Green Friendly California

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – The head of Microsoft Corp’s $9 billion research unit thinks the debate over stopping climate change is being muddied by talk of renewable energy.

Efforts should be focused on stopping output of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas which helps heat the planet, rather than moving to a source that can be regenerated, said Craig Mundie, the man who replaced Bill Gates as the world’s largest software maker’s futurist.

Conservation and radical technologies, including new nuclear, could be key, he said.

“If you talk to the man on the street, there is a lot more awareness of the concept of renewable energy than there is about the need for a zero-carbon source,” said Mundie, Microsoft Chief Research and Strategy Officer, in an interview on the sidelines of a major electricity conference.

Even industry insiders were not looking hard enough at “the scarier or less understood technological approaches,” he said.

The U.S. Congress is considering a massive climate bill and nations globally are preparing to negotiate a follow up to the Kyoto climate change treaty at the end of this year. Development of solar power, wind and other ‘clean’ energy sources are hot topics globally.

But the fastest way to cut carbon output is to cut use, Mundie offered.

“The first crucial step we have to take across the board is conservation,” he said in the speech at the Edison Electric Institute after introducing software for consumers to monitor their own power use, called Hohm.

He argued that humans will need energy alternatives that can be built in large arrays quickly to meet the demands of a growing, developing planet, and saw one such possibility as nuclear.

“I’m probably more enchanted with the idea of these novel nuclear approaches than any other one technology. There’s wind, there’s solar, there’s tides, there’s geothermal, but I think each of these is going to be more challenging to harness at some very large scale,” he said, stressing that he was not giving his company’s official policy.

He referred in particular to research work on traveling-wave reactors, a technology that aims to use slow-burning reactions in waste fuel from current plants.

“I think it would be a fascinating outcome if we woke up 10 years from now and said look, you can have all the nuclear you want, it doesn’t have a weapons problem related to it, the cost of fuel is relatively low, there’s no reprocessing requirements. It would be kind of a silver bullet for the energy problem.”

> > >WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- Despite plowing billions of taxpayer dollars into the ailing U.S. renewable industry, there’s been little sign of new life in the sector, says the head of one of the largest manufacturers in the business.

And without a federal mandate requiring an increasing percentage of electricity to come from renewable sources such as wind and solar power, the U.S. industry is likely to remain in a funk for at least another year. said Randy Zwirn, Siemens Energy.< < <

EXCUSE ME!

Come on folks, the last thing we need is more mandates. It is time for the Government to get out of the way and let private industry drive this bus. President Barack Obama signed into law a nearly $800 billion economic stimulus package, right or wrong it’s law now. That stimulus package contains nearly $15 billion in tax credits for the renewable industry, and tens of billions of dollars in grants, loans and loan guarantees.

The article mentioned above goes on to state that although there are billions of dollars in renewable energy production tax credits available, many of the biggest financiers have limited tax liabilities in the current economic woes to offset and can’t or haven’t stepped up to take advantage.

Too Bad! If the big boys in private industry like Siemens and General Electric don’t reach out and grab handfuls of that cash the new breed entrepreneurs will. Individual Americans, raised with the “can do” attitude and “Christian work ethic” will step up and better ideas will come into play. The grass root movement already started to wean the United States off of fossil fuel and into renewable energy will prevail, with or without the government’s unwanted involvement.