EcoRadio

Category: Energy Matters

The twentieth century way of life has been made available, largely due to the miracle of cheap energy. The price of energy has been at record lows for the past century and a half.As oil becomes increasingly scarce, it is becoming obvious to everyone, that the rapid economic and industrial growth we have enjoyed for that time is not sustainable.Now, the hunt is on. For renewable sources of energy, for alternative sources of energy, for a way of life that is less dependent on cheap energy. 

  • Significat geothermal energy reserves discovered

    ‘Significant’ geothermal energy reserves discovered

    Peta Carlyon, ABC July 13, 2010, 12:00 pm

     

     

    Studies of underground water tables in Victoria’s north and west have revealed a significant new store of geothermal energy reserves.

    Geothermal energy is a clean renewable resource and is generated from hot rocks and aquifers deep below the earth’s surface.

    The State Government and Geoscience Victoria, have undertaken large studies of underground energy over the last year and released a new map of available reserves to attract investment.

    The Energy and Resources Minister, Peter Batchelor, says Stawell, Horsham, Mildura, and Ballarat, have all been identified as new areas with significant energy potential.

    “These are good results, they’re better than we expected,” he said.

    “We had very limited data available and to help encourage geothermal exploration, we’ve provided this atlas for more detailed information.”

     

  • US imposes new freeze on deepwater drilling

     

    Mr Salazar had previously warned he would issue a new order to block deepwater drilling regardless of how the court ruled, as oil companies decided not to resume drilling due to the legal uncertainties.

    The first moratorium was imposed after the deadly April 20 explosion on a BP-leased drilling rig sparked the worst environmental disaster in US history.

    The new move, said the Interior Department, is supported by “an extensive record of existing and new information indicating that allowing new deepwater drilling to commence would pose a threat of serious, irreparable, or immediate harm or damage to the marine, coastal, and human environment”.

    – AFP

  • Electric cars and wind turbines face metal supply shortages

    Electric cars and wind turbines face metal supply shortages

    Ecologist

    12th June, 2010

    The Government’s much-vaunted ambition for a low-carbon economy could be threatened by shortages in key metals and the environmental cost of developing new mining facilities

    A rapid increase in electric cars and offshore wind turbines might not be sustained, the Government has been warned, because of a shortage in a number of key metals.

    Current production of both requires considerable amounts of rare earth metals, valued for their magnetic capacity and resistance to high temperatures.

    However, the world may now face shortages as China, which produces 95 per cent of the metals, cuts back on exports to concentrate on manufacturing and exporting higher value goods.

    A report prepared for the Department for Transport by the consultants Oakdene Hollins warns that the combined demand from wind turbines and hybrid/electric cars for neodymium (used in wind turbine generators) and lanthanum (used in batteries) is predicted to exceed all but the ‘most optimistic supply scenarios’.

    It says UK plans for offshore wind farm capacity alone would lead to an average demand for neodymuim in 2020 of over 12 per cent of the total global supply in 2014.

    Overall demand for rare earth metals is predicted to grow at 8-11 per cent a year between now and 2014.

    Environmental cost

    The report says the US and others have responded by seeking to develop new mines of their own, with Canada, Australia, Malaysia and Greenland known to contain significant reserves.

    However, these will take as long as four years to open and more importantly would come at an environmental cost in terms of land use, extraction cost, water and chemical usage and biodiversity loss.

    ‘If you are trying to decarbonise the transport sector you don’t want another biofuels situation – [where] you are trying to solve one problem but you end up creating another,’ said report author Dr Hudai Kara.

    Alternatives to magnets used in electric car motors are currently limited but the report says a number of alternatives for batteries are currently being researched. It urges the UK to focus, like Japan, on research into the life extension of products and better recycling techniques for recovering the metals.

    The Department of Transport said it was currently considering the findings but would not comment on their significance to the development of the low carbon transport sector.

  • LLoyd’s adds its voice to dire ‘peak oil’ warnings

     

    The report the world is heading for a global oil supply crunch and high prices owing to insufficient investment in oil production plus a rebound in global demand following recession. It repeats warning from Professor Paul Stevens, a former economist from Dundee University, at an earlier Chatham House conference that lack of oil by 2013 could force the price of crude above $200 (£130) a barrel.

    It also quotes from a US department of energy report highlighting the economic chaos that would result from declining oil production as global demand continued to rise, recommending a crash programme to overhaul the transport system. “Even before we reach peak oil,” says the Lloyd’s report, “we could witness an oil supply crunch because of increased Asian demand. Major new investment in energy takes 10-15 years from the initial investment to first production, and to date we have not seen the amount of new projects that would supply the projected increase in demand.”

    And while the world is gradually moving to new kinds of clean energy technologies the insurance market warns that there could be shortages of earth metals and other raw materials needed to help them thrive.

    Lloyd’s also calls on manufacturers, retailers and the wider business community to reassess global supply chains and their just-in time models because the “current system is increasingly vulnerable to disruption.”

    The report says government needs to do much more to bring additional price stability and transparency if the global carbon market is to become a reality.

    Richard Ward, chief executive of Lloyd’s, said the failure of the Copenhagen climate change talks last December has helped lull many business leaders into a false sense of security about the challenges ahead. “We are in a period akin to a phony war. We keep hearing of difficulties to come, but with oil, gas and coal still broadly accessible – and largely capable of being distributed where they are needed – the bad times have not yet hit … all businesses … will be affected by energy supplies which are less reliable and more expensive.”

  • Researchers win grant to use algae to make fuel

     

    “It’ll take us ’til the first quarter of next year to put all the equipment in place,” he said.

    “What we’re trying to do there is grow algae at the power station, modify the system and run it through a trial period through next year to understand exactly how the algae grows and how it responds to the flu gas emissions.”

    Mr Lawson says the project is the first of its kind in the world.

    “It’s really the first anywhere and the other project in Spain is connected to a cement kiln and there’s a similar sort of approach in Israel, so this is the first one of its scale at a power station,” he said.

    Tags: alternative-energy, energy, research, research-organisations, maroochydore-4558, tarong-4615, toowoomba-4350

  • Solar plane completes night flight

     

    “It’s the first time ever that a solar airplane has flown through the night,” said team chief Bertrand Piccard, the Swiss adventurer who achieved the first round-the-world balloon flight in 1999.

    “That was the moment that proved the mission was successful, we made it,” he told journalists.

    Alighting from the plane after sitting day and night in the narrow cockpit, Borschberg said he felt that he was “floating”.

    “I have the impression that I’m still in the air,” the 57-year-old said on the tarmac, as he was showered by congratulations and slaps on the back form the 70-strong team.

    “I feel very pleased, really happy. It was crucial step. Now we’ll go even further, we’ll do long missions.”

    The high-tech single-seater aircraft had taken off from Payerne in the early hours of Wednesday, in the first ever attempt to use solar energy alone to keep a manned flight aloft for a day and a night.

    Flight director Claude Nicollier said that the flight had gone well overnight just as Borschberg guided the experimental aircraft towards a landing after dawn.

    “It went better than that,” Mr Nicollier said.

    The plane’s flight during the overnight hours of darkness was powered by the charge its batteries had stored during the 14 hours of daytime flight thanks to an array of 12,000 solar cells on wings the size of an airliner’s.

    “It’s a super flight, better than nominal,” added Mr Nicollier, a former space shuttle astronaut.

    As darkness fell there were fears that a sudden burst of strong high altitude winds at dusk had deprived Solar Impulse of some of the stored energy to last the night.

    But Borschberg seemed unflustered by the 26-hour experience, dismissing “one or two little difficulties”.

    “The flight was really zen. It’s very peaceful, during this time you have the time to think and to concentrate,” he explained.

    Piccard revealed that Solar Impulse had emerged from darkness with three hours of energy left in its batteries, a far bigger margin than expected.

    The first prototype, shaped like a giant dragonfly, is clad with solar panels across a wingspan of 63 metres, the size of an Airbus A340 airliner.

    The solar cells and nearly half a tonne of batteries provide energy for four small electric motors and propellers – the “power of a scooter”, as the crew put it – and weigh little more than a saloon car.

    The team is driven by a desire to demonstrate that clean energy is technically feasible and should be developed and used more widely for transport, in the household and at work.

    – AFP