Green Investment Boom Gets Traction: Fund Promises $10 Billion for Clean Energy

The private investment fund Ceres, a group of institutional investors, has promised to devote $10 billion to investment in clean energy sources. The news comes as 3 of the world’s major oil companies call for coordinated policy on how to face climate change, constrain emissions, and a couple of months after 150 global corporations asked for a major boost in subsidized research into transitioning to clean energy technologies.

The Financial Times reports “A group of nearly 50 institutional investors has pledged to invest at least $10bn (£5.1bn) in environmental technologies and to incorporate ‘green’ standards in investment decisions”. The fund’s president, Mindy Lubber, said during the press conference at UN Headquarters in New York, “This action plan reflects the many investment opportunities that exist today to put a dent in global warming pollution, build profits and benefit the global economy”.

The cost of the climate change burden is increasingly on the minds of corporate leaders, financiers and investors, and the glittering potential of economic windfall in pioneering the green economy is catching the eyes of investors and political leaders. Bio-ethanol, a crop-based fuel source, considered cleaner than fossil fuels, and having the benefit of being a renewable fuel source, has shown tremendous potential for financial growth.

The Daily Green reported yesterday that:

Today, Deer & Co. reported $5.2 billion in first-quarter profits, 55% higher than expected, because it is providing farm equipment to farms that are making record investments.

Monsanto, the maker of genetically modified corn and soy seeds, saw its stock jump nearly 200% in a year, as its sales grew 36%.

Mosaic, the world’s largest phosphate fertilizer producer, saw its profit quadruple.

Chemical giant DuPont saw its corn sales volume increase 52% recently, and expects double-digit earnings growth in 2008.

The value of the U.S. farm economy is expected to hit a record in 2008, $144.1 billion, 38% above the 10-year average.

There are serious drawbacks to increasing reliance on ethanol: burning organic materials or extracts also emits carbon, albeit in lower doses; food prices have been soaring across the world as a result of shifting agricultural production to meet demand for bio-fuels; land-use policy may not keep pace with the rush to exploit the economic boom ethanol presents; worldwide, arable land and water for irrigation are already severely strained, not able to meet food production needs in a sustainable way.

So it is of paramount importance that new funding is being offered for new research into potential alternative methods of truly “clean” energy, meaning fuel sources or electricity production methods that require no combustion and emit no harmful toxins or heat-trapping gases into the environment.

In July 2006, Sentido.tv [a project of Hot Spring's publisher], reported that:

The global wind-generation resource has been estimated at 72 terawatts, 40 times the entire global demand for 2000. Eliminating peat bogs and other highly vulnerable ecosystems from that resource potential will cut into the global capacity, but at 40 times demand, or 20 times or even at 10 times, there is clearly room to work with.

Finding the right combination of resources, in terms of cost-effective construction and maintenance, infrastructure development and ugrading, and stabilizing the role of consumers in both production and usage (solar and wind energy permit fitted individual homes to become production mechanisms expanding grid potential), will allow for the creation of a far more efficient and by extension, economically viable and sustainable energy market. This could be extended to a global scale, if investment accurately discerns and follows opportunity.

• Financial Times: “Oil groups urge clarity on tackling emissions [inset: Green energy to get $10 billion boost]“
• Guardian: “Investment fund giants demand 90% reduction in carbon emissions”
• Daily Green: “Want Real Economic Stimulus? Jump-Start the Green Collar Economy”
• Quipu Economic Forum: “The 12-year Sea Change, the Green Economy”
• Ceres: “Investors and Environmentalists for Sustainable Prosperity”
• Quipu [from EPI]: “Why Ethanol Production Will Drive World Food Prices Even Higher in 2008″
• Sentido.tv: “WORKING OUT THE KINKS IN RENEWABLE ENERGY’S GREATEST PROMISE”
• Ceres: “Climate Investment OpEd by Ceres President Mindy Lubber in Pensions & Investments magazine on 9/19/05″

Raindrops New Source of Low-Intensity Clean Energy

A new study has shown that raindrops can be used to produce electricity. The key is the mechanical energy of the raindrops, meaning the energy contained in their motion and in the way that force is diffused when striking a given type of surface.In this case the surface is PVDF (polyvinylidene diflouride) plastic, which is able to release a charge when temporarily “deformed” by mechanical activity, such as being struck by a moving object. A sheet of PVDF just 25 micrometers thick (1,000 = 1 milimeter) receives the impact of raindrops, and the effect is the release of energy, which can be harvested and turned into electricity.

Romain Guigon, from the research institute CEA Leti-Minatec in Grenoble, France, says the research shows that “even in the most unfavorable conditions, the mechanical energy of the raindrops… is high enough to power low-consumption devices”, but the study does not specify how well circuitry retains a minimum charge sufficient for regular functioning.

While circuitry is a vital issue related to this potential technological advance, it may also be worth looking at what uses there might be for such tools as the PVDF sheets that gather energy to the system’s electrodes. Careful adjustment of the study’s initial presumptions could lead to powerful new supplementary energy applications, saving battery life or eliminating the need for ecologically unfriendly battery systems altogether.

• Discovery: “It’s Raining Energy. Hallelujah!”

The 12-year Sea Change, the Green Economy: How Do We Get There?

Quipu Economic Forum :: Between the years 2008 and 2020, we are likely to see a still unimaginably sweeping shift away from fossil fuels and high-contamination modes of powering our economy. The transition will have a political component, but will be driven mostly by cost concerns, resource scarcity, and public demand for cleaner air and responsible climate policy, a demand which is not ideological in nature.

The long-term overhaul of the global economy, to bring it in line with what would be a responsible climate policy, will be more gradual, and has for some time now been taking its first halting steps toward acquiring momentum. But wealthy countries, ostensibly the most dependent on carbon-based fuels, also enjoy the conditions that permit broader flexibility in fuel resourcing, namely an economic cushion and variety in the marketplace.

It is often necessary to assess economic trends in emotional terms, or to use a new catch-phrase in social awareness and economic undercurrent analysis, to locate the ‘tipping point’, after which momentum becomes reality. This idea is attractive to those who want the market to ’set’ the rules, i.e., design-in public consciousness and cost-considerations based on ‘what the market will bear’.

This last idea is often used to justify the notion that a commonly talked-about direction is the inevitable direction: not for reasons of a grand conspiracy nor because one company will profit from its point of view taking hold, but because if the known ideas dovetail with real economic momentum, then investors find some measure of stability. Instead of blaming the ‘perfect storm’ of unforeseen events for a given failure, they believe they’ll be able to cite something like a ‘perfect groupthink’, with a delightfully positive outcome.

The problem is: groupthink as is well known is not a grand scheme brought into being by the best and brightest minds to achieve the most good for the largest number of people or interests; it is a way in which deferring to incomplete ideas bandied about in an echo-chamber leads to poor decision-making, hands bound, intellectual traps and the failure of policy to meet the moment.

So, how do we meet the moment? What tools can we apply to the problem in order to bang out a solution? Obviously, we are talking about a complex array of problems, with an even more complex array of causes, and we need to adjust to a new cosmology in which we think openly about the possibility that this ‘complex array’ will not only condition us, but is also what will be required of us, going forward.

We need to integrate into daily activities a complex array of daring attempts at streamlining and building efficiency; we need to develop new information systems that give us not only access to new and evolving knowledge about our environment, but also a means of reacting at the right time to the right signs of trouble; we need to make sense of what seems to have no bearing on our personal experience, so that we don’t take the ill-fated route of so much of human history, and decide we can build a good history on the frail foundations of our own personal experience.

It may take a village, it may take a movement, it may take sudden bursts of popular awareness, or it may simply be a question of letting people —who are already very much concerned that we handle our ecological responsibilities with care— be heard.

On 30 November, the AP and the Washington Post reported that officials from 150 global corporations, worth more than $4 trillion in market capital, have signed a petition urging strong action to mandate emissions cuts and reduce global carbon emissions by at least 50% by 2050. Change is coming to our economic structures, likely through the evolution of techniques, and not ideology; our best hope is to take the change seriously, early, and to act to be in the best possible position by 2020.

Any suggestions?