Sustainability is not political

Heidi Suydam in Red, Green & Blue profiles Tsien-si Chen, a Christian conservative architect who specializes in sustainable design and construction. In the words of Mr. Chen, “Creating a sustainable future is not political.” That expresses a firm and growing sentiment of my own.

Coal-to-liquids plant coming soon to Montana

The concept of making liquid fuel out of coal is not new–visionaries such as Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa pioneered the technology, necessity being the mother of invention–and it looks as if the United States may be getting its first commercial synfuel plant. A deal was just struck between an Australian company and a Native American tribe that sits on 9 billion tons of coal under unspoiled Montana lands. Coal gets mined, carbon is sequestered, jobs jobs jobs, everybody gets paid, whatever.

This Week in Change

Here’s to an (extended because it’s my first recap) exciting week of change:

• The foreclosure crisis is not over, and could prove deeply damaging to the financial system
• Even the CEO of BP admits it: No more cheap energy
• Some think the end of cheap energy should also mean the end of environmental regulations on energy production
• Believe it or not: improving mileage from 15MPG to 20 saves the same amount of gas as improving mileage from 30 MPG to 60
• California used to be the United States’ Saudi Arabia, but just look at it now and you will understand the concept of peak oil
• The auto leasing model is on its way out because nobody wants to buy the crap we have been buying–a clear marker that consumer tastes have changed dramatically
• The French are starting to use old sailing ships to transport goods to the UK–and they plan to build new ones. That new sailing ships. You know, with sails.
• Small electric cars are catching on–in Texas?
• Spain is enacting a 50 MPH speed limit to save on gas
• In nutritional change news, the movement to disclose calorie content on menus grows
• More people in LA are riding their bicycles to work, revealing just how hostile the LA megalopolis is to bicycles
• America’s nuclear power generators are getting long in the tooth–and may not last long enough to be replaced
• In a truly “WTF?” declaration, the Big 3 want to roll back the new MPG standards
• So many people are taking the train that Amtrak is having trouble dealing with the crowds
• It’s well understood that economic growth in China is helping to put a stake in the heart of cheap energy–but on the hopeful side, the newly affluent in China want to buy a lot of new stuff…
  

That’s a lot of change for one week.

Is oil headed to $60/barrel?

Not likely, but you can sense the gleeful anticipation among the more-of-the-same crowd given the recent fall in oil prices. In my book, this is reflective of the now well-documented drop off in demand.

We see the same thing in the electric industry. There are plenty of old dogs who insist that all this is just a lot of noise, and that we will return in due time to the same modest trend line we’ve enjoyed for fifty years. The saviors come and go: sometimes it’s cheap liquified natural gas (LNG), sometimes it’s clean coal, sometimes it’s nuclear… but the refrain is the same: soon and very soon, the future will look like the past we’ve known and loved.

Don’t count on it.

The future is bright… for coal

Here’s a gloomy assessment from MarketWatch: it’s boomtown for coal, and that’s because apparently we don’t have “realistic” alternatives. All I can say is, life is a lot simpler for those who want to steer by the wake.

It’s not just the Big 3 that are feeling the pain

Luxury marks like BMW and Daimler are getting hammered by the move to smaller cars as well. Both are selling more of their smaller cars (BMW sells the 1 series and Mercedes has the Smart), but since margins are much slimmer on the smaller cars they have to sell several small cars for every one luxury car that isn’t bought. Expect as part of the smaller-is-better phenomenon to see the smaller cars become trendier and go upscale. This will provide automakers with the opportunity to carve back some of that lost margin.

Here comes the Chinese consumption wave

Here’s the kind of prospective phenomenon that makes an economist giddy: the Chinese love to shop, and somebody’s going to have to supply the product to scratch that itch. Could a Chinese consumption wave right the US/China trade imbalance. Some hope so. Although if it’s not Buicks or iPods, I’m not sure what consumer goods American companies make that aren’t already made in China. In fact, iPods probably are made in China anyway.

It’s getting crowded at Amtrak

Get this: people are loving the train lately, so much so that Amtrak is having trouble dealing it.

They love Buicks in China. Seriously.

In fact, GM sells nearly twice as many Buicks in China as in the United States. Huh. Get this quote from a Chinese Chevy buyer:

“I saw Chevrolet is very heavily used, I saw a lot of them on the streets,” Zhoucheng told us through a translator. “Chevrolet has very good quality and quality is very important for Chinese.”

Automakers to CAFE: ‘Not so fast…’

The Big 3 are chafing under the new CAFE requirements. I suppose I can’t blame them for pushing against regulations that present risks to their business models, but I have to wonder: can’t they see from the plummeting value of their used vehicles (because nobody wants to buy the older, less fuel-efficient vehicles any longer) that the market is primed for a new generation of more fuel-efficient vehicles?