I just got around to posting slides from my January lectures at Northwestern University and University of San Francisco on SlideShare and embedding here for you all to have a look. The video from my NU lecture is online as well.
And found a really old deck I had up there from a previous Beijing Energy Network talk while I was a carbon analyst at BNEF.
I am proud to say I have made my best music video to date. It was all just the great sum of many individual parts: working with an awesome team, sunny days for filming, an awesome camera and cameraman, laying down the track in a proper studio, and of course one truly inspiring and viral idea: Occupy Rooftops.
This video’s purpose is to get people excited about investing in community solar and putting their dollars into something that can make a difference while earning some decent interest. I hope it does just that!
Please tweet and share this video.
Don’t u know I got a fever and the only cure is solar PV? #occupyrooftops music vid from @sustainablejohn @solarmosaic bit.ly/OccupyRooftops
— sustainable john (@sustainablejohn) May 11, 2012
Professor Dan Kammen seems happy to be back on campus after spending a year serving as the World Bank’s Chief Technical Specialist for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency. While in DC, it was his job to be the voice for a clean energy future in a bank that still lends money to big coal-fired power plants. Even with cogent analysis to back up calls for a clean energy transition, Kammen found that old habits will die hard.
The World Bank has been funding coal-fired power projects for more than a decade in Kosovo. Kosovo’s growing economy has experienced a surge in energy demand, and many experts at the Bank contend that yet another new large coal-fired power plant will be the “least cost” option to meet this demand. In a recent SF Chronicle op-ed, Kammen stated why he thinks this is distinctly not the case.
Using research produced by his students and colleagues in the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory (RAEL) here at Berkeley, he points out that an alternative low-carbon scenario including efficiency, hydropower, and other renewables would create more jobs and that “the capital cost of the scenario including a new coal power plant is more than double the cost of the low carbon scenario.” Additionally, if Kosovo wants to join the EU, a new coal plant would ensure that Kosovo would not be able to meet the EU’s 2020 climate goals. Civil society in Kosovo is strongly against any new coal plants, Kammen notes, because the type of coal they have there is a very dirty form of lignite which is causing severe air pollution.
Cases like this are not without precedent. In August 2010, the World Bank approved a $3.75 billion loan to a coal fired power plant in Medupi, South Africa, amidst environmental criticism from all over the globe. Although the U.S. ended up abstaining from the vote on this project, South African President Jacob Zuma lobbied hard for support from the U.K., which ended up approving the loan.
The major donors to the World Bank have large sway in whether these projects get approved or not, and the U.S. has so far been in support of the Kosovo project. The World Bank has also been lobbying the U.S. for a larger allocation to their loan portfolio. Kammen sees the new World Bank president Jim Yong Kim (a public health expert) as one of the last hopes in stopping the construction of a new coal-fired power plant. Bob Ichord, a deputy assistant secretary at the State Department’s new Bureau of Energy Resources, could also play a role in swaying the decision.
A new World Bank energy strategy that would require greenhouse gas analysis for all electricity investments and prohibit funding of new coal-fired power plants in non-IDA countries (Kosovo is an IDA country, but South Africa is not) has been stalled since it was leaked in April 2011 before a meeting of the Committee on Development Effectiveness (CODE) could vote on it. Executive members of CODE include representatives from major World Bank donor and recipient countries. Reportedly, China and other developing countries refused to negotiate and vote on the proposal once it had been leaked.
Had a little party yesterday and cooked up about a dozen jian bings for my friends on my new propane fired Krampouz crepe griddle. This may be one of the wisest investments I’ve ever made. The heating is incredibly intense but easily controlled and evenly distributed. Not sure quickly it runs through a tank of gas yet, but I am very pleased with the way my new jian bings are turning out. Next step: get a trike! I also want to work on my packaging…
You know the drill here… batter, egg, green onion, cilantro, then…. the flip (!), hoisin, fermented tofu, spicy sauce, black sesame seeds, and now using three fried wonton wrappers for an extra crispy tri-fold jian bing. It’s so beautiful and delicious…
I was at First Friday’s in Oakland this past Friday, and there was a hipster with a trike (push cart, one wheel and seat in the back, two wheels in the front) serving up “mini tacos”. He basically just assembled the tacos with pre-made ingredients, nothing special, pretty lame actually. Ha, look at me, not even launched yet but already dissing the competition. Anyways, it seems like First Friday’s is a good place to launch my trike and test out the market for sure.
lame mini taco trike
I’ve started to read an “Introduction to Energy in California” by journalist Peter Asmus (who apparently also has a side career in music/sustainability). One cool part of this book is that it is part of a series called “California Natural History Guides”; the other books in the series are Air, Water, and Fire. I’m pretty stoked that Energy is one of the Natural History Guides. The series is almost as complete as Captain Planet’s Planeteers: earth, water, fire, wind, and heart. Wind + heart = energy? Yeah, that’s pretty much my textbook definition. There’s a reason why the logo for China’s Green Beat has a heart.
So if I’m so warm and fuzzy about energy, why is this post talking about a “sick sick world”? Well, the history of energy in California turns out to be extremely fascinating in ways that just sometimes baffle me. I believe energy development has often swayed between the realms of capitalism and socialism and this has truly impacted the landscape. It makes working in energy sometimes very painful (hitting head against the wall) but all the more rewarding, and that’s why we love it.
Here are two excerpts from the early chapters of the book that are the subject of my fascination:
Electric vehicles that could travel 100 miles between recharges had already been put on the market in 1900, but the lack of charging stations rendered them impractical for most of California.
Ummm… sound familiar anyone? We’re in pretty much the same situation now.
Armed with Edison’s patents on a variety of gadgets that ran on electricity, Southern California Edison [a utility] was particularly adept at expanding each consumer’s consumption of kilowatt hours of electricity through aggressive sales of vacuum cleaners, electric stoves, and other home appliances. [this is the 1910s, 1920s]
Do you what the utility does today in California? Their revenues are “decoupled” from their sales (rates can be adjusted legally to guarantee utility profits when sales drop), so there is an incentive for them to make their customers more energy efficient. Utilities have entire business units dedicated to end-use efficiency, and ARRA had specific programs for offering rebates on more energy efficient appliances. So, the juxtaposition of where we are today as compared with the historic beginning of the utility industry (whereby it actively created the demand for its product) is pretty fascinating.
The book has lots of other juicy tidbits on the development of oil and hydropower in California which were the main focuses of the industry from 1850 all the way until 1950, when natural gas and nuclear became much more important. Another awesome thing about early energy development…the first power stations were called “dynamos“; I mean, how badass is that? I highly recommend this book for anyone in the energy or public policy fields.
To finish this “sick sick world” post, however, I do not need to go far from my office. In fact, I can just go the top of my building at Lawrence Berkeley Lab (building 90) and take a look at the solar water heaters that seem to be from the 1980s or possibly even earlier. Now for a national lab, that has cutting edge research in all fields of clean energy and carbon reduction and was home to the U.S.’s current secretary of energy Steven Chu, you would think that we could ditch the “first-mover” installation of 80s water heaters and get a full modern age rooftop solar PV installation done. With a lab that isn’t moving any time soon, and a relatively sunny Berkeley, and with the way solar prices have plummeted, and with retail rates in northern California around $0.15-20/kWh, you would think that the lab has an interest in going solar and saving a ton of money through a wise investment (much more than with those aged, although possibly still decently working, solar water heaters). You would think this, until you found out that LBL has a special electricity contract with prices of $0.05/kWh, pitifully low. According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s chart on solar grid parity, this investment should become attractive some time around NEVER (later than 2030). LBL is a leader in research for a low-carbon economy, but it’s a sick, sick world when it comes to walking the talk.
LBL building 90 solar water heaters from the 1980s (also notice plenty of ample rooftop space everywhere for solar PV which will likely never be used)
Readers: What’s your favorite example of the “sick sick world” of energy? Don’t you love it? 