Avalence II

After I met with Tom, the Chief Technical Officer, I went to see Debbie Moss and Steve Nagy, the principals in Avalence. Actually, Debbie came to find me, because Tom and I had been talking for an hour and forty-five minutes and folks were wondering what exactly happened to us for so long. We were back in the lunch room sitting down, both of us with pads of paper madly scribbling down figures to calculate the energy benefits for us. Actually, the benefits are rather limited. But, after talking with Steve and Debbie about the nature of technological development, we are still going to get one installed in our lobby.



The questions is: why?



The answer is not, believe it or not, to show what innovative thinkers we at Eco Building Tech are. Instead, it is the planting of a seed. One of the most significant acts we can accomplish as a company is to show the public what is possible. If we somehow can influence one or two folks to use a Hydrofiller for their own use, more funds will flow toward Avalence, either in the form of outright sales or development funds from private investors or governmental programs. Eventually, Avalence will develop something not in the Beta stage. Eventually, they will make a machine that turns water into fuel and fits in your basement and runs your house's entire energy needs from a fuel cell.



One might wonder why this machine then must sit in our show room. Good question. But I think we suffer from a syndrome called "the Jetsons syndrome." I just made that up, but it helps illustrate what I mean. The Jetsons syndrome is the popular belief that if we can imagine a new technology and someone can make a new technology, (household robots, for instance) then, poof, it will appear on our doorstep in ten years. Unfortunately, life and technology do not work like that. The missing ingredient in that equation is MONEY! Unless, Avalence gets sufficiently funded, they will no longer develop Hydrofillers. If they don't develop more Hydrofillers, and ones that are more efficient than the ones they have already developed, gas stations won't install Hydrofillers, because they will be too expensive. With no place to refuel, no one in their right mind would buy a hydrogen car, would they? (As an aside, in CA there are a nested bunch of hydrogen filling stations, and, guess what, more hydrogen cars are bought and sold in CA than anywhere else in the US.)



The point is public opinion about a technology makes or breaks a technology. Do you remember thirty five years ago, when computers were these huge boxes that spit out reams upon reams of paper will holes punched out? No one in their right mind would want one of those things in their house. It would be stupid, expensive, messy, and pointless. Today, almost everybody reading this has a home computer. Computers are now reasonably priced and an integral part of our culture. But back then, computer companies, such as IBM and Mac received funds and support from vague and mysterious sources, and it wasn't until many years down the line that they started to make money and Bill Gates became a household name.



However, between the time that those paper dots were all over the computer lab floor and now, someone had to say to someone else, "Check this out! We have this amazing machine that can take this data I'm punching in here," click, click, click, "and then it computes it all by itself and puts it out the answer over there. Just think, eventually every household will have one of these things!" I admit, I was one of those guys that looked at the computer geeky enthusiast and longed for the less intrusive slide rule version of geekdom. Time has shown me the error of my thinking.



So, the answer to the question above, "Why?," seems a lot clearer to me now. Someone has to be the geek enthusiast. Someone has to jump up and down with excitement over something others cannot yet see. This time around that may as well be me.

Innovators

I went to this building in Milford, CT, a grey industrial looking thing with tired blue trim. I'd heard about Avalence from my former partner, Steve, and he had come back from meeting with them hopping up and down with excitement. "These guys," bounce, bounce, "make fuel from water."

Debbie Moss, a principal in the company, she seemed extrememly pleasant and accomodating, so I honored my appointment which, as it turns out, was not to be with Debbie, but with Tom, the Chief Technical Officer. I walked in, introduced myself, "Miles Shapiro," and I was shown to a metal chair and a random set of old magazines.

I was told Tom would be with me shortly, and so he was. He took me through a room that had one of those lunch tables used in elementary schools in the South during the 1960's. The walls were grey. There was a water dispenser without water.

We meandered through a brief hallway and headed left into what can only be described as a very large garage. There were these huge boxes, about the size of those boxes you used to see on "Let's Make a Deal," you know, the one's "behind where Carol Merrill is standing." Big. And each one of these boxes, some with an outside covering in blue plastic and others with grey metal coverings, had a regularly positioned cluster of metal cylinders, four feet long and no more than 4-5 inches in diameter. Out of the top end of each of the cylinders (it turns out the machine I was looking at had 24) two metal tubes, maybe 1/4 inch in diameter, poked out and led to black hoses that snaked in an arc somewhere into the machine. From below, one of those black tubes ran into the cylinder. Then it all goes into this big box like on the game show, and in the box are these scuba-looking tanks, only twice as long and thicker round and black. Of course there were a slew of buttons and electrical connections with color-coded wires and panels which opened up to stuff I wouldn't even bother trying to describe. Needless to add, I was in water a tad too deep for me to know what was really going on, but Tom was an extremely patient man, and more importantly, he liked to talk about what it was he was doing.

He explained to me that in those cylinders were essentially two compartments separated by a thin membrane. In one compartment went the anode and in the other went the diode-- as an aside, I don't exactly know what those things are-- and from the bottom in comes water. Simple H2O, but rather pure or else all the other junk that might be in the water would sit on the bottom of the cylinder and build up and eventually short the entire thing out. So in short, you run two ends of energy through the water, which they refer to as electrolysis, which is not the removal of unsightly hair, but can be translated into shocking the crap out of the water, and the water molecules break into Hydrogen and Oxygen. So one of those tubes heading out of the top of the cylinder is the Hydrogen line and the other one is the Oxygen line.

The big aqua lung containers in the machine store the Hydrogen. You then tap into the hydrogen and use it as fuel, just like you do when you use propane gas. Sounds fundamentally simple. Shock water, catch the two resultant gases. Use one as fuel. Sell the other to hospitals that need pure oxygen. I get it.

However, the truly compelling element was more along my line of thinking, and that is the cost of the thing. Each little coupling on top of the cylinder, so there were two per cylinder and twenty four cylinders, each one of those was five dollars. Each one of the black hoses, carbon filtered tubing, cost 50 dollars. So you have 240 dollars in couplings, 2400 in tubes, and you haven't even gotten to the idea of welding the metal stuff together and correctly situating the anode and cathode and membrane for each cylinder. No wonder those things cost $200,000. Thus, the remainder of my discussion with Tom was about honing the designs of these machines for maximum production of hydrogen and then being able to reproduce each design without all of the difficulties in building a prototype. The idea of mass production of these things was beyond the ken. Tom was hoping to make maybe thirty to fifty of these machines of various sizes and capacities in a single year, because now they can only produce around ten, and each one is a one off.

But the truth is, the one missing component is money... funding. And although these Avalence guys are amazingly innovative and perhaps have the final answer to the global warming crisis, they don't have sufficient funds to move forward quickly enough to warrant switching over to hydrogen fuel instead of petroleum. Car companies have designed prototypes for hydrogen run fuel cell cars, and in California, New York City, Washington, D.C. and a few other random outposts, some variant of Tom's machine sits in a gas station for hydrogen fueled cars to fill 'er up. But until enough people have enough of these cars, it won't be cost effective for gas stations to pay $200,000 for one of Tom's machines to only sell 3 pounds of hydrogen at 5000 pounds/square inch per car fill up. Now these cars with those three pounds will travel for 150 to 200 miles, probably as much as one would with a normal tank of gas, but the cost is no bonanza for the driver or the gas station owner, and therein lies the problem.

It is about money folks! That is what it will always be about. And we can sit around and rub our hands together in worry until we make them chapped and bloody, but the global warming issue is not going to go away until somebody makes green=greed. I understand that sounds surgical and without conscience or feeling, but that is the real world. And the real world is going to get warmer and warmer until we find a way to make that hydrogen gas car a bargain for John Q. Public and me and you. But, you know what? After meeting Tom, and to a similar extent Debbie and Steve Nagy, another principal in this company of innovators, I believe they are going to sit in that ugly garage building and tinker and adapt and change and fix and fuss and finally, they are going to make it cheaper to be green. So there is hope.

Cheaters and Prospering

I didn't think about it until the New England Patriots got into the Superbowl and every sports columnist with 100 words at his disposal spouted about how the Patriots were proof that cheaters DO prosper. The quick response to that idea is "yeh, they probably do, and more than we know, because the good cheaters don't get caught," but there is more to it than that.

When you look at the Bush administration, when you look at their manipulation of the elections, their rejiggering of the courts and district attorney offices around the country, their lying about foreign policy... need I go on? When you look at all that crapola, one could readily conclude, cheaters do prosper. But I think there is another way of looking at it which is perhaps too Pollyanna-ish a response, but one which need be looked at with critical eyes. When I think of the Bush administration in abstracted form, I see the United States in its purest form. Bush is to American politics what Las Vegas is to America. There ain't nothing more American than Vegas; it's like Kansas with 'roid rage. When you go there, you might have had a great time, but you leave and thank your lucky stars you don't live there all the time. Not just that, you come to realize you can't live the high life constantly or you will go broke and die a drunkard.

Bush policies are just like that. Once we have had the advantage of a little perspective, we will come to realize this grotesque cheating is not a good thing. More to the point, American greed, while part of the American character for certain, when unchecked, greed is toxic. Bush's policies, domestic and abroad, have proven toxic. We are in a recession, despite the government's loud protestations. The dollar can buy penny candy in Europe and not much else. Our foreign policy leaves death and poverty in its wake. Sensibly minded folk are getting the picture.

So, yeh, Bush and his cronies are making money hand over fist, but what is left when they are gone? I think what's left is a wiser US. We will look at the the cheating, the lying, the manipulation, and we will decide, just like we did after our Vegas trip, that we don't want to continue living in this way.

The clearest indication of this is the explosion in "green" everything. Green buiding, green energy, green you-name-it. The public, and that is the only opinion that has ever mattered, thinks it is time to cut back. Prius cars are the rage. Solar energy is the rage. Wind power is the rage. Hydrogen cars are about to explode. Organic produce. Chemical free farming, chickens, beef, vegetables... and so on. The country is coming to the conclusion it wishes to be toxic no more.

This is not to say the American character is changed for the better as a result of the Bush over-indulgences. No, it is a political pendulum swing, just like other swings that have happened over the last two hundred and thirty some odd years. Americans will remain greedy. Americans will continue to over-indulge. Americans will forever be self-righteous in their foreign policy.

What we need to do is somehow link in the minds of Americans the idea that it is greedy to be green. I think that is possible. There is a long discussion about how this can be so, but for brevity sake, I will skip it. Suffice to say, it makes economic sense to buy green. And I don't mean it makes sense for the country overall or in the long run or anything like that. I mean, if Joe Blow goes green, he will have more money in his pocket than if he didn't go green.

Bush and his Patriot co-horts have awakened the American conscience. Americans have had their fill of being the bad guy. More importantly, it isn't working for the average Joe. He's in foreclosure or just hanging on by his fingertips or feeling the financial pinch in some way, most likely at the gas pump. So, if you can be a good guy and get money to do it, hell, that's the most American notion in the world. I think it is an idea we can sell to the American public. The fact we might save the planet as a result is merely a happy by-product.

A Fuerher of Our Own

A Fueher of Our Own

American Jews face a very difficult political reality today. I came upon this dilemma while I was listening to the ninth of twelve CDs of “European Thought and Culture in the 20th Century,” a series of lectures from The Great Courses™ series produced by The Teaching Company and given by Professor Lloyd Kramer of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In his 17th lecture Professor Kramer gives a brief rundown of the events that thrust Hitler and the Nazis into power in German. My notes read as follows:

“By the early 1940’s there was no way to ignore what was happening in Europe with the aggression of the Nazis. Ell European countries but Spain were at war, and Spain had just endured a bloody civil war which resulted in a dictator assuming control of that country’s political fortunes. Intellectuals were divided by Nazism. People in the middle of a moment in history cannot see the outcome or assess the validity of their choices. Intellectuals were faced with the problem of abandoning the abstract and making political choices. They made these choices in the military context of the 30’s and 40’s. Three German writers are perfect examples of the possible choices in response to the rise of the Nazis and totalitarianism: Martin Heiddeger—support; Hannah Arendt—exile/flight; Dietricht Bonhoffer—resistance leading to death.
In later January, 1933 Hitler and the Nazi party legally come to power in Germany. Within a matter of months, Hitler declares and gains emergency powers. Again almost immediately, he launches the persecution of Jews, outlaws all other political parties and trade unions other than those with close Nazi affiliation, establishes Germany as a police state, builds concentration camps for political opponents, and essentially militarizes the entirety of Germany culture. The Nazis begin to re-arm and prepare themselves for a massive offensive against their European neighbors. This is also the start of “The Final Solution,” the systematic extermination of all Jews.”


The resultant Holocaust is all too well known to us. This specific lecture goes on to show that Heiddeger, Arendt, and Bonhoffer, all three great intellects, made three distinctly different choices regarding their acceptance or rejection of the Nazis. While that moment in history was as desperate as any humanity has ever recorded, the questions facing the American Jew and his political choices today are, while not as terrifyingly life-threatening, far more difficult an intellectual puzzle to unravel than what the great minds of Heiddeger, Arendt, and Bonhoffer faced with the rise of Nazi Germany. And here is why.
If we look at that second paragraph of notes which detail the Nazi rise, one cannot ignore the startling similarities to the sequence of events and actions between Hitler and the Nazis and the present Bush administration. President Bush came to power legally, and within 8 months, the tragic events of 9/11 lead the president to declare a state of emergency. We have remained in this state of armed readiness since. In this heightened posture, America has justified some seemingly implausible political actions. I say “implausible” because I never expected the United States, the land of the free, to perpetrate such defiling of American ideals as “Guantanamo,” “the attorney general purges,” “the Iraqi war,” “the planned Iranian war,” and the seemingly endless number of assaults on American Civil Liberties I had come to believe to be an American birthright. Further, this administration’s attempts to imbue the presidency with king-like divine rights of power have posed a greater threat to our constitutional guarantees than any other political maneuvering since the grotesqueries of Senator Joseph McCarthy.
Indeed, we have become aware of documented cases of Middle Eastern-Americans being swept up off street corners and placed in jail cells for weeks, even months, without explanation for why they were detained, without means of defense, and without a phone call to a lawyer or loved ones. Our government clearly falsified information about weapons of mass destruction to legitimize the Iraqi invasion and subsequent occupation. And it is but a hair’s width of sanity and the interjection of concrete evidence about Iran’s lack of effort to create a nuclear bomb arsenal that keeps our military dogs at bay from Iranian borders. Seemingly, America has declared an undeclared war against Arabs, short and sweet. By throwing a blanket of “terrorism” over ever turban in the Middle East, this administration attempted to receive a carte blanche to invade wherever and whenever they wanted, just so their bullying behavior yielded enough oil to satisfy the American populations gluttonous desire for fuel and American oil companies greedy thirst for profits.
This lumping of one people-- today it is Arabs, seventy-four years ago, it was Jews-- into a faceless group of “enemy combatants,” who by their very existence threaten the moral (filthy, greedy, blood-thirsty: pick the adjective to applies to the group and era), religious (Muslim vs. Christian, Jewish vs. Christian), and financial (“They control all the oil,” or “They control all the banks”)well-being of the United States, is essentially the line Americans are being fed by the present administration. Thousands of lives have been lost. Thousands are incarcerated and tortured, regardless of the legal hair-splitting of the term, “water-boarding.”
But these are Arabs, who are being treated thus. These are our sworn enemies, foes determined to wipe out Israel. Therefore, the question before American Jews is: can we adopt the ways of our former enemy in opposition to our present enemy? This is indeed a more difficult decision for the American Jew than the rest of America, for Jews must wade through the history of victimization at the hands of the Nazis, before being able to see clear to the unencumbered American question of whether this administration’s policies have been valid or legal or moral.
Yet, while the American Jew might have his vision blurred by the encroachment of the past onto his thinking today, the answer to the question: Should I support a presidential administration that treats my enemy as we were treated by the Nazis; is even more powerfully the same. To condone the same shape of actions which led to the extermination of six million Jews is to condone the extermination itself. Regardless of what group of people are on the other end of the stick this time, we cannot allow our nation adopt the policies of the most morally repugnant leader and government in modern history. We must not. For if we open that door a mere sliver, those echoes of goose-stepping footfalls will drown out any American Jewish voice denouncing any future attack on any Jew ever again.
The question then must be posed: do we accept (Heidegger), flee (Arendt), or confront (Bonhoffer)? There are arguments for all three positions. Although the above makes clear I am against accepting what the Bush Administration has to offer, in any form, mind you, that does not mean I am oblivious to the profoundly valid arguments pleading for military forcefulness in the world community as a means of achieving stability, and hence peace. However, military might and aggression is successful when applied judiciously and without bias. What I mean by that is we should not threaten a sovereign nation because it has brown skinned people as opposed to light skinned people, which seems to be the extent of the Bush foreign policy other than the oil grab doctrine. Rather, we must establish a significant enough military force as to dissuade other aggressors throughout the world from attacking other sovereign states (and us) for fear that we might exercise our power against the aggressor. Still, to be able to carry this posture, one must assume a moral high ground, and not one reached by declaration (Hey, we’re the good guys. See the white hat?). Instead, our actions as a country must show the world our conscience is clean and clear of lesser motives.
As American Jews with much at stake in the well-being of American life, our acceptance of our government means a commitment to the democratic process. Should this process become compromised (see: Florida, Presidential Election: 2000), the stability and freedom we have enjoyed in the US is jeopardized.
Another alternative is to flee. My father did this. He was sick of the government. He was sick of banging his head against the wall, so he took himself, his wife (English), his vast knowledge of American law, and moved to England. Unlike Hannah Arendt, he left for more personal than political reasons. But the issue is should we leave these shores and from afar point out the misguided direction in which the country is headed? This option strikes me as a completely sane choice. Other than Israel (and that doesn’t exactly qualify as Sanity Central), Jews have never known a country from which they did not have to flee at some point or another. The Wandering Jew plant was named after a repetition of circumstance, as opposed to us being named after a plant.
Secondly, to remove oneself from a state of conflict is to achieve perspective. Nothing rounds out one’s viewpoint like either a distancing of time or space. I can’t possibly imagine that our present federal government could look any more ridiculous from a change of scenery, but my father swears otherwise. And this coming from a man who goes to work everyday with men wearing wigs style for the 18th century. Go figure.
As for confrontation, there is much to say for it. However, the ability to confront our government in writing, in peaceful protest, and/or by any other means, merely serves to suck the wind from one’s anti-establishment sails. One of the great things about this country is its uninterrupted support of protest. While violent protest is not tolerated, and while other protests might be disrupted and even attacked by the establishment’s police force, the population at large views these police attacks as a violation of our inalienable rights and there is a constitution which back up this viewpoint. This is not to say there are not oppressors in our government, but they are not the loudest voice in the crowd of the body politic.
Additionally, the freedom of speech extends to the written word, and writing about the violations of human rights is rarely, if ever shut down in the United States. And one need not be Al Gore to take a pot shot or two at Bush and his cronies. Heck, all you really need to do is write a blog and figure out how to put on an rss feed (something which is beyond me at present, but I was just looking into how to do it), and lawdy, lawdy, you got yourself a protest. Now, perhaps my next blog will be from a jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama, but I doubt it. Instead, I, like most, will go ignored by the powers that be, and elections will proceed without incident and I will avoid incarceration and show up at the polls on Election Day. When I do, I will have committed the most audible protest imaginable. You can join me, and, to quote the tag line from last century, “throw the bums out of office.” We can only hope.

Green Inequality

Green Inequality



Racism, ageism, classism-- these are truths. They exist in all forms of our society. And if the last seven political years have taught us any one thing, it is we cannot look to government to correct societal wrongs. When we have a government that snatches up people off the streets because they have a mode of worship and dress unfamiliar to most in the US and a skin color a few shades darker; when we have a government that robs Peter to pay Paul, but only when Peter is old enough to qualify for social security, and Paul is a well-connected corporation; when oil prices hit $100/barrel and the government's idea of alternative energy sources is to crank up the old coal mines: well, it is time we take matters into our own hands.

These societal wrongs exist in an environmental context as well. If one were to map out where the primary Brownsfield sites in large metropolises are and then were to overlay first, where people of color lived, next, were the aged live, and finally where the impoverished live, I'm sure it would come as no surprise that people of color, older people, and poor people come in contact with more pollution than the average American. Our government will not correct this unfairness. The question remains, who will?

The "green" construction industry has failed to address this issue of environmental racism/ageism/classism. How do we, as obviously concerned citizens, point our compasses toward not just a cleaner planet, but a fairer planet as well?

Part of our mission as "green" builders is to develop means of limiting "green" construction costs. Further, developments designed for the elderly, for affordable and workforce housing, cannot simply be cheap. This is unfair thinking. This is wrong thinking. This is short sighted thinking. We cannot allow "green" construction to remain the pet boutique industry of the wealthy. This means that the wealthy will be the only beneficiaries of the newest environmentally friendly developments. More importantly, if this is the sole sphere in which "green" thrives, then "green" dies. Until "green" becomes the building mode of the masses, "green" has only minimal impact-- except, of course, on the lucky few who can afford renewable energy sources and those builders who can build for clients without need of a budget. But will this narrow scope of change have any significant change on the environment? I doubt it.

Simultaneously, "green" construction, particularly renewable energy sources shouldn't be financially structured as too expensive. With public and private financing intervention, renewable energy sources could be viewed as just the opposite-- it would be too expensive to not use renewable energy sources. How do we do this? Well, it is no more than torquing one's perspective as both a consumer and a vendor. As a consumer, one must be forward thinking and understand that to not invest in sustainable energy sources is to incur significant financial burden for fossil fuel costs. As a vendor, to sell systems which imbue value into a project, be it single family home, a multi-family dwelling, or a commercial building, is a means of creating more value for your product, thus making that product easier to sell.

Perhaps the perspective which needs most changing is that of the banking community and, dare I suggest it, the government-- municipal, state, and federal. The banking community needs to jump on board and conclude that green construction is more valuable construction. If banks adopt this perspective, then value-added green components should then allow a consumer to borrow more money. After all, 80% of 120 thousand dollars is more than 80% of 100 thousand dollars. However, banks thus far have failed to adopt any form of value conversion, and this has slowed the development of green alternatives. As for our government, well, until we have someone in the White House who does not directly benefit financially from the burning of fossil fuels, we will not have a national plan for renewable energy sources, period.


For a more academically formal investigation on this topic, please go to www.hinkleycenter.com/publications/poverty_pollution_siting_94-8.pdf.