UL Green Approval

It is good to see that Underwriters Laboratories UL will now test devices and products that claim to be green and if the product is as good as it claims it will get the UL Environment logo.

http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/photos/0,,20308688,00.html?xid=grnewsletter-140108-green-myths

This got me thinking as the Bloom Coffin is an electrical device it must have UL approved components and in total may be UL approved for electrical device safety.   Now we just need UL to do the efficiency tests on the Coffins and compare their results to Bloom’s claims on their website.  I challenge Bloom Energy to send us data that UL Environment tested their Solid Oxide Fuel Cell and the results show a >60% thermal efficiency as Bloom claims on their website under Better Electrons. 

“Higher Efficiency

Bloom Energy Servers convert natural gas or renewable biogas into electricity using a direct electrochemical reaction rather than combustion. This highly efficient process is not bound by the same thermodynamic constraints¹ for creating electricity, and thus enables exceptionally high conversion efficiency. Today, Bloom ships systems with an industry-leading 60+ percent electrical efficiency, based on the lower heating value (LHV) of the fuel — a figure that has increased markedly since our first commercial shipments in 2008. Looking forward, we see a clear pathway to deliver even higher efficiency.”

http://www.bloomenergy.com/clean-energy/

Electrons have spin and the Bloom Better Electrons have even more spin.  Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes is getting wind of the spin Bloom pulled on her in February 2010 when the Coffins were launched with great fanfare on 60 Minutes.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/bloom-box-energy-machine-unveiled/

It is interesting that the photo in the CBS link has  a white board with the messages Zero Defects and Don’t Make, Don’t Take, and Don’t Pass behind the Gangrene CEO who simply lied through his teeth to Ms. Stahl 4 years ago.   The next episode of the Bloom Coffin will have a white board with Zero Truth. Make it up, Take the SGIP money, and Pass the contributions onto Huffman.

I know for a fact that Ms. Stahl asked Robert Rapier the Chemical Engineer featured in the Cleantech  Crash piece his opinion on Bloom.  Mr. Rapier told me he told Leslie Stahl “it works, but very expensive and overhyped.”  Mr. Rapier was being kind I would have said “it works with much lower capacity factor than claimed, is three times as expensive generating electric power as combined cycle power using the very same natural gas,  they hyped their low emissions which actually are higher than combined cycle natural gas, they hyped their efficiency which is 45.16% on the higher heating value of natural gas, they are not over 60% efficient as they have claimed, they have VOC emissions, they have solid waste that is hazardous and contains sulfur, they stole over $28 million for Delmarva customers in Delaware, and the pilfered as much as $257 million of the SGIP money in California.  Their corporate culture is to pay Mexican welders sub-minimum wages in Pesos for work done in the Bay Area.  They got AT&T, Walmart, Target Stores, EBay, Apple, and myriad other companies to go along on the greenwashing ride.  But they were brilliant in getting young green behind the ears politicians like Jared Huffman, and Jack Markell to give them gobs of money and believe their junk.  They even got you to believe their hype in February 2010 when you helped launch them on this very show.”

The Population Of Vehicles

China now has over 255 million vehicles on its roads.  130 million of the vehicles are private cars.  The other vehicles are trucks and busses.  The US has almost the same number of total vehicles but has far fewer busses and has more private cars and small trucks.   Next year China will overtake the US in the total number of vehicles on the road.  China sold just over 20 million vehicles last year of which 15 million were private cars.  The US has car and small truck sales of 15.6 million in 2013.   Our scrapping rate is approximately 13.5 million vehicles a year and China’s scraps less than 10 million vehicles a year.

OK all the data show that China will overtake the US and the leading internal combustion engine nation.   Dr. P. can be happy that the US has the largest fleet of plug in vehicles in the world and that the Chinese market for these expensive toys is much smaller than ours.   The Chinese government gives buyers of plug in a little more of a gift than the US does but Chinese consumers know the ICE is the economic alternate and have shied away from plug ins.

Last year 95,921 plug in were sold in the US.  95,881 if you leave out the Coda Blues and the Flopping Fiskers.  This is more than 6 times as much as the amount sold in China.   The US government (we the people) forked out $609,065,450 in tax rebates to the owners of these plug ins.   Dr. P and Mr. J will get $7,500 of your money each.   Before you multiply 95,881 by $7,500 and comment that my math is wrong some of the plug ins with smaller battery packs get less tax credit that $7,500.

The very sad truth is that there simply are too many vehicles on the road and countries like China will consume more and more energy to propel all these vehicles.  Of course this points to a problem with deploying so many internal combustion engines in such large measure all over the planet.   It does look like we had all better focus on a global agreement on energy usage and emissions.

The developing economies of China and Brazil for example have demanded from the US and the Europeans that they want an accounting of CO2 emissions going back to the start of the industrial revolution as the basis for the global agreements going forward.  The US and the Europeans have told the non OECD countries forget it.   Ford and GM as well as the European vehicle companies particularly VW have enjoyed great sales of vehicles in China so they want the motorization of the public to continue.  

China issued 26 million new drivers licenses in 2013.   I simply got my expiring license renewed on-line through the California DMV web site.  I have no plans of giving up driving just because great grandpa drove a Model T in 1913 and the Brazilians think this did them an injustice.  My view is we are all in this together and we all need to use fuel sparingly.  I drive few miles each year, I only heat certain rooms of the house which itself is small, and I try to educate lay people to be greener.  

Please comment on this post as we need folks to suggest a path forward as 85 million new cars, trucks and busses will be produced and sold worldwide in 2014.  In 1960 there were a total of 127 million registered vehicles worldwide.  I sure did like the 1959 Chev Impala. 65,800 of the Convertible Chev Impalas were sold in 1959.  No one gave a hoot about CO2 in 1959.  No one ever thought China would overtake the US in anything.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5OpBgdy5w8

60 Minutes Gets Its MoJo Back

This evening CBS’s 60 Minutes did a piece titled Cleantech Crash on the green energy debacle in the US.   60 Minutes got its MoJo back and finally did a hard hitting investigation into the greenwashed junk we all have paid for over the past five years.   I bet Dr. Chu and Dr. Rice were asked to be interviewed and they hid.   I also bet that Condi Rice resigned from the board of Kior a couple of weeks back as she well knew that 60 Minutes was going to do a piece on her benefactor Mr. Khosla and his gangrene company Kior. 

Bravo 60 Minutes you reported in 2014 what the Green Machine has been reporting for years.  The next 60 Minutes piece should be the apology piece for launching Bloom Energy with such fanfare 4 years ago.   The next 60 Minute piece should put John Doerr on the hot seat just like the thermodynamic neophyte Vinod Khosla was put on tonight.   I took great pleasure in seeing Mr. Khosla swallow hard when asked some probing questions about his failure and his use of our money to fund those failures.

Robert Rapier the chemical engineer who was interviewed was the only thermodynamically honest person interviewed on the show.  Well done Robert!!!

When Bloom is fully exposed, Jared Huffman my Congressman will be as squirmy Steven Koonin the former DOE Head Scientist who gave away our money in Dr. Chu’s green boondoggle that 60 Minutes exposed tonight.   Mr. Huffman you can hide for a little while longer but the news on Bloom and the quarter billion dollars of ill-gotten SGIP money in California is not going away. 

Here is a link to the 60 minute piece

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cleantech-crash-60-minutes/

The Mission Of Green Explored

My blog has had the following Mission Statement to guide me in my writing over the past 5 years.

“There are numerous opinions and claims about sustainable and green products.  However, many of these opinions and claims are supported by neither science nor fact.  Green Explored provides the reader with a humorous primer on green and sustainability that is easily understood by the layperson.  Spurious claims are shot down while honesty is applauded.  Those who break the laws of thermodynamics are punished with the Gangrene Award”

I probably have stayed pretty true to the mission statement but have probably become far more cynical and acerbic in the past couple of year.    Several friends who regularly read the blog have asked me to be less acerbic.  Some have also called some of my writing biased.  I doubt the writing is biased but it certainly may have from time to time gone from acerbic to vitriolic and may have even touched on ranting. 

My new year’s resolution is that Green Explored will move away from bitching to informing and will deal with the myriad sustainability issues that face us that range from eco efficiency to fair wages and proper treatment of people.    Some readers have suggested a forum, others have suggested topics such as clean water and healthcare.  I will cover these topics as well as green energy in future blogs and it is my intention to ask others to do guest blogs particularly in health care.

While I was managing “sustainability” at Bechtel ten years ago, I coined a term for socializing the notion of sustainability inside that organization as LEAP.   The L is for Legacy, the E is for Eco Efficiency, the A for Appropriate, and the P for Partnership.   Now more than ever in a world where more people consume more scarce and dwindling resources and more people are at each-others’ throats or in traffic jams all over the planet a LEAP forward is needed.  Green Explored will attempt to debate and then capture and communicate the essences of that required LEAP.

I expect that many who read the Blog will also contribute to the forum that discusses the issues and then formulates the appropriate solutions.   Of course once in a while when big news of the demise of a gangrene imposter happens, I may resort to my shtick as that is a part of me.  But I plan on sticking to the mantra of the LEAP.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shtick

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/leap

Day 4 of 2014

UPDATE   Dr. P contacted me to say his tires were at 8 32 meaning 1/4 of an inch tread not 3/4 worn.  He still has another 25,000 to 30,000 miles to go on them.   Also Dr. P. says he knows of a Tesla owner who already has done 50,000 miles so Gov Mooooooonbeam won't be handing out any back slap to Dr. P.   Mr. J contacted me to say he is green because the grid in NJ has nat gas and nuke generation and I should not amortize the massive amount of electricity the Japanese used to fabricate his batteries over the miles he will drive.    I will research the emissions from the NJ grid and try find out how many miles the batteries will really provide before I give Mr. J a detailed response.  Jerry B did not respond as he is still recovering from the wounds he suffered in the Photo Shop.   I did not do the makeup on the photo, I simply found it by Googling Jerry Brown Image.


So far 2014 has been a wonderful year.  My 1999 Mercedes C 280 passed its California smog test with flying colors and is now registered for another year.   The registration process with the Cal DMV was online and very easy.   Maybe Oh Bummer Care Dot Com can learn a lot from the Cal DMV.   I remember the long lines and incompetent helpers at the DMV station in San Francisco thirty two years ago when I first registered a car in California.  Going to the dentist was much more enjoyable than an entire afternoon inline at the DMV.   Bravo Cal DMV you have applied the internet to make our lives so much more pleasurable.

Inside EVs has published the 2013 sales of most EV vehicles in the USA and the Volt and Prius Plug In actually had negative sales growth over 2012.   Makes sense as the plug in hybrid market now has other entrants such as Ford.  The Nissan Leaf increased sales considerable and this was caused by a massive cut in price.  Nissan still sold less Leaves than Chev sold Volts but those two cars both managed sales above 22,600 vehicles in 2013.

http://insideevs.com/monthly-plug-in-sales-scorecard/

The Tesla Model S sold about 17,650 vehicles in the US in 2013 and proved that more affluent buyers will use Uncle Sam’s money to attempt to be green.   Actually all plug ins and all Evs were subsidized by Uncle Sam and some states so all buyers of these vehicles got some shredded pork shoulder.   The total of all EVs and plug in sales for 2013 will be very close to 96,000 when Ford reports sales on Monday.  The plug ins will be just over half of the total and the pure EVs will be just under half.  In 2012 plug ins sold approximately 38,000 of 52,581 total.  In 2013 pure EVs gained popularity more than plug ins primarily from the marketing success of Tesla and the massive price cut of the Nissan Leaf.

I have opined that in 2014 we can expect approximately 140,000 plug ins and EVs to be sold and again the split will be roughly 50 50.   The experiment with plug in cars has been expensive and has been partially successful.   Certain drivers like Mr. Marsh Seattle have been marvelously green in using an EV for their high mileage commutes powering up with low carbon power from a green grid.   Most Tesla owners did nothing to lower carbon emissions and simply sucked Federal and state money to lower their taxes.

From the public policy perspective the EV story has been a waste of money (Fisker, A 123, Ener 1, LG Chem, etc. etc.) and even the Nissan story is a bust.   Nissan will repay the DOE loan for the battery and Leaf plant in Smyrna TN but that plant was intended to produce 200,000 Leaves a year and Nissan has only achieved one tenth of its promised goal.   

Interestingly the United Auto Workers hopes to unionize the Fremont California Tesla assembly plant.   It will be interesting to see if this happens or not.  Talking of Tesla I did some math for a couple of friends who own Model Ss.   The 5 fires in the Tesla is about the same incidence rate 0.025% as fires in the general fleet of all cars in the US.   The one factor that is against Tesla is that the average age of the Model Ss on the road is six months and the average US car is 11.5 years old.   Older ICE cars tend to catch alight more frequently than newer cars.   Also the US fleet data includes cars that were ignited as a result of arson.   From this analysis I think model S owners are more likely to see their cars go up in smoke but the likelihood is still small and I have told Dr. P and Mr. J. to save their money and not buy asbestos underwear.  

Mr. J. lives in NJ and the weather has been horrible.   He took his extra money and bought thermal underwear as he informed me he did buy the panoramic roof option on his Model S.  Poor Mr. J better not go on the NJ Turnpike at 77 MPH in 17 degree weather.   Dr. P in Orange County CA is enjoying fine weather and claims he has almost 20,000 miles on his Model S.   He has experienced two tows because of flat tires and his tires are ¾ gone and will need to be replaced soon.  

Perhaps Dr. P will be the first Model S owner to turn 100,000 miles and like Mr. Marsh in Seattle Dr. P will be famous and have the governor give him a pat on the back.  Governor Moonbeam will say to Dr. P. “We are in a degenerate state of self-government. In fact, even to use the words self-government, is not only an exaggeration, it's a lie. It's a big lie!”  Oops that is what he said in 1995.  Governor B would now substitute the word greening for government.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jerry_Brown

Happy 2014

We just buried 2013 and now 2014 is the new born.   It is the cycle of life.   My hopes for 2014 are pretty simple.   I just want to see Bloom Energy and its Officers, Directors, and major shareholders brought to justice by the FTC, the state of Delaware, the State of California, and some good private lawyers. 

My new year’s resolution is to be much more positive about the President of the USA and his Secretary of Energy but only if they actually set forth an honest and real energy policy and don’t rehash the thermodynamic lies of the past.  The freshman honeymoon for Dr. Moniz is over and he better do something now that actually obeys the second law of thermo or else he will follow the Chu Chu train on the bridge to nowhere.

My prognostication for green energy stocks for 2014 is that KIOR will be no more by the time 2015 comes around.  The hyped hydrogen stocks like BLDP, HYGS, PLUG, QTWW, and FCEL will drop by 40% as a group by year end.   The solar players like SPWR and FSLR will drop by 20%.  And finally the car company that defies gravity TSLA will be a $100 stock by December 31, 2014.   I will report in a year how wrong or right my dart throwing was.

My guess on what China will do to remove particulates and acid gases from their air is that they will start to spend a good deal of money on bag houses and scrubbers to remove the worst offenders in their dirty air and that the country as a whole will emit at least 5% more CO2 in 2014 than they did in 2013.  They simply will continue to use more energy but will begin to produce some shale natural gas and will only increase oil imports by 400,000 barrels a day.

The US will continue to increase shale oil and gas production and we will reduce our imports by another 250,000 barrels a day.  Europe will still be the dog of economic growth and they will simply continue to go sideways.

The big news in Green for 2014 will be that the quantity of cellulosic derived liquid transport fuel produced in the USA will quadruple from less than 1 million gallons in 2013 to over 4 million gallons but will still be the size of a pimple on an elephants behind.  PV power production will start to be meaningful and concentrated solar boondoggles like Brightsource in Ivanpah will not be repeated as it is simply too complex and expensive to compete with PV.  The cost of PV panels might increase slightly in 2014.   In 2013 the price of PV panels did increase from January to December by approximately 10% as the PV industry reached rock bottom a year ago.

We will see some major waste of money in grid energy storage but some glimmer of hope may start to shine through using battery chemistry other than lithium ion for grid energy storage.   By year end we may see systems that store several megawatt hours and can dispatch 2 or 3 mw become available.  These storage system will still be expensive and will need subsidy but will be less expensive that lithium ion storage.  

On the lighting front LED lights will gain significant market share.  Televisions will see some move to Ultra HD at the high end.  OLED will be too expensive and will only gain a very small niche market.   The mainstay of TVs will still be 2D LED lit LCDs at 1080p and 120 Hz.   More than this is simply a waste of money.  The price of a 60 inch LED 1080p 120Hz non smart TV will drop by another 10 to 15% in 2014.

On plug in hybrid or pure battery vehicles the US will sell 96,000 in 2013 (mainly plug in Hybrids) and will sell 140,000 in 2014 also mainly plug in hybrids.   Sales of the Nissan Leaf and Chev Volt in 2014 will be at the same level as 2013.  The Tesla will see 35,000 sales in the USA and new plug in models from Mercedes, BMW, Porsche, and other high end manufacturers will begin to take some market share.   There will be 10 fires in Teslas in 2014.

My guess for gasoline price here in the US is that it will be a couple of percent lower than in 2013.   All in all the US will emit a little more CO2 in 2014 than in 2013 perhaps an added 0.5%.  

Hope you all have a happy 2014 and that you do your part to be little greener.  It is the year of the horse so trade in your car and buy a new Mustang.  I don’t think the Green Machine will win a Nobel Prize in 2014 but Al Gore may be stripped of his ill gotten one.