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A Uruguayan physicist cracked a major code for renewable energy : NPR

In an unlikely country, Uruguay, a particle physicist figured out how to convert energy grids to renewable energy. We tell the story of how he did it.

Source: A Uruguayan physicist cracked a major code for renewable energy: NPR

Uruguay is demonstrating the new model we need to be actively deploying as the ASEAN economies start rapid enough growth to compete with China.

We now see how the ASEAN countries can electrify almost all their economies. 

I did some unsponsored research 2018 regarding how the ASEAN countries could electrify with 90% renewable energy.

Like Uruguay, the islands, and even the mainland countries like Laos and Viet Nam, have all of the pumped hydro storage potential needed to mimic Uruguay.

The ASEAN region also has plentiful wind and solar resources that, like Uruguay, can supply 37% of the electricity needs, with the pumped hydro’s supplemental energy storage, which the terrain is ideally suited for.

I checked the Uruguayan electricity mix in the International Trade Administration objective analysis:

https://www.trade.gov/country-commercial-guides/uruguay-renewable-energy-, Uruguay’s energy mix in 2021 looked like the following:

” In 2021, electricity matrix distribution consisted of 37 percent of hydropower generation, 35 percent wind, 18 percent fossil, 7 percent biomass and 3 percent from solar.”

I feel strongly that the Uruguay model should be used as a template for electrification on the high ASEAN electricity demand from data centers and other 80% electrified industries.

This can be accelerated by electrically powering what is projected to become the fourth-largest economy, equal to 25% of the global economy.

I want to thank Atty Geoffrey Anderson for once again pointing me toward crucial and unbiased thinking that either illuminates or wipes out some critical premises of my thoughts.

 

 

 

 

This talk explains why I’ve not been able to explain my thinking to audiences who want to understand.

Over the past 35 years, I’ve brought together several independent power generation businesses in situations considered “impossible.”This talk is humbling and gratifying at the same time. I’ve only been able to say, “We just think differently.”

My thinking has always been oriented toward orchestrating businesses to last at least 20 years or longer. This has made them complex beyond any single stakeholder’s imagination.

Yet, as we start “seeing” each entity, the complexity can be broken down into simple and transparent relationships that all parties can see are in their best interest to maintain and honor their participation enabling agreements.

The occasional saving grace is the side that has what Simon calls infinite thinking and has enough empathy to recognize the other side’s seemingly inexplicable and scripted behavior is based on the truth as they’ve been taught to perceive it.

No matter how much I’ve experienced and learned, I’ll never be a “master”and will always appreciate teachers that reframe my perspectives so I can better understand the “Why” of nearly every situation.

Four Nuclear Power Plants Gearing Up for Clean Hydrogen Production

Source: Four Nuclear Power Plants Gearing Up for Clean Hydrogen Production

Hydrogen is a significant step toward the electrification of the energy universe.

I’m a recent convert, but, in looking at the long view, I’m bringing my deep hydrogen understandings back to active status.

I can see a practical path for hydrogen’s surprising potential in moving toward a net zero economy.

I just hope we can get it implemented more quickly than the prognostications.

https://microgridknowledge.com/microgrids-rural-areas/?

Much of the significance of this article is “unimaginable.”

“No man can imagine even a simple thing that he’s never experienced,” John Locke.

Microgrids, to date. have been perceived by the “energy industry” as a well-balanced assemblage of equipment that will work seamlessness to provide reliable electricity to a specific group of users. And I agree that this is an essential part of our energy transition.

What is unimaginable is how and what a microgrid does, and even more, what it could do.

I’ll be going further with some unrecognized microgrid possibilities in another post.

But this article is certainly worth a read as a step in better understanding the greater possibilities of microgrids.

 

Michelle Moore, former sustainability chief under President Obama, is keen on building rural microgrids to provide resilience and clean power.

Source: https://microgridknowledge.com/microgrids-rural-areas/?vgo_ee=YjAmVs6MJNKvMnGeEWhSVzpxdzkQNl9LgdxZ9pnzLRY

The net-zero transition: Its cost and benefits | Sustainability | McKinsey & Company

I read this as a summary of a $9.2 Trillion opportunity for all things decarbonization.

This includes “natural gases” of all sources because what we don’t turn into electricity is 29 times worse than CO2.

One focus area of particular focus is the “biogas” coming from landfills all over the world. And landfill gas has many more air, water, and locality toxins than pipeline, or the relatively clean natural gas coming from petroleum-producing areas.

In all cases we must open our perspective to the new, and transformative thinking that will lead us to a more positive future than we now have enough unbiased information to imagine.

 

Source: The net-zero transition: Its cost and benefits | Sustainability | McKinsey & Company

An Agenda for Genuine Financial Reform – CAPITAL INSTITUTE

This just came to my inbox, and I haven’t read it, but I know John’s thinking has been like breathing fresh air after 30 years of doing developments in ways considered almost mystical.

In developing private power projects on three continents and getting them financed in ways that caused the World Bank to call me to their Washington D.C. office, to tell me I must cease and desist this disruptive approach.

They were too late, because, when the relationships, understandings, benefits, and probability all come together, as this approach also imagines, it’s alive, everyone has ownership, understands, and stands together through the challenges, and the “unimaginable” becomes the new reality.

I cannot describe the joy that brings to the composer, and I’m still trying to learn how to teach the “magic,” but I do know that it works and keeps on working with the “stakeholders” having the pride of a team like Manchester United.

And, though I’ve experienced that kind of joy and unity before, I thought I was going to die before anyone would be interested again in learning it.

Until synchronicity brought John’s 2015-Regenerative-Capitalism 4-20-15 to my attention, and I started reading it. It’s like a diary of everything I know and have seen working.

Click to access 2015-Regenerative-Capitalism-4-20-15-final.pdf

And the book “A Finer Future” that he wrote in collaboration with my highly respected friend L. Hunter Lovins, Stewart Wallis, and Anders Wijkman is also a book about a dream I fiercely believe in.

The difference that no one of late, has any idea of is that I’m not hoping it will work, I’ve seen it, and FELT how it works.

I know how “Right Relationship” feels, Viewing wealth “holistically,” “Innovative, adaptive, responsive.” How else are you going to build from dynamic elements? Empowered Participation. That’s what makes teams like Manchester who they are. Honors Community and Place. That’s what Manchester’s flag represents. Edge Effect abundance-essential. That’s what keeps outsiders from ripping at the perimeters of the community. Robust Circulatory flow. That’s why the community needs a heart. A heart that understands that prosperity depends on healthy flow Seeks Balance. No, it craves balance. It feels imbalanced, and when properly designed, is the unseen gravity that pulls and holds everything together.

Our current and modern economy is experiencing more and more entropy. President Trump is doing his best to accelerate the entropy that causes economies and societies to fall into anarchy.

When I do get blindsided by “news,” it’s making me feel like his childish attitude is “By God, if I don’t get to rule, I’m gonna make sure there’s nothing left for anyone to rule.”

But, from another perspective, I recognize why Shiva-The Destroyer, is part of the Hindu trinity.

Shiva destroys the universe at the end of a cycle, to allow a fresh new “creation” to begin.

My personal faith is unconditional love, but the pragmatist in me has also seen the green field in the high pastures of the Himalayas growing from the blackened slopes of November.

Regenerative needs to start years ago, but the manipulation of money, as John points out, has been proliferating falsehood of the magnitude of the Roman Catholic church’s insistence that the universe revolves around the earth.

It’s a time to start laying down the aces in the deck that “regenerative” is still quietly holding, and I pray that we can start putting down our personal and business agenda’s long enough to co-create the new economy that can be designed to heal the earth.

Source: An Agenda for Genuine Financial Reform – CAPITAL INSTITUTE

China’s toxic air pollution resembles nuclear winter, say scientists | Environment | The Guardian

This article is 6 years old, and I’m posting it today to show how long the Chinese people have been having to wear masks to survive.
Covid 19 is bringing the first breaths of fresh air these people have had since before this article was published.

The truth is that we can bring back the productivity, and dramatically reduce pollution by getting off the fossil fuel narrative, and fully utilizing hybrid renewable, natural gas, and nuclear electricity.

It’s time to stop talking about “Climate” and start focusing on mitigating today’s pollution. Kill Pollution, and the Climate will get better, faster than the current narrative is doing.

____________________________________

Air pollution now impeding photosynthesis and potentially wreaking havoc on country’s food supply, experts warn

Source: China’s toxic air pollution resembles nuclear winter, say scientists | Environment | The Guardian

A Supreme Moment in Our Humanity – Now is the Time! | The Nature of Business

Finally, an explanation of the “Mysterious” thinking that has gone into the “Altresco” business models that have stayed intact for decades. This thinking has been considered unfathomable over the decades, and not compatible with “modern “stockholder” capitalism for a simple reason.

Modern capitalism is based on marketing, sales of “merchandise”, and this quarter’s results. Both Altresco, and “Regenerative” capitalism is based on creating “Net Present Value.”

Revenues and profitability generated by stable and continuing sales of beneficial continuing consumption of essential goods, and services, that are foundations of community, and macro economies.

We are in the midst of a metamorphosis, profound shifts are affecting the way we work, how and why we do things, and the purpose and meaning we bring to our organisations, social systems and wider …

Source: A Supreme Moment in Our Humanity – Now is the Time! | The Nature of Business

Vision 2050, Isiolo County

I was asked to write a story about what the results of our 2020 integrated Energy, Water, Food, and Communication plan might look like in 2050.

This inspired me to imagine beyond our current perspectives that 5 years is nearly over the horizon, and think about what the results of our efforts today might look like in 30 years. In the “framing” webinar put together by