OUR GOVERNMENT TRIES TO HELP GET CLEANTECH GOING THE WAY THEY HELPED THE INTERNET

Recently I heard about this government program called ARPA-E which might help cleantech get going the way something called DARPA helped get the internet going. So I emailed them and asked about it. Their answer (below) didn’t say much about how we kids could help. But they talk about some things we probably need to learn about like new batteries to make electricity more reliable and cleaner, bio-fuel to replace gas in cars, and CO2 capture (which there’s plenty of stuff about on the internet). I needed some help from my parents to understand what they said – maybe you will too. But it’s good our government is doing this!




Dear Dylan,

Thank you for your e-mail and interest in ARPA-E.

Our goal is to help develop flexible, creative and inventive approaches
that have the ability to transform the global energy landscape and
advance our Country's technological leadership.  ARPA-E projects not
only creates jobs, but can also help cut carbon pollution and lead to
the next Industrial Revolution in clean energy technologies.

In our recent selection process, a large number of small businesses and
educational institutions such as MIT, Stanford, University of Minnesota
and Arizona State University received funds to advance their research.
Here are just a few examples of the great work ARPA-E awardees are
doing:

*       Liquid Metal Grid-Scale Batteries: Created by Professor Don
Sadoway, a leading MIT battery scientist, this battery technology could
revolutionize the way electricity is used and produced on the grid,
enabling round-the-clock power from America's wind and solar power
resources, increasing the stability of the grid, and making blackouts a
thing of the past. And if deployed at homes, it could allow individuals
and families like yours the ability to be part of a future "smart energy
Internet," where they would have much greater control over their energy
usage.
*       Bacteria for Producing Direct Solar Hydrocarbon Biofuels:
Researchers at the University of Minnesota have developed a bioreactor
that has the potential to produce a flow of gasoline directly from
sunlight and CO2 using a symbiotic system of two organisms. This
development has the potential to greatly increase U.S.-production of
clean fuel for our vehicles and end our reliance on foreign oil.
*       CO2 Capture using Artificial Enzymes: Funding will support an
effort by the United Technologies Research Center to develop new
synthetic enzymes that could make it easier and more affordable to
capture carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and factories.
Success of this project could substantially lower the cost of carbon
capture relative to current, state-of-the-art amine and ammonia based
processes. This would represent a major breakthrough that could make it
affordable to capture the carbon dioxide emissions from coal and natural
gas power plants around the world.
*       Low Cost Crystals for LED Lighting: Developed by Momentive
Performance Materials, this proposal for novel crystal growth technology
could dramatically lower the cost of developing light emitting diodes
(LEDs), which are 30 times more efficient than incandescent bulbs and
four times more efficient than compact fluorescents. This higher
quality, low-cost material would offer significant breakthroughs in
lowering costs of finished LED lighting, accelerating mass market use,
and dramatically decreasing U.S. lighting energy usage, which currently
accounts for 14 percent of U.S. electricity use.

ARPA-E plans on continuing these efforts to fund projects like this by
bringing together America's brightest energy innovators to pioneer a
low-cost, low-carbon energy future for our nation.  More information on
ARPA-E and our projects can be found on our Web site.

Best Regards,

ARPA-E

INTERVEIW WITH AMORY LOVINS!(GET YOUR PARENTS TO READ THIS TOO KIDS!)

Hi guys! Sorry I messed up on that last post there. This is the rest of the post so check it out! (from the Amory interview in case you forgot)

• If you were in 5th grade, what are the first 3 things you'd do to help the environment?

Survey energy- and water-saving opportunities in your house. (Some good tips are at www.rmi.org in the Home Energy Briefs and the old but still useful book Homemade Money: Saving Energy and Dollars in Your Home.) Maybe you can persuade your parents to have a house doctor make a house call and diagnose your home's chills and fevers. Bring your findings back to school to encourage your classmates to do similar surveys in their own homes.

Organize your classmates to seek similar opportunities to improve the efficiency of your school. Besides the obvious opportunities like weatherstripping, insulation, boiler choice and maintenance, windows, and showerhead efficiency (you can get a great shower from well-chosen 1.2-gpm units), lighting and daylighting are often winners. Retrofitting exterior and interior lightshelves can bounce daylight evenly all through the classroom, saving ~3/4 of its electricity—enough to pay for textbooks—and speeding learning by ~20–26%.

Maybe you can persuade the school to do what the schools in New Orleans did many years ago: if the students serve as "energy monitors" who close/open windows at sensible times, turn off lights in empty rooms, etc, the student body gets to keep half the resulting dollar saving. (It worked so well some of the New Orleans student bodies got $50,000 in the first year. Later a new superintendent scrapped the system, and the savings disappeared too. Then they rehired the old superintendant, who restored the rewards and the savings returned. The school board decided it was better for the school system to get half of a big saving than all of nothing.)

• Your website has lots of ways kids can save energy and water. And try to get their parents to. But do you have ideas what kids can do to make energy? Does human power like pedaling a bike machine make sense?

You can rig a generator that might make a couple of hundred watts, maybe a little more, if you pedal really hard. Some "green" gym chains are starting to do this with their exercise equipment. But it takes some engineering to (a) match a low-voltage DC generator, like a bicycle generator, to low-voltage DC uses, or (b) make line voltage and then safely and properly connect it to feed back into the grid. This could make an interesting science-course or shop project to try to design and build. Maybe someone has a parent who's a licensed electrician who might help. Just be careful and do it right -- no shocks, no fire hazard, follow code and UL and utility rules. It may be simpler not to mess with line voltage but just to use low-voltage DC, off the grid, and rig it to run electronics.

• Should we try to organize stuff like "kids for solar and against coal" in our schools? Maybe in contests between schools, and call press conferences?

Sure. Go for it. Just know what you're for. Here are some of the ways to get the US off coal (which makes half our electricity), and what fraction of coal-fired electricity they'd save:

- Use electricity as productively as the average of the top ten states (adjusted for their economic mix and climate): ~62%

- Use electricity as efficiently as will saves money compared to just buying the coal, even if the power plant and grid were free: 100-150%

- Build the windpower now waiting in line to be connected to the grid: 50% (new windpower, "firmed" so you can have it any time whether the wind is blowing or not, costs about half as much as new coal power or a third as much as new nuclear power)

- Build windpower in all available cost-effective U.S. sites: >200%

- Put photovoltaics on 7% of U.S. structures: >100% (this is starting to be competitive in many sites and uses)

- Build other sensible renewables: probably >50% (most beat new coal power)

- Remove obstacles to "cogenerating" electricity together with useful heat in buildings and factories: >50% (plus more in buildings); this generally beats new and sometimes old coal power

- Run partly-idle existing combined-cycle gas-fired power plants more and coal plants less: ~35% (this would cost an extra ~2¢/kWh, which is about 5–10x less than building new nuclear plants)

So there are lots of ways to pick from this menu, eliminate our coal-burning in power plants (nearly all of it), and save money.

• Is nuclear power bad?

It's not bad, but it'd be dumb to build more of because it's extremely expensive -- so much that it saves about 2-20x less carbon per dollar, and does so about 20-40x slower, than buying instead the  sorts of options in the list above. Those are the market winners; because they cost less and build faster, with much less financial risk, than giant power plants (whether nuclear, coal- or gas-fired), they've pushed all those central power plants down to a total of less than 50% market share in the world.

• How scared should we be of global warming?

We should be very concerned about climate change, and should strive with all our might to stop it. This will also save money, because it's cheaper to save fuel than to buy fuel: efficiency is cheaper than fuel. Thus the debate about climate protection should be not about cost, burden, and sacrifice, but about profits, jobs, and competitive advantage. That makes the politics much easier.

We should not be scared of global warming or anything else. To solve this and the other big problems in the world, we need to be fearless. Check out my essay on "Applied Hope" at [Dylan, I'm in an airplane and can't get online -- please go to www.rmi.org and use the search engine; it's the essay in the front of our 2007-08 Annual Report, which is also available from the menu at the top of the homepage, I think under Publications]. Kids will save the world because nobody's taught them to be afraid yet. (If anyone tries to teach you to be afraid, just say no. Prudence is good—don't do dumb dangerous things—but fear is crippling.) We need a new generation who don't run away from big challenges but run towards them.

• Are oceans in big danger like we hear in the news and blogs?

Yes. Same advice.

• Can algae replace oil?

Maybe. There are some very promising developments not just with algae but with sugar palm (Arenga pinnata), switchgrass and other weedy prairie grasses (learn about perennial polyculture and the work of The Land Institute), and other ways to grow biomass that don't interfere with the food system, regenerate soil fertility, and pay farmers and ranchers for taking carbon out of the air and putting it back into soil biota where it belongs.

• How will cars change as we get older?

Profoundly. Think about this sequence: Start with a good hybrid (over a million are on the road), drive it properly, and save half your fuel per mile. Make it much lighter-weight (but safer) and more aerodynamic, with better tires, and you save half the remaining fuel; now you're down to one-fourth the fuel per mile you started with. Fuel it with 85% sustainably grown ethanol, which pretty soon will be cellulosic, not corn-based; that saves three-fourths of what's left, so now you're down to 6% of your original oil per mile. Make the car a plug-in hybrid (good ones will come on the market in the next year or two) and you save at least half of what's left; now you're down to 3% of the original oil per mile. If you want to get rid of that too, and even the biomass too, you can go to a pure-electric battery car or a hydrogen fuel-cell car; both can make sense and make money if and only if the car was made properly efficient in the first place. Seewww.oilendgame.com for details.

• What kind of jobs will there be in cleantech and helping the environment as we grow up? What should we study to get those kinds of jobs?

Many good jobs of all kinds, but they won't just be specialties in a new green sector; all jobs everywhere will get increasingly green to the degree you make them so. Study everything you can, the more diverse and seemingly unconnected the better, so you can hook up what we know in new ways that solve the problems we created by trying to do just one thing and not understanding hidden connections. [Dylan, please search www.rmi.org and add URL for "How Not to Parachute More Cats."] Let me tell you a big important secret: there are few if any disciplines that a smart, motivated person can't learn more about in six months than most (not all) people in the field know. Once you realize that, you can jump into any field you need, learn anything you want, and feel utterly inhibited about intruding on someone else's turf.

• What easy things can the government do to help the environment?

Stop rewarding the opposite of what we want—subsidizing stupid, dirty, dangerous technologies. (Most environmental harm is caused by uneconomic but heavily subsidized technologies.) Better still, desubsidize all energy and water sources and agricultural practices. For example, I'd love to see all ways to save or produce energy allowed and required to compete fairly at honest prices, regardless of their type, technology, size, location, or ownership. Who do you suppose might not be in favor of that?

Reward utilities for cutting your bill, not selling you more energy. Reward architects and engineers for what they save, not what they spend. Set a wonderful example. Help us all connect the dots.

• Lots of kids have computers and know how to use them. I learned a lot from your website. Could you maybe webcast some shows for kids?

Good idea. I'll look into it. Meanwhile, check out redapes.org, and go to ted.com to see "Willie Smits Restores a Rainforest." Judy and I were there last year. Amazing work. Willie is a great friend and partner in Indonesia.

INTERVEIW WITH AMORY LOVINS!(GET YOUR PARENTS TO READ THIS TOO KIDS!)

This posting is an email interview with a very great scientist named Amory Lovins (there is info about him and some of his work at www.rmi.org ). If we can think about the stuff Amory says, we can start to do more for the environment right now. And it’s a great guide about how to think about the environment as we get bigger. THANK YOU AMORY FROM ALL OF US!!!