Clean solar leads drive away from dirty oil

May 24, 2010

[Note: this Op-Ed was published by the San Francisco Chronicle Sunday May 23, 2010]
Most energy-industry accidents are small, so we don’t notice them. But every so often we wake up to really horrifying spectacles: the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil tanker accident, the 2008 coal ash mega-spill in Kingston, Tenn., the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster – [...]

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Video: Villlage Scale Solar

May 15, 2010

Tony Seba describes “Village Scale Solar” and entrepreneurial opportunities around the world.
- Half a billion people in 500,000 villages in India alone are not connected to the grid. Two billion people around the world get their energy from kerosene or diesel at rates up to 10 times todays solar cost. But solar PV doesnt need a grid.

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What is Solar Power Tower?

May 5, 2010

Solar Power Tower is one of the most important technologies in the emerging clean energy economy. I went to Spain to visit the first commercial power tower in the world. The PS10 tower has a height of 330 feet (110 m) PS10 tower and has a generating capacity of 11MW. Launched in the fall of 2006, it generates 24.3 GWh of electricity per year.

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Are You Ready For Free Energy?

April 19, 2010

As BIPV follows the downward technology cost curve, solar tiles, solar bricks, and solar windows will approach (maybe beat) the cost of traditional tiles, bricks, and windows. BIPV homes will not just sit there: they will be personal power plants. The energy they generate will be essentially free.

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How Clean is San Diego’s Water Desalination Plant?

April 7, 2010

Water desalination is energy intensive. Desalination plants follow the traditional energy pattern: most of the energy comes from burning fossil fuels. Burning coal to clean water seems dysfunctional, to put it mildly. Clean water needs clean energy. Burning fossil fuels to clean seawater or brackish water is unsustainable and unaffordable in the long term.

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Video: Energy, Water, and the coming Humanitarian Crisis in Yemen

March 11, 2010

Energy and Water are tightly linked. We are going to reach ‘Peak Water’ before we hit ‘Peak Oil’. This video, from Tony Seba’s Stanford University course “Clean Energy Market and Investment Opportunities”, introduces the topic of water and shows how Yemen is facing a massive humanitarian crisis. In 10 years 2 milliion people will have no water and nowhere to go. This water crisis may have global repercussions. The solution is simple: solar power and solar desalination. More in Tony Seba’s book “Solar Trillions”: http://bit.ly/ac1wAF

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Video: Can Egypt join the ranks of Energy World Powers?

March 9, 2010
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Can Egypt join the ranks of Energy World Powers?

March 9, 2010

If Egypt were to realize less than one percent of its solar energy potential, it could be a larger energy producer than all the Middle East oil exporters put together.   It could power the energy needs of its growing population and could be a net exporter of solar electricity to Europe.
How large is Egypt’s potential?  [...]

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The Future of Energy

March 3, 2010

I believe that the clean energy economy will produce some of the most important new business opportunities of this generation and the twenty-first century. New companies, industries, regions, and countries will emerge to dominate the emerging multi-trillion dollar firmament. The entrepreneurs, investors, and societies who emerge on top have a once-in-a-generation chance to redraw long-ossified boundaries and reap vast amounts of wealth in the process.

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