Assigning real-world priorities
Quick question: Which would you rather have? A bag of almonds to garnish your salad, or electricity to heat your home this winter? That is not as an unusual of a choice as it may sound. Many Texans in the winter of 2020 discovered the hard way that there's no beating nature. With skyrocketing power bills as high as $17,000 dollars for one month for a single residential home, we literally cannot afford to make mistakes when it comes to energy production, and management. Texas isn't alone in under performing and over-promising. California is racing toward a calamity of its own making. With multiple clean energy mandates in place, but no plan on how to actually reach those goals, and now with a mega drought on our doorstep, a warming planet, and increasing power demand, there is little choice left except to stop and rethink the path forward.
And there is a path forward. Element One Technologies has been planning for this event for the past decade. Three years ago, founder and CEO Karl Rudisill, stood before the (Karl you told me this story, but the details are fuzzy. You an see where I'm going with this, though...)
Being right is of little consolation when the stakes are so high and lives are on the line. If we wait to debate, it will be too late. But what priorities can we change, and how do we do it? We start by rethinking everything.
The equation is pretty simply. Not enough power. Not enough water. Too much emissions. Too much heat.
To reduce the emissions, we need a renewable and clean energy source. Energy requires water. In a limited resource scenario like California and indeed, all of the West and across the globe, there's not enough water to do everything we want to do. Reshuffling of priorities is required. We start with the obvious.
Meet the water-guzzling nuts
How much water would you guess is required to grown a single almond nut? Couple of ounces maybe? Try one gallon. Almost five gallons to grow a walnut. How much water is required to grow a pound of almonds? Almost 2,000 gallons of water. In a single year, about 6,800 almond growers consume the equivalent of three years worth of water consumption for Los Angles. This equates to the water needs of 12 million people. State wide, that's roughly 10% of the entire state's water consumption. This scenario "worked" under what we consider a normal climate. We're anything but normal these days.
It's not just almond growers that are water hogs. In 2019, according to research done by the Guardian, Nestlé took 45 million gallons of pristine spring water from just one of California's streams from federal lands to sell in single-use plastic bottles. Multiply that privatization of public land-water consumption all over the world, and a grim picture appears. Our climate is deteriorating in real-time. Change is everywhere except in the halls of short-sighted, sweet-deal business arraignments. Creeks and rivers are running dry, but the business model has remained unchanged. Power and money talk. But the weather talks louder.
It may be uncomfortable to talk about, but we need to have these difficult conversations as we look ahead and map out a real-world plan to regain what we lost. Enter the hydrogen equation.