Mark Kerbel's Personal Website

• How can society be nudged to replace brown with green technologies?
• Cleaner electricity supply is obviously good, but why is there so little attention given to reducing consumption (assuming you concur with the thinking that "a kWh saved is worth more than an extra kWh generated")
• What I've done to lower my own energy bill
• How can we educate homeowners and office tenants to switch high-usage bulbs to CFLs (No, not the Cdn Football League, but Compact Fluorescent Lights). I've included a spreadsheet to show how much you can save on your electricity bill by switching from high-wattage incandescent bulbs and floodlights to low-wattage CFLs.
• Alleviating pollution caused by transportation: Push all the way to hydrogen fuel cells, or shift initially to hybrid gas-electric or biodiesel engines?
• What do all the "organic" certification tests really mean to consumers who are trying to figure out which products to purchase?
• How could one make use of the water flowing down an easetrough and going down the drain?
• Ever notice that the grass on a lawn is damp even in the evening in the summer -- is there any way to use the moisture for other purposes, e.g. reducing the radiant heat generated from pavement, to cool an urban setting?
• Speaking of which, what are other ways to provide the functional characteristics of pavement without using dark, heat-absorbing and radiating materials?
• How difficult would it be to shift combustion engines en masse to alternative renewable or at least severely more environmentally friendly fuels (whether they be gas/electric hybrids, bio-diesels, or hydrogen fuel cells)?

Introduction

This is Mark Kerbel's personal website, a place where I can note my $0.02 worth about topics that occupy my thoughts. The themes herein deal primarily with my energy and environmental concerns. Given my professional background in Ontario's electricity and financial sectors (spanning business, regulatory, and information systems perspectives), most of the topics will focus on energy issues, covering a wide range of topics spanning concepts such as consumption attitudes, regulatory frameworks, waste reduction, low-emission transportation power sources, economic constraints, renewable technologies, distributed generation, and industry participant attitudes. This isn't going to be a "how to select a windmill" website, since there's far more to the issues at hand IMHO, and this website is intended to be a place for me to voice a smattering of thoughts. Like 'em or not, let me know what you think either way. :-) This will be a continually growing website, and will be modified when I have the time and desire to add more content.

I've since started a blog where I posted "miscellaneous ramblings" that come to mind on environmental energy topics.

If you'd like to know what I do professionally, see REGEN Energy, which I co-founded in Jan 2005.

Rest assured I'm not a fanatic (Hey, I still love car racing :-), rather, I'm focused on deriving practical solutions that can be implemented using a combination of good 'ol fashioned common sense and what I refer to as environmental capitalism. There's nothing that says you can't have an economically profitable business that can't simultaneously be a socially and environmentally responsible organization. That's my ultimate goal. How will we get there? Stay tuned, as Roman Kulyk and I are forming a new company (Jan/05) to put our theories into practice.

If you'd like to read or participate in such discussions, please feel free to contact me.

P.S.: Yes, I know the web site is utilitarian ("ugly"? :-). If you want to volunteer your time to spruce it up, I'd be more than happy to hear from you (and would obviously provide acknowledgement of said help).

Interesting Reading

Since I keep adding to this list, and it's already quite length, I've moved it to a separate Readings page. For the convenience of Toronto resident, I've provided links to the Toronto Public Library's system to locate the books and authors noted. Their web site also provides handy links to additional books of the same classification.

Interesting Links

I've placed a number of interesting links on a separate Links page.

Acknowledgements

• The August 2003 blackout, where out on Lake Ontario during the Saturday after the blackout, I noticed that the horizon spanning the entire Greater Toronto Area was completely clear of smog on a not-windy warm summer day, most likely due to the lack of additional pollutants (from generation plants, industrial operations, and curtailed road traffic) for only a day and a half. As corny as it sounds, I had an epiphany that moment, realizing I had to do something about the energy situation in my backyard.
• John Wilson (an old IT colleague) and his family for their attitudes and most importantly actions which spawned further thinking of my own. Their house, in terms of elegant style, interesting design, and efficient technical features is a model of a family home that doesn't sacrifice comfort one bit while being environmentally super-friendly.
• Many friends and industry colleagues who have spawned further discussion (You know who you are, some of whom would prefer to remain confidential, but I'll eventually contact you to ask for your permission to give credit where credit is due).

Contact Information

Email: kerbelm @ yahoo.com
...and just in case you're wondering, no, I'm not the Mark Kerbel in Toronto who's in the legal profession.