Sep 08 2011
Dear NEXT100 reader:
Starting today, new content on NEXT100 is moving to www.pgecurrents.com/next100. Please bookmark your browsers accordingly.
NEXT100 is now in its fourth year of covering the intersection of the clean energy business and the environment. Its mission—to explain important trends in green technology, policy, and the Earth’s climate that will most impact the energy industry and PG&E’s customers over the next 100 years—becomes more timely and relevant every day.
Some months ago, PG&E launched a companion site, www.pgecurrents.com, to report in depth on all facets of news about the utility. Rather than maintain two separate sites, we have decided to integrate them without changing their complementary missions. Readers will benefit from having a wider variety of content available at one location, while we take advantage of production efficiencies.
NEXT100 will continue to offer a lively mix of content that reflects PG&E’s broad commitment to the environment without always showcasing the utility. Until the integration is complete, archived stories will remain searchable on www.NEXT100.com.
Thanks for your continued support,
Jonathan Marshall
Editor
Sep 07 2011
As the Earth warms and the world’s population grows, competition for dwindling supplies of fresh water will intensify. As the biggest industrial user of water, the energy sector can either fight to maintain its share, or learn to conserve.
The stakes are high. As Jim Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy, put it, “water is the new oil.”
For utilities especially, water is precious. They use it most of all to cool steam generators that may be driven by coal, natural gas, nuclear or even solar energy.
In 2008, at least one nuclear reactor, in
Most climate models predict that the drought-stricken Southwestern United States will grow even drier and hotter--like Texas--as global warming progresses. That will harm the energy sector along with agriculture, tourism and recreation, and many other kinds of industry.
"The competition between water and energy needs represents a critical business, security, and environmental issue, but it has not yet received the attention that it deserves," said Diana Glassman, co-author of a report by the World Policy Institute and EBG Capital on “The Water-Energy Nexus.”
"Energy production consumes significant amounts of water, and vice versa. In a world where water scarcity is a major and growing challenge, water deserves a place on the energy agenda alongside cost, carbon and security considerations."
The report notes that coal- and oil-fired power plants use twice as much water as natural gas-fired plants. Nuclear plants use three times as much.
Some of the biggest water hogs are oil extractors, according to the report. Mining the thick tar sands of
Renewable energy isn’t exempt from this problem. Although wind and solar photovoltaic plants use little or no water, water-cooled solar thermal plants use five times as much as gas-fired plants. (Some solar thermal producers, like BrightSource Energy, have switched to air cooling to save water at their desert sites, despite the loss of some generating efficiency.)
And biofuels fermented from soybeans or corn “can consume thousands of times more water than traditional oil drilling, primarily through irrigation,” according to the World Resources Institute.
The best solutions—because they carry so many benefits—are programs to conserve energy and water consumption. Water-related users in
PG&E and other utilities are also installing new air or "dry" cooling systems on their power plants that save more than 90 percent of the water required by traditional "wet" cooling.
Last but not least, wind and solar photovoltaic plants will help out as they replace traditional fossil generation. A thousand megawatts of wind power can save 1.3 billion gallons of water annually, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Tomorrow: What PG&E is doing to save water.
Sep 06 2011
“The sun is shining on
I was sure impressed by that first number. It’s almost identical to the entire capacity of the nuclear power industry in the United States!
If that seemed a bit improbable, so did the following statistic—that all that power would light only a few thousand homes. They must have some pretty big air conditioners and refrigerators in
The story’s errors—since corrected—reflect the fact that many people, including news editors, don’t have a clue about units or magnitudes of energy. A recent survey of global utility customers by IBM found that 30 percent had no clue to the meaning of “dollar per kwh (kilowatt-hour)” or the local currency equivalent, even though electric bills are a large and recurring consumer charge.
As it happens, the Post-Gazette story overstated
The total installed solar capacity nationwide is only a little over 2,100 megawatts, as far as I can tell from 2010 data released by the Solar Electric Power Association.
In fact, the solar industry as a whole has good reason not to boast just yet, despite its impressive growth and rapid technological advance. If my math is correct, it accounted for just 0.03 percent of total electricity generated in the
One reason that fraction is so tiny is that solar generators manage to actually deliver only a small portion—typically a fifth—of their rated output. They produce nothing at night and little or nothing when clouds pass overhead, unless they come with expensive storage options.
Still, solar is undeniably clean, renewable and (usually) available during the day when customers are using their computers, air conditioners and office lights. I look forward to the day when the Post-Gazette’s original lead is finally correct.
Sep 02 2011
Several stories on the science and politics of global warming caught our attention this week:
Increased depression, anxiety, substance abuse, suicide and self-harm could be more prevalent in a world of greater natural disasters due to climate change, according to a study by the Climate Institute that looked at recent events in Australia. Following a severe weather event, as many as one in five in a community will suffer extreme stress, emotional injury and despair, it noted, and the longer-term impacts lower the quality of life.
Climate change appears to be forcing many of the world's creatures to migrate to more favorable locales up to three times faster than previously believed, according to a study published in the journal Science. The study contributes to a better understanding of the larger issue raised by scientists who have suggested that some species are at risk for extinction due to climate changes.
Michael Mann, a Pennsylvania researcher who’s been a target of climate-change skeptics, was once again cleared of wrongdoing surrounding hacked e-mails. The National Science Foundation closed its inquiry after finding "no evidence of research misconduct." Climate-change doubters used the e-mails as evidence that researchers conspired to quash studies questioning the link between human activity and warming, a claim cited by U.S. politicians such as Texas Governor Rick Perry to question the validity of data on climate change.
Sep 01 2011
Splitting atoms is a proven way to generate energy. Now scientists are working hard on ways to split water molecules to release hydrogen—which someday could be a tremendous way to store clean energy.
Hydrogen is the ideal feedstock for fuel cells, which quietly generate electricity with only water and heat as byproducts. They can also be fed with natural gas or other fuels, but those release CO2, a greenhouse pollutant.
Unlike nuclear energy, splitting water requires more useful energy than it produces. But if the cost and net energy requirement could be reduced enough to drive hydrogen production from sunlight or surplus windpower, the potential benefits of a clean “hydrogen economy” might be immense. Clean vehicles could run on hydrogen instead of gasoline, and large businesses could generate clean power on site with fuel cells.
The key is finding the right chemical shortcut—or catalyst—to split H2O efficiently. Many traditional catalysts are based on platinum—which is called a “precious metal” for a reason. Last I checked, it was selling for about $1,850 an ounce.
But a group of
"Hydrogen production now involves a large amount of CO2 emissions," said one researcher. "Once this alloy material is widely available, it could conceivably be used to make zero-emissions fuel for powering homes and cars and to heat homes."
Just three weeks ago, a team of scientists in
Still other scientists are investigating catalysts made of cobalt, manganese, and exotic metal nanoparticles. One company is already commercializing hydrogen technology using titanium dioxide and another, spun off from MIT, is commercializing a solar-powered approach using cobalt and phosphates.
Don’t get too excited. It’s a lot easier to produce journal articles and news releases than cost-effective new industrial processes. And even if hydrogen production becomes cheap, transporting and storing it remain major challenges.
Aug 31 2011
A century ago, intrepid explorers ventured deep into the jungles of
Ashli Brown, a young biologist at
Over millions of years, pandas have evolved to dine on weeds like bamboo that the rest of us find unpalatable and indigestible. Their secret lies in the specialized bacteria in their gut that excel at breaking it down.
Brown’s team found that the intestinal microbes found in pandas are even more efficient than termites at digesting tough cellulose, thanks to highly effective enzymes that speed up chemical reactions. They are able to covert as much as 95 percent of cellulose into simple sugars that can readily be turned into ethanol or other fuels.
Her research agenda calls for isolating the most efficient bacteria, then transferring their genes into yeast, which can be used to convert waste biomass into fuel in mass quantities.
Finding enzymes that can do this trick cost-effectively is the holy grail of the biofuels industry—and one that nobody has yet accomplished.
Said Gideon Davies, a chemist at the
Maybe Brown’s team will finally pull it off.
“Who would have guessed that ‘panda poop’ might help solve one of the major hurdles to producing biofuels, which is optimizing the breakdown of the raw plant materials used to make the fuels?” Brown said. “We hope our research will help expand the use of biofuels in the future and help cut dependency on foreign oil. We also hope it will reinforce the importance of wildlife conservation.”
But Brown faces stiff competition. A Dutch technology company claims to have a powerful new enzyme cocktail ready to market. Its secret, according to a story published yesterday, is . . . elephant poop.
Aug 30 2011
The thickening blanket of greenhouse gases now raising the world’s temperature to feverish levels mostly originated from underground carbon in the form of oil and coal. If we could send a big portion of that carbon back where it came from, humanity might buy time to end the threat of climate change.
An experiment in
Healthy soil is full of organic matter, rich in carbon. That includes roots, microbes, fungus, and decomposed humus, which provides an ideal growing medium. Humus forms from the decomposition of fallen leaves, twigs and roots that create a rich topsoil.
But regular tilling exposes organic matter to microbes that release carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and eventually degrade the quality of the soil. Over a period of a century, a blink of the geologic eye, tilling can slash the carbon content of soil by half, according to
As the Marin Carbon Project says in its mission statement,
Over the past 150 years we may have lost fifty to eighty percent of our topsoil worldwide. It is estimated that more than a third of the carbon dioxide we have added to the atmosphere during that time has come from changes in land use and poor land management. This soil-derived change in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration suggests the potential for improved land management practices to result in sequestration of significant amounts of atmospheric carbon dioxide in the soil as organic matter.
The project is a collaboration of various academic, governmental, environmental organizations and the 539-acre Nicasio Native Grass Ranch, where the research is being conducted. The principal investigator is Whendee Silver, an environmental scientist at the
Her team has already completed soil surveys to determine the levels of carbon in the soil of the region. The next step is to test the effect on soil carbon, and CO2 emissions, from soil composting and from alternative plowing methods. They are experimenting with those techniques in Marin and in
The plow they are testing was developed in
Other techniques, such as cover cropping and crop rotation, can also enrich soils, benefiting agriculture as well as the global environment. A paper in Science magazine by researchers at
Although the Marin Carbon Project has yet to confirm such results, Silver recently told Discover magazine that preliminary findings are highly encouraging. She estimates that
Aug 29 2011
The Great State of Texas has been cursed this summer by record temperatures and the worst drought in its history, despite the prayers of its governor. But it’s been blessed in at least one way: the winds have kept on blowing, spinning turbines that have kept air conditioners humming in the face of record power demand.
This August, however, as wind speeds in
Wind power also came to the rescue this February when coal and natural gas plants shut down due to freezing weather, making up for the February debacle three years ago.
All this just goes to show the value of diversity in energy supply.
Whether planning an investment portfolio, seeking qualified job candidates or spicing up your romantic life, diversity is usually a good thing. The same holds for building an energy portfolio. PG&E buys or generates power from diverse sources to protect customers against unforeseen changes in fuel prices, weather conditions, accidents and other risks.
Another reason is that diverse energy resources often complement each other well. Wind and solar power, for example, tend to peak at very different times of the day, so combining the two makes power available more often. And natural gas-fired generators complement them both by ramping up or down depending on the intermittent output of these renewable resources.
The case of wind power shows that diversity is valuable even within a single energy sector. The more you disperse its production, the more you smooth total output and the less you need to resort to costly backup power. As the International Energy Agency put it, “the size of swings in output from wind farms and the volatility of average output are significantly reduced through geographical aggregation.”
Dispersing wind power isn't trivial. It requires investing in a big transmission grid—and even then utilities and grid operators may find themselves on occasion stuck with too little or even too much wind.
But as Michael Goggin, manager of transmission policy for the American Wind Energy Association, told Climate Wire, this year’s experience in
Aug 26 2011
Several stories on the science and politics of global warming caught our attention this week:
Global climate fluctuations are playing a role in violent conflicts, according to a new study that has linked the hot, drier weather brought by the El Niño climate pattern with conflicts in the affected countries. Using data from 1950 to 2004, the researchers concluded that the likelihood of new conflicts arising in these countries, mostly located in the tropics, doubles during El Niño years as compared with wetter, cooler years.
Sea ice in the Arctic Ocean has receded dramatically during this summer, opening up two new shipping lanes – the Canadian Northwest Passage and Russia’s Northern Sea Route, according to a new report from the European Space Agency. The summer of 2007 recorded the lowest amount of sea ice since satellite observations began in 1979.
The California Air Resources Board (CARB) recently voted to reaffirm its carbon cap-and-trade program, a decision that puts the nation's first state-level economy-wide program on track for 2013 when it goes into effect for power generators and other greenhouse gas emitters. The move comes after CARB delayed its start date from 2012 to allow more time to work out the program's finer details such as how to allocate allowances to emitters.
Aug 26 2011
Pressure of work sometimes keeps me from getting to items longer than I would like. Here’s one story on a remarkable form of solar power that’s been sitting in my in-box for nearly 300 years. But I think you’ll agree it hasn’t gone stale.
It concerns an unkempt inventor—“with sooty hands and face, his hair and beard long, ragged, and singed in several places”—who has devised a way of “extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers.” In short, a novel kind of hybrid solar-biomass power.
That’s not all. He reportedly stores the sunbeams in hermetically sealed phials, from which they can be released “to warm the air in raw inclement summers,” like those here in
Unfortunately, this inventor, though a member in good standing of the grand
Any angel investors reading this may contact the inventor through the noted surgeon and ship captain Lemuel Gulliver, who first reported these remarkable scientific advances in his famous 1726 memoir (published with the help of the Irish writer Jonathan Swift), Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts.
It’s still in print by Signet Classics, and available online. Check it out.
