Don't forget the future

One of the guys I have taken an interest in recently is Prechter and Elliot Waves, what strikes me as I have been working through how they apply Elliot to markets is their inability to apply the same Fib math to innovation and technology. While the focus on the markets and economics they miss the underlying build up of the various technologies , just like Fibs bunnies innovation in alternates comes in waves but the insist on reverting to linear math when the plot the future potentials. Allot of things seem to be following this kind of number sequence, debt and saving cycles, solar and various other alternates, if the debt cycle is exploding in one part of the world doesn't equilibrium teach us that the saving cycle is exploding in another.

As I wander around China it seems intuitively ludicrous that its all going to stop somehow based on the tapped out debt cycle of the Western economies, sure some significant retracement is likely along the way but the energy and capital of Asia, the sheer momentum is like nothing the world thats experienced in history, the Chinese bunnies are reaching critical mass, Krondietiev is famous for plotting prices and production waves, whats apparent in his stuff read more deeply read is his belief that constraint breeds innovation, its the old thing about big budget and big companies not being able to innovate while the smaller operations create the innovation that eventual creatively destroys the larger less nimble leaders. Rising commodity constraints breed innovation, Peak Oil breeds exponentially cheaper Algae fuels, Peak Coal and centralized power constraints breeds distributed Solar and Fuel Cell power generation, Peak Water breeds free desalination and wave energy

http://www.carnegiecorp.com.au/files/asx-announcements/2008/CleanTech%20Presentation_080312.pdf

Peak Population breeds more engineers, mathematicians and scientists to solve the problems of Peak Everything.

Kurzweil seems to have a point about the worlds point in the innovation cycle and from my experience of reviewing so many of these technology companies it seems to confirm his charts, we seem to be on the verge of a revolution thats hard to imagine

http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?printable=1

This being the case I am kind of looking forward to the likely crash of the equity markets that makes all these opportunities even cheaper

This is part of the reason I struggle with gold, the more I look at them the more I want to free up my gold. I want to free up as much capital as I can to this next revolution .

Ceramic Fuel cells

One of the best plays in the alternates is the replacement of the oil -fired home boiler market, there is +200m home boilers in Europe being replaced at the rate of 10-12m per year. There is one company that will have a home "ceramic fuel cell" alternative in production in product by early 2009. At a cost of $2800 Euros you can have these installed and connected to the gas within a couple of hours, they produce 2Megawatts of electricity for the house, the heat output can be used for hot water, spare capacity can be sent back onto the grid, they have 5-6 major utility partners as customers as well as sub shareholders. They have just received their first order from Nuon for the first 50,000 units (100m pound isnt a bad first order for a tech start up) they have only one competitor thats 2 years behind them (Ceres).

They are beaten down just above their all time low, plenty of access to capital and cash in the bank.

The emergence of distributed energy is technology is an echo back to the emergence of distributed computing, why send fuel to the power station and grid it to the home (30% efficient ) when you can send the fuel directly to a fuel cell sitting in the laundry (90% efficient), this cuts entire energy logistics chain . Whats also apparent is type of "moores law" efficiency in the technology, 2 years ago they were pumping out 0.50 megawatts from the POC, 2007 they improved that to 1Mg this year its 2Mg (all from the same unit at the same cost)

Europeans use as much oil heating their houses as they do driving there cars, clean autos will take years to roll out , where this is nearly upon us and feeds into a rising oil price due to lower production and emission/carbon legislation due to hit Europe in the next 12 mths

http://anz.theoildrum.com/node/3723

50 Environmentally Friendly Apps, Hosts and Resources

Virtual Hosting Blog » GreenDev: 50 Environmentally Friendly Apps, Hosts and Resources: "As a web developer, you probably assume that your work is pretty environmentally friendly, and for the most part, you’re right. But despite all of your paper saving and working at home, your work, specifically your websites, still contributes to rising CO2 levels. Check out this collection to find tools and resources that will help you minimize your impact on the environment in web development and beyond."