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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. 

  • Train union calls for tanker ban

     

    In one incident, two young girls died when a petrol tanker exploded after hitting their car near Batemans Bay. The tanker driver was also killed, while the girls’ father later died of his injuries in hospital.

    The union’s national organiser, Bob Nanva, said a ban would help minimise truck and car collisions.

    “Putting hundreds of extra long-haul trucks on our roads with mums, dads and kids in the car is hardly a good thing, especially when they’re carrying millions of litres of flammable petrol,” he said.

    “We all want to do everything we can to minimise the risk of these tragedies from occurring on our roads again and a ban on the long-distance road transport of dangerous goods will go a long way to achieving that.”

    Mr Nanva says transport companies need to be held accountable.

    “If companies put commercial goals ahead of doing the right thing by the thousands of families that depend on our roads, governments should pull them into line,” he said.

    “In light of the carnage on our roads in recent weeks, there’s no reason why the Government can’t act now to ban the long-distance road transport of dangerous goods.”

    The New South Wales Premier Kristina Keneally says the ban is a good idea, but difficult to implement.

    She says a different type of rail network would have to be built to accommodate the freight.

    “It is an attractive proposition, but one that is a complex issue,” she said.

    “We would need to work with the Commonwealth and where we would need to work with retailers and we would need to work with motoring groups to determine the best outcome here.”

    A spokesman for the Transport Minister says the government is already working closely with the Federal Government and other states on the transport of freight on roads, including dangerous goods.

  • Clean coal locked out of funding

     

    Australia failed to get CCS included in the funding program, the Clean Development Mechanism, at talks in Poznan, Poland, last year, and Brazil has maintained its resistance to CCS funding. The mechanism gives lucrative carbon credits to firms that invest in clean technology projects in developing countries, and those credits were seen as a valuable way to subsidise the development of CCS.

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    John Howard was a staunch advocate of CCS technology, and Kevin Rudd has set up a global institute to promote it, winning praise from Barack Obama and other world leaders for championing the new technology, which has not yet been commercially applied in a full-size coal plant.

    But Brazil, which wants to see the CDM used for other technologies, resisted the inclusion of CCS at Poznan last year, and a small number of opponents were again able to block it within the key Copenhagen working group at the climate summit.

    Britain and the US have both vowed to become world leaders in capturing coal emissions and storing them underground.

    The Canberra-based Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute, set up by the Prime Minister to drive the development of CCS technology, was last night considering its position on the Copenhagen decision.

    Peter Cook, chief executive of the Co-operative Research Centre for Greenhouse Gas Technologies, said the decision was not unexpected and was part of a debate he believed would result in CCS being included in the funding development mechanism.

    “Whatever happens with CDM, as long as we continue to use fossil fuels we’re going to need CCS if we’re going to do something about the emissions,” Dr Cook said. “We dare not leave CCS out of the equation.”

    The summit is expected to put up to $US10 billion ($11bn) a year for the next three years into projects to help developing countries respond to climate change.

    Additional reporting: Matthew Franklin, Sean Parnell

  • Offshore Wind Makes Sense for China

     

    Offshore wind particularly makes sense for the provinces on the Eastern coastal region, from Guangdong to Shandong, which have the highest population densities. They have tremendous offshore wind resources which, in cases such as Guangdong and Fujian, are among the best in China. These cities are also where the bulk of China’s manufacturing capability is to be found.  By developing offshore wind farms close to the coastal regions where electricity demand is highest, China can avoid the headache of having to create a series of long distance transmission lines to bring onshore wind power from the far North and the West of the country, where most onshore wind facilities are based.

    Offshore wind does involve high initial investment costs, and this has no doubt been a factor hindering development of China’s offshore capacity. But the long-term advantages of offshore — minimal running costs, longer-lasting turbines, higher and steadier volumes — outweigh the short-term disadvantages.

    The role of China’s government to drive forward offshore wind power is crucial. Proper government incentives are needed to overcome the higher investment costs associated with offshore wind. China’s government recognizes this and has taken steps to push forward the commercialization of offshore wind energy. China successfully installed its first offshore wind farm earlier this year, in the East China Sea near Shanghai. It is expected to become operational in May 2010. There are many other proposed projects, based off the coast of Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Shandong Provinces.

    However, there are large gaps in China’s offshore wind power expertise. While the pace of the market’s growth has been impressive, Chinese firms are still playing catch-up in terms of advanced offshore manufacturing and engineering. To realize China’s full offshore wind potential, technology transfer from developed countries with experience in offshore wind is vital.

    As a world leader in offshore wind energy, Scotland is a ready partner for China in developing its offshore capacity. Scottish firms such as SgurrEnergy are already actively involved in providing consultancy services to Chinese firms.  In fact, SgurrEnergy has been appointed by the EU-China Energy & Environment Programme to advise on the potential for China to exploit its offshore wind resource, and it will also work in partnership with the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) to assess whether it is economically viable to construct offshore wind farms along a 10,000-kilometre stretch of coastline from Fujian to Shandong.  

    Scottish companies SeaEnergy Renewables, one of the only companies in the world with deepwater offshore wind experience, and Crown Estates, focused on the lesser of the U.K.’s deep waters, will be visiting with the Scottish delegation to the China Wind Power 2009 exposition to enhance their growing collaborative relationship with the Chinese government and Chinese wind power manufacturers.  We believe that continued cross-border co-operation such as this will create many opportunities for mutual gain. 

    Most Chinese MW-class wind turbine generator (WTG) manufacturers also remain at R&D or prototype stage. Similarly, many local component manufacturers and service providers are not yet fully capable of meeting the sector’s needs. China’s wind farm developers, meanwhile, have limited practical knowledge or experience of offshore wind farms.

    There are great opportunities for experienced firms to work with China to build its capabilities in WTG system design and manufacturing, offshore power transmission, offshore wind measurement, wind farm design, installation engineering, access solutions as well as maintenance and services. With larger machines comes the need for better-designed substructures capable of coping with the forces involved in such giant wind turbines. Scotland has led the way in this field and applied such substructures not only to large wind turbines such as REpower’s 5-MW turbines but also in the deepest water yet reached by offshore wind. This is a jacket structure technology from the oil and gas industry, an industry in which Scotland has a long and distinguished heritage, applied to offshore wind. 

    Scotland now possesses some 25 percent of Europe’s wind resources and is a recognised world leader in offshore wind. We boast a vast supply base of innovative small and medium size companies who are pivotal in turning emerging technologies into commercial opportunities and securing business gains through technological advantages. Scottish companies are researching a new hydraulic transmission system for turbines, innovative blade manufacturing techniques, operations and maintenance of crane systems and application of various techniques to process gas and oil and operate deep-sea wind power plants.

    As well as tapping into the sector’s latest innovations, China also has the chance to learn from the past mistakes of more experienced countries. For example, it will be tempting for China to start building wind farms in tidal flats or very shallow water, but the lessons learned in the UK’s offshore wind market should be heeded and the problems associated with such sites avoided. To build wind farms offshore one needs a proper water depth for full-time access during the construction period and to avoid later problems for operations and maintenance activity.

    China’s government has been active in developing the country’s offshore wind capacity. However, there are some restrictions to foreign investment and trade in China’s offshore wind sector that will need to be addressed if China is to fully benefit from the knowledge transfer it requires.  Once those are addressed, we see great potential for collaboration between China and Scotland in renewable energy technology transfer, and are working to support Scottish firms in establishing links with their Chinese counterparts to make the most of these opportunities. We are confident that China’s government will continue to strike the right balance between nurturing the domestic offshore wind industry and allowing foreign firms to play a role in developing China’s offshore wind capacity.

    Frank Boyland is Director, Asia for Scottish Development International, a Scottish government organization tasked with promoting international trade for Scottish firms and inward investment to Scotland.  Mr. Boyland is responsible for further enhancing Scotland’s strong trade and investment links with the Asia Pacific region, overseeing operations across SDI’s ten offices in China, Japan, India, Korea, Singapore, and Australia.  Mr. Boyland’s background is in electronic engineering and he has over 22 years experience within the semi-conductor industry, including strategic posts for Chartered Semiconductor in Singapore and National Semiconductor UK in Scotland. Mr. Boyland was educated at James Watt College in Greenock, Scotland where he completed an HNC Electrical & Electronic Engineering as well as an HNC in Marketing, Economics and Advertising.

  • Nitrous oxide concerns cloud future of biofuels

     

    The road transport industry is also keen to increase the use of biofuels, and an EU directive last year requires 10% of all road transport fuel to come from plants by 2020. Theoretically the fuels are carbon-neutral: when burned they only release the carbon dioxide they absorbed while the plants were growing.

    Campaigners argue biofuels are not as sustainable as they seem and say more biofuels would mean the destruction of virgin forests – and the release of their stored carbon – to create agricultural land.

    Heinz Ossenbrink, of the EC’s Institute of Energy (IoE), said research carried out by EU-funded scientists increasingly pointed to a long-term problem for large-scale biofuels use, namely the emissions of nitrous oxide. This is about 270 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas and is released through use of fertilisers to grow biofuel crops. “Some of the older studies don’t take that into account,” he said. “We have now come to less positive values for biofuels.”

    The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change does consider the production of nitrous oxide when deciding on the sustainibility of particular biofuels, but errors in its calculations are known to be large.”That’s because there’s such a huge local variation – [emissions] could double from one end of the field to the other and hundreds of times between the fields in the same country and thousands of times around the world,” said Robert Edwards, of the renewable energies unit at the IoE.

  • Brazil defends biofuels at Copenhagen summit

     

    Brazilian delegates were at pains to show that not only is biofuel production the best way to reduce greenhouse gas (GhG) emissions but can also combat poverty as exemplified by the country’s scheme to promote micro-distilleries to provide additional income for rural families.

    Biofuels have, however, come under serious attack in recent years for eating into farmlands meant for food production. As a result, the European Union backed out, last year, from a commitment to introduce a 10 percent mandatory quota of biofuels in all transportation by 2020.

    In Brazil itself environmentalists have pointed to biofuel production as one of the key reasons for the steady deforestation of the Amazon basin.

    Countering such criticism Jose Migues from the Brazilian ministry of science and technology said: “We were told that biofuels lead to deforestation in the Amazon, but the ethanol production areas are 3,000 km away from the Amazon.”

    Migues referred to Indirect Land Use Change (ILUC), a phrase describing the effects of biofuel production, which pushes human activities towards the Amazonian forests. In the Sao Paulo area, where most ethanol production is concentrated, there has been a significant decrease in cattle raising and agricultural production.

    “But is it fair to say that all of these activities are now moving to the Amazon?” asked Thelma Krug, another representative of the ministry. “There is much room for making agriculture and cattle raising more efficient in Brazil.”

    While the question of where Sao Paulo’s farmers moved remained unanswered in Copenhagen, the planned expansion of the ethanol industry threatens further displacement. Over six million hectares are under sugar cane in Brazil but Krug said there were plans to make ”64 million ha available for expanding sugar cane production.”

    Krug said the government is working on using satellite imagery to monitor the loss of forest cover and keep deforestation under check. A representative of Nature Conservancy a Brazilian non-governmental organisation (NGO) spoke of the thoroughness of forest protection laws.

    As for food security issues linked to biofuel production, Andre Correa do Lago, director general of the energy department in the ministry of foreign affairs, stopped short of an outright denial that biofuels were to blame for the 2008 rise in food prices.

    “Food security is one of the main concerns of our government,” he said. “Biofuels, like any other human endeavour, can be done in a better way. So we should not use the worst case as a general reference point.”

    Legislation is under consideration to prevent biomass burning, which is responsible for large amounts of GhG emissions.

    Much of the waste, especially bagasse, is replacing polluting nitrogenous fertilisers and the production process streamlined with nine units of energy being produced from bagasse against every unit from fossil energy.

    While admitting that “biofuels are no silver bullet,” Brazilian authorities insist that biofuels are the best way forward for developing countries.

    • This article was shared by our content partner IPS, part of the Guardian Environment Network