Get the Electricity Right and...

Friedman is still humming about green energy (which I took up in my Fast Company article too). First, he is totally entranced with the innovation being produced by hundreds of alternative energy start-ups. I am too, although I would contend that the small start-up is harder to do today with the recent changes to rentier bankruptcy laws (try to start something with a credit card and an idea today and find out what happens...). Innovation will come, but if you have to rely on KPCB for funding, you are going to see it come slowly.

I also think he is off-base with his focus on the gasoline issue. In my view, if you get electricity right, everything else will flow. Here's what I mean. Electricity has become the fundamental unit of energy for a modern society. One reason is that it allows the lowest power interconnection -- telecommuting. A second is that it offers the best hope for hyper-localized production. A third is that it is potentially fungible, meaning that it can be sold back to the collective grid if unused locally. That combo means that it is the key to high resiliency in modern society. If you can produce electricity at the home and local level you can also weather disconnection from the grid with a decreasing list of deleterious effects (as efficiency and capacity increase).

In contrast, gasoline is the hard problem. The pressures of making a mobile solution, the one-way nature/complexity of the current infrastructure, and a plethora of seemingly viable alternatives will confuse the issue for years to come. It's very likely, nay probable, that the wrong solution will gain steam -- like bio-fuels. Solving the hard problem first is a false path. It only delays the outcome.

Comments

[JTH]

John

Good points
(been away for a while ...health and just too da*m busy)

To topic: "alternative" sources
To some extent, been there, done that.
Couple of years ago I had my "Jimmy Carter" solar collectors refurbished.

Many of these ideas are not all that new.
Many today just forget that we have been here before, and often the long term economics don't pan out as advertised.

And, if Simmons is wrong, the Saudi's will drop the price, break the economics of alternatives.
IF

Now on to electricity.
1) check out Peter Huber (I know, right wing, Manhattan Inst ect.) "Bottomless Well"
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/bottomlesswell/

Peter and Mark (Mills) get a few things not quite right (gasoline does not "explode" in an IC engine, it burns, and IC engines are pretty damn efficent after all)
But that is for another and longer conversation.

Peter has written a lot on Electricity, generation, conditioning and distribution.
21st century is the electric century.

Seemingly crazy idea that waste is good.
But with thermodynamics, it is.
Higher delta (hotter) generates better power, then you throw away heat to get higher ordered power (digital)

Agree on distractions like biofuels (esp. Ethanol), hybrids ect.

Of note, looking into a private investment fund : Green stuff, with hundreds of companys (I know of most and have invested in some, sold a good number (losses)) and suprise, suprise, the largest holding is ... GE.

Transit/Rail (locomotives)
Generation (from gas turbines to nukes on the shelf)
Now going into Wind ect.

Keep up the good work(s)
Ciao
JTH