3p Contributor: RP Siegel
Recent Articles
Naked Energy Delivers Solar Electricity and Hot Water in One Package
Solar photovoltaic systems that make electricity directly from sunlight are one of the most promising technologies for clean renewable energy. While solar PV has many positive attributes (e.g. clean, renewable, quiet, etc.), there are two primary drawbacks:
- They are intermittent (meaning that they only create juice when the sun is shining).
- They have a low energy intensity (meaning that the amount of energy per unit of area is small, especially when compared to large scale fossil or nuclear plants).
The intermittency problem, like certain chronic medical conditions, can’t be cured, (not unless you use satellites that continuously track the sun and beam energy back to earth) though it can be managed with storage capacity and a smart distribution system (grid).
The intensity problem can be addressed in two ways. First, because solar is available everywhere, its intensity is less important if it’s used in a distributed manner. If, for example, you can power your home with panels installed on your roof, you don’t care that much if they take up your whole roof or half your roof, except that the latter will probably cost less. A factory on the other hand will likely not have enough roof space to meet its total energy demand and would instead have to settle for some fractional solar contribution.
The other way that intensity can be improved is by improving efficiency, which has been the subject of a great deal of research. That means increasing the amount of usable energy produced per unit of sunlight. Solar panels are relatively inefficient (22 percent is a good number today). What’s worse is that their efficiency tends to drop off under high temperature. And since their job is to sit out in the sun, getting hot is something that will happen regularly. That’s where today’s story about Naked Energy picks up.
IBM, Honda and PG&E Collaborate on Smart EV Charging
We all know that to minimize the impact of global climate change we need to drastically reduce our combustion of fossil fuels. We can do that in a number ways including: increasing our use of renewables for electric power generation, moving to some other way of powering our automobiles, and embracing the use of systems thinking as we design our infrastructure moving forward. What I like about today’s story is that it combines all three of these.
The story is about a three-way partnership between IBM, Honda, and Pacific Gas & Electric to facilitate smart charging of electric cars in a way that makes maximum use of an increasingly smart grid for both distribution of power to customer and storage of transient power from renewables.
The aim of this partnership is to make electric vehicle charging, a simple, straightforward process with a reliable charging source and a stable infrastructure.
Liquid Fluoride Thorium Power: Pros and Cons
There is no perfect energy source. Each and every one has its own advantages and compromises. This series will explore the pros and cons of various energy sources. Learn about other forms of energy generation here.
Last August, I posted an article on Thorium reactors, a form of nuclear power that supposedly overcomes many of the concerns associated with traditional nukes. Despite my admittedly anti-nuclear bias, I had heard enough good things about this technology to want to learn more and share what I learned. The technology has attracted an enthusiastic following, many of who feel that this is the best of all currently available alternatives. Supporters claim that it sufficiently addresses the numerous issues that have made nuclear a less attractive, if not outright frightening option.
Among the concerns about traditional nuclear are the following:
BP’s Cover-up of Previous Blowout Revealed
Ecowatch.org just released newly uncovered evidence of a Deepwater Horizon-type blowout of a BP rig in the Caspian Sea, in September 2008, two years before the Deepwater Horizon blew out.
The evidence consists of an eyewitness account that they claim has been backed up by several rig workers as well as incriminating documents.
Had the event not been concealed, an investigation would have occurred which may have led to safety improvements that could have prevented the disaster in the Gulf. Or for that matter, it may have resulted in Congress refusing to open the Gulf for drilling.
The witness, whose name has been withheld for his own protection, is supposedly an industry insider who claims that there were striking similarities between the two events. Most notably, both rigs used quick dry cement to plug the wells, faulty blowout preventers, inadequate evacuation procedures and an overarching atmosphere of intolerance for the expression of concerns about safety, all of which were contributors to both events.
It is clear is that in the absence of public or regulatory attention, the company was able to continue to use the same shoddy, cost-saving practices that ultimately led to the biggest oil spill in US history, in which 11 rig workers were killed.
Why are we just hearing about this now?
Stronger and Safer? BP’s 2011 Sustainability Review
BP really wants to be considered one of the good guys. You can practically feel the eagerness saturating every page of their new 2011 Sustainability Review. But like a lion showing up at a vegetarian restaurant they don’t seem to realize that whatever their soft-hearted intentions might be, they cannot get away from their true nature, which is that of a fossil fuel giant.
Fossil fuels will be a necessary evil for the immediately foreseeable future. By delivering these fuels to us, BP is performing a service that many of us literally could not live without. And it appears that they are trying to do it in as responsible a manner as they possibly can.
But, responsibility, while admirable, is not the same as sustainability. Fossil fuels are, by definition, inherently unsustainable in several ways. First, they are finite and non-renewable. Their use is rapidly driving our entire planet towards an unsurvivable condition for a very large number of its inhabitants, quite possibly including us. Finally there is no way to extract these fossil fuels from their ancient burial grounds without inflicting significant damage to the surrounding area as was amply demonstrated back in 2010 with the Deepwater Horizon disaster. The company has had an abysmal safety record for years. But then, to be fair, it is an inherently risky and difficult business.
Tar Sands Oil: Pros and Cons
There is no perfect energy source. Each and every one has its own advantages and compromises. This series will explore the pros and cons of various energy sources. Learn about other forms of energy generation here.
You might not know this, but Canada has oil reserves of 170 billion barrels, more than Iran and Nigeria combined. This fact is not widely known since much of that oil has been considered “not economically recoverable,” lying deep underground in a mixture of bitumen, a thick, tarry substance, sand and water known as oil sands or tar sands. Development of these tar sands, located near the Athabasca River, by Suncor Energy, began in the 1960s but has been conducted at a relatively small scale because of the costs involved. Only recently, with declining supplies and increasing prices have attempts begun to try and ramp up production, especially after PetroChina acquired a 60 percent interest in two major wells in Alberta in 2009. This was followed in 2010 by Sinopec paying $4.65 billion for a 9 percent stake in Syncrude Canada Ltd.
Chinese investors find this resource to be attractive, since Canada is considered to be a low political risk when compared with, say, the Middle East. As of 2010, the three biggest of many players were Syncrude Canada, Suncor, and Albian Sands, a joint venture of Chevron, Shell Canada and Marathon Oil. BP also has a substantial stake, with a 75 percent interest in Terre de Grace, which it also operates.
Projections made after slowdowns in offshore production show that as much as 36 percent of American oil could be coming from Canadian oil sands by 2030. According to oil expert Daniel Yergin, “Canadian oil sands…have gone from being a fringe energy source to being one of strategic importance.’’
Sounds good so far, but not so fast; there are numerous major environmental problems and risks associated with this technology.
Food & Water Watch Takes a Hard Look at Market Self-Regulation
Concerned about a recent trend in which financial interests have turned their attention to the profitability of trading in common resources such as air quality, water and fisheries, in what they are calling, “the financialization of nature,” Food & Water Watch (F&WW) just introduced a new Common Resources program that scrutinizes these schemes with an eye towards protecting these common interests.
One would think that would be the role of government agencies, and in earlier times it was. But these are strange times we live in
In the announcement, Wenonah Hauter, Executive Director of Food & Water Watch said, “Unfortunately, the most powerful financial interests have determined that trading money, risk and related financial products outperforms the profitability of manufacturing products or even trading goods and services. And in this age of increased competition for natural resources, these interests have their eye on placing natural resources, like clean water and clean air, at the mercy of the market.”
So rather than creating products (and jobs), these “smart money” people have figured out that more profit can be extracted by privatizing and then trading these resources rather than doing anything productive with them, not to mention conserving or protecting them.
Algae-based Biofuel: Pros And Cons
There is no perfect energy source. Each and every one has its own advantages and compromises. This series will explore the pros and cons of various energy sources. Learn about other forms of energy generation here.
Algae–based biofuel is a new energy source that has been getting a lot of attention lately. Certain types of algae contain natural oils that can be readily distilled into a vegetable oil or a number of petroleum-like products that could serve as drop-in replacements for gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel.
But because it’s a bio-fuel, it is essentially carbon-neutral because the carbon emitted when it is burned had just recently been absorbed as food, which means that the net CO2 emission is essentially the same as if the algae had never been grown. That does not include CO2 utilized in production. Industry claims assert that algae-based bio-diesel has a GHG footprint that is 93 percent less than conventional diesel. Some algae production is sited near sources of CO2 such as power plants, in a kind of symbiotic relationship. Algae-based fuel yields considerably more energy per unit area than other bio-fuels. It can also be grown on land otherwise unsuitable for agriculture. The technology is quickly moving out of the lab and into commercial scale production. A number of companies developing refineries include Solazyme, Sapphire Energy (which just last week announced another $144 million in funding) and OPXBIO. Aviation trials with several airlines including United and Qantas have been successfully completed using fuel blends of up to 40 percent algae-derived fuel.
Algae was initially raised in large shallow ponds which produced about 5,000 gallons per acre-year and required a fair amount of water to compensate for evaporation. More recently, companies have migrated to vertical photo bio-reactors (PBRs) that are gravity fed, with no evaporation, and in which 85 percent of the water is recycled along with excess nutrients and CO2.
Here is a list of pros and cons for algae-based biofuels.
Another Reason Not to Eat Factory Chicken: Arsenic
Earlier this week Nicholas Kristof wrote a piece in the NY Times about arsenic in chicken. He cited two studies that gave evidence of arsenic, caffeine, Tylenol, Benadryl and certain banned antibiotics in chicken.
The two studies, conducted by the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, and Arizona State University set out to look for the presence of antibiotics in chicken, but they found much more than that. “We were kind of floored,” said study co-author Keeve E. Nachman. “It’s unbelievable what we found.”
While they did not find anything that they felt was an “immediate health concern,” you have to wonder what the long term effects of ingesting these things might be.
You might think this is all a bunch of chicken feed, but really, how did these things get in there? Clearly, it was no accident. It turns out that arsenic has routinely been fed to livestock to reduce infections. It also tends to make the flesh a more appealing color and enhance growth. What with the use of arsenic as well as thousands of tons of antibiotics, enough to put all of us at risk from the development of resistant strains, it pretty clear that infections are a major problem on these overcrowded meat factories, which are now being regulated to avoid this problem in Europe.
Clean Coal: Pros and Cons
There is no perfect energy source. Each and every one has its own advantages and compromises. This series will explore the pros and cons of various energy sources. Learn about other forms of energy generation here.
Let’s face it, coal is nasty stuff. It contaminates everything it comes in contact with and creates problems at every step of its life cycle: from unhealthy and unsafe underground mines, to the environmental catastrophe of mountaintop removal, to the problems associated with handling the enormous piles of ash that are produced every day. But by far, the biggest problem is the enormous amount of carbon dioxide emitted. According to the EPA, coal contributes 31 percent of all CO2, the largest of any source.
The people who still support coal basically have one argument: that it’s a necessary evil, being the only source of energy within reach that is sufficiently abundant to keep up with our enormous and ever-growing appetite for energy. We have so much coal, they reason, and we need so much energy, how could we not take advantage of this resource? They could be right, as much as those of us who care about the environment hate to admit it. As much as we would like to believe that conservation, efficiency and renewables will meet our growing, but maybe-not-growing-quite-so-quickly demand, there is certainly no guarantee that they will. Considering that coal accounts for 40 percent of all electric generation (down from 45 percent) and 21 percent of all energy in the US, that’s a lot of energy to replace. Of course, with falling natural gas prices, that is clearly picking up a lot of the slack.
Meanwhile, renewables accounted for just over 10 percent of electric power in 2010, and most of that was from existing hydropower.
If that’s not bad enough, coal powers 70 percent of China’s electric grid, which is growing far faster than ours and shows no sign of slowing down. In fact, the only thing keeping them from increasing coal generation even faster is their limited ability to physically move the stuff. Together, the US and China are responsible for 33 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
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