Google's search for smart power- Story by Giles Parkinson in Business Spectator today
Giles ParkinsonGoogle's search for smart power
Most people expect there to be a transformation of the energy industry, but what if it turns out to be a total revolution?
Most talk focuses on a possible move to distributed rather than centralised power supplies, the introduction of smart grids and the replacement of fossil fuels with renewable energy supplies such as wind, solar, marine and geothermal.
In other words, the structure of the industry pretty much remains the same, except for a few whiz-bang technologies that make it greener, more efficient and more available.
But what if it went further than that, and the whole industry was turned upside down? Two developments in the past few days in the US give a hint of what is being envisaged and what might be possible – the entry of Google into the energy utility business and the much-hyped release of the stand-alone fuel cell, the Bloom Box.
Great story today by Giles Parkinson in the Business Spectator. Useful information about the way US business in particular is positioning itself to lead this next energy revolution should be instructive encouragement for the development of Australia's emerging renewable energy industry.
We need a business culture which embraces this challenge and takes advantage of the opportunities it presents. We could be the at the dawn of one of the most exciting phases of business evolution ever seen in this country or Australia could simply be left behind. The question is simple- do we want to gear ourselves to become an economy exporting cutting edge technology for an industry projected to grow exponentially in the future or simply sit back and export coal until the accumulated environmental cost eventually shuts down that industry for good? See this extract from an Atlantic Monthly article published in August 09 describing the shift in attitude towards the industry in Silicon Valley for an example of what we are missing out on
"The boundless optimism in Silicon Valley recalls the early days of the Internet boom. “Think of the smartest guy you’ve ever met and then imagine 50,000 more just like him innovating all at once,” Mike Danaher, a partner and cleantech specialist at the law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, told me. [...] Last year, cleantech was the third-largest recipient of venture funding, after IT and biotechnology, with investments of $5.8 billion. But that statistic doesn’t begin to convey its psychic significance. It’s all anyone wants to talk about. Exhilaration over clean energy has so thoroughly swept Silicon Valley that it has transformed the local culture.”
Google has consistently demonstrated that long term success in the new world can involve merging genuine volition and imagination with profit. God bless them. I hope they, like other companies like GE, are able to show the way. It would be great if in the future Australia was able to look back on this era and say we were proud of the contribution we made to the transition to a sustainable energy system. And not only that but that we profited by positioning our economy for long term success in a way which enhanced and preserved quality of life for future generations. I look forward to more stories like this.
Update
See this Guardian article on 25 February with the following quote.
"Does the Bloom Box represent a substantial technical advance over Ceramic Fuel Cells? On the information provided so far, I could see no obvious technical innovation that puts Bloom ahead of the Ceramic Fuel Cells machines. But Ceramic Fuel Cells works from Melbourne, not Silicon Valley, and can't get the California Governor and Colin Powell to come to its product launches. We'll soon see whether the unflashy Australians have just lost their market to Bloom or whether Ceramic Fuel Cells long and painful development has just been validated by Bloom's hyperbolic endorsement of the potential of the SOFC."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/25/bloom-box-innovation
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