Energy Matters – Page 60

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.Â

Solar power from Sahara a step c;oser

The German-led consortium was brought together by Munich Re, the world’s biggest reinsurer, and consists of some of country’s biggest engineering and power companies, including Siemens, E.ON, ABB and Deutsche Bank.

It now believes the DII can deliver solar power to Europe as early as 2015.

“We have now passed a real milestone as the company has been founded and there is definitely a profitable business there,” said Professor Peter Höppe, Munich Re’s head of climate change.

“We see this as a big step towards solving the two main problems facing the world in the coming years – climate change and energy security,” said Höppe.

The solar technology involved is known as concentrated solar power (CSP) which uses mirrors to concentrate the sun’s rays on a fluid container. The super-heated liquid then drives turbines to generate electricity. The advantage over solar photovoltaic panels, which convert sunlight directly to electricity, is that if sufficient hot fluid is stored in containers, the generators can run all night.

The technology is not new – there have been CSP plants running in the deserts of California and Nevada for two decades. But it is the scale of the Desertec initiative which is a first, along with plans to connect North Africa to Europe with new high voltage direct current cables which transport electricity over great distances with little loss.

Leading European energy industry expert Paul van Son has been appointed chief executive of DII and will recruit staff to build up a framework to make the building of both power plants and the grid infrastructure.

“We recognise and strongly support the Desertec vision as a pivotal part of the transition to a sustainable energy supply in the Middle East, North Africa and Europe,” he said.

“Now the time has come to turn this vision into reality. That implies intensive cooperation with many parties and cultures to create a sound basis for feasible investments into renewable energy technologies and interconnected grids.”

Desertec has gained broad support across Europe, with the newly elected German coalition government of Angela Merkel hoping the project could offset its dependence on Russian gas supplies.

North African governments are said to be keen, too, to further exploit their natural resources. Algeria and Libya are already big oil and gas suppliers to Europe.

Höppe said Munich Re had been concerned about the potential impact of climate change on the insurance business since the early 1970s. Extreme weather events related to climate change are already a reality and have the potential to be uninsurable against within a few decades, pointing to a possible crisis for the industry, he said.

“To keep our business model alive in 30 or 40 years we have to ensure things are still insurable,” he said.

Munich Re also plans to invest in the new initiative and Höppe said banks were confident that they could raise sufficient funding to make the project work.

There are already some small CSP plants in Spain and North Africa, with the power used locally. But Desertec plans to see big power stations of one gigawatt operating in five years’ time and exporting some current across the Mediterranean. The consortium stresses, though, that power generated by solar fields in North Africa would be used by North Africans as well as Europeans. North Africa has a small population relative to the size of its deserts. For similar reasons Australia is putting together its own Desertec initiative.

Dan Lewis, head of a new thinktank, the Economic Policy Centre, and author of a forthcoming energy policy paper, said: “This is just the sort of long-term, big-difference, energy security gain project that our UK short-term targets and policy framework can’t deliver.

“Instead, we’re spending ridiculous sums on no-hoper, marginal stuff like fusion energy and a massive smart meter rollout, that at best will only shave a fraction off peak demand.”

National Grid plan for local waste-to-biogas plants

In a new report released today, the grid operator sets out how a series of ‘Urban Energy Centres’ could take delivery of separated food and household waste.

The food waste would be fed straight into an anaerobic digester, which breaks down the sludge to produce a methane-rich gas and a nutrient-rich liquid slurry, that can be used as an agricultural fertiliser.

The household waste would be fed into a Mechanical Biological Treatment (MBT) plant, which sorts the waste to remove recyclable materials, and then submits the remaining fraction to high pressure steam, sterilising the waste and reducing its volume.

This waste is then heated to high temperatures in the absence of air to drive off ‘syngas’ – a mixture rich in hydrogen – which can be upgraded and then injected into the gas mains along with the gas from the anaerobic digester for use in home boilers and cookers.

Because the process does not incinerate waste in the presence of air, harmful combustion byproducts should be kept to a minimum.

National Grid calculates that 10 plants could deal with all of London’s waste, reducing CO2 emissions by some 146,365 tonnes a year by displacing fossil natural gas.

However, although the report calculates that the Energy Centres would make better economic sense than incinerators (costing £62.50 per megawatt hour of energy produced, as opposed £110.25 per megawatt hour of energy from an incinerator), the Grid’s executives believe that the project will not succeed unless the Government introduces promised financial incentives.

‘This only becomes feasible if the Government introduces a renewable heat incentive (RHI) payment for renewable gas that makes it commercially viable,’ said Mark Fairbairn, executive director of gas distribution for National Grid. ‘Also support will be needed to develop gasification technology alongside a review of waste policy to ensure that energy recovery from waste is maximised at all plants in the UK.’

Useful links
National Grid report

Local residents have rallied around a proposal for a 328 megawatt wind farm and put up a website, coalriverwind.org, to promote their vision. The wind farm would, over the course of a few decades, provide far more jobs in the community than those created during the few years it would take Massey Energy to reduce the mountain to a flat, barren, and toxic wasteland. Just a few days ago, the AP reported that a local organization, Coal River Mountain Watch, has been working with Google Earth to design a presentation that will be shown at the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen, contrasting the proposed wind farm with Massey Energy’s plans for more than 6,000 acres of mountaintop removal coal mining on the mountain.

A 328 megawatt wind farm versus a 6,000 acre mountaintop removal coal mine—there could be no better symbol of the crossroads we are at in America’s energy future. Whichever way it goes, the fate of Coal River Mountain is America’s energy future. If the coal companies can mine Coal River Mountain, they can do anything they want. If they can destroy these peaks, we’ll know exactly what the effect that the billions in tax-payer giveaways to the coal industry will have if the climate bill is passed.

What’s at stake

There’s far more than just a wind farm at stake when it comes to the destruction of Coal River Mountain, however, both for residents of the Coal River Valley and for people across the country who believe that a clean energy future is within our grasp.

For local residents, this is the last intact mountain in the vicinity, home to some of the few remaining headwater streams that have not been polluted with heavy metal-laden mine waste. If Massey Energy’s plans aren’t stopped, they know exactly what’s in store—just a few weeks ago, a local Eyewitness News story about 200 families in the town of Prenter who are suing 9 coal companies for contaminating their well water with coal waste began as follows:

“Twenty-two year old Josh McCormick is dying of kidney cancer. Twenty-six year old Tanya Trale has had a tumor removed from her breast; her husband has had two tumors removed from his side and both have had their gallbladders taken out.

Rita Lambert has had her gallbladder removed; so has her husband and both parents.

Jennifer Massey has a mouthful of crowns and so does her son after their enamel was eaten away, and six of her neighbors—all unrelated—have had brain tumors, including her 29-year old brother, who died.

Bill Arden is one of those neighbors. He survived his brain tumor, but Arden’s eight-year old boxer named Sampson did not.

What do all of these people have in common? They all live within a 3-mile radius of Prenter Hollow in Boone County, West Virginia. And all have well water.”

As usual, despite overwhelming evidence that it’s the sludge they have been pumping into underground mine shafts that contaminated the groundwater, the coal companies deny any connection to the problem.

On Coal River Mountain, less than 100 yards from where the mining has begun, lies the Brushy Fork coal slurry impoundment, a massive earthen dam holding back 8.2 billion gallons of toxic coal sludge. Were that dam to fail, as several have done in the recent past, hundreds of lives could be lost in a matter of minutes and thousands would be put in jeopardy. Even short of complete dam failure, the risks to local communities are great. The ground beneath the impoundment is riddled with abandoned underground mine shafts, leaving many local residents with little doubt that some of that toxic slurry will end up in their groundwater as the foundation-shaking blasts of ammonium-nitrate explosives begin cracking rock strata and exposing aquifers to the contaminated water.

Outside the Coal River Valley and across the nation there is also a lot at stake—especially for the millions of young people who turned out en masse during last November’s election, believing they could take their country back from the powerful special interests that pulled the strings of government over the preceding eight years. Just this weekend, thousands of students are attending regional “Powershift” conferences, learning what they can do to bring about their vision of a new future and a new energy policy build around efficient use of clean and renewable energy technologies.

Those same young people who came out by the thousands chanting “Yes We Can!” last fall are soon going to learn whether that slogan applies to them, or really just to powerful corporations with a lot of money and political influence. Today, it’s coal companies like Massey Energy that are claiming the “Yes We Can!” slogan:

“Yes we can destroy your mountains, drinking water, and dreams for a better future. Yes we can threaten and intimidate you at public hearings and drown out your voice.Yes We Can!”

Just last week, the same administration that donned the mantle of “Hope” and “Change” held public hearings on the rubber-stamp permitting of mountaintop removal in which the Army Corps of Engineers allowed mobs ginned up by the coal companies to threaten, intimidate and drown out the voices of people brave enough to speak out against the destruction of their homes, communities and mountains.

But it’s too soon for those young people to return to the feelings of disenfranchisement and cynicism that has characterized their age group for the past few decades. The Obama Administration has begun taking small steps to rein in mountaintop removal mining, and recently threatened to veto the largest mountaintop removal permit ever proposed in West Virginia. For even those baby-steps, they are facing a massive push-back from the coal industry. But it’s not nearly enough to make tweaks to the permitting process while letting mountaintop removal continue under the industry-friendly rules rigged by the Bush Administration. The administration needs to hear from us—to hear from you.

What you can do

It’s time we demand the “change” we were promised, and Coal River Mountain, the most powerful symbol of the difference between the destructive and climate change-denying policies of the past and the promise of a new future, is the line in the sand. Coal River Mountain must be saved.

The Administration has been hearing a lot from the coal industry, but have they heard from you? If not, you can start by calling the White House and making your voice heard. Here’s a link for more information: www.ilovemountains.org/coalriver/.

Next, sign up to for the e-mail list to stay informed and engaged in the campaign. It’s not a scam, your e-mail address won’t be traded or sold, so get over it and sign up—you can’t stay engaged and make a difference if you don’t stay informed. Here’s the link.

And finally, tell a friend, recruit a co-worker, or post the news to a list or a blog.

The mission is clear. The stakes couldn’t be higher. The fate of Coal River Mountain and our energy future are up to you. The time to act is now.

Originally posted at iLoveMountains.org.

UN report slams existing biofuel policies

The report, the first by the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) International Panel for Sustainable Resource Management, concludes that some first-generation biofuels, such as ethanol produced from sugar cane, can deliver net reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. It calculates that extracting ethanol from sugar cane, as currently practiced in countries such as Brazil, can lead to emission reductions of between 70 per cent, and more than 100 per cent when the fuel is substituted for petrol.

But it also echoes previous studies that warned some biofuels are leading to net increases in carbon emissions, calculating that the use of biodiesel from palm oil plantations grown on deforested peatlands, for example, results in greenhouse gas emissions that are up to 2,000 per cent greater than those generated from fossil fuels.

In addition, the report states categorically that biofuel adoption targets in developed countries, such as the UK’s Renewable Fuel Transport Obligation, are contributing to land use changes in developing countries – a position long held by environmental groups that have argued that biofuel demand is indirectly contributing to deforestation in countries such as Brazil and Indonesia.

The report estimates that globally between 118 and 508 million hectares of cropland would be needed to meet 10 per cent of worldwide transport fuel demand by 2030 if first-generation biofuels are used.

Achim Steiner, UN under-secretary general and executive director of the UN Environment Programme, argued there was a need for a more sophisticated debate on biofuel use, saying they are neither a panacea nor a pariah.

“On one level it is a debate about which energy crops to grow and where, and about the way different countries and biofuel companies promote and manage the production and conversion of plant materials for energy purposes,” he said. “On another level it is a choice about how humanity best manages its finite land bank and balances a range of competing interests in a world of six billion people, rising to more than nine billion by 2050.”

The report notes that generating electricity at local power stations using wood, straw, seed oils and other crop or waste materials “is generally more energy efficient that converting biomass to liquid fuels”. And it argues that while using abandoned land to produce energy crops is preferable to clearing virgin land for plantations, it is often more efficient still to use abandoned land for reforestation or solar power projects.

“Using abandoned or so-called waste land for biofuels might be a sensible option, but it may also have implications for biodiversity, and greenhouse gas emissions might be better cut by forestry schemes,” the report states.

Additionally, it warns that higher fuel efficiency standards and the development of alternative technologies, such as plug-in vehicles, could dramatically reduce emissions from the transport sector without the need for biofuels.

Despite its implicit criticism of the EU’s plans to increase use of biofuels, the report was welcomed by Timo Mäkelä of the European Commission, who said it would help in the design and implementation of new targets and sustainability criteria for the use of biofuels.

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

Oil prices hit high but report warns of supply crunch

Analysts have been surprised at the recent resilience of oil prices given the impact on energy demand of the global recession. In spite of this year’s volatility in the oil price, the underlying trend for a decade has been for it to rise steadily.

A report from the non-governmental organisation Global Witness – famous for its exposé of so-called “blood diamonds” – pointed to an impending supply shock that could be so severe that many of the world’s poor countries would simply be shut off from the world of energy by sky-high prices.

Two years in the preparation, Global Witness’s report, Heads in the Sand, accused governments of ignoring the fact that the world could soon start to run short of oil. This would lead to huge consequences in terms of price shocks and much higher levels of violence around the world than last year’s food riots.

“There is a train crash about to happen from an energy point of view. But politicians everywhere seem to have entirely missed the scale of the problem,” said the report’s author, Simon Taylor.

“We are all addicted to oil but if you look at the mathematics of the problem, they simply don’t add up in terms of future supply and demand.”

The report went through the latest figures from the oil industry and the Paris-based International Energy Agency, which last year drastically reduced its estimate of the available oil.

The IEA figures showed there could be a gap of 7m barrels a day between supply and demand by 2015. That represents about 8% of the expected world demand by then of 91m barrels a day.

The IEA expects production from existing oilfields to fall by 50% between now and 2020 and warned the world needs to find an additional 64m barrels a day of capacity by 2030 – equivalent to six times current Saudi Arabian production.

But Global Witness took issue with the IEA’s recommendation that the oil industry spend $450bn a year chasing these supplies, many of which may well not be there. Because of the demands of climate change, the report argued, the money would be better invested in moving rapidly to a post-oil world of renewable energy and conservation.

Taylor said even the new IEA projections of how much new oil the world would discover were likely to be over-optimistic. He said the so-called “big” oil discoveries of the last few years added up to nothing like the “discovery rate” needed to replace the world’s dwindling supplies from existing fields. They have totalled around 16bn barrels, or only around 1.7m barrels a day, once up and running.

The report said that between 2005 and 2008, global oil production ceased to grow in spite of widespread investment and rising prices, which should normally have brought forth a big rise in supply. It notes that the biggest year for new discoveries was 1965, since when they have been falling. Global oil production overtook new discoveries in 1984 and has outpaced them ever since.

It also dismissed as myth a widely held expectation that tar sands in Canada could fill the supply gap. Tar sands are unlikely ever to yield more than 3-4m barrels a day, equivalent to the pace at which existing fields are declining every year.

Taylor said the four key issues about oil – declining output, declining discoveries, increasing demand and insufficient projects in the pipeline – have been apparent for many years.

“But governments and multilateral agencies have failed to recognise the imminence and scale of the global oil supply crunch, and most of them remain completely unprepared for its consequences,” he said.

“There has been a decade of dithering and it is now too late to avoid the consequences unless the authorities move like there is no tomorrow.”

Dr Jeremy Leggett, author of books on peak oil and convenor of the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security, said: “A steep premature descent in global oil production would be worse than the credit crunch in terms of economic impact. Unlike the credit crunch, however, the peak oil risk assessment involves big companies sounding the alarm alongside organisations like Global Witness.”

Sun goes down on solar schools

Those 700 would be funded if eligible, and additional money made available if required.

But no more applications will now be considered until next financial year.

Announcing the program in July 2008, Mr Garrett said “the Rudd Labor government wants every Australian school — primary, secondary, public and private — to have the opportunity to become a ‘solar school’ and the commencement of this half-a-billion dollar program delivers on our election commitment.”

“… Industry too will benefit from the program from the $480 million federal funding injection, creating increased demand for large solar power systems for school roofs,” Mr Garrett said at the time.

The suspension is the latest in a series of changes and cuts to government solar programs, including the introduction of a means test on the household solar panel rebate and the ending of the remote solar program.

Opposition environment spokesman Greg Hunt said it was “amazing that this government can waste $16billion on unwanted school halls but suspend a key solar program that every school appears to want”.

The program has already hit implementation hurdles with NSW’s centralised tendering process meaning no school had installed panels more than a year after the program started, and many schools running into problems hooking their panels into the power grid.

Mr Garrett’s spokesman said the Department of the Environment would contact every school registered under the program as well as those with applications on hand to advise of the suspension until next year.

Under the program schools were eligible for up to $50,000 to install solar power systems, or energy efficiency spending on items such as lighting, fans or awnings. Rainwater tanks, small wind turbines, small hydro power generators and skylights were also eligible.