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GE Alternative Energy Expert Assimakopoulos Looks into the Future (Part 1 of 3) – When Homes have ‘Envirodashboards’
Energy Tech Stocks
Journey into the future of energy with Eliot Assimakopoulos, an alternative energy technology expert at General Electric Global Research, and you discover that what’s in GE’s world today sounds like it will be in your world tomorrow.
First stop is your house. It is equipped with a GE device now in development called the “Envirodashboard,” the purpose of which is to save you money and help you to be “green” at the same time. With this one “smart” instrument, you monitor and stay in control of how much energy and water you consume, as well as the amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions you generate. Just by pressing a button you can save money by, for instance, raising the thermostat a degree or two or by timing the start of the dishwasher to take advantage of lower evening electric rates. You also can interface with the solar photovoltaic equipment you may well have on your house, maximizing your consumption of emissions-free solar power, maybe even earning a buck or two by programming it so that your local electric utility can utilize any excess solar power you have on a hot summer afternoon when system-wide demand is spiking.
(5 May 2008)
Contributor Bill Paul writes:
This week we’re running a three-parter with seldom-interviewed GE alternative energy technology expert Eliot Assimakopoulos from GE Global Research. Part 1 running Monday is about GE’s “Envirodashboard,” a revolutionary control panel for homes and businesses being designed to enable people to easily control their energy and water consumption, and their GHG output, all at the same time. Part 2 is about how GE plans to turn parking spaces into “gas stations” with new technology that will enable plug-in electric vehicles (PHEVs)to be easily filled with grid-supplied electricity from your local electric utility. (Should be interesting to see how Big Oil reacts to this challenge to their marketing domination.)Part 3 is about how GE customers with big flat roofs (think manufacturers and big box retailers) have told GE they are anxious to start generating and selling solar power, portending big new growth for solar and maybe! a major new revenue source for the likes of Home Depot.
Tech CEO Council’s Mehlman discusses IT sector’s push for efficiency (video and transcript)
Monica Trauzzi, OnPoint, E&E TV
How can the federal government work with the IT sector to make the technology industry more energy efficient?
During today’s OnPoint, Bruce Mehlman, executive director of the Technology CEO Council and founding partner of the lobbying firm Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti, discusses how a private sector-federal government partnership could help promote greater efficiency.
Mehlman explains how the United States’ relationship with China affects the technology sector and what steps the United States should take to facilitate a successful trade partnership. He also assesses the United States’ level of competitiveness in terms of innovation.
(5 May 2008)
Can We Survive? (Part 2) (PDF)
Stephen Paley, George K. Oister, and Richard T. Hu; Council for Secular Humanism
In Part 1, we argued for the rapid deployment of what we called “first-round survival technologies.” These technologies are designed to satisfy certain of mankind’s fundamental needs while buying additional time to hold global warming within tolerable limits – long enough, it is hoped, to make other substantive changes that are required for humankind’s survival. Without such technologies, many climate researchers believe that our opportunity to prevent intolerable climate change may evaporate in fewer than ten years.
… This crisis seems to call for breakthrough research-why has it been so slow in coming? One surprising cause lies with the large public and private research organizations-specifically, their failure to recognize that significant innovation is a oneperson game. As a rule, major breakthroughs occur in the mind of a single individual. Group research becomes relevant only after defining the innovation and framing the approach for implementing it.
Organizational climates were once friendlier toward breakthrough research. Until the mid 1960s, innovative engineers and researchers at large organizations could frequently act on their own ideas. A classic example is the diversion (with management’s approval) of a small amount of time by one researcher at Bell Labs to demonstrate his concepts for the first transistor, a feat that ultimately won him the Nobel Prize, after which the device was eventually made practical for wide use by years of team development.
Today’s researchers or engineers enjoy far less support. By the time technical people become involved in most projects, both the project goal and the approach by which that goal is to be achieved have already been decided by managers who usually have little scientific or technical knowledge. It then falls to researchers to simply work out the details within an established framework. But what if that framework does not permit the creation of a survival technology?
The fact that innovation is a one-person enterprise has other consequences, too. Although some individuals are responsible for more than one significant innovation, and in more than one specialty, innovation is inherently unpredictable. One can never be sure from whom-or from where- a specific, significant innovation will come. Thus, significant innovations cannot be planned, which means that they may not come from specific university or government labs funded and designated for particular kinds of applied research.
Survival requires that we change the system so that important innovations from any source can be safely revealed and verified, while fully protecting the innovation’s commercial potential. However, existing government or university labs are unlikely to cooperate in this process. Breakthroughs in any field usually result in research funding being cut or eliminated-after all, a breakthrough means a problem is solved. Established labs would rather make progress slowly to keep research funds flowing. This is actually occurring in some survival-critical research areas at a time when we may have less than ten years in which to widely deploy firstround solutions.
… It is now easy to understand how small high-tech companies can create survival and first-round survival technologies and the reasons they go unrecognized.
1. There is general technological ignorance on the part of decision- makers throughout our society.
2. There is a lack of credibility among technologists, scientists, and engineers who are associated with most small, high-tech companies, no matter where they were previously employed and irrespective of their prior accomplishments.
3. We lack a widely credible institution with the knowledge to judge these technologies, review them, and establish their validity for the rest of us.
4. There is a danger to a small company that it will have the technology stolen by large multinationals if it applies for a patent.
(April/May 2008)
Part 1 (PDF)
Part 1 (HTML)
The authors seem to place great hope in high-tech solutions, such as were developed during World War II and through the 1960s. For example, they mention new processes for cellulosic ethanol and desalinization. I’m inclined to think that in a coming low-energy society, that cultural change and intermediate technology (aka appropriate technology) will be more relevant. -BA
