Yay, I finished my first Olympic distance triathlon last weekend at the Wildflower in south Monterey County. I was really slow (one of my friends beat me by over an hour), but it was inspiring and I’ve signed up for another one in September in Pacific Grove.

Let me state my goals publicly here so I’ll be more likely to stick to it. This race, I came in over 4 hours. Definitely bottom quartile, but hey, it was my first one and I’ve been traveling a lot for work lately. I was in survival mode. I hope to get under 3.5 hours in PG in Sep. Then, next year’s Wildflower, I want to be under 3 hours. Once I get in this range, I can really work on actual racing, which will be really cool.

The toughest parts for me are: 1) the start is basically a cold sprint of swimming with no way to catch your breath after the initial chaos subsides; and, 2) the transition between bike and run wreaks havoc on my leg muscles. I need better technique (in addition to general fitness) to conquer either one. In terms of biggest bang for time improvements, if I can be comfortable with the bike>run transition, I can really push the bike (by far my best leg) and cut serious time by not walking off calf cramps during the run. While the swim will be good to nail, I don’t think I can win more than 10 extra minutes unless I make a serious step change in technique… I’ll save that for next summer.

Triathlon is a great sport!

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Click on image to download slides from my presentation at the Biomass 2008 Conference today in DC.

A friend of mine in medical school was complaining the other day about how business schools always get the nice buildings. I complained that I was about 7 years too early to enjoy Sloan’s new building… Here’s a blurb about the “greenness” of it, though:

Once it is completed in 2010, the new MIT Sloan building (E62, pictured in this artist rendering) should be the greenest building on campus. The six-story structure will incorporate a number of environmentally friendly features including daylighting, chilled beams and radiant ceiling panels.

Source: Tech Talk, April 16, 2008 (issue includes several other energy articles)

Sadly, for about the same price… this picture was taken on a beautiful ride in the Marin Headlands last weekend.

Here’s the view from my office in Shanghai on a “clear” day:

Pudong, the new business + suburbs district across the river from old Shanghai, is still very much under construction. The site here is for the new IFC Towers… I wonder about the urban planning that is going into (or not) the development of the whole area. It just seems like they could be doing a lot more cool stuff to make Pudong an interesting place to be. But, alas, it seems it is just a race to erect giant, soulless skyscrapers. I guess that’s an indication of what provides the largest and quickest ROI.

I have noticed a direct negative correlation between my work travel schedule and how much I blog, which is my excuse for not blogging much since last summer. I’ve been on a pretty extreme travel rotation that includes (from east to west, north to south): Boston, DC, Denver, Seattle, San Francisco, Beijing and Shanghai. (Call me Pacific-centric, but I think of China as west of California). The cycle has been about every 4-5 weeks.

The main work lately has been as EIR at Qiming/Ignition and consultant to the DOE (see About Me for more on those). In my spare time, I’ve been writing clean energy business plans, which I am not quite ready to talk about much just yet (another excuse for not blogging)…

The good news is that I should hit 1K status on United this year by the 4th of July.

Aside from the obvious point of this map (that the US is in a GHG league of it’s own… well, I guess not alone considering China just passed us), I was kind of shocked to see the GHG footprint of countries like Argentina, Thailand and Pakistan. Seems that this is a good argument for international carbon trading systems. There’s a lot of low hanging fruit out there!

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I have been focused on clean energy for some time now and I am passionate about the topic. It’s a global issue. To this end, I have been working on projects in both the US and China, 2 of the biggest problem spots in the world (or, blame it on my capitalist training when I say: 2 of the biggest market opportunties for new energy technologies).

All the talk over the last week about “China’s National Climate Change Programme” has made me really think about how I frame the energy problem. And, actually, I sat down to write this post with a mind to criticize China’s newly published position. However, once you get past all the defensive rhetoric that basically points fingers at the developed world and hides behind the UN and Kyoto, I think their position is very well formulated. The trick —as always— is in the execution, so hopefully I won’t have to sit down and write that critical post some time in the future (we’ll see though, honestly, China’s track record is pretty poor so far!).

The first paragraph of the report rightly points out the fundamentals:

Climate change is a major global issue of common concern to the international community. It is an issue involving both environment and development, but it is ultimately an issue of development.

The way I see it (at the risk of over-simplification), development has 3 main factors: 1) population, 2) standard of living and 3) efficient use of collective knowledge (ie, technology). China’s program addresses each of these in various ways. Bottom line is that China’s huge population, multiplied by its increasing standard of living requires the full force of advanced global technology to develop sustainably, so let me focus on that last bit by citing 3 passages from the program document:

1. Technology cooperation and transfer. Technology will play the central role in addressing climate change. International technology cooperation and transfer should be strengthened to share the benefit of technological development worldwide. Measures in this regard should include the following: establishing an effective technology cooperation mechanism to promote R&D, deployment and transfer of technology of addressing climate change; eliminating obstacles to technology cooperation and transfer in terms of policy, institution, procedures, financial resources and protection of intellectual property rights; initiating incentive measures for technology cooperation and transfer to ensure its occurrence in reality; establishing a special fund for international technology cooperation so that environment-and-climate-friendly technologies are accessible and affordable to developing countries.
2. Needs for technology transfer and cooperation, Technology need for mitigation of climate change. China is at the stage of large-scale infrastructure construction, and is in urgent need of technology for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. China’s technology need for mitigation of climate change mainly covers advanced energy production and utilization technology, environmental protection and resource comprehensive utilization technology, high-efficiency transportation technology, new material technology, new-style building material technology, etc. Among these needs, the high-efficiency, low-pollution coal-burning power generation technology, large hydropower generation unit technology, new generation nuclear technology, renewable energy technology, building energy conservation technology, clean fuel vehicle technology, hybrid vehicle technology, urban rail-based traffic technology, fuel cell and hydrogen technology, oxygen-rich coal-spray blast furnace & long-life span technology, comprehensive technology for transformation and expansion of medium and small nitrogenous production facilities, new paving material technology, and new-type wall-body material technology are the priorities. Introduction and diffusion of these technologies in China will make significant difference to the country’s efforts to control greenhouse gas emissions.
3. Development of human resources. Capacity building needs for development of human resources mainly include personnel training, international exchange program, discipline development and professional training in the area of fundamental research on climate change, policy analysis on mitigation and adaptation, information system development and CDM project management.

First, let me say that I applaud the Chinese government here for stepping up and listing off a pretty extensive list of things they are currently lacking and need help to develop. While this is embedded in a carefully positioned paper, culturally, it is a big step for China to make these statements (even though they are artfully worded to preserve as much face as possible).

HOWEVER (here comes my pitch for open markets, free trade and privatization), these things cannot be realized just by virtue of being written down in a plan. Sure, China’s command and control style is famous for implemeting radical change quickly, but the most efficient way to truly diffuse best of class technologies and get them into play as fast as possible in China is to set up a free market structure and let the players go to work. This includes effective rule of law, policy transparency and intellectual property protection. It also includes lowering barriers (formal and informal) for project approvals so that high-tech solutions can be rolled out. Lastly, companies with the technology and abilities to execute need access to the energy markets, which in some (most… all?) cases is totally controlled by government monopolies. I guarantee that if the markets were truly open, some company (foreign or domestic) would be happy to step in and build the climate friendly solution.

I know, easier said than done, but in my mind, this is the crux of the problem. There are great (green) technologies in the world whose owners would love the opportunity to roll out in China, but are scared of getting burned. The new climate change program is a good first step, but I fear China’s underlying tone here is more about setting itself up for excuses later.

In response to China’s new climate change program, head of the U.N. Environment Program, Achim Steiner said, “I welcome this step very much … We cannot ask for more at this stage.” I think there is one more thing we can ask for and that’s for China to follow through.

Thomas Friedman putting things in perspective at a Stanford energy conference last week:

“We could have all the rules in this country to have clean air, no CO2, but if there’s no rules in China, and China is the second largest CO2 emitter in the world, on its way to being number one, what have we done?” he said. “Our challenge is to get green down to the China price.”

More here: Friedman confronts green challenge - The Stanford Daily Online

technorati tags:China, Energy

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Feb 1, 2007: Tens of thousands of people have marched through Mexico City in a protest against the rising price of tortillas. The price of the flat corn bread, the main source of calories for many poor Mexicans, recently rose by over 400%… More from BBC here.

It seems that the ethanol boom in the US is starting to have an impact on food prices. Of course, a story like this is never that simple:

From the NY Times a week earlier: There is a continuing debate here about what caused the price of tortillas to shoot up so quickly. Some economists blame the increased demand for corn from ethanol plants in the United States, and it is true corn prices in the States last week reached their highest point in a decade, the United States Agriculture Department said. At the same time, the cost of white corn has risen about 13 percent here over the past year, Mexican government figures show.

But Mexican lawmakers and other officials have suggested that giant tortilla companies and corn flour distributors — among them Grupo Maseca S.A. and Maíz Industrializado S.A., often known as Minsa — have taken advantage of the situation, hoarding supplies to drive prices up even more.