AlternaPower

Like Putting Lightning in a Bottle

2010-09-03T22:18:00.001+01:00

Energy is all around us.

Wind, solar, hydro, tidal, geothermal – all of these alt-power sources are so promising because they are able to harness the energy created by the very forces of nature, rather than by consuming finite resources.

Now, perhaps we can add a new option to this list. Brazilian researchers say they have developed a way to extract electricity from the atmosphere. That’s right, just pull power from the air.

Everyone knows the skies are full of electricity – ever see a wild lightning storm? Now that’s a lot of energy!

But until now, nobody really knew how this power was generated. The key, it turns out, is water.

The old thinking was that water droplets in the air were electrically neutral, but scientists at Brazil’s University of Campinas have proven otherwise. In fact, water picks up charges from dust particles in the air, and the more humidity in the air, the more electricity is being stored. Makes sense, since lighting is usually accompanied by heavy rain.

Fernando Galembeck, lead researcher on the project, found “clear evidence that water in the atmosphere can accumulate electrical charges and transfer them to other materials it comes into contact with.

Galembeck calls this effect “hygroelectricity,” or “humidity electricity.”

Though this is still just a lab project, Galembeck says it could be possible to commercialize the concept and create hygroelectricity collectors that would draw electricity from the air that could be routed to homes or businesses. These would be most effective in regions with high-humidity, including many developing countries.

One extra benefit: siphoning off power from the air would electricity from accumulating in the air, and perhaps head off any damage caused by lighting strikes. Though we might miss watching those really dramatic lighting storms.

Poor Planning

2010-08-28T14:31:00.002+01:00

Remember way back in 2007, when we tweaked the United Kingdom for building wind farms in areas that don’t get enough wind?

Well, we have a similar problem here now; according an article in Wired magazine, a significant number of turbines in rural areas, especially in west Texas and Iowa, are situated in sparsely populated areas that lack the high-power lines needed to carry electricity back to the big cities where it’s needed.

The problem is so bad that some operators actually have to pay the local utilities to take surplus electricity off their hands, instead of selling the juice they feed into the grid. (Technically, it’s called “negative electricity pricing.”) Wow, that just seems amazingly… dumb.

Why does this happen? Well, here’s the part that does make a little sense. Wind farms take up space, a lot of space, and people in the cities and the suburbs don’t want to devote precious acreage to turbines. Hello, NIMBY politics!

Out in the country, of course, there’s a lot of space, often filled with struggling farmers who see windmills as a potential new source of revenue. Tax subsidies for running wind farms makes turbines even more appealing. But the low populations in these areas (as well in the deserts and other undeveloped areas where wind and solar projects spring up) mean utilities have never built the transmission lines needed to bring the juice back where it’s needed.

One expert says developers can build a wind farm in a year or two, but it takes about five years to install the transmission lines needed to carry the power back to the cities. And that’s assuming there aren’t any bureaucratic headaches getting the rights to string the wires through public and private lands.

The lesson here is that government incentives, like the ones that encourage people to build alt-energy project, are good, but they also need to be smart. And sometimes it seems like “smart” and “planning” are two words that rarely go together.

Winds of Change

2010-08-26T22:27:00.000+01:00

So there are some signs of positive change.

According to data released this week by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, overall power consumption in the United States is falling, and the amount of energy generated by renewable sources is climbing.

Power generated from coal, natural gas and petroleum in 2009 is down from the year before, according to the new figures, while solar, hydroelectric, geothermal and, most significantly, wind all gained.

Total power usage in the U.S. was 94.6 quadrillion BTUs last year, down about 4.6 percent. In part, the decline in overall power use is tied to the recession – less economic activity means people and businesses use less power, researchers say. Another key factor was the growing use of energy-efficient appliances.

Meanwhile, renewable power sources became a more important part of the mix. Wind saw one of the biggest spikes, up more than 37 percent, to 0.7 quadrillion BTUs. And since most of that fed right into the grid, it offset the need for coal-fired electricity plants.

"The increase in renewables is a really good story, especially in the wind arena," Lawrence Labs researcher A.J. Simon told Science Daily. "It's a result of very good incentives and technological advancements. In 2009, the technology got better and the incentives remained relatively stable. The investments put in place for wind in previous years came online in 2009. Even better, there are more projects in the pipeline for 2010 and beyond."

Wind Power Dangerous to Birds

2010-06-07T22:22:00.001+01:00

Birds, bats and wind turbines – still a bad combination.

Researchers are studying wind farm in the Northwest to determine their impact on the local raptor population (that’s hawks, eagles, vultures and other big birds of prey). Big wind farms, naturally, are located in areas with strong, consistent wind patterns; unfortunately, those winds are also appealing to large birds, allowing them to glide for hours while scouting for prey. And when a diving hawk comes into contact with the whirring blade of a wind turbine, well it’s not pretty. Turbines also are a danger to bats, for all the same reasons.

“It’s like a crime scene,” says one researcher in this article from The Seattle Times, who’s been keeping track of the number of bird-kills for the wind-power industry. The initial results show that wind power is not a major threat to wildlife (but the studies were commissioned by the power companies, so were you really expecting a different answer?).

Still, this is an issue that won’t go away. I covered it back in 2005, when the Altamont Pass wind farm in California was temporarily shut down so environmental researchers could find a way to minimize the number of bird kills. A 2004 report found 880 to 1,300 raptors were killed at Altamont every year, including red-tailed hawks and the federally protected golden eagle.

The best answer, it seems, is finding locations for wind farms without a major population of raptors. Of course, if you don’t do your homework, then a big wind farm will eventually make sure the local area doesn’t have a substantial raptor population.

Focus On: Tidal Energy

2010-06-04T22:51:00.001+01:00

Tidal power has always been one of our favorite ideas, and now it’s starting to evolve from cool theoretical concept to a practical source of energy.

Ocean Power Technologies is one of the front-runners here, with ongoing projects in Australia, Spain, two in the United Kingdom, Hawaii, New Jersey and two in Oregon.

Most of these are small deployments, mainly to test the technology, but the Oregon projects are noteworthy because they are slated to be full-scale, commercial power wave parks. In Coos Bay, OPT has proposed installing up to 200 of its PowerBuoys about 2.7 miles offshore, enough to generate up to 100 MW – the company says this will be the largest wave-power plant in the world.

Not far up the coast, in Reedsport, OPT expects 10 PowerBuoys offshore. It’s currently waiting for all the necessary federal permits; if it actually happens, it will be the first such commercial wave power site on the West Coast.

OPT has been testing the PowerBuoy near Atlantic City for more than two years, but the energy produced is simply dissipated. (These are big machines – see the pic above.)

Wave power is simple, in theory, but really hard to pull off. Like windmills, these systems convert kinetic energy into electricity. As the tide and waves move, the PowerBuoys move up and down, generating power.

Tide power has some key advantages over other green energy concepts. The tides, they never stop, so there’s a seemingly infinite supply here, and it could be more consistent than wind power. Plus, the tide is everywhere, so tidal power systems could be installed in a wide variety of sites.

But the sea is a very tough environment. Water and salt don’t mix well with electricity, metal and electronics, and it’s tough to send out a maintenance crew. But OPT’s systems seem to be holding up over time, so maybe we’ll see more of these. In fact, despite these not-so-trivial challenges, the main hurdle may not be the technology, but the regulatory process (see Cape Wind).

A Modest Proposal

2010-06-01T22:44:00.002+01:00

I have to give these guys plenty of credit for being bold.

As part of an effort to come up with a series of futuristic projects that could remake the world of tomorrow, researchers at the Japanese tech company Shimuzu Corp. have suggested turning the surface of the moon into a massive solar power plant.

Wow. That’s really all I have to say about that.

The idea behind the Luna Belt, as they call it, is to build a series of enormous solar arrays all the way around the moon’s equator, nearly 7,000 miles. It would initially be a few miles thick, and would eventually grow to as wide as 250 miles.

The power would be beamed back to Earth via lasers or microwave, and then converted into electricity.

And how would this enormous project be built, you might ask. Good question. Shimuzu says that much of it could be constructed using the rocks and dust found on the moon, including cement, bricks and glass fibers, and most of the work could be handled by robots. Shimuzu even says it can combine hydrogen with moon dust to generate water (but it’s BYOH from home, unfortunately).

Modestly, the company says the idea will lead to “the infinite coexistence of mankind and the Earth.”

Tilting at (Green) Windmills

2010-05-13T22:07:00.001+01:00

Cape Wind makes the cover of The New Yorker!

This totally awesome image says so so much about this project’s years-long approval process. Which, by the way, is still not over even though Interior Secretary Ken Salazar gave it the thumb’s up last month.

Native American groups still oppose the wind farm, which they say desecrates sacred ground. That’s an argument that may still carry some weight, I think, though other groups that claimed the project could interfere with fishermen and wildlife probably have little ground to continue their appeals.

But this cover – so fun. A pilgrim (that would be Cape Cod locals, I assume) riding a whale (to represent fishermen? Or is that pro-environmental groups?) tilting at windmills. Are they saying the whole Cape Wind debate was a Don Quixote-style fight they could never win? A total waste of time?

But for who – Cape Cod residents who opposed the wind farm project, or environmentalists who embrace green energy?

The ambiguity is the best part.

Offshore Wind - More Delays

2010-04-08T05:55:00.001+01:00

Here’s an important lesson for anybody trying to develop a major alt-power project: work with your neighbors.

Cape Wind, the proposed offshore wind farm in Nantucket Sound, appears to be sinking after years of controversy. Last week a federal panel recommended that the government reject the project; interior secretary Ken Salazar is expected to make a final ruling this month.

Among other missteps, Cape Wind developers failed to win over the powerful Kennedy clan, which reportedly was concerned about the environmental impact of the turbines. (Also, big windmills might mess up the view from the Kennedy compound.) When a green project gets the thumbs-down from the famously pro-environment Kennedys, that’s a bad sign. Fishermen were also reportedly concerned the turbines would interfere with their nets, and Native Americans said the project would intrude upon culturally significant areas and rituals.

And in New York, NIMBY politics also scuttled in 2007 an offshore wind proposal that would have been visible from one of Long Island’s most popular beaches, though Long Island Power Authority is currently working on another proposal that might address these concerns by planting the turbines farther out in the Atlantic.

But in Rhode Island, another windy Northeast state, wind-power advocates are taking a different approach. Instead of letting developers take the lead, that state is trying to do its homework first. The state is expected to finish in August a three-year study of potential offshore wind sites. It’s evaluated bird migration, fish populations, local fishermen and Native Americans’ concerns. That seems like it should cover all, or at least most, of their bases.

Peas - More than Just Good Food

2010-03-05T22:34:00.000Z

I’ve always thought photosynthesis was cool.

Yes, photovoltaic solar power is cool too, but converting light energy into electricity doesn’t seem like such a huge transformation. Light – a type of energy we can’t see or touch – being converted into electricity – another form of energy we can’t see or touch.

But photosynthesis, now that’s something. Plants convert light into… well, I always thought it came close to creating life. Using the energy of the sun to help plants grow, to literally form living organic mass.

The news today is that researchers at Tel Aviv University have managed to harness the engine of photosynthesis to create electricity, using nanotechnology.

In a plant, solar energy energizes electrons, triggering a biochemical reaction that leads to sugar production. The mechanism is something called Photosystem 1, a very sophisticated nano-scale arrangement that converts solar energy into chemical energy.

The Tel Aviv researchers managed to isolate tiny crystalline elements of the PS1 from a common pea plant, and tweaked them to generate not chemical energy, but electrical energy. In fact, they created an array of these crystals on top of a layer of gold (an excellent conductor) and laid it out in the sun. The result: 10 volts of juice.

The message: peas are good tasting, good for you, and may be an important part of a balanced energy diet as well.

A Power Source Blooms

2010-03-02T04:47:00.002Z

Who is Bloom Energy

This Silicon Valley startup emerged from stealth mode last week promising to solve the word’s energy crisis and make sure everybody gets double portions of ice cream for dessert.

Well, actually, they announced a solid oxide fuel cell that the company claims will enable homes and businesses to generate their own electricity. They call it the Bloom Box, which I admit is a catchy name, but I wish they provided more details about how it works.

Here’s what we do know: the company has raised boatloads of VC money, somewhere around $400 million, from some very well-known names. Ebay, Fed-Ex and Googleare said to be testing Bloom Boxes now to power their corporate campuses.

Here’s what we need to know: how it works and what it will cost. Fuel cells aren’t a new concept; they generate power through a chemical reaction, but Bloom isn’t revealing what’s in its secret sauce. Sure, the boxes can put out juice, but it’s hard to tell now if they’re affordable. And with an up-front cost of more than a half-million dollars, Bloom Box power will need to be substantially cheaper than other options to make this a viable product.

We would be thrilled if our initial skepticism was proven unfounded, but then we also fell, briefly, for cold fusion.

Nuclear Power, No Cold War Flavor

2010-01-28T22:11:00.002Z

Thorium – will this be the future or nuclear energy?

I admit, I had never heard about the stuff until I saw this article in Wired recently, but the idea of thorium-based reactors has been kicking around for decades. In fact, back in the 1950s, when nuclear energy was just getting off the ground, thorium was a leading candidate to become the basic fuel of reactors around the world. In the end, uranium won out (you’ll see why shortly), but some researchers are taking another look at thorium

Here’s what’s cool about it. First, it’s really abundant. There’s lots of it out there. Uranium, by contrast, is less common, especially the U-235 isotope that’s used in reactors.

Also, thorium leaves behind very little waste material. We all know that nuclear waste is a pretty major issue with current reactors. And, the byproducts of thorium reactors are only dangerous for a few hundred years, compared with uranium’s leftovers, that are harmful for thousands of years.

And here’s the kicker: when thorium breaks down, none of the resulting materials can be used to produce nuclear weapons. Uranium, of course, begets plutonium, the key ingredient to bombs.

Obviously, this was seen as a perk during the Cold War – hey, we get electricity and explosives! That’s a win-win.

But our priorities have changed now, and maybe that means the world is ready for a nuclear power plant that doesn’t have much to offer the Pentagon.

Algae - A Reality Check

2010-01-28T04:33:00.003Z

Algae biofuel companies are up in arms this week over a new study that cast serious doubts about the environmental benefits of what many had seen as a promising technology.

Yes, there are plenty of advantages to algae over other biofuel source-crops: it generates more power than other commonly used plants, and because it grows in water instead of soil it doesn’t compete with farmland that can be used for food.

But the report, published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, focuses on other factors. The main problem isn’t the algae, it’s the fertilizer needed to grow it. More specifically, it’s the energy used producing fertilizer and the carbon dioxide emitted by the trucks that haul it to the ponds where algae is raised.

While producing biofuels from crops such as corn and canola can ultimately cut down on carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the report concluded that the algae production could actually increase greenhouse gases.

This is an important point – everything is connected. Even if algae delivers more energy than fuels from other sources, it’s not necessarily a gain if the entire process, start to finish, is less efficient than other source crops.

But don’t rule out algae just because of this report. It’s still a promising concept, and it’s hard to imagine that smart people can’t develop new manufacturing processes that are more efficient than what we’re using now.

Team Effort: Supergrid

2010-01-05T18:40:00.000Z

When the government really gets behind a project, sometimes it can pull off some pretty impressive work.

In this case, a continent-spanning, green “supergrid” in Europe. Nine countries are collaborating on a massive energy project that would link wind turbines, tidal energy systems, solar farms and hyrdro power sites all across the North Sea region.

The nine nations – Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, Sweden and the United Kingdom – are expected to formally approve the project this month, and hope to have firm plans in place by Fall. Various estimates have pegged the cost at close to 30 billion euro.

The vision is to connect wind farms in Scotland, solar facilities and Germany and tidal power systems in Belgium and Denmark through a vast network of high-capacity, undersea DC cables. Direct current transmission lines cost more than AC, organizers say, but lose less energy over long distances.

The project has one more component that seems especially clever: all these alt-energy systems will be linked to a network of hydroelectric plants in Norway. When the wind is a’blowin’ and the waves are a’crashin’ and the sun is a’shinin’ there’s going to be plenty of juice, and the excess power can be diverted to Norway, to push water uphill. Then, when the weather is less cooperative, the water can flow downhill to power the hydro plants.

The EU has pledged to generate 20% of its power from renewable sources by 2020; that’s an ambitious target, but projects like this one could certainly help them get there.

3 Gorges X 5

2010-01-03T19:17:00.002Z

Amazing article in The New Yorker last month, about China’s green energy programs, and more importantly, how they absolutely dwarf anything we’re trying to do here in the U.S.

I had known that China was a big force in renewables – that the country was a major supplier of wind turbines and solar systems, and that their manufacturing capacity was huge, and growing. But I hadn’t really appreciated the scale, not of what they are able to do now nor of what they are going to be able to do in the near future.

In fact, Chinese researchers have been pushing hard to develop green energy for decades, through an initiative called the 863 Program – so-named because it was the result of a scientific call to action in March of 1986. 1986! That was more than three decades ago.

With such a big head start, it’s no surprise that China has moved into such a leadership position. Here’s my favorite stat about the country’s impressive progress: in the next decade, China is expected to install enough wind power equipment to generate FIVE times energy of the Three Gorges Dam, which is already the world’s biggest electricity producer.

Chinese scientists have also garnered respect for other advanced systems, including clean-coal gasification, batteries for electric cars, thin-film solar cells and more.

And it’s not just scientific progress that’s boosting the country’s green progress; Chinese policy shifts have allowed the price of coal to increase, giving the billion-plus consumers there incentive to seek an alternative for what has long been one of the most common sources of household energy.

Meanwhile, back in the U.S., the Reagan and Bush administrations moved in the opposite direction, dismantling green research projects and developing policies that encourage the use of oil and other sources of greenhouse gases.

This was a powerful reminder of what can result from far-sighted leadership.

Head in the Sand

2009-12-08T21:15:00.001Z

I really don’t see how people can deny that the world, the climate, is changing. It’s like those people who say the Holocaust never happened -- how can they ignore something so big, so documented, so obvious?

But no. Today comes a report claiming that deforestation is not as big a factor in global warming as previously thought. Conventional wisdom holds that deforestation is responsible for about 20% of global carbon emissions, which has prompted numerous groups to call for cutbacks in logging and clearing, especially in developing countries.

The World Growth trade group, however, says new data pins that figure at closer to 5%. And, if deforestation is a smaller factor in climate change, well I guess there’s no reason to cut down more trees. The report give countries the green light to pursue deforestation projects as part of their overall development and growth efforts.

Do I believe it? Well, World Growth is a pro-development NGO, so it’s not like they have an unbiased view here. Nothing like finding statistics to justify your preexisting position.

But, just like trying to refute the Holocaust, denying the facts doesn’t make them any less true. The other big news today is the finding that this decade will likely be the warmest on record.

The source: the World Meteorological Organization. Definitely a more reputable name.

Unintended Consequences

2009-10-27T21:32:00.000Z

Why do we like biofuels? Because they are a substitute for oil. Because oil will run out, maybe sooner, maybe later, but someday it will all be gone. There aren’t any gasoline bushes growing out there.

But we can grow plenty of algae, or jatropha, or soy, or even turkeys – all of which can be converted to fuel. However, that only solves one of the two big issues we’re facing today. Biofuels address our energy needs, but what about the environment?

Well, since biofuels are designed to replace gas in an internal combustion engine, they don’t really do much for that side of the column. Cars running on biodiesel still generate carbon-dioxide. Well, at least we’re dealing with one of the problems, so don’t we come out ahead?

Well, maybe not. According to an article in Science Express this month, producing biofuels can significantly increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, hastening global warming. Apparently, converting land use to grow food crops to biofuel source crops will sharply increase CO2 emissions. Converting natural areas (you know, those beautiful pristine places out in the wilds) is even worse.

Oh, there’s one more thing. The fertilizer needed to grow biofuel source crops will generate huge amounts of nitrous oxide, which is even worse for the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.

"Large greenhouse gas emissions from these indirect land-use changes are unintended consequences of a global biofuels program; consequences that add to the climate-change problem rather than helping to solve it," the report found.

So, let’s go back to where we started this conversation? Why do we like biofuels? Maybe I’m not as certain as I was before.

Good Investment

2009-10-16T22:42:00.001+01:00

Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced this week that three universities will receive up to $8 each million to develop more efficient turbines and fund students who want to do research in the field.

The University of Maine plans to study offshore turbine designs, including a nifty project to evaluate a floating turbine. Illinois Institute of Technology will evaluate new “aero elastic models” aimed at improving efficiency. And the University of Minnesota will be looking at new ways to transmit power from the turbine to the grid, as well as designs that can “increase energy capture.” Not sure exactly how those ideas all work, but they sound cool, no?

And here’s why this initiative is a double-plus: the funding is coming from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Why is this cool? Because it’s investing twice. First, it’s a much-needed push to boost U.S. green technology. And second, it’s a clear statement that the government sees green research as an area that will likely deliver long-term economic returns. In fact, despite record unemployment figures, green industries are hiring. This is an industry with a future.

Photosynthetic Phuel

2009-07-27T22:43:00.002+01:00

We’ve written about biofuels, and we’ve written about solar power, but Joule Biotechnology is trying to combing these two very different concepts.

The company emerged from stealth mode today, touting its “Helioculture” system that it claims can turn sunlight, carbon dioxide and some kind of proprietary organism into Ethanol. Now that’s some kind of secret sauce!

The basic process seems to be based on photosynthesis, and though the company hasn’t released all the details, it’s clearly an intriguing concept. Joule claims it has developed a “photosynthetic organism” that uses the energy in sunlight to “metabolize” carbon dioxide to create a variety of fuel products.

Joule says its first commercial product, SolarEthanol, will be ready for commercial production next year.

The system requires open space, but can be anywhere, and doesn’t displace any land that can be used for crops. Nor does it need fresh water. And unlike other types of Ethanol that need to be refined from various source crops, the end product of the Helioculture process is SolarEthanol – no need for additional steps. Just pour sunlight into one end of the process and fuel comes pouring out the other end.

Wow, we’re dying to know more about how this works.

A Fatal Flaw

2009-07-14T22:29:00.000+01:00

If T. Boone Pickens can’t make wind power an economic reality, who can?

The famed oil tycoon announced last year that he wanted to build in Texas one of the world’s biggest wind farms.

Under his PickensPlan, he initially signed on to buy more than 600 turbines that would be able to generate up to 1,000 megawatts; the ultimate goal was to quadruple that figure.

But his plan hit a few snags. First, he announced in November that he was having trouble lining up financing. Something kind of global credit crunch was to blame, he said.

But the real hurdle was more fundamental: Pickens said last week he was pulling the plug on the whole project because of a lack of transmission lines that would carry the power from the windswept plains of Texas, where he planned to install the turbines, to the cities, where it’s needed. The power lines aren’t there, nobody is stepping up to build them, and with Pickens having trouble with financing, he couldn’t cover them himself.

We’ve touched on this concept before, and it’s a bit distressing that such an ambitious project would fail because of such a fundamental flaw.

So what does this say about the future of wind power? I guess that it’s still out there, in the future.

Green Nukes?

2009-07-01T04:32:00.002+01:00

Asia’s green energy approach may actually have a soft blue glow.

Experts at a recent alternative energy confab in Manila are pushing nuclear energy as an important option for the rapidly growing region, according to this article.

It’s better than coal or oil, they say, and delivers more power than any existing alternative sources. India, for example, is planning to quintuple its nuclear capacity, from about 4,000 megawatts now to 20,000 megawatts in the next decade, and is getting technology and resources from the United States.

China, too, is developing more nuclear plants as part of a push to diversify its power-production capabilities. The country currently derives 70 percent of its energy from coal, while alternative sources and nuclear plants contribute less than 10%.

"Developing Asian countries whether they like it or not should take a look at nuclear power as a source of energy," Piyasvasti Amranand, a former Thai energy minister and now chief advisor for a Bangkok lobbyist group Energy for Environment Foundation, said at the conference.

It may sound like heresy, but I’ve got mixed feelings about nuclear power. I know the waste is a huge issue, and the potential impact of a major malfunction is huge (Chernobyl, anyone?).

But it’s a lot cleaner than burning coal or oil, and the technology is proven and effective. Switching from fossil fuels to renewables like wind or solar is the goal, right? But that won’t happen overnight. Does it make environmental sense to push for more nuclear energy as a way to wean ourselves from oil and (hopefully) slow down global warming?

I’m not sure where I stand on this one, but I’m willing to entertain arguments for either position.

New Challenger

2009-07-01T04:04:00.001+01:00

Here’s another candidate claiming to be the perfect source of biofuels: jatropha.

My Dream Fuel, a Florida farming company backed by an Indian tech firm and a Costa Rican agriculture operation, is trying to convince U.S. farmers to buy and raise jatropha, which it claims is ideal for biodiesel production.

The numbers are impressive. The trees cost $6 to $7, according to an article by the Associated Press, and can be grown 400 to an acre. When harvested, each tree yields more than two gallons of oil that can be converted to biodiesel. The company says the trees are easy to maintain and require little water or care.

Jatropha-based fuel has already powered some commercial air flights, and the energy giant BP is involved in jatropha projects in India and Africa.

The downside, naturally, is convincing people to take a leap of faith and actually cultivate the trees. The economics, the basic numbers, aren’t always enough to make the case when they’re all based on rosy projections that assume a market for a new product. You can’t blame farmers for being wary, and doing something new is always a little scary. But that shouldn’t be a reason not to try.

Solar Power at Night

2008-08-19T22:18:00.000+01:00

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Labs say they have solved one of solar energy’s biggest problems with a new kind of thin-film solar cell that will generate power at night.

Traditional photovoltaic solar cells absorb photons from visible sunlight, converting the absorbed energy into electricity.

The key technological breakthrough coming from Idaho Labs is a tiny nano-antenna that can absorb mid-infrared rays, otherwise known as heat. The Earth absorbs sunlight all day long, and emits infrared energy constantly.

These nano antennas are stamped onto a polyethylene sheet, and researchers said the production process is easy and inexpensive. Even better, they said the new design can capture up to 80 percent of the energy in the IR light, compared to photovoltaics, which are often only about 20 percent efficient.

Of course, there’s a snag. Once the nano antennas absorb all this energy, they begin to oscillate with alternating current at a trillion times per second; the researchers say they still have to come up with a new kind of rectifier that can convert that power into usable, direct current.

Existing rectifier designs can’t handle such high-frequency oscillation, and are way too big. The researchers now must create a nano-scale rectifier, which would have to be about 1,000 times smaller than commercial rectifiers that are currently available.

A Whale of a Reality Check

2008-08-05T22:29:00.001+01:00

It was once considered the only energy source suitable for artificial light. It was one of the world’s first multinational industries, and generated massive fortunes. And it required a global infrastructure connecting the source, in some of the Earth’s most remote locations, to living rooms around the world.

And while some of the key players in this huge 18th century industry said their businesses would thrive indefinitely, a wonderful article in the New York Times Sunday points out that the whale oil business eventually died out for one simple reason. It was based on a finite resource, and when it was used up, there was no more product to sell.

Sound familiar?

And just as whale oil was replaced by petroleum, starting in the mid-1800s, oil can be replaced as well. Yes, the oil barons of today insist there’s enough oil in the ground to last for many more years, but let’s be realistic. Maybe oil has peaked, maybe not, but is there anyone who doubts that the tap will run dry someday?

Where the Wind Blows

2008-07-11T22:36:00.001+01:00

The wind industry is getting a leg up from NASA.

The space agency has been collecting global weather data for almost a decade, which it initially used to predict storms and keep track of other weather patterns. But as part of that research, NASA’s QuickSCAT satellite has also been monitoring the speed, direction and power of wind traveling over the ocean’s surface.

That’s pretty useful information for anyone considering an offshore wind farm, and NASA published it all this week in a scientific journal. Some of the best sources of potential wind energy are off California’s Mendocino coast (I know it’s been plenty windy just about every time I visited), Tasmania, and Tierra Del Fuego, regions where land formations channel wind into a concentrated jet that blows almost year round. I’m sure the locals could probably have tipped off wind developers to these spots, but NASA’s findings also identified a few areas in the middle of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, which could be candidates for floating wind farms.

Connecting the Dots

2008-07-07T22:01:00.000+01:00

Texas, which currently has more wind power capacity than any other state, seems to have gotten ahead of itself.

The state has enough turbines to generate about 5,000 megawatts, almost 3 percent of its needs, and has plans to expand to 9,000 megawatts by yearend and 15,000 megawatts within a few years. Experts say that the wide open spaces in West Texas get enough wind to one day produce about 30 percent of the state’s power.

So where’s the problem? Turns out that there aren’t enough power lines in place to move the power from West Texas, where there’s plenty of wind and not so many people, to the rest of the state, where people need it. The Public Utility Commission is considering a few plans to build more lines, which will cost between $3 and $6 billion.

This hiccup in wind power seems to have opened the door to critics, who are, not surprisingly, closely tied to companies that operate traditional, coal and natural gas plants. Why spend so much money now, they argue, for an unreliable energy source that tends to die down in the afternoon, right when it’s most needed?

To that I say, why continue to support outdated power technologies that depend on resources that will eventually be exhausted? And if we continue to pursue short-sighted policies like refusing to build the lines to connecting turbines to the places where the power is needed, it’s pretty much certain that we’ll use up our finite resources faster and will have no backup plan in place for when they are gone.

Leadership

2008-07-01T03:04:00.000+01:00

I’ve seen two major public policy initiatives in the past week that made me hopeful, at first, and then pessimistic, yet again.

First the good news. The United Kingdom is making a huge push in wind power. It’s planning to spend $200 billion over the next decade to install thousands of wind turbines all over the country and offshore, as part of a long-term goal to produce 15 percent of its power from renewable resources by 2020.

The U.K. government is under no illusions that this will be an easy, or inexpensive, fix, yet it’s still willing to move forward. Business secretary John Hutton said “it is absolutely imperative that we take as much carbon as possible out of the way we generate energy… There is a cost in going green, I’m not going to pretend otherwise. But it will cost us if we don’t, because we have to factor in the climate change cost.”

That seem like real leadership, doing the right thing rather than the easy, or popular thing.

Now, for the reverse. Here in the U.S., the Bureau of Land Management is putting a freeze on all new solar energy projects.

The agency said it has received so many proposals to build solar projects on public land, more than 130 since 2005, that it has decided to stop accepting new proposals until it can conduct environmental impact reports on the ones already filed, which could take up to two years.

Solar companies have filed proposals for more than 130 projects on public land since 2005

Certainly it makes sense to be careful about installing large solar farms, but I find it hard to believe the agency couldn’t find enough people to fast-track these studies. Shutting down all development, at such a critical time for the alternative energy space, seems amazingly short-sighted. Which, I guess, is not such a huge surprise.

Unhappy Picture

2008-06-25T21:34:00.000+01:00

We’re going to need a lot more power plants.

According to the Department of Energy, global demand for energy will increase by 50 percent over the next two decades. That’s a huge increase, and it seems even bigger when you compare it to population growth rate of about 1.14 percent per year (thanks Wikipedia). In other words, the Earth will have a few more people every year, and all of them will be using a lot more power.

And according to the report released this week, most of that power will continue to come from oil, coal and nuclear. There are so many reasons why this is depressing I just don’t know where to start.

First, global warming. Burning more fossil fuels will only make our problems on this front worse.

Then there’s supply and demand. Fossil fuels are finite resources. How much is left to be extracted? I don’t know, and neither does anyone else, but we can be certain we’ll eventually run out, and there are a lot of smart people who say the world’s oil cup is less than half-full now.

The report said that coal use will increase by about 2 percent per year, with China accounting for almost three-fourths of that, and oil consumption will increase by a third, to about 113 million barrels per day. I was in China several years ago and was surprised to see how many people relied on coal for cooking and heating; once I noticed that, I certainly wasn’t surprised to look up at the sky and see only a haze.

And the really bad news: renewable energy will increase by only 2.1 percent per year, and most of that will be hydro plants in developing countries.

Let’s recap: in 2008, global oil prices are going through the roof, the world is clamoring for alternatives, and there are plenty of people working hard on compelling wind, solar an other viable renewable sources. But over the next two decades, the Department of Energy sees nothing to indicate that alternative energy sources will make any significant gains. Am I the only person who thinks there’s something wrong with this picture?

Out in the Wilderness

2008-06-20T22:42:00.001+01:00

What if you built a huge power plant and then couldn’t connect it to the grid?

That’s apparently a growing problem for some alternative energy projects. Wind farms must be installed in places where the wind blows and there’s enough room for dozens, or hundreds of turbines. Solar installations also take up a lot of space.

As a result, many of these projects end up far from major cities, often in undeveloped areas, and sometimes close to wilderness areas. The issue is that these plants eventually need to be connected to power companies’ lines, which requires some pretty major wiring stretching out to the middle of nowhere.

San Diego Gas & Electric is facing heat over plans to build a huge solar/wind/geothermal plant in the middle of the Southern California desert, and then string power transmission lines back to the city, 150 miles away, including a 23-mile stretch cutting right through a popular state park.

A Southern California Edison executive sums up the conflict succinctly in an AP article. “It’s a trade-off. Clean energy requires building infrastructure in potentially sensitive areas. There’s no way around it.”

Environmentalists just don’t know what side to pick in this fight.

Chips and Solar

2008-06-20T22:41:00.000+01:00

We’re seeing even more connections between the semiconductor industry, which has perfected the art of cost-effectively producing high-tech silicon devices, and the solar panel makers, which need to make their products more affordable.

The latest is IBM, which is one of the world’s leaders in chip-making technology and has also been quietly working on solar technology. Big Blue said this week it would work the Japanese tech company Tokyo Ohka Kogyo to develop a high-output solar cell manufacturing process, which the companies hope to have ready in about two to three years.

Most solar cells today are silicon, just like the vast majority of computer chips, but IBM is planning to use a different material, copper-indium-gallium-selenide. This technology exists now, but CIGS solar cells today typically are less effective than silicon, able to turn about 6 to 12 percent of the solar energy they absorb into electricity, compared to 20 for silicon.

IBM is shooting for 15 percent, which is an improvement for CIGS, but still short of silicon. However, the CIGS cells could offer other advantages, notably price, as silicon prices are on the rise, and weight. Tokyo Ohka Kogyo’s specialty is laying down thin films, and they hope to develop ultra-thin CIGS solar cells that would weigh less than thicker silicon, and could be installed in places where traditional solar panels cannot.

IBM also pointed out that CIGS technology is still developing, and there’s plenty of room for innovation. One researcher has produced CIGS cells with 19% efficiency, in a lab setting, which makes people optimistic that the technology could eventually reach parity with silicon, or even exceed it.

Solar Factories

2008-06-16T22:01:00.002+01:00

One of the big issues with solar power has always been cost; producing all those panels makes the up-front expense of a major solar project dauntingly huge. So I’m not surprised to see a growing link between the solar field and the semiconductor industry.

Chipmakers have always been way out in front when it comes to manufacturing technology. Sure, designing a microprocessor is tough work, but that’s only half the job. The other part of the business, which doesn’t get nearly as much attention, is the chip factory where some of the world’s most complicated products are mass-produced. Designing a cost-effective method for turning out products with features that approach the atomic level comes close to a dark art, so if any field can figure out how to make photovoltaic cells affordable, it’s going to be the chip guys.

Today I heard that Intel Corp. is spinning off a solar start-up unit it’s been incubating, SpectraWatt Inc., which will begin building its own advanced production site later this year. Intel noted that the cost of producing electricity with solar power is about twice that of conventional methods, but the advanced solar technologies it is working on could eventually make solar comparable in cost.

And another chip company, Cypress Semiconductor, owns a majority stake in the solar cell company SunPower Corp., and is developing ways to produce the cells in its chip factories. Cypress CEO T.J. Rodgers has said that producing solar cells in a chip plant offers better returns that all but the most advanced microchip designs, and that his own company will probably be better known for solar technology than chips in a few years. The long-term goal, according to SunPower, is to halve the cost of turning out solar cells by 2012.

I wonder if Moore’s Law, the famous observation that the processing power on a chip will double every 18 months or so, has a corollary for the solar market.

Look, up in the air!

2008-06-10T22:02:00.000+01:00

We’ve written about algae before, and now it seems like the goop is really gaining some traction in the biofuels world, and especially in aviation.

It’s no secret that airlines have been struggling for the past several years, and the skyrocketing cost of fuel is only making things worse, so it’s encouraging to see several aircraft companies taking the lead in promoting biofuels.

In February, Virgin Atlantic was the first to get biofuels into the air, testing a Boeing 747 running partly on fuel made from coconut and babassu oil, and Air New Zealand said last week it plans to test biofuels later this year. The carrier expects that 10 percent of its fuel needs will come from biofuels by 2013, replacing about a million barrels of jet fuel.

But most of the excitement in the air comes from algae. KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, JetBlue and Airbus have all said they are developing planes that will run on algae-fuel, and the concept got a huge boost last month from Boeing.

The aircraft giant is one of the main backers of a new group, the Algal Biomass Organization, dedicated to commercializing algae as a source of fuel. In fact, it’s the only major company represented on the group’s steering committee; the rest are all academics, scientists, consultants and investors.

There are plenty of plusses to algae: it grows quickly, consumes little water, and can be produced almost anywhere, so it does not compete with food crops. Oh, and as it grows, it can be used to clean the gunk out of polluted water and suck carbon dioxide and other green house gases out of the air. This keeps getting better and better.

According to Billy Glover, Boeing’s managing director for environmental strategy and one of the co-chairs of the Algal Biomass Organization’s steering committee, “Boeing recognizes that algae biomass holds tremendous potential for use as jet fuel, and it fits into our plan to guide aviation toward commercially viable and sustainable fuel sources – fuels with substantially smaller greenhouse gas footprints that do not compete with food or require unacceptable quantities of land and fresh water resources.”

Renewables Reality Check

2008-06-06T20:54:00.001+01:00

First, the good news. The United States invested in $9 billion in wind energy in 2007, and generating capacity increased by 46%, the world’s fastest growth rate for the third consecutive year.

Those figures, released this week by the U.S. Department of Energy, also show that wind projects accounted for 35% of all new electrical generation capacity last year, and there is more than 200 GW of wind plants currently in development.

Those figures all sound impressive, so here’s the reality check. Only 1.2% of U.S. electricity supplies were from wind at the end of 2007.

For perspective, several countries in Europe get a major chunk of their power from renewable sources. In Sweden, the region’s top producer of green power, the figure is 40%, and they hope to boost that to 49% by 2020. Latvia generates 35% of its power with renewables now, and expects to reach 42% by 2020.

And Portugal, which generates 21% of its power from renewable sources, has set out on an ambitious path. The world’s largest solar plant is currently under construction there, a 45 MW project that will be about twice the size of the biggest solar farms now, and Portugal’s economics minister Manuel Pinho, recently issued what amounts to a green energy declaration of independence.

“We have to reduce our dependence on oil and gas. What seemed extravagant in 2004 when we decided to go for renewables now seems to have been a very good decision,” he said.

“When you have a program like this, there is no need for nuclear power. Wind and water are our nuclear power. The relative price of renewables is now much lower, so the incentives are there to invest. My advice to countries like the U.K. is to move as fast as they can to renewables. With climate change and the increase in oil prices, renewables will soon become more and more important.”

And though he didn’t mention us by name, I’m pretty sure his advice would apply to the United States as well.

Paying Our Share

2008-06-02T23:48:00.001+01:00

Two-and-a-half cents.

That’s how much it will cost me to put my money where my mouth is, according to ConEd, the utility that supplies New York with electricity. ConEd recently sent out a brochure offering to deliver only wind-generated power to my apartment, for the nominal fee of an additions 2.5 cents per kilowatt-hour.

ConEd helpfully points out that 60,000 other households have already done so (making me feel even more like the eco-villain if I decline), and that for the average customer, switching to wind power is the equivalent of not driving 5,763 miles when it comes to generating carbon emissions.

Certainly a few pennies doesn’t sound like much, though the figure seems much higher when you consider that ConEd says that will raise the average New Yorker's electric bill by about 10%. Am I willing to pay 10% more per month to support wind power? To be honest, I’m not sure.

What I find interesting about this offer is the completely shameless way that ConEd is trying to pass the buck to its customers. Does it really cost them more to produce wind power? Well, the wind is free, but installing turbines involves a significant upfront investment.

But contrast that with the expense of running a hydro plant, or a nuclear plant, or even a coal-powered generator. Lots of labor, lots of safety equipment, and (except for hydro), plenty of raw materials. I have to wonder how much utilities spend purchasing coal.

To be sure, green energy is part of an eco-friendly lifestyle, and I am willing to pay my fair share. And that’s exactly the point that ConEd’s brochure wants to drives home: “Together, we can make a difference,” wrote Peter Blom, their manager for renewable energy services.

But what happens when my 2.5 cents per kilowatt-hour, finally pays off its investment in turbines? Is ConEd really going to pass that on to consumers as well, by reducing their rates?

BioTown USA

2008-05-30T22:07:00.000+01:00

BioTown USA, also known as Reynolds, Ind., is getting ready to build a power plant that will convert cow manure into electricity, another step on its bumpy path to becoming the country’s first community to run completely on renewable energy.

It’s a noble goal, though the town has had trouble turning this vision into reality. It’s a flyspeck of a town, with a population just a bit more than 500, and according to one report, about a third are using Ethanol in their cars.

But the town took a major step back towards the grid in October, when a major refiner, VeraSun, suspended construction on a Ethanol plant in Reynolds, saying that prices for the fuel were too low to justify adding the production capacity.

Yes, gas prices are skyrocketing, but that hasn’t translated to the Ethanol market, where everyone apparently had the same idea, and increased their own production, driving up supplies and driving down prices. It certainly doesn’t help that increased production has also driven up the price of corn, further hindering manufacturers, and also contributing to global inflation for basic food products.

But back to BioTown. The community is clearing ground for an anaerobic digester, a machine that basically lets microorganisms eat poop, and in the process creating methane, which can be converted into electricity. The farming has always had a plentiful supply of manure, so this project is a two-fer, combining waste disposal with renewable energy.

Here’s the big question: can BioTown serve as model for the rest of the country? That remains to be seen. First, it’s not at all clear that the community can actually achieve its goal of meeting all of its energy needs with renewable sources. And second, even if it can, I wonder whether that model can scale upwards to support larger cities, or even if it can be exported at all. I know there aren’t many cows in my neighborhood (though there may be other sources of organic waste). Still, it’s heartening to see people making the effort, and I’ll be watching out for future BioTown developments.

Better Tax Policies

2008-05-28T22:05:00.000+01:00

Gas prices are still on the rise, and I’m pleased to see Congress trying to do something that demonstrates more long-term vision than cutting the gasoline tax and encouraging people to drive, and consume, more.

Here’s a quick recap of current policies on the agenda in Washington. Last week, Congress approved a huge farm bill (actually, they voted to override a veto – take that, Mr. Bush!), which includes a production tax credit of a penny per gallon for biofuels derived from cellulose. The same bill also cut the tax credit for standard, corn-based ethanol by 6 cents, to 45 cents per gallon.

I like both of these policies, and I like it even more that they were packaged together. A year ago, gas was expensive and ethanol was hailed as the energy industry’s savior. Today, gas is even more costly, but so are corn, rice, bread and many other basic food products. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that farmers will sell their crops for energy production instead of food if it means they’ll make more money, and the higher price of gasoline has led to a surge in demand for ethanol. The crazy inflation at the supermarket this year was something that could have been easily predicted.

That’s why cellulosic fuels, which can be made from wood chips, switch grass, and many other plants that people don’t eat, are a very promising alternative. These two tax policies encourage people to develop energy sources made from crops that can be converted into fuel, without putting a dent in our dinner plate.

And in other encouraging news, lawmakers seem to have little interest in approving the gas-tax holiday that the presidential candidates have touted.

Wise Tax Policy – Not!

2008-05-01T22:09:00.000+01:00

I’ve been thinking lately about the gas tax – the one that both John McCain and Hillary Clinton want to waive during the summer when Americans (read: voters) hit the roads on vacation. It’s about 18 cents a gallon, and getting rid of it is something that would be immediately noticeable to anyone (read: voters).

Most people think of taxes as a way for the government to generate revenue, which they are. But taxes have another purpose, to steer behavior. The state imposes fees on things they want to discourage. Case in point: the well-publicized congestion pricing plan in New York, which may or may not be completely dead. To limit traffic, the city proposed a fee for people entering Manhattan by car. If they really want to drive in New York, they’ll be willing to pay for the privilege, or so the theory goes. And if they don’t want to pay the fee, they’ll take public transportation, which is exactly what the city wanted.

So apply that logic to the gas tax. If we really want to encourage people to be mindful about their driving habits, if we really want to encourage the auto industry to produce fuel-efficient vehicles, then we shouldn’t be getting rid of the gas tax, we should be RAISING it! Making people vote with their wallets will make them think twice about what’s really important, but making gas cheaper will just make people drive more.

And what kind of message does it send to waive the tax? I guess that people running for president don’t really care about the environment nearly as much as they care about making people (read: voters) happy. At least in the short term.

Because in the long term, it seems pretty clear that expensive oil will be with us for a while, and we need some really smart alternative energy ideas to make sure that gas and other forms of power remain reasonably affordable. And lowering taxes on gas – that’s not a smart idea.

Building Better Batteries

2008-04-25T22:22:00.002+01:00

Though there are plenty of ways to create electricity from renewable sources, one of the problems with making them viable is making the power available whenever we need it.

Solar is great, during a bright, sunny day, but all those panels don’t do much good at night. And what are you going to do with all those wind turbines during a windless spell? Even if your solar parks and wind farms can put out more power than needed at peak output, there aren’t many options for storing the extra juice for a windless, rainy day.

Sure, there are batteries, but these aren’t very good for holding on power on an industrial scale. Plus they’re expensive and often packed full of some serious pollutants.

But in the past week, I’ve heard of two really cools ideas for doing exactly that: banking renewable energy. The first (covered in nice piece in the NYTimes Magazine by Clive Thompson) is the Iowa Stored Energy Park, a still-in-development project that will use wind turbines to generate electricity, which in turn powers a series of powerful air compressors. These force air down into the earth, into what is called a compressed air energy storage system. Think of it like a giant underground balloon.

When the wind dies down, simply let the air out of the balloon; any kid can tell you what happens when you let go of an inflated, untied balloon, right? But instead of propelling a little piece of latex across the room, the kinetic energy of air escaping from a CAES is heated, and used to power a turbine. The project sponsors say the stored air can power a pair of 134-megawatt turbines, generating enough electricity for 80,000 homes, anytime it’s needed.

The other idea is just as cool, but works with solar power. Solar cells can seem kind of mystical – just shine a light on that funky black panel and out comes electricity. It almost seems like producing power from nothing.

But sunlight isn’t just light, it’s heat. Really, what is the sun, but a giant exploding ball of hydrogen, right?

So several innovative companies are pushing solar thermal systems, which use lenses and mirrors to focus sunlight into super-hot beams of energy. There are a few different concepts in play here; one uses that energy to heat up a huge tank of molten salt, which can retain its temperature for hours. Another idea is to heat up miles of black piping, filled with a special fluid, again designed to retain that heat energy.

Both plans then take that stored heat energy to boil water into steam, which is used to power a steam turbine and produce electricity, whenever it is needed.

It’s like those gag gifts you can buy in Florida -- a can of genuine Florida sunshine -- except these projects are no joke; they really can store wind and solar power, and are no joke.

Bad Corporate Citizen

2008-04-11T21:52:00.001+01:00

I admit it. I fell for the spin.

Last year I posted an item praising Wal-Mart Stores Inc. for its green strategy. The retailer has built a few stores using all sorts of energy-saving designs, and is pushing suppliers to use eco-friendly packaging, and I went out on a limb to say the company was demonstrating a long-term vision tied to the bottom line, exactly the kind of business decision that can make alt-energy policies viable.

Turns out it was mostly hype.

At the Wall Street Journal’s ECO:nomics conference last month, Wal-Mart’s CEO Lee Scott Jr. all but admitted that the whole point of his company’s green push is mostly hype. “We are not green,” he said.

And despite its efforts to use alt-energy at a few stores, the company’s overall carbon emissions continue to climb, and Mr. Scott said that is unlikely to change since growing the company is his top priority, and other factors, like alternative energy, promoting the environment, saving the world, etc., are less important.

The best part: one conference attendee asked him when, if ever, Wal-Mart might meet its stated goal of eliminating waste and using only renewable energy. “I haven’t a clue,” Mr. Scott answered.

At least he was being honest.

As for me, I guess I can go back to trusting my gut instincts when multinational corporations try to claim they are doing good.

River Power

2008-03-31T22:11:00.001+01:00

Not that we needed it, but here’s another reason to be impressed with the creative thinking of chemists: the chemical reactions that occurs when fresh water in rivers runs into salty sea water could one day become a viable commercial power source.

Two European projects, in Holland and Norway, are testing systems to capture the energy released in estuaries, and though the concept is still in the very early stages, they estimate that the world’s estuaries could, in theory at least, put out enough power to meet 20 percent of the word’s electricity needs.

The basic idea is that when fresh water meets more concentrated salt water, the salt water, which is more concentrated, sucks in the fresh water as the two types of liquid seek equilibrium. In the process, the water becomes warmer, by about 0.1 degree C, and as we know, changing temperature requires power.

The two projects are both using specialized membranes to convert that temperature change into electricity, but with slight variations. The Dutch project captures salt particles in the process, and the salt crystals produce electrical current. The Norwegian one is trying to harness the physical force as the salt water sucks the fresh through the membrane; one researcher said the energy is comparable to the kinetic energy produced by water falling 270 meters.

Of course, there are plenty of complications, not the least of which is protecting a delicate membrane that stretches for acres and is vulnerable to tears and pollution. Oh, and one more thing. The membranes being tested are based on ones used in commercial desalination plants, which convert sea water to drinking water, But there isn’t really any design available that could be used in a commercial power plant, and there probably won’t be one available for a decade or more.

Still, I love the creative thinking that goes into finding new ways to harness the always-changing earth. And, let’s not forget that while the sun only shines in the daytime, and wind only blows when it wants to, the rivers and the tides never stop.

Making Wave Power a Reality

2008-01-18T22:18:00.000Z

Here’s a quick update on tidal power.

Looks like PG&E is willing to place a bet on this emerging source of power. The California utility said last month that it would purchase power from a Canadian company that is trying to build the first U.S. commercial power plant that would transform the movement of the sea into electricity.

Finavera hopes to park eight power buoys about 2.5 miles offshore from Eureka, Calif. The so-called “wave park” is expected to be complete in 2012, and the project should put out about 2 megawatts, enough to power 1,500 homes.

But first, there are a few hoops for Finavera to jump through. First, it needs to line up enough financing for the project; having lined up PG&E as a customer will certainly help.

More importantly, the company has to perfect its AquaBuoy technology. The basic concept is fairly straightforward. The cylindrical buoys float upright in the water. A few feet stick out, but most of the device is underwater. As it rises and falls with the waves, the motion drives an internal pump that forces water through a turbine. The kinetic energy of the moving turbine is then converted into electricity and delivered to shore through an underwater cable.

Sounds simple, but there’s a lot of work involved in making this work. An earlier prototype that was deployed off the Oregon coast sunk last year. The company still doesn’t know why, and the waterlogged AquaBuoy remains on the ocean floor.

The Motion of the Ocean

2007-12-17T02:59:00.000Z

What is electricity? Sure, there are plenty of ways to define this force in terms of charge or current or the interaction of particles, but unless you’ve got a solid background in physics, it’s hard to really get a handle on exactly what that means.

So here’s an interesting way to think of electricity: it’s a way to harness, store, transport and use the energy originally created by something in motion. That’s what generators do -- they turn kinetic energy into electricity. Everything starts with motion.

This is easy to see with hydroelectric power, which uses the motion of water flowing through a dam to turn a rotor; when the rotor spins inside a magnetic field, electricity is produced. But most people don’t realize that the same concept is at work in other power plants. Coal, wind and portable generators all work the same way. A lot of people don’t understand that nuclear plants are just fancy steam engines; they think it uses some kind of advanced super-scientific principle to get juice flowing directly out atoms, but in fact it uses a controlled fission reaction to release heat, which boils water. The resulting steam is used to drive a rotating turbine, which produces electricity.

So where can we find a nearly limitless source of motion? The ocean, of course. In the past week, I’ve seen two great ideas for transforming the kinetic energy of the tides and waves into electricity.

The first uses power buoys, tethered to the ocean floor. Inside the buoy, a coil of metal is attached to the tether, so it cannot rise or fall with the waves. This is surrounded by a sheath of magnets that is not tied down, and does move up and down around the coil with the tides. This motion creates electricity.

The government has approved at least four proposals to test the concept, all in Oregon.

The second idea is even more out there. It uses something called a “dielectric elastomer,” which is a fancy way of saying a high-tech, stretchy piece of plastic. Scientists know that some elastomers contract when power runs through them. Well, it turns out the process can work in reverse. Stretch out an elastomer, and it will kick out electricity.

Researchers are trying to turn this concept into a commercial power reality, using waves and tides to stretch out the elastomer. Just tie one end to the sea floor and the other to a floating buoy, and the waves will move them around all day long.

Neither idea is close to reality; one of the problems is that wind and salt water don’t mix well with power generators. Another, like offshore wind farms, is NIMBY politics. Still, this is such an elegant idea that I can’t help but hope that somebody will make it work.

A Sight to Behold

2007-11-05T21:18:00.000Z

Growing up in San Francisco, it’s hard to avoid making the dreary drive between the Bay Area and Los Angeles at least several times.

There are two basic routes. First, the stunning road along the coast, a twisty, winding trip with sheer cliffs falling into the mighty Pacific for much of the 10-hour trip. Just about everybody says they prefer this road simply for its sheer natural beauty, but most people end up going the other way because it takes about half as long, a tedious shot down straight-as-a-ruler Highway 5 through the Central Valley. It’s about as boring a drive as I’ve ever made. The most striking part of the trip is probably the massive feedlot in Coalinga; even at 85 mph, the smell of acres and acres of cows standing ankle-deep in their own poop lingers for a good half-hour. I’ve driven up and down the state more times than I can count, and I have yet to take the coastal road.

For me, the highlight of the trip has always been crossing over the Altamont Pass (yes, that Altamont), where the Bay Area ends and drivers enter I-5, and where the windswept hillsides are dotted with thousands of windmills. There are big ones and even bigger ones, two-blade models, three-blade models and (always my favorite) a few that look like the DNA double-helix spinning around and around. As a kid, I loved to watch them all spinning ‘round and ‘round, and when I started making the trip as an adult, I always made sure to point them out to my own kids.

Maybe that’s why I find it so cool that the Bluegrass Ridge Farm, Missouri’s first commercial wind farm, in the tiny town of King City, Mo., has become the farming community’s top (only?) tourist attraction, according to the Kansas City Star.

The site was formally dedicated in September, with 27 turbines spread over 6,000 acres, some as tall as 262 feet. Since then, tourists have been flocking to the site, bringing much-needed tourism dollars, and farmers receive $3,000 every year for each turbine on their land. The city of just 1,000 people is even mulling a $250,000 visitors center, including a viewing area and theater.

“It sure is a novelty, seeing those big ol’ windmills out there turning,” said King City’s mayor Jim Gillespie. “We’ve embraced it.”

The best part of the article: a handy diagram comparing the size of the windmills to other well-known tourist attractions, including the Statue of Liberty (305 feet) and the Gateway Arch in St. Louis (630 feet).

Can't Win For Trying

2007-09-28T20:38:00.000+01:00

This one’s just a big biofuel bummer.

A new report concludes that the industrial farming methods needed to produce biofuel plants in volume also product greenhouse gases. A LOT of greenhouse gases.

Turns out that the fertilizers used to grow these crops generates three to five times more greenhouse gases than previously thought, especially nitrous oxide (yes, the same stuff you get at the dentist or Grateful Dead concerts), which can be as much as 300 times more effective an atmospheric insulator that carbon dioxide.

And this report doesn’t come from any kind of quack organization; it was written by Paul J. Crutzen, a Nobel prize winner in chemistry.

Using biofuels produced from rapeseed, a popular source crop in Europe, can generate up to 70 percent more greenhouse gas than just using standard, petroleum-based diesel. Corn, one of the main crops in the United States, is a bit better; depending on how it’s produced it can cut greenhouse gas product by 10 percent, or increase it by up to 50 percent. And sugarcane, widely used in South America, can cut emissions by 10 percent to 50 percent.

Worse, none of these numbers even considered the emissions produced during the process of refining crops into fuel.

“The nitrous oxide emission on its own can cancel out the overall benefit” of switching to biofuels, said Crutzen’s co-author Keith Smith.

However, they report did not look at all potential biofuel crops, and there are some contenders that may not require much, or any, fertilizer (algae, anyone?).

I guess the hunt continues.

Good Advice

2007-09-07T21:22:00.000+01:00

This may seem too obvious to even mention, but it’s a good idea to build wind farms in places that actually, you know, get a decent amount of wind.
But amazingly, it seems that many of the wind farms in the U.K. don’t get enough wind to make them a reliable source of energy.
The wind industry rates locations by their average annual wind speeds, which is called a “load factor.” The recommended load factor for a wind farm is at least 30 percent.
Though there are plenty of windy spots in the U.K. – some wind farms in Scotland and Wales come in at about 45 percent – there are many more that fall far short. One, in Cumbria, for example, rates at only 20 to 21 percent, and of the 25 wind farms in Eastern England only five (5!) have load factors that meet the 30 percent threshold.
Wow. That just seems amazingly short-sighted.
How could this happen? Some energy consultants blame government pressure to produce green energy. The U.K. wants 15 percent of its energy to come from renewable sources by 2014, and power companies are rushing to put up wind farms.
Certainly, I’m not privy to what went into the decisions to build the under-performing sites, but I can’t help but think that the subsidies that the government used to offer for building wind farms played a role.
Those subsidies are no longer available; now the government sets targets that power suppliers must meet, selling a certain percentage of green electricity each year, and imposing fines on those that don’t make their numbers.
Hopefully, these penalties may make some power companies realize that the windless wind farms are bringing their averages down.

Off Hiatus

2007-09-06T21:33:00.000+01:00

Wow, take on a few side projects, get out of town for a vacation, and pretty soon it’s been almost two months since my last post.
I’ll try to update the site a bit more regularly now, especially since alternative energy seems to be in the spotlight more than ever these days.
Here’s an item I thought was especially… tasty.
Remember the Tyson Foods plan to convert the byproducts of its meat-packing operations into biofuel? Well, think for a minute about what those “byproducts” actually are.
OK, don’t think too hard, because it’s not a pretty mental image. Yes, we’re talking about slop and slime and fat and guts. Blech.
Turns out that there’s already a company testing the production of biofuel from animal byproducts, Renewable Energy Solutions, of Carthage, Mo., which went live in May 2004, which turns turkey waste from several nearby packing plants into fuel.
Unfortunately, the plant has its own unpleasant byproduct, a serious smell problem, and some local residents are raising a stink about the stink.
The governor ordered the plant shut down in December 2005, but it reopened three months later, after the company invested about $3 million in industrial grade odor eaters.
But that doesn’t seem to have done the trick, and one local resident has filed a lawsuit against RES.
I have to admit, the meatpacking plant/biofuel plant combination seems great on paper, but sometimes real-world complications don’t show up on paper.
While this is an example of NIMBY politics with which I can sympathize, there are plenty of other examples of alt-energy projects that have been stalled for other reasons that I think are just lame.
But we’ll cover Cape Wind another day.

Reality Check

2007-07-17T05:09:00.000+01:00

Solar energy is hot. It seems like I read about a new commercial project almost every time I scan my favorite econews sites, and there’s a lot of research money pouring into finding more efficient ways to harness the sun than the venerable photovoltaic cell.

So, you’d think that solar power would eventually be generating a significant chunk of our power, right? Well, apparently not.

The New York Times, in its usual comprehensive fashion, reports that solar energy is barely noticeable as a source of power today, and that’s not likely to change. According to a story today, solar power was used to create just 0.1% of all power used in 2005, and by the year 2030 it will still be 0.1% (though the total amount generated will increase from 900 million kilowatt-hours to 7 billion kilowatt-hours over the same period). That’s hardly even noticeable.

And a quick look at the government’s energy investments show that solar is clearly not a priority. R&D on solar technology in fiscal 2007 will be $159 million. Nuclear gets $303 million , and coal (?!) will merit $427 million. Biofuels are currently considered the darling of the alternative energy movement in Washington (though I’m sure that the huge farm lobby was a factor there).

There are two other interesting details in this chart. First, check out the huge surge in coal power. Worldwide, a new coal-burning power plant is coming on line every week.

Second, notice that petroleum is the only source of power that declines. Who says that the peak oil theory is a myth? Seems like a good reason to invest more in alternative energy.

Fuel from Garbage

2007-07-09T04:43:00.000+01:00

I really did a double-take when I first heard that the massive meat-packing company Tyson Foods was jumping into the biofuels market, but the more I thought about it, the more I had to give them credit for creative thinking.

Meat and diesel – where’s the connection? Easy. One of the byproducts of butchering thousands of beasts every day is a huge amount of animal fats. And all that natural goop, that horrible-smelling, greasy, slimy fatty slop, can be converted into biodiesel.

Tyson is forming a joint venture operation called Dynamic Fuels, with Syntroleum, a company that specializes in producing fuel from a variety of organic materials, including animal fat. The beauty of this partnership is that it allows the chicken company to get rid of its waste material, stuff that often collects in huge ponds outside meat-packing plants. In other words, it turns garbage into gas, and allows the company to make money from its waste instead of paying someone to take it away. Oh, let’s not forget the potentially significant benefits to anyone who has to live within smelling range of the plant.

Tyson, which already has a well-established network of trucks and trains, will also handle transportation. Even better, Tyson wants to get other meat packers to provide their waste products as well. I’m not sure if Tyson will pay for it, or just offer to take it off their hands for a really attractive rate, but the economics of this arrangement are hard to ignore.

The two companies are expected to kick in $75 million each, and hope to start construction on a new refinery next year. They hope to produce 75 million gallons of fuel per year, starting in 2010.

The Solar Map

2007-07-03T22:26:00.000+01:00

How much do you think you’ll cut from your monthly power bill with that fancy home solar system you’re planning to install?

It’s pretty hard to tell. Sure, the manufacturers can tell you how much power the solar cells are capable of putting out, but we know that’s always a best-case scenario, and life rarely follows the best-case script.

That’s why the San Francisco Solar Map is such a great idea. This interactive Web site has a map of the city, with dozens of color-coded dots representing residential and municipal solar projects. Click on a dot to open a window showing the size of the project, the company that installed it, and in many cases, the actual output and annual cost savings.

This is particularly useful in San Francisco, aka Fogtown, where the oh-so-moody fog can really cut into the efficiency of solar energy systems. If you live in the fogbelt of the city’s north-west corner (where I spent a large chunk of my youth – shout out to the Richmond and Sunset districts!), there’s probably a big difference between what a system is capable of putting out, and what it really does.

Well, according to this map, the 7 kW system at 36th Ave. and Geary, puts out 14,400 kilowatt hours per year, saving the owner $4,800. And the 2.3 kW project down the road at 23rd Ave. and California generates 1,900 kilowatt hours per year. The owner of that one includes the helpful note that “Every kW generated locally is one less kW produced by fossil fuels.”

Someone who is casually considering a home solar system could easily be put off by the up-front costs, which can easily reach $20,000 or more. But when the guy down the street says he’s saving close to $5,000 a year, it can make the expense seem much less daunting. Now that’s news you can use!

Pond Scum Power

2007-06-22T22:37:00.001+01:00

Here’s another entry vying to be the next big source-crop for biofuels: algae.

Yes, green pond scum can be cultivated, harvested, and converted into fuel,
and a company called Solix Biofuels, is trying to commercialize the idea. In an
article in Popular Science, the company point out several advantages that algae has over crops such as soy, corn or canola, which make it great for growing in high-volume.

For starters, algae grows in water rather than dirt, which means it can be cultivated just about anywhere, not just on a farm. Solix plans to grow algae in long, tubular, plastic bags filled with water. They are clear, so sunlight can shine on the “crop” from every direction.

Perhaps more importantly, algae doesn’t require much in the way of nutrients. Water, sunlight, and carbon dioxide are pretty much all an algae farm needs, and the crop grows quickly. As a result, Solix says that algae can produce more fuel in less space than other plants.

The company estimates that it would take 140 billion gallons of biodiesel to satisfy the United State’s total need for petroleum-based fuel for a year, and that it would take about 3 billion acres of soybeans to produce that much gas. Canola is much more efficient, requiring just 1 billion acres. Unfortunately, there are only about 425 million acres of arable land in the county (and don’t forget we need a lot of that to grow food).

But algae only needs 95 million acres, and it doesn’t have to be 95 million acres of farmland. In fact, the best place to put an algae-growing operation is next to a power plant, where the green stuff can live on carbon-dioxide emissions. Hmmm, it uses space that nobody really wants to use for anything, and sucks up greenhouse gas emissions? What’s not to like here?

The Cellulose Ratio

2007-06-15T04:24:00.000+01:00

My last post made me wonder about the various crops that people are touting as the next big thing for biofuels. Though ethanol is certainly the best-known alternative to petroleum-based gas, and the one most widely used, I was pretty surprised to discover that it doesn’t really offer much of an improvement over regular gas.

According to an article I found in Plenty, the green magazine, the ratio of energy produced compared to the amount of fossil-fuel energy needed to make ethanol is just a whisker above that of gasoline. Gas comes in at about 1:1, while ethanol is about 1.5:1.

But biofuel produced from cellulose plant material, that is the fibers found in trees or various grasses, blows them away; it comes in at 10:1.

Of course, it’s not that simple. Ethanol, which gets its energy from the starch in corn or soy, is easier to make than fuel derived from cellulose because the starch breaks down easily. Cellulose is a bit more hardy, and requires additional processing steps. Still, it seems pretty obvious to me that perhaps if we’re hunting for next major fuel source, the best place to look would be the crops where we can find the most energy.

Carbon Farms

2007-06-13T04:42:00.000+01:00

Ever heard of miscanthus x giganteus?

I hadn’t either, until I read this articlein the San Francisco Chronicle. A bunch of alternative-energy researchers are betting that this Asian superweed will be the next big thing in biofuels.

Turns out that miscanthus is an incredible sources of cellulose, a form of carbon found in organic materials that can be converted into fuel. The tropical reeds can grow as tall as 12 feet, live for two decades or more, require little water or fertilizer, and are easy for farmers to cultivate. All of that makes it almost ideal as a potential biofuel crop.

For years, ethanol was such niche product that nobody really paid much attention to the economics of producing millions of gallons of the stuff. Indeed, the U.S. produces so much corn and soy, the two main sources of ethanol, that turning it into fuel was seen not as an energy strategy but a way of disposing of excess crops.

But now that biofuels are getting so much attention, people are starting to put some thought into what it will take to convert potentially millions of acres of farmland into, as the Chronicle put it, “carbon farms.” Think about it for a second. The U.S. has about 425 million acres of arable land, but if we start converting huge swathes of farmland to growing miscanthus, that means less produce for your table, which could drive up the price of food, which is probably one of the few things that would be even more unpopular than spiking gasoline prices.

That’s why it makes sense to start looking for the plants that will produce the best juice, that is, the ones the produce the most organic material per acre, with the least impact on the environment, and that can be refined into the most powerful form of fuel. Remember, we didn’t start making ethanol out of soy and corn because some scientist determined that they make the best gas – we just had too much of the stuff laying around. Maybe cellulose will turn out to be a more efficient source of power than the sugars in corn that are used to produce ethanol.

In fact, you can make biofuel out of almost anything. I wrote a story last year for Wiredabout a guy who had some fat liposuctioned out of his butt and converted into biodiesel, but animal fats, algae, even used restaurant grease, will all do, as long as it will explode inside the cylinder of an engine. That reaction converts the stored energy in a fuel into the mechanical energy needed to move a piston. Petroleum happens to be an efficient way to store this energy, and, until the latter part of the last century, we thought we had plenty of that laying around too.

Green Pioneer: Wal-Mart (really)

2007-06-10T03:16:00.000+01:00

Yes, I know their labor practices are truly awful and their business model makes them the poster-child for all that is evil and exploitive about globalization, but I have to give some credit to Wal-Mart for their green strategy. (And yes, I have seen the terrifying documentary Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price.)

The retailer has two experimental stores, one in McKinney, Texas, and one in Aurora, Colo., that are just packed with alternative energy technology. They clearly put a lot of effort into making these buildings environmentally friendly, from the ground up.

To name just a few of the green projects: The parking lot is paved with a porous material, so rainstorm runoff won’t mix with oil and wash pollutants into the sewers. The roof is covered with solar cells, and there’s a wind turbine in the parking lot. The floors have pipes built into them that carry hot water, which helps heat the store. Used cooking oil from the deli is dumped into a furnace, which also helps heat the building. Even the smallest details have been thought through, from low-energy light bulbs to new designs on the freezer cases to hold in cold. I was impressed.

But I wasn’t totally convinced. Let’s get real; Wal-Mart is not exactly known for being touchy-feely, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the entire purpose of this project is nothing more than making the company look good.

But it’s also possible that they are on the right track. Wal-Mart is famous for paying scrupulous attention to its costs. That’s how it’s managed to become the behemoth it is, by trying to shave even fractions of a cent off of anything and everything. And, unlike many U.S. companies, they think long-term; Wal-Mart will spend millions now to save a few pennies tomorrow, as long as they can keep saving those pennies for years to come.

And that’s exactly the kind of thinking that we need when it comes to alternative energy.

The ding factor on green power has always been the cost. Yes, the systems are expensive, and yes, almost all the costs must be paid upfront, which scares off a lot of people.

But the benefits – lower energy costs, less consumption – start from day-one. Green power has to be seen as a long-term play, with long-term benefits.

So I dropped Wal-Mart a note to find out more about their energy strategy.

A spokeswoman wrote back, with some details, though not a lot (I’ve covered Wal-Mart before; it’s a very tough company to deal with, and being forthcoming with the press is not very high on their list of priorities). She wouldn’t say how much the company had spent on the projects, but she did say that the stores were definitely spending less on energy costs, about 8 percent less at the Colorado store compared to standard sites in the same area, and that the savings were expected to be even higher in the winter.

She said that the company sees these stores as labs, to see which alternative energy ideas offered the most savings, in terms of both power and cost, and that Wal-Mart eventually hopes to use that information to develop a new prototype store by 2010 that will be 25 to 30 percent more efficient, and produce 30 percent less greenhouse gas emissions, than standard stores.

In other words, the company does indeed seem to be planning for a green future, a model that other companies might do well to emulate. Now that’s the kind of everyday savings that I can really get behind.

Power Mash-Up

2007-06-08T04:00:00.000+01:00

I read a great article in The New York Times Magazine recently about a guy who built a completely energy-independent house, using solar cells, water and cans of hydrogen.

The basic idea goes like this: Mike Strizki, of New Jersey, covered the roof of a storage shed with solar panels, enough to put out about 10 kilowatts. That’s more than he needs for his home – for most of the year, the array kicks out as much as 60 percent more than he needs.

A lot of people with solar-powered homes manage to feed their excess juice back into their local utility’s energy grid, though I don’t think anyone makes very much money off this arrangement.

Here’s the really cool part of Strizki’s setup. Instead of selling his unused power to the electric company, which has a monopoly on the local market and therefore can control the rates it pays, he runs the power through something called an electrolyzer, which combines electricity and water to create hydrogen and oxygen -- basically, the electricity powers a reaction to split water into its two elements.

Strizki stores the hydrogen in a bunch of old propane tanks in his shed, and months later, when the days are shorter and his system isn’t keeping up with his home’s power needs, he simply runs the system in reverse. That is, he runs the hydrogen and air back through the electrolyzer to create water and… more electricity. In effect, he’s using hydrogen as a battery to store power for as long as he needs. It’s simple, and brilliant.

Before crowning Strizki as the energy-visionary of the century, however, I should point out that he’s not exactly breaking new ground here. Photovoltaic solar cells, of course, have bee around since the 1950s, and the electrolyzer concept dates back to the 19th century. In other words, he simply took a few great ideas that were already around and bolted them together to create a very efficient home energy system. It’s an alternative energy mash-up!

And that’s exactly the point; alternative energy is not a new concept. The basics have been around for centuries, and even many of the latest-and-greatest ideas have been available for years.

What has been missing, until very recently, has been the will to put the ideas into practice, to actually get up and use these very amazing technologies.

One of the big barriers, of course, is cost. And even Strizki concedes that his home was not much of a deal. He spent about $500,000 to develop and install. Ouch. And considering that the average homeowner pays roughly $1,800 per year on energy, that means he dropped enough on up-front costs to power his house for almost 300 years. Looks like he may have overspent a bit, there.

Well, maybe not. Consider it an R&D investment. Strizki says he can build another system just like his for about $100,000. OK, that’s still not much of a bargain. But, if he can find enough people willing to buy these systems, the price would surely drop.

How many buyers would it take to bring the price into the range of reason? And what is the price that would make the average person willing to consider getting one? I don’t know.

But I do know that a few people have to be willing to go first, and we already have one. So, who’s willing to be next? Lets see some hands. Anybody?

(“The Zero Energy Solution,” by Mark Svenvold. The New York Times Magazine, May 20, 2007)