The Spanish Packet

Life comes in packets, I think. It comes in sections of time with borders constituted by changes in life’s pace, mood, activity, place, philosophy, circumstance, etc. Years and semesters of school are discrete in these ways. Periods lived in one city or another, or working various jobs, or dating a person, or playing on a certain team are also ways to partition the otherwise continuous river of life.

Sometimes changes are gradual and barely discernable, and other times they are stark and rapid. No transition in my life, however, has ever been as drastic or profound as the transition from China to Spain.

I left my frigid, biohazardous, dark, and jackhammeringly noisy apartment in Shanghai at the end of a long and challenging winter in Shanghai. Each day was a new challenge and a new learning experience in my 100% Chinese office, in smoky factories, power plants, and meeting rooms, in my Chinese language classes, and on the bustling Chinese streets. I grew and learned through those challenges, but also frequently remarked how much more comfortable life might be without some of the less enjoyable accoutrements of life in China: the smog, toxic water, noise, unforgiving language barriers, and general marginalization of the individual in the sea of billions. I left the country knowing that I had ended a 4-month period of rapid and important learning and personal growth, but also looking forward to something a bit more comfortable and familiar.

Fast forward to Madrid, where I disembarked from my train into the balmy Mediterranean air. Pablo, a Spaniard I met through a friend several years ago in New York City, waited to help me with my bags. Pablo had graciously offered to host me for the next month and a half.

I knew little about what to expect. For example, I did not expect to live in a famous and beautiful piece of Spanish architecture – a house frequently shown in design magazines and architecture blogs for its genius use of material, space, and light. I did not expect to pass through three fortress-like security gates, meet multiple guards, and be "introduced" to gigantic German Shepherds so that they would not tear out my throat when returning from my morning runs. I did not expect to have a forest of manicured running and biking paths at my disposal, nor did I expect them to be stocked with tweeting songbirds. I was certainly surprised to see my new home featured as a set in a new G-Unit music video.


















So, that was a nice change. Then there was the language, which I already know a bit about, and can navigate with some confidence. As in China, I have enrolled in an aggressive schedule of language courses to learn more. Languages, I’ve come to believe, are the most critical key to understanding and participating in a culture.

My work is also new and different. I am working with the second largest private company in Spain, Gestamp, which employs over 50,000 Spaniards. All my previous projects in China and Iceland focused on broad business strategy or technology/engineering. Now I’m going after finance. Somehow I weaseled my way into the office of Gestamp’s Wind Power CFO, and convinced him to teach me renewable energy project finance. I’m currently translating and retooling the financial models that Gestamp used to plan and raise money for large wind farms in Spain and Brazil. Gestamp has provided me with amazing opportunities in terms of personnel and information, and now it’s my job to assimilate and learn.

I’ve also linked into some side projects targeting geothermal developments in Germany and Switzerland, which are now fast-tracked since the crisis in Japan has officially plugged many European nuclear power pipelines. Germany, for example, has halted operations at 17 nuclear power, and is considering a new wave of incentives and policies to encourage geothermal energy development as a way to achieve decarbonization targets. The earth's heat, unlike other renewable and clean energy sources like the wind and sun, provides "base load" power, meaning that power is constantly available throughout the day, and can be dispatched like a fossil fuel or nuclear power plant. This consistency is critical for national utilities, which, rain or shine, need meet the demands of millions of customers.

So, it’s a busy but exciting time over here in Spain.

Outside of work, I’m taking some salsa-dancing classes, exploring the Madrileño nightlife with Pablo & Co., hitting many of Madrid’s famous museums like El Prado and Palacio Real, and learning about the local cuisine. Tapas are a new personal passion for sure – I had a creamy truffle pasta that almost brought me to tears the other day, and I've been diligently watching my house's live-in chef, Jose, to learn more about Spanish cooking.


















I still can’t believe that two weeks ago I was wearing a down jacket, sweat pants, skiing socks, and a wool hat to bed every night in my oppressive Shanghainese apartment, and wondering how many poisons were in the milk and cereal I’d eaten for breakfast. As transitions go, this has been a cool one.

Onward to Madrid

I awoke in a pathetic delirium when the door of my cramped sleeper cabin suddenly crashed open as the train’s brakes screeched, again, and I rolled against the wall, again. This time blinding sunlight filled my closet-sized space and elicited vampiric hissing. This meant that it was daytime, and that my only opportunity for sleep in the bracketing 48 hours had officially closed without a single “Z.”

My cabin smelled of flatulence and Frenchmen. The former, I admit, we may credit to my predilection for the French cheeses on which I had supped for the preceding several days. I’d been visiting my girlfriend in Paris and had used the entirety of my French language abilities to order croque monsieurs and onion soup au gratin. Colonol Gadfdafi could seriously economize on his tear gas expenses by bottling the air in that cabin.

The French odor, the worst national body odor of any by far, emanated from the four Frenchmen with whom I shared my temporary prison for the first eleven hours of my journey south to Madrid.

There was also a Pakistani in my cabin. He had startled me from my half-slumber at 4:00AM by announcing that we had arrived at my station of disembarkation, and that I only had only moments to shuttle and unload my copious baggage through narrow train corridors. I furiously packed, lifted, and panicked until he returned moments later saying, “actually your destination is not for six more hours.” I imagined with gratification the superpower ability to fire lightning bolts from my eyes into his head.

My 24-hour train journey from Paris to Madrid included a 6-hour layover in Irun, a boarder town in northern Spain. I unloaded in Irun, reached back into the deep recesses of my brain, and extracted the high school Spanish skills that I had buried somewhere between Pokémon names and GEO101: Introduction to Earthquakes and Volcanoes.

I asked someone where I might store my baggage (I prefer my sleepless wanderings to be unencumbered by rolling bags and briefcases), and learned that a subterranean bar several blocks away would be my only option. Sure enough I found the bar, asked around, and four Euros later I was strolling through Irun observing gypsies, somber looking men walking a somber looking terriers, sombrero-wearers, and an ancient, rickety man wearing a Johny Walker Whiskey baseball cap with the slogan “Keep Walking,” which seemed to be about all the man could muster.

I settled down in a café, fired up my laptop, and set out to somehow summarize China without barring myself from later professional excursions there. I'll keep it brief.

My 24-hour train ride was a luxurious experience compared to the train I took from Shanghai to Beijing in December. But before I complain about the filthy cramped quarters of that travel experience, let's acknowledge how luxurious and easy these trains have been compared to travel options of millennia past.

Whether contemplating the Oregon Trail, transatlantic sailing, or the Silk Route, we must feel thankful for the blessings of safe, reliable, and fast transit. My trips from Beijing to Shanghai or from Paris to Madrid would have taken weeks or months in the past, required a much larger financial commitment, and would have been wrought with the perils of sickness, banditry, and the feral wilderness. I marvel at the near-thoughtlessness with which I traveled from China to Singapore, Indonesia, Taiwan, and Japan.

Easy access to energy and improved engines (power production) are largely to thank for our modern travel system. In fact many aspects of our modern lifestyles owe largely to an enhanced energy system. Energy consumption correlates tightly with a variety of important quality of life metrics like Human Development Index (HDI-energy chart shown below), education, health, and GDP, to list a few. My four months in China exposed and reinforced these relationships for me.


http://pensiveprimate.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/energy-use-hdi.jpg

China is a nation in flux: nearly every aspect of the ancient society is racing forward to enter the modern era. The government, the economy, the cities, and the culture are all struggling and striving to come to terms with New China. These changes certainly do not exclude the nation’s energy system - the improvement, modernization, and sustenance of which constitutes a major priority in the Chinese government's new 5-year plan (released this year).

China’s power supply depends 70% on energy from coal. Much of the remainder derives from oil and massive hydroelectric projects. Renewables constitute an infinitesimal portion of China’s domestic primary power portfolio (in the graph below, renewables = 9%, but that includes over 6% hydro). However, wind power is accumulating quickly, especially in the west and north, and now China installs more wind power per year than any country on earth.












Energy Graph: http://www.chinasnaps.com/?p=209

The most important role of renewable energy in China is actually as a source of demand for China’s immense manufacturing capacity – the international community, particularly western Europe and North America, now purchases the majority of its cleantech gear from the Middle Kingdom. China is the world’s manufacturing leader for solar cells and wind turbines in addition to many of the components and inputs for other clean technologies like lithium batteries, steam power cycles, etc.

Beyond manufacturing and exporting clean energy technology, the central government has yet to roll out significant incentives or plans for a domestic buildup of clean or sustainable energy. Instead, new initiatives are targeting increased capacity for natural gas as an alternative to additional coal. Coal mines around the country are also being consolidated and reformed for greater safety, efficiency, environmental standards. Additionally, the government is prioritizing energy efficiency – a massive opportunity as China currently uses five to six times more energy per dollar of GDP than S. Korea, Japan, the US, and many Western European economies.

Don’t allow these lofty goals to mask the tremendous environmental problems currently wreaking havoc on China’s air, waterways, and ecosystems. Beijing is a veritable environmental apocalypse, as are most major Chinese cities. Pollution from poorly scrubbed coal smokestacks, urban factories, and the thousands of new cars entering Chinese streets each day all contribute to the particulate emissions, noxious fumes, and ozone that blanket urban China. One day in November the American Embassy in Beijing reported that the air quality had exceeded the 500-point scale used to measure harmful elements in urban air. By contrast, anything over 50-80 points is a red flag day in most European and American cities.

The truth is that Chinese pollution's damages to human health and the broader environment are severe and worsening – therein is the motivation for the government’s new environmental and energy objectives. Appalling environmental damages also underlie my interest in China as a place where large opportunities for clean energy investment exist, and where the necessity for such investments is literally palpable and visible. China’s clean-tech industry (like most of China's industries) has generated a gold rush mentality among international investors, which has resulted in rapid asset price inflation. Some cry "bubble," but most of the investors I interviewed concluded that opportunities for companies to generate massive environmental impacts and fast growth are real.

My experiences in China truly opened my eyes to new layers of the world and the global energy industry. I learned so much from my experience: I studied Mandarin every day for two hours, I learned volumes about how to build and operate geothermal and waste heat recovery (WHR) power plants, I gained soft skills relating to the Chinese business settings as well as general face-saving etiquette, I greatly improved my chopstick usage, I benefitted from daily street-side haggling and negotiations, and of course I participated in a radically different culture and lifestyle.

Taiwanese Geothermal Power Plant:


















I spent November in Beijing interviewing and meeting individuals from all over the Chinese energy industry and related industries. In December I moved to a home base in Shanghai, where I remained for three months working on engineering and business development projects with Global Geothermal, Recurrent Engineering, and Shanghai Shenghe New Energy Resources and Technology Co. I spent five days per week in a 100% Chinese office, and was also invited to power plant and factory tours in five different cities. Additionally, I was introduced to key Japanese and Taiwanese clients by my host companies, and I spent many days working with those clients to understand their power plants, projects, problems, and solutions.

In Late February I left China, flew through Dubai for a very fun 24-hour layover, and arrived in Paris to see my girlfriend for a few days before heading down to Madrid, where I will stay with a Spanish family and work with Gestamp Wind to understand European renewable energy subsidies and their impacts on “green field” project finance. I will also take Spanish language, culture, and dance classes in the Salamanca district to connect with and participate in the local culture. Additionally, I’ll have the opportunity to continue writing and publishing articles for the International Geothermal Association after the acceptance of my most recent article, “Industrial Synergies Between Geothermal Energy and Waste Heat Recovery.”

With that, I’d like to officially re-open this blog after months of government censorship-induced silence. I’ll post my stories and reflections from Spain, and also fill in my Asian adventure with photos in the sidebar and perhaps a full post of my favorite pictures. Thanks again for reading, and to those of you readers (over 1,000 page views per month before my shutdown in China) who have drifted away, please come back!