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A quick variety of business models promoting, effecting, and compatible with sustainability talknicer.com/susjam. James Salsman jim@talknicer.com Sustainability Jam 22-24 November 2013 CBi China Bridge, Shanghai. Introduction to James Salsman.
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A quick variety of business models promoting, effecting, and compatible with sustainabilitytalknicer.com/susjam James Salsman jim@talknicer.com Sustainability Jam 22-24 November 2013 CBi China Bridge, Shanghai
Introduction to James Salsman • Carnegie Mellon-trained statistician working since the 1990s on pronunciation assessment using speech recognition for language learning and at EF in Shanghai since May 2013. • Hobbies include evaluating peer reviewed secondary academic journal literature, which uses statistics to describe the confidence and significance of inferences, and editing Wikipedia. • http://talknicer.com/about talknicer.com/susjam
This is what we must do to survive talknicer.com/susjam
We will do it, because solar and wind power are growing so fast talknicer.com/susjam
Even if solar power did not exist, wind power alone is growing fast enough talknicer.com/susjam
Scope of this talk does not include: • Any business opportunities that existing companies are likely to be able to address • Traditional forms of renewable energy • Synthetic carbon neutral fuels: require large chemical engineering infrastructure • Petro-conglomerates already have this • Batteries: very competitive industry • Pumped hydro storage: constrained by geography • Compressed air storage: too new for likely success talknicer.com/susjam
Shipping container-based wind power • Makani Power (acquired by Google, 2012) • http://www.makanipower.com/home/ • Likely to very rapidly displace traditional tower-based wind farms, including by scrapping • Because they cost less than half and produce twice as much per land area, and they can go on ordinary trucks • Logistics of marketing, sales, installation, grid integration, support and repair services vastly larger than current Makani staffing levels can support. • Google is very likely to outsource these efforts talknicer.com/susjam
Shipping container-based wind power talknicer.com/susjam
Shipping container-based wind power talknicer.com/susjam
Shipping container-based wind power talknicer.com/susjam
Seawater carbon extraction • Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) owns this: • http://talknicer.com/co2extraction.pdf • These will manifest as likely very large or outright giant plants on ocean ports • Very opaque commercialization prospects • PARC may be fielding lock-up offers from petroleum companies who are likely to be severely disrupted • However, their DARPA funding contract almost certainly requires reasonable and customary licensing terms • Coastal and island jurisdictions may choose to opt out of patent encumbrance on national security grounds talknicer.com/susjam
Seawater carbon extraction talknicer.com/susjam
Income equality • Very complicated political history, but a mistake by Yale Professor Arthur Okun is the source of most of the confusion: • http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2011/09/berg.htm • Very profound and wide-ranging implications, especially in China • New unoccupied property transaction tax: 20% • Property tax announced last week • New down-payment for second urban home: 70% • Likely to cause continued sharp increases in the broad healthcare sectors talknicer.com/susjam
Income equality talknicer.com/susjam
High-yield bond funds • Likely destination of most Chinese investment savings as real estate becomes less attractive • Stock market is far too volatile under command economy • Chinese bond market has been remarkably stable and consistent, including through crises • Returns have been about half of investment grade U.S. high-yield bond funds with 30+ constituents talknicer.com/susjam
High-yield bond funds talknicer.com/susjam
Shareholder activism and resolution support services • As the “1% who stand with the 99%” age and become more active as shareholders, they are likely to become extremely successful • However, pushing shareholder resolutions requires delegate attendance at shareholder meetings and limited power of attorney actions • Such actions are easy to outsource to service bureaus, if and only if such services are being offered • Examples: fossil fuel divestment, CEO pay caps, strengthening social security, etc. talknicer.com/susjam
Questions? jim@talknicer.com Thank you! talknicer.com/susjam