August 4, 2008

In the Hills of Nebraska, Change Is on the Horizon

Driving south out of the agricultural town of Ainsworth, you can't miss its newest crop: wind turbines, three dozen of them, with steel stalks 230 feet high and petal-like blades 131 feet long, sprouting improbably from the sand hills of north-central Nebraska, beside ruminating cattle.

Though painted gray, the turbines stand out against the evening backdrop of battleship-colored thunderclouds and bear an almost celestial whiteness when day's light is right. Airplane pilots can spot them from far away, and rarely does a bird make their unfortunate acquaintance.

The sound of 8.5-ton blades, three to a turbine, turning and turning, only enhances their almost supernatural presence. Standing at the base of a turbine's stalk, you hear a whistling whoosh - whuh ... whuh ... whuh - as steady summer winds come like the breath of gods to toy with pinwheel amusements.

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August 1, 2008

Cheap solar at night? MIT may have answer

MIT researchers say they have discovered a way to use solar energy cheaply even after the sun goes down, which could make it a mainstream source of power within the next decade.

Solar energy has been expensive and inefficient to use after dark, said Daniel Nocera, 51, the Henry Dreyfus professor of energy and professor of chemistry at MIT. But in an article published in the July 31 issue of the journal Science, Nocera and other Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers say they have found a simple, inexpensive process for storing solar energy.

"How the heck are you going to build an economy or a business only if the sun is shining?" said Nocera, the senior author. "What you really need to do is when the sun is shining, figure out how to store some of that energy so you can unleash it when the sun isn't shining."

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July 24, 2008

Gassing Up With Garbage

After years of false starts, a new industry selling motor fuel made from waste is getting a big push in the United States, with the first commercial sales possible within months.

Many companies have announced plans to build plants that would take in material like wood chips, garbage or crop waste and turn out motor fuels. About 28 small plants are in advanced planning, under construction or, in a handful of cases, already up and running in test mode.

For decades scientists have known it was possible to convert waste to fuel, but in an era of cheap oil, it made little sense. With oil now trading around $125 a barrel and gasoline above $4 a gallon, the potential economics of a waste-to-fuel industry have shifted radically, setting off a frenzy to be first to market.

"I think American innovation is going to come up with the solution," said Prabhakar Nair, research chief for UOP, a company working on the problem.

Success is far from assured, however. Some of the latest announcements come from small companies whose dreams may be bigger than their bank accounts. They are counting on billions in taxpayer subsidies. Big technological hurdles remain, and even if they can be solved, no one is sure what unintended consequences will emerge or what it will really cost to produce this type of fuel.

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July 19, 2008

Texas Approves a $4.93 Billion Wind-Power Project

Texas regulators have approved a $4.93 billion wind-power transmission project, providing a major lift to the development of wind energy in the state.  The planned web of transmission lines will carry electricity from remote western parts of the state to major population centers like Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio. The lines can handle 18,500 megawatts of power, enough for 3.7 million homes on a hot day when air-conditioners are running.

The project will ease a bottleneck that has become a major obstacle to development of the wind-rich Texas Panhandle and other areas suitable for wind generation.

Texas is already the largest producer of wind power, with 5,300 installed megawatts - more than double the installed capacity of California, the next closest state. And Texas is fast expanding its capacity.

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July 14, 2008

Coal's New Technology: Panacea or Risky Gamble?

According to NASA climatologist James Hansen, there's still time to avert a climate crisis. All we need to do, he said in a speech a few weeks ago in Washington D.C., is "phase out coal as quickly as possible." Of course, given the fact that coal generates more than half the electricity in the United States, and is even more vital in the developing world, this is easier said than done. But if we can't kick the coal habit, can we at least burn it in a way that doesn't cook the planet?

The key to coal's future - and maybe our own - is a technology called carbon capture and storage (CCS). At first glance, the idea seems straightforward: As coal is burned (or, in the future, gasified), remove the carbon dioxide, pressurize it into a supercritical liquid that's roughly the consistency of oil, then pump it underground. Depleted oil and gas wells make good storage sites, as do deep saline aquifers 2,000 feet or so underground. You can even pipe the CO2 offshore and inject it under the ocean floor. In theory, the CO2 will stay buried in these spots for hundreds if not thousands of years, thereby allowing us to continue burning coal without trashing the earth's climate.

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July 16, 2008

O'Malley backs wind farm

Governor supports Md. participation in Del. offshore project

Gov. Martin O'Malley threw his support yesterday behind a wind farm off the coast of Delaware - a clean energy-generating system that could eventually extend to the waters off Ocean City.

Maryland's support for the turbines 11 to 12 miles off Rehoboth Beach could be crucial toward launching the United States' first offshore wind energy project - one that potentially could produce enough power for hundreds of thousands of homes.

O'Malley's statement of interest in offshore wind power came in response to questions at a news conference about his position on President Bush's decision to lift an executive order prohibiting oil drilling off most of the U.S. coastline, a move that leaves a congressionally imposed ban in place.

The governor rejected Bush's position in harsh terms - calling the argument that it would help lower fuel prices "patently false" - before volunteering that the proposed project off the Delaware coast is "one offshore effort I would like to go in on."

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July 9, 2008

Tropical Biofuels Getting Less and Less Green

A new analysis suggests that biofuels grown in the tropics are not a much greener source of energy than drilling for oil--at least in the short term. The research paints an even gloomier picture of biofuels than previous studies, which have begun to cast doubts on the greenhouse gas benefits that these alternatives to petroleum might provide.

Proponents see plant-based biofuels as a carbon-friendly alternative to fossil fuels. That's because plants that produce, say, palm oil or corn ethanol recycle carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they grow. In contrast, petroleum production introduces new carbon into the air that was previously sequestered deep within Earth.

Two studies published earlier this year in Science, however, suggest that the carbon benefits from biofuels are delayed for centuries when farmers knock down carbon-absorbing forests in order to grow the plants. One paper, for example, estimated that cutting down Brazilian rainforest to grow soybeans for diesel fuel would result in a so-called carbon debt that would take 319 years to repay--essentially rendering the fuel as carbon-unfriendly as gasoline in the short term.

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July 1, 2008

Global Clean-Energy Investment Rose 60% in 2007

Wind, solar and biofuel companies received a record $148 billion in new funding last year as rising oil prices and climate-change rules encouraged investment in renewable energy, the United Nations Environment Program said.

Wind power attracted the most financing at $50 billion, according to a report today from the Nairobi-based UNEP. Overall, investment in clean-energy and energy-efficiency industries rose 60 percent from 2006.

Carbon dioxide, the byproduct of burning coal, oil and natural gas, is the main pollutant blamed for global warming. Fossil-fuel burning power plants are the world's biggest source of CO2, according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency.

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June 29, 2008

Can Weeds Help Solve the Climate Crisis?

Lewis Ziska, a lanky, sandy-haired weed ecologist with the Agriculture Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, matches a dry sense of humor with tired eyes. The humor is essential to Ziska's exploration of what global climate change could do to mankind's relationship with weeds; there are many days, he confesses, when his goal becomes nothing more than not ending up in a fetal position beneath his battleship gray, government-issue desk. Yet he speaks of weeds with admiration as well as apprehension, and even with hope.

It is easy to share the admiration and apprehension when you consider the site that Ziska planted with weeds in downtown Baltimore in the spring of 2002. Tucked in next to the city's inner harbor, the site is part of a barren expanse of turf rolled out over a reclaimed industrial landscape. This unfertile scrap seems an unlikely choice for growing anything, but Ziska saw in it, ominously perhaps, a model of where the global habitat as a whole is headed.

"Ingenuity," Ziska says, "may be the mother of invention, but poverty is definitely the father." For some time, he had wanted to create in a laboratory setting the elevated temperatures and increased concentrations of atmospheric CO2 predicted for the mid-21st century by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the leading international scientific authority on the subject. Carbon dioxide has received a lot of attention as a greenhouse gas, a major cause of global warming. But it is also, along with water, light and nutrients, one of the four essential resources for plant growth. The effect that boosting this gas's concentration in the atmosphere will have on plants is very poorly understood.

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June 19, 2008

Another Silicon Valley? The rise of solar energy, in one form or another

WIND power works, and will work better in the future. But wind is only an interim stop on the way to a world where electricity no longer relies on fossil fuels. The ultimate goal is to harvest the sun's energy directly by intercepting sunlight, rather than by waiting for that sunlight to stir up the atmosphere and sticking turbines in the resulting airstreams.

Fortunately, inventors love that sort of problem. Ideas they have come up with range from using the sun to run simple heating systems for buildings, deploying "reverse radiators" painted black, to the sharpest cutting edge of that trendiest of fields, nanotechnology, to ensure that every last photon is captured and converted into electricity. The most iconic form of solar power, the photovoltaic cell, is currently the fastest-growing type of alternative energy, increasing by 50% a year. The price of the electricity it produces is falling, too. According to Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA), an American consultancy run by Daniel Yergin, a kWh of photovoltaic electricity cost 50 cents in 1995. That had fallen to 20 cents in 2005 and is still dropping.  Not RE<C, but heading in the right direction.

Photovoltaic cells (or solar cells, as they are known colloquially) convert sunlight directly into electricity. But that is not the only way to use the sun to make electrical power. It is also possible to concentrate the sun's rays, use them to boil water and employ the resulting steam to drive a turbine. These two very different approaches illustrate an unresolved question about the future of energy: whether it will be generated centrally and transported over long distances to the consumer, as it has been in recent decades, or generated and consumed in more or less the same place, as it was a century ago. 

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June 16, 2008

Utility finds foes to renewable energy line plan

It seems like an idea any environmentalist would embrace: Build one of the world's largest solar power operations in the Southern California desert and surround it with plants that run on wind and underground heat.

Yet San Diego Gas & Electric Co. and its potential partners face fierce opposition because the plan also calls for a 150-mile, high-voltage transmission line that would cut through pristine parkland to reach the nation's eighth-largest city.

The showdown over how to get renewable energy to consumers will likely play out elsewhere around the country as well, as state regulators require electric utilities to rely less on coal and natural gas to fire their plants - the biggest source of carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S.

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June 11, 2008

Coalinga solar plant would also burn manure

A proposed Central Valley power plant will tap three potent sources of renewable energy at once - the sun, crop stubble and cow manure.

The plant, near the old oil-patch town of Coalinga in Fresno County, will combine a large solar farm with a generator that burns orchard trimmings, agricultural waste and, yes, excrement.

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. will announce Thursday that it will buy electricity from the plant, which will be built by Martifer Renewables, a U.S. subsidiary of a Portuguese company. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

The plant's design will allow it to do something not typically associated with solar power. It will keep running, and generating power, at night.

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May 26, 2008

Missing the Market Meltdown

Capitalists have already scuttled Patrick Moore's claimed nuclear revival. New U.S. subsidies of about $13 billion per plant (roughly a plant's capital cost) haven't lured Wall Street to invest. Instead, the decentralized competitors to nuclear power that Moore derides are making more global electricity than nuclear plants are, and are growing 20 to 40 times faster.

In 2007, decentralized renewables worldwide attracted $71 billion in private capital. Nuclear got zero. Why? Economics. The nuclear construction costs that Moore omits are astronomical and soaring; low fuel costs will soon rise two-to fivefold. "Negawatts"-saved electricity-cost five to 10 times less and are getting cheaper. So are most renewables. Negawatts and "micro-power"- renewables other than big hydro, and cogenerating electricity together with useful heat-are also at or near customers, avoiding grid costs, losses and failures (which cause 98 to 99 percent of blackouts).

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May 29, 2008

Methane Poses Climate Risk, Energy Opportunity

Methane reserves deep in the ocean and in arctic permafrost might trigger runaway global warming. But they've also got the potential to provide huge amounts of power, a possibility that is attracting the interest of energy companies.

Methane hydrate, a strange form of natural gas, has recently become a fascination for energy-hungry nations from the United States to Japan and India. Hydrate is found in oceans across the world, where the gas is trapped in icy structures below the seabed, and also lies beneath the Arctic's permafrost.

A paper published this week in Nature suggests that the release of methane hydrates, also known as clathrates, may have triggered a very rapid period of global warming 635 million years ago -- and may do so again. But those same hydrates are also a tempting target for energy production. 

 
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May 21, 2008

New Trend in Biofuels Has New Risks

In the past year, as the diversion of food crops like corn and palm to make biofuels has helped to drive up food prices, investors and politicians have begun promoting newer, so-called second-generation biofuels as the next wave of green energy. These, made from non-food crops like reeds and wild grasses, would offer fuel without the risk of taking food off the table, they said.

But now, biologists and botanists are warning that they, too, may bring serious unintended consequences. Most of these newer crops are what scientists label invasive species - that is, weeds - that have an extraordinarily high potential to escape biofuel plantations, overrun adjacent farms and natural land, and create economic and ecological havoc in the process, they now say. 

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May 15, 2008

Smart grid's aim: wiser power use - Xcel hopes project in Boulder leads to 'new energy age'

Xcel Energy is on track to become the world's first utility to dramatically transform the way it delivers power to a city.

Colorado's biggest utility officially launched its ambitious $100 million "smart grid" project on Thursday in Boulder.

When completed in 2009, the project will allow Boulder customers to gather real-time information about how much electricity they use, and at what cost, at different times of the day.

Xcel hopes that Boulderites will make consumption decisions based on the information and cut usage during peak hours of the day, saving Xcel the expense of buying or generating more power at those times.

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May 12, 2008

Europe looks to develop second-generation biofuels

Two German companies-Süd-Chemie and Linde-are teaming up to develop second-generation biofuels based on crops that do not compete with food production.

The partners will focus on developing a biotechnological process to generate fuels such as ethanol from plant matter containing cellulose, such as wheat and corn straw, grasses, and wood.

Süd-Chemie will contribute its know-how in biocatalysis and bioprocess engineering to the joint venture. Linde's subsidiary, Linde-KCA-Dresden, will provide engineering expertise in the areas of biotechnology and chemistry.

The partners stress that their technology, which will be commercially available, will not compete with food and feed crops, as first-generation biofuels do. First-generation biofuels are produced solely from plant matter containing oil, starch, or sugar. Biodiesel, for example, is derived from rapeseed oil, and bioethanol is derived from starch or sugar. Second-generation biofuels, however, use only cellulose-based matter.

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