Yes I got to see President Obama, in person at MIT

President Obama visited MIT today and gave a speech on probably the biggest challenge USA and the rest of the world faces: Energy and Climate Change.  I somehow landed with an invite to join the limited audience (thanks REBN and NVCA), and my thoughts on his speech are below:

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What a proud day for MIT! President Obama delivered a speech today at MIT on energy policy to an audience of almost 1,200 (from my MIT days I remember that being the official number of people Kresge can hold). This represents an important milestone in the journey of many MIT researchers, faculty, students, and alums who have worked hard to make MIT the mecca of clean energy research in the world. Obama came, joked about his motorcade being placed on top of Building 10 (referring to hacks that MIT’ers like myself hold sacred), enthused the audience about the great challenges and potential that lay ahead for all of us, and left after a few hugs. All in a matter of less than 30 minutes.

I had waited for over 2 hours for him, but it was worth the wait (and the quick clearing of my calendar). I left wanting more from him. We all do on issues we care about deeply. The President’s job today was to celebrate the successes so far, and get us jazzed about his commitment to face the challenges ahead and I believe he succeeded. I like what I heard:

1. Nations are engaged in a peaceful competition to determine what technologies will provide the clean energy of tomorrow. And the nation that wins the competition will dominate the global economy.
2. The biggest threat to our progress is pessimism. America can solve problems and act collectively.
3. Innovation and discovery is in our DNA, but the challenges of this generation are also bigger than before.
4. The Recovery Act is the largest investment ever in energy in history ($80 billion). Not only in technologies of today, but also in science for technologies of tomorrow.
5. The Pentagon has declared dependence from fossil fuels is a threat to our security. “Operation FREE” is in effect!
6. Young people realize clean energy is the challenge of their generation. All MIT community members are heirs to a legacy of innovation…one gets excited just being there.
7. Ed Markey and John Kerry are working across the aisle to turn all the work on energy and climate into an act of legislation. The naysayers are being marginalized, but the closer we get, the opposition will fight harder.
8. Obama believes this nation will lead the clean energy economy of tomorrow. Yes, I too believe the same!

It was a fantastic show of force by the local clean energy community. As someone remarked, it was the best cocktail hour they had ever been to. Executives, entrepreneurs, investors, lawyers lined up to get in and mingled until the announcement was made for the singing of the national anthem. It was a celebration of sorts, and a moment of reflection that despite the turbulence in the economy around us, there could be no worthier industry than clean energy to be working for.

Obama’s laser sharp focus on energy…carbon cap within 1 year?

Last night I chose to listen to Obama rather than join a conference with a few lawyers discussing international company registration procedures. I am told (by the lawyers themselves) that I made a wise decision….

…I was elated to see Obama deliver a powerful speech. His body language and his verbage were refreshing and motivating. and that was his most important goal – to rise the morale of a nation that is heavily snowed under in these unprecedented economic times.

…I was leisurely listening to his speech when he said something that surprised me and made me sit up and listen the rest of his speech even more attentively. I asked my wife “Did I just hear him say he wants a carbon cap legislation within 1 year”. Well, she had not paid attention, so I didn’t get the confirmation but this morning when I read the transcript, it turned out to be true. He has made energy one of his top three priorities in the economic recovery program and has placed carbon cap legislation squarely in the middle of it. This could be big…not just for clean energy development in the USA, but also for the rest of the world to observe if the USA would indeed lead the world on this issue.

Here is the section of Obama’s first speech to the congress that focused on energy:

It begins with energy.

We know the country that harnesses the power of clean, renewable energy will lead the 21^st century. And yet, it is China that has launched the largest effort in history to make their economy energy efficient. We invented solar technology, but we’ve fallen behind countries like Germany and Japan in producing it. New plug-in hybrids roll off our assembly lines, but they will run on batteries made in Korea.

Well I do not accept a future where the jobs and industries of tomorrow take root beyond our borders—and I know you don’t either. It is time for America to lead again.

Thanks to our recovery plan, we will double this nation’s supply of renewable energy in the next three years. We have also made the largest investment in basic research funding in American history—an investment that will spur not only new discoveries in energy, but breakthroughs in medicine, science, and technology.

We will soon lay down thousands of miles of power lines that can carry new energy to cities and towns across this country. And we will put Americans to work making our homes and buildings more efficient so that we can save billions of dollars on our energy bills.

But to truly transform our economy, protect our security, and save our planet from the ravages of climate change, we need to ultimately make clean, renewable energy the profitable kind of energy. So I ask this Congress to send me legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy in America. And to support that innovation, we will invest fifteen billion dollars a year to develop technologies like wind power and solar power; advanced biofuels, clean coal, and more fuel-efficient cars and trucks built right here in America.

As for our auto industry, everyone recognizes that years of bad decision-making and a global recession have pushed our automakers to the brink. We should not, and will not, protect them from their own bad practices. But we are committed to the goal of a re-tooled, re-imagined auto industry that can compete and win. Millions of jobs depend on it. Scores of communities depend on it. And I believe the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it.

–President Barak Obama, February 24, 2009

Climate scientist James Hansen’s open letter to Barak Obama

An excellent set of proposals for incoming President Obama by one of the top climate scientists. Obama has appointed a terrific science advisory team to demonstrate his appreciation of the role of science in policy (more on that in a later post), but they must pay attention to the points in Jim’s letter as they try to tackle the global climate change issue. he is on the spot regarding (a) the immediacy of the crisis, and (b) the kind of policy steps that make sense.

An open letter to the president and first lady from the nation’s top climate scientist

29 December 2008
Michelle and Barack Obama
Chicago and Washington, D.C. United States of America

Dear Michelle and Barack,

We write to you as fellow parents concerned about the Earth that will be inherited by our children, grandchildren, and those yet to be born.

Barack has spoken of “a planet in peril” and noted that actions needed to stem climate change have other merits. However, the nature of the chosen actions will be of crucial importance.

We apologize for the length of this letter. But your personal attention to these details could make all the difference in what surely will be the most important matter of our times.

Jim has advised governments previously through regular channels. But urgency now dictates a personal appeal. Scientists at the forefront of climate research have seen a stream of new data in the past few years with startling implications for humanity and all life on Earth.

Yet the information that most needs to be communicated to you concerns the failure of policy approaches employed by nations most sincere and concerned about stabilizing climate. Policies being discussed in national and international circles now, which focus on ‘goals’ for emission reduction and ‘cap and trade,’ have the same basic approach as the Kyoto Protocol. This approach is ineffectual and not commensurate with the climate threat. It could waste another decade, locking in disastrous consequences for our planet and humanity.

Energy is where the action is at…

If you were still wondering why so many VCs are flocking to the energy sector, here is one quick reason why: Energy is where the action is at…, no not just in the financial markets (where oil has traded between $39 and $147 all in the same year!), but importantly in the academic world where transformative discoveries are being made at a very rapid pace. MIT is one of the most prestigious engineering universities, and it is quite telling that many of its most prominent discoveries of last year were related to the energy and cleantech sector.

Check this out from MIT News:

MIT discoveries top magazine’s list of year’s best

December 16, 2008

Five discoveries from MIT have been named to Discover Magazine’s Top 100 Stories of 2008. The list appears in the magazine’s December issue.

Coming in at #21 is Professor Daniel Nocera’s discovery of a simple, inexpensive method to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, which can be stored to power a fuel cell. The process, reported in Science in August, could lead to a practical way to store solar energy for use when the sun is not shining.

Pakistan’s first sugarcane-waste biogas plant

The use of biomass as fuel is not new to Pakistan. In fact, I still remember train journeys from Karachi (in the very south of the country) to Rawalpindi (north of the country) during which I would intently watch the village women making patties of cow-dung, straw and clay to dry and use as home cooking fuel. Unfortunately it was a relatively inefficient use of the bio-mass and caused severe indoor air pollution with well documented adverse health effects.

Well, times have changed, and with the double whammy of high cost of fuel and the shortage of power, not just individual consumers but even industries are hard-pressed to find ways to utilize their waste biomass in productive ways. Conversion of biomass to syn-gas which can then be either burnt to drive turbines, or converted via fischer-tropsh type reactions into value added chemicals and fuels, has recently gained a lot of attention worldwide. Entrepreneurs and investors alike are flocking to technologies that promise higher efficiencies or better yields of valuable products.

Pakistan has now entered the field and in good form. The first sugarcane-waste bio-gas plant is now operating at the site of Shakaranj Mills in Jhang and is producing 8MW of co-generated energy (Source). According to the Cleantech Group:

Is Al Gore Nuts?

I may not be a die-hard Al Gore fan, but for the work that he has done in bringing the issues of climate change and global warming to the fore-front of American public discourse, I am very grateful. He has become a crusader for a topic that is near and dear to my heart, and very often I find him on target on this issue. I have very high respect for him and his work.

But I was a bit surprised to read about his latest speech challenging America to produce all of its energy, including transportation needs, from renewable sources in the next 10 years. He spoke passionately about the threat to humanity and our earth that is faced in the next few decades unless we dramatically change things, and, in his words, this is a man-to-the-moon type of a mission that we are on.

Al Gore is certainly warning us about a most imminent threat, that despite all his work via “An Inconvenient Truth”. we haven’t yet quite realized an internalized as a society. But is he for real or has he gone nuts when presenting this as a 10-year challenge? If he is for real, than I can’t imagine a majority of population taking him seriously, but if he really used hyperbole generously to capture media attention, then maybe I can find some rationality in his intentions.

Right now less than 1% of our energy is derived from renewable sources, i.e. wind, solar, hydro. And almost none of our transport needs are met by renewable sources. But the reality is that renewable energy is currently very expensive and while the trajectory is poiting towards parity with other sources, it is not going to be there as soon as we would like it to be. The technologies are still being developed, and scale will be achieved in 5 years or so, if we are lucky. Then comes the stage of deployment and changes in infrastructure to make the switch whole scale. I am among those who feel a price for carbon is around the corner (via carbon tax, sequestration costs or some other mechanism), but even then…how do we even imagine meeting Al Gore’s challenge without going bust? What about poverty and disease that we also need to work on. What about our committment to human rights, human development, and global security which also puts demands on our resources?

I am not saying Al Gore has gone nuts! He understands the nature of the beast that we have to deal with to preserve our selves from catasteophic climate change impacts, but maybe his words were either purposely provocative, or just mis-calculated. I wish him success, and hope to be a part of the leaders making his ultimate goal a reality. But I would do my calculations a bit more conservatively and set goals that would allow others to take my task and challenge more seriously.

Here’s an interesting blog post by Neal Dikeman at CNET on Al Gore’s speech…and from where I got the title for this note.

July 17, 2008 10:25 PM PDT

Posted by Neal Dikeman

In his speech in Constitution Hall this week, former Vice President and renewable energy investor Al Gore extolled a stretch goal challenging America to achieve 100% renewable power within 10 years. The quote: “Today I challenge our nation to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years.” And my favorite part: “When President John F. Kennedy challenged our nation to land a man on the moon and bring him back safely in 10 years, many people doubted we could accomplish that goal. But 8 years and 2 months later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the surface of the moon.”

Water: the next frontier in energy innovation….

Finally Bill Aulet takes the leap and writes about Water. He is both knowledgeable and spends a lot of time thinking about these issues…so when he writes, I pay attention. Click here for what I wrote on water a few months ago.

My comment to Bill:

I was hoping somebody would write on water. Thanks. While the average were running after nanotech/biotech deals 5-8 years ago, the cunning were starting to see environmental tech on the horizon. Now that the average are running after energy deals, the smart should be thinking about water.

I don’t mean any offense to those in the industry, but you are dead-on that the decision makers in the water business are slow, relatively non-techie, and risk-averse. Having worked in the next slowest industry, i.e. automotive, I can imagine how hard it is to sell into it. But is there a way to approach the customers directly who would be more willing to pay than the middle-man thinks? I can tell you my family in urban Pakistan would pay a lot more for clean water (and are more used to it) than an average American.

It is interesting that some of the issues faced by water innovators parallel those in energy: (a) geographical distribution of markets, (b) centralized vs distributed systems, (c) scalability issues, (d) mismatch between rhetoric and action at governmental level, and (e) lack of entrepreneurs/investors who are willing to stick with long-term endeavors.

I agree with your comment above that the water-energy nexus could be great for both. Energy companies could end up investing in water innovations while water companies would look for cheaper energy sources. I think we need to take energy and water technologies to regions where they are needed most to develop them fast and cost effectively, i.e. developing countries in Asia, Africa etc. And lets find long term investors (maybe the Middle East investors fit the bill) who are less scared of playing with commodities in such markets.

The Next Big Thing in Energy Innovation and Investing? Let’s Talk Water

Bill Aulet 5/20/08

Energy innovation and investing are exploding right now. Technological breakthroughs are seen as perhaps the greatest hope to solving our dire energy challenge. However, what is often overlooked is the link between finding or creating new sources of energy and the effects on food and water.

Indeed, if you think of energy as a coin, the flip side is water and food. The scary thing is that food and water are both lower on Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs—i.e., they are more fundamental to human survival. Yet, the current rush to create new sources of energy—including “clean” energy—may have potentially disastrous tradeoffs on our food and water supplies. Going forward, trading off energy creation for water—meaning creating new sources of energy that depend on heavy use of water, as many do—will be less and less acceptable. That’s why the most exciting opportunities in energy entrepreneurship and investment lie in strategies that create more water or energy without adversely affecting the other. Xconomy for more…

MIT’s burgeoning role in the green movement

Under its new President, Susan Hockfield, MIT has taken a leadership role in the discussions regarding science, technology, business, entrepreneurship and policy in energy and the environment. Here is an op-ed from her in today’s Boston Globe. I look forward to attending the MIT Energy Conference this coming weekend. I invite you to visit GEO2’s booth on the friday night’s Energy Showcase.

MIT’s burgeoning role in the green movement

by Susan Hockfield

April 7, 2008

BOSTON MAGAZINE has ranked MIT’s work on energy and the environment as No. 2 on its list of “61 Best New Things About Boston.” It’s unusual praise for MIT; our research is more often noticed in academic journals. But the magazine’s listing says something important: people beyond the university research community and the green movement are eager for answers to our energy and environmental challenges.

The challenges are many. How do we meet the aspirations of people around the world for a healthy, comfortable, productive life, without irreparably damaging the planet? How will we in the developed world preserve our quality of life, while shifting to renewable technologies? At the same time, how do we enable the developing world to reach a standard of living that grants access to modern comforts? How, for example, will we get electricity to the 1 billion people who don’t yet have it?

At MIT we are inventing real energy and climate solutions – from large-scale technologies that capture carbon emissions and dramatic new ways to tap deep geothermal energy, to smaller-scale ideas such as lithium-ion batteries to revolutionize the electric car and new materials that could make solar energy as cheap and dependable as coal.