2030: The Year the last Petrol/Diesel Powered Commercial Car Will Be Built

Just had a lecture by Tony Seba of Stanford University and author of the book - Solar Trillions - and came out thoroughly convinced that the end of the gas powered vehicle is near.

Two http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifthings:
Battery Storage: The cost of a battery bank to power an electric car today stands at $25,000. By 2030 that cost will be $3,600. A fully electric vehicle costs $5/month to charge in San Francisco. Imagine the cost savings in gasoline!!!

Solar Energy:The cost of solar panels and thus solar generation today is higher than that of all fossil fuels. But by 2020, following Moore's law, the cost of solar energy generation will be at parity with the cheapest fossil fuel - coal.



President Obama Test Driving the VOLT

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Financing Green Energy Growth

I grew up as one of the lucky 250,000 Nigerians that had a NITEL land line before the advent of GSM and cell phones in Nigeria. Today, everyone who can put N2,000 together can get a line and a cell phone.

The Obasanjo administration deregulated the telecommunications industry and Nigeria is now awash with telecommunication companies, a booming industry and happy citizens who can now 'complain' about poor service. We need to achieve the same growth and liberalization for the energy sector, particularly electricity. It appears that anything that can be 'pay-as-you-go' would scale in Nigeria.

To translate this to electricity and clean electricity at that; we can achieve scale with the right government policy. A first step would be to allow anyone to generate and sell electricity as long as the source of generation is 'clean'. This way we could have neighbourhood estates and villages generating solar power (using concentrated solar panel technology) or wind power to produce energy at source with minimal transmission losses and plant maintenance costs.

A second step and one that could create huge demand and a new industry would be the creating of a legislation that would treat green energy home improvements as a mortgage. If there is a government policy is instituted that would allow citizens or businesses that install solar generation or wind generation systems to get tax credits at a better rate than current mortgage tax credit, we would immediately unlock bank funds and harvest the low hanging fruits of rich people who currently use N2-N3M silent generators. By providing financing and tax credits, these customers will be the early adopters of the technology on a large scale and progressively wean us off fossil fuel generating sets.

It will like the mobile phone business create new companies, jobs, innovations, businesses and added services that we do not have now because electricity does not exist. The cost for early adopters will be high but as the technology and services become more available, we will naturally follow Moore's law; the same way mobile phones followed Moore's law, service and phones became twice better but cost twice cheaper every 18-24 months.

If we can make it relatively 'painless' for early adopters to afford green energy in Nigeria, then we will be well positioned to leapfrog to the new 'green' energy world and bring on board virtually all Nigerians to reliable, available energy in the next 10 years, the same way the mobile phone industry has provided communication to virtually all Nigerians within the same time frame.

BOP: Designs for 2 X10^9 People

BOP = Bottom of the pyramid. More than 40% of humanity live on less than $2 a day and this population lacks access to the marvels of technology and the opportunities this access brings. As technologies explode and prices halve while efficiencies and speed doubles, we are entering into an era of abundance where products and services are becoming more affordable.

India is taking the lead in this arena by designing specifically for people with low incomes. The Nano car and the newly unveiled $35 laptops (http://bit.ly/9RqF5a) are just examples of this new wave. As products become cheaper and more accessible, people have the opportunity to have more control over their lives and increase their capacity to do more for themselves.

The role of governments therefore in this era is to provide the basic services that are necessary for the citizenry to avail themselves of these technologies. Energy again is the core. We must provide universal access to energy at an affordable and environmentally sustainable price. Making available 1KWHr of energy for every household for at least 10 hrs pay day would power 6 LED light points, 2 ceiling fans or 1 room heater, 1 refrigerator (for food preservation), 1 television, 1 radio, 1 computer that would connect every individual to the world.
On this platform, a youth in the remotest village in Nigeria could get a world class education on Wikipedia or at MIT http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm or other available open source education portal, for free and without having to leave his village!

But to achieve this we must provide access to electricity for all. Not by declaring a state of emergency but by clearly defining targets, communicating these targets and working together to achieve them. By 2012, the $35 laptop will be available around the world, by 2015 we might be struggling to get kids to use pen and paper because laptops will cost $20. But will we in Nigeria and Africa have the electricity to power them on?

Energy should be at the top of all developmental goals for developing countries. Providing energy is the bedrock for designing for the BOP. It is a huge market and India leads the way in recognizing this, Nigeria as a NET energy Exporter needs to lead in providing energy solutions for the BOP.

Energy The Key: To Unlock the Benefits of Exponential Technologies for SubSahara Africa.

The statistics are alarming and heart breaking. More than 50 years after independence and despite numerous development projects, 79% of people in sub-Sahara Africa do not have access to electricity. And most of the 21% that have access do not have constant reliable 24hr a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year access.
It is estimated that the amount of energy consumed in one day in all sub-Saharan Africa, minus South Africa, is approximately equal to the daily consumption in New York City. The problem is most acute in sub-Saharan Africa, with several entire nations there effectively non-electrified. In 11 African countries, more than 90 percent of people go without electricity. In six of these -- Burundi, Chad, Central African Republic, Liberia, Rwanda and Sierra Leone -only 3 to 5 percent of people can readily obtain electric power.

Energy drives everything and without access to electricity, people will be unable to harness the full benefits the exponential technologies that is changing our world and would accelerate more changes in the near future. African countries should therefore focus on providing access to energy for all citizens. Opportunity exists in green technology to provide decentralized off the grid clean energy solutions. The success of the cell phone revolution in sub Sahara Africa points to the viability of standalone decentralized systems in the region. This model be deployed for energy and the use of solar, wind and biomass energy sources for home and community power generation should become ubiquitous.

Approximately every two years, the cost of a laptop is halved while the speed is doubled, observing and utilizing this trend, it is possible that solutions in the clean energy space could mimic this growth. Sub-Sahara Africa cannot afford wait until a solar panel costs $10 but we should start now to utilize this solution and build our economy so that in the future we too can contribute to technology and benefit from the growth of technology. Without addressing the energy problem, we cannot fully participate in the development trends and opportunities available to the world at this time.

Exponential Technologies and Sub Sahara Africa

Today I made a presentation at Singularity University, NASA Ames California about the 6th goal in the MDG. Target 6B states in summary: Achieve, by 2010, universal access to treatment for HIV/AIDS for all those who need it. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Development_Goals) As of today, it is estimated that only 42% of people worldwide who are living with HIV/AIDS have access to treatment.
In sub-sahara Africa, there are many USAID and other NGO initiatives to grant access to treatment but most candidates do not avail themselves of the opportunities because they do not know their status. Most people only get tested when they already have symptoms of full blown AIDS. Despite the spread of the disease, people living with HIV/AIDS experience stigmatization and inadequate support from society and even loved ones and thus they sometimes lose the fight for their lives when they need it most.

I believe that we are experiencing exponential growths in technology and the dissemination of these technologies would be global because to global access to the internet. As Sub Sahara African (SSA) countries fix their energy problems, the use of internet services including smart phones will become ubiquitous.

Sub Sahara Africa is uniquely positioned to benefit from the green energy revolution due to the lack of on-grid electricity in most areas. By 2020, solar and wind energy solutions will come cheap and in a box. Solving the energy problem will grant SSA cheap access to internet networks and platforms where people can get world class education from the comfort of their homes.

Innovations in 3-D printing and rapid automated manufacturing (http://www.weareacasa.com/) would revolutionize home construction and by 2025, the average time to build a functional home in SSA would be seven (7) days.
Trends in bioinformatics and biotechnology will produce biovores- disease eating cells- which will work with white blood cells to actively target and destroy disease bearing viruses and organisms. Respiravores - red blood cells- and regenerative cells will be created by bio engineering to replace damaged cells and speed up healing and regeneration of damaged tissues. By 2025 crowd sourced platforms like GoogleHealth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Health) would have user reported health information and high value medical information that people would make intelligent medical decisions on common problems.

Building off these technologies, artificial intelligence through robotics and super computing, would allow the creation of intelligent primary care doctors who can diagnose illness with the aid of reports from user home test kits and symptoms analysis over smart phones. All these and more would be available by mid 2030's but to be part of this revolution SSA has to make tremendous progress in fixing her energy problems within the next decade.