Turning On LED's  

Moving from incandescent lighting to LEDs should be something that everyone can agree is a good thing (except incandescent globe manufacturers of course) - MIT Technology Review takes a look at the state of LED technology.

When the Christmas tree at the U.S. Capitol was illuminated this year, it shone with the light of 10,000 light-emitting diodes (LEDs). And next year the giant New Year's Eve ball in Times Square will also be festooned with LED lights. Such milestones are another indication that the use of solid-state lighting made from semiconductor chips or organic polymers is advancing rapidly.

According to projections from Sandia National Laboratories, the energy-saving benefits of LED lighting would be impressive: If the technology can be improved so that half of all lighting is solid-state by 2025, it will cut worldwide power use by 120 gigawatts, saving $100 billion a year and reducing carbon dioxide emissions from power plants by 350 megatons a year.

Moreover, lighting experts say, semiconductor LEDs and organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) would change the way people think about lighting their homes. Rather than static fixtures holding single-color bulbs, solid-state lighting will be more flexible, allowing for glowing ceiling tiles or accent lights whose colors can be digitally adjusted at the touch of a button.

In the wake of reports late last year about the imminent demise of natural gas supplies to New Zealand, Rigzone reports on a newly arrived drilling rig search for more Maui gas.

A specially-imported drilling rig has arrived in Taranaki from Texas to begin a landmark assignment -- finding more gas in the offshore Maui field. The rig, owned by the Nabors group of companies which owns and operates more than 1500 drilling rigs worldwide, is being unloaded from the vessel Umiavut at Port Taranaki after a delivery journey from Houston.

Soon it will be taken to the Maui-A production platform where it will drill a series of exploration wells in an effort to discover a number of pockets of gas that the field's owners believe may have been missed by the existing gas production wells. The wells -- and it is not know how many will be drilled -- will probe into the already productive Kapuni D Sands and another geological zone known as the Ihi Prospect.

This prospect is in the northern part of the Maui field and is believed to contain gas with a high carbon dioxide content. This means that if the Ihi wells were commercially developed, the gas could be used by Methanex New Zealand for the manufacture of methanol, but would need to be treated for other users.

Last week Methanex announced it intended restarting its Waitara Valley plant on January 13 for a two-month stint, during which it would use up its remaining allocation of Maui gas.

Jeff Rubin at CIBC World Markets has issued some research (pdf) that is very bullish on Canadian tar sands, saying that onshore oil production has peaked and any future production growth will be coming from offshore oil and alternative sources like tar sands. Additional commentary can be found at The Oil Drum.

Alberta's oil sands will become the most important source of new oil in the world by 2010 as conventional crude dries up, CIBC World Markets says in its latest monthly report.

Alberta will sit on one of the most valuable energy sources in the world by that time, and one of the few still open to private investment, said Jeff Rubin, chief economist at CIBC World Markets, the bank's wholesale banking arm. He added that conventional oil production around the world apparently peaked in 2004.

Rubin found that total oil supplies around the world grew by less than one million barrels a day last year. None of that growth came from outside the OPEC sphere. That finding was particularly surprising because oil prices have doubled in recent years, making exploration of many new areas economically feasible for the first time.

Rubin looked at 164 upcoming oil fields in his study and found that new oil is, in fact, being discovered and it is coming on stream. But more than half simply balances declining production from existing fields in the North Sea and Kuwait's Burgan region.

Rubin does expect a net gain in oil production in coming years, but it will be small and getting smaller. Rubin expects 3.6 million barrels of new oil to come on stream in 2006, but 2.2 million barrels will go to replace declining reserves elsewhere, leaving just 1.4 million barrels of new oil. He expects 1.5 million barrels of new oil in 2006 and 2007, but less than a million barrels a day in 2008.

Energy companies are finding new oil, but most of it will come from non-conventional sources. Ocean oil rigs are the primary source of new oil today, with Alberta's oil sands tomorrow, with expansion projects rivaling those of Saudi Arabia.

The Guardian has a report on a Norwegian effort to create a "Noah's Ark" of seeds.

The Norwegian government plans to build a "doomsday vault" to house 2m seeds which represent the entire agricultural diversity of the planet. The idea is to safeguard the world's food supply against threats such as nuclear war, asteroid impact, terror attack, climate change and rising sea levels.

"It's a Noah's ark for seeds," said Cary Fowler, executive director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, who carried out a feasibility study on the project. "It would be used to re-establish agriculture."

The precise location has not been decided, but it will be close to Longyearbyen on Svalbaard, well inside the Arctic Circle. The vault, measuring 5 metres by 5 metres by 15 metres, will be cut from solid rock in the side of a mountain and should be finished by September 2007.

The £1.7m cost is being put up by Norway, which will own the facility, but technically not the seeds inside. "It's a gift to humanity," said Dr Fowler. "It's a fairly cheap insurance policy given the importance of agriculture."

The seeds will be cooled to between -10C and -20C, but if the cooling system fails the permafrost surrounding the vault will keep them at around -4C, cold enough to save most of them. The facility will not need to be permanently manned, but "the mountains are patrolled by polar bears", said Dr Fowler.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that 75% of the genetic diversity of agricultural crops has already been lost. The US, for example, had 7,100 varieties of apple in the 19th century; 6,800 no longer exist. "They are extinct - never to be seen again. Like a dinosaur," said Dr Fowler.

TreeHugger has a post on a Japanese obsession with small Sitrling engines - Stirling Engines in the Palm of your Hand.

Treehugger loves Stirling engines-they have been the way of the future since 1816. They work on the basis of temperature differences and can be powered by just about anything- This Japanese toy version appears here to be powered variously by a dog, lunch, a cup of tea and an ice rink- that is versatility! We hope they manage to scale it up a bit.

"The Stirling engine works by the repeated heating and cooling of a sealed amount of working gas, usually air or other gases such as hydrogen or helium. When the gas is heated, because it is in a sealed chamber, the pressure rises and this then acts on the power piston to produce a power stroke. When the gas is cooled the pressure drops and this means that less work needs to be done by the piston to recompress the gas on the return stroke, giving a net gain in power available on the shaft. The working gas flows cyclically between the hot and cold heat exchangers.The working gas is sealed within the piston cylinders, so there is no exhaust gas, (other than that incidental to heat production if combustion is used as the heat source). No valves are required, unlike other types of piston engines."

WorldChanging has a post on "China, India, and the 'State of the World'" which takes a look at the latest WorldWatch "State of the World" report.

Worldwatch's venerable State of the World annual is just out, and the 2006 edition zeroes in on China and India -- and the threats and opportunities they present to sustainability.

The litany of bad news has been well told. As Worldwatch puts it "If China and India were to consume resources and produce pollution at the current U.S. per-capital level, it would require two planet Earths just to sustain their two economies."

Among the realities: China has only 8% of the world's fresh water to meet the needs of 22% of the world's people. . . . China and India have both just started to build what are slated to be two of the largest automobile industries in the world . . . If Chinese per-capital grain consumption were to double to roughly European levels, China would require the equivalent of nearly 40% of today's global grain harvest.

And so it goes.

What could the good news possibly be? Turns out there's plenty. For starters, both China and India committed during 2005 to accelerate the development of renewable energy sources. India plans to increase renewables' share of power from 5% to as much as 25%, while China's new energy law will help jumpstart wind power, biofuels, and other renewable fuels.

China's automobile industry has adopted Europe's environmental standards, which are tougher than those in the U.S., part of that country's efforts to promote energy efficiency. China has achieved status as the world leader in producing and installing compact fluorescent light bulbs. India already has the fourth-largest wind power industry, while China and India are the third and fourth largest ethanol producers, respectively.

And then there are leapfrogging technologies and systems that could head off some of the more dire predictions about the development world's environmental footprint. One example is in transportation: A growing number of people in China now argue that an automobile-based transportation system simply is not capable of providing mass mobility to over a billion people without destroying resources that are required to meet other human needs. ...

Rigzone has a report on moves by the new Bolivian president to nationalise Bolivia's energy reserves and his invitation to China to help exploit these reserves.

Bolivian President-elect Evo Morales invited energy-hungry China on Sunday to help develop his country's vast gas reserves after his government carries out plans to nationalize them, a Morales adviser said.

Morales met with State Councilor Tang Jiaxuan, a senior Cabinet official, after
arriving from Europe on a world tour. He was due to meet Monday with President Hu Jintao and China's commerce minister.

"For the government of President Morales, hydrocarbons is a fundamental topic, in particular the industrialization of natural gas," said Carlos Villegas, an economic adviser to Morales. "He invited the Chinese government, through its state companies, to participate."

Morales has alarmed Western governments with his plans to nationalize Bolivia's gas resources. Villegas said Bolivia wants private companies to remain as partners to develop them and will renegotiate existing contracts following Morales' Jan. 22 inauguration.

Villegas said Morales wants to develop industries to turn Bolivia's gas into more profitable products such as cleaner-burning diesel instead of exporting it as a low-priced raw material. "We have made the proposal in Spain and France, and now in China," Villegas said. "We are offering. It doesn't mean that we are relying only on China."

Finally, Bruce Schneier has written his response to Kevin Kelly on the value of anonymity. Given all the kerfuffle about the easy availability of people's phone records in the US, perhaps he should also write a piece on the value of privacy.