Technology Review has an article on "devices that make ice at night to replace air-conditioning during times of peak power demand" - Using Ice to Cool Down the Grid.

Over the next few weeks, a consortium of municipal utilities in California will begin retrofitting government offices and commercial properties with systems that use ice made at night to replace air-conditioning during the day. It's part of a pilot program for the devices, which are built by Windsor, CO-based Ice Energy. If widely deployed, they could reduce fuel consumption by utilities by up to 30 percent and put off the need for new power plants.

The first devices will be installed on about two dozen city-owned buildings in Glendale, CA, under the plan being coordinated by the Southern California Public Power Authority. Over the next two years, the 11 participating utilities will install 1,500 of the devices, providing a total of 53 megawatts of energy storage to relieve strain on the region's electrical grid. The project is the first large-scale implementation of Ice Energy's technology.

Each Ice Energy device is designed to make ice overnight, when demand for electricity is low, using a high-efficiency compressor to freeze 450 gallons of water. Around midday, the cooling mode kicks in, and the device shuts off the building's regular air conditioner for a six-hour cycle. It pipes a stream of coolant from the slowly melting block of ice to an evaporator coil installed within the building's heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning blower system. Once the ice is melted, the air conditioner returns to normal operation. Brian Parsonnet, Ice Energy's chief technology officer, says the Ice Bear can cut a building's power consumption by 95 percent during peak hours on the hottest days.

Cutting demand for electricity during peak hours reduces the need to build new power plants. It also allows utilities to rely on their most efficient power plants, says Ronald Domitrovic, a senior project manager for electric utilization at the Electric Power Research Institute. He says that when utilities fire up their "least efficient, oldest, and least desirable" generating resources to meet peak demand, every increment of increased power on the grid sends costs surging, whether one is talking fuel costs, greenhouse gas emissions, or service reliability. However, at night, utilities draw on their most efficient power plants, which use less fuel than power plants used only during peak hours. The utility also saves energy at other points in the grid--for example, cooler power lines at night transmit electricity more efficiently.

Domitrovic says systems that use ice or cold water on a large scale to provide cooling for campuses and large buildings have "been around for some time." But he says these are usually "expensive one-off units, designed specifically for the building," and that the smaller modular thermal storage systems that Ice Energy provides "can be deployed with relative simplicity" to serve one- or two-story commercial buildings. Ice Energy says that cooling units housed at distributed sites can be networked, presenting utilities with a resource that can be dispatched as needed to help manage demand on the grid.

TreeHugger has a post on storing excess wind power in the form of ice - Ice Could Be Key To Storage of Renewable Energy .

75% of our electricity goes into buildings, and much of that runs air conditioning. The entire system is built to try and cope with the peak loads that come in summer. TreeHugger has covered ice storage systems before; they simply make ice at night, when electricity is cheaper and it is cooler, so it is easier to make, and then run air conditioning during the daytime when it is hot and electricity is in short supply. This can knock the peak off the demand curve and significantly reduce the need for new power plants.

But we learned In the Calmac Booth that it can have another significant benefit: It can act as a battery for wind power.

In some areas, the wind blows stronger at night than in the day, but the nation is running on base load power and the extra power from the wind is wasted. But Icebank storage systems could use that power and convert it to ice. It then acts as a battery, storing the energy at night to cool buildings during the day.

The BBC reports that the fabled northwest passage has finally opened up - your carbon emissions at work.

The most direct route through the Northwest Passage has opened up fully for the first time since records began, the European Space Agency (Esa) says. Historically, the passage that links the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans through the Canadian Arctic has been ice-bound. But the agency says ice cover has been steadily shrinking, and this year's drop has made the passage navigable. The findings - based on satellite images - have raised concerns about the speed of global warming.

The Northwest Passage is one of the most fabled sea routes in the world - a short cut from Europe to Asia through the high Arctic. Recent years have seen a marked shrinkage in its ice cover, but this year it was extreme, Esa says. It says this made the passage "fully navigable" for the first time since monitoring began in 1978.

"We have seen the ice-covered area drop to just around 3m sq km (1,2 sq miles)," Leif Toudal Pedersen of the Danish National Space Center said. He said it was "about 1m sq km (386,000 sq miles) less than the previous minima of 2005 and 2006". "There has been a reduction of the ice cover over the last 10 years of about 100, 000 sq km (38,600 sq miles) per year on average, so a drop of 1m sq km (386,000 sq miles) in just one year is extreme," Mr Pedersen said.

The Northeast Passage through the Russian Arctic has also seen its ice cover shrink and it currently "remains only partially blocked," Esa says.

Scientists have linked the changes to global warming which may be progressing faster than expected. The opening of the sea routes are already leading to international disputes. Canada says it has full rights over those parts of the Northwest Passage that pass through its territory and that it can bar transit there. But this has been disputed by the US and the European Union. They argue new route should be an international strait that any vessel can use.

TreeHugger reports that the first geoengineering experiment is about to begin in the South Atlantic - "International Team Of Scientists To Test South Atlantic Carbon Sink In 2009". Yikes - isn't reducing our carbon emissions a lot easier than conducting these sorts of dangerous experiments for evermore ?

In an attempt to test the possibility of mitigating the effects of global warming, scientists from India, Germany, Italy and Chile plan on “sinking” carbon emissions into the Scotia Sea, off the Antarctic Peninsula in the South Atlantic, during January to March 2009.

By depositing 20 tonnes of non-toxic iron sulfate into a 1,000 square kilometre area of the sea, it is hoped that the iron particles will create fertile conditions for the explosive growth of phytoplankton or algae and microorganisms that will soak up carbon dioxide.

Carbon sinking (also called ocean seeding, iron fertilization, carbon capture and sequestration) was first tested 15 years ago as alternative method of “managing” global warming, though there are questions to the long-term environmental ramifications of experiments on this kind of scale.

Earlier this year, companies such as Planktos have conducted trials in seeding an area near the Galapogos to observe the effects. According to Planktos, the process involves dilute infusions of iron over large areas and if ocean seeding is successful in the long term, it will apparently not only restore plankton populations but also improve water quality, buffer the surface water acidity and assist in sinking large amounts of carbon into the ocean to slow climate change.

However, the amount of carbon absorbed or “sunk” will hinge on how much plankton sinks to the sea bed. There are concerns that the increase in plankton will result in more methane and nitrous oxide being released into the atmosphere – possibly worsening the situation.

Nevertheless, it is obvious that the sea’s capacity to absorb carbon has decreased: recent data published in Science shows that the Southern Ocean’s ability to absorb carbon from the atmosphere has been reduced approximately 15% every decade since 1981, due to changing levels of substances such as iron sulfate. The result is a possible feedback loop from the intensification of increasing carbon emissions, coupled with the ocean’s declining ability to absorb carbon. It is a worrying scenario and only time will tell if large-scale, international experiments such as these will have a positive impact on slowing climate change.

Links:

* Peak Energy (US) - the surge. Northern hemisphere branch is back from an extended holiday.
* CNN - The end of oil. Run of the mill introduction to peak oil story. Only covers 2 extremes - Heinberg saying peak oil is now, some guy from Oppenheimer and Rex Tillerson from Exxon saying we have 3 trillion barrels left - reality nowhere to be seen. Hasn't the basic story been done everywhere now ? I feel like I'm reading repeats...
* Courier Mail - End of the Oil Age is near and Report warns of petrol chaos. Articles on Andrew McNamara's yet-to-be released report on peak oil and its impact on Queensland.
* Courier Mail - Crude Awakening reveals all about peak oil
* The Oil Drum - Declining Net Oil Exports Versus “Near Record High” Crude Oil Inventories: What is going on?
* Energy Bulletin - OPEC and $80 oil
* Dave Roberts - 10 things we can do: Rebuilding civil society
* Grist - The desertification-global warming feedback loop
* Grist - Bill to phase out incandescent light bulbs gains steam in U.S. Congress
* Energy Bulletin - UK Conservatives issue green blueprint
* TreeHugger - Razing Buffalo: Why is This Happening?
* WorldChanging - Making City Streets Safer for Bicycles. My main bicycle safety issue at the moment is homicidal over-protective magpies attacking me every day when I ride past their tree. This article has no useful hints on that front.
* Open The Future - Greetings from Rüschlikon. "Sometimes, being a futurist means acting as a civilizational therapist."
* Mobjectivist - Ambiguity
* Mobjectivist - Hooky Bump'in, and other parasitic relationships
* Inventor Spot - Crowded Japan