Will the Rust Belt Become the Green Belt?

The two key aspects that will drive alternative energy are huge capital and engineering capability. I think this is where the oncoming energy revolution will be dramatically different from the IT revolution; and which is also why it is quite unlikely that any one place on earth will be the hub of this revolution.

It is more likely that there are many hubs all over the world - in China, in Australia, in India…where lots of capital can meet good engineering talent, and where lots of energy are required (so that brings to mind China and India, not just USA), the alt energy revolution is going to take root and spread wings.

I am not entirely sure how important intellectual property is - sure, it will play a role, but I suspect it’s role will be far less important than it was for the IT revolution

NS @ Alternative Energy Profits - http://www.altprofits.com/ref/report/report.html

I think this article is right on target—just like the minister in Ontario.

In Texas, where I grew up—people are still fixated on fossil fuels, particularly “romantic” oil. Why? First is the legend of Texas in the oil boom last century. Then there are the countless personal tales about the Great Depression years. My Mother was a little girl then, so her memory’s foggy. But she knows many of the older boys and men in her extended family in West Texas would line up every morning outside the nearest working oil well, and a lucky few might get a day’s work.

Of course, there were never enough jobs to go around.  Mom had something like a dozen uncles alone—never mind cousins (scads). And the oil field managers tried to do right—after all, they tended to be local, too—and rotated whatever work there was.

Didn’t mean Joe went hungry.  My Grandmother’s family shared with each other.  So did my Grandfather’s. And the two families shared with each other.  NO one ever did without.

Those are powerful, binding ties.

Mom was over the Moon when Pailn said, “Drill, baby, drill!”  [I was horrified.]  It’s in her veins, deep.

So, what’s my point?  To underscore the difficulty of changing attitudes.  Mom genuinely believes that fossil fuels aren’t so dirty, and she believes global warming is some sort of commie myth.  And she’s *educated*—BA and MA degrees in English, retired highschool English teacher, recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship, and reasonably well-traveled.

She thinks peak oil is a myth.

My Sister and I inherited land.  My Sister and her family live on it, which is long and skinny, like a pencil, except a bit at one end.  I’ve we put wind turbines at the far end of the ranch and all the houses on the land (6) on the wind grid.  My sister is educated, too.  A teacher.  ABD. While Sis isn’t as extreme as Mom, she’s pretty far into the oil camp, and resists. “Unsightly.”  Never mind her huge electric bills in her 3,400 square foot home, nor in the rental properties—our trailerracks up $600+ in one month for electric.

Mom’s 75 and Sis is 55; they aren’t going to change.  There are untold numbers of Moms and Sisters across the land.

And it goes beyond logic, at least in their cases and, I believe, many others.  They complain about “Obama’s taxes are going to destroy the nation, subsidizing all this green stuff.”  Do the math on how we subsidize oil, coal, and gas—and they flat refuse to discuss it further.  The issue in visceral, not cerebral, not for them.

In my view, “that"s the biggest single barrier to shifting towards solar, wind, even nuclear.  (Both Mom and Sis sing high praises to nuclear—we have relatives in the industry on the in-the-plant working level, not office types—UNTIL I suggest we lobby our elected representatives to have one built near US.  “NIMBY!” they scream in unison.)

Now, it sounds like I want to run the Exxons, the Mobils, the coal mines, the natural gas field companies out of business.  No, I don’t.  On the pragmatic level of energy needs, fossil fuels, and probably nuclear, are going to be the bigger part of the equation for decades to come, barring some mad scientist locked away in a lab coming up with some truly revolutionary, presently unimaginable, new energy source. On the human level—it would take a real . . . well, plug in a bad name there; your choice . . . to wish to see tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of workers thrown into the breadline, to see investors lose their dreams—little investors, like maybe your parents and grandparents.  And to see structurally fine companies destroyed overnight.

I *would* like to see the two sides to sit down together with open minds, leaving all the garbage about “Obama’s a commie!” and “Bush was a Nazi!” outside the darned room.  (I get sick to death of hearing both extremists’ camps.)

On the right—fossil energy is dirty.  Forget global warming.  Even if it’s a myth, I want clean air, water, and soil.  And fossil fuels are finite; otherwise, why are oil companies so hot on shale oil—when a few decades ago, they would have laughed derisively at the suggestion of drilling for it?  Green is clean, and if a guy can build an oil derrick, he can build a wind turbine.  Or install or repair solar panels.  And so on.  Get over it; green will have to come sooner or later; let’s ease the transition for displaced workers so they step out of the oil patch and into a wind farm.

And you folks on the left, first of all, Bush isn’t President anymore.  Quit demonizing him.  Wake up and smell the coffee; all the green technologies combined are still many years away from doing the heavy lifting.  Get over it.

I don’t mean to anger either side here.  Yes, I myself lean green—but I don’t hate “the other side,” as I hope I’ve made clear.  If anything, I hope I’m being a little bit of a peace-maker.

What is engineering capability if not intellectual property?

The upper Midwest is much better prepared to adapt to a knowledge-based economy than the South/Sunbelt. Here is an example: Toyota NA has all its grunt work located in the South due to lower costs and non-union environments. However, Toyota opted to keep its brainpower IN the Rustbelt near Ann Arbor. The Southern states need to come up with a better strategy than to give incentives for plants when in 20 years those same plants will relocate to Mexico.

Water could bubble up Detroit’s recovery

More than a hundred years ago, Henry Ford transformed the automobile from a custom-made, luxury item to a low-cost, standardized product that became the engine of the world economy. What would happen if the design skills that created the Mustang convertible were charged with creating cost-effective “plug and play” onsite water “appliances” to be used by cities and businesses?

Michigan Lt. Gov. John Cherry Jr. recently announced a plan to get Detroit’s unemployed autoworkers to back work in the water sector. The “Green Jobs for Blue Waters Initiative,” in partnership with the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, will pair Michigan workers from Detroit and Farmington Hills with Miya, a global water supply management firm, to train them in industrial design for water management.

The goal is to develop the capacity for Michigan to become an international leader in water-management, creating American jobs and “exporting its knowledge and experience to a thirsty world,” Cherry said.

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Today, the U.S. water industry remains fragmented, driven by custom projects to fix small parts of our rapidly decaying centralized water infrastructure. But our infrastructure is failing. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that it would cost $267 billion during the next 20 years to adequately repair existing water infrastructure.

We cannot ignore the dramatic benefits of onsite water appliances for businesses and cities. Businesses use an estimated one-third of urban water. Onsite water recycling can save 80 percent to 90 percent of the drinking water required at a business like a retail store, and over 85 percent of the energy previously required to convey that water from a local treatment plant to that business. In places where water must be transported long distances, the energy savings of onsite water management are comparable to installing solar panels as an alternate energy source.

The need to use water and energy more wisely is great, and the technology for on location water management is well-proven and improving rapidly. What is lacking is the kind of industrial design for reliability and low-cost manufacturing that the engineers who once worked at Chrysler, GM and Ford can bring.

Here is an enormous market—estimated to generate $500 billion worldwide annually—that cannot help but grow in importance. Now is the time to harness Detroit’s design expertise to launch this great industry in the United States.

Laura Shenkar is principal at The Artemis Project, a consulting practice that combines business development for pioneering water tech products with projects that apply water conservation approaches to large corporations.

http://www.detnews.com/article/20090618/OPINION01/906180430/1008/OPINION01/Water-could-bubble-up-Detroit-s-recovery