Powering The Dream The History and Promise of Green Technology by Alexis Madrigal

Powering The Dream The History and Promise of Green Technology by Alexis Madrigal


This is a history of alternative energy technology. It is a story of failure as much as it is a story of success. We learn that the ideas behind green technology are not new. There are many historical examples of early green technology in this book. For example, an attempt to build a 1 megawatt wind turbine was done in 1951. We also learn that many of the failures are not about the technology. It is as much about politics, philosophy, and business practices whether or not a new technology fails. The first battery operated cars hd horrible customer service and maintenance.


Alex Madrigal also compares other energy sources to renewables. Most notably he describes how the nuclear industry created a view that it was our future. We get a sense that history repeats itself with different energy sources being touted at different points in recent history. The historical examples are not what you might expect.


We learn that there were solar water heaters in 1930s, solar homes in the 1950s, wind energy was used in the American West to pump water, there was a wave energy demonstration plant in 1906 in San Francisco, compressed air was considered as an alternative to electricity as a way to store energy, and that historically green energy was part of a number of philosophical movements like transcendentalism. This is a very different picture than what is presented in the mainstream press.


In this book, green energy is as much a state of mind as a technology. For example, Google has a program called RE


We learn that only after many tries did wind become a viable renwable energy source, and that Luz solar concentrating power went through a variety of different companies selling the same technology with slight improvements over time.

The black and white photographs in the book are quite interesting. There are pictures of the first solar hot water heaters, first 1 megawatt wind generators, articles about wave generators from 1906, and pictures of other energy technnology.

This is an excellent book both from the viewpoint of a history of technology, and as a review of the philosophies underpinning renewable energy. I especially liked the first book on renewable energies title, The Paradise Within The Reach of All Men, Without Labour, by Powers of Nature, and Machinery An Address to All Men by John Etzler written in the 1830s, which described early forms of wind, wave, and solar power. It reminded me of Lewis Mumford's ideal of a "technic civilization" built on wind and wave power.

Alexis Madrigal is a senior editor for the Atlantic. There is a blog which is related to this book on the history of renewable energy. http://www.greentechhistory.com/

Green Your Place In the New Energy Revolution by Jane Hoffman and Michael Hoffman-- Review

Green Your Place In The New Energy Revolution by Jane Hoffman and Michael Hoffman is a primer on alternative energy. The book starts with reasons you should go green; pollution, dwindling energy resources, political instability, and changes to a healthier lifestyle.

The book describes the present state of renewable energy focusing first on sources of energy that are not renewable. Coal, nuclear, oil and natural gas are compared to renewables. The author correctly points out that although there is talk about carbon sequestration, but no research money has actually been spent on creating the process.

The book then focuses on the state of renewable energy. It describes the different types of renewables, wind, solar, geothermal, hydroelectric, and biomass energy. Wind is pointed out to be the most successful form of renewable energy currently. There is some brief talk on new concepts in solar energy like solar towers.

Then the author switches to describing biofuels. As part of this discussion he describes how a hydrogen infrastructure is not possible to build until at least fifteen years in the future. Ethanol and biodiesel are the only two currently available biomass fuels. This is a little bit wrong. Biobutanol is another option which could have been described. I like the extensive description of biofuels in Brazil. The authors even give several suggestions on how the Brazilian model could be extended to the United States.

After the forms of energy are described, methods of encouraging renewable energy are suggested. This includes definitions, RECs, (renewable energy credits), carbon cap and trade systems, and carbon offset taxes. The language makes these ideas which are very complex easy to understand.

Finally some new technologies are suggested. The jatropha plant which can be used for biodiesel is described, and the plasma converter for waste is also explained. This book misses the boat on wave energy converters. It doesn't talk about them at all.

Then the book puts renewable energy in a global perspective. China has already put over $8 billion dollars a year into renewable energy. They are very serious about developing a renewable infrastructure. India also has an extensive renewable energy infrastructure.

The final chapter is a series of recommendations for renewable energy. They are very lightweight. Institute higher standards for gas mileage, conserve energy at home and buy green appliances, and invest in a wide variety of renewables.

This is a solid primer on renewable energy. It covers all the basics in clean, understandable language. The book is not very controversial. It is meant for the mainstream reader. It is not very preachy. This book would be a good introduction for the sceptic or the person who was just starting to be interested in the subject. There is a short index in the back as well as a set of notes on the chapters. The book is a quick read.

Clean Technology

Pelamis Wave Energy Converter. This image is Copyleft.

Clean Technology (The titles in italics are book titles).

I have been posting some of my green political ideas on various forums. I have always been fascinated by green technology. I follow it pretty closely. I am a big fan of the Apollo Alliance http://www.apolloalliance.org/ . I reviewed a book on this organization called Apollo's Fire Igniting America's Clean Energy Economy.

The idea that we can completely eliminate oil is not a new one. I also posted Winning The Oil Endgame by Amory Lovins. http://www.oilendgame.com/ReadTheBook.html The Rocky Mountain Institute has http://www.rmi.org/ pointed the way on building a clean economy focused on what would be called Natural Capitalism-- http://www.natcap.org/ . It is possible to build a clean energy economy. It is more of a matter of political will than anything else.

There is more than one roadmap to a clean technology future with a revived industrial base for the United States. Listening to the endless drivel which we are being fed every day won't get us to where we want to be. Not only do we need to talk to our politicians, we need to invest in the future technologies which will make a clean future. Silicon Valley is more than willing to create a surge of investment in clean technology. http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_9308526

Another book which I reviewed earlier was The clean tech revolution : the next big growth and investment opportunity. This book covers environmentally sound technologies which can offer changes in industry because they are cleaner, more energy efficient, and use less waste. It covers things like green buildings, efficient appliances, renewable energy, and other clean tech.

Contrary to what many more conservative people say, clean technology will not drive the country into a recession, quite the opposite will happen. At a minimum it will create whole new industries and massive economic growth. There is a potential of at least 3 million new jobs created. These jobs are industrial jobs and manufacturing jobs, not service jobs.

In Freedom From Oil by David Sandalow which I reviewed earlier, he pointed out that there is no magical formula for energy independence. It is not hard to figure out what we need to do. We need to plug our cars into a wall socket. The majority of our non-transportation energy comes from energy that is not dependent on oil. This means we should be building more hybrid cars and more electric cars. We should also as an interim step increase the amount of ethanol blended with gasoline as well as biodiesel blended with diesel.

The coal industry, the nuclear industry, and the oil and gas industry are mature industries. This means there is very little room for growth. The newer clean technologies have room to grow and develop. They also offer significant environmental benefits.

Investing in clean technologies could provide the boost to create what would be renewable energy cheaper than coal. We are not as far from this as you might think. Wind power with economies of scale could also approach this. This is what the coal industry is afraid of. It is not about destroying our economy, it is about the process of capitalism, creative destruction.
http://cleantechnica.com/2008/05/10/solar-power-goes-to-extremes-for-5cents-per-watt/

I think there is real potential for green economics to be much more potent. There is increasing interest. I read http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/ occassionally.

I also follow a variety of publicly traded companies, verenium (vrnm), mgp ingredients (mgpi), capstone turbine (cpst), finavera (fvr.v), and others. I think there is a real interest in investing in green technology.

People spend a lot of time writing about companies like http://www.phoenixmotorcars.com/ and http://www.teslamotors.com/ which represent near term change. Without people being aware of these kind of companies and buying their products, they will never get off the ground.

There is a real interest in seeing the idea of the electric car revived. I look forward to seeing when General Motors rolls out the Chevrolet Volt http://www.chevrolet.com/electriccar/ . There is not too much hope for GM unless there is real change.

Americans are facing a real crisis in our manufacturing industries and blue collar jobs. Greening them will end up saving a lot of jobs and bringing a lot of change. Change that will be uncomfortable, but in the long run necessary.

The best thing that can happen now is to level the playing field and make the energy industry much more competitive.

What got me so interested in the concepts of a sustainable future was a book called Bioshelters, Ocean Arks, City Farming: Ecology As The Basis of Design by John and Nancy Todd. It was written in 1984. The writers described how to design cities that were extremely green, introduced concepts like aquaculture, vertical farms, and many radical scientific ideas on treating wastewater and solids using ecological designs. At the time the time they were writing no one was even close to thinking about things like this.

John Todd currently runs http://www.toddecological.com/ . I tried to place their more recent work, A Safe and Sustainable World, The Promise of Ecological Design by Nancy Todd and John Todd on hold through interlibrary loan but could not get it. I am debating on whether to just purchase it.

Earlier, I had a vague idea of civilization being able to run on renewables. R. Buckminster Fuller had predicted that in the future society would run on renewable energy, the sun and the wind. Also, I had come across the idea of a "Technic" civilization or a society that ran on wind and water technology proposed by Lewis Mumford. Lewis Mumford's book Technics and Civilization is a brilliant, if somewhat bizarre history of the development of technology.

Earth The Sequel-- Fred Krupp-- Review

Earth The Sequel: The Race to Reinvent Energy And Stop Global Warming by Fred Krupp and Miriam Horn is a guide to renewable energy companies working on breakthrough technologies. Fred Krupp correctly states that unless there is a national competitive cap and trade system for carbon, renewable energy will not take off in this country in time to prevent global environmental disaster.

Each chapter in this book focuses on a specific type of renewable energy; solar, biofuels, ocean energy, "clean coal" (specifically carbon sequestration), geothermal energy, assorted energy sources, what can be done now, and the future.

In the chapter on solar, three types of solar power were discussed photovoltaic, thin film, and solar concentrating. The most interesting of these technologies to me is the solar tower. There was a brief overview of the "stirling engine", a type of engine often used with solar concentrating mirrors. Solar concentrating technology is an old technology that can use solar power to create utility scale energy.

This book is focused on new developments in alternative energy. Because this it skips the two already developed alternative energy sources, wind and hydropower. It would have been nice if there was some coverage of micro-hydro and distributed hydroelectric power. Oddly, the section on wind energy focused on wind energy kits and wind energy blimps. Basically, a blimp is raised on a tether with wind turbines attached. The tether is a cable which can take the current genterated at high altitudes and send it to the ground for storage.

I really enjoyed reading the section on ocean energy. It gave the complete history of the aquabuoy wave energy turbine, and a bit on the pelamis wave energy device. There was also a bit on underwater wave turbines similar to wind turbines. Ocean energy is one of the newest forms of energy and has not been exploited very much.

I thought the section on geothermal was quite limited. I think that the author correctly points out that not much funding is being put into developing new sources of geothermal energy.

The author did the best job of describing biofuels. He attacked ADM, Archer Daniels Midland for their focus on food (specifically corn) as a fuel. A lot of next generation biofuel companies were described, Verenium which makes cellulosic ethanol, Greenfuel Technologies which is working on algae biofuel, Amyris which is designing genetically engineered biojet fuel.

There was a discussion of miscellaneous technologies. Things like Waste Management's landfill gasification program, and using animal waste to create methanol. Also conservation was briefly covered.

The car was brought up in the last chapter. The author focused on the electric car. He mentions two developments that are interesting, the Tesla roadster all electric sports car, and the Volt, General Motor's planned hybrid electric car.

If you want a survey of new energy technology and ideas this book is for you. It lists many companies that are working on potential breakthrough renewable energy technology. This would be a good book to read if you are an investor. The authors point out that there is a considerable amount of money in Silicon Valley waiting to be tapped if the regulatory environment changes for alternative energy research and development. Google has an interesting program, Renewable Energe Cheaper than coal, and Vinod Khosla one of the founders of Sun Microsystems has started a venture capital firm focused on biofuels. The will to change is there, but the environment in the United States to bring about the change is difficult.

This book was on the New York Times Bestseller list, it is 279 pages long, there is an index and a short list of websites focused on renewable energy. I was not impressed with the writing in the book, it was a little slow. However, the subject held my interest readily. Fred Krupp is the president of the Ennvironmental Defense Fund, and Miriam Horn is a journalist.

Apollo's Fire Igniting America's Clean Energy Economy-- By Jay Inslee and Bracken Hendricks-- Review

Solar Tower, Sandia National Laboratory, United States

Apollo's Fire Igniting America's Clean Energy Economy by Jay Inslee and Bracken Hendricks, Foreword by President Bill Clinton is a very political left leaning book. It is an energy plan to change the economic base of the United States to more renewable energy. The book is very big government oriented. When I read the book, I had to wade through a lot of rhetoric and political jargon. This book compares a large scale energy plan to the Apollo Project which sent man to the moon. They sound the alarm on global warming, petropolitics, and national security.

In the opening chapters, the story of Felix Kramer who created the first plug in electric hybrid with $700 worth of nickel hydride batteries is told. Austin Energy is already selling conversion kits to turn hybrid electric cars into plug in hybrid cars. Although, the story is not in the book, the story of http://www.greasecar.com/ which provides kits to convert diesel engines to run on vegetable oil is very similar. This is of course a very inspiring story.

They then describe how we can encourage the big three automakers to convert to mass producing plug in hybrid electric vehicles. This is not very convincing. General Motors killed both the EV-1 electric car and the multi-fuel turbine car. The Volt is the planned plug in hybrid of General Motors. The authors did mention Tesla Motors http://www.teslamotors.com/ which is producing a high end $92,000 electric sportscar and plans on producing an all electric sedan for $50,000. Supposedly the government should buy lots of plug in hybrids, this will supposedly encourage people to buy more plug in hybrids. Also they mention Senator Obama's "Healthcare for Hybrids" plan to retool America's auto factories. I really didn't get how it was supposed to work. I wish the authors had instead discussed how we should encourage more innovation inside the country to create a more competitive automobile market for alternative cars.

The section on solar energy is not very convincing. Solar energy is very expensive and we are far behind Japan and Germany. Investing in photovoltaics seems like a long term project. It is at the end of the chapter where things get interesting. Solar turbine technology in large installations has grid parity in pricing with non-renewable energy. It is just getting off the ground. Solar concentrators also seem to be much more affordable than photovoltaics.

The best eneryg policy is energy efficiency. It costs half as much to reduce energy use as to introduce new energy. The United States uses more energy per capita than most industrialized nations. Japan uses 4000 kilowatt hours per person, California uses 8000 kilowatt hours, and the rest of the United States uses 14,000 kilowatt hours per person. I didn't know California was a separate country from the rest of the United States. The book suggests we should adopt California's energy efficiency legislation for the whole country. Different methods for energy efficiency like fluorescent or led lighting, green buildings, energy saving appliances, and insulation are discussed.

A central idea of this book is that the United States should revitalize our economy by investing in "Green Collar" jobs in every community. The environmental industry is worth $341 billion dollars and provides 5.3 million jobs. I am interested in knowing which sectors of the economy exactly are part of the environmental industry. This is not explained completely. "Green Collar" jobs are high technology jobs focused on energy efficiency, clean energy, green buildings, mass transit, and clean cars. This is essential to jump start our economy for the 21st century. Part of this is investing in massive Hoover Dam style projects like rebuilding the energy grid along more distributed lines and building lots of new clean light rail mass transit.

After talking about "Green Collar" jobs the book reveals an interesting plan for farmers. There are some dubious qualities about it. Biofuels are going to jump start the heartland. Greys Harbor, Washington where Imperium Renewables has set up a clean biodiesel plant is trumpeted as the town of the future. We get a picture of where first farmers build biofuel plants, then they invest in wind turbines to sell wind energy, then they convert their farm machinery to biodiesel, then they invest in solid waste digester for manure to produce methanol and fertilizer. A kind of clean energy farm for the future.

The main dubious idea is that corn ethanol is good and that cellulosic ethanol is the fuel of the future. Ethanol will never be completely oil free, it is blended with gasoline. There are also only 378 E85 ethanol pumps in the country. The United States can't even get a blending standard of 10% ethanol in all gasoline passed. The idea that somehow we will force the big oil companies to install massive amounts of E85 pumps is very far fetched.

This is one of the reasons I am a big fan of biodiesel. Biodiesel can be pumped from any regular diesel pump which is available at a gas station. There is no need for a new biodiesel infrastructure, it can simply be expanded. It is also the fastest growing of the alternative fuels. Diesel engines were originally designed to run on peanut oil.

Biodiesel is growing very fast because centralized fleets of heavy diesel equipment can simply switch the fuel they are using to biodiesel easily. It also provides less wear and tear on engines and burns cleaner than regular diesel. Also, biodiesel was recently used to power a jet plane. We can keep our aircraft if we use biodiesel. http://www.greenflightinternational.com/

The next section is on wind energy. Wind Energy is the first truly profitable renewable energy source. The breakthrough in making wind energy profitable is when research started working on creating tidal turbines for the ocean. The blades and engines of tidal turbines could handle far more torque than regular wind mills. This design allowed the creation of 2.5 megawatt 200 foot tall wind turbines like the ones produced by the Clipper company. One of these turbines can power 800 homes. Tidal energy of course is fascinating. Although, it isn't mentioned in the book, Finavera is opening the first tidal power plant in alliance with PG&E on the United States west coast in 2012. According to the book tidal power could provide potentially between 8-20% of our energy and wind could provide 20% of the United States energy. If they are going to talk about tidal and wind energy, why don't they talk about distributed hydroelectric. There is nothing in this book about improving hydroelectric energy which is the largest portion of renewable energy used by the United States.

Coal energy and nuclear are discussed. Clean coal which is a process of capturing carbon and sequestering it in the ground is described. What is missing from the description is the idea of cofiring coal with biomass to reduce emissions. There is a little bit of discussion of GreenFuel Technologies at MIT, but it does not have much detail on using algae to scrub CO2 from coal plants. http://www.greenfuelonline.com/ . Sequestration is a good idea, but reducing emissions at the source seems to me to be a better idea. The description of nuclear energy here is at best cursory. It describes how nuclear energy is completely unsafe. Coal represents 50% of the United States utility use.

The final chapters are a summary of what needs to be done. The Apollo Alliance combines a coaltion of labor, environmentalists, businesses, and community based organizations. It aims to create "Green Collar" jobs and improve the environment. They have proposed a five point plan to change the United States economy.

1) Increase energy efficiency with green manufacturing of appliances, lighting, and transportation, improve conservation, and build green buildings.

2) Reduce reliance on oil by increasing mileage standards for vehicles, introducing biofuels, and plug in hybrid electric vehicles.

3) Reward renewables and carbon free electricity. They suggest a 25% renewable portfolio standard for utilities by the year 2025. This is a pretty steep expectation.

4)Build cities that are more dense and green with light rail, an improved distributed energy grid, and more green buildings.

5)Put carbon caps in place. They suggest a carbon tax. This will not be very popular with most businesses. The other option they suggest is a cap and trade system where carbon emissions are given a specific value. This is much more likely to inspire innovation, but will still leave some rampant polluters.

The problem with this whole idea is the cost. This will cost $300 billion dollars, $30 billion dollars per year for ten years. The legislation was tried in 2005, but it didn't even make it to vote. http://www.grist.org/comments/soapbox/2005/05/18/inslee-apollo/index.html .

The ideas in this book need to be brought down to earth and made into a more manageable form. There is a lot of dreaming and political rhetoric and not enough hard nuts and bolts solutions. The five proposals of the Apollo Alliance seem to cross party lines and pieces of them could be implemented. There are a lot of very interesting ideas in this book. Because of its very liberal slant, it might be a hard read for libertarians or republicans.