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. 

  • UK makes real plan for solar

    Like the other European Union nations, the UK has agreed to the binding target of 20% of total energy from renewable sources. As such, this recent report outlines a roadmap and the considerations that are necessary to implement that target. What makes this a seminal document is that it explicitly articulates how important renewable heat — in addition to the standard focus on electricity — will be to meet the stated energy targets. But the report goes further than just recognizing the essentialness of the renewable heat contribution; it analyses in depth the current sources of energy used in the UK and lays out a comprehensive strategy for spearheading the deployment of renewable heat on a widespread scale.

    Basically, the UK needs to go from a 1.5% share of renewable energy in their overall energy mix to 15% by 2020. Given that this represents a ten-fold increase, the question they have correctly identified is how is this realistically feasible? The report makes the point that in order to close the gap in terms of total energy coming from renewable sources, it might be easier to increase the share of renewable heat to a certain level, than to increase the level of renewable electricity, given the issues of grid capacity. Since renewable heat tends to be generated onsite, as opposed to distributed generation, the constraints affecting take-up are “modest.”

    The Situation Thus Far

    Globally, heating accounts for an estimated 50% of the total energy used in the building sector, and therefore it is one of the largest sources of CO2 emissions. Meaningful carbon reductions cannot be met without targeting this use of energy. Furthermore, the unit costs to generate renewable heat tends to be substantially less then the unit cost to generate renewable electricity, which means that to displace a certain amount of total energy, it will cost less money to displace the heating component. So given considerations of efficiency, governments should be extremely aggressive in providing the necessary mechanisms to allow for the most cost-effective uptake in renewable heat technology.

    In the UK, heat accounts for 49% of the final energy demand and 47% of carbon emissions. Up this point, this huge proportion of energy that is necessary for indoor space, ventilation, and water heating has not been adequately examined in terms of how it could be generated using renewable sources. With the new UK Renewable Energy Strategy, “decarbonising” the heating component is stated as being necessary to achieve the 15% renewable energy target. It is also recognized that this will require “develop[ing] a completely new approach to renewable heat [and] providing substantial incentives to jump-start this new market.”

    Now, as a caveat, I would disagree that the renewable heat technologies are “new” because there are many excellent solar thermal technologies that are being deployed around the world, but I think the point that is trying to be made is that as a market, “renewable heat” is just starting to come to the forefront. One other inaccuracy that I feel obliged to point out is that the report defines “solar thermal” as being only solar water heating, while omitting solar air heating. This is a serious flaw because solar air heating targets the largest usage of energy in the commercial and industrial sector (indoor space & ventilation heating). As well, independent monitoring analysis conducted in the UK by BSRIA has shown that solar air heating by itself is capable of fulfilling the 10% renewable energy target for set forth by the Merton Rule.

    Translating political objectives into action is at the crux of any good policy strategy. Accordingly, the UK Renewable Energy Strategy details the possible policy measures that could be used to jump-start the use of renewable heating. These government support mechanisms will be essential because without them, the current policies will only take the UK to a 5% level by 2020. This is why the status quo clearly cannot stand, and the report identifies the following options:

    • Direct financial support in the form of a grant to clients who install solar or other renewable heating systems.

    • Renewable Heat Incentive Scheme: This would likely take the form of a feed-in-tariff at a fixed £/MWh of thermal heat produced (like the feed-in-tariff used to drive the PV industry).

    • Renewable Heat Obligation: This would require that a certain percentage of heat energy in the UK be generated using solar, biomass or other renewable choices. Users would have to present Renewable Heat Certificates.

    • Cap and Trade System: This is a more general climate change strategy designed to make the cost of all carbon-based fuels higher, and therefore help facilitate the transition to a broad range of renewable energy technologies.

    In theory, all these policies will stimulate the use of renewable heat. However, when examining the practicality and costs of each scheme, the report makes a firm recommendation in favor of a Renewable Heat Incentive.

    On the matter of increasing the share of electric heat, the report argues against this on the basis that the electricity grid in the UK would have to be expanded by 130% in order to meet the peak winter heating demand. This would be contrary to the UK’s energy objectives of decreasing total energy to meet the 2020 targets.

    This emphasis on renewable heat is of the utmost extremely relevant for the United States and Canada — and perhaps even more so — because the overall heating load in these countries tends to be higher than it is in UK. It is essential from a variety of perspectives that municipalities and state energy offices recognize the necessity of crafting and aggressively promoting renewable heat strategies.

    This will allow the renewable heat industry to finally make a meaningful contribution to climate change that is proportionate to the benefits they offer in terms of CO2 displacement, energy production, and cost-effectiveness.

    Victoria Hollick is the VP of Operations at Conserval Engineering, which has been instrumental in promoting solar air heating around the world for the commercial & industrial sector with the SolarWall transpired collector.  Victoria has had a life-long interest in solar, and became further interested in effecting environmental and renewable energy policy while completing a graduate degree in economics.  She is also the Vice President of the Canadian Solar Industries Association.

  • San Diego gets solar powered ice rink

    In keeping with its commitment to transform UTC (University Town Center) into one of the greenest shopping centers in the country, Westfield today powered up the first major solar photovoltaic array on a regional shopping center in San Diego County.
     
    “The new UTC will be a model for green development in the shopping center industry, and powering up today’s solar project is the latest example of Westfield’s commitment to leading sustainability efforts here in San Diego,” said Jonathan Bradhurst, Senior Vice President Development, San Diego.  “Our customers enjoying a meal at the food court or coming out to skate will be using clean, green, renewable energy generated right above their heads.”
     
    The solar rooftop project is part of the enhanced green program for the New UTC, the $900 million planned revitalization approved by the City Council in July, 2008.
     
    The 100-kilowatt solar array, developed in partnership with Resource Energy Systems was installed by SPG Solar with modules produced by Sharp.  The array will provide approximately 50 percent of the power requirements for the common areas of the mall’s ice rink and food court.  Generating this power through renewable photovoltaics (PV) will reduce carbon emissions by approximately 250,000 pounds per year, which is like planting more than 30 acres of trees.  
     
    The New UTC is one of the first projects in the country to achieve Gold-level approval from the U.S. Green Building Council under its pilot LEED-ND (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design – Neighborhood Development) program.  Also planned for Westfield UTC are solar PV arrays on top of new parking structures and potentially more on the retail rooftops. In conjunction with many other energy-efficiency measures, innovative water conservation strategies, alternative transportation choices, waste reduction and use of sustainable construction techniques, the New UTC project will set a high standard for green development in San Diego and in the shopping center industry nationwide.
     
    “We are very pleased to have played an integral role in providing renewable energy to UTC” said Scott Reinstein, Chief Operating Officer of Resource Energy Systems. “The Westfield Group has long maintained a strong commitment to the environment. We look forward to working with them in providing solar energy systems at their other shopping centers across the nation.”

    “Sharp is very pleased to be helping Westfield realize its goal of reducing its carbon footprint – and achieve sustainability,” said Ron Kenedi, vice president of Sharp Solar Energy Solutions Group.

    “SPG Solar values the opportunity to work with Westfield and Resource Energy Systems, and contribute to the success of Westfield’s New UTC LEED-ND program, “ said Edward C. Orrett, PE Senior Account Executive, SPG Solar.

  • Energy Agency warns that oil has peaked

    From Jeremy Legget in The Guardian

    Another year passes, another climate change summit arrives, the 14th in the annual series. The community of nations have been talking for more than 18 years now about how to stop humanity’s remorseless effort to cook its own home. These gabfests have largely been action-free zones. I have attended too many of them, but this year it was time to risk my blood-pressure on another.

    I took the train to Poland, a prospect that sounds like a recipe for slow-travel hell, but in fact was both easy and productive. You take the afternoon Eurostar to Brussels, the evening express to Cologne, the night train to Poland, disembark after eight hours sleep just in time for breakfast, with a massive reading backlog dismantled along the way. Much less carbon emitted than would have been the case flying, and Ryanair’s boss – Michael O’Leary – deprived of his thin margin. All in all, a good day’s work.

    At the talks, little had changed since my visit to the Montreal summit of 2005. Thousands of delegates throng in cavernous halls, trying to find out what is going on behind the closed doors of the intergovernmental side meetings where most of the serious stalling is done. The “Fossil of the Day” award – a statue given each day by environmental groups to the worst foot-dragger among the 100-plus national governments and dozens of industry lobby groups – is still being dished out. The star renegades in the first week of this summit were Poland and Japan. Candidates are never in short supply. During my stay they included Chancellor Merkel, who is angling for massive exclusions for German heavy industry in carbon permitting, and Kuwait and Qatar, who are claiming they should qualify for the putative fund compensating victims of climate change because sea-level rise may damage their offshore oil rigs.

    One of my missions was an effort to raise the peak oil issue. I suspect that most of the 9,000-plus attendees – diplomats, lobbyists and journalists – may have little idea how strong the evidence is that a global energy crisis lurks just a few years in the future, and that it will have massive implications for climate change policymaking.

    Some of that evidence was aired by the International Energy Agency at an open meeting on its recently-completed World Energy Outlook 2008. Between the lines of the IEA’s latest weighty annual lies an early warning of a premature peak in global oil production. I say “between the lines”, because the IEA is a somewhat inconsistent organisation. Set up by developed governments essentially to promote fossil fuels, it has to wrestle with considerable internal tensions when warning both of fossil fuel depletion and the environmental impacts of fossil fuel burning. These tensions are often discernible in the wording of the agency’s committee-written reports, and in public presentations by its officials.

    This year, for the first time, the IEA has conducted an oilfield-by-oilfield study of the world’s existing oil reserves. It shows that the fields currently in production are running out alarmingly fast. The average depletion rate of 580 of the world’s largest fields, all past their peak of production, is fully 6.7% per annum.

    IEA executive director Nobuo Tanaka showed a slide illustrating the situation. It is, he said, his most important diagram. It shows crude oil production from all the world’s existing fields climbing unevenly from just below 60 million barrels a day (mbd) in 1990 to a peak – more exactly a brief plateau – of just over 70 mbd between 2005 and 2008. In 2009, however, crude production begins a steep descent, falling steadily all the way below 30 million barrels a day by 2030. The depletion factor charted by his team, as I see it, could better be called a fast-emptying factor.

    This is indeed alarming, Tanaka said. The more so because, even with demand for oil being destroyed fast by recession in the west, the rate of demand growth – led by China, and India – is such that the world will need to be producing at least 103 million barrels a day by 2030.

    Can that be done? Yes, he said, but only if massive investment is thrown at the challenge, especially by the Opec nations. Global production today totals 82.3 mbd if we subtract biofuels and add to existing crude production the 1.6 mbd of “unconventional” oil squeezed from the tar sands and 10.5 mbd of oil produced during gas-field operations. To reach production of 103 mbd, therefore, would require oil-from-gas to expand almost to 20 mbd, unconventional production to expand almost 9 mbd, and on top of that more than 45 million barrels a day of crude oil capacity yet to be developed and yet to be found. All this adds up to 64 mbd of totally new production capacity needed onstream within 22 years. That, said Tanaka, pausing for effect, is fully six times the production of Saudi Arabia today.

    I imagined I could detect a desire in Tanaka to say more about his thoughts on the likelihood of this. But of course, in his position, he can’t.

    Here is the bottom line. At oil prices below around $70 a barrel, producing oil becomes uneconomic in many settings today. With the oil price where it currently languishes, at less than $50 a barrel – in a market where pricing has become completely disconnected from “fundamentals” by the volume of paper trading – oil development and exploration projects are being cancelled around the world on a daily basis. How on earth is the industry going to bring on six new Saudi Arabia’s from this kind of dead-in-the water start?

    That is before you even consider the shrinking rate of large-field discovery, the state of the industry’s rusting infrastructure, its ageing workforce, its long history of under-investment, the consistent delays in bringing oilfields onstream once discovered, and other problems.

    Tanaka closed by saying that the world needs a “clean energy new deal”, as the IEA is calling it. Insurance must be taken out, via clean energy, in case the oil industry fails to meet projected demand. The perils of climate change require such a course of action anyway. So too does the rebuilding of economies made necessary by the financial crisis. It all makes sense in a win-win-win sort of way.

    The IEA, in Poznan, thereby added its name to the growing list of institutions calling for what is now widely referred to as a green new deal. I asked Tanaka whether he knew of the recent study by a group of eight UK companies, the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security.These companies, including my own, have conducted a business-risk assessment of the likelihood of the “six Saudi Arabias”.

    Our conclusion is that it is unlikely that the oil industry will close the widening gap between depletion and demand within a few years. Peak oil, we fear, is going to hit the oil-dependent world hard. Many oil-importing countries risk experiencing peak oil not as an energy crisis, but an energy famine, as producers cut off their exports for use at home. Peak oil might, if we are smart and lucky, galvanise a proactive mass mobilisation of the alternatives that can abate both the energy-security and climate threats, and so soften the landing in the global energy crisis. On the other hand, if many governments choose to forget about climate change in their scramble for alternatives, it could also mobilise technologies like tar sands and liquids-from-coal on a scale that would drown any effort to deal with global warming.

    “There is a risk, as you say, of a constraint on the supply side,” Tanaka replied cautiously. We hope the climate-change issue will drive the world to take proactive action, he said. “It’s a choice: peak oil or you yourself (meaning the community of nations) will drive energy efficiency and alternatives.” Tanaka hadn’t mentioned the words “peak oil” once in his presentation. Only now, in discussion, did the seemingly taboo term emerge.

    Afterwards, an IEA official came up to me to offer words of encouragement. “There’s a real risk that this thing could collapse,” he said. He meant the operating model for the world’s energy markets. Where financial markets can go today, in other words, so can energy markets tomorrow.

    Perhaps 100 of the 9,000 delegates in Poznan attended Nobuo Tanaka’s presentation. The next day, I give a talk of my own, on the UK taskforce report. Around a dozen people attended that.

    And so to the train journey home. Somehow it seemed to take longer than the journey out.

  • Recession hits US green energy

    Second, a byproduct of this recession is the freeze of capital for investment, lending, mortgages and consumer credit. This negatively impacts access for investments in clean energy industry expansion as well as electric generation projects and home buying, second mortgages and renovation loans.

    Third, as energy demand drops, electric utilities are beginning to shelve planned electric generation projects. As economic growth slows, so does need for extra electric generation, peak power and electricity grid upgrades.

    Fourth, while both the Investment Tax Credits for energy efficiency and renewable energy and the Production Tax Credits for utility-scale renewables are important — their value is substantially diminished because less businesses have a large tax liability at year end in this harsh recession. The renewable trade groups are rightly asking for a policy change to have these newly won tax extensions be refundable or transferable so as to have more usefulness in this harsher environment.

    And finally, the clean energy industries are predominantly small businesses, and the expected large and prolonged dip in sales and installation may undercut their ability to supply due to problems with cash flow and carrying costs of inventorying equipment and components. Stories are beginning to proliferate in the national media, such as a recent front page story in the November 25, 2008 New York Times, “Economic Slump May Limit Moves on Clean Energy” by Elisabeth Rosenthal.

    Now this recent set of financial challenges as outlined above, make the articulated national priorities of President-elect Obama even harder to achieve. To meet large-scale reductions in energy imports (petroleum, natural gas, uranium), reductions in greenhouse gas emissions (and those mandated under the Clean Air Act such as SO, NOx, and particulates) and create millions of green jobs, this country needs a rapid influx of high value energy efficiency and renewable energy — everywhere and in every market sector.

    There are two sets of policy tools that will keep the green industries afloat during this extremely hard economic time.

    First, there are a host of already-funded capital programs throughout the federal (and state) government that can be directed to green industries and their consumers. These programs include the Department of Agricultures Rural Utility Service, Department of Energy Loan Guarantee and State Grants programs, EPA’s State Grants programs, Department of Homeland Security’s Critical Infrastructure grants to States, Small Business Administration loan programs, and IRS’s Clean Renewable Energy Bonds (CREBS) that in aggregate are billions of dollars of rather flexible capital flow.

    Second, under a series of Executive Orders signed by a series of U.S. Presidents from both political parties — all have set goals for federal purchasing. The past two energy bills (EPACT05 and EISA 07) have also mandated purchasing goals by Congress. The U.S. government is the largest user of energy in the world and the largest owner of buildings in the world. For instance, the Department of Defense has 316,238 buildings and another 181,591 structures. Currently because of slow processing, nearly US $2 billion worth of energy renovations within the federal sector is slowly moving through the procurement pipeline.

    Many of us have been advising federal procurement managers, Members of Congress and the Obama Transition Team staff to not only accelerate the federal procurement pipeline now, but to add to it for the next three years and leverage procurements regionally with state and local governments. Such an action could create a rather large and sustained market pull for the clean energy industries.

    This multi-year sustained government procurement effort would be multi-technology including materials, energy systems, vehicle fleets and green power purchases. Not only would this sustain the clean energy industries, it would keep them vibrant all across the United States. And of course, US taxpayers pay the energy bills for buildings and facilities that can last a century — virtually every improvement in buildings, vehicles or energy inputs — will reduce taxpayer supports of the energy costs for these government uses.

    We don’t want this short term economic chaos to undermine the survival of the breadth of the clean energy industries across the U.S., undermine goals to cut energy imports and emissions and undermine the initiative by our new President to fundamentally shift our economy to green jobs.

    To reorient existing federal capital (loan, guarantee and bond programs) and existing procurement programs would requite a totally new approach by the Obama Administration. New procurement tools would need to be fashioned not only to accelerate procurements but aggregate procurements and leverage them regionally in concert with other state and local government procurement programs.

    This would require White House coordination with mandatory participation by OMB, GSA, DOE’s Federal Energy Management Program, and even DOD to insure these procurement and coordination tools could be realized. This is a tall order, because federal procurement specialists and lawyers like their own turf and autonomy. And while some of these existing rules and bureaucracies insure good projects and prevent fraud, many of them increase costs, increase delays and reduce modularity and standardization goals of these emerging technologies and applications — a long standing problem within the marketplace.

    The energy efficiency and renewable energy industries need to clearly plot their near term future so as not to be a casualty of the global economic recession. Leveraged government procurement programs along with changes in utilization of federal tax credits (so as to have refundability and transferability) seem to be the critically appropriate measures. This is surely the time to express our industries’ needs before the new Administration and Congress take office. The clock is ticking.

  • Capturing the ocean’s energy

    These inventors would disappear into the mists of history, and fossil fuel would instead provide an industrializing world with almost all its energy for the next two centuries. But Girard et fils were onto something, say a growing number of modern-day inventors, engineers, and researchers. The heave of waves and the tug of tides, they say, are about to begin playing a significant role in the world’s energy future.

    In the first commercial-scale signal of that, last October a trio of articulated, cylinder-shaped electricity generators began undulating in the waves off the coast of Portugal. The devices look like mechanical sea snakes. (In fact, their manufacturer, Scotland’s Pelamis Wave Power Ltd., takes its name from a mythical ancient Greek sea serpent.) Each Pelamis device consists of four independently hinged segments. The segments capture wave energy like the handle of an old fashioned water pump captures the energy of a human arm: as waves rock the segments to and fro, they pump a hydraulic fluid (biodegradable, in case of spills) powerfully through a turbine, spinning it to generate up to 750,000 watts of electricity per unit. Assuming the devices continue to perform well, Portuguese utility Energis expects to soon purchase another 28 more of the generators.

    The completed “wave farm” would feed its collective power onto a single high voltage sea-floor cable, adding to the Portuguese grid about 21 megawatts of electricity. That’s enough to power about 15,000 homes.

    In a world where a single major coal or nuclear plant can produce more than 1,000 megawatts of electricity, it’s a modest start. But from New York’s East River to the offshore waters of South Korea, a host of other projects are in earlier stages of testing. Some, like Pelamis, rely on the motion of waves. Others operate like underwater windmills, tapping the power of the tides.

    Ocean-powered technologies are in their infancy, still technologically well behind such energy alternatives as wind and solar. Necessarily designed to operate in an inherently harsh environment, the technologies remain largely unproven and — unless subsidized by governments — expensive. (Portugal is heavily subsidizing the Pelamis project, with an eye to becoming a major European exporter of clean green power in the future.) Little is known about the effects that large wave or tide farms might have on marine ecosystems in general.

    Despite the uncertainties, however, proponents say the potential advantages are too striking to ignore. Eight hundred times denser than air, moving water packs a huge energy wallop. Like solar and wind, power from moving seas is free and clean. But sea power is more predictable than either wind or solar. Waves begin forming thousands of miles from coastlines and days in advance; tides rise and fall as dependably as the cycles of the moon. That predictability makes it easier to match supply with demand.

    Roger Bedard, who leads ocean energy research at the U.S. utility-funded Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) in Palo Alto, says there’s plenty of reason for optimism about the future of what he calls “hydrodynamic” power. Within a decade, he says, the U.S. could realistically meet as much as 10 percent of its electricity needs from hydrodynamic power. As a point of reference, that’s about half of the electricity the U.S. produces with nuclear power today. Although he acknowledges that initial sea-powered generation projects are going to be expensive, Bedard believes that as experience grows and economies of manufacturing scale kick in, hydrodynamic power will follow the same path toward falling costs and improving technologies as other alternatives.

    “Look at wind,” he says. “A kilowatt hour from wind cost fifty cents in the 1980s. Now it’s about seven cents.” (That’s about the same as producing electricity with natural gas, and only about three cents more than coal, the cheapest — and dirtiest — U.S. energy choice. Any future tax on carbon emissions could narrow that gap even more, as would additional clean-power subsidies.)

    For some nations, wave and tide power could pack an even bigger punch. Estimates suggest, for instance, that the choppy seas surrounding the United Kingdom could deliver as much as 25 percent of its electricity. British alternative energy analyst Thomas W. Thorpe believes that on a worldwide basis, waves alone could produce as much as 2,000 terawatt hours of electricity, as much as all the planet’s major hydroelectric plants generate today.

    Although none are as far along as Pelamis, most competing wave-power technologies rely not on the undulations of mechanical serpents, but instead on the power captured by the vertical bobbing of large buoys in sea swells. Ocean Power Technologies (OPT), based in New Jersey, drives the generators in its PowerBuoy® with a straightforward mechanical piston. A stationary section of the mostly submerged, 90-foot buoy is anchored to the ocean floor; a second section simply moves up and down with the movement of sea swells, driving pistons that in turn drive an electrical generator. The Archimedes Wave Swing, a buoy-based system developed by Scotland’s AWS Ocean Energy, harnesses the up-and-down energy of waves by pumping air to spin its turbines. Vancouver-based Finavera Renewables uses seawater as its turbine-driving hydraulic fluid.

    Although Pelamis beat all of these companies out of the commercialization gate, OPT appears to be right behind, with plans to install North America’s first commercial-scale wave power array of buoys off the coast of Oregon as early as next year. That array — occupying one square-mile of ocean and, like other wave power installations, located far from shipping lanes — would initially produce 2 megawatts of power. OPT also announced last September an agreement to install a 1.4-megawatt array off the coast of Spain. An Australian subsidiary is in a joint venture to develop a 10-megawatt wave farm off the coast of Australia.

    Meanwhile, Pelamis Wave Power plans to install more of its mechanical serpents — three megawatts of generating capacity off the coast of northwest Scotland, and another five-megawatt array off Britain’s Cornwall coast.

    The Cornwall installation will be one of four wave power facilities plugged into a single, 20-megawatt underwater transformer at a site called “Wave Hub.” Essentially a giant, underwater version of a socket that each developer can plug into, Wave Hub — which will be connected by undersea cable to the land-based grid — was designed as a tryout site for competing technologies. OPT has won another of the four Wave Hub berths for its buoy-based system.

    Other innovators are trying to harness the power of ocean or estuarine tides. Notably, in 2007, Virginia’s Verdant Power installed on the floor of New York’s East River six turbines that look, and function, much like stubby, submerged windmills, their blades — which are 16 feet in diameter — turning at a peak rate of 32 revolutions per minute. The East River is actually a salty and powerful tidal straight that connects Long Island Sound with the Atlantic Ocean. Although the “underwater windmills” began pumping out electricity immediately, the trial has been a halting one. The strong tides quickly broke apart the turbines’ first- (fiberglass and steel) and second- (aluminum and magnesium) generation blades, dislodging mounting bolts for good measure.

    Undeterred, in September Verdant Power began testing new blades made of a stronger aluminum alloy. If it can overcome the equipment-durability problems, the company hopes to install as many as 300 of its turbines in the East River, enough to power 10,000 New York homes.

    A scattering of similar prototype “underwater windmill” projects have been installed at tidal sites in Norway, Northern Ireland, and South Korea. (In addition, interest in moving into freshwater sites is growing. Verdant itself hopes to install its turbines on the St. Lawrence River. At least one other company, Free Flow Power of Massachusetts, has obtained Federal Energy Regulatory Commission permits to conduct preliminary studies on an array of sites on the Mississippi River south of St. Louis.)

    The environmental benefits of hydrodynamic power seem obvious: no carbon dioxide or any other emissions associated with fossil-fuel-based generation. No oil spills or nuclear waste. And for those who object to wind farms for aesthetic reasons, low-profile wave farms are invisible from distant land; tidal windmill-style turbines operate submerged until raised for maintenance.

    There are, however, environmental risks associated with these technologies.

    New York state regulators required Verdant Power to monitor effects of their its turbines on fish and wildlife. So far, sensors show that fish and water birds are having no trouble avoiding the blades, which rotate at a relatively leisurely 32 maximum revolutions per minute. In fact the company’s sensors have shown that fish tend to seek shelter behind rocks around the channel’s banks and stay out of the central channel entirely when tides are strongest.

    But a host of other questions about environment effects remain unanswered. Will high-voltage cables stretching across the sea from wave farms somehow harm marine ecosystems? Will arrays of hundreds of buoys or mechanical serpents interfere with ocean fish movement or whale migrations? What effect will soaking up large amounts of wave energy have on shoreline organisms and ecosystems?

    “Environmental effects are the greatest questions right now,” EPRI’s Bedard says, “because there just aren’t any big hydrodynamic projects in the world.”

    Projects will probably have to be limited in size and number to protect the environment, he says – that’s a big part of the reason he limits his “realistic” U.S. estimate to 10 percent of current generation capacity. But the only way to get definitive answers on environmental impact might be to run the actual experiment — that is, to begin building the water-powered facilities, and then monitor the environment for effects.

    Bedard suggests that the way to get definitive answers will be to build carefully on a model like Verdant’s: “Start very small. Monitor carefully. Build it a little bigger and monitor some more. I’d like to see it developed in an adaptive way.”

  • Lithium shortage challenges electric car hopes

    Japanese electronics and electrical company Toshiba, last week launched a battery designed to power the next generation of electric cars. (Read the full story) The SuperCharge battery is fast to recharge, can be recharged 5,000 times and is desinged to last for ten years. It is also light-weight and engineered to avoid catching fire, a problem caused by packing large numbers of traditional lithium batteries into the small spaces needed to power motor cars. Toshiba expects to sell 900 million US dollars worth of the batteries every year as the electric car market grows. While most commentators agree that new battery technology is the key to widespread adoption of electric cars, there is disagreement over the viability of lithium in the long term. While the global capacity to produce lithium currently exceeds supply, the expected growth in demand would require new extraction methods. The process is also heavily pollluting and energy intensive.

    The Generator News – Week ending December 5th,2008