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The Hidden Cleantech Revolution: Five Priorities for Securing America's Energy Future -- without Breaking the Bank
By John Moore and Toby Shute 

 

Free full-text download available at http://hiddencleantech.com/

The most difficult aspect of our society's energy challenge for most people to grasp is the sheer scale of energy demand, the massive investment sunk into existing infrastructure, and the timeframe required for substantive change.  In thinking about the evolution of energy technology, most of us are thus subject to the classic error articulated by futurologist Paul Saffo: confusing a clear view of the future with a short distance.

Seeking to avoid that trap, The Hidden Cleantech Revolution: Five Priorities for Securing America's Energy Future -- without Breaking the Bank, a slim volume written by Acorn Energy CEO John Moore and Motley Fool energy analyst Toby Shute, focuses not on long-term breakthrough technologies or future regulatory changes, but rather on immediate opportunities for modest improvements.  By changing the inflection of the energy productivity curve right now, the authors argue, we can reap large cumulative impacts over time.  It's the miracle of compound interest translated from financial to energy planning.

That's why Moore and Shute talk about a "hidden cleantech revolution" --  some of the innovations they highlight are hidden in plain sight, overlooked because individually they are not game-changers, not exciting new technology, not disruptive.  But from the perspective of entrepreneurs and investors, energy and utility executives, or regulators and environmental policy-makers, these innovations in the aggregate have the potential to make a huge difference within the next decade.

And that's the driving energy behind this refreshingly brief, clear, and focused volume -- the authors want to make sure that potential near-term improvements and economic gains are not left in the shadows, while unwarranted attention is lavished on unproven or uneconomic technologies that might have an impact in the future.  As the authors stress, "Hope is not a strategy."

Moore and Shute leverage their deep experience with the real world of energy innovation to highlight a range of opportunities that can improve our existing energy infrastructure, production and distribution processes, largely through the application of information technology.  IT has already driven revolutionary change in industry after industry, but as yet has had little penetration in energy.  I especially like the references to Kevin Kelly's ideas about the "internet of things," that is, creating more effective and responsive systems by interconnecting and adding intelligence to the existing world of isolated 'dumb' devices like those making up our electrical grid or oil and gas pipelines.

The focus on wringing near-term improvements out of our existing infrastructure is clearly reflected in the structure of the book, which is organized around five strategic 'national priorities': 

• Getting more from the Grid
• Getting more from Oil and Gas
• Getting more from Coal
• Getting more from Nuclear
• Safety, Security, and Resilience

Notably missing is the usual discussion of such high-profile topics as bioenergy, solar, wind, or electric vehicles.  Not that the authors don't think these topics are important for the future, just that unresolved technical, economic, and regulatory issues drive higher risk and longer lead times for deployment at scale.  On the other hand, as their fifth National Priority indicates, they pay more attention than usual to opportunities associated with extending the life of our aging and vulnerable infrastructure.

Their focus on realistic short-term opportunities puts the authors on the same wavelength as Stuart Brand in his recent Whole Earth Discipline,  which emphasizes "ecopragmatist" solutions, or Robert Bryce in Power Hungry, with his 'N2N' (or natural gas to nuclear) policy.  The emerging consensus, as I see it, is that we need to become tougher and more hard-nosed in thinking about how to make immediate progress on every front possible, at the same time that we encourage visionary long-term approaches to changing the status quo.

One of the best features of the book is its simple rating system for the near-term potential of the various opportunities examined.  For each technology, the authors examine its potential to improve how clean, safe, reliable, and affordable our energy production and distribution systems are.  They then weight the result both by the extent to which the technology is already proven, and how widespread its deployment within the next 10 years could be.  A small table makes these ratings explicit at the head of each relevant chapter.

Though the precision of these energy impact ratings is low, the trade-off is that they are clear and transparent, suitable for comparative discussion and debate.  And they work well enough to highlight some counter-intuitive results, such as:

• Some 'killer apps' that have garnered attention for their long-term potential, such as smart-meter deployment and grid-scale batteries, get extremely low scores for near-term value due to their current economics or technical maturity.
• Some 'hidden' opportunities that most people have never heard about, such as computer modeling for vegetation management in electrical transmission right-of-ways, or mega-project management software for nuclear plant construction, get very high marks due to the potential for widespread and economic implementation right now.

My favorite example was what the authors called 'the seeing bit.'  By using high-speed down-hole communications in concert with real-time seismic modeling, drilling accuracy can be improved enough to drive an estimated 15% improvement in oil recovery from existing fields.  A classic transformation of capabilities arising from the synergy of many small innovations, enabled by improved IT to tie them all together.

As the authors point out, knowledge is power -- literally!  Our current energy infrastructure is so enormous and so inefficient, that knowledge, in the form of improved IT and near-term cleantech developments, can provide us with more new usable power than any comparable brute force investment in basic capacity.  And collectively, these near-term improvements can start changing our energy productivity trend line now.