Soros to Invest $1 Billion in Clean Energy
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
On a cost-per-BTU basis, taking into account upfront CAPEX, cost-of-capital, present-value discounted cash flow analysis (PV10, for example), storage, processing, transport, and end-use thermodynamics, there are no known energy sources in 2009 that are cost-competitive with hydrocarbons.
Which probably explains why such insanely large amounts of cash are flowing to K-Street for Waxman Markey.
The only applications where using something other than hydrocarbons makes business sense, is in applications where the cost of energy is not important.
For instance, telecommunications satellites. Or, closer to home, energizer batteries at the grocery store. A single D-cell lead-acid battery has an energy cost of $500,000 per kilowatt-hour. However, no one thinks of it in those terms -- cost-of-energy is not an important factor for this niche.
Thinking of "renewable energy" sources as a replacement for hydrocarbons is a huge mistake. Hydrocarbons are used in large-scale applications where cost is the only metric that matters. And on that metric, it is impossible to compete with hydrocarbons.
The best bet for "clean tech" is to target niche applications that are underserved by hydrocarbons. Clearly, you're not going to use an internal combusion engine to power your laptop. Rather, you're going to shell out hundreds of dollars for a lithium ion battery -- and then charge that battery from the grid, which is likely to be powered by coal or natural-gas power plants.
To take a page from the enterprise software world, the problem with "clean tech" and "green tech" startups is that they are trying to make a "value" sale in a cost-driven market. That never works.
Unless, of course, you can get the federal government to tax the low-cost producers to death.
Even if considering the cost of the side effects?
http://globalclassroomstudentsdev.innovasium.com/en/involved...
Some friends and I made an entry, though we don't expect to win (we didn't have a proper video camera, proper editing, or any experience). Personally, I'm inclined to say that the Youtube video part is a poorly thought out attempt to ``get in touch with the youth of today.''
EDIT: Because it is very difficult to not select for the team with the best video camera, audio, etc. Maybe UNICEF employees can sort through this, somehow...
Do you consider the science beyond dispute? Do you think it is primarily caused by human activities or not? How much do you care, and what have you done about it - if anything?
And I'm attempting to develop a "car conversion" kit to convert popular family cars to be plug-in hybrids. Very interesting project involving designing and building new wheel-hub motors + electronics and software.
Having been in software all my professional life, the largest shock when moving into "real" manufacture is how slow it is to get stuff made - considerably longer than a compile.
I suspect that those companies will get quite a lot of taxpayer funded dough and will be extremely profitable.
The way that science plays a role in shaping public policy is by allowing us to ask, "What is our best guess as to the correct decision based on the evidence available."
Whether or not the science is beyond dispute is irrelevant.
How does this follow? If a scientific question is largely unresolved, we don't even have a basis upon which to evaluate decisions yet. Generally, disputed science never even touches on the political sphere.
Now, with global warming the science is in fact largely settled, and thus we've moved on to the stage wherein one political faction says "This science demands that I do a bunch of unrelated things I wanted to do anyway!", whilst the other faction says "This science is inconvenient to my ideology, thus I will stubbornly deny objective reality!".
Ah, politics.