Over the past decade, whenever I went to China and engaged Chinese on their pollution and energy problems, inevitably some young Chinese would say: “Hey, you Americans got to grow dirty for 150 years, using cheap coal and oil. Now it is our turn.”

It’s a hard argument to refute. Eventually, I decided that the only way to respond was with some variation of the following: “You’re right. It’s your turn. Grow as dirty as you want. Take your time. Because I think America just needs five years to invent all the clean-power technologies you Chinese are going to need as you choke to death on pollution. Then we’re going to come over here and sell them all to you, and we are going to clean your clock — how do you say ‘clean your clock’ in Chinese? — in the next great global industry: clean power technologies. So if you all want to give us a five-year lead, that would be great. I’d prefer 10. So take your time. Grow as dirty as you want.”

Whenever you frame it that way, Chinese are quizzical at first, and then they totally get it: Wow, this energy thing isn’t just about global warming! In a world that is adding one billion people every 15 years or so — more and more of whom will be able to live high-energy-consuming lifestyles — the demands for energy and natural resources are going to go through the roof. Therefore, E.T. — energy technologies that produce clean power and energy efficiency — is going to be the next great global industry, and China needs to be on board.

Well, China has gotten on board — big-time. Now I am worried that China will, dare I say, “clean our clock” in E.T.

Yes, you might think that China is only interested in polluting its way to prosperity. That was once true, but it isn’t anymore. China is increasingly finding that it has to go green out of necessity because in too many places, its people can’t breathe, fish, swim, drive or even see because of pollution and climate change. Well, there is one thing we know about necessity: it is the mother of invention.

And that is what China is doing, innovating more and more energy efficiency and clean power systems. And when China starts to do that in a big way — when it starts to develop solar, wind, batteries, nuclear and energy efficiency technologies on its low-cost platform — watch out. You won’t just be buying your toys from China. You’ll be buying your energy future from China.

“China is moving,” says Hal Harvey, the chief executive of ClimateWorks, which shares clean energy ideas around the world. “They want to be leaders in green technology. China has already adopted the most aggressive energy efficiency program in the world. It is committed to reducing the energy intensity of its economy — energy used per dollar of goods produced — by 20 percent in five years. They are doing this by implementing fuel efficiency standards for cars that far exceed our own and by going after their top thousand industries with very aggressive efficiency targets. And they have the most aggressive renewable energy deployment in the world, for wind, solar and nuclear, and are already beating their targets.”

Here’s the key point on energy from the draft report of the president’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board: “If the U.S. fails to adopt an economywide carbon abatement program, we will continue to cede leadership in new energy technology. The U.S. is now home to only two of the ten largest solar photovoltaic producers in the world, two of the top ten wind turbine producers and one of the top ten advanced battery manufacturers. That is, only one-sixth of the world’s top renewable energy manufacturers are based in the United States. ... Sustainable technologies in solar, wind, electric vehicles, nuclear and other innovations will drive the future global economy. We can either invest in policies to build U.S. leadership in these new industries and jobs today, or we can continue with business as usual and buy windmills from Europe, batteries from Japan and solar panels from Asia.”

Indeed, if you look at those top 10 lists, compiled by Lazard, the investment bank, Japanese companies have the most, then Europe, then China — then us.

This is a major reason I favor the climate/energy bill passed by the House. If we do not impose on ourselves the necessity to drive innovation in clean-technology — by imposing the right prices on carbon emissions and the right regulations to promote energy efficiency — we will be laggards in the next great global industry.

Posted by Big Gav at 10:20 PM | Permalink | Comments

There is an everything strike going on in Toronto, another nail in its reputation as a City that works. Ferries aren't running, pools are closed, and the garbage isn't getting picked up. But what is in those bags stacking up in our parks? Why do we generate so much garbage?

Perhaps it is an appropriate time to experiment with going zero waste; here is a roundup of some posts we have written on the subject to help you on your way.

At the Worldchanging book launch, Alex Steffen said something like: "Garbage is simply useful stuff in the wrong place". It is true- In Toronto we have no beer bottle garbage, because there is a ten cent deposit on them. 'We have become an increasingly throwaway society, reliant on cheap, disposable and hard to recycle goods,' said Nick Pearce, the think-tank's director. 'Business needs to take greater responsibility for the whole life of a product." a Zero Waste Society

"Humans are the only species on the planet that don't live by zero waste principles. Zero waste is a 'call to action' that aims to bring an end to the current 'take, make and waste' mentality of human society." Quote of the Day: Michael Jessen on Zero Waste


Robert Ouellette points out at ::ReadingToronto:
"All garbage is bad garbage. There is no effective way to rid the environment of our trash. The only real answer is to not make it in the first place."
Chemist and author Paul Palmer goes much farther and suggests that recycling is dead. He says It has "become lazy, relying on yesterday's methods and advancing no new ideas to inspire the public. Has Recycling Jumped the Shark?

Lets call recycling what it is- a fraud, a sham, a scam perpetrated by big business on the citizens and municipalities of America. Look who sponsors the National Recycling Coalition: behind America Recycles Day: Coca-Cola, Pepsico, Anheuser-Busch, Coors, Owens-Illinois, International Bottled Water Association, the same people who brought you that other fraud, Keep America Beautiful.

Recycling is simply the transfer of producer responsibility for what they produce to the taxpayer who has to pick it up and take it away. Recycling is Bullshit; Make Nov. 15 Zero Waste Day, not America Recycles Day.

Everyone is talking about zero waste these days. Jared Blumenfeld of San Francisco's environment department says "From our perspective, waste doesn't need to exist,It's a design flaw." David Redfield of Wal-Mart says "When you look at a dumpster, you see trash. When I look at it, I see materials and money." William McDonough says "We're not talking here about eliminating waste, We're talking about eliminating the entire concept of waste." Meme of the month: Zero Waste.

Labels: waste

Posted by Big Gav at 8:39 PM | Permalink | Comments

Why should there be an energy problem? After all, there is plenty of energy around us. The sun beams on the earth's surface a daily amount of energy that corresponds to almost ten thousands times the primary energy we generate - mainly - from fossil fuels. And that doesn't include geothermal energy nor the perspectives of nuclear energy, especially in terms of fusion power. Just tap a small fraction of this energy bonanza that surrounds us and we can have more than we need.
But, of course, things are not so simple. We still rely heavily on fossil fuels for our needs and switching to alternative sources is proving to be a very slow and difficult process. Production from traditional nuclear plants is going down (WNA 2009) and fusion power remains far away in the future. Traditional renewable sources, such as wood burning and hydroelectric have very limited possibilities of expansion, while the "new" renewables (mainly photovoltaic and wind power) still produce only a minuscule fraction of the worlds' total primary energy. It was only last year (2008) that for the first time the total power of new renewable plants installed outstripped that of new traditional plants in the US and in Europe (REN21 2009). Renewables are growing fast, but can they grow fast enough to compensate for the depletion of fossil fuels?

We have a problem of cost. That can be intended as monetary costs, but also in terms of energy return of energy invested (EROEI). As shown in Charles Hall's "balloon graph" (2009) the EROEI of renewables can be considered as reasonably good in most cases (with the exception of biofuels). It is around 10 for photovoltaics and around 20 for wind. Similar returns are reported for current nuclear technology. These are good returns on the investment, but not as good as it was for fossil fuels in the golden days. Decades ago, the EROEI of petroleum was of the order of 100 and perhaps even better (Hall 2009). It was this high EROEI that led fossil fuels to acquire the dominance that they have today. Without that kind of EROEI; other energy sources haven't had a possibility to compete. Today, we still need fossil energy to build non-fossil energy plants. But, with fossil fuels starting their decline, it will be more and more difficult to sustain the growth of alternative energies at a rate fast enough to provide a smooth substitution of conventional sources. We can think of an industrialized world that doesn't need fossil fuels, but we don't seem to be able to get there fast enough.

So, we are facing Tantalus' curse: we are surrounded by abundant energy but we can't get it. That is, unless we can develop a technology with a much better EROEI than what we have now. With a very fast energy return on investment, we could free the world's energy system from its dependence on fossil fuels. That is, unfortunately, easier said than done. The internet is full of claims of supposed breakthroughs in energy technologies that promise a lot but turn out to be just dreams; or even outright scams. But there may exist an energy technology that can not only promise, but deliver a high EROEI and that is also based on sound physical principles: high altitude wind power.

The basic idea of high altitude wind power is that wind is more intense as you move up in the atmosphere. The average wind speed increases with height according to an exponent (called "Hellman exponent") which is about 1/7. But the energy contained in a mass of air in movement increases with the cube of speed. From a simple calculation, we see that if we could raise a wind turbine to a height of 800 m, we could increase the power obtained of a factor of 8 in comparison to the same turbine near the ground. Even larger increases are possible at higher altitudes, where winds are also much more constant; easing the intermittency problem of conventional wind turbines. But of course, it is impossible to reach such heights with the current wind technology, limited to about 100 m because of the cost and weight of the tower.

This concept has been clear for a long time and has led to several proposals to tap the wind at higher heights. There are two possible ways for doing that: balloons and wings. You can find a recent summary of the progress in this area in the work by Big Gav (2009) published on TOD . As you can see, there are many ideas in this field, many of which exist only as sketches on paper. In many cases, the energy yield of the proposed systems is only a guess while, for those systems based on aerostats, the need of a non renewable resource (helium) is a considerable limit.

However, a few systems have been studied in depth and some tested in practical experiments. Systems based on rotors are possible and systems based on kites, in particular, do show a lot of promise. Saul Griffith of Makani Power has shown some images of a test done with a three rope kite. Wubbo Ockels, (Delft University of technology) has been also experimenting with a kite , this one using a single rope. In this field, the most advanced system seems to be the "kitegen"; a kite system created by Massimo Ippolito of Sequoia Automation , a company based in Italy. Tests on a prototype system have been completed and a first energy producing plant is being built in Northern Italy.

The Kitegen is a simple aerodynamic system: it uses state of the art kites which create lift dynamically by flying at 70-80 m/sec; this is the speed reached by the tips of the blades of a conventional wind turbine. In the simplest configuration (called "stem"), the system uses a single kite linked to a power generator located on the ground. The kite moves like a yo-yo: when it goes up, it generates energy that is transformed into electric power by the generator. When it reaches its maximum height, it is placed in an aerodynamically non-lifting configuration, so that it can be pulled down at a very small energy cost. Two coupled stems would work like a two-cylinder engine, although the "power" phase would last 90% of the time while the "pull back" phase would be much faster. A single stem could have a maximum power of a few MW. Larger plants could be operated in the "carousel" configuration. In this case, the kites fly at a constant height and at much higher altitudes, pulling a generator that moves on a circular rail. For a large carousel system, the maximum power obtained can be calculated as of the order of 1 GW or even higher.

Since the kitegen has been studied in detail, we can use it to make an estimate of the EROEI involved in high altitude wind generation. Before getting to that, however, let's summarize the known data for the current wind technology. A recent LCA study for a conventional 3 MW wind turbine was reported by Nalukowe et al, (2006). They estimate the total energy input for building and maintaining the turbine as ca. 8000 MWh for 20 years of lifetime. Since the total weight of the above ground part of the turbine is about 400 tons, we can estimate an embodied energy requirement of about 20 kWh/kg. The turbine will produce about 160,000 MWh during its lifetime and hence the final EROEI is ca. 20.

Now, let's see the results of a similar approach for the kitegen. According to Massimo Ippolito (data published on www.kitegen.com), the energy required to make a 3 MW rated power kitegen stem is of 40kWh/kg. The calculation that leads to this value takes into account all the requirements in terms of the materials needed: steel for the structure, copper for power lines, neodimium and boron for the magnets, machining, transportation, building, etcetera. This value includes also the energy costs involved with having workers at the plant and for the periodic substitution of cables and kites over a 30 year lifespan.

We see that the kitegen requires more energy per kg than a conventional wind turbine; this is expected because it is a more sophisticated machine. But the stem is much lighter: we are talking of about 30 tons in total for a 3MW plant. So, we can estimate the total energy requirement as 30*40= 1200 MWh. Assuming 5000 hours per year of operation at maximum power, the plant could produce approximately 15,000 MWh per year, or 450,000 MWh in 30 years. The final result is an EROEI = 375 (!!). If we assume a 20 year lifespan, the estimate should be reduced, but it remains large. For larger kitegen plants of the carousel type it would be possible to reach higher heights, tap into stronger winds and increase even more the EROEI. This calculation is valid for the specific case of the kitegen system, but other proposed systems based on kites or rotors would probably be able to attain similar large EROEIs. ...

From these data, we could be tempted to see high altitude wind power as a nearly limitless energy technology. But that would be a mistake. Energy production is not static - it goes with the economy and if the economy is powered by a source of cheap and abundant energy it tends to grow exponentially. Exponential growth is treacherously misleading: we could find ourselves bumping into the ceiling of high altitude winds much sooner than we would expect.

But there is a much more serious problem in the fact that energy is not the only parameter that affects the economy. Abundance of something is not abundance of everything. Abundant electric power doesn't necessarily translate into abundant food, although electricity can surely be used in agriculture in place of fossil fuels. That our problem is not just energy is confirmed by the models developed for the "Limits to Growth" series (Meadows 2004). The models can be run for scenarios that assume abundant (or even infinite) energy available, but the result is that the economic system collapses because of the strain on the environment and on agriculture generated by a combination of overpopulation and pollution. To avoid collapse, we need to stabilize both the economy and the population at a stationary level. Even so, the gradual depletion of mineral ores will make us depending on more and more energy if we want to keep the flux of mineral commodities at the present level (Diederen 2008, Bardi, 2008). So, even with abundant energy, we'll still need to recycle materials and reuse what we manufacture.

So, even with abundant energy we still need to come to terms with the fact that the earth is a limited system. However, high altitude wind power offers us a hope of a future of relative abundance, even of prosperity, if we'll be able to keep the economy and the population stable and avoid overexploiting our agricultural and mineral resources.

Labels: airborne wind turbines, wind power

Posted by Big Gav at 10:17 PM | Permalink | Comments

Hoping to speed up the development of renewable energy resources on federal lands, the U.S. Interior Department designated about 670,000 acres of land on Monday as potential areas for solar energy production.

Demand for renewables has created a boom for land previously considered worthless in sunny deserts and wind-swept plains. At the same time, it has become a controversy as environmentalists and politicians, including U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, have decried federal plans to open ecologically sensitive land to development.

"This environmentally sensitive plan will identify appropriate Interior-managed lands that have excellent solar energy potential and limited conflicts with wildlife, other natural resources or land users," Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said.

The land is divided into 24 solar energy zones spread across six western states and could generate nearly 100,000 megawatts of solar electricity. The department will evaluate the possible environmental impacts of solar production in these areas as well as their energy resources.

"The objective is to provide landscape-scale planning and zoning for solar projects on (Bureau of Land Management) lands in the West, allowing a more efficient process for permitting and sitting responsible solar development," the department said.

President Barack Obama has made moving the United States away from reliance on fossil fuels a key priority of his administration. Obama has pledged to double renewable energy production in three years and supports setting a national renewable power mandate.

The Interior Department created a special task force in March to identify the specific areas on public lands where the government could act rapidly to create large-scale renewable energy production.

The department's Bureau of Land Management has received about 470 renewable energy project applications, including 158 active solar applications.

Labels: solar power

Posted by Big Gav at 10:15 PM | Permalink | Comments

Humans like to think we're pretty good at design and technology - but we often forget that Mother Nature had a head start of 3.6 billion years. Now the burgeoning science of biomimicry, which reverse-engineers clever ideas from the natural world, is exploiting the way geckoes climb walls or hummingbirds hover.

Such efforts have been employed for years. Joseph Paxton's designs for the Crystal Palace, home of London's Great Exhibition of 1851, were based in part on his observations of the structure of giant water lilies.

George de Mestral, a Swiss engineer, came up with the concept of Velcro after observing the way burdock seeds clung to his clothes and the fur of his dog.

Yet as we become more concerned about the environmental impact of our behaviour, biomimicry is becoming fashionable.

"Imitating natural systems is about trying to mimic the amazing effectiveness of ecosystems, where the waste from one system or animal is used as the nutrients for another," says Michael Pawlyn, the director of a sustainable architecture firm. "Often, by applying ideas from ecosystems you can turn problems into solutions that are better both environmentally and commercially."

Suppose you want to clean a building cheaply. Scientists noticed lotus plants are self-cleaning - they grow in muddy environments yet remain pristine. Researchers found tiny ridges and bumps on the leaves that stop water from spreading across the surface; instead, droplets slide away, carrying dirt with them. Result: self-cleaning solar panels and paint. The paint retains tiny bumps in its surface when it dries, copying the lotus.

There are plenty of examples of biomimicry from across the world, including: ...

See like a bee

Nissan's goal of halving the number of deaths or serious injuries involving its vehicles between 1995 and 2015 seemed an ambitious task. But the company had a secret weapon: the bumblebee.

The Japanese firm has unveiled a new micro robotic car, the BR23C, which avoids collisions by using sensors based on the creatures' compound eyes. With a field of vision of more than 300 degrees, bees fly uninterrupted inside their personal space and dodge obstacles.

To recreate the function of a compound eye, engineers at Nissan came up with the idea of a Laser Range Finder.

The LRF detects obstacles up to two metres away within a 180-degree radius in front of the car, calculates the distance and sends a signal to an on-board microprocessor to help the driver to avoid a collision.

"The split-second it detects an obstacle, the robot will mimic the movements of a bee and instantly change direction by turning its wheels at right angles or greater to avoid a collision," says Toshiyuki Andou, manager of Nissan's mobility laboratory and principal engineer on the project. The firm plans to incorporate the system into manually driven cars.

Dine at the wormery

One of Pawlyn's more ambitious plans - for which he is still trying to find funding - is the Community Ecology Centre, in which the building's external form and internal function mimic the natural world.

"We wanted to create a celebratory form of architecture which is commercially viable, links energy production and water purification, and acts as a social hub," he says.

At the heart of the centre is a greenhouse, with tropical fruit and vegetables grown near the ceiling, where it's hotter.

The produce will be served in a restaurant; the waste food will feed a wormery; the worms will be fed to tilapia, a type of fish; and the tilapia will be served to the diners. Any rubbish will be processed by an anaerobic digester, a kind of processor in which micro-organisms break down the waste in an oxygen-free environment, producing biogas to heat the greenhouse and provide electricity.

Meanwhile, a "living machine", designed to mimic the filtration process that occurs in natural wetlands, will turn the sewage into clean water. ...

Strong mussels

Australian scientists also turn to nature for inspiration. Dean Cameron was reading a bedtime story to his son about animals when he had an epiphany.

He'd been working on a way to join plastic waste-water tanks together that would allow them to be transported in separate pieces, potentially saving his company hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. What caught his eye was a picture of a mussel.

"They have an intriguing mechanism for holding onto rocks, or another substrate," Cameron says. The picture showed how the mussel extended many flexible threads of protein into small cracks in rocks giving it a tenacious hold.

Seeing the way mussels and clams held onto rocks in "life or death situations" gave Cameron the spur he needed to proceed with the design of his Joinlox invention - a fastening system that joins two overlapping, crenellated surfaces with a flexible strip of plastic.

"You're not going to improve on processes that have been under the evolutionary spotlight for a long time," he said.

Just like the flexible threads used by the mussel, the plastic strip bends to absorb forces imposed on the joint, making the join remarkably strong.

This mollusc-inspired invention won Cameron the 2008 Invention of the Year award on the ABC show The New Inventors.

The mechanism was described as "Velcro for the manufacturing industry" and has wide-reaching applications in many areas, as it allows the creation of a strong join with no special materials or technique.

Labels: biomimicry

Posted by Big Gav at 10:10 PM | Permalink | Comments

Detailed plans for expanding renewable energy tenfold and cutting emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses that heat up the planet – all in little more than a decade - will be announced. The plans will be spelt out in three documents due to be published in about ten days time.

Ed Miliband, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, will unveil a White Paper that will spell out how emissions will be cut by at least 34 per cent on 1990 levels by 2020 and a 'Renewable Energy Strategy' to increase its use to 15 per cent of Britain's total energy supplies by the same date.

Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary, will launch a 'Low Carbon Industrial Strategy' which the Government hopes will create 400,000 new jobs in environmental industries over eight years and "transform our whole economy and change our industrial landscape, our supply chain and the way in which we all work and consume".

Publication of the plans will be followed by an Energy Bill, to be included in the next Queen's speech, to promote technology to remove carbon dioxide from the emissions of coal fired power stations; new ones will effectively be banned unless they use it.

Next Wednesday the Prince of Wales will lend strong support to the thinking behind the plans.

Delivering this year's Dimbleby lecture he will stress that environmental "sustainability" must be put at the heart of economic policy if the world is to recover fully from the recession and avoid dangerous climate change.

A massive increase in renewable energy – like solar, wind and tidal power - lies at the heart of the plans.

At present Britain gets little more than 1.5 per cent of its energy from it – the third lowest proportion of any European country – despite having the continent's most plentiful resources.

Most of the increase will come from multiplying the prppotion of Britain electrictyy generated from renewables sixfold, to 30 per cent, by 2020 - largely through a further massive expansion of windpower, especially offshore and in Scotland. And they are also hoping for a substantial contribution by tapping tidal power in the Severn Estuary.

The strategy will also disclose detailed plans for introducing "feed in tariffs" where householders and business who install renewable energy will be able to sell surplus electricity on favourable terms to the grid, a measure that has stimulated a rapid increase in the use of solar power in Germany and other countries.

Posted by Big Gav at 10:07 PM | Permalink | Comments

SANTOS has bought a large stake in a company with neighbouring gas fields and advanced technology in NSW's Gunnedah Basin, so it can speed up the extraction and delivery process for its own coal seam gas reserves.

Santos yesterday bought a 20 per cent stake in Eastern Star Gas from Hillgrove Resources for $176 million, and paid Gastar Exploration $300 million for its 35 per cent interest in exploration permits and production areas operated by Eastern Star.

"The transaction … provides a basis for each party to work together to accelerate the development of the region and a range of commercialisation opportunities, including domestic gas supply, power generation and future LNG (liquefied natural gas) options," Santos chief executive David Knox said.

Santos is drilling 23 wells in the Gunnedah Basin, which it entered in 2007.

Spokesman Matthew Doman told BusinessDay that Santos would benefit from Eastern Star's knowledge of the local geology. "We are now pretty much in a joint venture," he said.

The combination of operated coal seam gas permits belonging to Santos and Eastern Star in the Gunnedah Basin covers an area of about 63,000 square kilometres, containing resource potential estimated to exceed 50 trillion cubic feet.

"What Santos brings to the table for us is more understanding of market growth opportunities," said Eastern Star managing director David Casey.

Santos is building a $7.7 billion facility in Gladstone, Queensland, with Malaysian gas company Petronas to store and transport liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Asia.

Mr Casey said the gas was unlikely to travel all the way from Gunnedah to Gladstone, and he would like to see LNG transportation facilities built in Newcastle.

He said Eastern Star had spent seven years developing its extraction technology in Gunnedah, where the coal lies parallel to the surface and must be extracted sideways.

Labels: australia, coal seam gas, gunnedah basin, santos

Posted by Big Gav at 3:05 PM | Permalink | Comments

Dean Kamen – the multimillionaire inventor behind the Segway personal transporter – is well down the road in the development of a new bike that combines electric power and a radical generator which will allow it to burn almost any fuel.

Built around a fairly conventional battery and electric motor combination to provide the drive to the wheel, something Kamen's experience with the much-hyped Segway makes relatively easy, the radical part of the design is the inclusion of a Stirling engine to recharge the bike's battery pack. Based on technology that pre-dates the internal combustion engine by nearly a century, the Stirling engine is closer in concept to a steam engine, using external combustion, and without the need for a fuel that can be injected and burned incredibly fast inside a normal engine's combustion chamber, it can run on virtually anything that burns – opening the door to easily renewable fuels rather than relying on dwindling fossil fuel supplies.

Although the prototype bike has yet to be shown in public, unlike Kamen's Stirling-engined car which has been demonstrated several times, Kamen himself is understood to have been using the prototype to zip around his own estate.

As revealed in Kamen's own patent for the technology, the bike looks like a conventional scooter, with the Stirling engine and its fuel tank mounted under the seat, a rechargeable battery pack in the floor and a radiator in the front fairing. Although the Stirling engine's low output – one this size is unlikely to make any more than 5bhp – means it can't give the bike much performance on its own, it's able to keep the battery topped up by continuing to supply electricity even when you're not moving. The energy reserves in the battery can be used when more power is needed. And as the Stirling engine could be left running at low speed even when the bike is parked, the battery would never be likely to go flat.

Kamen has already sunk more than $50 million into his development of Stirling engine technology, using the idea for everything from bikes to cars and even to water-purifiers to be used in the developing world.

Labels: dean kamen, hybrid scooter, stirling engine

Posted by Big Gav at 3:04 PM | Permalink | Comments

The Department of Energy has been showered with money lately. It's received about $30 billion in funding (on top of its approximately $24 billion annual budget) from the stimulus bill passed in February. And it's responsible for issuing $125 billion in loans and loan guarantees. The person in charge of the agency's finances is chief financial officer Steve Isakowitz. He's responsible for, among other things, the formulation of the DOE's budget and the management of the mammoth loan-guarantee programs.

Technology Review interviewed Isakowitz at a recent conference on innovation held at the United Nations. He discussed the challenge of issuing loan guarantees designed to promote economic recovery while avoiding the mistakes made decades ago when President Jimmy Carter's administration managed its own loan program. In a follow-up interview, Isakowitz described some specific changes that the DOE is making and also provided an update on the newly established Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E), a $400 million agency created to push high-risk, potentially breakthrough energy technology to market.

All told, the DOE has been ordered to allocate $100 billion for commercializing clean-energy technologies, with half of that going to established technology that isn't being funded because of the recession, and the other half going to commercial-ready technology that hasn't yet been tested on the market. This program is actually an expansion of a $4 billion loan-guarantee program first established in 2005, but no loans were actually given out until this year. The DOE announced the first award this March: $535 million to the solar company Solyndra. Another $25 billion loan program was funded last year for helping automakers and suppliers produce cars that use less gas. The first awards under that program were announced this week, with $8 billion distributed among three companies: Tesla Motors, Nissan North America, and Ford Motor Company.

Similar loan programs in the late 1970s and early 1980s were a debacle. "The price of oil was skyrocketing, and the conventional wisdom was that it would continue to increase, therefore making things like synthetic fuels look economically attractive," Isakowitz says. "That was a going-in assumption, and it turned out to be flawed, as the price of oil dramatically dropped. Most of the loans went into default as a result."

The most famous example, he says, is the Synfuels Corporation, a quasi-public organization created in 1980 to commercialize processes for converting coal and shale oil into synthetic fuel. It was part of an attempt to reduce foreign-oil consumption. At the time, oil cost $40 a barrel (in 1990 dollars) and was expected to reach $80 to $100 a barrel in short order--expensive enough to make synfuels competitive (synfuels cost $80 to $90 a barrel to produce). But oil prices dropped, and the venture failed....

Posted by Big Gav at 10:55 PM | Permalink | Comments

New Zealand's environmental watchdog has warned that the 1.3 million household smart meters to be installed nationwide by 2012 will not be smart enough to deliver expected cuts in energy use.

Parliamentary commissioner for the environment, Jan Wright, said that she has "heard mutterings that the smart meters being installed in New Zealand are actually 'dumb meters'", adding that the new meters lacked the functionality required to underpin a truly "smart" electricity grid.

Power companies are in the process of replacing 800,000 outdated household electricity meters with newer models that would enable utility firms to obtain meter readings remotely. However, as there are no guidelines for the standard of the meters, different companies are installing varying types.

In a report presented to New Zealand parliament last week, Wright said that many of the new meters lacked basic real-time monitoring functions that would provide consumers with an incentive to curb energy use at peak times.

The devices also lack a microchip that would enable meters to "talk" to smart appliances, which are not yet available in the country.

Advocates of the technology argue that this ability to automatically turn off smart appliances at times of peak energy demand is one of the main environmental benefits of smart-grid projects.

Wright warned that without the necessary microchip, there would be little incentive to sell smart appliances in New Zealand.

The report also warned that retrofitting the real-time reporting and smart appliance functionality at a later date would cost at least an additional NZ$60m (£23.5m).

Green Party co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons accused power companies of installing 150,000 smart meters "with only half a brain" and the intention to install a further 650,000 "served nobody's interests but their own".

Wright's report noted that the rollout of smart electricity meters in New Zealand, unlike other countries, is being done without government oversight. " Regulatory intervention is needed to ensure environmental and consumer benefits can be delivered," she said.

Labels: new zealand, smart meters

Posted by Big Gav at 10:53 PM | Permalink | Comments

Steve Rubel on how social networking sites and lifestreams are the next indicated thing.

The image above is one of the most important graphics I have ever seen. In fact I stare at it every day on my desktop to remind me that a) there will always be shifts in media and b) one format never supersedes another.

The blog is at a critical stage in its evolution. Blogs are out of beta. Blogs are the new normal. Everything is a blog. So what’s next? Well, the format will indeed evolve into something new. I believe it will be the stream. Yet lots of folks this week are defending the blog like it’s sacrosanct and untouchable.

The protests after the Iran elections shows how powerful social networking sites can be. The real news came from Twitter and Facebook, with every other media source lagging far behind. Not only is it easy to post to social networking sites from cell phones, they can reach far more people way faster than can blogs and websites.

Blogs are out of beta but bloggers, as pioneers, should always in beta seeking to grow and advance our beloved format, rather than be complacent. I am surprised that more of us aren’t asking what’s next for the almighty blog - and I am interested in your thoughts on this subject.

Just like traditional media websites got blindsided by blogs (as witness them howling now about how Obama asked HuffPo a question at a press conference, imagine, a blog invaded their turf. Oh the indignity), blogs in turn may not see the next wave, that of social networking, coming.

The image is from Baekdal.com, who has a must-read post about it. Highlights include:

2009 - Everything is Social

The new internet is completely dominating our world. The newspapers are dead in the water, and people are watching less TV than ever. The new king of information is everyone, using social networking tools to connect and communicate.

Even the traditional website is dying from the relentless force of the constant stream of rich information from the social networks.

The Future

The first and most dramatic change is the concept of Social News. Social news is quickly taking over our need for staying up-to-date with what goes on in the world. News is no longer being reported by journalists, now it comes from everyone. And it is being reported directly from the source to you - bypassing the traditional media channels.

But social news is much more than that. It is increasingly about getting news directly from the people who makes it.

2020 - Traditional is dead

In the next 5-10 years, the world of information will change quite a bit. All the traditional forms of information are essentially dead. The traditional printed newspapers no longer exists, television in the form of preset channels is replaced by single shows that you can watch whenever you like. Radio shows is replaced podcasts and vodcasts.

That this process will destroy existing industries and businesses while creating new ones is a given. Those who are nimble and able to morph and change will thrive. Those who insist on making a stand where they are may find the ground eroding out from under them.

Labels: internet, media

Posted by Big Gav at 10:48 PM | Permalink | Comments

As the world’s second-largest and fastest-growing consumer of oil, China is showing increasing interest in oil fields in a country that has until very recently seemed to be firmly in the American sphere of influence for natural resources: Iraq.

Chinese oil companies are expected to bid for the rights to develop Iraq’s oil fields in auctions that are set to start Tuesday, although Sinopec, the China National Petroleum Corporation and the China National Offshore Oil Corporation all declined to comment Monday about their bidding strategies.

In another sign of China’s interest in Iraqi oil fields, Sinopec, China’s refining giant, offered $7.22 billion on Wednesday to buy Addax Petroleum, a Swiss-Canadian company with operations in the Kurdistan region of Iraq and in West Africa. If Addax’s shareholders and Canadian regulators approve the deal, which Addax’s board is recommending, it would be China’s largest overseas energy acquisition.

And Sinopec’s archrival, the China National Petroleum Corporation, or C.N.P.C., started drilling in spring in the Ahdab oil field in southeastern Iraq.

After six years of war, few Americans or Iraqis may have expected China to emerge as one of the winners in Iraqi oil. But signs of stability in Iraq this year, and a planned American military pullout from Iraqi cities on Tuesday, just happen to coincide with an aggressive Chinese push to buy or develop overseas oil fields.

The Chinese companies “have been interested in Iraq,” said David Zweig, a specialist in Chinese natural resource policies at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. “They were interested in Iraq before the war, and now that things have improved somewhat there, it’s on their agenda.”

China’s leaders were surprised by the steep rise in commodity prices early last year, which exposed the vulnerability of their country’s huge manufacturing sector to high raw material prices. When oil prices plunged in autumn, China began buying, importing and storing oil in huge quantities, helping to drive a partial rebound in world oil prices in spring. And China stepped up its hunt to acquire foreign oil.

Chinese officials, economists and advisers have been almost unanimous in recent weeks in saying that their country needed to invest more in natural resources, while also voicing concerns about the long-term creditworthiness of the United States and the buying power of the dollar. China has $2 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, mostly invested in dollar-denominated bonds, and has been looking for ways to diversify gradually into other assets like commodities, said a Chinese government adviser who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the secrecy of Chinese reserve policies.

China’s central bank, the People’s Bank of China, called Friday for the development of an international currency other than the dollar that would be a safe repository of value, in the latest sign of China’s search for other ways to invest its international reserves.

Philip Andrews-Speed, a specialist in China’s oil industry at the University of Dundee in Scotland, said Iraq was clearly attractive for China and its oil industry.

“All, or nearly all, oil companies who have the courage want to be in Iraq because of the large size of the proven resource base and the potential for new discoveries,” he wrote in an e-mail message. “So, in this respect, the Chinese are part of the herd.” ...

Iraq has the world’s third-largest proven reserves, after Saudi Arabia and Iran. Many geologists say that the true oil resources of Iraq are even greater than official statistics suggest, because Iraq’s oil industry has suffered from decades of disruption and underinvestment. Many oil fields have not been fully explored as a result.

I have too much time on my hands, so I took a gander at the 2009 BP Statistical Review of World Energy to kill time as well as wait to see if I won the bid for an Iraqi oil field. I didn’t.

BP and China National Petroleum beat me and they now have the right to develop Rumaila - the largest Iraqi oil field. The two organizations beat out a bid from Exxon Mobil Corporation and the Iraqi Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani estimates that the selling of oil rights will garner them more than $1.7 trillion over the next 20 years.

This win shouldn’t be surprising considering 2008 was the first year that developing countries, led by China, consumed more energy than developed countries. It was also noted in BP’s report that industrialized countries reduced their energy consumption by 1.3 percent led by a 2.8 percent decline in energy consumption from the U.S. –the steepest single-year decline since 1982. However the potential benefits of energy reduction were offset by countries who increased their energy consumption. China accounted for nearly three-quarters of the 1.4 percent global consumption increase.

So, did we reduce our global oil consumption or what? Yes. By 1.3 percent. For you Peak Oil fanatics - pay special attention - 2008 also marked a REDUCTION in proven oil reserves. Since 1980 oil reserves have fallen only three times, 1990, 1998 and 2008.

BP estimated that we have 42 years of oil left at current consumption rates, 60 years left of natural gas and 122 years of coal. This might be fine and dandy if the people of the world used the same amount of energy each year. They don’t. They use MORE each year.

According to The International Energy Outlook, world marketed energy consumption is projected to increase by 44 percent from 2006 to 2030. Total energy demand in developing countries is estimated to increase by 73 percent, compared with an increase of only 15 percent in developed countries.

The U.S. is hoping to curb its fossil fuel consumption through the Cash for Clunkers program, increased fuel economy standards (CAFE standards) and proposed Climate Bill. It is also hoping to increase biofuels use through the Biofuels Interagency Working Group, and boost the pace of bringing hybrids and electric cars to market in part through the Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

What’s the moral of this story? Oil is running out. Accept it and move on. The world must change how it produces and uses energy. Now.

Labels: iraq, oil

Posted by Big Gav at 10:39 PM | Permalink | Comments

An interview with American Samoa Territorial Energy Office (TEO) Acting Director Mauigoa Reupena Tagaloa, with Radio New Zealand International, triggered a couple of articles on Guam Newsfactor. The most interesting part of the articles may be the claim that the US Navy would be spending 1.5 Billion to build OTEC for the military facilities on Guam. That seems like a very high number and I would be interested to hear what has been included in that.

Labels: guam, ocean energy, otec

Posted by Big Gav at 11:53 PM | Permalink | Comments

Cutler Cleveland of Boston University has reported that the EROI of oil and gas extraction in the U.S. has decreased from 100:1 in the 1930’s to 30:1 in the 1970’s to roughly 11:1 as of 2000 (Figure 1). But beyond the fact that society receives currently around 11 barrels of oil for every 1 barrel that it spends getting that oil, What does this mean?

Well, first, it means that, if the trend of declining EROI continues, society will be spending an increasingly larger chunk of their remaining energy to get more energy. This cycle is positively reinforcing:

Declining EROI means that the net energy contained in each unit of energy delivered to society is decreasing over time, requiring the extraction of increasingly greater quantities just to meet societal demand →
decreases the quantity of energy remaining in the ground for future society →
makes it more difficult to find and develop the remaining bit of energy.

With every barrel we pull out of the ground we propel ourselves further down this path, creating a more difficult situation for future generations. (note: I assume that the “Best First Principle” applies to this scenario, i.e. society is using the best resources (i.e. oil fields) first, then the second best, etc…)

More importantly, declining EROI also means that the amount of discretionary energy available to society is FAR less than that predicted by a Hubbert curve (Figure 2). The Hubbert curve represents the total gross quantity of energy available, and, as it is calculated, there are equal quantities of energy available on the left and right side of the peak. This, however, is only true in a gross sense. The net energy available (i.e. discretionary energy) is less. In other words, declining EROI means that there will be much less net energy extracted post-peak than pre-peak on the Hubbert curve.

Labels: eroei, peak oil

Posted by Big Gav at 11:40 PM | Permalink | Comments

Microsoft is moving into the energy use-recording business, with a new application designed to tell consumers how much electricity they are using.

Microsoft Hohm uses technology licensed from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Department of Energy. The free online application, which has not yet been made officially available, will take data from consumers where available and use it to help them assess their energy use. Such data will include house features, electricity usage patterns and appliances. Where the information is unavailable, it will use local and national averages.

The system will use this data to make practical recommendations to consumers, including placing new caulking on windows or installing a programmable thermostat, said the company in a statement.

The system is designed to integrate with energy meters so that it can gather data from customers transparently. To this end, the software giant is working with four utilities: Xcel Energy, Puget Sound Energy, Seattle City Light and Sacramento Municipal Utility District. It will create a software development kit for utilities to work with.

Significantly, the software giant says that Hohm will use the Microsoft advertising platform, indicating that there may be a commercial element to the system. It will also take advantage of its recently launched Bing search engine.

The move comes just weeks after Google announced its own set of partnerships around a similar system, called Google Power Meter. It, too, is publishing a set of APIs designed to enable utilities to look into its own systems, feeding data back to its servers, and enabling consumers to monitor their own power use.

Labels: hohm, microsoft, smart meters

Posted by Big Gav at 11:38 PM | Permalink | Comments

DOOM-MONGERS have got it wrong - there is enough space in the world to produce the extra food needed to feed a growing population. And contrary to expectation, most of it can be grown in Africa, say two international reports published this week.

The first, projecting 10 years into the future from last year's food crisis, which saw the price of food soar, says that there is plenty of unused, fertile land available to grow more crops.

"Some 1.6 billion hectares could be added to the current 1.4 billion hectares of crop land [in the world], and over half of the additionally available land is found in Africa and Latin America," concludes the report, compiled by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

If further evidence were needed, it comes in a second report, launched jointly by the FAO and the World Bank. It concludes that 400 million hectares, straddling 25 African countries, are suitable for farming.

Models for producing new crop land already exist in Thailand, where land originally deemed agriculturally unpromising, due to irrigation problems and infertile soil, has been transformed into a cornucopia by smallholder farmers.

As in Thailand, future success will come by using agriculture to lift Africa's smallholder farmers out of poverty, aided by strong government measures to guarantee their rights to land, say both reports.

Labels: africa, agriculture

Posted by Big Gav at 10:29 PM | Permalink | Comments

Existence is the ultimate proof of the possible. Every time a bold new project is tried, and works, we advance our sense of the achievable. Given how much transformation we need in order to meet the challenges we face, we need many more attempts at innovation, and we're not getting them. The achievable is not advancing quickly enough.

Why does it matter? Because our perception of what's possible dictates our standards of what's acceptable, and the biggest barriers to social innovation and bright green experimentation are almost always institutional, legal and regulatory. We may have tons of new technology, promising designs, ambitious plans, but in most of the Global North, it's exceedingly costly and difficult to try new things at any scale. A few examples:

* Cutting edge green builders often encounter all sorts of local building code barriers that prevent bold designs (sometimes even when those designs are well-proven elsewhere);

* District energy plans are often stymied by national, provincial or local laws governing utilities, which often make it difficult-to-impossible to implement new ideas for improving the grid or building local energy at scale;

* Existing utilities and agencies may resist new ideas because they stand to lose revenue if, for instance, a new water-recycling system with living machines and biodigesters takes a building off the sewer system (and would thus exempt it from paying sewer fees);

* People attempting to make woonerf-style pedestrian streets may find that municipal insurance in the U.S. may demand that streets for which the city is responsible be built at a certain width to accommodate emergency vehicles moving quickly, and companies may oppose street grid innovations which inconvenience cars on the theory that their workers or customers may have difficulties getting to their businesses;

* Banks may refuse to fund new business ideas that depend on governmental permissions or exemptions from rules, and investors may be similarly shy of getting behind projects which are both innovative and face potential regulatory or legal challenges;

* Neighborhood opposition may slow down to the point of infeasibility any project which local NIMBYs think may bring "undesirable" people or activities, even if those activities are perfectly legal and may even be welcomed by other neighbors.

Each of these examples is based on a story I've heard of an innovative project that died not because it was a bad idea, but because of societal inertia. Given how tough it is to start new projects (and find financing and support) under normal circumstances, innovators facing this kind of opposition often end up contenting themselves with incremental -- sometimes downright meaningless -- gains.

This is not just a problem for the innovators, it's a problem for everyone. Breakthroughs in the way we make our biggest things -- buildings, vehicles, infrastructure systems -- need to go through a process of trial and error to reach the cutting edge. We may never know how many great ideas were lost forever, simply because the thinkers behind them couldn't find a place to experiment boldly and in public.

What might that place look like?

In his recent Long Now talk (MP3 here), economist Paul Romer tells a story. In the early 1970s, China was stuck in a societal inertia after the death of Mao. However, right next door, Hong Kong (administered by the British) was a thriving city-state based on trade and innovative manufacturing. Chinese leaders decided to see if they could copy Hong Kong's success on a limited scale, and set up four "Special Economic Zones" where foreign investment was encouraged and capitalism was unconstrained. The experiments were so successful economically that their rules soon more or less became the guiding principles of the Chinese miracle. As Romer says, “Hong Kong was the most successful economic development program in history.”

In many ways, the Global North is as hamstrung in the face of bright green challenges as China was in the face of capitalism. What if the answer is a sustainability and social innovation equivalent of China's answers: a sort of "Special Innovation Zone"?

Imagine a place -- perhaps a shrinking city, or a badly savaged brownfield neighborhood -- where laws were set up to strip rules and regulations down to a do-no-harm minimum (maintaining criminal laws and protecting health, safety, workers' rights and civil liberties, but perhaps limiting liability and certainly slashing red tape and delays) allowing for wild deviations from existing patterns for buildings, systems and operations. Imagine a free-fire zone for sustainable innovations, where new approaches could be iterated and tested rapidly, and, when they work, sent to proliferate outside the Zone. Conversely, some of the freedom might paradoxically come from imposing boundary limitations that can't yet be made practical or survive politically outside the Zone, such as bans on broad classes of chemicals or strict greenhouse gas emissions limits.

To be sure, there are places out there where people are already starting to experiment successfully with this blank-canvas mentality. Vancouver, B.C. has seen wonderful results in urban design from its discretionary zoning policy, which favors case-by-case evaluation of projects in pursuit of regional goals, rather than setting blanket standards. And in Greensburg, Kansas, the devastated landscape left behind after a tornado ripped through the town in May 2007 became a laboratory for innovation, as people from within the community and around the world resolved to rebuild Greensburg as a resilient, efficient and sustainable example of bright green living. Our allies at Re:Vision Dallas have offered up a full block in Texas's third largest city as the site for a new "sustainable model for the world." Although the final product will need approval at all levels, the design charrettes for Re:Vision Dallas put city officials and design visionaries in the same room, where they could tackle institutional stumbling blocks with more immediacy. If the winning designers have their say, the Re:Vision renovation will indeed push the envelope and the imagination. But these are small, limited exceptions that prove the rule.

I imagine that anything actually set up to work this way would have a half-life that shortened the better the Zone got at producing innovation, either because it would fly apart (like so many brilliant artistic scenes) or because it would get so profitable that funding would pour in and crush the creativity (as happens to many unfettered intellectual booms). But while it lasted, a Zone like this might well spit out more proven innovation in a handful of years than gets built on the ground in decades during the normal course of things. It might well be a flare that could illuminate a whole series of interesting paths out of the darkness.

Posted by Big Gav at 10:24 PM | Permalink | Comments

As Iraq prepares to auction off oil contracts next week, the biggest of the Big Oil companies are keeping mum on whether they plan to bid. Exxon Mobil Corp. CEO Rex Tillerson said earlier this month his company was “still evaluating” whether to participate. Representatives for Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips said much the same in interviews this week.

But at least one oil chief is happy to say he wants to get into Iraq: Ray Irani, chairman and CEO of California-based Occidental Petroleum Corp. “Iraq is a huge resource play,” Mr. Irani said in an interview. “The place is full of opportunities.”

Other companies have complained privately that Iraq is offering only so-called “technical service contracts” rather than the production-sharing deals companies prefer. That means, in essence, that the companies would be serving as contractors, getting a fee for their work but not owning any of the oil they produce or the reserves left in the ground.

Mr. Irani said the structure of the contracts doesn’t bother him. After all, he noted, owning reserves is no guarantee—look at Venezuela, where companies owned reserves until the government nationalized the oilfields two years ago.

“As long as the returns on investment are attractive and merit the risk that’s involved, we don’t have a problem,” he said. “I’m not hung up on whether you can book reserves or not.”

Not that Mr. Irani doesn’t see risks. The security situation in Iraq remains uncertain, he said, especially as U.S. armed forces pull back. The political situation is just as unstable. As a result, Mr. Irani said Occidental would prefer to get involved as part of a consortium rather than going it alone.

Occidental is far smaller than Exxon and its ilk, and it specializes in the kind of projects Iraq is offering—rejuvenating old, neglected fields and developing previously discovered resources—rather than the exploration the supermajors do best.

But most experts expect that, despite its complaining, Big Oil will fall in line and participate in next week’s auction. After all, at 115 billion barrels of proved reserves and plenty of territory left unexplored, Iraq is too big to ignore.

Labels: iraq

Posted by Big Gav at 10:13 PM | Permalink | Comments

It’s an exciting time for space fanatics everywhere as construction recently began on the world’s first commercial space launch pad, Spaceport America. Designed by Foster + Partners, the facility is located in southern New Mexico near the White Sands Missile Range and will serve as a launch site for private space travel. Built into the side of a hill, the Spaceport will meet LEED building standards and includes some high-tech green building strategies including a solar roof, excellent use of thermal mass, and a highly efficient HVAC system.

Virgin Galactic, part of the Virgin Group run by Richard Branson, commissioned the Spaceport from Foster + Partners, and has invested over $300 million to develop the new space launch system. Their plans are to have their first private space launch by 2011. 300 passengers have already signed up for their space flight and paid their $200,000 for the privilege. Additionally, when completed, Spaceport America will serve as the official venue for the X Prize competitions.

Built into the side of a hill, the Spaceport will use the thermal mass of the surrounding earth to moderate the hot and cold desert temperatures. Earth-tubes will pre-condition air to reduce HVAC costs by 50-70% and solar thermal panels on the roof will heat water. The 110,000 square foot facility will also use skylights and natural ventilation to achieve greater energy efficiency.

Labels: green buildings

Posted by Big Gav at 10:10 PM | Permalink | Comments

AUSTRALIAN support for the solar industry is faltering just as the technology promises to deliver baseload power.

Recent breakthroughs in concentrating solar power technology allow heat energy to be stored almost indefinitely — in molten salts — and dispatched as needed.

The Andasol parabolic trough solar thermal plant near Guadiz in Spain, developed and operated by German company Solar Millennium (which has an Australasian joint venture with Leighton Contractors), generates 50 megawatts (MW) of clean electricity, with enough storage to run for 7.5 hours without sun and around the clock in summer.

There's plenty more coming, with Bloomberg reporting 14,000MW of solar thermal power stations are in the pipeline in Spain alone. That's enough clean power to run NSW, according to Matthew Wright, of Melbourne-based advocacy group Beyond Zero Emissions.

In the US, SolarReserve and a division of giant defence contractor United Technologies plan a series of solar thermal "power towers" in the Californian desert — generating between 50MW and 300MW each — again using molten salts to store energy and able to run 15 hours without sun.

Even better solar technology is being developed here, at the Australian National University, using super-heated ammonia to store energy. A company called Wizard Power is in a joint venture with ANU to commercialise the process.

John Grimes, chief executive of the Australian New Zealand Solar Energy Society, fears a bitter replay of earlier brain drains.

"Australian scientists and research and development are at the leading edge of the world," he says. "What we lack is government support to commercialise and capitalise on that research. We will be the dumb consumers of the technology that we invented."

The Australian Government has shown this month that it is all over the place when it comes to solar energy policy.

On a positive note, it surprised many when the May budget allocated $1.35 billion to part-fund construction of up to four solar power stations generating up to 1000MW each.

But Grimes is concerned that, amid continuing uncertainty over the Government's renewable energy target (RET) and emissions trading scheme — and in the wake of the financial crisis — it will be difficult to raise the matching private capital needed to get those projects off the ground.

Investor confidence would not be helped by the latest triple whammy of abrupt decisions. The popular $8000 means-tested solar rebate was unilaterally dumped by Environment Minister Peter Garrett on June 11, a fortnight ahead of schedule, leaving many suppliers, installers and home owners in the lurch.

Labels: australia, csp, solar thermal power

Posted by Big Gav at 10:05 PM | Permalink | Comments