We at BlueTech think 2010 is the year water technology will come into mainstream consciousness, widespread demand and accelerated adoption.
We think you see this too. So tell us, what signs do you see that Blue Technology is about to bloom? (Feel free to suggest your own.)
We’ll aggregate the results and announce the most popular signs at the beginning of the Blue Tech Innovation Forum.
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As we mentioned previously, a Phoenix based company called AbTech has the technology and the production capacity to protect Louisiana’s marshes, beaches and estuaries.
CNN has thorough coverage of the Smart Sponges’ potential.
Or, as covered by Fox News:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_dVbcM2RJQ]
What do you think is keeping BP from pulling the trigger and deploying this obvious technology to protect the Gulf Coast?
Autos queue for diesel during a shortage in Cairo. Photo credit: madmonk on flickr
Vikram Rao is Executive Director at Research Triangle Energy
Consortium and a former CTO of Halliburton. He will present a keynote address at the BlueTech Innovation Forum on June 8th.
I’m certainly not the first to raise the specter of an oil plateau. This is not the same as Peak Oil, although there are similarities.
The first intimation of the concept was by Christophe de Margerie, the CEO of Total S.A., based in France, who first described this issue back in the fall of 2007. Subsequently PFC Energy went public with their research.
de Margerie’s statement made quite a splash. Here was one of the top five oil companies in the world, and the CEO was saying there’s a plateau coming. He put the plateau at 100m barrels a day. At that time the world was producing about 85m.
After that I personally, publicly asked a CEO of a major oil company to comment on de Margerie’s prediction. He acknowledged the plateau was real. He said, “I’m not sure I’m going to subscribe to the 100 number, but there’s a plateau coming.”
Shortly before that I spoke to the head of the the French Petroleum Institute (IFP), and they confirmed that their modeling showed the same thing. They pegged it at a somewhat lower number.
So here we have substantial people saying there’s a plateau coming and yet nobody acknowledges it publicly. Nobody wants to discuss it. Nobody really wants to act on it.
Causes
Now you’ll ask the reasons for the plateau. First of all there is a technical model that predicts a plateau, courtesy of PFC Energy in DC, but if you want to speak conversationally, the reasons are multifarious.
Credit: Pete Souza / White House
Say you caught an elevator ride with the President — you’ve got 45 seconds to say something. What would it be?
I’d talk about water.
Failing water infrastructure causes more illnesses every year in the United States than H1N1 did worldwide in 2009.
Aging water infrastructure wastes billions of liters of drinking water, every day.
Inefficiency makes water utilities the single most energy-intensive industry: 13% of United States energy use originates from the water complex.
A 5% decrease in leaks in the United States would save 270 million gallons of water a day and 313 million kilowatt hours of electricity annually — enough to power 31,000 homes. Not only that, but it’d keep 225,000 metric tons of C02 emissions out of the air. For just 5% better efficiency. Imagine 20%.
The cost to overhaul the water complex would make the President balk: $335 billion is a tough number to swallow.
But doing nothing is betting human lives on a losing hand.
I’d offer the President a moderate alternative: make water infrastructure smarter.
Install sensors, from companies like AUG Signals, Ltd, an Artemis Top 50 company, to monitor water pressure, quality and demand. Integrate software from Artemis Top 50 companies like Derceto, Optimatics and TaKaDu to model water use in real time, dynamically adjusting water delivery to its highest possible efficiency.
The relatively small investment would pay for itself. Utilities could visualize weaknesses in infrastructure, enabling them to prioritize repairs instead of blindly replacing good pipe along with the bad. They would predict failures and plan intelligently, scheduling infrastructure upgrades and distributing costs over a period of years, thus increasing the affordability of each phase.
Smart water monitoring would continue to benefit new infrastructure: sensors would analyze water quality in real time. Utilities would identify toxins immediately, without the long feedback loops inherent in traditional laboratory testing. They’d be able to preempt bacterial outbreaks, industrial contamination and terrorist attacks — saving lives while reducing costs.
It’s a win-win opportunity: jumpstart a new industry, increase water quality, reduce energy usage and carbon emissions, increase national security and prevent tragedies, all while saving billions of dollars now and tens of billions of dollars in the long run.
He’d have to say yes.
Shrimp Boats Cleaning BP Oil Spill - Credit: Eric Gay from AP
The cleanup of the April 20th BP oil spill is getting desperate. Shrimp boats are collecting as much oil as they can, but 5,000 barrels a day is overwhelming. The national guard is setting up a plastic fence along the entire coast. Some individuals are even sacrificing their fashion: they’re stuffing pantyhose with human hair in an effort to absorb oil approaching the shore.
The residents sacrificing their hair may be elated to hear that technology exists to spare their hair. A company called AbTech sells sponges specifically designed to clean up oil spills. They’re called Smart Sponges and they absorb oil while repelling water. Even when they’re saturated with oil, they float for easy retrieval. After retrieval they can be safely transported to waste-to-energy power plants and burned to generate electricity.
It’s a no-waste solution to BP’s blunder off the coast of the United States. And everyone can keep their pantyhose on.
Drill beside Produced Water containment pit
When the Massey coal mine exploded last month, other mines continued to produce. When an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico exploded last week, other platforms kept pumping. The natural gas industry has weathered its own tragedies, as it will in the future.
Until renewable and sustainable energy sources enter mass production, citizens in the developed world will ensure demand for carbon based energy remains steady. And so long as demand for carbon based energy exists, there will be an industry devoted to treating the water produced during energy exploration and extraction.