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Welcome to the official Cool Planet blog. We have added a blog section to our website to be able to make announcements, cover topics, address issues, and engage more interactively with those who are following the important work we are doing here at Cool Planet.
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(Feel free to use this blog as an opportunity to introduce yourself and share a little about your background and what interests you about Cool Planet.)
this is quite a good and interesting concept like composting with a lot more benefits, much needed ---thanks
Very interesting. The other cellulosic technologies call for huge scale and yours utilizes a decentralized approach. Feedstock opportunities increase as scale is reduced. When will the demonstration unit be operational?
I've been thinking: people have to buy food; they want to buy gas. Stop & Shop in our area has found a good way to join necessity and preference by offering automatic gas discounts as a perk for using your S&S card in their stores. You get 10 cents off at S&S or Shell station for every hundred dollars spent. You can get the whole discount at the pump by scanning your S&S card before you get gas. The pump will know how many points you've accumulated. No coins to turn in, receipts to show a clerk, etc. Super convenient.
I think CoolPlanet should consider making the same kind of connection in its roll out of plants around the country. It already has one foot in farming. Its food sales partner would be its plant [owner? manager?], the most viable local farmer's market/food hub.
Think about it.
just stopped in to see the commentary
Very exciting. However sadly no discussion of renewables, or of oil dependency, in the mainstream media, seems to reference your work. I'm greatly looking forward to seeing just one truly scaled up proof of concept - where both you and the independent farmer (say) can make a profit, sustainably. (Do those biofractionators need to be rebuilt, after some use? Are there hidden costs, say through chemicals needed to make the biofractionators work, or to heat the process, or to replace enzymes lost in the biochar? etc.) There isn't much of an energy margin in sunlight. But I really, really hope this is for real. (And if it is, why isn't the Gov't jumping in to help, since this apparently the only cost-feasible way to reverse global warming? And to become energy independent?)
Great to see the blog. I've invested in Algae Tec (algae biofuel company) but would like to invest in your company too if you ever list! Really keen to see massive roll-out of your product asap!! The world is in desperate need of smart clean alternatives to old dirty energy sources
just learning about the blog
What are your criteria for choosing sites to build on? Do you have an application form? Do you help find the money? Is the contractual arrangement like a franchise or like a license to make and sell?
I truly hope this works. I invested in Electric Fuel (zinc-air batteries). I invested in Beacon Power (flywheels). I'm not exactly sorry...but I hope for better luck this time.
Woops - all of the text messages or blog postings have been cut off on the right margin. I would say some growing pains.
Question: Which of the grasses or grains give the best results?
Tom G.
Thank you to all of you that have joined the conversation with us here at Cool Planet. We recently launched the blog portion of the website and we are excited and pleased to see so many interested participants.
I’d like to start out by saying we are new to managing a blog and will get better as we go along. We are just now getting our processes in place and you should see posts appearing quicker. Additionally, we appreciate the questions and comments submitted so far. Though we may not be able to address each and every post, we do read each post and will try to address what we can. Please keep in mind that we are still a private company and will answer questions as well as we can.
In regards to the deployment timeline of this new technology, we are working toward a very aggressive timeline to build our plants. We currently have a small scale demo plant near our Headquarters in Camarillo, CA. Near term we are focused on deploying our first commercial scale refinery. After this major milestone, we plan to deploy many more commercial size plants and increase efficiency as we innovate. Additionally, we intend to become a public company.
We are also running fuel demonstrations to show how are negative carbon fuel functions in real world scenarios such as the one we did with Google's G-Ride program and the fuel demonstration we are currently running with the County of Ventura.
Regarding energy balance, without going into much detail, we are confident in the levels of energy balance we have achieved to date with our technology.
Great Business Model... We are very excited to promote to have an opportunity be a teaming partner with CoolPlanet !
Ron Clark, P.E.
Introduction
Thomas D. Garven, P.E.,& CQE
Lake Havasu City, AZ 86406
Retired Licensed and Registered Professional Engineer and Certified Quality Engineer by the American Society for Quality. Work history includes:
1. Farming
2. US Navy
3. Aerospace - Apollo Program
4. Tooling design and testing for Safeguard Anti-Ballistic Missile System
5. Manufacturing quality of US Navy and commercial nuclear power plant components and;
6. Nuclear Power Plant construction quality and safe power plant operations
Over 25 years of experience verifying heavy construction and public utility sector power plant safety and operations. Active blogger on several sites including:
Renewable Energy World, MIT Technology Review, IEEE Spectrum, CNET, Energy Trends Insider and other sites that publish environmental or energy related stories.
Generally a really nice guy who always enjoyed doing what they do best. Skilled at evaluating the effectiveness of management systems and implementing quality strategies that work. Taught Quality Engineering principles to hundreds of other engineers and management teams during and after retiring.
I became interested in Cool Planet after seeing your 2012 video presentation at Solve For X sponsored by Google. I believe your work is of the utmost importance.
Just wondering - how long is the comment review process for this site. Does it take 2 hours or 2 days for comments to appear?
There is an interesting blog site with lots of discussion about alternative fuels. It seems like someone at Cool Planet should be blogging on that site.
http://www.energytrendsinsider.com/columns/rsquared/
Might be a very good way of letting people know who Cool Plant is and what you do.
Do you have an electronic mailing list? I would like to received monthly updates.
Thank you
Thomas D. Garven
tomgarven@outlook.com
CoolPlanet certainly has an intelligent overview of what we need right now to improve (preserve) our life on the planet. I assume that the hydrocarbon profile matching process works. I applaud the simplicity of the plant installation as shown in the sketches. I take delight in the idea of including the undeveloped parts of the world as producers.
BUT WHAT'S THE PLAN? Specifically, how can Greenfield MA get a plant going HERE?
Will cool planet become a public company, offering shares?
Wow looks like I am the first to comment!
Very interested in this idea which I found on the Solve for X YouTube channel. Do you have any more info on the way that your biomass converter works and the energy balance achieved? How much net energy does it produce.
Thanks
It is disappointing that there doesn't seem to be much current interest in your website and/or efforts. Of course, a successful deployment of your technology would change all that. Do you have a timeline for a deployment or 2?