Quite a lot of people is concerned because photovoltaics and other regenerative technologies need some time to earn back the energy which was necessary to build the facility.
But if you see it from a private investor you see that this is nearly irrelevant.
If we analyse the typical spendings like new car, holiday trip or pool instead of solar panels we see that those investments all consume energy. having invested in solar panels I'm saving the fuel which would have been burned during the flight and I'm using the energy free of CO2 after the energetic y back period. So make energy saving your hobby, you might also find methods with very short energetic pay back time and enjoy solar powered activities instead of solar burned bodies...
Saturday 26 January 2008
Monday 7 January 2008
Transforming our spending?
Dear Reader,
the media is now taking up biofuel criticism, but let us do a more in depth analysis based on economic theory. We will introduce two guidelines for a foresight analysis:
1. look at the spendings of individuals to identify options for energy policy
2. identify transformations in global economy - taking the multi causal approach
At the midth of the last century approx. 50% of the budget of a four person family in Europe was spent for food. Rationalisation in agriculture has generated a budget free for other spendings. In the beginning a lot went into mobility and travel, towards the end of the last century we had increased spendings for communication but the liberalisation has brought a cost decrease in this segments. Caused by the enormous demand for energy, the arable land has now been the limit for producing biofuels. This is due to the fact that rationalisation has already been taking out the reserves. As one example we are working know two hours less than in the sixties for pork as food (0.36 instead of 2.37 [1]). Now the first answer is to stick to oil, but of course we will run into transformation and global warming problems this way - one of the variants is atomic energy - the other coal or oil shale first.
Shouldn't we have a second thought on that? Shouldn't we revisit the share of our spendings? Since communication cost are on the decrease there would be the option to pay more for food and have biofuels in parallel. But this is as risky as sticking to fossil oil. The shortage of arable and and extensive (non-intensive) growing of bio food is adding to the problem.
We definitely have only one option to step out of this vicious circle, reducing the energy demand. Since the budgets of the individuals now have some space to invest, we should introduce the energy saving bank savings book. Like for buying estate where the state adds to the interest we propose a premium for saving money for future energy saving investments.
By means of a transformation of the houses, industry and vehicles to low energy we can take out the pressure from arable land and increase the share ob biofuels.
But lets have a look on the market, and take as example the car industry. We now have some shift to hybrid electric vehicles even for vehicles aiming to be used off-road without stop'n go operation which profits most from hybdrisation. We see another approach, the low budget ultra-light vehicle, often a three wheeler. Of course the energy demand of those vehicles is much lower compared to the best available car technology. We see that step wise improvements of the care we know does not lead to solving the problem. We also see that engineering attempts of the past to build an efficient and lightweight vehicle were not successful on an economic basis. In most cases decreased safety and comfort are overruling other buying arguments. So we need additional intrinsic safety of light vehicles, we need more investments in lightweight engineering and we need an uptake of lightweight constructions by famous designers.
The success case of bicycles being the ultimate energy efficient vehicle shall be enlarged by ultralight three wheelers adding safety, without increasing energy spending. How this may be done. We think that combining high-tech from automotive industry and telematics with bicycle technology will create vehicles capable of meeting the demand of more than half of the inhabitants of cities.
You will find vehicles soon in the show rooms and on the street. The nice thing is that skills are ubiquitous, engineering and production resources are much smaller for human powered vehicles with electric assist compared to cars. So the only thing which will change is the price tag, to be successful ultra low energy vehicles should not have the 20% VAT tag, and on the other hand fuel guzzlers may have well up to 50% tax. This way we motivate the big brands to shift to ultralight three wheelers, because they may earn more money with a high tech tricycle for €5,000 ,compared to the conventional sales being hit by vehicles entering the market with a price tag as low as $2,200. Profit margins are on the decrease for high volume vehicles, innovative ultralight vehicles offer the chance to earn more- of course at higher risk- this would be the perfect field for venture capital. Or coming back to the bank books, if energy saving bank savings book generate profit, part of it may be invested into companies active in the domain of developing energy saving technology. So lets approach our governments, after bank saving books for estate, private pension provisions, we need some support for bank savings books for energy saving!
the media is now taking up biofuel criticism, but let us do a more in depth analysis based on economic theory. We will introduce two guidelines for a foresight analysis:
1. look at the spendings of individuals to identify options for energy policy
2. identify transformations in global economy - taking the multi causal approach
At the midth of the last century approx. 50% of the budget of a four person family in Europe was spent for food. Rationalisation in agriculture has generated a budget free for other spendings. In the beginning a lot went into mobility and travel, towards the end of the last century we had increased spendings for communication but the liberalisation has brought a cost decrease in this segments. Caused by the enormous demand for energy, the arable land has now been the limit for producing biofuels. This is due to the fact that rationalisation has already been taking out the reserves. As one example we are working know two hours less than in the sixties for pork as food (0.36 instead of 2.37 [1]). Now the first answer is to stick to oil, but of course we will run into transformation and global warming problems this way - one of the variants is atomic energy - the other coal or oil shale first.
Shouldn't we have a second thought on that? Shouldn't we revisit the share of our spendings? Since communication cost are on the decrease there would be the option to pay more for food and have biofuels in parallel. But this is as risky as sticking to fossil oil. The shortage of arable and and extensive (non-intensive) growing of bio food is adding to the problem.
We definitely have only one option to step out of this vicious circle, reducing the energy demand. Since the budgets of the individuals now have some space to invest, we should introduce the energy saving bank savings book. Like for buying estate where the state adds to the interest we propose a premium for saving money for future energy saving investments.
By means of a transformation of the houses, industry and vehicles to low energy we can take out the pressure from arable land and increase the share ob biofuels.
But lets have a look on the market, and take as example the car industry. We now have some shift to hybrid electric vehicles even for vehicles aiming to be used off-road without stop'n go operation which profits most from hybdrisation. We see another approach, the low budget ultra-light vehicle, often a three wheeler. Of course the energy demand of those vehicles is much lower compared to the best available car technology. We see that step wise improvements of the care we know does not lead to solving the problem. We also see that engineering attempts of the past to build an efficient and lightweight vehicle were not successful on an economic basis. In most cases decreased safety and comfort are overruling other buying arguments. So we need additional intrinsic safety of light vehicles, we need more investments in lightweight engineering and we need an uptake of lightweight constructions by famous designers.
The success case of bicycles being the ultimate energy efficient vehicle shall be enlarged by ultralight three wheelers adding safety, without increasing energy spending. How this may be done. We think that combining high-tech from automotive industry and telematics with bicycle technology will create vehicles capable of meeting the demand of more than half of the inhabitants of cities.
You will find vehicles soon in the show rooms and on the street. The nice thing is that skills are ubiquitous, engineering and production resources are much smaller for human powered vehicles with electric assist compared to cars. So the only thing which will change is the price tag, to be successful ultra low energy vehicles should not have the 20% VAT tag, and on the other hand fuel guzzlers may have well up to 50% tax. This way we motivate the big brands to shift to ultralight three wheelers, because they may earn more money with a high tech tricycle for €5,000 ,compared to the conventional sales being hit by vehicles entering the market with a price tag as low as $2,200. Profit margins are on the decrease for high volume vehicles, innovative ultralight vehicles offer the chance to earn more- of course at higher risk- this would be the perfect field for venture capital. Or coming back to the bank books, if energy saving bank savings book generate profit, part of it may be invested into companies active in the domain of developing energy saving technology. So lets approach our governments, after bank saving books for estate, private pension provisions, we need some support for bank savings books for energy saving!
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