Why should you waste your time reading another talking head pundit, particularly on global warming with all its hot air? Mostly because these are written for me, by me, to clarify my own thinking as I struggle with an onslaught of claims and try to extract facts, and form opinions. I modestly think I bring some unique vantage points to the struggle—and the odds are I know more than you do, not because I am smart, I’m no Bill Gates even if we started out in the same Harvard Class, but because the topic is so all encompassing. A lot of my life experience have been relevant, and I’ve spent the past 8 years immersed in climate change solutions, and more specifically Carbon Dioxide Removal.
I have been able to spend time with many leading researchers, attend global scientific conferences, listened and participated in a hundred web conferences, read hundreds of research papers and patents, advised startup companies with potentially critical technologies, and discussed potential opportunities with many global companies. I was there when DAC (Direct Air Capture of CO2) went from a fringe idea where we all fit in a small conference room to it being a mainstream part of the climate discussion.
Prior to that I owned, managed and asset managed, sold and brokered real estate, managed all the energy purchases and efficient upgrades for a major real estate portfolio, and I was the person energy efficiency promotors had to sell to. I was responsible for the first high rise solar installation in New Jersey. I also started a billion dollar’s worth of hard tech companies from scratch, and oversaw hundreds of millions of dollars in energy related building out spending. The dominant system for containerized battery system fire suppression is a product I developed at a company I founded.
I spend 7 years on the board of the most advanced electrical grid sensing company, and created a Singapore company to try to revolutionize AC/DC conversion. I took down the domain name Electronstorage.com in 1996 in the hope that my 6th grade dreams of creating a room temperature superconducting magnetic energy storage system would become practical. I have been wrong a lot of times, and too far ahead at others like when I tried to buy a heat pump company in 2008.
I have written and torn up many pages as I struggle with outlining my view of what needs to be understood about the problem and how to address it seriously. I emphasize the word seriously as at least 90% of what is discussed, particularly by politicians, but also in technical conferences and papers is not serious, ie, has little or no chance to scale or limited potential even at full scale. For the most part what is proposed and discussed makes people feel good by being natural or meeting some “social justice” goal. The problem is that decarbonizing and repairing the planet is really, really, hard.
In these essays I will try to show why it’s so hard, why doing it the most effective way matters, and possibly provide some hope if I can find it. I hope, to quasi quote Jason Jacobs of “My Climate Journey”, “that you will learn a lot about the formidable problem of climate change.”
Note: Some of these essays were put on my LinkedIn feed over the past 2 years, but like this introduction, the Substack articles have been substantially redone. If you are looking for me on twitter or facebook or other social media you are out of luck, I don’t us any social media, but please give me feedback of all kinds through substack. And please forgive me for any typos and writing style no-no’s, I don’t have a ghost writer or editor (volunteers welcome!).
James F. Lavin
Dec. 28, 2021