481" TEXT="&quot;The potential yields from algae dwarf those of any other biofuel crop. Some seventeen hundred U.S. power plants, GreenFuel estimates, have enough land (most of which nobody else wants) for both algae greenhouses and on-site refineries, plus enough waste heat to power both. Unlike soybeans and corn, which can be harvested just once or twice a year, algae multiply so fast they can be harvested daily (&apos;Just like milking a cow,&apos; Berzin says). While an acre of soybeans yields about 60 gallons of biofuels and oil palms about 600 gallons, an acre of algae could yield 5,000 gallons of biodiesel and ethanol a year. At present, only 20 percent of U.S. petroleum consumption is in the form of diesel. But if half of all U.S. cars ran on diesel, as they do in Europe, replacing all of it with soy would require 1.5 billion acres of fertile land, three times the total cropland in the country. Algae could do it with 47 million acres, on land not suited for agriculture. Though they require huge amounts of water, they can tolerate wastewater-- and clean power plant emissions along the way.&quot; (p. 109)"/>
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<node CREATED="1204923777536" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1120938113" MODIFIED="1217727881650" TEXT="Algae selection">
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<node CREATED="1204924278471" ID="Freemind_Link_301488069" MODIFIED="1213976945790" TEXT="&quot;&apos;We look all over the world for nature&apos;s finest,&apos; says Cary Bullock, GreenFuel&apos;s vice president for business development. To protect local ecosystems, the company relies on indigenous varieties or saltwater species (if saltwater marine algae were to escape into freshwater, the osmotic pressure would crush them to death, preventing any damage from the alien invasion). They then adapt the algae by gradually shifting their living conditions-- the water supply, the chemical makeup of the gas-- to match those the algae will encounter inside the farm. The goal is to have algae that reproduce so prolifically--the &apos;local hero,&apos; APS&apos;s Ray Hobbs calls it-- that they crowd out any zooplankton or other algae that might try to move in.&quot; (p. 107)"/>
<node CREATED="1204924463179" ID="Freemind_Link_713627641" MODIFIED="1204924552766" TEXT="&quot;A few rival companies are working to genetically engineer a race of superalgae, bigger and fatter and even quicker to reproduce, but Hobbs thinks that is a bad idea. &apos;They want big fat guys they can fish out with a net. But given the dangers of unleashing a GMO [genetically modified organism] that adaptable and prolific, they&apos;ll delay themselves fifteen years getting through the regulatory process. And with twenty thousand species to choose from, why would you need to engineer a new one?&apos;&quot; (p. 107)"/>
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<node CREATED="1204925379863" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1900574329" MODIFIED="1217727900595" TEXT="Carbon cleanup potential of Algae">
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<node CREATED="1205962801497" ID="Freemind_Link_1835644690" MODIFIED="1205962812713" TEXT="What is the potential of algae to clean up carbon dioxide from power plants?">
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<node CREATED="1204925387661" ID="Freemind_Link_636367248" MODIFIED="1204925515078" TEXT="&quot;The potential scale of the carbon cleanup is also immense. In their first configuration, says Hobbs, the algae at Redhawk absorbed 150 tons of carbon dioxide per acre per year. In the newest version, says Berzin, the algae are adding 100 grams of weight per square meter per day, which means they are absorbing 200 grams of carbon dioxide; at scale, that would take up about a ton of carbon dioxide per acre per day. At that rate, says Hobbs, algae grown on 1,000 acres of land available at Redhawk would absorb half the carbon dioxide the plant emitted in 2006 and then could be converted to fuel (a coal-fired plant of similar size would require nearly 2,000 acres--a lot of real estate in some regions of the country).&quot; (p. 110)"/>
<node CREATED="1204925532711" ID="Freemind_Link_1152357879" MODIFIED="1204925623357" TEXT="&quot;If GreenFuel can get to a competitive price for those fuels, he adds, algae farmers will want as much carbon dioxide as they can get their hands on. Hobbs gestures at the landscape around him: empty except for roads and the seemingly endless colony of power plants. &quot;Two thousand-- or ten thousand-acre greenhouses; they don&apos;t really intimidate me.&apos; When the fuel is burned, the carbon will be released to the atmosphere, but its energy will have been harvested twice, and it will have displaced an equivalent amount of fossil fuels.&quot; (p. 110)"/>
<node CREATED="1205254417801" ID="Freemind_Link_1721468791" MODIFIED="1213976980666" TEXT="&quot;&apos;Carbon dioxide is a big risk hanging over the head of utilities,&apos; says Berzin. &apos;After Al Gore, they feel like everyone sees them as villains. But they need to provide more electricity, because we all keep adding demand. So what do they build? If they build coal, in five years when they have to pay to clean up their carbon they&apos;ll look like idiots. If they build natural gas, which is expensive, they&apos;ll look like idiots now. But what if they clean up their carbon dioxide, and for every ton of carbon dioxide they get half a ton of algae worth $300 in biofuels? Well, now they&apos;re American heroes. If they clean up 20 percent of the carbon dioxide effluent from every power plant in the country, they&apos;ll create enough fuel to replace 20 percent of imported oil.&apos;&quot; (p. 110)"/>
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<node CREATED="1205255014465" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1064089241" MODIFIED="1217727911027" TEXT="Venture Capitalists">
<node CREATED="1205255016655" ID="Freemind_Link_1715175468" MODIFIED="1205255090396" TEXT="&quot;&apos;They don&apos;t care whether something is intellectually interesting,&apos; he explains. &apos;They want to know if it works. If you&apos;re an academic, you&apos;re like a medical doctor. If you make a mistake, your patient dies. But if you&apos;re a start-up, you&apos;re like the pilot of a small plane. I you make a mistake, you die.&apos;&quot; (p. 113)"/>
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<node CREATED="1205255767662" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_604601405" MODIFIED="1217727912987" TEXT="How algae works">
<node CREATED="1205255770952" ID="Freemind_Link_1367342924" MODIFIED="1213977038077" TEXT="&quot;Single-celled algae can crack water with a photon into hydrogen and oxygen, then metabolize that hydrogen with carbon dioxide to sugar. We can&apos;t do that. We can&apos;t even fully understand it. You just have to be mesmermized and humbled.&quot; --Hobbs (p. 116)"/>
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<node CREATED="1205255871765" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1074238152" MODIFIED="1217727957877" TEXT="Carbon sequestration">
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<node CREATED="1205962940357" ID="Freemind_Link_706935156" MODIFIED="1205963031121" TEXT="What are the advantages of Algae? Why is carbon sequestration wasteful?">
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<node CREATED="1205254814431" ID="Freemind_Link_1653072984" MODIFIED="1205255912168" TEXT="&quot;Why expensively sequester carbon dioxide when it can be profitable recycled?&quot; --Metcalfe (p. 112)"/>
<node CREATED="1205255935010" ID="Freemind_Link_142752954" MODIFIED="1205255978290" TEXT="&quot;We spend enormous amounts of money to dig holes to get carbon out of the ground, and the best fix we can come up with is to dig more holes and put it back in? That&apos;s something your dog might think to do.&quot; --Hobbs (p. 117)"/>
<node CREATED="1205255991246" ID="Freemind_Link_938332072" MODIFIED="1213977069075" TEXT="&quot;&apos;Given all we invest to get carbon in the first place, shouldn&apos;t we think of ways to use it again? The tomatoes in my sandwich come from greenhouses where they burn natural gas just to make carbon dioxide to feed the tomatoes. We have a valuable raw material coming out of that smokestack, and we&apos;re just throwing it away.&apos;&quot; --Hobbs (p. 117)"/>
<node CREATED="1205256216269" ID="Freemind_Link_1929360331" MODIFIED="1205256330828" TEXT="&quot;&apos;You could grow the algae, burn the algae in the power plant, capture that carbon dioxide and pump it back into the greenhouse, and grow more algae. Dried algae has as many BTUs per pound as coal. You&apos;d have a completely renewable power plant.&apos;&quot; --Hobbs (p. 118)"/>
<node CREATED="1205256275414" ID="Freemind_Link_1605998992" MODIFIED="1213977077790" TEXT="&quot;&apos;We throw away heat. We need to use it. We throw away flue gas; we need to use that too. But these ideas will only work when carbon dioxide has monetary value. Without a price on carbon dioxide, the economics will always pressure you to burn fossil fuels.&apos;&quot; --Hobbs (p. 118)"/>
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<node CREATED="1205255337888" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1356172688" MODIFIED="1205255718652" TEXT="quotes">
<node CREATED="1205255340188" ID="Freemind_Link_691482095" MODIFIED="1205255382977" TEXT="&quot;On a return flight from the moon, Apollo astronauts reported seeing two human structures from space-- the Great Wall of China and the plume from this 2,000-megawatt coal-burning plant.&quot; (p. 114)"/>
<node CREATED="1205255629946" ID="Freemind_Link_1072469443" MODIFIED="1205255709988" TEXT="&quot;&apos;We&apos;re able to live the way we do now because the decisionmakers in our parents&apos; and grandparents&apos; generations thought about us and built the infrastructure we would need.&apos;&quot; --Hobbs (p. 116)"/>
<node CREATED="1205256575978" ID="Freemind_Link_1476832557" MODIFIED="1205256630592" TEXT="&quot;&apos;You need a way for people to make money. Forget wisdom. We have to play off greed. A carbon cap will be the turning point. You can&apos;t stack the deck against these scientists and innovators. Society has to stand with them. And utilities are nothing more than instruments of public policy.&apos;&quot; --Hobbs (p. 118)"/>
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<node CREATED="1205256804957" ID="Freemind_Link_1386286943" MODIFIED="1205462164240" POSITION="right" TEXT="Chapter 6 (Ocean Energy)"/>
<node CREATED="1205256085702" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1332351325" MODIFIED="1217727978887" POSITION="right" TEXT="Chapter 7 (Geothermal Energy)">
<node CREATED="1213978799923" ID="Freemind_Link_411034149" MODIFIED="1213978807777" TEXT="This chapter is available online"/>
<node CREATED="1213978785439" ID="Freemind_Link_464108345" MODIFIED="1213978795396" TEXT="http://earththesequel.edf.org/book.sampleChapter"/>
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<node CREATED="1205256813434" ID="Freemind_Link_1293794968" MODIFIED="1205462186046" POSITION="right" TEXT="Chapter 8 (Cleaner Coal)"/>
<node CREATED="1205256824143" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_536698316" MODIFIED="1217728279133" POSITION="right" TEXT="Chapter 9 (Today&apos;s solutions)">
<node CREATED="1205257362569" ID="Freemind_Link_1569668102" MODIFIED="1205358356599" TEXT="Sample chapter about the rainforest"/>
<node CREATED="1205258368127" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1473438666" MODIFIED="1217728002998" TEXT="Deforestation&apos;s contribution to climate change">
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<node CREATED="1205258384102" ID="Freemind_Link_365156562" MODIFIED="1205258414415" TEXT="&quot;Because of deforestation, Indonesia and Brazil rank third and fourth in the world-- behind China and the United States-- in greenhouse gas emissions.&quot; (p. 201)"/>
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<node CREATED="1205257948670" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_448376073" MODIFIED="1217728009136" TEXT="Saving the rainforest via carbon trading">
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<node CREATED="1205963071450" ID="Freemind_Link_1468539279" MODIFIED="1205963084434" TEXT="How can we change the laws to make saving the rainforest profitable?">
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<node CREATED="1205963135531" ID="Freemind_Link_252670007" MODIFIED="1205963144188" TEXT="How would a cap-and-trade system help save the rainforest?">
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<node CREATED="1205257679943" ID="Freemind_Link_736353277" MODIFIED="1205257716193" TEXT="&quot;The rainforest will be used to the most profitable end, whatever that end might be. The only sure way to preserve it, therefore, is to make it worth more to people intact than destroyed.&quot; (p. 200)"/>
<node CREATED="1205258196432" ID="Freemind_Link_1849809346" MODIFIED="1205258354941" TEXT="&quot;To protect the rainforest, achieve the largest-scale carbon reductions possible in the near term, and create a path for developing nations into the global emissions reduction regime, tropical countries should earn tradable carbon credits for reducing deforestation on a national scale. Two and a half acres of rainforest contains between 120 and 300 tons of carbon; preserving half a million acres of that forest would keep out of the atmosphere about as much global warming pollution as a 500-megawatt coal plant emits in its entire fifty-year lifetime. The inclusion of &apos;forest protection credits&apos; would also help overcome one of the largest obstacles in global climate negotiations: how to engage key developing countries, particularly Brazil and Indonesia, in reducing emissions without chocking off modernization and economic growth.&quot; (p. 200)"/>
<node CREATED="1205257953437" ID="Freemind_Link_586681398" MODIFIED="1213977354686" TEXT="&quot;Here is how carbon-credit trading would work: Brazil and the other participants in the global carbon market would agree to use a recent historic period as a baseline for comparison. Brazil would then have to reduce the rate of deforestation below that baseline. (Brazil has accurately monitored and measured its forests via satellite since the 1970s, so if it succeeded in reducing national deforestation it would be clear in the satellite data.) A ton of carbon not emitted could be sold in the global carbon market to companies needing additional reductions. For example, a German power company that emitted 1.2 million tons of carbon dioxide, but only had allowances for 1 million tons, would need to be 200,000 tons of reductions; one of its options in a global carbon market would be to pay Brazil for the carbon credits it had earned by reducing deforestation ($6.3 million, at November 2007 prices). The total value of allowance traded in carbon markets worldwide (created in preparation for the first Kyoto Protocol commitment period, which began in 2008) reached $30 billion in 2006. Eventually, the carbon market is expected to be worth hundreds of billions of dollars annually. The potential of claiming even a small fraction of this market would be a powerful incentive to preserve forests.&quot; (p. 201)"/>
<node CREATED="1205259107638" ID="Freemind_Link_961914407" MODIFIED="1205259226607" TEXT="&quot;For Brazil, getting paid to keep forests standing would generate more profits per acre than most of the cattle and illegal logging operations, and create a stream of revenue for financing conservation and protecting forests far beyond what Brazil&apos;s government and international aid could ever supply. In late 2007, Daniel Nepstad of the Woods Hole Research Center and colleagues determined that over the next thirty years, Brazil could prevent emissions of 6 billion tons of carbon at a cost of less than $2 a ton. In a market that priced carbon at $10 a ton, those avoided tons would net Brazil $40 million in profits; at $30 a ton, Brazil would earn $168 million.&quot; (p. 202)"/>
<node CREATED="1205358101380" ID="Freemind_Link_981725126" MODIFIED="1205358131389" TEXT="&quot;When there are profits to be made by keeping these forests standing, the same entrepreneurial energy that has brought them down at such an alarming rate will become an equally powerful force for their protection.&quot; (p. 202)"/>
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<node CREATED="1205388314272" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_337401623" MODIFIED="1217728014376" TEXT="Methane">
<node CREATED="1205388319111" ID="Freemind_Link_1246058220" MODIFIED="1205388391701" TEXT="&quot;Methane, for instance, is the second most common human produced greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide and has a heat-trapping effect more than twenty times as potent as that of carbon dioxide. But methane also has something carbon dioxide does not: a positive value as fuel. Increasing numbers of farmers and landfill managers have therefore begun capturing the methane gas emitted by animal wastes and trash dumps to produce clean, cheap power.&quot; (p. 203)"/>
<node CREATED="1205388491354" ID="Freemind_Link_1055269889" MODIFIED="1205388579451" TEXT="&quot;By 2007, 125 biogas recovery systems in the United States were reducing methane emissions from manure by about 80,000 metric tons-- with a warming impact equivalent to 1.7 million tons of carbon dioxide-- and generating 275 million kilowatt-hours of energy. The EPA says about seven thousand farms could potentially make a profit by turning their manure into gas, providing 700 megawatts of energy to rural areas while avoiding 1.3 million metric tons of methane emissions.&quot; (p. 203)"/>
<node CREATED="1205388979037" ID="Freemind_Link_1131719728" MODIFIED="1205389007379" TEXT="&quot;Some cattle and pig farmers use the biogas they capture from fermenting manure to generate electricity on site, for use on the farm or sale into the grid.&quot; (p. 204)"/>
<node CREATED="1205389009549" ID="Freemind_Link_1273752810" MODIFIED="1205389076461" TEXT="&quot;Researchers at North Carolina State University are exploring a further possibility: using high-temperature gasifiers to turn the solid residues to fuel, which could not only increase energy production but also solve the mounting pollution problems associated with livestock production and animal wastes.&quot; (p. 204)"/>
<node CREATED="1205389123607" ID="Freemind_Link_86048852" MODIFIED="1213977400700" TEXT="&quot;Landfills are the largest human-related source of methane in the United States, accounting for a quarter of all methane emissions. In 2006, about 425 landfill gas energy projects captured the warming equivalent of 89 million tons of carbon dioxide, while generating about 10 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity (some of the gas was burned for heating). The EPA has identified an additional 560 landfills that could profitably be tapped. In September 20076, Houton-based Waste Management announced that it would develop methane energy projects at sixty of these sites, adding to the one hundred it already operates.&quot; (p. 204)"/>
<node CREATED="1205388698615" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1279302879" MODIFIED="1205388704974" TEXT="Intermountain Gas Company">
<node CREATED="1205388705432" ID="Freemind_Link_813551557" MODIFIED="1205388778783" TEXT="&quot;In its first year of operation, the daily processed 10 million gallons of manure, producing enough pipeline quality natural gas to heat five thousand homes, as well as milk. Intrepid expects to recoup its $5 million investment in three years; in the future it expects to earn additional revenue by selling both carbon credits and the dried, leftover digested fiber, which makes a gardening product similar to peat moss.&quot; (p. 204)"/>
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<node CREATED="1205388852603" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_200294049" MODIFIED="1205388866311" TEXT="S.C. Johnson &amp; Son&apos;s">
<node CREATED="1205388866697" ID="Freemind_Link_1015224408" MODIFIED="1205388954484" TEXT="&quot;S.C. Johnson &amp; Son&apos;s cleaning products plant in Sturtevant, Wisconsin, where Windex and other household cleaners are made, uses methane gas captured and piped in from a neighboring landfill in its cogeneration plant. (A cogeneration plant makes both electricity and heat.) When the landfill gas-powered turbine was installed in 2003, it cut the plant&apos;s carbon emissions in half-- the equivalent of taking more than ten thousand cars off the road.&quot; (p. 204)"/>
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<node CREATED="1205389326570" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1952368813" MODIFIED="1217728037080" TEXT="Energy efficiency">
<node CREATED="1205389342355" ID="Freemind_Link_1918707015" MODIFIED="1205389448568" TEXT="&quot;A November 2007 report by McKinsey &amp; Company found that the U.S. could cut projected emissions almost in half by 2030 without major new technology or lifestyle changes, provided we have the right policy incentives and start soon. Fully 40 percent of those reductions would more than pay for themselves, creating net savings.&quot; (p. 205)"/>
<node CREATED="1205389567588" ID="Freemind_Link_899562970" MODIFIED="1205389666945" TEXT="&quot;California has provided a model. According to the state public utility commission, its three decades of efficiency programs have saved 40,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity and eliminated 12,000 megawatts of peak demand-- which means that two-dozen 500 megawatt power plants did not have to be built. Even with the most efficient natural gas technology, those plants would now be dumping 15 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year (if conventional, subcritical coal-fired plants, they would be dumping nearly 40 million tons a year).&quot; (p. 205)"/>
<node CREATED="1205390064792" ID="Freemind_Link_1134329338" MODIFIED="1213974201009" TEXT="&quot;While it costs 6 to 8 cents to generate a kilowatt-hour from new coal or nuclear plants, plus another 2 to 4 cents to move that power through the grid, saving that same kilowatt-hour costs just 3 to 4 cents.&quot; (p. 206)"/>
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<node CREATED="1205389711454" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_600024243" MODIFIED="1217728047201" TEXT="Demand Response Programs">
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<node CREATED="1205389723662" ID="Freemind_Link_836459707" MODIFIED="1205389767427" TEXT="&quot;When electricity demand threatens to exceed supply, the utility can remotely dim its customers&apos; lights or cycle their air-conditioners on and off to avoid having to fire up another power plant.&quot; (p. 205)"/>
<node CREATED="1205389777444" ID="Freemind_Link_618443956" MODIFIED="1205389851203" TEXT="&quot;Entrepreneurs producing software to measure and manage &apos;negawatts,&apos; or negative watts, have collected tens of millions of dollars in venture capital in the past few years. One company, ConsumerPowerline, contracts with big energy consumers--chain stores, hospitals, and commercial buildings--to reduce electricity use on short notice when spikes in demand threaten a power outage.&quot; (p. 206)"/>
<node CREATED="1205389852193" ID="Freemind_Link_1761299861" MODIFIED="1205389979208" TEXT="&quot;At three Sears and Kmart stores in Connecticut, for instance, the company has installed software to control lights and air-conditioners; when the New England independent system operators issue a &apos;demand response notification,&apos; ConsumerPowerline can cut energy use at the nine stores by 540 kilowatts, and the company shares the money with the stores. The entire customer base benefits: while a utility pays up to $2 million to the capacity to generate a new megawatt at a power plant, it typically pays less than $100,000 for each megawatt a demand response company can commit to eliminating from the load.&quot; (p. 206)"/>
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<node CREATED="1205390154207" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1317888886" MODIFIED="1217728050992" TEXT="Energy efficient lighting">
<node CREATED="1205390162425" ID="Freemind_Link_752957666" MODIFIED="1213977471909" TEXT="&quot;Cities replacing incandescent bulbs with light-emitting diodes have cut energy use in traffic signals by 92 percent.&quot; (p. 206) "/>
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<node CREATED="1205390284783" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_778831991" MODIFIED="1217728072529" TEXT="Wal-Mart">
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<node CREATED="1205390287578" ID="Freemind_Link_970560433" MODIFIED="1213977499810" TEXT="&quot;By installing skylights, sensors to dim in-store lights, doors on its refrigerated display cases, and dozens of other seemingly small improvements, Wal-Mart has cut energy use by 20 percent in existing stores, 50 percent at a few demonstration stores. In May 2006 the company installed auxiliary power units-- small, efficient diesel engines-- on all Wal-Mart trucks that make overnight trips. Rather than letting the big truck engines idle during breaks, drivers can turn them off and use the little auxiliary unit to warm or cool the cabin and run communications systems. In a single year, that one change saved Wal-Mart $25 million and eliminated 100,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions.&quot; (p. 206)"/>
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<node CREATED="1205390497541" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1815893073" MODIFIED="1217728076033" TEXT="Individual products">
<node CREATED="1205390503838" ID="Freemind_Link_1372234277" MODIFIED="1205390556915" TEXT="A Silicon Valley company called Spudnik, for instance, is making energy-efficient flat-screen TVs (for environmentally conscious couch potatoes).&quot; (p. 207)"/>
<node CREATED="1205390557973" ID="Freemind_Link_1406883980" MODIFIED="1205390608129" TEXT="&quot;Minnesota-based SAGE Electrochromics makes windows that change color in intense sunlight, without losing transparency, to keep heat out and reduce air-conditioning loads.&quot; (p. 207)"/>
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<node CREATED="1205390631296" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1322599005" MODIFIED="1217728088538" TEXT="Automatically powering down computers">
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<node CREATED="1205390638560" ID="Freemind_Link_1030396359" MODIFIED="1205390726097" TEXT="&quot;A Seattle company called Verdiem, launched in 2001, makes software that allows schools, businesses, and government agencies to power down idle computers throughout their networks. By the summer of 2008 it projects that its customers will have cumulatively saved over 482 million kilowatt-hours of electricity and more than $48 million, achieving a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions equal to conserving 31 million gallons of gasoline.&quot; (p. 207)"/>
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<node CREATED="1205390783419" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_399537344" MODIFIED="1217728102243" TEXT="Power supplies">
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<node CREATED="1205390789229" ID="Freemind_Link_1781381735" MODIFIED="1205390881611" TEXT="&quot;Nextek Power Systems on Long Island makes a device that connects renewable energy sources that generate DC power directly with electronic devices and data centers that use DC, avoiding the energy losses in converting into and out of AC. Google and Intel are leading a coalition working to replace current computer power supplies, which lose about 50 percent of incoming energy, with a new 90 percent efficient global standard. That switch, they calculate, would save $5.5 billion worth of energy a year.&quot; (p. 207)"/>
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<node CREATED="1205390957483" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_489253400" MODIFIED="1217728108074" TEXT="Energy Intelligence">
<node CREATED="1205390962138" ID="Freemind_Link_153988463" MODIFIED="1213977539315" TEXT="&quot;The biggest arena of innovation may be &apos;energy intelligence,&apos; which in 2006 attracted more than $450 million in venture capital. The idea is to build the energy equivalent of the Internet: a sophisticated web that draws electricity from where it is abundant and sends it to where it is needed; such a system reduced the need to add new plants in order to meet peak demand requirements.&quot; (p. 208)"/>
<node CREATED="1205391576744" ID="Freemind_Link_1426761259" MODIFIED="1205391662359" TEXT="&quot;Some of the companies involved are focused on the supply side: developing systems to manage the emerging multidirectional network of distributed power-generating facilities (including intermittent generators, like rooftop solar arrays). Others are focused on the demand side: adjusting consumption levels minute by minute in response to dips in supplies or spikes in prices.&quot; (p. 208)"/>
<node CREATED="1205392088898" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_964637044" MODIFIED="1205392264763" TEXT="GridPoint -- &quot;A virtual peaking power plant&quot;">
<node CREATED="1205391737757" ID="Freemind_Link_1957562399" MODIFIED="1205391866296" TEXT="&quot;A company based in Washington, D.C., called GridPoint [...] has developed a refrigerator-sized device that is essentially a very smart battery, which utilities install in customers&apos; basements: At times of excess supply, coming either from centralized power plants or from renewable systems, the system puts energy into the batter; when demand climbs or generation falls off (the wind stops blowing; the sun doesn&apos;t shine), it takes energy back out again. Gridpoint also provides the utility and homeowners with control systems, enabling them to remotely adjust thermostats and appliances.&quot; (p. 208)"/>
<node CREATED="1205392105033" ID="Freemind_Link_1567906339" MODIFIED="1205392276135" TEXT="A &apos;virtual peaking power plant&apos; --that is, a way to meet peak demand with advanced information technology rather than new boilers and turbines. The system is also designed to accomodate new technologies as they emergy, including plug-in hybrid cars and fuel cells.&quot; (p. 208)"/>
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<node CREATED="1205392547263" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_212222098" MODIFIED="1217728116667" TEXT="More efficient fans">
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<node CREATED="1205393004137" ID="Freemind_Link_1817318025" MODIFIED="1213977573655" TEXT="&quot;Growing up on the beaches of Australia, Jay Harman noticed that seaweed ripped easily in his hands but held together in the roughest surf. It survived those wrenching forces, he learned, by twisting itself into a coil to allow water to pass through with the least possible resistance. Working as a naturalist with the Australian Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Harman began a rigorous study of the vortices he realized were all around: mapping the flow patterns of ocean and air currents, of tidal eddies and spiraling storm clouds. Harman was not the first to notice nature&apos;s preference for a swirl; Leonardo daVinci spent the last ten years of his life painting whirlpools. But Harman may be the first to have turned his insights into the energy saved by swirling fluids into a series of successful companies. [...] In 1997, Harman founded PAX Scientific in San Rafael, California, to apply what he had learned about nature&apos;s efficiencies to seemingly mundane products: fans and mixers, propellers and turbines. He found a way to translate natural geometries into mathematical algorithms, which he then used to generate industrial products that are both incredibly beautiful and Spartan in their energy use.&quot; (p. 210)"/>
<node CREATED="1205392558194" ID="Freemind_Link_719704968" MODIFIED="1213977590936" TEXT="&quot;One of [PAX Scientific&apos;s] first commercial products is a little fan designed for refrigerator motors. Its blades at rest look as if they are already in motion, bulging and curving at the top like something out of Looney Tunes. Twenty-five percent more efficient than conventional fans, the PAX fan will cut overall energy use in refrigerators by 4 percent. That sounds small, until you consider that 15 million refrigerators are sold in the United States each year, which means that 4 percent could translate to 219,000 megawatt-hours of electricity not used.&quot; (p. 210)"/>
<node CREATED="1205392684901" ID="Freemind_Link_904618935" MODIFIED="1205392759905" TEXT="&quot;Fans are in every motor, compressor, and pump, and collectively use 15 percent of the total electricity consumed by U.S. industry; as PAX expands into these other areas of industrial design, the potential energy savings are enormous.&quot; (p. 210)"/>
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<node CREATED="1205393472783" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1184509954" MODIFIED="1217728131332" TEXT="A replacement for drywall">
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<node CREATED="1205393481949" ID="Freemind_Link_952194563" MODIFIED="1205393647824" TEXT="&quot;Porat&apos;s newest product, EcoRock, scheduled to be on the market in 2008, aims to displace conventional drywall, which is responsible for some 12 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions worldwide each year. Those emissions come primarily from the multiple &apos;burns&apos; required: first to dry gypsum (which comes wet from the mine), then to grind it, then to boil water to make a slurry, then to shape it and dry it again. The EcoRock drywall cooks itself through an exothermic chemical reaction. (An exothermic chemical reaction generates heat energy, rather than requiring energy from an external source.) Because it needs to heaters, it produces no carbon dioxide. It is also stronger, cheaper, and lighter than conventional drywall, reducing the costs and emissions of transport.&quot; (p. 211)"/>
<node CREATED="1205393653560" ID="Freemind_Link_946481105" MODIFIED="1205393796720" TEXT="&quot;In November 2007, Serious Materials closed a $50 million round of funding with Rustic Canyon and Foundation Capital, most of which the company will use to build the first EcoRock factory. Among the sites under consideration is one on the San Joaquin River in Stockton, California, right next to a factor owned by the nation&apos;s largest drywall company: U.S. Gypsum. Where that older factor has immense intake pipes for natural gas, EcoRock&apos;s factory will have none; it&apos;s minimal power needs will come entirely from rooftop photovoltaics. &apos;You have to be on the right side of the energy curve,&apos; says Porat. &apos;If your costs rise with the price of energy, you&apos;re cooked. But if you can decouple, then you don&apos;t care what happens to gas prices.&apos;&quot; (p. 211)"/>
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<node CREATED="1205393920718" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1233516078" MODIFIED="1217728137707" TEXT="Cleaner Cement">
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<node CREATED="1205393927624" ID="Freemind_Link_528645975" MODIFIED="1213977650203" TEXT="&quot;Global cement production is responsible for about 5 percent of the world&apos;s greenhouse gases-- more than all global air travel combined. Half those emissions come from calcium carbonate (limestone), which releases carbon dioxide when heated; half come from the 1450C flame needed to &apos;calcine&apos; the cement, or drive off bound molecules of water so that it will be ready to react when new water is added.&quot; (p. 212)"/>
<node CREATED="1205394029938" ID="Freemind_Link_1981008541" MODIFIED="1205394262090" TEXT="&quot;European manufacturers like Lafarge have invested millions of dollars trying to clean up the process; so far, they have cut emissions by only 20 percent. The Portland Cement Association, which represents North America&apos;s manufacturers, says the U.S. industry will decrease emissions to 10 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. Porat calls that target &apos;insanity--stupid.&apos; He claims that his newest company, CalStar Cement, will use a reformulated recipe (replacing large amounts of calcium carbonate with fly ash, the fine residue left after coal combustion) and a proprietary heat-generating chemical reaction to eliminate 90 percent of cement&apos;s carbon emissions. &apos;The 10x change is what we&apos;re after, in all we do,&apos; says Porat. &apos;Silicon Valley is a great place to lodge those dreams.&apos; Will they come true? The answer is unclear. But the Portland Cement Association acknowledges that cement can be made almost entirely of fly ash using &apos;chemically unique, more rare fly ashes.&apos; And Porat has assembled an impressive team of technical advisers who are betting he may be right.&quot; (p. 212)"/>
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<node CREATED="1205394524016" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1693532074" MODIFIED="1217728154380" TEXT="Industrial Carpet Manufacturing">
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<node CREATED="1205394534882" ID="Freemind_Link_1958441842" MODIFIED="1205394706593" TEXT="In Ray Anderson&apos;s telling, his thirty-three-year journey through the land of industrial carpet manufacturing has been a kind of modern-day Pilgrim&apos;s Progress, taking him from the &apos;City of Destruction,&apos; as John Bunyan had it, to &apos;the world which is to come.&apos; For the first twenty-one years after he founded Interface in 1974-- it has since grown to be the world&apos;s largest maker of modular carpet tiles-- Anderson, who had played football for Georgia Tech, says he &apos;never gave one thought to what we took from or did to the earth.&apos; Then someone gave him Paul Hawken&apos;s 1993 book, The Ecology of Commerce, which argued for a new kind of enterprise that would become more profitable by reducing waste and energy use and its overall impact on the planet. The revelations Anderson found in those pages were like &apos;a spear in the chest that has never left me. I realized the way I&apos;d been running my company had been the way of the plunderer.&apos;&quot; (p. 214)"/>
<node CREATED="1205394720890" ID="Freemind_Link_1733657819" MODIFIED="1213977693761" TEXT="&quot;In the wake of that epiphany, Anderson made it his company&apos;s mission to &apos;climb Mount Sustainability,&apos; fundamentally remaking its operations and choice of materials to achieve an ultimate goal of zero environmental impact. No fossil energy of petrochemical inputs, no solid waste, no air or water pollution. No footprint. Beyond that extraordinary goal, he committed to make Interface the world&apos;s first &apos;restorative company,&apos; contributing more than it was taking from the natural world, publicly documenting its progress so others could follow the example. Anderson&apos;s allegorical way of speaking can seem overwrought on the page, but it is impossible to ignore how much he has already achieved. Since 1995 his company has reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 56 percent, saving more than $300 million while increasing sales 49 percent.&quot; (p. 214)"/>
<node CREATED="1205394911384" ID="Freemind_Link_1630337796" MODIFIED="1205395024401" TEXT="&quot;Anderson&apos;s strategy has been to &apos;burn bridges,&apos; abandoning destructive and wasteful practices. One such abandoned process is the printing of patterns on carpet tiles. Dye printing requires huge amounts of energy and water: for applying the dyes, streaming and fixing the colors, washing out the excess, drying the carpet, and treating the excess water. Anderson&apos;s team figured out a way to use the tufting machine-- a kind of huge sewing machine with hundreds of needles that insert loops of yarn into jute, cotton, or synthetic backing-- to create the patterns, decreasing water and energy use by 90 percent.&quot; (p. 215)"/>
<node CREATED="1205395035580" ID="Freemind_Link_775793300" MODIFIED="1205395147736" TEXT="&quot;Another innovation came in the carpet pattern itself. The company&apos;s top-selling pattern, called Entropy, mimics the disorder of a forest floor with its strewn leaves, pebbles, and twigs. That randomness means that the pattern needn&apos;t match up from tile to tile, but can be laid out in any direction, eliminating the huge amounts of scrap normally generated at installation. It means few tiles are rejected at the factor: imperfections get lost in the wandering variations of color. It also means the carpet lasts a long time, because worn or stained tiles can be swapped out without replacing the rest.&quot; (p. 215)"/>
<node CREATED="1205395149465" ID="Freemind_Link_505601556" MODIFIED="1205395217546" TEXT="&quot;The company&apos;s clear mission, says Anderson, has had a galvanizing effect on employees. He tells a story about a visitor to one Interface factor who approaches a lift truck operator and asked, &apos;What do you do?&apos; The young man stopped his machine and climbed down to answer: &apos;Ma&apos;am, every day I come to work to save the earth.&apos;&quot; (p. 215)"/>
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<node CREATED="1205395392677" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1624504070" MODIFIED="1217728158725" TEXT="Thermoelectric Heating">
<node CREATED="1205395401514" ID="Freemind_Link_856711719" MODIFIED="1205396083282" TEXT="&quot;The C2 Climate Control doesn&apos;t look like a revolution. Just ten inches tall and made of white plastic, the little space heater-- designed to heat the area immediately around the user&apos;s body-- looks more like a flat-bottomed blow dryer, or a retro telephone. In fact, the C2 is one of the first commercial products to use advanced thermoelectrics: solid-state devices that turn heat to electricity, or electricity to heat. Produced by Herman Miller with cutting-edge technology from a California company called BSST, the C2 uses 90 percent less energy than a traditional space heater, without heating coils, chemicals, emissions, or fire danger.&quot; (p. 216)&#xa;"/>
<node CREATED="1205396085325" ID="Freemind_Link_1817951456" MODIFIED="1205396121573" TEXT="&quot;Like so many of these advanced technologies, thermoelectrics has its roots in the nineteenth century. In 1821 a German-Estonian physicist named Thomas Johann Seebeck discovered that certain materials, like lead sulfide, produced an electrical current when one side was hotter than the other. That is, heat become electricity without first being used to make steam and then drive moving parts. The reverse was also true: if electricity was applied to these same materials, one side became hot and the other cool.&quot; (p. 216)&#xa;"/>
<node CREATED="1205396122975" ID="Freemind_Link_1512612950" MODIFIED="1205396136061" TEXT="&quot;For a long time, that conversion of heat to electricity or vice versa was deemed too inefficient, and the materials too expensive, to be commercially interesting. But recent advances by BSST have changed that. The company is now working with the Departments of Energy and Defense, materials scientists at national laboratories, and private companies to expand applications for this solid-state heating, cooling, or power-generating device.&quot; (p. 216)&#xa;"/>
<node CREATED="1205396140051" ID="Freemind_Link_1325812579" MODIFIED="1213977778220" TEXT="&quot;The first commercial thermoelectric product brought to market by BSST&apos;s parent company, Amerigon, was a car seat that warms or cools its occupant, now available in more than twenty modes of cars. The C2 was next, coming to market in January 2008. Now BSST is working with BMW North America and other partners to develop a product to convert waste heat from vehicle exhaust into electrical power. In current automobile engines, about 70 percent of the energy value in gas is lost to the atmosphere as waste heat; capturing the heat and converting it to electricity to run the car&apos;s air-conditioner, heating, and electrical systems, according to BSST cofounder Lon Bell, could improve fuel economy by 10 percent. BSST is also working with Carrier, the UTC subsidiary involved in the Chena Hot Springs geothermal power project profiled in Chapter 7, to develop solid-state refrigerators and air-conditioners. Ultimately they envision industrial-scale thermo-electric heating and cooling systems, and large-scale systems to make electricity from waste heat that is produced in abundance in every building and factory and power plant in America. When that happens, according to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, &apos;the impact on America&apos;s fuel consumption, and the resulting impact on security and the environment, will be of enormous and lasting value.&apos;&quot; (p. 216)"/>
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<node CREATED="1205396268744" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_896376425" MODIFIED="1217728168229" TEXT="Data Centers">
<node CREATED="1205396274902" ID="Freemind_Link_1200086668" MODIFIED="1205396365016" TEXT="&quot;In May 2007, IBM debuted &apos;Project Big Green,&apos; a billion-dollar-a-year initiative to redesign data centers to cut energy use up to 40 percent. It was its own first customer: according to Wayne Balta, IBM&apos;s vice president of corporate environmental affairs, the company will double its computing capacity in the next three years &apos;without using another electron to do it.&apos;&quot; (p. 217)"/>
<node CREATED="1205396387901" ID="Freemind_Link_915565772" MODIFIED="1205396465057" TEXT="&quot;Pacific Gas and Electric was another early customer: the utility switched from the three hundred servers it had been using to six IBM mainframe-based &apos;virtual servers&apos;-- single computers programmed to do the work of dozens--reducing energy use in its data centers by 80 percent.&quot; (p. 217)"/>
<node CREATED="1205396521732" ID="Freemind_Link_1033757076" MODIFIED="1205396586144" TEXT="&quot;In October 2007, IBM announced that it had developed technology that permits recycling of silicon wafers, helping ease the silicon shortage that has plagued developers of solar power.&quot; (p. 217)"/>
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<node CREATED="1205396590873" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1115393409" MODIFIED="1217728173196" TEXT="High-resolution weather predictions">
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<node CREATED="1205396626929" ID="Freemind_Link_1014448922" MODIFIED="1205396772201" TEXT="&quot;Yet another new service builds on the expertise IBM has accumulated designing weather computers for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Called Deep Thunder, it provides real-time, high-resolution weather predictions (down to a square mile) to help companies stay efficient no matter what the sky brings down. &apos;Suppose you were in the business of moving cargo or you were in a forest products company sending heavy equipment into the woods,&apos; says Balta. &apos;Wouldn&apos;t you want to be able to anticipate the weather? Solving climate change will require new technologies. But the world isn&apos;t just going to stop working how it does.&apos;&quot; (p. 218)"/>
<node CREATED="1205396810268" ID="Freemind_Link_1949566663" MODIFIED="1205396936519" TEXT="&quot;The company is also developing on water management systems, including a smart irrigation one that combines soil sensors with Deep Thunder&apos;s weather forecasts to ensure minimal water use: it will save not only up to half the water now used in irrigation, according to Balta, but also the enormous amounts of energy used to move that water around. That could mean big savings: fully 90 percent of all electricity used on farms goes to pump water for irrigation; California&apos;s Energy Commission estimates that almost 20 percent of the state&apos;s total electricity demand is associated with water use.&quot; (p. 218)"/>
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<node CREATED="1205419602741" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_817273964" MODIFIED="1217728176589" TEXT="Market failures: Information">
<node CREATED="1205419629494" ID="Freemind_Link_827526129" MODIFIED="1213977842333" TEXT="&quot;Consumers often lack good data about the differences in energy efficiency among products, and the resulting energy savings. When choosing between a more expensive energy-efficient air-conditioner and a cheaper energy guzzler, most will focus on the upfront savings--unless they are clearly and persuasively informed about the money they will get back in lower electricity bills over the unit&apos;s lifetime.&quot; (p. 219)"/>
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<node CREATED="1205419697354" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_393940092" MODIFIED="1205419708778" TEXT="Market failures: Principal-agent problems">
<node CREATED="1205419709261" ID="Freemind_Link_425899864" MODIFIED="1213977901823" TEXT="&quot;Another market failure concerns what economists call &apos;principle-agent problems,&apos; which arise when the person who decides what level of energy efficiency to install is not the person who saves the money. Think of the real estate developer who chooses inadequate insulation because homeowners rarely make that the basis of their purchases, even though better insulation would save more money than the extra cost of installing it. Or the landlord who lacks incentive to fix drafty windows or install more efficient appliances because the tenant pays the utility bills. Or the television manufacturer who builds a product that hogs power even when in &apos;sleep&apos; mode. In these cases, simple government approaches can usefully buttress a cap-and-trade system, including improving building code standards, energy labeling, and efficiency standards for appliances. These are narrow-gauge approaches, not a comprehensive solution. If carbon trading provides the overarching framework--the economic signal that drives innovation and reorients market decisions--standards can ensure that the signal is transmitted to the final decisionmaker.&quot; (p. 219)"/>
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<node CREATED="1205420040167" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_728066859" MODIFIED="1205420042528" TEXT="Electric cars">
<node CREATED="1205419963392" ID="Freemind_Link_1409020448" MODIFIED="1205420011076" TEXT="&quot;[Automobiles] add another twenty pounds of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere with every gallon of gas they burn.&quot; (p. 220)"/>
<node CREATED="1205420042925" ID="Freemind_Link_1491864835" MODIFIED="1205420152760" TEXT="&quot;Even accounting for the largely carbon-intensive generation of electricity in the United States, battery-powered cars are responsible for only about half as much carbon dioxide per mile as comparable gasoline cars, and the picture is even better in regions with a relatively clean power mix, such as California. So while electric cars will not make a major dent in global warming pollution until battery costs come down and U.S. electric power generation relies far more heavily on solar, geothermal, wave, and wind, they will eventually become very important indeed.&quot; (p. 220)"/>
<node CREATED="1205426497596" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1067073154" MODIFIED="1205426499906" TEXT="Companies">
<node CREATED="1205420370792" ID="Freemind_Link_1720476965" MODIFIED="1205420380171" TEXT="Tesla Roadster (p. 220)"/>
<node CREATED="1205420390527" ID="Freemind_Link_1051625750" MODIFIED="1205420415431" TEXT="Think City car from Norway (p. 221)"/>
<node CREATED="1205420407062" ID="Freemind_Link_1589603670" MODIFIED="1205420430155" TEXT="Chevy Volt car from GM (p. 222)"/>
<node CREATED="1205420476448" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1748894722" MODIFIED="1205420634550" TEXT="California-based car company ZAP">
<node CREATED="1205420519250" ID="Freemind_Link_252852403" MODIFIED="1205420598248" TEXT="&quot;California-based car company ZAP, which has been making small, low-speed city cars for more than a decade and recently signed manufacturing agreements in China, says that its lightweight aluminum ZAP-X, with high-tech hub motors in every wheel, will deliver 644 horsepower, reach speeds up to 155 miles per hour, and go 350 miles on a ten-minute recharge.&quot; (p. 223)"/>
<node CREATED="1205420734529" ID="Freemind_Link_1591168823" MODIFIED="1205420806977" TEXT="&quot;(Automotive News notes that earlier questions about aluminum&apos;s safety have been put to rest by the proliferation of high-performance, lightweight vehicles in auto racing: &apos;Deaths have decreased significantly while the weights of the vehicles have gone down progressively...In this case, lighter is markedly safer.)&apos;&quot; (p. 223)"/>
<node CREATED="1205420676126" ID="Freemind_Link_1400197332" MODIFIED="1205420719654" TEXT="&quot;By eliminating the engine, transmission, drive train, and conventional brakes, ZAP says, it will open up space beneath the floor for a giant lithium-ion battery pack.&quot; (p. 223)"/>
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<node CREATED="1205420844418" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1077994802" MODIFIED="1205420850675" TEXT="PML Flightlink">
<node CREATED="1205420851314" ID="Freemind_Link_777441636" MODIFIED="1205420900152" TEXT="&quot;A still newer company, PML Flightlink, recently got $40 million to develop its own hub motors to be incorporated into car wheels, which it says will recapture 80 percent of the braking energy, using it to recharge the batteries.&quot; (p. 223)"/>
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<node CREATED="1205426512182" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1539303838" MODIFIED="1205426513843" TEXT="Batteries">
<node CREATED="1205426517720" ID="Freemind_Link_504214907" MODIFIED="1205426685338" TEXT="&quot;Most innovators are modifying the chemistry of lithium-ion batteries to make them cheaper (the battery pack in each Tesla Roadster costs $20,000), smaller, lighter, and safer (in computers, lithium-ion batteries have been known to go up in flames). A123Systems, an MIT spin-off, and Altair Nanotechnologies of Reno, Nevada, are both using nanotechnology to increase battery stability and performance and reduce cost, and both have deals with car companies. California&apos;s Air Resources Board calculates that with mass production, the price of lithium-ion battery packs will fall below $4,000, cheap enough for a mass-market car. A123 has more than $100 million in funding and 250 employees in the United States and Asia, is already supplying batteries for power tools to Black &amp; Decker and DeWalt, and is one of two companies developing batteries for the ChevyVolt.&quot; (p. 224)"/>
<node CREATED="1205426716119" ID="Freemind_Link_1051383558" MODIFIED="1205426984659" TEXT="&quot;More radical new storage approaches are also being explored. A company in Austin called EEStor has stirred intense curiosity with its new ultra-capacitor technology for cars, not least because it has maintained a silence worthy of Greta Garbo. When in 2007 the company was awarded its first key patent, the Associated Press reported that &quot;energy insider spotted six words in the filing that sounded like a death knell for the internal combustion engine.&apos; The six killer words: &apos;technologies for replacement of electrochemical batteries.&apos; Because a conventional battery relies on chemical reactions to store energy, it can be slow to charge and discharge. An ultra-capacitor instead sandwiches a chemical compound between thousands of wafer-thin metal sheets: charged particles stick to the metal sheets and move quickly across the material. In EEStor&apos;s case, the proprietary sandwich is made from barium titanate. The claims made for the device are extraordinary: that it will charge in five minutes, power a car for five hundred miles, weigh less than a hundred pounds, tolerate extremes of cold and heat, cycle through millions of discharges and recharges without giving out-- and be powering Canadian-manufactured ZENN Motor cars by 2008. Joseph Perry of Georgia Tech says his researchers have used a similar approach to double the amount of energy a capacitor can hold, but that EEStor is claiming a 400-fold improvement; Perry is skeptical, but hopes to be proved wrong.&quot; (p. 224)"/>
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<node CREATED="1205426999015" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1925467303" MODIFIED="1205427022224" TEXT="Car batteries as distributed storage">
<node CREATED="1205427023599" ID="Freemind_Link_1745272284" MODIFIED="1205427191499" TEXT="&quot;If the problems with batteries can be solved and electric cars or plug-in hybrids finally manage to go mainstream, that will present another game-changing possibility: the use of car batteries as a huge distributed storage system for off-peak and renewable energy. A consumer would &apos;fill up&apos; at home, using a standard wall socket. She would no longer need gas for local errands, and the cost of driving each mile would drop below 4 cents, equivalent to one-buck-a-gallon gas. On top of that, should would get paid by the local utility for agreeing to plug the car in during certain hours of the day, thus providing standby power to the electric grid in case it should need a quick burst of electricity; Hal LaFlash, director of renewable-energy policy for PG&amp;E, predicts payments from this vehicle-to-grid (V2G) system might reach several thousand dollars a year. The car battery would also serve as backup power should the grid go down, storing enough electricity to run a whole house (minus the air-conditioner) for two days.&quot; (p. 225)"/>
<node CREATED="1205427286243" ID="Freemind_Link_1767702598" MODIFIED="1205427443556" TEXT="&quot;Pacific Northwest National Laboratory calculates that there is enough excess nighttime generating capacity nationwide to charge 84 percent of the 198 million cars, pickups, and SUVs on the road today. Ideally, the energy charging those cars would come from carbon-free sources, which would reduce almost to zero the greenhouse gas emissions per mile. But a joint study by Electric Power Research Institute and the Natural Resources Defense Council found that even if a plug-in vehicle got all its electricity from coal-fired plants (the U.S. electricity grid is about 50 percent coal), it would still emit only two-thirds of the greenhouse gases released by a conventional car. Over the next thirty years, the study concluded, widespread adoption of V2G could eliminate 450 million tons of carbon dioxide annually, the equivalent of retired a third of the current fleet.&quot; (p. 226)"/>
<node CREATED="1205427522293" ID="Freemind_Link_1774919192" MODIFIED="1205427774779" TEXT="&quot;Several U.S. utilities have begun developing the infrastructure necessary to support V2G, with PG&amp;E in the lead. LaFlash says that rather than build new plants to meet marginal peak demand or pay gas-fired generators to quickly turn off and on, he would much rather use electric cars to shave those peaks. One thousand vehicles would hold a megawatt of power; four hundred thousand vehicles would hold the equivalent of a small coal-fired plant. Princeton&apos;s Steve Pacala explains that a utility&apos;s generating options become far greater if it does not have to be 100 percent reliable every minute of every day (that is, if it does not need enough extra power turned on at all times so that no matter who flicks a switch, a light comes on), but instead can fill in gaps from a distributed storage system. And while it takes $1,500 to build a kilowatt of capacity at a power plant, he says, it costs just $15 to make a kilowatt of capacity in a car. PG&amp;E has also announced plans to buy used electric-car batteries once they have outlived their usefulness for transport and install them in basements of offices and substations to store more green energy.&quot; (p. 226)"/>
<node CREATED="1205427820949" ID="Freemind_Link_1553405645" MODIFIED="1205427992600" TEXT="&quot;PG&amp;E is now working with Tesla on ways to remotely control charge (and discharge) times. With Google, the utility has installed a test recharging station to demonstrate the bidirectional flow of electricity between the car batteries (made by A123Systems) and the grid (though at the Googleplex, most of the power is coming from the solar panels installed by Energy Innovations); PG&amp;E sends wireless signals to the cars to determine their state of charge. More than one observer has noted the potential business opportunities for Google in a V2G system: providing data and network management infrastructure to figure out where millions of cars are plugged in, matching the power level in their batteries with the grid, developing meters that can track the energy going in and out of the cars, and figuring out what to charge or credit the car owner. With such a system, says one prominent venture capitalist, &apos;PG&amp;E will cut ExxonMobil at the knees.&apos;&quot; (p. 227)"/>
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<node CREATED="1205428389909" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_995813904" MODIFIED="1217728194398" TEXT="Improving car efficiency with today&apos;s technology">
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<node CREATED="1205428396846" ID="Freemind_Link_1548981236" MODIFIED="1205428547535" TEXT="&quot;Though there is no question that we needed the broadest possible research and development portfolio for the car of the future, some observers worry that the dazzling promises made for electricity (and for hydrogen, which for a time claimed the spotlight and still has its acolytes) have effectively distracted policymakers from the carbon-cutting opportunities immediately at hand. That carmakers could dramatically cut carbon emissions without any technological breakthroughs has been made patently clear by industry leaders elsewhere in the world. From 1990 to 2005, Toyota cut average fleetwide emissions not primarily by introducing the Prius, but by incrementally improving efficiency in the Corolla. BMW cut its fleet average 12 percent with efficiency improvements and the introduction of the MINI Cooper.&quot; (p. 228)"/>
<node CREATED="1205428574018" ID="Freemind_Link_896217702" MODIFIED="1213978084878" TEXT="&quot;Even the leading car companies could go further still, says Axel Friedrich, head of the transport department at Germany&apos;s Federal Environmental Agency. In 2007 he hired university engineers to rebuild a Volkswagen Golf with off-the-shelf parts: They cut emissions 25 percent while keeping horsepower intact. A study by the National Academy of Sciences estimates that 2 billion gallons of fuel a year could be saved in the United States just by reducing the rolling resistance of tires 10 percent, with no compromise on safety.&quot; (p. 228)"/>
<node CREATED="1205428682356" ID="Freemind_Link_1620350247" MODIFIED="1205428924428" TEXT="&quot;Without any major breakthroughs, vehicles that are little different from today&apos;s could use one-third the energy per mile, says John DeCicco, Environmental Defense Fund&apos;s specialist in automotive strategies. That alone would radically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. If those cars ran on a biofuel made from renewable feedstocks with one-fourth the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions of today&apos;s gasoline (Amyris&apos;s biogasoline, for instance, or Verenium&apos;s cellulosic ethanol), then the emissions per mile would be one-twelfth what they are today, a reduction of 92 percent. It was the feasibility of such options that, in September 2007, caused Vermont U.S. District Judge William K. Sessions to reject manufacturers&apos; challenges and rule that they could meet California&apos;s new standards, requiring carbon dioxide emissions in new cars to be cut about 22 percent in the first phase (2009 through 2012) and 30 percent in the mid-term phase (2013 to 2016). Given the expected doubling by midcentury of vehicle miles traveled in the United States, however, California and the rest of the country will have to go much further--reducing automobile emissions about 80 percent.&quot; (p. 229)"/>
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<node CREATED="1205429293395" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1205911861" MODIFIED="1217728232278" TEXT="Ethanol Boosting Systems">
<node CREATED="1205428974714" ID="Freemind_Link_1403039521" MODIFIED="1213978104691" TEXT="&quot;One of the most promising steps in that direction has emerged from the Sloan Automotive Laboratory at MIT. After several decades as head of the university&apos;s fusion center, Professor Daniel Cohn realized he wanted to work on something that would come to fruition in his own lifetime. With his old friend John Heywood, who runs the Sloan lab (he is often called &quot;the Yoda of cars&quot;), and Leslie Bromberg, one of the world&apos;s great computer modelers, he figured out a way to combine existing technologies to make a small internal combustion engine perform like a big one, improving fuel efficiency by 25 percent. The key is overcoming knock, the spontaneous explosions that occur in overheated cylinders and limit the amount of power carmakers can get from each piston stroke. Cohn and his colleagues discovered that could cool the overheated cylinders by spraying a bit of ethanol directly into the combustion chamber before the spark; ethanol takes a lot of heat to evaporate, so when it does it cools the cylinder far more effectively than water might, and without degrading the fuel mix. They called the technology--and the company they founded--Ethanol Boosting Systems (EBS). A small, light, four-cylinder engine equipped with an EBS, they claim, could power a giant truck. The necessary modifications--a second fuel tank for ethanol, an injection system, and a small exhaust-driven turbocharger (to compress more air into the cylinders)--will cost about $1,500, far less than the extra price consumers now pay for a hybrid (about $4,000 in 2007). With increased engine performance, the technology saves three gallons of gas for every gallon of ethanol consumed, reducing net carbon dioxide emissions 20 percent.&quot; (p. 230)"/>
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<node CREATED="1205429509263" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_935161356" MODIFIED="1217728239536" TEXT="CAFE standards">
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<node CREATED="1205429327765" ID="Freemind_Link_916396597" MODIFIED="1213978188339" TEXT="&quot;Even without using ethanol boosting or other exotic approaches, gasoline engines could perform far more efficiently than they do today. In a January 2007 paper for the Society of Automotive engineers, Heywood and an MIT graduate student found that advanced turbocharged gas engines could use 40 percent less fuel than conventional engines. Heywood has argued vigorously for changes in government policies--including stricter Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards--to help &apos;push and pull this technology into the marketplace and ensure it is used.&quot; (p. 230)"/>
<node CREATED="1205429525609" ID="Freemind_Link_1715040712" MODIFIED="1205429589732" TEXT="&quot;The United States has lagged other developed countries on this score. While the whole European fleet averaged 44.2 miles a gallon in 2007, and Japanese cars edged about 45 miles per gallon, the U.S. Congress finally agreed to require American cars and light trucks to average 35 miles a gallon-- by 2020.&quot; (p. 230)"/>
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<node CREATED="1205429793652" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_101422584" MODIFIED="1217728253815" TEXT="Redesigning the car body">
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<node CREATED="1205429797961" ID="Freemind_Link_212526140" MODIFIED="1205429859875" TEXT="&quot;Extended mirrors eat up ten miles per gallon, so instead they [Aptera] have set cameras flush into the body that transmit to LCD screens.&quot; (p. 232)"/>
<node CREATED="1205429862093" ID="Freemind_Link_1155723732" MODIFIED="1205429907450" TEXT="&quot;In 2007 it [Alcoa] formed a partnership with Zhengzhou Yutong Bus Company to build aluminum buses for the 2008 Olympics, which will cut overall weight by as much as 20 percent.&quot; (p. 232)"/>
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<node CREATED="1205429959545" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1692763609" MODIFIED="1217728274872" TEXT="Two-stroke engines in the developing world">
<node CREATED="1205429971810" ID="Freemind_Link_1565179083" MODIFIED="1205430165788" TEXT="&quot;The biggest opportunities for emissions reductions may be in the developing world, where demand for vehicles is growing fastest. A hundred million motorcycles, scooters, and three-wheel &apos;tuk-tuks&apos; in Southeast Asia are powered by two-stroke engines, each of which produces as much pollution as fifty cars. Envirofit International, a nonprofit organization in Colorado, has developed a fuel injection retrofit kit that cuts fuel use and carbon dioxide emissions from those two-stroke engines by 35 percent, with still greater reductions (up to 90 percent) of the conventional pollutants that cause cardiac and respiratory illness. By 2010 the organization will have retrofitted three thousand motorcycle taxi engines in the Philippines--eliminating 3,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year and saving drivers $1.4 million in fuel costs. Envirofit is now collaborating with microfinance groups to enable drivers to buy $350 kits with loans, paying them off in the first year with the $500 they save on fuel.&quot; (p. 233)"/>
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<node CREATED="1205430269968" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1568762666" MODIFIED="1213978316417" TEXT="Smarter Real Estate">
<node CREATED="1205430276517" ID="Freemind_Link_169706484" MODIFIED="1205430322413" TEXT="&quot;The last arena of automobile-related innovation is focused on reducing the amount of driving--currently projected to increase in the United States by 60 percent over the next two decades. These increases threaten to overwhelm gains won through more efficient vehicles alone.&quot; (p. 233)"/>
<node CREATED="1205430323165" ID="Freemind_Link_1125391968" MODIFIED="1213978296756" TEXT="&quot;Smarter real estate development is one important solution. A 2007 study by the Urban Land Institute found that shifting two-thirds of new growth to compact patterns would save 85 million tons of carbon dioxide annually by 2030. California&apos;s San Joaquin Valley recently put in place financial incentives to encourage developers to design subdivisions that reduce the need to drive. Going forward, policymakers may have to require more accountability for the carbon dioxide impacts of transportation and infrastructure decisions. Simply using the most advanced building technologies can make a big difference; &apos;cool paint,&apos; for instance, which reflects infrared light and therefore cuts heat absorption by half, can dramatically reduce air-conditioning loads.&quot; (p. 233)"/>
<node CREATED="1205430508866" ID="Freemind_Link_117136266" MODIFIED="1213978289731" TEXT="&quot;Getting incentives right for drivers and commuters is also critical. London has cut carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles in its city center by some 20 percent with congestion pricing--fees charged for entering the center during peak hours. In Germany, trucks with dirty engines pay higher tolls. Pay-as-you-drive insurance, which rewards drivers who reduce their annual mileage with lower premiums, could reduce Americans&apos; driving by as much as 15 percent. Used widely around the globe, such innovations could save 600 million tons of carbon by 2030.&quot; (p. 234)"/>
<node CREATED="1205431099916" ID="Freemind_Link_622051385" MODIFIED="1205431194690" TEXT="&quot;On a growing number of roads from Singapore to San Diego, tolls are being adjusted by the time of day to ensure that roads operate efficiently without congestion, with revenues funding better transit services. In Yorkshire, England, a private road developer&apos;s earnings are tied to how well traffic moves. Information feedback systems are optimizing passenger and freight routing: IBM is providing integrated, real-time information on trains, buses, highways, and airlines to allow travelers and shippers to avoid bottlenecks and breakdowns.&quot; (p. 234)"/>
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<node CREATED="1205431217474" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_915141415" MODIFIED="1205431559600" TEXT="Breaking OPEC&apos;s monopoly to reduce the price of oil">
<node CREATED="1205431397194" ID="Freemind_Link_975780619" MODIFIED="1205431488328" TEXT="&quot;A move toward greater efficiency in cars, combined with the advent of biofuels and better planning, says Pacala, will profoundly alter the economics of oil, the single most important determinant of our energy security. &apos;We&apos;ve had a nonmarket cartel controlling petroleum for decades,&apos; he explains. &apos;With that one bloc controlling 45 percent of the total and all the spare capacity, they have had a complete monopoly on price and trapped us in a rigged game for thirty years.&apos;&quot; (p. 234)"/>
<node CREATED="1205431223141" ID="Freemind_Link_191257584" MODIFIED="1213978371203" TEXT="&quot;A global cap-and-trade system would build a substantial industry providing alternatives to oil and thus would cause the price of oil to fall to the price of alternatives-- about $40 to $50 a barrel. &apos;The extra dollars per barrel they&apos;re [OPEC] getting, the transfer of rents resulting from that monopoly market, adds up to about $1 trillion a year, which is more than enough to pay for climate solutions,&apos; says Pacala. &apos;All it would take to get petroleum down to that free-market price is opening up a gap, not a very big gap--just a couple of million barrels a day--between the supply and the demand. That would break their capacity to sustain those price controls and generate enormous savings in consuming countries, which could be used to finance global warming solutions.&apos;&quot; (p. 234)"/>
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<node CREATED="1205945072903" ID="Freemind_Link_609736926" MODIFIED="1205945081300" POSITION="right" TEXT="Chapter 10 (Futuristic solutions)"/>
<node CREATED="1213978635671" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_894264489" MODIFIED="1217728356123" POSITION="right" TEXT="About the authors">
<node CREATED="1213978646916" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_417335894" MODIFIED="1217728354699" TEXT="Fred Krupp">
<node CREATED="1213978658812" ID="Freemind_Link_1021746182" MODIFIED="1213978665445" TEXT="Fred Krupp is president of Environmental Defense Fund, a national nonprofit organization that links science, economics, law and innovative private-sector partnerships to create breakthrough solutions to the most serious environmental problems.&#xa;&#xa;Krupp has been an influential leader in developing market-based solutions for our planet, such as the acid rain reduction plan in the 1990 Clean Air Act and the U.S. proposal for the global climate treaty. He played a pivotal role in the $45 billion buyout of Texas utility TXU in 2007, winning major environmental safeguards. He has led Environmental Defense Fund in a series of corporate partnerships with DuPont, FedEx, McDonald&#x2019;s and others and helped launch the U.S. Climate Action Partnership.&#xa;&#xa;Krupp is a graduate of Yale with a law degree from the University of Michigan. Prior to joining Environmental Defense Fund, he spent several years in private law practice in New Haven and helped found the Connecticut Fund for the Environment, a leading state environmental group. He lives in Connecticut with his family."/>
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<node CREATED="1213978672298" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1576403277" MODIFIED="1217728351907" TEXT="Miriam Horn">
<node CREATED="1213978686083" ID="Freemind_Link_1138028258" MODIFIED="1213978687644" TEXT="Miriam Horn, now on staff at Environmental Defense Fund, has written for numerous newspapers and magazines, including Vanity Fair, The New York Times and The New Republic. She was also a senior editor at U.S. News and World Report, where she was a finalist for a National Magazine Award. The author of Rebels in White Gloves; Coming of Age with Hillary&#x2019;s Class &#x2013; Wellesley &#x2018;69 (Times Books, 1999), Horn lives in New York City with her husband and daughter. She is a graduate of Harvard University, and studied environmental science at Columbia University."/>
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<node CREATED="1213978711509" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_1457338783" MODIFIED="1213978713089" TEXT="About Environmental Defense Fund">
<node CREATED="1213978727502" ID="Freemind_Link_500589371" MODIFIED="1213978741433" TEXT="Environmental Defense Fund is at the forefront of an innovation revolution, developing new solutions that protect the natural world while growing the economy. Founded in 1967 and representing more than 500,000 members, the group creates powerful economic incentives by working with market leaders and relying on rigorous science. See more about our work.  [edf.org]&#xa;&#xa;All profits from sales of this book will go to support EDF&apos;s global warming campaign."/>
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<node CREATED="1205949373227" FOLDED="true" ID="Freemind_Link_798852525" MODIFIED="1217728478312" POSITION="right" TEXT="Reasons for Mindmap">
<node CREATED="1205949382352" ID="Freemind_Link_399068734" MODIFIED="1205986330615" TEXT="1) If the goal of the book is to give people a tool to win debates, the mindmap makes it a lot faster and easier to find ideas/facts from the book to support your argument&#xa;&#xa;2) It makes the book much easier to for journalists and bloggers to talk about. Enables journalists to ask better questions.&#xa;&#xa;3) Gives early adopters the tools they need to talk to the masses&#xa;&#xa;4) It makes it much faster to grok the most important ideas in the book&#xa;&#xa;5) Reading a book is a lot of work, and flipping through a mindmap is more like something you do to procrastinate from doing work.&#xa;&#xa;&#xa;&#xa;"/>
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