Earth2Tech has a post on a wave of new iPhone apps that help you monitor and manage your power usage by letting users visualise data gathered by smart meters - 7 iPhone Apps to Manage Energy Consumption.

Energy management tools designed to help you curb unnecessary power used in your home have yet to break into the mainstream, and only 13 percent of people say they would want to manage home energy consumption via a mobile device, according to Clint Wheelock of Pike Research (via GigaOM Pro subscription required). But hey, who needs a market for this stuff, when energy management startups can build a slick iPhone app on the cheap and use the mobile version as marketing for their main products. There’s also been an influx of iPhone app developers that have created basic calculators that you can use to manually plug in electricity meter data to track and manage your home consumption (we only named a couple of them below). Here’s 7 iPhone apps being developed by firms that want you to cut back on your pad’s energy use and which are available now, or will be soon enough, through Apple’s iPhone app store.

Tendril Vantage Mobile: Tendril Vantage Mobile, which debuted at the Demo conference in March, comes from Tendril — a 5-year-old Boulder, Colorado-based company that recently raised $30 million. (Updated) The app will be available to both select utility customers and consumers in 2010, offering a way to see their home energy consumption in real time, view dynamic pricing changes, and control connected appliances and thermostats remotely. Tendril says it is also working on adding text-message updates, more graphs, and information about the carbon emissions associated with users’ energy use.

Visible Energy’s Energy UFO: Visible Energy, a year-old Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup that launched at our Green:Net conference earlier this year, has developed an iPhone application called Energy UFO that is already available on Apple’s app store for free. The UFO app provides a mobile interface for the plugs and circuits that are connected to Visible Energy’s energy management gadgets and power strips — but, since that gear isn’t available for sale yet, we’re thinking the iPhone app won’t be too interesting until the first products are supposed to be available by Christmas of this year.

Ecobee’s Smart Thermostat: As Tyler Hamilton reported on Clean Break this weekend, the Toronto-based startup Ecobee, which has developed a WiFi-based smart thermostat, is planning to launch an iPhone app that enables users to remotely turn up and down their thermostats. The thermostat interface is displayed horizontally on the iPhone screen and can be used for utility demand response services.

Meter Readings: Developed by Graham Haly and released at the end of July, Meter Readings is available now for $0.99, and provides up to four interfaces where you can enter meter data from electricity, water and gas meters. Like the following two apps, Meter Readings is intended for manual entry of meter data so it is a little time consuming and limited.

MeterRead: Another manual input app, MeterRead was created by Zerogate, and enables the user to input the data from electricity meters to monitor and manage home energy consumption. It’s available now for $0.99. The interface is interesting in that you can set the virtual dial on the app to match the image on the meter, instead of inputting numerical data (via TheAppleBlog).

Wattulator and Watts Plus: Like the two previous manual input applications, the Wattulator and Watts Plus — both developed by David Holzer and released late June — requires you to manually input power usage to crunch calculations, but these apps are focused on how much energy specific appliances are consuming. Available now for $0.99 for Wattulator and $1.99 for Watts Plus.

Control4’s My House UI: Digital home startup Control4, which recently raised $17.3 million, has recently launched an iPhone application for its customers called “My House UI.” The iPhone app enables the customer to control a variety of house system, including air conditioning and heating and lights. It’s free to download but of course you need Control4’s in-home devices.

Cleantech.com has a report on yet another planned algae based biofuel refinery - Plankton Power plans for biofuels facility on Cape Cod.

Wellfleet, Mass.-based algae biofuel developer Plankton Power and Woods Hole, Mass.-based virtual incubator Regional Technology Development of Cape Cod said today they have established a public-private consortium to build a new facility to produce renewable biofuels from algae.

The site, to be called the Cape Cod Algae Biorefinery, is expected to focus on pilot- and commercial-scale development of algae biodiesel that would be cost-competitive with existing petroleum- and vegetable-based fuels, with improved performance characteristics.

The facility, with access to Cape Code’s convenient source of seawater, includes collaboration with the Massachusetts National Guard, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Marine Biological Laboratory, and the Cape Cod Commission.

The proposed biorefinery is expected to be constructed on five acres on the Massachusetts Military Reservation in Bourne, Mass., supported by the state’s National Guard. The facility would focus on Plankton’s algae-growth technology, the result of 20 years of cold saltwater species research and production.

The biodiesel produced from Plankton’s cold-saltwater algae species serves as a drop-in replacement for petroleum-based biofuels, according to the company. By fall 2010, Plankton expects to initiate pilot-scale operations to generate up to one million gallons of biodiesel per year—enough fuel to supply Cape Cod's current biodiesel usage.

The Cape Cod Algae Biorefinery Consortium has submitted a $20 million proposal to the U.S. Department of Energy that would leverage $4 million in private funding to construct the proposed facility. MassDevelopment, the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, and Loud Fuel are supporting the initiative.

Massachusetts-based Waltham Technologies is also producing biodiesel, but with a special breed of blue-green algae and focused on the beverage industry. The bacteria doesn’t need acres of land, sunlight or ponds often required to grow green plant-like algae (see Blue-green algae turns dirty water into clean energy).

Cape Cod isn’t only being looked at for its biofuel capabilities. A 468-megawatt wind turbine project was proposed to be built off the coast. The $1 billion project was met with some roadblocks from the Cape Cod Commission (see Cape Wind's latest hurdle a breeze?).

The New York Times has a post wondering if it makes sense to manufacture large wind turbines on site at wind farms instead of trying to transport and erect ever-larger monoliths from centralised manufacturing facilities - Why Not Make Turbines at Wind Farms?.

Since wind turbines are so difficult to transport, why not manufacture them on site — at a wind farm?

Clipper Windpower, a wind developer and manufacturer, is considering doing exactly that at a site in South Dakota. The company hopes to build a 5,000-megawatt wind farm (even bigger than the “world’s largest wind farm” that T. Boone Pickens once planned) in an area southeast of Pierre, the state capital. The farm alone would require 2,000 turbines — enough perhaps to justify, say, its own tower factory.

“The project is of a size that you can start to think about dedicated manufacturing for that project,” Peter Stricker, the vice president for strategic project development at Clipper, said.

One option would be a “gypsy plant” to turn out turbine parts temporarily. Mr. Stricker said that it could be either an “industrial tent structure,” or mounted on a flat-bed. Another possibility would be a more permanent factory.

“The industry is paying too much of its overall margin to just getting pieces delivered,” Mr. Stricker said.

He offered no firm time-line for the South Dakota project, but suggested that it would not be operational until at least middle of the next decade. One big hurdle, he said, was transmission — getting the wind power from lightly populated South Dakota to the cities that need it. A proposed 3,000-mile, $10 billion to $12 billion transmission line in the Upper Midwest called the “Green Power Express” would help.

For a change of pace...

Mountain bike in Alps.

Next100 has a post on the much reported McKinsey report into energy efficiency - THE SAUDI ARABIA OF ENERGY EFFICIENCY

McKinsey & Company this week released a report on energy efficiency opportunities in the United States -- not solutions, which the report authors say will be up to policy makers, businesses and academia.

The report outlines widespread barriers to energy efficiency potential over the last several decades, including:

* substantial upfront investment in exchange for long-term savings

* fragmented potential -- across millions of locations and billions of devices in varied sectors inherent challenge of measuring and verifying energy not used

There are also opportunity-specific barriers relating to structural barriers, behavioral barriers and barriers of simple availability.

If we can overcome some of these barriers, how much energy efficiency potential are we talking?

At the press briefing, McKinsey Director Ken Ostrowski said, "The United States is the Saudi Arabia of energy effiicency." You get the idea.

More specifically, the full energy efficiency potential of the United States is greater than Canada's current non-transporation energy consumption, than either Mexico or South Korea's entire energy consumption and equal to "shutting down the world for two weeks." Wow.

Wondering how McKinsey came to such grand conclusions?

The team modeled more than 650 technologies and analyzed more than 20,000 micro-segments of energy consumption. They also benefited from the expertise and participation of PG&E, along with other government, non-government and private entities.

The Australian has a report on further increases in coal seam gas reserves in Australia - Arrow Energy gas reserves more than double.

ARROW Energy's chief executive expects the company to continue to deliver reserve upgrades and said it has the capability to supply both the Fishermans Landing and Curtis Island liquefied natural gas plants in Queensland.

The Sydney-based group said it has more than doubled its proven and probable reserves, or 2P, gas reserves to 2,581 petajoules. "This is a huge reserves increase but there is much more to come - we have barely scratched the surface and we have much more to do," chief executive Nick Davies said.

Arrow's current 2P reserves are about a quarter of the size of those of Woodside Petroleum's, Mr Davies said, and these reserves have come from only one 10th of Arrow's coal seam methane land. ... Arrow said today the 2,581 2P petajoules of coal seam gas at June 30, was up 119 per cent from 1,177 PJ at December 31. The company's net proven, probable and possible reserves now stand at 5,412 PJ, Arrow said.

TED has a new talk from Janine Benyus, promoting biomimicry based design - Janine Benyus: Biomimicry in action.

Janine Benyus has a message for inventors: When solving a design problem, look to nature first. There you'll find inspired designs for making things waterproof, aerodynamic, solar-powered and more. Here she reveals dozens of new products that take their cue from nature with spectacular results.

(Recorded at TEDGlobal 2009, July 2009 in Oxford, UK. Duration: 17:42)

One company I hadn't heard of before that was mentioned in the talk is a collaboration between Benyus and Paul Hawken called "OneSun", though I haven't been able to find anything about it online, other than an indirect reference in the Harvard Business Review that talks about a solar panel which "imitates a leaf" and an announcement at the Clinton Global Initiative in September. She also mentioned her "Ask Nature" initiative (mentioned below) and EO Wilson's "Encyclopedia Of Life".

Paul Hawken, one of the first green entrepreneurs and environmental capitalists, is working with Benyus on an interesting new venture. They're looking at Benyus' database of 2,100 nature-themed technologies invented by biologists and winnowing it down to handful that have tremendous commercial potential to solve important problems. (You can peruse a great deal of this knowledge free at asknature.org.) They couldn't provide too many details for intellectual property reasons, but they have a new design for a solar panel which imitates the way a leaf uses the sun's energy. As opposed to regular solar panel production, which is extremely hi-tech and requires clean rooms and lots of energy, Hawken says they have found a new, cheaper way using materials found in every home in the country. President Clinton will be announcing something about this at the next Clinton Global Initiative meeting in September — so watch this space.

Physics Central has an article on generating power using salinity differentials between different bodies of water (which I once dubbed "The Power Of Osmosis") - Electricity From Salty Water.

A device that gleans usable energy from the mixing of salty and fresh waters has been developed by University of Milan-Bicocca physicist Doriano Brogioli. If scaled up, the technology could potentially power coastal homes, though some scientists caution that such an idea might not be realistic.



Extracting clean, fresh water from salty water requires energy. The reverse process?mixing fresh water and salty water?releases energy. Physicists began exploring the idea of extracting energy from mixing fresh and salty waters, a process known as salination, in the 1970s. They found that the energy released by the world?s freshwater rivers as they flowed into salty oceans was comparable to "each river in the world ending at its mouth in a waterfall 225 meters [739 feet] high," according to a 1974 research paper in the journal Science. But those who have chased the salination dream have collided with technological barriers.

Brogioli has developed a new approach to salination, a prototype cell that relies on two chunks of activated carbon, a porous carbon commonly used for water and air filtration. Once he jump starts the cell with electric power, all that is required to produce electricity are sources of fresh and salty water and a pump to keep the water flowing. When the separate streams of salty and fresh water mix, energy is released.

A typical cell would require about three dollars worth of activated carbon, and, given a steady flow of water, the cell could produce enough electricity to meet the needs of a small house. It's the equivalent, in hydroelectric power, of running your appliances from a personal 100 meter (338 feet) high waterfall.

Salination would be an ideal technique for places where fresh and salty waters naturally mix, such as estuaries, according to Brogioli. He said that a coastal community of about a hundred houses could set up a plant with minimal damage to the ecosystem. "A salinity difference plant will be much smaller than a solar plant," he said. The only waste product is slightly brackish water that can be poured directly into the sea or, Brogioli suggested, into ponds that support estuary-friendly flora and fauna.

Instead of using fresh water, an increasingly scarce global resource, a salinity power plant could use water that is polluted or slightly contaminated with salt, giving new life to unusable water, Brogioli said. Seawater could also be mixed with high-salinity water, obtained by evaporating seawater?perfect for a desert community with little fresh water but sunshine to spare.

"Preliminary evaluations confirm that the setup can be scaled up to very big plants suitable for powering whole cities," said Brogioli.

Scientists agree that Brogioli's concept is sound but are cautious to declare it practical on a large scale.

"I don't see any reason why it should not work," said Yury Gogotsi, director of the A.J. Drexel Nanotechnology Institute at Drexel University in Philadelphia. "Capacitor desalination has been demonstrated and commercialized, and this can be called reverse capacitance desalination. It appears to be a logical approach. Of course the challenge is the practical implementation."

George Crabtree, a senior scientist at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, said he likes that the device extracts the energy as immediately usable electricity. But he sees difficulties in scaling up from a lab experiment to megawatt plants that could compete with wind turbines or other clean energy sources. Crabtree thinks the water requirements might limit the technology to large river deltas, like the mouth of the Mississippi. The energy it could potentially generate, he said, "is significant ... [but] not enough to solve everyone's problems."

The Times of India has an article on a new battery technology being promoted by Daniel Nocera - Tiny battery traps solar power to run a house for 24 hrs.

A Utah-based company has found a new way to store solar energy – in a small ceramic disk which can store more power for less. Researchers at Ceramatec have created the disk, which can hold up to 20-kilowatt hours, enough to power an entire house for a large portion of the day.

The new battery runs on sodium-sulfur — a composition that typically operates at greater than 600°F. “Sodium-sulfur is more energetic than lead-acid, so if you can somehow get it to a lower temperature, it would be valuable for residential use”, Ralph Brodd, an independent energy conversion consultant, says.

Ceramatec’s new battery runs at less than 200°F. The secret is a thin ceramic membrane that is sandwiched between the sodium and sulfur. Only positive sodium ions can pass through, leaving electrons to create a useful electrical current.

Ceramatec says that batteries will be ready for market testing in 2011, and will sell for about $2000. The disk has not yet been manufactured for residential use, but the creators have spoken optimistically about the possibility.

The convergence of two key technologies — solar power and deep-storage batteries — has profound implications for oil-strapped the US.

“These batteries switch the whole dialogue to renewables,” said Daniel Nocera, professor of energy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who sits on Ceramatec’s advisory board. “They will turn us away from dumb technology, circa 1900 — a 110-year-old approach — and turn us forward.”

The Durango Herald has an article on using geothermal energy (via hot springs) to heat greenhouses and provide other services in Colorado - Red-hot greenhouse.

The scalding mineral water that bubbles up from deep within the earth here to sustain spas, heat public buildings and de-ice sidewalks is scheduled to grow vegetables soon.

"The idea of using geothermal heat in greenhouses has been floated for 20 years," Michael Whiting, director of the land trust, said during a tour of the garden site last week. "We'll be able to grow crops year-round, and by adding a solar system to extend daylight hours, we could grow tropical fruit.

"Current circumstances - weak economy, high cost of fuel, interest in renewable energy and a shift in the national culture - could mean it's the right time."

A Web site of the Governor's Office of Energy Management and Conservation lists only one other site in Colorado where greenhouses are heated with geothermal energy - a grower of potted plants near Mount Princeton.

The project here will consist of four or five greenhouses on 2 acres donated by the town in Centennial Park at the confluence of the San Juan River and McCabe Creek.

Mineral springs in the region were treasured for therapeutic qualities by Native American tribes centuries before the site was discovered by military expeditions, miners and other settlers who arrived in the 1860s. Today, the water that gushes from artesian wells at temperatures of 130 to 150 degrees has been harnessed for other purposes.

Because mineralized water can't be used in distribution pipes, the town operates a heat-exchange system. The system strips heat from the mineralized water and transfers it to a fresh-water loop into which customers tap.

About 40 businesses and public buildings, including schools and the Archuleta County courthouse, already are tied into the system, Town Manager David Mitchem said. Other businesses, including spas, have their own geothermal systems, he said. The town recovers its costs on the system, which dates to 1982, Mitchem said. It's not intended to be a money maker. Town customers, who are on meters, pay 60 cents a therm, but the greenhouse project will not be charged.

The cost of the greenhouses as well as space for packaging and warehousing exceeds $500,000, with about $300,000 contained in the federal 2010 appropriations bill, Whiting said. Local businesses have pledged free in-kind contributions.

Green building of the week from Inhabitat is this German data centre - World’s First LEED Platinum Data Center Opens in Germany.

Germany recently joined the ranks of the green elite with the completion of Citigroup’s stunning new Data Center in Frankfurt. Designed by leading sustainable architecture and engineering firm Arup Associates, the 230,000-square-foot facility’s efficient use of energy and resource-conserving design have made it the first data center in the world to achieve LEED Platinum! That’s no small task considering the energy required to keep stacks of servers running smoothly in a climate-controlled environment.

Citigroup’s new data center outwardly showcases its green credentials throught the extensive use of recycled and locally sourced materials and alternating green facades - a green wall on one side of the complex and a fenestrated window panel on the other. Whereas the green wall serves to insulate the building’s interior, the fenestrated window offers daylighting while providing the opportunity for natural ventilation. The facility is topped off by a vegetated green roof that actively keeps the building cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter while absorbing rainwater. Plant topology was carefully selected to enhance the operational energy efficiency of the building.

While the building’s envelope aesthetically projects sustainable design practices, the most radical green innovations occur on the inside. Citi Data Center will use only 30 percent of the power required for services that a typical data center would utilize, and only requires 40 percent of the heating energy. Additionally, through the use of innovative reverse osmosis water treatment for cooling, the building will save 50 million liters of water per year.

Larvatus Prodeo has an amusing description of the rules for debating global warming - The Rules.

Hello world. It’s your friendly neighbourhood denialist here. Look, we need to talk. I think we got off on the wrong foot. You’ve got me all wrong. I’m really an open-minded guy. All I’m asking for is evidence of your AGW claims. Surely that’s not too much to ask?

And please note, that when I say evidence, I mean:

1) Nothing that was recorded by instruments such as weather-stations, ocean buoys or satellite data. Since all instruments are subject to error, we cannot use them to measure climate.

2) Nothing that has been corrected to account for the error of recording instruments. Any corrected data is a fudge. You must use only the raw data, which is previously disqualified under rule #1. Got that? OK, moving along…

3) Nothing that was produced by a computer model. We all know that you can’t trust computer models, and they have a terrible track record in any industrial, architectural, engineering, astronomical or medical context.

4) Nothing that was researched or published by a scientist. Such appeals to authority are invalid. We all know that scientists are just writing these papers to keep their grant money.

See? I’m a reasonable guy. I’m perfectly open to being convinced by real evidence — you know, the kind that doesn’t rely on scientific instruments, or corrected data, or computers, or results recorded by other scientists. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and I’m sure you’d agree that any evidence which meets my criteria would be extraordinary indeed.

And before you accuse me of hypocrisy, I apply all these rules to myself. For example, I have perfectly good evidence that the ETS will destroy the economy. I haven’t relied on any measurements, or projections, or the advice of economists in making this prediction. Therefore my evidence for this prediction of economic doom is water-tight. (On a related note, how can you predict the climate next decade when you can’t predict the weather next week? And did you know I can predict economic doom from the ETS next year, even though I can’t predict the stock market tomorrow?)

Before I go, here are some corollaries that devolve from the above 4 rules:

A) Any previous errors in climate science are automatic proof that new data is also wrong. For example, if you produce results which show a reduction in ice coverage, or a warming of ocean temperatures, all I have to do is shout ‘Hockey Stick!’ and the new data is instantly dispelled.

B) So, before I will accept your new data, it must retrospectively correct any errors in past data, and erase them from the space-time continuum as though they never occurred. Furthermore, if you do manage to perform this feat, your data will be invalid because corrected data is disqualified under rule #2.

C) Al Gore is a big fat hypocrite and a liar and a fraud who jets around the world and has a big house and eats puppies for breakfast. And will you please stop the ad hominem attacks on Ian Plimer?

D) Will somebody, please, somewhere, anywhere, address the science in Ian Plimer’s book? I mean, surely that’s not too much to ask? By the way, anybody who addresses the science in Ian Plimer’s book is just a nit-picker who hasn’t addressed the main issue.

E) Please, spare me your conspiracy theories. It’s not my fault that AGW is a giant hoax perpetrated by Big Green to take over the world in a socialist plot. I’m just trying to uncover the truth here, with the assistance of a lot of commentators, media personalities, corporate executives and hired scientists who just happen to share similar political views to my own.

F) Your position is based on religious faith, not on the science. I can tell because you pay attention to the scientific instruments, the corrected data, the computer models and the writings of published scientists, instead of what I know, deep in my heart to be the truth: that AGW is a giant hoax and a fraud.

G) If you ever refuse to debate with me, that is proof that your position is untenable, you’re frightened of the truth and you don’t have the evidence. And, by the way, when will Burt Newton respond publicly to the claims that he’s a trans-gender vampire who was regenerated in a vat from a single hair of Vlad the Impaler? His silence on this issue is telling…

—-

I’m so glad we could have this chat. I’m sure if we can just conduct this discussion using the rules and corollaries above, it will be an enlightening and fruitful enterprise that is well worth the time and effort of everybody involved.

I look forward to having this debate, at every opportunity, on every forum, on every website, from now until the end of time.

Yours truly,

The Marquess of Queensbury

The FT has a post on peak oil and the recent article in The Independent - Knocking peak oil.

We’re not averse to peak oil around here - in fact many of our favourite energy writers are peak oilists.

For some, the phrase provokes an image of mad survivalists, but the peak oil debate is really much more nuanced than this: will there be a peak or a plateau? Will there simply be a gradual shift towards higher energy prices (which is arguably already under way), or will prices shoot up quickly enough to have catastrophic consequences for those who are ill-prepared?

And above all, it’s a debate about timing: when will it happen, irreversibly and definitively?

But something has always bothered us a little about it. It’s not the technology argument (oil extraction techniques are advancing all the time, therefore the peak/plateau keeps getting extended), and it’s not the economic argument (we will simply adjust to higher oil prices, because that’s what economies do).

No, it’s this: is declining oil the most important issue here? John Kemp says no. Peak oil, he reckons, is ‘the right answer to the wrong question‘.

He points out a few well-known facts: fears of peak oil are almost as old as the oil industry itself; US production peaking gave a big boost to the peak oil argument, as did, more recently, decline in Mexico’s supergiant Cantarell field. At the same time, he says, the recent huge natural gas finds should give adherents of the Hirsch report pause for thought.

He also argues peak oil overly focuses on ‘conventional’ oil, the definition of which changes over time:

First, the definition of “conventional” changes over time as a result of price and technology. Deepwater oil only became conventional 20 years ago, and ultra-deepwater in the last decade. In future, higher prices and technology changes could eventually shift ocean and arctic output into the “conventional” category and increase the reserve base substantially.

Kemp argues that in contrast, there are plenty of other sorts of hydrocarbons around:

Second, the focus on conventional oil obscures the much larger reserve base of other hydrocarbons — natural gas, coal, bitumen (oil sands), and kerogen (oil shale), let alone methane hydrates (natural gas trapped in ice formations at the polar ice caps, in the permafrost zone and on the ocean floor).

And most of these aren’t even in the Middle East, he says. What is now considered unconventional oil, he says, is expensive but not necessarily too expensive. He puts the range at $40 - $120 a barrel, and this compared to conventional oil in Middle East countries, where our figures compiled late last year put the figure at less than $10 toward an upper range of about $30/barrel.

But Kemp maintains the cost is still significant. This is his parting shot:

Blinded by their obsession with physical availability of conventional oil, peak oilers miss the much larger questions: how much will these alternative hydrocarbons cost and what happens to the environment if we combust them all and don’t find a way to trap the CO2?

The topic of cost however has gained a lot of coverage recently: Christohper Steiner and Jeff Rubin have recently published well-publicised books about this very topic. Rubin says we will move from a world of ‘wage arbitrage’, where cheap transport costs made it economic to import goods from low-wage countries, to a very different sort of world in which localised production and trade plays a much greater role. We haven’t read Steiner’s book yet but he appears to be making a similar argument.

On the topic of environmental challenge, again he might slightly mischaracterise the peak oil movement - environmental issues are mentioned pretty regularly at places like The Oil Drum - and in fact TOD’s reader survey earlier this year shows there are quite a range of views on what declining oil supplies and/or more expensive oil might mean.

One of the other interesting arguments Kemp makes is that peak oil is really quite mainstream. Even the Green Group in his small village, he says, is hosting a talk on the subject. The massive interest in the Independent’s story on Monday either shows how mainstream it is, or how mainstream it isn’t (as much of it has already been said).

Beyond Zero Emissions has an interview (podcast) with Mil Ovan of Firefly Energy on improving lead acid battery technology - Mil Ovan of Firefly Energy speaks about their microcell technology that improves traditional lead acid battery peformance parameters.

Scott Bilby: We're talking with Mil Ovan, senior vice-president of Firefly Energy, a company that has developed a carbon graphite foam grid technology that increases the performance of lead acid batteries and reduces the amount of lead used. The technology has the potential to improve a wide range of market segments including transportation, construction, computer back up systems, just to name a few and also with significant cost savings. Welcome to the show Mil.

Mil Ovan: Thank you very much for having me. Appreciate it.

Scott: It's a joy having you on the show. We're interested in the name 'Firefly' and where it came from.

Mil: What's interesting about Firefly is that as I was thinking about the attributes of the technology, what words would capture it the best. It turns out I looked through the entire Thesaurus looking for names starting from A to Z and the short story is my daughter who was very young got up at 3 o'clock and wanted a bottle, I couldn't sleep after feeding her and I picked up the thesaurus and the first thing I saw in 'F' was Firefly and I said, that's it; but I went through all the way to Z anyway to figure out if there wasn't one that was even better. But when you think of a firefly it's very captivating, very illuminating, obviously a great power to weight ratio and also with the tip, it's very green and what we're doing with this firefly technology is replacing the heavy, corrodible, very non-conductive, lead metal grid in a lead-acid battery with this light-weight high surface foam material that now allows batteries to run longer, last longer be lighter, smaller in volume and much more environmentally responsive with the reduction in the amount of lead used in lead acid batteries. ...

Scott: And on that topic it kind of reminds us of the origin of the work done into the batteries from caterpillar. Is that correct?

Mil: Yes, the technology was incubated there, and it's a kind of interesting story. How is it that the company that makes earth moving equipment for a living come up with the Holy Grail of battery technology? Well, it turns out that Caterpillar has long used lead-acid batteries in their earth movers and you can't imagine a more abusive environment for a battery than something that shakes violently and is used in temperature extremes and is used infrequently like a battery in a CAT bulldozer, but they decided around the 2000 timeframe that they were going to put the Caterpillar name on those lead-acid batteries that they had long sourced from their current supplier and when they did that customers started to complain. They said, 'Hey, what's with this Caterpillar ruggedness that we've come to know and expect. These lead-acid batteries are failing, how would you fix them?' And that same battery had been sourced before by Caterpillar, so the customers' expectation really got heightened when the CAT name was put on that.

So, they went back to their existing base of lead-acid battery suppliers and said, 'How would you fix these problems? The battery kernel…unintelligible 05.13... at an accelerated rate of heights…unintelligible 05.16... you let the battery sit uncharged it sulfates up and you can't get the battery to accept the charge. How would you solve those problems?'

Not surprisingly, the answers coming back to Caterpillar weren't very sufficient from the lead-acid battery company, because when you think about it the last major innovation in lead-acid batteries, and by the way this technology was created in 1859, the last major innovation was not having to add water to your battery. Well, that's a big yawn because that was twenty, thirty years ago. So, when they reached the limits about what they can do with a lead-acid battery with the lead grid in it, they got rid of their R & D teams and their sophisticated test equipment and they started to look at other chemistries like nickel metal hydride and lithium.

So, Caterpillar instead, having found those answers to be not sufficient, turned inward to their own research and development arm, and Caterpillar probably spends about $600, $700 million a year on research and development, and an enterprising materials scientist named Kurt Kelley was given the task of designing a better lead acid battery. The good news, as it turns out, was that he had never designed a battery before so therefore he wasn't constrained with conventional wisdom about what you should and should not do to a battery, and one of those things that according to battery company wisdom was you shouldn't add carbon to a battery. Well, Kurt, as a materials scientist, knew that there was a broad spectrum of carbons, and that the battery industry only tried one, and Kurt tried an entirely different kind of carbon. And that overcame, therefore, the limitations in terms of runtime life that was posed by those who used lead metal and lead-acid batteries. So, that's really the essence of the innovation and in May, 2003 the technology was spun out to my partner and I as well as the chief scientist, whose also co-founder, and Firefly was founded in May, 2003.

Matthew: Now, for our listeners, they're familiar with the battery when it comes to lead –acid batteries, the battery in their motor vehicle, in their car, and now obviously, initially you'll be selling into some other markets, we can talk about those in a second, but I'm just interested in knowing, comparing it to what's in a car, like a flooded wet cell battery of a certain density that can deliver a certain amount of power to run your car, like how much lead is in a Firefly battery versus the one in our car, and how much more power can you get out of a Firefly battery than the kind of battery that's in a car at the moment?

Mil: Sure, and that's an interconnected question. In Australia you probably don't face extreme colds, but in more northern climates, typically in the winter, your battery is double-sized to account for the big drop in capacity when the cold temperatures hit. So, depending on your geography, this could be a third to a quarter less in size than a classic lead-acid battery.

It all depends on the application. You know, today's lead-acid battery isn't asked to do much in a car application, but that's quickly changing. You look in Europe, the E.U. wants to implement very stringent CO2 reductions on automobiles, and if the car manufacturer doesn't meet those by a certain timeframe they're going to get penalised 90 euros per car as a result. So, there's a dramatic shift to what are called micro-hybrid vehicles whereby you pull up to a busy stop light in Paris, you push in the clutch, the engine goes off, you let your foot off the brake after the light changes and the engine comes on again. And that's already been seen to reduce the amount of fuel consumption and pollution significantly.

However, the problem is the normal lead-acid battery isn't used to being started that many moment your Firefly technology, nickel metal hydrides, or these new lithium ion batteries times, you know instead of starting once when you drive your car home from work, you might be starting the vehicle 20-30 times during that commute and that's a very punishing application, particularly since when you're at that stop you still want to have your accessories running, now that has to run off the battery as a result rather than off the alternator. So, the situation with cars is going to be significantly changing and your father's lead-acid battery isn't going to be suitable for these new vehicles that are soon to be coming to the world.

BEZ is also campaigning against coal fired power - Switch off Hazelwood. Switch off Coal. Switch on Renewables. September 12-13.

"Switch off Hazelwood. Switch off Coal. Switch on Renewables" is a day of fun, creative and inspiring direct community action at Hazelwood coal power station.

Coal burning power stations are one of the main contributers to climate change, and Hazelwood is one of the dirtiest in the industrialised world.

On Sunday September 13th, 2009 people from across Victoria, and Australia, will come together for a day of peaceful community mass civil disobedience to Switch off Hazelwood and Switch off Coal – we will be taking direct action for renewable energy.

Renewable Energy World has an article on a new US Army project to develop a 500MW mixed solar PV and solar thermal power plant in California- Clark & Acciona To Develop 500-MW Solar Project for US Army.

Clark Energy Group has been selected to develop the largest solar power project in Department of Defense history at Fort Irwin, California. Joining Clark Energy Group in their efforts to construct and manage the Fort Irwin Solar Energy project will be Acciona Solar Power.

The selection of Clark and Acciona was made by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Baltimore District, Enhanced Use Leasing (EUL) program working in partnership with Fort Irwin and the Department of the Army.

The Fort Irwin Solar Energy EUL will entail a flexible, phased, multi-technology approach to delivering up to 1,000 megawatts (MW) of power generation. The Clark-Acciona proposal features the development of both photovoltaic and concentrated solar thermal technologies at an industrial scale.

The proposed development will ultimately include over 500 MW of solar power that will produce 1,250 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of renewable energy per year at Fort Irwin facilities. The Clark-Acciona plan calls for a phased implementation that considers site characteristics, constraints, available resources, current and future technologies, cost, access to transmission lines and length of approval and connection processes at each stage of construction.

The Fort Irwin Solar Energy EUL pilot project is an initiative of the Secretary of the Army's Senior Energy Council. The council is tasked with coordinating and promoting energy security and policy for the Army by utilizing measures to conserve and use energy wisely while also encouraging the production of alternative sources of energy from the Army's substantial land holdings across the United States.

TreeHugger points to a report in The Independent on the IEA and peak oil. It seems to be a rehash of an old story, but whatever - Warning: Oil supplies are running out fast.

The world is heading for a catastrophic energy crunch that could cripple a global economic recovery because most of the major oil fields in the world have passed their peak production, a leading energy economist has warned.

Higher oil prices brought on by a rapid increase in demand and a stagnation, or even decline, in supply could blow any recovery off course, said Dr Fatih Birol, the chief economist at the respected International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris, which is charged with the task of assessing future energy supplies by OECD countries.

In an interview with The Independent, Dr Birol said that the public and many governments appeared to be oblivious to the fact that the oil on which modern civilisation depends is running out far faster than previously predicted and that global production is likely to peak in about 10 years – at least a decade earlier than most governments had estimated.

But the first detailed assessment of more than 800 oil fields in the world, covering three quarters of global reserves, has found that most of the biggest fields have already peaked and that the rate of decline in oil production is now running at nearly twice the pace as calculated just two years ago. On top of this, there is a problem of chronic under-investment by oil-producing countries, a feature that is set to result in an "oil crunch" within the next five years which will jeopardise any hope of a recovery from the present global economic recession, he said.

In a stark warning to Britain and the other Western powers, Dr Birol said that the market power of the very few oil-producing countries that hold substantial reserves of oil – mostly in the Middle East – would increase rapidly as the oil crisis begins to grip after 2010.

"One day we will run out of oil, it is not today or tomorrow, but one day we will run out of oil and we have to leave oil before oil leaves us, and we have to prepare ourselves for that day," Dr Birol said. "The earlier we start, the better, because all of our economic and social system is based on oil, so to change from that will take a lot of time and a lot of money and we should take this issue very seriously," he said.

"The market power of the very few oil-producing countries, mainly in the Middle East, will increase very quickly. They already have about 40 per cent share of the oil market and this will increase much more strongly in the future," he said.

There is now a real risk of a crunch in the oil supply after next year when demand picks up because not enough is being done to build up new supplies of oil to compensate for the rapid decline in existing fields.

The IEA estimates that the decline in oil production in existing fields is now running at 6.7 per cent a year compared to the 3.7 per cent decline it had estimated in 2007, which it now acknowledges to be wrong.

"If we see a tightness of the markets, people in the street will see it in terms of higher prices, much higher than we see now. It will have an impact on the economy, definitely, especially if we see this tightness in the markets in the next few years," Dr Birol said.

"It will be especially important because the global economy will still be very fragile, very vulnerable. Many people think there will be a recovery in a few years' time but it will be a slow recovery and a fragile recovery and we will have the risk that the recovery will be strangled with higher oil prices," he told The Independent.

In its first-ever assessment of the world's major oil fields, the IEA concluded that the global energy system was at a crossroads and that consumption of oil was "patently unsustainable", with expected demand far outstripping supply.

Oil production has already peaked in non-Opec countries and the era of cheap oil has come to an end, it warned.

In most fields, oil production has now peaked, which means that other sources of supply have to be found to meet existing demand.

Physorg has an article on a new example of biomimicry - a "synthetic, microfabricated "leaf" that can generate power from evaporative flow" - Artificial Leaves Generate Power by Pumping Water.

Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Michigan, and MIT have constructed leaves out of glass wafers with tiny veins through which water can flow. The veins open at the tips of the glass "leaves," where evaporation draws water out of the veins at a rate of about 1.5 cm/sec.

Then, the researchers wired the leaves by adding metal plates to the walls of the central stems and connecting them to a circuit. By charging the metal plates, the researchers created a capacitor made from the two conducting plates separated by an insulating layer.

Next the researchers added air bubbles into the leaf veins to periodically interrupt the flow of water. Every time a bubble passed between the metal plates, it changed the capacitance and generated a small current. The current then passed to an external circuit where it increased the voltage on a storage capacitor.

Each bubble could create about 2-5 microvolts, or 2 microwatts per cubic centimeter. The researchers predict that they could easily improve this amount to a few hundred microwatts per cubic centimeter. This power density is still much less than that of batteries or fuel systems, and the power output is still modest compared to solar technology. Still, the researchers hope that, as an energy scavenging system, the synthetic leaves might serve as a complementary solar technology, with sunlight driving the transpiration process.

Grist has apost on a new all-electric car from Nissan - Nissan Unveils Leaf Electric Car.

Nissan unveiled Sunday its first all-electric car, the Leaf, vowing to open a new chapter for the troubled auto industry and take a lead over its bigger rivals in zero-emission vehicles.

The mid-sized hatchback, which will go on sale in late 2010 in Japan, the United States, and Europe, represents a bold bet by Nissan that hybrids are merely a passing fad on the road to pure electric vehicles.

The Leaf, described by Nissan as “the world’s first affordable, zero-emission car,” can travel more than 100 miles on a single charge, at a top speed of 87 miles per hour, the company said.

It will “lead the way to a zero-emission future, opening a new era in the automotive industry,” chief executive Carlos Ghosn said, unveiling the car at the group’s new headquarters in Yokohama, southwest of Tokyo.

“The Leaf is totally neutral to the environment: there is no exhaust pipe, no gasoline-burning engine. There is only the quiet, efficient power provided by our own lithium-ion battery packs,” he added.

The price was not announced, but Ghosn said it would be “very competitive.”

Nissan plans to sell the car at a similar price to a comparable model with a petrol-powered engine. The battery, which will be stored under the seat and floor, will be leased separately.

“The monthly cost of the battery, plus the electric charge, will be less than the cost of gasoline,” Ghosn said. ...

But the Leaf will not be the first electric car on the market. Mitsubishi Motors recently rolled out its “i-MiEV” minicar while Fuji Heavy Industries launched the Subaru Plug-in STELLA.

The Business Spectator has a pair of articles on the problems with carbon trading and why a carbon tax is preferable - Our carbon trading blunder.

It’s a tragedy that the climate change debate is being used to pull the Coalition apart and to possibly bring on a double dissolution, because the political skirmish is obscuring significant events that have occurred since the current set of policies were framed.

This week the change really came home to me when I discussed the latest developments with a state environment minister who seemed tantalised by the possibilities created by the new events. But with all policies virtually locked in, and the opposition in disarray, the widened debate is left to media commentators.

In today’s commentary I am ignoring the rising number of climate change sceptics which are a hidden force bubbling below the surface. A majority of Australians want to slash our use of carbon in a way that creates the least disruption to the economy. If we are not very careful, the present track will lead us to a carbon reduction policy that does the economy great harm.

As I have explained many time before, the discovery of huge reserves of gas – which burns with much lower carbon emissions than coal – in Queensland and NSW in North West Shelf quantities, gives Australia the opportunity to combine gas and renewable energy sources to slash emissions at a manageable cost (New energy can't wait, July 15). The United States is in a similar situation and the high-profile political figure Robert Kennedy Jr has woken up to the new paradigm.

To justify the investment in low carbon fuel sources, it is necessary to make carbon emissions a cost. In essence that’s what the emissions trading scheme is all about.

The trouble is that the proposed Australian version is complex and traps people and organisations that the community does not want to trap.

Many moons ago politicians on both sides of federal parliament and in most states abandoned the idea of a carbon tax because they reckoned it would be unpalatable to voters. But in those days they had budget surpluses and did not believe they needed an extra tax. Now they desperately need additional tax revenue to cover their huge deficits and are looking around for all sorts of nasty taxes.

So why not re-visit a carbon tax at a rate set at on the basis of an international formula? This would require a rebate for all export industries and a tax on the carbon content of imports. In other words, the price of carbon is lifted no matter where in the world it comes from. It's simple and it's easy to understand a tax and with wide community acceptance it would become the new GST to reduce the deficit. Fans of carbon trading will protest that selling carbon permits can raise just as much revenue for the government if the price is set correctly – however, the way the government's carbon trading plans are already being manipulated by interest groups suggests that in practice this would not happen.

And the second installment - Our carbon bubble danger.

A decade ago, when the accountants were debating a new set of accounting rules, business was too busy to be active in the discussions. The result is an international mess. We could never have imagined our accountants would get it so wrong. Similarly with sub-prime, who could have imagined American bankers being so stupid?

When it comes to carbon trading, we are once again too busy running our businesses to realise what is happening. I fear that the greatest legacy of the 'ute-gate' affair will soon be a that it did not give Malcolm Turnbull and the coalition the breathing space to step back from the carbon trading issues and devise a better way to achieve the government’s objective, rather than simply raising questions.

And there is a much better way to achieve the government’s carbon reduction objective. The best place to start such an examination process is the Conversation section of Business Spectator where we have been deluged with some wonderful commentaries – including commentaries from people who question whether carbon is the issue. I urge all my readers and all politicians to be updated on how much the carbon facts have moved since the Coalition government first proposed carbon trading.

When I initially raised the issue I was tentative because I knew that I was probably too late to have an impact on the debate, but the Conversation contributions have convinced me of the virtues of a carbon tax. And two private emails have added a new dimension: one from Clunies Ross award winner and Cosmos magazine founder Alan Finkel; and a second from a Sydney merchant banker who knows just how much money his sector will make from carbon trading. This merchant banker, who has asked that his name be withheld, gives a new perspective on a carbon tax.

Finkel in the June issue of Cosmos says that of the $23 billion expected to be raised via carbon permits in the first two years in Australia, ”every dollar will be returned in handouts, with not a cent allocated to technology research or investment in building infrastructure capacity”.

“Cunning traders” will exploit the scheme’s complexity as they did with the complexity of mortgages and derivatives created over the past 10 years, wreaking havoc on the global financial system.

Finkel says: “Do we really need to create a whole new market employing hundreds of highly paid lawyers, traders, brokers, analysts, bookkeepers and others just to buy and sell permits – or hoard, speculate or profiteer from them?”

A carbon tax can raise money “simply and fairly” because governments already have agencies that collect taxes efficiently. “No matter how small the price impact, it would stimulate more behavioural change than if there were no price increase at all.

“At a modest $10 per tonne, the annual revenue in Australia would be $6 billion. This would help pay for measures such as phasing out coal-fired electricity – replacing it with lower emissions sources such as gas-fired power, or near-zero emission options such as wind, solar and nuclear.

“It could pay for research into new technologies to improve energy efficiency and behavioural change, and mitigate the coming impacts of climate change”.

But the merchant baker has a different way of using a carbon tax.

“We could ‘do something’ about reducing Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions by taxing them fairly heavily, encouraging pass-through of the costs to consumers and using the tax proceeds to compensate consumers by cutting income taxes and raising social benefits, with the net effect being revenue neutral", he says.

”This would increase the costs of energy, transport and other CO2 intensive goods and services enough to stimulate and accelerate research, development and introduction of non-polluting alternatives (by the private sector).

“It would give consumers the ability to pay the new higher prices and would reward everyone who, in the past or future, did or does something to lower their greenhouse gas emissions."

Technology Review has an article on the state of play in the solar power industry, with the industry declaring "incremental advances have made transformational technologies unnecessary" - Solar Industry: No Breakthroughs Needed.

The federal government is behind the times when it comes to making decisions about advancing the solar industry, according to several solar-industry experts. This has led, they argue, to a misplaced emphasis on research into futuristic new technologies, rather than support for scaling up existing ones. That was the prevailing opinion at a symposium last week put together by the National Academies in Washington, DC, on the topic of scaling up the solar industry.

The meeting was attended by numerous experts from the photovoltaic industry and academia. And many complained that the emphasis on finding new technologies is misplaced. "This is such a fast-moving field," said Ken Zweibel, director of the Solar Institute at George Washington University. "To some degree, we're fighting the last war. We're answering the questions from 5, 10, 15 years ago in a world where things have really changed."

In the past year, the federal government has announced new investments in research into "transformational" solar technologies that represent radical departures from existing crystalline-silicon or thin-film technologies that are already on the market. The investments include new energy-research centers sponsored by the Department of Energy and a new agency called ARPA-Energy, modeled after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Such investments are prompted by the fact that conventional solar technologies have historically produced electricity that's far more expensive than electricity from fossil fuels.

In fact, Energy Secretary Steven Chu has said that a breakthrough is needed for photovoltaic technology to make a significant contribution to reducing greenhouse gases. Researchers are exploring solar cells that use very cheap materials or even novel physics that could dramatically increase efficiency, which could bring down costs.

But industry experts at the Washington symposium argued that new technologies will take decades to come to market, judging from how long commercialization of other solar technologies has taken. Meanwhile, says Zweibel, conventional technologies "have made the kind of progress that we were hoping futuristic technologies could make." For example, researchers have sought to bring the cost of solar power to under $1 per watt, and as of the first quarter of this year one company, First Solar, has done this.

These cost reductions have made solar power cheaper than the natural-gas-powered plants used to produce extra electricity to meet demand on hot summer days. With subsidies, which Zweibel argues are justified because of the "externalities" of other power sources, such as the cost from pollution, solar can be competitive with conventional electricity even outside peak demand times, at least in California. And projected cost decreases will make solar competitive with current electricity prices in more areas, even without subsidies.

Representatives of the solar industry say the federal government should do more to remove obstacles that are slowing the industry's development. One issue is financing for new solar installations, which can be much more expensive if lending institutions deem them high risk. A recent extension of federal tax credits and grants for solar investments is a step in the right direction, many solar experts say. But more could be done. A price on carbon would help make solar more economically competitive and more attractive to lenders.

Tech Review also has an article on solar thermal power using Stirling engines - Cheaper Solar Thermal Power.

Stirling Energy Systems (SES), based in Phoenix, has decreased the complexity and cost of its technology for converting the heat in sunlight into electricity, allowing for high-volume production. It will begin building very large solar-power plants using its equipment as soon as next year.

The company is currently building a 1.5-megawatt, 60-unit demonstration plant that will use the company's latest design. Stirling expects to finish that project by the end of the year. It also has contracts with two California utilities to supply a total of 800 megawatts of solar power in Southern California. The first of the plants that will supply this power could be built starting the middle of next year, pending government permits and loan guarantees from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

The projects are part of a resurgence in what's known as solar thermal power. Various solar thermal technologies were developed starting in the 1970s, but a breakdown in government funding and incentives caused them to stall before they reached a scale of production large enough to drive down costs and allow them to compete with conventional sources of electricity. "It was a classic problem with solar. The market support to bring solar to high volume wasn't there," says Ian Simington, the chairman of SES and chief executive of the solar division of NTR, a company based in Dublin, Ireland, that bought a controlling share of SES last year.

Recent state mandates and incentives for renewable energy have led to a new push to commercialize the technology. There are over six gigawatts of concentrated solar power under contract in the southwestern United States right now, says Thomas Mancini, program manager for concentrated-solar-power technology at Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, NM. That's equivalent to about six nuclear-power plants. BrightSource Energy has contracts to provide 2.6 gigawatts of solar power with concentrated solar power (a previous version of this story cited only one of two 1.3 gigawatt contracts), and Solar Millenium has announced a project that would generate nearly one gigawatt of power.

Stirling Energy Systems technology uses 12-meter-wide mirrors in the shape of a parabolic dish to concentrate sunlight onto a Stirling engine. The difference in temperature between the hot and cool sides of the engine is used to drive pistons and generate 25,000 watts of electricity. The first phase of the company's large-scale projects will use 12,000 of these dishes to generate 300 megawatts of power. Simington expects electricity from the systems to cost between 12 and 15 cents per kilowatt hour, higher than the cheapest sources of electricity--such as coal-fired power plants--but competitive in many markets, especially in the afternoon, when prices are highest.

Earlier this month the company unveiled its production design. Compared to several prototypes that have been tested for several years at Sandia National Laboratory, the new design cuts about two metric tons from the weight of each dish and reduces the number of mirrors in each from 80 to 40. The simplified design can be built in large quantities using equipment in existing factories for automobiles.