10. Our Energy Future

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 10

2011 April 11. Seizing the Smart Energy Opportunity. By L. Hunter Lovins, Greenbiz.com Excerpt: Investing in energy efficiency and renewable energy will generate jobs and help build strong companies, communities, and countries…The new green energy economy will generate new manufacturing businesses, jobs retrofitting existing buildings, opportunities to build and manage the new decentralized energy system, the ability to revitalize farm income from biofuels, wind farms, etc… In April 2010, Michael Weinhold, chief technical officer of Siemens’s Energy Sector and an engineer, described to students at Berlin’s Technical University how new ideas have shifted his focus from implementing small technical improvements to concerns of greater social responsibility. “We engineers need to make the energy system sustainable, so that the world can avert catastrophic climate change,” he said. “Siemens already is showing politicians what’s possible.” He described some of the company’s recent work: free-floating offshore wind turbines; the world’s largest gas turbine in the combined-cycle process with a record-setting 60 percent efficiency; a new high-voltage direct-current (DC) power line in China that moves 5 gigawatts of CO2-free hydropower across about 1,400 kilometers at about 95 percent efficiency....

2011 April 11. Gulf’s Complexity and Resilience Seen in Studies of Oil Spill. By Leslie Kaufman, The New York Times. Excerpt: In the year since the wellhead beneath the Deepwater Horizon rig began spewing rust-colored crude into the northern Gulf of Mexico, scientists have been working frantically to figure out what environmental harm really came of the largest oil spill in American history…
…Biologists are nervously monitoring as yet unexplained dolphin strandings this year, trying to come up with a realistic count of birds and mammals killed during the spill and working to understand what happens when the gulf floor is covered with the remains of oil-eating bacteria.
…How the regional ecosystem has responded, its strengths and weaknesses, will keep scientists busy analyzing data for years and help them in understanding the effects of environmental disasters.

2011 January 15. Solar Panel Maker Moves Work to China. By Keith Bradsher, The NY Times.  Excerpt:  ...Evergreen Solar emerged in the last three years as the third-largest maker of solar panels in the United States. But now the company is closing its main American factory, laying off the 800 workers by the end of March and shifting production to a joint venture with a Chinese company in central China. Evergreen cited the much higher government support available in China....
...Beyond the issues of trade and jobs, solar power experts see broader implications. They say that after many years of relying on unstable governments in the Middle East for oil, the United States now looks likely to rely on China to tap energy from the sun....

2011 Jan 5. Many projects in renewable energy research and development underway. What are the pros and cons of renewable energy development? What are the environmental impacts of various renewable energy developments? Will such projects actually reduce our reliance on fossil fuels overall? Should the government be providing billions of dollars to build facilities on public lands that have been set aside for protection? What are the environmental impacts in various ecosystems and how might they be mitigated effectively?

2010 December 24. African Huts Far From the Grid Glow With Renewable Power. By Elisabeth Rosenthal, NYTimes. Excerpt: …As small-scale renewable energy becomes cheaper, more reliable and more efficient, it is providing the first drops of modern power to people who live far from slow-growing electricity grids and fuel pipelines in developing countries. Although dwarfed by the big renewable energy projects that many industrialized countries are embracing to rein in greenhouse gas emissions, these tiny systems are playing an epic, transformative role….
…Yet while these off-grid systems have proved their worth, the lack of an effective distribution network or a reliable way of financing the start-up costs has prevented them from becoming more widespread....

2010 November 25. In California, Carports That Can Generate Electricity. By Felicity Barringer, The NY Times. Excerpt: …Ersatz roofs made of solar panels have sprouted above dozens of school parking lots in the state, altering vistas and promoting a philosophy of green thinking among the young...
...By forming partnerships with banks and other backers, school districts get guarantees of reliably cheap electricity for their buildings for as long as 20 years. The institutions, which finance the systems and sell the electricity back to the schools, also receive tax incentives from the federal and state governments…

2010 November 8. The Ultimate Roller Coaster Ride: A Brief History of Fossil Fuels. Narrated by Richard Heinberg, Post Carbon. Excerpt: And now, for your viewing and sharing pleasure we bring you 300 years of fossil fueled growth in 5 minutes.

2010 October 19.  A Cheaper Route to Solar Cells.  By Matthew L. Wald, The New York Times.  Excerpt: A company that secured a Department of Energy grant to pursue a breakthrough idea in the manufacture of solar cells plans to announce on Tuesday that it has raised $20 million to commercialize its technique, which it says will reduce the price of solar panels by 40 percent.
The company, 1366 Technologies of Lexington, Mass., has found a simpler way to produce the basic building block of solar cells: silicon wafers...
...The cell has other refinements, including finer wires to conduct away the electrons, so the shadow cast on the energy-gathering area is smaller. And the company drills small holes into the cast wafer to give it a honeycomb appearance, which allows light to bounce around inside the crevices, producing better absorption and less reduction...

2010 August 26. Wind Turbine Project Runs Into Resistance. By Leora Broydo Vestel, The New York Times.  Excerpt:  ...Moving turbine blades can be indistinguishable from airplanes on many radar systems, and they can even cause blackout zones in which planes disappear from radar entirely. Clusters of wind turbines, which can reach as high as 400 feet, look very similar to storm activity on weather radar, making it harder for air traffic controllers to give accurate weather information to pilots.
...Moving turbine blades can be indistinguishable from airplanes on many radar systems, and they can even cause blackout zones in which planes disappear from radar entirely. Clusters of wind turbines, which can reach as high as 400 feet, look very similar to storm activity on weather radar, making it harder for air traffic controllers to give accurate weather information to pilots.
...In 2009, about 9,000 megawatts of proposed wind projects were abandoned or delayed because of radar concerns raised by the military and the Federal Aviation Administration, according to a member survey by the American Wind Energy Association. That is nearly as much as the amount of wind capacity that was actually built in the same year, the trade group says.
...Part of the challenge is that many radar systems in use in the United States date back to the 1950s and have outdated processing capabilities — in some cases, less than those of a modern laptop computer. While there are technology fixes to ease interference on these aging systems, it can be tricky to filter out just the turbines. ...

2010 August 18. Finding New Ways to Fill the Tank. By Matthew L. Wald. The New York Times. Excerpt:...The work is part of the mission of the new Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy, which is intended to finance high-risk, high-reward projects... ...The goal of this agency, whose budget is $400 million for two years, is to realize profound results — such as tens of millions of motor vehicles that would run 300 miles a day on electricity from clean sources or on liquid fuels from trees and garbage...
...One miracle would be a better battery... ....A team at an infant company is using tiny carbon structures called nanotubes to store electricity. The goal is to create something the size of a flashlight battery, holding only about 30 percent as much energy, but able to charge or discharge in two seconds, almost forever... ...That kind of battery is called a capacitor... ...a capacitor was the original battery... ...The walls of the tubes are about 12 atoms thick, and they grow, like leaves of grass, with just enough space between them to provide docking stations for charged particles. So a lot of charged particles can fit into a small space, with very light structures... ...Because the connection is physical, not chemical, the charged particles can attach and detach almost instantly. The result is a small, light, powerful package... ...The walls of the tubes are about 12 atoms thick, and they grow, like leaves of grass, with just enough space between them to provide docking stations for charged particles. So a lot of charged particles can fit into a small space, with very light structures... ...Because the connection is physical, not chemical, the charged particles can attach and detach almost instantly. The result is a small, light, powerful package... ...In batteries today, whether they are lithium-ion or old-fashioned lead-acid, an atom shuttles between the positive and negative terminal, carrying a single electron, as the battery charges and discharges. But a magnesium atom would carry two electrons, so a battery storing a given amount of energy could be nearly halved in size and weight...
...Engineers have tried using steam, acids and enzymes to break cellulose into useful sugars... ... So far, none are commercial, but with Energy Department help, some researchers are trying new methods... ...Sugars — both the common kind that comes in paper packets for coffee and some more exotic types — can be converted by yeast into ethanol, a technology known since ancient times. Or they can be fed to gene-altered bacteria that will excrete diesel or gasoline components. Or they can be converted chemically, with catalysts...
...All these steps, including the tricky one of recovering sugar from cellulose, can be done already, but not cheaply enough to produce tens of billions of gallons a year.... ...The Energy Department is putting $4.6 million into Agrivida, and similar sums into other start-up firms, many of them intent on finding gasoline substitutes. It is, said one department official, “real science fiction stuff,” ideas promising enough to attract a few million dollars for research but not quite promising enough to draw the private capital required for small-scale production.

2010 August 9. Portugal Gives Itself a Clean-Energy Makeover. By Elisabeth Rosenthal. The New York Times. Excerpt: …To force Portugal’s energy transition, [Prime Minister José] Sócrates’s government restructured and privatized former state energy utilities to create a grid better suited to renewable power sources. To lure private companies into Portugal’s new market, the government gave them contracts locking in a stable price for 15 years…
Compared with the United States, European countries have powerful incentives to pursue renewable energy. Many, like Portugal, have little fossil fuel of their own, and the European Union’s emissions trading system discourages fossil fuel use by requiring industry to essentially pay for excessive carbon dioxide emissions.
…Portugal is now on track to reach its goal of using domestically produced renewable energy, including large-scale hydropower, for 60 percent of its electricity and 31 percent of its total energy needs by 2020.
…In making the shift, Portugal has overcome longstanding concerns about reliability and high cost.
…Portugal’s national energy transmission company, Redes Energéticas Nacionais or R.E.N., uses sophisticated modeling to predict weather, especially wind patterns, and computer programs to calculate energy from the various renewable-energy plants. Since the country’s energy transition, the network has doubled the number of dispatchers who route energy to where it is needed.
…A 2009 report commissioned by the Pew Center on Global Climate Change estimated that the United States would have to spend $3 billion to $4 billion a year for the next two decades to create a grid that could accommodate deriving 20 percent of electricity from wind power by 2030--a 40 percent to 50 percent increase over current spending.

2010 August 4. LBL NEWS RELEASE: New Study Sheds Light on U.S. Wind Power Market. By Allan Chen, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Excerpt: …The U.S. was one of the fastest-growing wind power markets in the world in 2009, second only to China, according to a report released today by the U.S. Department of Energy and prepared by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
…The 2009 edition of the “Wind Technologies Market Report” provides a comprehensive overview of developments in the rapidly evolving U.S. wind power market. The need for an annual report of this type has grown as the wind power industry has entered an era of unprecedented expansion, both globally and in the United States. … At the same time, as the report documents, the past year has been one of upheaval. The global financial crisis and lower wholesale electricity prices have negatively impacted the near-term growth prospects for the wind power industry, while new federal policies are pushing the industry towards continued aggressive expansion.
… The report analyzes trends in wind power capacity growth, industry and manufacturing trends, turbine size, turbine prices, installed project costs, project performance, wind power prices, and how wind prices compare to the price of conventional generation. It also describes trends among developers, project owners, and wind power purchasers, and discusses financing issues. Finally, the report examines other factors impacting the domestic wind power market, including grid integration, transmission issues, and policy drivers. It concludes with a preview of possible near-term market developments.
…Looking ahead, expectations are for a slower year in 2010. Lower expectations stem from a combination of the financial crisis, lower wholesale electricity prices, and lower demand for renewable energy. Projections among industry analysts range from 5,500 MW to 8,000 MW of wind power capacity likely to be installed in the United States in 2010, a drop of 20 to 45 percent compared to the nearly 10,000 MW installed in 2009. After a slower 2010, most predictions show market resurgence in 2011 and 2012, as programs funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act mature and as financing constraints ease. Beyond 2012, however, the picture is considerably less certain, because of the scheduled expiration of a number of federal policies at the end of that year.

2010 July 27. Pushed Along By Wind, Power Storage Grows. By Matthew. L. Wald, The New York Times. Excerpt: …As the wind installations multiply, companies have found themselves dumping energy late at night, adjusting the blades so they do not catch the wind, because there is no demand for the power. And grid operators, accustomed to meeting demand by adjusting supplies, are now struggling to maintain stability as supplies fluctuate.
On the cutting edge of a potential solution is Hawaii, where state officials want 70 percent of energy needs to be met by renewable sources like the wind, sun or biomass by 2030. A major problem is that it is impossible for generators on the islands to export surpluses to neighboring companies or to import power when the wind towers are becalmed.
... So the 30-megawatt wind farm [on the north shore of Oahu], which will have enough power to run about 30 Super Wal-Marts, will have Xtreme Power of Austin, Tex., install a 15-megawatt battery
…Computers will work to keep the battery exactly half-charged most hours of the day… If the wind suddenly gets stronger or falls off, the batteries will smooth out the flow so that the grid sees only a more gradual increase or decrease, no more than one megawatt per minute at some hours of the day.
…The Hawaii installation is designed to succeed at a crucial but obscure function: frequency regulation. The alternating-current power system has to run at a strict 60 cycles per second, and the battery system can give and take power on a micro scale, changing directions from charge to discharge or vice versa within that 60th of a second, to keep the pace steady.
…Electric companies are using other strategies for storage and frequency regulation. In Stephentown, N.Y., near Albany, a Massachusetts company, Beacon Power, is building a bank of 200 one-ton flywheels that will store energy from the grid on a moment-to-moment basis to keep the alternating current system at a strict 60 cycles… Atop each flywheel is a device that can be a motor at one moment and a generator the next, either taking energy and storing it in the flywheel or vice versa
…The Energy Department is also supporting storage projects that rely on compressed air.

2010 July 14. Project's Fate May Predict the Future of Mining. By Erik Eckholm, The New York Times. Excerpt: …Federal officials are considering whether to veto mountaintop mining above a little Appalachian valley called Pigeonroost Hollow, a step that could be a turning point for one of the country’s most contentious environmental disputes.
…The Environmental Protection Agency under the Obama administration, in a break with President George W. Bush’s more coal-friendly approach, has threatened to halt or sharply scale back the project known as Spruce 1. The agency asserts that the project would irrevocably damage streams and wildlife and violate the Clean Water Act.
…Feelings run high in the counties right around the project area. “Spruce 1 is extremely important to all of southern West Virginia because if this permit is pulled back, every mine site is going to be vulnerable to having its permits pulled,” said James Milan, manager of Walker Machinery in Logan, which sells gargantuan Caterpillar equipment… The loss of jobs, Mr. Milan said, would have devastating effects on struggling communities.
…In documents issued in March, the E.P.A. said the project as approved would still smother seven miles of streamed… Filling in headwaters damages the web of life downstream, from aquatic insects to salamanders to fish, and temporary channels and rebuilt streams are no substitute, the agency said. The pulverized rock can release toxic levels of selenium and other pollutants, it noted...

2010 June 5. Imagining Life Without Oil, and Being Ready. By John Leland, NY Times. Excerpt: …For Mrs. Wilkerson, 33, a moderate Democrat from Oakton, Va., who designs computer interfaces, the spill reinforced what she had been obsessing over for more than a year — that oil use was outstripping the world’s supply. She worried about what would come after: maybe food shortages, a collapse of the economy, a breakdown of civil order. Her call was part of a telephone course about how to live through it all.
…“Our whole economy depends on greater and greater energy supplies, and that just isn’t possible,” he said. “I wish I could say we’ll quietly accept having many millions of people unemployed, their homes foreclosed. But it’s hard to see the whole country transitioning to a low-energy future without people becoming angry. There’s going to be quite a bit of social turmoil on the way down.
” …Transition US, a British transplant that seeks to help towns brace for life after oil, including a “population die-off” from shortages of oil, food and medicine, now has 68 official chapters around the country, since starting with just two in 2008. Group projects range from community vegetable gardens to creating local currency in case the national one crashes.
…“It’s very difficult for people to hear that this form of the economy is breaking down,” he said. “They think that because it hasn’t happened yet that it won’t ever happen.”

2010 April 16. At Upstate Campus, Saving Energy Is Part of Dorm Life. By Lisa W. Foderaro, NY Times. Excerpt: ITHACA, N.Y. — The Energy Star label, the federal government’s nod of approval for energy-efficient products, usually calls to mind household appliances like refrigerators and air-conditioners. But at Ithaca College, a campus known for its embrace of all things sustainable, two dormitories proudly wear the Energy Star label, too.
The residence halls, Clarke and Hood, feature six-way zoned heating, energy-efficient boilers, digitally controlled heating systems and ample weather-stripping. They also benefit from a brigade of students on campus, known as eco-reps, who cajole and exhort their peers to reduce their carbon footprints. Among their duties is the posting of fliers inside bathroom stalls, called installments. A recent missive urged students to “beware of the phantom load,” energy used by appliances that are turned off but still plugged in....

2010 March 15. POST CARBON EXCHANGE #1: Richard Heinberg & Lester Brown.  Some positive news on alternative energy developments of wind in Texas and China as well as solar in N. Africa and Europe in a short video clip (11 min) from the Post Carbon Institute. ...Post Carbon Institute Senior Fellow Richard Heinberg talks with Lester Brown, Founder of the  Earth Policy Institute, about hopeful developments in alternative energy, as well as the importance of Brown's updated path toward a sustainable future, "Plan B 4.0".

2010 Mar 9. Solar Industry Learns Lessons in Spanish Sun. by Elisabeth Rosenthal, New York Times. Excerpt: PUERTOLLANO, Spain — ...Armed with generous incentives from the Spanish government to jump-start a national solar energy industry, the city set out to replace its failing coal economy by attracting solar companies, with a campaign slogan: “The Sun Moves Us.” Soon, Puertollano, home to the Museum of the Mining Industry, had two enormous solar power plants, factories making solar panels and silicon wafers, and clean energy research institutes. Half the solar power installed globally in 2008 was installed in Spain. Farmers sold land for solar plants. Boutiques opened. And people from all over the world, seeing business opportunities, moved to the city, which had suffered from 20 percent unemployment and a population exodus. But as low-quality, poorly designed solar plants sprang up on Spain’s plateaus, Spanish officials came to realize that they would have to subsidize many of them indefinitely, and that the industry they had created might never produce efficient green energy on its own. 
In September the government abruptly changed course, cutting payments and capping solar construction. Puertollano’s brief boom turned bust. Factories and stores shut, thousands of workers lost jobs, foreign companies and banks abandoned contracts that had already been negotiated.
...Yet, despite the pain that Spain’s incentives ended up causing, in many ways they fulfilled their promise, Ms. DeLine said. “Even though incentives can create bubbles and bursts, without them this industry won’t take off,” she said....
The most robust Spanish solar companies survived the downturn, have restructured and are re-emerging as global players.....
...When it was announced in the summer of 2007, Spain’s premium payment for solar power was the most generous anywhere — 58 cents per kilowatt-hour — with few strings attached. In retrospect it was far too high. 
...Although Spain’s long-term goal had been to produce 400 megawatts of electricity from solar panels by 2010, it reached that milestone by the end of 2007.
In 2008 the nation connected 2.5 gigawatts of solar power into its grid, more than quintupling its previous capacity and making it second to Germany, the world leader. But many of the hastily opened plants offered no hope of being cost-competitive with conventional power, being poorly designed or located where sunshine was inadequate, for example.
...In Spain, the tariff, now adjusted quarterly, is about 39 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity from freestanding solar power plants, and slightly higher for panels on rooftops.
Germany’s tariff, 53 cents per kilowatt-hour, is expected to fall at least 15 percent this summer, and there are proposals before Parliament to eliminate subsidies for solar plants on farmland....

2010 January 28. Laser fusion test results raise energy hopes. By Jason Palmer, BBC News. Excerpt: A major hurdle to producing fusion energy using lasers has been swept aside, results in a new report show.
The controlled fusion of atoms - creating conditions like those in our Sun - has long been touted as a possible revolutionary energy source. However, there have been doubts about the use of powerful lasers for fusion energy because the "plasma" they create could interrupt the fusion. An article in Science showed the plasma is far less of a problem than expected.
The report is based on the first experiments from the National Ignition Facility (Nif) in the US that used all 192 of its laser beams.
..."For the first time ever in the 50-year journey of laser fusion, these laser-plasma interactions have been shown to be less of a problem than predicted, not more," said Mike Dunne, director of the UK's Central Laser Facility and leader of the European laser fusion effort known as HiPER.
"I can't overstate how dramatic a step that is," he told BBC News. "Many people a year ago were saying the project would be dead by now."
Adding momentum to the ignition quest, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory announced on Wednesday that, since the Science results were first obtained, the pulse energy record had been smashed again. They now report an energy of one megajoule on target - 50% higher than the amount reported in Science.
The current calculations show that about 1.2 megajoules of energy will be enough for ignition, and currently Nif can run as high as 1.8 megajoules....

2010 January 4. Small-scale solar plan clashes with big energy. David R. Baker, SF Chronicle. Excerpt: When it comes to renewable power, Californians tend to think big.
Big wind farms sprawl across our hills. Big solar power plants will soon blanket acres of desert. Big new power lines will bring that electricity to our cities.
This, Bill Powers insists, is exactly the wrong approach. He wants us to think small.
Powers, an engineer and energy consultant, argues that California should cover every available rooftop with photovoltaic solar panels, especially commercial buildings. The panels can be installed quickly, unlike large solar power plants that take years to win government permits. They don't require big new power lines. And their price has dropped about 40 percent in the past year.
... "The solar plants in the desert are albatrosses," Powers said. "We've come to a point where (photovoltaic solar) is either going to be in the remote installations or it's going to be in the urban core. It'll be much more beneficial for those solar panels to be sitting in the urban core where they're going to be used."
...Photovoltaic solar "in the urban core is a fundamental threat to the utility business model," Powers said.
..."Because of the economic and operational issues, I think we're going to see large-scale, grid-connected power for a long, long time," said Jonathan Marshall, a spokesman for Pacific Gas and Electric Co. Many environmentalists reluctantly agree.
...California has been trying to ramp up its use of renewable power as a way to combat global warming. Under state law, 20 percent of the electricity the utilities sell must come from renewable sources by the end of 2010, a deadline they will probably miss.
...Photovoltaic solar panels have dropped in price, but the technology remains more expensive than many other ways to generate electricity, according to the California Energy Commission. All figures are given in cents per kilowatt hour and include construction and operation costs.
Solar PV - 26.22*
Solar thermal (parabolic trough) - 22.47
Natural gas - 12.61
Geothermal - 8.31
Wind - 7.24
* Solar PV price assumes that the project is at least 25 megawatts in size. Source: California Energy Commission

2010 Jan 4. For Cape Cod Wind Farm, New Hurdle Is Spiritual. By Abby Goodnough, The NY Times. Two Massachusetts Indian tribes have objected to the Cape Wind project, saying it would block their unimpeded view of the sunrise.
Excerpt: BOSTON - In a new setback for a controversial wind farm proposed off Cape Cod, the National Park Service announced Monday that Nantucket Sound was eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places, guaranteeing further delays for the project.
Known as Cape Wind, the project is the nation's first planned offshore wind farm and would cover 24 square miles in the sound, an area roughly the size of Manhattan. The park service decision came in response to a request from two Massachusetts Indian tribes, who said the 130 proposed wind turbines would thwart their spiritual ritual of greeting the sunrise, which requires unobstructed views across the sound, and disturb ancestral burial grounds.
...The decision by the National Park Service did not kill the Cape Wind plan, but it erected new hurdles by requiring more negotiations and, possibly, changes to the project, like moving it.
...Cedric Cromwell, chairman of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe, said the decision confirmed "what the Wampanoag people have known for thousands of years: that Nantucket Sound has significant archaeological, historic and cultural values and is sacred to our people."
Others said the finding was surprising because Nantucket Sound, which encompasses more than 500 square miles, is by far the largest body of water ever found eligible for listing on the national historic register. Other eligible bodies of water have included Walden Pond in Massachusetts, which covers about 60 acres, and Zuni Salt Lake in New Mexico, which is about 6,500 feet across, said Jeffrey Olson, a spokesman for the park service.
"The decision is without precedent in terms of implicating many square miles of what is, legally speaking, the high seas," said Ian A. Bowles, the Massachusetts secretary of energy and environmental affairs. "But as a procedural matter, it's a good thing a decision was reached, and the secretary is getting personally involved to get it over the finish line."
A spokeswoman for Mr. Salazar said he planned to meet next week with representatives of the tribes and the developer in hopes of speeding a resolution.

2009 November 18. NSF Release 09-225: On the Crest of Wave Energy. Excerpt: The ocean is a potentially vast source of electric power, yet as engineers test new technologies for capturing it, the devices are plagued by battering storms, limited efficiency, and the need to be tethered to the seafloor.
Now, a team of aerospace engineers is applying the principles that keep airplanes aloft to create a new wave-energy system that is durable, extremely efficient, and can be placed anywhere in the ocean, regardless of depth.
While still in early design stages, computer and scale-model tests of the system suggest higher efficiencies than wind turbines. The system is designed to effectively cancel incoming waves, capturing their energy while flattening them out, providing an added application as a storm-wave breaker.
A colleague had read an article on wave energy in a magazine and mentioned it to Siegel and the other team members, and they realized they could operate a wave energy device using the same feedback control concepts they had been developing....

2009 October 20. Study: Shifting the world to 100% clean, renewable energy by 2030 - here are the numbers. BY Louis Bergeron, Stanford Report. Excerpt: Most of the technology needed to shift the world from fossil fuel to clean, renewable energy already exists. Implementing that technology requires overcoming obstacles in planning and politics, but doing so could result in a 30 percent decrease in global power demand, say Stanford civil and environmental engineering Professor Mark Z. Jacobson and University of California-Davis researcher Mark Delucchi.
...Jacobson and Delucchi used data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration to project that if the world's current mix of energy sources is maintained, global energy demand at any given moment in 2030 would be 16.9 terawatts, or 16.9 million megawatts.
They then calculated that if no combustion of fossil fuel or biomass were used to generate energy, and virtually everything was powered by electricity – either for direct use or hydrogen production – the demand would be only 11.5 terawatts. That's only two-thirds of the energy that would be needed if fossil fuels were still in the mix.
In order to convert to wind, water and solar, the world would have to build wind turbines; solar photovoltaic and concentrated solar arrays; and geothermal, tidal, wave and hydroelectric power sources to generate the electricity, as well as transmission lines to carry it to the users, but the long-run net savings would more than equal the costs, according to Jacobson and Delucchi's analysis.
"If you make this transition to renewables and electricity, then you eliminate the need for 13,000 new or existing coal plants," Jacobson said. "Just by changing our infrastructure we have less power demand."...

2009 October 13. Governor signs bills that boost solar power. By David R. Baker, SF Chronicle. Excerpt: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed several bills Sunday that will tweak the way California's electricity market works, encouraging solar power and phasing out some rules created during the state's electricity crisis.
One bill will require California utilities to buy surplus solar power from homeowners who generate more than they use. Another bill will expand the state's "feed-in tariff," a system that sets a price for renewable power that utilities buy from businesses with midsize solar arrays.
Another piece of legislation will raise the electricity rates of customers who use relatively little power, ending a rate freeze put in place during the energy crisis of 2000-01. The same bill also will allow a limited number of large electricity customers - such as businesses or schools - to leave the utilities and buy power from other companies....

2009 May 28. Hard Hats Swarm to Smart Energy. By Liz Galst, NRDC OnEarth. Excerpt: On an early spring morning in a classroom in New York City's hardscrabble East Harlem neighborhood, a group of four dozen young adults listens intently to a presentation by Elizabeth Yeampierre, president of the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance.
... Brandon Ingram, a Bronx native sitting in the front row, rises. He wears the lozenge-shaped glasses of a budding hipster and holds aloft Van Jones's best-selling 2008 book, The Green Collar Economy.
"I've been reading this," Ingram says, displaying the cover for all to see. "I want everyone in the room to hear it." He reads aloud a passage that spells out a bright green future for job seekers: in 2006, there were 8.5 million jobs (and by the end of 2007, half a million new ones) in renewable energy and energy-efficient technologies, and the sector produced nearly $1 trillion in revenue and more than $100 billion in industry profits.
Ingram's colleagues are equally impressed. They are classmates in a 12-week green-construction training program run by Strive, a nonprofit group based in New York City. For many of them, long unemployed, work in the expanding green sector could be the break they've been waiting for. The program teaches both "hard" and "soft" job skills. At the practical level, students learn how to audit and then insulate a leaky house and construct new, energy-efficient buildings. They also learn the basics of public speaking and personal presentation -- hence all the snazzy ties in the room....
Job training programs like Strive, offering skills in everything from energy-efficiency retrofitting to the manufacture and maintenance of wind turbines, are springing up across the country. Together they represent a significant shift in the American workforce and, perhaps, in the environmental movement. President Barack Obama's $787 billion federal stimulus package promises at least $1 billion for green-job training; millions more are being invested by foundations, state and local governments, and private interests....
The idea that blue-collar occupations -- make that "green-collar" occupations -- can help heal the earth while providing stable, well-paying employment was once simply a fantasy of a few underfunded dreamers. But in 2003 that fantasy came to life through the work of two pioneering nonprofits: Sustainable South Bronx, in New York City, and Baltimore's Civic Works. Now green-job training programs serve a broad spectrum of the population and attract a scale of financial backing that surprises even some of their earliest advocates....

2009 May 26. In Hot Pursuit of Fusion (or Folly). By WILLIAM J. BROAD, NY Times. Excerpt: LIVERMORE, Calif. ..."Bringing Star Power to Earth" reads a giant banner that was recently unfurled across a building the size of a football stadium.
The $3.5 billion site is known as the National Ignition Facility, or NIF. For more than half a century, physicists have dreamed of creating tiny stars that would inaugurate an era of bold science and cheap energy....
In theory, the facility's 192 lasers - made of nearly 60 miles of mirrors and fiber optics, crystals and light amplifiers - will fire as one to pulverize a fleck of hydrogen fuel smaller than a match head. Compressed and heated to temperatures hotter than those of the core of a star, the hydrogen atoms will fuse into helium, releasing bursts of thermonuclear energy.
The project's director, Ed Moses, said that getting to the cusp of ignition (defined as the successful achievement of fusion) had taken some 7,000 workers and 3,000 contractors a dozen years, their labors creating a precision colossus of millions of parts and 60,000 points of control, 30 times as many as on the space shuttle.
...In February, NIF fired its 192 beams into its target chamber for the first time.... skeptics dismiss NIF as a colossal delusion that is squandering precious resources at a time of economic hardship. Just operating it ... will cost $140 million a year. Some doubters ridicule it as the National Almost Ignition Facility, or NAIF....
Dr. Moses, while offering no guarantees, argued that any great endeavor involved risks and that the gamble was worth it because of the potential rewards.
He said that NIF, if successful, would help keep the nation's nuclear arms reliable without underground testing, would reveal the hidden life of stars and would prepare the way for radically new kinds of power plants.
"If fusion energy works," he said, "you'll have, for all intents and purposes, a limitless supply of carbon-free energy that's not geopolitically sensitive. What more would you want? It's a game changer."....

2009 May 10. Efficient Power Use Attracts Investors From the Green Side. By Claire Cain Miller, The NY Times. Excerpt: Venture capital is moving away from alternative energy and returning to one of its traditional strengths: improving the efficiency of energy consumption....

2009 May 7. Sea 'snake' generates electricity with every wave. By Colin Barras, NewScientist. Excerpt: Anaconda, a giant rubber "snake" that floats offshore and converts wave energy to electricity, is a step closer to commercialisation. An 8-metre long, 1/25th scale version is currently undergoing tests in a large wave tank in Gosport, UK, and a full-size working version could be a reality in five years.
Harnessing the power of waves is an attractive proposition because they are much more energy dense than wind. But wave power remains the poor relation of the renewable energy sector due to the difficulties of cheaply operating machinery in the harsh marine environment. The world's first commercial wave farm only began operating last year, off the northern coast of Portugal.
A variety of other designs are in testing around the world, but none are as unusual as the Anaconda. The rubber snake is filled with freshwater – to help deter sea creatures from setting up a home inside – and sealed at both ends to create a semi-rigid balloon that floats at the sea's surface.
The tube is anchored at one end and as waves wash along its length they exert pressure on the snake that is transmitted by the water inside. This forces Anaconda's walls to expand outwards into the wave troughs where they are under less pressure, forming "bulge waves" that travel along the Anaconda's length.
These waves are similar to those that pass through the human circulatory system and can be felt as the pulse in the wrist and neck, says Rod Rainey of Atkins Global, co-inventor of the Anaconda. When each bulge wave reaches the end of the snake it keeps a turbine spinning to generate electricity....

2009 March/April. The Rooftop Revolution. By Mariah Blake, Washington Monthly. Excerpt: A little-known policy is turning sleepy central Florida into a green energy hub. Could it do the same for America at large? This winter, as Congress was scrambling to pass the stimulus package, the bottom fell out of the renewable energy sector.... Trade groups like the American Wind Energy Association, which as recently as December was forecasting "another record-shattering year of growth," began predicting that new installations would plunge by 30 to 50 percent. Solar panel manufacturers that had been blazing a trail of growth announced a wave of layoffs....
But there is one place where capital is still flowing: Gainesville, Florida. ...Tim Morgan ... intends to rent roof space from eighty Gainesville businesses and install twenty-five-kilowatt solar generating systems on each of them, for a total of two megawatts-a project that would nearly double Florida's solar-generating capacity. ...Paradigm Properties, a residential real estate company, plans to install photovoltaic arrays on fifty local apartment buildings and its downtown headquarters. Achira Wood, a custom carpentry outlet, is plastering the roof of its workshop-roughly 50,000 square feet of galvanized steel-with solar panels. Interstate Mini Storage is doing the same with its sprawling flat-roofed compound. Tom Lane, who owns ECS Solar Energy Systems, a local solar contractor, told me he's planning to expand his staff from eleven to at least fifty. "The activity we've seen is just explosive," he said. "I've been in the business thirty years and I've never seen anything like it."
Why is the renewable energy market in Gainesville booming while it's collapsing elsewhere in the country? The answer boils down to policy. In early February, the city became the first in the nation to adopt a "feed-in tariff"-a clunky and un-descriptive name for a bold incentive to foster renewable energy. Under this system, the local power company is required to buy renewable energy from independent producers, no matter how small, at rates slightly higher than the average cost of production. This means anyone with a cluster of solar cells on their roof can sell the power they produce at a profit. The costs of the program are passed on to ratepayers, who see a small rise in their electric bills (in Gainesville the annual increase is capped at 1 percent). While rate hikes are seldom popular, the community has rallied behind this policy, because unlike big power plant construction-the costs of which are also passed on to the public-everyone has the opportunity to profit, either by investing themselves or by tapping into the groundswell of economic activity the incentive creates....

2009 March 11. Atmospheric ‘Sunshade’ Could Reduce Solar Power Generation. NOAA. Excerpt: The concept of delaying global warming by adding particles into the upper atmosphere to cool the climate could unintentionally reduce peak electricity generated by large solar power plants by as much as one-fifth, according to a new NOAA study....
“Injecting particles into the stratosphere could have unintended consequences for one alternative energy source expected to play a role in the transition away from fossil fuels,” said author Daniel Murphy, a scientist at NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo.
The Earth is heating up as fossil-fuel burning produces carbon dioxide, the primary heat-trapping gas responsible for man-made climate change. To counteract the effect, some geoengineering proposals are designed to slow global warming by shading the Earth from sunlight.
...Murphy found that particles in the stratosphere reduce the amount and change the nature of the sunlight that strikes the Earth. Though a fraction of the incoming sunlight bounces back to space (the cooling effect), a much larger amount becomes diffuse, or scattered, light.
On average, for every watt of sunlight the particles reflect away from the Earth, another three watts of direct sunlight are converted to diffuse sunlight. Large power-generating solar plants that concentrate sunlight for maximum efficiency depend solely on direct sunlight and cannot use diffuse light....

2009 Feb 27. Selling the Sun. by Michael Behar, OnEarth magazine - NRDC. A Man, A Plan, and the Dawn of America's Solar Future. "I am a capitalist," announces Jigar Shah, the 34-year-old founder of SunEdison. ...An iconoclast among greens, he's a devoted environmentalist who champions market economics and believes American business acumen can conquer climate change. Shah has spent the past six years leveraging his convictions to build North America's largest and most successful provider of solar energy.
In 2003, Shah launched SunEdison to smash the decades-old paradigm that required anyone wanting solar to pay huge installation costs up front. Depending on its size, a rooftop array or a ground-based solar farm can cost anywhere from $10,000 to $10 million. This infuriated Shah, who has always believed that having to own the means of producing solar power is woefully out of step with how the energy industry operates. "Do you want to be in the power-plant business?" he asks. "Or do you just want to buy solar power?" Imagine having to own and operate a satellite to get DirecTV and you begin to understand why Shah scorned the prevailing model for solar energy.
...For Shah's part, he didn't invent any groundbreaking technologies. He just repackaged ones that already existed and convinced people to buy them. SunEdison customers pay nothing for their solar systems. That's right, zero. Instead they sign what is known as a power-purchasing agreement, or PPA. These agreements are commonplace in the coal, oil, nuclear, and natural gas industries (the Hoover Dam was financed in part with PPAs). But Shah figured out how to make PPAs profitable for solar, something that nobody had been able to do before. When SunEdison installs a solar array, the customer agrees under a PPA to buy the electricity it produces at a set price for at least 10 years. "When we priced out owning the system ourselves, it didn't make sense," Buckley tells me. "We wanted a way to establish price certainty in a volatile market. SunEdison gave us a long-term hedge against that price uncertainty. We're paying less for electricity and reducing our carbon impact. And 15 years down the road, when the price of electricity is higher, the savings will be even more attractive."....

2009 January 12. Gulf Oil States Seeking a Lead in Clean Energy. By Elisabeth Rosenthal, The New York Times. Excerpt: ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — With one of the highest per capita carbon footprints in the world, these oil-rich emirates would seem an unlikely place for a green revolution.
...Still, the region’s leaders know energy and money, having built their wealth on oil. They understand that oil is a finite resource, vulnerable to competition from new energy sources.
So even as President-elect Barack Obama talks about promoting green jobs as America’s route out of recession, gulf states, including the emirates, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, are making a concerted push to become the Silicon Valley of alternative energy.
They are aggressively pouring billions of dollars made in the oil fields into new green technologies. They are establishing billion-dollar clean-technology investment funds. And they are putting millions of dollars behind research projects at universities from California to Boston to London, and setting up green research parks at home.
...This new investment aims to maintain the gulf’s dominant position as a global energy supplier, gaining patents from the new technologies and promoting green manufacturing. But if the United States and the European Union have set energy independence from the gulf states as a goal of new renewable energy efforts, they may find they are arriving late at the party.
“The leadership in these breakthrough technologies is a title the U.S. can lose easily,” said Peter Barker-Homek, chief executive of Taqa, Abu Dhabi’s national energy company. “Here we have low taxes, a young population, accessibility to the world, abundant natural resources and willingness to invest in the seed capital.”
...For the rest of the world, the enormous cash infusion may provide the important boost experts say is needed to get dozens of emerging technologies — like carbon capture, microsolar and low-carbon aluminum — over the development hump to make them cost-effective....

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