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Author: admin

  • Importing Solar Power with Biomass

     

    Another big biofuel order recently announced by Valero Energy could be worth up to $3.5 billion dollars. Mission New Energy, an Australian company, will deliver 60 million gallons per year of biodiesel oil from Jatropha crops in Malaysia. Jatropha is a drought-resistant bush with oily seeds that are easily converted to diesel fuel. It is not edible and thrives in tropical climates but requires manual labor for picking the seeds. The all-year growing season, tropical sun and availability of inexpensive labor provides a clean replacement for diesel fuel that can be shipped by the same tankers used for fossil fuel. Valero’s annual sales are $120 billion, so this is a serious order.

    Mission New Energy works with small farmers to encourage them to plant the bushes on unused and marginal land. They can press their own oil and sell it to the refinery.  Larger farmers can refine the oil themselves, as the refining process is very simple compared to petroleum refining.

    Jatropha can also be planted on depleted, marginal forestland to restore the land. Mission is careful to maintain a balance between food, fuel and forest so the development is a plus for the community. Unlike factory development, biomass makes it possible for people to remain on their ancestral lands and make money doing clean, outdoor farm work. With industrialization everybody moves to the city to work on dehumanizing production lines. Growing biomass can become a major source of income for the poor and undeveloped tropical countries of the world.

    Biomass feedstocks can be grown on soils that have no other uses. For example, Florida has 100,000 acres of phosphate clays that are not stable enough to build on and useless for growing food crops.  Leucaena is a bushy legume that grows nicely on these lands.  It can be harvested three times per year using standard harvesting machinery to chop it into chips and put it into a truck that follows the harvest machinery.  Yields of up to 25 dry tons/acre per year have been obtained but 15 tons is a reasonable average.  

    Moringa is another legume that has achieved even higher productivity and is tolerant of sulfate acid soils.  Legumes need no nitrogen fertilizer because they can fix nitrogen from the air. In semi-desert areas, specially adapted plants like Agave can be grown with no irrigation. Agave stores water in its leaves and heart so that it can continue growing through the long dry seasons that are common in the tropics.  

    Bamboo has been known to grow as much as 48 inches in a 24-hour period and has been observed growing 39 inches per hour for brief periods. The plants can grow to full height in 3-4 months but die naturally on a six-year cycle.

    Clenergen has been growing a variety called Beema Bamboo in India for four years achieving a yield of over 60 tons/acre after four years of cultivation. The company has also been raising a tree called Paulownia for several years with a yield of 40 tons/acre. The company uses a process in which it gasifies the biomass to generate local electrical power but it has announced plans to use gas-to-liquids technology to make liquid fuels out of the syngas. Liquid fuels can be inexpensively shipped around the world by existing tankers.

    In fact, biomass can be converted into a wide range of energy carriers for economic shipping. Here are some possibilities and their volume energy density in Watt-hours per liter:

    Crude oil, biodiesel

    8800 watt-hr/liter

    LNG (Biomethane)

    7216 (must be stored at -268°F)

    Torrefied Wood Pellets 

    6500

    Ethanol                             

    6100

    Methanol                         

    4600

    Ammonia

    3100

    Wood Pellets

    2777

    Liquid Hydrogen 

    2600 (must be stored at -423°F)

    CNG 250 bar biomethane

    2500

    Wood chips

    1388

    Hydrogen, 150 bar

    405

    Lithium Ion Battery

    300    

    The technology for converting biomass to gas and liquid fuels is well known. Methanol, also known as “wood alcohol,” is readily produced from biomass through gasification and catalytic synthesis. Methanol fuel cells can convert it to electricity for efficient hybrid electric cars. Methanol has a big advantage because it can be reformed into hydrogen at 200 °C, about half the temperature of other fuels. This makes fast warm up times practical, greatly reducing battery size. During World War II methanol was used extensively in Europe to keep cars running in the face of gasoline shortages. 

    Methanol and other liquid fuels can be made efficiently on a small scale using microchannel technology, originally developed for the space program. Velosys and Oxford Catalyst have developed a working prototype of a biomass-to-FT-liquids plant that is just being installed in Güssing, Austria. The 5 ft diameter X 25 ft assembly of 10 microchannel reactors is connected to a biomass gasifier and will output 400 barrels per day of ultraclean synthetic crude oil. This output can be shipped just like crude oil and burned or converted to a full range of clean, carbon-neutral fuels by conventional oil refineries. The microchannel reactor is much more efficient than massive-scale gas-to-liquids plants.  The microchannel approach is much like a chemical microprocessor. This kind of small-scale upgrading technology will soon make it possible for tropical areas to convert their plentiful sunshine into easily shipped liquid and solid fuels. 

    Another approach to exporting solar power involves using electricity as the carrier. The Desertec scheme envisions building HVDC electrical transmission links under the Mediterranean Sea to connect the Sahara desert to the European grid. Massive solar thermal plants in the desert would then supply electricity to all of Europe. Similar concepts for Australia, India, and the USA have been worked out. It still remains to be seen if solar thermal with overnight storage can really be economical. Perhaps someday, but in the meantime, low-tech wood-pellet production is already working at prices almost competitive with coal.

    Desertec is like the supercomputer approach while biomass is more like distributed microcomputers.  An informal network of low tech, minimal investment biomass operations spread over the world and using existing transportation infrastructure could make a nice living for millions of small low-tech biomass entrepreneurs. Like the Internet, no central control is needed, just a free market that rewards innovation and efficiency. Ocean shipping compares very favorably with HVDC electrical transmission for efficiency. The energy wasted on a long ocean voyage is a tiny percent of the energy being transported.

    Already, in 2008 the worldwide pellet market had reached 10 million tons. About 25% of it is already exported to other countries and the market is growing at 25-30% per year. As equipment for upgrading energy density improves, the economics of this market will also improve dramatically. Some power plants in Europe are running entirely on wood pellets but the pellet’s lower density means that extensive modification of the power plant are needed. Torrefied pellets can be burned without modifying the power plant. They can be stored, pulverized and burned just like coal. With shipping costs halved, the economics are compelling.

    The southern United States has lots of sunshine and rain so it is an excellent biomass growing area. The most efficient model for biomass is to grow it locally in a small radius around a Combined Heat and Power (CHP) plant built where thermal heat is needed. Efficiencies of 90% are often attained because all heat that is normally wasted is used. A recent study showed that the southeastern U.S. could easily be energy self-sufficient. The U.S. government has done some detailed studies showing the dramatic environmental superiority of biomass power over fossil fuel plants. Even conventional farming techniques using fertilizers, insecticides and mechanization turn out to have an excellent energy efficiency factor of 20.5 under a detailed analysis that includes all energy inputs including the energy to make the farm machinery. With all of the energy inputs subtracted, the plantation analyzed yielded a net energy production of 125 MWh per acre per year.

    You may have heard that biomass is much less efficient than photovoltaic cells. Solar cells are typically rated around 10% efficiency but this rating ignores the fact that the average energy from the sun is only about 20% of peak. The real average efficiency then is .1 X .2 = 2%.  If we look at land use of some real projects now on the drawing boards we find that the latest photovoltaic, parabolic and tower projects all use about 5-6 acres per peak MW.

    The Saguaro 1-MW parabolic trough plant near Phoenix for example, generates 2000 MWh of electricity annually, using 15.8 acres. That’s 130 MWh per acre per year. The 125 MWh figure for the biomass plantation that I mentioned above is for heating value. Electricity generation can be 80% efficient if it is done where wasted thermal energy can be used as in CHP plants. So biomass is at least in the same ballpark as other solar technologies for land use but much cheaper to implement, store and transport than direct electrical generation. 

    Some terrible mistakes have been made in recent years when tropical rain forests and peat bogs were burned for agricultural development. Big trees should not be replaced by a succession of little trees. We must structure carbon trading so that such acts are taxed and only sound actions are rewarded. Clearing land by open-air burning is common today.  If simple, inexpensive equipment was available for upgrading biomass to shippable products, logging waste could be put to good use replacing coal power.

    Biomass can help keep the lights on while we build more renewable capacity. If we don’t use it, coal will certainly fill the gap. Sweden, Norway and Finland have been making heavy use of biomass for power for decades. They have structured their laws to encourage good stewardship of the land. We can do the same thing internationally by defining good rules for carbon trading.

    Download my free renewable energy book, Fuel Free: Living Well Without Fossil Fuels here.

  • Warmer temperatures spreading malaria in Africa

    Warmer temperatures spreading malaria in Africa

    Ecologist

    4th January, 2010

    Millions more exposed as disease moves into higher altitude areas in Kenya and Tanzania

    The spread of malaria in Africa has been directly linked to climate change and rising temperatures in a study published by the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI).

    Researchers have been looking at the increase in outbreaks of the disease amongst the four million people living on the slopes of Mount Kenya.

    Similar outbreaks elsewhere have been attributed to factors such as drug resistance and land use change but the KEMRI study claims the only change that has occurred recently in the area that might have lead to an increase in malaria is in mean annual temperatures, which have risen from 17 degrees in 1989 to nearly 19 degrees today.

    The malaria parasite can only mature in temperatures above 18 degrees.

    Previously absent
     
    Malaria had previously been absent in the Central Highlands district. However, as average temperatures rose over the 18 degree tipping point in the 1990s, malaria epidemics began to break out among the population.

    In 2005, malaria-carrying mosquitoes were discovered in Naru Moro in the Kenyan Central Highlands at heights over 1,900 metres above sea level.

    Similar uphill movements of the disease have also been reported in neighbouring Tanzania.

    The UN has predicted that  an extra 400 million people could be exposed to malaria by 2080 due to climate change.

    The Department for International Development (DFID) and the Canadian International Development Research Centre (IDRC), which both part-funded the Kenyan research, have been funding the provision of mosquito nets to the local community.

    ‘The spread of malaria in the Mount Kenya region is a worrying sign of things to come. Without strong and urgent action to tackle climate change, malaria could infect areas without any experience of the disease,’ said Secretary of State for International Development Douglas Alexander.
     
    ‘That’s why we need to make sure vulnerable, developing nations such as Kenya have the support they need to tackle the potentially devastating impacts of climate change.’

    Useful links
    Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI

  • Peru’s mountain people face fight for survival in a bitter winter

     

    In a world growing ever hotter, Huancavelica is an anomaly. These communities, living at the edge of what is possible, face extinction because of increasingly cold conditions in their own microclimate, which may have been altered by the rapid melting of the glaciers.

    A consequence is that Quechua-speaking farmers and their families, who have managed to subsist for centuries at high altitude, believe they may not make it through the next southern winter.

    There have been warnings from meteorologists in Peru that this month will see the Huancavelica region hit by the worst weather conditions in years with plunging temperatures, floods and high winds. The weather is already claiming lives; last month seven people died and scores were treated in hospital after torrential rain caused flash flooding in Ayacucho, the capital of the neighbouring region.

    The cold is tipping Pichccahuasi into a spiralling decline brought on by pneumonia, bronchitis and hunger.

    Although designed to withstand the cold, Huamani’s house is crumbling and his roof, half-collapsed from the snowstorms that battered the village last June and July, offers scant protection from the freezing wind and rain.

    His family, including four young children, sleep on wet ground night after night. His children have not yet recovered from illnesses from this year’s winter and he is terrified that they won’t be resilient enough to endure further freezing weather.

    He points to his youngest son, aged two, who trails after him, soaking wet and racked with bouts of coughing, as he goes about his work

    “All the children here are sick, they all have breathing problems,” he says. “The problem is there is too much cold, too much rain. We have had no time to recover from last winter before it has begun again. There is nothing I can do.”

    Climate change campaigners and development NGOs say that the failure of Copenhagen has signed the death warrant for hundreds of thousands of the world’s poorest and that a quarter of a million children will die before world leaders meet again to try to thrash out another deal at the United Nations next climate change conference in Mexico in December. Among them may be these children of the high mountains.

    Enduring prolonged sub-zero temperatures is a matter of course for Peru’s indigenous mountain people, many of whom live at more than 3,000m above sea level. Scores die every year from the cold, but in recent years the number of people succumbing to the freezing temperatures has triggered talk of a national crisis.

    This year the neighbouring district of Puno saw a severe spike in child mortality as the winter brought months of high winds and relentless ice storms. Government figures record that more than 300 children died in Puno in May last year from the cold; NGOs say that the figure was probably much higher.

    Local government officers in Huancavelica could not provide figures for how many children died here last year, but admit that child mortality is rising in the region.

    “There have been many dead children. I don’t know how many, but there are more and more and mainly the deaths have been from pneumonia,” says Rafael Rojas Huanqui, regional director for the Defensa Civil, the national disaster protection agency. “They have no resilience of any kind to deal with the weather getting colder.”

    Huancavelica has always been one of Peru’s most deprived regions, with 80% of families, largely indigenous farmers living at heights of up to 5,000m, subsisting below the poverty line.

    The changing weather has come on top of a lack of basic health services, animal diseases, rising food prices and a declining availability of water.

    Since 2007, children’s acute respiratory infections have increased by 30% and staple food production has fallen by 44%. Latest figures show that one in 10 children do not live to see their first birthday.

    Ignacio Huamani says that the main problem his village faces is a lack of water, as more extreme temperatures mean there is no grass or drinking water for the alpaca that people breed for wool and meat. “If the alpaca die, then we all die,” he says. He works with his neighbours to build shelters for the alpaca to give some protection from the elements, but he is fighting a losing battle.

    Since 2007, alpaca mortality in Huancavelica has more than doubled, with pregnant animals aborting their calves, a huge psychological as well as economic blow to people who rely on their ability to keep their herds alive.

    Any money the village has is spent on trying to keep their animals from dying. NGOs and children’s groups working in the area warn that in such desperate situations, the lives of alpaca become more valuable than those of children.

    “The welfare of children is sidelined because the situation is so bad that everything has become about the survival of the animals, both for the families themselves and the agencies who are trying to support them,” says Teresa Carpio, director of Save the Children Peru. She expects to see child mortality in the region rise this year.

    “In the west we tend to think that children take priority above all else, but when there is this level of desperation, children can be the last to get the attention they so badly need – until it is too late.”

    Four hours’ drive away in the larger community of Incahuasi, a health clinic is full of women and children waiting to see a visiting nurse. Helen dos Santos trained in nearby Ayacucho, but unlike most other locally trained health workers has stayed to work in the region. Now she spends her week travelling on foot between villages, walking for up to five hours a day.

    “It’s always been poor here, but now the situation is getting critical,” she says. She points to the 20 or so children lined up in the waiting room. “All of these children are malnourished, some very dangerously so, and winter is still five months away.

    “I don’t have any strong antibiotics to give them, only aspirin. I can’t even refer them to the hospital in Huancavelica because nobody has enough money to pay for transport there and the men here are reluctant to spend on anything but the animals.”

    Rojas Huanqui says the regional government is working hard to strengthen health systems with more doctors and nurses in “most” of the villages, but admits that the state has been unable to deliver the basic services required.

    “I’m not going to deny that it’s really hard to supply the great amount of villages there are, and they are used to getting everything for free, so the progress that the government makes is limited, but we do need to implement stronger medicines up in the villages that need it most,” he says.

    There is anger among Huancavelica’s mountain people at what they see as the inaction of regional and central government. Although aid packages and clothing bundles arrive with the onset of winter, it does not compensate for what these people believe is the ambivalence of the authorities to their fate.

    “We can only put ourselves in God’s hands, because nobody else is helping us,” says Carolina Flores, a mother of six whose six-month-old daughter is dangerously ill with pneumonia. “Our men have gone and talked to people in the government and told them what is happening to us, but they do nothing. We are not important to them, so we die up here and nobody helps us.”

    For how long the mountain people are prepared to wait for action remains to be seen. After hundreds of years of systematic discrimination, there are signs that indigenous people across Peru are prepared to fight what they consider to be threats to their survival.

    Last July, dozens of indigenous protesters were killed and scores injured when riots broke out in Bagua Grande in the Amazonas region over claims that the government was giving away land to oil and gas drilling. The relationship between Peru’s indigenous people and the government of the president, Alan García remains tense.

    Those working with indigenous populations in Huancavelica are warning that governments cannot expect people in threatened villages to accept their fate lying down.

    “The conduct of the authorities in relation to Peru’s Quechua mountain communities is similar to the one they take to indigenous communities throughout the country, which is to ignore their problems because they don’t believe that they are a priority,” says Dr Enrique Moya, the former dean of Huamanga University, who now works with local NGOs which are running support programmes in the region.

    “Religion is still a strong sedative in these communities, but although the first reaction to what they are facing might be fatalism – the feeling that they are in God’s hands – we are starting to see a change.

    “The difficulty is that the government only reacts when things turn violent, so I think what we have here is potentially an area of great conflict, because no matter how used to poverty they are, these people won’t be left to die.”

  • Climate has no time for delay or denial

     

     

    It is a well-known fact that powerful vested interests and those opposed to action on climate change are working overtime to see that they can stall action for as long as possible.

     

    The Centre for Public Integrity in the US has found that some 770 companies and interest groups have hired an estimated 2,340 lobbyists to influence America’s federal policies on climate change in the past year, just as the stakes became higher with the prospect of far-reaching climate legislation in the US. That translates into more than four lobbyists for each member of Congress in Washington DC.

     

    The climate sceptics have also been active in other ways. Take the hacking of emails from the University of East Anglia and the use of private communications between the scientists involved to discredit the science contained in the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which I chair. These scientists are highly reputed professionals, whose contributions over the years to scientific knowledge are unquestionable.

     

    But, more importantly, even the allegations made on the basis of the stolen emails have proved incorrect. The papers which were criticised in the emails were actually discussed in detail in chapter six of the Working Group I report of the AR4. Furthermore, articles from the journal Climate Research, which was also decried in the emails, have been cited 47 times in the Working Group I report. It is also a well-established fact that the IPCC relies on datasets – not from any single source – but from a number of institutions in different parts of the world. Significantly, the datasets from East Anglia were totally consistent with those from other institutions, on the basis of which far-reaching and meaningful conclusions were reached in the AR4.

     

    The same group of climate deniers who have been active across the Atlantic have now joined hands to attack me personally, alleging business interests on my part which are supposedly benefiting me as well as the Indian Tata group of companies. My institute, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), has no links with the Tata group, other than having been established through seed funding from that group as a non-profit registered society in 1974, much like several other non-profit institutions of excellence set up by the Tatas for the larger public good. As for pecuniary benefits from advice that I may be rendering to profit making organisations, these payments are all made directly to my institute, without a single penny being received by me.

     

    I am providing this background only to highlight the fact that powerful vested interests are perhaps likely to get overactive in the coming months, and would perhaps do everything in their power to impede progress towards a binding agreement that is hoped for by the end of 2010 in the next major climate negotiations in Mexico City. In the end, knowledge and science will undoubtedly triumph, but delay in reducing emissions of greenhouse gases would only lead to worse impacts of climate change and growing hardship for the most vulnerable regions in the world, which are also unfortunately some of the poorest communities on earth.

     

    A multilateral agreement to tackle climate change is absolutely essential, but given the slow pace of progress and the power that vested interests exercise over legislative and policy initiatives in democratic societies, something more may be essential. Firstly, given the critical role of the United States in forging an effective agreement to meet the challenge, the passage of legislation in that country will have to be supplemented with several initiatives to be put in place by the executive branch of the government.

     

    But importantly, it seems to me that civil society and grassroots action would have to come into their own, not only to ensure that human society takes responsibility for action at the most basic level, but also to create upward pressure on governments to act decisively. If such grassroots efforts do not spread and intensify, nation states may not be able to resolve the differences that exist between them.

     

    It is becoming increasingly clear that the spread of knowledge and awareness would be a critical driver of the transformation that is required to move human society towards a pattern of sustainable development. This would also be the most effective means of thwarting the efforts of skeptics and vested interests, who will do everything possible to maintain the status quo. As the science in the IPCC Fourth Assessment report clearly demonstrates, there is no leeway for delay or denial any longer.

     

    • Rajendra Pachauri chairs the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and is director-general of The Energy & Resources Institute

  • Sea Rise Mapping

    Here is an interesting site. http://flood.firetree.net/

    It shows maps of the world which can be magnified in detail like Google maps. You set the extent of sea level rise from 1 metre to 14 metre rise in sea level and can check out the new shape of the new coastline. Check out Sydney for instance.
    Kind regards and Happy New year
    Susan Stock

  • Australian bakes through warmest decade on record

     

    “There’s no doubt about global warming, the planet’s been warming now for most of the last century,” he said.

    “Occasionally it takes a breather, during La Nina events for example.

    “But we’re getting these increasingly warm temperatures – not just for Australia but globally – and climate change, global warming is clearly continuing.

    “We’re in the latter stages of an El Nino event in the Pacific Ocean and what that means for Australian and global temperatures is that 2010 is likely to be another very warm year – perhaps even the warmest on record.”

     

    Record heatwaves

     

    2009 was Australia’s second-warmest year on record, with the annual mean temperature 0.90C above average.

    Dr Jones says the results have been partly driven by three record-breaking heatwaves.

    Temperatures soared in southern Australia during late January and early February, contributing to the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria.

    A winter heatwave over most of the inland resulted in the warmest August on record, while another heatwave in November across central and south-east Australia saw a record eight consecutive days of maximum temperatures in Adelaide.

    “These broke records by large margins over large areas. Very, very extreme events,” Dr Jones said.

    “To get one of them in a year would have been unusual. To get three is just really quite remarkable.”

    Dr Jones says overall temperatures in the south-east were above average.

    “It turns out the Murray-Darling Basin, South Australia and New South Wales all recorded their warmest years on record,” he said.

    “But of course if you look at absolute temperatures some very notable numbers appeared.

    “We saw a 48.8C during February in Victoria on Black Saturday and also some very high temperatures in South Australia and WA [Western Australia] with many numbers close to 49, 48 degrees.”

    Dr Jones says some areas of the country are being affected more than others.

    “What we are finding for Australia is that the inland areas are warming most quickly as the planet heats up,” he said.

    “So areas such as western New South Wales, northern South Australia and so on are tending to warm about twice as fast as some of the coastal regions.”

     

    Rainfall and drought

     

    The overall Australian mean rainfall total for 2009 (based on preliminary data) was 453 millimetres, slightly below the long-term average.

    Dry conditions continued in the south-east and south-west of the country.

    There were several short-term floods in eastern parts – most notably in May when record rain fell in parts of Queensland and New South Wales.

    The year ended with further flooding in parts of New South Wales and Queensland.

    Dr Jones says there appears to be no correlation between the higher temperatures and rainfall.

    “This isn’t natural variability. In the past when we had droughts we tend to have warm temperatures and vice versa,” he said.

    “Australia as a whole has been getting warmer for about 50-60 years and it’s actually been tending to get wetter.

    “You see this paradox – the country, particularly in the north, it’s getting wetter but is also warming up.”