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. 

  • Shell plays green card face down

    George Monbiot’s comments on his interview with Shell boss Jeroen van der Veer

    For a while it seemed that Shell had stopped pretending. The advertisements that filled the newspapers in 2006, featuring technicians with perfect teeth and open-necked shirts explaining how they were saving the world, vanished. After being slated by environmentalists for greenwash, after two adverse rulings by the Advertising Standards Authority, Shell appeared to have accepted the inescapable truth that it was an oil company with a minor sideline in alternative energy, and that there was no point in trying to persuade people otherwise.

    The interview I conducted with its chief executive, Jeroen van der Veer, broadcast on the Guardian’s website today, contains what appears to be an interesting admission. I asked him whether Shell had stopped producing ads extolling its investments in renewable energy. Van der Veer does not express himself clearly at this point, but he seems to admit that his company’s previous advertising was not honest.

    “If we are very big in oil and gas and we are so far relatively small in alternative energies, if you then every day only make adverts about your alternative energies and not about 90% of your other activities I don’t think that – then I say transparency, honesty to the market, that’s nonsense.” So, I asked, Shell did not intend to return to that kind of advertising? “Probably not,” he told me. “I’m very much: keep your feet on the ground, tell them who you are and explain why you are who you are.”

    But since the interview was filmed, Shell’s messianic tendencies appear to have resurfaced. In December the company ran a series of ads in the Guardian suggesting again that it had come to save the world. “Tackling climate change and providing fuel for a growing population seems like an impossible problem, but at Shell we try to think creatively,” one boasted. It features a diagram of a human brain, divided into sections labelled “fuel from algae”, “fuel from straw”, “fuel from woodchips”, “hydrogen fuels”, “windfarm”, “gas to liquids” and “coal gasification”. This suggests progress of a kind, in that the company is acknowledging that it sometimes dabbles in fossil fuels, but its core business – oil – and its massive investments in tar sands extraction are missing from the corporate mind. Could Shell be having a senior moment?

    The confusion deepens when you watch its latest publicity film. It’s called Clearing the Air, and it does just the opposite. It is supposed to tell an inspirational tale of discovery, but the script and the acting are so gobsmackingly bad that it inspires you only to rip your clothes off and run screaming down the street. The lasting impression it leaves is that Shell’s staff are chaotic and incompetent. Perhaps the clean-cut corporate clones featured in the ads of 2006 put people off.

    Jeroen van der Veer is neither an incompetent nor an automaton. He is charming, friendly and smart. But he refused to answer some of the questions I had prepared.

    Reading Shell’s reports and publicity material, I kept stumbling on an absence. In 2000, the company boasted that it would be investing $1bn in renewable energy between 2001 and 2005. But since then it appears to have produced no figures for its renewables budget. The company now claims that it is “investing significantly in wind energy”, but it doesn’t say what “significantly” means. Of the 10 windfarms listed on its website, only one appears to be in the planning or development stage: the others are already in operation. Where is the evidence of new money? When Shell pulled out of Britain’s biggest windfarm, the London Array, last year, did this represent the end of its major investments?

    I asked Van der Veer a simple question – 15 times. (Only a few of these attempts feature in the edited film.) “What is the value of your annual investments in renewable energy?” He waffled, changed the subject, admitted that he knew the figure, then flatly refused to reveal it. Nor could he give me a convincing explanation of why he wouldn’t tell me, claiming only that “those figures are misused and people say it is too small”, and it “is not the right message to give to the people”. It strikes me that there is only one likely reason for these evasions: that Shell’s spending on renewables has fallen sharply from the figure it announced in 2000. It’s a fair guess that the current investment would look microscopic by comparison to its spending on the Canadian tar sands, and would make a mockery of its new round of advertising. I challenge Shell – for the 16th time – to prove me wrong.

    Nor would Van der Veer give me a straight answer to another straight question: “Is there any investment you would not make on ethical grounds?” I asked this six times. He was unable to furnish me with an example. It’s not hard to see why. As well as exploiting the tar sands, which means destroying forest and wetlands, polluting great quantities of water and producing more CO2 than conventional petroleum production, Shell is still flaring gas in Nigeria, at great cost to both local people and the global climate. It has been fiercely criticised for its secret negotiations with the Iraqi government, which led last year to the first major access for a western company to Iraq’s gas reserves. It is prospecting for oil in some of the Arctic’s most sensitive habitats.

    All this makes my question difficult to answer. Aside from the greenwash, it is not easy to spot the practical difference between this civilised, progressive company and the Neanderthals at Exxon.

    Like all oil companies, Shell simply follows the opportunities. Shut out of the richest fields by state companies, struggling to extract the dregs from its declining reserves, it has been turning to ever more difficult oil extraction, some of which lies beneath rare and fragile ecosystems. When the price of oil was high, it announced massive investments in the tar sands. Now the price has dropped again, it has cancelled further spending. It has even less of an incentive to invest in renewables. Shell does what the market demands.

    I don’t blame Shell or Van der Veer for this: they are discharging their duty to their shareholders. I do blame them for creating the impression that the company has a different agenda, and I blame governments for allowing them to drift into whatever fields they find profitable, regardless of the consequences for people or the environment.

    On this issue Jeroen van der Veer and I agree. Oil companies, he says, should not seek to determine a country’s energy mix: that is for the government to decide.

    Saving the biosphere, in other words, cannot be left to goodwill and greenwash: the humanity of pleasant men like Van der Veer will always be swept aside by the imperative to maximise returns. Good people in these circumstances do terrible things. Companies like Shell will pour big money into alternative energy only when more lucrative or immediate opportunities are blocked. Where is the government that is brave enough to block them?

    monbiot.com

  • Clean future starts now

    The agency’s conversion is only the latest and most dramatic example of a new global attitude. The changes leave the Federal Government suddenly looking out of touch, its recent climate change announcements more like a white flag than a white paper.

    The Government’s weak emissions trading scheme design is not just a surrender to the big polluters, but appears to give up on saving precious national icons such as the Great Barrier Reef, Kakadu and the Murray-Darling river system. It is also bad news for the economy, as Professor Ross Garnaut wrote in these pages recently.

    It is dishonest to claim that our per capita pollution reductions are comparable with those of Europe. Increasing population is not being forced on us by Martians, it results from 20th century policies to boost immigration and encourage larger families. The Earth’s natural systems don’t understand how many Australians there are, only our total impact. As global citizens, we should curb the growth in our numbers and set serious targets to cut pollution.

    The UN’s 2007 Bali conference noted that countries such as Australia need to reduce greenhouse pollution by 25 to 40 per cent to give the Earth a fighting chance of avoiding dangerous climate change.

    The latest science is more alarming. Until recently, methane levels in the air had been stable for a decade, but there has been a surge. Unpublished research shows the methane is coming from the Arctic. This is the sign climate scientists have been warning about, a possible tipping point.

    Temperatures have increased more at the poles than in the tropics. Warming is releasing methane from tundra, increasing warming and causing further methane releases, possibly setting in train an unstoppable surge in temperature. We need an urgent and concerted approach to cut greenhouse pollution.

    Global changes have been striking. The World Economic Forum’s Dubai summit on the global agenda concluded that responses to the financial crisis need to be integrated with policies that take into account climate change, energy security, food and water.

    Global think tank the Club of Rome has been warning for 35 years about the inevitable consequences of uncontrolled growth. It convened a conference last month that concluded the climate and financial problems interlock and demand an integrated approach. The IEA recognised the science when it called for an energy revolution.

    Now US President-elect Barack Obama has named as his energy secretary a scientist who has called for a super-grid to harness solar and wind energy. This move to “green infrastructure” is at the heart of Obama’s plan to repair the US economy.

    Diplomats are working on talks between Obama and Chinese leaders before the UN’s 2009 Copenhagen conference, which must produce a framework to slow climate change. China has shown it is serious by closing 2300 small coalmines, improving energy efficiency by 7 per cent and planning to expand solar and wind energy massively.

    What should we be doing? We should join the energy revolution, rather than try to prop up old technologies. Kevin Rudd has set an inadequate target to cut emissions just 5 per cent by 2020, offered billions in subsidies to overseas-owned big polluters and done little to encourage growth of local clean-energy technologies to power our future.

    The plan has to go to the Senate, where it faces a rocky road. I expect the Greens to oppose it because it doesn’t do enough. The Coalition is hopelessly divided between climate change deniers, Howard-era dinosaurs who don’t get it, and a minority who understand the scale of the problem. They may also oppose the scheme. That would force the Government back to the drawing board.

    If enough of us make clear to our MPs we want serious action, the Prime Minister could develop a stronger scheme. Next year will be critical. I am not exaggerating in saying the survival of civilisation is at stake.

    As a scientifically and technologically literate country, we must recognise that a green economy is vital. That makes economic sense as well as being environmentally responsible. We have to go green if we want to get out of the red.

  • US solar companies farm mall roofs

    From SunEdison press release

    SunEdison, North America’s largest solar energy services provider, today announced the largest solar distributed generation program with Developers Diversified Realty, a Cleveland-based real estate investment trust (REIT) actively engaged in the development and management of shopping centers. SunEdison has the rights to deploy solar energy systems at more than 200 shopping centers, covering up to an estimated 30 million square feet, located in 24 states and in Puerto Rico. Potential capacity of the program is up to 259 MW.

    Once a system is operational, Developers Diversified will be able to purchase energy for common area uses. In addition, shopping center tenants can benefit and realize energy savings by opting to purchase the power generated through the program at rates lower than retail energy rates.

    “Developers Diversified is a forward-thinking real estate company—bringing clean solar energy to its properties for the benefit of its tenants and the environment through the largest distributed generation program of its kind. It’s a way for Developers Diversified and its tenants to reduce operating costs. Furthermore, a typical-sized solar energy system in the program will avoid an estimated 10 million pounds of carbon dioxide pollution,” said Brian Jacolick, General Manager, Americas for SunEdison.

  • Government support for renewables essential

    by Tam Hunt, Community Environmental Council

    What is the best size for a renewable energy project? The answer is, of course: it depends. It depends on location, renewable energy resources (sun, wind, etc.), and costs. The bottom line is, however, that we truly do need all the renewable resources we can get. We have major crises either upon us or heading our direction that require a rapid buildout of renewable resources. At the same time, we need to vigorously pursue all available energy efficiency improvements.

    Regarding the goldilocks problem of renewable energy, it’s important to be aware of the costs and feasibility of the various market segments. I divide the renewable energy market into three segments: small-scale (one megawatt (MW) and less); medium-scale (one to twenty MW); and large-scale (above 20 MW).

    The advantage of small-scale renewables like rooftop solar photovoltaics is that they can be built relatively quickly due to fewer permitting hurdles. They also take advantage of rooftops or parking lots, so don’t require disturbing large amounts of land. Even though there are still permitting problems in many jurisdictions, conditions have improved remarkably in recent years. At the same time, the general public has become more tolerant of seeing solar panels on rooftops. And installers have become more adept at installing small installations tastefully.

    The primary downside to small-scale renewables is that they are often still relatively expensive. It also requires a lot of small-scale renewables to add up to a large-scale impact in terms of climate change mitigation or energy independence. California enacted the California Solar Initiative in 2007, with a goal of 3,000 MW by 2017. This sounds like a lot, but it will comprise about half of one percent of California’s power needs in 2017. We need much more. The CSI is also relatively expensive. The program provides about US $3 billion over ten years in rebates. Even with rebates and federal tax credits (amounting to billions more dollars), rooftop solar is still, in many situations, significantly more expensive than other types of solar.

    For example, medium-scale solar facilities (one to twenty megawatts) cost about half what residential solar facilities cost, on a unit basis (cents per kilowatt hour). When we’re talking about thousands of megawatts, this adds up to a big difference to ratepayers and taxpayers. Medium-scale solar facilities have a major advantage in that they generally don’t require any serious transmission infrastructure to be added.

    A recent report from the California Energy Commission’s Renewable Energy Transmission Initiative found the potential for about 28 gigawatts of medium-scale solar (20 megawatts each) in California alone. This is enough for about one-fifth of our total power demand.

    The main downside to medium-scale solar is that it is still relatively expensive when compared to fossil fuel power. This is why we haven’t seen a huge buildout in this segment already. As I wrote about in my last column, we need costs to come down a little and/or to provide just a few cents more policy support for medium-scale solar power and we will probably see this market take off. I’m optimistic that we’ll see this happen, but it will probably still be a couple of years before new regulations are in place to achieve this change.

    The large-scale renewable energy segment is the least cost segment. This should not be surprising because economies of scale, by definition, lead to lower costs. Large-scale projects cost one-fifth to one-third less than medium-scale projects, depending on a number of factors.

    Large-scale projects can be truly large: Clipper Windpower recently announced a new deal with BP for a 5,000 megawatt wind farm in North Dakota, to be named, appropriately, “Titan.” In California, Edison and Alta announced an agreement in 2007 for a 1,500 megawatt wind farm in the Tehachapi region. And numerous solar projects have been announced around southern California, some approaching 1,000 megawatts in scale. Clearly, with a dozen or two of these types of projects in California, we can make a serious dent in greenhouse gas emissions and in improving energy security!

    Figure 1, below, shows the approximate costs of each type of solar power, as a representative renewable energy technology. Many factors determine the actual costs at any given location, but these figures show the relative costs, which is my key point. Keep in mind that these cost figures do not include taxes and rebates because my figures represent the total societal costs — not just the costs paid by a homeowner, utility or other entity.

     

     

     

    Figure 1: Approximate total societal costs for solar market segments. (Sources: California Energy Commission; Black & Veatch; E3).

    The downside, of course, to these large-scale projects is that they can have large-scale impacts. One proposed solar project will cover nine square miles. And large wind farms have viewshed impacts that affect many residents and may have impacts on wildlife (though the actual impact is far less than detractors often claim). All of these impacts must be weighed against the alternatives — coal, nuclear, natural gas, big hydro — and it is quite clear to me, at least, that the impacts from even these very large projects are far less than the alternatives. But I can’t speak for everyone and unfortunately these large projects arouse the ire of many in the communities where they are proposed.

    So what should policymakers do? Which size is “just right”? Again, we need all the renewable energy we can get – and quickly. So while the answer does depend on many facts specific to each case, the complete answer is that no size is just right — we need them all. But we should also keep in mind that there are tradeoffs for each market segment.

    No renewable energy project should, however, be given carte blanche. All projects should be as environmentally sound as possible. But when comparing different types of renewables it’s very important to keep in mind the relative economics and the relative impacts of each type.

    In this Goldilocks story, then, Goldilocks tries each bowl of porridge and declares: “They all present unique flavors and textures, and I like each in their own special way. But I’m still hungry! Can I please have some more of all three?”

    Tam Hunt is Energy Program Director and Attorney for the Community Environmental Council in Santa Barbara. See www.cecsb.org for our regional energy blueprint. He is also a Lecturer in renewable energy law and policy at the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management at UC Santa Barbara.

  • Kiwis test jet fuel bean

    Air New Zealand tested a jet fuel made from the jatropha plant on Tuesday as the airline searches for an affordable and environmentally friendly alternative to crude oil.

    For two hours, pilots tested the oil, in a 50-50 blend with conventional jet fuel in one of the four Rolls-Royce engines powering a Boeing 747-400 aircraft — the first test flight by a commercial airline using jatropha oil. Rob Fyfe, Air New Zealand’s chief executive, called the flight a milestone in commercial aviation. “Today we stand at the earliest stages of sustainable fuel development and an important moment in aviation history,” he said. The project has been 18 months in the works.

    Unlike other biofuel crops like soybeans and corn, jatropha needs little water or fertilizer and can be grown almost anywhere — even in sandy, saline or otherwise infertile soil. Each seed produces 30 to 40 percent of its mass in oil, giving it a high per-acre yield, specialists said.

    The results of the flight — and two others planned by rival airlines in the United States and Japan in January — will be closely watched by an industry that is trying to shift toward renewable, low-emissions fuels.

    A sharp rise in crude oil prices — to more than $145 a barrel in July — offer a strong incentive for the industry to reduce its exposure to volatile oil prices. But pressure to reduce carbon emissions has also driven the search for alternatives.

    The International Air Transport Association, which represents 230 airlines, wants its members to use 10 percent alternative fuels by 2017. The association has the goal that airlines will be able to fly carbon-free in 50 years, with the help of technologies like fuel cells and solar energy.

    Such goals have ensured that research and development into greener flying have continued, despite the plunge in oil prices below $40 a barrel.

    Having conducted a series of tests Tuesday, Air New Zealand and its partners, the aircraft manufacturer Boeing, the engine maker Rolls-Royce and the technology developer UOP, a part of Honeywell, will review the results “as part of our drive to have jatropha certified as an aviation fuel,” the flight’s chief pilot, Capt. David Morgan, said.

    The hope is that the test results will lay the groundwork for jatropha to be commercially available in three to five years, executives from the companies said.

    In February, Virgin Atlantic became the first airline to test a biofuel blend in a commercial aircraft, using a 20 percent mixture of coconut oil and babassu nut oil in one of its four engines.

    Two more airlines are to test their alternatives next month. Continental Airlines will conduct a test flight on Jan. 7 using a blend that includes algae and jatropha, the first biofuel test flight of a commercial airliner owned by an American company.

    And Japan Airlines is planning a test flight Jan. 30 using a fuel based on the camelina oilseed.

    But the potential use of jatropha has not been free of criticism, with some observers fearing that farmers could be tempted to grow jatropha rather than edible crops in the hope of getting better prices.

    Algae may be free of this potential problem, but research into algae is not as far advanced, said an Air New Zealand spokesman.

    Air New Zealand said the jatropha used on Tuesday’s flight had been grown in Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania.

  • Obama invests in green power

    Is it a bail-out or a build-up? That’s the question being put to federal lawmakers right now as they try to grapple with the nation’s economic woes and with how to allocate its depleting resources.

    President-elect Barack Obama says that while his administration will insist on financial prudence, it must address the current recession head-on. In January, he is expected to introduce an economic stimulus package that is reported to be in the $500 billion range. An estimated $15 billion would be targeted toward green energy initiatives to create or preserve millions of jobs.

    To skeptics, it sounds like a giant make-work program — one that would spend billions on rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure and create a massive budget shortfall in the process. But to the president-elect and most Democrats, it is a necessary step to not just avoid falling off the precipice but to also generate the next-generation of jobs and those predicated on the green economy.

    “My presidency will mark a new chapter in America’s leadership on climate change that will strengthen our security and create millions of new jobs in the process,” Obama said in a video. “We will invest in solar power, wind power, and next generation bio-fuels. We will tap nuclear power, while making sure it’s safe. And we will develop clean coal technologies.”

    News stories are replete with inside scoops on where else the billions would be channeled. Pouring money into the smart grid is one place while weatherization programs that seek to make homes more energy efficient is another. Meanwhile, mass transit groups say that they have at least $8 billion in projects ready to go.

    Obama said on numerous campaign stops that addressing global warming would become a national priority under his administration. To reduce the associated heat trapping emissions, a cap-and-trade program would be implemented. Under such a regime, the government would set emissions limits and then auction “credits” to those companies unable to meet the thresholds. That money — pegged at $150 billion — would then go to the creation of green energy technologies.

    But many of his comments were made prior to economy’s precipitous fall in October. At that point, American industry became more concerned with weathering the storm than investing in expensive technologies. The incoming administration has subsequently acknowledged that its attention must focus initially on getting the economy healthy and secondarily on reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 — the amount that some climate scientists said is necessary to avoid catastrophic consequences. Hence, the nation’s budget deficit will expand in the short run.

    “The primary focus of the new administration will be on improving the conditions of the domestic economy, which makes energy policy a secondary concern,” says Andrew Watt, managing director of Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services. “Moreover, funding of the plan will be problematic in this deteriorating economy that has also seen a rapid decline in crude oil and natural gas prices.”

    New Possibilities

    Needless-to-say, the rejuvenation of the economy and the creation of clean technology jobs dovetail with one another. And with billions about to be doled out for those purposes, energy-related interest groups are converging on Washington.

    The Western Governor’s Association, which is a non-partisan group representing 19 states, just penned a letter to President-elect Obama that says energy efficiency and the development of alternative fuel sources must become a main concern. That’s because the U.S. Energy Information Administration projects that by 2030 the domestic demand for electricity will rise by at least 20 percent while the demand for petroleum and other liquid fuels will increase by 10 percent.

    The ultimate goal is a low-carbon society. As such, the effort will require bi-partisan and public-private partnerships to build more wind, solar, geothermal, biomass and hydro facilities, the governors say. At the same time, they caution the new administration not to neglect traditional fuel sources that are prevalent today.

    “There is no getting around it — if we want to ‘keep the lights on’ in America, we are going to need to build new base-load power plants, erect new high-voltage transmission lines, and increase our production of all forms of American energy,” adds Colorado State Senator Bill Cadman, a Republican. “Modernizing our energy infrastructure is critical to our security, and that means taking immediate action. The new Congress and President-elect Obama have a great opportunity to get it right this year.”

    Obama understands that crafting energy policy is an urgent but delicate matter. The sheer complexity means that he must prioritize his time and efforts. And he’s made it clear that the promotion of green energy and next generation jobs will garner his attention.

    While government may provide stimulus packages and safety nets during these hard times, it will be the private sector that finishes the job. For their part, many utilities are waiting until conditions improve. Others, though, are searching for new possibilities that involve investing in new forms of generation to meet tomorrow’s needs.

    “We believe there remains significant investment opportunities for the industry to implement public energy policy as renewable energy resources are built and smart grid technology is evaluated and deployed,” says David Parker, a utility analyst with Baird & Co. “There remains opportunity to develop a more efficient generating fleet as older generating resources are retired and replaced with more advanced technologies.”

    The federal government is leveraging its goodwill. But its current and future involvement are meant to resurrect the ailing economy and to create the foundation for a green energy uprising. It’s an issue that gets to the heart of Obama’s platform and one that will not just determine his political success but also the nation’s economic and energy futures.