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. 

  • NASA damns coal

    “This is the first paper in the scientific literature that explicitly melds the two vital issues of global peak oil production and human-induced climate change,” Kharecha said. “We’re illustrating the types of action needed to get to target carbon dioxide levels.”

    Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that concerns climate scientists because it can remain in the atmosphere for many centuries and studies have indicated that humans have already caused those levels to rise for decades by burning fossils fuels. Also, carbon dioxide accounts for more than half of all human-caused greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

    Previously published research shows that a dangerous level of global warming will occur if carbon dioxide in the atmosphere exceeds a concentration of about 450 parts per million. That’s equivalent to about a 61 percent increase from the pre-industrial level of 280 parts per million, but only 17 percent more than the current level of 385 parts per million. The carbon dioxide cap is related to a global temperature rise of about 1.8°F above the 2000 global temperature, at or beyond which point the disintegration of the West Antarctic ice sheet and Arctic sea ice could set in motion feedbacks and lead to accelerated melting.

    To better understand the possible trajectory of future carbon dioxide, Kharecha and Hansen devised five carbon dioxide emissions scenarios that span the years 1850-2100. Each scenario reflects a different estimate for the global production peak of fossil fuels, the timing of which depends on reserve size, recoverability and technology.

    “Even if we assume high-end estimates and unconstrained emissions from conventional oil and gas, we find that these fuels alone are not abundant enough to take carbon dioxide above 450 parts per million,” Kharecha said.

    The first scenario estimates carbon dioxide levels if emissions from fossil fuels are unconstrained and follow along “business as usual,” growing by two percent annually until half of each reservoir has been recovered, after which emissions begin to decline by two percent annually.

    The second scenario considers a situation in which emissions from coal are reduced first by developed countries starting in 2013 and then by developing countries a decade later, leading to a global phase out by 2050 of the emissions from burning coal that reach the atmosphere. The reduction of emissions to the atmosphere in this case can come from reducing coal consumption or from capturing and sequestering the carbon dioxide before it reaches the atmosphere.

    The remaining three scenarios include the above-mentioned phase out of coal, but consider different scenarios for oil use and supply. One case considers a delay in the oil peak by about 21 years to 2037. Another considers the implications of fewer-than-expected additions to proven reserves due to overestimated reserves, or the addition of a price on emissions that makes the fuel too expensive to extract. The final scenario looks at emissions from oil fields that peak at different times, extending the peak into a plateau that lasts from 2020-2040.

    Graphs of CO2 levels

    Image above: Atmospheric carbon dioxide changes over time for the study’s five fossil fuel scenarios: business-as-usual (a), coal phase-out (b) and oil use and supply (c-e). Credit: NASA/Kharecha and Hansen. > Larger image

    Next, the team used a simplified mathematical model, called the Bern carbon cycle model, to convert carbon dioxide emissions from each scenario into estimates of future carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere.

    The unconstrained “business as usual” scenario resulted in a level of atmospheric carbon dioxide that more than doubled the preindustrial level and from about 2035 onward levels exceed the 450 parts per million threshold of this study. Even when low-end estimates of reserves were assumed, the threshold was exceeded from about 2050 onwards. However, the other four scenarios resulted in carbon dioxide levels that peaked in various years but all fell below the prescribed cap of 450 parts per million by about 2080 at the latest, with levels in two of the scenarios always staying below the threshold.

    The researchers suggest that the results illustrated by each scenario have clear implications for reducing carbon dioxide emissions from coal, as well as “unconventional” fuels such as methane hydrates and tar sands, all of which contain much more fossil carbon than conventional oil and gas.

    “Because coal is much more plentiful than oil and gas, reducing coal emissions is absolutely essential to avoid ‘dangerous’ climate change brought about by atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration exceeding 450 parts per million,” Kharecha said. “The most important mitigation strategy we recommend — a phase-out of carbon dioxide emissions from coal within the next few decades — is feasible using current or near-term technologies.”

  • Google and GE outline plans for smart grid

    The two executives gave few details of their planned collaboration. In an interview after their presentation, Dan Reicher, director of climate change and energy initiatives at Google.org, an operating unit of Google, said the effort was in its planning stages and did not have a set budget.

    “All this talk about renewable energy will not be realized if we do not build substantial additional transmission capacity,” Mr. Reicher said.

    Without additional capacity, Mr. Reicher said, it would not be possible, for example, to get power from a solar plant in the Mojave Desert to Los Angeles, or from a wind farm in the Dakotas to Chicago. Mr. Reicher said that environmental standards, overlapping state and federal regulations and other policy issues were among the biggest impediments to building additional transmission capacity.

    Google and G.E. are also discussing how to combine their respective software and hardware expertise to enable technologies like plug-in hybrids on a large scale and to accelerate the development of geothermal energy.

    For Google, the partnership with G.E. is part of larger set of energy initiatives, including direct investments in green technology to help develop renewable energy that is cheaper to produce than coal-generated power. For its part, G.E. has made a large bet on green energy technologies, an initiative the company calls Ecomagination.

  • Green energy to create 20 million jobs

    Speedy creation of the jobs will depend on countries implementing and broadening policies including capping emissions of greenhouse gases, and the shifting of subsidies from the oil and natural gas sector, to new energy including wind, solar and geothermal power, it said.

    “If we do not transform to a low-carbon economy we will miss a major opportunity for the fast tracking of millions of new jobs,” Achim Steiner, UNEP director, told reporters.

    He said movement toward the jobs will occur even if the world does not come to a new agreement by the end of next year on stabilising and then cutting greenhouse gases because global population is headed toward 8 billion or 9 billion by 2050, while new resources like metals, oil and gas are becoming more expensive to find.

    But if the world waits 10 years to take serious action on greenhouse gases the costs for moving to a green economy will be much higher, he said.

    US President George W. Bush walked away from the UN’s carbon-capping Kyoto Protocol early in his first term, saying it would raise costs and unfairly exempt rapidly developing countries from emissions limits.

    Delegates from across the world will try to reach a successor agreement to the Kyoto pact in a UN meeting in Copenhagen late next year.

  • China leapfrogs US to Iraqi oil

    Beijing’s success in the latest battleground represents a double blow for Washington whose troops are still fighting daily for Iraq’s security. With the return of stability, Baghdad hopes that its output can triple to six million barrels per day.

    The latest Chinese outpost on the ground is a mountain camp pitched 1,400 metres above sea-level by CNPC, which has signed a contract to conduct the exploration of a 44 x 12 mile tract. The sensitivity of the Chinese presence is betrayed by the camp’s heavy fortifications. It is overlooked by watchtowers and surrounded by a square earth berm. Scientists in the 100-strong team only leave to conduct surveys in heavily-armed convoys. Fierce-looking members of the Surchi, a notorious local tribe, stand guard at the gate.

    The chief CNPC geologist at the site, Chao Shu-he exudes a missionary zeal. “The Chinese have opened the door to co-operation,” said Mr Chao. “China is more and more developed and it’s our patriotic duty to contribute to development, even if we are far from home.”

    Oil executives complain that China is the only big country prepared to work in Iraq. DNO, a Norwegian firm that produces 10,000 barrels a day in Kurdistan, said it solicited “dozens” of well-known firms before signing a drilling contract with another Chinese firm, Great Wall Drilling.

    “The Chinese are strong in service contracts but not in exploration rights,” said Asti Hawrami, the Kurdish oil minister. “They are not taking on the risks but they are playing a strong, important role in the industry.”

    “China wants security of oil supply but they also want a finger in every pie,” said Paul Stevens, an expert at Chatham House. “The Chinese now sit like death’s head at the feast, waiting for the slightest chance to get into Iraq.”

    Clifford Chance, the international law firm, reported last month that up to 30 billion barrels of oil lies beneath the Kurdish territories, where fire worship around the pools of crude at the surface has a long tradition.

    Such estimates have drawn a rush of wildcat firms but, because of a political dispute between the regional government and Baghdad, big American and British oil firms are notably absent.

    Western majors have been warned off by threats from Hussein al-Shahristani, the Baghdad oil minister, to blackball firms seeking production in the north. However that injunction does not appear to have applied to CNPC.

    As the American military presence in Iraq shrinks, the al-Ahdab deal is one of a host of signs that Beijing is well-placed to rival US ties to post-war Iraq.

    An affinity with Chairman Mao Zedong, a leader who killed 10 times as many as the vilified Saddam, drew President Jalal Talabani to China last year. But when President Talabani paid $100 million for Chinese-made Kalashnikov rifles, America was so displeased it sent all Iraqi security forces on a training programme to use US M4 rifles.

  • Spanish student solves wind power problem

    A voltage dip is a sudden reduction in potential in the electric grid, followed by a rapid return to its normal value. This, at times, can be caused by lightening or by a tree falling on power cables. It can also be due to a large company consuming a lot of energy all at once. This drop in voltage happens in a matter of milliseconds. “We are aware of it because the lights begin to flicker or because they go off and on momentarily — but, for a machine, this can be an eternity,” explained López. In fact, an interruption of half-a-second in a productive process can cause the whole process to block and it may have to be re-initiated.

    Lopez said that in the normal operation of wind turbine, the flux in the stator rotates synchronously, i.e. at the grid frequency. As the rotor turns near this speed, the voltage induced by this flux is small. The sudden dips on the grid cause the appearance of a new flux in the stator, which has been named the “natural flux.” This second flux, as opposed to the normal flux, is fixed to the stator, that is, it doesn’t rotate. Therefore, its relative speed in respect to the rotor is much larger and it induces voltages in the rotor much greater that those corresponding to the normal operation.

    Usually, the electronic converter connected to the rotor is not able to overcome to theses voltages and the converter, as a consequence, loses the control of the currents. In this situation, there appear overcurrents that can damage, depending on the depth of the dip, the converter.

    To date, one system has been in place to protect converters, however it’s not an optimal solution.

    “The current system of protection, known as Crowbar, has the advantage of being able to protect the machine but the disadvantage of the machine coming to a halt,” López said.

    “For example, if a large company suddenly consumes a lot of current, the voltage drops. This causes the wind power units at El Perdon [in Navarre, Spain] to disconnect and cease producing electricity. As a result, the power dip is even more accentuated and, consequently, it is even more difficult to bring the voltage up to its normal operating value.”

    Taking into account that, in Spain, there are days that wind-powered energy can account for fully one-third of electricity production, the problem can prove to be a serious one.

    Engineers are tackling the problem by trying to find a way that the generator will behave more like a conventional power plant and not disconnect during a voltage dip/power failure but rather help to bring the grid voltage back up.

    Two new protection techniques patented

    “Before looking for a solution, the problem has to be studied from a theoretical perspective, i.e. why does this machine behave as it does when there is a voltage dip? And why, if we do not install a protection system, the machine starts to burn out?”

    The research produced a rotor model that was “sufficiently simple to be able to deal with without having to carry out simulations. A model in which we can see what role each parameter of the machine plays, how they interact, how the current drops if we increase the leak inductances, etc,” said Lopez.

    Once this model was developed, Lopez says that it was more or less easy to propose solutions. “The most important thing is that we have achieved solutions that enhance the behavior of the machine without any need to change anything, except the control. It’s like changing the version of a text treatment program on the computer, without needing to change the PC. There a number of computers inside a wind energy converter and one of these — that which controls the electrical machinery — is the one the control of which we have proposed to modify in order to enhance the behavior of the machine.”

    In his PhD thesis, López proposed two different systems of protection and both have been patented. The first, which only requires changing the control of the machine converter, has been transferred to a manufacturer for introduction into wind parks worldwide; the other requires changing elements inside the machine and continues to be developed for applications in new creation wind generators.

  • US tax break for solar worth 25 billion

    “By extending the solar investment tax credits, Congress can provide an immediate boost to the floundering U.S. economy by creating hundreds of thousands of jobs and injecting billions of dollars of new investment capital into the economy, while at the same time driving down energy costs for consumers,” said Rhone Resch, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), based in Washington, D.C.

    “The solar energy industry creates jobs that are the foundation of our economy — jobs for manufacturers, construction workers, engineers, roofers, electricians and plumbers. These jobs are needed now and Congress is in a position to extend the ITC and ensure that these jobs are created here in the U.S.”

    According to the study, by 2016, the solar energy industry would create 440,000 permanent U.S. jobs with much of the direct growth occurring in domestic manufacturing, construction and the trades. This figure reveals the strength of the solar job creation engine when compared to the current 79,000 direct employees of the coal mining industry and the 136,000 direct employees in oil and gas extraction.

    “There is the potential to create significant U.S. employment and investment opportunities,” said Jay Paidipati, Managing Consultant at Navigant Consulting. “An 8-year extension of the ITC would allow the market to maintain or possibly exceed its current growth rate.”

    Since many solar energy components are manufactured near the markets the industry serves, extending the ITC would create manufacturing and installation jobs in all 50 states, with California, Florida, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon and Washington as the states most likely to see the largest economic boost. In some states, the number of jobs could grow as much as 300% or more.

    Similarly, the economies of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio and the rest of the Great Lakes region would grow significantly from solar energy if Congress passes the ITC extension, according to a press release issued by SEIA. With the recent decline in automotive and traditional manufacturing jobs that has hit these areas, an economic boost would be a welcome change.

    “We strongly urge Congress to seize this opportunity to extend the solar investment tax credit for 8 years now before leaving for the campaign trail,” said Resch.

    The Navigant study also pointed out that the solar industry creates high quality domestic jobs. The greatest growth will occur in new manufacturing, construction, and engineering jobs, and in the roofing, electrical, and plumbing trades.

    Beside jobs, its is estimated in the report that should Congress pass an 8-year extension of the 30% ITC, solar energy could produce 28 gigawatts (GW) of power by 2016, which is 19 GW more than is expected to be installed should the ITC not pass, according to the study.

    Navigant also pointed out that 84,000 U.S. jobs were lost in just in August 2008, with 39,000 of those in the auto-making industry alone. The additional 440,000 jobs that would be created in the solar industry if an 8-year extension of the ITC passes would go a long way toward rebuilding a struggling American economy.

    Last night, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that includes ITC extensions, however the Senate is not expected to enter into debate on this version of the bill and is instead working on crafting its own bill that may include its own version of ITC extenders.