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• Ecce Mortis: Afterture – A Para-Life Experience: See Ya
  The Staff / 01/06/2014
• Ecce Mortis: We Citizens: Bless Us
  The Staff / 01/05/2014
• Ecce Mortis: The Condition: No Solution and Related News
  The Staff / 01/04/2014

School Yard Fights

• One Unabomber Moment Away from Sanity in a Part-time Snippet World
  Paul Haeder / 01/16/2014

Latest Articles

• US-Israel Strange but “Stable” Alliance
  Ramzy Baroud / 01/22/2014
• State Dept’s Keystone XL Contractor, ERM Group, Also OK’d Controversial Pebble Mine in Alaska
  Steve Horn / 01/22/2014
• Sunday Afternoon at Jack’s
  Linh Dinh / 01/22/2014
• Population and Sustainability: Addressing the Taboo
  Stuart Jeanne Bramhall / 01/22/2014
• Six Witch-Hunts Inform The “Age of Scapegoating”
  Robert S. Becker / 01/22/2014
• Scientists Speak Out Against Canada’s “War on Science”
  Peter Rugh / 01/22/2014
• Black Madness under Obama
  Glen Ford / 01/22/2014
• An Open Letter to University of Maryland President, Dr Wallace Loh
  William James Martin / 01/22/2014
• Meet the Glassholes: The Google Glass Rage
  Binoy Kampmark / 01/22/2014
• Ariel Sharon is Dead: His Crimes Will Not be Buried with Him
  James Petras / 01/22/2014

Recommended Reading

• Wellsprings: A Fable of Consciousness William T. Hathaway
• Out of Bounds: Academic Freedom and the Question of Palestine Matthew Abraham
• Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party Joshua Bloom
• Undoing Border Imperialism Harsha Walia
• Obama and the Middle East: The End of America’s Moment? Fawaz A. Gerges
• Informing the News: The Need for Knowledge-Based Journalism Thomas Patterson
• Madiba A to Z: The Many Faces of Nelson Mandela Danny Schechter
• On Western Terrorism: From Hiroshima to Drone Warfare Noam Chomsky and Andre Vltchek
• The Colonial Present: The Rule of Ignorance and the Role of Law in British Columbia Kerry Coast
• Ruth First and Joe Slovo in the War Against Apartheid Alan Wieder
• More books »

The DV Poetry Page

Clean Technica

A new “sugar battery” possessing an “unmatched” energy density has been created by a research team from Virginia Tech. The researchers think that their new battery — which, it bears repeating, runs on sugar — could potentially replace conventional forms of battery technology within only the next couple of years.

The researchers argue that their sugar batteries’ relative affordability, ability to be refilled, and biodegradability, are significant advantages as compared to current battery technologies, and should give it the edge in competition. They are currently aiming for the technology to hit the market sometime within the next few years.

“Sugar is a perfect energy storage compound in nature,” stated researcher YH Percival Zhang, an associate professor of biological systems engineering in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the College of Engineering. “So it’s only logical that we try to harness this natural power in an environmentally friendly way to produce a battery.”

While sugar batteries aren’t an entirely new concept, they have never been all that viable either — the new technology, though, is different, possessing an “energy density an order of magnitude higher than others,” according to Zhang. Continuing: “Sugar is a perfect energy storage compound in nature. So it’s only logical that we try to harness this natural power in an environmentally friendly way to produce a battery.”

Virginia Tech provides more:

This is one of Zhang’s many successes in the last year that utilize a series of enzymes mixed together in combinations not found in nature. In this newest development, Zhang and his colleagues constructed a non-natural synthetic enzymatic pathway that strip all charge potentials from the sugar to generate electricity in an enzymatic fuel cell. Then, low-cost biocatalyst enzymes are used as catalyst instead of costly platinum, which is typically used in conventional batteries.

Like all fuel cells, the sugar battery combines fuel — in this case, maltodextrin, a polysaccharide made from partial hydrolysis of starch — with air to generate electricity and water as the main byproducts.

“We are releasing all electron charges stored in the sugar solution slowly step-by-step by using an enzyme cascade,” Zhang explained. “Different from hydrogen fuel cells and direct methanol fuel cells, the fuel sugar solution is neither explosive nor flammable and has a higher energy storage density. The enzymes and fuels used to build the device are biodegradable. The battery is also refillable and sugar can be added to it much like filling a printer cartridge with ink.”
Source: Clean Technica. Reproduced with permission.

The Australian rooftop solar PV industry may have to prepare for a future with no federal government incentives. There is growing speculation that the small scale renewable certificate may be cut in a revamp of the national renewable energy target.

RenewEconomy understands that there is a renewed push by utilities and generators – particularly but not exclusively the state-owned ones – to close the small scale renewable energy scheme (SRES) and cease issuing renewable energy certificates for rooftop solar. Others suggest cutting the price cap on the certificates.

The renewable energy target is already under threat from utilities and generators, state governments, and sympathizers within the Abbott ministry to either remove, or severely dilute, the 20 per cent target.

Large scale developers are more or less resigned to having the fixed target of 41,000GWh for the large scale component moved beyond 2020 – possibly to 2022 or 2025. Because of falling demand, the government will claim that renewables will still account for 20 per cent of national demand in 2020.

However, less expected is a new attack on the small scale solar subsidy. However, Australia already has more than 3,000MW of rooftop solar, is adding around 700-800MW a year, and this is having a big impact on the returns of generators such as Stanwell Corp, and the business models of network operators.

Australian utilities are not alone, because rooftop solar is threatening their business models across the world – particularly in north America and Europe. Consider these remarkable comments made this week by Mark Ferron, one of the heads of the California Public Utilities Commission, who resigned this week.

He noted that utilities, while claiming to like solar, “would still dearly like to strangle rooftop solar if they could.” Ferron said the CPUC – and by inference other regulators – would come under pressure to  “protect the interest of the utilities over those of consumers and potential self-generators, all in the name of addressing exaggerated concerns about grid stability, cost and fairness.”

That is exactly what has been happening in Australia, where solar is couched in terms of the “death spiral” and its potential impact on non-solar users, rather than the benefits it can bring to consumers and the grid as a whole, as the heatwave underlined last week.

The RET once offered 5 certificates for each estimated megawatt hour of electricity produced by rooftop solar. This – in combination of generous state-based feed-in-tariffs – created a flood of certificates and forced authorities to separate the small scale scheme to absorb the excess. The multiple was rapidly brought down to one as it became clear that the cost of rooftop solar PV had fallen.

Ironically, that small scale solar market had finally reached balance just as the utilities make a new push to have it removed altogether. Their argument is that rooftop solar no longer needs the subsidy (the states have already largely removed feed in tariffs). The Queensland government, for instance, is constantly deflecting the blame on rising electricity bills on to the cost of solar subsidies.

The reality is that the small scale scheme adds very little to electricity bills, less than one per cent, according to official data, and the Climate Change Authority, which reviewed the RET in 2012.

However, the CCA raised the possibility that the certificate multiple could be reduced below one (say to 0.5/MWh) if the costs of the scheme rose beyond 1.5 per cent of consumer bills, and the payback of rooftop solar PV fell below 10 years.

That assessment brought howls of protest from the solar industry, which pointed out that few businesses would invest in technology on such a payback, so why should households.

The reality is, however, is that the payback for rooftop solar PV has now fallen to below 5 years, and to 7 years for commercial installations. The solar industry says that removing the certificates would add two years to that payback.

That would make rooftop solar less obtainable and attractive for those on lower incomes. However, the government has the potential to offset this by targeting, as it has flagged, its “one million solar roofs” program to the lower income, rental and apartment markets. That program has already slashed its proposed subsidy from $1,000 to $500 a system, but it is not yet clear how it would be introduced.

There have been arguments that it is superfluous if the RECs exist. Others such as ARENA are working on financing models for lower income and rental households, arguing that this would be a more effective system.

In a recent submission to the Direct Action proposal, Origin Energy, the largest utility in Australia, stopped short of calling for the SRES to be scrapped, but called for the $40 cap on the price of small scale certificates to be reduced. It also questioned the one million rooftop program, noting that on its estimates, another million roofs would be connected to solar by 2020 anyway.

“It is against this policy context that Origin believes that current support for solar PV systems should be moderated,” it writes in its Senate submission. It also wants a 10kW limit on SRECs, which it noted had been proposed by the CCA.  Any bigger system would still qualify for large scale renewable energy certificates, which are based on actual output rather than an upfront rated capacity.

The Federal Government has yet to release the terms of reference for its RET review, despite having committed to do so by early December. Part of the problem is the complication of the CCA remaining in existence after Labor and the Greens voted down its repeal.

However, removing the SRES could have implications for large scale developments, and it is not clear how the various targets would be resolved. No doubt the utilities will make clear their ideas when the RET review is finally open to submissions.

Mitchell is a marginal Labor seat in southern Adelaide, held by Sibbons. Mitchell covers Sheidow Park, Trott Park, Old Reynella, Seaview Downs, Dover Gardens, Seacombe Heights, Seacombe Gardens and Sturt, and parts of Darlington, Bedford Park, Clovelly Park, Mitchell Park, Oaklands Park and Warradale.

Mitchell was held prior to the 2010 election by Kris Hanna, first as a Labor MP, then as a Green and then as an independent. In 2010, Hanna increased his primary vote but fell into third place behind the Liberal Party, which saw the ALP regain the seat.

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Yuan Wang, a former doctoral student at Texas A&M, along with Texas A&M atmospheric sciences professors Renyi Zhang and R. Saravanan, have had their findings published in the current issue of Nature Communications.

Using climate models and data collected about aerosols and meteorology over the past 30 years, the researchers found that air pollution over Asia — much of it coming from China — is impacting global air circulations.

“The models clearly show that pollution originating from Asia has an impact on the upper atmosphere and it appears to make such storms or cyclones even stronger,” Zhang explains.

“This pollution affects cloud formations, precipitation, storm intensity and other factors and eventually impacts climate. Most likely, pollution from Asia can have important consequences on the weather pattern here over North America.”

China’s booming economy during the last 30 years has led to the building of enormous manufacturing factories, industrial plants, power plants and other facilities that produce huge amounts of air pollutants. Once emitted into the atmosphere, pollutant particles affect cloud formations and weather systems worldwide, the study shows.

Increases in coal burning and car emissions are major sources of pollution in China and other Asian countries.

Air pollution levels in some Chinese cities, such as Beijing, are often more than 100 times higher than acceptable limits set by the World Health Organization standards, Zhang says.

One study has shown that lung cancer rates have increased 400 percent in some areas due to the ever-growing pollution problem.

Conditions tend to worsen during winter months when a combination of stagnant weather patterns mixed with increased coal burning in many Asian cities can create pollution and smog that can last for weeks. The Chinese government has pledged to toughen pollution standards and to commit sufficient financial resources to attack the problem. “The models we have used and our data are very consistent with the results we have reached,” Saravanan says.

“Huge amounts of aerosols from Asia go as high as six miles up in the atmosphere and these have an unmistakable impact on cloud formations and weather.”

Zhang adds that “we need to do some future research on exactly how these aerosols are transported globally and impact climate. There are many other atmospheric observations and models we need to look at to see how this entire process works.”

Yuan Wang, who conducted the research with Zhang while at Texas A&M, currently works at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory as a Caltech Postdoctoral Scholar.

The study was funded by grants from NASA, Texas A&M’s Supercomputing facilities and the Ministry of Science and Technology of China.