IEA calls for global push to end energy poverty

admin /11 November, 2009

IEA calls for global push to end energy poverty

Energy watchdog says that without action at Copenhagen one in six people will still be without electricity by 2030

• Tim Webb
• guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 10 November 2009 20.59 GMT
• Article history

Children of Ogwolo village, Katine. There will be an estimated 700 million people in Africa without access to electricity in 2030. Photograph: Dan Chung

 

Rich countries are being urged to sign up to a Make Poverty History-style pledge at the climate change summit at Copenhagen next month to bring electricity to the 1.5 billion people in the world without it.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) is working with the United Nations and the World Bank on a project to electrify millions of homes and villages in Africa and south Asia.

The energy watchdog’s chief economist, Fatih Birol, told the Guardian the west was ignoring the issue of energy poverty in developing countries. The IEA also predicted that without international action by governments, there would still be 1.3 billion people – or 16% of the world’s population – with no access to electricity in their homes or villages by 2030.

Key oil figures were distorted by US pressure, says whistleblower

admin /10 November, 2009

Key oil figures were distorted by US pressure, says whistleblower

Exclusive: Watchdog’s estimates of reserves inflated says top official

• Terry Macalister
• guardian.co.uk, Monday 9 November 2009 21.30 GMT
• Article history

The world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit, according to a whistleblower at the International Energy Agency who claims it has been deliberately underplaying a looming shortage for fear of triggering panic buying.

The senior official claims the US has played an influential role in encouraging the watchdog to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of finding new reserves.

Space-Based Power System Needed to Solve Earth’s Energy Woes.

admin /9 November, 2009

Civilization faces an urgent need to develop space-based power generation systems that would beam energy to the planet from satellites that would shine like “golden apples” in the night sky, a large team of scientists said today.

The researchers also recommend looking into deploying some cosmic Coppertone, giant sunscreens that would block solar energy and curb global warming.

With energy demand expected to triple over the next 50 years while traditional energy production fuels global warming, the diverse group of scientists said creative but feasible technologies are needed to battle a growing “energy imbalance” that threatens global prosperity.

Images

A power relay satellite, solar power satellite (SPS), and lunar power system all exploit unique attributes of space — high solar flux, lines of sight, lunar materials, shallow gravitational potential well of the Moon.

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• Develop pollution-free energy
• Trim the growth in energy demand
• Intervene in the global warming trend by “geoengineering” the planet

Fossil fuels provide the bulk of Earth’s energy. Their conversion to useable energy contributes, most scientists now agree, to a warming planet. Decades of efforts to harness solar power and other renewable, clean resources have yielded only marginal benefit.

But the Sun’s energy is eight times greater in space, above Earth’s atmosphere and clouds. Capturing it there could supply all the world’s power needs now and for millennia to come, says Martin Hoffert, a physics professor at New York University and lead author of the report.

“The potential is vast,” Hoffert told SPACE.com. “From humankind’s point of view most of the Sun’s energy is wasted.”

The evaluation of myriad ideas was written by experts in atmospheric science, energy production, economics and biology from NASA, Exxon-Mobil Research and Engineering Company, and about a dozen universities and research institutions.

Hoffert and his colleagues reviewed options that have been envisioned by others. Among their recommendations are continued research into nuclear fusion, a promising but unharnessed cousin to atom-splitting fission reactors that dot the globe today. They also suggest further improvements in automobile fuel efficiency but warn that China and India could erase any U.S. gains if cars overtook bicycles as the primary form of transportation there.

The report considers the future of wind and solar power but cites their inability to provide the huge amounts of electricity needed to meet “baseload” demands.

The first space project could involve power plants in low Earth orbit (LEO) — where the space station and shuttles roam — that would use solar panels to collect energy, then convert it to microwave energy and beam it to the planet, where it would be converted to electricity. Broader schemes would put power plants in higher orbits or even on or around the Moon or in other points in space, then beam the energy to Earth-orbiting reflectors.

Satellites could also be used to transmit power from one terrestrial location to another.

No single effort would cure civilization’s energy woes or halt global warming, the scientists point out. But some of the space-based efforts are more promising and immediately feasible, Hoffert said.

“We recommend starting in a practical way — with simple, LEO-based systems at relatively low cost, beaming intermittent power to multiple locations, and working up to a constellation to handle baseload power,” Hoffert said.

Later, systems could migrate to higher, so-called geosynchronous orbits, where a single satellite can hover continuously over a given spot on Earth and beam power to any location on half the globe.

“Space Solar Power (SSP) is certainly a technological challenge,” Hoffert said. “But much less of one than, say, building a fusion power reactor.”

Both methods have the potential to provide baseload electricity for Earth for millennia to come, he said. But unlike fusion, space-based power generation doesn’t require scientific breakthroughs before it can be employed.

“We advocate an SSP demonstration in the next 10 years to explore the technology and potential for cost reductions aimed at power for developing nations.”

The idea is not new.

Freeman Dyson, a visionary physicist now at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, speculated five decades ago that advanced civilizations would build spheres around their suns to capture energy. The artificial structures — perhaps a ring of solar collectors, he suggested — came to be known as Dyson spheres.

Solar energy might be pollution free in the traditional sense, but there are other forms of “pollution” to consider. While the beams of microwave energy would not themselves be visible, the satellites would, because their solar panels would be huge. Many satellites no bigger than a bus reflect enough sunlight to be visible from Earth. Power generation schemes conceived by NASA involve solar arrays the size of Manhattan.

“A large enough system would reflect enough sunlight to be seen,” Hoffert said. “Their visibility poses interesting aesthetic issues.”

Rather than a form of visual pollution, advocates argue that a ring of solar power satellites in geostationary orbit might be viewed as inspiring “golden apples of the sun,” a reference to the last line of the poem “Song of Wandering Aengus,” by William Butler Yeats.

Where poetry and power might meet, the need is clear, the scientists argue. University of Houston physicist David Criswell, another author of the paper, has advocated gathering solar power at the Moon for more than 20 years.

“Prosperity for everyone on Earth requires a sustainable source of electricity,” Criswell said earlier this month at a World Space Congress meeting. He said it would take about a decade to build a lunar power station and begin delivering electricity to the terrestrial grid.

The raw materials needed to make solar cells are present in the Moon’s soil, other researchers have said. Equally important, a lunar station could be situated to receive continuous sunlight, except for about three hours a year during a total eclipse, when stored energy would be needed.

Space-based power generation isn’t going to solve the energy imbalance overnight, the researchers say. An insurance policy of sorts is needed to prepare to combat global warming from another angle.

Ironically, while Hoffert’s team recommends harnessing the Sun’s energy from space, they also suggest blocking some of it, either with giant translucent shields or mirrors. About 2 percent of the Sun’s energy would need to be blocked in order to correct for climate-warming gas production. Such an effort is called geoengineering.

“For this application a sunshield or solar parasol would have to be very large (thousands of kilometers in diameter), possibly very thin, and possibly fabricated from lunar materials,” Hoffert said. “At this point, space mirrors are more of a thought experiment than a real option.”

The scientists stress that each approach outlined in their report has deficiencies. Only a broad range of intensive research and development will provide the options needed to stabilize the global climate and allow continued economic development.

Accomplishing such broad change in energy management would require worldwide political cooperation, they acknowledge. Yet the need to do something involving “great compromise may become more acute” as the global economy grows, they conclude.

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