Dana Blankenhorn

The Renewable Energy Sweet Spot is Storage

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 17 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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While most attention in renewable energy is focused on solar panels, or wind turbines, or the use of pine pellets and algae for fuel, the real sweet spot is in storage.

Imre Gyuk , energy storage program manager at the Department of Energy, says it's not just because solar and wind are intermittant. It's also because an increasingly computer-driven society requires cleaner power.

You know this in your own life. If you have a desktop PC, chances are you have a Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) sitting under your desk, or at least a “power conditioning” power strip next to you – maybe both. Spikes can damage critical components.

Tax Carbon in the Name of Growth

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 7 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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The following is going to annoy my liberal friends, but hear me out.

The decisive turn in a generation's political thesis, which is a collection of myths and values driving power, the point at which you go from winning elections to winning them for a generation, comes when business moves to your side.

You don't need all of business. You only need the rising tide of business to be on your side, that element of business driving economic growth.

Without significant business support, your side of the political world is always swimming upstream. That's because the business of America is business, even its political business is business, and anyone who questions that doesn't know America. (This Rising Tide is a restaurant in Scarborough, Maine. We hear good things about the lobster.)

Will Biofuels Join the War Against Oil?

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 6 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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I haven't gotten into the nitty-gritty of the War Against Oil here in some time.

For those who need a quick refresher, the War Against Oil is the chief economic necessity of our time. The Sun shines, the wind blows, we live on a molten rock, yet we still power our world like cavemen did, by digging up shit we can burn and burning it. As a result we're burning up our planet.

There are still (believe it or not) idiots who deny that methane and carbon dioxide are responsible for increased global temperatures, for more extreme weather, and for the melting of ice caps around the world. Some are paid shills for folks who want to dig shit up and burn it. Others are ideologues who scream “no” at anyone saying yes. And some are indeed idiots.

The political winds toward burning shit grew to hurricane force during the Bush years, with the wholesale takeover of the country by the fossil fuel industry. The results were war and (ta da) rising fossil fuel prices. We're now accustomed to paying $4/gallon for gasoline, just as the “boiling frog” got used to hot water, and the industry wants to apply more pressure.

All the fracking in the U.S. is not going to drop gas prices one dime. It's not in the frackers' interest to do it, they control the process of getting fracked oil to market, it's just not going to happen. Besides, fracking costs big money. Margins are thinner from fracking than they are from sticking a straw into the ground and sucking.

The only way we're going to get a thumb down on prices is with an alternative to fracking. And right now, that means biofuels.

Depth Beats Breadth in the Internet News Game

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 2 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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 Wonder why I'm not rich, if I'm so smart?

It's because, as a reporter, I'm a polymath. My knowledge is a mile wide and an inch deep.

Journalism is my home because it lets me skip around from beat-to-beat depending on what interests me. Even for a journalist I'm not rich, for just that reason. Most journalists stick with one area, developing deep expertise, becoming pundits in those areas of expertise. I don't. I research an area and, once I decide I'm finished with it, I take my journalistic skill set and go somewhere else.

The Open Source Thesis Returns

Think of this as Volume 16, Number 48 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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Right after this year's election I began looking back at all the stories I've written, since 2006, on political philosophy.

I was looking for patterns, and frankly for an e-book.

My review is far from complete – there are over 200 pages just in the first year I began my work – but what I have found is that my views on political patterns were first informed by my work on open source. I first wrote about what I called the “open source thesis” in 2006 , and I found, even then, that it matched up very well with the political aims of one Barack Obama.

The Bookends of the Crisis

Think of this as Volume 16, Number 45 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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Katrina and Sandy are bookends to the crisis of our time.

The crisis is the War Against Oil, but it's a crisis that dare not speak its name.

Al Gore spoke its name, and he was buried for it. Buried by Bush's Supreme Court in 2000, then buried by ridicule after getting his Oscar for “An Inconvenient Truth.”

This President has tried to approach things in a different way. Rather than address the crisis directly, he has sought to make the case instead for the role of government. He used government to address the financial panic, with modest success, and he used it to try and address health care inflation, although success there remains years away. With people impatient for change they could feel, he needed a break.

Sandy was the break he needed.

As a political bookend, Katrina set things in motion. Katrina changed the nation in profound ways, ways we didn't even notice at first. Katrina made us angry, it enraged us. The non-reaction of the Bush Administration became its unforgiveable sin – more than Iraq, more even than the financial panic. Katrina, and New Orleans, became a burning coal in every Democrat's belly. Never again, we promised ourselves. That fire burned hot in 2006, it burned hotter in 2008, it burns in my heart today.

Welcome to the 1970s

Think of this as Volume 16, Number 41 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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This decade could have easily been the 1930s all over again.

You wouldn't have wanted to go there. We're talking no social safety net, people living in shantytowns, and starving. We're talking 32% unemployment at a time when women didn't work outside the home. We're talking social unrest and the almost-universal feeling that democracy was doomed (DOOMED!), that only the iron hand of the Left or the Right could save mankind from extinction. And then, of course, World War II.

Want to know what the 1930s were like? Look at Greece today. Greece was induced to follow the advice of the bankers, to practice extreme austerity in the face of impossible loan demands, and look what's happening. People are going hungry, and they're turning to a neo-Nazi party called the Golden Dawn for comfort. Not just as an electoral force, but as a social one, which is more ominous. Want to know where Hitler came from? Stuff like that.

Things could have easily gone that way for us, had John McCain been elected. What McCain was promising in the wake of a 1929-like crash was a great heaping helping of Hooverism. Instead we got the stimulus, we got some honest government, and while the problems aren't all fixed – too many bankers are still walking around loose – things are indeed getting better.

Golden Age for Writers

Think of this as Volume 16, Number 29 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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I'm doing pretty well these days. I write each day for TheStreet.com, do a few pieces for Seeking Alpha, and I'm usually done by noon.

But I'm not alone. These are golden days for writers.

The reason is that, while newspaper editors keep whinging they don't know how to make money and that people refuse to pay for news, lots of companies have cracked the code.

1. Identify a business, industry, or lifestyle to focus on. Politics can be a lifestyle.

2. Offer ample opportunities for interaction. Scale it. Keep people talking back-and-forth to one another. You're building a community. Focus on that.

3. Show that your community represents your target market – that you have a big share of buyers in your target – and sell against it.

4. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Days of Apps

Think of this as Volume 16, Number 28 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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In 2012 the software industry is like an iceberg. Most of it is under the water.

Not underwater, mind you. Under the water.

That's because the world of “applications” is over. It's all about the apps now, brutha. And no one in the app business has yet gone public. The smart VC guys and private equity people are putting tons of money into the space, so there's no need to go public, no need to give the public investor a taste.

It's like the social boom. You'll know the bust has started when one of these outfits starts looking for suckers on NASDAQ.

Doesn't mean there's no there, there. There is. I found that out Monday when I went to a “MeetUp” for Techcrunch.com at the Sweetwater Brewery, a few miles from my home.

The place was packed. Cars were parked around the corner and down the next street. (They could do it because this is a warehouse district where everyone else goes home around 5 PM.) There were well over 3,000 people there. Mostly male, mostly young, mostly white. But not exclusively. I was also pleased to find two people who rode bikes there. A guy my own age who admitted he'd taken the train to a nearby transit stop, and a younger guy who'd ridden 8 miles in rush-hour traffic. 

The Cloud Starts Now

Think of this as Volume 16, Number 26 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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One thing tech reporters often ignore, or forget, is that most companies don't live on the bleeding edge.

It's easier to ignore now, with the consumer market dominated by gadgets that anyone can afford, but which can go from latest-and-greatest to obsolete within a year.

The business computing market isn't like that. It's much bigger, and what works tends to keep working until it becomes obsolete.

So I make it a practice to connect, once in a while, with the realities of the business computing market. And I was fortunate that Red Hat invited me to witness their annual Summit in Boston, so I could listen to their customers.