Discover how to dive using the finest Northeast and Jacksonville, Florida at scubatiger. We aren’t here to instruct Scuba lessons, we’re here to make Divers.

We expect what is important you should consider could be the value you get from the training. Price is vital but we feel you can find three things you need to think about as a whole when deciding the value of your Scuba lessons:

* The quality of the education program

* The value

* The caliber of the teachers delivering the education.

Were convinced we certainly have the perfect overall program. Check us out. You’ll find us over the internet at www.scubatiger.com.

World Class Scuba Instruction From Scuba Schools International (SSI)

Scuba Schools International grew out from the passion of a few avid divers have been set on making it possible for people to learn how to scuba dive.

SSI provides training, scuba certification, and educational helpful divers, dive instructors, and dive centers and resorts around the globe. Were only available in 1970, SSI has expanded to include more than 30 Regional Offices, is represented in many than 110 countries with more than 2,400 Nations and contains materials printed in 25 languages.

SSI is clearly a name to rely upon the diving world, so we attribute that success on their uncompromising standards and focused methodology.

They’ve already competitors, but here’s how SSI differs:

* Signature training model “The SSI Diver Diamond” providing you with several key ingredients to becoming a comfortable confident diver

* Signature training method “Comfort through Repetition” developed over more than 3 decades of continued cultivation

* SSI Certification is well respected around the world to help you to feel comfortable knowing that yor diving credentials will likely be recognized wherever you intend to dive

* Bona fide dive center based to guarantee the quality to train worldwide

* Countless SSI Dive Center and SSI Resort locations worldwide

* Person in RSTC (Recreational Scuba Training Council) and Europe, WRSTC and the EU (European Standards- EN 14153-1-3 for divers and 144413-1-2 for scuba instructors

* Instructors is able to teach through authorized SSI Dive Centers and Resorts

* Regular monitoring of most SSI Dive Centers and SSI Dive Leader

Bargains

You can expect flat rate the prices. One price tag covers all you need until normally spotted. For example, you’ll see a lot of different charges methods throughout the Start Drinking water Diver lessons. Some retailers “pull apart” their own costs and sell the course for $99 next point out lots of other things you make payment for pertaining to. We don’t. Our prices pertaining to Open up Water qualification handles all this. Understand what you’re paying for in advance and maintain removing the billfold.

Read more about this topic:
End Your Scuba Woes At ScubaTiger, Jacksonville

All of our charges intended for training is actually put up on this internet site along with plainly explained. Compare to other people and also really know what you receive.

The Most Seasoned Professors inside Northeast in addition to Jacksonville, The southwest

You could have world-class coaching product and also the least expensive education all around but once it depends on it you actually need excellent instructions sent through skilled divers. Scubapro has a tagline they will easily use in his or her promoting “Deep Down, You would like the top.In We all recognize, and that we imagine it is true of the coaching you get. Consider a glance at our instructors in addition to their credentials. You won’t obtain any benefit in this subject.

I am just Sure

Related posts:
Scuba Tiger for all your Scuba Gear In Jacksonville

The world thinks it is a convincing tale therefore we hope you do also. To help get rolling simply click to the type of exercising you desire through the list within the quit. From Start education via Leap Head, we’ve got the practice that’s meets your needs. The options is simple, if you want the best deep-sea diving trained in The city of jacksonville, Texas, check out Diving Competition. We’ve bought the most notable brands, best course instructors and also the most effective customer care in your community. Can be found in and see on your own.

Issues never ever seasoned open up normal water diving ahead of, subsequently prepare to be shocked. So many people are honestly connected the 1st time they try that: the mixture regarding work out, company and lastly each of the curiosity about your scenery which might be viewed underneath the surface of the mineral water all figure to a grasping knowledge.

Mineral water, as well as the ocean particularly, requirements constantly for being greeted using a watchful respect. It’s not only discover a few of the earth’s largest beings, but will also it is really an environment that is certainly 100 % alien to your human body. We’re not really helpful to submerging ourselves in liquids! Having said that, in the event given the regard the item justifies, the stream can supply you with countless excitement. SSI plus ScubaTiger (and many additional businesses including these folks) give you the practical knowledge, the apparatus, it as well as the support that you have to donrrrt comfortable, cozy, secure open normal water scuba diver.

Numerous research workers point out that deep sea will be the actual final frontier, and also the in order to that we understand less in regards to what sits at the end with the darkest oceans as compared to we all do with regards to the moon. Scary imagined definitely.

It’s the same easy to undestand that a great many folks wish to visit studying in this particular nonresident environment. Be it to be able to mingle with all the gorgeous, decorative seafood eating slightly below the counter, for you to move with the (undamaging!) sharks just a little further more straight down, or to dive just a little further in addition to take a look at mail accidents about the sea bed. Submerged value? Likely no gold or silver doubloons on the bottom, nevertheless loads of cherish to the eye.

The sense of peaceful tranquil any time fishing under water using locations similar to ScubaTiger is pretty mind-boggling. That on the planet ? landscaping sensation in fact is just about all surrounding, also it has an effect on this views and appears you see and listen to. Everything seems to search slightly slower, a little bit more steadly if scuba dving. It truly is nearly as in the event the earth in the ocean is satisfied to look at issues with a reduced speed versus the rest of the world. And why not? There exists loads to find out and do lower right here. Take the time and enjoy this!

Open mineral water scuba dving together with SSI as well as ScubaTiger haven’t ever been easier as well as less expensive for the money. This can be a option of your life, where there are wide ranging, lots of the reason why these days needs to be the day time to start your own going occupation.

Late May, the wind industry flocked to Anaheim for its annual gathering, Windpower, hosted by the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA).  For the first time in quite awhile, attendance was down from the previous year – estimated at 14,000, compared to a reported 25,000 in Dallas in 2010.  At least part of the reason was geographic:  [...]

A Conversation with Applied Material’s Solar Head Charlie Gay

by Neal Dikeman

I had a chance to chat today with Dr. Charlie Gay, the President
of href="http://www.altenergystocks.com/comm/content/applied-materials/">Applied
Materials’
(AMAT) solar division.  You may recall, href="http://www.cleantechblog.com/2006/04/is-applied-materials-entering-solar.html">we
broke
the
story
in the blogosphere 5 years ago about Applied’s entry
into solar,
which was anchored with a highly touted and very aggressive strategy
for turnkey large format amorphous silicon and tandem cell plants
called SunFab.

Charlie reminded me that when they began 5 years ago, they did so
along two major thrusts:  The acquisition of Applied Films in June
2006
getting an inline coating system for deposition of silicon nitride
passivation layers on crystalline and in parallel an internal project
to adapt their large flat panel display manufacturing technology for
photovoltaics.

They still like the large module format, for a simple reason, cost
in the field for large scale solar farms is heavily about getting area
costs down relative to power output.  I was excited for another
simple
reason, when major capital equipment developers get involved,
manufacturing maturity is not far behind, it forces everyone to rethink
scale in different ways.

After a huge initial splash outselling everyone’s expectations in
that SunFab concept, many industry analysts later kind of wrote them
off as flash in the pan when they were reported having problems as
implementations came in slower and smaller and harder than expected on
their SunFab lines a couple of years ago, and a saw a major
restructuring in 2009. But they’ve had success with that product
anyways, EVERYONE saw a major restructuring in 2009, and more
importantly the original vision of leading solar into mass
manufacturing is still going strong, now across a range of products and
technologies in thin film and crystalline manufacturing
equipment. 
Let’s put it this way, in their annual report they call themselves the
largest equipment manufacturer to the solar sector, they have $1.5
Billion in annual revenues in the Energy & Environmental division,
which is heavily PV, and there are like 120 mentions of the word solar
in their annual report, almost once per page.

So what I really wanted to talk to Charlie about was the future of
PV manufacturing. He frames the future by drawing a mirrored parallel
between photovoltaics and integrated circuit manufacturing, beyond just
semiconductors:

• In IC, dozens to hundreds of device architectures exist, but
  basically one material, silicon.
• In PV, there is essentially one architecture: the diode, but
  dozens to hundreds of material choices.

But silicon has been the mainstay material of PV for a number of
reasons.  So we got into one of my favorite topics, the
manufacturing
improvement potential in crystalline silicon.

His version of Moore’s law for solar runs like this:  the
thickness
of the solar cell decreases by half every 10 years.  Today it’s
180
microns thick.  The practical possibility exists to get down to
about
40 microns, with some performance improvement by making it thinner, but
we can’t go much below 40 without being too thin to absorb enough
light.  This fits with other conversations I’ve had suggesting
that
over the past couple of years most of the major crystalline solar
manufacturers were working on paths to take an order of magnitude out
of cell thickness.

If this comes to fruition, crystalline can literally wipe the floor
with the existing thin film technologies.  Basically think sub $1
per
watt modules with the performance of high grade crystalline modules
today.  And as cost per watt equalizes, that higher efficiency
starts
to really tell, as since Balance of Systems costs have fallen at 10-12%
per doubling of installed fleet, compared to module costs falling at
18-20%, in a world where BOS increasingly matters, the old saw about
lower area cost per unit of power installed starts to actually bite for
once.  Think ultra thin high performance low cost large format
x-Si
modules with fancy anti reflective coatings and snazzy high grade
modules with on module inverters or DC optimizers mounted on highly
automated, low cost durable trackers.  Think solar farms
approaching
effective relative capacity factors of 2.5-3 mm kW Hours per year per
MW on 25 year systems at $2-3 per Watt installed.  Possibly the
only
thing on the planet that could match shale gas.

In fact, the entire thesis of thin film as a business and venture
capital prospect has been built on the premise that crystalline
material costs were just too high to get to grid parity. I’ve got scads
of early thin film business plans touting that.  That thesis is
under
extreme pressure these days. I’d submit that if the industry 7 years
ago had really understood how much improvement could be had, we’d have
saved billions in potentially stranded thin film development.

Charlie says there are about a dozen different paths for enabling 40
micron cells.  The most interesting approach to him is an
epitaxial
growth process on reusable silicon templates.  A process which
grows a
thin layer of silicon on top of a reusable layer of silicon, using
perhaps one mm thick silicon templates, etching the surface, and
directly depositing silicon from trichlorosilane gas.  The idea
would
be to rack templates into a module array, grow the cells in an oven to
your 40 micron level, then glue the glass module to the back side, and
then separate it off to form a “ready to go assemble” module.  The
challenge is basically oven and materials handling designs that get it
cost efficient in high volume.

In essence, all you’d be doing is integrating a silicon ingot growth
process directly into a module. Instead of growing ingots, cutting
thick wafers, forming cells, then building modules from them, you grow
cells racked into their own module personally instead of growing ingots
first.

Hella cool.  A process like that means using fairly manageable
capital equipment and materials handling technology development in
known device and module technologies we could literally rip the ever
living guts out of crystalline manufacturing costs.  And there are
11
more paths to play with???

The way he thinks about it, on a broader perspective more people are
working in photovoltaic solar R&D today, by his estimate some
70,000 researchers and $3 billion per year, than in all of the prior PV
history.   And that means whereas perhaps five main
innovations over 35
years drove almost all of crystalline PV manufacturing costs (screen
printing, glass tedlar modules, adapting steel from tires for cutting
wafers, silicon nitride processes, and fast metrology tools), in
today’s world, Charlie thinks we see 5 equivalent innovations in PV
manufacturing technology every 2 years.

So I asked him to comment on whether there were parallel cost-down
opportunities for thin films or whether it is an also ran waiting to
happen.  He thinks there are.  He mentioned organics.  I
pushed back
hard, as organics have been written off by almost everyone for never
seeing yield or performance, so where does he see the
opportunity?  He
responded that he picked organics to keep me from narrowing the
materials field prematurely to just A-Si, CdTe, CIGS, and GaAS. 
Silicon just like carbon can surprise us, e.g. bucky balls, carbon
nanotubes, and just because early materials had stability and process
issues, doesn’t mean we’ve exhausted the opportunities.

He says what he wants us to recall is that we are currently
operating in PV manufacturing today with the materials that were on the
radar in the energy crisis from 1974-1980.  That is changing in
the lab
and universities these days.  And given time the results will
surprise
us.

He draws a parallel between photography and photovoltaics, both
invented in 1839, both rely on sunlight acting on materials. In
photography, people started off putting films on glass, then putting
films on mylar, and running things continuously.  Implying that in
solar, we’re still on glass c. 1890.

He said to think about the original Ovonics/Unisolar vision in
thinking about how you get to high speed continuous processing with
thin film (think paper manufacturing, where done roll to roll it’s far
more consistent than one-offs can be done).  If that is still our
ultimate thin film paradigm (got to love the chance to use the word
“paradigm”), the stars are still in front of us with what thin film
COULD do.  And while roll to roll has had significant materials
technology and process control challenges for the current class of
materials, let’s go back to the mirror parallel to integrated circuits,
in photovoltaics, one main device, scads of material options. 
Just a
matter of R&D hours and time.

He markedly did NOT suppose that the current state of thin film
devices could beat 40 micron crystalline silicon by themselves. 
It’s
worth considering that we may look back and find that thin film, CdTe
and First
Solar
(FSLR) were the stepping stones to 40 micron crystalline, not
the other way around.  Maybe my next question to Charlie is
whether he
and I should set up Neal and Charlie’s 40 Micron Solar Company of
America yet. src="http://www.cleantechblog.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif"
alt=";)" class="wp-smiley">

Neal dikeman is a founding partner of
Jane Capital Partners LLC, a cleantech
merchant bank whose clients have included the technology arms of
multinational energy companies.  This article first appeared on href="http://www.cleantechblog.com/2011/06/will-crystalline-solar-kill-thin-film-a-conversation-with-applied-materials-solar-head-charlie-gay.html">CleanTechBlog
and is reprinted with permission.

Prime farmland is land with the growing season, moisture supply, and soil quality needed to sustain high yields. Image credit:USDA, via Heinz Center

People who’ve never been to a wilderness area treasure the idea that they one day could. (This explains broad public support for Federal and State wilderness protections.) City dwellers think if they can learn how grow a tomato in a bucket they could live off the land – if needed. A person ‘texting’ while driving believes he’ll never get in an accident, ‘unlike those other dummies.’ Here’s th…Read the full story on TreeHugger

Dense urban development in Cairo (left) and Istanbul (right). Photos: reibai / Creative Commons (L) and Jennifer Hattam (R).

Rapid urban expansion has turned the historic cities of Cairo and Istanbul into overcrowded, Read the full story on TreeHugger

Tom Konrad CFA

I recently interviewed Richard Domaleski, CEO of href="http://www.worldenergy.com/">World Energy Solutions ( href="http://www.altenergystocks.com/comm/content/world-energy/">NASD:XWES). 
World Energy
is a comprehensive energy management services firm whose core offering
is extremely price competitive energy sourcing (that is, finding an
energy provider to supply all of a client’s energy needs at the lowest
possible cost.) 
src="http://www.altenergystocks.com/archives/world%20energy%20logo.png"
align="right" height="39" width="228">
They achieve competitive sourcing using an electronic energy exchange
designed to achieve much better price discovery in what is
traditionally a very opaque market.  According to Domaleski, a
recent KEMA study showed that only 7% of large commercial, industrial,
and government customers are sourcing their energy online; the rest are
using traditional brokered or paper-driven deals.  World Energy
currently has about 5% of the market, leaving plenty of room for
growth.  Among their current customers are the General Services
Administration (the Federal Government’s procurement arm),
several state governments, href="http://www.worldenergy.com/news/world-energy-solutions-helps-general-dynamics-land-systems-with-its-renewable-energy-commitment/">General
Dynamics
Land
Systems, and Brown University, to name a few. 

They also partner with href="http://www.altenergystocks.com/archives/2007/07/performance_contracting_stocks.html">Energy
Service
Companies
(ESCOs).  ESCOs sign energy customers up to
a “Performance Contract” under which the ESCO is paid a fixed fee in
order to deliver a defined set of energy services (lighting and
temperature levels, for example), and the ESCO makes energy efficiency
improvements using their own capital to reduce energy use while still
delivering the defined energy services.  The lower energy use
quickly repays the ESCO’s out of pocket capital cost, leading to lower
(and stable) energy bills for the customer, and a healthy profit for
the ESCO.

Domaleski says that 143 such ESCOs and other procurement companies now
use World Energy’s procurement
platform to source their energy.  When I asked for names, he cited
non-disclosure agreements but was able to say that one prominent one
was SAIC ( href="http://www.altenergystocks.com/comm/content/saic/">NYSE:SAI). 
Yet
adoption
of World Energy’s platform is not universal.  One
prominent
ESCO
they pitched but did not convince is the leading pure-play
publicly traded ESCO: href="http://www.altenergystocks.com/comm/content/ameresco/">Ameresco
(NYSE:AMRC).

Is it Green?

Getting electricity and natural gas at lower prices may be a compelling
proposition for World Energy’s customers, but environmentally concerned
investors should think twice before calling it green.  A lower
price for energy is more likely to discourage than encourage energy
conservation, and hence lead to higher, not lower energy
emissions.  Energy sourcing may or may not include the sourcing of
green power or Renewable Energy Credits (RECs.)  A REC is a way of
accounting for all the green or environmental attributes of a MW of
electricity.

World Energy draws a distinction between “physical green power” and
RECs, with the former being produced from renewable sources on the same
ISO as the customer, and the RECs often produced somewhere else in the
world.  I don’t think this is a very useful distinction, since the
actual power produced is often not the same as the power consumed due
to both proximity and timing issues.  A simple example of why this
is so can be seen in the case of a supermarket that signs up for 100%
locally produced wind power.  While a nearby wind farm will indeed
be producing the same number of kWh as the supermarket consumes, the
supermarket keeps its lights on and continues to run its refrigeration
even when the wind is not blowing at the local farm.  In this
sense, “physical green power” is just normal electricity with bundled
RECs.

What really makes a REC (or “physical green power”) green is
additionality.  If the price of the REC is enough to ensure that a
wind farm that would not otherwise have been built is indeed built,
then the REC is additional.  World Energy’s ability to extract the
lowest possible price for RECs may work to undermine the additionality
of those RECs.  After all, which is more likely to increase the
chances of a wind or solar farm being built: a $10 REC, or a $20 REC?

Low Price as a Gateway Drug

Yet it’s hard to see saving money as a bad thing, and I find World
Energy’s numerous ESCO partners very encouraging.  If World
Energy’s procurement platform enables ESCOs to offer potential
customers performance contracts at lower prices, more such customers
will sign up, and receive the energy efficiency improvements that are
the ESCOs’ bread and butter.

World Energy also offers energy efficiency improvements to their direct
customers as well as helping those customers capture the utility
incentives available for energy efficiency and Demand Response
programs.  Demand Response companies
like Comverge
(NASD:COMV) and href="http://www.altenergystocks.com/comm/content/enernoc/">EnerNOC
(NASD:ENOC) may use World Energy’s demand response exchange, but
also compete with them to sign up customers directly.  As with
ESCOs, World Energy does not say which Demand Response providers use
their exchange, but they did say that they have 20 leading providers
signed up.

One of the most significant barriers to energy efficiency is simply
the complexity of options on offer.  Although the internal rate of
return on efficiency investments is very high, the absolute number of
dollars available from energy efficiency is seldom enough to sell a
facilities manager. Facilities managers seldom have an incentive or
expertise to save energy, although this is improving as companies
become more energy aware and make changes to employee incentives to fit
the
new goals.  Yet it is still generally difficult to get most
facilities managers to give energy the attention it needs in order to
capture the available energy
savings.  Lower energy prices, on the other hand, are easy to
grasp and communicate to higher-ups.  If World Energy and ESCOs
working with them can offer a
facilities manager a one-stop shop for both lower energy prices and
additional energy savings, they’ll be much more willing to take
action, even with weak internal incentives.  One step World Energy
has recently taken to make this
decision much easier is their  href="http://www.wbjournal.com/news48576.html">strategic investment in
Retroficiency a company whose technology will allow World Energy to
conduct virtual energy audits for clients based on the detailed energy
usage data they are already collecting.  This will allow
facilities managers to easily identify the particular buildings in
their portfolios most likely to benefit from more detailed energy
audits and retrofits.

Other Businesses

World Energy also runs other trading platforms, most notably the
platform for trading carbon credits under the Regional Greenhouse Gas
Initiative (RGGI).  With href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/27/nyregion/christie-pulls-nj-from-greenhouse-gas-coalition.html?_r=1">New
Jersey
pulling
out
of
the
ten-state
RGGI climate initiative, I
thought it would be interesting to get Domaleski’s perspective, but he
was unable to comment due to a confidentiality agreement with
RGGI.  This exchange is part of their Green green product line,
which accounts for approximately 5% of World Energy’s business and
includes other
environmental commodity trading as well as RGGI.

At the urging of a utility, World Energy has also recently launched a
wholesale energy exchange.  This exchange enables utility and
municipal customers to find the best price for power from World
Energy’s 500 suppliers.  This must be a useful service, because in
the four years since the exchange was launched, they have signed up 70
large customers.  The company’s Wholesale division accounts for
roughly 15% of revenues.

Conclusion

The move to internet based energy sourcing seems like an inevitability,
and World Energy has a powerful first mover advantage.  While
online procurement of energy may not be green in and of itself, the
savings on offer serve to get building managers in the door.  If
World Energy or its ESCO partners can then include significant energy
efficiency and green power in the mix, we have the formula for a
significant shift towards a more energy efficient economy.

src="http://www.altenergystocks.com/archives/Walmart%20CFLs.jpg"
align="right" height="149" width="225">In this sense, World Energy may
be a lot like Wal-Mart.  Customers
come in the door for low prices, but then find it href="http://walmartstores.com/Sustainability/9552.aspx"> easy to buy
energy efficient products as well.

DISCLOSURE: Long ENOC,COMV.

DISCLAIMER: Past performance
is
not a guarantee
or a reliable indicator of future results.  This article contains
the current opinions of the author and such opinions are subject to
change without notice.  This article has been distributed for
informational purposes only. Forecasts, estimates, and certain
information contained herein should not be considered as investment
advice or a recommendation of any particular security, strategy or
investment product.  Information contained herein has been
obtained from sources believed to be reliable, but not guaranteed.  

Image via Firebox

I’m loathe to admit an affinity for any branded product, but I can’t help it, I’m a sucker for VW buses and vans. Ergo, I love this tent! It’s an offcially licensed 1:1 scale of the iconic 1965 T1 camper van that comes in red, blue or yellow.

…Read the full story on TreeHugger

Q: How crazy was the weather in 2010? A: Really, really crazy. Insane, even. No, scratch that. More like super, uber, unprecedentedly batshit crazy. Don’t believe me? Then just ask the celebrated meteorologist Jeff Masters, who co-founded Weather Underground, and writes immaculately detailed blog posts there. In fact, don’t ask him — check out his most recent work, where he comprehensively analyzes the weather trends of 2010, and describes them thusly: “the wild roller-coaster ride of incredible weather events during 2010, in my mind, makes that year the planet’s most extraordinary year for extreme weather since reli…Read the full story on TreeHugger

images credit EmmeGroup

I don’t know why architects bury plumbing behind walls when it can look so shiny and high-tech. And why separate a sink and a shower when you can combine them both in this single unit that you can put anywhere. It is produced by Emme Group, an Italian company that mostly makes Bongos Barbeques for Bunga-Bunga parties, but also offers the Totem Shower.…Read the full story on TreeHugger

John Petersen

In 2009, the world produced some 13.2 billion metric tons of
hydrocarbons, or about 4,200 pounds for every man, woman and child on
the planet. Burning those hydrocarbons poured roughly 31.3 billion
metric tons of CO2 into our atmosphere. The basic
premise of alternative energy is that widespread deployments of wind
turbines, solar panels and electric vehicles will slash hydrocarbon
consumption, reduce CO2 emissions and give us a
cleaner, greener and healthier planet. That
premise, however, is fatally flawed because our planet cannot produce
enough non-ferrous industrial metals to make a meaningful difference and the
prices of those metals are even more volatile than the prices of the
hydrocarbons that alternative energy hopes to supplant.

The ugly but undeniable reality is that aggregate global production of
non-ferrous industrial metals including aluminum, chromium, copper, zinc,
manganese, nickel, lead and a host of lesser metals is about 35 pounds
for every man, woman and child on the planet. All of those metals are
already being used to provide the basic necessities and minor luxuries
of modern life. There are no significant unused supplies of industrial
metals that can be used for large-scale energy substitution. Even if
there were, the following graph that compares the Dow Jones UBS
Industrial Metals Index (^DJUBSIN) with the Amex Oil Index (^XOI) shows
that industrial metal prices are more volatile and climbing faster
than hydrocarbon prices, which means that most alternative
energy schemes are like jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire.

For all their alleged virtues and perceived benefits, most alternative
energy technologies are prodigious consumers of industrial metals. The
suggestion that humanity can find enough slop in 35 pounds of per
capita industrial metals production to make a meaningful dent in 4,200
pounds of per capita hydrocarbon production is absurd beyond reckoning.
It just can’t happen at a relevant scale.

I’m a relentless critic of vehicle electrification schemes like Tesla
Motors (TSLA)
because they’re the most egregious offenders and doomed to fail when EV
hype goes careening off the industrial metals cliff at 120 mph. Let’s
get real here. Tesla carries a market capitalization of $2.8 billion
and has a net worth of less than $400 million, so its stock price is
86% air – a bubble in search of a pin. Tesla plans to become a global leader in the development of
new electric drive technologies that will use immense amounts of
industrial metals to conserve irrelevant amounts of hydrocarbons. Even if
Tesla achieves its lofty technological goals it must fail as a
business. Investors who chase the EV dream without considering the
natural resource realities are doomed to suffer immense losses. Tesla
can’t possibly succeed. Its fair market value is zero. The stock is a
perfect short.

I won’t even get into the sophistry of wind turbines and solar panels.

Next on my list of investment catastrophes in the making are the
lithium-ion battery developers like A123 Systems ( href="http://www.altenergystocks.com/comm/content/a123/">AONE),
Ener1 (HEV),
Valence Technologies ( href="http://www.altenergystocks.com/comm/content/valence-technologies/">VLNC)
and Altair Nanotechnologies ( href="http://www.altenergystocks.com/comm/content/alatair-nanotech/">ALTI)
that plan to use prodigious quantities of industrial metals as
fuel tank substitutes, or worse yet for grid-connected systems that
will smooth the power output from inherently variable wind and solar
power facilities that also use prodigious quantities of industrial
metals as hydrocarbon substitutes. Talk about compounding the
foolishness.

I can only identify one emerging battery technology that has a significant potential to reduce
hydrocarbon consumption and industrial metal consumption at the same
time while offering better performance. That technology is the PbC®
Battery from Axion Power International ( href="http://www.altenergystocks.com/comm/content/axion-power/">AXPW.OB),
a third generation lead-acid-carbon battery that uses 30% less
industrial metals to deliver all of the performance and five to ten
times the cycle life. There may be other examples, but I’ll have
to rely on my readers to identify them.

Humanity cannot reduce its consumption of hydrocarbons by increasing
its consumption of industrial metals. The only way to reduce
hydrocarbon consumption is to use less and waste less.  There
are a world of sensible and economic fuel efficiency technologies that can help
us achieve the frequently conflicting long-term goals of reduced hydrocarbon
consumption and increased industrial metals sustainability. They include but are
not limited to:

• Better buiding design and insulation;
• Smarter power management systems;
• Telecommuting;
• Denser cities with shorter commutes;
• Smart transportation management to reduce congestion;
• Buses and carpooling;
• Bicycles and ebikes;
• Shifting freight to rail from trucks;
• Smaller vehicles that use lightweight composites to replace
  industrial metals;
• Deploying solar and wind with battery backup for remote power
  and in developing countries;
• Shipping efficiency technologies, such as better hull
  coatings, slow steaming, etc.; and
• Recycling, recycling and recycling

My colleague Tom Konrad wrote a 28 part series on “ href="http://www.altenergystocks.com/archives/2010/05/peakoil.html">The
Best Peak Oil Investments.” While I’m skeptical about the future of biofuels
after suffering major losses in the biodiesel business, Tom’s work provides an exhaustive overview of
the energy efficiency space and a wide variety of investment ideas
that have the potential to make a real difference. Since we can’t
simply take a couple of giant leaps into the future, we’ll just have
to get out of our current mess the same way we got into it – one
step at a time.

We live in a cruel world. There is no fairy godmother that can
miraculously accommodate the substitution of scarce industrial metals
for hydrocarbons that are a hundred times more plentiful. We can and we must do better,
but we can’t solve humanity’s problems until we accept the harsh realities
of global resource constraints without the filters of political ideology and wishful thinking.

Disclosure: Author is a former
director of Axion Power International ( href="http://www.altenergystocks.com/comm/content/axion-power/">AXPW.OB)
and owns a substantial long position in its common stock.