Assembly Bill 32, signed into law by California Governor Schwarzenegger in late 2006, took a big step closer to implementation last week with the release of the much anticipated “Climate Change Draft Scoping Plan.”

Sturnella neglecta.

Two key pages in the 77 page document are pages 11 (table 2) and page 17 (table 4).  The table on page 11 “Recommended Greenhouse Gas Reduction Measures,” has targeted emissions reductions by sector, expressed in “MMTCO2E” – million metric tons co2 emissions.  In this table, it only appears that 2 of the 160 million ton goal are going to be accomplished through land use regulations.  This may be misleading however, since they are leaving another 35.2 MMT under a general category “Additional Emissions Reduction from Capped Sectors.”

On page 17, table 4 “Sector Responsibilities Under Cap-and-Trade Program,” shows what total emissions are projected to be via (1) “business as usual,”  (2) “after implementation of other recommended measures” (CARB-speak for fees and mandatory caps via state auctions of emission allowances), and (3) “under cap and trade program.”  Basically the table shows CARB claiming they can pretty much accomplish the emissions reduction goal either 100% via fees and auctions, OR via cap and trade.  It is important to emphasize that auctions – the sale to industry of allowances to emit CO2 with the proceeds collected by the state – can happen under either of these schemes.

More detail on all the sections of the scoping plan will come later this month in the form of detailed appendices to each proposed measure, and more economic analysis will come in late July or early August.  Regarding land use (one of our favorite topics), there is not much in the scoping plan.  The land use section begins on page 31 and is very general.  On page 38 the plan states a goal of enacting “Indirect source rules for new development,” where “research shows that low-density development located distant from employment centers and other destinations has a high transportation carbon footprint,” and “adoption of regional indirect source rules could provide reductions in greenhouse gases through better project design and mitigation of emission impacts.”  That’s about as specific as they get.

Based on what we have so far, it is way too soon to predict how AB32 will handle the land use question.  Mandatory concentric development, new classes of protected land and species, tying transportation funds to concentric growth, and other measures called for in SB 375 - which is making its way through California’s legislature currently - are not in the AB 32 scoping plan.  SB 375 is a perfect example of how the barracks of Ceauşescu need only be painted green, and festooned with new urbanist gingerbread, so California’s nanny state can see to it we are all herded inside like cattle.  Much easier to depopulate the ”sacred” open space, create myths of scarcity and nightmares of climate catastrophe, and force (through “incentives”) everyone into urban high-density concentrations, than to build new roads, dams, aqueducts, water treatment plants and power plants.  That might require spending some of those tax dollars on new hires instead of pensions.

It is important to emphasize that AB32 will potentially raise tens of billions of dollars per year for California’s public sector.  Qualifying municipalities that enforce high density may earn carbon offset fees from polluters, based on how many vehicle miles they can calculate they eliminated through high density zoning.  AB 2596 sets the stage for this.  Redefining public sector jobs to address global warming mitigation may encompass a huge percentage of the public sector workforce, including construction, infrastructure, education, as well as explicitly environmentally focused agencies.  Already California’s 400+ cities, 58 counties, and 32 air quality management districts are imposing new global warming related fees.  Since global warming mitigation is a specific program - no vote is required to assess these fees.  But the biggest source of funds to the public sector would be the annual auctions of emissions allowances to industry - this alone has been estimated to potentially yield as much as $30 billion per year.

There is no “smoking gun” - yet - that indicates public sector agencies are salivating over the whole revenue potential associated with AB32.  But why wouldn’t they?  Every public entity in California is at risk of bankruptcy, primarily because of grossly over-generous employee compensation, benefits and pensions.  Other than carbon-related offset payments, fees and auctions, there is no new source of revenue even remotely capable of restoring solvency to public entities.  Avoiding public sector reform in general, and avoiding public employee pension reform in particular, is the hidden issue that informs global warming alarm in the public sector.  

The opportunity cost of not reforming public sector pensions, because instead we implemented AB32 in a manner which poured money into the public sector - could literally be the most significant economic burden of AB32 - and that’s saying a lot.  Because if we abolished public employee pensions, we could increase public sector hiring and infrastructure investments - helping the economy - at the same time as we could balance public entity budgets and relieve public entity balance sheets of crippling pension liabilities.  If we abolished public employee pensions, then all American voters would have the same formula govern their retirement entitlements - creating the voter momentum to finally reform and restore social security and medicare.

Our position on AB32 has been consistent - notwithstanding how it addresses environmental issues, something worthy of far more debate than has been allowed - this bill is going to raise tens of billions of dollars per year to fund otherwise unsustainable compensation and benefits for California’s state, county and city employees.  It is going to delay pension reform for a generation or longer.  The connection between AB32 implementation and the undemocratic political influence of public sector unions who have created two classes of Californians - government workers and ultra-rich people versus the rest of us in the globalized private sector who work, pay taxes, and will depend on social security when we’re old - has not been sufficiently explored.

And butterflies still fly the slopes of Kilimanjaro. (Vanessa cardui)

We have reported on the state of cellulosic ethanol development, and the potential of cellulosic ethanol, in our recent feature entitled (not surprisingly) “Cellulosic Ethanol.”  But if you take an interest in the future of biofuel, this is only half the story, if that.  What about biofuel derived from algae?  Despite the title of this post, it isn’t an either/or choice, and comparing the potential of algae versus cellulose as a biofuel feedstock is an interesting topic - both claim immense potential and neither are here yet.  Will both of these biofuels end up in industrial scale production in the next few decades?  Here are some comparisons:

(1)  Algae can be converted into ethanol or diesel, depending on the process.  Typically algae is associated with biodiesel, and cellulose is associated with ethanol.

(2)  Cellulose has an extremely diverse array of potential feedstocks, but the quantity of many cellulosic feedstocks are significantly affected by seasonal variations.  Algae, on the other hand, can be grown in ponds where conditions are precisely managed, or even in enclosed tanks.

(3)  Cellulose feedstock, generally speaking, has a much larger geographic footprint than proposed algae designs - tinder harvesting from forests, vast plantings of winter cover crops, and extraction of agricultural waste, for example, require the cellulosic harvesting infrastructure to be more or less pervasive across the landscape - not necessarily in a bad way.  Algae ponds, like dedicated cellulosic crops, are far more concentrated, promising fuel yields as high as 25,000 gallons per acre per year, or more - but these are very early projections.  Algae grown in enclosed tanks have an even higher theoretical limit to their yield per acre, since they can build upwards.

(4)  Both algae and ethanol can be grown utilizing waste streams.  Algae ponds, or enclosures, can be nourished with CO2 from fossil fuel burning utility power stations, for example.  Ethanol can be directly extracted from syngas or flue gas.  Fossil fuel emissions can provide feedstock or nutrients for both algae and ethanol.

(5)  Cellulosic feedstock for ethanol is available  now, with the exception of dedicated crops that deliver some of the higher projected yields.  But everything else; forest tinder, crop residue, municipal waste, etc., is already waiting for harvesting.  Algae feedstock is not clearly ready - there have been successful experiments with regular algae, but most companies pursuing this technology are attempting to modify algae into strains that are more commercially exploitable.

(6)  For both of these very promising feedstocks, algae and cellulose, we are going to wait a few more years before we’ll hopefully get a clear indication as to whether or not they truly emerge as major sources of transportation fuel.

Three very interesting companies working on algae to fuel technologies are Algenol, Greenfuel, and Sapphire Energy.  Two companies working on interesting cellulosic ethanol technologies are Coskata and Mascoma.  There are hundreds of companies currently pursuing algae and cellulose solutions to our energy challenges.

One of the most useful ways to measure how efficiently we use energy is to calculate how many units of energy are required to produce a unit of wealth - this is known as energy intensity.  In theory energy intensity can be measured in a variety of ways, but a useful convention is to divide the total annual energy consumption for a nation, expressed in British Thermal Units (BTUs), by that nation’s Gross Domestic Product for the same year.  The fewer BTUs per dollar of GDP, the better the score.

BTUs are a universal energy measurement favored by economists - one BTU is defined as the amount of energy it takes to heat one cubic centimeter of water by one degree centigrade at room temperature.  One kilowatt-hour is equal to 3412 BTUs.  One gallon of gasoline has about 130,000 BTUs.  When looking at entire economies, the standard unit is one quadrillion BTUs.  The USA, for example, consumed about 101 quadrillion BTUs of energy in 2007.  California consumed 8.4 quad BTUs in the same year.

You can get recent information on energy production and energy intensity by country from the U.S. DOE Energy Information Administration’s country index.  You can also calculate energy intensity by U.S. state from the EIA website; for example, California’s energy intensity can be found in the EIA’s energy profile for California.  The wide range of energy intensity calculations across various nations and states is quite revealing.

Among nations, the worst energy intensity is found in nations where energy is extremely cheap and abundant.  Saudi Arabia, for example, has an energy intensity of 17,979.  Russia has an energy intensity of 14,935.  In Russia’s case, cheap energy, a cold climate, far flung cities, and aging energy infrastructure all combine to give it a poor score.  But even in Canada, a nation with modern energy infrastructure, but otherwise similar to Russia - relatively cheap energy, cold climate, far flung cities - their energy intensity at 13,825 is not much better.

The most advanced European nations might be looked to for the best energy intensity, while they have cold climates, they are densely populated and have modern infrastructure.  And energy is very expensive in Europe, which has encouraged efficient energy use.  So it is logical that their energy intensity is dramatically better than the vast northern nations of Canada and Russia - indeed, France only requires 7,243 BTUs per dollar of GDP, Germany scores 7,021, and the United Kingdom logs 6,048.

And what about the USA?  Most Americans still live in cold climates, there are vast areas to cover which requires heavy consumption of transportation fuels, infrastructure is relatively modern - so America’s energy intensity of 9,113 should also come as no surprise.  California’s energy intensity is an impressive 4,840, partly due to her warm climate and densely populated urban centers, partly due to large sectors of California’s industries being exceptionally profitable with very little energy input - the high tech industry creates GDP with a far higher energy intensity than, say, auto manufacturing.  No doubt, California’s extraordinary energy intensity is also partly due to government policies enacted over the past few decades to encourage Californian’s to use energy efficiently.

An important dimension to energy intensity is to correlate it to per capita income.  It appears that pre-industrial economies have very efficient energy intensities - Sierra Leone, to use one example, has an energy intensity of 2,459, with per capita GDP of $700.  As a nation industrializes, its energy intensity worsens, but per capita income rises.  India, for example, whose process of industrialization is now well underway, has an energy intensity of 4,001 and a per capita GDP of $2,700.  China, a nation somewhat closer to completing their process of industrialization, has an energy intensity of 7,906 and a per capita GDP of $5,300.

Returning to California, whose high-tech economy might loosely be characterized as post-industrial, their energy intensity of 4,840 combines with a per capita GDP of $47,186.  The rest of the United States - measured with California’s population and GDP subtracted - delivers an energy intensity of 9,904 BTUs per dollar of GDP, and a GDP per capita of $34,885.  There is no economic region on earth that delivers anywhere near California’s combination of extraordinarily efficient energy intensity alongside per capita GDP that ranks among the highest in the world.  The reason - as the preceding statistics might indicate - is because California’s economy runs on brainpower more than horsepower.  California’s state government would do well to see to it they do not drive these brains elsewhere, by making California even more business unfriendly than it already is.

As California’s legislators flirt with a descent into pure socialism, cloaked in radiant and rhetorically unassailable green rationalizations, they might consider the example of Russia, a nation blessed with extraordinary scientific talent, whose innovators were strangled for nearly seventy years on the alter of socialism.  California’s dream has survived in spite of a government that is grotesquely hostile to business innovators.  California’s government has been squandering the prosperity of the golden state on obscenely generous pensions and benefits for state employees, and entitlement programs that have undermined the work ethic of entire subcultures - while only creating more government jobs.  Unless California’s slide into state socialism is reversed, the golden state’s century of economic growth will become only a memory.

Al Gore has said Americans are addicted to “short term thinking.” He is correct. Even in the business world, which is presumably rational, timelines often stretch no further than the next quarter’s earnings reports. To think ahead by spans of generations or more is not very common.

Sadly, however, Al Gore fails to emphasize - for reasons either cynical or simply because he suffers from the same affliction as most everyone else - that Americans are also victims of “scope insensitivity.” That is a big phrase - “scope insensitivity” - but understanding the meaning of this phrase is key to understanding many of the policy failures of America, especially in recent decades.

Scope insensitivity is the inability of a person, or voting block, or nation, to understand simple quantitative proportions, which if understood, would cast a policy issue in an entirely different light. Simply put, because of scope insensitivity, the logical conclusions one might rationally find obvious are eclipsed by emotional arguments.

Absent the ability to recognize basic quantitative realities, the proper scope of the relevant variables that affect a policy issue are incomprehensible, and policy becomes a puppet of whoever has the most money and the most compelling emotional appeal. Here are three interrelated examples:

HOW SCOPE INSENSITIVITY ENABLES FLAWED POLICIES:

Immigration: There is nothing wrong with America opening her borders to immigrants. America is a nation of immigrants. But Americans appear unable to grasp the difference between allowing immigration sufficient to make up for low birthrates - something all developed nations are experiencing - and allowing immigration that based on current rates will cause America’s population to increase by 50% or more within the next 20-30 years!

American policy ought to reflect a rational calculation of what rate Americans want their total population to increase - then taking into account the high birthrates of immigrants recently arrived - should calculate how many additional immigrants be admitted every year.  Scope insensitivity prevents this calculation from being made. Instead, Americans are led to believe they must absorb all the dispossessed, the persecuted, the destitute, from all the world. But simple calculations will indicate conclusively that even if Americans doubled or tripled their already alarming rate of immigration, it would make virtually no dent in the number of people in the world who suffer these afflictions.  The realistic way for Americans to help alleviate poverty in the rest of the world is to assist them with economic development.

Corporate Profits:  Pointing a reproachful finger at the major oil companies, who perhaps in aggregate declared profits of $100 billion dollars in 2007, has great emotional appeal. Ordinary people who are paying $4.00 per gallon for gas are understandably concerned.

Quantitative reality, however, scope, paints a very different picture. First of all, most of those profits are outside the USA, but even if they were all inside the USA, yearly profits of $100 billion divided by annual American gasoline consumption of 170 billion gallons only translates to a price drop of $0.58 per gallon.  But major international oil companies only make a fraction of those profits in the USA, and they are not allowed to deduct from their taxable income all the money they need to explore for more oil, which means if they make no profit, they have no money to find more oil. More on that later.

Another way corporate profits are used to generate emotional arguments that translate into misguided voting and subsequent bad policy relates to CEO compensation. There are perhaps 1,000 corporate executives who make $100 million per year - probably not even that. This equates to $100 billion per year. But public employees, thanks to their public employee unions who exercise nearly absolute control over politicians and elections at the state, county and local level in most American states, now enjoy compensation that exceeds private sector compensation by a factor of 2-4x.  This eggregious disparity is easily validated if, along with salaries and wages, you take into account the value of health and retirement benefits, overtime, and generous paid time off.

The difference between what America’s approximately 30 million public sector workers make, compared to what they would make if they were paid according to the globally competitive rates paid for similar work in the private sector is approximately 1.5 trillion per year (30 million times $50K) - 15 times as much!  This staggering sum of money could be used to eliminate government deficits and fix our roads - but scope insensitivity means emotion rules - corporate chieftans are demonized, and cities and states go bankrupt so public employees can retire early.

Global Warming:   Let’s assume all of these catastrophic projections are actually true; that we have to immediately drop atmospheric CO2 concentrations to under 350 PPM, and this is something under our control.  In pursuit of this goal, in California, for example, we are going to now cram everyone into ultra high density lots, destroy all semi-rural suburbs with subsidized ultra high density infill, coerce people out of their cars, and carpet the landscape with wind and biofuel farms. But is this feasible and likely to make any difference in global atmospheric CO2 concentrations? The answer is an absolute and definite NO.

Currently over 80% of the world’s energy comes from fossil fuel. And even if we were able to bring everyone in the world up (or down) to a per capita energy consumption at 30% that of people in the USA, energy production in the world would have to double. There is no way this will happen without fossil fuel. It is inspiring and appropriate to work to accelerate the deployment of non-fossil fuel energy. But it is completely impossible to ratchet atmospheric CO2 down to 350 PPM through curtailment of fossil fuel burning. It isn’t going to happen. Only gross scope insensitivity would allow anyone to come to such a conclusion. And absent this conclusion, policy options change considerably.

WHO ARE THE VICTIMS OF SCOPE INSENSITIVITY?

The ironic answer is the real victims are regular working people, ordinary people, all of them potential voters who never got out their calculators and overcame their scope insensitivity.  And who wins?  In America the environmentalist socialists - or socialist environmentalists - are the ones who win. The socialist left has taken over the environmentalist mainstream throughout the world, something that should, and does, horrify any of us who are environmentalists, but not socialists.

The unwitting agenda of socialists in America is to create a nation where social cohesion has been shattered because private sector workers including recently arrived immigrants were unable to enjoy the benefits the privileged elite enjoyed. Why? Because social security and medicare were never reformed and upgraded, because 30% or more of the electorate had unionized public sector jobs and had taxpayer supported retirement security utterly disconnected from social security and medicare.  Because Americans never confronted the challenge that faces, within a generation, all humankind, which is to learn to live with a stable population.  Because environmentalists marginalized economic growth at the same time as they forced an unsustainably growing, culturally fractured population into the “urban service boundaries” of exisiting cities, piling everyone on top of each other, creating social havoc, but also creating a meal ticket for the public sector employees; special education teachers, social workers, and public safety workers.

And what of the corporate sector? Socialists understand that the difference between socialism and communism is this: Socialism is communism with rich people and huge corporations. The most powerful multinational corporations always manage to thrive under the environmentalist / socialist agenda, because only the largest and wealthiest corporations can afford to comply with these ever stricter regulations.  Under the eco-socialist regime, America’s traditions of market competition and creative innovation will be tragically undermined, but huge coporations will prosper. And well they should, since the tax revenues assessed on their profits - rhetorically demonized - is what enables environmentalist nonprofit activists and overpaid public sector workers to exist.

Scope insensitivity is a big part of the reason Americans may see their nation complete its downwards drift towards becoming a socialist police state controlled by government employee unions in partnership with mega corporations, enforcing rationing instead of competition, artificial scarcity instead of abundance, and solidifying the nation into two very different classes; the unionized government elite and their partners, the super rich, and everyone else.  And this is the vision that carries the day unchallenged in 2008, carried on the rhetorical wings of humanitarian ideals, resentment at corporate profits, global warming crisis mongering, and extreme green ideology in general.

We have never simply posted a press release, but they remain essential to keeping track of what’s going on out there. Today we received two press releases, almost back to back, that have a lot to do with each other.

The first one announced a major new partnership between Caterpillar, “the world’s leading manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, clean diesel and natural gas engines and gas turbines,” with CleanAIR Systems of Santa Fe, New Mexico.  The announcement continues: “CleanAIR’s reduction technology will be installed on existing Caterpillar commercial engine applications to reduce diesel particulate matter, hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide and NOx.”

Literally minutes later, another press release arrived in the in-box, this one promoting a book entitled “The Coming China Wars,” by Peter Navarro.  We certainly hope there won’t be “China Wars” on the way, but as the book describes, China’s challenges as such a huge and rapidly growing nation are many.  Here’s an excerpt:  “unlike in the United States, Germany, or Japan where sophisticated pollution-control technologies are deployed, much of what Chinese power plants and factories spew in the air is not just sulfur dioxide but also a high percentage of fine particulate matter. This is a critical observation because particulate matter is the most damaging form of airborne pollutants.”

At the risk of pointing out the obvious, this is what we should be worrying about with China right now - the genuine, immediately unhealthy pollution coming from burning fossil fuel.  The problem is we are so focused on CO2 emissions, we are taking the spotlight away from particulate matter, hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide and NOx.  Even if we aren’t ignoring these more immediate and deadly pollutants completely, and this is key, the trajectory of reductions is slowed down because we are so focused on CO2.

The ability of the fully industrialized nations to provide advanced technologies that would render the burning of fossil fuel virtually clean - except for the CO2 - is already here.  We have proven technologies to accomplish these goals that get better and cheaper every day.  And the Chinese certainly have the money and know-how to deploy these technologies.  In fact, their coal plants use coal more efficiently than most of the plants in western nations, because they are newer plants.  They simply need to install the scrubbers.

Even more ironic is the fact that if China accellerated the building of modern coal plants, it would actually reduce air pollution in China, because these plants would provide energy to countless millions of households that currently rely as well on coal because they are off-grid.  And unlike power plants that produce hundreds of megawatts of power, off-grid coal is almost impossible to regulate.

If they aren’t already, Caterpillar and CleanAIR technologies should go to China and sell their clean technology.  And if environmentalists might embrace a greater measure of complexity, they might advocate diplomacy and protocols that emphasize the possible - healthy clean fossil fuel power plants - instead of the impossible - pumping 25+ cubic kilometers per year of CO2 into fissures in the earth.  And if we actually did that, the unintended geologic consequences might make the biofueled, CO2 offset subsidy enabled burning of Borneo look like a small campfire.

We’ve reported before on TREC, “The Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation,” an initiative that campaigns for the transmission of clean power from deserts throughout Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.”

The mission of this group, affiliated with the Club of Rome, is to promote the construction of high voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission lines throughout Europe, the nations ringing the Mediterranean, and the Middle East.  At the same time, they are calling for the construction of solar thermal power stations in the Sahara Desert to produce electricity that can be efficiently transmitted to European markets via the HVDC cables.

This is an ambitious project, to put it mildly.  We reported on HVDC transmission technologies in our post ”Life in the Electric Age,” describing the attempt to bring HVDC to the west coast of North America.  HVDC has several advantages over typical high voltage AC transmission lines.  Most importantly, HVDC experiences far less power loss over long distances, and the lines can be buried underground.  We have also covered TREC’s work in the past, in our posts “Mega Solar Concentrators,” and “Saharan Solar Power.”

A solar field and power tower. (Photo: Bright Source Energy)

One of the questions with solar thermal power, particularly if you are going to operate these plants in the desert, is how to access an adequate water supply for the steam turbine.  Clearly these plants would have to recycle nearly all of the water if they were to be practical.  The solution to this may lie in using the “power tower” design, vs. the various parabolic trough designs.  The reason for this is because the temperature in the power tower, where a solar field of mirrors all focus on a single boiler, gets quite a bit hotter than vs. competing designs, up to 550 degrees centigrade.

This advantage is realized when it is time to recycle the water back into the solar field.  Because the water is being reused, the steam that moves the turbine that turns the generator cannot simply be blown into the atmosphere.  Instead the steam has to be condensed, meaning the condensor has to shrink the steam back into water at the same rate as the hot steam is being released into the turbine, to avoid back pressure that will undermine the efficiency of the turbine.

Because a power tower design can achieve temperatures of 550 degrees centigrade, vs. approximately 325 degrees centigrade for a parabolic trough design, it is possible to efficiently air cool the water exiting the turbine for recirculation back into the solar field - even in the Sahara Desert.  With a parabolic trough design, there simply may not be enough differential in temperature between the steam entering the turbine and the ambient temperature to allow cost effective water cooling.  For more on this read “Bright Source’s Power Tower.”

TREC’s goal of replacing literally terawatts of power output throughout Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East with solar thermal power stations may never happen at the scale they envision, but the technologies they are advocating are being explored around the world.  Solar thermal power combined with HVDC electricial transmission technology are innovations that should be explored further.  It is also encouraging that the solar thermal cycle of boiling and condensing water may conceivably be integrated with desalination.  TREC’s vision is an example of a comprehensive potential solution to many challenges - efficient energy transmission, renewable energy production, and alleviating water scarcity.

The parallels between the internet revolution and the 21st century green revolution are many, but the most salient perhaps is this:  Wonderful progress is going to come out of this boom, but lots of business models and products are going to come and go, and we’re going to look back at many of them and shake our heads in disbelief.

GreenBuild.com is an excellent online resource for information about all things green relating to construction, and I sincerely hope they’re around and thrive forever.  Every Friday they email me their “Friday’s Green Video,” and they are always interesting.  But today’s video highlighted what can only be characterized as “bleeding edge green.”  By comparison, in our post “Affordable Green Homes,” we reported on Michelle Kaufmann Designs, where this architect is trying to apply green building concepts to modular homes that are elegant and green, but fall within the budget of normal people.  In that post, we contrasted Kaufmann’s products to the “Idea House” built in 2007 in San Francisco, which while incorporating brilliant green innovations, cost over $500 per square foot to build.

If the cost for the Idea House was stratospheric, the cost for the home featured in GreenBuild’s Friday video today was stellar.  This 9,000 square foot home will go on the market for $15 million, which comes out to a cost of $1,670 per square foot.  I’m not sure just how nice this home is, but if I can afford $15M for a home, I’m not going to tolerate low flow shower heads.  And call me a curmudgeon, but the “ethanol burning fireplace” that the home features is one of those things we’ll shake our heads at someday.  I’m surprised they didn’t explain that the fireplace will only burn cellulosic ethanol.

Once again, there are wonderful innovations in this home, and pioneering these innovations requires bleeding edge applications before costs settle down to levels affordable to mainstream consumers.  But will everyone someday be able to afford geothermal heating and cooling systems?  Probably not - this may never make sense financially.  Will unsubsidized photovoltaics ever compete with conventional energy?  More likely, but we’re not there yet.  If you are looking for what green innovations are most likely to end up in your home in the next ten years, look to companies who are identifying what is practical and applying them to their products.  For example, look to the green innovations in the homes by Michelle Kaufmann designs, and not to the bleeding edge green mega mansions of Long Island’s elite.

And if you’re investing in green technology, step back and ask yourself - IF all this climate panic subsides, and abundant clean fossil fuel (coal, shale, oil sands) has brought energy prices back to earth - will the business you’re interested in still be standing?  No responsible investor should ignore this scenario.

Even a turkey wants to avoid the bleeding edge.