STUFF

85M bls oil traded daily. Pretty much the world's daily use. Oil up ~18% on year, unleaded gas ~ 30%. Hm. EIA reported last week worldwide cost to find/lift oil out of the ground ~$30/bl. You do the math. $7/bl in mideast to $41 in GOM.

AT&T, Pepsi, UPS, FedEx, Verizon are charter members of National Clean Fleets Partnership, national effort to reduce diesel, gas use with greener fleets. They have ~275k vehicles. Fed gov has doubled their # of clean V's and profess will be fully clean in next few years. The charter members to put 20k advanced tech vehicles on our roads to save 7M gallons/yr which is ~3.5M bls. DHL joining. Eaton developing hybrid trucks. Enviro Defense Fund partnering up to green up medium-duty trux. In '09, Rocky Mt. Institute partnered up with truck industry to launch N. Am. Council for Freight Efficiency to double efficiency. "No silver bullets. We have to do everything we can."

Rogers (Duke) believes national clean E standard efforts were derailed by Fukushima. But he likes the pebble bed tech in China and investment in new tech. While we get Republican attacks on Clean Air Act, for Godssakes, and EPA. And, o by the by, the Repub's idea of cap and trade is now hated by them. Much like the budget deficits they gave us after '00. Go Republicans. You go.

NREL chief about clean E objectives: 1, separate transportation and generation energy issues; 2, new buildings will lead, building tech the low fruit; 3, don't dismiss hydrogen fuel cell vehicles; 4, if we lose 2nd gen solar to China, we may lose the race and 5, we have to get serious.

"There's a gap in fundamental scientific understanding of electrochem that controls efficiency of how el is converted and stored. We must understand relationship between C and active elchem materials in batts, FC's, capacitors and air." Quotes from the guy who developed first lithium batt while with Exxon in '70's. Whittingham. Exxon dropped that ball (go figure). Sony picked it up. "We have to pull out the batt cookbook again."

VC funding followup: 1, 93% of bucks went into follow-on rounds; 2, no one tracking new money into cleantech (bottom line - very tough enviro for new entrepreneurs); 3, corp investors getting more involved.

Back to Rogers: Congress had ample opportunity to pass cap and trade, a cheaper way to regulate C emissions. Bush 1 promoted, passed cap/trade for SOx, NOx that worked great. Now C&T is demonized by (R's) because of disbelief of the science behind global warming. (26% of Americans at times haven't believed we landed on the moon). Rogers likes modular nukes, and that they will be cost competitive with large nuke by '30. And "by '50, nuke trumps solar which trumps wind."

In '73, avg vehicle in US got 12 mpg. By '85 almost 20. Then CAFE standards were relaxed. Now a push for 35.

$1.40/w solar panel prices coming this year, $1.25 in '12.

Happy trails.