WHAT ENERGY CRISIS ?
Do we really have an energy crisis? Or is it an ignorance crisis and a greed crisis!”
The good news is; there are innovators around the world working from necessity, inspiration or pure bull headedness to solve a problem or achieve independence. These are individuals who are solving the energy crisis on their own and on occasion their ingenuity seeps out to the rest of the world. Fascinating examples are: an Alabama farmer who hates to pay the high price of gasoline and has converted his trucks to run on wood gas. A fifteen year old from Sierra Leone builds batteries, generators and his own radio station from scrap and gets invited to MIT. A group of farmers in a remote area of Andhra Pradesh in southern India are seeing electricity for the first time as a result of installing a series of solar collectors and batteries. Just a few of thousands of similar fascinating stories.
On the other side of the spectrum are high powered groups lead by people like Richard Branson, Elon Musk of Tesla/Space X < http://www.teslamotors.com/en_CA/ > or Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute < http://www.rmi.org/ > who are really setting the agenda for major transitions in energy efficiency, new energy sources and storage and the shift away from petroleum based energy production to renewables.
As indicated, I have archived thousands of stories with new ones coming to my attention every day. I want to share them because many of these innovations are changing the world we live in for the better and heralding the dawn of a new energy era.
AND it is all closer than you think!
ARE THESE GUYS THE ‘WRIGHT BROTHERS’ OF THE 21st CENTURY?
I recently gave a shout out to Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg who are piloting the Solar Impulse, around the world; powered only with batteries being recharged by solar collectors on the wings, during daylight hours as they fly. These guys are not cowboys or show-offs, they are genuine contemporary renaissance men, setting out to prove that there is an alternative to petroleum powered machines; in this case aircraft. Admittedly that won’t happen next year but what they are doing is a real breakthrough.
http://www.solarimpulse.com/
“These guys are epic heroes who are teaching the world that the future can be brighter, more efficient, less polluting. Imagine; a flying machine that can circle the world without using any fuel that leaves a path of junk behind it in the atmosphere.
This is not an isolated initiative. Not one, but two smaller battery powered planes recently flew across the English Channel demonstrating that not only is there innovation and progress, but competition in battery powered flight. There are numerous other groups working on competing designs. For example NASA is supporting a competition among universities to develop a four seat general purpose electric airplane. Airbus who developed one of the planes mentioned above (E-Fan) at a cost of over $67M Euro and has a design for a 100 seat electric airliner that could be in the air in about 15 years. I would call that forward thinking and I would call that progress. http://www.airbusgroup.com/int/en/innovation-citizenship/airbus-e-fan-the-future-of-electric-aircraft.html