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Archived material from historical editions of The Generator

  • Italian town exports renewables

    What has happened in Varese is unusual. On a national level, Italy is set to fall short of its EU objective of generating 25 percent of its gross electrical consumption from renewable energy sources by 2010. Italy’s share of renewables was just 13.93 in 2005.

    But the mayor of Varese, Michaela Marone, and her predecessor, Maurizio Caranza, turned their vision of a town driven by renewable energy into reality by leveraging funds from the EU and using their authority to cut through red tape.

    The town uses wind, solar and small-scale hydropower, a mix best adapted to its hilly terrain covering a total of 140 square km — and it has plans for more hydropower.

    Today, renewables bring not only environmental benefits but also improved living standards to a town that had suffered from years of steady decline. An additional 350,000 euros [US $514,000] in tax revenues is handed over to the council each year by the private company that owns the renewable energy network.

    "We fulfill all the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol and are non profit. We use all of our profits towards paying the electricity bills of the people in the town," Michaele Marone, the town mayor, told RenewableEnergyAccess.com.

    Four wind turbines located on a ridge 1100 meters above sea level — where the average annual wind speed is 7.2 meters per second — generate 8 million kWh of electricity a year that is fed into the local grid managed by Acam, a power company in La Spezia.

    The electricity from the wind turbines alone reduce carbon emissions by 8,000 tons, representing 0.05 percent of the region’s total annual carbon emissions.

    Photovoltaic (PV) panels have been installed on the town hall and the local school. The town hall has 102 PV panels covering 95 square meters and generating 12,700 kWh a year, which supplies 98 percent of the total energy consumption of the building.

    Varese’s secondary school has 39 PV panels covering 36 square meters and producing 4,600 kWh a year, which supplies 62 percent of the energy used.

    In addition to that, the town’s swimming pool is heated by solar power and a program to promote the use of wood pellet stoves is in the works.

    In conjunction with the development of a renewable energy infrastructure, the town has also launched initiatives to make Varese 100 percent sustainable. A total of 108 organic farms now supply 98 percent of the town’s food; water is purified using environmentally friendly technology and waste has been significantly reduced.

    The town has seen a six-fold increase in tourists in the last ten years, many coming just to see its renewable energy network.

    Varese Not Alone

    Although certainly a pioneer in Renewable Energy, Varese is not the only town in Europe to adopt such measures. The same thing is happening in many towns across Europe.

    Güssing in Austria with 27,000 inhabitants has also switched to renewable energy sources — and has also moved from poverty to prosperity, underlining the potential of renewable energy for creating new jobs and new investment.

    And it’s not only rural towns that are forging ahead with renewable energy projects. There has been a marked increase in the numbers of cities across Europe adopting initiatives to cut carbon emissions and develop green energy.

    Following Rome and London, Paris launched a new "Plan Climat" or climate plan on October 1st 2007 to reduce carbon emissions.

    Munich, Germany has also developed a strategy for cutting carbon emissions in half by 2030.

    Beatrice Alcaraz from Energie-Cités, an association of European local authorities for the promotion of local sustainable energy policies that represents more than 500 towns and cities, told RenewableEnergyAccess.com that the driving force behind all of this expansion was EU policy.

    "Municipalities have to adapt their national policies to the European directives, that is the European directive of public building. They also have to develop the renewables to achieve the EU energy and climate objectives," she said.

    The EU is targeting urban areas because more than 80 percent of the European population lives there, and the energy consumption of cities is growing.

    The latest figures from French Environment and Energy Management Agency (Agence de l’Environnement et de la Maîtrise de l’Energie (Ademe)) show that the energy consumption of French cities grew by 14.5 percent between 1990 and 2005 from 27 billion KWh in 1990 to 31 billion kWh in 2005.

    "The rapid development of renewable energy in so many towns and cities across Europe augurs well," said Beatrice Alcatraz, speaking about how cities are combating this increase in energy consumption while keeping down carbon emissions from fossil fuels.

    Though cities cover only 0.4 percent of the world’s total area, they consume 75 percent of the energy and generate about 80 percent of the carbon emissions according to a study by the Münchener Rück.

    Jane Burgermeister is a RenewableEnergyAccess.com European Correspondent based in Vienna, Austria. 

  • Murray Darling Commission wants free trade

    Developing and implementing open, barrier-free markets for water trading in the southern connected Murray-Darling Basin, consistent with the National Water Initiative, was a key task.

    Trade principles: "Building upon the success of the MDBC pilot interstate water trading project, which commenced in 1998, state jurisdictions have been committed to expanding interstate entitlement trade and have spent considerable time and resources in developing the necessary principles to enable trade to be fully realised," according to the Murray-Darling Basin Commission Annual Report 2006-2007 (29/9/2007). "Since 1 July 2006, interstate water trade has been implemented in accordance with Schedule E as follows:

       

    • allocation trade between New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia, and entitlement exchange rate trade between Victoria and South Australia;

       

    • Ministerial Council determined in May 2007 that tagged transfers will commence 1 July 2007 while allowing exchange rate trade to continue;

       

    • tagged transfer protocols were approved by the Commission in April 2007 to enable implementation of tagged entitlement transfers.

    Legal basis for trade: "The protocols included tagging entitlements for extraction in another state, and adjusting valley accounts and state transfer accounts. The revised Schedule E to the Murray-Darling Basin Agreement and its supporting protocols provides for expanded interstate water trade with a strong legal basis in which transfers can be consistently implemented across the jurisdictions. The Commission approved a Schedule E protocol in December 2006, Processing interstate transfers of water allocations (temporary transfers), to ensure that interstate temporary transfers were processed in a consistent manner and that state accounts are reconcilable. During 2006/07 the Commission considered and approved amendments to the following Schedule E exchange rate entitlement protocols: calculating Cap adjustments, processing interstate exchange rate transfers, and restricting transfers between trading zones," the report added.

    Reference: Murray-Darling Basin Commission Annual Report 2006-2007.

    Erisk Net, 29/09/2007

  • Korean Oil Spill damages China’s coast

    The crew of the 147,000-tonne Hebei Spirit stopped the leaking on 8 December, and pumped the remaining oil out of the last of three containers holed by a barge in a collision.

    Major disaster: But with over 10,000 tonnes of crude oil spilled into the Yellow Sea and now polluting a long stretch of coastline, valuable sea farms were threatened, wrote Hyung Jin-Kim in The Daily telgraph (9/12/2007, p.4). A state of disaster has been declared in the region, where beaches and farms dependent on the sea have been badly affected around Taean, 120 kilometres southwest of Seoul. Over 6,600 people, backed by 90 boats and six planes, fought to remove oil drifting at sea or washing on to beaches. Lee Bong-Gil, who headed the Korea Coast Guard’s maritime pollution bureau, told Yonhap news agency: "The large size of the spill has made containment difficult but there will be no significant expansion of the oil considering the tide, wind and their speeds."

    Seafood industry and birds at risk: Officials reported the oil slick washing onto beaches in Taean was already 17km long and 10m wide. He said that while there was no official damage report available yet, there were 445 sea farms in the area for oyster, abalone, clam and other seafood. The tanker was berthed 8km off Mallipo when it was struck. This stretch of coastline was one of Asia’s largest wetland areas, providing important habitat for migrating birds.

    The Daily Telegraph, 9/12/2007, p. 4

  • Vertical wind turbine available for low wind situations

    A vertical axis wind turbine known as the PacWind Delta II is available for small commercial operations. It produces 10 kilowatts of electricity in a small footprint and is completely silent. The turbines can be placed very close together and stacked up to five high. Eighteen months ago, Energy Matters reported that five large vertical axis turbines, each producing 5,000kilowatts, were towed to the North Sea and installed there. The Delta II is suitable for use in cities and provides electricity for the locality where it is installed, reducing the cost of building network infrastructure. It operates in wind speeds as low as ten kilometres per hour.

  • Penguins take the heat

    All four species of Antarctic penguins are in decline as a result of climate change according to a World Wildlife Fund report. The Adelie penguin population has plummeted by two thirds and the chinstrap penguins by one third over the last 25 years.. Population numbers on the Emperor Penguin were not quoted, but their nesting grounds have halved in size during the same period. The shrinking sea ice and its impact on lower krill numbers are two factors reducing penguin numbers. Sometimes whole breeding colonies are lost to the ocean when the ice shelf breaks up earlier in the year than has been normal over the last ten millenium.

  • Europe plans desert solar

    How Africa’s desert sun can bring Europe power

    More than a hundred of the generators, each fitted with thousands of huge mirrors, would generate electricity to be transmitted by undersea cable to Europe and then distributed across the continent to European Union member nations, including Britain.

    Billions of watts of power could be generated this way, enough to provide Europe with a sixth of its electricity needs and to allow it to make significant cuts in its carbon emissions. At the same time, the stations would be used as desalination plants to provide desert countries with desperately needed supplies of fresh water.

    Last week Prince Hassan bin Talal of Jordan presented details of the scheme – named Desertec – to the European Parliament. ‘Countries with deserts, countries with high energy demand, and countries with technology competence must co-operate,’ he told MEPs.

    The project has been developed by the Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Corporation and is supported by engineers and politicians in Europe as well as Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Jordan and other nations in the Middle East and Africa.

    Europe would provide initial funds for developing the solar technology that will be needed to run plants as well as money for constructing prototype stations. After that, banks and financial institutions, as well as national governments, would take over the construction programme, which could cost more than £200bn over the next 30 years.

    ‘We don’t make enough use of deserts,’ said physicist Gerhard Knies, co-founder of the scheme. ‘The sun beats down on them mercilessly during the day and heats the ground to tremendous temperatures. Then at night that heat is radiated back into the atmosphere. In other words, it is completely wasted. We need to stop that waste and exploit the vast amounts of energy that the sun beams down to us.’

    Scientists estimate that sunlight could provide 10,000 times the amount of energy needed to fulfil humanity’s current energy needs. Transforming that solar radiation into a form to be exploited by humanity is difficult, however.

    One solution proposed by the scheme’s engineers is to use large areas of land on which to construct their solar plants. In Europe, land is costly. But in nations such as Morocco, Algeria, and Libya it is cheap, mainly because they are scorched by the sun. The project aims to exploit that cheap land by use of a technique known as ‘concentrating solar power’.

    A CSP station consists of banks of several hundred giant mirrors that cover large areas of land, around a square kilometre. Each mirror’s position can be carefully controlled to focus the sun’s rays onto a central metal pillar that is filled with water. Prototype stations using this technique have already been tested in Spain and Algeria.

    Once the sun’s rays are focused on the pillar, temperatures inside start to soar to 800C. The water inside the pillar is vaporised into superhot steam which is channelled off and used to drive turbines which in turn generate electricity. ‘It is proven technology,’ added Knies. ‘We have shown it works in our test plants.’

    Only small stations have been tested, but soon plants capable of generating 100 megawatts of power could be built, enough to provide the needs of a town. The Desertec project envisages a ring of a thousand of these stations being built along the coast of northern Africa and round into the Mediterranean coast of the Middle East. In this way up to 100 billion watts of power could be generated: two thirds of it would be kept for local needs, the rest – around 30 billion watts – would be exported to Europe.

    An idea of how much power this represents is revealed through Britain’s electricity generating capacity, which totals 12 billion watts.

    But there is an added twist to the system. The superheated steam, after it has driven the plant’s turbines, would then be piped through tanks of sea water which would boil and evaporate. Steam from the sea water would piped away and condensed and stored as fresh water.

    ‘Essentially you get electricity and fresh water,’ said Knies. ‘The latter is going to be crucial for developing countries round the southern Mediterranean and in north Africa. Their populations are rising rapidly, but they have limited supplies of fresh water. Our solar power plants will not only generate electricity that they can sell to Europe, they will supply drinkable water that will sustain their thirsty populations.’

    There are drawbacks, however. At present electricity generated this way would cost around 15-20 eurocents (11 to 14p) a kilowatt-hour – almost twice the cost of power generated by coal. At such prices, few nations would be tempted to switch to solar. ‘Unless it is extremely cheap, it won’t stop people using easy-to-get fossil fuels,’ John Gibbins, an energy engineer at Imperial College London, told Nature magazine last week.

    However, Desertec’s backers say improvements over the next decade should bring the cost of power from its plants to less than 10 eurocents a kilowatt-hour, making it competitive with traditionally generated power.

    Other critics say the the plants would be built in several unstable states which could cut their supplies to Europe. Again, Knies dismisses the danger. ‘It’s not like oil. Solar power is gone once it hits your mirrors. It would simply be lost income.’ The European Parliament has asked Desertec to propose short-term demonstration projects.