Lexicon: Single & Dual Axis Solar Trackers

photo: Concentrix Solar

Nevermind Single or Dual Axis varieties, what are solar trackers?

In the broadest sense solar trackers move the solar panel so that it is position as close to optimum as possible in relation to the angle of the sun, across seasons and time of day. Compared to just laying a panel flat, correct positioning can boost the panels output by up to 15%, but by using a motorized tracker gains due to efficiency of between 27-40% can be achieved.

Currently, there exist two types: Single Axis and Dual Axis. Single axis trackers move on one axis over the course of the day, following the sun; doing so can boost output by about one-third. Dual axis trackers on the other hand move both east and west but also vertically; this can increase output by 35-40% as compared to a flat panel.

Single-axis tracking is one of the most straightforward ways to improve the potential performance and economics of a commercial solar installation. By using relatively simple equipment, considerably more performance can be expected. Tracking system manufacturer RayTracker, for example, says its systems have been proven to improve energy yield over fixed angle modules by up to 23% and over flat modules by 38%.

Manufacturers of the simpler, single-axis devices have claimed that the additional net energy yield delivered by a dual-axis system over a single-axis system is frequently lost as a result of additional installation, permitting and on-going maintenance costs. And, such systems are at greater risk of failure, having more moving parts than a single-axis tracker. Furthermore, single-axis trackers tend to have a lower profile, sometimes half the height of dual-axis trackers, and are therefore more likely to receive planning permits.

The Copenhagen Call

At the World Business Summit on Climate Change, the latest of the climate change meetings going on in Copenhagen in the run-up to the COP15 UN Climate Change Conference, global business leaders have issued what has been dubbed as the Copenhagen Call – a six-point statement of what they believe is required to create an effective new global climate change treaty. The points are stated and elaborated below

1. Agreement on science-based greenhouse gas stabilization path with 2020 and 2050 emission reduction targets

We support the scientific evidence of the IPCC’s 4th. We are concerned that some recent scientific evidence suggests the problem may be worse than many of the IPCC estimates.

An effective global climate treaty must establish an ambitious goal and set emission targets that protect us and future generations from the risks of climate destabilization. Limiting the global average temperature increase to a maximum of 2°C compared to pre-industrial levels would entail abatement of around 17Gt versus business-as-usual by 2020.

This will require an immediate and substantial change in the current global greenhouse gases emission trend: it must peak and begin to reduce within the next decade. Longer-term targets must be informed by the evolving science, but the IPCC’s 4th Assessment Report indicates that global emissions must fall by at least half of 1990 levels by 2050.

We believe that working to reduce emissions now is less costly than delaying our efforts. There is nothing to be gained through delay. The deepest reductions should initially be made by developed economies though global emissions reduction will require all nations to play a part.

Emissions reduction at this scale will profoundly affect business, and business is already taking action to drive down greenhouse gas emissions. We are ready to make those changes and support ambitious political decisions to address the climate challenge wherever we operate. If policies are well designed and implemented, the benefits of early action will outweigh the short-term adjustment costs. This early action can only be achieved by setting an ambitious 2020 target.

2. Effective measurement, reporting and verification of emissions

Achieving and tracking greenhouse gas emissions reduction is vital to measuring convergence towards the objectives of an effective climate treaty. As businesses we can set an example by contributing to a unified, coherent and reliable measurement, reporting and verification discipline leading to mandatory reporting. Accounting for the emissions we are responsible for will provide the basis for emissions reduction beyond what may be required by regulation and allow our performance to be properly judged and rewarded by investors and the public.

3. Incentives for a dramatic increase in financing low emission technologies

To promote effective, efficient, equitable and ambitious action to address climate change the world will need to mobilize the scale of investment necessary to achieve the emissions reduction required. Properly established, an international carbon market framed around ambitious reduction targets can enable both cost-effective abatement and create the carbon price stability to drive the deployment of technologies that will deliver large-scale emissions reductions.

The first steps to establishing a global market will be to enable linkage between national and regional carbon markets. An international agreement will help secure investor confidence in the carbon market, and national actions will help generate new financial flows for climate investment.

The new climate treaty must “push” the development of new technologies through the use of public funds to leverage private finance in early stage demonstration and deployment. This will require policy measures that create clear, predictable, long-term incentives to stimulate private investment and enable the global diffusion of capital and technology.

4. Deployment of existing low emission technologies and the development of new ones

The private sector is already the source of over two-thirds of the world’s investments in clean technology innovation, and is the most effective source of know-how and technology dissemination and transfer. Many low-technologies already exist and can significantly reduce global emissions. Significant emissions reduction can be achieved through energy efficiency, much of it with positive financial returns. Standards and regulations are the best way to achieve this. A new treaty must support deployment of low-carbon solutions by encouraging incentives for public and private purchasers to choose the lowest emissions infrastructure and technologies and for investors to account for climate risk in their decisions.

Government and business must work together to ensure that all nations have equitable access to new clean energy technologies and other innovations by, among others, working with developing countries to improve the infrastructure required for effective deployment.

An effective global climate treaty must provide the means to fund research, development and the deployment of new clean energy technologies. Pricing can help “pull” these technologies through the innovation chain, generate revenue and enhance the flow of investment to developing countries. Governments should strive to end the current perverse subsidies that favour high-emissions transport and energy infrastructure and promote deforestation.

A shift to a low-carbon economy, supported by private sector participation and government, has the potential to drive the next generation of technological innovation, address the environmental and economic challenges that climate change presents, and contribute to global development.

5. Funds to make communities more resilient and able to adapt to the effects of climate change

We recognize that adaptation is as important as mitigation in an effective global climate treaty. Adaptation planning will require a holistic and long-term planning perspective, which will require different levels of activity at the international, national and local levels. Businesses will be responsible for building much of the infrastructure needed to protect us from climate impacts. An effective global climate treaty will mobilize funding that supports public private partnerships to enhance development, adaptive capacity, climate resilience and management of risk.

6. Innovative means to protect forests and balance the carbon cycle

Because a significant proportion of the CO2 reduction required by 2020 comes from the sequestration of carbon in forests and agriculture lands, an effective climate treaty must facilitate such sequestration. If emissions reductions targets are to be met, there is an immediate need to protect forests and enhance carbon sequestration. The private sector can play an important role in reducing deforestation, particularly in developing countries, through mechanisms structured to value conservation.

We believe these elements should form the core of the international climate change treaty agreed at Copenhagen. As business leaders we stand ready to innovate and operate within the framework established through that treaty and national policies.

Reducing the emissions that until now have been so linked to our economic growth and betterment will be an enormous, unprecedented global challenge but will also provide significant opportunities for sustainable growth, development and innovation. Acting together, we owe it to future generations to meet this challenge. Now is the time to create the foundations for long term, low carbon prosperity. We are willing to work with government to do so.

For more information, the Call itself, transcripts of the special address by Cate Blanchett and opening address by Ban Ki-Moon, do visit the Copenhagen Climate Council’s website.

Breakthrough Design Uses Electrical Towers to Harvest Wind Power

The winners of this year’s Next Generation design competition have unearthed an idea that’s brilliant in its simplicity: retrofitting wind turbines onto already existing electrical towers. The project, aptly called Wind-It, would have wind turbines built on pylons and towers along high voltage lines across the US, sparing the need to build entirely new structures on private or government land while generating as much as a megawatt of power per tower.

The concept is the brainchild of French designers/architects Nicola Delon and Julien Choppin, and Raphaël Ménard, an engineer.

Wind-it answers one of the greatest challenges to the development of wind power: where to site wind turbines. Choppin, Delon and Menard’s design uses existing infrastructure – the towers and pylons that dot the more than 157,000 miles of high voltage power lines in the U.S. – to locate their turbines, which can be stacked within already sited structures. Moreover, Wind-it solves the problem of linking energy generation and electricity transmission in the same way – by co-locating them.

- Metropolis

Wind-it XL calls for new and taller pylons. The design is most promising for developing regions and can generate as much as one megawatt of power for each pylon.

Wind-it L loads eggbeater turbines onto the core of existing towers in medium- and high-voltage grids.

Wind-it retrofits low- and medium- voltage pylons for a nominal one ten kilowatts of power.

Here are the artist impressions

Here’s how the retrofit would look on a standard transmission line.

“The genius of the proposal is that it solved probably the biggest issue of wind production, which is where to locate these very large structures. By incorporating them into transmission towers, which are already located and of the same scale as wind towers, the idea of how it looks on the landscape is very cleverly integrated.”

- Alexandros Washburn, NY Chief Urban Designer and Next Generation Judge

Australia: The Politics of Environment – A Brief Round-Up

Kudos to Warren McLaren, Sydney for writing this great article for treehugger.com

They say “a week is a long time in politics.” And this was my first thought when Matthew asked me, a month ago, to consider a round-up of business and politics events from Australia.

It may be a large sunburnt land blessed with many natural assets, but the so called Lucky Country might be using up some of its nine lives, if recent events are anything to go by. Some of the worst weather since records began suggest the climate is a changing. And not just atmospherically, politically as well. Not only are international icons like the Great Barrier Reef at risk via climate change, so are one of the oldestindigenous peoples on the planet. So what should a country, which can claim the dubious distinction of being the world’s highest emitters of carbon dioxide per capita, do to improve it’s environmental footprint? We peek at a smattering of the issues below.

Renewable Energy Feed-In Tariffs

Photo: Peak Energy

Australia has a bit of reputation for being world class innovators, but lousy entrepreneurs. We can problem solve with great flair, but we’re not particular brilliant at bringing products to market, oftentimes selling the new technology to someone else to commercialise. This has been our experience with solar. As a staffer at one of our leading photovoltaic research universities recently told me, “We make engineers, we don’t make solar panels.”

So Australia has the technology. In many cases we invented it. We certainly have the sun. But we have just lacked the political and commercial will to forge this country into the solar dynamo it should be. One of Australia’s leading suppliers of renewable energy, Energy Matters, put its bluntly. Germany, “ … while having half the sunshine of Australia, have 200 times the solar production capacity of our country …” And they put this down to Germany having a generous feed-in tariff program.

A feed-in tariff is where the owner of a a grid connected renewable energy system, like solar, is paid a premium (usually greater than the retail price of electricity) for the energy they feed into the grid (that their electricity utility can on-sell to other users.) There are two basic types of tariffs, net and gross. Net is only paid for any energy supplied to the grid that is greater than what was used. For example, if the system generated 12 units of power, but also drew down on the grid for 10 units, then the tariff would only be paid for the 2 units that were in surplus. With a Gross Feed-In Tariff (FIT) the premium is paid for the full 12 units.

Australia has no national feed-in tariff, with some of the states only just implementing their own disparate versions in the past couple of years. At the time of writing, the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) had the most generous solar program. In this our tiniest self governing region, they offer, to those of their 340,000 residents who have grid-connected photovoltaic systems, just over 50 cents AUD (38c USD) per kilowatt hour, for up to 10kw of solar capacity. This is roughly four times the retail price of electricity, depending on the plan an ACT customer is on. The program went live for residential solar systems in March 2009.

However, according to the recently announced Western Australian budget, the ACT has been trumped by a more generous feed-in tariff of 60 cents AUD (45c USD) per kilowatt hour. This high premium will only be open to those customers who also sign up for 100% GreenPower for the energy they purchase. With these rates it has been calculated by the WA Sustainable Energy Association that a solar system could be paid off in nine years. (Most solar panels are designed to function for 20-25 years.) The most populous Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) is currently deliberating on what form of feed-in tariff it will legislate. A result is expected by June 2009. The rest of country has a mish mash of tariff, but there remains a push for a national gross feed-in tariff of 80c /kWh.

Solar Power Adoption

Photo: PV-Tech

The feed-in tariff argument has recently reached prominence, due the success that Germany and Spain have had in rolling out photovoltaic systems. But it has not been the only influencing factoring in the slow adoption of solar technologies in Australia. Being a long way from anywhere has meant panels have been expensive to import. And with a relatively small population, (only 57% that of California!) sparsely spread around the country, they have tricky to produce locally, given high wages and small economies of scale. BP Solar, the only on-shore producer of PV panels announced in December 2008 they would close their Sydney plant to concentrate on production out of Asia.

In the face of such pricing pressures, various Australian federal and state governments have, over the years, rolled out different rebates for solar panel purchases. Initially these were to assist people in remote areas, but more recently with utilities embracing grid-connect systems, rebates for photovoltaics became more pervasive. In general the federal government will pay $8,000 towards the cost of 1 kW residential solar installations. In the 2008 budget the government announced the $8,000 rebate would ‘means tested’ and only available to those households with a combined income of less than $100,000. This sent a tremor of fear through the Australian solar industry. However, they need not have worried as, inexplicably, installation applications increased in such demand that rebate processing times about doubled.

It may have been that the political debate over the changes alerted more people to the fact that rebates were available, or maybe the announcement raised concerns that the rebate was being reviewed and interested parties needed to get in quick while it was still on offer. If the latter, then their instincts were spot on, for change was coming. For as of 30 June 2009 the $8,000 is gone, replaced by a new Solar Credits scheme.

Under this new process, there is no direct cash rebate, but tradable renewable energy credits (RECs) will allocated on a sliding scale of points, depending of the carbon reduction efficiency of the installed system. RECs are already in place for the likes of solar hot water rebates, but with the new Solar Credits program their value will beartificially increased five fold.

This process has drawn flak from many quarters. Some believe it means polluters, like coal-fired power stations, buying the exchangable credits on the market, will be purchasing much cheaper credits to allow them to continue their carbon dioxide emissions,negating the efforts of the homeowner to reduce CO2 output . In pure economic terms, the RECs will not, in many instances, reward the residential householder as much as the current lump sum $8,000 rebate.

Couple these rebate changes, with the aforementioned move to gross feed-in tariffs and with the newly emerging business model of communities, co-ops and businesses bulk buying panels and inverters to bring the price down even further, and you have a mad rush of residential solar installations.

Renewable Energy Targets

Photo: Wind in the Bush

All of which goes to help the government inch closer (sounds better than ‘centimetre closer’) to their stated aim of 20% renewable energy by 2020. Back in April of this year the federal and state governments under the umbrella of the Council of Australian Governments’ (COAG) agreed to expand the existing Mandatory Renewable Energy Target (MRET) to this goal. In reality this means that nationally Australia will strive for a legislated target of 45,000 gigawatt-hours by 2020. More than four times larger than the present MRET.

This won’t just come from solar, but also the likes of wind, biomass and geothermal (aka “hot rocks”). But on the solar side of things, the government of Kevin Rudd, just this weekend past detailed one the ways the federal government will be contributing to this target.

It plans under its Clean Energy Initiative to build four solar plants, which in aggregate will amount to “largest solar energy project in the world.” As the Australian newspaper understands the Solar Flagships proposal, there will be almost $1.4 billion AUD invested in two solar thermal, and two solar photovoltaic stations with a combined output of 1000MW coming on stream by 2015.

Other government initiatives like Solar Schools and Solar Cities will also contribute towards the national MRET. As will wind power, although rolling out wind farms tends to more problematic when the NIMBY (not in my back yard) element comes into play.

Geothermal energy holds great promise as water is flushed into deep holes in the earth’s crust, to be heated by hot rocks and returning to the surface as steam, to drive turbines. Although feasible to the point it is said it could provide for all of Australia’s energy needs, it is currently experiencing some technical teething issues. But not everyone will need to make a contribution, like the big polluters, known as ”emissions-intensive, trade-exposed industry”, who’ll be largely exempt.
In the federal Budget just announced last week the government said they would invest $465 million to establish Renewables Australia to support this sort of leading edge research and make it commercial.

Emission Trading Scheme (ETS)

Photo: AAP / Dean Lewins from the ABC

However Australian governments aren’t having the good news stories all flow their way.

The federal Rudd Government have come under concentrated attack from green groups, and particularly the national Greens poltical party, for their 2009 budget announcement, that they’ll be funding so called ‘clean coal’ to the turn of $2.4 billion AUD, most of which will be directed a Carbon Capture and Storage Flagships program. That’s $0.4 billion more than the Solar Flagships program.

And the Victorian government has been chastised for its feed-in tariff, which will be a net system, not gross and be eligible for only up to 3.2 kW energy systems (the ACT’s is 10 kW) and will be a credit on their electricity bill, not a payment.

On the much bigger picture is the federal government’s emission trading scheme, or as they prefer to call it, the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. Many believe that the Labor party was successful at the 2007 election, in part because they promised to sign the Kyoto Protocol and actually do something about climate change, unlike the previous government.

Professor Ross Garnaut, was employed to inform the Australian government on the economic impact of global warming to the country. Part of his recommendations included the establishment of an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). (The US has been talking around a similar idea, but using the terminology ‘cap and trade.’ In short, enterprises who want increase their emissions beyond an allowance (or cap), set by the government need to buy (trade) credits from businesses who emit less greenhouse gases.

Anyhow. acting on the Garnaut report, the government developed their version of an ETS. But up until recently they have had no joy getting anyone to like it. Malcolm Turnbull, the leader of the federal opposition party, the Liberal/National Coalition was right when he said, “It’s literally completely friendless.” Environmentalists and The Greens felt it was wishy washy, because it only strove to reduce emissions by 5% and gave a heap of ‘get out of jail’ free cards to the big emitters. The influential mining industry (Australia is the world’s largest exporter or coal) obviously are not keen on any legislation that impedes business opportunities. It was so universally disliked that it did not pass through the parliament. It didn’t look like anything was going to be place by the election promised date of 2010.

Then at the start of May 2009 the government reneged, coming out with a revised plan. They were now moving it back to 2011 and implementing a raft of compromises, like a new low price for carbon — $10 a tonne — and yet more free permits for large polluting industries. Yet these changes enabled them to drop their bombshell (the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, had repeatedly stated that “It would be reckless and irresponsible for our economy and for our environment,” to delay the introduction of an emissions trading scheme), supported on the day, by the Business Council of Australia, the Australian Industry Group, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and mainstream enviro groups like the Australian Conservation Foundation, the Climate Institute and the World Wildlife Fund.

One of the concessions was that Australia would move to a 25% Greenhouse Gas reduction by by 2020. Which on the surface sounded great. But devil is always in the detail. This cut would only occur if a comprehensive global agreement on emissions reduction can be signed in Copenhagen in December 2009. Of course, the Greens are incensed at what they see as ‘smoke and mirrors.’ But the government wants some sort of scheme passed by parliament, so it can attend the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen with at least something in its pocket, as a bargaining chip.

And There’s More?

Photo: Warren McLaren / INOV8

With all this talk of emissions trading and solar programs one could be forgiven in thinking there weren’t other environment issues stalking the corridors of Australian political office. Let’s briefly touch on just a few.

As previously noted here the state governments couldn’t agree on national campaign to rid shops and waterways of the dreaded plastic shopping bag, so South Australia went it alone. (As they many years ago, being the only state to have Container Deposit Legislation, placing a redeemable deposit on all beverage containers.)

The food bowl of Australia is the catchment of two major river, the so-called Murray-Darling basin; it is, as Reuters points out, “as large as France and Germany combined, accounts for 41 percent of Australia’s agriculture and provides A$21 billion ($13.54 billion) worth of farm exports to Asia and the Middle East. Around 70 percent of irrigated agriculture comes from the basin. And whether due to the worst drought in over a century, or the early onset of climate change the region is under some pretty severe stress.

“The drought has already wiped more than A$20 billion from the $1 trillion economy since 2002. It is the worst in 117 years of record-keeping, with 80 percent of eucalyptus trees already dead or stressed in the Murray-Darling region.”

It’s not just ecosystems at imminent risk of devastation. If the current dry conditions continue, as they are forecast to, then the South Australian capital of Adelaide may run out of water within two years. Other states have offered to sent drinking water for the city of over 1 million people, but they too draw upon the Murray river, which only has 18% of its capacity at the moment. The federal government has given the The Murray-Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) $50 million to buy back some of the seven billion litres of water from water licence holders along the catchment, who are willing to sell.

The devastating bushfires in the state of Victoria, which claimed around 170 lives and 2,000 homes, are another aspect of Australia’s dry climate. There are claims that not enough fuel reduction burns were undertaken preceding the fires, though the bush and forest is the reason many of the people live in those locations in the first place. Others believe that with the ongoing drought, there are not enough safe days in the year to undertake the scale of reduction burns needed. A Royal Commission is presently underway to determine the factors that contributed to the most deadly natural disaster in Australian history.

Before the Commission convened and on behalf of more than 13,000 firefighters and support staff, the National Secretary of United Firefighters Union of Australia sent an open letter to the Australian Prime Minister and Victorian Premie. It said, in part:

“Something is going on. As we battle blazes here in Victoria, firefighters are busy rescuing people from floods in Queensland. Without a massive turnaround in policies, aside from the tragic loss of life and property, we will be asking firefighters to put themselves at an unacceptable risk. Firefighters know that it is better to prevent an emergency than to have to rescue people from it, and we urge state and federal governments to follow scientific advice and keep firefighters and the community safe by halving the country’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.”

And how about this one: The ABC reports that “Tasmania’s Department of Environment, Parks, Heritage and the Arts will be shut down to help cover a looming budget black hole.”

But there is some good news. A massive amount of environmental rebates available from state and national government to help householders, landlords, schools and community groups. These cover ceiling insulation; rainwater tanks (with added incentives if these are connected up to washing machines and flushing toilets); solar hot water systems; energy and water efficient washing machines; compost bins; drip water gardening systems; grey water systems, green loans, and more.

And we have to stop there. For next week there’ll be a whole new set of challenges and opportunities confronting our elected representatives.

US Department of Energy: $786 Million for Biofuels Research & Commercialization

photo: Steve Jurvetson via flickr

The latest allocation of funds from the stimulus bill by the Department of Energy has been announced. This time it’s for biofuels and in the amount of $786.5 million. Here’s where it’s all going:

$480 Million for Integrated Pilot- and Demonstration-Scale Facilities

Projects selected under this Funding Opportunity Announcement will work to validate integrated biorefinery technologies that produce advanced biofuels, bioproducts, and heat and power in an integrated system, thus enabling private financing of commercial-scale replications.

DOE anticipates making 10 to 20 awards for refineries at various scales and designs, all to be operational in the next three years.  The DOE funding ceiling is $25 million for pilot-scale projects and $50 million for demonstration scale projects.

These integrated biorefineries will reduce dependence on petroleum-based transportation fuels and chemicals. They will also facilitate the development of an “advanced biofuels” industry to meet the federal Renewable Fuel Standards.

$176.5 Million for Commercial-Scale Biorefinery Projects

$176.5 million will be used to increase the federal funding ceiling on two or more demonstration- or commercial-scale biorefinery projects that were selected and awarded within the last two years.

The goal of these efforts is to reduce the risk of the development and deployment of these first-of-a-kind operations. These funds are expected to expedite the construction phase of these projects and ultimately accelerate the timeline for start up and commissioning.

$110 Million for Fundamental Research
This allocation will be further divided as follows,

Expand the resources available for sustainability research through the Office of Science Bioenergy Research Centers and establish a user-facility/small-scale integrated pilot plant ($25 million).

Create an advanced research consortium to develop technologies and facilitate subsequent demonstration of infrastructure-compatible biofuels through a competitive solicitation ($35 million).

Create an algal biofuels consortium to accelerate demonstration of algal biofuels through a competitive solicitation ($50 million).

$20 Million for Ethanol Research

The Biomass Program is planning to use $20 million of the Recovery Act funding in a competitive solicitation to achieve the following:

• Optimize flex-fuel vehicles operating on high octane E85 fuel (85 percent ethanol, 15 percent gasoline blend).
• Evaluate the impact of higher ethanol blends in conventional vehicles
• Upgrade existing refueling infrastructure to be compatible with fuels up to E85.

More: Department of Energy – Recovery and Reinvestment

Texas Wind Farm Uses NASA Radar to Prevent Bird Deaths

Photo Credit: Chrishna via flickr

What do you do if you build a wind farm smack dab in the middle of a major bird migration route? A radar system that’s designed to shut down the entire thing when it detects a mass of birds on the way has been installed at the 202 MW Peñascal Wind Farm in Texas.

System Detects Birds Approaching Four Miles Away
The system uses radar originally developed for NASA and the US Air Force to detect birds as far as four miles away, The Guardian reports. When it picks up the approaching birds, it analyzes the existing weather conditions and determines in real time whether those birds are in danger of flying into the blades. The system then automatically restarts the turbines when the birds have passed.

During Inclement Weather Birds May Fly Lower
The reason that the system takes into account the weather is that in ordinary conditions the migratory birds—at peaks times which can number 4,000 an hour—pass well over the wind farm, flying thousands of feet up. But when the weather turns nasty, the birds, which typically fly at night, can become disoriented. The risk which the radar system attempts to minimize is that when they’re disoriented the birds will lose altitude and crash into the turbines.

Buildings & Cats More Threat to Birds Than Turbines
It’s estimated that about 7,000 birds are killed annually in the US by wind turbines (and that in some areas bats are more in danger than birds), but all told that’s a far lower number than are killed by birds simply flying into buildings or are killed by your neighbor’s cat.

via: The Guardian

Wind Power
Offshore Wind Power in Great Lakes Touted as Untapped Resource
Common Eco-Myth: Wind Turbines Kill Birds
Cool Interactive US Wind, Solar & Biomass Power Potential map Released by NRDC

World’s Largest Solar Tower Now Powers 10,000 Homes

Photo via Abengoa

The world’s largest solar power tower just began operating outside Seville, Spain—and it marks a historic moment in the saga of renewable energy. The solar tower PS20, seen above right next to its smaller sister PS10, produced even more power than expected over the course of its trial testing. It’s been confirmed that the groundbreaking solar tower generates 20 megawatts of electricity: and it’s now powering 10,000 homes with renewable energy.

The tower, built and operated by Abengoa Solar, is one of the more innovative examples of solar technology. Though we’ve seen similar solar towers before, we’ve never seen it executed on such a scale.

How the World’s Largest Solar Tower Works
Here’s how it works, according to Abengoa:

PS20 consists of a solar field made up of 1,255 mirrored heliostats designed by Abengoa Solar. Each heliostat, with a surface area of 1,291 square feet, reflects the solar radiation it receives onto the receiver, located on the top of a 531 feet-high tower , producing steam which is converted into electricity generation by a turbine.

As for the energy benefits? Well, of course there are many: by Abengoa’s calculations, the plant will prevent over 12,000 tons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere. And combined with PS10, which generates 10 megawatts of power, both stations combined are a renewable energy force to be reckoned with.

This is yet another sign that the renewable energy revolution is ramping up—Spain has long been a leader in alternative power, and this is yet another clean energy victory. But what’s even more encouraging is that Abengoa Solar now has a presence in 70 countries around the world—will we be seeing massive solar power towers springing up all over?

Sun-Powered Self-Healing Plastic – The End of Scratched Gadgets?

Image via Ars Technica, Credit: Marek Urban/Science

Two clever scientists from the University of Southern Mississippi have developed a plastic that can utilize UV rays to heal scratches. Think of the way skin mends itself when cut, except imagine that being the surface of your cell phone or iPod.

The science behind it is summed up very well by Ars Technica:

At the core of their design is polyurethane, which is an elastic polymer that already has decent scratch resistance. To enhance its ability to withstand mechanical damage, Ghosh and Urban added two more components, OXE and CHI. OXE has an unstable chemical structure (a four-membered ring containing three carbons and one oxygen) that makes it prone to being split open. CHI is UV sensitive.The idea is that, if the polyurethane gets damaged by a scratch, the unstable ring structure of OXE will open to create two reactive ends. Then, UV light can trigger CHI to form new links with the reactive ends of OXE and thereby fix the break in the polymer.

When tested out with a 120 W fluorescent UV lamp (just slightly stronger than natural sunlight), scratches created by the scientists were healed to the point of being negligible within just a half an hour. It is reminiscent of the self-healing paint we heard about a few years ago.

This kind of development could hold great potential for us as consumers of plastic, helping to create plastic products that last far longer and that stay polished looking so we aren’t so quick to buy something new just because our current product looks unattractive.

Before it goes to market, a few things need to be sorted out, such as the shelf life and if the area of a healed scratch can be scratched and healed a second time. We also want to know things like the safety and recyclability of the polymer. But should this get worked out, it could mean longer lives for products, and hopefully a smaller waste stream.

Via Ars Technica via Science

Thermal Photovoltaics Breakthrough Boasts Theoretical Efficiency of 85%

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Theoretical Efficiency of 85%!
Thermal photovoltaics has been around since the 1960s, but it never produced enough power to compete with solar thermal using steam turbines, or more traditional photovoltaic solar panels. However, recent breakthroughs at MTPV Corp. (which stands for Micron-Gap Thermal Photovoltaics, the name of the technology they’re using) supposedly deliver “an order of magnitude” more power than regular thermal photovoltaics.

What’s the difference between conventional solar panel and photovoltaics from thermal photovoltaic systems?

A conventional solar panel absorbs light from the entire spectrum, but it only converts certain colors efficiently. Much of the energy in the other wavelengths of light goes to waste. As a result, the maximum theoretical efficiency of a conventional solar cell is 30 percent, or 41 percent if the sunlight is first concentrated using a mirror or lens. In a thermal photovoltaic system, light is concentrated onto a material to heat it up. The material is selected so that when it gets hot, it emits light at wavelengths that a solar cell can convert efficiently.As a result, the theoretical maximum efficiency of a thermal photovoltaic system is 85 percent.

-Technology Review

Using “micron-gaps” between the heated part and the photovoltaic part (instead of the traditional bigger gaps), they claim to have increased the flow of photons to the solar panel by 10 times compared to traditional TPV technology, which not only makes the whole thing less expensive (coupled with the fact that 1/10 as much solar-cell material as traditional TPV is used), but also lowers its working temperature significantly.

The 85% efficiency theoretical figure mentioned above is of course very hard to reach, but MTPV’s computer models show that 50% efficiency should be possible. So far the company has reached 10 to 15%, which is similar to many other solar panels on the market (not bad). With a bit more progress (it probably hasn’t been getting much R&D effort compared to silicon and thin film solar cells), this technology could become a big player in the solar power world.

Via Technology Review, MTPV

New Battery Technology Improves MacBook Pro Battery Life by 60%

Source: “New Battery Technology Improves MacBook Pro Battery Life by 60%“, treehugger.com, Jaymi Heimbuch, 6th Jan 2009

Photo via Gizmodo

New battery technology in the 17″ MacBook Pro was shown off at MacWorld today, which lays claim to a battery life improvement of 60%. The new battery can last up to 8 hours on a charge, and can be charged 1,000 times, equivalent to about 5 years. It’s also recyclable at the end of it’s life. But there are even more green features to this new technology.

Apple made a block of batteries, rather than the usual cylindrical cells that end up wasting space. The newly utilized space allows the notebook to have a 40% bigger battery, without making the notebook bigger. The problem, of course, is that you have to take the notebook apart if you want to replace the battery. 

But the upside is that it will last three times longer than the industry standard. The trick for making it last longer is using a chip within the battery that communicates with each cell to make adjustments to the current for each cell. This means a maximized battery life.

With it lasting so much longer, and being recyclable at the end of it’s life, that alone is enough to get Dell to hush up a bit. But additionally, Apple has a take-back program for the batteries, making recycling even easier, and it is EPEAT Gold, arsenic, BFR, mercury, PVC free, and touts 34% smaller packaging.

Via Gizmodo Live Blogging at MacWorld

More on Apple
Apple’s Mac Brick Rumors and the Environmental Impact
Apple Recycles iPods, Computers, All Brands of Cell Phones
New Apple Macbook & Macbook Pro has Greener Energy Saver Icon
Steve Jobs: New Apple Nano iPods to be Greener

EU Wants to End Conventional Incandescent Lightbulbs

 

 

Improvements to conventional bulbs reached a limit 50 years ago

A European Union report has recommended banning conventional incandescent light bulbs by 2012 to save energy and cut down on greenhouse gas emissions.

 

Most light bulbs sold in the EU are of the type developed by Thomas Edison in 1879.

But the report says the EU could save up to $12bn (£8bn) a year in energy bills by switching to low-energy bulbs.

The report needs the backing of the European parliament and all 27 member states to become law.

“It’s very clear that this is a measure that will change the way that we consume energy,” EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs told journalists.

Phase out

Once approved, the EU would phase out conventional bulbs between September 2009 and September 2012.

 

Consumers will choose between long-life fluorescent bulbs or halogen lamps.

The EU says the measure will save households up to 50 euros ($64, £43) a year and pump up to 10bn euros ($13bn) into the economy.

“European homes will keep the same quality of  lighting while saving energy, CO2 and money.” Andrea Piebalgs, EU Energy Commissioner 

The new-style lamps carry energy savings of 25% to 75% compared to traditional incandescent bulbs, which are little changed since they were invented almost 130 years ago.

The report also says the switch will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 12 million tonnes a year, and save energy equivalent to the consumption of 11 million European households.

Mr Piebalgs said that the phasing out had to be gradual so that “production facilities could adapt to the new lighting” and the quality of illumination could be ensured.

“European homes will keep the same quality of lighting, while saving energy, CO2 and money,” he said.

Several nations including Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the Philippines have already announced they will phase out or restrict sales of traditional bulbs.

Source: BBC News, “EU wants end to old-style bulbs”, 8th Dec 2008

Using Space Lasers to Measure Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide

Image via ESA – AOES Medialab

By 2016, we just might have space lasers measuring the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and telling us whether or not (or how quickly and for how long) we’re melting the planet.

The Advanced Space Carbon and Climate Observation of Planet Earth – or A-SCOPE for short – is one of six possible missions to be considered for a feasibility study, which could lead to a 2016 launch timeframe for the mission.

The idea is to understand more about how carbon dioxide moves between atmosphere, land and ocean in order to improve how we calculate the impact the greenhouse gas has on the earth, and therefore improve estimates on what we can do about it. In order to accomplish this, the project aims to do something really interesting:

The proposed measuring technique involves two short laser pulses being emitted at two adjacent wavelengths. This results in carbon dioxide being absorbed at one of the wavelengths but not by the other, which serves as a reference. The comparison of the reflected signals from both wavelengths yields the total column concentration of carbon dioxide. This novel approach implies that the return signal depends on the reflectance properties of the area of ground illuminated by the laser.

There is still a lot of footwork to do for this project, but if it is chosen, it could represent a novel way of analyzing carbon dioxide on earth – though it might be long due The work they’re doing also is expected to help out scientists working on laser technology in general.

Other Earth Explorer future missions under consideration include BIOMASS – to take global measurements of forest biomass; CoReH2O – to make detailed observations of key snow, ice and water cycle characteristics; FLEX – to observe global photosynthesis through the measurement of fluorescence; PREMIER – to understand atmospheric processes linking trace gases, radiation, chemistry and climate; and TRAQ – to monitor air quality and long-range transport of air pollutants.

Via Science Daily

More on Measuring Carbon Dioxide
Research Shows that Research Contributes to Global Warming
Venting Our (Carbon Dioxide) Problems into Space
350: The Most Important Number of Your Lifetime

Apple’s Green Thing

There is much to improve on. Keep up the good work, Apple.

ASUS Gets First Ever EU Eco Flower Award

 

Photo via ASUS

ASUS, in addition to getting its N series notebooks ranked EPEAT Gold, has earned the first ever EU Flower Eco Award for computers for that very same notebook series.

While the name is rather, well, flowery, the award is not. It’s a really big deal they achieved it and makes a big green-hued statement to the rest of the computing world.

ASUS has been a quiet leader for some time in environmental sustainability in the computer world. That is recognized by its earning one of the industry’s toughest awards, and being the company that made the world’s first computers to earn it.

With the awarding of EU Flower certification to the N50, N80, N20, and N10 notebooks, ASUS notebooks have secured a spot in history as the world’s first computers to be conferred the prestigious award. Underscoring the magnitude of this achievement is the fact that 15,000,000 computers are sold in Europe each year, and ASUS N Series notebooks are the first to obtain EU Flower certification.

The award criteria includes energy savings, hazardous substances, product design, user instructions, packaging, labeling, noise, lifetime extension, and Takeback programs. A computer has to be all-around green to even rank for the EU Flower award – one of the highest rated and strictest standards for computing in the world.

Go, go Green ASUS!

Via Press Release

More on ASUS:
Buy Green: Laptop and Notebook Computers
ASUS N Series Notebooks Finally Make EPEAT Gold
Asus Bamboo Computer Arrives. Verdict: Feh
Green Geek Opportunity: Intel, ASUS Open Community for User-Created Dream PCs

20 MW Solar Tower Project: Just the Beginning

Source: “20MW Solar Tower Project: Just the Beginning”, www.treehugger.com, Science & Technology, Sami Grover, 24th Nov 2008

Spanish Concentrated Solar Thermal Plants Set to Grow Exponentially 
Viva España! No sooner does Kimberley post on a solar electric project in a Spanish cemetery that we also read over at The Guardian about the expanding ambitions ofSpain’s solar tower developers. As our readers will know from our previous posts onsolar towers, they are an innovative form of renewable energy that uses giant mirrors to focus sunlight onto a central steam-powered turbine – and they have the potential to produce massive amounts of clean, renewable energy. Not only is a 20MW plant, known as PS20, going to be inaugurated in the desert outside Seville in January, but developers are eventually looking to expand to 300MW of capacity. And that’s just the beginning, as the Guardian report explains:

Spanish firms are charging ahead with CSP: more than 50 solar projects around Spain have been approved for construction by the government and, by 2015, the country will generate more than 2GW of power from CSP, comfortably exceeding current national targets. The companies are also exporting their technology to Morocco, Algeria and the US.”CSP is at the very beginning of a big boom,” said José Luis García, at Greenpeace in Spain. “Spain is in a good position to develop and implement the technology. We have the sun so we are in the best position to lead in this field.”

 

The Guardian

USGBC and Sen. Hillary Clinton Offer Energy Saving Solutions for Schools Via Upcoming “Webinar” (Web Seminar) Series

 

Source: “USGBC and Sen. Clinton Offer Energy Saving Solutions for Schools via Upcoming Webinar Series”, treehugger.com, Business & Politics, Kenny Luna, 11th Nov 2008

If you’re as interested in seeing our schools cutting energy costs and their total carbon footprint as Sen. Clinton and the United States Green Building Council are then there’s no doubt you’ll want to get involved with their upcoming series of webinars aimed to help schools across the country get a better idea of just how valuable some simple investments in green infrastructure can be.

Of course, a sneak TH preview of just what’s in store for those who participate is right after the fold…

As they’re set to feature a wide range of solutions, ranging from the “no cost” like controlling classroom thermostats and putting someone in charge of the common areas to “low cost” like coming up with a vacation energy shutdown plan and installing 365 day time clocks for outside lighting.

With the next scheduled event coming up on Wednesday, December 3, 2008 – 1:00pm – 2:30pm EST and titled “Top 10 Low-Cost Ways to Lower Your School’s Utility Bills” to be followed on Wednesday, January 21, 2009 – 1:00pm – 2:30pm EST with their “Top 10 Investments to Lower Your School’s Utility Bills”.

To register head on over to www.usgbc.org/webinars and find out more great ways that you can get involved making our nations schools a greener place to learn.
Via: USGBC

More on Green Schools and the USGBC
Economic Crunch Hits Schools Efforts to Go Green

Students Protest Lack of LEED

My Bottom Line is Green: McCain v. Obama on Renewable Energy

 

Source: “My Bottom Line is Green: McCain v. Obama on Renewable Energy”, treehugger.com, Business & Politics, Matthew McDermott, 17th Sept 2008

In politics everyone has their bottom line issue: The issue for them which is the ultimate deciding factor when comparing candidates running for office. For me, and I suspect many TreeHugger readers, that issue is the environment.

In that spirit, over the next couple of weeks I’m going to be presenting a series of posts comparing the proposed policies of Barack Obama and John McCain, mostly in their own words and with my take on them at the end. Many people have already made up their minds, but for those who haven’t I hope this comparison proves useful. Renewable Energy is up first:

Before we get into the heart of this everyone needs to keep in mind that both candidates undoubtedly place energy policy high on their list of priorities, which is a good thing. How each prioritizes the co-joined issues of energy independence and greening our energy mix, not to mention the best way to go about doing each, vary considerably.

John McCain on Renewable Energy

The first thing about the McCain renewable energy policy in the official campaign literature is that any reference to it occurs after mentioning expanding domestic oil and natural gas production, after expanding nuclear power, and after mention of clean coal—all of which will be tackled in future posts—and when he does get around to talking about renewable energy it is in fairly general terms:

“Even-handed” System of Tax Credits to Promote Renewables

According to the Department of Energy, wind could provide as much as one-fifth of electricity by 2030. The U.S. solar energy industry continued its double-digit annual growth rate in 2006. To develop these and other sources of renewable energy will require that we rationalize the current patchwork of temporary tax credits that provide commercial feasibility. John McCain believes in an even-handed system of tax credits that will remain in place until the market transforms sufficiently to the point where renewable energy no longer merits the taxpayers’ dollars. (McCain-Palin 2008)

 

Biofuels Show Promise
On biofuels, McCain’s official position is similarly succinct:

…Alcohol-based fuels hold great promise as an alternative to gasoline and as a means of expanding consumer choices. Some choices such as ethanol are on the market right now. The second generation of alcohol-based fuels like cellulosic ethanol, which won’t compete with food crops, are showing great potential.(McCain-Palin 2008)

 

No Federal Renewable Portfolio Standard
In regards to any mandatory federal Renewable Portfolio Standard, McCain has indicated that he would prefer the market to decide the best solution and states to set standards as they deem appropriate:

As a strong supporter of a greenhouse gas cap and trade system, I believe that such an approach is a better way to diversify and cleanup up the nation’s energy mix by harnessing the power of market forces. I believe that government’s role is to set appropriate standards to protect the environment and allow the market to determine the best means of achieving them. To the extent that state and local policymakers identify useful ways to augment this architecture, I believe that governors, mayors, county supervisors, public utility commission and other authorities can better tailor such policies to local conditions and resources. (‘08 On The Record)

 

When asked recently by Science Debate 2008 how government should support renewable energy he said:

Government must be an ally but not an arbiter. [...] I’ve voted against the current patchwork of tax credits for renewable power because they were temporary, and often the result of who had the best lobbyist instead of who had the best ideas. But the objective itself was right and urgent. [...] We will reform the effort so that it is fair, rational and permanent, letting the market decide which ideas can move us toward clean and renewable energy.

 

In a broader perspective , The League of Conservation Voters has given John McCain’s lifetime environmental voting record a score of 24 out of 100, adding that he has repeated “rejected even the weakest renewable energy programs.”

Sarah Palin’s Position on Renewable Energy
There’s no doubt that Sarah Palin speaks out far more about expanding production of fossil fuels than on the benefits of renewable energy and her now oft-cited quote,“alternative energy solutions are far from imminent and would require more than 10 years to develop” (The Post & Courier), does little to promote any other viewpoint.

That said, last year she did add her name to a letter to the Senate Committee on Agriculture which isn’t so hostile towards, and frankly ignorant about, renewable energy:

If the nation is to pursue energy independence, we must look beyond traditional biofuels production. [...] Local production of renewable biomass energy benefits the national economy, promotes national and regional energy security and stimulates the rural economy through the creation of high quality jobs. Encouraging such production will require increased federal investment in programs that support cellulosic biofuels research, increased biodiesel production and use, increases in wind and solar energy and energy from animal wastes, improvements in energy efficiency, bio-based product development, effective carbon storage, and other renewable technologies. (On The Issues 2008)

Barack Obama on Renewable Energy

Low Carbon Fuel Standard
In addition to the 25% by 2025 Renewable Portfolio Standard mentioned above, Obama would:

Establish a National Low Carbon Fuel Standard to speed the introduction of low-carbon non-petroleum fuels. The standard requires fuel suppliers in 2010 to begin to reduce the carbon of their fuels by 5% within 5 years and 10% within 10 years. The Obama plan will incentivize increased private sector investment in advanced low-carbon fuels and has a sustainability provision to ensure that increased biofuel production does not come at the expense of environmental conservation. (Barack Obama and Joe Biden)

 

Food Versus Fuel
On May 4th of this year on Meet the Press Obama weighed in on the food versus fuel debate. He was asked whether he would consider changing the current ethanol subsidy program:

We’ve got rising food prices here in the US. In other countries we’re seeing riots because of the lack of food supplies. So this is something that we’re going to have to deal with. [...] My top priority is making sure that people are able to get enough to eat. And if it turns out that we’ve got to make changes in our ethanol policy to help people get something to eat, then that’s got to be the step we take. But I also believe that ethanol has been a important transitional tool for us to start dealing with our long-term energy crisis ultimately. Over time we’re going to shift to cellulosic ethanol, where we’re not using food stocks but we’re using wood chips & prairie grass.

 

The League of Conservation Voters has given Obama’s lifetime environmental voting record a score of 96 out of 100.

How Does Joe Biden Play Into This?
According to the LCV, Joe Biden has a lifetime environmental voting record score of 84, which compares to a Senate average of 52. When asked about a federal Renewable Portfolio Standard by LCV he said,

I support setting a national renewable fuel standard of 20% to increase the use of renewable fuels. We should have a national policy that encourages the development of clean, renewable energy and we should invest in developing renewable energy technology. The US should be a world leader not only in using renewable energy but also in developing and exporting renewable technology to the rest of the world.

Barack Obama’s position on renewable energy is well publicized in his campaign documents. He has promised to invest $150 billion over 10 years in renewable energy technologies; he has said that by 2030 he will require at least 60 billion gallons of advanced biofuels be incorporated into the national fuel mix; by 2025 Obama would require that 25% of the US electricity supply be generated from “clean, sustainable energy sources, like solar, wind and geothermal; and he would extend the federal production tax credit for five years to assist in making this happen.

To my knowledge, he’s not offered any definitive plan as to how US developed technology will be exported to the rest of the world—is he referring to technology transfer to developing countries or just the normal trade that already goes on?—but either way it’s good to see this mentioned.

McCain & Obama Head to Head

Obama supports strong national policies promoting renewable energy, including a strong Renewable Portfolio Standard; McCain would leave many such decisions to the states and has expressed no support for a national RPS. Obama has a clear position on how long renewable energy tax credits would be extended; McCain only states that an “even-handed system” is needed until renewable energy no longer needs support. Both candidates support biofuels, and seem to have gotten the message that first generation biofuels aren’t quite the thing we thought they were, but here too Obama’s position is more detailed and clear. In terms of running-mates, Joe Biden is far more articulate on the issue of renewable energy than Sarah Palin and is clearly a supporter; whereas Palin is ambivalent at best and at worst simply doesn’t get it.McCain Talks Renewable Energy But Clearly Prioritizes Other Energy Sources
Overall though, I think the starkest contrast between the campaigns is that the McCain platform clearly prioritizes increasing domestic fossil fuel production and expansion of nuclear power over renewable energy. It is somewhat supportive of renewables in its rhetoric—though it seems as though he thinks the current renewable energy tax credits are some sort of command economy lite, which they simply aren’t—but this is secondary to the issue of increasing energy independence.

Obama Places Renewables on More Even Footing
The Obama campaign clearly envisions renewable energy occupying a greater portion of the United States’ energy supply in a shorter time period than does the McCain campaign. While it too mentions nuclear and the oxymoronic clean coal these are prioritized far differently than in the McCain campaign. Obama has clearly expressed that the federal government should take the lead in promoting renewable energy, again a stark difference. While it may not be perfect—$150 billion over ten years is an genuine increase in government investment in renewables, but it is a small fraction of overall investment that is needed—the Obama position on renewable energy is simply stronger.

2008 US Presidential Elections
John McCain on Amtrak
John McCain’s Bear Problem
“Drill Baby Drill” Screams Punctuate McCain’s Energy Policy in Acceptance Speech
Economic Advantages of Green Energy Take Precedence Over Environmental Benefits in Obama Acceptance Speech
What Green Words Are Obama and McCain Really Saying? Ask SpeechWars
Offshore Oil Drilling Will Still Not Lower Gasoline Prices: Barack Obama and Legislative Compromise

Singapore’s First “Clean Coal” Power Plant to be Built

TUAS Power, the third-largest power generator here, plans to build a $2 billion steam and electricity production plant.

It will be the first plant here to run on clean coal and biomass, ensuring the efficient and non-polluting use of coal to power industries on Jurong Island.

Given the nod by the National Environment Agency, construction of the Tembusu Multi-Utilities Complex will start soon, Tuas Power said yesterday.

The company believes if the plant proves successful, it could pave the way for greater use here of clean coal combined with other fuel sources.

Hastening this change: soaring global oil and gas prices.

Tuas Power said the new complex will start operating in 2011, to supply steam, chilled water and electricity, and treat industrial waste for up to 10 petrochemical companies on Jurong Island.

The plant will be powered by 80 per cent low-ash, low-sulphur coal and 20 per cent biomass, which is waste woodchips and palm kernel shells. Coal is the world’s most abundant fuel but is controversial for its high carbon emissions.

Tuas Power plans to keep emission levels down with the latest biomass and clean coal boiler technology from Japan. Biomass is a renewable, zero-emissions energy source.

‘Overall, we are able to produce one unit of energy at a more competitive cost,’ said Tuas Power president and CEO Lim Kong Puay.

It will translate into cost savings of about 10 per cent of a factory’s utilities bill compared to energy generated by a gas-fired plant, he told The Straits Times.

With the plant, clean coal will contribute 15 per cent to Tuas Power’s revenue by 2012. It is now wholly reliant on gas.

‘The approach we are taking is to incorporate very efficient energy processes and renewable biomass to minimise the impact on the environment,’ said Mr Lim.

Its diversification into other fuel sources was welcomed by the Energy Market Authority (EMA), which said in a statement yesterday the move would ’serve as a hedge against rising oil prices’.

Currently, about 80 per cent of Singapore’s electricity is generated from natural gas, the cleanest available fossil fuel, and the rest from oil.

However, the EMA stressed the Government is not about to allow the use of coal for power generation ’solely or on a large scale’ any time soon.

This stems from its decision two years ago to import liquefied natural gas (LNG) and build an LNG terminal, to diversify Singapore’s sources of natural gas.

‘We will not allow any entry of coal to adversely affect and jeopardise the viability of the LNG project,’ it said.

Apart from moving into new fuel sources, Tuas Power is the first of the big three power-generating companies (gencos) to offer utilities beyond just electricity. These multi-utilities would include steam or chilled water power.

Tuas Power is expanding beyond its core business of electricity production after being acquired earlier this year by China Huaneng, China’s largest coal-fuelled power producer.

Last week, the Singapore genco won a contract to supply multi-utilities to Finnish company Neste Oil Corp’s $1.2 billion plant which produces renewable diesel.

Mr Lim believes his company has the ‘core skills’ to go into multi-utilities as ‘the production of electricity involves the production of steam as well as very high-grade water for boilers’.

The integrated supply of different utilities to clients is expected to contribute about 30 per cent of Tuas Power’s total revenue by 2012.

 

Green features

# No exposure of coal to the environment: Coal from neighbouring countries is transported in covered barges, unloaded through fully enclosed conveyors and stored in covered silos.

# Biomass clean coal boilers: This technology allows combustion to take place at lower temperatures, keeping emissions to a minimum.

# Total carbon emissions are around 400g per kilowatt of power, which is lower than the 700g per kilowatt emitted by an oil-fired power plant.

# Filters have been installed to ensure particulate matter emitted meets National Environment Agency requirements. Ash generated will be reused in the plant.

# High-energy efficiency: 70 per cent of energy fed into the plant can be turned into useful energy in the form of steam and electricity. This is comparable to the 40 to 50 per cent efficiency of steam or gas-fired power plants. 

Source:

“Tuas Power to build $2b ‘clean’ plant”, The Straits Times, Clarissa Oon (clare@sph.com.sg), 26th Sept 2008

Greener fuel for Jurong Island
 

 

High oil prices are pushing Singapore power suppliers to embrace more efficient energy generation technologies, in order to help industries cut costs.

Tuas Power, for one, is investing $2 billion to build a state-of-the-art complex on Jurong Island featuring three different plants, which will provide cogeneration, desalination and waste water treatment to corporate clients located there.

The Tembusu Multi-Utilities Complex will be the first such facility in Singapore to use biomass and clean coal technology.

The biomass burnt will be comprise mostly waste woodchips and palm kernel shells, which will be sourced both locally and from neighbouring countries.

Tuas Power said this will make energy cheaper by as much as 10 per cent for petrochemical firms on Jurong Island.

Mr Lim Kong Puay, chief executive of Tuas Power, said: “The efficient use of the cogeneration technology coupled with biomass and clean coalallows us to achieve savings, and this saving will be passed on to our industrial consumers.”

The new technology uses 20 per cent biomass and 80 per cent coal to produce steam and electricity.

As a result, system efficiency can reach as high as 70 per cent, 30 per cent more than an oil-powered plant.

Some residual energy will also be produced, half of which will be channelled back into the plant for internal consumption, while the rest will be exported to the national grid.

It is also expected to reduce carbon emissions by roughly20 per cent compared to a coal-fired plant.

Mr Lim said: “By providing centralised multi-utility services, we are able to offer competitive solutions, and this provides an attraction for investors to Jurong Island.”

Construction for the complex will start next year and it is expected to start operations by 2011.

Currently, Tuas Power has a market share of 24 per cent of the power generation market in Singapore.

Source:

“Greener fuel for Jurong Island”, Today Online, 26th Sept 2008

Intel Launches Less-Toxic Halogen-Free Xeon CPUs

Halogen-Free CPUs
Chip-maker Intel has announced that is has started shipping four halogen-free Xeon processors (series 5200 and 5400). The chips are functionally the same as the previous versions, and they are drop-in compatible.

What’s Wrong With Halogens?
Halogens might not sound that bad because we’re familiar with the word (all those lamps), but the Halogen family includes fluorine, chlorine, bromine, iodine, and astatine. “Halogens are highly reactive, and as such can be harmful or lethal to biological organisms in sufficient quantities.” Now, we’re not saying that your CPU is dangerous to you (don’t try too eat it, though), but over the manufacturing of millions of them, it adds up to a lot of halogens. Removing them will no doubt make electronics recycling safer.

Availability
From Intel’s release:

A number of systems vendors are supporting these new processors including Asus, Dell, Fujitsu, Fujitsu-Siemens, Gigabyte, HP, IBM, Microstar, NEC, Quanta, Rackable Systems Inc., Sun Microsystems, Supermicro, Tyan and Verari Systems. The new 5400 series processors are available now, while the X5270 will be available this fall.

We hope that this means that Intel will transition its whole line of chips soon, and since Intel is the 800 lbs gorilla in its industry, competitors will probably follow its lead.

Via Intel

Other Green Initiatives by Intel
Intel’s Next CPU To Include Dedicated ‘Power Control Unit’ to Save Power
Intel Shows Wireless Electricity System at IDF
TH Interview: More on Intel’s Renewable Energy Purchase
Intel: Now Largest Purchaser of Green Power in U.S.

Source:

“Intel Launches Less Toxic Halogen-Free Xeon CPUs”, treehugger.com. Science & Technology, Michael Graham Richard, 12th Sept 2008

 

Incredible Sahara Forest Project to Generate Fresh Water, Solar Power and Crops – A Collaboration between CSP & Seawater Greenhouses

Can you imagine being able to produce enough water in the Sahara to grow crops there? Can you imagine harnessing sufficient quantities of solar power to supply electricity to cities in Africa and cities in Europe? Can you imagine producing a sustainable bio-fuel that doesn’t impact on world food supplies? Charlie Paton,Michael Pawlyn and Bill Watts can and what’s more they can imagine all these happening in the same place at the same time.

This week this trio of visionaries launched the Sahara Forest Project: their proposal to combine two innovative technologies, Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) and Seawater Greenhouses, to produce renewable energy, water and food in an area of desert known to be one of the hottest places on earth.

Multitasking renewable solutions
It has often been said that there will be no one solution to solving the climate crisis and all those issues that surround it, such as energy sources, food prices and water supply. We need a portfolio of technologies to help us to combat these advancing problems. The Sahara Forest Project is one of the first projects we’ve seen that proposes not only to combine technologies to optimise performance and production, but also aims to tackle all of the serious challenges mentioned above. It is a bold and ambitious plan that, if realised, could have a powerful positive impact not only for the Sahara region, but also for Europe and the rest of the world.

Positive Collaboration
The most exciting aspect of the Sahara Forest Project is not specifically the use of these technologies. We’ve read about Seawater Greenhouses and Concentrated Solar Power and how they’re being used to great effect. It is the fact that they are being used together in the same place, to support each other and optimize their operating capacities to produce energy and water and by proxy vegetation.

This sense of collaboration is echoed in the team of people behind the proposal: an inventor – Charlie Paton, creator of the Seawater Greenhouse; an architect – Michael Pawlyn of Exploration Architecture, previously of Grimshaw and the lead architect on the iconic Eden Project; an engineer – Bill Watts of Max Fordham & Partners, an engineering firm that focuses on energy efficient systems for the built environment. These three men have brought their considerable expertise together to create a truly innovative proposal.

Illustration of greenhouses having a similar effect on the climate as a region of forest, yet providing a net input of water vapour from the sea.

What does a Seawater Greenhouse do?
The Seawater Greenhouse was designed to address the problem of irrigating crops in arid coastal regions by evaporating seawater and condensing it into fresh water. This helps to reverse the trend of desertification created by normal industrial greenhouses, which can use up to five times more water to irrigate crops than the respective region’s average annual rainfall. The system works by mimicking the natural hydrological cycle where seawater heated by the sun, evaporates, cools down to form clouds and returns to the earth as rain, fog or dew.

What does Concentrated Solar Power do?
CSP is currently seen as one of the most exciting and powerful ways of harnessing the sun’s energy to create power. Like the Seawater Greenhouse, CSP works well in hot arid areas where the sun is at its most powerful. The sun’s rays, collected through reflecting mirrors, are used to heat water which then produces steam to power turbines. Examples currently working are Nevada Solar 1 near Las Vegas, and the solar tower in Barstow California. It has been proposed that the energy created by CSP in the Sahara could be transported to Europe with minimal loss via high voltage DC power lines.

Sketch showing long ‘hedge’ of Seawater Greenhouses oriented towards the wind.Photo of Solar Power Tower in Barstow, California

How will the Sahara Forest Project work?
These CSP / Seawater Greenhouse technologies will work together at a location some distance from the north coast of Africa, hopefully at a point below sea level which will reduce or potentially eliminate the costs of pumping seawater. The scheme has been designed as a ‘hedge’ of greenhouses providing a windbreak and shelter for the outdoor planting. CSP arrays will be placed at intervals along the greenhouse ‘hedge’. The greenhouses produce five time more fresh water than needed for the plants inside. This surplus will be used to irrigate the planted orchards and the Jatrophra crop, which can be turned into bio-fuel for transportation and other needs.

Commercial Synergies
The Sahara Forest Project team tell us that the innovative interaction between the two technologies helps each to function more efficiently:

1.CSP systems need water for cleaning the mirrors and for the generation of steam to drive the turbines which the greenhouses can provide.

2.The Greenhouse evaporators make very efficient dust traps (as do plants that are growing outside) which benefits the CSP since the mirrors stay cleaner and therefore operate more 
efficiently.

3. In solar thermal power plants, only about 25% of the collected solar energy is converted into electricity. If combined with sea water another 50% of the collected energy, normally released as heat, can be used for desalination. This way, up to 85% of the collected solar energy can be used.

In conclusion the Sahara Forest Project works on many levels. By combining the benefits of Concentrated Solar Power and Seawater Greenhouses the design team has vastly scaled up the positive outputs of renewable energy, food production and fresh water supply. Furthermore they tell us that “the scheme would also have the restorative effect of returning areas of desert to forested land and sequestering substantial quantities of atmospheric carbon in new plant growth and reactivated soils.” Surely this is a perfect example of the potential power of human and technological collaboration.

:: Seawater Greenhouse
:: Exploration Architecture
:: Max Fordham & Partners

More on Concentrated Solar Power:
Solar Energy in the Sahara to Power Europe Gains Support 
Solar Thermal Power in North-Africa: How Much Land to Power the World?
Switched On: 15,000 Homes Powered By Nevada Solar One 
1000 Suns From Huge Concentrating Dish
Abengoa Solar to Build World’s Largest Solar Plant in Arizona

Source:

“Incredible Sahara Forest Project to Generate Fresh Water, Solar Power and Crops in African Desert”, treehugger.com, Design & Architecture, Leonora Oppenheim, 2nd Sept 2008

New Gravity-Mapping, Climate Predicting Satellite set to launch from Russia

 

Despite the major improvements made in satellite technology and modeling over the past few years, predicting future climate change remains a tricky matter. Taking into account the often conflicting reams of data provided by researchers and monitoring technologies results in the creation of imperfect models that inevitably fail to accurately represent all aspects of the changing climate.

It is in the hope of tackling this vexing problem that scientists from the European Space Agency (ESA) are preparing to launch the Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE), which will help improve measurements of the Earth’s gravitational field and, in turn, improve predictions about climate change. The satellite will help climate scientists arrive at a more accurate picture of the ocean currents, The Guardian’s James Randerson reports, by comparing their surface shape with the fluctuations in the planet’s gravitational field.

Image from the ESA

GOCE, which will remain in orbit for around 20 months, will complete a map of the Earth’s gravitational field once every 70 days; it will orbit from pole to pole at an altitude of 160 miles — low by most satellites’ standards, but necessary for it to precisely record the minute changes in gravity that regularly occur.

To measure these tiny variations, GOCE is equipped with 3 pairs of ultra-sensitive accelerometers arranged in 3-D. Their particular arrangement allows them to respond to the planet’s gravitational acceleration differently and, in so doing, simultaneously measure 6 unique, but complementary, components of its gravity field.

The “Formula 1″ of spacecrafts (that’s what the ESA is calling it), GOCE will become the most advanced gravity space mission to data when it launches next month. Here’s a brief snippet explaining how GOCE works from the ESA’s latest press release:

Over its lifetime of about 20 months, GOCE will map these global variations in the gravity field with extreme detail and accuracy. This will result in a unique model of the geoid, which is the surface of equal gravitational potential defined by the gravity field – crucial for deriving accurate measurements of ocean circulation and sea-level change, both of which are affected by climate change. GOCE-derived data is also much needed to understand more about processes occurring inside the Earth and for use in practical applications such as surveying and levelling.Since the gravitational signal is stronger closer to Earth, the ‘arrow-like’, five-metre long GOCE satellite has been designed to cut through of what remains of the Earth’s atmosphere at just 250 km above the surface of the planet. This low-orbiting spacecraft is the first mission to employ the concept of gradiometry – the measurement of acceleration differences over short distances between an ensemble of proof masses inside the satellite.

 

Via ::Climateer Investing: New Satellite to Predict Future Climate Change (blog) and::The Daily Galaxy: New Satellite to Predict Future Climate Change (blog)

More about satellites
::Satellite Images Reveal Two of Greenland’s Biggest Glaciers Are Losing More Ice
::Brazil to Develop Satellite to Monitor Deforestation, Urban Expansion
::NASA Satellite Could Make Floating Ocean Wind Farms Possible

Source:

“New gravity-mapping, climate-predicting satellite set to launch from Russia”, treehugger.com, Science & Technology, Jeremy Elton Jacquot, 12th Sept 2008

Obama’s Energy Plan

 

Many of you have probably seen, heard or read about Barack Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in Denver last night. For those who haven’t seen it and who have 45 minutes to spare, a video of the entire speech is embedded above. However for those with less time on their hands, here are the relevant portions in regards to what Mr Obama has said in regards to energy policy. 

Environmental and climate change policy were not mentioned.The fact that these are absent from this speech is slightly disconcerting, but if pushing forward the economic benefits of renewable energy is what it takes to convince more people of its virtues (and the end result is lowered greenhouse gas emissions), then I won’t begrudge Barack for not mentioning them in this venue.

Ending Oil Dependency

And for the sake of our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, I will set a clear goal as president: In 10 years, we will finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East. We will do this. 

Washington — Washington has been talking about our oil addiction for the last 30 years. And, by the way, John McCain has been there for 26 of them. And in that time, he has said no to higher fuel-efficiency standards for cars, no to investments in renewable energy, no to renewable fuels.And today, we import triple the amount of oil than we had on the day that Senator McCain took office.

Now is the time to end this addiction and to understand that drilling is a stop-gap measure, not a long-term solution, not even close.

 

It probably goes without saying that better fuel efficiency standards, more investment in renewable energy and more consistent government policy on incentives (too bad this last one wasn’t mentioned…) are all perennial themes on TreeHugger. It’s also good to see that Obama has said that simply drilling for more oil is not a realistic proposition for kicking the oil habit.

Energy Security/Independence

As president, as president, I will tap our natural gas reserves, invest in clean coal technology, and find ways to safely harness nuclear power. I’ll help our auto companies re-tool, so that the fuel-efficient cars of the future are built right here in America. I’ll make it easier for the American people to afford these new cars. [...] Yes, government must lead on energy independence, but each of us must do our part to make our homes and businesses more efficient.

 

I would have liked to see renewable energy come first in the speech—and as we’ve said before, there’s really no such thing as clean coal— but then again I don’t have to carry coal-producing states. I guess we’ll have to see how this one pans out if Obama is elected.

In regards to the government leading on energy policy, but all of us having to do our part to improve how efficiently we use energy: It sounds like he’s been reading TreeHugger.

On Renewable Energy

And I’ll invest $150 billion over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy — wind power, and solar power, and the next generation of biofuels — an investment that will lead to new industries and 5 million new jobs that pay well and can’t be outsourced.

 

Can’t complain here, especially considering there’s mention of the next generation of biofuels, rather than the support he’s previously shown for corn ethanol.

Obviously there’s no specific policy to comment upon here, but the fact that he recognizes the economic benefits of increasing renewable energy investment is good to see. As I said at the outset, while I might argue that the environmental benefits of renewable energy are even more important than the real economic benefits, in uncertain economic times if that’s what it takes to sell the concept, then so be it.

:: Barack Obama

Offshore Oil Drilling, Fuel Efficiency, Renewable Energy, More…
Offshore Oil Drilling Will Still Not Lower Gasoline Prices: Barack Obama and Legislative Compromise
Bush’s New Fuel Economy Rules Look Good…Until You Read All 417 Pages
Important U.S. Renewable Energy Incentive Package Still Stalled in Senate
New Generation of Nuclear Power Plants More Expensive than Expected
There Is No Such Thing As Clean Coal
First Commercial-Scale Cellulosic Ethanol Plant Approved for California
Mapping the Alternative Energy Potential of the United States

Source:

“Economic Advantages of Green Energy Take Precedence over Environmental Benefits in Obama Acceptance Speech“, treehugger.com, Business & Politics, Matthew McDermott, 29th August 2008 

4000 Megawatts of US Geothermal Power in Development, Sector Has Grown by 20% This Year

photo: Calpine

There’s been a good deal of geothermal energy news in the past few weeks—less than solar and wind perhaps, but that’s more a function of publicity and popularity rather than the potential of the resource—and the latest US Geothermal Power Production and Development Update from the Geothermal Energy Association shows just how much geothermal power has grown so far this year.

New Developments Will Nearly Double Current Capacity
According to the new report, geothermal power has grown by 20% since January of this year, with 103 project currently underway in 13 states for a combined capacity of nearly 4,000 megawatts. The GEA says when completed these projects will be able to meet the electric needs of about 4 million homes.

Currently, installed geothermal power capacity in the United States is nearly 3,000 megawatts, with 2555 MW of that in California alone.

California, Nevada Lead the Way
By state, this is what’s on tap geothermally: Alaska, 5 projects/53-100 MW; Arizona 2/2-20 MW; California 21/928-1037 MW; Colorado 1/10 MW; Florida 1/0.2-1 MW; Hawaii 2/8 MW; Idaho 6/251-326 MW; Nevada 45/1083-1902 MW; New Mexico 1/10 MW; Oregon 11/297-322 MW; Utah 6/244 MW; Washington 1/(unspecified capacity); Wyoming 1/0.2 MW.

Just so everyone’s clear on this, the geothermal power being talked about in this report is a different thing entirely than ground source heat pumps, which are sometimes called geothermal heat pumps. While both utilize the heat of the planet, the two really shouldn’t be confused.

via :: Renweable Energy World and :: Geothermal Energy Association

Geothermal Power
1% of Australia’s Geothermal Power Potential = 26,000 Years of Energy
Jargon Watch: Geothermal vs Ground Source Heat Pump
US Department of Energy to Invest $90 Million in Advanced Geothermal Research

Source:

“4000 Megawatts of US Geothermal Power in Development, Sector Has Grown by 20% This Year”, treehugger.com, Science & Technology (Alternative Energy), Matthew McDermott, 22nd Aug 2008

IKEA Puts $U.S. 75 Million Toward Cheap Solar

Johan Stenebo is chief of an IKEA susidiary called Greentech, and a man with a dream. Stenebo wants to invest in the “cheapest, best” PV roof panels available in order to sell them in IKEA stores in the next two to four years.

Low-cost solar a tall order
Of course, that’s a very tall order. But IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad’s son Peter is an avowed green tech believer, and Stenebo’s Greentech will put about US$75 million into at many as ten companies in five different areas: solar technology, energy conservation, water saving products, alternative lighting, and new product materials. Scandinavian companies are Greentech’s first focus. Nearly all of these areas are ones we would welcome the IKEA low-cost approach to, although setting up solar roof panels with just the simplistic diagrams and little Allen keys that accompany IKEA’s usual do-it-yourself furniture seems something of a stretch. Then there’s the problem than many installations require building and other permits. But IKEA’s fabulous distribution network of 270 global superstores would mean green tech for the global masses, a welcome development.

Solar supermarkets in four years?
Up until now, IKEA has held itself to interior decoration rather than pursuing the constructing and building sector that is dominated (at least in the U.S.) by players such as Lowe’s and Home Depot. But these megastores haven’t tried to sell green solutions in any organized fashion, so IKEA sees little current competition for its plans to get products to stores in three to four years. Via ::Miljö Aktuellt (Swedish)

Read more on IKEA:
IKEA Bans Plastic Bags For Good
IKEA Gives Out 60,000 Free CFLs
IKEA Lighting The Way To Warmer LED Lamps

Source:

“IKEA Puts $U.S. 75 Million Toward Cheap Solar”, treehugger.com, Business & Politics, April Streeter, 14th Aug 2008

Paper Bags or Plastic Bags? Everything You Need to Know

by Colin Dunn on 9th July 2008 for treehugger.com

Paper or plastic bags: which is better?
It’s an age old question, when it comes time to check out when grocery shopping:paper bag or plastic bag? It seems like it should be an easy choice, but there’s an incredible number of details and inputs hidden in each bag. From durability and reusability to life cycle costs, there’s a lot more to each bag than meet the eye. Let’s take a look behind the bags.

Where do brown paper bags come from?
Paper comes from trees — lots and lots of trees. The logging industry, influenced by companies like Weyerhaeuser and Kimberly-Clark, is huge, and the process to get that paper bag to the grocery store is long, sordid and exacts a heavy toll on the planet. First, the trees are found, marked and felled in a process that all too often involves clear-cutting, resulting in massive habitat destruction and long-term ecological damage.

Mega-machinery comes in to remove the logs from what used to be forest, either by logging trucks or even helicopters in more remote areas. This machinery requires fossil fuel to operate and roads to drive on, and, when done unsustainably, logging even a small area has a large impact on the entire ecological chain in surrounding areas.

Part way between trees and paper bags. Photo credit: Sally A. Morgan—Ecoscene/Corbis

Once the trees are collected, they must dry at least three years before they can be used. More machinery is used to strip the bark, which is then chipped into one-inch squares and cooked under tremendous heat and pressure. This wood stew is then “digested,” with a chemical mixture of limestone and acid, and after several hours of cooking, what was once wood becomes pulp. It takes approximately three tons of wood chips to make one ton of pulp.

The pulp is then washed and bleached; both stages require thousands of gallons of clean water. Coloring is added to more water, and is then combined in a ratio of 1 part pulp to 400 parts water, to make paper. The pulp/water mixture is dumped into a web of bronze wires, and the water showers through, leaving the pulp, which, in turn, is rolled into paper.

Whew! And that’s just to make the paper; don’t forget about the energy inputs — chemical, electrical, and fossil fuel-based — used to transport the raw material, turn the paper into a bag and then transport the finished paper bag all over the world.

Paper recycling plants, like the one shown above, is the best place for bags to go when you’re done with them.

Where do paper shopping bags go when you’re done with them?
When you’re done using paper shopping bags, for shopping or other household reuses, a couple of things can happen. If minimally-inked (or printed with soy or other veggie-based inks) they can be composted; otherwise, they can be recycled in most mixed-paper recycling schemes, or they can be thrown away (which is not something we recommend).

If you compost them, the bags break down and go from paper to a rich soil nutrient over a period of a couple of months; if you throw them away, they’ll eventually break down of the period of many, many years (and without the handy benefits that compost can provide). If you choose the recycle paper bags, then things get a little tricky.

The paper must first be re-pulped, which usually requires a chemical process involving compounds like hydrogen peroxide, sodium silicate and sodium hydroxide, which bleach and separate the pulp fibers. The fibers are then cleaned and screened to be sure they’re free of anything that would contaminate the paper-making process, and are then washed to remove any leftover ink before being pressed and rolled into paper, as before.

How are plastic bags made?
Unlike paper bags, plastic bags are typically made from oil, a non-renewable resource. Plastics are a by-product of the oil-refining process, accounting for about four percent of oil production around the globe. The biggest energy input is from the plastic bag creation process is electricity, which, in this country, comes from coal-burning power plants at least half of the time; the process requires enough juice to heat the oil up to 750 degrees Fahrenheit, where it can be separated into its various components and molded into polymers. Plastic bags most often come from one of the five types of polymers — polyethylene — in its low-density form (LDPE), which is also known as #4 plastic.

How does plastic bag recycling work?
Like paper, plastic can be recycled, but it isn’t simple or easy. Recycling involves essentially re-melting the bags and re-casting the plastic, though, according to the U.S. EPA, manufacturing new plastic from recycled plastic requires two-thirds of the energy used in virgin plastic manufacturing. But, as any chef who has ever tried to re-heat a Hollondaise sauce will tell you, the quality isn’t quite as good the second time around; the polymer chains often separate break (thanks to reader MaryBeth for noting the difference between “separate” and “break” — the former implies that the chains can come back together, which they can’t), leading to a lower-quality product.

What does that mean to you? Basically, plastic is often downcycled — that is, the material loses viability and/or value in the process of recycling — into less functional forms, making it hard to make new plastic bags out of old plastic bags.

What about biodegradable plastic bags?
Biodegradable plastic is a mixed bag (pun intended) as well; while biopolymers like polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) and Polylactide (PLA) are completely biodegradable in compost (and very, very, very slowly — if at all — in a landfill) and are not made from petroleum products, they are often derived from our food sources.

The primary feedstock for bioplastics today is corn, which is rife with agro-political conflict and often grown and harvested unsustainably; because of these reasons, and because it competes with food supply, it is not likely to be a long-term solution in the plastics world.

Plus, some bags marked “biodegradable” are not actually so — they’re recycled plastic mixed with cornstarch. The cornstarch biodegrades and the plastic breaks down into tiny little pieces but does not actually “biodegrade,” leaving a yucky polymer mess (if in small pieces). The only way to avoid this? Look for 100% plant-based polymers, like the two mentioned above.

So, while it’s good to have the alternative (and to recognize the innovation it represents), bioplastics aren’t quite ready to save us from the paper or plastic debate.

Paper bags hold more stuff, but plastic bags use less energy during production and recycling. Photo: Getty Images

Paper or plastic: A look at the facts and numbers
Further insight into the implications of using and recycling each kind of bag can be gained from looking at overall energy, emissions, and other life cycle-related costs of production and recycling. According to a life cycle analysis by Franklin Associates, Ltd, [pdf] plastic bags create fewer airborne emissions and require less energy during the life cycle of both types of bags per 10,000 equivalent uses — plastic creates 9.1 cubic pounds of solid waste vs. 45.8 cubic pounds for paper; plastic creates 17.9 pounds of atmospheric emissions vs. 64.2 pounds for paper; plastic creates 1.8 pounds of waterborne waste vs. 31.2 pounds for paper.

Paper bags can hold more stuff per bag — anywhere from 50 percent to 400 percent more, depending on how they’re packed, since they hold more volume and are sturdier. The numbers here assume that each paper bag holds 50 percent more than each plastic bag, meaning that it takes one and half plastic bags to equal a paper bag — it’s not a one-to-one comparison, even though plastic still comes out ahead.

It’s important to note that all of the above numbers assume that none of the bags are recycled, which adds a lot of negative impacts for both the paper and plastic bags; the numbers decrease in size (and the relative impacts decrease) as more bags are recycled. Interestingly, the numbers for paper bag recycling get better faster — the more that are recycled, the lower their overall environmental impact — but, because plastic bags use much less to begin with, they still ends up creating less solid and waterborne waste and airborne emissions.

Paper and plastic bags’ required energy inputs
From the same analysis, we learn that plastic also has lower energy requirements — these numbers are expressed in millions of British thermal units (Btus) per 10,000 bags, again at 1.5 plastic bags for every one paper bag. Plastic bags require 9.7 million Btus, vs. 16.3 for paper bags at zero percent recycling; even at 100% recycling rates, plastic bags still require less — 7.0 to paper’s 9.1. What does that mean to me and you? Plastic bags just take less energy to create, which is significant because so much of our energy comes from dirty sources like coal and petroleum.

The best way to go? A reusable bag, not a plastic bag. Anya Hindmarch’s wildly popular “I am Not a Plastic Bag” tote is helping give the reusable bag some sex appeal.

Paper bags or plastic bags: the conclusion
Both paper and plastic bags require lots and lots of resources and energy, and proper recycling requires due diligence from both consumer and municipal waste collector or private recycling company, so there are a lot of variables that can lead to low recycling rates.

Ultimately, neither paper nor plastic bags are the best choice; we think choosing reusable canvas bags instead is the way to go. From an energy standpoint, according to this Australian study, canvas bags are 14 times better than plastic bags and 39 times better than paper bags, assuming that canvas bags get a good workout and are used 500 times during their life cycle. Happy shopping!

Plastic bags are getting banned more and more. Read on in TreeHugger…
TreeHugger Picks: Ban the Bag
IKEA Bans Plastic Bags for Good
China Launches Crackdown on Plastic Bags
China’s Plastic Bag Ban is Working, So Far
San Francisco To Ban Plastic Shopping Bags
Whole Foods Bans the Bag
Bag Ban Phase 2: All Retail Stores
Wait for Us! Australia Wants to Ban Plastic Bags Too
Ban or No Ban: The Debate over Plastic Bags in LA (UPDATED)

More about reusable bags and shopping bags
Q&A: Retail Carry Bags – Paper or Plastic?
I’m Not an Ethical Plastic Bag
Anya Hindmarch’s Carrier Bag
The Mini Maxi Shopper: the Reusable Bag you won’t Forget
Reusable Shopping Bag Madness in Australia
Bring Your Own: Reusable Bags , Cups & More
Minimalist/Modernist Reusable Tote Bags
Bags of Change: Carrot Better Than Stick

Disclaimer:

This is not my work, I’m merely disseminating must-read info. I also must say Colin did a very great job with this article. I might put my time into writing articles of this exhaustiveness, detail and length. Not until I’m out of National Service though.

The Train that Stops for No One: Efficiency to the Max

 

The Train That Never Stops

The above video, demonstrates a rather interesting concept by Taiwanese inventor Peng Yu-Lun for a train that never stops. He correctly points out that trains would be far more efficient (and on-time) if they didn’t have to go through the trouble of, you know, stopping to pick up passengers, Unfortunately, at present not stopping for passengers would mean, well, no passengers. Yu-Lun’s design solves that problem with a kind of “top-mounted boarding shuttle that is scooped up when the train passes one station and automatically deposited when it reaches the next stop.” See the video to get a better sense of how it would work.

Taiwanese inventor Peng Yu-Lun believes that trains are more energy inefficient than they have to be, hobbled ecologically by the totally unnecessary task of having to stop to pick up passengers. To counter the problem, he has invented a concept for a constantly moving train, or a “non-stop MRT system.”

More on Trains (Links by treehugger.com)

Japan: Producing Electricity from Train Station Ticket Gates
Train Travel Hits New Highs
Fuel Cell Powered Trains on the Rails In Japan
Italian Trains Get Solar Boost
Dual Mode Trains in Japan
Biogas-Powered Train in Sweden
Amtrak: Still in the Red, But There’s Green At the End of the Tunnel
Obama Appeals to Crucial Train Swing Vote

Inventor rolls out efficient non-stop train system [Taiwan Headlines via DVICE]

 

Source:

“Taking Efficiency to its Limits: A Train that Doesn’t Stop for Passengers”, treehugger.com, Cars & Transportation, Andrew Posner, 24th June 2008

Computers can reduce emissions by solving efficiency problems

Good Computer, Bad Computer

The Global eSustainability Initiative has released a report showing that while information and communications technologies (ICT) use a lot of energy and have an impact on global warming, that impact might not be negative. It is true that electronic equipment worldwide is about on par with aviation for CO2 emissions with 830 million tonnes (or 2% of total), but the other side of the coin is that these technology could help avoid 7.8 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions by 2020, or 500% more than what they caused.

How Computers Make us Greener
The most obvious way that electronic equipment can make us greener is by reducing transportation emissions: Videoconferencing, email, audio calls, etc. That should all add up to between 140m and 220m tonnes of CO2 a year in 2020. But the real big improvements are elsewhere: Improving logistics (f.ex. planning better routes for delivery vehicles, managing supply chains better, etc) could save 1.5 billion tonnes of CO2, using data networking to create a “smart” grid could save 2 billion tonnes of CO2, and computer-controlled buildings that can manage lighting and ventilation depending on how many people are inside could save a further 1.7 billion tonnes of CO2.

But it won’t happen on its own:

None of this will be easy. The industry can supply the hardware and software, but the bigger problem is the “wetware”—people, economics and politics. The right skills are often scarce. Incentives are lacking for businesses to invest in carbon-reducing technology. There need to be new technical standards. For transport, power grids and buildings to become more efficient, there must be rules on how, for instance, refrigerators should talk to electricity meters, and thermostats to heating systems. But the internet shows that when common standards are agreed on in an industry, great things can happen. The technology industry’s contribution to tackling climate change may come from its standards bodies as much as its clever gizmos.

Green Electronics
CherryPal: A 2-Watt Computer the Size of a Paperback
Number of the Day: 11.8 Million Computer Servers in the US
BuyGreen: Laptop Computers
BuyGreen: Desktop Computers
Saving Energy in Data Centers with Smart Sensors and Algorithms

More on Positive Impacts of Computers on the Environment
Computing sustainability

New Thin-film Solar Cell Coater Reaches 1GW Annual Output

by Matthew McDermott, Brooklyn, NY on 19th June ‘08 for treehugger.com

What you’re watching above is a new thin-film coater from Nanosolar in action. The San Jose-based company calls the machine a “milestone in solar technology” and while usually such language is standard PR hyperbole, considering that 10-30MW in annual production through other methods is usual, the 1 gigawatt annual throughput of this coater really is a cut above.

Nanosolar says the way in which it can achieve such high levels of production is through its proprietary nanoparticle ink, which allows them simply print their highly efficient (up to 14.5%) solar cells at rates up to 100 feet per minute.

The cost of the coater is $1.65 million, which is significantly less expensive that vacuum process tools, as well as being much faster in operation.

Nanosolar began shipping its first panels last December.

:: Nanosolar

Other Links by treehugger.com
EDF Energies Nouvelles Invests $50M in Nanosolar
Nanosolar: Printing Solar Film Like Paper
19.9%: New Thin Film Solar Efficiency Record
Sharp Invests $725 Million in 480 MW Thin-Film Solar Plant

See Also from The Green Guy Blog:

New Solar Cell Rivals Silicon-Based Ones

(Another article on Thin-film Solar Cells except from another company. Tells you a lot about the competition in this field yea?)

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) webcast with John Barry, VP Unconventionals, Enhanced Oil Recovery and CO2

Just yesterday, I received an invitation to an online discussion with Shell on CCS, Enhanced Oil Recovery etc.

As a blog with a well-informed interest in the energy challenge and new technologies to reduce the impact of CO2 emissions on the environment, I hope you (and your readers) will be interested in this invitation to join Shell for an online discussion on Carbon Capture and Storage.

John Barry, Shell’s VP Unconventionals, Enhanced Oil Recovery & CO2 will be answering your questions about this technology in a live webchat on June 19 at 5pm CET (11am in NYC) athttp://www.shell.com/dialogues. If you visit the site in advance of this date you can watch a short video where he gives some useful background information on this exciting technology and Shell’s strategy.

Please take the opportunity to register now so that you can post your questions to him on June 19 and to receive reminders about this and future webcast and Q&As. Registration will take only 30 seconds.

Please do feel free to pass this message on to others who you think may like to attend this webchat, and do feel free to blog it either before or afterwards.

(I hope you don’t mind me posting this invitation as a comment – I couldn’t see an email address to contact you privately.)

Best wishes

Chris Reed
Shell Scenarios team

Click here to pre-register:

http://www.shelldialogues.com/carbon-capture-and-storage

Pre-register to have your say, opinions, ideas heard!

Personally, I’m pretty much skeptical about carbon sequestration, not as a solution to the current global warming crisis but as a high-fidelity long-term solution. Would efficient CCS leave us complacent and permit ourselves to more carbon dioxide emission? Would this “out of sight, out of minds” scenario be possible? What are the statistics for long-term viability for CCS?

However, I’m not undermining the help that CCS could bring, especially in this last hour where I foresee that climate change mitigation at the current pace is not nearly enough to prevent severe global warming. So with this perspective, CCS is arguably a great time buyer for other green policies and technologies to bring down the carbon dioxide concentrations in the air.

What are YOUR thoughts?

 

First Cellulosic Ethanol Biorefinery in the U.S. Opens

by Michael Graham Richard, Gatineau, Canada, for treehugger.com

First Cellulosic Ethanol Plant in the US
The first demonstration-scale cellulosic ethanol plant in the United States is now open! The verenium biorefinery in Jennings, Louisiana, will produce 1.4 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol a year with agricultural waste left over after sugarcane production.

What are Second Generation Biofuels?
Ethanol made from cellulose, as opposed to ethanol made from corn, is a second generation biofuel. The difference, and it’s an important one, is that second generation biofuels use non-food residual biomass like the stems, leaves, wood chips, and husks, or they use non-food crops that can be grown without high energy inputs, like switchgrass.

Verenium’s Cellulosic Ethanol Goals
Verenium wants to create cellulosic ethanol at $2 per gallon, which right now would make it fairly competitive with corn ethanol and regular gasoline.

But this demonstration plant is just the beginning: Next year, Verenium wants to built several commercial plants that would each produce 20 to 30 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol yearly. That’s still a fairly small drop in the bucket of gasoline consumption, but it would be much better than corn ethanol, and certainly better than fossil fuels.

Cellulosic Ethanol Feedstock and Process

Verenium will use a combination of acid pretreatments, enzymes, and two types of bacteria to make ethanol from the plant matter–called bagasse–that’s left over from processing sugarcane to make sugar.

 

It will also process a relative of the sugar cane called the energy cane. It produces less sugar, but more fiber and grows taller, increasing yield.

What to do with Corn Ethanol?
One question that remains is: What do we do with all that corn ethanol?

The best hope would be to convert corn ethanol biorefineries into second generation biofuel plants. That might or might not be possible on a technical level, but we suspect that on a political level it will be even harder. The farm lobby is very good at keeping subsidies forever. When food prices are low, they ask for subsidies, when prices are high (as now), they ask for more. So who knows if the fat corn ethanol subsidies will ever be repelled?

Ethanol
Green Basics: Ethanol
Cellulosic Ethanol in Japan: BioEthanol & Celunol
Iogen’s Cellulose Ethanol – Straw-Powered Cars

Biodiesel
Green Basics: Biodiesel
Solazyme B100 Algae Biodiesel Goes on the Road
i-Spec Q-100: A Biodiesel Analyzer in Your Pocket

More on Verenium Cellulosic Ethanol Plant
Verenium Begins Commissioning of Nation’s First Cellulosic Ethanol Demonstration-Scale Plant
Cellulosic Ethanol Plant Opens
CELLULOSIC ETHANOL: FUELING THE FUTURE

Scientists Develop Air “Scrubber” Capable of Capturing 1 ton of CO2 a Day

Scientists of the Columbia University in New York, led by Klaus Lackner, plan to build and demonstrate a prototype within two years that could economically capture a tonne of carbon dioxide a day from the air. That’s the equivalent of the carbon output per passenger for a flight from London to New York.

The prototype “scrubber” would be small enough to fit inside a shipping container, and while  Lackner estimates it will initially cost around £100,000 to build, the carbon cost of making each device would be “small potatoes” compared with the amount each would capture.

The scientists stress their invention is not a magic bullet to solve climate change. It would take millions of the devices to soak up the world’s carbon emissions, and the CO2 trapped would still need to be disposed of (see below). But the team says the technology may be the best way to avert dangerous temperature rises, as fossil fuel use is predicted to increase sharply in coming decades despite international efforts. Climate experts at a monitoring station in Hawaii this month reported CO2 levels in the atmosphere have reached a record 387 parts per million (ppm) – 40% higher than before the industrial revolution.

The quest for a machine that could reverse the trend by “scrubbing” carbon from the air is seen as one of the greatest challenges in climate science. Richard Branson has promised $25m (£12.6m) to anyone who succeeds.

Lackner told the Guardian: “I wouldn’t write across the front page that the problem is solved, but this will help. We are in a hurry to deal with climate change and will be very hard pressed to stop the train before we get to 450ppm [CO2 in the atmosphere]. This can help stop the train.”

He added: “Our project has reached the stage where it is quite clear we can do it. We need to start dealing with all these emissions. I’d rather have a technology that allows us to use fossil fuels without destroying the planet, because people are going to use them anyway.”

Scientists have been sceptical about air capture devices for carbon because of the large amounts of energy they consume. Although it is relatively easy to find chemicals that absorb CO2, it is harder to then strip the gas from the so-called sorbent for reuse. A detailed report on carbon capture from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2005 effectively dismissed the air capture as unworkable.

Lackner’s team says it has made a significant breakthrough that massively reduces the amount of energy required to recharge the sorbent. It is reluctant to discuss details, but a US patent application obtained by the Guardian shows that it is based on changes in humidity.

The team says it can trap the CO2 from air on absorbent plastic sheets called ion exchange membranes, commonly used to purify water. Crucially, it has discovered that humid air can then make the membranes “exhale” their trapped CO2. The discovery was “some serendipity and some working out,” Lackner said. “When I saw it the first time, I didn’t believe it.”

The team is working to build a prototype at a laboratory in Tuscon, Arizona. Run by a company called Global Research Technologies (GRT), of which Lackner is vice president of research, the laboratory unveiled a “pre-prototype” air capture machine last year, based on a different technique -rinsing trapped CO2 off the membrane with liquid sodium carbonate, and then using electricity to liberate the CO2 from the fluid.

Lackner says that device works, but the “humidity switch” could slash the scrubber’s energy use tenfold. He said: “We can do it coming out carbon positive.”

The team is also working on ways to dispose of the pure CO2 gas produced by each scrubber.

The patent suggests the scrubber could be connected to greenhouses, where the CO2 would boost plant growth. Or the gas could be used to grow algae, for food, fertiliser or fuel. The latter could “close the carbon loop,” Lackner said.

The discovery could make the team eligible for the $25m Virgin Earth Challenge, which has pledged the money to the inventor of a way to remove a billion tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere each year, though Lackner said he had not contacted Branson.

Wallace Broecker, the distinguished environmental scientist at Columbia University who helped Lackner set up GRT, said the air scrubber could be only way to tackle climate change.

He said Lackner was “one of the smartest guys on the planet”. Broecker introduced the late Gary Comer, a billionaire entrepreneur, to Lackner and Allen Wright, an engineer who runs GRT, helped by his brother Burt. Broecker said that the Wright brothers helped to cause this problem and “now the Wright brothers are going to fix it”.

Source:

David Adam, “Could US scientist’s ‘CO2 catcher’ help to slow warming?”, The Guardian, 31st May 2008

See Also:

Carbon Storage (A Complementary Add-on to the Air Scrubber) Carbon Sequestration and Storage in Soils Could Solve Global Warming

Other Alternatives to the Same Problem: Scientists Develop Low-Cost Version of CCS (Carbon Capture & Storage)

Norwegian Wind Power Could Become Europe’s Battery

by Michael Graham Richard, Gatineau, Canada on 28th May 2008 by www.treehugger.com

Norway and Wind Power, Sitting in a Tree…
What’s the best thing you could buy with oil money right now?

Norway’s Oil and Energy Minister, Aaslaug Haga, seems to think that wind turbines is a good bet. The scandinavian country is the 5th biggest exporter of oil in the world, but it also has the longest coastline in Europe and lots of strong wind. A 30-page report by the Energy Council, comprising business leaders and officials, says: “Norway ought to have access to up to 40 terrawatt hours of renewable energy in 2020-2025, of which about half would come from offshore wind power.“

Turning Oil Into Renewable Energy

Sufficient wind parks — totalling 5,000 to 8,000 megawatts installed capacity — would cost between 100 billion Norwegian and 220 billion Norwegian crowns ($43.89 billion) assuming prices of 20-28 million crowns per installed megawatt. The energy would be equivalent to up to about eight nuclear power plants.

 

That’s a lot of money, but that’s also the value of about half a year’s oil output for Norway. It would be kind of a giant offset scheme.

Wind Power Even When the Wind Doesn’t Blow
One thing that makes Norway – like Quebec – particularly well suited for wind power is the presence of hydro. When the wind blows, you can slow down the flow of water and accumulate it behind the dams, and when the wind doesn’t blow, you can open up the valves. And since Norway has about half of Europe’s reservoir capacity, it could keep producing even with long periods without wind (which is fairly rare offshore).

Links by Treehugger

Wind Power
::Quebec Buys 2,004 Megawatts of Wind Power, Wants to Export to Ontario and USA
::Wind Power Produces 123% of Residential Energy Demand in Rock Port, Missouri
::Enercon E-126: The World’s Largest Wind Turbine (for now)

Green Norway
::Norway: Carbon Neutral by 2030
::Strange But True: Norway Announces First “Ecological Prison”
::Norway’s Hydro Develops Floating Wind Turbines

More on Norway’s Wind Power Project
::Wind power could make Norway “Europe’s battery”

New Solar Cell Rivals Silicon-Based Ones

 

Photo Credit: straylight6 on flickr

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory have moved closer to creating a thin-film solar cell that can compete with the efficiency of the more common silicon-based solar cell. 

The copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS) thin-film solar cell recently reached 19.9 percent efficiency, setting a new world record for this type of cell. Multicrystalline silicon-based solar cells have shown efficiencies as high as 20.3 percent. The energy conversion efficiency of a solar cell is the percentage of sunlight converted by the cell into electricity.

“This is an important milestone,” said NREL Senior Scientist Miguel Contreras. “The thin film people have always looked for matching silicon in performance, and we are reaching that goal.”

CIGS cells use extremely thin layers of semiconductor material applied to a low-cost backing such as glass, flexible metallic foils, high-temperature polymers or stainless steel sheets. Thin-film cells require less energy to make and can be fabricated by a variety of processes.  Because of this, they provide a promising path for providing more affordable solar cells for residential and other uses. The CIGS cells are of interest for space applications and the portable electronics market because of their light weight. They are also suitable in special architectural uses, such as photovoltaic roof shingles, windows, siding and others.

Researchers were able to set the world record because of improvements in the quality of the material applied during the manufacturing process, boosting the power output from the cell, Contreras said.

Members of the record-setting team at the National Center for Photovoltaics include Contreras, Ingrid Repins, Brian Egaas, John Scharf, Clay DeHart and Raghu Bhattacharya.

NREL is the U.S. Department of Energy’s primary national laboratory for renewable energy and energy efficiency research and development. NREL is operated for DOE by Midwest Research Institute and Battelle.

So watch this space.

References:

National Renewable Energy Laboratory, News Releases, 24th March 2008

Record Makes Thin-Film Solar Cell Competitive with Silicon Efficiency

Nano Vent-Skin of Micro-Wind Turbines

by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 05.28.08 for treehugger.com

Some think big when it comes to wind turbines; designer Agustin Otegui thinks very small, at the nano scale, with his idea for Nano Vent-Skin, the ultimate green wall.

“Using nano-manufacturing with bioengineered organisms as a production method, NVS merges different kinds of micro organisms that work together to absorb and transform natural energy from the environment. What comes out of this merging of living organisms is a skin that transforms two of the most abundant sources of green energy on earth: Sunlight and Wind. There is another advantage of using living organisms: the absorption of CO2 from the air.”

The outer skin of the structure absorbs sunlight through an organic photovoltaic skin and transfers it to the nano-fibers inside the nano-wires which then is sent to storage units at the end of each panel.

Each turbine on the panel generates energy by chemical reactions on each end where it makes contact with the structure. Polarized organisms are responsible for this process on every turbine’s turn.

The inner skin of each turbine works as a filter absorbing CO2 from the environment as wind passes through it.

The fact of using nano-bioengineering and nano-manufacturing as means of production is to achieve an efficient zero emission material which uses the right kind and amount of material where needed.

These micro organisms have not been genetically altered; they work as a trained colony where each member has a specific task in this symbiotic process. For example, an ant or a bee colony, where the queen knows what has to be done and distributes the tasks between the members.

Imagine NVS as the human skin. When we suffer a cut, our brain sends signals and resources to this specific region to get it restored as soon as possible.

NVS works in the same way. Every panel has a sensor on each corner with a material reservoir. When one of the turbines has a failure or breaks, a signal is sent through the nano-wires to the central system and building material (microorganisms) is sent through the central tube in order to regenerate this area with a self assembly process.”

view from interior of building clad in Nano Vent-skin

Detail of exterior. More information and bigger pictures at Agustin Otegui’s 

Source:

www.nanoventskin.blogspot.com

Nano Vent-Skin is a personal project aimed to trigger new approaches into greener and more energy efficient structures. This website (Nano Vent-Skin) is a platform to show the progress and developement of this project. All the images and concepts are copyright protected and taken from this site.

Green Star Creates Breakthrough Micronutrient that Boosts Algae Growth

by Michael Graham Richard, Gatineau, Canada on 05.22.08 for treehugger.com

First Generation Biofuels Need to Go
While an almost universal scientific consensus is developing around the downsides of first generation biofuels (f.ex. corn ethanol), entrepreneurs and scientists are working on biofuels that require less energy inputs to make and don’t compete for agricultural land with food crops. One of the most promising feedstocks is algae, with which biodiesel can be made.

One of the companies working on making algal fuels viable is Green Star, and they just announced the creation of a new micronutrient that can help boost algae daily growth rate by 34% and “increase the total biomass quantity in a harvest algae growth cycle by well over 100%.”

Researchers Want to Make Biodiesel form Algae
Research took place in Biotech Research’s lab facility at the UABC University in Ensenada, Mexico.

The UABC testing has shown that 1:10,000 nutrient dilution rates were very productive (i.e. one gallon of MMB mixed with 10,000 gallons of water). Even at 1:20,000 dilution levels, the MMB was still effective.Green Star will make available 12-oz sample bottles to all universities [either at no cost or with $50 shipping fees], research institutes and commercial facilities for testing on their specific strains of algae.

 

This is quite a smart move. This way they can find quickly which kinds of algaes work with the micronutrient, and their product will get more scientific scrutiny from many unbiased observers.

Biofuels are Entangled in Politics
The fast second generation biofuels come to market, the faster we can convince politicians that they should drop all those counter-productive corn subsidies. The farm lobby will fight back, but if it is publicly known that a viable alternative that is both greener and doesn’t make food prices shoot up exists, their position will be a lot harder to defend.

Here’s a two minute video produced by Green Star about algae-based biodiesel:

 

Links by treehugger.com:

Algae Biofuels
::Solazyme B100 Algae Biodiesel Goes on the Road
::15 Algae Biofuels Startups to Watch
::First Commercial Algae-to-Biofuels Facility Goes Online

Other Alternative Fuels
::Geneticist Craig Venter Wants to Create Fuel from CO2
::Syntec Biofuel: Closer to Fuel from Waste
::Iogen’s Cellulose Ethanol – Straw-Powered Cars

More on Green Power’s Algae Research
::Green Star Official Website
::Green Star Announces Algae Breakthrough
::Green Star Says New Micronutrient Boosts Growth Rate of Algae by 34%

 

 

Luxim Plasma Light Bulb Kicks Some Serious LED Butt

by Michael Graham Richard, Gatineau, Canada on 040708 for treehugger.com

At 140 lumens/watt, these pill-sized plasma light bulbs by Luxim are a pretty awesome contender for “light of the future”. They are almost 10 times more efficient than traditional incandescent light bulbs, twice as efficient as current high-end LEDs, and they also beat CFLs, most of which are around 50-80 lumens/watt. Only the prototype 300 lumens/watt nanocrystal-coated LEDs can hold a candle to them.

And the light from Luxim’s LIFI bulb is not ugly either: color rendering index (CRI) is 91. Lifetime for a bulb is estimated at 20,000 hours, and a relatively large amount of power can be pumped through them, allowing a tiny bulb to produce 30,000+ lumens (not something LEDs can do).

An RF (radio-frequency) signal is generated by the solid-state power amplifier and is guided into an electric field about the bulb. The high concentration of energy in the electric field vaporizes the contents of the bulb to a plasma state at the bulb’s center; this controlled plasma generates an intense source of light.

Luxim seems to want to use them in projectors, but since even a tiny light bulb can produce as much light as a street lamp, sky seems to be the limit if cost can be brought down.

Low-Energy Water Filtration

by Lee Bruno for Technology Review; published by MIT

Spin cycle: The water purifier shown above separates out contaminants using centrifugal force. Credit: Palo Alto Research Center Inc. (PARC)

A new membrane-free water-purification system uses small amounts of energy.

Most water-filtration technologies require a lot of energy to push water through membranes that eventually become fouled and need to be replaced. Both factors make water filtration costly for most applications.

Now researchers at Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) have been able to overcome those challenges by incorporating scientific insights from the physics of toner particle movements into a low-energy water-filtration device that doesn’t use membranes.

That’s all good news for the looming specter of filtering brackish drinking water that threatens much of the developing world and even some water-stressed areas in developed countries. In the past, however, the economics have been the stumbling block for creating affordable water-treatment systems. The United Nations estimates that over the next eight years, some 900 million people will need a safe supply of drinking water.

PARC researchers call their device the spiral concentrator. It is a spiral-shaped, 50-centimeter-long piece of plastic tubing that’s one millimeter in diameter. As water is pumped through one end of the device, particles in the water are pressed up against the walls of the tubing. Particles as small as one micron in size are separated out by centrifugal force and shunted away from the clean water via diverging forks in the spiral concentrator.

The advantage of this approach is that it doesn’t require as much energy as it would to push contaminated water through a membrane. Such membranes are typically built from resin and have many tiny holes perforated in them, ranging in size from a few micrometers to a few nanometers.

The PARC innovation sprang from an earlier contract research project with the U.S. Army. The aim was to design a device to concentrate biohazards like anthrax by concentrating few parts per liter of contaminants so that a sensor could detect their presence.

The PARC researchers have lots of experience with studying the physics of particles. Toner in copy machines is made up of miniature, electron-charged particles. Understanding the physics of how these charged particles move in both air and liquid has been a key area of PARC research. The lessons the researchers learned about particle toner were used for PARC’s biological agent detection system and for the water purifier.

The purifier requires a constant flow rate of water so that the movements of the particles conform to predicted patterns. That flow of water can be achieved with a low power pump that can be driven by a panel of solar cells.

However, because the spin concentrator can separate particles no smaller than one micron in size, it can’t remove bacteria. Scott Elrod, manager of the hardware systems laboratory at PARC, says that smaller particles could be separated out by adding alum to the water being filtered. Alum is used in water treatment plants to chemically bind small particles to larger ones, which can then be separated out using gravity. In the case of the spin concentrator, centrifugal force will supply the horsepower to remove those congealed particles.

Elrod says that in the next two months, the researchers expect to scale down the device into a parallel stack of spin concentrators that are small enough to be sold commercially. They also plan to test the system with larger volumes of water, to reach the maximum volume of 100 liters per minute filtration rate. Researchers have already done the calculations on paper indicating that the parallel schema and water volume should be able to be handled.

Scientists Develop Low-Cost Version of CCS (Carbon Capture & Storage)

by Jeremy Elton Jacquot, Los Angeles on 05.17.08 for Treehugger.com

Image courtesy of melancholic optimist via flickr

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) has always been a tough proposition: Scientists and environmentalists worry about the potential leakage from storage sites and its additional fuel requirements, while energy utilities complain about the excessive costs and risks associated with the technology. A new technology developed by scientists at the University of Wyoming, Laramie, could help ease its adoption by significantly reducing the cost factor.

Currently, companies typically pass their carbon dioxide emissions through a solution containing monoethanolamine (MEA) to bind the gas. The process of heating the saturated MEA solution, which is necessary to release CO2 and restore the material, incurs huge costs; it is believed to drive the cost of recovering CO2 to around $47 a ton.

Maciej Radosz and his colleagues at UW decided to use activated carbon and other carbon-rich materials — much cheaper alternatives — to adsorb the CO2. While previous studies had suggested that high pressure conditions were needed for the carbon-rich materials to work effectively, Radosz intuited that separation could also occur under low pressure/temperature conditions — a gamble that paid off when he put it into practice.

The researchers are now working on scaling up the process and on making the carbon materials more selective; if successful, they believe it could drop the cost of CCS to $20 a ton, or less than half current prices. Yet doing so could prove tricky: As we’ve mentioned before, scaling up such technologies can often reveal hidden costs, environmental and other.

URL: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/05/better-ccs.php

 

Green Technology News

Here’s something interesting I found a while back.

The Straits Times, Home p16, Tuesday, 18th December 2007

Recycling Company building $50m plastic-to-fuel plant

Newspaper Cutting

For those who are too lazy to read the full article or wait for the thingy to load. Here’s a summary.

• Mainboard-listed Enviro-Hub Holdings announced it is building the world’s first large-scale commercial plastic-to-fuel plant
• S’pore first $50m plastic-to-fuel plant – which converts waste plastic into useable fuels and gas
• Technology was imported from India
• Patented technology, for which Enviro-Hub now holds an exclusive license
• Mixed waste plastic is fed to a reactor to be melted at 350 degrees Celsius
• Special catalyst added at controlled intervals to encourage depolymerization (breaking apart the polymers of the waste plastic)
• Heating process would be emissions-free
• By-products include diesel (85%), liquid petroleum gas (10%) and coke (5%)
• Process takes an initial 3 hours to start up, after which waste plastic can be fed continuously into the reactor all day
• First phase of plant will be able to take up to 100 tonnes of waste plastic a day
• Plant is expected to produce 20 million litres of diesel, 4 – 5 million kg of gas and 1500 tonnes of coke
• Operation will occur 330 days of the year

Now that’s really impressive. Finally, a rather good solution to the problem of plastic non-biodegradability. The technology kills 2 birds with one stone. First is as mentioned, the problem of waste plastic, which is clearly in excess. The second is the prospect of returns in the form of fuels. It doesn’t solve the problem of the pollutive nature of carbon-based fuels but it is a good midlong-term solution. Alternative energy should still reign as top priority