February 2010 Archives
Feb 26 2010
Several stories on the science and politics of global warming caught our attention this week:
PG&E Corporation Chairman, CEO and President Peter Darbee and Carnegie Institution climate change expert Christopher Field released a short whitepaper for business leaders and policy makers on the scientific and economic issues central to the current conversation on global climate change and the need for a response by government and business. “My hope is that it serves to inform and engage more leaders in this issue and, ultimately, helps drive the adoption of smart climate and energy policies for our country,” said Darbee.
Want to see scientific evidence supporting global warming? There’s an app for that. Australian solar physicist John Cook of Skeptical Science has created an iPhone app that includes numerous climate skeptic arguments as well as the science-based counterarguments. So far, there are 90 climate skeptic arguments included and, of course, the scientific responses to those. You can see graphs and links to scientific papers or other sources in there as well. Cook calls the app “imperative” to the climate debate and “pretty cool.”
The non-partisan United States Geological Survey recently reported that the ice shelves on the southern Antarctic Peninsula have been retreating at an increased pace threatening coastal communities and low-lying islands worldwide. Scientists claim the pattern could lead to further accelerated glacier retreat on the continent and ultimately, sea level rise. Scientific data shows every ice front in this section of the peninsula has been retreating from 1947 to 2009, but the most dramatic changes have come since 1990.
Feb 26 2010
Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:
Defense contractor General Atomics plans to develop a small commercial nuclear reactor that would run on spent fuel rods from large reactors. The reactor would be about one-quarter the size of a conventional reactor and have the ability to burn used fuel. The company expects it would take 12 years to develop the liquid-helium-cooled reactor at a cost of $1.7 billion and would need financial help from the Department of Energy. Babcock & Wilcox Co. and NuScale Power Inc. also are exploring small reactors amid renewed interest in nuclear energy.
The Vermont Senate voted 26 to 4 this week to block a 20-year license extension for the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant owned by nuclear operator Entergy, citing leaks of radioactive tritium at the 38-year-old plant, misstatements in testimony by plant officials and other problems. The license expires in 2012. Unless the Senate reverses itself, it would be the first time in more than 20 years that the public or its representatives decided to close a reactor, the New York Times reports. Vermont is the only state where the Legislature has a role in deciding a nuclear power plant’s future. "We remain determined to prove our case to the legislature, state officials and the Vermont public," Entergy said.
Internet giant Google has received permission from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to buy and sell electricity in bulk. FERC's authorization will allow subsidiary Google Energy to better manage its own energy costs and to possibly add electricity marketing services. CNet notes that the company "has expressed a desire for access to larger amounts of renewable energy to help produce the electricity it consumes as part of its vast search-engine empire."
Feb 25 2010
Skiers know Alpine County as home to Kirkwood and Bear Valley. But along with its Sierra beauty, the thinly populated county is also home to a contaminated Superfund site, the abandoned Leviathan Mine. The open pit sulfur mine leaches acidic water, arsenic and dissolved metals, devastating local streams near the California-Nevada border.
Cleaning up the toxic site will take years and a great deal of energy. Given the remoteness of the site, Atlantic Richfield--which inherited the property from Anaconda Copper--may have to haul in huge amounts of dirty diesel fuel to power its operations.
But EPA and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory are investigating the possibility of siting wind, solar or other forms of clean energy on the site. The old Leviathan Mine is one of 12 contaminated sites under review nationwide for renewable energy production, under a program called Re-Powering America's Land. In all, there may be about 4,000 such sites across America.
In addition, they are looking at the feasibility of siting solar generators--and infrastructure to support alternative fuel vehicles--at some of the tens of thousands of abandoned gas stations around the country. (EPA estimates there may be more than 200,000 "petroleum brownfield" sites nationwide.)
"We think of recycling materials all the time, so why not take a look at recycling land," said Brigid Lowery, acting director of EPA's center for program analysis. "It just makes sense to take a look at these sites before we turn to using greenfields."
It especially makes sense given how many large renewable energy projects are tied up in permit disputes over their local environmental impact.
Environment and Energy Daily reporter Scott Streater notes that there are many precedents for recycling brownfield sites into renewable energy projects--including the fact that "the largest operating solar power plant in North America sits atop a long-abandoned landfill at Nellis Air Force Base, northeast of
Feb 24 2010
Solar cells are so passe. The hot new area for research is thermocells, which convert waste heat into electric power.
Sorry, I couldn't resist that one.
Power plants, factories, cars, computers--everything that uses energy in turn creates waste heat. If even a small fraction of that heat could be converted back into usable energy--in particular, electricity--the result could be dramatic energy savings and benefits for the environment. In principle, converting waste heat to electricity could double the battery life of cells phones or laptop computers, according to MIT engineer Peter Hagelstein.
A bunch of startup companies are working on just that challenge. They include Alphabet Energy, based in the basement of the Bancroft Hotel in
Others include MTPV Corp. in Austin, TX, GMZ Energy, founded by scientists at MIT and
Thermocells operate on the principle of the Seebeck thermoelectric effect, discovered in 1821 by the physicist Thomas Johann Seebeck. He found that heating one end of a metal bar created an electric current proportional to the difference in temperature at the two ends. Unfortunately, most materials that exhibit this property convert heat to electricity with extremely low efficiency, making it tough to create commercial solutions.
The race is on to increase conversion efficiencies and lower the cost of materials. Scientists at
They make it sound so easy.
Another team of scientists just reported using carbon nanotubes to triple the usual efficiency of thermocells, without the cost of exotic metals such as platinum.
One of the co-authors of their new paper, Dr. Baratunde Cola at
Feb 23 2010
Tobacco killed an estimated 100 million people worldwide over the last century, according to the World Health Organization. Now researchers are turning cigarettes into plowshares, finding novel ways to turn the hardy plants into biochemical laboratories for making antibiotics, vaccines, plastics and now enzymes that can be used to produce clean energy.
Feb 22 2010
Finally, 67 years after it first opened, the hit musical Oklahoma has received official confirmation from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory that "the wind blows sweeping down the plains" with dramatic force.
According to a new report from NREL, the wind generation potential in Oklahoma is nearly 1.8 million gigawatt-hours annually, or more than a third of total U.S. electric generation in 2008 (4.1 million GWh).
And Oklahoma' s wind resources rank only 9th among states in the continental United States. Texas leads the pack with annual potential wind generation of 6.5 million GWh--50 percent more than total U.S. generation in 2008. Other Plains states also have immense potential, as shown in this map.
And what about California? It ranks a measley 19th, with potential generation of only 105,000 GWh. On the other hand, PG&E's total electricity sales in 2008 were 82,000 GWh, so that's hardly a trivial number.
These new estimates represent a huge increase since a 1991 asessment by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, which found California's total potential to be about 59,000 GWh annually, Oklahoma's at 725,000 GWh, and Texas's at 1,190,000 GWh. (Mississippi still takes last place, at zero potential.)
Nationwide, NREL's new estimate of potential wind energy is more than three times the old estimate and more than nine times total U.S. electricity consumption.
The increased estimate reflects in part the enhanced ability to today's immense turbines to grab wind energy at heights of 80 meters or more, where it blows relatively unobstructed by surface effects and obstructions.
The gap between existing and potential resources is immense, even in California, which was one of the earliest adopters of wind power. Total installed wind capacity in California was 2,794 MW in 2009, less than a tenth of its estimated potential capacity of 34,000 MW. Texas had more than three times as much installed capacity, 9,410 MW, but a total potential more than two hundred times that, according to NREL.
The big unknown is what fraction of the potential can ever be realized, especially given intense local opposition to siting of huge (and to some eyes, ugly) turbines and transmission towers near populated communities, recreation areas and sensitive habitat.
Nearly everywhere you go, from Cape Cod to California's Mohave Desert, activists are seeking to block large wind energy projects. There's even one doctor who claims people living near such facilities may suffer from "Wind Turbine Syndrome," which allegedly brings on sleep disorders, headaches and panic attacks. These claims have been debunked by other scientists assembled by the wind industry, but good luck trying to stamp them out once they're all over the Internet.
Feb 22 2010
Electric vehicle maker ZAP, based in Santa Rosa, has been selected along with four other firms in a competitive bid held nationwide by the USPS to provide clean vehicles for its more than 140,000 mail carriers. ZAP was awarded an engineering contract for the design and development of an electric version of the Postal Service’s Long Life Vehicle (LLV). They will convert the gasoline mail truck to run on electricity.
This is part of a bigger program of the USPS to develop a clean vehicle fleet, including some cute three wheeled package delivering vehicles previously featured in Next100.
Feb 19 2010
Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:
Calling all U.S. grad and undergrad entrepreneurs! The MIT Clean Energy Prize is accepting entries for its fourth annual competition, and the prizes are nothing to sneeze at. Semifinalists get coaching from business and technology leaders. Finalists present detailed business plans to venture capitalists, policy experts, academics and corporate executives. The grand prize is $200,000 awarded by NStar and the federal Department of Energy. The deadline is February 25, so no procrastinating.
The new Silicon Valley? Livermore was recently designated one of six future Innovation Hubs for Technology Development (iHubs) by California's Business, Transportation and Housing Agency. The city is hopeful the designation will bring with it the potential for additional funding for green energy technology. Livermore was chosen to be an inaugural iHub member for its development of the Innovation for Green Advanced Transportation Excellence (i-GATE) plan, which seeks to develop futuristic energy technologies and create an "open campus" area near the high-security federal labs where private, hi-tech business and/or academic development could occur.
Worldwide clean energy investment was down in 2009, according to EnergyBoom.com's analysis of several studies. But the future looks bright as the brand new DB NASDAQ OMX Clean Tech Index was recently launched. The new index is made up of 119 companies that each derive at least a third of their revenues from clean technology.
Feb 19 2010
Several stories on the science and politics of global warming caught our attention this week:
The man responsible for leading worldwide global warming negotiations is leaving his post. The United Nations announced that Yvo de Boer, often called the United Nations Climate Chief, will step aside as of July 1, 2010. Recently, de Boer expressed discontent as to the outcome of the Copenhagen conference. Those who worked alongside de Boer claim they were not surprised by his decision to resign, saying he was “exhausted and frustrated.”
While you may not want it building up on your windowsill, new research claims dust could protect us from the harmful effects of global warming. That theory is being discussed at the annual scientific meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, taking place this year in San Diego, California. Scientists presenting at the conference assert that dust may limit the amount of solar radiation that reaches the Earth's surface.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) is pushing for a bill that he claims some lawmakers may accept as an alternative to renewable energy mandates. He calls it a broader clean energy standard that would require utilities to supply increasing amounts of power from specific sources, including wind, solar, biomass, clean coal and new nuclear generation. The big energy and climate bill the House approved last year includes a renewable electricity standard, and so does broad energy legislation the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee approved last June.
Feb 18 2010
Anyone who still thinks all utilities are slow and stodgy should pick up a copy of the March issue of Fast Company, a magazine that chronicles the strategies and successes of cutting-edge businesses. On its annual list of the 50 Most Innovative Companies--at no. 7--is Pacific Gas and Electric Company.
Among companies in the energy industry, PG&E ranks second behind First Solar, the extremely successful maker of thin-film solar photovoltaic panels, including those used in at least one project now supplying clean, renewable energy onto PG&E's grid. The magazine notes that First Solar was the first renewable energy company to break into the S&P 500.
In fourth place among energy companies is another renewable power developer under contract to PG&E, NextEra Energy Resources. And in ninth place is Silver Spring Networks, a major partner of PG&E in the deployment of smart meters and future smart grid applications.
Fast Company cites PG&E's decision last September to resign from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, citing "fundamental differences" with the Chamber's approach to climate change legislation. Noting that PG&E produces only one percent of utility emissions while serving five percent of the total U.S. population, the magazine also praises PG&E's aggressive support of innovative renewable energy companies.
"If only all utilities attacked greenhouse gases with this much . . . energy," it concludes.
Feb 17 2010
According to the Book of Genesis, God said "Let there be light," and there was light upon the Earth.
Feb 16 2010
A typical "D" battery stores enough energy to deliver five watts of power for one hour. Now imagine more than five million such batteries strung together, and you get a sense of the storage capabilities of an advanced sodium-sulfur battery that PG&E plans to install later this year on its grid to support customer needs. It will be the largest battery storage system in California.
I guess that's what they mean by the term "utility scale."
The goal of PG&E's battery storage project isn't to operate five million flashlights or clock radios, but to provide backup power to customers in case of a power failure, improve power quality by smoothing out small variations in voltage and frequency, and help manage the ebb and flow of intermittent wind and solar power so the utility can handle more renewable energy.
PG&E's planned battery installation, which just won funding support from the California Energy Commission, will have a projected life of 15 years. It will also support a 36-month demonstration project to study the value of storage in the utility's distribution system.
"Energy storage will become critical as we migrate to California's future 'smart grid' and integrate renewable energy sources, manage peak demand, and relieve transmission line congestion," said James Boyd, vice chair of the Energy Commission. A 2008 report by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers said "massive energy storage . . . is a key to making the use of renewable energy possible on a broad scale."
Besides the Energy Commission, PG&E's partners in the project include the Electric Power Research Institute, which will help design and analyze results of the pilot project; NGK Insulators Ltd., which makes the batteries and promotes their use in a wide range of utility applications; and S&C Electric, which is handling design engineering and construction services.
Sodium-sulfur batteries run too hot to use at home or in your car. But they store a great deal of energy in a small space and have a long life, making them ideal for utility installations. In the United States, such batteries have been tested or used by American Electric Power, Long Island Power Authority and Xcel Energy.
PG&E is still working on the details, but plans to install the 4 megawatt battery at a site in Silicon Valley, where it will be easily accessible for study and where customers will appreciate its impact on service reliability. The goal is to have it operational by the fourth quarter of 2010.
Batteries are only one form of storage open to utilities. PG&E has long operated a pumped hydro facility, which generates power during the day by running water from a mountain reservoir through a turbine, then pumps the water back up into the reservoir at night when demand falls and power is cheap. PG&E is considering adding more such storage to its system.
PG&E also won funding last fall from the Department of Energy to pursue a project that will store energy during off-peak hours in the form of compressed air held in porous rock formations underground. As the air is released, it can be used to help spin turbines that will generate electricity. The project will be well-suited to storing excess wind energy generated at night.
Feb 12 2010
Several stories on the science and politics of global warming caught our attention this week:
Recent polls show public support for global warming is declining but British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is denouncing warming deniers calling them “anti-science, flat-earth climate skeptics.” Brown will co-chair the United Nations High Level Advisory group on Climate Change Financing. The group aims to raise cash to halt deforestation, encourage low-carbon development and adapt to rising sea levels, extreme weather events and higher temperatures.
President Obama wants to develop a new government agency that would focus specifically on Climate Change. During his campaign, he promised the American people he would devote a good portion of his administration’s time to fighting global warming. Obama announced that in an effort to live up to that promise, he was ordering the creation of a new organization. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Service will actually be a branch of the existing NOAA but will have its own director and specific agenda.
For the next couple weeks, Olympic hopefuls will adorn their colors and put their boots into bindings in the mountains overlooking Vancouver. And they’ll be racing and jumping towards medals in mostly man-made snow. January of 2010 was the warmest January on record in Vancouver, with temperatures averaging 44.8 degrees. This is in stark contrast to recent snow storms on the east coast of the United States, which have fueled the fire for global warming skeptics. Scholars of climate science argue that neither example is proof of anything. Instead they would point to longer term trends showing a gradual warming of the whole earth over the last thirty years.
Feb 12 2010
Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attention this week:
Major league baseball spring training begins next week and the greening of the sport continues to show no letup. The Minnesota Twins are installing a giant underground storage tank the size of a freight car to harvest and recycle rainwater at their new ball park, Target Field. The Twins may save more than two million gallons of water a year. The Rain Water Recycle System will purify rainwater for human consumption as well as maintenance and irrigating the field. It was designed by Pentair, a company specializing in water systems and storage. The Twins also are seeking a LEED (Leadership in Engineering and Environmental Design) certification for the new park.
Eco-minded residents of Berkeley are recycling and composting so much that the city's refuse revenues are down by $4 million, the biggest factor in a $10 million city budget deficit. Residents are switching to smaller trash bins which carry a lower collection rate. People are buying less stuff so there's less packaging and cardboard waste, and a failed business means there's no trash to collect. "Not only does the amount of garbage change with the economy, but the very nature of garbage changes," says Robert Reed, spokesman for Recology Sunset Scavenger, San Francisco's garbage company.
Car sharing memberships in North America soared by 117 percent between 2007 and 2009, according to the Frost & Sullivan research firm, and total membership is projected at 4.4 million in North America and 5.5 million in Europe by 2016. The firm estimates that each vehicle in a car sharing fleet replaced 15 personally owned vehicles in 2009 and car sharing members drove 31 percent less than when they owned a personal vehicle. This means fewer cars on the road and a reduction of more than 482,000 tons of CO2 emissions. Meanwhile, car sharing firm Zipcar Inc. has pulled the 2010 Toyota Prius hybrids from its fleet (less than 1 percent) due to the recall for a potential brake problem. Zipcar also has removed 2009 and 2010 Toyota Matrix models in a previous safety recall.
Feb 11 2010
Yesterday we looked
at some of the simple--and for the most part, obvious--changes in driving habits and maintenance practices that can, at no cost, increase your vehicle mileage up to 15 percent, saving you money and sparing the environment.
It should be equally obvious that your choice of what car to drive--today, without waiting for the next generation of plug-in hybrids, fuel-cell vehicles or advanced diesels--can have an even bigger impact on your wallet and the environment.
That also happens to be a central finding of a recent Oxford University study titled "The Future of Mobility." Instead of waiting for manufacturers to perfect some brilliant new engine technology, it concludes, simply "downscaling . . . both size and weight" of conventional vehicles is the best way to reduce emissions in the near future.
Automakers already know how to do that--they did it during the energy crisis of the late 1970s. It just takes consumers to care enough about the environment (or their budget) to buy the smaller and lighter cars on the market.
Consumers are clearly of two minds. On Yahoo! Autos' list of most-searched-for cars in 2009, the Chevrolet Camaro ranks #1. The Ford Mustang, Jeep Wrangler and Dodge Charger and Challenger also made the top 10, showing that America's love affair with muscle cars lives on.
On the other hand, the Honda Civic, Mini Cooper and Smart for Two were in the top 5, so many people care about economy as well as a cleaner environment.
How much difference does your choice make? The 8-cylinder Camaro pumps out about 6.4 tons of CO2 for every 10,000 miles traveled, and will cost more than $1,500 for gasoline, according to the indispensible comparison web site, www.fueleconomy.gov.
Buying instead a peppy and trendy Mini Cooper will save you about $13K and about $400 in gasoline. It will also emit only 4.4 tons of CO2 each year, almost a third less than the Camaro.
Or you can save an additional $5,000 on the purchase price, and a couple hundred dollars on gas, by picking a Toyota Yaris, a no-frills car with what some reviewers call an "impressive safety package." It emits only 4 tons of CO2 per 10,000 miles. Added bonuses: it hasn't been recalled, and you probably won't be pulled over as often as the driver of a red Camaro.
Any one of these cars will reach the speed limit and get you to work and back. So why not save money and save the earth at the same time?
Feb 10 2010
Automakers the world over are spending billions of dollars on high-tech R&D to eke out a few percent gains in vehicle mileage. And before their efforts make any noticeable difference to the environment, consumers will have to shell out hundreds of billions of dollars on cleaner new vehicles over the course of many years.
Yet the same result could be achieved at no cost, with no new technology, almost overnight. Simply by changing their driving habits and properly maintaining their cars and trucks, vehicle operators can readily improve their mileage by up to 15 percent--saving themselves big money and sparing the environment.
The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, composed of 11 major global carmakers, is promoting an EcoDriving movement to make exactly that point. It hasn't garnered nearly enough publicity, though it has been endorsed by many of the nation's governors, including California's Arnold Schwarzenegger.
- If just half of all drivers nationwide practiced moderate levels of EcoDriving, annual carbon dioxide(CO2) emissions could be reduced by about 100 million tons, or the equivalent of heating and powering 8.5 million households.
- If all Americans practiced EcoDriving, it would be equal to 450 billion miles traveled on our roadways without generating any CO2 emissions. That’s 1,500 CO2-free miles for every man, woman and child in the United States each year.
Many EcoDriving techniques (also called hypermiling) are obvious, others less so. You already know you want to avoid fast starts and stops by paying close attention to road conditions ahead. You probably know that mileage plummets as you drive faster than 55 mph because of aerodynamic drag. You may not know, however, that driving with your windows open above 40 mph generally wastes more fuel than relying instead on your air conditioner for cooling.
That said, be sure to have your air conditioning checked to make sure it's operating at maximum efficiency. And heed Barack Obama's much-lampooned advice during the presidential campaign about the wisdom of checking tire pressure monthly. More than a billion gallons of fuel may be wasted annually because of underinflated tires, according to the Department of Energy.
Driver education is especially important for improving the performance of corporate fleets--which is why the Environmental Defense Fund has a major initiative to promote fuel-smart driving practices. In Europe, the RECODRIVE project is promoting fuel-efficient fleet practices across the continent, with significant results.
Best of all, better driving promotes safety as well as fuel efficiency. Carrier, a division of United Technologies Corp., reports that it slashed at-fault accidents resulting from rear-end collisions by 45 percent in one year while cutting fleet emissions by 30 percent, and saving $1 million a year in fuel costs.
Feb 09 2010
A belated kudos to a couple of PG&E employees--CEO Peter Darbee and Senior Director Andrew Tang--for making GreenTechMedia's list of 100 Movers and Shakers of the Smart Grid.
The list comprises people the clean-tech blog believes are "influencing this market on a daily basis, be it through innovating, regulating, evangelizing, planning, deploying, benchmarking, architecting, standardizing, investing, developing, etc."
The list spans the alphabet from Shai Agassi, founder of the electric vehicle charging company Better Place, to Liu Zhenya, president of State Grid Corporation of China.
Darbee previously made Earth2Tech's list of the "top 15 most influential people in the smart grid space," so he's used to this sort of honor. On GreenTechMedia's irreverant list, he's sandwiched between Desh Despande, chairman of battery maker A123 Systems, and Rodney Dangerfield, who unlike others on the list, never got much respect.
Tang, who heads PG&E's Smart Energy Web program, makes the list for his ubiquity and congeniality as well as his vision. His expertise is widely sought on issues like energy information devices, home area networks and electric vehicle charging.
"When we say that Mr. Tang is everywhere, what we really mean is that he gets around the smart grid industry circles," the blog explains. "He's a true visionary for the market, not to mention a very nice gent."
Feb 08 2010
Like Rodney Dangerfield, electric power plants that burn biomass don't get much respect in this age of high-tech solar and wind energy. But the conditional approval last week by the California Public Utilities Commission of a deal between PG&E and the owners of a small cogeneration plant near Bakersfield bodes well for the future contribution of biomass to a cleaner environment.
The Mt. Poso Cogeneration Company has operated a coal-fired cogeneration facility (combined power plant and industrial heat source) since 1989. Now it plans to convert the facility to burn agricultural and urban wood waste--everything from orchard prunings to clean demolition wood--to generate 44 megawatts of power, enough to meet the needs of about 47,000 average homes. Unless engineering or economic obstacles emerge, the plant should begin feeding biomass power into PG&E's grid by 2012.
The plant will divert woody biomass, which would have been burned in the open, to a combustion facility with modern emissions control equipment. And it will reduce carbon pollution by substituting biomass--which might otherwise have decayed, releasing greenhouse gases--in place of coal.
The retrofitting of old coal plants to run with at least some biomass won a ringing endorsement in a new study published by the Journal of Environmental Science and Technology. Substituting wood pellets for just 10 percent of the coal used in power plants in the United States and Canada would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 170 million metric tons each year, it concluded.
The idea is catching on. In December 2006, Public Service of New Hampshire began running a 50 MW former coal-fired plant entirely on wood chips. Portland General Electric is now seriously considering converting Oregon's only coal-fired plant to burning wood pellets. And several other cogeneration plants in PG&E's service area are considering similar conversions.
California likely could do even more. Currently, biomass accounts for only about two percent of the state's power (comparable to wind and small hydro). David Bischel, president of the California Forestry Association, has argued that dead trees, scrub brush and other wood waste are abundantly available as fuel for additional power generation.
Biomass generation isn't a cure-all, but it's an important part of the clean-energy solution, even for transportation. As noted previously in NEXT100, some scientists have determined that in most cases it's better for the environment to burn biomass to generate electricity for plug-in vehicles rather than converting it to biofuel to run in traditional engines.
Feb 05 2010
Several stories on the science and politics of global warming caught our attention this week:
A white roof may look like a painted masterpiece to those who want to reduce urban heat. The National Center for Atmospheric Research recently completed a study demonstrating that white roofs can be an effective method for cooling. The study’s simulations provide an idealized view of different types of cities around the world and indicate that, if every roof were entirely painted white, the urban heat island effect could be reduced by 33 percent.
According to a new report released by a leading Canadian environmental group, the city of Vancouver, which will host the 2010 Olympic Winter Games, would earn a bronze medal if fighting climate change were an Olympic sport. The report claims the event’s organizers have done a good job building energy efficient venues, but have fallen a tad short when it comes to offsetting carbon emissions surrounding the Winter Games. Environment is one of the three “official pillars” of the Olympic movement.
Just before athletes from around the world will have a chance to earn their gold, silver and bronze medals, athletes from Indianapolis and New Orleans will go after the Vince Lombardi trophy. And it is estimated that this year’s Super Bowl – which the NFL says is more environmentally responsible than in the past – will produce 310,000 pounds of carbon emissions. In addition, researchers claim the stadium in Miami will use 187,000 KW of electricity and the television sets of home viewers will consume roughly 10,004,603 KW of energy. And speaking of green, it is estimated that close to 54 million pounds of avocados will be consumed by guacamole loving fans.
Feb 05 2010
Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attentionthis week:
San Francisco startup and solar brokering firm One Block Off the Grid, or 1BOG, is applying a business model emphasizing social media such as Twitter and door-to-door pitches to match groups of homeowners seeking solar systems with local solar installers. 1BOG put in 550 solar systems in 2009, its first year, and is expanding into new markets in 2010. The solar customers get volume discounts and 1BOG gets referral fees from the installers. The company is introducing a program in New Jersey and planning moves into San Antonio and Honolulu. "We want 2010 to be the year where we bring solar to the masses," says Dave Llorens, co-founder and general manager.
Oil-dependent Hawaii aims to get 70 percent of its total energy needs from clean resources by 2030 -- 40 percent from renewable power generation and 30 percent from energy efficiency. The islands have abundant solar, wind, geothermal and wave resources. The state is considering projects such as a 30-mile undersea cable to link proposed wind farms on Lanai and Molokai to electric grids on Oahu and Maui. Hawaii's Gas Co. is using municipal solid waste and animal fat to make synthetic gas for its customers. "We're adopting policies and technologies here that can serve as a model for the rest of the globe," Jeff Mikulina, executive director of the Blue Planet Foundation, a Hawaii clean energy advocacy group, told the Los Angeles Times.
Last March, NEXT100 reported on a novel 60-foot catamaran made of used plastic bottles under construction in a shed on the San Francisco waterfront. The boat, named Plastiki, now is going through trials on San Francisco Bay before it hoists sails early in March to cross the Pacific to Australia. Plastiki's twin hulls are made of 12,500 plastic bottles filled with dry ice. David de Rothschild, project leader and scion of the Rothschild banking family, aims to draw attention to plastic waste winding up in landfills and in the oceans. He told the San Francisco Chronicle the way to get the recycling message across is a plastic sailing adventure -- a message in a bottle.Bon Voyage!
Feb 04 2010
Maybe it's just his optimistic personality, but Joel Makower, executive editor of GreenBiz.com, made a strong case today that the glass is at least half full for the green economy going into 2010, even in the face of one of the deepest recessions in memory.
Makower presented the highlights of his organization's third annual State of Green Business Report today at PG&E's Gold LEED-certified auditorium before an audience of about 400 people. The report identifies 10 major trends in green business and 20 key indicators of its health, such as green power use, toxic emissions and energy efficiency.
"Something remarkable happened in 2009," Makower told the audience of business executives and green activists. "Green business didn't go away--it even thrived. You not only kept your jobs but in many cases became more critical to your companies' mission."
Last year saw significant progress on six indicators tracked by the report, including the number of clean-energy patents (an all-time high), energy efficiency, the number of green IT products, the development of green office space, and declining use of paper and water.
Makower said he's heartened by the "race to the top" in several industries such as computing, where Energy Star and EPEAT-rated equipment is rapidly gaining ground, and package delivery, where the US Postal Service, UPS and Fed Ex are all making great strides in acquiring cleaner fleets.
On the other hand, setbacks last year included the slow rate of improvement in greenhouse emissions per unit of GDP, shrinkage of telecommuting and inadequate recycling of electronic equipment.
Of the major business trends discussed in the report, one of the most interesting is the concept of "radical transparency," which refers to the "virtuous circle that develops when detailed information about companies, products and ingredients is instantly available, enabling consumers to make smarter choices, thereby moving markets toward less-harmful products."
This transparency starts at the grass roots, where the "tweet and text generation," as the report calls them, exploit social media to spread word instantly about good and bad business practices. It is also driven by the many web sites, like HealthyStuff.org, that provide sustainability information on a host of consumer products.
And, at the corporate level, it is being driven by ratings from groups like the Carbon Disclosure Project, Climate Counts and Dow Jones, with its Sustainability World Index. More and more corporations, including PG&E, are working with investor outfits like Ceres to produce annual corporate responsibility reports that detail impacts of their businesses on the environment, communities and employees.
Once transparency and disclosure start taking hold, they spread powerfully by example, and may eventually become required. A striking example was the ruling last month by the Securities and Exchange Commission that public companies must warn investors of significant risks that global warming might pose to their businesses.
Someday soon we'll all wonder why that decision was ever controversial. In the meantime, companies will either have to clean up their act, or informed investors will jump ship. That's the power of transparency.
Feb 03 2010
One of the biggest stories to come out of this week's announcement of the Department of Energy's new budget was its support for nuclear power plant--including $36 billion in new loan guarantees.
But one of the most overlooked stories was DOE's proposed support for small modular reactors in the $195 million "Reactor Concepts Research, Development and Demonstration" program. According to The Energy Daily, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu "appears to have won a tussle with the White House Office of Management and Budget," which "last year had sought to bar DOE work in that area."
In December, a senior DOE official told a Senate committee that small nuclear reactors--typically a tenth the size of most commercial reactors operating today--may prove more cost-effective for many applications and pose fewer proliferation risks. Their modular designs may be suitable for mass production, lowering costs and improving reliability. Some are even designed to be installed underground, reducing the threat of terrorist attack.
A fierce race to develop small commercial reactors is underway globally."Technical and manufacturing innovations make [small reactors] a potential game-changer for the global clean energy market," said Christofer Mowry, president and CEO of Babcock & Wilcox Modular Nuclear Energy, which is developing a 125 MW reactor of its own.
Like their big brethran, most small reactors under development today create heat through uranium fission, which is used to create steam that drives a turbine to generate electricity.
But because of their small size, they should be easier to manufacture and more suitable for remote locations or industrial uses. Many designers claim they are inherently safe as well, incapable of runaway chain reactions and melt-downs. And many proponents project that they could generate clean power for as little as 6 to 9 cents per kilowatt hour, a fraction of the cost of solar power.
One of the centers of research on small reactors is Sandia National Laboratory. Its proposed design will generate between 100 MW and 300 MW of power, and has a relatively simple cooling system based on liquid sodium. It should operate for several decades without refueling, and cost only $250 million per unit.
Meanwhile, design concepts developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory are being commercialized by Santa Fe-based Hyperion Power Generation, Inc. In November, it unveiled its design for a power module, or "fission battery," that generates 25 MW of power, enough to serve about 20,000 typical homes. Hyperion calls it a "safe, self-contained, simple-to-operate" design that is "small enough to be manufactured en masse and transported in its entirety via ship, truck, or rail."
Corvallis-based NuScale Power, commercializing DOE-funded research at Oregon State University, also says it has developed a small nuclear power system that is "safe, modular and scalable." Its 45 MW water-cooled reactors could be combined in clusters to produce as much power as a conventional reactor but with much less construction time. The company hopes to submit a design to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for certification this year. The company is backed by CMEA Ventures, based in San Francisco.
Feb 02 2010
The space race is back. But this time, instead of landing a man on the moon, the goal is to unlock the commercial potential of clean and virtually limitless solar power from space.
Southern California-based Solaren Corporation is working on it for PG&E. Mitsubishi and more than a dozen other Japanese companies are working on it for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). Now Europe's number one space company, EADS Astrium, says it, too, has begun developing key components to beam power collected by orbiting solar panels back to Earth, where it can be delivered to the electric grid.
While Solaren and JAXA envision beaming power via radio waves, Astrium is working instead on high-powered infrared lasers to carry the energy. It is also collaborating with scientists at the University of Surrey to develop devices that convert infrared energy to electricity. Their chief technology officer says a space mission to demonstrate the technology should be feasible within five years, according to Aviation Week and Space Technology.
Ralph Nansen, former program manager for solar power satellites at Boeing, president of Solar Space Industries and author of the new book Energy Crisis: Solution from Space, told me that infrared laser solutions appeal mainly to the military, because their tightly focused beams could in theory supply power to remote battlefield locations.
Unlike radio waves, however, high-power lasers raise both safety and political concerns, and they don't penetrate thick clouds. One of the great appeals of space solar power carried by radio waves is its ability to deliver energy around the clock and under nearly all weather conditions, unlike terrestrial solar.
As Nansen points out, however, "The whole key to the thing is developing a
Nansen said the United States lags in the development of space solar power, despite many years of studying its potential, because NASA says it's an energy program, and the Department of Energy says it's a space program. So unless private U.S. companies can deliver, expect Japan, Europe or even Russia to take the lead.
Nansen, like a growing number of experts believes space must become the next great source of clean energy here on Earth. Agree or not, you can believe him when he says, "I’ve worked on this long enough to know it’s not easy."
Feb 01 2010
Since the Obama administration didn't succeed at first, it's try, try, trying again this year to convince Congress to phase out fossil fuel subsidies to help fight global warming.
The administration's new budget proposes ending $36.5 billion in subsidies--mostly various kinds of tax credits--for oil and gas production over the next decade in order to "foster the clean energy economy of the future and reduce our reliance on fossil fuels that contribute to climate change."
And lest we forget, fewer subsidies will mean less budgetary red ink as well.
Obama is following through on a promise he made last year at the G20 economic summit in Pittsburgh "to phase out fossil fuel subsidies so that we can better address our climate challenge."
While the prospect of putting a price on carbon emissions is still controversial, calls to withdraw taxpayer subsidies from polluting sources of energy should be much easier to swallow. For years, economists of many stripes have suggested that it makes little sense to subsidize production of fossil fuels--mature and highly profitable forms of energy whose price generally does not reflect the harm they cause to human health and the environment.
Industry associations, on the other hand, argue that federal "incentives" for fossil-fuel production are merited in order to promote domestic energy security and to create jobs.
Last fall, The Environmental Law Institute, in partnership with the prestigious Woodrow Wilson International Center, published an analysis claiming that fossil fuels received a vastly disproportionate share of the $100 billion in federal subsidies for energy from 2002-2008.
Traditional oil, gas and coal interests received a bit more than $70 billion in tax breaks and direct subsidies, according to the study. Corn ethanol, a controversial fuel additive, received just shy of $17 billion. Traditional renewables received only $12 billion.
Those estimates, predictably, have fueled a lively academic debate. In the long run, however, the accuracy of specific estimates doesn't matter most. What counts more is whether Congress is willing to pay the political cost of upsetting traditional interests in order to fight global warming by tilting the energy market in a greener direction.
