Entries by Jonathan Marshall
Mar 18 2010
When, more than two years ago, Oakland-based BrightSource Energy first submitted plans for some huge solar power projects that would help
The company has its solar thermal “power tower” technology in hand, with a demonstration project up and running in
It has generous financing from investors like Chevron, and Google.org., as well as nearly $1.4 billion on loan guarantees from the U.S. Department of Energy.
And it has commitments from one of the world’s leading engineering and construction companies, Bechtel, to build its first major facility, the Ivanpah Solar Electricity Generating System in the
But for the last two and a half years, BrightSource has been unable to get regulators to approve its Ivanpah plant, despite downsizing the plans from an initial 440 MW to 392 MW to minimize its local impact on desert tortoises and various plant species.
That may finally change, with a recommendation this week by the staff of the California Energy Commission to move ahead with the project.
The staff wisely balanced the inevitable local impact any project would have against the clear gains for the global environment from cleaner energy.
“[I]t will provide critical environmental benefits by helping the state reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, and these positive attributes must be weighed against the project’s adverse impacts,” Terry O’Brien, deputy director at the CEC, wrote in a memorandum on March 16. “It is because of these benefits and the concerns regarding the adverse impacts that global warming will have upon the state and our environment, including desert ecosystems, that staff believes it would be appropriate for the commission to approve the project . . .”
Many environmental groups still oppose the project in its current location, despite its proximity to a golf course, Interstate 15, casinos and existing power transmission lines. BrightSource reportedly plans to pay $25 million to buy land to relocate 25 desert tortoises that could be displaced by its project. Its project still faces further reviews by the Bureau of Land Management.
Mar 16 2010
In the 1974 TV show “The FBI versus Alvin Karpis, Public Enemy Number One,” the bank robber and kidnapper, known as “Creepy Karpis,” tells his sidekick, “I’m sick and tired of everybody goin’ green . . .”
Karpis, who held the record for longest attendance as a non-paying guest at
"There are about 1 million visitors to
Actually, it will be a showcase in concept only—and a good thing, too. In order to preserve the historic nature of the site, most of the panels will be carefully hidden from view by walls around the prison roof.
Thanks to smart contracting, the park service managed to stretch its original budget from last year, freeing up $129 million for new projects, of which the
Another of those new projects will be seven new solar installations at Point Reyes National Seashore to complement six existing photovoltaic systems at the park. Together they will “reduce its total annual electrical consumption from fossil fuels by more than 45 percent,” the facility estimates, “moving the park closer to Pacific West Region’s vision of carbon neutrality by 2016, the year the National Park Service celebrates its centennial.”
Mar 15 2010
With all the attention paid to carbon pollution and global warming these days, it’s easy to forget the importance of traditional air pollutants like ozone smog, lead and fine particulates. They don’t threaten to disrupt ecosystems worldwide, but they still cause sickness and even death, as well as billions of dollars in damage to crops and structures.
While carbon pollution continues its inexorable rise, regulation of other air pollutants is a major, and sometimes unheralded, success story.
A new EPA report, “Our Nation’s Air: Status and Trends Through 2008,” shows marked and sometimes dramatic improvements in nationwide air quality, thanks to laws that require cleaner cars, industries and consumer products.
Compared to 1990, air pollution in 2008 was lower in six major categories:
- Ozone (ground level): down 14 percent
- Particulates (<10 microns): down 31 percent
- Lead: down 78 percent.
- Nitrogen oxide: down 35 percent
- Carbon monoxide: down 68 percent.
- Sulfur dioxide: down 59 percent.
The decline in sulfur dioxide emissions, driven in part by the acid rain program and controls on coal-burning utilities, has improved water quality in lakes and streams and improved visibility in many scenic areas by reducing haze.
In addition, total emissions of toxic air pollutants such as benzene, xylenes and tuluene, some of which are suspected carcinogens, have fallen some 40 percent since 1990, thanks to controls on chemical plants, dry cleaners, incinerators and other sources.
There’s still plenty of room for improvement. In 2008, more than 119 million people lived in counties where ozone levels exceeded national standards, exposing their lungs and throats to irritation and inflammation. Nearly 37 million lived in areas that exceeded national standards for fine particulates, which can lodge in the lungs or bloodstream and kill people prematurely.
The EPA report also notes that annual
In 2007, the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that “future climate change may cause significant air quality degradation by changing the dispersion rate of pollutants; the chemical environment for ozone and particle pollution generation; and the strength of emissions from the biosphere, fires, and dust.”
Bottom line: Our nation’s success in reducing local air pollutants shows that intelligent and determined regulation can work. Now’s the time to adopt equally intelligent and determined regulations to control greenhouse gas pollutants.
Mar 11 2010
LNG in
Yes. You won’t see any drilling rigs out in the pastures, but at Altamont Landfill, whopping amounts of methane gas are belched out by bacteria that break down organic waste. Instead of venting into the atmosphere, however, the gas is now captured by dozens of black suction tubes spread across the facility.
Last November, Houston-based Waste Management Inc., which runs the 240-acre landfill, and Linde North America, a major engineering company, announced they had started production at the world’s largest facility to convert landfill gas to LNG.
In full production, the plant can produce up to 13,000 gallons of the super-cold methane each day. The liquid fuels 300 clean-air vehicles in Waste Management’s hauling and recyling fleet and will reduce CO2 emissions by nearly 30,000 tons a year.
The use of LNG cuts carbon emissions 85 percent compared to gasoline or diesel fuel, according to Waste Management. The company has nearly 500 vehicles powered by LNG or compressed natural gas in about 20
(PG&E also runs some of its heavy trucks on LNG, which fuel up at the
“It’s taking material that would otherwise go into the atmosphere and be a contributor to global warming and turning it into a useful product that is cutting emissions,” said Mary Nichols, chair of the California Air Resources Board. “This is exactly the kind of win-win situation we are looking for in trying to transform our whole energy economy away from having to extract, process, and import fuels from other parts of the world.”
Waste Management is aggressively mining its landfills for more green energy. The company runs 115 gas-to-energy facilities at its landfills and 16 solid waste-to-energy combustion generators. In all, they produce enough power for 700,000 homes.
The company’s newest investment horizon is waste-to-biofuels production, including investments in Enerkem to make ethanol and a partnership with Terrabon and Valero Energy to make “green gasoline.”
EPA recently reported that 519 landfill gas-to-energy projects were operating across the country last year, up more than 25 percent since 2005. NEXT100 profiled one such project in Half Moon Bay in December.
Converting waste methane gas to biofuel isn’t just good business. It’s especially good for the environment since methane that escapes into the atmosphere is a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide. If Congress ever gets around to putting a price on carbon emissions, we’ll surely see many more companies drilling for landfill gas.
Mar 10 2010
Menlo Park city officials were impressed last month when they learned from PG&E that switching nearly 500 street lights to light-emitting diodes (LEDs) could save $28,000 a year in energy bills and maintenance costs.
And across the Bay in Walnut Creek, the city slashed its energy use for 126 streetlights by more than half when it recently converted to bright LED lights. To sweeten the deal, PG&E provided the city a rebate of $17,950 to install the energy-efficient lights. Danville earned rebates as well for converting 262 of its streetlights to LEDs.
All three cities will be glad to know that experts agree they made a smart choice. Engineers at the University of Pittsburgh recently assessed four different streetlight technologies and concluded that LEDs "strike the best balance between brightness, affordability, and energy and environmental conservation when their life span--from production to disposal--is considered."
The study was commissioned by the City of Pittsburgh, which is considering replacing 40,000 of its streetlights with LEDs. The city estimates that such an investment could save $1 million annually in energy costs, $700,000 in maintenance and 6,800 tons of carbon emissions.
In addition to thrifty energy consumption, LEDs last three to five times longer than standard high-pressure sodium and metal halide lamps. And unlike its competitors, LEDs contain no mercury and fewer other toxins.
Check out PG&E's web pages for more on the utility's streetlight program and incentives.
Mar 09 2010
Americans spent more than $1.2 trillion dollars on insurance premiums in 2008, or about $4,000 for every man, woman and child. Evidently, they understood that it pays to hedge your bets against small but real chances of catastrophic losses.
But when it comes to climate change, deniers cite scientific uncertainty as an excuse to do nothing. They say we can’t be certain that global warming will cause rising oceans to drown coastal communities, droughts to wither crops, new diseases to cause epidemics and fires to consume our forests—so why bother to act?
They have it exactly backwards.
Although climate scientists concede they can't say for sure how bad things will get if humanity keeps emitting greenhouses gases into the atmosphere, that's not cause for comfort. On the contrary, their uncertainty means life could easily become a lot worse for homo sapiens and other species than we’ve been led to believe.
As Harvard's Martin Weitzman noted in a recent paper, "We seem headed for a unique planetary experiment of subjecting the Earth's system to an unprecedented shock by geologically instantaneously jolting atmospheric stocks of (greenhouse gases) far above their highest level over the last several million years. We simply do not know what will happen under such extreme circumstances."
No less an authority than Dr. Robert Watson, chair of the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change from 1997 to 2002, recently conceded that the IPCC’s last major report in 2007, which sounded a strong alarm over global warming, was in many cases too conservative, leading him to warn that the world could face "unthinkable impacts."
For example, the IPCC's projections of sea level rise did not take into account the melting of Greeland’s ice sheet, which is taking place much faster than previously believed. This December, scientists writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences forecast an increase in global sea levels of five feet by 2100 if greenhouse emissions are not strongly curbed, a finding supported by many other recent studies.
"The ramifications of a major sea level rise are massive," write ocean scientists Rob Young at Western Carolina University and Orrin Pilkey at Duke University:
Agriculture will be disrupted, water supplies will be salinized, storms and flood waters will reach ever further inland, and millions of environmental refugees will be created. . . .
What terrifies these and other scientists is the possibility that ice caps on Greenland and Antarctica will melt much faster even than current models predict. Indeed, the last time CO2 levels were as high in the Earth's atmosphere, about 15 million years ago, seas were 75 to 120 feet higher.
Ice cap melting is just one of nine potential "tipping elements" that scientists say could lead to abrupt and disastrous shifts in climate. Others include massive die-off of the Amazon rainforest, disruption of the monsoon system, and wholesale changes in Atlantic and Pacific ocean currents.
One of the biggest longterm "tipping" risks is that global warming will unlock vast amounts of carbon and methane currently frozen in Arctic permafrost. Methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times as potent as carbon dioxide, could accelerate the warming process with dire consequences. British and German researchers reported last August evidence that warming Arctic waters were melting methane hydrates stored in seabed sediments. High rates of Arctic methane seepage were reported this January by a researcher at the University of Alaska, and confirmed in a new paper published in the journal Science.
(If you want to get really masochistic, check out the 2003 paper in Geology, "Methane-Driven Oceanic Eruptions and Mass Extinctions," which makes the case that the worst mass extinction of all time, some 251 million years ago, was caused by an explosive upwelling of methane from the ocean, which may have unleashed 10,000 times as much energy as the world's entire stockpile of nuclear weapons.)
If the worst of these climate feedback loops prove real, average temperatures over the United States could jump an unimaginable 15°F to 18°F in 50 years, according to recent projections by the prestigious Met Office Hadley Centre in the UK. And a study led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration last year suggests that the catastrophic consequences would be "largely irreversible for 1,000 years."
So the question isn't whether we should buy insurance against climate change, or even whether we can afford to pay a little more for energy in order to phase out fossil fuels. The real question is, what are we waiting for?
Mar 08 2010
If my math is correct, today marks the 100th celebration of International Women’s Day, a tradition first proposed by Clara Zetkin, leader of the “women’s office” in the German Social Democrat Party.
The theme this year is “equal rights, equal opportunities: progress for all.” While that’s entirely worthy, the United Nations, which began officially recognizing the day in 1975, ought to consider putting the focus on “women and energy” sometime before the next 100 years are up.
The United Nations Development Programme notes that two billion people around the world still live “off the grid,” depending on fuels such as wood and dung for heating, cooking and other basic household needs. In most societies, it falls mainly to women to collect and then use these fuels—dangerous, unhealthy and time-consuming activities that sap the ability of women to improve their education or earn a living.
Access to more efficient, cleaner, environmentally sustainable and reliable energy services is mandatory and needs to be addressed as part of the energy sector development plans in order to improve women’s status, provide them with more opportunities for income-generating work, and also improve their general health and living conditions as more effective members of their communities.
Energy, therefore, can be a key input and entry point toward achieving the third Millennium Development Goal: promote gender equality and empower women.
As previously discussed in NEXT100, a project in West Africa to introduce solar-powered irrigation allowed households to dramatically increase food yields, improving diets and netting $7 to $8 from surplus crop sales each week. The investment was a huge boon to women, who traditionally tend the gardens, by cutting the time they spend watering by 50 percent and freeing them up to earn additional money.
But just as clean energy can open doors for women, so women are essential to opening doors for new energy technology in many societies, noted Elizabeth Cecelski in a key report for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in 2000. If women’s needs are ignored or misunderstood, they may resist new technology that reduces drudgery in one target sector only to increase their required labor in another. As Cecelski noted,
Renewable energy manufacturers that do not pay attention to women's needs will be missing a huge potential market. Energy policymakers who ignore womens needs will be failing to make use of a powerful force for renewable energy development. Energy researchers who leave women out of energy research and analysis will be failing to understand a large part of energy consumption and production.
And let's not forget the role of women in developed societies, where the problem isn't so often access to energy as using too much of it. A national survey of women and energy last year, commissioned by Women Impacting Public Policy and the Women's Council on Energy and the Environment found that 77 percent of women say they have equal or primary responsibility for paying electricity bills, and 91 percent say they have equal or primary responsibility for using less electricity at home. By a two-to-one margin, the women surveyed cited moving toward cleaner energy sources as a more important energy goal than reliability or keeping costs low.
Sounds to me like women could become a key force in helping our own country transition to a clean energy future. That would be something to celebrate soon on International Women's Day.
Mar 04 2010
Americans love a good competitive challenge, from the Olympcs and Survivor on down to kiddie soccer games. So what better way to promote energy efficiency than to turn it into a contest?
The EPA’s Energy Star program has been doing just that since 2008, promoting fun but fierce competition among building owners for recognition as the top energy saver in their city.
The San Francisco Earth Hour 24x7 Energy Challenge, co-sponsored by PG&E, promises to “identify—and shower kudos upon—the most energy efficient buildings in the city, as well as the properties that make the greatest gains in performance” over the period March 2008 to February 2010. (Contestants are using PG&E’s automated benchmarking service to track their monthy energy use data.) The Kilowatt Cup for “superior achievement in energy management” is scheduled to be awarded this April.
Such contests are being held around the country by EPA in partnership with the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA), nonprofit organizations and utilities like PG&E.
And for good reason: building energy use is low-hanging fruit in the fight against climate change.
“Roughly 40 percent of all humanity's greenhouse gas emissions from energy come from the building sector," said Evan Mills of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "I would rank it one of the very first, if not the first thing to do."
In
The
In 2008, 150 school buildings entered
And not to be outdone,
Mar 03 2010
One of my colleagues – a guy -- the other day suggested that I write up the new
Something about the overly aggressive look of the car, and the even more aggressive price tag it’s likely to carry, put me off. Automakers are falling all over themselves to make ridiculous looking electrified sports cars--like this, this, and this--that only moguls can afford.
But now that I’ve seen
Apparently, this video can turn grown men into jello. Here’s what green car expert Nick Chambers had to say:
What is Porsche doing to me? I had just gotten over my teenage-like, eco-speed-lust with the 918 Spyder hybrid from yesterday’s announcement, and now Porsche has to go and release a video showing it actually driving? It’s not right. A man can only take so much.
Mar 03 2010
This article was adapted from a story by James Park in PG&E's communications department.
What're you going to do when your new high-tech electric vehicle goes on the blink? For PG&E, which is adding several hundred new hybrid and electric vehicles to its fleet, calling the Tappet brothers at Car Talk is not an option.
Instead, PG&E has gone into partnership with several community colleges to teach the utility's fleet mechanics how to safely repair and maintain the new trucks and cars. Starting this month, about 175 fleet mechanics will be trained on safety, diagnostics and routine maintenance for the new vehicles. Classes will be taught over the course of three days by 14 instructors from local community colleges.
PG&E is adding about 250 Chevrolet Silverado light-duty trucks and Ford Escape hybrid passenger vehicles to its fleet along with some 50 electric and hybrid passenger vans and heavy-duty trucks manufactured by Altec, Eaton and Peterbilt.
"The hybrid vehicles are entirely new technology platforms," said Mac Fernandez, PG&E master mechanic. "For example, there’s no such thing as doing just a simple brake job on these cars because they use regenerative braking technology."
Fleet mechanics will be taught about the unique aspects of the vehicles, including appropriate diagnostic technology and special safety procedures associated with using electric hybrid battery packs, which have voltages as high as 800 volts.
Citing PG&E's national leadership in alternate fuel technologies, Dave Meisel, PG&E's director of Transportation Services, said "this program will provide a mechanism to ensure that our professional technicians and our customers alike will have access to some of the most sophisticated technical training on some of the most technologically advanced vehicles in the world today. The clean vehicle training program will allow PG&E and its transportation team to maintain its commitment to environmental leadership, employee development and community involvement."
The partnership between PG&E and the community colleges is called the PowerPathway™ Clean Tech Vehicle Training Program. It's part of a broader skills development program aimed at creating a trained workforce for PG&E and the utility industry in California under the PowerPathway™ umbrella.
The partnership with community college instructors will also help take curriculum knowledge back to California communities. Instructors will use techniques gained from teaching the utility's fleet mechanics with their own students at local community colleges, developing technical skills and creating career paths.
Mar 02 2010
When it comes to corporate responsibility, the third time's a charm.
For the third time in three years, PG&E was named to Corporate Responsibility Magazine's annual list of 100 Best Corporate Citizens, chosen from among the Russell 1,000 largest companies based on performance on the environment, climate change, human rights, philanthropy, employee relations, financial performance and governance.
This year, PG&E was the top-ranked utility at number 25, improved from last year's ranking at 28th. And that was against tougher competition: the average composite score of the top 100 companies rose 19 percent, according to the magazine.
“The higher scores reveal a quantum leap in performance, which we attribute to the competitive dynamic of firms who understand the importance of stakeholder support from investors, customers, employees, regulators, and suppliers,” said Corporate Responsibility Magazine editor Dirk Olin.
Earning a spot on the list reflects PG&E’s long-standing commitment to corporate responsibility, including its efforts to deliver some of the nation’s cleanest electric power and its groundbreaking programs to help customers use energy more efficiently. The ranking also recognizes the many ways in which PG&E is giving back to local communities, respecting and celebrating diversity and contributing to the quality of life in the areas where its employees live and work.
Further evidence that PG&E is on to something came last month when RiskMetrics Group named PG&E to its sixth annual Global ESG 100 list of top-rated companies worldwide. The companies were selected based on their "effective management" of environmental, social and governance issues. The list was previously managed by Innovest Strategic Value Advisors, which RiskMetrics purchased in 2009.
As previously noted in NEXT100, Corporate Knights magazine recently ranked PG&E number two on its Global 100 list of sustainable large companies, behind only GE.
One of the great contributions of organizations that monitor corporate responsibility and sustainability is educating investors that doing good is often a precondition for doing well. In today's interdependent world, handling environmental and social issues to the satisfaction of customers, regulators and other stakeholders is a sign of attentive management. Corporate Responsibility points out that longstanding members of its 100 Best list outperformed other companies on the Russell 1000 by 26 percent over three years. And RiskMetrics notes that since its list was created in 2005, "the Global ESG 100 has outperformed the benchmark FTSE All World Developed (AWD) Index by 116 basis points per annum, as of the end of 2009."
Mar 01 2010
Suppose that for every dollar you invested in the stock market, you could reap an average return of $1.40. Most likely you'd be thrilled--especially after the last decade of losses in the S&P 500.
Yet few business magazines bothered to note the California Public Utilities Commission's estimate last summer that every dollar invested by utilities to promote energy efficiency should save customers at least $1.40--a 40 percent return on investment over just a few years.
Last year, McKinsey & Co. reported even more strikingly that economy-wide improvements in energy efficiency could save the United States $1.2 trillion--more than a thousand billion dollars--for an investment of less than half that sum. "The reduction in energy use would also result in the abatement of 1.1 gigatons of greenhouse gas emissions annually – the equivalent of taking the entire
PG&E and other major California utilities have been investing in energy efficiency programs since the mid-1970s. PG&E's programs alone have saved customers more than $24 billion. Now their counterparts nationwide are getting the message, according to a new report from the non-profit Consortium for Energy Efficiency (CEE).
CEE says that U.S. gas and electric utilities spent $5.3 billion last year on efficiency programs, double the amount in 2006. And the number of states with energy efficiency programs jumped from 37 in 2008 to 46 last year.
CEE member utilities reported combined savings on electricity and natural gas of $8.6 billion in 2008. The savings prevented emissions of more than 55 million tonnes of CO2, equal to the output of about 12 coal-fired power plants.
Last fall, the CPUC approved a budget of $3 billion over three years for energy efficiency programs by PG&E, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric. The utilities will promote more efficient lighting, air conditioning, consumer electronics and building materials, among other things. Those programs should save the state the cost of building 1,500 megawatts of new generation--and all the carbon pollution that would go with it.
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 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 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 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.
Jan 29 2010
Everyone knows that "sustainable" is good, but what exactly is it? Corporate Knights, a Canadian-based magazine for "clean capitalism," has come up with a comprehensive definition--and it announced yesterday that Pacific Gas and Electric Company ranks second on its Global 100 list of sustainable large companies, right behind GE.
Working with three strategic partners--Inflection Point Capital Management, Legg Mason's Global Currents Investment Management and Phoenix Global Advisors LLC--Corporate Knights came up with what they call the "international gold standard" for sutainability indexes. It summarizes 11 separate measures, including energy productivity (sales divided by energy consumption), water productivity, leadership diversity, R&D intensity and transparency.
Announcing the magazine's findings at Davos World Economic Forum, editor-in-chief Toby Heaps said that to be considered sustainable, companies must "squeeze four times more wealth out of every resource they use."
Heaps explained the significance of the new global ranking: “By using clear metrics to show investors which companies stand out from their peers, we hope to create a virtuous cycle where the most sustainable companies attract the most capital and earn the best returns.”
Although U.S. companies lead the list, they comprise only 12 of the 100. The United Kingdom dominated with 24; Canada and Australia took the bronze medal with 9 each.
Jan 29 2010
PG&E has become the first utility to join the American Wind Wildlife Institute (AWWI), a national organization committed to peaceful coexistence between wind energy and wildlife.
The organization was founded in late 2008 by 20 environmental groups, state wildlife agencies and wind energy companies to focus their collective expertise on protecting wildlife through research, mapping, mitigation and public education on best practices in wind farm siting and habitat protection.
Members include Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, BP Wind Energy, Clipper Windpower Inc., Environmental Defense Fund, GE Energy, Horizon Wind Energy, Iberdrola Renewables, National Audubon Society, Natural Resources Defense Council, and others--but until now, no electric utilities.
PG&E's decision to become a member reflects the utility's longstanding use of wind power--dating back at least to the 1980s. Wind power is sure to represent a growing share of the utility's generation as PG&E continues taking aggressive steps to add to its portfolio of clean energy.
In addition, PG&E announced last month plans to buy and operate a major wind production facility in Kern County. The proposed Manzana Wind Project, if approved and built, would provide enough energy to meet the needs of about 100,000 average homes. The project will undergo careful environmental reviews that consider, among other things, its potential impact on birds and other wildlife.
PG&E's membership in AWWI also reflects the utility's heightened interest in environmental stewardship. Two decades ago, PG&E became a founding member of the Avian Power Line Interaction Committee with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The utility's Avian Protection Plan, which includes retrofitting thousands of power poles to make them safer for birds, is considered a national model.
Some studies suggest that wind farms cause a tiny percentage of bird deaths compared to vehicles, buildings, and even communications towers. But concerns over the high rate of bird kills in Altamont Pass and bat deaths in East Coast wind plants have prompted the wind industry and its allies to fund significant research on the siting and operation of turbines to minimize risks to wildlife. AWWI's exclusive attention to that issue should help advance this collaborative effort as the wind industry ramps up its installations.
AWWI Vice President Stu Webster said the organization is still in the "nurturing stages." Its early focus is on efforts to map wind and wildlife resources so developers can make more informed siting and mitigation decisions.
One of its biggest and most important initiatives will be to find ways to share proprietary data across the industry to help stakeholders better assess wildlife issues. "The legal and competitive issues need to be harmonized with the need for data to improve our scientific understanding," Webster said. "NGOs, academia, government agencies and industry all want this. It's critically necessary to answer the questions that have been raised."
Jan 27 2010
The U.S. wind industry hurtled forward at gail force last year, flying in the face of of the nation's deep recession. But California, once the leader in wind energy, seemed caught in the doldrums.
The American Wind Energy Association reported yesterday that the U.S. wind industry "broke all previous records by installing nearly 10,000 megawatts (MW) of new generating capacity in 2009," thanks in part to stimulus from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. In fact, wind was on par last year with natural gas as a source of new generation--a major feat for the renewable power industry.
But little of that growth took place in California. The Golden State added only 277 MW of wind capacity, compared to 2,292 MW in Texas and 879 MW in Iowa. California still ranks third in wind power, but its growth of just over 10 percent last year was dwarfed by national growth of 39 percent.
I'm not the only one who was struck by our state's sluggish performance. Bill Opalka, editor of Renewablesbiz.com, commented,
It's hard to miss that the former leader, California, the place that kept wind on the map for 20 years, is falling further and further behind. . . . If the state with the most aggressive mandates in the country has trouble matching sparsely populated states - and those happen to be ones without mandates - what chance does California have it making its deadlines? A question worth asking, even if it's one beyond the scope of a report like this one.
I asked Nancy Rader, executive director of the California Wind Energy Association (CalWEA), for some perspective on the industry's difficulties in our fair state. She noted that it was inevitable that other states, many of which have superior wind resources, would begin catching up to California.
Nonetheless, some of our wounds are self-inflicted. "It is very hard to build in California because we are waiting for transmission development and it takes years to slog through the permitting process, whether you are on private or federal land," Rader said.
Partly as a result, Rader said, demand for wind energy in California is spawning development in surrounding states like Oregon and Washington.
The good news is that a new Tehachapi transmission line being built in Southern California should enable a host of new wind projects by 2013--including one announced by PG&E.
"Hopefully within five years we will see California wind capacity more than double because of the Tehachapi transmission line," Rader said.
Jan 26 2010
Clean energy enjoys huge political support. Climate change legislation, by contrast, is on life support. What critics don't realize is that putting a price on carbon emissions is the surest way to drive investment in energy efficiency, renewable energy, smart grids and other clean tech innovations.
Concerned by fierce opposition to climate legislation from vocal critics, some members of Congress have called for sidelining the climate bill and focusing only on a new energy bill to promote "innovation and new technology."
That would make every politician's life easier. But as Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., has noted, innovation doesn't come from thin air--it needs the right market environment:
If you separate climate from energy reform, you slow your ability to create those clean jobs because every market expert tells you those energy reforms can't take hold unless you price carbon. Unless you do something comprehensive you're just going a more expensive, less effective route and you'll keep trailing other countries.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., gets it as well. As he told a recent gathering of the geothermal industry, "Most importantly, Congress needs to send the market a clear signal on the costs of global warming pollution to drive far greater investments into geothermal and every other form of renewable energy and energy efficiency."
Businesses have been saying the same message, loud and clear. In a recent ad signed by dozens of major companies, including PG&E, corporate leaders warned that "today's uncertainty surrounding energy and climate regulation is hindering the large-scale actions that American businesses are poised to make. We need strong policies and clear market signals that support the transition to a low-carbon economy and reward companies that innovate."
The same logic has also motivated major automakers to call for higher gas taxes, so consumers will buy smaller, more fuel-efficient cars, including hybrids.
Let's face facts. It will be many years, if ever, before renewable energy and clean nuclear power are as cheap as coal-fired power. Not until the price of coal reflects the environmental damage it inflicts will alternatives stand on their feet without massive government subsidies. That's why legislation to stabilize the Earth's climate is so critical to creating the right climate for new investments in clean energy.
Jan 25 2010
Here at PG&E, we (like most Californians) have a love-hate attitude toward the rain. Like bitter medicine, it's not enjoyable in the moment, but deep down we know it's good for us.
Wind-driven precipitation knocks trees into our power lines, topples power poles and floods our facilities, creating outages and public safety risks. In fact, last week's storms impacted service to 1.5 million customers and damaged more than 500 poles, 250 miles of electrical lines and 800 transformers.
About the only good thing we can say during a storm is it brings out the best in our heroic repair crews and our customers, who (mostly) suffer service disruptions with patience and understanding.
But come spring and summer, if we haven't had enough rain, we at PG&E start to miss the clean, efficient hydropower driven by all the water in our mountain rivers and reservoirs. We also miss the wet ground that keeps vegetation from drying out and becoming tinder for giant wildfires that threaten our facilities and our customers' homes and businesses.
Before the onslaught of storms last week, California was headed into another drought year--its third in a row.
Just before the storms hit the state, the Department of Water Resources painted a bleak picture of continuing drought conditions:
This year's precipitation as of mid-January 2009 is well below average, with 20-30" of additional rain and snow needed to produce average runoff. The previous two water years, October 1, 2006 thru September 30, 2008 left a deficit of nearly 28" of precipitation in the Northern and Central Sierra, source of much of our water supply. . . . Statewide average reservoir levels are 68% of average for this date. Last year at this time they were at 80% of average.
And the bottom line: "As of January 1, 2009, the statewide runoff is forecast to be dry to critically dry this year."
The result of the prolonged drought was to reduce PG&E's hydropower generation from 13,800 gigawatt-hours in 2006 to 7,700 GWh in 2007 and 7,900 GWh in 2008. (Preliminary data suggest that 2009 was a little better, but still far below normal.) This loss of about 7 percent of our total generation had to be offset by sharply higher power purchases, mostly from natural gas-fired generators, which increased costs to customers and greenhouse gas emissions as well.
Fortunately, this picture brightened last week even as the skies darkened. According to PG&E's hydro experts:
The recent wave of severe winter storms have produced significant amounts of snow and precipitation in PG&E service areas and hydro watersheds. As a result the cumulative precipitation picture has improved substantially: The California statewide average snow water content increased from 79 percent of normal on 1/7/2010 to 107 percent of normal on 1/21/2010; PG&E's hydro-weighted precipitation, from 15 representative stations, increased from 68 percent of normal to 91 percent of normal to date. If the wet trend continues, it could lead to better-than-average annual hydro generation year.
So as you struggle with your umbrella, or sit in the dark for a few hours, take heart in knowing that all this rain may end up saving you money and sparing the environment.
Jan 21 2010
When is the last time Corporate America, Big Labor and the environmental movement agreed on anything?
Try today.
An ad running in today's Wall Street Journal, and slated to run on the Politico web site as well, brings together leaders from all three groups, along with representatives from the faith-based community, in unprecedented support of "bi-partisan, national energy and climate legislation that increases our security and limits emissions, as it preserves and creates jobs."
The signers include a Who's Who of top corporations, including PG&E Corporation, BP, Campbell's, Con Edison, Dow, Duke Energy, Dupont, Ford, GE, GM, Honeywell, Shell, Siemens, Toyota and Weyerhauser.
Also signing are the cream of the labor movement, including the AFL-CIO, SEIU and United Steelworkers.
Major environmental NGOs endorsing the call to bipartisan action include Environmental Defense Fund, Nature Conservancy and NRDC.
Last but not least, the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference and Evangelical Environmental Network represent sectors of the faith-based community in support of national action on climate change.
As the signers note,"America faces a once-in-a-century opportunity to lower greenhouse gas emissions and become the world's leader in a burgeoning clean energy economy."
That's not an opportunity to be missed--but it's unfortunately also not an opportunity that can be taken for granted. In the wake of Senator-elect Scott Brown's upset victory in Massachusetts, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said "there's minimal enthusiasm" among members of his party for climate change legislation.
Jan 20 2010
If California solar developers think they have it bad, waiting endless months for permit reviews, consider the case of Cape Wind, the first offshore wind project proposed in the United States.
That $900 million project, sited off the coast of Cape Cod., Mass., has been in limbo for nine years while local residents, dismayed by the prospect of giant wind turbines spoiling their views of Nantucket Sound, have waged guerrilla warfare to kill it. Further delays were ensured when two Indian tribes this month persuaded the National Park Service that the project might interfere with their spiritual practices.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the European Wind Energy Association reported Monday that developers last year connected to the European grid 199 offshore wind turbines with a combined capacity of 577 megawatts--a third more than the entire Cape Wind project. EWEA projects that another 1,000 MW of offshore wind capacity will be added this year, continuing the dizzy pace of growth in the market.
And that's not the half of it. Some 17 offshore wind farms are now under construction in European waters, totaling more than 3,500 MW of capacity, and 52 more have been approved with a combined capacity of more than 16,000 MW. (By way of comparison, peak demand in PG&E's service area runs about 21,000 MW.)
Much more is coming. Great Britain this month announced the winners of a third round of offshore licenses in the North Sea for up to 32,000 MW of wind power. The government expects construction to begin in 2014 and all projects to be completed by 2020. The projects could end up supplying a quarter of the country's entire electricity demand.
The United States does have a handful of small offshore wind projects under consideration off the Eastern seabord, but nothing remotely comparable to Europe. Unfortunately, the high prices that U.S. developers are seeking make some of these projects unappealing to utilities shopping for more renewable power.
If the United States could get its act together, it could potentially tap offshore wind resources totaling 900,000 megawatts, according to the Department of Energy. Polls show strong public support for projects in the Eastern seabord states with the best offshore wind potential. (California, with its deep coastal waters, is unsuited to traditional offshore turbines.) But until state and federal governments can set forth clear policies and streamline their reviews, the United States will remain an embarrassing laggard in the race to tap this enormous source of clean energy.
Jan 19 2010
Sometimes the biggest blow to a new technology isn't an engineering glitch but a seemingly authoritative report proving its time hasn't come. That's exactly what happened last month, when a team of experts from the National Research Council declared that sky-high battery costs will doom plug-in electric vehicles to irrelevance for years to come.
It doesn't happen often, but the NRC experts appear to be flat wrong, according to evidence of actual battery costs compiled by CalCars and the Electrification Coalition.
"Real-world information is already a step ahead of their assumptions," CalCars claims. "Battery and auto manufacturers would not be spending tens of billions of dollars on factories to support over a dozen new plug-in vehicle models unless they saw a long-term path to low-cost, competitive components."
At the heart of the NRC's critique was the claim that battery packs today cost more than $1,000/kilowatt-hour, and that it will take a decade of engineering and production innovation to slash costs to the $400/kWh needed to make plug-in vehicles affordable to the mass market.
The truth about battery costs is closely held by manufacturers, but CalCars cites a study prepared last year by experts from the Department of Energy and Argonne National Laboratory, estimating that batteries should cost only about $300/kWh in mass production, and less than double that in modest runs of about 10,000 per year.
General Motors officials have leaked data to the media suggesting that the cost of batteries for the new Volt hybrid will be in the range of $500/kWh to $600/kWh, and will likely fall to only $300 by 2015. A company spokesman specifically refuted the NRC's estimate of battery costs as "bloated." He added, 'Our starting point, which already costs much less than they estimate, is just the first step.'
Bottom line: as battery makers and electric vehicle manufacturers begin production, costs will indeed be high, as they were originally for personal computers, flat screen TVs, and most other new technologies. But as affluent early adopters and government subsidies create a growing market, prices should fall quickly to make these clean vehicles a strong contender in the marketplace.
Jan 15 2010
It's official: 2009 tied as the second hottest year on record, according to global temperature data posted today by NASA.
2005 was the hottest year and 2007 tied for second place in the NASA rankings. Overall, the last decade was the hottest ever recorded.
This year's El Nino, which promises to deliver wild and wet weather to California next week, could make 2010 even warmer. That's because El Nino events typically bring heat to the surface of the Pacific Ocean, raising the average global temperature.
As noted previously in NEXT100, the continental United States was one of the few places on earth that remained relatively cool last year--so it's no wonder skeptics about global warming abound here despite a strong scientific consensus. The same pattern repeated in December, bringing chilling cold to much of this country.
Note: not every authority agrees with NASA. For example, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says 2009 tied with 2006 as the fifth warmest year on record. But NOAA agrees that the decade as a whole was the warmest.
Jan 14 2010
Green doesn't get much cuter than this.
As part of its ambitious program of energy conservation and environmental stewardship, the U.S. Postal Service is experimenting in several Southern California cities, as well as parts of Arizona and South Florida, with a nifty three-wheel electric vehicle for delivering mail.
With the world's largest civilian vehicle fleet, annual travel of 1.1 billion miles and fuel costs of more than $2 billion, the USPS can make a big difference to the environment by its leadership in clean transportation technology. It has experimented with advanced diesel, ethanol, hybrid electric and fuel cell vehicles, but I'm most taken by the T3 Series Electric Stand-up Vehicle, with optional solar-powered trailer, that the postal service has developed with T3 Motion, Inc. in Orange County.
T3 Motion claims the vehicles have a range of 40 miles, a maximum speed of 12 mph and a carrying capacity of 450 lbs. Its quiet operation and maneuverability make the vehicle a favorite of police forces as well. "Most importantly, it produces zero emissions and costs less than 4 cents a mile to operate," the company added in an announcement today.
The U.S. Postal Service aims to reduce its energy use 30 percent by 2015. Kudos to it for thinking outside the (four-wheel) box.
Jan 14 2010
Every year the world produces 2.5 billion tons of cement, enough for 9 billion cubic yards of concrete that could pave 16 highway lanes from the Earth to the moon.
The production of all that cement, which requires heating limestone and other materials to about 2,600F, contributes as much as five percent of all CO2 emissions, making it a major cause of global warming.
As previously described in NEXT100, traditional cement companies and a growing number of startups are exploring novel production methods to radically reduce or even eliminate their net output of carbon dioxide.
Now one of the most promising--and most controversial--of those companies says it has begun to make cement on a significant scale by drawing carbon dioxide from Dynegy's huge Moss Landing power plant.
Los Gatos-based Calera claims its process for making cement actually locks up more CO2 than it produces. The manager of the Moss Plant Power Plant calls it "probably one of the best carbon-capture processes out there that we know of today." And Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, said "It changes the nature of the fight against global warming."
Those are extravagent claims, but Calera's founder, Brent Constantz, has serious credentials. He is a consulting professor at Stanford University and founder of three previous companies. He convinced noted venture capitalist Vinod Khosla to fund his firm. And he can point to a patent issued in Australia to support some of his claims.
But a lot of people don't believe him, including cement industry rivals and, more disturbingly, fellow scientists. One of the most noted critics is Ken Caldeira, a distinguished geochemist and climate expert at the Carnegie Institution, located on Stanford's campus.
It doesn't help that Calera's web site is notably short on technical details or that the company has been operating at Moss Landing for over a year and a half without much in the way of public results.
So who's right, Calera or Caldeira? Here's hoping that Calera is for real and Caldeira is uncharacteristically wrong. The world needs a game changer. But it can't wait forever to see results.
Jan 13 2010
The Department of Energy today announced grants of up to $78 million to support advanced research and development of biofuels and fueling infrastructure to replace petroleum products. "By harnessing the power of science and technology, we can bring new biofuels to the market and develop a cleaner and more sustainable transportation sector," said Energy Secretary Steven Chu.
But only a few days ago, researchers at Rice University blasted U.S. biofuels policy, noting that despite generous subsidies--amounting to $4 billion in 2008--biofuels have replaced a mere two percent of gasoline production. The cost to consumers for biofuel was almost $2 a gallon on top of the retail price for gasoline.
Further, the report claimed, "it is uncertain whether existing biofuels production provides any beneficial improvement over traditional gasoline" in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. And the biofuels create potential hazards to human health by impeding the natural breakdown of other toxic chemicals, such as benzene, in the groundwater.
So is U.S. biofuels policy nothing more than a biofolly? Yes and no if you believe the Rice University report (which was funded by Chevron, but is consistent with many other studies). The problem isn't with biofuels in principle, but with corn-based ethanol, which accounts for nearly all current U.S. biofuel production. Growing corn to make ethanol is of debateable value because it requires extensive energy and produces greenhouse gases from soil clearing and tillage.
But if we can transition to a next generation of biofuels, based on hardy weeds, crop residues, waste wood products (such as beetle-killed trees) or even algae, the environmental benefits begin to look far brighter. Unfortunately, the economics so far look a lot dimmer--which is where the DOE's research grants may come to the rescue.
Intriguingly, one Bay Area company--Cobalt Biofuels--yesterday announced with great fanfare the launch of a facility in Mountain View to begin producing biobutenol, a versatile fuel that can be blended with gasoline or diesel and converted into jet fuel or even plastics. The company claims cost breakthroughs that will allow it to produce the fuel for only $1.40 a gallon by 2012. Biobutenol delivers more energy than ethanol and is less polluting. And, most important from an environmental standpoint, Cobalt's feedstock isn't food crops but forest waste and mill residues.
Cobalt's claims, like so many before from the biofuels industry, may prove more than a tad optimistic. But DOE and Cobalt are on the right track by moving beyond traditional corn-based ethanol to greener biofuels.
Jan 12 2010
If I were one of the army of auto marketing executives showing off new hybrid and electric vehicles at this week's Detroit auto show, I'd be smiling for the public but privately panicking.
Despite all the fawning media coverage of these fuel-efficient and climate-friendly vehicles, a chorus of naysayers are warning that few consumers will actually buy them--relegating all this fancy new technology to the scrap heap of failed investments.
Last month, a report from the National Research Council warned that the high cost of batteries will limit the number of plug-in hybrid vehicles on America's roads to only about 13 million by 2030, not enough to make more than a slight dent in the country's carbon emissions.
Last week, Boston Consulting Group piled on with a new report claiming that battery costs "are unlikely to drop enough to spark widespread adoption of fully electric vehicles without a major breakthrough in . . . technology."
Even the clean-tech blog Earth2Tech saw fit to depress its readers with "10 signs your next car won't be electric."
So for you die-hard enthusiasts who can't bear to cede the argument without a fight, I highly recommend reading "11 Practical Reasons to Buy an Electric Car," by Nick Chambers of Gas2Org. While he acknowledges that "the vast majority of people will still drive gas-powered cars into the foreseeable future," he ticks off the many good reasons your next car should be electric after all.
Start with the fact that you won't need to spend nearly as much time making friends with your mechanic: "By removing the engine, exhaust system, emissions controls, and the many other little bits that are traditionally associated with a combustion-powered car, then replacing them with a motor that has one moving part, some batteries, and associated fans and coolant, the chances that you'll end up in the service department are drastically reduced."
Nor will you need to crawl under your car to change the oil every few thousand miles. "Likely the only major things you'll need to get regularly serviced on an EV will be a coolant flush and battery change every 100,000 miles or so," Chambers points out.
You'll stand to save countless trips to the gas station as well. If you've got a garage, and install a suitable outlet, "you may never have to make a trip somewhere to 'fill' your car up again."
The cost per mile of electricity is liable to be far less than you pay now for gasoline--and far more stable as well. You won't depend on foreign imports of oil from insecure lands to power your car.
And as you glide down the road, with no rumble from the engine, you can take quiet satisfaction from knowing that you are doing your part for the environment.
Jan 12 2010
Stop the presses! Scientists report that pulverizing mountains to remove coal can damage environment!
All kidding aside, last week's publication in the prestigious journal Science of a "blockbuster" new study on the irreversible environmental impacts of mountaintop mining--a widespread practice in Appalachia--was a sobering and long overdue cry of alarm from an eminent group of hydrologists, ecologists and engineers, including several members of the National Academy of Sciences.
Obvious as their conclusions might seem, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers continue to permit mining companies to strip mountaintops of their forests and topsoil, blast them with explosives and then push rock and toxic materials into adjacent valleys and streams in order to expose coal deposits.
"We now know that surface mining has extraordinary consequences for both aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems," said Dr. Keith Eshleman of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, one of the co-authors. "Notwithstanding recent attempts to improve reclamation, the immense scale of mountaintop mining makes it unrealistic to think that true restoration or mitigation is possible with current techniques."
Lost in some of the reporting about habitat destruction was the team's finding that such mining practices seriously harm human health due to air and water pollution.
As the study noted, "Adult hospitalizations for chronic pulmonary disorders and hypertension are elevated as a function of county-level coal production, as are rates of mortality, lung cancer, and chronic heart, lung, and kidney disease."
Another careful study published last year, and cited in the Science article, estimated that coal mining in Appalachia results in somewhere between 1,700 and 2,900 "excess deaths" each year. The authors of that study noted that coal mining contributes about $8 billion annually to the region's economy--but exacts an economic cost to its inhabitants of over $40 billion a year.
And that's not counting the cost to human health from sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, mercury, radioactive particles and other pollutants caused by burning the coal. (In fairness, cheap coal-fired power indirectly saves some lives, as well, by making possible more economic food refrigeration and other benefits.)
The National Mining Association dismissed the new study as "an advocacy piece, rather than independent science." The authors noted that the paper underwent rigorous peer review by other experts in the field.
Note: In 2006, California enacted a law that essentially prohibits utilities from purchasing any additional coal-fired power. Only a few percent of PG&E's power comes from legacy coal-fired sources.
Jan 11 2010
Last May, Newsweek editor Jon Meacham called Barack Obama "Spock with global sex appeal." Since then, the brainy president with abs has put his sex appeal to good use, championing energy efficiency investments to produce jobs, keep the environment clean and promote energy independence.
In June, as he announced new federal standards to making lighting more efficient, President Obama said, "Now, I know light bulbs may not seem sexy, but this simple action holds enormous promise because 7 percent of all the energy consumed in America is used to light our homes and our businesses." He estimated that new standards would save consumers up to $4 billion a year in energy costs.
Last month, reviving that theme, President Obama declared that home insulation is "sexy stuff" because it saves money. Appearing at a Home Depot store, Obama called on Congress to enact more building retrofit incentives, on top of the $5 billion allocated in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to weatherize low-income homes and the $300 million to promote energy-efficient appliances.
It remains to be seen how titillated ordinary homeowners have become by R-values and Energy Star ratings--though I'll bet they seem sexier now with winter temperatures plunging to extreme lows across the country--but swooning venture capitalists have enthusiastically embraced Obama's message.
An annual survey of worldwide clean tech venture funding, issued last week by Deloitte and the Cleantech Group, reported that funding of companies focused on the business of energy efficiency hit a record billion dollars last year--a period that saw a one-third decline in overall clean-tech investing.
"I know it sounds odd that VCs are putting money into things like windows and drywall, but that's where the excitement's been for the last year," said Kevin Surace, chief executive officer of Serious Materials, a Sunnyvale company that makes efficient building materials.
"This past year is a reflection of why energy efficiency makes sense," added one of Serious Materials' funders. "Investments that have payback periods less than two years tend to be what gets invested in during a recession."
Jan 11 2010
The solar industry could get a welcome stimulus this year if the California Public Utilities Commission approves an application PG&E filed in February 2009 to develop a series of solar photovoltaic projects in the 1-20 megawatt range, totaling 250 MW over five years. In the interim, PG&E is building a 2 MW pilot plant at its Vaca-Dixon substation.
Total cost of the program, if approved, would run about $1.5 billion. That should create some serious jobs along with a lot of clean energy.
In anticipation of a ruling that could come as early as next month, PG&E plans later this month to request information from potential suppliers to qualify bidders for everything from providing PV modules to installing complete PV systems. Then, if the CPUC ruling is favorable, the utility will be able to move ahead quickly with getting bids and putting shovels in the ground.
Interested suppliers can obtain more information on PG&E's website.
Jan 07 2010
Last month, NEXT100 described a simple but remarkable agricultural technique taking root in arid and impoverished West Africa--the cultivation of crops in pits, called zai holes, that store water and prevent erosion.
Now a team of Stanford-led experts report on another promising innovation in the region: Solar-powered pumps in the West African country of Benin are dramatically increasing farm yields and incomes for desperately poor rural families who get by on just a dollar a day.
Malnutrition in the area is serious because water is scarce and the deep groundwater makes irrigation impractical without expensive and polluting diesel-powered pumps.
The Benin Solar Irrigation Project was made possible by assistance from an American NGO, the Solar Electric Light Fund, which promotes electrification of poor villages that are off the grid, mostly in Asia and Africa. In 2007, it began a program to electrify an entire district of northern Benin with photovoltaic panels to serve drip irrigation systems, schools, clinics and community centers.
To gauge the effectiveness of the investment, it worked with Stanford University's Program on Food Security and the Environment to rigorously study the results of the irrigation program.
The researchers found that households with access to solar-powered irrigation were able to grow enough crops to consume several pounds of their own vegetables each week, a major upgrade of their diet, and earn another $7 to $8 from surplus crop sales each week. The payback time for the system was estimated at less than three years.
The program is also a huge boon to women, who traditionally tend the gardens, by cutting the time they spend watering by 50 percent, freeing them up to earn additional money.
"With the proper support," the researchers concluded, "successful widespread adoption of photovoltaic drip irrigation systems could be an important source of poverty alleviation and food security in the marginal environments common to sub-Saharan Africa."
Jan 06 2010
They say there's power in numbers. Well, PG&E has just proven that the cliche is literally true.
With the help of two thousand customers who participated in an experiment this summer, the utility has shown that voluntary reductions in electricity use, particularly for air conditioning, can reliably replace expensive and polluting peak power generators for balancing supply and demand on the electric grid.
As described previously in NEXT100, this pilot test of the utility's ability to work with customers to shape their demand in a timely and predictable fashion addressed what the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has called "the 'killer application' for the smart grid."
Programs to reduce peak loads can save money (by avoiding the need for generators that sit idle most of the year), reduce the risk of system overloads and cut down on air pollution, including greenhouse gas emissions.
Equally important, utilities could use such programs to support the integration of more renewable resources, by synchronizing demand with the fluctuations of wind and solar energy.
PG&E's voluntary 
SmartAC program provides customers with free radio-controlled thermostats or on-off switches that can be directed to turn down air conditioners during periods of peak energy demand, usually without sacrificing customers' comfort.
Until now, however, operators of the state grid could not be confident that the program would deliver load reductions quickly or reliably enough to replace traditional peak generation.
Working with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory this summer, PG&E recruited 2,000 SmartAC customers in Antioch, Fairfield and Fresno for a test.
PG&E also invested in sophisticated telemetry infrastructure to monitor, in near real-time, the impact of air conditioner controls on system loads. This was a critical addition to the SmartAC program, needed to prove its true value as a resource for balancing supply and demand.
Among the test customers, PG&E turned down their air conditioners for 15 minutes twice each weekday during the months of August and September--a total of 71 times.
The results were significant: "the average load reduction per device across all events was 0.65 [kilowatt] per device." That may not sound like much--but if extended across all 135,000 SmartAC-controlled devices, the program could replace as much as 80 MW of generation on most summer days, and up to 180 MW of generation during system peaks (equivalent to about two peak power plants).
Equally important, the pilot proved that the load reductions could be fast and reliable enough to meet the demanding requirements of state grid operators who must balance supply and demand.
Last but not least, despite the repeated curtailment of their air conditioning, almost nine in ten customers who took part in the pilot were satisfied with PG&E and only 17 percent even noticed that their air conditioning was affected.
The potential environmental and economic implications are huge.
As Reuters columnist John Kemp noted recently, if the California electric grid "could reduce demand on just the 2 percent of peak hours each year, it could avoid . . . the need to maintain more than 5,000 MW of idle [generating] capacity. [That] explains why demand response strategies designed to curb power use at peak periods have become one of the highest priorities for governments and system engineers on both sides of the Atlantic."
Jan 05 2010
Look around the clean-tech sector--at companies trying to produce renewable energy, design better batteries or replace petroleum with biofuels--and you won't find too many newly minted billionaires. Most the companies are run by people with a passion for the environment who are sacrificing in the hope of someday making a difference as well as a profit.
But a few entrepreneurs, with a passion only for money, are cashing in on the environment in an altogether different way: by scamming the public.
In an end-of-year alert to investors, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) said, "It seems like everybody's going green these days--even fraudsters. However, the 'green' they are after is your money."
FINRA said it issued the alert "to warn investors about green energy investment scams that dangle the promise of large gains from investing in companies purportedly involved in developing or producing alternative, renewable or waste energy products."
Among other tips, FINRA warned investors never to "rely solely on information you receive in an unsolicited fax, email, text message or tweet--or in a blog post" (NEXT100 no doubt excepted). "It's easy for companies or their promoters to make glorified, unsubstantiated claims about new products, lucrative contracts, or the company's revenue, profits, or future stock price."
In a recent lawsuit, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged several defendants with raising $30 million from more than 300 investors in 12 fraudulent and unregistered securities relating to "green" investment opportunities, including a "carbon negative" housing development in Tennessee and what the promoters claimed was the largest biochar production operation in the world.
The really shameful thing about investor ripoffs, apart from the fleecing of individual victims, is the pall they cast over legitimate ventures seeking risk capital.
For example, many experts believe that production of biochar--a form of carbon created by heating organic material in an oxygen-deprived environment--could be a major contributor to the fight against global warming.
Endorsed by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack at the North American Biochar Conference 2009 and in the U.S. Senate by a rare bipartisan group including Democrat Harry Reid of Nevada and Republican Orrin Hatch of Utah, biochar could, in the words of environmental activist Bill Hewitt,
• (potentially) store billions of tons of carbon in soil for centuries;
• dramatically reduce agricultural waste, forest debris and some municipal solid waste, thus eliminating the production of greenhouse gases that result from their decomposition;
• generate energy to both power itself and a surplus for use in surface transportation or electricity generation; and
• greatly increase the productivity of agricultural soil, thus reducing the need for expensive and polluting fertilizers.
Bottom line? Don't invest your life savings in the next biochar company promising 1000% returns and brought to your attention over Twitter. But, at the same time, don't let the frausters close your mind to exciting new technologies that could give us a cleaner and more liveable world.
Jan 04 2010
Happy cows are proof that ignorance is bliss. They burp up huge amounts of methane--a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide--without a trace of guilt over their carbon hoofprint.
As consumers of dairy products and beef, however, human beings can't claim ignorance. The cows we raise are the single biggest source of methane emissions in the United States, according to the EPA.
Fortunately, a few people are doing something about it. Researchers at James Cook University in Australia have determined that feeding nutritious dried algae to cows in place of traditional feed can slash bovine emissions of methane by 20 to 40 percent, according to a recent article in The Australian.
"These algae are about 20 per cent protein, and carry a lot of other vitamins and minerals, including salt," James Cook University nutritionist Tony Parker told Stock and Land magazine (recommended bedtime reading). "The cattle we've got came up and hooked straight into it, so it seems they like it."
Independent studies show that dairy cows fed with bio-algae concentrates produce 20 percent more milk than other cows, with higher protein and fat content.
In a win-win-win, the algae can be grown in aquaculture farms along with seaweed to clean effluent waters of nitrogen and phosphorous from agricultural runoff. Left untreated, such pollutants cause eutrophication, harming fisheries and ocean reefs. So-called "algal turf scrubbers" are now a mainstay of modern bio-remediation.
"I like to call it the reef and beef project because it has far reaching implications that come full circle: starting with seaweed, taking in the beef and aquaculture industries, and extending back out to the sea to help conserve the Great Barrier Reef," Parker added.
Jan 01 2010
As we all prepare to get the Next 10 underway, we thought we'd take a look back on the decade that has passed. Here are several items that caught our attention:
It appears that clean energy and the environment have been top of mind for most speakers of the English language for the last 10 years. The Global Language Monitor has announced the top word of the decade was "Global Warming," beating out "9/11," while the top phrase was "Climate Change." (You'll have to ask them why one counts as a word and the other as a phrase.)
Grist's look back on the top green stories of the '00s makes climate change the main focus of at least six. But its very top story of the decade is "Celebs and and movies and magazines and TV go green." Go figure. Evidently Cameron Diaz, Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio rate higher than Al Gore.
Time magazine covers the Top 10 Green Ideas of 2009 as one of 50 top 10 lists--guaranteed to kill your appetite for this genre for a long time. Besides the usual suspects--the climate-change summit, cap-and-trade and fuel-efficiency standards--the magazine offers "General Motors Goes Bankrupt." That sounds more red than green to me.
And finally for a look ahead, Fast Company chronicled the Ten Best Green Jobs for the Next Decade. From farmer to solar panel installer or even green-tech entrepreneur it covers career paths that will position you as part of the solution rather than part of the problem. Warning: the list is for idealists only--no pay information provided.
Dec 31 2009
Science magazine's new list of the 10 most significant scientific breakthroughs of 2009 is a good reminder of how far we've come as a species in the blink of a geologic eye.
The journal's Breakthrough of the Year was the discovery of fossils of Ardipithecus ramidus, a four-million-year old primate species that sheds new light on the common origins of humans and chimpanzees.
Fast forward to this year, and Ardipithecus's offspring were being recognized by the journal for new kinds of gene therapy, discovering water on the moon and detecting rapidly rotating neutron stars known as pulsars.
One of the journal's ten breakthroughs has direct relevance for the future of clean energy: graphene. As discussed before in NEXT100 here and here, graphene is a miraculous crystalline form of carbon first discovered in 2004. A mere one atom thick, it is up to 50 times stronger than steel, a superfast electrical conductor, and the best conductor of heat ever discovered.
Today it is being studied for use in solar cells, lithium batteries and ultracapacitors (energy storage devices), high-speed semiconductors, light amplifiers, jet fuels and a host of other applications.
The University of California at Riverside this month reported that its Materials Science and Engineering department is looking ways to take advantage of graphene's remarkable thermal conductivity to dissipate heat from nanoscale electronic circuits, allowing them to be produced in higher densities.
At the University of Manchester, where graphene was discovered, researchers have announced that small chemical modifications--such as adding hydrogen atoms--can dramatically alter the material's characteristics. As one physicist there commented in August, "Being able to control the resistivity, optical transmittance and a material's work function would all be important for photonic devices like solar cells and liquid-crystal displays . . . Chemical modification of graphene . . . uncovers a whole new dimension of research. The capabilities are practically endless."
Graphene has already made its way out of the lab and into production. The Maryland-based company Vorbeck Materials is using graphene to create conductive inks, which it says will replace metal coatings and enable "cheaper, easier, greener printed [circuits]."
Over in Michigan, XG Sciences is making "graphene nanoplatelets" that it says are useful as "nano-additives for . . . strong, lightweight composites suitable for aerospace, automotive, or electronic applications" and in advanced batteries and ultracapacitors, among other applications.
Ohio-based Ansgtron Materials is now operating a 22,000-square-foot facility to produce the notoriously tricky substance. This month it won a grant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology to develop its production process.
Many other companies will surely join them. A report this year from Lux Research on graphene's "Near-term Opportunities and Long-term Ambitions" projects that the super material has the "potential to impact $53 billion of intermediate products," from automobiles to displays, by 2015.
Dec 30 2009
In ancient times, slaves provided the power to grind corn between millstones (Job 31:10). Today, human power is having a comeback--at college gyms, where sweaty student generate electricity on specially equipped elliptical machines.
With financial help from the local electric utility, the University of Oregon installed 20 such machines at the Student Recreation Center and connected their generators to the grid. If the students keep them busy, the machines collectively can deliver 6,000 kilowatt hours a year, enough to meet the needs of one reasonably efficient house in the region.
The machine's maker, Florida-based ReRev, claims that a 30-minute workout provides enough power to light up a compact fluorescent bulb for two and a half hours, or to run a laptop computer for an hour.
"We're not going to get off Middle Eastern oil by connecting up all the ellipticals all over the country," said U of O's sustainability director, Steve Mital. "We bought it and installed it mostly because it's an educational opportunity. People will be on those things sweating away and it gets them thinking."
The attraction of sweat power is apparently catching on. The University of Nebraska now has seven ReRev machines in the campus rec center. A special monitor shows students how much power they are generating--giving them an extra incentive to work out and stay in shape.
Cal State San Bernardino hooked up 20 of the machines this August, in time for the start of fall classes.
Conceding that the output of the machines is only a tiny fraction of the power used in the building that houses them, and that the cost of generation is uneconomic, the university's director of recreational sports said, "What we are doing is generating clean electricity and educating our students about how they can be green."
Hopefully, it will also get them to think about how much progress humanity has made since the days when all power came from people or animals. There's a lot to be said for being able to flip a switch when we want to power up our computers, rather than having to head for the gym.
Dec 29 2009
We've all heard the litany of complaints from opponents of nuclear power: it creates long-lived radioactive waste; the fuel cycle produces plutonium that could be diverted to nuclear weapons; and runaway nuclear reactions might cause reactor meltdowns, endangering the public.
The nuclear industry has good answers to each of these claims, but the best answer may someday be to reinvent nuclear power altogether.
To wit: substitute a relatively abundant, silvery-white element called thorium for uranium and plutonium in commercial reactors.
Thorium-based reactors, like those using uranium or plutonium, work on the principle of nuclear fission. Thorium absorbs neutrons to create uranium 233, whose nuclei are then split to release energy that can be harnessed by steam generators to produce electric power.
Experiments at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the 1960s and 1970s proved that thorium could work as a fuel, but industry saw no need to introduce new designs when uranium reactors worked well enough.
In principle, say boosters of the rival element,
thorium could solve the nuclear power industry's most intractable problems. After it has been used as fuel for power plants, the element leaves behind minuscule amounts of waste. And that waste needs to be stored for only a few hundred years, not a few hundred thousand like other nuclear byproducts. Because it's so plentiful in nature, it's virtually inexhaustible. It's also one of only a few substances that acts as a thermal breeder, in theory creating enough new fuel as it breaks down to sustain a high-temperature chain reaction indefinitely. And it would be virtually impossible for the byproducts of a thorium reactor to be used by terrorists or anyone else to make nuclear weapons.
In addition, proponents say thorium-based reactors can be designed to regulate their output to eliminate the risk of a meltdown.
Interest in thorium is growing worldwide. India is working on a thorium-based reactor design that may be ready within a couple of years. China also hopes to exploit domestic reserves of thorium to reduce its nuclear industry's dependence on imported uranium. An expert panel formed by the China National Nuclear Corporation has reportedly selected a Canadian reactor design as the most promising way to shift to a thorium fuel cycle.
A public U.S. company called Lightbridge Corp. is working with nuclear designers in France and Russia to produce thorium-based fuel rods that could replace uranium in some commercial reactors by 2017.
Finally, further research on the prospects of thorium has been championed--so far unsuccessfully--by an unusual pair of bipartisan sponsors in the Senate: Orrin Hatch of Utah and Harry Reid of Nevada.
"With the growing interest in thorium nuclear power in the world and in the U.S.," Hatch said when introducing the Thorium Energy Independence and Security Act of 2008 last fall, "it's time we made sure our government has a regulatory infrastructure in place to accommodate this new generation of nuclear power."
Dec 28 2009
When it comes to the next generation of Smart Grid technology, smart meters and customer-oriented devices like Home Area Networks and electric vehicle charging units have all the sex appeal. Energy storage technology attracts its share of geeks as well.
But according to a new report from Pike Research, smart meters "are really just the tip of the iceberg," in the words of Clint Wheelock, the market research firm's managing director. ""Our analysis shows that utilities will . . . devote the majority of their capital budgets to grid infrastructure projects including transmission upgrades, substation automation, and distribution automation."
The new study forecasts that global spending on Smart Grid technologies will total a hefty $200 billion from 2008 to 2015. Investments in advanced metering infrastructure, however, will amount to just 14 percent of that sum. Management of electric vehicles will capture a mere 2 percent over the same period.
In contrast, unglamorous grid automation initiatives will account for 84 percent of Smart Grid investments worldwide through 2015.
While PG&E hasn't announced projected Smart Grid spending plans over that period, it believes in laying the foundation for a smarter grid through transmission and distribution system automation. This fall, the utility won funding from the Department of Energy for a major Smart Grid project to monitor its transmission grid in conjunction with the Western Electricity Coordinating Council.
And in 2008, the utility proposed a multi-year program to upgrade the reliability of its electrical system. Called the Cornerstone Improvement Program, the proposal included significant investments in PG&E's distribution system to help "fully achieve the benefits of a Smart Grid."
If the program is approved by the California Public Utilities Commission, the utility hopes to install automated systems for "Fault Location, Isolation and Service Restoration" (FLISR), which can slash the duration of customer outages from an hour or more to a matter of only a few minutes.
By automating about 1,200 circuits in urban and suburban areas, PG&E projects that the average annual duration of customer outages systemwide could be cut 19 percent, and the frequency by 23 percent. (The full Cornerstone program aims to reduce those statistics by 25 and 33 percent, respectively.)
That may not be as sexy as programming your dishwasher to run only when electricity prices fall below a certain level. But it's a great example of how a smarter grid may keep electricity flowing reliably to your dishwasher, and all your other appliances, around the clock.
Dec 23 2009
Albert Einstein famously dismissed the emerging physics of quantum mechanics as "very impressive" but "not yet the real thing." He just couldn't bring himself to believe its wierd implications, which continue to spark scientific and philosophical debate.
Good thing the young turks of quantum physics pushed on, for it became an essential tool for understanding semiconductors, the basis of the electronics revolution of the late 20th century. Today, scientists are exploiting its strange implications to study quantum dots, quantum computers, and now "digital quantum batteries."
Two scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have drafted a largely incomprehensible new paper claiming that a miniaturized array of "nano vacuum tubes," using quantum principles, could create energy storage devices with several times the capacity of lithium batteries or standard capacitors. Or to put it another way, for any given energy capacity, they could be shrunk into a much smaller and lighter package.
Just as important for many applications, their rate of charging and discharging is claimed to be orders of magnitude greater than current batteries. That would be a boon in electric cars, where the ability to deliver power on demand would guarantee high acceleration.
The paper claims further that "cheap environmentally friendly materials can be used to fabricate" the devices using standard techniques for making integrated circuits, and that the devices "can hold electric energy without any losses for many years."
In a normal capacitor, electrical energy is stored in a field between two conducting plates separated by an insulator. The closer the plates and the thinner the insulator, the more energy it can store--but thinner insulators are more prone to breakdown under high voltages, making it tough to design small, high-capacity devices.
The key to the new quantum batteries--which exist only as concepts so far--is exploiting quantum mechanical effects that prevent short-circuits between the two electrodes, which are spaced only 10 nanometers (about 100 atoms) apart.
The scientists have applied for funding to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to develop a prototype. The concept has generated a lot of skepticism, but at least one MIT engineer, who is working on competing devices, declared himself "cautiously intrigued."
Dec 22 2009
Solar energy is great--clean, renewable and reliable--except when the sun goes down. Too bad that happens every day, for hours at a time.
Now a handful of companies in the solar industry are using a high-tech version of thermal storage to stabilize the output of their power plants when clouds pass overhead or the sun goes down.
PG&E today disclosed that it has contracted with a subsidiary of Santa Monica-based SolarReserve, LLC for 150 megawatts of clean solar power, augmented by a proven energy storage system based on molten salt. The proposed Rice Solar Energy project is sized to produce as much renewable energy as consumed by more than 60,000 average homes, starting in 2013.
If approved by state regulators, SolarReserve's project will be located at the site of the World War II-era Rice Airfield, near the unincorporated community of Rice in San Bernardino County, Calif.
The project will use thousands of large, movable mirrors to focus the sun's rays onto a receiver in a central tower to heat four million gallons of molten salt to more than 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The hot, liquid salt will flow into a storage tank and used to heat water for a steam generator to produce electricity. The stored molten salt can also provide energy during periods when sunlight dims or is not available.
The ability to store heat and tap it at any time for power generation is thus like having a huge battery or backup generator on hand to smooth out peaks and valleys of solar generation.
The storage technology was demonstrated successfully over several years in the 1990s at the Department of Energy-sponsored Solar Two power plant in Southern California.The owner of some of the patents, United Technologies, licensed the process to SolarReserve.
Molten salt--28,500 tons of it--is currently being used for thermal storage at the 50 MW Andasol 1 solar thermal power plant in Spain, the first of three sister plants designed by Solar Millennium. Abengoa Solar has a molten salt demonstration project and plans to use the technology in a 280 MW solar thermal power project in Arizona. Other companies that have expressed an interest in molten salt thermal storage include the Spanish company Sener and SkyFuel, based in Albuquerque.
Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, home of the National Solar Thermal Test Facility, says molten salt is ideal for capturing solar energy in power towers "because it is liquid at atmosphere pressure, it provides an efficient, low-cost medium in which to store thermal energy, its operating temperatures are compatible with todays high-pressure and high-temperature steam turbines, and it is non-flammable and nontoxic."
Best of all, a well-insulated storage tank for molten salt can be 99 percent efficient, so it loses heat only very gradually.
Dec 21 2009
In a fitting sign of the times, the town of Santa Claus, Ind. this year switched to light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to light up its holiday tree. That's something many Northern California cities--and PG&E--have been doing now for several years.
And no wonder. LEDs consume as little as one-tenth as much power as incandescent bulbs for the same output--saving money and sparing the environment. A new study shows that even counting the energy used to manufacture and dispose of LEDs, they are far more efficient than traditional bulbs.
LEDs also last 20 times longer than incandescents and several times longer than compact fluorescents--and offer a much more pleasing color than CFLs. Said one expert for Consumer Reports, "They run cooler, so there's less of a chance of a fire hazard. They're much more durable and they did last longer."
Researchers predict that the world market for LEDs will triple by 2012. PG&E is doing its bit to expand the market forward by offering incentives for deployment of LEDs in municipal street light fixtures and commercial refrigerated case lighting. PG&E also provides advice on the best LED products to buy to ensure maximum energy savings.
This fall, PG&E installed 262 LED streetlights in Danville and 126 in Walnut Creek on main thoroughfares. The program was supported by federal stimulus funds to promote energy efficiency.
Based on data from a study of LED street lights in San Francisco, an analysis by PG&E concluded that if all the nation's high-pressure sodium street lights were replaced by high-performance LEDs, the energy savings would avoid 5.7 million pounds of CO2 emissions.
Still, not everyone's sold. LEDs still cost a lot more than traditional bulbs, of course. And for some die-hards, Christmas just isn't Christmas without the crunch of breaking glass bulbs.
"When you're finding shards of purple glass in the summer when you mow the grass, you can remember the fun you had at Christmas," said Gary Barksdale of Norman, Okla. "There's a certain nostalgia to having those big glass bulbs that we put up as a kid."
Dec 16 2009
First there was Cash for Clunkers, followed by President Obama's proposed $23 billion Cash for Caulkers program.
Less well publicized, and less alliterative, is another government green subsidy program that some analysts are calling a great success. Its less-than-jazzy name is section 1603 of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
Section 1603 is pumping life-saving dollars into the veins of finance-starved renewable energy companies, creating jobs as well as a cleaner environment. It provides direct cash reimbursement of up to 30 percent of a developer's total costs. In contrast, longstanding federal investment and production tax credits don't do the trick in today's economy, since many developers don't have any tax liability to offset.
So far, more than 150 projects across the country have received more than $1.7 billion in payments, ranging from $3,000 for a small solar installation in Pennsvylania to $122 million for a big Texas wind farm.
"If I had to give a grade, the 1603 would be an A+," said Greg Burkart, a managing director at financial advisory and investment banking firm Duff & Phelps.
California is still behind the curve on winning Section 1603 payments. The biggest win so far is $6.6 million for a project at a landfill in Half Moon Bay that captures methane gas (a potent greenhouse pollutant) and uses it to generate enough electricity to serve almost 12,000 homes.
The project developer, Ameresco, called it "one of the largest landfill gas-to-energy projects that's been developed in the past five years -- certainly it's the biggest project in California in the last five years."
To qualify for funds, construction on new projects must begin by 2010 and put in service sometime between January 1, 2013 and January 1, 2017, depending on the type of project.
Dec 15 2009
Driving the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy will require a lot more than gee-whiz technology. As two of PG&E's clean energy suppliers can testify, it takes a rigorous focus on execution and operational excellence to cut costs and stay competitive.
The latest issue of Power magazine honors six "top plants" in the North American renewable power industry that exemplify those attributes. Two of the six are under contract to PG&E, which must say something about our energy procurement team. One is Sempra Generation's El Dorado Energy solar photovoltaic (PV) plant in Boulder, City, Nev.; the other is the Rio Bravo Rocklin Power Station, a biomass-fired facility in Lincoln, Calif.
The 10 MW El Dorado plant, said to be the largest thin-film PV plant in the United States, was built in only six months, an astonishingly short time. One reason is that Sempra wisely chose to locate the project on the site of an existing gas-fired plant, slashing the cost of land, permits, transmission and operations.
But Power magazine also praises Sempra (working with supplier First Solar) for coming up with a "finely tuned and standardized" design for 1 MW increments of PV that can be combined as needed to reach almost any power level (land and sun permitting). "Sempra has quickly established perhaps the most rational development program for PV technology development in the U.S.," the magazine enthuses.
Sempra plans to replicate that model in its next proposed plant--a 48 MW expansion at the same site. In July, PG&E announced that it will buy the entire output of this Copper Mountain Solar facility when built. (The contract is subject to approval by the California Public Utilities Commission.)
The magazine also offered kudos to a decidely older and less sexy power plant: the Rio Bravo Rocklin plant, which has been burning waste wood products to generate 25 MW of power since 1989. It's owned by Constellation Energy and North American Power Group, Ltd.
California has plenty of waste wood, which is better burned in power generators than in forest fires. Currently, agricultural or forest waste provides fuel to biomass-fired plants in the state totaling about 400 MW of capacity.
The challenge for operators of these plants is preventing wear and corrosion of major components, including the combustor and heat transfer tubes. Fuel ash and contaminants like sand shorten plant life and can lead to expensive outages for maintenance.
At Rocklin, according to the magazine, these problem pushed the plant to the brink of closure until plant management took a discipline approach to upgrading fuel supplies, improving maintenance practices and motivating workers. As a result, the forced outage rate fell to less than 1 percent and employee turnover dropped from 30 percent annually to "almost zero."
"For keeping the plant in California's renewable resource mix for many years to come," the magazine concludes, "all Californians should send their congratulations for a job well done."
Dec 14 2009
There's good news and there's bad news today for fans of plug-in hybrid cars.
The good news first: Toyota, the undisputed champion of traditional hybrids, has belatedly announced plans to introduce a plug-in version of its best-selling Prius. It's a little early to get in line--only 150 will ship to the United States next year for a demonstration program--but the company aims "to begin sales in the tens of thousands of units to the general public in two years."
Earlier this month, General Motors announced that it would begin producing its long-awaited Volt--with an electric range four times greater than the plug-in Prius--late next year. GM said it is "working with key utilities across North America to prepare each regional market in advance of the retail market deployment." One of those utilities is Pacific Gas and Electric Company.
Now the bad news: the National Research Council claims in a new study that plug-in hybrid cars like the Volt will cost at least $10,000 more than manufacture than conventional vehicles, more than offsetting any savings on fuel costs. As a result,
Subsidies in the tens to hundreds of billions of dollars over that period will be needed if plug-ins are to achieve rapid penetration of the U.S. automotive market. Even with these efforts, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles are not expected to significantly impact oil consumption or carbon emissions before 2030.
Hopefully that assessment will prove pessimistic. One way to make it so would be to give consumers a stronger incentive to buy plug-in hybrids (and other fuel-efficient vehicles). That's why many automakers--including the heads of General Motors and Ford, along with most economists--now call for a higher federal gasoline tax, a position they would never have embraced a few years ago.
As Bill Ford Jr. said earlier this year, "We have to have some predictability on fuel pricing and that price signal has to be strong enough so customers will continue buying smaller, fuel-efficient cars."
Thomas Cooley, dean of the NYU-Stern School of Business, noted last year in a column for Forbes that gas taxes in Europe typically run $3.50 per U.S. gallon, seven times the average combined federal and state gas tax in the United States. "Put bluntly, we are not on the same planet where this issue is concerned," he observed.
Maybe with a higher gas tax in the United States, Ford would consider selling here its new version of the gasoline-powered Focus--available in Europe next spring--which gets a whopping 62 mpg. That's efficient enough to give any hybrid a run for its money.
Dec 10 2009
Two years ago, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that water shortages and crop failures caused by global warming could afflict between 75 million and 250 million people in Africa this century.
The report didn't tell inhabitants of the continent anything they don't already know. According to the London Economist, in a story titled "A Catastrophe is Looming:"
This year's drought is the worst in east Africa since 2000, and possibly since 1991. Famine stalks the land. The failure of rains in parts of Ethiopia may increase the number needing food handouts by 5m, in addition to the 8m already getting them . . . The International Committee of the Red Cross says famine in Somalia is going to be worse than ever. . . . In fractious northern Uganda cereal output is likely to fall by half. Parts of South Sudan, Eritrea, the Central African Republic and Tanzania are suffering too.
In addition to drought, war and government mismanagement, African farmers also must make do with severely depleted soil, lean in organic matter and nutrients, that forms a tough crust. No one's thumb seemed green enough to make plants grow under such conditions, until recently.
Now there's some remarkable cause for hope. Spearheaded by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), with the endorsement of the World Bank, farmers are using an innovative technique to restore production in eroded, denuded and abandoned farmlands in many arid parts of the continent.
In major stretches of the West Africa, ICRISAT is teaching farmers to dig compost-filled planting pits called zai holes, which hold water for long periods after sporadic rains fall. They prevent soil from blowing away and foster growth of deep-rooted vegetables and fruit trees like the Moringa.
Moringa leaves, said to be Niger's most popular vegetable, have "seven times as much Vitamin C as oranges, four times as much Vitamin A as carrots, four times as much calcium as milk, thrice as much potassium as is found in bananas and twice as much protein as is found in milk," according to ICRISAT.
One farmer in Burkina Faso, Yacouba Savadogo, has become world famous for his successful experiments growing sorghum and millet in zai pits. The manure in his pits attracted termites, which built tunnels that broke up the soil. Soon trees began sprouting from seeds in the manure; he nurtured them, and in return, they provided shade, cooled his land and prevented erosion, increasing yields.
"This is probably the largest environmental transformation in the Sahel, if not in Africa," said Chris Reij, a Dutch geographer who's been working in the region for decades. In Niger alone, he says, farmers have grown some 200 million trees. "There are fifteen to twenty times more trees than there were in 1975, which is completely opposite of what most people tend to believe."
The return of this ancient farming practice is transforming social relationships as well. ICRISAT notes that women, who have been allocated the most degraded lands, have been able to transform their holdings into productive farms and earn a living for the first time.
"By working with women to grow indigenous vegetable and fruit trees, we have not only restored the self-worth of women but also enabled them to better care for their children and families as well as make some money on top of it all," said Prof. Dov Pasternak, a scientist at ICRISAT.
Dec 09 2009
The great Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter once described the process of growth in capitalist economies as "creative destruction." No one knows that better than the clean-tech industry. Even with generous government incentives, investor support and public interest, a lot of smart people with good ideas are inevitably going to fail in the Darwinian struggle for survival.
That harsh reality was brought home this week on the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack. On December 7, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced plans to provide $100 million in R&D funding to accelerate innovation in clean technology, including "a new generation of ultra-high energy density, low-cost battery technologies" to promote widespread adoption of electrified vehicles.
On the same day, reflecting the creative side of the process, Stanford University said that its scientists have discovered a miracle ink composed of carbon nanotubes and silver nanowires that can coat paper to make ultralight, flexible storage devices, including batteries and supercapacitors. The scientists claim that storage devices made with the ink can last ten times longer than lithium batteries, and experts say the technology "has potential to be commercialized within a short time."
The same day also brought destruction, however, when the much-acclaimed battery startup Imara Corp., based in Menlo Park, closed shop.
Three months ago, the company announced its first high-power lithium-ion battery, touting its "unique combination of power, energy, cycle life and safety compared to today's commercially available high-power cells."
And just last month, Fast Company magazine called Imara one of "10 Green Startups to Watch," noting that its new product delivered "20% more power and 60% more energy density (range between charges)" than the competition.
But in a blog on December 7, titled "A Day that will live in Infamy," Imara's business development chief wrote, "After 4 years at taking a run at the battery industry with a most promising technology, Imara is out of funds and out of time. We never could get the Operations scaled up and after a year delay, investors needed to cut their losses. In the end, in this exec's opinion, the battery industry is not about producing compelling PowerPoints, it is about the nuts and bolts of equipment design, process control and repeatability and producing a quality product at high run rates."
Fortunately, even with the demise of promising technology companies like Imara, innovation in the battery sector remains strong, thanks in part to the lure of multi-billion dollar markets.
A new report from Pike Research estimates that emerging market for electrified vehicles will boost sales of lithium-ion batteries from just under $900 million in 2010 to nearly $8 billion by 2015.
To achieve sales like that, battery makers must slash the cost of their products at least in half, reduce their size and weight and extend their lifespan. That's no small task.
To enhance their chances of success, and help put one million plug-in hybrid vehicles on the road by 2015, the Obama administration in August awarded $1.5 billion to advanced battery manufacturing projects.
No one knows who will come up with the "fittest" technology to survive the competition for this market. Will it be lithium-sulfur batteries, championed by Sion Power Corp.? Or long-lasting lithium-air batteries favored by IBM? Or Nissan's lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide battery? Or Fluidic Energy's metal-air ionic liquid battery technology?
Go ahead and place your bets--but count on losing some along the way before you score.
Dec 08 2009
2009 was a good year for bankruptcy lawyers but not for the solar photovoltaic (PV) industry. Dragged down by the world economy, and by sharp cuts in Spain's lavish solar incentives, the PV industry suffered its first decline as demand shrunk 14 percent year-over-year.
At the same time, according to a new report from the market research firm DisplaySearch, solar cell manufacturing capacity grew 56 percent to more than 16 gigawatts (GW) worldwide. That's just as well, because demand is likely to surge 38 percent next year, the firm predicts.
Looking farther out, GTM Research estimates that demand for PV installations in the United States will soar 50 percent a year, reaching 2 GW by 2012. Along with enough new clean energy for 1.5 million homes, this growing industry will produce 50,000 new jobs and more than $6 billion in annual investment, it predicts.
California will continue to lead the way in solar installations, but Arizona, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Nevada and Massachusetts will contribute significantly to expanding the market.
GTM predicts that the utility market will become the fastest growing segment of the industry, a view shared by a new study from Emerging Energy Research. EER notes that U.S. utilities already have an announced pipeline of PV projects totaling more than 4.8 GW. State regulatory mandates for renewable energy and federal tax incentives are helping to drive the market.
PG&E and other California utilities account for three-quarters of the solar PV pipeline in the United States, according to EER. PG&E has signed hundreds of megawatts of PV deals with developers such as Sempra Generation, SunPower and Topaz Solar Farms (now owned by First Solar). In February, PG&E announced a plan to develop up to 250 MW of utility-owned PV projects in the 1-20 MW size range.
Although PV is still a relatively expensive technology, it holds many attractions for utilities. "Unlike other larger, centralized power generation technologies such as natural gas, wind, concentrated solar power, and geothermal, PV offers scale and unique siting versatility," explained EER Solar Research Director Reese Tisdale. "These key differentiators allow PV to be deployed in a wide range of geographies."
Dec 07 2009
Here's another reason to hope that electric-powered vehicles make a big splash next year: advanced biofuels that could replace gasoline or diesel won't be ready for prime time until 2020, according to the CEO of Royal Dutch Shell.
Although Shell is a big investor in alternative fuel technologies--hedging its bet for the day when oil starts running out or new laws restrict carbon pollution--its chief executive, Peter Voser, now predicts that it will take "quite a number of years" before the next generation of biofuels starts significant commercial production.
Ethanol made from corn is widely used today as an additive to gasoline, but many critics claim it raises the price of food without helping the environment, taking into account the energy and water required to grow the crops and the carbon released by tilling the soil.
That's why everyone is eagerly awaiting (or investing in) the next generation of biofuels. These include "cellulosic ethanol" produced from hardy plants such as switchgrass, which require little tending, and fuels produced by ponds of genetically engineered algae. Dozens of companies have issued breathless press releases, but none is yet producing commercial quantities of fuel from such technologies.
Shell's warning about the slow progress of second-generation biofuels was foreshadowed by a report from the International Energy Agency, which concluded that "given the complexity of the technical and economic challenges involved, in reality, the first commercial plants are unlikely to be widely deployed before 2020."
The IEA guessed that with another decade or more of technology development and commercialization, ethanol could become competitive with gasoline if oil climbs above $70 a barrel. The report emphasized that significant government support would be needed in the interim.
The farm lobby and the clean tech lobby together are likely to ensure that such support is forthcoming. The House of Representatives is scheduled this week to vote on a one-year extension of production tax credits ($1 per gallon) for biodiesel.
And more dramatically, the Department of Energy on Friday announced $564 million in grants for 19 biomass projects aimed largely at achieving the government's goal to produce 36 billion gallons of biofuel by 2022.
Bay Area grant winners included Solazyme of South San Francisco, a leader in algae-based technology, and Amyris Biotechnologies in Emeryville, which hopes to convert sorghum into renewable fuels and chemical products.
But in light of the cautionary comments from Shell and the IEA, this comment from Katie Fehrenbacher of Earth2Tech seems apt: "A big question to consider is how far this funding can take some of these firms -- given that commercialized advanced biofuel plants can cost hundreds of millions to a billion dollars to build, a $25 million grant for a pilot project will only help move that plant partway to the next stage."
Nov 30 2009
In an intriguing departure from partisan political trends on this side of the Atlantic, the British Conservative Party--which leads in the polls--is taking an aggressively pro-environmental stance.
Last week, one of the party's top leaders, George Osborne, promised to slash carbon emissions from government agencies by 10 percent within a year, create a new investment bank to fund "green" initiatives, and pay households to recycle waste.
Saying that the British Treasury has long been "at best indifferent, at worst obstructive" toward environmental policy," he vowed to change that attitude if the Conservatives take power in the next election.
"I want a Conservative Treasury to be in the lead of developing the low carbon economy and financing the green recovery," he said in a speech at Imperial College London, a university known for its strong science curriculum.
While some commentators called into question the Conservatives' sincerity--claiming their words to date have spoken louder than their actions--James Murray of BusinessGreen called Osborne's speech "not far short of a master class in political positioning, responding to the legitimate complaints made by those within the environmental movement and proposing policies that, on the face of it, offer appealing solutions."
Noting that Osborne was making a "shameless play for traditional Labour voters," Murray added, "the government has no one but itself to blame. . . . It is an open secret that the Treasury has put the kibosh on any number of innovative green policy proposals over the past 13 years - all it took was for Osborne to point out the uncomfortable truths."
Nov 24 2009
Good news for California clean energy: the U.S. Department of Energy today awarded PG&E $25 million to fund initial work on a significant energy storage project to support the utility's increased use of renewable wind and solar power.
The grant to PG&E was one of 16 awards, totaling $185 million, to "help fund utility-scale energy storage projects that will enhance the reliability and efficiency of the grid, while reducing the need for new electricity plants," according to DOE.
"Improved energy storage technologies will allow for expanded integration of renewable energy resources like wind and photovoltaic systems," it added.
Energy storage is a critical part of next-generation utility "smart grids" that the Obama administration is strongly backing with R&D and infrastructure grants.
Storage will contribute to grid efficiency, reliability and sustainability by smoothing out the fluctuations in power output from wind and solar plants. It will also reduce the need to build costly new fossil-fueled generation by absorbing excess wind generation during periods of low demand and releasing that energy at times of peak demand.
By one estimate, California will need four gigawatts of storage to meet its goal of achieving 33 percent renewable power by 2020.
The funded projects include advanced battery systems, flywheels and--PG&E's current focus--compressed air energy storage (CAES). Experts at the Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto say that CAES is the most cost-effective form of mass energy storage.
PG&E's $356 million compressed air energy storage project in Kern County will use night-time energy, when wind power is most abundant, to pump air into a porous rock formation deep underground. The compressed air will then be released to drive turbine generators as needed. The project will be big enough to deliver 300 megawatts of power--about as much as a mid-sized power plants--for up to 10 hours.
PG&E hopes to win approval before the end of the year from the California Public Utilities Commission and California Energy Commission for additional funds to match the DOE grant. The total should be enough to cover site planning, technology selection and project design. The utility will then put the project up for bid, with the expectation of it going operational by the end of 2014.
Supporters of the project include the Independent Energy Producers Association (IEPA), a California trade association representing many renewable energy developers, and the manager of the state's electric grid, the California Independent System Operator (CAISO).
"Energy storage promises to be a game changer for integrating renewable energy into California's resource mix," said Jan Smutney-Jones, executive director of IEPA. "This project will commercially prove-out compressed air storage leading the way for future projects."
"Large-scale energy storage technologies with multiple hour charge and discharge capabilities, such as compressed air storage, offer the potential to significantly help manage high penetration levels of variable renewable resources," said CAISO's director of system operations, Debi Le Vine.
PG&E is also considering a major expansion of its pumped hydro storage capacity, but that is expected to be a 10-year process, said Hal La Flash, PG&E's director of emerging clean technologies. Meanwhile, "We have thousands of megawatts of renewables coming on line so we also need storage technologies like CAES that can go into operation sooner."
Nov 24 2009
PG&E's request for a 20-year extension on its license extension to operate its Diablo Canyon Power Plant puts the utility in good company: More than 50 U.S. nuclear reactors have received license extensions from their original 40 years out to 60 years, acording to the World Nuclear Assocation.
The result has been a largely unheralded but dramatic contribution to this country's clean generation facilities. While utilities, politicians, investors and activists debate the merits of new nuclear construction, the old plants keep chugging away, producing greenhouse-gas-free power around the clock and generally at very attractive prices.
A recent story by Paul Voosen of Greenwire raises the remarkable possibility that America's nuclear plants may run another 50 or more years before being decommissioned.
Thanks to new research on how to detect and repair flaws associated with aging, one expert said that if nuclear plants are properly maintained, "technically, there is no age limit."
Nuclear energy provides about 20 percent of America's electric power, exceeded only by carbon-polluting fossil fuels. Without the license extensions made possible by improved maintenance, power shortages would have been "nothing short of catastrophic" and would have prompted massive construction of new coal- and gas-fired power plants, said Gary Was, the director of the University of Michigan's Phoenix Energy Institute.
Besides extending their plants' life, nuclear operators have also increased their efficiency and output, a process called "uprating." According to Power magazine, "Power uprates alone have added more than 5,600 MW since 1998 -- the equivalent of five new nuclear plants." Exelon's chairman, John Rowe, recently testified that future uprates could add an additional 8 gigawatts of capacity to the U.S. nuclear fleet.
Nov 23 2009
It's a dubious honor, but Chrysler can now boast of being number one--in average CO2 emissions per vehicle.
Based on preliminary data, the EPA reports that the average Chrysler vehicle for model year 2009 pumped out 476 grams of this greenhouse pollutant for every mile traveled, topping General Motors (447 g/mi) and Ford (434 g/mi).
Chrysler, which had the biggest improvement in emissions from 2007 to 2008, gave up nearly all those gains in this model year.
Mileage and CO2 emissions per mile are inversely related. Thus Chrysler's cars averaged only 18.7 mpg, compared to 20.5 for Ford.
Evidently the Big Three, or at least the majority of their customers, have only recently heard of global warming. In contrast, Honda, Hyundai-Kya, Toyota and Volkswagen all managed to build cars averaging less than 400 g/mi.
In fairness, Ford now has an impressive lineup of hybrid vehicles, like the highly rated Fusion, and plans to electrify at least 10 pecent of its fleet by 2020.
GM is preparing to unleash its highly anticipated hybrid electric Volt, which earned plaudits ("extremely refined vehicle") from a New York Times reporter who test drove it.
As for Chrysler, its new owner, Fiat, recently killed prospects of the automaker launching a new line of hybrid or all-electric vehicles. That should keep Chrysler on top of the list for some time to come.
Overall, thanks to Americans' love affair with big, heavy and fast vehicles, the cars and light trucks they buy have become more carbon polluting in recent years, not less, the EPA reports.
In 1987, the average light duty vehicle sold in the United States got 22 mpg and emitted 405 grams of CO2 per mile. By 2009, average fuel economy had declined to 21.1 mpg and CO2 emissions had risen to 422 g/mi.
On the brighter side, the average vehicle today can accelerate from 0 to 60 in only 9.5 seconds, down from 13.1 seconds in 1987, despite being 900 pounds heavier.
Nov 19 2009
For years now, critics have warned that the nascent electric car industry could run into a brick wall if world supplies of lithium, the third element in the periodic table, prove inadequate to supply tens of millions of new car batteries.
Lithium is the 33rd most common element, rarer in the earth's crust than yttrium, lanthanum, neodymium, rubidium and cerium. Reserves are concentrated mainly a few countries, most notably Chile, Bolivia and China, compounding concerns over future supplies.
Scientists haven't cracked the lithium shortage, but at least they know who's to blame for it: we are.
More precisely, the mysterious absence of lithium in the Sun is caused by the fact that it has planets, including our own. A new study of 500 stars shows that sun-like stars with planets burned up their lithium far more completely than those without planets.
Most lithium was created almost 14 billion years ago in the primordial Big Bang, not by fusion reactions within stars. The level of lithium in a star, therefore, is mainly a function of how quickly the star destroys it.
Unfortunately, the international team of scientists who took 10 years to make this discovery were unable to decide why planets make such a difference.
"There are several ways in which a planet can disturb the internal motions of matter in its host star, thereby rearrange the distribution of the various chemical elements and possibly cause the destruction of lithium. It is now up to the theoreticians to figure out which one is the most likely to happen," said Michel Mayor of the Swiss Observatoire de Genève.
Worse yet, the good scientists said nothing about how to make lithium more plentiful. Fortunately, optimists claim that if we just look a little more energetically, there will be plenty of the element available to meet foreseeable needs.
In fact, one mine under development in Kings Valley, Nevada has the potential to become one of the world's greatest producers of lithium. So our original planetary sin may not be so detrimental after all.
Nov 18 2009
Why do so many Americans stubbornly resist scientific evidence that carbon pollution is causing global warming? Perhaps because they believe their lying eyes.
The powerful scientific case for global warming continues to mount: The latest global temperature data from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies confirm that the world just experienced the hottest June-to-September period on record and the second hottest October on record.
But look more closely at the regional data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and you'll see one part of the world got a lot cooler this October: the continental United States. (Alaska, along with most far-northern latitudes, was sharply warmer.)
"For the contiguous U.S., the national temperature average during October 2009 was much-below average, ranking in the top five coolest such month," NOAA reported. For the first ten months of the year, most of the globe experience "warmer-than-average conditions . . . with the exception of cooler-than-average conditions across parts of Canada, the northern contiguous United States, the southern oceans, and along the northeastern Pacific Ocean."
Within the United States, nearly all of the Midwest and Eastern seabord have experienced cooler-then-normal temperatures this year, though most of the Southwest (including Southern California) experienced above normal temperatures.
Such regional cooling is almost certainly temporary, a random local deviation from the rising global average.
Still, it's no wonder much of the public is no longer clamoring for action. They can't see or feel what all the fuss is about. Talk of climate models and greenhouse gas effects is simply too abstract when the thermometer outside registers below normal.
As one blogger commented, "If you look back at 1937, during the middle of the dust bowl, the only thing that finally made Congress act to form the Civilian Conservation Corps was when soil from the plains blew straight into the Senate during a debate about Dust Bowl policy. If only a hurricane or a heat wave would hit D.C during the clean energy Senate hearings, then Congress might finally get some much needed fear in their hearts."
Nov 17 2009
In the everything-you-believed-is-wrong category, one of the most surprising was the recent claim by a National Research Council report that electric cars will bring no particular benefits to the environment--and in some respects could be even worse than gasoline-powered vehicles.
The report, entitled Hidden Costs of Energy, looked at the full lifecycle costs of grid-powered vehicles, including environmental damage caused by coal-fired plants that power them and the extra resources required to manufacture electric vehicles and their batteries.
The surprising conclusion appeared to gain support this month from a study in England by the Environmental Transport Association that prompted this headline in the Daily Telegraph of London: "Electric cars could lead an increase in carbon emissions."
Fortunately, there's plenty of evidence that electrification of transportation is still a sensible--indeed, probably an essential--step for curbing carbon pollution and urban smog.
In the case of the British study, it was complaining not about electric vehicles, but about European Union policies that give carmakers incentives to build more gas-guzzling SUVs in return for producing some clean EVs. Duh.
Meanwhile, let's not forget that a comprehensive study conducted two years ago by the Electric Power Research Institute and the Natural Resources Defense Council, concluded that widespread adoption of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) could "reduce GHG emissions from vehicles by more than 450 million metric tons annually in 2050 -- equivalent to removing 82.5 million passenger cars from the road."
Old news, you say? Well a study issued just this month by the consulting firm Energy and Environmental Economics, Inc., on "Meeting California's Long-Term Greenhouse Gas Reduction Goals" reports that doing so will require wholesale electrification of passenger transportation, nearly eliminating gasoline consumption.
"To achieve the state's GHG reduction targets, by 2020 the state will need approximately 2.6 million electric vehicles and PHEVs (out of 29 million total cars), and by 2050 90 percent of all new light duty vehicles must be nearly fully electric," it states.
Of course, California's electric generation is much cleaner than the rest of the country--PG&E produces only about 40 percent as much CO2 as the average utility, per kilowatt--and is getting cleaner as the state's utilities transition to more renewable energy.
But a major study by McKinsey last year concluded that even China--with its coal-heavy power mix--could reduce carbon pollution significantly by promoting electric vehicles.
Bottom line: grid-connected vehicles are good for the air and good for the planet. Whether they'll be good for your pocketbook when they start hitting the market next year is still an open question.
Nov 16 2009
The United States should aim to make electric vehicles account for 25 percent of all new car sales by 2020 and to use electric power for 75 percent of all miles traveled by cars and light trucks by 2040, a new industry group declared today.
This call for a transportation revolution was sounded by the non-partisan Electrification Coalition, which includes representatives of the full electric vehicle value chain: energy suppliers (including PG&E), battery makers, automakers, charging infrastructure providers, major transportation users and venture capitalists.
At an event in Washington, D. C., the coalition unveiled its "Electrification Roadmap," a call to accelerate the adoption of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles through focused public policy at the national, state and local levels.
Weaning this country off its addiction to oil will be a much greater challenge than sending astronauts to the moon. The coalition's report notes that
our cars, trucks, planes and ships rely on oil for 94 percent of their fuel, and there are no meaningful substitutes currently available at anything remotely approaching scale. In 2008 alone, the United States spent more than $900 billion dollars on gasoline, diesel, and other petroleum products.
At the same time, the status quo is unsustainable. Dependence on a single fuel source, found largely in an unstable part of the world, whose price fluctuates wildly, is both an economic and a security risk.
And as the level of CO2 in the atmosphere rises to levels that may trigger catastrophic global warming, dependence on burning oil is also a threat to global environmental security.
While biofuels or natural gas could provide alternative fuels, the coalition argues that dramatically increasing the use of grid-enabled vehicles--those propelled in whole or in part by energy stored in batteries charged by the electric grid--will best safeguard our economy, national security and environment.
Among the advantages of vehicle electrification are the diversity of domestic power sources, the relative stability of electricity prices, the availability of substantial spare generation capacity (especially at night) and the existence of a ubiquitous delivery infrastructure--the electric grid.
Thanks to the high efficiency of electric vehicles and the relatively low cost of electricity, the operating cost of electric vehicles typically runs only a third that of gasoline-powered vehicles, the report notes. Further improvements in battery technology should make grid-enabled vehicles fully price competitive within a few years.
Until that time, the report calls for substantial public incentives to accelerate the industry's growth: tax credits and loan guarantees to grow the battery market; modified building codes to promote installation of chargers in homes and public places; reimbursement of utilities for large-scale investment in upgraded distribution systems; and regulatory support for price plans that induce customers to charge at night, when demand is otherwise low.
Refreshingly, the group also calls for reduced tax credits and other financial support for the indstry starting in 2014. When the electric vehicle industry can stand on its own feet and outcompete traditional fuels and vehicles, the revolution will truly have arrived.
Nov 12 2009
While kitepower is still only an exciting concept as a source of renewable energy on land, it has already become a viable commercial product over water.
A kite flown over the ocean is just a sail by another name. SkySails, a company based in Hamburg, Germany, has reinvented the sailing ship by designing towing kites that dramatically cut the reliance of cargo vessels on polluting fuels.
Ocean-going ships are an enormous source of air pollution. They contribute nearly 3 percent of all the world's CO2 emissions. In addition, they emit about 9 percent of global sulphur oxides and at least a fifth of all nitrogen oxide pollution.
U.S. researchers estimated in 2007 that high-sulfur marine fuels caused the premature death of 60,000 people in 2002. The U.S. EPA has proposed tough new engine and fuel standards that could prevent 13,000 to 33,000 premature deaths by 2030 and produce health benefits of $110 billion to $280 billion annually.
One way to cut down on pollution is kitepower. Like a giant spinnaker, the 160-square-meter SkySail can tug ships forward with the equivalent force of a thousand horespower engine, reducing fuel consumption 10-to-30 percent, the company claims. That can save big money as well as reducing pollution.
Flying at an altitude of more than 100 meters, the sail picks up high-velocity winds, giving it several times more propulsion power than traditional sails. It doesn't require extensive rigging, and because it causes little or no heeling of the vessel, it is said to be far better suited to modern shipping than other sailing rigs.
When not in use, the kite can be folded into a space the size of a telephone booth.
Last year, Beluga Skysails became the first commercial cargo ship to cross the Atlantic--from Venezuela to Norway--with assistance from a towing kite, which provided 20 percent of the vessel's power.
Wessels Shipping Company is now equipping some of its new cargo ships with SkySails, and plans to retrofit the Beluga SkySails with a monster new 300 sq. meter towing kite. It should be fun to watch, but don't try hooking one of these babies up to your kiteboard unless you want to become an astronaut.
Nov 10 2009
In the short list of the world's best jobs, designing kites to produce renewable energy has to be right up there--the perfect combination of excitement, imagination and do-goodism.
So it was an enviable group of inventors, entrepreneurs and university researchers who gathered last week at Chico State University and Oroville from at least six countries for the world's first conference on high-altitude wind energy.
Their common focus was on finding ways to tap the vast energy potential of winds high in the atmosphere, including the mighty jet stream. And their common question, in the words of one speaker, was "how do we put together the industry?"
Kite power, as some call it, is one of those far-out but potentially game-changing sources of renewable energy. But in the judgment of Scientific American, "By the standards of revolutionary technologies, . . . high-altitude wind looks relatively straightforward and benign."
In a major study published in 2005, Cristina Archer (organizer of the Chico State conference) and her Stanford University thesis adviser, engineering professor Mark Jacobson, calculated that the amount of wind energy available just 80 meters above the earth's surface is 35 times the world's total power consumption.
"It's free energy, continuously guaranteed aslong as the Earth is what it is," Archer says.
At about six miles up, the jet stream produces even more energy--as much as 100 times the world's current consumption. But it will take more than a little engineering wizardry to tap.
Accordingly, a lot of playful wizards have put on their serious thinking caps.
Google-financed Makani Power, with an amazing engineering and creative team based in Alameda, is pursuing large kite designs that could produce megawatts of power. "This is the dawn of the new age of kites," said former CEO Saul Griffith.
The Italian company Kite Gen aims to deploy giant kites at an altitude of about 3,000 feet to exploit the faster wind speeds available at higher altitudes. As winds carry them aloft, the kites' unspooling tethers spin an alternator, generating power. Each kite may be able to produce about 3 megawatts of power.
But where would a developer put these kites to avoid bringing down an unwary 747? In otherwise off-limits airspace.
"To help visualizing the existing unexploited potential," the company notes, "just consider that the flight-prohibited area over a nuclear power plant can easily get to contain 1 GW of wind power, equal to the power of the plant itself."
An even more ambitious concept under development at Delft University in the Netherlands is an enormous loop of kits that turns like a ferris wheel in the sky. It could rise up to 30,000 feet and generate 100 MW of power.
In addition to all the obvious engineering challenges of operating generators so high in the sky, kite power has at least one other drawback: its energy source isn't completely reliable. Apparently even high-altitude winds die out about five percent of the time, something of a nuisance if you are running a hospital, operating a semiconductor fabrication line or watching the Superbowl.
"While there is enough power in these high altitude winds to power all of modern civilization, at any specific location there are still times when the winds do not blow," said Ken Caldeira at the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology at Stanford. "This means that you either need back-up power, massive amounts of energy storage, or a continental or even global scale electricity grid to assure power availability. So, while high-altitude wind may ultimately prove to be a major energy source, it requires substantial infrastructure."
Nov 09 2009
Benjamin, the young man played by Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate, should have listened to the advice he got from Mr. McGuire: "There's a great future in plastics."
If he had, young Benjamin might have found a way to perfect production of carbon fiber-reinforced plastic (CFRP), a light and superbly strong but expensive composite material that enables a growing share of today's clean technology. In many applications it can replace heavier metal parts and reduce energy consumption.
Consumers already appreciate CFRP in niche products like high-end bicycle frames, tennis raquets, fishing rods and golf clubs. Formula One race car enthusiasts know that CFRP makes the lightest crash-resistant auto bodies, offering the highest performance where cost is no object.
The good news is that CFRP is now penetrating more markets as manufacturers find ways to automate its production.
Mainstream car buyers may soon be able to enjoy race car quality thanks to a new joint venture of BMW and SGL Group to mass produce carbon fiber auto bodies at a competitive price. BMW plans to make them integral to its lightweight hybrid Megacity vehicle.
Robert Koehler, CEO of the SGL Group, stated: "This joint venture with the BMW Group is a milestone for the use of carbon fibres on an industrial scale in the automobile industry. . . . This . . . shows that carbon fibre technology is becoming increasingly important in the materials substitution process to lighter material. This material will help to reduce CO2 emissions and save our natural resources."
The Aptera hypercar, nearing commercial production, will also use a composite body to lower weight and achieve the equivalent of more than 200 miles per gallon, while allowing occupants to survive high-speed crashes.
In a completely unrelated application, General Electric reportedly plans to introduce a radical wind turbine blade design based on carbon fiber composites. The key innovation is a new process that will permit mass production at affordable prices, in place of traditional labor-intensive methods.
The new carbon-fiber blades will weigh as much as one-third less than traditional blades, reducing installation costs and wear on gears and drive shafts. GE hopes to bring the technology to market by 2012, according to the manager of GE Global Research, interviewed in BusinessGreen.com.
Nov 04 2009
They say all politics are local. So are many of the issues driving PG&E to invest in smarter grids, according to PG&E Senior Director Andrew Tang, who delivered a keynote address at today's GreenTechMedia conference on "The Networked Grid."
One of the major drivers behind PG&E's smart grid program is systemic: the need to manage and balance the large fluctuations in output from increasing amounts of solar and wind energy, as PG&E increases its reliance on renewable power.
But at least two other issues, which get much less attention, are intensely local.
One is the rapid but uneven rise in rooftop solar installations connected to PG&E's grid. Today PG&E has about 300 megawatts of customer solar capacity in its service area--almost 40 percent of the nation's total--and that figure is expected to hit about 1,000 MW by 2014.
But the distribution of customer solar installations within PG&E's network is "very lumpy and concentrated," Tang said. San Francisco has 1,520 connected to PG&E's grid; San Jose has 1,430 and Fresno has about 1,250. The median city in PG&E's service area has only 12.
Where rooftop solar is concentrated, grid management issues can arise. The passage of clouds overhead can lead to rapid changes in power output and voltage fluctuations. PG&E will need smart sensing devices to monitor such changes so they can be corrected--with flexible conventional generation, energy storage devices or demand response programs. The latter two are prime smart grid applications.
Another emerging issue is charging of electric vehicles. Tang said PG&E's service area could easily host half a million such vehicles by 2020.
An electric car that charges in four hours at 240 volts represents the same load as a full-sized house in San Ramon--or nearly three homes in San Francisco, where average residential power demand is much lower.
If large numbers of EV customers decide to plug in their cars when they get home from work, the result could be an unwelcome spike in system load in the late afternoon, requiring expensive new generation and distribution facilities.
That won't be a problem for some time in many parts of PG&E's service area. But in green-minded cities like Berkeley, where 18 percent of new vehicle registrations are already hybrids, electric vehicles could soon put a big strain on the local electric grid.
The answer, Tang said, will be a combination of smart meters and "smart charging" capabilities to deliver power to thirsty batteries only at night when other loads taper off.
"People have talked about home automation for two decades," Tang said. "We think some aspects of home automation are finally becoming feasible at reasonable price points. [PG&E's] role needs to be the enabler. Our SmartMeter(tm) has a home area network chip so you can know how much energy you are using right now and what the energy is costing you.
"We are also working on smart charging for EVs," he continued. "If we give people the technology to plug their car into the wall, knowing it will be charged by morning, it will be customer friendly." The key, he emphasized, will be educating customers about the benefits they soon will be able to enjoy from these smart grid programs.
Nov 04 2009
With billions of dollars now flowing into the "smart grid" market--from utilities, venture capitalist and now the Department of Energy--it's no wonder more than 400 people showed up today for a conference at PG&E on "The Networked Grid."
Organized by GreenTechMedia, noted for its reporting and market research on clean technology, the conference is covering current and planned utility deployments of smart grid technology, communications infrastructure, home area networks and the challenges of integrating renewable and distributed energy on a mass scale.
Rick Thompson, co-founder and COO of GreenTechMedia, kicked off the conference with preliminary findings of a new survey of North American utilities, which confirm the high level of ferment in the smart grid market.
Over half of utilities surveyed are now in the preliminary stages of planning or running pilots for smart grid applications; about half expect to deploy smart meters to a majority of their customers in the next three years; half plan to run pilot tests of charging electric vehicles over the next couple of years; and half plan to deploy utility-scale energy storage on their grids within five years.
The biggest benefit they see from smart grid is reduction in peak demand, which will limit the need for new power generation investments. Other leading benefits include energy efficiency (good for the environment and the pocketbook) and reduced outages.
The biggest challenges they see are regulatory barriers and the lack of technology standards, which are needed to ensure that equipment from various manufacturers will work together on the same grid.
Another major challenge is ensuring the security of utility communications networks that relay customer data or control grid operations. "We need intelligent security," said Erfan Ibrahim, a senior technologist at the Electric Power Research Institute. "Just building a big wall won't keep (intruders) out."
GreenTechMedia's Thompson said the single biggest concern of utilities is the challenge of managing, storing, protecting and effectively using the vast amount of data that smart grids will generate. Utilities, including PG&E, may need to dedicate entire datacenters just to andling and processing the hourly meter reads from smart meters, which replace the monthly reads of old.
Andrew Campbell, advisor to CPUC commissioner Rachelle Chong, noted that the regulatory body adopted a policy in 2003 that all electric customers should have smart meters. The commission's goal--well on its way to implementation--was to permit the introduction of time-varying pricing to induce customers to shift demand away from peak periods.
But as PG&E's Kevin Dasso noted, the many new capabilities of smart meters will require changing the traditional relationship between utilities and their customers. "We need to work with customers to help them take advantage of the meters' capabilities. . . . We have to make sure we are communicating with our customers . . . to help them make the transition to what smart grid can offer them."
Oct 29 2009
The geothermal power industry, which has suffered several well-publicized setbacks in recent months, today got a huge financial and morale boost in the form of up to $338 million in Recovery Act grants from the Department of Energy to support research, exploration and development of new production fields.
The matching grants will help fund 123 projects in 39 states. As much as $133 million will go to support the promising new field of "enhanced geothermal systems" (EGS), which involves drilling deep into hot rocks to develop power resources in locations that were never previously considered candidates for geothermal energy.
If EGS proves economically feasible, relatively clean, renewable geothermal energy could go from a niche resource to a major contributor to U.S. power needs. Total geothermal capacity in the United States today is about 3,100 megawatts, of which 2,600 MW are in California. The U.S. Geological Survey estimated that the nation's geothermal resources could in theory support 500,000 megawatts of generation, almost half of all electricity consumed in the United States.
And a report produced in 2006 at Massachusetts Institute of Technology concluded that with a few hundred million dollars in R&D to jumpstart the industry--on the order of what DOE is now providing--EGS could feasibly produce 100,000 MW of power by 2050, enough for about 85 million homes.
"Geothermal energy from EGS represents a large, indigenous resource that can provide base-load electric power and heat at a level that can have a major impact on the United States while incurring minimal environmental impacts," according to the MIT study. "Further, EGS provides a secure source of power for the long term that would help protect America against economic instabilities resulting from fuel price fluctuations or supply disruptions."
Four of the new DOE grants are for EGS projects at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a prime center of research on clean energy. They will help engineers better understand how hot fluids move through fractured rock deep underground.
One study will examine the potential for using carbon dioxide to absorb heat from underground rocks for use in electricity generation, an idea that's getting a lot of attention of late.
Last month, two companies--Enhanced Oil Resources Inc. and GreenFire Energy--announced a joint venture to evaluate the potential for CO2-based geothermal power in parts of Arizona and New Mexico. They hope to start building a 2 MW demonstration plant next year. If it works, one could imagine capturing CO2 from coal plants, injecting it underground and producing geothermal energy from the hot fluid.
Oct 29 2009
Last week we looked at the remarkable history of electric cars, which enjoyed a U.S. market share of nearly 40 percent a century ago.
But let's not forget the brief but glorious history of hybrid vehicles. AutoblogGreen reminds us that the sleek Woods Dual Power Coupe--1916 Model 44 shown here--was powered by both an electric motor and a 4-cylinder internal combustion engine.
According to Wikipedia, this hybrid model was produced in Chicago by Woods Motor Vehicle Company from 1915 to 1918 and reached a top speed of 35 mph.
They cost about $2,700 each--without tax breaks or subsidies. That's about $55,000 today.
Oct 28 2009
Nearly 34,000 PG&E customers had grid-connected solar power installations by the end of September--64 percent of the total for California's investor-owned utilities (IOUs), according to the latest progress report from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC).
Together, the three IOUs have now passed 50,000 customer solar installations and 500 megawatts of customer solar capacity, both impressive milestones. About half that capacity has been installed since 2007, when the utilities began offering special incentives under the California Solar Initiative.
The initiative, endorsed by the state legislature and overseen by the CPUC, aims to support creation of a strong solar market in California and to drive prices lower as the market grows and matures. Over the past five quarters, the report notes, the average cost per watt of installed photovoltaic systems has dropped between 9 and 13 percent, depending on size.
The number of new residential applications hit a record high of 2,123 in August--1,602 at PG&E alone--as customers sought to get their applications in before utility incentives were scheduled to decline.
The promotion of so much new clean power--and the jobs that come with it--speaks well of the state's program, the utilities that administer it and especially of the social consciousness of Californians who are doing their part for the environment.
But like many good things, it comes with a price. Rooftop solar is one of the most expensive sources of power. To date, California's IOUs have paid out $605 million in incentives for customer solar installations under the state program, with another $293 million in incentives pending.
Some critics question whether subsidies for residential solar are too high. Even accounting for the special benefits of rooftop solar--including the fact that it produces no carbon emissions, needs no transmission capacity and tends to peak in mid-day, when power is needed most--the social cost currently outweighs its benefits, according to University of California energy economist Severin Borenstein.
Needless to say, his view isn't particularly popular. But all should agree on the importance of driving down costs further--to make solar an even bigger win for customers and the environment we all cherish.
Oct 27 2009
The Obama administration today issued a huge vote of confidence in the utility industry's commitment to providing customers with more reliable, efficient and sustainable electric service: It announced $3.4 billion in grants to leverage more than $8 billion in total investments in "smart grid" technology and systems.
The programs funded include mass deployments of smart meters, in-home energy displays and distribution and transmission automation systems. The White House predicts they will create tens of thousands of jobs across the country, reduce the frequency of power outages that cost American consumers $150 billion a year, and help make possible energy savings of $20 billion a year by 2030.
California utilities will receive $203 million in funds from the Department of Energy. Other large state recipients were North Carolina ($404 million), Florida ($267 million), Texas ($258 million) and Pennsylvania ($233 million).
Ultimately, all utilities--and more important, their customers--should benefit from the lessons these projects will provide in how best to implement high-tech systems that help people manage energy more wisely and sustainably.
PG&E, which leads the nation in smart meter deployments, did not receive funding for its proposed customer energy management project, in collaboration with IBM, Cisco, Stanford University, the city of San Jose and other partners.
However, with funding previously approved by the California Public Utilities Commission, PG&E still plans a project to demonstrate Home Area Network technology. As PG&E's Chief Customer Officer Helen Burt wrote in Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle, such technology will allow smart meters to "communicate with in-home displays that show customers how much energy they are using and at what price, and with smart appliances, which can be programmed to operate during hours when there's less demand for power and lower prices."
PG&E is also part of a consortium led by the Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC), which won stimulus funds to improve monitoring and performance of the 14-state Western electric grid.
WECC's $108 million project--which will be supported by a $54 million grant from the Department of Energy--will install sophisticated sensors, called phasor measurement units, at key points around the grid and connect them with a new data communications infrastructure.
The sensors will help operators improve grid reliability, free up transmission capacity and facilitate greater integration of intermittent renewable generation, like wind and solar power, into Western electricity markets.
PG&E also has another proposal--to build a compressed air energy storage facility that will store off-peak wind energy and release it during peak afternoon hours--which is still being reviewed by the DOE as part of the smart grid stimulus funding program.
Oct 21 2009
It won't be long now before the wizards of clean automotive technology around the world finally begin selling a broad assortment of electric vehicles--at least to those who can afford price tags of $40,000 and up.
Enthusiastic as I am, part of me still can't help but wonder, what took them so long?
It turns out that successful electric car technology long predates the General Motors EV-1, a triumph of design that was rudely abandoned in 2002. In fact, the first crude electric carriages were first brought to market in the 1830s--nearly two centuries ago!
Inventors in Europe made rapid headway as battery technology improved. In 1899, a French-designed electric vehicle broke the world land speed record, reaching over 65 miles per hour.
Americans came late to the race, but Electric Carriage and Wagon Company in Philadelphia supplied the first fleet of electric taxis to New York in 1897. Soon established companies like Edison, Studebaker and Riker were producing and selling electric cars. The first car designed and built by Ferdinand Porsche was electric, with front-wheel drive and automatic transmission.
By the early 20th century, more than 33,000 electric cars were registered in the United States--a number not surpassed until 2003. A typical electric car sold in 1912 for $1,750, less than $40,000 in today's dollars.
Anderson Electric Car Company in Detroit began selling the popular Detroit Electric in 1907. Its range was advertised as 80 miles between charges--but it ran in one test for 211 miles! Buyers included Thomas Edison (of course) and John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who apparently didn't mind that the car used no petroleum. Women (including Henry Ford's wife Clara) reportedly appreciated the fact that it started quickly and smoothly without hand cranking and didn't backfire. In all, the company sold about 14,000 electric cars. (A 1916 Detroit Electric Touring Car is on display at the San Jose Historical Museum.)
So why didn't electric cars make it? One reason, certainly, was lack of range for long-distance touring. Another reason was aggressive price-cutting by Henry Ford on gas-powered vehicles like the Model T.
And at least one historian claims the big mistake automakers made was marketing the electric cars to women--complete with "poofy couches, lace curtains, and bud vases as standard equipment"--even though men made the buying decisions in most households.
Oct 20 2009
This year's bienniel Solar Decathlon competition, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, produced another remarkable outpouring of home design innovation from university-led teams around the world--including Team California, which combined the talents of Santa Clara University and California College of the Arts.
Although Team Germany ("Old Europe") won for the second time in a row, leaving California in third place, nearly every team excelled in some area.
For example, the University of Illinois, with its Midwest-style Gable Home, won the appliance competition, managing to run a refrigerator, freezer, washer, dryer and dishwasher entirely from solar power. They also won for producing the most solar-heated water for their shower.
The University of Louisiana at Lafayette's BeauSoleil home won for market viability, based on cost-effective construction and solar technology.
Team Germany, with its "Cube House," won for most comfort--based on indoor temperature and relative humidity--and for generating the most excess solar power for sale back to the utility grid. It managed to produce surplus power despite three days of rain.
And Team California? I'm proud to say, as a communications professional, that they won for best PR, with a score of 69.75 points out of a possible 75. Way to go, California!
All snarking aside, Team California's Refract House also won for best architecture, based on aesthetics, functionality, use of space, integration of design and design surprises.
Well done, all.
Oct 19 2009
Good news for a change from the scientists who study global warming: the Earth's thermostat can be held below dangerously high levels over the next few decades if we take collective action against highly potent but widely ignored agents of warming other than CO2.
Cutting harmful hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) used in refrigeration, black carbon soot from dirty diesel engines and ovens, ozone smog and methane "can buy us about 40 years before we approach the dangerous threshold of 2°C (3.6°F) warming," said Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a leading expert on climate and atmospheric sciences at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and co-author of a paper published last week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Reining in these pollutants shouldn't take a superhuman effort, the authors note. Substitutes already exist for HFCs--which are 350 times more potent than CO2--and could be promoted by expanded enforcement of the Montreal Protocol treaty that was adopted in the late 1980s to prevent destruction of the ozone layer. EPA today proposed phasing out HFCs in automobile air conditioners.
And black carbon soot, which absorbs sunlight and causes melting of glaciers and Arctic ice, could quickly be reduced by installing filters on diesel vehicles and replacing wood- or dung-burning stoves with solar cookstoves.
Meanwhile, more than three trillion cubic feet of methane escape into the atmosphere every year, mostly in Russia and the United States, from leaky natural gas wells, pipelines and tanks. Methane is about 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a heat-trapping gas.
Reversing the Bush administration's hands-off policy, the Obama administration may require oil and gas companies to begin reporting their carbon emissions, the first step toward mandating steps to seal such leaks. The EPA estimates that ordinary methane leaks at gas wells trap as much heat as the CO2 emitted by 8 million cars.
Engineers at BP have discovered that investing in measures to catch methane emissions at their wells saves three times as much as it costs, reports The New York Times.
"This for me is an absolute no-brainer, even more so than putting in those compact fluorescent bulbs in your house," said Al Armendariz, an engineer at Southern Methodist University.
Oct 15 2009
I already know what I want for Christmas 2020: a nuclear-powered wristwatch. That would one-up Dick Tracy for sure.
What will make it possible is a miniature nuclear battery the size of a penny, developed by researchers at the University of Michigan. By the time they shrink it to the thickness of a human hair, it should be fit for all manner of portable applications, including my watch.
And with about a million times the power of a conventional chemical battery, it could render most other batteries obsolete.
Nuclear batteries use emissions of charged particles from radioactive materials to generate small currents--a concept dating back to 1913 when British physicist Henry Moseley developed the Beta Cell. They can also convert the heat from radioactive decay into power.
Nuclear batteries have actually been used in space satellites and remote scientific stations that require long-lived power sources.
In 2005, a multi-university research team announced a small nuclear battery that could be used for pacemakers or other low-power devices. It used a silicon wafer to capture electrons fired by radioactive materials, like the hydrogen isotope tritium. The scientists explained that the radioactive emissions were too weak to penetrate the skin, making the battery safe to wear or implant.
The innovation of the Missouri researchers is to use a liquid semiconductor to capture electrons rather than solid silicon, which extends the battery life. I'll just have to take it on faith for now that the battery won't shorten my life.
Oct 14 2009
"On a remote edge of Utah's dry and arid high desert," writes reporter James Bamford, "hard-hatted construction workers with top-secret clearances" are building one of the world's biggest data centers. "At a million square feet, the mammoth $2 billion structure will be one-third larger than the U.S. Capitol and will use the same amount of energy as every house in Salt Lake City combined."
The client isn't Google or Microsoft but the super-secret and scandal-plagued National Security Agency, responsible for codebreaking and "signals intelligence" (SIGINT) in times of peace and war. "SIGINT is critical to monitoring terrorist activities, arms control compliance, narcotics trafficking, and the development of chemical and biological weapons and weapons of mass destruction," explained CIA Director George Tenet in 2000.
The NSA usually keeps out of the spotlight--except when caught illegally wiretapping--but it dwarfs the better-known CIA. Intelligence historian Matthew Aid, author of a new book on the NSA, estimates its current budget at $8 billion. The NSA itself says it is "comparable in size and budget to the top 10% of Fortune 500 companies."
That kind of money comes in handy when trying to build a network of supercomputers big enough to store and analyze trillions of phone calls, emails, web sites, radio broadcasts, radar signals. Like the Air Force's legendary Area 51 in Nevada, the NSA's new classified data facility is too big to hide. The construction budget for the NSA's Camp Williams Data Center PH 1 in fiscal year 2010 alone is $800 million.
Much like its civilian counterparts, the NSA is finding that collecting enough computing power in one place is only the start of its problems. Next comes the challenge of feeding its massive new complex with enough electrical power.
Data center power usage was estimated in 2005 to cost $18.5 billion and is doubling every five years, according to researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Today they reportedly use more power than the state of Massachusetts. The exponential growth in power use at data centers has become the top infrastructure concern of IT executives--apparently including those at NSA.
By one estimate, a typical large data center today runs about 50,000 square feet and consumes five megawatts of power. The NSA's Utah data center will be 20 times larger and require more juice than some power plants generate.
The importance of this issue comes through in a report from the Salt Lake City Tribune: "[T]he initial phase of the project is expected to include more than $52 million in preparatory electrical work -- much of that is likely to be spent connecting two large power corridors that run through Camp Williams to the construction site near the base airstrip. The next phases of the project will include $340 million in electrical work . . ."
One reason the NSA is building the new complex in Utah (and a companion installation in Texas) is that its "city-sized" headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland, has nearly reached the limits of its capacity to add more data processing equipment. Already it spends $70 million a year on electric power alone--and that's before it finishes building a power generation upgrade at a cost this fiscal year of $176 million.
Bamford, author of three authoritative books on the NSA, notes, "The issue is critical because at the NSA, electrical power is political power. In its top-secret world, the coin of the realm is the kilowatt. More electrical power ensures bigger data centers. Bigger data centers, in turn, generate a need for more access to phone calls and e-mail and, conversely, less privacy. The more data that comes in, the more reports flow out. And the more reports that flow out, the more political power for the agency."
Note to the NSA: PG&E runs one of the country's leading utility programs to promote energy efficiency in data centers. If you want to keep your power bills down, call Mark Bramfitt, principal program manager for high tech in PG&E's customer energy efficiency group.
Oct 13 2009
Whoever succeeds in framing the debate usually wins the argument. So it's no wonder that critics who decry what they call "cap and tax" have been gaining ground on those who maintain that "greenhouse gas emissions" must be curbed to prevent "climate change" and "global warming."
After all, no one likes taxes. As for global warming, it might sound welcome if you live in North Dakota or New Hampshire. And don't greenhouses grow pretty flowers?
Maybe that's why most people put global warming at or near the bottom of their list of concerns, despite urgent warnings from so many scientists.
Supporters of climate change legislation have finally realized that words matter. Whenever possible, they don't even talk about the climate anymore. The House bill is called the "American Clean Energy And Security Act of 2009." And the new Senate bill is called the "Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act."
People may not care much about the climate in the short run, but in a recession, everyone can relate to jobs. And in a world wracked by terrorism, everyone wants America to be powerful.
Similarly, the Senate bill talks about pollution reduction, not "cap and trade," a mysterious concept to most Americans. And it speaks of "carbon pollution" rather than "greenhouse gases," an innovation that President Obama adopted back in April, when he spoke to the National Academy of Sciences, and repeated in his speech to the U.N. Summit on Climate Change in New York last month.
Other officials now refer to "heat-trapping pollutants" to engage wider audiences who otherwise tune out when faced with technical scientific jargon.
Said Edward Maibach, director of the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University, "The word 'pollution' is more concrete to people than the term 'greenhouse gases. There's a fair amount of research showing that people don't understand the phrase 'greenhouse gas' very well. 'Heat-trapping pollution' is a very good, concrete way to express what's going on with climate change."
On the opposite end of the spectrum, global-warming deniers at the Competitive Entprise Institute have run ads with the slogan: "Carbon dioxide. They call it pollution. We call it life."
The big question now is what will the American people, and their representatives in Congress, call it?
Oct 12 2009
Is the solution to global warming to burn more natural gas?
That's basically the claim of one of the world's leading oilmen--Royal Dutch Shell CEO Peter Voser. Implausible and self-serving though it appears at first, his assertion finds support from some serious environmentalists.
Voser's point--made last week in a speech in Washington at a Woodrow Wilson International Center forum--is that natural gas can replace coal as a transitional fossil fuel until wind, solar and other forms of renewable energy become more widely deployed.
"Renewable energy, while important and necessary, is not a silver bullet that is going to solve all of our problems, at least not for a long time yet," Voser said. In the meantime, "Coal-fired electricity is responsible for the fastest growth in greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. It is urgent that we address that. Supplying more natural gas is one way of doing that."
Though natural gas does produce greenhouse gases and other pollutants when burned, it emits only half as much heat-trapping carbon dioxide as coal and far fewer toxic emissions like mercury. It drives modern combined cycle gas turbines and combined heat-and-power plants at very high efficiency.
And, no small matter, it now appears to be extremely abundant and inexpensive.
New techniques for producing gas from shale fields have led to soaring U.S. gas reserves and plunging prices. Extended worldwide, the new drilling techniques may double global gas reserves, enough to meet hundreds of years of demand, according to a recent study by HIS Cambridge Energy Research Associates.
This June, the noted climate expert Joseph Romm began publishing a series of long articles on his blog Climate Progress, arguing that by displacing coal in a large fraction of U.S. power plants, "natural gas alone could essentially meet the entire Waxman-Markey CO2 target for 2020 -- without requiring gobs of new power plants to be sited and built or thousands of miles of new transmission lines."
He added, "it is widely seen, even by groups as green as Greenpeace, as a plausible transition fuel for the next two to three decades as we aggressively ramp up wind, solar PV, concentrated solar thermal, biomass, geothermal, and other ultra-low-carbon energy sources."
Natural gas is also an excellent complement to renewable energy. A study prepared for the California Energy Commission this May noted that flexible natural gas-fired generation--which can ramp up or down quickly--is ideal for balancing the fluctuating output of wind and solar plants. Indeed, the report concluded, additional gas generation could actually lead to lower greenhouse gas emissions by allowing the electrical grid to take on more renewables than it could otherwise handle reliably.
However, some environmentalists warn that new gas extraction processes may cause groundwater contamination from benzene and other toxic compounds used to fracture shale rock. This summer, several members of Congress introduced the "Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act" to impose federal regulations on hydraulic fracturing.
Oct 09 2009
The cost of combatting carbon pollution could be slashed tens of billions of dollars by investing in forest protection programs in the developing world, according to a bipartisan report by the Commission on Climate and Tropical Forests. Spending $60 billion to preserving rain forests in Brazil, Indonesia and other countries from destruction by fire and conversion to cattle ranching or soybean farming could cut emissions as much as spending $110 billion on carbon-limiting measures in the United States.
The global recession has temporarily curbed heat-trapping emissions, buying the world a tiny bit of extra time as nations struggle to commit to fighting carbon pollution, according to the International Energy Agency. But the agency warned that every year of delay will cost the world $500 billion in additional investments needed to head off the consequences of global warming.
The American Farm Bureau Federation continues to oppose climate change legislation in Congress, but a new study by an environmental group suggests the farm lobby's concerns are misplaced. "A more careful examination of the facts shows that climate change itself, not climate legislation, is the real threat to American agriculture, and that climate-induced crop losses will cost US taxpayers and farmers far more than could ever be caused by the (House) bill," the Environmental Working Group said in its report.
In a useful reminder that global warming isn't the only cause of natural disasters, scientists at Columbia University have concluded that drought conditions ravaging states in the Southeast have mainly been caused by rising population and poor water management, not exceptionally dry conditions. Another scientist commenting on the study said, "This should be a wakeup call. If this [drought] is not the worst-case scenario, what are we going to do when the worst-case scenario arrives?"
Oct 07 2009
These may be the best of times and the worst of times for geothermal energy.
Of late, the worst has garnered the most publicity, as stories in the New York Times have probed the link between deep-rock drilling, water injection and seismic events (read: earthquakes).
A promising demonstration project by geothermal pioneer AltaRock Energy at The Geysers in Sonoma County was suspended at the beginning of September due to "geologic anomalies." Drilling problems also plagued Australia's Petratherm, Ltd. A well blowout set back another Australian geothermal leader, Geodynamics, Ltd.
And a much-touted new plant in Beaver, Utah isn't producing water hot enough to generate significant amounts of electricity--and will need millions of dollars in new investment to fix.
The good news, according to a new report from the Geothermal Energy Association, is that 144 new geothermal projects, totaling 7,000 megawatts of potential capacity, are being developed in 14 states.
If all come to fruition, admittedly unlikely, the total output would be enough to serve the needs of 7 million people.
Nevada leads with 64 projects with combined capacity of almost 3,500 MW. California is next with 37 projects that could supply as much as 2,400 MW.
Although the industry continues to make progress despite the recession, the high cost of drilling--and the uneven track record of companies pioneering deep geothermal wells--make financing these projects a challenge.
Companies also face long delays in getting drilling permits for federal sites from the Bureau of Land Management, which has been overwhelmed by demand from renewable energy developers, especially in the solar sector.
Industry veterans also complain on the long wait for stimulus funds from the Department of Energy's Geothermal Technologies Program.
"Investors are basically waiting to see who is going to get DOE funding," said the report's author, Dan Jennejohn. "They are more reluctant to invest in geothermal projects until the DOE funding comes out."
Oct 05 2009
To Princeton economist Alan Blinder, who was among the first to propose it, "Cash for Clunkers" seemed like a win-win. "If done successfully," he wrote last year, a program of government payments to scrap older, polluting cars "holds the promise of performing a remarkable public policy trifecta -- stimulating the economy, improving the environment and reducing income inequality all at the same time."
But critics now question whether the "Car Allowance Rebate System," as the government blandly called it, might have been a lose-lose proposition instead.
After a huge surge in August stimulated by government rebates of up to $4,500, car sales by U.S. manufacturers plunged in September after the program expired, according to new sales figures.
"The reports of monthly sales numbers confirmed predictions that some of the spectacular gains of August had merely been achieved by moving up sales that would have happened in September," according to the Washington Post.
Blinder himself--who criticized the program for being much too brief--conceded that the $3 billion spent was "mostly" a waste.
Just as disappointing, consumer surveys suggest that the replacement of older, more polluting cars with cleaner new models may not result in fewer harmful emissions after all.
The new cars purchased under the program average almost 25 miles per gallon, compared to the average 16 mpg of clunkers handed over to the government for scrapping.
Unfortunately, customers say they plan to drive their new cars much farther each year--an average of 10,900 miles versus 6,200 miles annually for their clunkers. The extra miles more than offset the improved fuel economy.
According to one calculation, "The approximately 700,000 total vehicles moved under the program will therefore use an additional 42 million gallons of fuel annually during the first years of ownership."
That's a paradox familiar to students of energy efficiency. Sometimes called the rebound effect--or the 'Khazzoom-Brookes Postulate'--it notes that any technology that saves energy in effect makes energy cheaper, thus encouraging more use that offsets some of the savings.
That's why many economists say if you really want to reduce vehicle carbon emissions, there's no better way than raising gas taxes. Higher gas taxes encourage people to drive less and switch to more fuel-efficient cars. And in principle, the revenue can be used to soften the blow on the poor by improving public transit or lowering other taxes.
Oct 02 2009
Global warming skeptics have long claimed that climate models are imperfect. Now many scientists says they are half right: "We've observing changes that are happening much faster than the climate models have predicted," said Nalân Koç, director of the Centre for Ice, Climate and Ecosystems at the Norwegian Polar Institute. The dramatic loss of ice in the Arctic is happening "30 years ahead of time," he added.
The U.S. Senate is poised to begin considering climate change legislation sponsored by Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and John Kerry, D-Mass. The bill aims to cut carbon emissions 20 percent from 2005 levels by 2020. Republicans complained that the bill is "more aggressive" than the House-passed alternative. Adding to the pressure for action is the EPA's proposal to begin regulating carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants, refineries and other major sources.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, stung by defections of several major utilities (PG&E, PNM Resources, Exelon) and dissent from other companies (Nike, Johnson & Johnson), insists that critics who claim the organization opposes climate legislation are "dead wrong." The critics, in turn, cite a long list of documented cases of the Chamber endorsing global warming deniers and warning that legislation would be "disruptive" to the economy.
Countries in the developing world will need as much as $100 billion per year to help them adapt to climate change, according to a new report by the World Bank. The estimate was based on a forecast of warming that many scientists say is already outdated and much too low.
Oct 01 2009
On the opening day of the 2009 West Coast Green conference at San Francisco's Fort Mason Center, it was clear that the recession has trimmed the number of attendees--who paid up to $895 to register--but not their enthusiasm.
The show, devoted to green innovation, expects about 10,000 attendees over its three days, down about a thousand from previous years. And this year people are walking on concrete, not carpet, to save money.
But with dozens of speakers, education and networking sessions, and more than 150 exhibitors, the conference is a veritable cornucopia of resources for the sustainable building and design community.
Perhaps the most eye-popping exhibit, and certainly the most popular, was a trailer equipped with enough food storage, water and electricity to last a week, without connection to any utilities. It can fit inside a shipping container for quick transport in case of emergency.
Of course, the maker, Green Horizon, doesn't call them trailers. Rather, they are The Next Generation of On-Demand, Self-Sustaining Housing Solutions.
The Medical Unit and the Communications Unit might appeal to disaster preparedness agencies, but I kind of like the Bunk House Unit, which could help parents cope with family emergencies, like out-of-control kids.
Another interesting item was the Stak Block from Oryzatech Inc. These high-insulation blocks, made of rice straw, can be fit together to build load-bearing walls while sequestering carbon.
The conference got its start about a decade ago at PG&E's Pacific Energy Center, and the utility has been a sponsor ever since. As Platinum Sponsor this year, PG&E representatives are talking in-depth to attendees about residential new construction, new efficiency options and incentives, energy savings tips and rebates and making energy use carbon neutral with ClimateSmart(tm) .
PG&E CEO Peter Darbee also presented the inaugural "West Coast Green Collaboration Award" to the California Academy of Sciences for its commitment to getting the entire community involved in combating climate change. In its first year since the new Academy opened, it has already touched the lives of millions as the greenest museum in the world. The Academy received the highest LEED rating from the U.S. Green Building Council and it consumes 30 to 35 percent less energy than current codes require. PG&E has worked closely with the Academy to develop creative exhibits on climate change.
Thanks to Jack Chang, Susie Martinez and Andrew Souvall for contributing to this item.
Sep 30 2009
While you're relaxing with a fine bottle of wine from Napa Valley, some microbes may be hard at work turning the winery's wastewater into hydrogen that can run vehicles and power supplies.
Bruce Logan, a professor of environmental engineering at Penn State, has enlisted Napa Wine Company in Oakville to test his refrigerator-sized hydrogen generator. Tiny bacteria break down the organic waste from the winemaking process--pulp, seeds, stems and cleaning water--in an electrolysis plant to create hydrogen gas. The process is called electrohydrogenesis.
His demonstration system processes about 1,000 liters of wastewater each day. "There is almost 10 times more energy in the wastewater than we use to currently treat it," Logan said.
Napa Wine Company, which offered its facilities for the test, grows grapes on more than 635 acres. It has produced more than 100 consecutive harvests and is now 100 percent organically certified.
In 2005, Popular Mechanics magazine gave Logan and two colleagues a Breakthrough Award for his early work using microbial electric generators to produce hydrogen. The National Science Foundation heralded their early device as being up to twice as efficient as other biological systems for creating hydrogen, and flexible enough to digest human or animal waste as well as plant material.
"Bruce Logan is a clear leader in this area of research on sustainable energy," said Bruce Hamilton, director of the environmental sustainability program at NSF, which funds his work.
To learn more--or build a microbial fuel cell yourself--check out Logan's helpful web site.
Sep 29 2009
The following dispatch, regarding disturbing new findings about the acidification of the ocean due to rising CO2 levels, comes from John Lindsey, a colleague of mine at PG&E based in San Luis Obispo County:
Since the industrial age, concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere have increased by about 100 parts per million (ppm) to about 380 ppm. Ice core samples from the Arctic show it is now higher than it has been in the last 650,000 years.
Scientists surveying the near shore waters off the California coastline have discovered higher levels of dissolved carbon dioxide in the water column.
"The absorption of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) into the ocean lowers the pH of the waters" said Burke Hales, an associate professor in the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University. "This so-called ocean acidification could have important consequences for marine ecosystems," he noted.
Hale recently co-authored a paper called "Evidence for Upwelling of Corrosive Acidified Water onto the Continental Shelf."
As the world's oceans absorb growing levels of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, a greater amount of carbonic acid is formed. That has a corrosive effect on aragonite, the calcium carbonate mineral that forms the shells of many marine creatures.
This condition could have a profound effect on zooplankton, pteropods and other marine invertebrates that sustain many of our commercial fish, such as juvenile salmon. Other research indicates that abalone may also be adversely affected.
Over the last few years, the northwesterly winds have blown with greater strength and consistency, with fewer periods of relaxation. As surface waters are blown out to sea, this condition produces a greater amount of upwelling from the ocean depths and cooler near-shore seawater temperatures along the northern and central coast of California.
"The upwelling and the phytoplankton blooms have been larger along the West Coast," Hales said. "When the material produced by these blooms decomposes, it puts more CO2 into the system, decreases the levels of dissolve oxygen and increases the acidification."
"Even if we somehow got our atmospheric CO2 level to immediately quit increasing," Hales added, "we'd still have increasingly acidified ocean water to contend with over the next 50 years."
His study was funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and is part of a planned series of biennial observations of the carbon cycle along the West Coast of the continent.
Sep 25 2009
Climate researchers now say the global thermometer will rise an average of more than 6 degrees F over the rest of the century even if countries around the world follow through on their promises to slash emissions, according to a new forecast released by the United Nations Environment Program. Such warming is double what many scientists and policymakers say the world can sustain without catastrophic consequences.
Satellite observations show severe thinning of glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica--as much as 30 feet per year along parts of the coast of Antarctica. "It's the way that some ice sheets in the past--at the end of the last ice age--appear to have collapsed and caused very rapid sea level rise," said Hamish Pritchard, lead author of the study published in Nature.
The Environmental Protection Agency has ruled that large emitters of carbon pollution--about 10,000 facilities that emit the equivalent of more than 25,000 tons per year of carbon dioxide--must begin collecting and reporting their emissions data. The EPA has threatened to begin regulating carbon pollution if Congress fails to act on climate legislation.
The United Nations' climate chief, Yvo de Boer, this week praised China for surpassing the United States in plans for energy efficiency, renewable power, vehicle emissions standards and shutdowns of dirty plants. "China and India have announced very ambitious national climate change plans. In the case of China, so ambitious that it could well become the front-runner in the fight to address climate change," de Boer said. "The big question mark is the U.S."
European officials who gathered in New York this week for climate talks also expressed dismay at slow action by the United States to address global warming. However, Senator Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., says she hopes to kick off hearings on climate legislation next week before the Environment and Public Works Committee.
Sep 24 2009
If an environmentalist were to give just one word of advice to a young adult seeking a green career, it certainly wouldn't be "plastics." But it could well be "buildings."
While experts debate the relative merits of solar and nuclear power, CO2 sequestration technology and algae biofuels, one of the biggest untapped clean resources lies underfoot and over our heads: potential energy efficiency improvements in the buildings where we work and live.
Buildings globally consume more energy than any other sector of the economy or society--38 percent of all energy produced worldwide, versus 26 percent for transportation. Counting all the energy used in materials and construction, the total soars to more than 50 percent. In the United States, they consume three-quarters of all electricity produced.
Those facts make tackling energy efficiency in the building sector priority number one in the battle against global warming. At the same time, major progress would hold down energy bills for renters, homeowners and businesses.
Barack Obama gets it. The president-elect said in December,"First, we will launch a massive effort to make public buildings more energy-efficient. Our government now pays the highest energy bill in the world. We need to change that. We need to upgrade our federal buildings by replacing old heating systems and installing efficient light bulbs."
A new study by Trevor Houser, visiting fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and senior advisor to the U.S. Special Envoy on Climate Change, makes a key point: "aggressive, whole-building improvements in energy efficiency" can cut harmful emissions more cheaply than most other proposals for slashing carbon pollution.
Experts at McKinsey & Co. have popularized the notion that the building sector is rife with opportunities for money-making investments in better lighting, heating and cooling systems, insulation and other means of lowering energy costs.
Houser isn't convinced these improvements will come so cheaply, but he agrees that market failures are slowing progress--for example, the disconnect between building owners and renters often prevents energy-reducing investments that would save end-users big money.
In all, he concludes, the building sector could slash carbon emissions 8.2 billion tons by 2050 at a net cost (beyond energy savings) of about $180 billion worldwide. That's the target needed to reach an overall 50 percent reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions.
That works out to be cheaper, per ton of carbon, than emissions reductions from the power sector or from industry. But getting there will require tough new building standards to overcome market barriers. To that end, the Obama administration has announced significant new standards--for example, covering building lighting--and hundreds of millions of dollars in stimulus funding for building energy efficiency.
There's still a long way to go, but it's an important start.
Sep 22 2009
In the past several weeks, two high-profile companies - Duke Energy and Alstom - publicly gave up their membership in the American Coalition for Clean Coal Energy in protest over its opposition to federal climate change legislation.
Other companies that similarly favor climate change legislation faced uncomfortable questions this summer over their memberships in similar groups that have mounted aggressive campaigns to defeat pending climate bills.
Most responded to critics by pointing out that climate change is only one of many issues these organizations address.
Fair enough. But not every issue is created equal, and sometimes companies decide they have to take a more decisive stand on the really big ones.
Duke and Alstom made that decision. Now PG&E has as well.
In a letter to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, PG&E Chairman and CEO Peter Darbee cited "fundamental differences" over climate change to explain why the company is pulling out of the organization, despite the Chamber's "long history as a positive force for America's businesses and its economy."
The letter criticized the Chamber for taking an extreme position on climate change, which Darbee said does not represent the range of views among Chamber members. In particular, he took the Chamber to task for its recent demand that there be a "Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century" to challenge the science on climate change:
We find it dismaying that the Chamber neglects the indisputable fact that a decisive majority of experts have said the data on global warming are compelling and point to a threat that cannot be ignored. In our opinion, an intellectually honest argument over the best policy response to the challenges of climate change is one thing; disingenuous attempts to diminish or distort the reality of these challenges are quite another.
Darbee also drew a sharp contrast between the Chamber's approach and the constructive, consensus-driven positions forged by Edison Electric Institute and the U.S. Climate Action Partnership.
Instead, he said, "I fear it has forfeited an incredible chance to play a constructive leadership role on one of the most important issues our country may ever face."
Brian Hertzog assisted with this posting.
Sep 22 2009
PG&E has won many environmental awards for its commitment to climate action at the state and federal level, its innovative programs like ClimateSmart(tm), its leadership on energy efficiency and its relatively clean portfolio of electric power.
Still, it was a special honor to be named as the greenest utility in the United States in Newsweek magazine's green ranking of America's 500 largest publicly traded companies. The magazine cited in particular PG&E's "strong efforts" to promote energy efficiency and its growing use of renewable energy.
The rankings were based on several criteria, including emissions of greenhouse gases and toxic wastes, management of environmental issues and policies, regulatory compliance, policies concerning climate change and environmental reputation.
The magazine also assembled a panel to review its methodology and ranking list, including experts from Yale University, The Conference Board and Natural Resources Defense Council.
"This is the first time a media organization has ranked companies in this way," said Kathleen Deveny, Global Business Editor of Newsweek. "Most green lists are anecdotal -- ours is the result of a massive database research project conducted in collaboration with three of the leading players in environmental research: KLD, Trucost and Corporate Register."
Sep 21 2009
Vocal naysayers claim it's too expensive to combat climate change, but a new survey suggests that a majority of large corporations now think otherwise--indeed, that their self-interest requires taking action.
The Carbon Disclosure Project's Global 500 Report, produced by PricewaterhouseCoopers and released today, shows that 51 percent of Global 500 companies report emission reduction targets, up from 41 percent in 2008.
More and more large companies are becoming transparent in their disclosures of carbon emissions as well, with more than four out of five now reporting greenhouse gas emissions they generate through direct burning of fossil fuels or indirectly through purchases of electricity.
The organization praised several U.S. companies for leading efforts to deal with global warming, including Cisco Systems, Boeing and Pepco Holdings along with Consolidated Edison, EMC, E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Hewlett Packard.
Leaders in disclosure include Bayer, BASF, Wal-Mart Stores and Comerica. PG&E also ranked near the top of the list, along with Cisco Systems, Chevron and Public Service Enterprise Group.
When it comes to climate, corporations "are demonstrating they are willing, ready and able to engage with it," Carbon Disclosure Project chief executive Paul Dickinson told the Washington Post.
The goal of the Project's survey is to "help investors gain exposure to companies that actively manage their impact on the environment."
Companies that are still hiding their carbon footprints may soon have to come clean. The EPA plans to issue a final rule any day that would require large emitters--who release 25,000 tons or more of carbon dioxide annually--to declare their pollution levels.
The not-for-profit Carbon Disclosure Project was founded in 2000 "to collect and distribute high quality information that motivates investors, corporations and governments to take action to prevent dangerous climate change." With more than 2,200 organizations around the world now reporting on emissions and climate change strategies, the Project claims to have "assembled the largest corporate greenhouse gas emissions database in the world."
The organization represents about 475 global institutional investors, with more than US $55 trillion in assets under management.
Last week, a separate group of 181 institutional investors representing more than $13 trillion in assets released a major policy statement calling for a tough international treaty to impose binding constraints on greenhouse gas emissions and promote "massive global investments in low-carbon technologies."
Signers included the California and New York state employees' retirement funds, he California State Controller and Treasurer, and a host of private assets managers.
Sep 18 2009
"The world's ocean surface temperature was the warmest for any August on record," according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, "and the warmest on record averaged for any June-August (Northern Hemisphere summer/Southern Hemisphere winter) season." In addition, NOAA reported, "the global land surface temperature . . . was 1.33 degrees F above the 20th century average . . . and ranked as the fourth warmest August on record."
A sweeping new economic report from the World Bank says the world must overcome its inertia and commit to spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year by 2030 to promote clean energy and deal with natural disasters caused by global warming. "We are particularly good at acting on threats that can be linked to a human face, that present themselves as unexpected, dramatic or and immediate," the report states. "The slow pace of climate change as well as the delayed, intangible and statistical natures of its risks simply do not move us." 
A leading British economist and author of the British government's report on climate change, Lord Stern, says rich nations may need to think about foregoing future growth as the price of preventing runaway global warming. To give everyone in the world the same carbon footprint by 2050 would require cuts in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 90 percent, he said.
A dollar spent on family planning reduces carbon emissions more than four times as effectively as a dollar spent on low-carbon technologies, according to report from the London School of Economics. Giving access to contraception to all women who want it would reduce the world's population by half a billion people by 2050, saving 34 gigatons of greenhouse gas emissions, the study estimated.
Beer drinkers have a special reason to care about climate change: Higher global temperatures are damaging the quality of Saaz hops used in pilsner lager, according to a climatologist at the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute. The heat reduces the production of alpha acids that give the hops their prized taste.
Sep 17 2009
If you care about your carbon footprint, there's a new place you can go to shrink it down: a kiosk at San Francisco Airport.
San Francisco International Airport is launching a "Climate Passport" program to let travelers to offset the impact of their flights by purchasing carbon offsets before they take off. Kiosks are available in the International Terminal and Terminal 3, or you can buy your offsets online.
The offsets are arranged by the San Francisco firm 3Degrees, which "provides a range of renewable energy and climate mitigation products and consulting services." 3Degrees was one of five organizations around the country recognized by Secretary Steven Chu on Monday as "Green Power Network Leaders" for "exceptional achievements in supporting increased market deployment of renewable energy technologies through green power programs."
3Degrees is obtaining carbon offsets for SFO's new program from the Garcia River Forest, which absorbs carbon dioxide as it grows in a protected environment. That's also one of the primary sources of offsets for PG&E's ClimateSmart(tm) program, which offers customers a way to offset the emissions caused by their use of electric power. The typical cost is only about $5 a month per home.
To see what it will cost you to offset your next flight, go to the Climate Passport web site and give the calculator a try. My recent trip to Seattle, with my wife, would have cost an extra $12.33 to offset. That's a small price for peace of mind.
Note: I was tipped off to this story by an occasional blogger named Gavin Newsom. He describes himself as a Santa Clara University graduate (with partial baseball scholarship), a supporter of gay marriage and universal health care, and the "youngest San Francisco mayor in over a century."
Sep 16 2009
San Jose's City Hall almost reached critical mass today, as Mayor Chuck Reed was joined by representatives of PG&E, IBM, Cisco Systems, local civic organizations, congressional offices and, last but not least, major Bay Area print and broadcast media.
What brought them all together was an announcement of the details--and wider implications--of PG&E's recent application to the U.S. Department of Energy for a $42.5 million Smart Grid investment grant under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
The grant would fund half of an $85 million Customer Energy Management Project that will allow PG&E to build the next stage of Smart Grid applications upon its existing SmartMeter™ program, already the largest and one of the most advanced in the nation. (The count is 3.5 million high-tech meters deployed to date, and growing one every two seconds.)
PG&E's Andrew Tang, who runs the utility's Smart Energy Web program, said the project would provide 75,000 business and residential customers with state-of-the-art energy use displays to help them better understand and control their energy usage in near-real time.
These devices are just a starting point for more sophisticated energy management appliances that will help customers take advantage of voluntary utility programs that let them save money by cutting back or shifting their energy use from peak to off-peak periods.
That lowers costs, improves grid reliability and spares the environment by reducing the need to build more peak generation, Tang said.
The Customer Energy Management project would also enhance electric reliability by helping PG&E manage wider adoption of clean customer solar. When large numbers of solar installations exist in a neighborhood, passing clouds and changing weather can cause voltage fluctuations. By installing high-tech sensors on distribution lines, Tang said, the utility will be able to detect and respond to those fluctuations before they create power quality issues.
This project represents just a few of the many ways smarter grids will help PG&E and other utilities integrate more intermittent renewable energy (read: wind and solar power) into their systems, improve reliability and lower costs.
By setting the stage for future Smart Grid investments and innovations, this project will reinforce California's technological leadership, provide valuable lessons for other utilities nationwide and stimulate clean tech jobs.
Among PG&E's major partners are the City of San Jose--the largest city in PG&E's service area --IBM, Cisco Systems, ABB and Stanford University. The project has been endorsed by Governor Schwarzenegger and many Bay Area business, labor and civic assocations.
Mayor Reed kicked off the announcement with comments about the tremendous importance of Smart Grid to the region and the nation, including its potential for creating new jobs.
"There is no better place than San Jose to demonstrate how new technology can be used to address our country's energy problems," he said. "An investment here will help set the foundation for using 'Smart Grids' across the country."
IBM and Cisco both emphasized how strategic the partnership promises to be.
"This project is leading edge and one of the most impressive that I've seen in the country," said Marianne Dickerson, Associate Partner in IBM's North American Energy & Utilities Practice.
Sep 15 2009
Americans love being number one. But sometimes, leading the pack isn't all it's cracked up to be--like being number one in medical spending as a percent of GDP.
Happily, the United States has finally slipped from its traditional number one ranking in another questionable area: carbon emissions per capita.
Out of 185 countries surveyed, Australia now holds that dubious distinction, according to Mapplecroft, which bills itself humbly as "the leading source of global risks intelligence."
According to its "CO2 Energy Emissions Index," Australia emits 20.6 tonnes (metric tons) of carbon dioxide per person per year, nearly a tonne more than the average American and almost two tonnes more than third-ranking Canadians.
While China as a whole has become the world's leading emitter of greenhouse gases by virtue of its huge population, the typical Chinese generates only 4.5 tonnes of carbon emissions. And the average Indian puts out a miserly 1.2 tonnes.
Australia is simultaneously a major exporter of coal, the most carbon-intensive of the major fossil fuels, and one of the countries deemed most at risk from climate change caused by the greenhouse effect. Recent heat waves, devastating fires, floods, spreading disease and other calamities have made those risks all too real.
But Australia is also a country that has come under the sway of influential climate change skeptics, so its swings in public opinion are being closely watched as a harbinger for the United States.
Sep 15 2009
For many construction projects, the biggest challenge is getting past all the reviews and winning all the approvals needed to actually put shovels in the ground.
PG&E's 2 megawatt solar photovoltaic pilot project--named the Vaca-Dixon Solar Station after the electrical substation it neighbors--has achieved that milestone and is moving quickly to become a reliable source of clean, renewable electric power later this year.
This photo, taken September 14, shows the first panels going up. They are polycrystalline modules from Solon Corporation, which PG&E selected after competitive bid as the turnkey supplier to build the facility.
Solon is building the facility with help from Silverwood Energy, Inc., a California disabled veteran business enterprise.
The pilot represents the utility's first step in implementing its plan to promote 500 MW of clean new PV power over five years--250 MW to be built by the utility and 250 MW by independent developers. (The plan, proposed in February, is under consideration by the California Public Utilities Commission.)
If the projects are approved and finished by 2015, they are expected to deliver more than 1,000 gigawatt hours of power each year, equal to the annual consumption of about 150,000 average homes. In all, this program would meet over 1.3 percent of PG&E's electric demand.
Sep 11 2009
Several news stories on the science and politics of global warming caught our attention this week:
A diverse group of leading U.S. corporations, including PG&E, DuPont, Hewlett-Packard, Nike, Dell and Johnson & Johnson, issued an open letter to the U.S. Senate urging swift action to fight climate change. "Passing legislation to cap greenhouse gas emissions will send a strong signal to the private sector unleashing new business opportunities, leveling the playing field for all U.S. businesses and ensuring that the U.S. economy can compete in growing global markets for clean energy," the letter said.
Bipartisan experts say that curbing global warming is an urgent matter of national security. A group of 32 former officials, including former Secretary of State George Shultz, former Senators Nancy Kassebaum Baker and John Warner, and former CIA Director James Woolsey, called on Congress to pass a "clear, comprehensive, realistic and broadly bipartisan plan." However, Senate Democrats say climate legislation is on hold while Congress debates health care reform.
Studies of the economic cost of climate change legislation are a dime a dozen. But what about the costs of inaction? As the globe continues to warm, those costs include flood damage, threats to public health, droughts, and impacts on transportation and recreational resources, among others. Read all about them in a new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and National Automobile Dealers Association have filed a motion with the US Court of Appeals seeking to overturn the EPA's approval of California's strict tailpipe standards to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
France may become one of the first countries to impose carbon taxes if French President Nicolas Sarkozy overcomes public opposition to his newly announced plans for a fee of $25 per ton of carbon dioxide. It would apply mainly to gasoline and natural gas. Sarkozy proposes offsetting tax cuts on small businesses.
Sep 10 2009
On Tuesday, NEXT100 reported that algae is hot--a prime target of venture funding for the next generation of biofuels.
Now it's getting even hotter.
South San Francisco-based Solazyme, Inc.--a microalgae biotechnology company named by BusinessWeek as one of "25 companies to watch in Energy Tech"--reports that it has been selected by the Pentagon to "research, develop, and demonstrate commercial scale production of algae-derived advanced biofuel that meets the United States Navy's rigorous specifications for military tactical platforms."
If successful, the transition to high-performance biofuels would reduce dependence on foreign oil, a national security issue, and reduce the U.S. military's enormous carbon footprint. (It burns more than 10 million gallons of fuel a day, according to Forbes.)
Just as the Department of Defense played a major role in promoting the early Internet, so it is pumping up advanced green tech. Last December, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency awarded $35 million in contracts to General Atomics and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), both based in San Diego, to investigate biofuel alternatives to military jet fuel.
Given that the military fuel market alone is worth $12 billion a year, investors are taking notice.
Said Paul Bollinger, a vice president of SAIC, "The military has the potential of serving as a market initiator and the airlines as a market maker."
Sep 10 2009
How's this for the ultimate in renewable green energy: tree power.
A team of University of Washington researchers has tapped the minute electrical currents in trees to power an electronic circuit for what they say is the first time.
Last year, MIT scientists demonstrated the existence of very small voltages between trees and the ground. You can see for yourself a demonstration on YouTube (as well as this cautionary tale).
Using a power booster, the University of Washington team was able to amplify the few hundred millivolts of potential between the ground and bigleaf maples on the university campus to run low-power sensors at 1.1 volts.
In this case, low power really means nanopower: The circuits consumed only 10 billionths of a watt.
"It's not exactly established where these voltages come from," said co-author Babak Parviz, an associate professor of electrical engineering at the university. "But there seems to be some signaling in trees, similar to what happens in the human body but with slower speed."
"As new generations of technology come online," he added, "I think it's warranted to look back at what's doable or what's not doable in terms of a power source."
Hmmm . . . Maybe if PG&E customers keep saving forests through their contributions to the ClimateSmart(tm) program, we can wire all those trees with electrodes and hook them up to our grid. Should be enough for a few fluorescent bulbs at least. Who could object to such green power?
Sep 08 2009
Today, a modified Prius sets out from San Francisco on a 10-day, cross-country tour to promote green vehicles. What makes this car special isn't its plug-in hybrid technology, which gives it a claimed 150 miles per gallon, but that fact that its internal combustion engine runs on gasoline made from algae. Thus its name: Algaeus.
Eons before human beings began tinkering with renewable energy, algae was one of earth's first and most productive solar cells--based on carbon, not silicon. It captures solar energy to convert carbon dioxide--a greenhouse gas--into various organic materials. With the right genetic tinkering, it can produce biofuels and other substitutes for petroleum.
Startups developing algae-based fuels are one of the hottest sectors of venture capital these days. At least 57 firms are competing in this niche space for a market that could someday be worth hundreds of billions of dollars a year.
San Diego-based Sapphire Energy, which is supplying the fuel for the Algaeus, has raised more than $100 million from various venture investors, including Bill Gates' Cascade Investments.
The Department of Energy is also supporting algae, with promises to devote up to $85 million in stimulus funds to algae-based and other advanced biofuels. And the California Energy Commission has awarded six-figure grants to NASA Ames Research Center and South San Francisco-based Solazyme Inc. to develop algae technology.
More impressively, Big Oil is starting to place some bets on algae. Exxon recently signed an R&D deal worth more than $300 million with Synthetic Genomics; BP has partnered with Marktek; and Chevron has a development deal with Solazyme, one of the algae industry's leaders.
But not even Big Oil can make a success of algae unless these startups master their biggest challenges: scaling up production and lowering costs. So far "no one is close to competing with petroleum," Jeff Matais, a senior executive at A2BE Carbon Capture, LLC, told NEXT100.
Few algae companies have even demonstrated significant production, much less competitive costs. California-based Aurora Biofuels says it has developed a strain of algae that is twice as productive as other species. The company also projects that it can produce fuel for about $1.75 per gallon, but so far, according to the New York Times, "the new algae strains have been producing a gallon of biodiesel a day in an Olympic pool-sized pond."
Sapphire says that by 2011 it will be producing 1 million gallons of diesel and jet fuel per year. But Tim Zenk, its vice president for corporate relations, conceded to NEXT100, "that's really just an R&D level. The real thing to focus on is 2018 and beyond when we get to commercial quantities."
At levels of 100 million gallons annually and up, he says, the company's product should compete with oil at $60 to $80 per barrel. "It's all about scalability. What drew us to algae is we believe it can be turned into an industrial crop through biology, then grown at a world scale. That's what we are building and perfecting."
At last year's Algae Biomass Summit in Seattle, the prince of venture capital, Vinod Khosla, said he had not invested in any algae companies yet because none had demonstrated an ability to achieve reasonable production costs.
But he added, "I believe algae can be a solution. I'm convinced someone here (at the Summit) will break the code." Maybe that breakthrough will be heralded by a cross-country drive starting in San Francisco.
Sep 03 2009
Mother Nature has played a dirty trick on the clean-tech industry: she hid many of the essential raw materials in out-of-the-way places and mainly in China. And China is in no mood to share.
Just as the 20th century economy was dependent on the Middle East for oil, so the 21st century economy may be dependent on China for supplies of "rare earth elements" that are vital to production of hybrid car motors and batteries, wind turbines, energy-efficient light bulbs, catalytic converters and many other "green" technologies. Every Toyota Prius is said to use 25 pounds of rare earth elements.
A recent story in the London Daily Telegraph reported that China may restrict or completely ban foreign exports of many of these elements. According to Reuters, "That makes Toyota's market-leading gasoline-electric hybrid car and other similar vehicles vulnerable to a supply crunch predicted by experts as China, the world's dominant rare earths producer, limits exports while global demand swells."
Rare earth elements, 17 in all, are well named: they are found in commercial quantities only in a few locations around the world. The United States has a once prominent but now closed mine at Mountain Pass, Calif. in San Bernardino County. Australia also has a couple of significant mines, but China today controls 93 percent of all production.
These elements have hard-to-pronounce names like dysprosium, praseodymium, neodymium and ytterbium. Blame the fact that they were named after obscure geographic locations (the village of Ytterby in Sweden) or Greek roots ("dysprositos" means "hard to get").
They are still hard to get, usually from obscure locations. Half the world's production reportedly comes from a single mine in China's Inner Mongolia
Similar concerns over the concentration of world supplies of lithium in a few countries like Bolivia raise questions over the long term viability of clean electric vehicles powered by lithium batteries.
The issue has grabbed enough attention that one conference organizer has scheduled a summit in Washington, D.C. on "the growing risks to Rare Earth Elements, Minor Metals, Lithium and Platinum Group Metals."
U.S. mining interests argue that dependence on China can only be avoided by promoting domestic production, which they claim is being impeded by excessive regulation. "We'd be much better off mining those metals domestically and getting good jobs and doing it in an environmentally responsible way than relying on countries like the Congo and China that may not always be our friends," said Laura Skaer, executive director of the Northwest Mining Association.
In the long run, if the value of these materials continues to grow, and if production remains constrained, access may become a growing issue of national security.
Michael Klare, Five College Professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College, and author of Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict, says "resource competition has been a decisive factor in driving conflict since the earliest recorded wars." Today, he adds, "we are becoming ever more dependent on a finite supply of critical materials at a time when the global demand for these resources--driven, in part, by the rise of China, India, and other newly-industrialized countries--is expected to soar. Under these circumstances, all of the conditions that might have prompted conflict over resources in the past are likely to become magnified."
As if to prove his point, an overheated report from the Industrial College of the Armed Forces at National Defense University in Washington, D.C. declared, "access to the world's material resources should become an overarching strategic imperative that shapes foreign policy decisions. . . In that light, the U.S. must be capable of applying all appropriate instruments of national power--including military power--to ensure access to currently unanticipated strategic materials markets."
Sep 02 2009
U.S. businesses, government agencies and educational institutions are wasting millions of dollars a year by failing to invest in proven ways of reducing IT energy costs, according to a new national survey of IT professionals by CDW Corp.
The implications are huge, not only for organization budgets, but for the environment, as needless greenhouse gas emissions accelerate global warming.
NEXT100 has already reported that U.S. organizations collectively waste an estimated $2.8 billion every year powering 108 million unused PCs at nights and on weekends--producing about 20 million tons of excess carbon dioxide emissions a year.
But mega data centers represent an even faster growing source of power demand. In PG&E's Northern California service area, they account for an astounding 2.5 percent of all electricity consumption, and nationally their energy use is expected to double by 2011. They thus represent a critical opportunity for energy-saving investments.
CDW's survey of 752 IT professionals offers good news and bad. Organizations are paying more attention to energy waste. 59 percent now train employees to shut down equipment after they leave the office for extended periods, up from 43 percent in 2008. 57 percent now buy ENERGY STAR-rated computers and other devices, compared to only 31 percent last year.
And 46 percent say they are now implementing server virtualization--a technique to reduce the number of physical computers in data centers by hosting several applications on the same device--compared to 35 percent in 2008.
Still, the average IT professional said their organization could save an additional 17 percent, or $1.5 million annually, in energy costs if they really got serious.
A majority said their IT department gets no higher-level directive or incentive to save energy. As a result, only 26 percent said energy efficiency is a very important consideration in purchasing new equipment, down from 34 percent last year.
These professionals did report that utility rebate programs to promote efficiency make a significant difference in their investment decisions. But Mark Bramfitt, who manages the data center efficiency program at PG&E, reports a slowdown in its accomplishments. Efficiency measures prompted by PG&E's rebates saved 7 megawatts of power last year, up from 4 MW in 2007. But results this year are running only about even with last year, in part because of a decline in the pace of construction of new data centers, where the program earns the most bang for the buck.
One especially promising souce of future energy savings in the technology sector could be in communications networks. A new report by Pike Research suggests that wireless networks could slash energy costs 42 percent--and save 100 million tons of CO2--by implementing greener technology. Start Twittering your friends about it today.
Sep 01 2009
The United States beat the USSR in the race to the moon. But in a space race with far bigger stakes--the race to deploy and harvest virtually unlimited space solar power--Japan is showing much greater commitment.
Bloomberg News reports today that Mitsubishi Electric Corp. and IHI Corp. are joining more than a dozen other companies in a $21 billion Japanese project "intending to build a giant solar-power generator in space within three decades and beam electricity to earth."
The project is being led by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the country's trade ministry.
Orbiting arrays of photovoltaic panels will gather solar energy, which will be beamed to earth as radio waves, then converted back to electrical energy for distribution over the grid. Unlike terrestrial solar power, the energy would be available almost continuously.
Kensuke Kanekiyo, managing director of the Institute of Energy Economics, a government research body, told Bloomberg, "It sounds like a science-fiction cartoon, but solar power generation in space may be a significant alternative energy source in the century ahead as fossil fuel disappears."
In the United States, government agencies have long studied and even endorsed the concept of space solar power, but have never funded serious R&D efforts. A report by the U.S. National Security Space Office in 2007 concluded that space solar power has "enormous potential for energy security, economic development [and] improved environmental stewardship," but said it "'falls through the cracks' of federal bureaucracies, and has lacked an organizational advocate within the US Government."
In Japan, on the other hand, the government is serious about making clean space solar power a significant contributor to the resource-poor country's energy mix.
JAXA plans first to launch a demonstration satellite to beam tens of kilowatts of power back to earth by 2015; then to demonstrate robotic assembly techniques; next to build a major prototype in geosynchronous orbit; and finally to deploy a commercial-scale system in space by 2030.
As one of their top scientists told EnergyBiz magazine last year, the goal is to start generating a gigawatt of power--roughly the output of a nuclear power plant--within two decades. "We expect space solar power panel systems will be competitive with the existing power plants in 20 to 30 years, if the space transportation cost is considerably reduced," he said.
PG&E and Solaren Corporation announced the first commercial space solar power deal in April. But Solaren, a startup based in Southern California led by aerospace veterans, must raise funds, complete the necessary R&D, and launch a working system into orbit by 2016 without the benefit of government support. "We are on track to meet the objectives we set with PG&E," said Solaren CEO Gary Spirnak.
India, too, is actively studying the potential of space solar power. It is developing an inexpensive reusable launch vehicle that could give "mankind the benefit of space solar-power stations in geostationary and other orbits," former President A. P. J. Abdul Kalam told an audience of international space experts in Boston two years ago.
Aug 31 2009
Many of us suffer from Chronic Information Overload Syndrome: books piling up on the night stand, magazines stacked in the bathroom and email overflowing our in-boxes. Still, that doesn't stop us from ever-optimistically creating lists of what we plan to read in the near future, just as soon as we finish the chores.
In that spirit, I was intrigued by news that the Humboldt County Library has more than 150 new books and other materials on the environment, "green" technology and energy efficiency, thanks to a grant from PG&E to the Humboldt Library Foundation.
I asked the library system for its list of new titles--they do, after all, serve one of the most environmentally conscious parts of the state, so their choices ought to give the rest of us excellent guidance on these popular, practical and important topics.
Here are some of the titles they thought well enough of to purchase at least two copies:
- Amann, Jennifer Thorne. Consumer guide to home energy savings.
- Bishop, Amanda. How to reduce your carbon footprint.
- David, Laurie. The down-to-earth guide to global warming.
- DeGunther, Rik. Energy efficient homes for dummies.
- Delano, Marfe Ferguson. Earth in the hot seat.
- Krigger, John. The homeowner's handbook to energy efficiency.
- Krupp, Fred. Earth, the sequel: The race to reinvent energy and stop global warming.
- McKay, Kim. True green kids: 100 things you can do to save the planet.
- Peppas, Lynn. Ocean, tidal, and wave energy.
- Reilly, Kathleen M. Planet Earth: 25 environmental projects you can build yourself.
- Rodger, Ellen. Building a green community.
- Sivertsen, Linda. Generation green: The ultimate teen guide to living an eco-friendly life.
- Thornhill, Jan. This is my planet: the kids' guide to global warming.
- Walker, Niki. Harnessing power from the sun.
If this list just whets your appetite for more, check out the lists on Amazon.com relating to the environment--all 1,956 of them!
Aug 28 2009
Several news stories on the science and politics of global warming caught our attention this week:
Rising temperatures over the next century could slash yields of three leading cash crops--corn, soybeans and cotton--by as much as 80 percent in the United states, according to a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Despite these implications, "Democratic leaders are finding that resistance in the [agricultural] heartland is one of the biggest hurdles to Senate passage of climate-change legislation," according to the Wall Street Journal.
Southern California is likely to get not only hotter but muggier, according to researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Warmer ocean currents off Mexico's Baja Peninsula are increasing humidity, a trend that contributed to the severe summer heat wave of 2006 that caused the deaths of 600 people and 25,000 cattle in the state.
One of the world's top climate scientists has called for drastic cutbacks of atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said he now endorsed a target of 350 parts per million, a goal endorsed by most of the world's poor and vulnerable nations. Current CO2 levels of nearly 390 ppm are already high enough to cause prolonged droughts, destructive storms and a measurable rise in sea levels.
Expert witnesses told a Senate subcommittee this week that global warming threatens to dramatically harm many U.S. national parks. Glacier National Park will lose its glaciers; Joshua Tree National Park may lose its Joshua trees; Rocky Mountain National Park will lose its tundra; and Ellis Island National Monument "could be lost to rising seas," the experts warned.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has long railed against the cost to business of unnecessary litigation, this week threatened to sue the EPA if it does not agree to hold a public hearing on the evidence for and against human-caused climate change. Likening it to the infamous Scopes monkey trial, William Kovacs, the chamber's senior vice president for environment, technology and regulatory affairs, said, with unintended irony, "It would be evolution versus creationism. It would be the science of climate change on trial." The EPA termed the Chamber's demand "frivolous" and most climate scientists dispute the Chamber's skepticism about global warming.
Aug 27 2009
Just how far are you prepared to go to fight global warming? Would you cover your home with algae?
That, essentially, is the intriguing proposal advanced this week by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, a 160-year-old professional organization, based in London, devoted to sustainable energy and cleaner and safer transportation.
In a major new report, Geo-Engineering - Giving us time to act?, the organization argues that in addition to the usual climate-change proposals, governments need to consider geoengineering schemes to cool the planet before we experience "dramatic changes to our climate . . . which could jeopardise modern civilisation."
Unlike some science-fiction-sounding proposals, like firing millions of solar reflectors into orbit, the group's three favorites include making building roofs more reflective (a favorite of Energy Secretary Steven Chu), building millions of "artificial trees" to chemically absorb CO2 out of the atmosphere (an idea championed by Columbia University physicist Klaus Lackner), and--most intriguingly--"algae-coated buildings."
This latter approach may seem a tad unappealing, but hear them out.
The idea is to install sealed containers of algae--photobioreactors--on the side of new or existing buildings. As the algae grows inside, it absorbs CO2 from the surrounding air, reducing greenhouse gases.
The carbon in the algae can then be "sequestered," or stored, by turning it into biofuel or into biochar, a soil additive used by farmers since prehistoric times, as discussed previously in NEXT100.
The algae-filled panels could use waste water or salt water, avoiding the need to tap scarce fresh water supplies. And by insulating buildings, they would reduce energy usage by occupants.
The institute concedes that the proposal is "very much at a conceptual stage," its technical feasibility remains unknown, and the cost of photobioreactors is at present "too expensive to be commercially viable." (And here's a question they don't answer: why would you install an algae photoreactor, with a photosynthetic efficiency of less than 5 percent, instead of photovoltaic building materials with twice that efficiency? ) But the group insists that many of the underlying processes are proven and the idea "is worthy of further research."
Any volunteers?
Aug 26 2009
Is he in your Rolodex? If so, says Earth2Tech, "you're probably in pretty good shape."
The noted energy and clean tech blog today named PG&E CEO Peter Darbee as one of the "top 15 most influential people in the smart grid space." This list, produced by Katie Fehrenbacher, calls PG&E "one of the most aggressive utilities, deploying smart meters and home area energy management tools."
Also today, IDC Energy Insights and Intelligent Utility magazine named PG&E one of the nation's five most "intelligent utilities," based on metrics quantifying productivity, renewable energy, smart initiatives, demand response/energy efficiency, and IT investment. The goal was to separate "smart grid hype" from reality.
"These metrics measure each company's efficiency, commitment to renewable energy, investments in developing smarter grids, enablement of their customers to manage their energy usage and costs, and their investment in information technology to enable business process improvement," according to the announcement.
The Earth2Tech story notes Darbee's extensive experience in the telecom industry, saying he "has a unique perspective on what the smart grid should provide for utilities in the U.S." It adds that he has "brought in and promoted executives with more of a Silicon Valley, think-outside-the-box mentality, compared to the traditional utility industry. His leadership shows, and PG&E has been partnering with tech-savvy startups like Silver Spring Networks and applied for smart grid stimulus funds to roll out home area network technologies."
Others on the list of leaders include Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, Cisco CEO John Chambers, Silver Spring Networks CEO Scott Lang and Guido Bartels, IBM's top exec for energy and utilities.
Fehrenbacher's timing was impeccable--she posted just hours before PG&E announced its application for Smart Grid stimulus funding for an innovative new energy storage project.
Aug 26 2009
When the wind stops blowing or the sun goes behind a cloud, where will we get the clean, renewable energy we need for a sustainable economy?
From storage--batteries, fuel cells, flywheels or other devices that convert surplus electricity to chemical or mechanical energy, then feed it back into the grid on demand.
Cheap energy storage is sometimes called the holy grail of renewable energy and a key component of future "smart grids" envisioned by utilities like Pacific Gas and Electric Company. It's also one of the hottest areas of clean-tech investing.
Now PG&E is taking steps to make it a reality, applying today to the Department of Energy for a $25 million Smart Grid stimulus funding grant, under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, for a large compressed air energy storage (CAES) project.
The application follows a previous PG&E request this month for a $42.5 million Smart Grid grant for a Home Area Network deployment project, in collaboration with the city of San Jose, Stanford University and several leading technology companies. Building on the utility's advanced SmartMeter(tm) program, it will help customers lower their energy costs and usage by installing 75,000 in-premise energy displays and controllers at select mid-sized commercial and industrial customers.
PG&E also joined a Smart Grid grant application this month led by the Western Electricity Coordinating Council to install high-tech devices called synchrophasors to monitor and enhance the reliability and performance of the Western electric grid.
With its latest project, PG&E plans to pump compressed air into an underground reservoir, using mainly wind energy produced during non-peak hours, and then release it to generate electricity during periods of peak demand. The project has an output capacity of 300 megawatts--similar to a mid-sized power plant--for up to 10 hours. It will take an estimated five years to design, permit and build.
"Energy storage is a strategic complement to the generation resources that provide power to our customers," said Hal La Flash, director of emerging clean technologies at PG&E. "This project will help us maximize the efficiency and flexibility of our system while enabling the delivery of clean, renewable energy."
Large-scale energy storage holds tremendous promise for helping the environment, improving grid reliability and reducing energy costs:
- It will reduce greenhouse gas and other undesirable air emissions by enabling greater use of intermittent renewable resources and by reducing the need to use conventional fossil-fuel "peaking" plants to meet peak demand.
- It will improve asset utilization by absorbing excess generation during periods of low demand and reducing the need to add new generation for peak periods.
- And it stands to lower costs by storing energy produced when prices are low (off-peak) and returning it to the grid when prices are high, avoiding the need to buy costly on-peak electricity.
CAES has orders of magnitude more capacity than typical utility batteries and appears to be the most cost-effective form of storage, according to technical experts at the Electric Power Research Institute. The concept has been proven by projects in Alabama and Germany. Several utilities, backed by DOE and Sandia National Laboratory, are working on a major CAES facility in Iowa.
A massive study of CAES at Princeton University last year concluded that it is ideally suited to smoothing out the ups and downs of wind energy, which often peaks at night:
CAES appears to have many of the characteristics necessary to transform wind into a
mainstay of global electricity generation. The storage of energy through air compression
may enable wind to meet a large fraction of the world's electricity needs competitively in
a carbon constrained world.
This project isn't PG&E's first foray into energy storage. For many years it has operated a 1.2 gigawatt hydroelectric plant near Fresno, the Helms Pumped Storage Facility, that uses inexpensive power at night to pump water into a higher reservoir for release during the day, when power is more costly. PG&E received permits last year from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to explore two additional pumped hydro sites totaling up to 2 GW in capacity.
Other utilities are also beginning to incorporate storage into their operations. Ohio-based AEP is installing utility-scale batteries on its network and says it plans to install a total of 1,000 MW of storage in its system over the next decade. Beacon Power Corp. was awarded $43 million in loan guarantees from the DOE to complete a 20 MW storage project for National Grid in New York state using flywheels. Japanese utilities have installed sodium sulfur and vanadium flow batteries to integrate wind power into their networks. And Southern California Edison just requested a DOE grant to partner with A123 Systems to build the world's biggest lithium-ion battery assembly--32 megawatt-hours in capacity--to help balance out intermittent wind power in the Tehachapi Wind Resource Area.
Aug 25 2009
There's a reason home prices in San Francisco have held up so well during the current recession, while those in other California cities have fallen by as much as a third--and it goes beyond views, history and charm.
It's walkability--the ability to grab a latte, drop off your clothes at the cleaner and get your hair cut without once having to brave traffic to drive to a mall.
A new study sponsored by CEOs for Cities, a national organization dedicated to "sustaining the next generation of great American cities," documents the strong correlation between home values and the walkability of residential neighborhoods.
The report, Walking the Walk: How Walkability Raises Housing Values in U.S. Cities by Portland, Ore.-based economist Joseph Cortright, found that more walkable neighborhoods typically command premiums ranging from $4,000 to $34,000 per home, controlling for other factors such as size, age, access to jobs and distance from downtown.
Cortright analyzed real estate transactions in 15 urban markets, including Fresno, Sacramento, San Francisco and Stockton. He assigned a Walk Score to each neighborhood, ranging from 0 to 100, based on the proximity of restaurants, schools, parks, stores, libraries and other services. For a typical neighborhood, each one-point increase in the Walk Score increased home values $700 to $3,000.
"Even in a turbulent economy, we know that walkability adds value to residential property just as additional square footage, bedrooms, bathrooms and other amenities do," said Cortright. "It's clear that consumers assign a tangible value to the convenience factor of living in more walkable places with access to a variety of destinations."
Want to know your neighborhood's Walk Score--or the score of a home you're thinking of buying? Check out the Walk Score website (of course), plug in the address, and you'll not only get the score, but a list of walkable destinations, a Google map with icons and details of the property, included estimated market value and property taxes. (Good news: my home scored 92 out of 100--a "walkers' paradise.")
Said Walk Score founder Mike Mathieu of the new CEOs for Cities study, "Walking the Walk shows definitively what we've always believed - that homes in walkable neighborhoods continue to be a good investment, and are one of the simplest and most effective solutions to fight climate change, improve our health, and strengthen our communities. Our vision is for every property listing to include a Walk Score: Beds: 3 Baths: 2 Walk Score: 84." (Walk Scores are now also available on Zillow.com, ZipRealty.com, and Postlets.com.)
So if you're a city planner, you may not be able to match the Golden Gate Bridge or San Francisco's Victorians, but you can work to deliver what residents are voting for with dollars and their feet: walkability. As Carol Coletta, president of CEOs for Cities, put it, "if urban leaders are intentional about developing and redeveloping their cities to make them more walkable, it will not only enhance the local tax base but will also contribute to individual wealth by increasing the value of what is, for most people, their biggest asset."
Aug 24 2009
Forget the economy, health care and Afghanistan. I want to know what the government is going to do about the weather.
Not the local weather in San Francisco, where the summer chill seems impervious even to global warming, but space weather--solar geomagnetic storms that have the power to disable satellites, disrupt radio transmissions and even knock out electrical power to wide areas, as when most of Quebec province went dark for hours in 1989.
As noted previously on NEXT100, a study group convened by the National Research Council reported this year that a really bad geomagnetic storm could black out most of North America, costing trillions of dollars in losses and requiring a decade for full recovery--if our social institutions survived at all.
The cost and complexity of dealing with the problem have stymied solutions and left modern civilization highly vulnerable. When I asked for details of current action plans several weeks ago, a spokeswoman for the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, which is tasked with preventing widespread blackouts, said only, "it's certainly an issue that NERC is looking into."
In a briefing paper released today on "Electromagnetic Pulse & Geomagnetic Storm Events," NERC concedes that geomagnetic storms "have the potential to physically damage electrical and electronic equipment throughout North America's critical infrastructure, notably including Extra High Voltage transformers and industrial control systems . . . The most significant electric reliability concern is the potential for simultaneous impact to large portions of the bulk power system, from which restoration and recovery may be challenging and prolonged."
NERC explains why the problem remains so great:
Essentially all of the system's critical conductive elements are exposed to this threat, as are many of its critical control elements. As a result, deploying controls and equipment that could prevent damage . . . may require considerable expertise, time, and financial resources.
NERC notes that a commission authorized by Congress to address the problem recommended several steps, including:
- Assure there are adequate communication assets dedicated or available to electrical system operators.
- Protect the use of emergency power supplies and fuel delivery, and importantly, provide for their sustained use as part of the protection of critical loads.
- Separate the present interconnected systems, particularly the Eastern Interconnection, into several nonsynchronous connected subregions or electrical islands.
- Install substantially more black start generation units coupled with specific transmission that can be readily isolated to balancing loads.
- Improve, extend, and exercise recovery capabilities.
In partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy and in collaboration with the Canadian government, NERC says it is convening a committee of government and industry experts to further assess the risks and--at a workshop later this year or next--will "consider potential preventative and planning measures to minimize their impacts on bulk power system reliability."
In addition, NERC says it will "work to coordinate various planning and mitigation actions with North American governmental authorities and other critical infrastructure sectors. A comprehensive, crosssector approach will be needed to ensure North America is adequately protected from these threats."
Bottom line, as I read it: expect more studies but not a lot of action anytime soon. We have a long way to go before we can sleep easier about the impact of solar storms or nuclear bomb explosions that create similar devastating electromagnetic pulses.
Aug 21 2009
Several stories on the science and politics of global warming caught our attention this week:
Huge ice sheets in Antarctica are thinning four times faster than measured only a decade ago, and may last only another century, according to findings by British researchers who warn that sea levels could rise dramatically as a result. "By the end of the century, the accelerated melting could cause sea levels to climb by 3 to 5 feet -- levels substantially higher than predicted by a major scientific group just two years ago," said Colin Summerhayes, executive director of the Britain-based Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research.
Arctic warming is releasing significant quantities of methane trapped in seabed sediments, according to another group of British researchers. Methane, an extremely potent greenhouse gas, may become an increasingly significant source of global warming if these releases continue, thus accelerating this dangerous feedback effect.
Hang on tight: global warming may cause the earth to tilt and wobble, according to a report in New Scientist. Melting of ice sheets in the Arctic is shifting the Earth's axis of rotation and moving the north pole at a rate of about 10 centimeters per year. And warming of the oceans is redistributing the Earth's mass enough to cause a new polar shift of about 1.5 centimeters per year toward Alaska and Hawaii.
A committee of the House of Representatives is investigating apparently forged letters sent by lobbyists opposed to climate change legislation, which appear to come from senior citizens concerned about rising electricity bills. The letters are similar to forgeries produced by a coal industry lobbying firm that were exposed two weeks ago.
A confidential memo from American Petroleum Institute President Jack Gerard, obtained and publicized by Greenpeace USA, calls on member companies to recruit employees, retirees and contractors to join "Energy Citizen" rallies to oppose climate change legislation. The first of the rallies was held Tuesday in Houston and was backed by Chevron.
Aug 20 2009
Yesterday we reported on a new study showing that music downloads are slashing the carbon footprint of traditional music distribution, considering the energy expended in producing and distributing CDs. Now researchers at Cleantech Group have documented how much digital book downloads can save in the way of trees, printing presses, truck trips and retail energy consumption.
As summarized by Katie Fehrenbacher at Earth2Tech, the study estimates that one e-book reader, like Amazon's Kindle, can save 168 kg of CO2 annually if the average user cuts back on the purchase of 22.5 physical books per year.
Said the report's author, Emma Ritch, "Multiplied by millions of units and increased sales of e-books, e-readers will have a staggering impact on improving the sustainability and environmental impact on one of the world's most polluting industries: the publishing of books, newspapers and magazines."
Based on the report's projections, e-book readers could save three million tonnes of CO2 annually by 2012, net of the emissions caused by production of the devices.
The savings will depend hugely on the pace of adoption, of course. Critics, such as The New Yorker's Nicholson Baker, have taken Amazon's Kindle to task for its high price, "sickly gray" screen, proprietary format and limited availability of titles.
Sony's competitive readers, which start at $199, lack wireless capability (for now), making them much less convenient. Other competitors, like the iRex iLiad, the Jinke Hanlin eReader, and CyBook by Bookeen, are largely unknown.
But the success of the Kindle has, ahem, kindled tremendous interest among electronics manufacturers (Samsung, Apple) and content providers (Barnes and Noble, Hearst Corp, Google), all but ensuring rapid growth of competition, price cuts and technological improvements to make this sector explode like the digital music industry. In fact, In-Stat projects that nearly 30 million e-book readers will ship by 2013, up from one million last year. That spells good news for the earth's environment, anyway you read it.
Aug 19 2009
Without any apparent public concern, the earth is quickly being taken over by a strange breed of iPod-people who look human except for the tell-tale wires hanging down from their ears as they walk to work or jog on treadmills at the local gym.
These strangely detached iPod-people have already wreaked havoc on the traditional music business, crushing sales of high-margin CDs in favor of cheaper digital music downloads, which now account for 35 percent of all music sold, up from 20 percent in 2007. By next year, predicts NPD Group, sales of CDs and digital downloads "will be a dead heat." (Dan Tynan at PC World calls the failure of the recording industry to get out in front of the digital music revolution one of the "10 stupidest tech company blunders.")
But now it turns out that iPod people may actually be saving the planet. A scholarly new study prepared for Microsoft and Intel (hmmm, I wonder who's side they're on?) asserts that "purchasing music digitally reduces the energy and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions associated with delivering music to customers by between 40 and 80% from the best-case physical CD delivery, depending on whether a customer then burns the files to CD or not. This reduction is due to the elimination of CDs, CD packaging, and the physical delivery of CDs to the household."
Buying a CD at a retail store produces more than 3,000 grams of CO2, counting production, distribution and customer transport. Downloading the same music to your digital player can produce less than 500 grams of CO2. (The gap will widen if digital music distributors follow tips from PG&E about making their data centers more energy efficient.)
However, there's good news for retro-types who still like CDs: you can dramatically cut the carbon footprint of your music if you walk or bicycle to the store rather than drive. Better yet, pick up some groceries on the way.
The study, titled "The Energy and Climate Change Impacts of Different Music Delivery Methods," was authored by Christopher Weber and H. Scott Matthews at Carnegie Mellon and Jonathan Koomey at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Aug 18 2009
Why is that when conservative industry groups sponsor economic analyses of environmental legislation, the results almost always turn out frightening (millions of jobs and hundreds of billions of dollars lost), while similar studies sponsored by environmental groups show the opposite?
You don't need a Ph.D. in economics--or political science--to figure that one out.
Fortunately, there are some simple rules of thumb to help anyone with even a modest understanding of economics evaluate the seemingly authoritative (but contradictory) claims these groups make every time a major legislative issue is in play.
Let's take as an example the highly publicized study of the costs of climate change legislation released last week by the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Council for Capital Formation, two conservative groups opposed to capping (or taxing) carbon emissions.
Their findings: Caps on carbon emissions, as called for in the Waxman-Markey bill, would raise electricity prices more than 30 percent by 2030, cut anywhere from 1.8 million to 2.4 million jobs, and shrink gross domestic product 1.8 to 2.4 percent by 2030.
Independent studies by the Energy Information Administration, Environmental Protection Agency and Congressional Budget Office show much more modest impacts. How can a non-expert know who to believe?
The first point is that you can discount the job loss numbers in NAM's study almost entirely. Various sectors of the economy (like coal mining) will surely lose jobs, but others will gain. The numbers cited in the NAM study--2 million jobs lost over two decades--pales compared to the fact that more than four millions jobs are lost in the US economy every month (offset, in normal times, by even more hires). Bottom line: full employment is a result of proper fiscal and monetary policy, not the cost of some new law.
A second point is to beware the optical illusion of magnifying costs by looking over a long period of time. Shrinking GDP by 2 percent by 2030 sounds like a lot until you remember that's how much the economy grows in a single year. In other words, if you believe the hostile assumptions of the NAM study, the U.S. economy would reach in 2031 the level of GDP that it would otherwise achieve by 2030 without climate change legislation.
To put it another way, the NAM study projects that even with climate change legislation, the U.S. economy would grow by about $9 trillion by 2030.
The biggest flaw of all is looking only at the costs and not the benefits--a rigged test if ever there was one. The whole point of the legislation is to buy relief from droughts and crop failures, crippling storms, flooded coastal cities, species extinction and many other threats. True, the benefits are uncertain and depend on how many other countries follow suit. But as one group of noted California economists put it, "The most expensive thing we can do is nothing."
That's a lesson we can all appreciate, even without a Ph.D.
Note: click here for one economist's critique of the NAM methodology.
Aug 17 2009
One result of global warming is the ever-more-heated debate between alarmists and skeptics over what (if anything) to do about it. The latest burst of controversy concerns a favorite topic of NEXT100, geoengineering.
Geoengineering is the name given to schemes for planetary-scale interventions to change the earth's environment, particularly its climate. They include proposals to combat global warming by reflecting sunlight--for example, by injecting aerosols into the atmosphere, seeding clouds over the oceans or sending reflective panels into orbit.
The latest contribution to the geoengineering debate comes from a source deeply distrusted by many environmentalists, the benign-sounding Copenhagen Consensus Centre, a Danish think-tank founded by Bjorn Lomborg, author of the controversial book, The Sceptical Environmentalist.
Lomborg's institute this month published a study claiming that "we might be able to cancel out this century's global warming by spending no more than $9 billion, and that climate engineering might be able to achieve as much for the planet as carbon cuts at a fraction of the cost."
The study supports an approach explored in detail in this blog: using unmanned ships to spray saltwater into the air to whiten marine clouds, reflecting just enough sunlight to stabilize the earth's temperature. They estimate the cost at a relatively trivial $9 billion, and the global benefits at a staggering $20 trillion.
Said Lomborg, who has criticized traditional policies for curbing carbon emissions as too expensive, "There's obviously more testing that needs to be done, but it is so cheap that it has to be worth looking at."
Predictably, the paper has provoked a firestorm of criticism, some related to the messanger and some to the message.
Lomborg's endorsement immediately made the thesis suspect in the eyes of many environmentalists. The fact that the paper was co-authored by an assistant professor in the Department of Petroleum at the University of Texas, and a fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute (a bastion of global warming deniers), didn't help its credibility.
Nor did the fact that geoengineering was endorsed as a "political ploy" by a spokesman for the British coal industry, who wrote, "The geo-engineering option provides the needed viable reason to do nothing about [human-caused global warming] now."
A more substantive critique is that geoengineering schemes that don't curb carbon dioxide emissions will permit rapid acidification of the oceans, devastating marine ecosystems.
Critics like Rutgers Prof. Alan Robock note many other problems. With an unchecked build-up of CO2, any lapse in geoengineering could cause rapid, catastrophic heating of the earth. Reductions in solar radiation would undercut solar energy. Attempts to impose geoengineering solutions might cause intense international conflict. And so on.
Out of all this debate comes one promising consensus view, however: while climate engineering is far too uncertain to be rushed into action, it deserves serious research support. It's time to turn down the heated rhetoric and turn up the science on geoengineering.
Aug 04 2009
Over the past decade, obesity-related health spending in America has doubled to about $150 billion a year, according to a new study. A similar epidemic has afflicted our vehicles for the past three decades, putting at risk efforts to achieve climate stability, cleaner air and energy security.
Daniel Sperling, director of the UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies, noted in a recent speech that average car weight has increased 29 percent since the 1980s. Thanks to much heftier engines, the average car today manages to accelerate from 0 to 60 in a speedy 9.5 seconds, down from a leisurely 14.5 seconds in the 1980s.
These trends help explain why auto and truck fuel economy, as measured by EPA, increased a mere 15 percent from 1980 to 2006.
According to Christopher Knittel at U. C. Davis, author of the new paper "Automobiles on Steroids," average mileage could have increased nearly 50 percent over that period if vehicle weight, horsepower and torque had stayed constant. In other words, the shift from light passenger vehicles to heavier and more powerful cars, SUVs and trucks almost completely masked some remarkable improvements in automotive efficiency.
This issue afflicts even cars that once exemplified thriftiness. For example, over the past 26 years, the venerable Honda Accord sold in the United States has increased in weight by more than 50 percent while tripling its horsepower.
This trend reflects in good measure the combination of low gasoline prices (cheaper than bottled water!) and Americans' love of power. The U.S. model 2009 Honda Accord gets at best a ho-hum 24 mpg, while British models, with smaller engines, get 31 mpg. The reason? Higher gasoline prices in the U.K. influence consumers to buy cars that economize on fuel.
With increasing weight, today's cars would be much more inefficient if automakers hadn't made great technological strides. Knittel estimates that a 3,000 pound car got about 10 mpg less in 1980 than in 2006. The problem isn't slow innovation but growing vehicle obesity.
Knittel concludes that the Obama administration's proposed new fuel economy standards are readily achievable if consumers would agree to put their cars on a diet. By merely shifting the mix of car and truck purchases back what they were in 1980 (fewer trucks, more cars), reducing vehicle weight and power gains since 1980 by just 25 percent, the average fuel economy of new vehicle fleets could meet 35.5 mpg with merely average rates of technological progress.
So the question is, will Americans rediscover the virtue of "small is beautiful?" The verdict is out--but the history of the late 1970s and last year's gasoline price spike suggests that Americans can see the beauty in more efficient cars when the price is right.
Aug 03 2009
What kind of magic would it take to convert millions of air conditioners into a cleaner, cheaper equivalent of gas-fired power plants? The magic envisioned in two automated "demand response" pilot projects that PG&E launched last week.
The basic idea is simple. Every electric utility must balance supply and demand on a minute-by-minute basis to prevent instability and power outages. Traditionally, power companies relied on fossil-fueled plants that could ramp generation up or down as needed to match the rise and fall of demand and the ups and downs of wind and solar power. These specialized plants are expensive (because they remain idle most of the time) and polluting (because they burn natural gas or coal).
In recent years, more and more utilities have experimented with "demand response" programs, which provide customers with incentives to curb usage during periods of peak demand, typically hot summer afternoons. While these programs help prevent grid overload, they generally aren't designed to replace combustion turbine plants for fine balancing of supply and demand.
That's about to change--and when it does, utilities and their customers stand to reap big rewards. "Demand response is clearly the 'killer application' for the smart grid," said FERC Commissioner Jon Wellinghoff last December. A report by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) added, "Growing use of these (demand-side) resources to meet daily capacity requirements, as well as their critical role in supporting the integration of variable renewable resources, will only increase their importance as climate change initiatives progress."
On July 29, PG&E began a pilot program with large commercial and industrial customers to test the ability of automated demand response systems--which use high-speed communications networks to signal customer energy management devices to adjust air conditioning, lighting and other loads--to act reliably enough to help manage day-to-day grid operations. If so, customers could actually earn money for this valuable contribution to the state's electrical system.
In parallel, PG&E plans to test whether residential and small commercial customers can play in the same market by enrolling in the SmartAC program. This voluntary program provides customers with free radio-controlled thermostats or A/C switches that can be signalled to slightly reduce the amount of electricity air conditioners use during periods of peak energy demand, without sacrificing customers' comfort.
Currently, PG&E has amost 120,000 small business and residential customers actively participating in the program, translating into a total load of more than 87 MW.
PG&E has nearly finished recruiting two groups of 400 SmartAC customers in separate hot inland areas to test the feasibility of using the program as a kind of "spinning reserves," the capacity of traditional generation plants to step up output on a minute's notice.
The key question is whether PG&E's signals to customer thermostats can trigger a quick, reliable, and definable change in demand, or if the system is too sloppy for fine-tuned control. The pilot team also hopes to learn what kinds of communications networks work most reliably for such a task--for example, wireless paging networks or the Internet.
The success of these and other pilot projects will hasten the day, envisioned just last year by Rick Sergel, President & CEO of NERC, "when my home's electronics and appliances will automatically react to changes in price signals and wind forecasts on the grid, reducing my energy usage to help bring on more renewables and manage my bill. The innovation and technology to do this already exists. The challenge remains, then, for us to let it loose."
Jul 31 2009
Several stories on the science and politics of global warming caught our attention this week:
At the request of the National Academy of Sciences, the Obama administration released thousands of intelligence photos of Arctic ice that had been classified by the Bush administration. They show the rapid decline in sea ice off the northern coast of Alaska and the shrinkage of glaciers in Alaska and Washington. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the world's ocean surface temperatures rose to record levels in June.
Droughts aggravated by global warming are drying rivers in Mesopotamia, the "cradle of civilization," shrinking ancient marshes and forcing peasants in Iraq and Syria to abandon their farms. Climate experts say the encroachment of desert may be permanent.
Global warming may explain a 24 percent decline in the number of large trees found in Yosemite National Park over the past half century, according to scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey and University of Washington. "Warmer conditions increase the length of the summer dry season and decrease the snowpack that provides much of the water for the growing season," said one researcher. "A longer summer dry season can also reduce tree growth and vigor, and can reduce trees' ability to resist insects and pathogens."
Curbing carbon emissions will become an ever greater challenge as the number of cars on the world's roads doubles to two billion over the next decade, according to Dan Sperling, a professor at the University of California, Davis, and member of the California Air Resources Board. One driver of this trend is the development of ultra-cheap car models like the $2,000 Tata Nano. Sperling favors higher gasoline prices and government support for electric and hybrid vehicles to minimize the environmental impact of bigger vehicle fleets.
Despite (or because of) their contribution to greenhouse gas emissions, Americans care less about government action to address climate change than people from 18 other nations, according to a new global survey conducted by the University of Maryland. Only Iraqis and Palestinians registered anywhere near the same lack of concern. In a separate Pew poll earlier this month, fewer than half of Americans (49%) said they believe the planet is warming because of human activity.
Californians remain more committed to action against climate change than the average American, but their support is slipping as the recession deepens, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. Although 66 percent of state residents support AB32, the 2006 law that requires greenhouse gas emissions to be reduced to 1990 levels by 2020, support has slipped 12 points since 2007. The partisan divide is strong: 76% of Democrats say warming is already happening, versus just 36% of Republicans. Almost as many Republicans (34%) say global warming will never happen. However, very strong majorities of state residents favor making automakers improve fuel efficiency and increasing federal funding for renewable energy technology.
San Francisco announced a coup this week: its Hunters Point Shipyard, a polluted Superfund site, will become home to the future United Nations Global Compact Center, a think tank, conference center and incubator for environmental start-ups. The 80,000-square-foot facility will cost $20 million, still to be raised from government, corporate and foundation donors.
Jul 30 2009
In my last two posts, I explored the potential for a severe geomagnetic solar storm to wreak havoc with electrical grids and modern life throughout much of the world.
If you think reading about such scenarios is depressing, consider this: merely being exposed to a moderate geomagnetic storm can increase your chances of depression and even suicide.
It might not surprise you to learn that homing pigeons lose their way when blasts of highly charged particles from the sun disrupt the earth's natural magnetic field. But humans are apparently also sensitive to magnetic fields, possibly through influences on the pineal gland (which regulates production of melatonin) or even through subtle changes in cell membrane chemistry.
A much-cited paper in the British Journal of Psychiatry reported "a statistically significant 36.2% increase in male hospital admissions with a diagnosis of depressed phase, manic-depressive illness in the second week following such storms compared with geomagnetically quiet control periods." And studies published in the South African Psychiatry Review and Bioelectromagnetics found significant correlations between geomagnetic storm activity and suicide rates in South Africa and Australia.
In 2003, economists at Boston College and the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta reported "strong empirical support" for the hypothesis that "people affected by geomagnetic storms may be more inclined to sell stocks on stormy days because they incorrectly attribute their bad mood to negative economic prospects rather than bad environmental conditions." High levels of geomagnetic activity appear to depress stock prices, while periods of quiet activity lead to "substantially higher returns around the world," they found.
None of this comes as any surprise to Russians, a people notoriously given to depression. According to a feature in Moscow News, Russians are obsessed with the notion that their mental and bodily ills stem from geomagnetic storms:
Millions of people keep track of its changes every morning, experts offer suggestions on minimizing its detrimental effects: rest, eat lots of bananas, don't make sudden movements. . . . Just like the weather, geomagnetic activity is often a suitable topic for chit-chat on the shuttle bus, or for a conversation between two babushkas on a park bench. Yet it's an issue of vital importance, with daily prognoses, recommendations, and warnings. Every now and then all the media outlets start screaming about giant explosions on the sun, about dangerous solar particles approaching Earth at fantastic speeds that cause "aching joints, migraines, plane crashes, epidemics, and grasshopper infestations," as Lenta.Ru recently reported in sensationalist fear.
One Russian scientist, Alexander Chizhevsky, claimed that political upheavals in his country tend to take place most often during periods of peak solar activity. As evidence, he cited the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, the peak of Soviet political persecutions (1937), the Hungarian revolt (1956), the Soviet invasions of Czechoslovakia (1968) and Afghanistan (1979) and mass demonstrations and perestroika (1989).
If the CIA is on the ball, it's already working on a report--based on the timing of the next solar maximum--titled, "Political Turmoil in Russia Predicted for 2013."
Jul 29 2009
How likely are we to be hit by a geomagnetic storm big enough to take down major power grids across the Northern hemisphere? What kinds of preparations have been made to avoid such an event paralyzing modern industrial civilization?
Some of those questions arose just last week in hearings before the House Homeland Security Committee, whose members took turns blasting the utility industry and public agencies for taking insufficient precautions against natural and man-made threats to the grid.
"Some in government have taken the position that (electromagnetic pulse) attack and geomagnetic storm disruption are low-probability events," complained William Graham, chairman of the congressionally mandated Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse. "By ignoring large scale, catastrophic . . . vulnerability" the United States needlessly exposes itself to risk, he testified.
Expert opinions about the level of risk vary widely. A grid director at the California Independent System Operator told me that modern forecasting tools and protective equipment to prevent transformer failures mean "the chance of cascading blackouts caused by these solar events is highly unlikely."
On the other hand, an expert at the Edison Electric Institute admitted that "if several dozen large transformers overloaded and blew up, the full recovery time could be months or longer. I envision an event would be cascading, that is, beginning at a specific point in a northern latitude (say, Quebec) and moving uncontrolled across paths of least resistance."
A spokeswoman for the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, which is tasked with preventing widespread blackouts, said only, "it's certainly an issue that NERC is looking into."
Finally, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which monitors space weather, states unequivocally: "A single strong blast of solar wind can threaten national security, transportation, financial services and other essential functions."
Let's start with some good news: For now, at least, the sun is acting like a sleeping kitten. Last year, the Sun went 266 days without showing a single sunspot, the quietest year since 1913. Though the sun started breaking out in dark spots again this June, most scientists believe the 11-year sunspot cycle will peak in 2013 at the lowest level since 1928.
The not-so-good news is that the sun could awaken from its slumber at any time and turn into a vicious lion. "As with hurricanes, whether a cycle is active or weak refers to the number of storms, but everyone needs to remember it only takes one powerful storm to cause huge problems," said Doug Biesecker, a scientist at the NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder. "The strongest solar storm on record occurred in 1859 during another below-average cycle."
As we saw yesterday, that 1859 storm, which electrocuted telegraph operators and lit the sky with pyrotechnics as far south as Panama, was stronger even than the 1921 event that a National Research Council study group said could shut down modern life across much of the Northern Hemisphere for a decade.
If the Sun were to get angry, several solar-observing satellites should detect the outbreak of a big geomagnetic storm and relay the information back to scientists on Earth. They include NASA's twin Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory satellites, launched in 2006, which provide information on the speed, trajectory and shape of so-called coronal mass ejections, multi-billion ton blobs of superhot gas that the sun fires our way at a million miles per hour. These satellites can give up to 24 hours warning of severe solar space weather.
Now the bad news: these satellites serve only a temporary scientific mission, not a long-term early warning system.
NASA also has the aging Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) satellite a million miles from Earth, which can measure the magnetic field of space weather and thus its likely impact on Earth.
"The problem is, we will only have 15 minutes of warning," NOAA's Biesecker told NEXT100. "That's not a lot of time to react." And if the ACE satellite were to fail, only one other satellite could be moved into place. "That's why NOAA is working hard to get a replacement up there," he said.
Then there's the problem of what to do with the warning. Several grid operators in North America (particularly in the Northeast and New England) have well-codified procedures for dealing with solar magnetic storms. But when the crunch comes, will they really bring down the grid, risking enormous cost and customer inconvenience, just because of an uncertain solar storm prediction? The Quebec power grid crashed in 1989 despite two-day-advance notice of major storming, Biesecker noted.
With so many doomsday scenarios circulating these days, from global flu epidemics to asteroid impacts, it's hard to focus on yet another. But the threat to our way of life from widespread grid failures would be immense. A relatively small investment in improved satellite monitoring and grid protection equipment would be insurance well worth buying.
Jul 28 2009
If you want to take your mind off the bad economy and global warming, try thinking instead about the possible collapse of advanced industrial civilization in the northern hemisphere.
Like Hurricane Katrina, the worst natural disaster in U.S. history, this disaster scenario involves a storm--but on the sun, not on earth. Katrina cost the country around $100 billion. A really bad geomagnetic storm, the solar equivalent of a hurricane, could wipe out major portions of North America's power grid, costing upward of $2 trillion in the first year alone, and requiring up to a decade for full recovery.
And that's not counting the effects on Europe, China and Russia.
That estimate was published earlier this year by the National Academy of Science in a sober but terrifying report, Severe Space Weather Events - Understanding Societal and Economic Impacts.
Most of us know that space weather can disrupt radio communications and, on rare occasions, even put satellites at risk. A solar storm in 1994 knocked a Canadian telecommunications satellite out of service for six months at a cost of more than $50 million; one in 2003 disrupted a Federal Aviation Administration GPS system for 30 hours; and another in 2005 forced the diversion of 26 United Airlines flights to avoid radio blackouts. Satellite disruptions caused by solar storms cost the government about $100 million a year, the Department of Defense estimates.
But the sun's fury occasionally hits much closer to home. On March 13, 1989, as horrified grid operators watched alarms go off, voltage surges extinguished power to all of Quebec province. Six million people lost service for nine hours--some for days.
The cause was a blob of plasma--superhot charged particles--blasted from the sun at a speed of several hundred miles per second. Weighing billions of tons, such eruptions cause havoc with orbiting electrical equipment, the Earth's ionosphere, and, in severe cases like 1989, electrical grids on the ground that act like giant receiving antennas.
Last year, the National Research Council convened a workshop to assess how vulnerable power grids remain to extreme space weather events since the 1989 outage.
The gathered scientists and policymakers noted that the 1989 storm was only one-tenth as strong as a megastorm that raged in May 1921. Both were dwarfed by an even mightier storm that struck in 1859. The latter superstorm produced bright red and green aurora lights over Cuba, wreaked havoc with the Earth's magnetic field and electrocuted telegraph operators.
A study presented by Metatech Corporation estimated that a storm like the one in 1921 could fry several hundred power transformers essential to grid operations and black out power to more than 130 million people in North America. (Northern latitudes--especially Canada, the upper Midwest and the East Coast--would be much more vulnerable than California.)
Here's how a report in New Scientist magazine describes what would happen next:
First to go - immediately for some people - is drinkable water. Anyone living in a high-rise apartment, where water has to be pumped to reach them, would be cut off straight away. For the rest, drinking water will still come through the taps for maybe half a day. With no electricity to pump water from reservoirs, there is no more after that.
There is simply no electrically powered transport: no trains, underground or overground. . . . supermarket shelves would empty very quickly - delivery trucks could only keep running until their tanks ran out of fuel, and there is no electricity to pump any more from the underground tanks at filling stations.
Back-up generators would run at pivotal sites - but only until their fuel ran out. For hospitals, that would mean about 72 hours of running a bare-bones, essential care only, service. After that, no more modern healthcare.
The truly shocking finding is that this whole situation would not improve for months, maybe years: melted transformer hubs cannot be repaired, only replaced. . . something that can take up to 12 months.
Even when some systems are capable of receiving power again, there is no guarantee there will be any to deliver. Almost all natural gas and fuel pipelines require electricity to operate. . . .
With no power for heating, cooling or refrigeration systems, people could begin to die within days. There is immediate danger for those who rely on medication. Lose power to New Jersey, for instance, and you have lost a major centre of production of pharmaceuticals for the entire US.
As the National Research Council committee concluded, "A quantitative and comprehensive assessment of the societal and economic impacts of severe space weather will be a truly daunting task."
Tomorrow: What is being done to prepare?
Jul 24 2009
Several news stories on the science and politics of global warming caught our attention this week:
The Colorado River, which supplies water to 27 million customers in the Southwestern United States and Mexico, is in its 10th year of drought. Unless population growth is controlled and water conservation practices are adopted, there's a 50-50 chance that the river's reservoirs may dry up by the middle of the century, according to researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
The chemicals introduced to replace ozone-eating gases in air conditioners and refrigerators, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), are powerful greenhouse gases, up to 4,000 times as potent as carbon dioxide. "You have this moment when you could nip this problem in the bud and avoid this very large growth of a dangerous chemical," said David Doniger, policy director at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "Now, in the next couple of years, is when you have to do this."
Almost two-thirds of U.S. investors polled for Bloomberg News say global warming is a minor risk or "no real threat," unlike 61 percent in Asia and 56 percent in Europe who acknowledge its significance. "In the U.S., very few see that the opportunity to build new businesses and create new jobs in transforming to green manufacturing could pay off for those engaged in those markets," said pollster J. Ann Selzer of Des Moines, Iowa. "Asian respondents are three times as likely as their U.S. counterparts to forecast opportunities for profit."
Among those in the United States who worry more about climate change legislation than global warming are farm lobbyists. This week, Agriculture Secretary tom Vilsack, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, and White House science adviser John Holdren finally responded to critics. "Our analysis demonstrates that the economic opportunities for farmers and ranchers can outpace -- and perhaps significantly outpace -- the costs," said Vilsack. Quite apart from the benefits of slowing global warming, a cap-and-trade market for carbon emissions would provide net income to the farm sector of up to $2 billion a year, according to an EPA analysis.
On a visit to India where she touted the benefits of energy efficiency, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was met with resistance from Indian officials over the cause of fighting climate change. India's environment and forests minister, Jairam Ramesh, said there was "no case" for the West to push India to reduce carbon dioxide emissions given that it has among the lowest levels of per capita emissions. "We are simply not in a position to take over legally binding emission reduction targets."
Jul 23 2009
We all know the saying, "light as a feather." So you can be sure that the two-to-four (depending on who's counting) billion pounds of feathers produced each year by the U.S. poultry industry would make a pretty big pile.
Fortunately, no one has to cram them all into a giant landfill. High in protein and nitrogen, they are ground up along with chicken innards and blood for use in animal feed and fertilizer. They are also used as raw material to make thin sheets of plastic for wrapping candy and sodas.
Now a team of scientists at University of Nevada-Reno has discovered a way to extract fat from chicken feather meal using boiling water, and then convert it into renewable biodiesel fuel. All those mountains of feathers and bloody innards are enough to create 153 million gallons of biodiesel annually in the United States alone. And after extracting the fat, the remaining feather meal produces better feed and fertilizer.
The same crew of clever scientists published a study last December showing that the world's 16 billion pounds of waste coffee grounds, which contain as much as 20 percent fat by weight, could potentially add 340 million gallons of biodiesel to the world's fuel supply. Best of all, the fuel would carry the aroma of coffee.
I can just imagine going to the filling station a few years from now and enjoying a freshly made latte out of the same machine that's pumping "Java Jolt" biodiesel into my car. Now that's what I call sustainable.
Jul 22 2009
Last month, NEXT100 profiled the miracle material graphene, a crystalline form of carbon only one atom thick yet that is the strongest material ever discovered. Its many astounding applications include ultrafast transistors, super-high capacity ultracapacitors, solar-cell electrodes and light-emitting diodes.
The cliche "the sky is the limit" applies literally to graphene. A group of Princeton engineers has just won a $3 million grant from the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research to study the potential of nanoscale graphene additives to help aviation fuel burn faster so jets can fly more easily at supersonic speeds.
Tiny amounts of graphene help fuel ignite at lower temperatures, a property that could also help diesel engines run more efficiently and reduce their pollution.
Said Ilhan Aksay, a professor of chemical engineering at Princeton and lead investigator, "The idea of being able to put in a very small quantity and have such a dramatic effect is important....Right now we don't know what actual reactions enhance the combustion rates when the particles are added to fuels. If we understand it further, we can make it more effective."
Jul 22 2009
Geoengineering--the planned alteration of planetary-scale systems--is a highly controversial approach to solving an increasingly desperate problem: global warming. Critics have condemned it "somewhere between a dead end and a hoax," while White House science adviser John Holdren said, "It's got to be looked at." The credibility of this outsized concept got a big boost this week from a major policy pronouncement by the American Meteorological Society.
As covered extensively in NEXT100, geoengineering proposals run the gamut from fostering the growth of carbon-absorbing plankton by fertilizing the oceans, to reflecting more sunlight by seeding clouds, to locking up carbon in the form of biochar.
The AMS notes the wide range of possible risks, including adverse local climate changes that might disrupt some countries and peoples even if geoengineering stabilized the global temperature. And some measures that address symptoms--for example, by increasing solar reflection--"would not diminish the direct effects of elevated CO2 concentrations such as ocean acidification or changes to the structure and function of biological systems."
All that said, given that past greenhouse gas emissions are almost certain to cause "dangerous climate changes," the society recommended stepping up research on climate geoengineering, including the environmental ethical, legal and social implications.
While reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a top priority, geoengineering "could contribute to a comprehensive risk management strategy to slow climate change and alleviate some of its negative impacts," the society declared. "The potential to help society cope with climate change and the risks of adverse consequences imply a need for adequate research, appropriate regulation, and transparent deliberation."
Jul 21 2009
While solar power gets much of the good buzz these days, geothermal power holds the most promise as a clean and economical alternative to fossil fuels, according to a comparative technology study by two experts at NYU's Stern School of Business.
PG&E opened the first commercial geothermal plant in 1960, and today that technology supplies about five percent of the utility's power, more than any other form of renewable energy. But long as it's been around, the technology has never enjoyed significant funding to exploit its full potential.
From 1974 to 2005, nine major governments collectively spent almost $38 billion on fossil fuel technologies and about $11 billion on solar, compared to a mere $2.6 billion on geothermal energy. Yet more than any other sector of power generation, the geothermal industry "shows exponential growth" in the payoff (kWh per dollar) from R&D spending and shows "no indication of slowing performance improvement," the authors conclude in their new paper in the journal Energy Policy.
Geothermal is already one of the least expensive forms of renewable energy--less than a third the cost of concentrating solar power or utility-scale photovoltaic power, according to figures they supply. The authors estimate that with an R&D investment of only $7.5 billion--peanuts compared to the energy budgets of the nine governments--geothermal would likely become even less expensive than generation from fossil fuels today.
As previously discussed in NEXT100, enhanced geothermal recovery techniques, still in the testing phase, could radically increase the industry's potential. And just last week the DOE's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory reported the breakthrough discovery of a new fluid--based on "nanostructured metal-organic heat carriers"--that could be heated by underground geothermal reservoirs and used to drive high-efficiency power turbines.
Total funding for the lab's research: just $1.2 million. At this rate, maybe geothermal won't even need the full $7.5 billion to prove its mettle.
Jul 21 2009
America's power sector may be shrinking along with the national economy, but the green lining is that it's becoming cleaner and more renewable.
With industrial production in free-fall over the past year, electric generation dropped 5 percent from April 2008 to April 2009, according to a report this month from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Of all the major fuels to take a hit, coal-fired generation suffered the worse, down almost 14 percent over the 12-month period. By contrast, natural gas-fired plants eased back only 1.5 percent.
Renewable energy emerged as the real winner over the past year, with generation from wind up 35 percent. Nuclear and hydro, which also emit no greenhouse gases, were up 3 percent and 18 percent, respectively.
Coal is still king for now. So far this year, it fueled 46 percent of electric power in the United States, followed by nuclear and natural gas at 21 percent each. Hydropower accounted for 7 percent and renewable energy still only 4 percent.
But the share for renewables has nowhere to go but up. More and more states--including, most recently, Kansas--are instituting renewables incentives and mandates. And coal is coming under pressure not only from the specter of national climate change legislation, but from closer scrutiny by EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers of controversial mining practices such as mountain-top removal in Appalachia.
Jul 20 2009
Along with more than 20 other Fairmont locations worldwide, San Francisco's famed Fairmont Hotel has begun recycling its kitchen oil--not to fry more potatoes, but to create renewable biodiesel fuel. This program will cut the hotel's disposal costs, unclog its drains and support the chain's strong environmental commitment, in particular its initiative to reduce its global carbon footprint in collaboration with WWF.
The Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn & Spa is also collecting used kitchen grease--about 150 gallons each quarter--for processing by Yokayo Bio-Fuels in Ukiah.
At Fairmont's London hotel, The Savoy, the restaurant saves food scraps along with used cooking oils and turns them over to a biomass-to-energy renewable power plant. The hotel expects the energy generated from this collaboration will power about 10 percent of its lighting requirements.
Made from fat or vegetable oil, biodiesel is a safe, biodegradable fuel that can be used in almost any diesel engine. The main byproduct, glycerin, is used for making soap.
This January, Disneyland announced that all five of its railroad trains now run on biodiesel created from recycled cooking oil collected by its many eateries. In San Francisco, plans to produce biodiesel have run afoul of local environmental activists who claim the facility "will cause air pollution, wastewater discharges, hazardous waste and increased truck, rail and boat traffic."
Jul 17 2009
The United States was the fastest-growing market in the world for wind power in 2008 for the fourth year in a row, according to a new report from the Department of Energy, authored by experts at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The U.S. accounted for about 30 percent of the world market last year.
With about $16 billion in new investment, wind power also accounted for an impressive 42 percent of all new generating capacity in the United States last year. The capacity addition of 8,558 megawatts was 60 percent higher than the previous U.S. record set in 2007. California is now the third largest state market for wind power, behind Iowa and Texas.
The upside potential for wind power is staggering, according to a new Harvard University study. In the continental United States, there's enough wind energy to produce more than 16 times the country's electricity demand. Worldwide, wind could supply 40 times current power consumption. That's assuming, of course, people and governments let projects be built.
The soaring U.S. market is supporting a significant expansion of turbine manufacturing in this country. Today about half of all turbine components are made in the United States, up from 30 percent in 2005. The report cites estimates from the American Wind Energy Association that the wind sector added 8,400 new manufacturing jobs in 2008.
Remarkably, the United States is actually ahead of schedule to reach the Department of Energy's ambitious goal of 20 percent wind penetration by 2030.
Although the severe U.S. and global recession will brake the industry's growth this year, exceptionally favorable government policies--including the extension of federal production tax credits to 2012 and a proliferation of state renewable energy mandates--should give the industry a powerful lift in 2010. Further adding to that lift, the Department of Energy yesterday announced grants to promote 28 new wind power projects.
Jul 17 2009
Several stories on the science and politics of global warming caught our attention this week:
A block of ice as big as Manhattan is poised to break off of a Greenland glacier due to warming air and ocean temperatures, according to a team of scientists who are recording its progress. The weight of this chunk is a staggering 5 billion tonnes.
Alaska Governor Sarah Palin opined this week in the Washington Post that President Obama's cap-and-trade energy plan "is an enormous threat to our economy," one that "would undermine our recovery over the short term and would inflict permanent damage." She called instead for responsible development of "the resources that God created right underfoot on American soil," including Alaskan oil. Critics quickly weighed in with detailed rebuttals. Others were content to quip that "Palin managed to write an entire piece about energy policy without mentioning the words 'global warming,' 'climate change,' 'carbon,' or 'emissions.'" Joseph Romm of Climate Progress noted that "in September, during the campaign, the Washington Post itself gave her its highest (which is to say lowest) rating of 'Four Pinocchios' for continuing to 'to peddle bogus [energy] statistics three days after the original error was pointed out by independent fact-checkers.'"
A group of military veterans and national security experts, including retired Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), is pressing Congress to enact climate change legislation as a matter of national security, according to Climate Wire. "Climate change can lead to failed states. When you have failed states, they can become havens for terrorists and spread instability in a region," said Lawrence Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and a senior adviser to the Center for Defense Information.
The United States and China announced a joint research program to promote fuel-efficient vehicles and buildings this week. Although the financial commitment was a mere $15 million, the partnership marked a step forward in global collaboration to fight climate change.
Jul 16 2009
When temperatures head north of 100 degrees, it's time to run through the sprinkler, mix up some iced tea and invite yourself to a neighbor's pool party.
It's also a good time to look for ways to cut back on energy use, to spare the grid and save everyone money.
Three times this week (Monday, Tuesday and today), as sweltering heat drove customers to crank up their air conditioners, PG&E declared "SmartDay" events to promote voluntary cutbacks in electricity use. (The last time the utility called three SmartDay events in such close order was in September 2008.)
These SmartDay events are targeted at utility customers who participate in one of PG&E's several voluntary "demand response" programs that provide incentives for business and residential customers to temporarily curb electricity use. For example, residential SmartRate™ participants can save about 3 cents a kilowatt hour on their power as long as they slash energy use from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. on SmartDay events, which are called up to 15 days a year.
PG&E also offers $25 incentive bonuses to customers who enroll in the SmartAC™ program, which adjusts their air conditioners on days when load reduction is critically needed.
Temporary surges in demand, especially for air conditioning, force utilities to build or buy expensive peak power and transmission capacity that lies idle most of the year. In California, some 2,500 MW of capacity comes on line only 50 hours a year. But we pay for this capacity in our rates every month, year in and year out.
Worse yet, notes a recent report by the California Public Utilities Commission and California Energy Commission, "peaking units contribute disproportionately not only to greenhouse gas emissions but to local air pollution because they operate during hot summer afternoons when local air quality can be poor."
That's why state energy policy lists "demand response" programs as second in priority only to energy efficiency, and ahead even of renewable energy. Finding ways to curb customer demand is especially important because peak demand is growing even faster than overall energy use in the state.
A staff report released last month by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission concluded that all-out deployment of demand response programs could lower peak demand in the United States by 20 percent over the next decade. The benefits would be huge: "This would eliminate the need for roughly 2,000 peaking power plants, lowering electricity bills, improving system reliability, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions."
Making this scenario happen will require giving customers price incentives to shift demand to off-peak times of day, which in turn will require providing them with advanced meters. PG&E is a leader in this field, having deployed more advanced meters than any other North American utility, including more than a million SmartMeter™ electric meters. (By 2012, PG&E expects to deploy more than 10 million automated gas and electric meters.)
Economists at The Brattle Group, who are among the leading experts on demand response, say another key factor in motivating consumers is automated energy management technology and in-home displays that show when it's time to cut back on use. An example is PG&E's Energy Orb, which shifts from cold blue to hot red when the utility calls a demand response event by sending out a wireless signal.
The good news is that customers welcome the chance to do good while saving money. We just need to give them the tools.
Jul 15 2009
Natural and organic are good--except when they're not. Consider, for example, the latest finding from the EPA that wood-burning stoves and fireplaces constitute one of the major sources of cancer risks in Oregon's air.
Humans have been burning wood to cook and keep warm for tens or hundreds of thousands of years, but until recently, they didn't live long enough to worry about getting cancer from the emissions. Now they do. Incomplete combustion of wood produces chemicals called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are known animal carcinogens and probable human carcinogens. Humans are also exposed to these compounds through the air from cigarette smoke and roofing tar emissions and through food from grilling meat.
Not to ruin anyone's romantic fireside date, but wood smoke also "contains harmful chemical substances such as carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen oxides (NOx), volatile organic compounds (VOCs), dioxin, and inhalable particulate matter (PM)," according to EPA. ". . . One of the biggest human health threats from smoke, indoors or outdoors, comes from PM. Wood smoke PM is composed of wood tars, gases, soot, and ashes."
(If you really want to ruin your day, check out Clean Air Revival's documented list of health effects from burning wood. You'll wonder how our species has lasted as long as it has.)
The good news is that there are alternatives. An EPA-certified wood stove emits less than a third as many particulates as an uncertified wood stove, and a twentieth as much as a fireplace, for the same amount of heat. But if you want to play it safe, a gas furnace is best of all; it produces less than a hundredth as many particulates as even an EPA-certified wood stove.
I've always thought my gas-burning fireplace at home looks a bit tacky. After reading up on EPA's web site, I now appreciate its virtues a little more.
Jul 10 2009
Several recent stories on the science and politics of global warming caught our attention this week:
Science and politics are often at odds because scientists and the public have widely divergent views, a new survey suggests. A Pew Research Center survey finds that unlike scientists, who mostly agree that human activity contributes to climate change, only half of the public agrees. (And 11 percent don't believe any warming has even taken place.) Nearly every scientist agrees that humans evolved through natural processes, but nearly a third of Americans believe people existed from the beginning of time. Not surprisingly, 85 percent of scientists polled said they believe public ignorance is a major problem.
New data from NASA earth-orbiting satellites show dramatic thinning of winter Arctic ice from 2004 to 2008, according to results published in Journal of Geophysical Research-Oceans. Over just four years, the average thickness dropped 2.2 feet. Thinner winter ice in turn means more open ocean during summer months and more absorption of solar energy, creating feedback effects. New estimates suggest that the amount of carbon frozen in arctic tundras that could potentially be released as warming continues is double the amount contained in the atmosphere.
The timetable for Senate action on climate change legislation got pushed back this week. California's Barbara Boxer, who chairs the Senate environment and public works committee, said a draft bill won't be ready until September, and there are no guarantees that legislation will pass by December, when President Obama will attend an international summit in Copenhagen.
International cooperation on climate change will be a challenge. A group of developing nations attending a G-8 meeting in Italy, including China and India, made it clear that they would not take a leadership role in combatting global warming. Unfortunately, some analysts say the U.S. Senate will balk at tough action unless they see evidence that developing countries will act in concert.
Chances of Senate passage are jeopardized by doubts expressed by more than a dozen Senate Democrats who fear the impact of climate change legislation on farmers, coal producers, utilities and manufacturers. On the Republican side, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a possible 2012 presidential candidate, said at the first Senate hearing, "It is hard to believe that at a time when growing our economy is our No. 1 priority, Congress is considering a bill that would reduce economic growth."
Jul 09 2009
Sometimes I think you have to be rich to live green.
That's how I feel every time I check out the organic produce or the divinely virgin olive oil at the Ferry Building in San Francisco. That's how I felt when I admired a cute one-seat electric commuter car at the Marin County fair last week--only to discover that it cost $120,000. The maker assured me they sell as fast as he can produce them.
So I was happy to learn today that that many of the greenest cars on the market--high-mileage hybrids and clean diesels--actually save you money over time relative to their gasoline-powered cousins.
Intellichoice.com just released an analysis of 51 different 2009 model year clean cars and their five-year (or 70,000 mile) ownership costs, based on factors such as depreciation, maintenance, repair and fuel costs. The bottom line: "34 have a lower overall Cost of Ownership compared to traditional or gasoline-only vehicles" in the same class.
Even if you ignore the tax break for hybrid vehicles, which gives them an artificial advantage, 23 of the hybrids and clean diesels beat their traditional competition for value.
Lower fuel costs were part of the reason--and a factor that will grow as gasoline prices keep inching back up. If gasoline hits $4 a gallon again, 41 of the clean vehicles in the survey would look like winners.
Also significant is the superior ability of many green vehicles to hold their value. The Toyota Prius and diesel Volkswagon Jetta TDI are champions in this regard. Both retain more than 70 percent of their initial value over five years, well above their closest counterparts (Camry and Jetta SE).
If Intellichoice.com's numbers are correct, you want to think twice before buying a new Lexus LS 600h L, GMC Yukon Hybrid, Chrysler Aspen Hybrid 4WD or Cadillac Escalade Hybrid 2WD--they'll burn through your pocket.
On the other hand, you'll enjoy thousands of dollars of savings with the Prius, Jetta TDI, Saturn Aura Green, Ford Escape Hybrid FWD, Chevy Silverado 1500 Crew Cab Hybrid and Mercedes-Benz GL320 BlueTEC (a diesel).
But don't forget--you'll save even more, and live even greener, by walking, riding your bicycle or taking the bus. You might even save enough to afford an organic peach now and then.
Jul 08 2009
PG&E continues to make significant progress on its 2 megawatt solar photovoltaic (PV) pilot project, first announced here in March. PG&E has selected Solon Corporation, a subsidiary of Germany's Solon SE, as the turnkey supplier to build the facility--named Vaca-Dixon Solar Station--next to PG&E's Vaca-Dixon substation in Vacaville, CA. Solon was one of the six suppliers invited to bid out of 168 suppliers who responded to PG&E's request for information.
The pilot represents the utility's first step in implementing its plan to promote 500 MW of new PV power over five years--250 MW to be built by the utility and 250 MW by independent developers. (The plan, proposed in February, is under consideration by the California Public Utilities Commission.)
PG&E will use the pilot project to help develop its processes for building and operating PV facilities while it seeks regulatory approval for the full 500 MW proposal. If approved and completed, that mega-PV program could meet more than 1.3 percent of PG&E's electric demand and deliver as much power as consumed by 150,000 average homes.
The Vaca-Dixon Solar Station will use Solon's polycrystalline modules, on ground mounts with a fixed tilt. Solon will sub-contract with Silverwood Energy, Inc., a California disabled veteran business enterprise, to build and commission the facility by the end of December, 2009.
Solon, which has the interesting corporate tag line, "Don't leave the planet to the stupid,"
is one of the largest solar module manufacturers in Europe and a major supplier of photovoltaic systems for large-scale solar power plants. Since 2005, Solon has constructed solar power plants with a total solar power output of over 130 MW in Spain, Germany, Australia and the United States. Solon's PV module manufacturing facility is located in Tucson, AZ, with an annual production capacity of 120 MW.
Jul 07 2009
Global Warming meets Big Foot: sounds like one of those Japanese monster movies from the '60s.
A team of biologists, led by Jeff Lozier of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has tried to guess the outcome of that thriller, using the technique of ecological niche modeling. The controversial technique combines environmental and species location data to extrapolate past and future habitation trends.
In the case of Big Foot, a/k/a sasquatch, the hairy creature said to inhabit forests of California and the Pacific Northwest, global warming will likely prompt the oft-sited but camera-shy ape to head for the hills in search of cooler climes.
The good news is that if Big Foots (Feet?) exist, they should find plenty of suitable habitat in the Rocky Mountains and Canada, the scientists report in the Journal of Biogeography.
Alternatively--and our theory hasn't yet been peer reviewed--if it gets hot enough, Big Foot might lose his hair and blend in with the rest of us homo sapiens. Next time you're camping in the Trinity Alps, keep your eyes out for some odd looking folks who might fit the bill.
Jul 07 2009
He (or she) who has the most money, wins.
In the race for bragging rights to the biggest wind farms, as I noted here recently, the Chinese have taken the lead with talk in Gansu Province of plans to develop a single project with 20 gigawatts of capacity by 2020. The project's total capacity, when the wind is blowing, could exceed that of the nearby Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest hydropower station.
The price tag for all that: nearly $20 billion.
In contrast, the closest American competitor, maverick Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens, is now reportedly scaling back plans, announced last year, to build a 1 GW wind farm in West Texas, which he said hoped to expand to 4 GW by 2014. Instead, he may try to build out three or four smaller sites.
Pickens blames falling natural gas prices (which make wind energy less competitive) and the unavailability of transmission for his decision. But the fact that the value of his hedge funds crashed from $4 billion last year to $1.5 billion today may have something to do with the relative modesty of his current ambitions.
Jul 06 2009
Vanished civilizations that cultivated the Amazon jungle long before the arrival of European explorers may hold a key to slowing or even reversing the onset of global warming.
Archeologists who once believed the Amazon basin, with its notoriously unproductive soil, was only thinly populated by Stone Age tribes now have abundant evidence that it was extensively inhabited and farmed many hundreds of years ago. Evidence of this pre-Columbian civilization was literally buried under jungle that encroached when European diseases wiped out the indigenous population.
The fertility secret that made these early urban cultures viable was a potent soil called terra preta, or dark earth. Recent scientific studies show the soil was man-made, not natural, formed by mixing earth with plant material that was allowed to smoulder without fully burning.
Today biochar is made by heating biomass in kilns without oxygen. Instead of burning, this process of pryolysis creates energy-rich syngas, liquid bio-oil and fine-grained, porous biochar.
Biochar doesn't directly provide nutrients, but it improves crop yields by reducing soil acidity, fostering the growth of favorable microorganisms and improving water quality, among other factors.
The relevance of terra preta today goes beyond its promise for helping farmers in the developing world. The very act of converting biomass into biochar and burying it in the earth may be one of the most effective ways to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and prevent it from contributing to runaway greenhouse warming.
Radio-carbon dating of Amazon soils shows that biochar can store carbon in the earth for hundreds or even thousands of years. Johannes Lehmann, a Cornell University biogeochemist and leading expert on biochar, said,
By sequestering huge amounts of carbon, this technique constitutes a much longer and significant sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide than most other sequestration options, making it a powerful tool for long-term mitigation of climate change. In fact we have calculated that up to 12 percent of the carbon emissions produced by human activity could be offset annually if slash-and-burn were replaced by slash-and-char.
Tim Lenton, a climate scientist at the University of East Anglia, compared all major geoengineering proposals for mitigating global warming and rated biochar production as one of the most promising. Other biochar enthusiasts include NASA earth scientist James Hansen, whose prescient warnings in 1988 launched much of the research and subsequent activism on global warming, and James Lovelock, famed originator of the Gaia hypothesis of Earth as a self-regulating environment.
Lovelock, who turns 90 this month, told New Scientist earlier this year that biochar could be humanity's salvation:
There is one way we could save ourselves and that is through the massive burial of charcoal. It would mean farmers turning all their agricultural waste - which contains carbon that the plants have spent the summer sequestering - into non-biodegradable charcoal, and burying it in the soil. Then you can start shifting really hefty quantities of carbon out of the system and pull the CO2 down quite fast. . . . This scheme would need no subsidy: the farmer would make a profit. This is the one thing we can do that will make a difference, but I bet they won't do it.
Despite his pessimism, biochar enthusiasts have made headway with the United Nations and even with Congress: The 2008 Farm Bill established the first national policy in support of biochar production and utilization in the world. And several companies, including Carbonscape and Carbon Diversion, Inc. are attempting to bring the technology of biochar carbon sequestration to market.
Biochar may of course prove too good to be true. But if you like to garden and want to attempt a little geoengineering in your yard, check out this FAQ. The earth may thank you for it.
Jul 03 2009
Several news stories on the science and politics of global warming caught our attention last week:
Big chunks of the state of Louisiana are destined to sink underwater as land subsides and sea levels rise, according to a new study co-authored by a scientist at Exxon. Human causes include not only global warming but thousands of dams and levees that block sediment deposits from the Mississippi that used to build up low-lying lands near the coast. "We conclude that significant drowning is inevitable," the authors write in a paper published in Nature Geoscience.
Meanwhile, ExxonMobile is drawing heat from the British and Australian media for apparently reneging on its promise last year to "discontinue contributions" to climate-change skeptics. The conservative Daily Telegraph reported that the world's largest oil company made several hundred thousand dollars in grants in 2008 to such groups, including the National Center for Policy Analysis in Dallas, the Heritage Foundation in Washington, and the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. ExxonMobile also contributes to some environmental groups, the paper noted. "We are funding people on all sides of that debate," a company spokesman told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Germany, UK and France are taking the most aggressive steps to fight global warming among G8 countries, according to a new report sponsored by WWF and the German insurer Allianz SE. Only Canada and Russia rank worse than the United States. However, President Obama plans to meet next week with Russian leaders to promote collective action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
After last Friday's close vote in the House of Representatives to pass the Waxman-Markey climate change bill--a tribute to Speaker Nancy Pelosi's "arm-twisting" in the words of Politico--attention now moves to the Senate. One of the biggest threats to passage comes from opposition by agricultural interests, despite major concessions they extracted in the House. The American Farm Bureau Federation opposes the bill partly because it may raise the cost of fertilizer and fuel.
It will be interesting to see whether supporters succeed in making farm-state Senators aware of how much their constituents have at stake as the earth warms. The recent report of the U.S. Global Change Research Program, commissioned by President Bush and based on the expert findings of 13 federal departments and agencies, has this to say about the projected impact of warming on the farm belt:
- Midwest: "While the longer growing season provides the potential for increased crop yields, increases in heat waves, floods, droughts, insects, and weeds will present increasing challenges to managing crops, livestock, and forests. Spring flooding is likely to delay planting. An increase in disease-causing pathogens, insect pests, and weeds cause additional challenges for agriculture. Livestock production is expected to become more costly as higher temperatures stress livestock, decreasing productivity and increasing costs associated with the needed ventilation and cooling equipment."
- Great Plains: "Agriculture, ranching, and natural lands, already under pressure due to an increasingly limited water supply, are very likely to also be stressed by rising temperatures. . . . Pests will spread northward and milder winters and earlier springs will encourage greater numbers and earlier emergence of insects."
- Southeast: "Effects of increased heat include more heat-related illness; declines in forest growth and agricultural crop production due to the combined effects of heat stress and declining soil moisture; declines in cattle production; increased buckling of pavement and railways; and reduced oxygen levels in streams and lakes, leading to fish kills and declines in aquatic species diversity. Decreased water availability is very likely to affect the region's economy as well as its natural systems. . . . Sea-level rise and the likely increase in hurricane intensity and associated storm surge will be among the most serious consequences of climate change. . . . a large portion of the Southeast coastal zone could be threatened. Ecological thresholds are likely to be crossed throughout the region, causing major disruptions to ecosystems and to the benefits they provide to people."
Jul 02 2009
China and Texas have at least one trait in common, besides the five-pointed star in their flags: a belief that bigger is better.
Latest case in point: After leading the United States in oil production, Texas is now home to the world's biggest wind farm. Meanwhile, after leading the world in new coal-plant construction, China is now boasting of wind-energy projects that will leave even Texas in the dust.
China last week announced plans to build seven giant new wind farms by 2020 at a cost of $140 billion. Their combined capacity will total 120 GW--gigawatts, not megawatts--representing about eight percent of China's power capacity by the time they come online a decade from now. (Sadly for GE and the U.S. balance of trade, China has no plans to tap foreign turbine manufacturers to meet its wind power needs; the central government has imposed a "buy Chinese" policy.)
The largest wind farm in the world today is Horse Hollow Wind Energy Center in Texas, spread over 47,000 acres near Abilene. Owned and operated by a subsidiary of FPL Energy, it consists of 421 giant GE and Siemens turbines with a total rated capacity of 735 megawatts, less than seven percent of the capacity of each of China's proposed new projects.
(By comparison, the Altamont Pass Wind Farm in PG&E's service area has a total capacity of about 576 MW.)
Two years ago, before the global financial crisis struck, Texas billionaire T. Boone Pickens floated plans to develop up to 4,000 MW of power from a giant wind farm in West Texas. A year ago, his Mesa Power LLP ordered 667 turbines from GE with a total rated capacity of 1,000 MW. More recently, in the wake of the economic downturn, the company laid off some employees and said it has significantly slowed its development schedule, while remaining committed to the project.
Meantime, just last month a Spanish group devoted to renewable energy, Guascor, announced plans to build what it believes will be the world's largest wind farm--a project of up to 900 MW in Argentina's wind-swept Patagonia. The estimated cost is $2.4 billion, and work could begin in as little as 12 months after environmental reviews.
Jul 01 2009
Just as I had finished glugging a glass of OJ this morning, a new report from the University of Rochester Medical Center caught my eye: orange juice decreases tooth enamel hardness by 84 percent. "The acid is so strong that the tooth is literally washed away," said the lead researcher.
After I overcame a brief bout of acid indigestion, I started wondering. If I and millions like me decide to get our daily vitamin C instead from rose hip pills, what will happen to all those California and Florida oranges piled high in our supermarkets?
Not to worry. Turns out orange peel oil makes a great additive to car tires, improving their performance and making them more environmentally friendly.
Japanese tire manufacturer Yokahama says its new Super E-spec tire, 80 percent composed of non-petroleum materials (including orange peel extracts), has 20 percent less rolling resistance than standard tires, increasing its fuel economy. It's also easier to recycle than synthetic products. Yokahama is targeting the new tires for use by the Toyota Prius and other high-mileage cars.
(As noted recently in NEXT100, a 10 percent improvement in the rolling resistance of older tires used in California could reduce the state's consumption of oil by more than 250 million gallons, save about $750 million and reduce CO2 emissions by 2.7 million metric tons annually, according to the California Energy Commission.)
But Yokahama's orange-infused tires aren't just for sedate sedans. Porsche outfitted its racing cars on the Sebring International Speedway during the Patron GT3 Challenge with tires using the same technology.
Mark Chung, Yokahama's director of corporate strategy and planning, told Wired.com that Yokahama has been experimenting with orange oils since the 1980s, and was prompted to go commercial with the technology because of environmental imperatives.
"It is used to soften the natural rubber and increase grip on the tire," he said. "We've tested a lot of natural products including spider silk, and we found that orange oil works best because it has a molecular structure similar to natural rubber."
Now if they could just figure out how to turn the orange pips into biofuels, we could have the seeds of a real automotive revolution.
Jun 30 2009
More than a few venture investors would consider giving up their first born if they could identify for sure the Next Big Thing.
Last week, however, a senior energy technology guru gave them some free advice. His message: don't just look at obvious items like batteries and solar cells, but also at the "game-changing materials" that underly key advances in those technologies. (Shameless plug: see NEXT100's earlier take on some of the amazing developments in materials science.)
Speaking at the annual convention of the Edison Electric Institute in San Francisco, Mike Howard, senior vice president of R&D at the Electric Power Research Institute, emphasized that "materials are critically important to everything we do," from generation to lighting to storage.
As an example, he pointed to the current limits on steam generation efficiency set by steels that degrade at temperatures above 1000F. If operating temperatures of boilers and turbines could be raised to 1400F, their efficiency could be increased dramatically from 37 percent to 47 percent.
Finding new materials to work at such temperature extremes without cracking requires understanding what is happening at the atomic level. "Working with atomic probe microscopes, we are uncovering some fundamental properties of materials and why failures occur," he said.
Materials science is also having a revolutionary impact on lighting, which consumes about 17 percent of all electricity in the United States. Applying surface-mount technology to assemble LEDs with different spectra to produce the desired light output is opening up great room for potential further improvements in efficiency and usability. "LEDs are on a strong upward trajectory with regard to efficiency," Howard said. "It's a game changer."
Last but not least he addressed storage, where the Holy Grail is maximizing the amount of energy stored per kilogram (energy density). For electrochemical batteries, the critical factor is the amount of reactive surface area available.
By inserting nanowires into lithium ion batteries, their energy density can be increased four times, Howard said. That means a laptop computer could be powered for 16 hours instead of only four, with batteries of the same weight and size. Or it means a Chevy Volt could drive 160 miles instead of 40 on a single charge. "That's where we are headed," Howard promised.
Jun 29 2009
Slow, loud and smoky, brought to you by General Motors.
That was the how Americans came to perceive a variety of ill-designed diesel cars more than two decades ago, after giving the fuel-efficient technology a try in the wake of the two oil embargoes. Diesel was a bust here in the U.S. of A.
So what is it about diesel cars today that makes them account for about half of new car sales in Western Europe? It turns out that engineers have quietly made them clean enough to pass the tightest air regulations, while retaining their famed accelerating power (torque) and fuel efficiency.
Diesel fuel has more energy than gasoline and diesel engines tend to have higher intrinsic efficiency than spark-ignition gasoline engines. Diesel fuels can also be manufactured from vegetable oils or animal fats--even recycled restaurant grease--making biodiesel an especially attractive "green" fuel.
There's more good news: after a nasty spike last year, diesel prices are back below gasoline. According to figures from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, diesel prices in California last week averaged $2.79 a gallon versus $3.01 for gasoline, a 22 cent spread.
This confluence of improved technology and lower fuel prices is giving a big boost to Volkswagon, maker of the diesel Jetta TDI. Sales of the diesel-engined Jetta in the United States are running far ahead of the manufacturer's projections.
The $22,000 Jetta TDI was named Green Car of the Year last November by Green Car Journal, which said the vehicle "raises the bar significantly in environmental performance with its EPA estimated 41 mpg highway fuel economy, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and extremely low tailpipe emissions. This is all the more impressive when you consider the Jetta TDI is a clean diesel, achieving the kind of fuel efficiency offered by gasoline electric hybrids but in a more affordable way."
Riding the diesel wave, Volkswagon recently unveiled its BlueSport roadster, with a top speed of 140 mph, 258 ft-lbs of torque, and 0-60 acceleration in less than 6 seconds. Its U.S. fuel economy is estimated at 42 mpg.
Like Volkswagon, Mazda is reportedly focusing on clean diesel engines ahead of more expensive hybrids. And Audi is launching a major marketing campaign for its new line of diesels.
The latest surveys suggest, however, that only a third of Americans would consider buying a diesel car. Maybe the Old Country still has something to teach us about new vehicle technology.
Jun 26 2009
Several news stories on the science and politics of global warming caught our attention this week:
Global warming--and efforts to fight global warming--are both putting national wildlife refuges at risk, according to a new report from Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. Not surprisingly, climate change and rising sea levels threaten to destroy marshes and other critical habitats. But the report also warns that wind and solar farms and electric transmission lines can slice up wildlife habitats. The report calls for incentives for landowners to protect sensitive land and for better siting of power infrastructure.
The Waxman-Markey climate bill comes to the House floor for a vote today, with strong backing from President Obama. Public opinion if divided on its central provision, cap-and-trade: 52 percent of those surveyed in a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll support the approach, with 42 percent opposed. But three-quarters of Americans, including even a majority of Republicans, support federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions.
A group of 20 corporations, including PG&E, HP, Applied Materials, and Starbucks ran an ad supporting Waxman-Markey, declaring: "Putting a price on carbon will drive investment into cost-saving, energy-saving technologies, and will create the next wave of jobs in the new energy economy."
Opponents of the bill include the American Petroleum Institute, the National Pork Producers Council, Friends of the Earth and most Republican members of Congress. Said House Minority Leader John Boehner, "Americans know that this bill would have a disastrous impact on our economy and our constituents." However, studies by the Congressional Budget Office and EPA suggest the average cost per household would be somewhere between $80 per year and $175 per year to help prevent potentially grievous economic and environmental harm.
Even if the United States passes a climate change bill with teeth, getting other countries to go along will remain a challenge. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev recently said Russia might cut greenhouse gas emissions by about 10 to 15 per cent based on the 1990 base year used under the Kyoto deal. But because Russian emissions were so high that year, such a target could still allow the country to increase emissions by a third by 2020.
Jun 24 2009
No one ever thought it possible, but an issue has finally emerged to unite the oddest of bedfellows: Senator Tom Coburn, the conservative Republican from Oklahoma who called global warming "just a lot of crap," and Greenpeace, one of the most zealous of environmental activist groups.
That issue is federal support for research on technology to capture carbon dioxide emissions, primarily from coal-fired power plants, and store them underground (even under the ocean floor) where they can't contribute to greenhouse warming of the earth.
Both right and left are slamming a decision this month by the Department of Energy to resurrect a Bush-era proposal to fund FutureGen, an R&D project to demonstrate carbon capture and storage (CCS) at a new coal-fired power plant in Mattoon, Ill. Tens of billions of dollars more could be made available for CCS projects through the Waxman-Markey bill on global warming.
The controversy has all the ingredients that make national action on global warming so difficult: the specter of huge federal expenditures, major scientific and engineering uncertainty, and the clash of powerful political lobbies (especially coal-related interests) against partisan and ideological opponents (Coburn and Greenpeace).
Sen. Coburn this month put FutureGen--slated to receive $1 billion in stimulus funds--at second place on his list of 100 federal projects that he denounced as "wasteful spending."
Meanwhile Michael Crocker, media director at Greenpeace USA, said, "The billions for CCS make a new fleet of helicopters for the president or Alaska's infamous 'Bridge to Nowhere' look like a rummage sale bargain. At least we know helicopters and bridges actually work."
Ouch.
Skepticism about CCS isn't confined to the two extremes. The Economist magazine charged in March that "For the moment, at least, CCS is mostly hot air":
[T]here is not a single big power plant using CCS anywhere in the world. Utilities refuse to build any, since the technology is expensive and unproven. Advocates insist that the price will come down with time and experience, but it is hard to say by how much, or who should bear the extra cost in the meantime. Green pressure groups worry that captured carbon will eventually leak. In short, the world's leaders are counting on a fix for climate change that is at best uncertain and at worst unworkable.
But the Department of Energy can make a good case for its subsidies. For one thing, several promising technologies already exist for grabbing CO2 out of the air (or, in this case, out of flue gases). And for years, oil companies have pumped compressed CO2 underground to displace and extract more crude. The challenge is to find cheaper ways to extract CO2 and safe underground storage caverns that won't leak for hundreds of years.
Hard, yes, but not impossible. Studies at MIT and elsewhere suggest it can be done for $50-$70 per ton of CO2, more expensive than many energy efficiency investments, natural gas-fired generation and some forms of renewable energy, but less than the cost of some policies now being adopted to fight global warming.
Many energy experts advocate funding a reasonable number of demonstration projects to help narrow the cost uncertainties and advance the technology before deciding the fate of coal and CCS. They are joined by mainstream national environmental organizations such as the Natural Resources Defense Council and Environmental Defense Fund.
Interestingly, Royal Dutch Shell has redirected its "clean energy" investments from solar and wind to place its bets instead on CCS demonstration projects. "We think carbon capture and storage is one of the few technologies which has the potential to become very big," said CEO Jeroen van der Veer in May. "And if it becomes very big, then you start to do something about greenhouse gases."
If nothing else, political realities suggest that with half of U.S. electric power coming from coal--and millions of jobs tied to it--coal will have to be part of the solution.
As Secretary of Energy Steven Chu said sagely, "Even if the United States turns its back on coal, China and India will not. Given the state of affairs, I would prefer to say let's try to develop technologies that can get large fractions of the carbon dioxide out of coal."
Jun 23 2009
Scene: It's 2025. The recent collapse of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets has raised sea levels two meters. Major sections of San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York City are now underwater and the public is panicking.
On the Washington Mall, under the hot sun, a fiery orater from Greenpeace tells assembled demonstrators that America must change its way of life or lead the world to ruin. He calls on the Menendez administration to support a ban on popular wall-sized TVs and other power-hungry home electronics.
On the steps of the Capitol, a crowd of counterdemonstrators jeer him. Their leader walks to the podium and hoists aloft his iPhone (version 20.0, with its new Telepathic OS™).
"You can have my iPhone when you pry it from my cold, dead hands," he shouts, as the crowd roars its approval.
That nightmare crossed my mind today upon reading the results of a new national survey of consumers. When asked whether they would be willing to do without certain products that harmed the environment, most people said, in effect, fuggedaboudit.
More precisely, only 38 percent said they would give up their iPod if they learned that it harmed the environment. Just over a third could live without a dishwasher. Only a quarter would part with their microwave, and only a fifth with their cell phone.
Civil war would erupt if anyone tried to turn off their air conditioner--only 14 percent of consumers would consider that sacrifice. The same for televisions--13 percent.
Most addictive of all were computers (7 percent willing to forego) and cars (6 percent).
If American attitudes are any indication, trying to convince residents of China and India to do without cars may be a lost cause.
Said Suzanne Shelton, whose Knoxville advertising firm conducted the survey, "Consumers don`t want to give up the modern conveniences of life. We`re all basically saying, `I`ll be green as long it doesn`t make me uncomfortable or inconvenienced.'"
Will we be uncomfortable enough when our cities are two feet under water?
Jun 22 2009
Pundits point to computers, wireless, the Internet, the Web and now clean tech as the revolutionary technologies of our time. But a strong case can be made that the enabling innovations behind most of those revolutions have been in the field of materials science.
Like Rodney Dangerfield, materials science--the study of the relationship between the atomic or molecular structure of matter and its macroscopic properties--doesn't get much respect outside of narrow professional circles. But the accelerating discovery of new materials with extraordinary properties is what makes advances in solar cells, lithium batteries and terabyte-level computer storage possible. They will be critical to helping the world achieve higher standards of living while using or producing energy more efficiently.
You won't see many stories in your local newspaper, but one of the hottest research areas for materials scientists is a two-dimensional crystalline form of carbon called graphene. A mere one-atom thick, it nonetheless manages to be the strongest material ever discovered. Unlike buckyballs or carbon nanotubes, which are also one atom thick, graphene lies flat, in sheets.
"In physics today, graphene is, arguably, the most exciting topic," says Tomás Palacios, assistant professor in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
It usually behaves like a highly conductive metal, but scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have discovered a reliable way to make it act like a semiconductor (the basis of transistors), by doping it with the right chemicals. The new results make graphene a promising candidate for nanoelectronics (microelectronics is so 20th century) and "could enable new kinds of optoelectronic devices for generating, amplifying, and detecting infrared light," according to the lab's announcement.
Meanwhile, scientists at the University of Manchester have used graphene to create the world's smallest transistors--a mere one atom thick and 10 atoms wide. And at MIT, scientists have shown the ability of graphene to process electrical signals at frequencies a hundred times faster than normal semiconductors, opening up new windows for communications.
An Austin, Texas startup, Graphene Energy, hopes to use the miracle substance to make super high capacity ultracapacitors, which story energy electrostatically between two charged plates, rather than chemically as in batteries. Unlike batteries, ultracapacitors can charge and discharge millions of times without failing. Graphene-based ultracapacitors could have application in electric vehicles, forklifts or even for stabilizing electrical grids.
Because ultrathin graphene films are both transparent and highly conductive, they also show great promise as electrodes in solid-state solar cells. Graphene can also be used for touchscreens, light-emitting diodes, sensing gas molecules and even detecting microbes.
Research in the field was opened up in 2004 when a team of physicists at the University of Manchester first announced their production of graphene. (Their paper almost didn't get published because its claims were so exotic.)
Highly impractical physicists love the stuff because it lets them explore theoretical questions of particle physics and even astrophysics in their labs without the need for multi-billion dollar particle colliders. The rest of us practical folks can look forward to a host of potentially life-changing applications.
Jun 19 2009
Several stories on the science and politics of global warming caught our attention this week:
A major new federal climate report, commissioned by the Bush administration, warns that unchecked CO2 emissions could warm the United States by 10 degrees over the next 80 years. Its regional findings for the Southwest, including California, warn that
Continued temperature increases combined with river flow reductions and rapid population growth will increase competition for water supplies. Increasing temperature, drought, wildfire, and invasive species will accelerate transformation of the landscape. Impacts of climate change on the landscape of the Southwest are likely to be substantial, threatening biological diversity, protected areas, and ranching and agricultural lands. . . . Record-setting wildfires are resulting from the rising temperatures and related reductions in spring snowpack and soil moisture.
Scientists reporting on the findings of a major conference attended by 2,000 climate impact specialists this March in Copenhagen say that half measures to limit global warming won't prevent the earth from reaching a "tipping point" in which "change is abrupt, large, and potentially irreversible in time frames relevant for contemporary society." Said John Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, "Either you make a decision like Churchill in the war and talk about blood, sweat and tears, or you say, 'Let's surrender.'"
Political battles in Congress continue to bog down climate change legislation. In addition to fierce opposition from the coal lobby, agricultural interests are seeking to water down key provisions even though global warming threatens to cause droughts, crippling heat and pest infestations. Backed by Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), farm state electric cooperatives are demanding free emissions allowances based on historic emission levels, which would reward the dirtiest polluters. Peterson is threatening to block climate change legislation unless he wins such concessions.
Farm interests also won a vote in the House Appropriations Committee for an amendment to the appropriations bill for EPA, which would block the agency from making factory farms report their greenhouse gas emissions and exempt livestock operations from emissions regulations. Cows and their manure are major sources of methane, a greenhouse gas much more potent than carbon dioxide.
The energy bill reported out of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will save only about a third as much energy as its counterpart in the House, according to an analysis by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. But the organization still sees a glass half full:
Consumers will realize approximately $20 billion in net savings by 2030. Moreover, such savings will avoid about 133 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions in 2020, the equivalent of taking 22 million cars off the road for a year. The 2030 energy efficiency savings account for about 4% of projected U.S. energy use that year.
Jun 18 2009
The world's biggest renewable energy project--at least on paper--may launch next month with an investment of half a trillion dollars, according to the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung.
Promoted by the Desertec Foundation, the project would erect 100 gigawatts of concentrating solar thermal power generation in North Africa, enough to supply about 15 percent of Europe's electricity needs. That's about 80 times the size of PG&E's record solar deal with BrightSource Energy.
As NEXT100 reported last fall, European leaders including Gordon Brown and Nicholas Sarkozy have endorsed the concept of transmitting vast amounts of Saharan solar power to Europe over efficient, high-voltage DC lines. Visionary inventors have gone further and proposed desalination plants and coastal agricultural projects to accompany solar stations along Africa's Mediterranean shore.
The Desertec project brings together 20 major German companies, including Siemens, Deutsche Bank, RWE, E.on, and the insurance giant Munich Re. Munich Re has been vocal about the looming financial impact on the insurance industry (among others) of natural disasters aggravated by global warming. Companies from other countries may join as well.
According to some estimates, harnessing a mere 0.3 percent of the light falling on the deserts of North Africa and the Middle East could supply all of Europe's energy needs.
Desertec has won applause even from the harshest critics of big corporations. Said Andree Bohling of Greenpeace, "Businesses have finally recognised that renewable energies belong to the future, and in times of economic crisis this also sends out an important signal for economic growth."
Jun 18 2009
Last summer, a presidential candidate named Barack Obama drew hoots and hollers from opponents for claiming that properly inflating your tires is a simple but important step individuals can take to save energy.
For all the derision he endured, Obama was right, of course. Tire pressure and road friction significantly affect auto fuel economy. The Department of Energy reports that "a vehicle with a recommended pressure of 35 psi whose tires are at 28 psi will have increased its rolling resistance by 12.5%."
Ironically, Obama was echoing an advertising campaign mounted by the first Bush administration in 1990, called "Do Your Part, Drive Smart," which advised that drivers collectively could save millions of barrels of oil a year simply by increasing the air pressure in their tires.
California has long understood the importance of tire friction. In 2003, the state passed a law that required the development of reporting requirements from manufacturers to help consumers compare the fuel economy of different tires.
A 10 percent improvement in the rolling resistance of older tires used in California could reduce the state's consumption of oil by more than 250 million gallons (saving about $750 million) and reduce CO2 emissions by 2.7 million metric tons annually, according to the California Energy Commission.
California's Air Resources Board already requires service stations to check tire pressure whenever they do repairs. Last week, the California Energy Commission proposed a new rating system for tires sold in California based on their rolling resistance, according to my favorite bedtime periodical, Modern Tire Dealer.
The Commission proposes to award the label "fuel efficient tire" to all tires that fall within 15 percent of the lowest measured "rolling resistance force." It would be like an Energy Star label for tires.
The Commission believes such ratings will "ignite a competitive spirit" among tire manufacturers to win the coveted label. But the Rubber Manufacturers Association advocates less costly testing requirements and a "self-certification" system for ratings.
Until the new ratings are final and published, one good source of information is Consumer Reports, which claims to be "the only independent group that rates tires for both performance and rolling resistance." Wikipedia also has a good list of tires with low rolling resistance.
Consumer Reports, which was invited by the Commission to be part of its rating proposal process, has this caveat:
Rolling resistance should not be the primary reason for a tire purchase. The most important considerations are safety-related performance features including dry- and wet-braking, hydroplaning resistance, handling, winter traction if applicable in your region, and tread-life. Low rolling resistance should be a secondary consideration in your tire-buying decision.
Jun 17 2009
Rail buffs, gird your loins: travel by train can actually produce more greenhouse gas emissions than flying, according to a new study of lifecycle energy use and pollution by cars, buses, trains and airplanes.
The study, by U.C. Berkeley engineers Mikhail Chester and Arpad Horvath, takes into account the full range of environmental impacts from raw materials extraction, manufacturing, construction, operation, maintenance and decommissioning of vehicles, fuels and infrastructure (roads, rails, airports) needed to run them.
Perspectives change a lot when you look at the big picture. For example, aircraft have big fuel requirements for every passenger-mile traveled, but relatively low infrastructure costs. Building and operating railroad stations and rail lines, on the other hand, takes twice as much energy as operating rail cars.
Their analysis shows that some light rail systems, like San Francisco's Muni, may use more energy per passenger mile than large aircraft. What saves Muni from having a larger carbon footprint is the relatively clean source of electricity it uses. Boston's Green Line, powered mostly by dirty fossil fuels, emits more greenhouse gases per passenger mile than large or mid-sized aircraft with typical occupancy rates.
Lead author Mikhail Chester told me he's cautious about declaring any one mode of transportation the "best" or the "worst." A lot depends on actual ridership. For example, he notes, "the worst performer could easily be the midsize aircraft flight I took recently with 5 passengers." Most aircraft, however, are much more fully loaded.
Buses illustrate his point especially well. The worst energy hogs shown in the paper's charts--and the worst greenhouse gas emitters--are urban diesel buses running off peak, with only a few passengers. But the most energy-efficient and generally cleanest vehicles are also urban diesel buses, running full at peak periods. (All comparisons are per passenger-mile traveled.)
Conventional cars, SUVs and pickup trucks are the worst energy users and greenhouse gas offenders, apart from near-empty diesel buses. But adding one or two passengers can dramatically improve their relative performance. The same point goes for other forms of transportation: higher occupancy works magic.
Strange, isn't it, that we invest so much money and talent into engineering more fuel-efficient vehicles, but not into finding simple ways to make them more people-efficient.
Jun 16 2009
Even die-hard fans of bottled water know all that plastic filling up landfills can't be good for the environment. What they may not appreciate, however, is the staggering amount of energy embodied in all those liquid refreshments.
Taking something you can get free from the tap and charging more for it than the price of gasoline is one of the great marketing triumphs of all time. As of 2007, beverage companies sold more than 200 billion--billion, not million--liters of bottled water worldwide. Americans alone drank more than 30 gallons of bottled water per person that year, more than milk or beer.
Manufacturing, filling, transporting and cooling all those myriad bottles uses a good bit of energy, particularly when they are shipped from France or Fiji.
In fact, producing and distributing bottled water requires as much as 2,000 times the energy used in producing tap water.
Bottom line: "the annual consumption of bottled water in the US in 2007 required an energy input equivalent to between 32 and 54 million barrels of oil or a third of a percent of total US primary energy consumption," conclude Peter Glieck and H. S. Cooley of Oakland's Pacific Institute in a new article in Environmental Research Letters. "We estimate that roughly three times this amount was required to satisfy global bottled water demand."
Jun 15 2009
Our recent report on the status of fusion power research suggested that its promises of limitless power are destined to remain promises for a long time to come. Confirmation of that view comes from a recent report by Agence France Presse about delays in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), slated for construction in southern France.
The reactor will heat hydrogen atoms to a temperature of 270 million degrees F, energizing their nuclei enough to fuse into helium, a reaction that unleashes tremendous amounts of energy. Don't try this at home.
Confirming that the hugely ambitious project has "a new commissioning strategy," a spokeswoman for France's Atomic Energy Commission said, "discussions are underway about the best timetable."
What that means, apparently, is the backers still hope to begin experiments by 2018, but on a pared-back schedule that will put any hope of commercial power back a long, long way. Key experiments necessary to commercialize fusion power would not begin until 2026 at the earliest, five years later than previously projected.
Participants in the project include the European Union (EU), China, India, South Korea, Japan, Russia and the United States, with Kazakhstan likely to join soon. (More grist for Borat.)
If they don't bail, those countries may be on the hook for $25 billion in construction and startup costs, according recent estimates.
Jun 12 2009
Several news stories on the science and politics of global warming caught our attention this week:
- Experts predict that environmental stress caused by global warming could displace at least 200 million people by 2050, creating the greatest migration in human history. A new report by the International Organization for Migration highlighted the likely impact on people living in vulnerable river deltas, deserts, and islands.
- In a rare joint statement, the science academies of the G8 countries and those of Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa appealed to political leaders to "seize all opportunities" to combat climate change, which they said "is happening even faster than previously estimated."
- Want to estimate your personal impact on climate change? A team of scientists has demonstrated for the first time a simple linear relationship between greenhouse gas emissions and global termperature changes. For every tonne of carbon dioxide emitted--which is about the carbon footprint of 5,000 miles of air travel--you'll raise global temperatures by 0.0000000000015 degrees.
- Japan announced this week that it plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 15 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. Japan's prime minister called the target "ambitious" but one environmental consultant termed it "the weakest target any country has pledged so far."
- In a cruelly ironic twist, global warming may be slowing down the very winds needed to generate renewable energy that could reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Though the findings are still controversial, one atmospheric scientist says average wind speeds in the Midwest have dropped 10 percent or more in a decade.
Jun 11 2009
Innovation sometimes involves little more than revisiting the past with a fresh look. Take, for example, the recent announcement that PG&E's ClimateSmart program will buy carbon offsets from California Bioenergy's methane capture project at a dairy near Bakersfield.
As the news release notes, "the project will process manure from the dairy through an anaerobic digester that traps the methane gas produced as the manure decomposes." Since methane is many times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas, this project should be a winner for the environment--and will yield a useful fuel as well.
Using anaerobic digesters--devices that harness microorganisms to break down organic waste in an environment free of oxygen--to generate methane is not a new idea. The first such device was reportedly built and used by a leper colony in Bombay in 1859. A few decades later, the English city of Exeter used one to create gas for street lighting. Today, it's common for agencies like the East Bay Municipal Utility District to use anaerobic digestion to break down food waste in their sewage treatment plants.
Anaerobic digestion has been promoted by the United Nations as a particularly promising source of energy in the developing world. In China, an estimated five million rural households use anaerobic digesters to process organic wastes. As in high-tech California dairies, they create energy in the form of biogas as well as fertilizer for agriculture. The versatile effluent can also be used to feed pigs, grow mushrooms or rear worms for chickens.
As PG&E's announcement shows, the technology is equally suited to the developed world. The waste management firm Biffa recently announced that it will build a major anaerobic digestion facility in Staffordshire, England to process 80,000 tonnes of waste food per year, generating four megawatts of electricity and producing compost and fertilizer for farms.
And the North German town of Lunen plans by December to finish a similar plant, which will generate 6.8 MW and supply enough heat to meet a third of the town's energy needs.
Turning bugs and waste into methane and energy may not be quite as sexy as turning lead into gold, but it's a remarkable kind of alchemy that will enrich us more in the long run.
Jun 09 2009
If you're trying to live a more environmentally pure lifestyle, here's something new to feel guilty about: charging your mobile phone too long. Turns out that many people charge their phones overnight for at least eight hours, when a mere three would do.
The result, according to a new survey of mobile customers in the UK: 85,000 tonnes of CO2 are needlessly emitted, wasting about $60 million a year in electricity, just in that nation alone. Topping it all off, overcharging reduces battery life.
Young people tend to be the most wasteful; half concede that they leave their phones charging for an average of 7.3 hours.
Men are most wasteful than women; 15 percent of men charge for an average of 8.5 hours, compared to fewer than 7 hours for a similar fraction of women.
Bottom line: if you can't remember to unplug the charger, be sure to get a timer to remind you. Just make sure it doesn't consume more power than your phone!
Jun 08 2009
If worse comes to worse, and the world fails to curb greenhouse gas emissions in time to prevent runaway global warming, there's always Plan B--"geoengineering" our way out of disaster by limiting the amount of solar radiation striking the earth. As described here in April, one of the most promising proposals--technically and economically--is to seed bright clouds in the ocean to reflect more sunlight.
The good news is that oceanic cloud seeding likely could hold back global warming for a quarter century, according to a new analysis by scientists at the Met Office Hadley Center, the United Kingdom's top center for climate change research.
The bad news is the earth would still experience disruptive regional climate shifts. Worst of all, rainfall would decrease sharply over South America, depleting the rich Amazon rainforest.
Said Dr. Andy Jones, lead investigator, "While some areas do benefit from geoengineering of this sort there are other, very significant regions, where the response could be very detrimental, raising questions about the practicality of such a scheme."
In other words, there's no simple fix. The politicians had better get back to work and solve this problem.
Jun 05 2009
Several stories on the science and politics of global warming caught our attention this week:
- A new evaluation of global companies that stand to be most affected by climate change shows that most are disclosing little or no information about the risks they face or their mitigation strategies, according to a new study by Ceres and Environmental Defense Fund. The report named ExxonMobil and Massey Coal as among the worst offenders, but cited AES, PG&E and Xcel Energy as some of the best performers. The report calls on the SEC to mandate increased disclosure.
- Mainstream institutional investors are significantly increasing their support for shareholder resolutions on climate change, according to a new study by Ceres and Fund Votes, two organizations that support sustainable business practices. Its report names TIAA-CREF as the institution most supportive of climate change resolutions in 2008, and also recognizes Credit Suisse and Charles Schwab as consistent supporters.
- Rising ocean levels in the Gulf of Mexico could doom 100,000 households and cause more than $10 billion in damage in the Galveston, Texas area, according to an analysis by researchers at Texas A&M University. Rising seas could also inundate various hazardous waste and Superfund sites, threatening public health unless they are moved or protected.
- A new exhibition that opened on Bonn this week, "The Himalaya--Changing Landscapes," shows photographs from mountaineering expeditions in the 1950s of vast glaciers that no longer exist. A major UN study warned last year that the Himalayan glaciers may shrink from 500,000 square kilometers to a mere 100,000 square kilometers in twenty years, posing huge risks of flooding and landslides.
Jun 04 2009
Last fall, NEXT100 revealed the secret of converting olive pits into ethanol. (We didn't take a stand on whether it should be consumed in person or in your car.)
Now there's another good reason to save your leftover pits: researchers at the University of Grenada report that olive pits, pulp and other waste are great for retaining heavy metals like lead that are found in sewage and industrial waste water.
Other materials with powerful "biosorbtion" properties for the cleanup of toxic heavy metals include various kinds of mold (Rhizopus), bacteria (Bacillus subtilis) and seaweeds (Sargassum, Ecklonia). They are useful for detoxifying effluent from mines, coal-fired power plants, battery manufacturing and other industrial operations.
But if you live in a place like Andalusia, which grows more olives than anyone knows what to do with, why use mold or seaweed when olive pits could do the job?
Jun 04 2009
Even with unemployment rates at levels not seen since the Great Depression, most workers in "green" industries feel relatively secure and are making good salaries, according to the first-ever Carbon Salary Survey by Reuters.
According to the survey, 68 percent of "green" workers say that increased government and business attention to global warming has improved their job security.
The average green collar worker earns $76,000 a year worldwide--and $100,000 annually in the United States. The worst paid sector, at $58,000 a year, was green marketing, PR and media--a category that includes bloggers.
On at least one score, green companies are still politically incorrect: they pay women an average of 18 percent less than men.
So how do you land a desirable green job in these hard times? Check out a new online map launched by Environmental Defense Fund. It lets you search for a wide variety of green California companies--2,200 in all--by city, county or congressional district. Clicking on any of the stick-pin icons will give you the name, address, url and description of each company.
The EDF database doesn't encompass all green companies; it focuses on those in the energy generation, energy efficiency, transportation and green building sectors.
Job seekers should also check out EDF's "Green Jobs Guidebook," which profiles dozens of jobs, suggests opportunities for high school graduates and provides information on job training and placement programs.
Jun 03 2009
If what's left of the US auto industry is looking for some bright young minds to help engineer the next generation of clean vehicles, we know where to look.
The 8th grade class at Novato Charter School in Marin County.
When the class decided to learn about alternative energy and transportation, it set an ambitious goal: "having a lot of fun" by designing a 4-person vehicle, called the Solar Human Hybrid.
They chose several design criteria: the vehicle had to have excellent peddling performance, an electric motor to push up hills, advanced battery technology with solar charger, and be street legal.
And, not least, it had to "look cool."
Rather than reinvent the wheel, the class decided to build their vehicle on an existing platform, the Swiss ZEM 4cycle, an aluminum-framed, four-wheel, four-passenger cycling machine. According to the school, one of these devices won third place at the human powered vehicle world championships held at Interlaken, Switzerland.
Then came all the electric hybrid modifications: a high efficiency, 24-volt motor and motor controller; an Italian-made transmission; batteries; two 20-watt solar panels; headlights; dog platform; global positioning system device; and much more.
The result was a road-legal motorized bicycle fit for four, able to squeeze into standard-width bike lanes, and limited to a maximum speed of 18 mph but with enough torque to climb hills.
Dealer inquiries, anyone?
Jun 02 2009
PG&E now boasts the nation's largest deployment of smart meters, which measure energy use at frequent intervals throughout the day and automatically communicate the data back to the utility. But what do those meters mean for customers, other than no longer having to tie up your dog when meter readers come by on their monthly rounds?
One big improvement, in addition to giving customers timely and detailed information on their energy use, will be expanded availability of voluntary pricing programs that can save them money and help the environment. Such pricing programs reward customers for cutting back on energy use a few hours each year during periods of "critical peak" demand, typically on scalding days when air conditioners are running flat out.
Timely reductions in load in turn reduce the need to operate expensive natural gas-fired "peaker" power plants, thus minimizing air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
Last year, 10,000 customers in Bakersfield signed up for a new program called SmartRate, one of the first critical peak pricing programs for residential and small-and-medium business customers in the United States, and the first to use data from advanced meters.
The award-winning program gives enrolled customers a discount of about 3 cents per kilowatt hour on electric bills from June 1 to September 30. In return, residential customers pay a rate surcharge of 60 cents for electricity used from 2 p.m to 7 p.m. on up to 15 days a year when soaring temperatures drive up demand on PG&E's grid.
The program is a win-win for customers and PG&E. On the nine peak "SmartDay" events called by PG&E last year, customers cut their average usage by about 17 percent. More than two-thirds of customers said they enjoyed savings. Nine in 10 customers said they intended to stick with the program.
Said one customer, insurance agent Randel Thompson, "This was one of the easiest tasks I have ever joined. . . . Makes for a nice reward at the end of the month and saves us all energy and money." Mary Noriega, another customer, commented that shifting power use to the morning or evening was "all it takes" to save money. "Also, get into the habit of turning off lights, fans, etc. when you leave the rooms. It is very easy to do and worth it!"
Impressive results like these help explain why "demand response and peak shaving have jumped to the top of the list as drivers of Smart Grid implementation at North American utilities," according to new research from Pacific Crest Securities.
Jun 01 2009
Some 3,500 people assembled on Friday at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, long associated with research on the hydrogen bomb, to celebrate a facility that could advance efforts to use the same physical principles to create vast amounts of electrical power for peaceful ends.
The lab's National Ignition Facility is by every account a stunning scientific and engineering achievement. But to what extent it will convert the promise of fusion power into affordable energy remains a huge question mark. The same is true of its French-based competitor, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER).
Nuclear fusion, the source of power for the Sun and other stars, is also the source of most power on Earth today in the "fossilized" form of oil and coal that derived from plants. It also drives renewable wind and solar power. But directly creating clean, concentrated and controllable fusion power on earth would be a stunning breakthrough and a giant step forward in fighting global warming.
Fusion proponents say, rightly, that they have made tremendous strides in understanding how to control a source of energy that, by its very nature, fiercely resists control. Critics say fusion power today remains where it has been for the past half century--about 20+ years from becoming a commercial reality. With every yard of progress, the goal posts seems to recede apace.
The $3.5 billion Livermore facility cost nearly triple the original estimate in 1994. It took 7,000 workers, 3,000 contractors and a dozen years to build, and won't be fully operational until 2010. When it gets up to full power, the stadium-sized structure will focus 192 lasers--emitting the same amount of energy consumed by 10 billion 100-watt light bulbs in one second--on a tiny hydrogen target. If all goes well, the hydrogen, heated it to 100 million degrees centigrade, will fuse into helium and release a great deal of energy.
It will require another huge feat of engineering, of course, to turn that energy into usable form at a reasonable cost.
Meanwhile, over in France, an international effort is underway to create a fusion reactor controlled by a magnetic doughnut that squeezes hydrogen until it fuses. The ultimate goal is to generate about 500 megawatts of thermal power, or about 10 times more than needed to run the machine.
Like Livermore's facility, the ITER reactor boasts some amazing statistics. Each of its giant magnetic coils weighs 360 tons, about the same as a fully loaded Boeing 747-300 jet. The reactor as a whole will weigh 23,000 tons, three times the Eifel Tower. It is being built on a platform the size of 60 soccer fields, will require the removal of 2.5 million meters of earth, and will rise 19 stories. It will create temperatures of 150 million degrees centigrade, ten times those at the core of the Sun.
But the ITER reactor, also like Livermore's facility, is running behind schedule and over budget. Its first major experiments likely won't take place until 2025 and the latest estimated cost of construction is about double the $7 billion promised in 2006.
As Scientific American noted, "If ITER succeeds, it will not add a single watt to the grid. . . . and some veterans in the field predict that 20 to 30 years of experiments with ITER will be needed to refine designs for a production plant."
May 29 2009
Several news stories on the science and politics of global warming caught our attention this week:
- Bad news out of London: A new report released today estimates that 300,000 people a year are already dying from the effects of global warming. Annual economic losses may total more than $125 billion. Both of those figures are expected to more than double by 2030. The report, authored by international climate and development experts, was published by the Global Humanitarian Forum.
- Good news out of China: Senator John Kerry said some of the "most constructive and productive talks" ever held with China over climate change leave him "very optimistic at the possibility of producing a successful outcome in Copenhagen." House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said of the talks with China, "I do see this opportunity for climate change to be . . . a game-changer."
- Lighten up: Secretary of Energy Steven Chu made a pitch for whitening the world's roofs and paved surfaces to reflect more sunlight as a strategy for combating global warming. Chu praised his friend Art Rosenfeld, a colleague at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and member of the California Energy Commission, for demonstrating the remarkable potential of this simple tactic. In a recent research note with Hashem Akbari, Rosenfeld calculates that white roofs could offset as much CO2 as taking all cars off the road around the world for 18 years. Check out NEXT100's detailed post on their research from last fall.
- Do the math: If you like the idea of cap-and-trade markets for carbon emissions but worry that the new Waxman-Markey bill is a giveaway to utilities, check out this detailed analysis by two eminent energy experts, Peter Fox-Penner and Marc Chupka, on Climate Progress. As they note, the bill basically ensures that free allowances will ease the transition for customers without creating windfall profits for shareholders. In another analysis of the bill, Harvard economist Robert Stavins explains why giving away emissions allowances rather than selling them at auction "affects neither the environmental performance of the cap-and-trade system nor its aggregate social cost."
May 28 2009
I doubt Michael Phelps got bored of ascending the medals podium eight times in the Beijing Olympics. For the same reason, I doubt anyone at PG&E ever gets tired of being recognized for its industry-leading efforts to foster the deployment of solar power--even by customers who then reduce their power purchases.
The Solar Electric Power Association today cited PG&E, along with several other utilities, for outstanding contributions to solar power in the face of serious economic challenges. The association has honored PG&E at least six times previously for solar business achievement, public awareness, industry leadership and portfolio leadership.
SEPA is a non-profit association of more than 500 utilities, manufacturers, installers and other solar industry participants, whose mission is "to facilitate solutions for the use and integration of solar electric power by utilities, electric service providers, and their customers."
In its new report on "2008 Top Ten Utility Solar Integration Rankings," SEPA called PG&E "the most solar integrated utility for the year 2008" based on its interconnection of 85 megawatts of new customer solar capacity--44 percent of the total recorded in its survey of participating utilities. Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric ranked second and third, representing a sweep for California utilities.
As I noted last month in NEXT100, PG&E now has about 300 MW of solar capacity installed in its service area. In February, PG&E asked the California Public Utilities Commission for permission to install 500 MW of mid-sized photovoltaic projects (half utility-owned, half developer-owned). In March, PG&E signed a record deal with BrightSource Energy for 1,310 MW of solar thermal power, enough to power more than half a million homes. In April, PG&E signed a first-of-a-kind space solar deal with Solaren. And PG&E continues to be a leader in its solar partnerships with California schools and Habitat for Humanity.
In releasing SEPA's report, Executive Director Julia Hamm had some kind things to say about PG&E:
In 2008, PG&E continued to strengthen its position as the most solar-integrated electric utility in the U.S. It is impressive to see a utility take a truly diversified approach to increasing the amount of solar electricity in its portfolio. PG&E is aggressively promoting and pursuing everything from providing incentives for small customer-owned rooftop systems to owning distributed and centralized systems to purchasing the power from third party owned and operated systems. It is also invigorating to see PG&E explore all available solar technology options, which will result in a solid internal understanding of the levelized cost of energy, performance and reliability, and other critical factors related to each technology - information that becomes more and more important as the utility increases the percentage of its power supply that comes from solar electricity.
May 27 2009
For energy consumers who want to go green and save money at the same time, there's no better way than investing in energy efficiency. But when you've squeezed out every kilowatt of savings, what then? The logical next step is to reduce your remaining carbon footprint by enrolling in PG&E's ClimateSmart™ program, which lets its customers support environmental projects that balance out the greenhouse gas emissions from their home or business energy consumption.
Fresh Choice, a restaurant chain based in the East Bay city of Newark, believes that promoting good health through fresh, wholesome food goes hand-in-hand with protecting the health of the planet. It recently enrolled in the ClimateSmart program to augment the environmental benefit of its many energy-saving investments.
With 28 restaurants and a central kitchen in Northern California, Fresh Choice lights, heats and cools nearly 140,000 square feet of restaurant space for up to 12 hours a day. Regional Director Elena Fortuna said, "Our continuous energy improvement plan includes implementing the most energy efficient lighting, heating, cooling and cooking equipment in our restaurants and evaluating our production systems to maximize our energy efficiency."
Having already taken advantage of many of PG&E's energy efficiency solutions, Fresh Choice was looking to do even more to minimize its impact on the environment. With the money it is saving in monthly natural gas and electricity bills, Fresh Choice decided to balance out its remaining monthly energy usage through PG&E's ClimateSmart program.
By enrolling in the ClimateSmart program, Fresh Choice now makes voluntary, charitable contributions that fund greenhouse gas capture and reduction projects, such as forest preservation programs, that make its Northern California restaurants' energy usage carbon neutral.
By joining the program, Fresh Choice will offset more than 8.8 million pounds of greenhouse gases every year, equivalent to taking 731 cars off the road each year. The company will donate approximately $43,000 annually to balance out the carbon emissions produced by its restaurants' energy use.
Fresh Choice CEO Sandy Boyd calls the program a simple, local solution to a global problem: "The ClimateSmart program is an easy solution to an ongoing problem. Our contributions not only balance out our restaurants' greenhouse gas emissions, but also help preserve the environment for future generations."
May 26 2009
Backed by the California Air Resources Board and several industry associations, the 2009 Hydrogen Road Tour begins today in San Diego, taking several hydrogen-powered vehicles to 28 cities along the West Coast over nine days.
The goal: to prevent the current wave of enthusiasm for battery electric vehicles from drowning interest in cars powered by fuel cells, which create electricity from hydrogen or hydrogen-rich compounds like methanol.
Hydrogen-power advocates were put on the defensive earlier this month when the Department of Energy cut funding for research programs using vehicle fuel-cell technology.
In response, Jeff Serfass, president of the National Hydrogen Association, pointed to the Hydrogen Road Tour as evidence that "hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are not a science experiment. These are real vehicles with real marketability and real benefits. So far, these facts have escaped the notice of the Secretary of Energy's attention, given the request to eliminate the federal hydrogen vehicle program."
Joining the tour will be cars from Daimler, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai-Kia, Nissan, Toyota and Volkswagen, as well as some transit buses.
One catch is that the vehicles will all need to be refueled by special mobile suppliers, since only a relative handful of hydrogen refueling stations exist around the country.
In an interview with Technology Review, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said the lack of refueling infrastructure is only one of several reasons why he is so skeptical about the promise of hydrogen as a vehicle fuel, despite the Bush administration's $1.2 billion Hydrogen Fuel Initiative:
[R]ight now, the way we get hydrogen primarily is from reforming [natural] gas. That's not an ideal source of hydrogen. You're giving away some of the energy content of natural gas, which is a very valuable fuel. So that's one problem. The other problem is, if it's for transportation, we don't have a good storage mechanism yet. . . . We haven't figured out how to store it with high density. What else? The fuel cells aren't there yet, and the distribution infrastructure isn't there yet. So you have four things that have to happen all at once. And so it always looked like it was going to be [a technology for] the distant future. In order to get significant deployment, you need four significant technological breakthroughs. That makes it unlikely.
Another critic, former Department of Energy official Joseph Romm, said:
Electric cars - and plug-in hybrid cars - have an enormous advantage over hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles in utilising low-carbon electricity. That is because of the inherent inefficiency of the entire hydrogen fuelling process, from generating the hydrogen with that electricity to transporting this diffuse gas long distances, getting the hydrogen in the car, and then running it through a fuel cell - all for the purpose of converting the hydrogen back into electricity to drive the same exact electric motor you'll find in an electric car.
Fuel cells have great promise in other applications, such as emergency backup power and in residential and commercial markets, where the heat they produce can be used along with their electric output. One key difference is that fuel cells can be competitive in stationary applications at a price 10 to 20 times higher than in vehicles.
Don't expect to find fuel-cell vehicles in auto showrooms anytime soon, even if you could find a way to refuel them. Last fall, General Motors unveiled its Equinox hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, but admitted it cost $1.5 million to produce and would take at least a decade to become commercially available.
Honda's FCX Clarity gets 280 miles on a tank and the equivalent of 74 miles to the gallon. But Honda's president said it costs several hundred thousand dollars to produce, and promised only that the cost would drop below $100,000 sometime in the next decade.
Questions about the commercial prospects of fuel-cell vehicles haven't dampened the enthusiasm of California officials. According to one recent report, vehicle license fees will pump $40 million into state support for hydrogen technology:
Shell Oil, for example, will receive nearly $2 million in state funds to help build a hydrogen pump at a gas station near a swank Newport Beach country club and high end shopping mall. The pump will service a few dozen cars. State officials and hydrogen backers say it is a small but key step forward in solving the nation's energy and environmental woes. An additional $5 million in tax dollars will help build hydrogen fueling pumps near UCLA's campus, San Francisco Airport, and at the foot of wealthy southern California coastal communities.
May 22 2009
Several news stories on the science and politics of global warming caught our attention this week:
- The House Energy and Commerce Committee last night approved a landmark energy bill that would set the first national limit on greenhouse gas emissions. It targets a 17 reduction in emissions by 2020 and an 83 percent reduction by 2050. "I don't think it's too much of an exaggeration to say that this is a turning point in the history of the United States and [its] energy sources," said Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), one of the bill's chief sponsors.
- Over in the Senate, Republican staffers for the Committee on Environment and Public Works proposed accusing Democrats of supporting various businesses in "corporate America" who are are "guilty of manipulating national climate policy to increase profits on the backs of consumers." Said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who chairs the committee, "I find it extremely amusing that suddenly the Democrats are being attacked as being too friendly to business creation."
- In addition to congrssional Republicans, a major source of opposition to climate change legislation is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. A new study of the Chamber's board of directors shows surprisingly that 19 of the businesses represented there favor such legislation and only four oppose it. Three of the four are coal-mining companies. "The staff seem to be freelancing on the agenda of just a few of their members," said the study's author, Peter Altman of the the Natural Resources Defense Council.
- A recent national public opinion poll shows majority support among American adults for regulation of greenhouse gases, but only a slight majority in favor of a cap-and-trade policy. Nine out of ten of those polled favor more federal research on renewable energy, but two-thirds oppose higher gasoline taxes.
- An ambitious vehicle fuel economy plan announced by President Obama would raise average fuel economy to 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016, saving an estimated 1.8 billion barrels of oil. "Few actions could have a more profound impact in the fight against global warming," said Bill Becker, leader of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies. However, some experts predicted that the new standards would have a limited impact without higher gasoline taxes.
- Meanwhile, "The most comprehensive modeling yet carried out on the likelihood of how much hotter the Earth's climate will get in this century shows that without rapid and massive action, the problem will be about twice as severe as previously estimated six years ago - and could be even worse than that," according to the news office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where the giant computer simulation was conducted. The new median estimate of warming by 2100--5 degrees Celsius--would cause havoc to ecosystems and food supplies, massive coastal flooding, and many other severe consequences.
May 21 2009
While scientists and engineers spend billions of dollars seeking "clean tech" solutions to our environmental woes, experience shows that it's sometimes hard to improve on Mother Nature's own remedies. Example: shade trees that cut air conditioning bills in summer while letting the sun in to heat homes naturally during the winter.
The simple act of planting of a shade tree on the western or southern side of a house in one of the warmer areas of California can reduce its summertime electric bill about 5 percent, or $25 a year, according to a new study by researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The findings--based on the first large-scale study to use utility billing data (from Sacramento)--won't win anyone a Nobel Prize, the authors admit. But co-author Geoffrey Donovan of the U.S. Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Research Station, says "this study gets at the details: Where should a tree be placed to get the most benefits? And how exactly do shade trees impact our carbon footprint?"
A London plane tree, planted on the west side of a house, can reduce carbon emissions from summertime electricity use by an average of 31 percent over 100 years, the authors found. But trees planted on the east side had no effect and those on the north increased summertime electricity use.
PG&E has long studied tree planting as an energy efficiency measure. Back in 1991, PG&E launched a shade tree program in Fresno, offering a $10 rebate to each customer who planted approved trees to shade residential buildings.
A detailed computer model of the program concluded two years later that each mature yard tree would save a projected 346 kilowatt-hours per year (mainly from reduced air conditioning) and absorb significant emissions of polluting gases and particulates. Each tree was also estimated to lock up 103 pounds of carbon in tree biomass and reduce CO2 emissions from power plants by 153 pounds a year.
Unfortunately, under existing regulations, the utility could not cite all of these social benefits to justify the cost of the program and it was dropped.
Last year, PG&E revisted the idea by launching a pilot "Shade and Save" program in San Jose, with an emphasis on covering western exposures. PG&E also created pilot tree planting programs in Stockton and the Woodland-Winters-Davis area. Studies of cost effectiveness are now under way.
As we noted yesterday, protection of tropical rainforests is high on the list of tactics for slowing the pace of global warming. It's worth remembering that our less exotic urban trees are a powerful antidote as well.
May 20 2009
PG&E today joined a coalition of leading U.S. corporations and environmental organizations to endorse protecting the world's endangered tropical forests by dedicating five percent of future greenhouse gas reduction permits to effective and verifiable conservation programs.
The group's "Consensus Principles on International Forests for U.S. Climate Legislation" are aimed at influencing congressional deliberations on a massive new energy bill that likely will include "cap-and-trade" provisions to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
Besides PG&E Corporation, the coalition includes American Electric Power, Duke Energy, Marriott International, The Walt Disney Company, Environmental Defense Fund, National Wildlife Federation, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, Union of Concerned Scientists and several other organizations.
They were convened by Avoided Deforestation Partners, a project of the Center for International Policy in Washington, D.C. that promotes "effective, transparent, and equitable market and non-market incentives to reduce tropical deforestation."
"Destruction of the world's forests produces about 20 percent of the climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions released into the atmosphere each year - more than from all the planes, trains and automobiles on Earth," said Mark Tercek, president and CEO of The Nature Conservancy, one of the signatories. "Additionally, millions of people around the world depend on forests for clean water, food, shelter and their livelihoods. These principles create a real chance to conserve tropical forests for people and nature."
Utilities are among the chief targets of proposed cap-and-trade legislation. Although PG&E is one of the nation's cleanest utilities, with greenhouse gas emissions that run only a third of the national average per megawatt-hour, its customers too would be affected by increases in the price of fossil fuels, which account for about half of its generation. Under the coalition's proposals, utilities and other entities would receive credits under a cap-and-trade system for any investments they make in "environmentally sound, measurable, reportable and verifiable" projects to protect tropical forests.
According to one expert, the five percent set-aside for tropical forest conservation programs would equal about $3.4 billion annually and would eliminate some 340 million tons of carbon dioxide a year, roughly equal to the emissions of France or Spain.
The signers also support explicit legislative provisions protecting the "rights and interests of indigenous peoples, other forest dependent communities and the rural poor" lest they be trampled in the name of protecting the environment.
May 19 2009
Imagine how frustrating life would be if every electric utility operated with a different voltage or frequency, so they couldn't share power when needed and you had to buy a separate converter for every city you visited.
That's the sort of scenario that electric utilities, technology vendors and government agencies are trying to head off as this country prepares for a tidal wave of new investment in a smarter, high-tech electrical grid.
The 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act charged the National Institute of Standards with overseeing work on Smart Grid standards.Today and tomorrow, NIST is holding its second major workshop to put this exceedingly complex and ambitious assignment on a super fast track. NIST's goal--with $10 million in new stimulus funding--is to publish an interim Smart Grid standards roadmap by this September. On Monday, the Departments of Commerce and Energy released the first 16 proposed standards.
Open standards allow devices, networks and other technologies to interoperate, or talk the same language, so buyers and sellers can take advantage of scale economies. In addition, technology standards help assure buyers that they won't be saddled with proprietary solutions that becomes obsolete if new competitors eclipse their vendors.
Every electricity consumer should be glad there are technology experts willing to put up with the tedious and time-consuming discussions necessary to create these standards.
Those experts have to be willing to participate in groups like the "IEEE 802.15 Smart Utility Networks (SUN) Task Group 4g" knowing that their stimulating job will be to "create a PHY amendment to 802.15.4" to facilitate "large scale process control applications . . . capable of supporting large, geographically diverse networks with minimal infrastructure," among other things.
They also need to keep track of the work of ASHRAE, IEC, IETF, EPRI, NEMA, ANSI, IOS, ITU, SAE and an alphabet soup of other organizations.
PG&E's Chris Knudsen, director of the utility's Technology Innovation Center and a veteran of various wireless communications standards efforts, is one of those dedicated (I won't say masochistic) souls. He and his team are involved in standards work relating to smart meter infrastructure, home area networks and automated demand response, among other priorities. He chairs the Open Smart Grid subcommittee that oversees technical work in the Utility Communications Architecture (UCA) international users group.
Open SG includes 10 utilities representing about 27 percent of U.S. meters. "It's a technically deep and engaged group," Knudsen says. "We are highly involved in the NIST process."
What NIST brings to the table, Knudsen says, is an ability to "provide focus and minimize fragmentation by putting a common process around this effort. They have us all looking at the same picture in a structured governance process. That's how you accelerate standards."
Knudsen notes that integrating all the necessary standards--which could number in the thousands, depending on how you count them--"is only the first step. You also need an industry compliance program to make sure everyone is implementing standards in the same way. Without a defined set of tests, engineers will do things a little differently and you won't get plug-and-play interoperability."
"Plug-and-play interoperatibility" is engineering-speak for the ability of customers to go down to Best Buy or Radio Shack and buy (for example) a programmable home energy management device that will work with any utility's smart meter and with smart appliances to limit electricity use when prices are high and shift demand instead to off-peak periods.
Such interoperability will also let electric cars plug seamlessly into smart outlets and charge only at off-peak times to avoid overloading the grid.
"All of this technology, stitched together, will fundamentally change the way utilities operate, deploy and utilize technology," Knudsen says. But what excites him most are the implications for energy users.
Open standards, Knudsen says, will help utilities and their vendors deliver "all sorts of new and innovative energy services including efficiency, hybrid electric vehicles, renewable power and distributed resources. Everything we are doing here is to drive energy efficiency and value to the customer."
When you put it that way, Smart Grid standards don't sound boring at all. Still, I'm glad it's Knudsen who attends all those NIST-sponsored standards meetings and not me.
May 18 2009
The hottest two buzz words in the utility industry these days are "smart" and "grid." They became even hotter after Congress earmarked $4.5 billion in federal stimulus spending on smart grid. Utilities are scrambling to come up with eligible projects, venture capitalists are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in the sector, new conferences are being organized almost weekly and consultants seeking a piece of the action are clogging the Internet with PowerPoint presentations.
But just what is so smart about smart grid? After all, electricity grids--transmission and distribution lines connecting generators to customers--have been around for more than a century, and the creators of what the National Academy of Engineering termed the greatest engineering achievement of the 20th century weren't exactly dumb.
The so-called smart grid is really a smarter grid, taking advantage of new technology to enhance efficiency, reliability and environmental sustainability. Here's how many at PG&E describe it:
The Smart Grid will leverage the power of information to transform the operation of our electric network--by integrating sensing, communications, computing and control technology from generation to the customer premise-- in order to give customers cleaner, more reliable and more flexible energy services.
So what does this mean in practice? A few examples might help:
- A fundamental building block of a smarter grid is the "smart meter," which keeps track of energy usage at frequent (say, hourly) intervals and communicates it back to the utility, eliminating the cost and hassle of monthly visits by meter readers. Customers can see their energy usage on the Web, helping them manage it better--for example, they might unplug that freezer in the garage after they realize just how much juice it draws.
- The same meter can be programmed to instruct a new generation of smart appliances in the home, like dishwashers and clothes dryers, to moderate their energy use when electricity prices are highest (on hot summer afternoons). Customers who sign up for voluntary programs like this can save money. For the utility, such control will be essential when millions of customers start charging plug-in electric vehicles.
- To improve service reliability, smart sensors on distribution lines, transformers and other parts of the grid will detect trouble spots, allowing system operators to prevent outages. When an outage does occur, intelligent switches will confine it to as few circuits as possible and identify the location so crews can repair it quickly.
- As utilities add more and more renewable power, they will face the challenge of balancing supply and demand when power availability fluctuates with the winds and available sunlight. A smarter grid will measure varying power output levels in real time and call upon storage devices, including utility-scale batteries, to even them out.
- A smarter grid will also perform that balancing act by adjusting demand automatically. If generation dips for a time, the smart grid can signal participating customers to cut back their usage until power levels are restored. That solution is likely to be much cheaper--and environmentally cleaner--than building new gas-fired "peaker" plants to back up wind farms and solar arrays.
PG&E's Andrew Tang, who heads the utility's "Smart Energy Web" program, recently presented his vision of the future of smart grid at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. Click on the short video clip above to see what all the excitement is about.
May 15 2009
Several stories on the science and politics of global warming caught our attention this week:
- A major study of the health effects of climate change, drawing on a wide range of experts at University College London and the distinguished medical journal The Lancet, concludes that humanity faces more disease, food and water insecurity, catastrophic weather events and other risks as the globe warms. "The big message of this report is that climate change is a health issue affecting billions of people, not just an environmental issue about polar bears and deforestation," said lead author Anthony Costello, a professor at UCL.
- In more bad news out of the UK, the head of the polar ocean physics group at Cambridge University says that by 2020 only one patch of arctic ice will remain in the summer. "It's like the Arctic is covered with an egg shell and the egg shell has been thinning to the point where it is now just cracking completely," he said.
- Continuing our dismal Brits theme, the Guardian of London reports that "America's oil, gas and coal industry has increased its lobbying budget by 50%, with key players spending $44.5m in the first three months of this year in an intense effort to cut off support for Barack Obama's plan to build a clean energy economy." In all, the report claims, "The spoiler campaign runs to hundreds of millions of dollars and involves industry front groups, lobbying firms, television, print and radio advertising, and donations to pivotal members of Congress. Its intention is to water down or kill off plans by the Democratic leadership to pass 'cap and trade legislation this year, which would place limits on greenhouse gas emissions."
- A recent Rasmussen poll indicates that just one voter in four can identify "cap-and-trade" as having to do with the environment. More think it has to do with regulating Wall Street, while about one in eight think it relates to health care reform. A plurality of 30 percent admit they don't have a clue.
- According to the Wall Street Journal, a marketing expert has this advice for the White House: call cap-and-trade a "clean energy dividend" and the American people will respond much more favorably. That is, unless they think it has to do with Wall Street.
May 14 2009
Yesterday's announcement of the record solar deal between PG&E and BrightSource Energy was a major endorsement of the future of clean, renewable solar power in California. But it's important to remember that word "future." Solar is coming on so fast, we sometimes forget how small it still is.
The latest statistics from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) show solar contributing just 0.08 percent of all energy (electric, thermal and other) consumed in the United States in 2007.
For 2008, EIA estimates the total amount of solar electricity generation capacity at 1,200 megawatts (MW), compared to 25,000 MW for wind and just under 1,000,000 MW from all sources. In other words, solar represents just 0.12% of U.S. generation capacity.
Finally, the contribution of solar to actual power output--taking into account that solar facilities don't create power at night--was only 2 billion kilowatt hours (kWh), compared to 53 billion kWh for wind. Total retail electricity sales in the United States were about 3,800 billion kWh. By my calculation, solar represented only 0.05 percent of the total.
So think of solar as a small acorn that's just sprouted. The Solar Electric Industries Association reports that the United States added 292 MW of solar photovoltaic capacity to the electric grid last year. That represents an 81 percent increase over the capacity added in 2007, an accelerating growth rate relative to previous years.
And there's lots more capacity in the pipeline. PG&E alone has contracts for more than 2,000 MW of solar power, nearly double the entire installed capacity of grid-connected solar in the United States today.
The trade journal PHOTON International reported in March that a staggering total of about 83,000 MW of new solar capacity is in "various stages of product development in North America . . . roughly equal to the current summer peak demand for electricity in California, Arizona and Nevada."
However, one of the unsettling facts the journal also noted was that the land requirements for all that capacity could be "nearly as large as the US state of Rhode Island."
You can bet that the future of the solar power industry will depend as much on its skill and wisdom in negotiating land-use agreements as it will on continuing to improve the price-performance of its technology.
May 13 2009
PG&E and solar thermal developer BrightSource Energy today announced a record solar deal--a series of power purchase agreements totaling 1,310 megawatts, with power output equal to the consumption of 530,000 average homes.
To gain more perspective on the significance of the deal and background on BrightSource, we posed a number of questions to the company's CEO, John Woolard, a PG&E veteran. Here are his answers:
What's the significance of today's announcement with PG&E?
From an industry perspective, the agreements between PG&E and BrightSource Energy now represent the largest solar deal in the world. From BrightSource's perspective, the expansion of our PG&E contracts from 900 megawatts to 1,310 megawatts serves as another validation of our technology and team.
What makes your technology different?
The Luz Power Tower 550 represents an advancement in solar thermal technology design. Our decision to use a power tower design stems from our engineering team's experience designing and building the nine Solar Electric Generating Stations (SEGS) in California between 1984 and 1990.
What the team learned from the SEGS experience is that by moving to a power tower design we could greatly improve efficiencies, reach higher steam temperatures, and significantly reduce costs compared to traditional troughs.
We accomplish this by combining the same basic components found in 90 percent of the world's power generation facilities, namely boilers and turbines, with our proprietary solar technology.
Using optimization software, our proprietary heliostat systems track the sun on two axes, allowing for more efficient collection of the sun's energy. Thousands of mirrors called heliostats then reflect the sunlight directly onto a boiler atop a tower. The direct concentration of sunlight onto the boiler reduces energy loss endemic to the trough design and enables the system to reach the higher operating temperatures found in today's most efficient steam turbines.
And by using standard boilers, turbines, and flat glass commoditized mirrors, we greatly cut costs and can deliver performance warranties from major suppliers.
Why solar thermal rather than solar photovoltaic?
We cannot afford to look at solar thermal and solar photovoltaics (PV) as competing resources. We are going to need both resources to achieve our renewable energy and climate change goals.
Each resource has different power characteristics that make them attractive. For example, solar thermal can be coupled with storage technology or a small natural gas plant and provide dispatchable power beyond traditional solar hours. The ability to use small amounts of natural gas coupled with the application of conventional turbines also allows for reliable integration into today's grid.
PV is great for rooftop or utility-scale projects close to load centers. PV can also be good for areas with diffuse sunlight.
Do you have any commercial deployments or are you starting from scratch?
Our first facility is the Solar Energy Development Center (SEDC) in Israel's Negev Desert. The SEDC is a six megawatt thermal facility that demonstrates our technology and test equipment, materials, and construction and operating methods.
The facility opened in June 2008 and has been consistently producing superheated turbine-quality steam. At the end of last year, we had an independent engineering firm, RW Beck, evaluate and validate the system as commercially viable.
The next phase will be the implementation of the system on a larger scale at our first 100 megawatt plant in Ivanpah, California. Construction on this plant will start in about six months, following approval from the California Energy Commission and the Bureau of Land Management. PG&E has contracted to buy the power from this plant.
What do you say to critics who say your installations will endanger sensitive desert habitats?
We share the concerns of environmental groups. We recognize that ours will be the first solar thermal plants built in California in nearly three decades and we take this responsibility to heart. This company was founded on environmental principles and we are taking key steps to help minimize the impact of our solar plants on the environment. Starting with site selection, we tried to identify areas that have already had human impact, existing transmission, and that have not been classified as having critical habitat.
The technology design also helps to minimize our environmental footprint. By placing individual mirrors onto metal poles that are driven into the ground, we reduce the need for extensive land grading and use far fewer concrete pads than other technologies.
Will your plants require large amounts of scarce water?
Building power plants in desert ecosystems means that we must be conscious of our water use. Early in our design process, we decided to employ an air cooling system, which reduces water usage in our plants by more than 90 percent.This decision comes with an efficiency reduction to our system, but we know that it's the right thing to do. To put our water usage in perspective, our 400 megawatt Ivanpah site will use roughly 100 acre feet of water annually, or about the same amount of water used by 100 homes. In contrast, a similarly sized wet-cooled plant would use about 30 times more water.
Do you have financing lined up for these projects?
We've been very fortunate in that we did not have to finance a project over the past few quarters when the financial markets could best be described as dysfunctional. The credit markets now seem to be loosening in time for our project financing in the latter half of this year. When the time comes for us to finance these projects, we are confident in our ability to successfully develop these projects and secure the necessary project financing.
What are the greatest obstacles to getting your projects completed on time and on budget?
We're very fortunate to have a great set of contracts, sites and projects in the pipeline. We must now execute on these contracts to bring PG&E's customers clean energy.
Our key areas of focus will be on permitting, financing, and then constructing and operating these solar power plants. I have the utmost confidence in our experienced and time-tested team to make this happen.
Our development group, which has collectively built more than 20 gigawatts of power projects, will continue to work with the California Energy Commission and the Bureau of Land Management to gain the approval to begin construction on our first site at Ivanpah. Our finance team will also be working with the finance community to structure the project financing. And our engineering team, the only group in the world that has built consecutive large-scale solar plants, will be responsible for working with our contractors to engineer and operate our plants.
The Holy Grail for solar PV is reaching "grid parity" with traditional fossil-fueled generation. When, if ever, will you reach that?
The idea of grid parity is a convenient framework for understanding the cost of renewable resources, but understanding the true cost of electricity requires a deeper understanding of electricity markets.
Many groups today will provide a cost of electricity per watt, which means that they are not accounting for the cost of installation, the solar output of a given site, or the total cost of a system over its lifetime, including replacement of inputs. We call this the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE). When looking at the costs of competing resources, we should always be looking at the LCOE, not just the resource's manufacturing costs. Ignoring these costs is a disservice to our end customers and policymakers that are creating legislation to support clean energy.
Using the LCOE framework, many resources, like solar thermal energy, are very competitively priced today. However, the broader solar energy industry is more likely to reach grid parity over the longer term once we fully account for the carbon found in conventional generation sources.
What inspired you to join the founding team at BrightSource?
I started looking at the climate change challenge in the early 90's while studying environmental planning. What struck me was what a profound impact that energy could have on addressing this problem. I spent the past couple of decades as an investor and entrepreneur researching how to bring market-based solutions to transform the energy industry and I realized that we're never going to be able to address climate change unless we can bring renewable energy to scale. After looking at all of the available technologies, it was clear that solar thermal represented the quickest and most cost-effective way to increase our renewables supply. And after meeting Arnold Goldman, our founder and chairman, and the rest of his team, it became obvious that this group possessed the greatest understanding of the technologies and how to build large-scale power plants. I am honored to be a member of this truly remarkable team.
Where do you expect BrightSource to be 10 years from now?
In ten years, we will have completed construction on the 14 plants that we have currently committed to our customers, including PG&E. We will also continue to advance our technology, driving efficiency up and total cost down. In addition, we will likely expand our activity within the US and internationally.
What do you think the renewable energy sector in California will look like 10 years from now?
I am hopeful that in ten years we will have far surpassed 20 percent of our energy coming from renewable resources and will be quickly approaching the 33 percent mark. The energy mix will be much more focused on solar, both solar thermal and PV, as well as wind. We may even see some innovative renewable resources, such as wave or tidal, come online. Effectively bringing these resources to California's citizens will also require a thoughtful build-out of our current transmission system.
May 12 2009
What could be greener than clean, renewable wind power? Unfortunately, a lot of environmentalists instead see red when considering the deadly impact of wind turbines on birds and bats.
Bird kills have been a fact of life for many years at Altamont Pass; by one government biologist's estimate, more than 400,000 birds are killed each year across the country by wind turbines. On the East Coast, biologists began sounding the alarm several years ago over their discovery of thousands of bat carcasses, battered and bloodied by blows (or rapid pressure changes) from turbine blades. Peak mortality tends to be in autumn, during bat migration and mating season.
Instead of covering up the problem, the wind industry to its great credit is trying to better understand and solve it. Today, researchers sponsored by the wind industry reported a breakthrough in lowering bat mortality by turning off turbines during low-wind periods at night.
At least 70 percent fewer bats were killed at a Pennsylvania test site owned by Iberdrola Renewables, the world's largest wind energy company, simply by curtailing operations when bats are most active. Because wind speeds were low, the company suffered only small losses in generation.
The research, which will continue for another year, is being sponsored by Iberdrola and the Bats and Wind Energy Cooperative, a coalition of the American Wind Energy Association, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Bat Conservation International.
The U.S. Department of Energy is a major supporter of systematic research into minimizing the wildlife impacts of wind turbine siting. On May 6, Secretary Chu announced a dozen new grants in this field totalling nearly $2 million.
Researchers aren't quite sure why bats fly into harm's way. Some believe bats investigate the giant turbines for roosting places; others think they are foraging for insects that are attracted to the light-colored towers at night.
"Many of us don't believe they are randomly flying into the turbines," said Dr. Ed Arnett, lead researcher on the Pennsylvania study, in an interview with NEXT100. "From thermal images you can see bats investigating the turbines. They are curious, very different from birds."
The wind industry is making progress on reducing bird kills as well. At a huge wind farm in Texas, Iberdrola is using advanced radar systems to detect the flight path of migrating birds and automatically shut down the turbines to prevent feathers from flying.
The wind industry's efforts to reduce wildlife kills, it should be noted, are extending its already exemplary environmental record. A study released in March by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority found that wind energy poses fewer wildlife risks in all respects than coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear or hydro power. (The study didn't encompass solar power.)
May 12 2009
Use by permission. Photo by Tobias Natt, ©2005 University of Delaware
Could the wave of the future for renewable energy be offshore wind power? That's the bet being placed by the British government, which has pledged major financial support for the world's biggest offshore wind farm--big enough, in fact, to power a quarter of Greater London's homes.
This gigawatt-sized project, known as London Array, will be undertaken by a consortium of E.ON, Dong Energy and Masdar. Together they will invest €2.2bn to build the first 630MW of capacity in the Thames Estuary. That first phase is only about 150 MW less than the entire amount of wind energy that PG&E has contracted to buy since 2002.
When doubts arose about the financial viability of the project, the British government apparently agreed to put up more than 500 million Pounds, in the form of Renewable Obligation Certificates, to support the investment.
The project was in limbo for months after Shell, one of the key development partners, pulled out. Dong Energy, a Danish utility, eventually bought its stake.
Offshore wind energy is hugely attractive because winds there blow strongly, unimpeded by obstacles, and because turbines can be located near coastal cities, avoiding the need for long transmission lines. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimated that wind turbines located in water less than 100 feet deep could supply a fifth or more of electricity used by coastal states.
The equally huge downside is the cost of installing turbines in ocean waters and the cost of maintaining them in a harsh, corrosive environment.
The British project may give further impetus to projects under consideration in the United States. "There are many states, especially along the Atlantic seaboard, that are ready to move fast forward with this," said Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. Last month the Interior Department announced new rules for offshore leases and royalty payments that should ease the way for offshore wind farms.
Unfortunately, wind energy off the coast of California only starts to get good at depths of several hundred feet, because the seabed drops off so fast. At such depths, most developers will find it uneconomic to anchor turbines. Floating turbines are a promising but unproven technology--though entrepreneurs are hard at work to commercial it.
May 11 2009
Corn should be:
A) Eaten off the cob
B) Ground into grits and served hot with butter
C) Fed to cows to fatten them up
D) Converted to ethanol to run American's cars and trucks
E) All of the above
If you answered E, you probably live in the Midwest or South, not in Berkeley. And you'll probably applaud the Obama administration's decision last week to provide $1.1 billion in loan guarantees and other new financing for conventional biofuel refineries. The administration's official goal is to support annual production and use of 36 billion gallons of biofuel by 2022, a target originally set by the Bush administration.
A host of critics have raised questions about the sustainability of biofuels production, including the impact on greenhouse gas emissions from planting and tilling new feedstock crops, the affect on food prices of diverting crops to fuel production, fresh water requirements, and many other issues. The economics remain dicey as well for now.
But one of the most intriguing challenges to the future of biofuels comes in a new study published in Science magazine. It finds that burning plants to generate electricity for use by electric vehicles, rather than converting them to ethanol for internal combustion engines, can increase the number of miles driven by 81 percent, even accounting for the steep cost of today's batteries.
And in terms of avoiding emissions of carbon dioxide, the conversion of biomass to electricity for transportation is twice as effective as converting it to ethanol, the authors conclude.
Their findings hold whether the source of biomass is corn or switchgrass, a fast-growing plant touted by advocates of second-generation cellulosic ethanol.
"The internal combustion engine just isn't very efficient, especially when compared to electric vehicles," said lead author Elliott Campbell of the University of California, Merced. "Even the best ethanol-producing technologies with hybrid vehicles aren't enough to overcome this."
Findings like these aren't stopping U.S. ethanol producers from requesting a waiver of the Clean Air Act to increase in the ethanol content of typical gasoline blends from 10 percent to 15 percent. Many automakers claim more testing is needed to be sure a higher ethanol content won't damage today's vehicles.
Still, ethanol supporters had a strong comeback to the Science article's apparent support for electric over ethanol-fueled cars. Said Matt Hartwig, a spokesman for the Renewable Fuels Association,
A great deal of innovation must happen in vehicle and power transmission technologies to make that a reality. In the meantime, Americans still need liquid transportation fuels. If the goal is to have more of those gallons come from renewable sources rather than imported oil, fuels like ethanol are the only technologies that are having an impact today.
May 08 2009
Several items on the science and politics of global warming caught our attention this week:
- President Obama and Vice President Biden urged House Democrats to push legislation to cap greenhouse-gas emissions. Obama reminded the group of 34 legislators of the pressing need to address global warming and declared that none of them "would want to look back in twenty to thirty years and think we had punted on something of a historic nature," in the words of attendee.
- Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat and chair of the Energy and Commerce committee, fought this week to quell a rebellion by nervous moderates who want to table climate change legislation and turn their attention instead to health care. Pledging again to pass a bill out of committee before Memorial Day, Waxman said, "We're getting very, very close." But Rep. Artur Davis, D-Ala., co-chairman of the House New Democrat Coalition, said, "I think it's the wrong time for cap and trade."
- Many House Republicans think no time is right for cap and trade, according to a story in Platts. "There is no doubt that the Democrats' misguided bill will kill jobs, raise taxes and lead to more government intrusion," said Rep. Mike Pence, R-Indiana at meeting of Republican House members on energy policy. "The reality is the cap-and-tax legislation offered by the Democrats amounts to an economic declaration of war on the Midwest by liberals on Capitol Hill." Joining him in those sentiments were heads of the National Association of Manufacturers and Industrial Energy Consumers of America.
- Across the Pacific, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who came to office vowing to launch a "green revolution," decided to put off the start of his own country's cap-and-trade program by a year in view of the global economic crisis. Australia has been one of the countries hardest hit by global warming, but it is also heavily dependent on carbon-rich coal.
- A British member of Parliament, who chairs the all-party climate change group, suggested that car advertisements should contain health warnings, like those on cigarettes, to counter misleading environmental claims. A spokewoman for the Society of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers and Traders in the UK didn't think much of the idea.
May 07 2009
Hardly a month goes by without some new study telling us just how many millions of jobs or billions of dollars of GDP will be lost or gained by proposed policies on climate change. For every environmentalist who waves a report promising vast numbers of new "green jobs" down the road, some congressional Republican brandishes a new study warning of impending economic doom if anyone tries to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
Without access to a supercomputer and Ph.D.-level knowledge of general equilibrium models, the average person doesn't stand a chance of evaluating these radically opposed--and usually self-serving--claims.
But a couple of recent columns in the Washington Post give useful insight into the underlying assumptions that drive these rival analyses.
Longtime economic columnist Robert Samuelson made a lot of green advocates see red when he echoed the late Milton Friedman's warning to distrust anyone who offers a free lunch. Samuelson took certain environmentalists to task for holding out the "tantalizing prospect" that "we can conquer global warming at virtually no cost."
Samuelson wasn't buying such rosy claims. "Re-engingeering the world energy system" to achieve an 83 percent drop in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, he said, could be a "nearly impossible undertaking." Surely it will not be cheap to scrap and replace decades of investment in energy and transportation infrastructure built around fossil fuel technology.
Last September, however, California's Air Resources Board released an economic analysis suggesting that it would be painless to adopt the state's proposed measures to address global warming. The study's provocative conclusion--which garnered great publicity--was that ambitious mandates to roll back greenhouse gas emissions would actually create 100,000 new jobs and boost personal income by billions of dollars.
Less well publicized were the conclusions of six economists called upon to review the methodology and assumptions behind the study. Academics are usually restrained in their comments, but several reviewers said they found the findings unbelievable.
Robert Stavins, a leading environmental economist at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, was moved to declare, "I have come to the inescapable conclusion that the economic analysis is terribly deficient in critical ways and should not be used by the State government or the public for the purpose of assessing the likely costs of CARB's plans."
That brings us to a rebuttal to Samuelson in today's Washington Post by Kristen Sheeran, executive director of the Economics for Equity and the Environment Network, and Mindy Lubber, president of Ceres, a national group working with companies to address sustainability challenges.
Instead of defending the claim that climate policies are a free lunch, they make the crucial but often forgotten point that the cost of doing nothing is likely much greater than the cost of acting now to curb global warming.
Critics like Samuelson, they note, assume
that all costs involved in mitigating climate change -- and there will be costs -- represent new costs, without acknowledging the massive error in our market system that equates the price of carbon emissions to zero. . . .
The real cost of carbon emissions is far from zero. Each new scientific report brings proof of a changing climate that promises to disrupt agricultural patterns, set off a scramble for dwindling resources, raise sea levels, propel population shifts and require massive emergency spending as we try to react to the growing crises. These are the costs of inaction.
Nicholas Stern, former chief economist at the World Bank, has estimated the costs of runaway global warming to be on a "scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic depression of the first half of the 20th century."
Putting a realistic price on carbon--something a cap-and-trade market would accomplish--would not only discourage greenhouse gas emissions, thus reducing those staggering social costs, but "would produce an amazingly quick shift to new technologies and behaviors," Sheeran and Lubber allow. "We change habits when it makes economic sense to do so."
If anyone doubts whether prices matter, just recall the impact of $4 gasoline on SUV sales--and the subsequent loss of interest in hybrids when the price fell back to $2 a gallon.
Bottom line:
- It won't be cheap or easy to solve the world's climate problem.
- To minimize the cost, it's important to curb greenhouse gas emissions as efficiently as possible, such as market-oriented cap-and-trade programs.
- Doing nothing is not an option.
- If anyone waves a study at you claiming otherwise, don't take it on faith.
May 06 2009
Princeton economist Alan Blinder last year called it "the best stimulus idea you've never heard of." He was lauding "Cash for Clunkers"--the idea of having the government buy up and scrap older, more polluting vehicles. Such a program, he said, could achieve "a remarkable public policy trifecta--stimulating the economy, improving the environment and reducing income inequality all at the same time."
The idea is no longer unheralded. Yesterday, President Obama and House Democrats forged a compromise on legislation to make Cash for Clunkers a reality. The new bill will fund a million vouchers of up to $4,500 to encourage people to trade in their older cars and trucks--as long as they get less than 18 mpg--for more fuel-efficient vehicles.
Buyers of a car with a 4 mpg improvement in fuel economy would be eligible for a $3,500 voucher. An upgrade of 10 mpg would increase the incentive to $4,500.
The standards are more relaxed for trucks. For example, it would take only a 2 mpg improvement in one class of light trucks to be eligible for a $4,500 credit. A pickup truck that gets only 15 mpg could qualify for purchase.
There's no doubt this program would provide a temporary shot in the arm to the beleaguered auto industry--even if there are no guarantees that American-made cars will benefit disproportionately. A similar program in Germany boosted February car sales there an impressive 21.5 percent. The U.S. auto industry's biggest friend in Congress, Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, put his stamp of approval on the deal: "It's a good agreement. It means sales of autos."
But what does it really mean for the environment? Many environmentalists and economists are not yet convinced that it's a magic cure-all.
Let's do the math. Best case, if every owner of a huge Toyota Tundra (16 mpg) traded in their truck for a petite Prius (46 mpg), they would save themselves--and the environment--408 gallons of gasoline for every 10,000 miles driven. That's about 4 tons of carbon dioxide per year.
On the other hand, if the program merely induced owners of a Jeep Liberty (18 mpg) to trade out for a Jeep Patriot (22 mpg), the savings would amount to only 100 gallons for every 10,000 miles, or about one ton of carbon dioxide per year.
Saving only 10 tons of CO2 over a decade at a cost of $3,500 ($350/ton) is a really expensive way to reduce greenhouse gases. In contrast, a cap-and-trade market would likely set a price on carbon emissions of well under $100 a ton.
Critics say the program will almost certainly be even less effective than it seems, because it will take a lot of energy to make new cars to replace the ones the government scraps.
Daniel Sperling, director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis, also warns that drivers who replace older vehicles with more fuel efficient models may end up driving more miles each year--the so-called rebound effect. Raising fuel taxes would be a more effective policy, he argues, since it would encourage drivers to buy more efficient cars and drive them less.
Despite these drawbacks, many thoughtful analysts still support the concept of Cash for Clunkers as a step in the right direction. It may not be perfect, but politics is a messy business, especially when trying to reconcile the goals of a cleaner environment and more robust economy.
May 04 2009
Walking by PG&E's entrance today, my attention was grabbed by an adorably cute little car on display. Not even the hot Tesla Motors Roadster nearby could compete.
I had spied a Mitsubishi i-MiEV, an all-electric four-seater, which goes on sale in Japan this summer. One of only six in the United States, it joined PG&E's fleet for testing last month. Under an agreement announced last August, PG&E will evaluate the suitability of the zero-emissions vehicle in the California market. PG&E owns and operates a number of clean air vehicles, including hybrids and natural gas vehicles, and is eager to begin checking out the new generation of production-ready electric cars.
One look tells you the i-MiEV will maneuver expertly through crowded city streets and fit into all sorts of tight parking spots in San Francisco. But according to Jim Larson, senior program manager in PG&E's Clean Air Transportation group, the car does wonders on the highway as well.
"It gets right up to highway speeds, holds it own, and can maneuver in traffic under aggressive driving conditions," Larson said. "It is fully highway capable." Even better, it's eligible for HOV lanes, so you can cruise along at high speed with less hassle.
The car is rated at 0-60 acceleration in 9.0 seconds, with a top speed of 82 miles. Larson says its range exceeds 100 miles and it charges in three-to-five hours on a dedicated 240 volt circuit.
Like other electric cars, it feels even peppier than it's rated. "You get very good acceleration due to the instantaneous torque of electric motors," Larson said. "And you get steady, smooth acceleration because there's no transmission."
Having tested many concept cars and conversions, Larson said he is impressed by how market-ready the i-MiEV is. "This is a very sophisticated, finished product, clearly ready for mass production," he observed.
The auto blog HybridCars.com agrees. "Its clever design, attention to detail, and solid powertrain could make electric driving as routine as picking up the kids," its test driver concluded in January. "Right now, the i-MiEV is the world's most polished four-seat, zero-emissions production car. It may not hold that title for long, but after years of primitive, plastic EVs from under-funded startups and importers, it's nice to see a 'real EV' from a genuine automaker at last."
Unfortunately, Mitsibushi isn't quite as ready as these enthusiasts. Its top North American representative said last month only that the car would be ready for buyers here "within two years." By then it will face lots of competition. Apparently the big holdup is getting enough lithium-ion battery packs.
The biggest unknown is how much the car will cost, especially given its diminutive size and carrying capacity. As I explored in yesterday's posting on fuel economy, if it's too expensive, even the attraction of low operating costs (electricity is much cheaper than gasoline) won't overcome the initial sticker shock.
May 04 2009
It's only a matter of time before every reader of NEXT100 does his or her bit for the environment and buys a hybrid car, thus helping to drive the world economy out of recession.
But with dozens of new models due to hit the market over the next year, how should you choose?
Paradoxically, given that fuel economy is the prime reason to buy a hybrid, relative MPG ratings should probably be low on your list of priorities.
The reason is that today's better hybrids already get such good mileage that additional fuel savings are rarely worth the extra cost.
For example, compare the Honda Insight 2010, released on the market in March, with the Toyota Prius 2010, due out in late May. The Insight lists for $19,800, the Prius for $22,000 (and up).
For a price difference of $2,200, you get a seemingly big difference in fuel economy--50 MPG for the Toyota, 41 MPG for the Honda (combined city and highway). That's got to be worth it, right?
Actually, if gasoline costs $2.50 a gallon and you drive 10,000 miles a year, the Insight will use only about 40 more gallons and cost only $100 more for fuel. It would take 22 years to make up the difference in price through fuel savings (not counting interest).
You can check for yourself with a handy online GPM Calculator (sometimes called an MPG Illusion Calculator) created by Richard Larrick, Associate Professor of Management and Organizations at Duke University. It takes miles per gallon and converts them into gallons per mile so you can see how cars really compare in fuel use and costs. (Larrick co-authored a seminal article in Science magazine last year calling attention to the virtue of gallons per mile as a better measure of how much gas you will use while owning a car.)
The fundamental insight is that any given absolute difference in MPG ratings (in this case, 9 MPG) represents a much smaller percentage difference at high MPG levels.
Second, any given percentage change in fuel use matters a lot less when total fuel use is relatively low. If you could travel 10,000 miles on just 100 gallons of gasoline (100 MPG), saving 10 percent wouldn't matter much (10 gallons). On the other hand, if it took you 1,000 gallons to go the same distance (10 MPG), saving 10 percent would be a considerable amount (100 gallons).
If we could improve our mileage rating from 16 MPG to 25 MPG, the same 9 MPG difference we see between the Insight and the Prius, the savings in gasoline over 10,000 miles would be 225 gallons, worth about $562 at $2.50 a gallon. That kind of saving might start to make a difference over time.
Choosing a high-mileage car is only one way to save money on fuel. Another good way is "hypermiling"--driving more frugally by accelerating slowly, coasting instead of braking, keeping windows closed and minimizing wind resistance by avoiding excessive highway speeds.
Late last month, NASCAR driver Carl Edwards and a team of passengers hypermiled a Ford Fusion Hybrid 1,445.7 miles on a single tank of gas, for an average of 81.5 MPG, double the car's EPA rating. The whole trip cost them only $37 in gas and covered a distance of half the United States.
So the lessons are:
- Buy a fuel-efficient car (probably hybrid, electric or diesel).
- Pay extra for cool features and sex appeal, not modest improvements in mileage.
- Drive your sporty new car slowly and conservatively to save gas.
May 01 2009
Several stores on the science and politics of global warming caught our attention this week:
- Unless greenhouse gas emissions are quickly and sharply curbed, carbon dioxide may reach the level needed to warm the globe a dangerous 2 degrees Centigrade in only 20 years, according to a new study published in Nature. "We should not forget that a 2C global mean warming would take us far beyond the variations that Earth has experienced since we humans have been around," said Malte Meinshausen of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, who led the study.
- A New York City-sized chunk of the Antarctic ice shelf broke off in April and shattered into icebergs, according to a German scientist who reviewed recent satellite images. Temperature increases of up to 3 degrees Celsius on the Antarctic Peninsula have caused a massive shrinkage of ice in some areas, experts say.
- Fewer than half of utility executives in the United States and Canada in a new survey said they support the Obama administration's proposals to fight global warming, including a cap-and-trade program to limit greenhouse gas emissions (43 percent in favor), investing in clean energy to create green jobs (48 percent) and making the United States a leader on climate change (46 percent). Large majorities favored promoting nuclear energy, building efficiency standards, smart grid technology and clean coal technology.
- A study of the economic impact of capping greenhouse gas emissions, commissioned by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other critics of proposed national climate legislation, found that U.S. GDP would be reduced an almost unnoticeable 0.4 percent by 2020.
- Contrary to some critics of U.S. global warming legislation, who claim that China and other developing countries will not do their part to control greenhouse gas emissions, China is now the world's largest investor in clean energy technology, according to the United Nations' climate chief, Yvo de Boer. Almost 40 percent of China's stimulus spending is directed toward renewable energy, pollution control, electric grid upgrades and similar measures. "In some countries, the fact that the Chinese are acting on climate change is hugely underappreciated," de Boer said.
Apr 30 2009
The economy may be tanking, housing prices may be plummeting and the state's unemployment rate may be in double digits, but growing numbers of California residents continue to invest in the future of clean energy by installing solar panels on their homes and businesses.
Thanks to falling prices for solar panels and generous new federal tax credits, homeowners and businesses installed a record 78 megawatts of solar capacity in the first quarter of 2009, according to the California Public Utilities Commission. Customer-owned solar panels in the state now generate more than 500 megawatts of power, the CPUC said.
Within PG&E's service territory, customers in the first three months filed preliminary applications to install another 43 megawatts of solar panels--more additional capacity than many states have in their entire solar portfolio, according to Lisa Shell, senior project manager for PG&E's customer and solar generation group. In January alone, PG&E's customers installed about 1,200 solar systems, double the usual monthly average.
Some of the more noteworthy business customers who invested in clean solar energy include Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. (which dedicated its new 1.5 MW solar system and electric vehicle charging stations on April 26), Del Monte Foods (which dedicated a 1.9 MW solar system on April 17), and Silver Oaks Cellars, an Oakville winery powered by 1,464 solar panels.
PG&E predicted demand would surge based on last fall's change in the federal tax code, and increased staffing in the customer solar area to process additional rebate applications. So far, the utility has met the surge in demand with few problems.
Since the beginning of 2007, when the California Solar Initiative was launched, PG&E has received more than 10,000 rebate applications. PG&E's customers--amounting to about five percent of the U.S. population--now have about 300 MW of solar capacity installed, about half the residential national total, according to Shell.
Apr 29 2009
A little-reported "well incident" this week in a remote part of Australia is a sobering reminder of the challenges facing the geothermal industry's next generation of technology.
Geodynamics Ltd., the largest publicly traded company in Australia focused on recovering goethermal energy by injecting water into hot granite rocks deep underground to create steam, acknowledged a breach of its first commercial-scale production well in the Cooper Basin in the southern part of the country.
The company says the crew responsible for commissioning the 1 MW plant is being "progressively demobilised" while experts (reportedly flown in from the United States) assess damage to the Habanero 3 well, which is 13,800 feet deep. Geodynamics offered no estimate of when operations would resume.
Geodynamics is a leader in the field of enhanced geothermal technology, which holds tremendous promise as a source of renewable energy. A massive report issued by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2007 estimated that it could affordably supply 10 percent of U.S. power needs within 50 years, at about the same low price as today's coal-fired plants.
Today's conventional plants, such as those located at The Geysers in Sonoma County (the world's largest geothermal field, with 850 MW of power capacity), use existing reservoirs of underground hot water or steam to drive turbines. Promising locations for new production including California's Imperial Valley, northern Nevada and the Oregon and Washington Cascades.
But if water can be injected from the surface, the main resource a developer needs is hot rocks, which exist almost everywhere on earth if you dig deep enough. Plants in The Geysers pioneered this concept by injecting treated effluent from nearby cities to supplement natural steam. The trick is finding rocks with the right characteristics to allow water to filter through them and heat up reliably.
Experts say that once the geologic and engineering challenges are worked out, so-called "enhanced geothermal" energy could become one of the 21st century's most promising resources.
"It brings an absolutely gigantic amount of power into the realm of economic feasibility," said Susan Petty, a former MIT scientist and chief technology officer of Sausalito-based AltaRock Energy, an enhanced geothermal energy firm. AltaRock Energy, which is funded in part by Google.org and the Department of Energy, has a major demonstration project in The Geysers area.
Paul Brophy, past president of the Geothermal Resources Council and a consulting geologist to one of the industry's leading drilling companies, agreed. "It would not be unreasonable to say the broad potential for geothermal is almost limitless," he told NEXT100. "Oil and gas wells go down 30,000 feet or more. You could drill down that far almost anywhere in the earth's crust and attain the sort of heat" necessary for geothermal power.
As it happens, however, most of the test wells in this country are being drilled in the West, where hot rocks lie closer to the surface, minimizing drilling costs.
Geothermal isn't the sexiest of renewable energy sources--it certainly can't compete with space solar power in that respect--but it's a proven workhorse. Unlike wind and solar power, it provides power around the clock, every day. It also has a much smaller footprint, Brophy noted, thus creating fewer environmental obstacles.
Around the world, geothermal supplies more than 10,000 MW of power. The United States is the leading producer, and California the leading state. Across the country, 126 new projects are under development--27 of them in California--with the potential to produce as much as 5,500 MW of new power, according to the Geothermal Energy Association.
PG&E played a major part in developing the industry, opening the first commercial geothermal power plant at The Geysers in 1960. The utility was required to divest its plants there in the late 1990s, but PG&E still purchases about 5 percent of its power from them, making geothermal the single largest source of renewable power in its portfolio.
Thanks to significant injections of new R&D money from the Department of Energy in just the past couple of years, the geothermal industry is enjoying a rebirth, with a focus on enhanced recovery techniques. In addition, the Obama administration's new stimulus program set aside $400 million for new geothermal development, a landmark commitment of government resources. "Research is progressing very rapidly," Brophy said.
But Geodynamics' setback is a reminder that enhanced geothermal is still more promise than reality. Some estimates put the cost of their wells at $12 million each, so the company can't afford too many mistakes.
But Brophy takes the news in stride. "When you are trying to do things for the first time, things will go wrong," he said. "We are still in the early stages of research and demonstration."
Apr 27 2009
In the two weeks since NEXT100 announced PG&E's first-of-a-kind deal to purchase space solar power from Solaren Corporation starting in 2016, the news has been reported, analyzed, debated, praised and ridiculed on more than 26,000 Web sites and other media, according to Google.
I've had time to review only about 0.1 percent of those sites, but several offered significant information, insights or opinions worth sharing.
Scientific American provided one of the most thorough analyses of space solar power and its prospects, including an interview with a co-founder of Space Energy, a Switzerland-based company in the same emerging market. The article quoted Frederick Best, director of the Center for Space Power (CSP) at Texas A&M University in College Station, Tex., as saying that space solar power "is a disruptive technology" that "could change the whole energy equation."
The same article also shed light on Solaren's 2005 patent, which suggests how the company proposes to keep weight and launch costs down by doing away with structures to hold all the orbiting elements together. For other useful discussions of Solaren's design concept and patent, see Todd Woody's post at Grist, Michael Mecham's blog "On Space" hosted by Aviation Week and Space Technology, and the discussion on the HobbySpace site.
A number of serious energy authorities applauded the concept while reserving judgment on the practicality of Solaren's plans to use satellites to capture solar energy, then send it via radio waves to an earth receiving station for conversion into electricity.
Ralph Cavanagh, head of the energy program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told the San Francisco Chronicle, "My prediction is this is going to be much more about economics than the environment." Utilities, he said, need to explore unconventional approaches to meet rising demand for energy while dealing with global warming. "You want to encourage them to try lots of different things," he said. "But the caution is that some of these things won't work."
Daniel Kammen, professor of energy and resources at the University of California, Berkeley, told the London Guardian: "The ground rules are looking kind of promising ... it is doable. Whether it is doable at a reasonable cost, we just don't know."
Solaren's CEO, Gary Spirnak, conceded his job won't be easy. Noting that the company would need "billions of dollars" in funding, he told Dow Jones News Wire, "We're under no illusions as to the difficulty of the task. . . . We understand how to work these things, but you have to put in the time, energy and engineering to make it work."
Green Wombat noted on the plus side that "there are no desert tortoises in space or other protected wildlife" that will stand in Solaren's way, though it will still have to "pass muster with a long list of state, federal and international government agencies."
Earth2Tech's Katie Fehrenbacher wondered briefly if the announcement wasn't a belated April Fools' Day joke, but grudgingly admitted "it's not as crazy as it sounds." Still, she wondered if Solaren can overcome the "clear technical and economic hurdles" that have kept anyone from deploying a space solar installation to date.
Blogger Chris Nelder has no such doubts; he confidently pronounced the whole deal a "pure fantasy" that got his "blood boiling."
A more generous Sacramento Bee editorial called April 10--the day PG&E filed its contract for review by the California Public Utilities Commission--"the date when imagination docked with the Earthbound economics model in our backyard." The paper concluded, "Who can say whether those technical challenges can be overcome, and at what cost? For now, it's enough to celebrate the progress toward a day when clean energy is no longer an out-of-this-world idea but a reality, thanks to boundless imagination."
And the Daily Breeze in Torrance editorialized, "We're glad that companies are thinking outside the biosphere in the search for alternative energy . . . Orbital solar power stations should be part of the solution to give the United States true energy independence. We hope the state's utilities, entrepreneurs and the scientists and engineers who have driven the South Bay's aerospace industry will make this imaginative idea a reality in the decade ahead."
Apr 24 2009
Several stories on the science and politics of global warming caught our attention this week:
The number of victims of climate-related natural disasters could jump 50 percent by 2015 to 375 million a year, according to the British charity Oxfam. A representative of the agency told BBC that international aid agencies could be overwhelmed by the impact of floods, storms and droughts.
Global warming may dry up some of the world's greatest rivers, including China's Yellow River, the Niger, the Ganges and the Colorado, according to a study by the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado. The result, especially in poorer countries, could be widespread shortages of fresh water and food.
Proposed legislation to discourage greenhouse gas emissions through a "cap-and-trade" market, derided by critics as an economy-busting measure, would cut the growth rate of the nation's gross domestic product only slightly, according to a new study by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA's analysis predicts that GDP would still grow from $16 trillion in 2015 to $22 trillion in 2030.
China, the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases and most ravenous consumer of coal, plans to spend $220 billion over the next two years on "green" stimulus plans, including renewable energy, or twice the commitment by the U.S. government, according to the Center for American Progress.
Republican Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, House minority leader, explained to ABC's George Stephanopoulos why he opposes regulation of greenhouse gas emissions: "George, the idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment is almost comical. Every time we exhale, we exhale carbon dioxide. Every cow in the world, you know, when they do what they do, you've got more carbon dioxide." Most scientists would inded laugh at the idea that CO2 is a carcinogen, but not at its contribution to global warming.
Is it any wonder that members of Congress can't always keep their facts straight? According to a new survey by Public Agenda, a non-partisan opinion research group, four in 10 Americans can't name a fossil fuel and half can't name a renewable energy source. Public Agenda's chief issue analyst wondered, "How can they understand something as complex as 'cap and trade,' which has very strong implications for how much they are going to pay and that their local utilities will use?"
Finally, the media had a field day with a report from the International Journal of Epidemiology blaming the rise in obesity for contributing to global warming. Overeating leads to more food production and leads people to drive more, both of which require energy. "Moving about in a heavy body is like driving a gas guzzler," said Dr. Phil Edwards of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Apr 23 2009
Is America in danger of falling behind the rest of the world in harnessing the piezoelectric effect, the property of certain materials, including quartz crystals and some ceramics, to produce an electrical charge when squeezed or stressed?
This effect, first demonstrated by French scientists in the 1880s, has been since been put to use in phonograph cartridges, ultrasonic submarine detectors, and even cigarette lighters.
In a passionate new essay, Kimberley Diamond, vice chair of the carbon and energy trading and finance committee of the American Bar Association, warns that "the U.S. is currently running at the back of the pack of global leaders in this space."
Insisting that "this needs to change," Diamond continues:
Revolutionary developments in piezoelectric technology now permit the kinetic energy generated from people walking and dancing, as well as from moving vehicles, to be converted into clean power. Innovative devices employing piezoelectricity offer vast public benefits and potential business opportunities in both the long and short terms. Increased piezoelectricity usage could be a trend that plays a significant role in shaping tomorrow's world in the alternative energy sector as well as in financial markets. Consequently, new scientific and technological advances in piezoelectric inventions merit endorsement and should be raised to the forefront of U.S. domestic public consciousness and discourse.
What are these revolutionary advances? NEXT100 covered one of them in January -- a proposal by an Israeli engineer to embed piezoelectric crystals in road beds to generate electricity from passing cars. His company, Innowattech, claims that electricity can be generated this way at less than 10 cents per kilowatt hour, but the company's web site is notably silent about the results of a pilot test that was supposed to take place in February.
Another application is in dance floors at two European nightclubs, Club Surya in London and Wvatt in Rotterdam, where as Diamond explains:
The clubs' "bouncing" dance floors are engineered with springs and series of crystal and ceramic blocks. When patrons at each club dance, the pressure they exert on these blocks causes the dance floor to depress slightly and the blocks to rub against each other. The result is the generation of a small electric current. This process effectively captures the dancers' kinetic energy, and feeds it into nearby batteries. In Club Surya, for instance, batteries power the club's lights and air conditioning, and supply up to approximately 60 percent of the club's energy needs. As long as clubbers dance, the floor's movement constantly recharges the batteries. The more dancing, the more power produced. Each person can produce between five and 20 watts, depending on their activity level.
(Here's a diagram of how it all works.)
A more pedestrian application in Ann Arbor uses piezoelectric sidewalk tiles to power colorful LED lights, an example of a concept the inventor calls "Project POWERLeap."
Diamond sees "mind-boggling" potential for expansion of the use of piezoelectricity, but offers no perspective on the cost. But in a suggestion that borders on parody, Diamond offers another alleged benefit:
From an investment banking perspective, if a certain threshold of increased demand is reached over the next decade or two for secured borrowing for large-scale piezoelectric projects, then there is the potential that a new esoteric asset class involving piezoelectric loans or bonds could be formed. The creation of such securities, backed by infrastructure-related or commercial real estate-related debt, could herald additional transaction structuring and trading opportunities in the capital markets. For instance, asset-backed securities in the form of piezoelectric infrastructure or commercial real estate loans could be used in the future as collateral for structured finance transactions such as collateralized loan obligations (CLOs), or other structured investment vehicles.
For myself, if we're looking for ways people can harness their own energy, I vote for turning every health club in America into a mini-power plant by adding dynamos to all of their treadmills. Said the president of California Fitness (a Hong Kong company, go figure):
One person has the ability of producing 50 watts of electricity per hour when exercising at a moderate pace....If a person spends one hour per day running on the machine, he/she could generate 18.2 kilowatts of electricity and prevent 4,380 liters of CO2 released per year.
Apr 22 2009
With California in its third year of drought, PG&E and its customers face not only the prospect of a significant decline in clean, inexpensive hydropower, but an increase in the risk of devastating wildfires.
U.S. Forest Service experts who gathered last week at the National Seasonal Assessment Workshop in Boulder, CO concluded that this year's fire season in Northern California could start in early May, roughly a month earlier than normal, because annual grasses are drying so quickly.
Worse yet, ample supply of dry, flammable vegetation, stressed by prolonged drought and insect kills, are setting the stage in the northern half of the state for another summer of wildfires that could compare in severity to those of 2008.
Last year's first large fire was the Summit Fire on the Central Coast, which began May 22, 2008. The next month, thousands of lightning strikes lit more than 2,000 fires across Northern and Central California, overwhelming firefighters. In early July, record temperatures--which hit 126 °F at Lake Berryessa--made the flames even more ravenous. By July 11, nearly 800,000 acres had burned, far exceeding the 500,000 acres lost to California wildfires in all of 2007.
Just as memorably, the fire season extended all the way to November, when 35,000 acres in the Los Angeles hills burned, destroying a thousand homes.
The summer fire storms in Northern and Central California, following the devastating winter storms in January, posed a major challenge to PG&E. From late June to early August, they damaged more than 100 miles of power lines, more than 500 power poles, five transmission towers and 121 transformers. More than 10,000 customers lost service.
With eight hydro facilities and thousands of miles of electrical lines at risk, the damage could have been much worse but for smart preparation and planning. That started with the $170 million a year that PG&E spends on vegetation management in order to protect public safety and the power grid. Clearing fast-growing trees and shrubs around power lines helps prevent summer fires due to sparks as well as winter outages due to short-circuits caused by falling trees.
Last summer, utility crews also pre-treated many poles with fire-retardent, saving 285 poles and almost five million dollars in replacement costs. (PG&E used the same fire-retardent to treat a hospital in the town of Paradise, near Chico, which could not be evacuated in time.)
PG&E emergency planners also used sophisticated geographic information systems to track the risk to utility assets, based on daily fire updates available on the web. PG&E passed the information through liaison officers to local agencies in charge of battling the fires to help them plan their strategy.
For this effort, PG&E was awarded a 2008 Emergency Recovery Award by the Edison Electric Institute, a major utility industry association.
You don't have to be a professional firefighter or utility crew member to start preparing for the long, hot summer ahead. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) urges residents to create a 100 feet zone of defensible space around their homes. By removing all dead vegetation in that zone, and all flammable vegetation within 30 feet of your home, you greatly diminish the chances of being overrun by a wildfire.
Other smart tips include clearing all needles and leaves from roofs and gutters, landscaping with fire-resistant plants, keeping branches at least 10 feet away from chimneys, and not using power equipment during the heat of the day.
Apr 21 2009
When Washington insiders hear "Waxman-Markey," they instantly think of the proposal by two key Democratic legislators, Henry Waxman of California and Ed Markey of Massachusetts, to create America's first "cap-and-trade" market to limit greenhouse gas emissions, a step that would transform this country's energy industry.
But buried in their draft American Clean Energy and Security Act are a number of energy efficiency provisions that would also slow the march toward global warming significantly.
In fact, according to a new analysis by the independent, non-profit American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), these provisions could slash U.S. energy use 10 percent by 2020. The savings would exceed the annual energy use of 49 out of 50 states, including California's. ACEEE figures the measures would avoid emissions of about 660 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2020, equivalent to locking 110 million cars in the garage for a year.
"These energy efficiency savings are very substantial and will go a long way towards paying the cost of the cap-and-trade program in the bill," said Steven Nadel, ACEEE's Executive Director, in a prepared statement. "Our analyses indicate that energy efficiency policies are a key cost-control element for climate change legislation because the less energy we need, the fewer new power plants we need, and the fewer existing power plants that need to be upgraded."
Key provisions in the bill include:
- A federal Energy Efficiency Resource Standard, which would make utilities reduce electricity demand by 15 percent and natural gas demand by 10 percent by 2020;
- A Retrofit for Energy and Environmental Performance program to promote energy efficiency improvements in residential and commercial buildings; and
- A requirement that states improve transportation efficiency to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
ACEEE says that while the draft legislation is a great step in the right direction, even more can be done. Its studies indicate that 25 percent of more of U.S. energy use can be cut cost-effectively with today's technology.
For information on how you can save energy--and money--check out PG&E's many energy efficiency programs and incentive rebates for your home or business.
Apr 20 2009
Imagine this: my hometown movie theater has staked out a claim of being "America's first solar major motion picture theater," a worthy record indeed for the Guinness Book.
The Fairfax 5 Theatre in Marin County, a neighborhood institution dating back to 1952, has installed 170 rooftop solar panels that now generate 31.5 kilowatts of power, more than a third of the theater's total electricity demand. (Full disclosure: both of my daughters once had jobs at this theater.)
Dave Corkill, founder of the small Cinema West chain that owns the Fairfax Theater, said his latest monthly power bill for the theater was $919, down from the usual $2,500.
Cinema West recently claimed a second record, this one for the largest solar system on a movie theater in America. A monster system on Livermore Cinemas uses 805 tubular solar modules made by Solyndra to generate 132 kilowatts of power.
PG&E provided rebates for both installations under the California Solar Initiative, $40,000 for the Fairfax Theatre alone. Said Corkill, "It was a very smooth process. It amazes me that people who are taking money out of PG&E's pockets by being their competitor are received so warmly. PG&E is geared up to do this in a very user-friendly way."
What will all this clean power bring you besides cold soda and hot popcorn? According to the latest movie schedule, the Fairfax Theatre's offerings include "Hannah Montana: The Movie" and "Monsters vs. Aliens 3D," not exactly prime uses of solar power in my book. On the other hand, you can also catch "State of Play" (featuring Rachel McAdams as a blogger) and, appropriately, the Disney nature documentary "Earth" (starting Wednesday).
If you prefer drive-in movies, and you happen to find yourself in east-central Illinois, you may want to check out what claims to be the world's first wind-powered theater, the Harvest Moon Holiday Twin Drive-In in Gibson City, Illinois. Their two turbines can generate 100 percent of the theater's power needs when the wind is blowing 12-15 miles per hour.
What's next? A movie theater powered by a geothermal vent, featuring "Journey to the Center of the Earth"?
Apr 17 2009
The peregrine chicks are hatching atop PG&E's headquarters in San Francisco! See the offspring of Dapper Dan and Diamond Lil in real time on PG&E's webcam (requires QuickTime):
Apr 17 2009
Several stories on the science and politics of global warming caught our attention this week:
- Carbon dioxide may be the single biggest contributor to global warming, but scientists now believe a not-too-distant second is soot, or black carbon, released by dirty fires prevalent in the developing world. The tiny dark particles absorb solar radiation, accelerating the melting of glaciers. Soot particulates are also a major cause of premature human deaths. The good news is soot emissions can be dramatically reduced by replacing primitive stoves with more modern smokeless technology.
- Migrating birds will have to fly farther between breeding ranges and wintering areas in Africa due to global warming, according to a team of scientists at Durham University. Small birds like the garden warbler, who already fly thousands of miles on these annual journeys, will be pushed to their limit to extend their journeys, the scientists predict.
- Congressional legislation to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions "is absolutely essential" to the Obama administration's hopes of spurring global action on climate change this December in Copenhagen, according to Carol Browner, the White House adviser on energy and climate change issues.
Apr 13 2009
As part of PG&E's commitment to providing more renewable energy to its customers, the utility has supported a wide range of technologies, including wind, geothermal, biomass, wave and tidal, and at least a half dozen types of solar thermal and photovoltaic power.
Now PG&E is extending that approach to tap renewable energy at an entirely new level: solar power in space.
PG&E is seeking approval from state regulators for a power purchase agreement with Solaren Corp., a Southern California company that has contracted to deliver 200 megawatts of clean, renewable power over a 15 year period.
Solaren says it plans to generate the power using solar panels in earth orbit, then convert it to radio frequency energy for transmission to a receiving station in Fresno County. From there, the energy will be converted to electricity and fed into PG&E's power grid. (See interview with Solaren CEO Gary Spirnak.)
Why would anyone choose so challenging a locale to generate electricity? For one, the solar energy available in space is eight-to-ten times greater than on earth. There's no atmospheric or cloud interference, no loss of sun at night, and no seasons. That means space solar can be a baseload resource, not an intermittent source of power.
In addition, real estate in space is still free (if hard to reach). Solaren needs to acquire land only for an energy receiving station. It can locate the station near existing transmission lines, greatly reducing delays that face some renewable power projects sited far from existing facilities.
While the concept of space solar power makes sense, making it all work at an affordable cost is a major challenge, which Solaren says it can solve.
Solaren's team includes satellite engineers and scientists, primarily from the U.S. Air Force and Hughes Aircraft Company, with decades of experience in the space industry. Its CEO, Gary Spirnak, was a spacecraft project engineer in the U.S. Air Force and director of advanced digital applications at Boeing Satellite Systems, among other positions.
They also have a long history of research to draw upon. The U.S. Department of Energy and NASA began seriously studying the concept of solar power satellites in the 1970s, followed by a major "fresh look" in the Clinton administration.
In 1997, John C. Mankins, manager of NASA's Advanced Projects Office, wrote:
Based on the recently-completed "fresh look" study, space solar power concepts may be ready to reenter the discussion. Certainly, solar power satellites should no longer be envisioned as requiring unimaginably large initial investments in fixed infrastructure before the emplacement of productive power plants can begin. Moreover, space solar power systems appear to possess many significant environmental advantages when compared to alternative approaches to meeting increasing terrestrial demands for energy - including requiring considerably less land area than terrestrially-based solar power systems.
The economic viability of such systems depends, of course, on many factors and the successful development of various new technologies - not least of which is the availability of exceptionally low cost access to space. However, the same can be said of many other advanced power technologies options. Space solar power may well emerge as a serious candidate among the options for meeting the energy demands of the 21st century.
In 2007, a major study by the Defense Department's National Security Space Office gave the concept another boost, concluding that "there is enormous potential for energy security, economic development, improved environmental stewardship . . and overall national security for those nations who construct and possess a SBSP capability."
The study group further declared, "Space-Based Solar Power is more technically executable than ever before and current technological vectors promise to further improve its viability."
So much for the concept. Can Solaren really deliver electricity to PG&E customers by 2016, the year it has contracted to begin commercial operation?
If Solaren succeeds, PG&E's customers have a great opportunity to benefit from affordable clean energy. There is no risk to PG&E customers; PG&E has contracted only to pay for power that Solaren delivers.
Solaren will work with citizen groups and government agencies to support the project's development. Solaren is responsible for getting all the necessary permits and approvals from federal, state and local agencies. Among other things, Solaren will have to prove that its technology satisfies all applicable safety standards, an issue that space power enthusiasts have addressed in detail, but is nonetheless sure to be controversial.
From PG&E's perspective, as a supporter of new renewable energy technology, this project is a first-of-a-kind step worth taking. If Solaren succeeds, the world of clean energy will never be the same.
Apr 13 2009
NEXT100 asked Solaren CEO Gary Spirnak to offer his perspective on the business strategy and technological approach behind his company's contract to deliver 200 MW of baseload space solar power to PG&E's customers by 2016. Here are his answers:
Q: What is Solaren Corporation?
A: Solaren is a California C Corporation that formed in 2001 and is based in Manhattan Beach, CA. Solaren was formed by a team of satellite engineers and space scientists to build a space energy company to generate and distribute electricity at competitive prices from Space Solar Power (SSP) stations in geosynchronous orbit. Solaren currently consists of about ten engineers and scientists, but plans to grow to more than 100 over the next twelve months.
Q: What was the impetus for forming the company?
A: The impetus for forming Solaren was the convergence of improved high efficiency energy conversion devices, heavy launch vehicle developments, and a revolutionary Solaren-patented SSP plant design that is a significant departure from past efforts and makes SSP not only technically, but economically viable.
Q: What kind of experience does your team have?
A: Each Solaren team member each has 20 to 45 years experience in the aerospace industry, primarily with Hughes Aircraft Company and the US Air Force, and has successfully developed and managed many first-of-a-kind, innovative space projects.
Q: Has anything like this been built before?
A: This will be the world's first SSP plant. While a system of this scale and exact configuration has not been built, the underlying technology is very mature and is based on communications satellite technology. For over 45 years, satellites have collected solar energy in earth orbit via solar cells, and converted it to radio frequency (RF) energy for transmissions to earth receive stations. This is the same energy conversion process Solaren uses for its SSP plant.
Q: What gives you the confidence that you can design the system?
A: The SSP pilot plant system design will work hand and glove with an extensive Solaren engineering development program. Before the Solaren SSP plant is constructed, an engineering development program will be implemented to reduce the cost, schedule and engineering risk associated with the Solaren SSP pilot project. The engineering development program is a meticulous step-by-step process that will validate all SSP components, subsystems and systems. In addition to laboratory and ground tests, Solaren plans to test and evaluate critical SSP system deployments and functionality in space. The rigorous SSP pilot plant design will be created from the foundation of engineering data generated through the SSP development program's component, subsystem and system tests.
Q: What gives you confidence that you can launch this system into space?
A: The SSP pilot plant satellites are designed to use existing launch capabilities. No new space launch vehicle capabilities need to be developed to launch our satellites into space. The SSP pilot plant design for the power satellites and ground receive station will be built and validated and the power satellites prepared for shipment to the launch site during the construction phase. At the launch site, the power satellites are launched into space using existing launch vehicle capabilities and moved to their final orbital positions.
Q: Finally, what gives you the confidence that you can start generating power by 2016?
A: What gives us the confidence that we can start generating power in 2016 is the experience of Solaren's team and suppliers, and these five steps. First, our meticulous SSP engineering development program will reduce program risk. Second, our rigorous SSP Pilot plant design will ensure that we meet or exceed our SSP system performance requirements and that the design is buildable. Third, the construction of the SSP Pilot plant is built to exacting specifications, which are each verified and validated. Fourth, the SSP satellites undergo a final verification prior to launch, and use low risk, existing launch vehicle capabilities for delivery to space. Fifth, once in geosynchronous orbit, a series of SSP pilot plant system tests will validate the satellites and ground receive station functions and verify performance, safety and key parameters to ensure successful operations. When we complete these steps, we will then be ready to deliver power to PG&E in 2016.
Q: Does Solaren have the option to not deliver power? Is this a best-effort contract?
A: No. We are required under this PPA to deliver the contracted 200 MW of baseload power on the contracted start date to PG&E, and Solaren is committed to making that date.
Q: Why go this route instead of sticking with more familiar terrestrial solar technology?
A: Solaren's patented design and proprietary approaches result in a baseload power generation system that is competitive both in terms of performance and cost with other sources of baseload power generation. We believe terrestrial solar power will play an increasing role in satisfying peak electricity demand. Solaren SSP is fundamentally different from terrestrial solar in that we address baseload power not peaking power.
Q: How does your SSP pilot plant work?
A: Solaren's patented SSP plant design uses satellites in Earth orbit to collect solar energy in space and generate power, which is transmitted to the ground receive station for conversion to electricity for delivery to PG&E. Specifically Solaren's SSP satellites use solar cells in space to convert the sun's energy to electricity. This electricity powers high efficiency generator devices, known as solid state power amplifiers (SSPA). The SSPA devices on-board the satellite convert electricity into RF energy. Next the SSP satellite, using the RF energy and the satellite's antenna, directs and transmits the RF power to the California ground receive station. The ground receiver directly converts the RF energy to electricity, and uses the local power grid for transmission to the PG&E delivery point.
Q: What is the potential of Space Solar Power?
A: Collecting solar energy in space and transmitting it to earth offers a significant untapped energy resource. The sun's energy is almost continuously available to a satellite located in a GEO orbit about the earth. According to an October, 2007 US Department of Defense (DOD) National Space Security Office (NSSO) study which included representatives from DOE/NREL, DARPA, Boeing and Lockheed-Martin: "A single kilometer wide band of geosynchronous earth orbit experiences enough solar flux in one year (approximately 212 terawatt-years) to nearly equal the amount of energy contained within all known recoverable conventional oil reserves on Earth today (approximately 250 TW-yrs)."
Q: Is the renewable energy generated from this project completely carbon-free?
A: Yes. Solaren's SSP energy conversion process is completely carbon-free.
Q: How will this project impact the environment?
A: The construction and operations of Solaren's SSP plant will have minimal impacts to the environment. The construction of the SSP ground receive station will have no more environmental impact than the construction of a similarly sized terrestrial photovoltaic (PV) solar power plant. Space launch vehicles will place the SSP satellites into their proper orbit. These space launch vehicles primarily use natural fuels (H2, O2) and have an emissions profile similar to a fuel cell. When in operation, the Solaren SSP plant has a zero carbon, mercury or sulfur footprint. In addition, the high efficiency conversion of RF energy to electricity at the SSP Ground Receive Station does not require water for thermal cooling or power generation, unlike other sources of baseload power (nuclear, coal, hydro).
Q: How was the SSP ground receive station site selected?
A: We had three major requirements for the selection of the SSP ground receive station. First, was the selection of a site that is close to a large load center, second the site had to be a short distance from a PG&E substation, and third was not to use any long distance transmission lines.
Q: When will Solaren be able to provide more details about your SSP pilot plant project?
A: We are currently supporting the CPUC regulatory filing process, and plan to provide additional details about our SSP pilot plant project in early Summer 2009.
Apr 10 2009
Several stories on the science and politics of global warming caught our attention this week:
- People in high places must be reading NEXT100. On April 8, a day after this blog completed a two-part series on geoengineering, President Obama's top science adviser, John Holdren said of this controversial approach to controlling global warming, "It's got to be looked at. We don't have the luxury of taking any approach off the table." Stephen Salter at Edinburgh University, a leading proponent of the cloud seeding measures described in Tuesday's post, said: "Everyone working in geo-engineering works with some reluctance: we hope it'll never be needed, but we fear it might be needed very, very urgently. Holden is echoing that exactly. It's very encouraging."
- People must be reading NEXT100, part two: Only a week after this blog commented on the surge of interest in carbon-free nuclear power, engineering giants The Shaw Group and Westinghouse Electric Company announced that they received full notice to proceed from Southern Company for an engineering, procurement and construction contract to build two new nuclear reactors. Can the timing be a coincidence? This project puts Southern Company on track to become the first utility to start construction of a nuclear power plant from scratch in more than three decades. If the utility receives final licensing and funding authority and construction goes as planned, the first unit will come online in 2016.
- Global warming may claim another set of victims: pets who aren't used to harsh climates. According to new scientific papers, ticks, fleas and mosquitoes are spreading more infectious diseases among household animals as milder winters allow these disease vectors to spread.
- As global warming progresses, the world may come to resemble Australia, according to scientists who link climate change to the deaths of 200 people from heat waves and 173 from wildfires earlier this year. Other calamities to strike the country include monsoon flooding, wildlife kills, mosquito-borne diseases, and the rapid decline of the Great Barrier Reef. However, the country is reluctant to kick its dependence on carbon-rich coal power, according to the Los Angeles Times.
- From the department