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  • Cores confirm C02 link with warming

    From Science Daily

    The first expedition, led by Heiko Pälike of the University of Southampton’s School of Ocean and Earth Science, based at the Centre, and Hiroshi Nishi (Sapporo, Japan), ended on 4 May after successfully coring over 3.5 km of the sediments and rocks from below the Pacific Ocean seafloor. A second expedition to the equatorial Pacific will depart Honolulu, Hawaii, on 9 May and will recover sediment cores from the seafloor at three more drilling locations.

    The entire scientific team is made up of 60 scientists from over 15 different countries and represents scientists at every stage of their career from graduate students to senior professors. Scientists, drillers, and technical staff participated in live interactive video conferences with enthused students and teachers who learned about the expedition’s discoveries, ocean drilling, and life at sea. The scientists supported by the UK are Heiko Pälike, Paul Wilson, Edgar Kirsty (National Oceanography Centre, Southampton), Paul Bown and Tom Dunkley Jones (University College London), and Peter Fitch (University of Leicester).

    The scientists are using mud and rocks from far below the equatorial Pacific Ocean floor to uncover details about the climate history on Earth. The sediment layers recovered from six drilling locations act like pages from a book, and record inch-by-inch Earth’s climate history. The two-month expedition succeeded in obtaining records ranging from the present to the warmest sustained ‘greenhouse’ period on Earth around 53 million years ago. At that time, alligators lived as far north as the Arctic, and palm trees grew in the Rocky Mountains. Reconstructions have shown that there were no significant polar ice caps, and greenhouse gas concentrations were several times higher than today.

    The super-greenhouse early Eocene was followed by gradual cooling and the sudden buildup of major ice caps on Antarctica around 34 million years ago, leaving its mark in the equatorial sediment cores that the scientists are bringing back to Hawaii. The voyage discovered the effect of large-scale climatic changes on the oceans of the past. 53 million years ago, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was much higher than today, and made the ocean much more acidic, such that only little carbonate is preserved in sediments recovered from those times. In contrast, during the buildup of ice on Antarctica, the ocean became less acidic very rapidly, and more carbonate was suddenly preserved in the deep ocean. The transition from warm to cool climates took place in less than 100,000 years – well within the time span that humans have been living on our planet.

    The onboard studies revealed that changes in ocean acidification, linked to climatic change, have a large and global impact on marine organisms. Co-Chief Scientist Heiko Pälike remarked: “It is truly awesome to see 53 million years of Earth’s history pulled up onto the drill ship’s deck, and then to pass through our hands and past our eyes. We saw the effects of Earth’s climate machine in action. Ocean drilling is the equivalent of the space programme to the Earth Sciences, and this truly international exploration would not have been possible without more than 40 years of scientific drilling research helping us find the best places to drill.”

    Because of the important role of the equatorial Pacific in climate processes, environmental changes are recorded by shells of microfossils the size of a pinhead that make up the sediments, which the international group of scientists have now brought from more than three miles below the sea surface onboard the unique scientific drilling vessel JOIDES Resolution.

    “We can use the microfossils and layers of this superb sediment archive as a ‘yardstick’ for measuring geological time. This will allow us to determine the rates of environmental change, such as the rapid first expansion of large ice-sheets in the Antarctic 33.8 million years ago,” said Expedition Co-Chief Scientist Hiroshi Nishi. “This polar process had a profound impact on phytoplankton even at the Equator. We managed to catch several records of this important climatic transition.”

    The JOIDES Resolution is a research vessel with unique capabilities for exploring and monitoring the sub-seafloor; it operates as part of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP). IODP is supported by the US National Science Foundation and Japan’s MEXT. Additional programme support comes from the European Consortium for Ocean Research Drilling (ECORD) to which the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) contributes. Other contributors are India (Ministry of Earth Sciences), the People’s Republic of China (Ministry of Science and Technology), the Republic of Korea (Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources), Australia and New Zealand. The JOIDES Resolution is now poised to help IODP continue to push the envelope of science by collecting unique sub-seafloor samples and data that would otherwise remain out of reach to researchers

  • Solid state battery powered by magnets

    From Science Daily

    The device created by University of Miami Physicist Stewart E. Barnes, of the College of Arts and Sciences and his collaborators can store energy in magnets rather than through chemical reactions. Like a winding up toy car, the spin battery is “wound up” by applying a large magnetic field — no chemistry involved. The device is potentially better than anything found so far, said Barnes.

    “We had anticipated the effect, but the device produced a voltage over a hundred times too big and for tens of minutes, rather than for milliseconds as we had expected,” Barnes said. “That this was counterintuitive is what lead to our theoretical understanding of what was really going on.”

    The secret behind this technology is the use of nano-magnets to induce an electromotive force. It uses the same principles as those in a conventional battery, except in a more direct fashion. The energy stored in a battery, be it in an iPod or an electric car, is in the form of chemical energy. When something is turned “on” there is a chemical reaction which occurs and produces an electric current. The new technology converts the magnetic energy directly into electrical energy, without a chemical reaction. The electrical current made in this process is called a spin polarized current and finds use in a new technology called “spintronics.”

    The new discovery advances our understanding of the way magnets work and its immediate application is to use the MTJs as electronic elements which work in different ways to conventional transistors. Although the actual device has a diameter about that of a human hair and cannot even light up an LED (light-emitting diode–a light source used as electronic component), the energy that might be stored in this way could potentially run a car for miles. The possibilities are endless, Barnes said.

    “There are magnets hidden away in many things, for example there are several in a mobile telephone, many in a car, and they are what keeps your refrigerator closed,” he said. “There are so many that even a small change in the way we understand of how they work, and which might lead to only a very small improvement in future machines, has a significant financial and energetic impact.”

  • New battery uses oxygen

    The research work, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), is being led by researchers at the University of St Andrews with partners at Strathclyde and Newcastle.

    Improved capacity is thanks to the addition of a component that uses oxygen drawn from the air during discharge, replacing one chemical constituent used in rechargeable batteries today. Not having to carry the chemicals around in the battery offers more energy for the same size battery. Reducing the size and weight of batteries with the necessary charge capacity has been a long-running battle for developers of electric cars.

    The STAIR (St Andrews Air) cell should be cheaper than today’s rechargeables too. The new component is made of porous carbon, which is far less expensive than the lithium cobalt oxide it replaces.

    This four-year research project, which reaches its halfway mark in July, builds on the discovery at the university that the carbon component’s interaction with air can be repeated, creating a cycle of charge and discharge. Subsequent work has more than tripled the capacity to store charge in the STAIR cell.

    Principal investigator on the project, Professor Peter Bruce of the Chemistry Department at the University of St Andrews, says: “Our target is to get a five to ten fold increase in storage capacity, which is beyond the horizon of current lithium batteries. Our results so far are very encouraging and have far exceeded our expectations.”

    “The key is to use oxygen in the air as a re-agent, rather than carry the necessary chemicals around inside the battery,” says Bruce.

    The oxygen, which will be drawn in through a surface of the battery exposed to air, reacts within the pores of the carbon to discharge the battery. “Not only is this part of the process free, the carbon component is much cheaper than current technology,” says Bruce. He estimates that it will be at least five years before the STAIR cell is commercially available.

    The project is focused on understanding more about how the chemical reaction of the battery works and investigating how to improve it. The research team is also working towards making a STAIR cell prototype suited, in the first instance, for small applications, such as mobile phones or MP3 players.

  • Obama leaves solar in the shade

    Here we are in May, with Obama’s first 100 days behind him and Congress assiduously debating his clean energy plan. The President’s plan includes three major components: global warming policy (cap and trade), a national requirement for utilities to produce a certain percentage of their power from renewables (Renewable Portfolio Standard), and much-needed improvements to our antiquated transmission system.

    Does this sweeping new plan include provisions to make solar energy, which currently accounts for 1/10th of one percent of our electricity supply, a substantial part of the nation’s energy mix?  The accurate answer is nuanced, but the short answer is no.

    Federal Renewable Electricity Standard (RES)

    The Obama Administration supports a policy requiring that 25 percent of our electricity demand be met by renewable energy by 2025.  In March, Representatives Waxman (D-30th CA) and Markey (D-7th MA) released their 600 page energy bill, which after weeks of negotiations contains a watered-down RES target of 20 percent standard by 2020, with up to 15 percent of electricity sales coming from renewable sources and 5 percent through efficiency.

    Senator Bingaman (D- NM), Chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources (E&NR) Committee, is working on a similar goal of 20 percent renewable by 2021, with energy efficiency also able to satisfy a quarter of that requirement. Bingaman’s RES proposal faces stiff opposition, with the real possibility of unanimous Republican opposition. As an indicator, Republican ranking member on the E&NR, Senator Murkowski (R-AK) is calling for a 15 percent goal that could be satisfied with nuclear energy, more hydroelectricity and unlimited use of efficiency measures. 

    Nearly any policy action that encourages more renewable energy is A-OK with us. We support the House and Senate’s federal RES goal, though significantly weakened, because it sets an important tone for the country and will directly lead to new wind and biomass development, all important steps on the path to a new clean energy future.  However, as currently written, none of the pending RES policies will deploy significant amounts of solar. According to the Department of Energy’s analysis of that 25 percent RES by 2025, which again is much stronger than the compromise goals emerging from Committees, the federal RES structure could lead to a 35 percent increase in solar compared to a 678 percent increase in wind.  When you’re starting at 0.001 percent, 35 percent growth doesn’t amount to much.

    Under the current RES proposals states would be able to buy and sell “renewable energy credits”(RECs) in a federal REC market.  In this marketplace, cheap wind from Montana could be sold by the Montana-Dakota Utility Company and bought by Southern Company to satisfy Georgia’s RES requirements.  As a result, renewable energy development will be greatly weighted toward more mature least-cost renewable energy options. That is good news for winning the votes of those worried about the near-term price tag, and it is great mechanism to bring wind and biomass to the grid.

    But by focusing entirely on the inputs, it doesn’t recognize the value of the results: solar energy production during day-time hours to supplement night-time wind generation, for example. Or the contribution of solar generation during the hours of the day when electricity costs are higher. Or the immense economic and job creation benefits of both distributed and central station solar. Solar that’s installed on rooftops and within the distribution grid also avoids costly investment in transmission and distribution system expansion and upgrades.  Not to mention that solar is the most abundant free source of energy available and the cost for both distributed and central-station solar generation is expected to drop significantly with higher levels of deployment. If we are serious about weaning our nation off fossil fuels and creating a stronger, more secure new energy economy, diversification of renewables will be crucial to maintaining a reliable electricity supply. 

    The Solar Energy Industries Association spent the last six months urging Congress to add solar specific provisions to the draft RES bills, namely a distributed generation carve-out to support rooftop solar, inclusion of solar hot water among the qualifying technologies and accomodations for utility-scale solar. The solar set-aside is a policy mechanism in use today in fifteen states, and one that has proven effective in kick-starting robust new solar markets.

    Instead, a “REC multiplier” for distributed generation is emerging as the favored solar mechanism in the federal bills under consideration.  With a three times multiplier, one megawatt  hour of distributed solar would be treated as three megawatts of wind, biomass, geothermal  or hydro in the REC market. If past experience at the state level proves anything (think Arizona and New Mexico), the multiplier will do little to encourage distributed solar as there’s still little incentive to invest in the early-market, higher-cost energy option.  Without a direct carve out to encourage this initial investment in distributed solar, it will take much longer to realize the economies of scale cost reductions projected for this valuable energy resource.  A further downside to credit multipliers is that they dilute the goal, an outcome that undermines the original intent of the policy. One megawatt counting as three reduces the total amount of renewable energy in the mix, an outcome that undermines the original intent of the policy.

    Climate Change Policy

    The Waxman-Markey energy bill also includes a carbon reduction plan.  The goal would be to set an “economy-wide” carbon limit and then auction or distribute carbon emissions credits, also referred to as allowances, equal to that limit. Through trading of the credits, and gradual tightening of the overall cap, the plan aims to reduce total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and 85 percent below 2005 levels by 2050.  

    The climate plan in the Waxman-Markey Discussion Draft is the result of years of negotiations and vetting. More than 300 people have testified at over 40 days of hearings in the E&C Committee alone on this plan over the past two Congresses. Even with all of the coalition building of the last decade, Waxman faces a serious challenge just to move the bill out of the E&C Committee. If the skeptics are wrong and this plan passes through Committee and becomes law, will it help deploy solar?  Unlikely.

    Much like the RES, the carbon cap and trade will encourage short-term, least-cost implementation mechanisms, ignoring the other tremendous benefits solar offers.

    In his carbon plan, Obama originally called for auctioning all emissions allowances. Carbon-intensive industries would be required to pay for their original allotment of carbon credits, and the government would use the auction revenues to develop low-carbon alternatives. However, legislators looking for votes understand that a compromise on that position is necessary. Sponsors of the Waxman-Markey legislation appear to have settled on a deal that would give away as much as 59 percent of the credits for free: 44 percent for the local distribution companies that service the electric and natural gas utility industries, and 15 percent for heavy industries deemed especially vulnerable to international trade.  Only15 percent of the emissions allowances would be auctioned, with the proceeds going to compensate the public for higher energy costs.

    If there is an auction of any allowances by the time the bill is passed into law, the solar community is asking that 5 percent of the auction proceeds be set-aside into a solar technology deployment fund. It remains to be seen whether this provision will be contained in the Waxman-Markey draft. But one thing is certain, giving credits away for free means fewer federal dollars to be invested in efficiency, transmission and renewable energy programs.  

    The role that solar and renewable energy generation plays in the new carbon market also remains in question. Solar advocates assert that solar generators, whether roof-top solar owners or large-scale concentrating solar power plants, should either receive some portion of the carbon credits allotted, or the overall cap should be lowered to account for renewable energy projects.

    Both options are designed to ensure real reduction in overall GHG levels from investment in solar generation. Unless we account for renewable energy generation when implementing the program, carbon-emitting generators could meet their requirements by taking credit for emission reductions from renewable energy projects that are already developed. A situation that amounts to zero progress on carbon reduction.  The latest Waxman-Markey bill would in fact allocate some allowances to states for investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency.

    Transmission

    There are around 7,000 MW of large-scale solar projects under contract in the U.S. today, mostly in the American southwest.  One of the most significant barriers facing these projects is access to available and affordable transmission capacity; the infrastructure that moves those valuable clean electrons to the communities where they are needed.

    The current system for planning, siting, permitting and funding transmission development was designed for the 20th century electric industry; although some might argue it is best suited for the 1800s. This model assumes a relatively limited number of centralized, dispatchable power plants delivering electricity within a utility’s service territory.  Solar and other renewables need a 21st century solution for transmission that looks beyond state borders to support the nation’s renewable energy goals.

    Both the Senate and the House of Representatives are currently considering several bills — including Senator Bingaman’s transmission bill  and Representative Inslee’s bill — that address these issues of transmission planning, siting and cost recovery.  All of the bills establish some level of oversight for planning and permitting by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), with varying degrees of state or regional responsibility. This federal oversight should help the country develop the most cost-effective and reliable national transmission system possible as quickly as possible, and will help tap the massive potential for central station solar farms by linking the areas with the best generating potential to load.

    Another solar-friendly element included in many of the bills directly addresses the challenge of cost. Who pays for these critical lifelines of our new energy future? Well, all electric consumers benefit from increased renewables in the general energy mix — for everything from increased energy security, to stabilizing the cost for electricity, to mitigating the impacts of global climate change. Therefore the cost of new transmission should rightfully be spread across all ratepayers in what’s known as “interconnection-wide cost recovery.”

    There are many important details still being debated in the proposed transmission legislation. How much, if any, non-renewable energy should be allowed to use the new transmission superhighway? Which agencies should be designated as lead for environmental review? The devil is in the details, and once the energy bill is passed, the real work will begin. Implementation will no doubt bring a new set of challenges, but it’s an exciting first step on the road to a new grid capable of incorporating solar into our national energy mix at an entirely new scale.

    Conclusion

    While transmission reform will likely lead to more central station solar development, we remain skeptical that current versions of either the RES or a carbon cap and trade policy will lead to significant solar deployment.  The pending bill has proven that a new, cleaner energy future is a national priority.  That in itself is progress. But a “sweeping” federal energy bill that fails to deploy a portfolio of renewable energy options is an underwhelming outcome, ill-equipped to help us meet the challenges at hand.

    However, there is a silver lining. States, the traditional hot-spots of solar progress, are not waiting for the federal government to solve our energy challenges. Policies that unleash solar’s many economic and environmental benefits — solar carve-outs within RES’s, net metering, interconnection, fair utility rates, sales and property tax abatements and exemptions — are passing at the state level.  While all signs indicate that this federal energy bill will set a floor for solar energy deployment, we expect to see pioneering work from states and cities as they continue to raise the ceiling.

    Annie Carmichael and Jim Baak are part of the Vote Solar Initiative. Carmichael is the director of federal solar policy and Baak is the director of utility-scale solar policy.

  • Largest biochar research project in Australia’s history

    Smaller-scale biochar research projects have already been funded by the Government, including through Richmond Landcare in NSW.

    “There is no single solution to climate change and we are investigating a wide range of measures which could help prepare Australia for the future,” Mr Burke said.

    “Hopefully this project will shed much more light on how biochar works – its potential, how to use it safely and any drawbacks.

    “We know that some biochars can be bad for plant growth and the wrong biochar with the wrong soil can cause toxic byproducts.

    “Research is key – and we believe the findings from this project will be important in global discussions on how biochar can be used in agriculture.”

    CSIRO Director of the Agricultural Sustainability Initiative Dr Brian Keating welcomed the funding.

    “The CSIRO is pleased to coordinate this important national project for Australian agriculture,” he said.

    “This project builds significantly on current research within the CSIRO and our research partners.

    “It will define the potential contribution that biochar production and application can make to productivity and carbon management in Australian agriculture.”

    The Climate Change Research Program is part of Australia’s Farming Future, the Government’s major climate change research program for our primary industries.

  • Pearson at odds with city greenies

    Pearson at odds with city greenies

    COMMENT: Tony Koch | May 23, 2009

    Article from:  The Australian

    A VISITOR strolling through the Brisbane CBD any weekday will almost certainly be confronted by an earnest-looking university-age youth handing out glossy pamphlets that tell how the Australian Wilderness Society is caring for Aborigines by “protecting their wild rivers”.

    The attendant donations tin is then shaken, and the brochures with their website referral seek funds to continue this version of God’s work.

    But the earnest-looking youth, like the Wilderness Society and the Queensland Government, cannot enunciate what imminent danger exists, for which they are providing this “protection” through never-ending solicitation for funds.

    The AWS website claims Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson is “pro-development” and therefore should be ignored, offering instead its opinion, which is formed not from actual living experiences on Cape York but from the al fresco tables in Brisbane’s West End.

    The Queensland Government and the AWS have struck this cosy “wild rivers” deal to lock up green preferences at elections. It involves the Bligh Government “declaring” certain rivers “wild”, giving them legislative protection from mining, cattle raising and any other type of development.

    The problem is that the land in Cape York is not the Bligh Government’s to trade away for green votes, thereby giving control to environmental groups who live thousands of kilometres away.

    Pearson and the vast majority of indigenous leaders on Cape York object strongly to being the pawns in this cheap political charade. Their main issue is that white people are again meddling in the lives of black Australians without being asked.

    They point out that the rivers of Cape York are pristine because of Aboriginal ownership, and they will stay that way without any “protection” from the AWS.

    Pearson was brought up on an alcohol-free mission run by the Lutheran Church, where he received a good education and lived in a violence-free home where his father each morning pulled his boots on and went to work.

    That simple scenario is all he wants for Aboriginal people today.

    But, he points out, any chance of Cape York Aborigines developing sustainable businesses in the future are being dashed by unwelcome controls such as those wielded by the AWS with the blessing of the Bligh Government.

    Pearson and the other Aboriginal leaders who fought for decades to get ownership of their land must wonder what those hard-earned court decisions really mean, when a government can just trade them off to curry favour with interfering green groups.