Category Archives: sustainability

China Hops On Australian Solar Market – Sad to say but it could have been America

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This is what the corporate suits missed about government support for solar and wind. They create things that other people want and good paying jobs as well.

http://www.hydrogenfuelnews.com/australia-poised-to-take-the-lead-in-solar-energy-market/854766/

Australia poised to take the lead in solar energy market

– July 16, 2012

Yingli Green Energy notes the solar energy potential of the country

Over the past decade, Australia has shown modest support for alternative energy. In recent years, this support has been growing at a rapid pace, with the country now showing major interest in solar energy. Because of Australia’s exposure to solar radiation, it is one of the most attractive locations in terms of a solar energy market. Yingli Green Energy, a Chinese solar panel manufacturer, believes that the potential for solar energy in Australia is so high that it may become the leader of the photovoltaic mass market by the end of the year.

Australia could benefit from Chinese manufactured solar technologies

Solar energy has been growing in strength all over the world. Demand for solar energy systems is growing amongst consumers who wish to see savings of their energy bills as well as help the environment. As demand for solar energy systems rises, so too does the supply of these energy systems. China has played a large role in the growing availability of solar energy systems. The country has thrown its manufacturing might behind the production of solar panels and other technologies, inundating the mass market with products that are driving down the price of solar energy systems.

Company expects solar energy market prospects to be extraordinary

Yingli Green Energy is one of the three largest solar panel manufacturers in China, as well as the rest of the world. Though the company has a small presence in Australia, it claims that the country could become a world leader in terms of solar energy in the coming years. The company expects Australia to see major progress in the solar energy market by the end of the year, with its prospects becoming “quite extraordinary” in 2014 and 2015.

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The Keystone XL Pipeline Is A Very Bad Idea – So why is the Springfield Chamber of Commerce backing it

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I have no idea how much Keystone and the Koch brothers gave to the Springfield, IL Chamber but it must have been a bunch because they hired someone to coordinate their support for the project. The first I knew of it was an Editorial published in what is left of the State Journal Register. So this posting and the next are in part my preparation for writing a counter Editorial.

http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/rkistner/a_native_people_fight_a_dantes.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+switchboard_rkistner+%28Switchboard%3A+Rocky+Kistner%27s+Blog%29

Rocky Kistner’s Blog

In Canada’s Tar Sands, a Dante’s Hell Threatens People Nearby and Across the Globe

In Canada’s western province of Alberta, Melina Laboucan-Massimo’s community—the Lubicon Lake Nation—has endured a withering toxic tar sands oil assault, an Armageddon against nature few Americans are fully aware of. Here in the once pristine sub-Arctic, tar sands mining operations level vast swaths of boreal forests near native lands, as pipelines burst and spew corrosive chemical-laced tar sands oil into rivers and lakes.

The Lubicon are used to living in harmony with nature. But tar sands mining has brought a deadly discordance to their environment. Melina has watched family and friends battle unheard of cancers and respiratory ailments; she’s listened to local fishermen and hunters complain about unusual lesions and tumors festering in their catches and prey. She’s reacted in disbelief as her government has sponsored airborne sharpshooters to gun down mighty Canadian wolf packs—a zero sum game that is killing one species to try to save another—as dwindling herds of caribou flee their disappearing forest homes and may be gone forever in the not so distant future.

For members of the Lubicon Lake Nation, it is a nightmare of Kafkaesque proportions. Their verdant land of abundant wildlife is metastasizing into pock-marketed battlefields of a thousand Verduns. Melina and other community leaders have not sat idly by as the environmental carnage unfolds around them. She has testified before Congress, spearheaded Greenpeace protest actions, and worked tirelessly to get the word out about the devastation in her community.

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Go there and see the video. Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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This Guy Had A Lot Of Guts – But the year is turning out the way he thought

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I love guys that think clearly about the future. So we will end the week with The Energy Collective and Gil Friend. I do not like the fact that they are backed by Siemens but I am something of a purist.

http://theenergycollective.com/node/75727

 

Posted by: Gil Friend

Predicting the Top Sustainability Stories of 2012

Last month I offered my picks for the Top Sustainability Stories of 2011. Here are my predictions for the Top Sustainability Stories of 2012. (It’s a rugged mix of bad news and good.)

Climate heats up and hides out The sheer pressure of the hard-to-escape evidence — more record-breaking temperatures, more disastrous weather events, big supply chain disruptions, ever-rising insurance payments — will drive more businesses to take global warming seriously as a business risk, even as The Economist and others blast the journalistic malpractice that leaves “climate” out of the weather disaster stories, and President Obama takes cover in an “all of the above” energy strategy.

US falls behind in solar China, Germany, Brazil — and California — continue to invest policy and capital in the new economy, while Washington remains lost in ideological shock and awe (as House republicans tell the Pentagon “you have to waste taxpayers money and make the troops less safe so we can continue to ignore both the science and the economics of climate change”). But there are surprises too: “red state” Iowa has decided that exporting $6b/year to buy fossil fuel from unfriendly nations might not be the most “conservative” plan, and is investing government money to reduce that balance of payments deficit!

EPA battle royal The right’s war on the EPA (and on regulation in general) will continue, and in fact heat up as campaign fodder. Little noticed: 191 house votes attacking the EPA in 2011. Expect this battle to continue into 2013 (depending on how the elections turn out). But there’s good news too.

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Is Tidal Energy Coming – According to this the answer is yes

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Tapping The Source: The Power Of The Oceans

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Last year I came across the story of Dutch company Kema and their energy island idea – basically a variant on the usual pumped hydro energy storage concept where water is pumped out of a space below sea level then allowed to flow back in, generating power as it does. The “island” uses wind power to pump water out of the enclosed area. An obvious extension to this idea would be to harness ocean energy as well – letting wave and/or tidal power supplement the output of the wind turbines. An attraction of this concept is that it potentially allows a large amount of new energy storage to be brought online – and this storage would be along the world’s coastlines, where most of the population lives.


Another form of energy island has been in the news recently, this one a substantially more ambitious proposal which envisions artificial islands to collect wind, wave, ocean current and solar power in the tropics, along with a more unusual energy source – harnessing the difference in water temperatures between the warm surface and the cold depths using a technique called OTEC (Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion). These islands are being proposed by architects Dominic Michaelis and his son Alex Michaelin as a response to Richard Branson’s Virgin Earth Challenge, which offers $25 million in prizes for innovative solutions for combating global warming.

While the practicality of these particular proposals has yet to be put to the test, the various forms of ocean power are probably the most overlooked of the big 6 renewable energy sources (along with solar, wind, geothermal, biomass and hydro).

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India Must Somehow Get Power For 4 Hundred Million People – Is the answer solar

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They have more people without electricity then there are in the United States. MAN! So solar might seem inadequate but I do not think so. I believe if China keeps pumping out the panels.

Written by Varun Mittal | 02 July 2012

India’s per capita consumption of electricity per is around 481 units or one-fifth of world average of 2596 units. Compare it to 900 units per month consumption of electricity in US. Such a low electricity use in India adds to the challenge of development because in order for India to be energy secure, the country needs to first match its supply of power with the demand. In addition, it must add the capacity year on year with respect to the gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate, power being a primary ingredient in economic development.

Gap between supply and demand of power

LOADS DEMAND AVAILABILITY DEFICIT
BASE LOAD 861,591 (MU) 788,355 MU 8.5%
PEAK LOAD 122 GW 110 GW 9.8%

Source: CEA report, 2011

Solar power in the renewable energy mix

India needs to sustain an 8% to 10% economic growth rate, over the next 25 years, and it needs, at the very least, to increase its primary energy supply. Fortunately there is an abundance of solar energy across India. About 5000 trillion kWh per year energy is incident over India’s land area with most parts receiving 4-7 kWh per square mile per day. The annual average global solar radiation on horizontal surfaces, incident over India is about 5.5 kWh per square metre per day or 1650 Kwh per square metre per year.

Fortunately there is an abundance of solar energy across India.

Based on such promising solar energy potential across India, the government of India rolled out

Based on such promising solar energy potential across India, the government of India rolled out the central policy “Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission: JNNSM” on 23 November, 2009 to add 20,000MW grid-connected solar power capacity, which is 27.62% in grid-connected renewable power capacity by 2022.  However, along with the central policy, 3 states (Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Karnataka) have come up with their state solar policies that are independent or concurrent to central policy while other states are planning their solar policies such that the total contribution of solar will be much higher in the renewable power mix. Therefore, the percentage of renewable power in the cumulative grid-connected power capacity will be increased.

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Longterm Storage Is Not An Issue – It never has been for renewable energy

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This is actually part of a lecture that I give to college students called the Myths of Global Warming. The point of it is that Global Warming is indeed happening and at an accelerated pace. The point is that there have been myths erected like barricades that defend the use of fossil fuels. Here is a high tech version.

http://theenergycollective.com/node/75535

Posted by: Joseph Romm

Lauren Simenauer is a former intern with Science Progress, and Sean Pool is Assistant Editor of Science Progress. This piece was originally published at Science Progress.

Super Hot Salt: The Newest Energy Storage Innovation?

Policymakers and energy industry experts often talk about clean energy as though it isn’t reliable. In fact, while an MIT study recently found the existing grid would probably be up to the challenge of absorbing clean energy, intermittency does present a real challenge that renewables must address to get to high levels of penetration.

But BrightSource Energy, a major player in the market for concentrating solar power, or CSP, recently announced the installation of new thermal energy storage technology at three of its planned power plants in California. This thermal energy storage technology will go a long way toward solving the intermittency problem for concentrating solar power. BrightSource’s announcement demonstrates that we can in fact get reliable baseload power from the sun [or, even better, load-following power].

The thermal energy storage systems, built using SolarPLUS technology, work by using hundreds of parabolic mirrors to concentrate the rays of the sun on a tank of molten salts, heating the salts to several hundred degrees above the boiling point of water. The superheated salt is then stored in a giant insulated container until the power plant needs to add additional output, at which point it can use the heat stored in the molten salt to boil water to create steam to drive its turbines.

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Healthcare Upheld – But that is not what I am going to post about

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It has been the shipping industry’s wet dream for a hundred years, Wind Power. They dream back to the days when the only costs for shipping was the ship and port fees. I do not know if this is the system that will catch on but it is pretty cool nonetheless.

http://cleantechnica.com/2011/02/28/wind-powered-cargo-ships-make-a-comeback/

Wind-Powered Cargo Ships Make a Comeback

February 28, 2011 By

Sailing ships once carried much of the world’s cargo across the seas, until canvas sheets were replaced by low-grade “bunker” oil. Now it appears that wind power is about to make a comeback, in the form of rigid “sails” that double as solar panels. The patent-pending technology, called the Aquarius Solar and Wind Marine Power System, is being developed by a company called Eco Marine Power. The dream of a high tech, sustainable energy cargo ship has been percolating for a number of years now, but it hasn’t caught on in a big way, so let’s see if this new system is The One.

Wind Power for Cargo Ships

At first blush, wind power for today’s ultra-huge cargo ships looks like a nice idea, but just not possible. The scale alone makes it seem impractical. However, that hasn’t stopped anyone from trying. In recent years a German company has come up with a parachute-like design for cargo ships that includes sails the size of football fields, and a British company has developed a more traditionally styled, rigging-free sail system for smaller cargo ships.

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The World Is Ending – Well right after it doesn’t

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Well really the guys point is that there will have to be fast and furious changes from a growth model economy to a static or sustainable economy for humans to survive in the civilized manner that we have gotten accustomed to. Still the world has suffered severe trauma before and humans are still here. Plus I believe the subtext of his piece is that the rest of the planet will never notice that mankind ran out of oil or even very much that the climate was destabilized by climate change. It is a really really long article so I will give you a little bit here.

http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/node/1124

Can We Avoid the Perfect Storm?
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It is quite possible that by the year 2100 human life will have become extinct or will be confined to a few residential areas that have escaped the devastating effects of nuclear holocaust or global warming.
—Brian Barry1

Evolution equipped us to deal with threats from dependably loathsome enemies and fearsome creatures, but not with the opaque and cumulative long-term consequences of our own technological and demographic success. As cartoonist Walt Kelly once put it, “We’ve met the enemy, and he is us.”

Deforestation, agriculture, and the combustion of fossil fuels have committed the world to a substantial and possibly rapid warming that will last for hundreds or thousands of years. Rising temperatures, whether gradual or sudden, will progressively destabilize the global climate system, causing massive droughts, more frequent storms, rising sea level, loss of many species, and shifting ecologies, but in ways that are difficult to predict with precision in a nonlinear system. These changes will likely result in scarcities of food, energy, and resources, undermining political, social, and economic stability and amplifying the effects of terrorism and conflicts between and within nations, failed states, and regions.

Action to head off the worst of what could occur is difficult because of the complexity of nonlinear systems, with large delays between cause and effect, and because of the political and economic power of fossil fuel industries to prevent corrective action that would jeopardize their profitability. Political leadership has been absent in large part because no government is presently organized to deal with the permanent emergency of climate destabilization. The effects of procrastination will fall with increasing weight on coming generations, making our role as the primary cause of worsening climate destabilization the largest moral lapse in history.

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Carbon Sequestration The Way It Should Be Done – I am not a huge fan of this but

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The method they are using here is preferable to simply drilling a well anywhere and trying to bury it in the ground. The oil in spent fields never will get out and there was plenty of pressure, so this at least seems safe.

http://www.cbs19.tv/story/18856255/doe-notice-advances-development-of-indiana-gasifications-co2-pipeline

DOE Notice Advances Development of Indiana Gasification’s CO2 Pipeline

Information contained on this page is provided by companies via press release distributed through PR Newswire, an independent third-party content provider. PR Newswire, WorldNow and this Station make no warranties or representations in connection therewith.

SOURCE Indiana Gasification

Transporting CO2 to Gulf States Could Boost U.S. Oil Production by 20 Million Barrels a Year

ROCKPORT, Ind., June 22, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Indiana Gasification welcomed today’s Federal Register publication by the U.S. Department of Energy of an amended notice of intent (NOI) to include an approximately 440 mile CO2 pipeline in the environmental impact statement (EIS) required for DOE financial backing of IG’s state-of-the-art clean fuels facility.

The DOE publication marks the most recent regulatory development in support of the plant, which will be the cleanest coal-fired facility ever built in the United States. In the last two months, the Indiana Department of Environmental Management has filed a proposed clean air permit with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and issued a draft Clean Water Act permit.

In the Notice of Intent, the Department of Energy acknowledges that the proposed project with the CO2 pipeline qualifies for financing under the 2008 appropriations act providing authority for industrial gasification activities. Further, the DOE has determined that the project meets two goals of the Title XVII Loan Guarantee Program, encouraging the commercial use of new or significantly improved technology and achieving substantial environmental benefits.

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2013 Is The Time For The Solar Decathlon – If I was in college I would be there

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Most colleges could stand to turn the energy spotlight on themselves. The University of Illinois for instance is still using a coal fired boiler from the 50s. Still this is a step in the right direction.

http://www.livescience.com/20710-solar-decathlon-nsf-bts.html

Planned For Solar Decathlon 2013

Monica Kanojia , National Science Foundation
Date: 01 June 2012 Time: 05:24 PM ET

This Behind the Scenes article was provided to LiveScience in partnership with the National Science Foundation.

Every two years, the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon encourages competing collegiate teams to design energy-efficient homes that use solar energy.

Launched in 2002, the Solar Decathlon is both an educational and workforce-development program. The competition enlists nearly two dozen teams of students, from various academic backgrounds, who design sustainable homes from the ground up, engineering them with materials provided by major corporate sponsors.

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More tomorrow.

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