It’s been a stellar year at Fresh Dialogues. Here are our top ten green interviews: from Tesla’s Elon Musk to Google’s Rick Needham. Most are exclusive Fresh Dialogues interviews, but some were special assignments for NPR’s KQED, The Computer History Museum, The Commonwealth Club and The Churchill Club (2013).
1.Elon Musk on burning oil, climate change and electric vehicles
“It’s the world’s dumbest experiment. We’re playing Russian roulette and as each year goes by we’re loading more rounds in the chamber. It’s not wise… We know we have to get to a sustainable means of transportation, no matter what.” Tesla CEO, Elon Musk. Read more/ see video
2. Mayor Chuck Reed on leveraging private funding for San Jose’s Green Agenda
“I said from the beginning that the key to being able to succeed with our green vision was to work with other people’s money.” San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed. Read more/ listen.
3. Carly Fiorina on fighting climate change
“The most effective thing the US should do is start substantive discussions with China on what they can do.” Carly Fiorina. Read more or listen here.
4. Jennifer Granholm on Obama and energy policy
“He should create a clean energy jobs race to the top.” Former Michigan Gov., Jennifer Granholm. Read more/ see video
5. Peter Rumsey on Net Zero Buildings and kids
“They’re going to say, ‘Wow, that’s one of the things we can do to solve this whole big climate change problem.” San Francisco Exploratorium Green Designer, Peter Rumsey. Read more/ see video
6. Gavin Newsom on why a carbon tax makes sense
“I want to see a standard that could bring this country back to international prominence in terms of leaning in to a low carbon green growth strategy, so that we can dramatically change the way we produce and consume energy and lead the world.”Gavin Newsom, Lt. Governor of California. Read more/ see video
7. Steven Chu on climate change deniers
“I’d put them in the same category as people who said, in the 60′s and 70′s, that you haven’t proved to me that smoking causes cancer. This is a real issue. We have to do something about it!” Former Energy Secretary, Steven Chu. Read more/see video
8. GM’s Pam Fletcher on electric vehicle adoption
“We need a lot of customers excited about great products. I want to keep people focused on all the good things that moving to electrified transportation can do for customers and for the country.” GM’s Chief of Electrified Vehicles, Pam Fletcher. Read more/ see video
9. Laurie Yoler on why Tesla is succeeding, despite the odds
“You know you’re on to something good when everyone you talk to is a naysayer. It takes a huge amount of courage and tenacity to continue going forth.” Qualcomm executive and founding board member of Tesla Motors, Laurie Yoler. Read more/see video at 11:20
10. Rick Needham on self driving cars, car sharing and Google’s electric car fleet
“It’s not just the car that’s underutilized; it’s the infrastructure, the roads…There’s an enormous opportunity…on the environmental side, on the human safety side, on utilization of infrastructure side.” Google’s Rick Needham. Read more/see video
Google’s Director of Energy and Sustainability, Rick Needham describes the company’s fleet of electric vehicles and how it has enabled millions of miles of electric driving (almost 2M and counting). As well as the “usual suspects” like Chevy Volt, Nissan Leaf, and Ford Focus Electric, Google’s electric “Gfleet” includes several Tesla Model S, a favorite due to its range of up to 265 miles. But is that the whole story?
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Google continues to grow its electric fleet. In 2011, it had 30 electric plug-ins, today it has over 50.
“We view that as a very interesting place to spend some time and effort and come up with a technology solution that can really help. It’s not just the car that’s underutilized; it’s the infrastructure, the roads. If you could enable that to be utilized more effectively… whether that be cars that can travel closer together (in a platoon), cars that travel and you can be doing productive things while they’re moving… There are a lot of opportunities on the environmental side, on the human safety side, on utilization of infrastructure side.” Google’s Rick Needham
This strategy makes a lot of sense, given Google’s ability to integrate Google Maps and traffic conditions to make driving both more efficient and safer.
2. Why it invested in car sharing companies Uber, Sidecar and Relay Rides
“It’s an enormous opportunity. Today the car sharing market is just over $3 Billion (in the US)…That’s just starting out…there quite a roadway, a runway there, to have a much bigger impact…” Google’s Rick Needham
Read more about how the Uber investment offers synergistic opportunities for Google and may help change the future of transportation.
Why it all might be related
Some commentators like Green Car Report’s John Voelcker have speculated that all this might be part of Google’s grand plan to purchase Tesla and use it to launch a driverless car-sharing taxi service sometime early in the 2020s. Tesla’s Elon Musk is good friends with Larry Page and has discussed the potential of driverless cars.
Google’s Clean Energy Struggle
Today, only 34% of the energy Google uses comes from renewable sources like wind and solar power. This is not something to boast about, especially given Apple’s claim to use 100% renewable power, but as Needham explains, he’s chasing a moving target. As the number of Google searches soars and more Google services are adopted, Google’s energy use is growing so fast that it battles to keep up with clean energy sources, despite investing over $1Billion in wind and solar power.
Find out more about Google’s strategy to green its energy supply, green its buildings, and reduce its carbon footprint.
Will GM experts share their wisdom with Tesla to make the Model S less prone to fires? That’s the question I put to GM’s Chief of Electrified Vehicles, Pam Fletcher last week at the Churchill Club in Silicon Valley.
You’ve no doubt heard that three fires have been reported in Tesla Model S in the last five weeks. As we all know, three’s a trend. Granted, they weren’t episodes of random spontaneous combustion. Instead they were ignited by one high-impact crash and two high-speed encounters with metal debris which acted like a “pole vault” to puncture the undercarriage of the car and hence the battery. Although Tesla’s Elon Musk has declared, there won’t be a recall, it’s almost certain the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will investigate. What needs to be done to make Teslas more impervious to battery puncturing road debris?
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As you’ll see in the video, Pam Fletcher confirms that GM has sold 58,000 Chevy Volts since its launch in 2010 and after 300 million miles on the road, not one has had a similar fate to Tesla’s Model S. She acknowledges that there were fire issues in 2011 at the crash-testing phase, but emphasises no real-world incidents similar to the Model S have occurred.
Fires, Electric Cars and Achilles Heels
First some background. In 2011, safety regulators investigated Chevy Volt crash tests resulting in one battery pack catching fire and one smoking and emitting sparks. The troubling issue was the week-long delay between the crash test and the battery pack catching fire.
During our interview, Fletcher confirms that after the investigation, GM made no change to the battery cells, but did put “some additional reinforcement on the outside of the battery.”
It also implemented a process with first responders that includes depowering of the battery after a severe crash.
Ironically, Tesla got the highest safety ranking from regulators and has a first responders guide in place, however all parties seemed oblivious to the vehicle’s Achilles’ Heel. It obviously needs more durable undercarriage protection to prevent any more fiery “pole vaulting” episodes. To date, Elon Musk has been strongly resistant to such an approach. A recall will taint not only Tesla’s award winning brand, but entail extra costs and manufacturing delays for this relatively small auto company. To make matters worse, extra reinforcement will increase the weight of the Model S, and the extra pounds will have a knock-on effect on the vehicle’s range.
But it looks like Tesla’s Elon Musk may have to get some tips from GM on adequate car underbelly protection or find his own solutions.
It’s unlikely Tesla will change the configuration of its batteries. According to Reuters, Tesla’s battery pack stretches across the base of the vehicle and is made up of small lithium-ion battery cells, like those used in laptops. By contrast, GM uses large-format battery cells in a T-shape in the center of the Chevy Volt.
Fletcher was eager to move past fiery discussions and talk about adoption rates and “getting to scale.” She described the newly unveiled Cadillac ELR (a luxury electric hybrid based on the Chevy Volt) which will be available for test drives this week at the LA Auto Show. We also discussed autonomous cars, why EV adoption rates are so high in Silicon Valley; what to expect from the next generation Chevy Volt; and what surprised her about the thousands of Volt drivers on the road today.
I sat down with Phil Williams of Webcor Builders to find out how the building industry is responding to climate change by quantifying a building’s environmental impact (water, CO2 production, etc) using Natural Capital Accounting (NCA).
“CFOs of major corporations are saying, ‘before it was random acts of greenness,'” says Williams. “Now I can start to measure our environmental impact.”
As he explains it, a global standard of measuring and quantifying a building’s impact can provide owners, renters, architects, and builders with valuable information with which to make key decisions about buying, renting, land use, building materials, energy systems etc.
Climate Earth’s White Paper “Valuing Natural Capital” states: “The objective of this project is to develop an estimate of the environmental costs of the greenhouse gas emissions, induced land use changes, and water consumption. For land use change and water consumption, environmental costs are dependent on where the activity takes place, and we developed local cost estimates to account for those differences. Greenhouse gas emissions are a global pollutant, and the costs are roughly indifferent to where the emissions take place, and so a single global number is sufficient to account for those costs.” The paper concluded that the Stern Review’s figure of $110/metric ton of carbon and carbon equivalent is appropriate.
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“NCA takes some of those numeric evaluations – kilograms of CO2, liters of water, hectares of land – and puts them into economic evaluations that large corporations and nimble companies can look at, ” explains Williams. “These are not just environmental metrics, these are just financial metrics.”
He predicts that by the end of 2014, there will be recognized standards in Natural Capital Accounting for construction, apparel and other retail products.
Find out more about the Future of Natural Capital Accounting from the World Forum on NCA which takes place in Edinburgh, Scotland this November.
During our interview, Williams also explains the concept of making buildings “Future Ready” i.e. flexible enough to add solar, and other energy-making, energy-saving components after the building is completed.
“Future ready is a positive approach, it’s not about adding more, it’s not about ultimate flexibility,” says Williams. “It’s about providing the right amount of infrastructure to afford flexibility.”
This is part of a series on the Future of Green Building, sponsored by Webcor Builders. For more in the series, check out these videos and stories
Read more about Green Building stories featuring Meryl Streep, Susan Sarandon and Apple and by checking the Green Building tab above or clicking here
Get this: It’s not the 330 year-old Douglas fir tree, sliced open to reveal stunning time markers, or the 20 foot tall “Tinkerers’ Clock,” powered by windshield wiper motors.
No. It’s the entire Exploratorium structure itself, an audacious experiment in green building that aims to create the world’s largest “net-zero” energy museum.
What’s “net-zero,” you ask? Simple, it’s a building that creates as much energy as it consumes.
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How it works
Peter Rumsey, CTO at Integral Group led the design of the building’s net-zero components and explains to Fresh Dialogues how it all works in this video.
A complex system that brings in 74,000 gallons of water per hour from San Francisco Bay to heat and cool the building via miles of floor-embedded pipes;
A rain-water catchment used for flushing toilets.
Rumsey may be an enthusiastic advocate for green building, but what gets him most excited is the idea that the San Francisco Exploratorium will inspire kids to think net-zero is the way of the future.
“They’re going to say, ‘Wow, that’s one of the things we can do to solve this whole big climate change problem,” says Rumsey. “We can design and build buildings that make their own energy and don’t create a carbon problem.’ As kids grow up and become leaders in society, they’ll be the ones saying, ‘we should just do that zero energy thing. I saw it when I was a kid…it was no big deal.'”
Despite much talk about the state of the art green building features, Rumsey says, “There’s nothing cutting edge about the building…we’ve taken things that are ‘off the shelf’ and applied them in creative and innovative ways. We call it ‘state of the shelf’.”
“It’s the world’s dumbest experiment. We’re playing Russian roulette and as each year goes by we’re loading more rounds in the chamber. It’s not wise… We know we have to get to a sustainable means of transportation, no matter what.” Tesla CEO, Elon Musk. Read more/ see video
“I said from the beginning that the key to being able to succeed with our green vision was to work with other people’s money.” San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed. Read more/ listen.
“The most effective thing the US should do is start substantive discussions with China on what they can do.” Carly Fiorina. Read more or listen here.
“He should create a clean energy jobs race to the top.” Former Michigan Gov., Jennifer Granholm. Read more/ see video
“They’re going to say, ‘Wow, that’s one of the things we can do to solve this whole big climate change problem.” San Francisco Exploratorium Green Designer, Peter Rumsey. Read more/ see video
“I want to see a standard that could bring this country back to international prominence in terms of leaning in to a low carbon green growth strategy, so that we can dramatically change the way we produce and consume energy and lead the world.” Gavin Newsom, Lt. Governor of California. Read more/ see video
“I’d put them in the same category as people who said, in the 60′s and 70′s, that you haven’t proved to me that smoking causes cancer. This is a real issue. We have to do something about it!” Former Energy Secretary, Steven Chu. Read more/see video
“We need a lot of customers excited about great products. I want to keep people focused on all the good things that moving to electrified transportation can do for customers and for the country.” GM’s Chief of Electrified Vehicles, Pam Fletcher. Read more/ see video
“You know you’re on to something good when everyone you talk to is a naysayer. It takes a huge amount of courage and tenacity to continue going forth.” Qualcomm executive and founding board member of Tesla Motors, Laurie Yoler. Read more/see video at 11:20
“It’s not just the car that’s underutilized; it’s the infrastructure, the roads…There’s an enormous opportunity…on the environmental side, on the human safety side, on utilization of infrastructure side.” Google’s Rick Needham. Read more/see video
