Husk Power Systems - show us the light!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/education/edlife/ideas-huskpower-t.html?_r=1

Manoj Sinha and Charles Ransler won the social entrepreurship award for a brilliant idea that can indeed impact the lives of millions of Indian farmers. These guys are using their proprietary technology of converting rice husks into methane that supplies electricity to rural India. Currently piloted in a few villages, they have plans of expanding to about a hundred. It's amazing how a small idea can have scalable effect! I find it inspiring to read about such accomplishments. I envy talented people involved in creating business plans that have far reaching social benefits.

Now reading

This was never meant to be a blog on finance, and I feel guilty for having unintentionally turned it into one. I will get back to the original goal, which is to write about interesting things I read or observe..and not all are finance related (give me break!)

I just completed reading Paul Coelho's book called Brida. It is yet another fascinating read on how Coelho manages to entwine the pursuit of wisdom with magic and spirituality. Although it's nothing to surpass his classic, The Alchemist, which I read a very long time ago perhaps in high school or middle school and all I recollect now is the continuous travel of a Shepard who follows his dream of finding treasure, encounters a wise old man/magician/god(?), arrives at an Oasis, etc. This is the origin of the famous and often repeated quote that flows somewhat along the lines of "..if you really desire something and work towards it, the entire universe conspires for you to achieve your goal." I know that it is a far cry from the actual wording in the book, much contorted and less coherent, but this is what I remember given the thick layer of dust that settled on the recollection of the details from the book. And I am not planning to hit google to find that quote either, too much effort for what purpose other that entertaining myself with writing these posts? All I can say about Brida is that every time I closed the book I felt vaguely free spirited, light headed and idealistic. It's an enjoyable musing for a dreamer!

My current book affair is with 'Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy' - by Joseph Schumpeter. It really isn't as corny and dense as the title may suggest. I shall update the blog if I find in it any jeweled thought out of the ordinary..

Failure of VAR as a risk metric

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/01/woefully-misleading-piece-on-value-at.html

Here's an excerpt

[in october] There were two daily changes of more than 10% during the month. With a standard deviation of daily changes of 1.032% (computed over the period 1971-2008) movements of such a magnitude can occur only once every 73 to 603 trillion billion years.

This recession is different..it is more severe

The unexpected further fall in US industrial production only points towards how much worse the recession could be. The data from post war recession (blue line in the chart) indicates that Ind.production should ideally start recuperating from the earlier lows, but the latest data from CFR shows even further dip..which is why the stimulus from govt. is much needed despite its limitations.

check this out : http://www.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/2009OutlookFinal_Long.pdf

Creating 'renewable energy'...non

The fundamental flaw with today's renewable energy sources is that they utilize non-renewable elements to work, points out an article in NewScientist.
Solar Cells need sillicon which is abundant on earth's crust, but they are only 25% efficient. The the more efficient cells (upto 40% level) called multi-junction cells use indium, and that is far from abundant.
"There are fewer than 10 indium-containing minerals...accounts for a paltry 0.25 parts per million of the Earth's crust...used to manufacture LCD screens, an industry that has driven indium prices to $1000 per kilogram in recent years. Estimates that did not factor in an explosion in indium-containing solar panels reckon we have only a 10 year supply of it left."

Another brilliant idea was generating electricity from hydrogen. Unfortunately though, splitting water cells requires platinum which is even rarer than indium (earth's crust has .003 parts of platinum per billion, and it would be exhausted in 15yrs).

When it comes to biofuels, most of us know the limitations of ethanol fermented from maize (food shortage), but algae that grows in tanks seems to be a bright solution that is receiving considerable attention.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16550-why-sustainable-power-is-unsustainable.html