Dana Blankenhorn

Renewable Energy Should Not Be PR

It's rare when I see something that is pro-renewables yet makes me want to wretch.

But that's how I feel about the Vestas Consumer Wind study and its accompanying Corporate Renewable Energy Index, both available as PDF files from here. 

The first study says that people like wind. Wind is popular. Wind has a halo effect, and this can be transferred to companies buying wind power.

This is a stupid business case. Invest in us so people will like you? Really? Really. No, invest in us because you will make money, at at least because you will advance a technology that can make money for you down the road. A business case based on PR is charity, not business.

Ink Jet! How Solar is Different from Chips

The Holy Grail of solar cell researchers, a cell that can be printed by something akin to the ink-jet printer by my desk, is within sight.

Oregon State University researchers (go Beavers) say they have created CIGS cells with 5% efficiency using an inkjet process. They also sent out this nifty picture (right) of a cross-section of the cell, taken at a micron level.

Their paper, in Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells, estimates they can get efficiency up to 12% over time. Naturally a patent has already been applied for.

Most of the publicity surrounding this finding emphasizes the ink-jet printer angle. But there's something more important that must be said about it.

A Mighty Wind

Renewable energy skepticism is based on some outright falsehoods.

Solar energy dies when it gets cloudy. (False.)  Solar energy is always intermittent. (False.)

But here's the most important fallacy of all.

Renewable energy needs the grid.

It doesn't.

Most of China's abundant wind energy is not attached to the grid. Africa is being transformed by off-the-grid energy. America's military is increasingly powered by solar energy when it is “in-country.” You don't need to recharge your iPhone at the wall if you don't want to.

And thus we come to residential wind.

A Few Words About Google Health

Google Health was doomed from the start.

It was based on a legal fallacy and a technical one.

• The legal fallacy was that you own your health data, and can control it. That may be the law, but that's not the fact. The people who collect your data control it, and that control is important to them.
• The technical fallacy was that most people are versed on technical subjects, and either have the patience to input their own data or go through a complex download-transform process to get it.

Both these fallacies have been pushed for years by so-called privacy advocates, mostly shills of insurers, who use Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) about technology to keep it out of doctors' offices. Through laws like HIPAA, and their continuing campaigns against reason, these "advocates" make it necessary for you to keep filling out the same damned forms -- over and over again -- whenever you see a new doctor.

Biochar! Biochar?

Biochar is pure carbon formed by the controlled burning of biomass at anywhere from 300-900 degrees centigrade.

It sounds nasty, and the process is a bit like an oil refinery. But in a controlled process you get both natural gas, fuel that can be transformed into gasoline or diesel fuel, along with a soil additive that can hold carbon in the soil and improve crop yields.

The process has been found to occur naturally in the Amazon, where a layer of “terra preta” or black Earth,  holds soil together to enable farming on very poor soil. Terra preta, unfortunately, released its gas into the atmosphere. A conference on the biochar concept was held in Colorado two years ago.

By burning the fuel in a controlled environment, and decomposing the result in the absence of oxygen, the idea is you create a positive feedback loop. Giving a little to cows can even reduce flatulence, i.e. methane production, reducing global warming further. You can also burn biochar as a fuel like charcoal.

The face is now on to turn this idea into an industry. A chart from the International Biochar Initiative shows that most feedstocks deliver major environmental improvements – and even its use for municipal garbage saves on disposal costs.

The challenge here is to turn the process into a product. Cool Planet  is working to create a “transportable” biowaste disposal plant, which could process plant or forest waste in-season and then be moved to another location. Biochar Solutions wants to build even-smaller systems, which can be hauled about behind a truck, to process biomass close to its source.

All this is a few years from turning into something an ordinary person can invest in, but it's just one example of how people are turning the “climate crisis” into business opportunity. If Al Gore had focused on the opportunities of climate renewal rather than the dangers of climate change 12 years ago, maybe this planet wouldn't be in the trouble it's in.

But better late than never.

Al Gore Agonistes

Think of this as Volume 15, Number 27 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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Every generation's conflict plays out in a different way, on a different battlefield, determined by each era's media mix.

Our current conflict is being played out in two media, with the newer Internet bringing change from the bottom-up against the top-down approach of TV.

This has resulted in a manic-depressive political pattern, low-turnout landslides in off-year elections giving advantage to intense movements created online, a trend that's moderated in Presidential years. (Compare it to thin-trade and broadly-traded markets.) The Internet creates intensity from the bottom-up.

Contrast this with the 1960s, where TV gradually imposed order on what was a social conflict seen best in movies and music. Or the 1930s, mass movements built out of movie propaganda and mass radio audiences. Or the 1890s, when newspapers could start wars and enable elite reform to triumph over mass urban and rural protests. Or the 1860s, where book readers fought a great Civil War over great principles.

The intensity of feeling in a crisis has little to do with what media is driving it, but the rising medium's attitude toward the question eventually dominates.

What I have said since before this crisis began, really since the mid-1990s, is that the Internet is driving this train. Unlike previous media, which could only sell ideas, the Internet lets a business perform its entire marketing function, from generating demand to fulfilling it and supporting it. The businesses that have succeeded most in our time have been those which best understood this.

The Obama campaign is the Amazon.Com of politics. They have, and will, dominate our time because they can scale intimacy. This was the secret of 2008, not the fund-raising at the front-end, but the ability to create volunteer armies in which millions felt they were being heard and could act on a core set of beliefs.

I have no doubt about the top-line result of next year's election. The question is whether our politics and overcome the real crisis of our time, the artificial scarcity of fossil fuels requiring a War Against Oil and the harvesting of abundance.

Who is Heath Now: The 1971 Game

As I promised in my earlier piece on Bob Metcalfe, the focus of my 1971 Game is less on politics or economics, and more on technology.

My thesis is that renewable energy is roughly where computer technology was in 1971. That is, it's available, it's expensive, the technology is very basic, the space is growing, but it's not something everyone has.

This is especially true in solar technology, which is the renewable resource that is most subject to Moore's Law. While it's true that efficiency of solar cells isn't going to double every year or two (it would quickly get to 100% from the current 10-15%) there are many dimensions for improvement, which when combined are driving prices down quite quickly.Here's a partial list:

• Basic Efficiency. Current thin film technologies are only 8% efficient. But we've seen 20% efficiency described by many people.
• Installation Cost. Right now it can cost thousands to put a solar array on your house. Standardized contracts, fittings, connectors, panel sizes, and designs can reduce that substantially.
• Useful Life. Right now solar cells may degrade completely after about 20 years of use, and they degrade substantially over time. Extending the useful life, increasing the efficiency of an older cell, lowers costs.
• Materials. The great "rare earth" scare is based on the idea that solar cells must be made with things like cadmium, which are expensive to mine and cause environmental damage. Many other materials are being tested that can do the same thing at lower cost.
• Manufacturing Costs. A less efficient system can be better and cheaper than a more efficient one if its manufacturing can be scaled-up effectively. This is First Solar's secret sauce -- they know how to make their stuff.
• Manufacturing Process -- There are many parts of the manufacturing process that can be improved, where costs can be taken out. Ultimately you want something you can print, like a newspaper or photo paper. Kodak is working on that.

This is why I insist Moore's Law is applicable to solar systems. Combine small improvements along each of these lines, multiply they over time, and you do indeed get falling prices, rising efficiency, and new markets opening up.

But let's get back to our subject, OK? Heathkit was a big deal in the 1970s. The company built kits from which you could build electronics devices. They served hobbyists and enthusiasts, the very front of the s-curve. And from these enthusiasts emerged nearly all the leaders of the eventual PC revolution. Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Bill Gates all engaged in computing as a hobby in the early 1970s.

So Heathkit has a very important historical role in the development of the PC market. It is a limited role. Their attempts to build full-fledged Heath computers flopped. Their markets moved on. Once mass production was turned toward the PC, Heathkit made no sense. You can, however, see the remains of their day if you venture deep into any Fry's store. There are still some people who buy parts and make stuff because it's fun.

Anyway, who's Heath now?

AHLTA Connections Given Control of VistA Open Source Project

Fred Trotter writes about a very scary story out of Washington.

The custodian for the new VistA system, the open source software that's supposed to replace what the Veterans Administration is now using, will be a long-time Defense contractor with no ties to open source whatever.

This is important for two reasons:

1. DoD is not as enthusiastic about open source as the VA. 
2. The DoD's health care software system, called AHLTA, sucks. It sucks because it's built on a contractor model, with proprietary software companies holding their own intellectual property close to the chest, refusing to cooperate until they're paid by everyone else around the table.
3. Eventually, AHLTA and VistA are supposed to be merged, under the new open source process.

Biting the Long Tail

When Wired editor Chris Anderson was doing his work on The Long Tail in the last decade, he was wildly excited about the possibilities.

Instead of just going after the big customers, he said, prosperity would come by serving smaller markets more effectively, using computer technology. Here it is illustrated, from his blog.

Maybe. (Anderson is now focused on the making phenomenon.)

But the big story of 2011 is how the long tail can bite.

In many industries you don't just have a long tail of buyers, you have one of sellers, and by going after the long tail of sellers lawyers can cause enormous damage.

Can Open Source Save Big Pharma?

Big pharmaceutical companies like Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer and Abbott Labs  have a problem software companies can relate to.

The costs of drug discovery, and drug trials, have grown exponentially, resulting in a smaller pipeline of new drugs and massive consolidation throughout the industry.

For software, open source provided a partial answer. By pooling basic technology through groups like the Eclipse Foundation and Apache, software companies have been able to reduce costs while retaining the power to innovate and sell innovations.

While health IT has used the open source process, both publicly (through the VA's redevelopment of its VistA platform) and privately (through groups like Open Health Tools) drug delivery itself remains a proprietary affair.

Now Pfizer is taking the first baby steps away from an all-proprietary formula by sharing the design of its first all-electronic drug trial, for the bladder control drug Detrol.

A number of companies are providing technology that lets Pfizer recruit trial participants online and have those people manage their own therapy. Myrtus is working on the front-end. Exco inTouch provides the mobile e-diary equipment. Perceptive Informatics is providing the back-end processing. The University of California is providing third-party validation.