Some Social Technologies colleagues and I recently had the good fortune to attend Al Gore's speech in Washington, where he unveiled a new challenge to the US: be free of carbon-based energy in 10 years. His challenge calls for the US not only to be oil independent but also coal-free, relying only on renewable energy. Gore emphasized solar, wind, and geothermal energy as replacements to carbon-based fuels.

Gore also called for a unified national grid, plug-in electric cars, and a carbon emissions tax. He emphasized the need for the US to be the leader, as well as a major innovator, of renewable energy.

Acknowledging his detractors, Gore said, “Of course, there are those who will tell us that this can’t be done. But even those who reap the profits of the carbon age have to recognize the inevitability of its demise. As one OPEC oil minister observed, ‘The Stone Age didn’t end because of a shortage of stones.’”

Here at Social Technologies, we are interested in seeing the actual plan that will implement these changes, since the speech was vague in that regard. In my opinion, it is a lofty, yet admirable goal. Dear readers, what do you think?

Apparently, some old gas pumps are confused: they were never designed to have gas priced over $3.99/gallon. Back in the 1940s and 1950s, the manufacturers could never imagine that prices could go beyond $3.99, so they didn't bother to make the gas gauge go higher.

Oops.

This little anecdote reminded us at S)T how people limit their concept of the future: clearly, back in the 50s it was unimaginable that gas prices would ever be higher than $3.99/gallon.

The bottom line? The improbable can and does happen. That's why we futurists set out to consider all possibilities, and urge our clients to think about the consequences of even the improbable.

Image: Jonny Hunter (Flickr)

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The March-April 2008 issue of "The New Economy" features an article entitled "Areas of Innovation: Biofuels" by Social Technologies' Mark Justman.

His article describes state-of-the art technologies (corn ethanol, biodiesel, and flex-fuel vehicles), challenges ahead (food vs. fuel concerns, logistics problems) and gamechangers in the biofuels arena.

Justman writes: 

High prices of oil have made the economies of biofuel production much more favourable, and have accelerated commercial efforts to find ways of producing biofuels. New technologies offer the potential to expand the range of biomass inputs to include a variety of waste streams, which could increase the total supply of biomass without impinging on prime agricultural lands.

 Read the entire article. 

The National Academies started a project in summer 2007 entitled America's Energy Future: Technology Opportunities, Risks, and Tradeoffs. As part of this 18-month long effort there will be a public meeting to engage industry as well as the policy and research communities in discussions about America's energy future here in Washington, DC on March 13-14th. Click here for event's website.

They are providing a video webcast for those who'd like to peek in on some of the sessions. The agenda includes lots of interesting stuff like...

March 13th 

• The Geopolitical Context of America’s Energy Future - James R. Schlesinger, Chairman, The MITRE Corporation and Senior Advisor, Lehman Brothers
  
• World Energy Outlook - Fatih Birol, Chief Economist, International Energy Agency (confirmed), Moderator: Robert W. Fri, Senior Fellow Emeritus, Resources for the Future (confirmed)

March 14th:  

• Google’s RechargeIT Program for Commercial Deployment of Plug-in Hybrid Vehicles - Dan W. Reicher, Director for Climate Change and Energy Initiatives, Google.org (confirmed)
• Winning the Oil End Game - Amory Lovins, CEO, Rocky Mountain Institute, and Principal Investigator, Winning the Oil End Game

Browse to the National Academies website on March 13-14 for a link to the webcast.

Image: Mingo Hagen (Flickr)

I'm in San Diego this week at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference. I'll be providing daily updates for ChangeWaves covering the various sessions I'm attending. Here's a recap of some of the stand out sessions and ideas from today:

• Megaphone, a startup specializing in interactive digital signage, started off the morning with an interactive game that people played while waiting for the first series of talks to begin. About 20 people called in to a phone number, then moved a character around on the interactive sign using the 2, 4, 6, and 8 buttons as up, down, left and right arrows. Players could then shoot other players by pressing 5 while moving in the direction of their opponent.
• Saul Griffith was the first presenter of the morning, and his talk was entitled "Energy Literacy." He covered the statistical background of climate change and explored various steps governments and individuals need to take to address the issue. He offered a meticulous analysis of his personal energy consumption relative to global energy consumption through the lens of the "best case scenario" presented by the IPCC and Stern reports.
• Eric Rodenbeck of Stamen Design gave an intriguing presentation on data visualization as a medium. He showed various data visualization projects like the Oakland Crimespotting maps and MySociety travel time maps. Rodenbeck focused on showing how we can use data visualization to interact with information--in ways previously too difficult for widespread adoption--for both analysis and entertainment.

Click to read more ...

In the not-too-distant-future, Hawaii's world-famous waves may be known for something more than being a prime spot for professional surfers to practice their amazing feats of athletic skill and daring. As it turns out, the same source that generates the "Jaws" of Maui" also has the potential to supply Hawaii -- as well as the rest of the world -- with an excellent platform for renewable energy.

Oceanlinx, an international leader in the emerging technology of wave energy conversion, has recently announced plans to install a 2.7 megawatt wave energy project off the northeast coast of the Hawaiian island of Maui. According to the U.S. Department of Energy's Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy weekly newsletter:

"The $20 million project will include three wave platforms and could be operating by the end of 2009. Each platform will employ oscillating water column technology, in which a cylinder is suspended in the ocean with its open end facing down, trapping air in the top. As waves pass the cylinder, the trapped air is compressed and forced out through a turbine, and in the trough of the wave, air is sucked back through the turbine and into the cylinder. Oceanlinx takes a unique approach to this technology by using a turbine with variable-pitch blades, a variable-speed generator, and a complex control system."

Click to read more ...

On February 15th, the National Academy of Engineering unveiled its Grand Challenges for Engineering. Over a year in the making, the list was crafted by an international committee with members like Ray Kurzweil, William Perry, and Craig Venter. The group came up with the following list of challenges:

• Make solar energy economical
• Provide energy from fusion
• Develop carbon sequestration methods
• Manage the nitrogen cycle
• Provide access to clean water
• Restore and improve urban infrastructure
• Advance health informatics
• Engineer better medicines
• Reverse-engineer the brain
• Prevent nuclear terror
  
• Secure cyberspace
• Enhance virtual reality
• Advance personalized learning
• Engineer the tools of scientific discovery

Click to read more ...

Image: Christian Science MonitorDenise Chiavetta, leader of Social Technologies' Technology Foresight program, talked to Daniel B. Wood of the Christian Science Monitor for his article "Could the Solar Bug Bring the Sun to the Car Market?"

Chiavetta said she sees a growing potential for entrepreneurial ventures in solar mobility.

"The interest in photovoltaic use in cars is making great headway in other countries such as Japan and Germany, but is still somewhat behind in the US, where consumers still want quite a bit of power and size and comfort."

Chiavetta also noted that with booming solar industries in such countries as Japan and Germany, market and consumer experience with and acceptance of photovoltaics will continue to grow.

"Globally, the transportation sector is facing mounting pressure to reduce emissions while increasing capacity. It only make sense that eventually more solar-enabled or enhanced transportation applications will emerge," she explains.

What will likely be the most important scientific and technological breakthroughs with significant commercial value and impacts on the lives of consumers out to 2025?

To begin to answer that question, S)T's Technology Foresight program conducted a virtual, global focus group of experts in technology, innovation, and business strategy. The group included experts from the Association of Professional Futurists, Tekes, Duke University, Hasbro, Worldwatch, General Motors, Shell, Johnson Controls, and Oxford University, among others.

After consolidating input from the expert panel and analysis by Social Technologies' futurists, what emerged was our list of top 12 areas for tech innovation through 2025:

Click to read more ...

Browsing through a recent issue of New Energy, I was struck by a photo of a plug-in hybrid charging up at an Elektrobay electric vehicle charging station in London, much like the image below. The article, which was about synergies between wind power and electric cars, mentioned that the British company Elektromotive Limited has installed two of these on-street charging stations in London and has plans to put in 200 more, in places like supermarkets and movie theaters so people can recharge electric scooters, cars, and plug-in hybrids.

Are these on-street charging systems the sign of a near-term revolution, pushing us toward electric mobility? Will we see them scattered across the US anytime soon? It’s highly unlikely…but it is a nice early indicator of one potential future for urban transport, and watching how the effort to deploy on-street chargers plays out in London will shed light on future challenges for other cities lookin
g to do the same.

For info on where you can charge up on US roads, see this map from PlugInMap.org.

 Image: frankh (flickr)

Charles Haynes (flickr)In his NYT column last Wednesday, Thomas Friedman takes an almost messianic view of global warming. He seems to believe that if we just wait for an energy breakthrough, we will be redeemed from our climate-change sins.

Friedman writes: "Without a transformational technological breakthrough in the energy space, all of the incremental gains we're making will be devoured by the exponential growth" of developing nations. It sounds logical, but a number of well-respected studies and reports I have come across while doing research for our Technology Foresight project directly refute Friedman's assumption.

An analysis published in the McKinsey Quarterly (pdf) and evaluated in TF-2007-22: Costs for Greenhouse Gas Reductions (Technology Foresight subscribers only) found that emissions reductions in the energy and transportation sectors combined will only account for about 32% of needed reductions in greenhouse gas emissions through the year 2030. Forestry—including the protection of forests and reforestation projects—actually account for more potential carbon abatement than either the manufacturing or energy sectors. As far as the need for a technological breakthrough to achieve these gains, the study notes, "almost three-quarters of the potential to reduce emissions comes from measures that are either independent of technology or rely on mature rather than new technologies."

The most recent reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change come to similar conclusions. In its 2007 report on emissions mitigation (pdf), the IPCC notes that about six gigatons of carbon per year (approximately 22% of needed reductions) could be abated by 2030 through currently available technologies that have a zero cost or negative net cost—things like better energy efficiency in buildings and better vehicle fuel efficiency. The IPCC report also states: "No one sector or technology can address the entire mitigation challenge."

sinosplice (flickr)The U.S. Department of Energy forecasts that emissions from developing countries will surpass those of the developed world around the year 2018. Certainly, this growth will create significant challenges. However, the lesson to take away from these studies is not, as Friedman advocates, that the planet needs a green revolution in just one sector to curb global emissions. Rather, these studies show us that incremental improvements across all sectors are necessary, and that they are achievable, without any kind of transformative breakthroughs in the energy sector. Companies that continue to wait for technology breakthroughs before beginning to "green" their operations could miss out on currently available efficiency improvements and find that by the time a transformational energy technology does develop, they are already well behind the curve.

I went to hear a talk last week given by Reed Hundt, former chairman of the FCC. It covered points from his book In China’s Shadow: The Crisis of American Entrepreneurship. As noted on his website the book argues that to compete against China in the future the US must “expand and renew the culture of entrepreneurship that has been at the heart of American economic success for centuries. Unless substantial entrepreneurship upsets the status quo in energy, health care and other sectors, as it did in communications and computing in the 90’s, average Americans will see their standard of living lowered.”

It looks like a provocative book, packed with interesting facts and ideas, but what struck me about Hundt’s talk was how quickly he moved from the topic of China to energy.

In the end, Hundt basically argued that the US needs to spark an environment of energy entrepreneurship with hordes of start-ups working toward zero-emission technologies; he seemed to be hoping for an environment akin to what we saw in telecomm over the last decade. Clearly investment in clean tech is picking up, and there’s more talk about an “energy boomlet” in Silicon Valley. This article offers a handy overview.

If such a shift happens I’m sure we’ll see our share of Pets.com misfires, but this could be interesting…so keep your eyes open for the Amazon and eBays of this possible energy future.

Also, I want to hear more about what experts think this environment of creative destruction would look like in energy. If you’ve seen anyone describe what is necessary for entrepreneurial boom model in energy, I’d love to see it.