I’ll start this article with the disclosure that i own shares in Amerityre (AMTY) the company i feature in this article.  This company was suggested to me as a longshot, green investment by a friend out west who is into trading stocks (i’m into investing for a period of a year or two).

So, Amerityre manufacturers foam polyurathene tires, the sort that might be found on electric mobility devices and powered wheelchairs.  They make solid tires used in agriculture, they make “tire fill” to go into solid and “run flat” tires.  Most recently they’ve been working on pneumatic (air filled) tires to replace the traditional rubber tires used on cars and trucks.  So, why is this company suddenly on my Solar/Green blog?  Because this company fights global warming.

 Let’s start with the product that is still under development, the automotive, pneumatic tires.  The first test indicate that the Polyurathene tires were getting less traction than rubber tires, but also had a lower rolling resistance than rubber, enough to increase gas mileage by 5 to 10%.  So, if you just look at the final product, a tire on a car, this new concept can help reduce the use of gasoline and it’s CO2 output and is a greener product than rubber.  Yet the greatest value of the product is gained, not when it’s mounted a car, but during manufacturing.  To vulcanize rubber and create tires, you must use heat and pressure on the rubber to harden it.  In contrast the heat and pressure, which is a huge cost in terms of energy and CO2 is absent from the Amerityre process.

A second product, being shipped today, is a tire fill.  That is a material used to fill rubber tires that are used for construction or “run flat” and have a rubber outside and some solid form of fill. The “Amerifill” is a lightweight alternative to traditional fill, once again, helping remove weight from vehicles helping save fuel in the shipping and use of these tires.

 Is this a great investment? Will be soon driving on Polyurathene tires? I don’t really know, but it shows another business that is going to make money in the green revolution by causing the evolution of tires into to a product with a lower carbon and energy footprint.

Everyone from Al Gore and Bono to General Electric’s Jeff Immelt are talking green these days and lots celebrities and businesses are “offsetting” their high CO₂ activities with credits that might not really offset the activity they’re supposed to offset.  While the notion of “Cap and Trade” pollution credits, or fees to offset costs of green energy production is not a new idea, but recently it seems that every jet setter is buying the credits to make their lifestyles look like they’re green.  Do these credits help create renewable energy sources or just provide PR for the dangers of global warming?

The article discussed Aspen purchasing renewable energy credits (RECs) for $2 per megawatt/hour of electricity they produce.  This $2 per megawatt fee, is allegedly going to cause more windmill or solar plants to built. Given that electricity retails for 7-12 cents per kilowatt/hour the $2 number is only .2 cents, or only about 1/3 of 1% of the cost electricity sold at 7 cents per kw/hr.  These numbers mean that over a 30 year period a power plant/farm would offset just 10% of it’s cost, hardley a compelling reason to go green if the costs are not equal to current technologies.

There is a very long article on the topic in Business Week this week, which was the inspiration for this article.  The article which discusses buying environmental credits with managers at Aspen Skiing and Johnson and Johnson.  In both cases the credits seemed to be the only way to allow the businesses to grow and do something green.  Companies cannot see any justification in spending money on environmental friend innovations that require 5, 10, or even 20 years to pay off.

As far as i can tell there are about 0 people (ok sure some lefties, hippies, survivalists but they have more of an agenda)  in the US that have any intention or ability to sacrifice their lifestyles to save the plant from global warming.  Why should they, given the masses who refuse to acknowledge the problem, let alone sacrifice to solve it? Why should the individual give up their things, their travel, their lifestyle to be 1 billionth, or less, of the solution?  I can’t see why, it flies in the face of both consumerism and self interest.  Why give up everything, if ice caps will still melt?

So, how do we solve the problem?  Well it’s really quite simple a combination of law and the marketplace. The coordination of laws, tax policy and the marketplace can encourage consumers to make the switch to green technologies as the financial sacrifice to do so decreases.

The leading example of how this can work is the German approach to moving the country toward solar power.  The German government requires that power transmission companies connect alternative power sources as a priority and pay a minimum rate per Kilowatt hour, locked in for a period of 20 years.  This guarantee, has encouraged german entreprenuers and homeowners to install over 1,150 megawatts of solar photovoltaic generating capacity in 2006.  It is this sort of methodology that can jump start the move to more expensive, less carbon intensive technologies.  This early adoption will, as with all technological products, will increase the demand and bring more capacity and ultimately the lower prices.  These lower prices will further speed the switch to renewable energy sources.

So can we save the world without sacrifice?  In reality, we will have to sacrifice some cash, but frankly with the skyrocketing price of oil, the marketplace is reducing the cost of us changing the infrastructure that powers our lifestyle. If you consider the modern, consumer lifestyle, only airplanes and ships seem unable to move without traditional fuels or in the case of ships nuclear power plants.  All other aspects, including cars, can be powered by electricity or carry sufficient hydrogen to be pratical.  Once everything is electric, the game has changed. In an electric world, we only need to replace carbon generating power, with carbon free electricity and that can be achieved thru non-polluting renewable sources, solar, wind, waves, etc. or carbon based fuels if the industry can truly sequester carbon.  In an ideal world, we could take CO₂, use bacteria to break off the O₂ and expell carbon fibre, that can be used to build the consumer products that generate the pollution of our the modern lifestyle.

So can we save the planet without sacrifice? Without individual sacrifice, yes, but as a society, we need to make laws, tax policies and grants, a a shared sacrifice to help rapidly change the infrastructure of our modern world to be sustainable.

Funny how environment and business interacts.  In the case of the earth, until recently, business always ruled over the “natural world”.  As long as business wanted to dump their waste in the rivers, they could.  As long as someone owned the land (was rich) or had an army (was powerful) they could do as they pleased.  As cities came to be and health became an issue; think of a plague, caused by filthy water and sewage in the streets.  The was the beginnings of concern health and the local environmental. 

Only in the last 60 years has humanity had the knowledge and tools to measure, test and track the impact of human activity. Today the focus on the environment has moved from local to global.  The environmental movement truely took off in the 1960s and since then a worldwide battle between the forces of green and the “anything for money” crowd: Laissez Faire Capitalists/Conservatives rages on. While some people who consider themselves L.F. Capitalist and Conservatives are surely environmentalists, the general belief of these folks is that the richest and strongest in society should act without restrictions, especially on financial and real estate issues.

These people, who have preached that “evidence” proves capitalism is superior, have simultaneously bristled at science that shows that this sort of behavior jeopardizes the environment and humanity.  In fact when such evidence is presented, they deny the science.  They deny the science since it threatens to curb the “freedom” to destroy the environment and put humanity at risk.

How does the battle of Science vs Conservatives get fought? In the US and Canada, it originally took the form of finding “Experts” who initially denied that there was any sort of problem.  As problems became more evident, they argued they couldn’t be proven to endager people.  When science had finally won the day and convinced the world there was a problem, that it hurt people, the fake experts would then explain that changes can’t solve the problem anyways.

More concretely, this has led to reports written by US government scientists being edited by political appointies in order to remove content that puts at risk the conservative agenda of letting business do anything to the environment if it makes someone rich.  The best metaphore here is from Orwell’s 1984, where the Ministry of Truth corrects previous statements and facts to square with the realities (read that politics) of the day. It’s hard to believe that the environment is debated politically, just because it might cost a few dollars more to live in cleaner, more environmentally stable world.

Fact: there is more CO2 in the atmosphere in the last 150 years than all but several periods in earth’s geology.

Fact: As industrial growth and use of hydrocarbon fuels grew, CO2 grew

Fact: The average temperature of earth has increased since human industrialization

Generally accepted as Fact: CO2, Methane increases in atmosphere are responsible for the increase heat.

Theory - reducing or eliminating CO2 from human activity will slow or reverse heating.

We’ve been talking about Germany and how it has become the leading user and manufacturers of solar power solutions.  A trip between Dusseldorf and Amsterdam, will show further demonstrate the adoption of wind power in germany too.  The strangest thing i found in germany, were incandescent light bulbs.  How can a country/people that are so on top of alternative energy still be willing to waste electricity and generate heat with a technology that hasn’t changed much since the 1890s.  I’m the first to admit that i hated the old style, glaring, flashy fluorescent bulbs of the 1970’s.  Who would sit and read a book under that kind of a light.  Today, i use compact fluorescent bulbs virtually everywhere.  They use significantly less power, give off less heat, and last 5 to 10 times longer than old bulbs.  You’d think every commercial property management company would have gone fluorescent, just wanting to save the extra labor of changing bulbs.

Mass Transit, what a concept!  Trains that go between various cities, trolleys and busses within the city, all running off electricty.  The US had trollies in most cities until the late 1940’s when the “transportion industry” destroyed it to sell gasoliine powered buses and automoblies. You can learn more about The Conspiracy to Destroy Mass Transit using that link or just searching for “GM” and “trolley”.  How much easier it is to deal with 1 power plant’s emissions than that of 50,000 autos.