This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Guest Post: Bill Gates and the Energy Research Dilemma
Submitted by www.oilprice.com
Bill Gates and the Energy Research Dilemma
There is an idea that has been around for a long time, at least since the fall of 1973: All that stands between the United States and an abundant energy future is a lack of spending on research and development. It is as though the Knights Templar could find the Holy Grail, if only the Pope would commit just a few more resources to the hunt.
Tens of billions of dollars have been spent on energy research, many of them fruitlessly; and some advances have been made, not the least in the kind of drilling technology that enables us to drill miles below the sea floor in the Gulf of Mexico. (Oops!)
Much else has been researched and not come to market. Wind and solar have taken giant strides, but still require tax breaks and subsidies. Nuclear energy has been researched, even as its deployment has languished. Worldwide hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent on nuclear fusion with nothing to show for it. Other programs have gone by the board, from coal liquefaction to magnetohydrodynamics and ocean-thermal gradients.
The thing about energy research has been that there are many promising lines, but seldom a big success. The big successes, too, have been happenstantial. One such is the aeroderivative turbine; essentially, a fighter-jet engine operating at very high temperatures in steady state on the ground, and burning natural gas instead of kerosene.
On June 10, a new set of highly qualified persuaders came to Washington to exhort the government to increase energy research and development funding from $5 billion to $16 billion a year, and to set up new organizations to channel and manage basic research on energy.
Some of the nation’s industrial savants, including Bill Gates late of Microsoft, Jeff Immelt of General Electric and Ursula Burns of Xerox, appeared at a press conference here as members of the American Energy Innovation Council. The chairman of the group, Chad Holliday of Bank of America, told the press: “Up until now energy investments have gotten short shrift.”
That is debatable. The problem with energy research has not been that it has been short-changed, but that it has often been directed at the wrong thing; it has often been diluted or spread out for political purposes. Farmers want ethanol research, coal states want carbon management, and the populous eastern states want carbon-free energy—so long as it is not nuclear.
The group of industry captains is not looking at the political, social and economic divides which have negated so many past endeavors. Just when the nuclear industry was ready to enter its long-expected renaissance in the 1990s, it was broadsided by the new gas turbines. If the carbon in coal can be safely sequestered, does that solve the environmental problems of ripping it out of the ground?
R&D always produces something of interest and often of value, but not always what it was directed toward. At the press conference, Xerox’s Burns said that innovation needed to be managed, and that the CEOs of the group knew that from experience.
Actually, the experience of Xerox itself may belie that. The original copying machine technology nearly perished for want of sponsorship and was finally saved by not-for-profit Battelle Laboratories. Yet later, when many of the innovations that made the rise of Microsoft, Apple and Cisco possible were developed at Xerox’s California computer laboratories, the company did not know what to do with them. But Bill Gates did. These two should talk.
The great Bell Labs produced optic fiber and the transistor, but did nothing with them. Management is a lovely business when it controls but in so doing, it stifles.
If you want innovation, first get rid of the managers. Second, get on bended knee before the bankers.
A new energy think is needed, but first it is a good idea to know where we want to go.
With the holocaust in the Gulf, our energy future is again in flux; the trusted has become dangerous, and the dangerous may again be trusted.
By. Llewellyn King for Oilprice.com who offer detailed analysis on Oil, alternative Energy, Commodities, Finance and Geopolitics. They also provide free Geopolitical intelligence to help investors gain a greater understanding of world events and the impact they have on certain regions and sectors. Visit: http://www.oilprice.com
»
- 6339 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
Is that right? Methinks someone has a fat finger...
That was my reaction. There is considerable money being spent on fusion research but not in that league, simply because of the huge odds against the development of a continuously running process. I was a big fan of this technology, but since magnetic containment has pretty much been proven impossible, it seems unlikely that a working fusion power source can ever be built, let alone a commercially viable one.
Jesus H. Christ, THORIUM!!!
For crying out loud!
If you include the cost of facilities to experiment, you might not be far from that.
It will happen. All I need is to get more of these neo-dynamium magnets aligned just right inside this Tesla toroidal ceramic brown's gas water splitter.
But seriously now... this will be the last stake to slay these reptilian gold slurping and silver snorting vampires. Once wireless/distributed energy becomes available... all bets are off.
Heck the universe doesn't work on wires, ok, maybe plasma electrical threads, but still... distributed wireless energy will be the next great paradigm shifter.
I'm certainly interested in all that Tesla stuff. I just wish I knew what books were "real" books and not the propaganda. I fear I might have bought some of the propaganda. Or where I can find out more about a lot of his stuff.
TheGoodDoctor...
I read 'The Oil Drum' for several years until they began to claim every bump up in the spot price of crude was a certain sign that we were past 'peak oil'.
As with econ sites many appear offering opinions and...btw... pushing their latest book on the subject of oil/energy.
I still read the site occasionally but take it with more than a grain of salt. Here is the link...
http://www.theoildrum.com/
That's the tough part.
Most of Tesla's stuff was seized by his benefactors or more than likely burned. The one concept that I always liked from Tesla was the earth as THE BATTERY.
We adopt 120 and 240w power don't for any specific purpose that the earth itself is constantly generating 60w of power. We live in a sea of electricity and radiation. We use it though, the earth itself is a giant rotating engine with more power behind it than we could ever possibily use.
If you want to look up something neat it's called an earth battery.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mq9ZKDKDclY
Nothing more compilcated than copper tubing in the ground in an array with a trickle charge behind it.
On the Documentary Channel I was watching this 5 part series about the Giza Pyramids/Egyptians and how they think that over 8k years that the Nile moved but that the Pyramids were indeed some way of harnessing electricity from the water table under the Pyramids when the Nile ran right by them.
My immediate thought was Tesla. And then they invoked his name for a bit.
When the Nile moved and the electricity generation stopped was when the pyramids ceased to function as the powerful beacons for space travel. Ever since the alien spacecraft have been having frequent crashes. Their guides for landing patterns have become outdated in the years since they left home base so that the flight plans are now missing a beacon for landing here.
" Ever since the alien spacecraft have been having frequent crashes."
...Imagine that...and all the time I thought they were crashing because Regan fired the Area 51 air controllers.
*que Marin Soljacic* If you want a more simplified version of what is being said in the following papers, please consult Google and/or Wikipedia.
83
Wireless Power AoP
He is a professor at MIT.
Now, you need to hope either GE buys the patent and commercialize the use of wireless energy transfer, or whoever buys the patent gets the necessary financing to market it.
We wouldn't want the same thing to happen to Soljacic [or future patent holders] that happened to Tesla when old man JP Morgan fucked him with the financing because Tesla wanted to make the power free [dirty fucking commie, how dared he amirite]
No, please not GE...
Look what Edison did to that poor elephant to discredit alternating current:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkBU3aYsf0Q
From the intro:
So much for Tesla. His idea of beaming energy freely in all directions just wasted most of the energy. The phrase "(which work very well for information transfer)" means we use this technique to broadcast television and radio signals, but these applications are very very low energy (although enough to power an earphone, which you know if you've ever built a crystal radio).
Lasers could be used to beam energy back to earth from orbiting solar panels. They could also be used to power spaceships (for, say, interplanetary or interstellar travel).
In other words, "evil" J. P. Morgan was right -- power is best transferred over long distances using wires. Once the power reaches your house, it may be possible to transfer it wirelessly and efficiently over a few dozen feet to your electronics; the paper proposes a technique for this.
First off Microsoft doesn't innovate.
Second, we need something that is disruptive. My guess is that it will come out of nanotechnology. But it could take years. At least a decade.
The problem is (as Dr. Stephen Leeb's last couple of books attest to) that with alt. energies is that they use natural resources, water, and energy to make them. Thus when commodoties rise higher it increases the costs substantially to the point that maybe what you are getting out of the alt. energy is not what you are putting in. In other words energy negative.
I agree that the best possible options are bridge fuels (like nat. gas and nuclear) will help to get us to the nanotech options.
But the answer isn't electric cars, windmills, and solar for the future. I mean we will use them and they too will be bridges to the next energy options. As the population increases, unless we become alchemists somehow we will have to be conservative with some of the natural resources that are less abundant or soon to be less abundant on the earth. Afghan stash or not! :)
Well said!
The problem isn't lack of alternative energy sources, its lack of "cheaper" energy sources. Oil is the most organic energy source, and it is made by mother nature for free (you just need to put up a small investment to pull it up), and nothing can really beat that.
Plants are solar powered. Plant a garden. Don't pay to have your vegetables frozen, shrink-wrapped, and shipped to your nearest market. Pick them out of your backyard. Don't beg bankers for anything; all they have are digital chits.
We have a term for the economy that's based on using the energy of plants we eat to cultivate more plants. Subsistence agriculture. It's not pleasant. It's barely even sustainable. If that's the solution, we might as well give up now.
Sounds like you want something for nothing. Go ahead and quit. I like garden-fresh produce. Can you see the irony in questioning the sustainability of subsistence agriculture while being addicted to the oil-based economy?
EROEI snitches!
Now, now we are *not* allowed to bring up Thermodynamics when discussing America's "Energy Frontier"....
When a country is based on a business model that needs people to spend $25 a month on Latte Frappe Choco crap and which howls if the same $25 were added to the Con-Ed bill that just might lead to towards truly green energy.... well, you get what you signed up for... sigh
sorry sorry, my apologies for not playing within the contextual framework of our societal make up...
"Infinite growth snitches!"
Can I play now?
Alex, I'll take "The exponential function" for $600....
Wow, A Daily Double!!
"I'll bet it all on black 22!"
"Sir, we are playing Jeopardy, not roulette..."
But seriously, it frightens me that so few people have *any* clue what is coming down the pike. We will either destroy ourselves or gain wisdom from it and learn what a sustainable business model for the planet and the last member of the Homo genus left.
Now that is funny!
The point is that the country should not be in a position to require them to do either. they should source the power from the best source for them. And the Latte.
I never understood why it was supposed to be cool to show you were dumb enough to spend $4 for a cup of coffee that you were then allowed to stand and drink.
There's no shortage of energy. There's not even a shortage of clean energy. What we are lacking is a source of energy that cheaper and cleaner than oil.
And if you don't believe oil is cheap, just go look in a supermarket and see how much of it is wrapped round things like salad and vegetables.
So the only question is, do we wait for oil to rise in price to the level that other sources become cost competitive, with the attendant risk of price spikes causing economic disruption, or do we build alternative sources in advance before its economically rational.
My personal view is that small scale investment in order to continue the advancement of the technologies is sensible, but the idea that we're going to run out of energy imminently and therefore need a crash course like the Manhattan project is simply irrational
The 'price' of other sources are likely to rise with the rise of oil price.
the whole universe, is nothing but energy. what we need, is a new perspective. some of the things, we have been taught, about the physical world, came from people, who just didn't know any better. not a conspiracy, just ignorance. open a channel of communication, in your mind, and ask the universe, to reveal it's truth to you.keep asking, keep an open mind. the answers will come
Yes, I think I hear it now, the answer from the Universe Profundus:
"You just ran out of time. Embrace your destruction."
Dang. Can I get a do-over?
that is hysterical
Is the surface of a planet the right place for an expanding
technological civilization?
Isn't it already, in the form of microwave radiation?
If you get rid of the managers there will be nobody left :)
----------
I was taking, about a month ago, the need for solar cell (Photovoltaics) research, but funded outside of the Gov by somebody with a lot of resources, like Bill Gates.
The reason is not so much having enough money to fund a breakthrough, the reason was to keep it private. Any true breakthrough would come under immediate threat from the exisiting energy community, including the Department of Energy. No it has to be done outside the Gov, with enough money to brush aside the industry opposition, and lobby against them in Washington. This takes money.
Mark Beck
Yes
Wouldn't this be a monopoly?
I'm pretty sure we are to the point now where big oil, big auto, etc. realize now is the make or break time. Innovate or die.
I think concerning your photovoltaics we need something similar to Moore's Law for CPU's. That is the ticket right there. That way the solar cells keep getting more efficient and use less resources.
I mean unless there is a way to capture the sun's energy by using plant like material to gather the energy rather than solar cells. Not man made plants but use real plants. Kind of like that potato thing where you can light up an LED but like a solar cell.
"If the carbon in coal can be safely sequestered, does that solve the environmental problems of ripping it out of the ground?"
As a global warming denier, I must point out that carbon is safely sequestered into the human body at about 20% by mass. Methinks that carbon cap and trade really means capping everyone off at the ankles, or the head.
As a global warming believer, I doubt that a CO2 sequestered coal-fired plant will ever be built in the US. Some will be promised in order to get new plant permits, but the "clean" promise of clean-coal generation will get postponed forever. Also the whole cap and trade is a racket that will accomplish nothing except enrich a few insiders.
The jury is somewhat still out on whether there has been "climate change" or not. I always want to ask one of those who believe the temperature can be controll, "What would the correct normal temperature be for the earth?"
The idea that CO2 is the cause of warming is really almost nonsense. What happens is that the sun heats the earth, the oceans give up the CO2 as they warm, more CO2 in the atmosphere and it follows the warming, not a cause of it.
However there could be a "positive" reason for carbon capture. There are soils that were manmade in the Amazon that have incorporated a type of charcoal called biochar. It is referred to as Terra Preta. People can create charcoal and use the gasses from the wood to normal heat purposes. The charcoal is incorporated into the land and will be stable for possibly several thousand years. The increase in fertility is darned amazing. When they were writing the rules for the cap and trade offsets I don't believe that this made the cut. It is too simple and would work too well for the little guysl
http://news.mongabay.com/bioenergy/2008/11/national-geographic-documentary-on.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/11/081119-lost-cities-amazon.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2002/eldorado.shtml
http://www.uvm.edu/~uvmpr/vq/vqspring05/amazon.html
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/03/1491/2445/
http://www.google.com/search?q=terra+preta&rls=com.microsoft:en-us&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1
My thought is that if the nutters are determined to spend the money on this stuff, lets get some benefit from it and for the long term. Increasing fertility and food production is a great benefit.
The manufacture of charcoal is incredibly basic, humans have been doing it for 1000's of years. The fact it's called biochar now doesn't remove the fact biochar is really just the amazon forest being turned into charcoal.
Yes it is great for the soil, like any ashes are. The question is one of volume of usage. Too much of anything is a bad thing. Even charcoal with the new name of biochar or vertchar. For an experiment do a mix of half ash, half dirt and find out how many veggies or flowers will grow. You'll end up with a VERY green plant, but without the proper nutrient levels to procreate. After a while the soil turns into sand and nothing grows because the biomass created requires dead plant material to continiously be built up (it's why you till a garden, you are feeding the dead to the living essentially).
A good example where ash is used is grave piles. Some of the prettiest grassy parks in the world are built but no coincidence on the mass graves that were in turn shoveled with a mix of ash and lye. Nice green grass, but take notice on the lack of trees usually because one won't grow unless it's transplanted.
Making charcoal is easy. What makes this a bit different is that it has to be done at a relatively low temp to leave the right components within the charcoal. It is not the normal charcoal product. The key to this seem to be that the charcoal is not consumed by the microbes but becomes somewhat a home and food exchange location for them. The soil science involved is somewhat new as a field of study. The ag science folks have figured out there is more to it than simply adding N,P,K and planting.
I have no experience with crops growing above sites of mass graves. However the Terra Preta has remained productive and retained the char for several thousand years.
Plant more trees! :) I don't want a carbon tax for something the human body naturally gives off during breathing. That is fucked.
Fox, meet henhouse. The majors will promote unbridled innovation so long as it doesn't threaten 1) their current monopolies or 2) their deep investments in politics.
Meaning, never.
They will then allow innovation within their own walls on the assumption that they will be able to control access to disruptive technologies, and meter out novel solutions in a way that does not alter any of the two points made above.
So you cannot look to these jokers for leadership in innovation. In fact they are the demon lords of stagnation. Any real innovators that labor outside this rare realm will be crushed once discovered.
Of course, this is a self-limiting problem; stagnation will bring this entire house down in rubble, eventually. For a long time it was "innovate or die" and now it's just die.
So far all our sources of energy are dependent, to one degree or another, on our sun and the sunlight falling on our planet.
I question whether we really understand how our sun works on the most basic level...otherwise, the money invested in fusion research should by now have offered a bit more promise than the facts indicate.
This is a circular problem. Scientists with new ideas cannot receive funding because their ideas might overturn research of thier seniors and included in text books...and if new ideas overturn the old then the question of tenure at universities arises.
Does this sounds familiar to problems we are currently experiencing in the realm of economics?
not all - geothermal works on the earth's heat
...and the heat of the earth originated where?
Beta decay of radiactive elements mostly.
Yes
So I am thinking..."energy research and development funding from $5 billion to $16 billion a year" of taxpayer donation. Do we get this back, once it's developed? I think the American Taxpayer should own the patent, and the new energy should be free. Hell why not just fund 16Billion a year "free energy Lotto". Contestants/Patent applicants submit their "new" energy ideas related to a pre-defined set of criteria. If no winners 1st year, pot increases, and so on. Winner gives patent to America and citizens reap the rewards. Perhaps, we then share it with the world.
Bill effin' eugenics Gates? are you serious??? wtf???
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqAGasF6Hfo
Yes - amazingly, if people can be sure that their children will survive to adulthood, they don't have as many children, reducing population growth...
Mr. Gates is not advocating vaccines as a means to "kill off" people - but as a way to keep them healthy.
no, he's using vaccines as a way to sterilize people.
Figuring out how to replace hundreds of millions of years of the sun's integrated energy impinging on the surface of the earth ought to be a walk in the park, no problem at all for a nobel prize winner, consider it done...A megawatt hour of energy all contained in a package the size of a nine volt battery available at Radio Shacks across this great nation starting next fall. Please do not discard in a fireplace...
Now back to our regularly scheduled financial downgrades..
The one form of energy that always works, costs nothing and will always be available (and is ignored) is conservation.
"Waaaah! No fun! I wanna jet ski/Hummer/Porsche/SUV/private jet/vacation/McMansion/plastic shit from CHINA!"
All lies from advertising. Sitting in a traffic jam - every single day, twice a day, morning and night - is no fun. Only the rats win the rat race.
Time to put away the toys and set about the hard work of remaking this country into a place where energy is not wasted.
Threre really is not much choice. Our future (and descendents') is driven by events. Gates, Immelt et al are irrelevant.
+1000 homey!
Let's discuss low technology, easy fixes for God's sake:
1) turbochargers - increase horsepower and fuel efficiency
2) Insulation - cheap and easy for windows and doors
3) Speed limits for the maniacal truck drivers we have here
4) Smart building software
I could go on.......
Before stuff that challenges all the Laws of Thermodynamics, we could just do the easy stuff right in front of our eyes. But of course, there's no politician or big company that will make money off the easy stuff.
I agree. There are many things we can do via conservation first and bridge fuels as well that reduce carbon output. We don't need a damned tax! Or the Green Police at the door.
I can assure you that reducing fuel useage is a primary focus for the truckers. I expect that the fuel cost may be greater than the labor cost. Their interest in efficiency in energy useage is much greater than what you would have for more efficient heating at home.
The problem is not a lack of energy, it is a lack of efficient, portable energy storage.
That truly is the, for sure, honest to God, heart of the problem.
Amen 99!
it's called a gas tank.
With all due respect, you don't know what your talking about.
- No one is losing money on Wind, esp. 2.5 mw towers. A 30% tax credit is not going to be enough incentive to invest in a money losing technology. I'm hearing 5 year payback periods.
- The same for Solar. You build some real capacity, and a product that can replace roofing shingles, and you will have a solar boom on your hands.
- Nuclear could save itself tomorrow with: Thorium Reactors. Again, this is a BOOM waiting to occur. Safe, cheap nuclear power, with virtually no environmental opposition.
- The PROBLEM is, the oil industry is controlled, not by real shareholders, but by Short Term Wall Street.
The oil industry doesn't want to be part of any "solutions", you've got a mind set of 70 year olds who don't read anything but the Industry Propaganda They Produce! Are you not yet aware of the amount of money the oil and coal industry spend in Green Propaganda? Even Blog posts and astro-turf? Hundreds of Millions, to avoid investing the Billions they have a their disposal.
Are you not aware of the BS Economics they flood the market with?
The investments could be made, and profitably, except we're going to to wait 10-20 years till the "incompetent's" have died.
What you are overlooking is that the nuclear technology has to be allowed to be implemented. there are several very good ideas and advances in nuclear. What is the cnance to get something built and operating? Zero.
Berry Sombrero said he supports nuclear power. Except that he is closing the national nuclear waste disposal site after we have spent billions on it through our power bills. Do you believe that an oil company was responsible for that?
Amen to your lines about thorium.
The U.S. has immense amounts of it and it's practically harmless in its natural state. You can hold a lump of it in your hand. The only thing standing between us and clean, abundant, relatively cheap energy is our government.
The amazing thing is that it's such an obvious and easy slam dunk for Barry O, such a ripe luscious piece of low hanging fruit and yet he and his equally pretentious man, Chu, don't make the slightest move toward it. What an utter lack of vision.
So you have alternative energy. Then you need alternative arable land and alternative raw materials.
Light your farts.
I truly believe that corporations, out of insecurity and self preservation, are more likely to stifle innovation than allow it to flourish. I personally work for one that spends more money on patents than it does on the research. It turns engineers into attorney pawns in waiting for unsuspecting entrepreneurs to ambush. More so, it prefers to spend more money acquiring technology than to develop it in house.
The collaboration between government and corporations is just more evidence of this mismanagement and corporate welfare with the clear intent to stave off competition from the garage tinkerers. Bill Gates may have started in his garage but I believe he once was quoted to have said something along the lines of his worst fear was another kid tinkering with the next big idea.
Corporations must compete like everyone else. Their unstated mission instead is to keep their potential competition bouncing along the bottom until their will is completely broken.
Signed
disgruntled paper pusher.
True that... our corporate leaders are a bunch of pussies that will do anything to quash competition.
Yes. And this is why, as the previous poster's paraphrased quote from Gates shows, big business has always liked big government. How else to stop big ideas advanced by small business?
Strange way of thinking.
I dont think that the concerned corporations have to do anything to preserve themselves in this story.
In many other cases, they proved their position was enough to absorb technological front-runners.
If a new energy paradigm is achieved, energy corporations will stay aside the required time to assess the most promising solutions and absorb the smaller entities which provide the said solutions. The energy corporations of the future are for most of them the energy corporations of present times. A few will miss the transition but all in all, the only risk they face is a change in name to suit better the major energy source of the future.
just what we need, pompous dickheads like Gates and Immelt leading the charge. Maybe Gates should start with conservation in his compound and with his lifestyle; and, maybe that phony Immelt could look at his own company's conservation efforts. What a bunch of hooey. Are they going to arrive in their private jets? Hey, dickheads, I know I'm gonna get mine; it's coming for you too.
The patent and copyright regimes, the general lack of property rights, the legal system, the monetary system, and the political system all conspire together to suppress innovation.
I'm confident that with accurate price signals and a general reduction in the level of violence in society, we would see rapid innovation in energy and in most other areas of technology.
Research can't be effectively managed without accurate price signals. Government funding will always produce malinvestment. You can't just throw money in the general direction of an engineer and then get something that is useful to the market. Without price signals, the entrepreneur is flying blind. They're guessing at best.
ARPANET was kept under government/university lock and key throughout the 70s, to the great detriment of society. If it'd been allowed to flourish in the public market, perhaps we'd be 10-20 years more advanced as a society.
For example, Facebook is basically a piece of forums software. The technology to build something like Facebook has been around since the mid-90s.
Somehow, it's worth billions of dollars and is considered "innovative." It may be a marketing success (and is on track to make $1B in revenue), but it's not an example of technological advancement.
People have had coffee making technology for hundreds of years. Starbucks is not a technology advancement either but it is also worth billions.
Hmm... well, Starbucks could be said to have made coffee-making machinery more popular, and advanced that technology.
It is kind of push and pull. Facebook has created more of a demand for web-based programming applications, which is a technological advance of a sort.
But to claim that it's "innovative" or a sign of fundamental technological advance is, I think, false.
Back to the original direction of the topic.
This is what the Cap and Trade nonsense generates:
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_resources/article4138295.ece
A giant Indian company that has bought up famous British firms such as Jaguar, Land Rover and Tetley Tea is to get hundreds of millions of pounds in “green” subsidies to build one of the world’s biggest coal-fired power stations.
Tata will receive huge sums from the West for building the power station in India, thanks to the carbon trading system established by the Kyoto treaty. Critics say the system makes a mockery of attempts to combat climate change.
When the plant near the port of Mundra, in Gujarat, becomes operational in 2011 it will emit 25.7m tonnes of carbon dioxide a year – more CO2 than any power station in Britain.
Yet it will be classed by the United Nations as a source of “clean power”. That means Tata will be able to sell surplus “carbon credits”, established under the Kyoto treaty, to firms in the West. Energy groups will be able to buy the credits as an alternative to reducing CO2 emissions.
It is estimated Tata could earn £30m a year from such sales. It has already received more than £230m in soft loans from the World Bank to build the plant.http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_resources/article4138295.ece
LAKSHMI MITTAL, Britain’s richest man, stands to benefit from a £1 billion windfall from a European scheme to curb global warming. His company ArcelorMittal, the steel business where he is chairman and chief executive, will make the gain on “carbon credits” given to it under the European emissions trading scheme (ETS).
The scheme grants companies permits to emit CO2 up to a specified “cap”. Beyond this they must buy extra permits. An investigation has revealed that ArcelorMittal has been given far more carbon permits than it needs. It has the largest allocation of any organisation in Europe.
The investigation has also shown that ArcelorMittal and Eurofer, which represents European steel makers at European level, have lobbied intensively in Brussels. This has included threatening to move plants out of Europe at a cost of 90,000 jobs, and asking European commissioners to meet Mittal.
More of: While You Say It Can't be Done: It's Being Done...
http://www.ecogeek.org/component/content/article/3191
All the stupid CEO's and bankers cited in this article don't understand one simple truth. There is plenty of energy research and new products when oil prices are high. When oil prices fall back everything grinds to a halt and the research gets moth balled. That is why we need some kind of tax structure that makes fossile fuels more expensive. Now I hate taxes as much as anyone else, but unless we have permanantly high oil prices nothing will ever get developed (or it will take forever). So if we must have taxes I would prefer direct energy or carbon taxes, that incent people to use less and make new technologies cost competitive sooner.
Whole argument overlooks one of the 'non negotiable' parametres required by TPTB .... any viable full / permanent baseload solution (i.e not solar, wind etc..) will not be considered if it is of the distributed type (i.e home generation). No grid = No Centralisation = No control.
I for one am convinced that solutions have been identified many times over by many creative men over many decades but have been systematically bought out / suppressed for this very reason. Odds on the US military has several technologies that could be used. Their too many seemingly credible claims to this effect to dismiss it offhanded.
Anything anybody came up with would be copied, reengineered and mass produced accross the globe and would become no more expensive that a good refrigerator within a decade. An entire segment of the economy would dissappear (energy generation and distribution).
The whole JP Morgan / Tesla / Wardencliffe tower story is telling of their motivations ... it is not a solution if it does not provide ongoing control with ongoing revenue stream.
Hopefully there is some merit in the predictions of Cliff High and Gerald Celente among others that these so called 'free energy' devices will be let out / get out of the bag when/if everything else collapses and will be the basis of a 'new' economy based on zero cost / zero emission / readily available energy.
The country is one big "bended knee before the bankers..."
A smooth transition away from oil (not possible in my opinion as it has too many uses), has to come 10 years before any global oil production peak according to the Hirsch report, otherwise we are in for a seriously rough ride. Since it appears we have been ON this plateau since 2005 or so and there has been very little done to shift away from oil dependance, the road will most likely start to get significantly rockier over the next decade.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirsch_report
http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/others/pdf/Oil_Peaking_NETL.pdf