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Lately I have been talking a lot about heat, and thinking about the language we use to describe heat.
In a meeting with several senior professors of mechanical engineering, I learned that “heat exchanger” translates to intercambiador de calor, and stretched my brain to explain concentrated solar power technology in semi-intelligent Spanish.
Slightly more sophisticated than my explanation in Chinese: “mirror, mirror, mirror, mirror” [while gesturing a bunch of flat things on the table and finding a taller object like a beer bottle to place in the middle of the mirrors] “and then those mirrors point the heat into this machine thing and it makes electricity” [gesticulating the motion of a turbine; my hands are better at explaining mechanics than my childlike Chinese vocabulary.]
I took this picture of San Francisco's City Hall on July 5, 2011 - an unusually warm summer day in the city. Nope, City Hall is not a heat exchanger, but it could be a useful "manipulative" (I learned that word my new-age 4th grade math class) to explain how one works. Just imagine a field of mirrors covering the entire parking lot, concentrating all the heat into a turbine in the dome. Not that the City of San Francisco would retrofit such an iconic building in that way. Details...
Amended 8.22.11: If you’re interested in real pictures and more technical descriptions of this technology, check out this photoessay from the Gunther Portfolio: Chevron BrightSource Solar-to-Steam Demonstration Plant Trials Underway.
Anyways, today I found some much more beautiful expressions of how heat affects people, in a New York Times feature called
Hot Type: Poems for Summer
These two poems are my favorites from the section.
COME LIVE WITH ME
Heat exists as energy in transit,
something spontaneous, volatile, elementary,
“something which may be transferred from one body
to another” (James Clerk Maxwell, “Theory of Heat”).
If you read my blog for the fun travel photos (you know who you are 
) please feel free to skip this rather nerdy post and go straight to My 7 Links.
If you’re interested in the laws that regulate and incentivize renewable and non-conventional energy in Chile, read on!
I’ve recently landed in Chile to work on a solar energy project, and one of my tasks is to learn about the legislation that guides this emerging industry. On March 20, 2008, President Michelle Bachelet signed Law 20.257 to encourage the development of renewable energy in Chile.
Photo of wind turbines in Coyhaique by Amanda Maxwell, Latin America Advocate for the Natural Resources Defense Council. Amanda's blog ( http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/amaxwell/ ) is an incredible resource for anyone researching renewable energy in Latin America.
I translated the first page of the law from Spanish to English. The full text (in Spanish) is here: Ley_ERNC_LEY-20257.
Quick disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and it’s been almost six years since I took a Spanish class, and the following translation is based on my initial read of the law. However, I think that translating it has been a useful exercise, and I’d like to share it with anyone that’s interested. The indented boxes below are notes to explain some technical terms in the text.
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Introduction of Modifications to the General Law of Electrical Services, with Respect to the Generation of Electrical Energy from Sources of Energy that are Renewable and Non-Conventional
April 1, 2008
This law obligates the companies that generate electricity, with a capacity of more than 200 MW, to make sure that 10% of the energy sold comes from renewable and unconventional sources or from hydroelectric plants with less than 40,000 KW. This energy must be produced or procured, starting from January 1, 2010.
This law will apply to the generators that supply energy to the Sistema Interconectado Central (SIC) and the Sistema Interconectado del Norte Grande (SING).
“Power generation in Chile is organized around four grid systems: 1) Sistema Interconectado del Norte Grande (SING), the northern grid, which accounts for about 19% of national generation; 2) the Central Interconnected System (SIC), the central region’s grid, which accounts for 68.5% of national generation and serves 93% of Chile’s population; 3) the Aysén Grid in southern Chile (0.3% of total generation); and 4) the Magallanes Grid, also in southern Chile (0.8% of total generation).” (Source: Global Energy Network Institute)
Chile's SIC Electrical Grid. The SING is in Chile's northernmost regions, which are not shown on this map. Source: GENI
This law signals that the percentage required of the electricity companies will increase gradually: 5% from 2010-2014, then +0.5% each year stating in 2015, until it reaches 10% in 2024.
The generators that fail to comply with this obligation will have to pay a charge of 0.4 UTM per megawatt hour (MWh) that does not meet the standard, and this will increase to 0.6 UTM in the cases of companies that continually fail to comply with the requirement.
UTM stands for Unidad Tributaria Mensual. According to Wikipedia it is a unit used in Chile for taxes and fines, which is updated based on inflation. It was created on December 31, 1944. Initially it was used by the Chilean tax authorities for fines and payscales, but since then its use has been extended to the payment of fines, debts, customs duties, and more. A chart showing its value every month for every year on record is here.
It is further provided that such charges arising from the breach of a distribution intended to end users (of the distributors whose suppliers have complied with the requirement) will help to establish a system of incentives that encourages competition in the electricity market.
The law indicates that the label “renewable and non-conventional energy (ERNC)” will correspond to small hydroelectric centers (with a capacity of less than 20 MW), and to projects that utilize energy from biomass, hydraulics, geothermal, solar, wind, tidal, and others.
The law goes on to describe modifications to specific articles, and I decided against translating that part. The full text (in Spanish) is here: Ley_ERNC_LEY-20257.
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President Sebastian Piñera just nominated a new Minister of Energy, Fernando Echeverría. In his new role. Echeverría plans to double the production of energy in the next ten years to meet Chile’s skyrocketing energy demand, lower the costs of energy, and strongly increase the participation of ERNC in the electrical grid. Read more here in La Tercera.
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Excerpt from Obama to Piñera: Make Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency the Base Case Scenario for Building Chile’s Energy Future. By Doug Sims, NRDC. March 17, 2011.
The conventional thinking about energy in Chile is that new coal, gigantic dams and nuclear are the only possible base case scenario given expected increasing demand requirements over the next 20 years. This way of thinking pushes renewables, or “non-conventional renewable energy” (defined under Chilean law to include wind, solar, geothermal and other renewables but to exclude large dams over 20MW) to the margins – right now the goal for renewables is a pretty anemic 10% of annual generation by 2024.
But this is exactly the wrong way to think about Chile’s energy future given its world class renewable resources, its potential to reduce energy demand and intensity through efficiency measures and the declining cost curves and improving performance of renewable technologies, solar in particular. In addition to a solar resource that exceeds that of the American Southwest, Chile is particularly fortunate to have excellent geothermal and sustainable biomass resources. These non-conventional renewable energy technologies are mature and can provide cost effective power at reliability levels (known as “capacity factors”) comparable to coal, gas, hydro and nuclear.
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Useful resources for further research on Renewable Energy in Chile:
- Amanda Maxwell’s blog
- Chile Renovables
- Comisíon Nacional de Energía
- Energía en Chile
- Global Energy Network Institute
Now I’m back in San Francisco, staying with my parents in their beautiful townhouse in an up-and-coming neighborhood. I think they are reliving their 20s: impromptu cocktail parties with the neighbors, nights out at Giants games, standing room at the opera, walks to the local wine bar with Max (the favorite child, the furry one with four legs!)
My impressions of life in America, after 1.5 years on foreign soil: Public bathrooms are so clean! Baby carrots are so convenient! People in the financial district at noon on Monday are almost all in jeans! (These are not nearly as entertaining as 9 Notes on Re-Entering Canada After Quite a Long Time Away.)
Thanks for all your kind words about my letter to China. It’s fun to hear how other people characterize their own relationships with China:
A lot of people have been asking me about my next step. I’m going to Chile to work with Charlotte Thornton, the founder and chairman of the CHEBEL Companies. Here is a description:
CHEBEL, a vertically integrated energy provider of 21st Century refinery science and fuels, is headquartered in Calgary, Canada with an office in Silicon Valley. A proprietary reconfiguration of ‘solar concentrated power tower’ technology affords us our business model unique to cleantech. CHEBEL will incorporate and base its key subsidiary, U-LINC ENERGY + SOLAR UTILITY, in Santiago with field offices in Calama and Copiapo for administering project(s) slated for Regions XV, II & III. CHEBEL believes strongly in giving back. A non-profit ‘WorldARC-CHILE’ will be set up with its program that promotes entrepreneurialism in zero emissions and waste recycling industries.
I met Charlotte on a sidewalk in Santiago in 2005. It was raining, and I think we shared an umbrella. She is an Oklahoma native, who has been a visiting scholar at Stanford University’s Civil & Environmental Engineering Collaboratory for Research on Global Projects. Last year she even sent me a care package of Trader Joe’s treats via a classmate who was traveling to Beijing.
A few months ago, Charlotte asked me to join her team for Startup Chile. Startup Chile is a program of the Chilean government to encourage world-class early-stage entrepreneurs to start their businesses in Chile. Here are two videos introducing the program:
I will be responsible for connecting with the Startup Chile community, English-Spanish translation, marketing, and more. I’m really excited to go back to Chile (where I studied for all of 2005) and actually use my Latin American Studies degree. I will need to brush up on my Spanish, and learn to speak intelligently about renewable power systems. I’m very excited for this opportunity.
On the couch at Golden Gobi in Mongolia, I met Shepherd Laughlin. An Oklahoma native new to Beijing, Shepherd transformed his visa run into a writing opportunity. Here, in Monocle‘s magazine’s Monocolumn, he describes how Mongolia has begun to assert its geopolitical power:
A new spring in the Steppe
October 7, 2010 — Beijing
Writer: Shepherd LaughlinFor decades, the term “buffer state” has been invoked as shorthand for Mongolia’s political raison d’être. The country is wedged between two BRICs, and more than 20 Chinese cities each exceed its entire population. If such a hinterland survived the 20th century intact, the phrase implies, it must be because the central planners in Moscow and Beijing permitted it to.
But today, fiercely independent Mongolia has an opportunity to play geopolitics at a scale not seen since its imperial heyday in the 13th century. In recent years, explorers have discovered vast quantities of gold, copper, uranium — and especially coal — beneath the grasslands.
Read the rest here on Monocle’s site 
In the past 24 hours, I have read two articles which contain completely different perspectives on the relationship between religion and social change.
The first, a New York Times piece entitled “In Kansas, Climate Skeptics Embrace Cleaner Energy,” outlines practical strategies the Climate and Energy Project has used to encourage greener behavior in Kansas.
A family eats by candlelight at a restaurant in Salina, Kan., part of an effort to conserve power. Image: Steve Hebert for the New York Times
What I find particularly remarkable about this article is that the Climate and Energy Project has focused on culturally relevant strategies that fit into residents’ worldview, such as tips for saving money, “creation care” talking points for church sermons, candlelight dinners on Valentine’s Day, and a Halloween campaign to search for vampire appliances.
“Don’t mention global warming,” warned Nancy Jackson, chairwoman of the Climate and Energy Project, a small nonprofit group that aims to get people to rein in the fossil fuel emissions that contribute to climate change. “And don’t mention Al Gore. People out here just hate him.”[more]
A basic tenet of rhetoric is that the best way to persuade people is to tell them stories that fit within their existing worldview. Kelly Parkinson makes a similar point here: The truth about selling mistletoe (& anything else.) Another great article on this topic is “Preach to the Choir –Then Get Them Singing Your Tune Outside Church.”
Speaking of church, today on Social Edge I read a discussion that begins with a description of a church in Kenya that is spreading a very different message, one that resists social progress.
Saul Garlick from the Innovation Institute writes:
Last year in Kenya, when I used to stay at a small motel in a highway town in the Coast Province, I woke up every morning to a blaring TV. The noise was scratchy and often unbearable and it was always a preacher standing on a stage exorcising a demon from some woman, healing a broken leg, or appealing to the masses to send in some small change to help their church pursue its mission.
I have no problem whatsoever with religion, but I was discouraged to learn the message that was taking hold in so many communities across the rural region where we work. A message of acceptance, but not acceptance of one another; rather, acceptance that their poverty, poor health and daily struggle was the way God intends.
There was a religious fatalism about what was possible. Hope was often sapped from their daily efforts, it seemed, because the community is ready to accept every disappointment, death, famine or burden as merely what God had planned for them.
This, of course, contrasts sharply with our goals in the community. The scholars on the Innovation Institute are deeply committed to seeing life improve in rural Africa and we believe unrelentingly in the power of people to create a better life for themselves.
Is this “religious fatalism” of accepting life as out-of-their-hands undermining our efforts to achieve social change in partnership with community members? [more]
I think that this world has a huge range of religious organizations, some progressive (which I define as taking concrete steps to make the world a better place) and some accepting (which I define as helping people deal with the world the way it is) and some destructive (which I define as aiming to destroy some aspect of the existing social order.) A single institution may include more than one of these aspects.
I think the huge range of religious institutions makes the question I posed in this post’s title, “Does religion inspire or inhibit social change?” not especially useful.
I believe it is far more useful to look closely at the specific tactics of religious practice, which may be sermons on “creation care,” or may be exhortations to accept “poverty, poor health, and daily struggle.”
Also, Kansas and Kenya happen to be where Barack Obama’s mother and father were born. On this particular issue, he seems to stand far closer to the people in Kansas.
What do you think? In your experience, has religion inspired or inhibited social change?
I'm Leslie and I connect entrepreneurs in Chile, China, California, and beyond — especially through translation, training, and trade. More about me.
