What we’re hearing at Planet Forward are the rumbles of a revolution. Really. Some expressions are serious, some are humorous. There are essays and poems and songs. But in almost all cases, if we take this stuff at face value, we’re hearing calls for an overthrow of the old ways we drive, work, travel and get around. A revolution in technology and green jobs to reduce carbon emissions, deal with climate change and improve our security. A revolution in the energy marketplace to knock the oil-igarchs around the world down a notch. Coincidentally, this is the bottom line of Barack Obama’s hugely ambitious energy program. And it’s what citizens and experts alike weigh in on here at Planet Forward.
This is a place where everyone has the chance to make their case about how we use energy, where our future energy should be and how we should think about the issue. We’ve heard from scientists and students, CEOs and cab drivers, defenders of coal and oil, as well as advocates of wind and solar. We’ve even got a few politicians making their case! It’s an orchestra of voices.
What makes Planet Forward different is that we connect some of the best ideas – rated by the online community and reviewed by our Planet Forward editorial staff – directly to decision makers. Some go straight to the White House. We do all this in a prime-time television special on PBS and in a web sequel here at planetforward.org. What’s most striking is how seriously the experts take the ideas and experiences of people out in the ‘real world.’ As they should.
This isn’t the usual television fare – which is either policy wonks talking to themselves or high-decibel hosts shouting at the rest of us. We wanted to do it differently. So we invited President Obama’s top adviser on energy and climate change, Carol Browner, to literally sit down with some Planet Forward contributors who submitted particularly provocative or creative ideas. She tells them what she thinks about their proposals, takes their questions and considers what she’d take back to the White House as a result of the conversation.
And we’re going to keep the discussion going. We’ve got a web sequel in the works. Submit your video or written essay by May 15th and it’ll be in the running for review and comment by another top White House adviser, Van Jones, the highly acclaimed author of The Green Collar Economy and now Special Adviser for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. We’ll put the exchange online – where you can see it, comment on it and share it with your social network.
We invite you to comment on the videos already posted. Raise questions, debate the merits.
This energy haul isn’t going to be easy. There is a lot new under the sun (and in the wind) but it’s still very expensive, diffuse and in its infancy. We’re going to be living with coal and oil and gas and nuclear power for a long time. Some of them may have a rebirth as we develop new technologies for them. Which are the winners and which are the losers – and at what cost – are among the questions we confront and must now try to answer.
Planet Forward is a chance for you to tell the world, and maybe the White House, what you’d do.
- Frank Sesno's blog
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14 comments for "Welcome To Planet Forward: From Your Lens To The White House Gates".
1. My biofuels grant proposal rejection letter
I just got a rejection letter today. It's not that I can't drive the price of biodiesel and its carbon footprint down with my transformative new approach, using Nevada desert, but that I wasn't really given a chance by the Department of Energy. My grant proposal died from a thousand paper cuts.
"Strengths: minor: The application is considered well aligned with the objectives of the Technical Area goals".
"Weaknesses: minor: The application does not clearly demonstrate how the proposed work will advance the current state-of-the-art. The proposal leaves doubt as to the likelihood that the project will advance the current state-of-the-art."
Well, let me tell this committee, hey, you're the people that demanded that I fit the whole proposal into three pages, one inch margins, 12 point type. I went into as much detail as I could. You're the ones who squeezed the "clearly" out of my proposal. You could have called me. You could have written me or emailed me.
And so it went down the list. Minor weakness, not clear, minor weakness, insufficient evidence, never a major weakness. My transformative energy proposal died from a thousand paper cuts.
A conspiracy theorist would say that the committee already knew which friends were to get the cash. That's not me. However, I'm a firm believer in committees of intelligent people becoming functionally incompetent in the face of bureaucracy. It even has a name, "groupthink".
The good news is that I'm building my own special lab with my own $2500 and a friend's labor and his tools, in his field. Then we test my other $10 device in maybe a month. Then we have some hard evidence. A number of million-dollar aeroplane efforts fell flat at the turn of the 1900s, but the Wright Brothers won with almost no money.
I have submitted a second transformative invention proposal, this one in transit. I'm prolific. This proposal went to ARPA-Energy. In its effect it's beyond what anyone on this board can imagine, and I've seen some good inventiors here. Somehow I expect to get smacked in the face yet a second time by our functionally crippled government contracting system.
One other holdover from the Bush Administration: the U.S. Government will give you a second million dollars in grant money if you put up the first million. Suppose you saw that written on your 1040 tax form, that the government would put up a million dollars to your retirement fund if you put in a million also, 50-50, but nothing under half a million, to keep out the poor and the middle class from this deal forever? You'd be enraged! Well, that's me. Only rich inventors get demonstration project grants, not poor ones. What kind of an America is this? A corrupted one?
2. Use of hydrogen.
I seems to me, if we had started to use hydrogen as a source of automobile fuel at the turn of the 20th century instead of gasoline and recently suggested that we were going to switch from hydrogen to gasoline, people would be saying, 'What - are you crazy? -- Strapping a tank of gasoline to an automobile presents so many safety problems, I don't see how anyone would ever consider it." I can't imagine what would have happened if the Hindenburg was filled with gasoline instead of hydrogen when it burned - but I know it would have been a lot worse than having it filled with hydrogen.
Powering automobiles with batteries sounds good until you realize that the power to recharge the battery has to come from somewhere.
3. Water Vapor
I hate to break it to the hydrogen proponents, but water vapor is a greenhouse gas...
4. The heat in summer air is our most accessible source of energy
A few miles north of Clayton, New York there is a home that is heated in the winter by heat that is extracted from the summer air. There is a detailed description on the web site http://sustainability-journal.ca (the November issue provides a brief summary). That heat is easy to extract fom the air and it is also easy to store in the ground until it is needed. The only limitation to using this source of energy is the amount of heat that we use for applications like home heating, domestic hot water and air conditioning, but that amounts to tens of thousands of petajoules.
5. Oil Field Depletion
I watched the PBS program and I believe I heard one of the panelists say they didn't think the price of oil would be going up again any time soon.
Also, your site has several demand projections, but no supply projections for oil - i.e. no-where here do I see anyone discussing oil field depletion. There is just an assumption that demand can continue to keep rising forever.
We live on a finite planet, and it should be obvious that this is not the case - as we most recently have witnessed with home prices and the stock market.
There are limits on the amount of oil production capacity we have - Mexico's Cantarell field is in decline, the North Sea fields are in decline, Prudhoe Bay in Alaska is in decline, as are many other sources of supply, and, although there have been some large discoveries recently, they barely make up for the losses from existing fields.
It should be obvious to anyone, then, that in a situation where demand is rising but supply is stagnant, or falling, that oil prices will start to rise, once more, if and when our economy starts to improve, and demand starts to increase.
Since the oil price fell off a cliff in the latter part of last year, many smaller producers have stopped investing in oil, since, at current prices, it is not economical.
Lower prices make investments in tar sands, and other technology-intensive mechanisms uneconomical also.
I think it is time people prepared themselves for the fact that fossil energy prices are going to keep rising, and the time to start to move everything we can over to renewables is now, before that switch becomes too costly.
6. Hybrid Gasoline/Electric cars are not always the best
Everyone is so gaga over Gasoline/Electric hybrids today they fail to understand the real limits they have.
They are very good in metro areas like Boston, Chicago or New York areas. When one is going over great distances over the flat lands of rural New Mexico or Ohio there is no savings. Even traveling over highways around suburbia where there is no stop and go traffic or great hills the savings are less than what the manufactures boast.
We need to focus on a hybrid that can be both a metro and a rural vehicle. To achieve that we need to look at other storable fuels like hydrogen which could be made using different methods. In New Mexico using solar cells to collect electricity you can decompose water to get hydrogen. In the case of Ohio one can break down ethanol made from corn or cellulose. In the cities natural gas or nuclear power plants could be the source.
Because hydrogen can be made from many different ways it becomes the most universal fuel. It also is the cleanest making water vapor.
There is still a rub here:
The methods in making hydrogen can be polluting
The concerns people still have with safety {I think the fear is based on the Hindenburg airship crash which is not the risk we have here}
7. Global Warming - Proposed Solution
Instead of debating the cause of Global Warming - nature or man made - , it is proposed that we conclude that the planet is warming. The question should be, "Are there methods to reduce the temperature of the planet (in a controlled fashion)?". As example, maybe as a joint venture among nations, we would conclude that we should build an ozone manufacturing plant near the North Pole.
I am not enough of a scientist to list the most practicle solutions, but I think scientific efforts should be made to explore methods of controlling the process of cooling the Earth.
8. Here is the site
http://www.ElectricVehicleFestival.com
9. Electric Vehicle Festival
Great show Frank. Shai is definitely an innovator. We invite Frank and Shai and anyone who is intersted in the electric vehicles to the 1st Annual Electric Festival at Hollywood Park, CA on August 1st.
http:://www.ElectricVehicleFestival.com
10. The premise of this Planet
The premise of this Planet Forward program is bogus. Flapping jaws will not solve our energy problems nor even come up with creative solutions. How about getting some knowledgeable unbiased scientists and engineers involved to tell it like it is. I'm tired of hearing from zealots claiming that renewables are the answer, that we're frying the planet, etc. They are worse than religious fanatics. How about applying logic and reason.
The price point for renewables is not here. As long as coal is cheap and abundant that's what we'll do. We need a carbon tax. We also need max renewables and max nuclear. Without advancing electricity storage, renewables are limited to about 15% of our electricity grid.
Batteries have less than 1/20th the energy density of gasoline. Better to make synthetic gasoline using nuclear power. Yes, this can be done.
We need government sponsored research on electricity storage, the next generation of nuclear power, heavy water / palladium excess energy release, and several other areas.
April 22, 2009
11. Demand green energy from your utility
Energy providers will change their energy mix when it's demanded by their customers. When customers are willing to pay a premium for clean power the utilities invest in it. Simple market behavior. Learn more about green power options here: http://www.epa.gov/grnpower/
Ask for green power options from your utility, and if they have a program subscribe to it.
12. PBS show apr 15
I just watched the Planet Forward show on PBS.
That was some good discussion, but there was one comment
made on the show that made absolutely no sense to me.
One of the guests said that a town generating renewable
energy was having to send its surplus to somewhere else,
and was having to pay them to take it. Why on earth would
they have to pay anyone to take their excess energy?
--
New to this...
13. How about 1000 years of energy that could be available in 10 yrs
Mr Sesno (pardon mistakes--hand surgery today): I saw with interest your program on PBS tonite and felt all panelists had valid ideas. One which piques my attention was not mentioned and I hope it will B brought up on Ur next program--and that is the use of Helium3 which is now being researched at the U of WI!
I cannot go into it other than give u a website to check. In the meantime we must look at all generally known sources until the research to extract He3 from the moon is feasible. This is terrib;y exciting--truly!
The website is: http//www.utube.com/watch?v=H9N084uvrg8
and is titled: Earth's Nest Fuel Supply: The Moon
Please watch! Wish I could write more but this site will be mind boggling--tho
it will need public support for it to flourish!
Thank U for great program on this night--15th!
JElisabeth
14. Very concerned citizen...
Hi All,
I am very pleased to find out that PBS is broadcasting + having the planet forward program tonight!!! I would like to say that I do not have the financial resources(I am on disability Social Security), however, I do know that I greatly support new ideas as well as ones already being used, solar panels, wind, recycling..etc. "our energy future"..
& green jobs support!! I have many young friends that are looking for employment in this rough time & are interested in saving the planet & being as "green" as possible. A GREAT thing that I heard that was mentioned on the program, having roofs & more opportunity for the shingles..etc to be more AFFORDABLE & available, & I do believe that this is a great idea for new jobs ..renewable energy..etc.
Also-I would like to advocate for more recycling bins..etc, more options?? It is a bit of extra work to break down things & recycle..etc, but it is WELL worth it!! Please also, if possible, advertise on tv, or where ever, to recycle :).
I would like to know if by chance, if it would be a possibility to be able to provide citizens with even small solar panels (maybe this would work w the cheaper options that are being explored..cheaper solar panel..etc. I'm sorry, I do not know the man who was on the show(I caught the program half way through(I'll be looking online here to see if I can watch the program again), who actually tests & builds these..well, I am wondering if this is something with the stimulus..etc if this is something that could maybe be done? this is better than nothing. Or maybe even doing this for schools..etc. ?
I am also very much interested in finding out if there is or if there could be something where in education there are any programs to help teach & support children as well as young adults with these issues & ideas? i hope you understand what I am saying? I don't have the best writing skills!
is this something that is even in the works or could maybe benefit from stimulus plans, or something alike? I have a few young cousins & I also used to babysit & even though some of these childrens & young adults parents practice these great methods, it is not taught in schools(that I know of?I graduated in 06') I know that some teachers do their own thing & most science teachers def. support the planet!! Again, I think more info is needed to be supplied to children.
ALSO- WE NEED MORE PLUG IN CARS(hybrids)..ETC, to be affordable & available,as you may know! but again I am here to advocate for US, THE WORLD! I am also a tiny bit more relieved that my Honda car have ULEV, ultra low emissions vehicle, but this is not good enough!!
I know that you may not be able to respond, these are just my comments& concerns..etc. I hope that my advocacy or anything, will help!! Please contact me via email if needed. I have just made an account/login with Planet Forward & I am VERRRY exited to be able to start to read the blog sections..etc.
Thank you very much for your time!!
Lisa N.
(Massachusetts)