Month: August 2016

It’s strange how MIT (The Massachusetts Institute of Technology) sometimes comes up with stupid ideas (Nocera with his Artificial Leaf), sometimes clearly steals ideas, and sometimes demo’s something anyone can apply. Today it did the latter as it demonstrated high temperatures, 100 Celsius can be reached with unfocused sunlight (so called 1 sun). This is about solar thermal heaters that now reach temperatures up to 70 deg Celsius or 100 if you don’t let the water flow.

SRB Ultra High Vacuum Collector

Of course there have been improvements on the solar thermal panel front, we had RSB and another company make high vacuum solar thermal panes, that can reach up to 500 Celsius. Those products are not storming the markets, they are in our opinion held back by the dominant gas lobby who can work in mysterious ways. 500 Celsius is a lot of heat, it is highly usefull and can drive regular power plant steam turbine. We need to take care of this type of products, or they will go the way of the early solar panels.

These simple component produce higher temperatures than was possible with 40 years of DOE research

The device MIT demonstrates makes only 100 degree steam, but that’s an important product because it separates the water from its impurities. But most amazingly to me it demonstrates a principle in heat collection I never realized was true, that you can multiply heat by collecting it and then giving it only a small space to exit. What happens in the collector is that heat is absorbed by some kind of metal, copper or aluminium, which is coated with a layer that does not reflect away the heat or emit it (mat black is the best heat emittier, silvered is the least). This captures the heat in the metal, which then tries to leave by radiation (photons) or convection (heating up the environment). The trick used is to have only a tiny amount of water available to transfer (drawn up through a wick like in an oil lamp) all this energy to, which if it is a hole in the hot metal collector plate, is ‘pushed’ from all sides to get hotter. Thus a multiplication of temperature happens, and this can be optimized by spacing holes in the collector plate.

Its not clear to us why the collector has to float on water, it doesn’t seem necessary, as is mentioned the water can also be supplied at pressure, the essential part is the concentration of heat (molecular kinetic energy) onto a small amount of water.

The main difference is that the amount of water per surface of collector is much smaller..

We have written here about ionic membranes, and solar ionic membranes that will make desalination about 80% less energy intensive. With that in mind it is unclear how this solar still type and ionic desalination methods compare. The materials are cheap for both. In any case this is great news for deserts near salt water bodies, where we hope to see massive tree planting and agriculture for CO2 capture, restoration of ecosystems in a roboeconomic or extraeconomical sense.

De verkiezings campagnes zijn begonnen. De PVV heeft zijn A4tje gelanceerd, D66 roept van alles, zoals gewoonlijk worden problemen genoemd, en weinig oplossingen. Het zijn de kiezers die op de problemen focussen maar zelf niks doen die dan stemmen op de partijen die vervolgens gaan zoeken naar een oplossing, waarom niet andersom?

Een rationele beleids agenda heeft weinig van doen met de deportatie van moslims, waarvan de meesten zich niet minder goed gedragen dan oerhollandse kaaskoppen. Het is zeker verstandig om het ophitsen in moskeen en het ‘opleiden’ van salafisten te voorkomen, welk welvaarts doel dient dat immers, we hebben ook geen scholen voor voetbal hooliganisme (hoewel dat economisch best interessant zou kunnen zijn). Er zijn al problemen genoeg, waarom zou je jonge mensen op een tegendraads spoor zetten? Als ze er nu heel welvarend en gelukkig van werden, maar dat lijkt niet het geval.

De politiek gedraagt zich als een ouder met een zeer lastig kind. Het kind wil een ijsje, het schreeuwt en tiert, de ouders moeten van de snelweg af, over de vluchtstrook, vader klimt over de vangrail terwijl moeder het kind probeert te weerhouden van het uit de auto klimmen en richting de langsstormende Ola vrachtwagens te rennen. Met veel pijn en moeite wordt een Cornetto bij een lokale bewoner uit de koelkast gebietst en zogauw het kind die te pakken heeft en verzwolgen is er een volgend probleem. De kiezer is koning, wat men zomaar uitblaat (weg met moslims) wordt beleid, waar het schip zo strand zien we later wel.

Waar komen de problemen met de veelal arme en economisch niet makkelijk inzetbare immigranten vandaan? Armoede. Er zijn te weinig hulpbronnen in onze economie (ook al zijn we heel rijk) om iedereen het leven en de omgeving te geven die ze zouden willen. Dat heeft ook te maken met economische processen die we zouden moeten minderen, zoals bv het gebruik van alcohol. Maar in de eerste plaats hebben te veel mensen het krap en wordt hen steeds minder inkomenszekerheid geboden, dus is er weinig animo tot constructieve samenwerking. Vastgoed financialisering (lijkt bijna vanzelfsprekend) maakt dat mensen, zeker in arme wijken geen eigen terrein hebben, weinig vrijheid, veel frustratie.

We hebben in Nederland al een sociale inkomensverdeling, maar toch kan dit beter. We hoeven de welvaart niet te verdelen als die lokaal van oorsprong is, dwz niet van fossiele aard, en dus eindig, maar van hernieuwbare aard, en per definitie min of meer gelijkelijk over het land verdeeld. Alle activiteiten die voor ons overleven nodig zijn, dus het produceren van schoon water, voedsel en energie voor verwarming, zouden lokaler moeten worden, onafhankelijker en duurzamer. Dat kan met zonneenergie, zonnewarmte bv. Er zijn meer oplossingen dan de markt nu toestaat. Daarmee los je gelijk een hele categorie problemen op, namelijk die te maken hebben met concurentie in de economie (voor banen, vastgoed en politieke macht).

Het streven naar lokale energie overvloed zou een zaak van de overheid moeten zijn, bv. economische zaken, maar daar wordt tot nu toe niet serieus gekozen, omdat economische activiteit nu een maal niet nuttig hoeft te zijn. Er moet omzet worden gegenereerd, verder mag een economische activiteit olie, grondstoffen en human resources verspillen deste meer deste beter. Grote projecten om meer energie en grondstoffen beschikbaar te maken zijn de sleutel tot meer duurzame en overvloedige welvaart. Meer vis uit de zee, meer graan van het land, meer warmte uit de zon en electriciteit uit wind en zon om vrij te reizen. Met hernieuwbare energie kan dit land een dubai zijn zonder de nadelen.

Zogauw we onze energie niet meer hoeven te verdelen tussen jong en oud, werkend of werkeloos, links of rechts, omdat er genoeg is voor iedereen, veranderd het spel in nederland en ook de politieke agenda. PVV wil geen windturbines maar wel vroegere pensioen, dat is een onpractische benadering. Laat de PVV voor meer windturbines zijn om de vroegere pensioenen mogelijk te maken! D66 wil de regels van zijn vaderpartij de VVD terugdraaien, meer zekerheid in arbeidscontract? Met hernieuwbare energie in overvloed kan elke burger een basis inkomen genieten waar niemand voor hoeft te werken, en kunnen werkgevers hun team samenstellen zonder voor de consumptie in de economie verantwoordelijk te worden gehouden.

De meeste problemen die we hebben, en zeker de grootste, komen voort uit onze afhanlijkelijkheid van fossiel en het toepassen van fossiel-economisch denken. We zijn bezig daar uit te groeien. Het zou fijn zijn als we dat in een keer doen, bij de komende verkiezingen. De partij waar je dan op moet stemmen heet de Partij van de Dieren, misschien de SP, een beetje Groen Links. Dat zouden rationele keuzes zijn, het is dus hopen dat u de keizer daar de rust voor vindt.

 

Zeeland staat op het punt 200 Miljoen uit te geven aan het voortzetten van het gebruik van kerncentrale Borsele. Waar zo’n enorm bedrag voor nodig is is een raadsel, de installatie staat er al, er is een beetje beton en staal nodig, niks bizonders zo’n slapende kernbom. De belangrijkste reden dat dit soort geld nodig is is om te zorgen dat de installatie niet zelfstandig wordt, maar in de handen van schuldeisers blijft, dat is meestal zo (en geen geheim, tijdens de Davos meetings wordt openlijk besproken dat de wereld nog meer schuldenlast kan dragen).

Een kerncentrale zorgt altijd voor een enorme kater als hij failliet gaat, en dat gaan ze altijd, want dan gaan de mensen die er aan hebben verdient naar huis, terwijl het object voortdurende koeling en beheer en zorgvuldige en ongezonde ontmanteling vereist. Niets waar de directeuren eigenaren last van hebben.

Waarom niet iets veel verstandigers doen, namelijk zo’n nucleare tijdbom gewoon sluiten. Elon Musk heeft al een tijdje geleden berekend dat er op het vrijgehouden oppervlak van een Borsele genoeg zonnestroom kan worden opgewekt als de installatie genereert. Bovendien kun je de turbine van Borsele hergebruiken met gebruik van offshore wind warmte (stukje gratis consultancy naar de Dongs van deze wereld toe). Dus wind en zon kunnen het energie aanbod vergroten en veiliger maken.

Borsele heeft een vermogen van 485 MW, produceert 3% van de nederlandse stroom

Met 200 Miljoen Euro kom je een heel eind, bv als je een zonnepark wil aanleggen. Dat zijn 1.3 miljoen zonnepanelen a 300 Wp, dus 390.000.000 Wp ofwel 390 MW. Beter is om te rekenen met 200,- per paneel, dan kom je op 1.000.000 stuks, 300.000.000 Wp en (maal .85) 255 kWh (hebben eerst door 1000 gedeeld voor de kWp). Da’s genoeg voor 85.000 huishoudens, beduidend minder dan de beweerde output van de kerncentrale, zo’n 1.2 miljoen huishoudens. Om die output te bereiken zou je nog 14 keer 200 Miljoen moeten investeren.

Altijd gezellig, de rol van een Bio-robot

Borsele afbouwen kost iig nog een keer 489 miljoen (maar duitsers schatten voor hun centrales tussen de 500 en 1000 miljoen). Dat geld ben je nu al kwijt. Duitsland schat zo’n 300 miljard kwijt te zijn aan het opruimen van 33 kerncentrales.  Dit soort kosten veroorzaken een niet onaanzienlijk lock in probleem. Een soort gokverslavings effect. Als het straks toch zo’n sloot geld kost dan maar zo lang mogelijk gebruiken. Wat men ook zou kunnen doen is deze kosten onder de loep nemen en uitzoeken hoe ze door gebruik van solar en robots te drukken zijn (nu houden robots ook niet van radioactiviteit, zodat in Tsjernobil en Fukushima mensen moesten worden ‘gebruikt’, de zogenaamde ‘bio-robots’).

Zeeland kan Borsele beter sluiten, hem ontmantelen nu het nog goedkoper is en we de middelen hebben. Verder kan het dan deelnemen in een zonnecentrale op het Markermeer, die alle bestaande centrales kan vervangen, zie de markermeerzonnecentrale.nl

 

Niemand in de tweede kamer in Den Haag kan meer ontkennen dat er iets vreemds aan de hand is. De temperaturen breken alle records elke maand weer. Iemand die niet de mening van de overgrote meerderheid van experts als uitgangspunt neemt liegt hierover of mist de intelligentie die van iemand in zijn ambt mag worden verwacht. Van de armste buurt tot de rijkste wijk weet iedereen dat er iets niet goed gaat met onze planeet.

Wanneer is het dan tijd voor noodmaatregelen? Waarom de schade hoger laten oplopen als experts ons vertellen dat de situatie zo ernstig wordt. Wat maakt dat iedereen zich als orkest op de Titanic gedraagt en niet reageert op een serieuze bedreiging? Het leeft bij de kiezer, al betekent die uitdrukking meestal dat de kiezer ook iets vindt. In dit geval vinden veel kiezers dat er een probleem is en dat daar wat aan gedaan moet worden.

Shell heeft niemand gechanteerd nemen wij even aan, of klem gezet. Alle mensen die blindelings voor fossiel zijn willen dat omdat ze er iets uit halen, of misschien omdat ze geen bal geven om wat er over twintig jaar gebeurt. Wat echter zeker is is dat deze mensen datgene wat hun pro fossiele houding hun geeft (inkomsten, levensstijl) ook op een andere manier kunnen bereiken, zeker als de politiek bereid is dat te faciliteren. De olie industrie kan worden uitgefaseerd.

Het is waanzin om te zeuren over banen enz. die verloren gaan. Je kunt blij wijze van spreken de pensioenen van mensen die door de fossiele vervuiling vroeg overleden verdelen over de fossiele werkelozen. Daarbij is er zo veel te doen, zeker als we besluiten daar speciale actie voor te ondernemen, dat dit veel werk zal veroorzaken. Een ding dat zeker is : Een beetje meebobben op de economie en verwachten dat het goed gaat is geen optie.

Net als Erdogan de Gulen leden uit zijn ambtenarij probeert te drijven, of net als de VS communisten achterna zat (en zit) moeten we de pro fossiele klimaat actie vertragers uit ons overheids apparaat gaan weren. Er moeten offers worden gebracht tov het bedrijfsleven dat niet meer alles zomaar mag gaan doen of promoten, zo’n beetje als met sigaretten. Geen vleesreclamen, geen vliegvakantie reclame, en actie actie actie.

Er is bijna geen nieuwe technologie nodig om het probleem te bestrijden, en het zal blijvend veel banen creeren, maar we kunnen het niet op een beloop laten. De klimaatzaak verplicht Nederland al veel meer te doen dan het nu doet. De kiezers moeten de business-as-usual mentaliteit niet langer tolereren. Het is tijd om te erkennen dat Nederland en zijn bevolking ernstig bedreigd worden, en dat we de middelen hebben om daar iets tegen te doen. Wanneer beginnen we de situatie serieus te nemen?

 

Invest here

Yanko Design developed a walking tree planiting robot which we don’t think has been build. The challenge of tree planting is huge and it seems people are still the best way to quickly plant trees. However in the Roboeconomy remote regions with next to no people suddenly become viable for building resource buffers using renewables and robots. For now as CO2 needs to be sequestered, remote new forrests won’t be buffers, but simply a way to increase carboncapture and provide habitats for animals (thus protecting species).

Putin makes an attempt to break through to the public. The media in the US seems to follow a political agenda that demonizes Putin. Putin explains that US demonizing of Iran has resulted in it placing weapons systems close to Russia that can be switched from defensive to offencive (nuclear) in a heartbeat.

It is clear since the cold war started (by Donald Rumsfeld ao) that the US has part of its political system driving the perception of a russian threat to justify arming itself. This was great for the US military-industrial-complex who’s budget is still bigger than that of any other countries defense industry. The so called Neoconservatives, or Neocons still have a lot of power.

For a young person with superficial knowledge of the world it is easy to develop a sense of global politics the public will believe, but which makes no practical sense..

There have been two occasions in the 80’s that a nuclear war could have started (Russian computer glitch and a solar flare causing alarms on the US side), and before that the Cuba crisis. Since that time scientist found that the systems responsible for launching nuclear rockets are sensitive to errors, so that welding the silo’s shut would be a good measure (creating a delay in deployment allowing for detection of the false alarm). These arsenals are super dangerous even if nobody wants to use them, because they operate at a hairtrigger detection system, in which time is critical.

Russia deployed a system to scramble electronic systems in a wide area, as protection against a functioning US missle defense shield

It is not everyday that the biggest opposing superpower to the US says it considers itself in ‘Grave danger’. That means Russia is on alert because it views US actions as offensive, and wonders where that offensive strategy will end. Question remains why anyone would push Russia in this way. Why move the world to the point where some random accident can cause global thermonuclear anihilation. Its like the US has gone insane.

“We have no choice but to re-instill in our foes and friends the fear that attaches to any great power…. Only a war against Saddam Hussein will decisively restore the awe that protects American interests abroad and citizens at home”. (PNAC fail)

What are the motives of the Neocons, and have they changed over the decades? Probably not. The goal was to secure US supremacy by any means, for the next century, even if it meant nuclear war. This is the goal according to the unreliable ‘conspiracy type’ channels. It could be in light of the above statement of the Neocon think tank PNAC and its follower the FPI.

There are people that like to solve problems for humanity and those that see humanity as the problem. They say “Less people, more to share”

The idea that disciplining someone will permanently instill paralyzing awe clearly failed. That’s because there is no real audience to a impress, it is not paying attention really, it is not homogenous, it has other things to worry about. What Neocons drive is like someone at the table hitting it hard to get attention without saying anything. Useless. We read that the Neocons have influence on Hillary. Trump they could simply buy. It is a question of time when a networked ideology which has been very succesfull finds someone to act out its fantasy.

World Peace and cooperation based on a renewables powered future is a threat for those that want to ‘stay on top’

The main question is why? Why war? The main answer is influence, fossil fuel sales and fossil fuel resources. The middle east is no treasure trove of interesting products or people for the US, but it has oil and it will both consume little of it and be forced to seel when it is either fighting or recovering from a war.  All the while the region is heating up and becoming uninhabitable. Solving the problems there would lead to a solar boom and growth of wealth and control over the environment (so desert farms, tree plantations) that would put many other regions in the shadows (even though that is thinking globally).  We are close to such a peace driving development or it will be prevented by a major world war. We may be seeing the last gasps of the war mongers, while renewables, removing global resource imbalances are making people more focussed on their local industry and lives..

 

 

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International Robotic Sailing Conference

Our world is facing a fossil fuel use induced extinction unlike we have seen in 250 million years. This one is happening so fast, and the cause is so singular it is beyond obcene how well the perpetrators are treated. The trick is that we are still existentially dependent on fossil fuels, for food and as a source of heating mainly. The banks, who ensure the fossil fuel resources are distributed optimally (for them, not in the light of efficiency, because then they would promote renewables a lot harder), do not want to lose this cashflow cow.

Lives are lost. Of people, animals, plants on land and in the oceans. Not only the use of fossil fuels brings a lot of life in the oceans and on land in reach of human destruction (call it consumption), the emitted CO2 raises the acidity and temperatures of the ocean, which means less can live in them, and the atmospheric temperatures, so more forrest fires, drought and heavy rains (as it takes more water to break out of cold clouds to a hot sea level surface). All this again because we can’t discipline the oil/gas/coal companies and leaching banks.

How much are those lives lost worth? The thought is triggered by an islamic recruiter of soldiers to fight in Aleppo, calling on them to ‘sell their soul to god’ in return for a place in heaven. Other places you get reminded of the value of a life is in medical insurance, which increasingly amounts to horse trading, where a life is about 70.000 Euro (no absolute amount) and if it gets more expensive it should be considered lost. If we look at premeditated murder in Holland, where we have no death penalty, we still look at 25 life years lost (because most get out after 25 years, or earlier).

Our lives depend on the lives of trillions of other creatures, literally, because the algae in the oceans make our oxygen, as do the trees in the Amazon. We can’t lose those lives and keep ourse, or we will be living on an Earth Mars style colony for at least a million years. Why? Because dead oceans become toxic and make our atmosphere unbreathable. So we have a stake in keeping our ecosystem alive, in the long and thus in the short term.

This will wake people up : Peak timber has been reached, timber cruch comming!

Interestingly you could say that people who don’t care about all of this because they know they won’t be burdened by it, also play with the concept of life and death, concluding that what happens after they die is of no concern to them. The biggest problem we face is thus the lack of immediate feedback from a system we (people who do have a sense of what happens after they die) need to protect. It is also a basic good to try to protect that which is today, so a parent that ignores calls for vegetarism, using EVs, solar panels etc. (where they could do something) is simply saying to their kids : “screw you”.

Climate irresponsible parents basically don’t care what happens to their children

Lets say all lives have a price, but price is counted in days of our lives lived in freedom. There’s a lot to say about freedom as wel by the way, because some people use their freedom for good, others use it to damage other lives (like trophy hunters or drug dealers). The ‘utility’ angle towards people however has been tried and resulted in the invention of the term ‘euthenasia’, it is also of decreasing relevance because of AI, robotics and renewables, which combined can provide us with most the things we need, without anybodies assistance.

Say we want to device a control scheme for humanity so we move back towards our 1800 ecological environment. We would like to see :

• No logging of pristine forrest
• No hunting or trade in endangered animals
• No degradation of land used by wild animals
• No warming of the oceans, no acidification
• Restoration of forrests, removal of dams
• Return to 1800 CO2 levels through multiple approaches
  • Use of automated systems for planting/development
  • Use of carbon storing soil techniques
  • Use of renewable energy on land and oceans

Already there are many rules in place that will penalize people for doing damage, but usually it is against economic interests, so you can’t log without a permit, you can’t fish beyond your quotum. Laws are lobbied for and against things by people who do and who don’t give a damn about our futures. A truely active approach in securing life on this planet would involve much more direct intervention in what people try to do when they are either hungry or greedy.

Pricing of resources is not communicating the true cost. They do not regenerate spontaneously

It seems that the economic incentive has to be removed in most cases, and wierdly enough this is again tied in with fossil fuels. This is because if people need money they don’t have their own land to sustain themselves, and they depend on trade to get their food. This involves remote production of what they need, logistics, point of sale, and all these things are fossil fuel dependent (especially in poor countries). So in a way the damage done to nature is fossil fuel induced on every level.

As long as we are locally dependent on remote resources we need money to aquire those resources, and we need to extract that from others through trade

Besides incentivising or disincentivising the activities mentioned above, one should look at developing local support systems that have no fossil energy or banking component. So a solar basic income, communal or owned land for food production worked by people or machines. This removes the need for destructive economic activity.

Help to poor countries now comes as an indirect subsidy to EU or US or Chinese companies. It also means fossil fuel colonization, because once you sell a motorcycle in Africa, the gasoline sales will follow for quite a while. This in turn forces the owner to work for money, and this introduces the western economic system in every activity. The balance between owners and traders is pused to the side of the traders until there are no debt free owners anymore. This maximizes the control of the biggest traders, the banks.

The goal should be to push back from this ownerless situation to one where all things are owned by either local communities or individuals. Those that don’t benefit from or depend on a resource can’t own it. Those that do must own it. We earlier proposed the horizon rule, that no company could be owned by someone living beyond the horizon as seen from its office, or could serve customers beyond the horizon.

 

The world is transitioning to renewables. Anybody who fully owns their solar panels discovers a strange thing : The price of their electricity drops to zero, even if they reserve income from the sale of it to the grid to buy the replacement panels. The renewable economy has different properties than our present fossil fuel driven economy. This has surprising implications.

Imagine a factory for solar panels, in the desert of Nevada for instance. It can produce silicon needed for the cells from sand using solar panels on its roof. It has a deal with Iceland for refining the aluminium with geothermal, it has deals with wind parks to generate the plastics from water and CO2 (for instance an offshore windpark). It has deals with glass melters in Mauritania that use solar energy to melt sand, mix it and create glass panes (or better still, it doesn’t use glass at all, because the glass pane is not necessary for solar panels to function or be durable). In short, there is renewable energy input in a production system that takes raw materials and turns them into solar panels. Even the delivery and logistics can be all electric/wind (maritime) powered.

Production chains can lower cost by integrating renewables in every step

A scenario as painted above has a surprising proprety, namely that it requires very little money to run, after all, all processes need to be maintained and protected against breakdown, but otherwise they run on their own. A road truck with a 40 foot container driving in the sun can generate about 6 kWp on its top, which is quite a lot of power for either its batteries or electric drive train. Once you have such electric trucks your logistics cost will be much less than with diesel trucks, let alone the lower maintenance and repairs. A solar electric truck combination will also not only earn enough money to pay for itself, but will continue to earn money out of a fossil fuel economy.

Renewable powered products and service pull carboncredit out of the economy, causing problems for banks

We have written about the incompatibility of the fossil fuel (carboncredit) economy and the new Roboeconomy (we are not Rifkinites or Kurzweilites because they use to much hyperbolic words and inspire a passive attitude). One of the fundamental incompatibilities is that the Roboeconomy will suck up money from the carboncredit economy which destabilizes this economy and makes it harder to control by the credit sources (banks). The only way the now dominant fossil fuel based economy can deal with renewables is by making sure they are in debt, they are written off (and destroyed) a the end of their economic life (so within about 15 years or so) and that as much of them as possible are forced to trade their energy into the market in which prices are still largely determined by fossil fuels. Even then the current economic system can only survive a modest percentage of renewables until the shift in paradigm becomes problematic.

The current economic system depends on fossil fuel consumption so it can only survive a modest % of renewables before the paradigm shifts

The shift in paradigm between the ‘Carboncredit’ and Roboeconomy lies in the logical source of credit. In our present fossil fuel dominated economy this source is the banks, who hide the fact that the credit they create has value due to the availability of fossil fuels in gas stations, gas grid, as coal electricity everywhere. A factory can not produce if it can’t pay its energy bills, no logistics company, no mining company, no airline or shipping company can operate. It has to earn money to pay for its operation, and if it earns more than it needs to pay for its energy needs, which includes salaries (which turn into food, products and services from the same factories) it makes profit. Banks like to drive the desire for profits because it increases the need for credit. It increases their control of this well oiled machine.

Now take a ammonia fuel generator, so a plant that turns N2 out of the air and H20 into NH3, a diesel like fuel that can be used to run farm equipment. If the farmers buy this installation out of their cash reserves it is a debt free source of farm fuel (CO2 free). This happend in the US with the Freedom Fertilizer project. Then obviously all the farmers can work their land and grow crops, irrigate (if there is a natural water source) and sell their produce without needing a Dollar in credit.

Ammonia is the safest fuel

This is how farming becomes free of any cost. If the NH3 generator is owned by someone else, say an investor, it can sell its NH3 to the farmers at a price lower than diesel, and this would still be a good thing. As the Wind to NH3 plant needs very little input (wind, air, water) it would accumulated dollars from the carboncredit economy. People would pay for something that was essentially free.

A renewable energy producer can become a bank, creating a mini-roboeconomy, or it can simply support the community

But the Wind to NH3 generator owner could also decide not to ask for dollars, but simply create its own currency, the NH3 coin, that farmers have to buy to get NH3. The Wind to NH3 generator owner could become a bank, that gave credit to building companies that wanted to build using heavy equipment, which also needed the diesel like NH3. Soon the NH3coin would circulate in the economy along the dollar as a hard currency, with some provisions, like a limited duration for use. The latter would not have to remain the case if the generator had adequate storage for NH3 and build up reserves. The fossil fuel banks already use the reserves of fossil fuels, which like NH3 is stored energy.

Farmers buy diesel and dump manure, while they could use NH3 and harvest it from the manure

In short, with renewables, and especially stored renewables, the credit function and economic role of banks is eroded. They will matter less and less as energy and thus the engine of local economies becomes more owned and more local. Eventually all the basic functions will become free (als due to increasing automation) because the community owns and maintains them themselves. Because the cost of everything have dropped the people doing the maintenace also don’t require much if any money. 3D printing and automation will play a large role in making this happen.

With renewables our machine, robotic environment gains autonomy to produce the things we need, as if the dead planet comes alive

The renewable transition can be seen in a romantic way as the evolution of the physical world, where it gains abilities now only present in the biological world. Living organisms maintain themselves by collecting energy from the sun mostly (directly or indirectly and in many different ways). The lifeless, dead, material world now gains this ability, and if we create systems out of raw materials that integrate renewable energy harvesting then these systems can become autonomous and self perpetuating. We can make it so that these systems support our lives, restore our ecology and create the best environment for us, and this will have no real cost other than humans using their lives to bridge the gap between the vision and it being reality.

Free solar panels for all will be an international intitiative born out of two considerations : The need for the solar transition and the fact it creates no losers

The first system that should experience this ‘augementation’ is the solar panel manufacturing sector. It should go 100% renewables, including the company building the factories, so that the cost will drop to near zero, and this system can become a self sustaining, growing industry. This is going to happen, the question is which company will make it happen. The role that you can play in this is to look for leaders that understand this, that see that the financial sector and energy markets will eventually die, that any location with renewable resources is roboeconomically viable, and that allowing natural resources (like from mines) to be used in return for the products instead of offering it to the market can create a low cost shortcut.

Solar City is doing this by getting power for it’s solar panel factory from Niagara Falls, one of the first places to use the idea’s of Tesla (which today Bought Solar City for $2.5 Bln)

The birth of a planet that sustains humanity and our coevolved animal kingdom can happen, and free solar for all will be the first sign.