When Will Renewable Energy Companies Overtake Traditional Enegry Companies
When Will Renewable Energy Companies Overtake Traditional Energy Companies?
Renewable energy has got buzz, growth and growing government support. But it’s no secret that it still makes up a small portion of the overall energy mix. As interest in renewables increases, the question has begun coming up more and more often: When will renewable energy companies catch up to conventional energy companies? That is, when will we see an Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. or ConocoPhilips of renewables?
In other words, the next BP of renewables could be BP.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. brought more attention to this question with his prediction, repeated over the last several months, that clean energy would overthrow energy incumbents within the next decade. “We’re going to democratize the energy system in this country and take it away from the incumbents over the next 10 years,” he said at the Solar Power International conference in Anaheim last October.
Coral reefs crucial to origin of new marine species, finds study
Coral reefs crucial to origin of new marine species, finds study
New research provides a new incentive to protect reefs, overturning ideas that coral sealife originated elsewhere
- guardian.co.uk, Thursday 7 January 2010 19.00 GMT
- Article history
Coral reefs are responsible for about 50% more new species than shallow-water environments. Photograph: Jeff Hunter/Getty Images
Coral reefs give birth to a dazzling number of new species of sea creatures, according to a study that highlights their critical role in marine ecosystems.
Scientists have found that the reefs not only harbour amazing biodiversity, but are actively involved in the generation of new life forms. The study overturns conventional thinking that much of the sea life in coral reefs originated elsewhere.
Oil Production Waste Stream: A Soutce of Electrical Power
Oil Production Waste Stream: A Source of Electrical Power
The Rocky Mountain Oilfield Testing Center (RMOTC) is located at the Teapot Dome oil field, also known as the Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 3 (NPR-3) (see image, below). NPR-3 is operated by the U.S. Department of Energy as a test site for new and developing oil and gas and renewable energy related technologies, and as a producing oil field.
The field is a 9,481-acre operating stripper well oil field offering a full complement of associated facilities and equipment on-site. There have been 1,319 wells drilled in the field with 589 of them plugged and abandoned. Of the 730 remaining well bores, 300 are producing wells in nine producing reservoirs ranging in depth from 250 to 5,500 feet. The remaining wellbores are temporarily shut-in or are used for testing.
Oil rig-style “offshore communiies” to maintain windfarms
Oil rig-style “offshore communities” to maintain windfarms
Difficulties accessing and maintaining windfarms located 150km offshore are expected to lead to onsite accommodation for maintenance workers. From BusinessGreen, part of the Guardian Environment Network
- guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 6 January 2010 11.05 GMT
- Article history
Turbines of the new Burbo Bank offshore wind farm. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
The difficulties in accessing and maintaining offshore wind farms around the UK means that “offshore communities” will have to live and work near the turbines on accommodation facilities similar to oil rigs.
That is the view of experts at the Carbon Trust who have identified accessing turbines in high seas as one of the main barriers to the successful development of the government’s £100bn offshore wind strategy.
Shell must face Friends of the earth Nigeria claim in Netherlads
Shell must face Friends of the Earth Nigeria claim in Netherlands
Shell disappointed at Hague court ruling on Oruma oil spill compensation ca
- guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 30 December 2009 22.00 GMT
- Article history
Shell gas flaring in the Niger Delta. The practice has proved controversial. Photograph: Pius Otomi Ekpei/AFP/Getty Images
A judge in the Netherlands has opened the door to a potential avalanche of legal cases against Shell over environmental degradation said to be caused by its oil operations in the Niger Delta.
The oil group expressed “disappointment” tonight that a court in The Hague had agreed to allow Friends of the Earth Netherlands and four local Nigerian farmers to bring a compensation case in its backyard for the first time.
Environmental campaigners insisted the case in the Netherlands was only being brought as a final resort and they declined to put a figure on the kind of damages stemming from the test case involving four farmers and alleged pollution at Oruma in Bayelsa state. But they said a variety of independent organisations in the past had estimated that the wider oil industry may be responsible for up to $20bn (£12.5bn) worth of damage as a result of pipeline spills and flaring of gas.
Importing Solar Power with Biomass
Importing Solar Power with Biomass
Every six hours the sun bathes the lands of the earth in as much energy as the world consumes in a year. If we could just find a way to collect and distribute that energy our energy problems would be solved. Unfortunately, most of our energy consumption is in the places with the least sunshine (see insolation map, below.)
Biomass captures and stores the suns energy for later use. In tropical zones biomass grows year round and can be five times more productive than in the temperate zones. Biomass can be converted to denser forms and shipped to where it is needed surprisingly economically. For example, ocean shipping of coal priced at $73/ton from Australia to China only adds about $12/ton to the final cost. Wood chips are bulkier, but they can be made as dense as coal by heating and compressing them into torrefied pellets.
Ocean shipping is amazingly efficient for long distances. Australia has shipped an average of two million tons of coal per month to China so far this year. Ordinary (untorrefied) wood pellets have less than half the energy density of coal, yet Plantation Energy just signed two contracts to ship $130 million worth of pellets to Europe over the next three years. With torrefied pellets shipping costs could be halved so the economics would work out even better. Torrefaction is like coffee roasting. It requires no external energy but uses about 8% of the biomass energy to drive the process. Some of that energy is recovered because pelletizing energy is reduced because the heat-softened lignin in the biomass makes it easier to compress into pellets.