A $50 Billion CalCars Plan to Save Detroit

As the age of oil ends we have stopped buying the cars Detroit makes, so now they don't have the money to build the fuel efficient vehicles we do need.

Yet many near-term solutions such as the Volt (which had been on track for 2010) could have driven us out of the age of oil. We have come to an impasse.

An interesting idea CalCars founder Felix Kramer is proposing would be a way to generate $50 billion for the auto industry and just get us the low carbon driving options America needs.

Put together 5 million deposits on EVs and PHEV orders at $10,000 each.
Give the $50 billion that that would generate to automakers to build the orders.
Refund $7,500 to the buyers within a year via the EV tax credits passed in October.
Allow orders placed up till next April to count towards the 2008 tax year for tax credits.

Between public and private fleets, those buyers could account for nearly a million orders alone. Private fleet orders would come from car share and taxi companies and universities. Some construction companies are paying to convert truck fleets to electric. The Federal government alone buys 75,000 cars a year. There is pent-up demand for the post oil age vehicles.

The genius of the CalCars plan is that it addresses that demand, and utilizes its force in a judo - like move.

WHY ARE CAR SALES FALLING? Not just because of the economic crisis. The more Americans hear that better cars are on the way, the more individuals and fleets will be reluctant to commit to inefficient vehicles whose resale value may fall quickly because they run only on price-volatile, polluting fossil fuels. We can harness these impulses.

As taxpayers, we have already invested in all the R&D that created these vehicles; last year's Energy bill had $25 billion for EV development under Section 136 of the 2007 Energy bill --almost $800 million of that went into the Volt alone. However, getting from the design room to the factory floor has been like pulling teeth.

Ford, for example, has now successfully test-driven its PHEV for over a year with Southern California Edison. Yet, despite a year of real-world driving success, Ford has no plans to produce their PHEV before 2015.

But $10,000 deposits on particular models would enforce specific action, and not waste autocompanies precious financial resources making more of what customers do not want. For small companies, deposits help focus precious resources where they can generate a certain return. Big companies need to have the same focus.

The automakers would not be able to start collecting deposits on the orders till they issue a maximum price estimate and specs. They would be given till Dec. 31, 2012 to fill the orders.

It is a novel idea but not untried. SmartForTwo and Tesla both took deposits to help them fund their production and gage the level of customer interest. But are there five million customers in the country who care enough? I think so.

The extraordinary number of people who were willing to donate their hard-earned money this election season to ensure that the country gets safely out of the Bush Error might suggest that there are more of these idealistic and altruistic people willing to put down hard money on a better future for the planet than the economic news would suggest.

WHY NOT ENLIST THE AMERICAN PUBLIC'S BUYING POWER? We're inspired by how Americans rose to past challenges: We raised $17 billion Liberty Bonds in two years in World War I. And 85 million Americans bought $185 billion in War Bonds during World War II. Especially since dollars back then were worth over ten times more than now, our proposal is small in comparison.

Here's the kicker. Any automaker that wants to receive federal loan guarantees beginning in January 2009 would have to commit by the end of this month to have at least one eligible plug-in vehicle for sale by the end of 2010 in volumes greater than 10,000.

The other funding ideas, such as robbing the Section 136 Innovation funding that jumpstarted the EV and PHEV industries, are counterproductive. So, if you think the CalCars idea is workable, you might want to spread it around.

Photo by Flikr user joshmeister
Read more...

Let's Pay Detroit To Bring Their Gas Sipping Cars Home To The U.S.A.

Who hasn't been enraged to read about how Ford and G.M. can make perfectly good little gas sippers in Europe, but just can't bring themselves to make a fuel efficient car for us back home?

Well, now that they need some funding from us, here's an idea. Let's fund Detroit just to set up their efficient European car factories — back here, where they are really needed. Let's get some better gas mileage out of their money troubles.

Apparently, it only costs $75 million to completely retool a plant, to produce an efficient little car instead of the gas-guzzling behemoth they were fobbing off on us fools all these years.

Read more...

Life-form with Million Year Lifespan

Microbes Devise Superior Evolutionary Strategy

One of the prerequisites for us humans to achieve interstellar travel is faster spaceships.

But what if we could do the opposite: what if instead we could evolve as slower people?

Imagine us with million year lifespans. Imagine if we lived on a geologic timescale.

If we could live a million years, then travel to a star 60,000 light years away would have all the traveltime investment of a bus trip cross town.

And here is Compared to us, a butterfly doesn't seem to get much done in it's tiny two week span. Imagine how much more we would achieve as a species if we could live a million years.

For one thing, locating and colonizing other planets looks a lot easier. So it is exciting news that scientists have found a new life form that looks to be working on exactly this evolutionary feat: learning to live for millions of years.

No doubt this is to make sure that theres a more feasible exit strategy when they evolve to our level and need 5 more planets for all the stuff they make, like we do.

This new lifeform is just a speck of stuff right now, living under the sea floor, but hey, where was your big fancy SUV a billion years ago? You too evolved from a tiny speck of stuff just like these newly discovered lifeforms.

ScienceDaily (July 22, 2008)

Tiny microbes beneath the sea floor, distinct from life on the Earth's surface, may account for one-tenth of the Earth's living biomass, according to an interdisciplinary team of researchers, but many of these minute creatures are living on a geologic timescale . While the Bacteria Escherichia Coli, as an example, doubles its numbers every 20 minutes, these Archaea double on the order of hundreds or thousands of years and consume very little energy.

"In essence, these microbes are almost, practically dead by our normal standards," says House. "They metabolize a little, but not much."

According to House, organisms metabolizing at such slow rates is what we could expect to find in other areas of our solar system because such environments have much less energy available than on Earth. Perhaps, similar organisms may be in hydrothermal vents beneath the ice of Europa -- the second moon of Jupiter -- or in subsurface aquifers of Mars.

"We do not expect the microbes in other places to be these microbes exactly," says House. "But, they could be living at a similar slow rate."

"For example, how do they die?" asks Biddle. "It is a simple question that we cannot answer."

Photo from NASA Read more...

LEED to Rate Solar-Powering Your City: Worthless

Or they they will… unless you weigh in:

California has a requirement that all new buildings be zero carbon by 2020; every electron a building uses must come from power generated onsite. Obama plans the same requirement nationwide by 2030.

So you would think that to meet their new neighborhood certification, on-site renewable energy would be a LEED requirement, not just an option. But it won’t be. What’s worse, it will be worth a measly 3 points out of the total 110 possible points to get LEED certification. But you can change that.

Recently LEED started their pilot program to certify neighborhoods. They have opened up their plans in a 50 day open comment period for review of the new neighborhood certification. Until this point, LEED has certified only buildings. But now, while they are “open to comment”, is the time to ask them to make a change — before a feeble standard is enshrined in convoluted plans that achieve little.

Presently, zero carbon or “On-Site Renewable Energy Sources” is more than half-way down the LEED list and can only garner only 3 out of the possible 110 points. So even if your neighborhood was 100% solar powered, you could only get 3 points. Or 100% geothermal powered, etc.

There are so many ways that entire neighborhoods can make renewable electricity. These tested technologies are in current use and are widely available now for neighborhoods:

1. Solar roofs on all big buildings, solar thermal outside town.
2. A wind turbine on the edge of town.
3. District heating: (CHP) combined heat and electric power. A boiler heats water or (or even better material) that turns a turbine to make electricity and the still warm waste water can be circulated throughout a neighborhood for heat. A CHP can be fueled by almost any biomass waste; from sewage to pig parts and from any cellulosic waste from walnut shells to woodchips.
4. Geothermal power in the Western and Southwestern states.

Several more are on the cusp of wide application.

1. Genetically engineered bacteria and nano-engineered algae fuels to replace natural gas fired electric power plants.
2. New non-invasive watermills - if you’re by a river.
3. Tidal or wave power – if you’re near the ocean.
4. Enhanced geothermal systems will soon be nationwide (EGS is what Google just invested $11 million in) because they can go deep enough to where it’s hot all over the world.
5. Solar thermal - normally out in a desert; has just been tested on a building. Why not?

If you want to weigh in on LEED’s strangely low weighting of self-powered buildings within neighborhoods, here’s their comment form. It is possible to improve LEED for neighborhoods. Weigh in.

But be polite. They just don’t know as much as you do about renewable energy.

Photo credit: Texas Finn via Flikr Creative Commons License

Published at Cleantechnica and SolveClimate Read more...

The Real Wall Street Bailout

A mere few centuries after they founded Nieuw Amsterdam , a distant settlement that came to be known as New York City; the worlds leading experts in sea-level adaptations may see their former colony drowned. But will Dutch dykes be enough to save Nieuw Amsterdam?

Beginning with just over three feet of sea level rise, the impact on the US would be calamitous, having the potential to destabilize many highly populated areas of this country, according to a Coastal Impact Study published at Architecture 2030.

The study challenges the notion that has been advanced by the media that only poor nations far from us will be impacted by climate change, leading to complacency about the need to confront global warming.

But even three feet of sea level rise - which is on the low side of most IPPC reports - will displace not just 60% of those other 6 billion far away foreigners, but that number actually includes most of our own coastal residents. As illustrated in these interactive maps of the effects on our own coasts.

"Starting in East Boston and moving down along the East Coast, around Florida and over to the Gulf of Mexico, then up along the West Coast and ending with the city of Honolulu, Hawaii, a picture of inundation, population displacement and catastrophic property loss develops.

With a business-as-usual approach, where fossil-fuel consumption and GHG emissions continue to increase, we will likely see a warming of 2 °C to 3 °C this century with a planetary energy imbalance sufficient to melt enough ice to raise sea level by several meters.

Once the process of ice sheet disintegration begins, the impact on the US is unremitting, and at each additional increment, additional cities and towns will be adversely affected."

If you think that bailing out Wall Street is expensive, you can imagine what its going to cost us to really bail out Wall Street.

Maybe we should just give Nieuw Amsterdam back?

Published at NRDC OnEarth and Red Green and Blue Read more...

Wildfire-Proof Prefab Camp Closes Up When You're Gone

If you live in dangerous drought conditions, wildfires are a worry.

So imagine a campsite dwelling designed so that you can easily just close it up entirely, completely concealed inside a fireproof sheath, whenever you are away. It is perfect for sites like this isolated area of drought-ridden Australia.

When closed, this prefab is completely sheathed in copper. This protects the 10 x10 foot building from brush fire.

And not just fire;



Goldilocks would love to creep upstairs when you are away and sleep in your comfy bed. An occasional-use building like this isolated camp shelter also needs to be protected against wandering vandals like Goldilocks. This design achieves that goal too.



Because how are any wandering vandals going to get in? There's no windows to break.

When you are gone, it looks weird and nasty, presenting a deliberately non-inviting presence to any possible unwelcome "guests". It might have come from another dimension of the universe, even.

But, it is surprisingly luxurious and comfortable inside when its opened up for habitation. Natural breezes flow through it. A spartan approach to green living.



In back, this cistern collects rain while you are gone, so you can put on a pot of tea when you return from your sojourns in this parched landscape.



Not bad, eh?

Architect: Casey Brown
Source: Research Architecture

For GreenBuildingElements Read more...

Rensselaer Researchers Nano-Engineer Solar to ‘Near Perfect’ Efficiency

Nano-engineering students at Rensselaer have created a solar power game-changer: more than 96% absorption of sunlight from all angles, from sunrise to sunset.

The two biggest efficiency hurdles for solar efficiency have been:

1. Solar cells absorb only part of the light spectrum.
2. The sun always moves in relation to the panel.

To solve problem number one, researchers nano-invented an anti-reflective coating to make the solar cell capture the full light spectrum. Currently, solar cells reflect almost 1/3 of the sunlight that hits them. That reflected light is not harvested, which has reduced solar cell efficiency. Problem one solved.

To solve problem two, they stopped the sun in its tracks.

Well, no, actually, that would be a roundabout way to solve that problem.

Instead, they designed a nano-coating to ‘follow’ the sun’s movements and absorb every last photon of light, regardless of the suns moving position in the sky.

The problem:

Most surfaces and coatings absorb or transmit light through them from only a specific range of angles. Your glasses, for instance, absorb-transmit all the light in front of you. But much less from the periphery.

That’s why some solar panels are mechanized to slowly move so they always face the moving sun. But that uses energy, too. So the energy it takes reduces the efficiency of the panel.

‘At the beginning of the project, we asked ‘would it be possible to create a single anti-reflective structure that can work from all angles?’ said Shawn-Yu Lin, professor of physics at Rensselaer and a member of the university’s Future Chips Constellation who led the research project.

‘Then we attacked the problem from a fundamental perspective, tested and fine-tuned our theory, and created a working device,’ Lin said. Rensselaer physics grad student Mei-Ling Kuo played a key role in the investigations.

How their solution works:

Unlike typical antireflective coatings that are engineered to transmit light of only one particular wavelength, this coating stacks seven of these layers, one on top of the other, in such a way that each layer enhances the anti-reflective properties of the layer below it.

These additional layers also help to ‘bend’ the flow of sunlight to an angle that augments the coating’s anti-reflective properties. This means that each layer transmits sunlight and also helps to capture any light that may have otherwise been reflected off of the layers below it.

The seven layers, each with a height of 50 nanometers to 100 nanometers, are made up of silicon dioxide and titanium dioxide nanorods positioned at an oblique angle.

Each layer looks like (and functions like) a dense forest where sunlight is ‘captured’ between the trees. The nanorods were attached to a silicon substrate via chemical vapor disposition.

The silicon surface absorbed 96.21 percent of sunlight, after treating the material with the reflective coating.

Only 3.79 percent of the sunlight was reflected and unharvested.

The entire spectrum of sunlight from UV to visible light to infrared was absorbed, for the first time.

‘To get maximum efficiency when converting solar power into electricity, you want a solar panel that can absorb nearly every single photon of light, regardless of the sun’s position in the sky,’ said Lin. ‘Our new antireflective coating makes this possible.’

The bottom line:

This is a game changer. This nano-engineered coating could be applied to nearly any photovoltaic material for use in solar cells, says Lin. These two huge gains move solar power forward to being cost-effective for mass production.

Photo Credit: Flikr user ZebSnaps via Creative Commons License, Rensselaer press release

Source: Rensselaer Polytechnical Institute

Published at cleantechnica and SolveClimate Read more...

Homo Sapiens Redesign: Homo Sustainabilius

I just knew Mother Nature would figure something out! The 6 Billion of us is such a tight squeeze on this planet, with our unsustainable ways!

Ecologists say that eventually climate change will shrink all species. They don't say, but, well, won't that include our own species?

It turns out the degradation of environments around the world due to climate change is limiting food availability, and as a result, smaller animals are doing better now than larger ones that need more resources.

Warmer temperatures limits species size.

Bergmann's rule says that species size decreases as warmth increases. That's because smaller species can radiate heat better to adapt to warm temperatures. The tropics host smaller species. Larger animals have a lower surface-area-to-volume ratio, allowing them to retain more heat and fare better in a cold climate, smaller ones in warm climates.

As a result, "As the world gets warmer, species will shrink."says Wendy Foden, the World Conservation Union biologist studying the effects of climate change on species.

Another population biologist Andy Purvis says that dying early will also reduce size. He says that all species will gradually evolve into smaller versions because as a result of climate change, they'll be coping with sudden changes in their environment and hence dying prematurely, leading to smaller offspring over time

So this will make sustainability more attainable for our species, won't it?

Imagine if we had been only 1 foot tall from the get-go. We'd have much less impact on the planet's resources. We would have set sail for America - where we now tear through five planets-worth of resources- in a boat about the size of one large log.

But of course, this adjustment is going to be in the very, very, very long run.

If only Gaia had had the foresight to make this adjustment to the size of Homo Sapiens a few million years earlier, we might not need five whole planets now to live the unsustainable way that we live now.

Artwork by Slinkachu

For the NRDC OnEarth

Read more...

A Federal Investment Bank For Renewable Energy

With the current financial crisis, the US has become like a typical third world nation –it’s now practically impossible to get investment debt financing, even for renewable energy for electricity we need, and with the paybacks of solar, geothermal and wind power.

Ever since the 60’s, the US Government has helped developers and lenders finance projects in the developing world where commercial lending was previously either non-existent or considered too risky.

Deutschbank and ClimateIntel both propose that we now create that same kind of quasi-governmental agency to jump-start the clean technology sector of renewable energy technologies in the U.S.

The US Government has dealt with this kind of investment problem in the third world by providing government-backed investment through its Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC).

The creation of a Renewable Energy Private Investment Corporation (REPIC) would provide a market-based mechanism to achieve similar goals.

The current financial crisis could serve a similar impetus in connection with the financing and developing of renewable energy projects that today, because of the crisis, cannot attract debt financing.

Moreover, the experience gained from OPIC would render a REPIC able to provide financial assistance in a sufficiently short time frame to have an impact on the economic crisis.

By creating REPIC and involving it in the financing of not only renewable energy projects along with new technology the Obama Administration could directly facilitate the development of new technology and projects, giving rise to “green” jobs and increased employment.

Not only is solving climate change the mother of all necessities, but there is already legislation that demands investment in renewable energy — but now, no mechanism to finance it.

One piece of legislation — a nationwide Renewable Portfolio Standards bill — will easily pass the next Senate with its near 60 majority. Many of the 26 states that have passed RPS already have utilities in danger of incurring fines for not meeting the new higher percentages it requires of renewable energy. The slowdown will bring only increasing friction between what is required and what can be financed and built in time for each mandated deadline.

Here in California, PG&E is likely going to be fined for missing its 20% renewables target by 2010. It now gets 14% from renewables. Climate change has played a part ,as we now have less snow-pack. But with the investment slowdown, it is now increasingly unlikely that PG&E will hit its target.

However, if a quasi-governmental investment bank were to guarantee utilities the loans they need to meet the mandated investments, that would solve the problem. And it would not expose the bank to risky loans, as renewable energy has a certain payback; the ground is not about to run out of heat or cold any time soon, nor the sky out of wind and sun. In fact, the U.K. is now reaping the financial rewards ( U.K. Guardian) of its mandated investments in renewable energy 15 years ago to meet Kyoto requirements:

The government profits come from a scheme set up in the 1980s to support renewable energy projects by guaranteeing to pay developers building wind, biomass and other non-fossil fuel generation plants a fixed price for their electricity for 15 years.

During the first decade of the so-called Non-Fossil Fuel Obligation scheme, it ran at a loss, paid for by consumers. But over the last six years, rising electricity prices have allowed the government to cash in on the energy contracts at a substantial profit.

The same thing would happen in the US. Unlike fossil-based electricity, renewable electricity prices will remain stable; once the capital investment is paid off — typically in 15 to 20 years — the fuel is free.

Photo Credit: inside view of a turbine by Flikr user Frogdog*
Via: ClimateIntel and Green Wombat

For Cleantechnica
Read more...

How to Build a Zero Carbon America Fast

Here's an idea for legislation to get more solar roofs up fast and cheaply, even during the current financial meltdown:


How?

Write a law saying that if homeowners want to put in a solar roof, then their utility MUST then forward their electricty bill payments to the solar company till the roof has been paid off by the homeowner, and the utility MUST accept the electrons being added to their grid from that customers roof.

How would that work?

1. You would be contacted to see if you would like to put up a solar roof. You would agree. Installation would be done. Your roof would begin sending electrcity to the grid.

2. You would contact your utility to tell them you have switched from being a customer to being a supplier of electricity to them.

3. They would say, ok, take you off their roll and send you an (averaged over the last year) bill which would become your new monthly payment amount towards paying off the solar roof. (Typically someone who pays alow of $80 a month and a high of $120 would be signed up to now paying a regular monthly bill of $100 for ten or twenty years - till the roof is paid off.) The utility would forward the entire payment to the solar company.

4. This billing would go on for as many years as it takes to pay off the solar roof, depending on size. If you move, the next person living there takes over the standard payment.

Why this solution would be attractive to uilities:

Renewable Portfolio Standards, while intended to get utilities to buy more renewables, can be slowed by NIMBYism and also by the ignorance of utilties about renewable power, dragging their feet. At a time of no credit; it's hard to comply. The utility must find credit and spend money to put in new renewable power to comply with RPS.

1. Utilities in 30 states already have to find more renewable power to comply with RPS. (Once congress passes the RPS nationwide (likely this year), even more utilities will have to find more renewables somewhere.) My solution offers a way for utilities to comply, yet not lift a finger to learn about renewables or spend money or credit on financing new renewable power.

2. If the homeowner defaults on the monthly payments the utility can cut you off just as they can now. So the utility, and solar company is more sure than a bank is of getting paid. They are not taking the same risk as a bank in "financing" the solar roofing of America.

Why this would be attractive to homeowners:

1. Most want to help solve climate change, if it doesn't cost more.
2. This way they wouldn't have to pay more than they do now.
3. They get a guaranteed fixed cost for ten or twenty years - and then free. The electricity price would not constantly go up like if they were paying the utility.

I have sold renewable energy, and my experience is that people want renewable power If it cost the same as they are paying currently. They just cannot find financing for the upfront costs.

If it was just "sign here to switch", no money involved - most people would switch to paying off a solar roof instead. With this law they would know that they do not have to apply for financing - they just would send the usual payment to their utility. (Berkeley just sold out of their new financing system involving property tax assessments)

Why this would help grow solar businesses:

Few people will risk having their power turned off by their utility for non payment.
As investers realized that all these solar businesses were cash cows over the long term with reliable mulitple monthly payments coming in for decades, they would loosen their pursestrings and lend to the solar companies to expand. The Federal government could guarantee these utility payments to the solar companies as collateral.

Why this would be attractive to the public:

There is no cost to taxpayers: All it would take is a law. No new taxpayer money is involved. Unlike Feed in Tarfiffs - which the public fears would encourage utilities to just charge you more for electricity since they must pay retail for your electricity.

Why this would cost nothing:

Nobody is inconvenienced.
The solar company is doing a lot more work and getting paid reliably over time (and thus getting loans easier).
The homeowner is paying their usual electrcity bill, except it goes all to the solar company.
The utility is the only one doing a little work for free; a little simple repetitive billing for the solar roof. But in exchange for this pro bono billing work, they do not have to go out and find new electrons to supply this homeowner any more. So, no benefit - but also - no cost. It's a wash. (Part of the business that just is something you have to do, like figuring out sales tax forms. As a former business owner, I know most businesses accept that. This would be just like that: a little inconvenience.)

What the congress can do:

You could guarantee the collateral (monthly payments) like you have the FDIC - so the solar companies have access to credit for expansion, and you could cut the utilities a sweet deal on meeting their Renewable Portfolio Standard requirements, for every customer they can get to pull out of their grid. This should make up for the loss of that customer (but remember - they don't have to find new electricity for that customer, either).

It is likely that you can pass legislation decoupling utilities as well this year, which will make this work well. As part of the green jobs corps, you could employ huge numbers of new green collar workers very quickly to go out and sign people up to make the switch. (I'd be happy to help organise that here in California!)

Why this idea really will make America a carbon free nation faster:

This solution takes no money and is consumer-driven by all of us who get it on climate change, avoiding the ignorance/hostility of fossil utilities or NIMBYs slowing it down. Many of us voted for exactly this kind of change and are excited about making it happen.

Published at the NRDC OnEarth Read more...