Bring the money, everything else will follow

Financing the second decade of the century

Energy and Banking are the grease of the American economy. When I entered the solar arena I had no idea how truly integrated our economy was. The federal govt is critically woven in the fabric of the private sector and vice versa. Consider that without the US military fossil fuel transportation and mining likely could not happen at a scale to support our current needs. Or without the underwriting of Nuclear plants there would not be a 20% energy infrastructure based on Nuclear energy. Of the five largest nuclear research facilities in the US all are federally funded.

Fluor, which is a huge construction company with major offices in SC, had its CEO attend the SC energy and jobs forum that I attended. He is likely a very savvy CEO but he said that the federal government should have less direct impact on the private sector. On the surface this is a wonderfully Ayn Rand concept, until you look at Fluor’s, client list; US Army, Afghanistan, Camp Adder, Iraq, CETAC I and CETAC II which has no budgetary numbers attached to it, but the 22 tasks are all encompassing. I would expect billions of dollars in taxpayer contracts. I applaud Fluor for supporting the US military and for providing 1000's of jobs. Fluor is a good company, I am glad they are working in Kazakhstan on the largest, most complex oil/gas separation facilities to date until you look at the leader of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev. Nursultan, who is the ultimate Oligarch of the post-Soviet era. While many of his stances place him in balance between the East and West, he has modified the constitution to allow himself to run as many times as he likes and is suspected of syphoning in excess of $1billion US to himself and family members. We need this investment and good companies running the show but..

My point being we live in a complex, interwoven world. It is easy for multi-national companies and US energy monopolies to use their political heft to influence public policy and energy decisions. When the Utilities say they are working solely in the interest of protecting rate-payers we should assume that is correct. We should also remember that SCANA is the only SC based utility company in the fortune 500 and they are beholden to their shareholders too.

While utility companies have 50yr generation plans to provide reliable, affordable energy, we as a state and country have an economy that runs in quarterly cycles and 15 minute news cycles. Investment capital is available and waiting to provide safe returns to investors through private solar power plant ownership. This would move the risk and cost of ownership away from utilities while they focus on Nuclear expansion and create much needed jobs and liquidity injections into a slowly recovering state economy. Capital likes sure bets, those sure bets are currently outside of SC. How do we entice those same people to invest in infrastructure in the future when we have not created the relationships in solar and RE where they are actively investing today. I am a solar guy, this stuff is not what I imagined I would be talking about at 6yrs in, but it is a way to bring solar to everyone over time and the more I research energy in SC the more I realise if we don't monetize it, solar will not become a viable energy source in time for the end of fossil fuels. I for one don't want to contemplate an America post fossil fuel without viable alternatives. Do you?

Lost opportunities and a bright future

I attended the SC clean energy jobs forum today. Great event hosted by USC, Duke Energy and the Nature Conservency.

The panel discussions had thought leaders in business, research, energy policy, and Govt.
Despite that I came away from the event frustrated again that I missed a golden opportunity. The audience was not given the opportunity to ask questions accept through a moderator. But USC president Harris Pastides asked for anyone to stand up who knew where our future energy would come from. It was, ironically a USC professor who articulated what I already knew. The earth is a closed-system, nothing comes into or leaves our atmosphere but energy from the sun in the form of photons. Therefore we do not have sustainable sources of energy except sun based energy, period, end of story.
Every other source of energy is intermediate, if we do not figure out how to harness the sun’s energy directly before we exhaust all of the sun created fossil fuel then we will return to the stone age. This is why I support research and development for solar energy.

We have Jim Rogers whom I admire and respect talking about 250yrs of coal reserves, but this is only true if we stop exporting coal to China, can get every last lump economically and we do not increase our energy usage over time. We currently have 1.6 billion people without reliable energy on earth, I suspect we have 100yrs of coal reserves that are viable. If we invest in two more generations of coal plants we hand a defunct, combustion based generating system to our kids without a paddle.

We had wonderful and exciting discussions on nuclear energy, nuclear is a good bridge technology, something to buy us time nothing more. Nuclear fuel is challenging, not domestic and storage requires Eon’s of commitment by the federal govt which we currently don't have.

I am a realist, solar is challenging, the sun only shines on half the planet at a time, its harvesting today is inefficient compared to fossil and nuclear fuel today. Estimates from Duke are that it can supply 15% of our energy with today’s technology.

Currently in South Carolina solar provides .001% of our energy and we are a sun state!

Fossil fuel and Nuclear power don’t need our help and they don’t need to be defended and compared to solar every step of the way. We are a 95% fossil fuel economy, what we need now is for thought leaders to pave the way for serious research and development of solar in SC, NC and every other state in the nation. The clock is ticking, with 50yr energy generation cycles we can’t wait any longer.