Sun, Surf and Clean Energy  

The SMH has an article on generating hydrogen using solar power and titanium. I'm always dubious about the hydrogen economy and I'd be interested in seeing the EROEI for this process (taking into account the effort to create the titanium material needed and all the inefficiencies in hydrogen distribution). Still, its always encouraging to see renewable energy in the local press.

A REVOLUTIONARY technology that uses sunlight and sea water to produce an unlimited supply of clean, hydrogen fuel could be developed within a decade, Sydney researchers say.

Leigh Sheppard, of the University of NSW, estimated that 1.6 million of the solar devices, installed on rooftops, would be able to produce enough hydrogen gas to supply Australia's entire energy needs. While other energy options under discussion, such as nuclear power, produce harmful wastes, the only by-products of this solar hydrogen technology would be oxygen and fresh water, Dr Sheppard said. "It is the cleanest, greenest energy option for a sustainable economy."

Dr Sheppard said much more research was needed, but the university team was confident it would be able to make the process efficient enough within 10 years for it then to be developed commercially. Its technique relies on using a light sensitive material, titanium dioxide, to harness the power of the sun to split water into oxygen and hydrogen gas. "The process has the additional advantage that it works best in sea water," Dr Sheppard said. Australia was rich in titanium, and had abundant sunshine. "And we are surrounded by ocean."

It might also be possible to use artesian water, or pump sea water inland, to a large array of solar panels which could produce hydrogen for local use and even for export. An area covering 40 square kilometres would meet the country's energy needs.

A way of using sunlight to split water was first developed by Japanese scientists in the 1970s, but worldwide interest in developing this approach has only recently been rekindled by concerns about burning fossil fuels and global warming.

The small UNSW team, led by Professor Janusz Nowotny, is a world leader in using titanium dioxide as a catalyst to split water. The researchers have developed instruments which can measure the electrical properties of the material so they can improve its performance by altering its oxygen content or adding impurities.

A visiting German solar expert, Helmut Tributsch, of the Free University in Berlin, said research was urgently needed into ways to covert the sun's power into usable energy, such ashydrogen fuel and photovoltaic electricity. Professor Tributsch said water splitting was a process nature used to harness the sun's energy. "We should really follow the example of nature. It is the only safe way to handle our environment in the long term." Hydrogen was a clean and efficient fuel for powering everything from vehicles to furnaces and air conditioning. "When you burn it, it gives water, so there is no pollution of the environment," he said.

The University of New Brunswick has high hopes for research into hydrogen storage.

Researchers at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton have made a breakthrough in hydrogen storage. They have successfully condensed hydrogen gas into a usable solid under mild conditions.

“The challenge is to find a safer, more efficient and economical way to store hydrogen so that it can be released on demand,” explained chemist Sean McGrady, the lead researcher on the project. “The way to do this is to turn hydrogen into a compound — a solid — so you can use it when you want, safely, in the amount you want.”

Hydrogen gas is typically stored under pressure in large metal cylinders, approximately four feet high. These cylinders are heavy and expensive to transport. Since they are under pressure, they also pose a safety hazard.

“We’ve reached a milestone with our ability to condense hydrogen into a usable solid,” said Dr. McGrady. “The next step is to produce a safe, compact storage system for the compound that is both lightweight and affordable.”

The research is expected to produce reversible hydrogen storage materials that can be processed into a powder for use in limitless commercial applications. UNB has a Research and License Agreement with HSM Systems Inc., a local company dedicated to the development and commercialization of novel technologies and materials for the storage and transport of hydrogen.

“We are ecstatic about the results” said Chris Willson, president of HSM. “One of the bottlenecks for bringing hydrogen into everyday use is the problem with storage. This storage problem prevents hydrogen from competing with gasoline as a fuel, even though it burns more efficiently and pollution free.”

In collaboration with Dr. McGrady’s team, HSM is currently testing an initial product that stores more than six per cent hydrogen by weight. The next step is to develop a more cost efficient product that will store more than nine per cent hydrogen by weight.

HSM believes that this will lead to acceptance of its materials as the industry standard. This will allow for the expansion of HSM into hydride tanker trucks for the widespread distribution of hydrogen, and the use of its hydrogen storage container as a fuel tank within fuel cell and hydrogen powered vehicles.

AFP reports that one of the Canary Islands will soon be solely powered by renewables.

El Hierro, one of the smallest of Spain’s Canary Islands, is to receive 100 percent of its electricity supply from renewable energy sources, the Madrid government said Tuesday.

As part of a plan through to 2009, El Hierro will soon be able to rely on a combination of hydroelectricity and wind power to generate its electricity, the industry ministry said. “El Hierro will be the first island in the world totally supplied by renewable energy,” the ministry said, without specifying when the scheme would actually be up and running. The island will rely on a system involving two reservoirs to power hydroelectic stations, a wind farm and a pumping system. “The bulk of the energy injected into the distribution network will emanate from the hydroelectric plant” with capacity of 10 megawatts, the ministry said.

The wind farm will generate electricity for the pumping station that will pump water to the two reservoirs that feed the hydroelectric stations, the ministry explained. Excess wind energy will be used to power two desalination plants. An existing diesel-powered plant on the island, population 10,500, will be maintained for emergencies if water and wind supplies run short.

“Using this system, we can transform a intermittent energy source into a controlled and constant supply of electricity,” the ministry said of the 54.3 million euro (65 million dollar) scheme which is designed to cut the island’s annual carbon dioxide emissions by 18,700 tonnes.

Kevin at Cryptogon has some comments (he also notes that Houses are cheaper than cars in Detroit):

It’s not rocket science, folks, as I’ve been saying for years…

The “water battery” is a great way to go. If I could build any system I wanted for my own property, that’s what I would do. Some of the time, my “battery” would be charged for free, when it rains. The rest of the time, excess power that was generated from the wind and the sun would pump water up the hill, charging the “battery.” Ducks would swim in the “battery.” There might even be a tire (or ‘tyre’ in New Zealandese) island in the middle of the “battery” full of weird and wonderful plants. The “battery” would look like a beautiful pond to most people. There’s no need to frighten people by calling it an aquatic microclimate that can store intermittent surges of clean energy!

Anyway, hats off to Spain.

They would be able to avoid some of the intermittent generation aspects of their current plan with linear induction wave buoys, but that simple technology, for some reason, isn’t available yet. In this case, even with the losses associated with pumping that water up hill, it seems like wind alone is enough. Spain could always add the wave component in the future.

After Gutenberg has a post on the Abu Dhabi solar power initiative I mentioned recently.

Arid, semi-desert areas of the world, where there has been the most development of utility grade thermal solar electric power, include Spain, Israel and the Southwestern United States. Australia is another promising area, but, with the exception of one very impressive project, Australia so far has lagged behind in development of electric power from either geothermal or solar thermal. Other countries with less well-developed electric utilities, but with low use land exposed to large amounts of sunlight, are now investing in or exploring the potential of such development, to include Greece, Egypt, Mexico, India, Morocco, Iran, Italy and Algeria.

After recently referring to a 2005 policy analysis from Greenpeace, which noted1 that two of the five most promising regions in the world for development of large scale, thermal solar projects are the Middle East and North Africa, I learned .. that Abu Dhabi has announced plans to build a 100-megawatt solar plant.

Abu Dhabi, which is the capital of the United Arab Emirates, is one of the world’s largest oil producers. Last year, the emirate began the Masdar Initiative; it wants to become a center for the development and the implementation of clean energy technology.

Despite initial skepticism and a few snickers, Abu Dhabi has sought to prove it is serious about clean energy. Masdar has already started a $250 million “clean technology fund” and begun construction of a special economic zone for the advanced- energy industry.

A molten salt system is a means to store thermal energy, thus mitigating the problem of an intermittent source for generating electricity at night or during cloudy weather.

Vinod Khosla, who believes that application of concentrator technology is progress in the right direction, identified during his keynote address on innovation at the 2006 Solar Energy Conference, a main challenge for such development: energy storage. Utility scale systems become less cost effective and quite possibly impractical, when operated on an intermittent basis. Thus, the challenge to find low cost, high quality, thermal energy storage, so that the generators operate 24 hours a day every day.

“Electricity is expensive to store, but many of the things we make from electricity are not,” notes Engineer-Poet. There is coincident research into the storage of hydrogen and desalination of sea water. Inexpensive electricity generated from photo voltaic systems goes toward a supply of water split into hydrogen and oxygen. The electricity then is re-generated and fed into the grid when the solar energy is unavailable.

As previously noted, for less developed areas where the expense of sophisticated generators inhibits project development, an alternative is using Stirling engines as generators.

Solar power advocates have noted that as the cost of photo voltaic cells decreases while their efficiency increases, another innovation in CSP (Concentrated Solar Power) may supersede thermal solar. The Masdar Initiative is one program interested in development of a combined, cost effective technology. PV/T (Photo Voltaic / Thermal) solar panels began at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in 1979, but are just beginning to appear commercially.

On 25 February 25 ADFEC (Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company), a wholly owned subsidiary of Mubadala Development Company, signed a cooperative agreement with MIT. The agreement will pave the way for MIT to assist Masdar in the development of a post-graduate educational and research institute, making it the first institution dedicated to research-driven graduate programs. ...

There is a certain irony here, since the country to which Abu Dhabi could turn for expertise is Israel or the United States, a chief ally of Israel. There is even greater irony in the UAE using the billions spent by American on imported oil to develop new renewable energy sources.

The Age reports that Origin Energy has followed AGL's lead and launched a carbon reduction scheme.

Origin Energy Ltd has launched a carbon reduction scheme (CRS) to allow companies and their customers to reduce their environmental footprint. The CRS will encourage activities that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, recognise greenhouse gas emissions through carbon credits and enable the development of carbon offset products.

Origin managing director Grant King said the scheme would be particularly attractive to companies with international operations. "It (the scheme) draws on and extends existing mandatory and voluntary frameworks to ensure that participants can use one framework and apply it to national and international operations," Mr King said. "Importantly, the scheme is cost effective, transparent and externally verified. This scheme also allows business to approach carbon offsets that are sourced from abatement activities overseas."

Participating companies include National Australia Bank Ltd (NAB), Transurban Group, Lend Lease Corporation Ltd, Insurance Australian Group Ltd, the Australian Football League, STA Travel and Intrepid Travel.

Origin chief operating officer Karen Moses says she expects "many many" more companies to join the scheme, as they decide how they want to be involved. "It is designed to suit all sectors and all sizes of company," she said. The CSR allows companies to offset their own carbon footprint, or those of their customers.

STA Travel will give their customers the chance to offset the environmental effect of air travel, with money put into schemes that reduce greenhouse gases, such as tree planting. The cost to offset a return flight to Fiji would be about $40. Companies can also offset their own carbon footprint from sources such reducing excess energy consumption in offices.

Last week NAB unveiled a target to achieve to carbon neutral status by 2010. "This will be achieved through improving energy efficiency and use across its international operations and purchasing offset credits where emissions can't be avoided," NAB said in a statement. ...

Only on Monday Australia's largest gas and electricity retailer, AGL Energy Ltd, signed to the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), the world's first voluntary but legally binding greenhouse gas emissions reduction registry and trading program. While some might suggest there could be an element of competition between Origin and AGL, with their announcements made just 24 hours apart, Ms Moses says he doesn't see things that way. "It's good that more companies are paying attention to their impact on the environment," she said.

The CRS will be run from Sydney and its administration funded from revenue from carbon offsets.

The Independent has a report on the White House's war on climate science (which seems to have begun in the Clinton/Gore era).

James Hansen, the Nasa scientist who first warned the US government about global warming, yesterday delivered a withering critique of the way the White House has "interfered" with climate scientists at the space agency.

Dr Hansen, the director of Nasa's Goddard Institute of Space Studies in New York, said that the space agency's budget for studying the Earth's climate has been slashed and that its scientists have been systematically gagged about speaking of their concerns.

In detailed written testimony delivered yesterday to the US House of Representatives, Dr Hansen said that there had been creeping politicisation of climate change with the effect that the American public has been left confused about the science of global warming.

"During my career I have noticed an increasing politicisation of public affairs at headquarters level, with a notable effect on communication from scientists to the public," Dr Hansen writes in his testimony. "Interference with communication of science to the public has been greater during the current administration than at any time in my career," he says. "In my more than three decades in government, I have never seen anything approaching the degree to which information flow from scientists to the public has been screened and controlled as it has now.

Political appointees within the public affairs office at Nasa headquarters were accused by Dr Hansen of interfering in scientific statements and of blocking reports that link rising temperatures or melting sea ice with global warming. He says instructions and reprimands were often made orally so that there was no paper or electronic record of the interference, which allowed press relations personnel to dismiss gagging allegations as hearsay.

"My suggestion for getting at the truth is to question the relevant participants under oath, including the then Nasa associate administrator for earth sciences, who surely is aware of who in the White House was receiving and reviewing press releases that related to climate change," Dr Hansen says.

When Dr Hansen gave a lecture to the American Geophysical Union about the record global temperatures in 1995, the White House called Nasa headquarters to complain of the resulting media attention. "The upshot was a new explicit set of constraints on me, including the requirement that any media interviews be approved beforehand and that headquarters have the right of first refusal on all interviews," he says. "It became clear that the new constraints on my communications were going to be a real impediment when I was forced to take down from our website our routine posting of updated global temperature analysis."

Since then, Nasa has slashed its budget for the study of earth sciences. "The impact is to confuse the public about the reality of global warming, and about whether that warming can be reliably attributed to human-made greenhouse gases," he says.

The Energy Blog points to a report on food production losses due to global warming.

Over a span of two decades, warming temperatures have caused annual losses of roughly $5 billion for major food crops, according to a new study by researchers at the Carnegie Institution and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

From 1981-2002, warming reduced the combined production of wheat, corn, and barley—cereal grains that form the foundation of much of the world’s diet—by 40 million metric tons per year. The study, which was published March 16 in the online journal Environmental Research Letters, demonstrates that this decline is due to human-caused increases in global temperatures.

"Most people tend to think of climate change as something that will impact the future,” said Christopher Field, co-author on the study and director of Carnegie’s Department of Global Ecology in Stanford, Calif. “But this study shows that warming over the past two decades has already had real effects on global food supply."

Green Business News has a post on "What firms should do about "The Great Global Warming Swindle"".

So global warming is a hoax.

We know this because last night a high-profile documentary on Channel 4 titled "The Great Global Warming Swindle" told us so over 90 long minutes.

For those who didn't catch it, the programme gathered together what Channel 4 called an "impressive roll-call of experts" who claimed man-made global warming is a myth, "created by fanatically anti-industrial environmentalists, supported by scientists peddling scare stories to chase funding, and propped up by compliant politicians and the media".

SunTo support these claims it pointed to evidence that suggests increased levels of CO2 are the result rather than the cause of global warming; cited theories that argue increased sun activity is the primary factor driving higher temperatures; that the conventional wisdom fails to account for a period of global cooling last century; and claimed climate theories that challenge the conventional wisdom on manmade global warming are being silenced by a scientific community that unthinkingly dismisses them as the work of cranks in an attempt to protect budgets for their own studies.

It is a wonderful conspiracy story, told with panache and relying on just enough serious-sounding science and eminent-looking sources to make it all appear reassuringly plausible.

It is also, of course, mostly complete nonsense.

What the documentary omits to say is that it is widely accepted that temperature and CO2 levels are linked and that in prehistory temperatures would increase 800 years before levels of CO2 climbed. But as The Independent pointed out in a review of the documentary earlier this week "it is irrelevant to what is happening now, because for the first time ever enormous amounts of extra CO2 are being released".

Similarly theories that sun activity drives global warming are not new, and again what the programme fails to reveal is the fact that many studies that argue CO2 is the primary cause of climate change have also assessed the impact of the sun's activity and concluded it is too minimal to have had such a large effect. Clearly there are a handful of scientists who disagree and maintain the sun is the main cause, but a far greater number of studies insist this is simply not the case.

The programme also claims that the conventional climate science can not account for a 40 year period of global cooling that followed the Second World War. It argues that during this period of mass industrialisation CO2 levels rose and in complete contradiction to the expected result the temperature fell. What it omits to say is that, as explained over at Science Blogs, the conventional theory has accounted for this period of lower temperatures, claiming that it was largely caused by increased levels of sulphate aerosols.

Of course the programme makers and contributors can get round these glaring omissions by dismissing these rival studies are all part of the great global warming conspiracy, which aims to cripple the developing world and ensure that climate scientists can line their pockets.

But if these various dissenting voices are all being silenced and sidelined as part of this conspiracy how come they have a prime time documentary and global press coverage, including a piece this week in The Washington Times? If there is a massive conspiracy led by the establishment and the media how come leading opponents of man-made climate change such as Nigel Calder can still find a platform for their views in some of the world's most respected newspapers? It is hard to accept scientific debate is being stifled when these people are (quite rightly) completely free to publicly voice their concerns about the prevailing opinion.

It is far easier to believe that some scientists disagree on the causes of climate change - after all the whole practice of science is built around such disagreements. But how plausible is it that a large group of these scientists has become so desperate to win the argument, maintain their relatively small salaries, and destroy the industrialised world that they have set out to deliberately trick the finest political and business minds of their generation? ...

Reuters has an article on a dolphin dieoff in Texas (which would have been better titled "The Texas Dolphin Massacre").

The stranding deaths of about 60 bottlenose dolphins on Texas beaches over the past three weeks has puzzled researchers and is a cause for concern during the calving season, a senior scientist said on Monday.

"This is the calving season so we often have strandings at this time of the year. It's tough to be an air-breather born in the water," said Dr. Daniel F. Cowan, professor of pathology at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and director of the Texas Marine Mammal Stranding Network. "But over the last few weeks we have had about 3 to 4 times the usual mortality," he told Reuters.

Most of the carcasses were in an advanced state of decomposition, suggesting that they were carried to Texas beaches from areas further off or up the shore. Suspected causes include parasites, an outbreak of infectious diseases or red tide, an algal bloom prompted by fertilizers or other excess nutrients. ... Several of the dolphins which have washed up on shore have been young with umbilical cords still attached.

Past Peak points to a Patrick Cockburn article on the state of freedom and democracy in Iraq, courtesy of our heroic oil grab.

Four years ago, in the middle of the US invasion, I drove safely from Arbil in northern Iraq to Baghdad. There were heaps of discarded weapons beside the road, and long lines of former Iraqi soldiers walking home. Signs of battle were few, aside from the hulks of burned-out tanks, but they all seemed to have been hit by US aircraft after their crews had fled.

If I tried to make the same journey today, I would be killed or kidnapped long before I reached Baghdad. Kurdish ministers in the Iraqi government dare not travel by road between the capital and their homeland. Three bodyguards of the Foreign Minister, Hoshyar Zebari, were ambushed and killed when they tried to do so a month ago.

Tony Blair and George Bush still occasionally imply that the picture of Iraq as a war-torn hell is an exaggeration by the media. They suggest, though not as forcibly as they did a couple of years ago, that parts of the country are relatively peaceful. Nothing could be more untrue.

In reality, the violence is grossly understated. The Baker-Hamilton report by senior Republicans and Democrats, led by James Baker, took a single day last summer, when the US army reported 93 acts of violence in Iraq, and asked American intelligence to re-examine the evidence. They found the real figure was 1,100--the US military had deliberately understated the violence by factor of over 10. [...]

Most [ordinary Iraqis] wanted rid of Saddam Hussein because they expected a better life after his fall. Since they had oil reserves comparable to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, Iraqis felt, why could they not have an equivalent standard of living to Saudis and Kuwaitis?

In fact almost every aspect of Iraqi day-to-day life has got worse over the last four years. In May 2003, people in Baghdad were getting 16 to 24 hours of electricity a day. Today the official figure is just six hours a day — and even that is on the optimistic side. In a city with one of the hottest climates in the world, it is catastrophic when fridges, freezers or air conditioners cannot be used.

There are 4.8 million Iraqi children under the age of five, who have lived most of their lives since the fall of Saddam Hussein. UNICEF figures show that 20 per cent of them are so severely malnourished that their growth is stunted.

Under Saddam Hussein most Iraqis worked for the state. This worked well while he had oil revenues to pay them, but after 1990, UN sanctions meant that millions of people who had enjoyed a middle-class standard of living became totally impoverished, and four years ago more than half of Iraqis were unemployed. One of the worst scandals of the occupation is that they still are — although billions of dollars have been spent, billions were stolen.

For all the money supposedly being spent on developing the economy, there were no cranes to be seen in Baghdad except a cluster in the Green Zone, at work on a vast new American embassy.

I'll close with some jokes, also from Past Peak.

Military contractor Halliburton announced this week that it is moving its corporate headquarters from Houston, Texas, to Dubai. A Halliburton spokesman said Dubai was chosen because of its convenient location just outside the long arm of the law. — Amy Poehler

This just in: Alberto Gonzales has announced he's going to move the Justice Department to Dubai. — Jay Leno