Joined: Mar 04, 2005 Posts: 2655 Location: New Zealand
Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2008 7:59 pm Post subject: Re: Future Energy Technology News
Lessons Learned by Offshore Oil Industry Boost Offshore Wind Energy
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There is a significant energy resource in the form of wind offshore of much of the United States. For example, a recent study done at Stanford by Dvorak, Jacobson and Archer suggests that there is an exploitable wind resource of up to 200 terawatt hours (TWh) off the coast of California. Unfortunately, 90% of it is in waters more than 50 meters deep, so a lot of this energy is not regarded as economically viable with the current monopile tower technology.
Floating platforms represent the most straight forward solution. The basic concept behind a floating system is that most of the wave load comes from the water plane, where the body pierces the water surface, but the buoyancy can be anywhere, so the motions of a platform due to waves can be reduced by having most of the body well submerged with only small members piercing the surface.
Last week in part 1, I looked at many wind power success stories. This week, we're going to take a closer look at the wind power industry itself.
Wind Power Facts and Statistics
The American Wind Energy Association compiles many statistics on wind power in the US. According to its numbers, the industry has had a growth rate of 29% on average between 2002 and 2007, with the last few years being the best (indicating that growth is accelerating).
At the end of 2007, there was 16,818 megawatts of wind power installed capacity in the US, which represents about 18% of all the installed wind power capacity on Earth (94,112 megawatts at the end of 2007).
Yet that's still generating only about 1% of US total energy, enough for about 4.5 million average US households. The good news is that at its current growth rate, there's a kind of Moore's Law that will apply, and while it took many years to get to the first 1%, the next one will take a lot less because of exponential growth, and so on until wind power is a bigger chunk of total energy production.
huffingtonpost _________________ Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. H. G. Wells.
Fatih Birol's motto: leave oil before it leaves us.
Joined: Oct 25, 2004 Posts: 1374 Location: Stalag 13
Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2008 8:30 pm Post subject: Re: Future Energy Technology News
Look. It’s a Freighter. It’s a Sailboat. It’s… Both
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In 1982, in my first journalism job, for Offshore Magazine, I got to interview Stinson Davis, a 100-year-old man in Five Islands, Maine, who was the last living captain of a ship powered entirely by sail. (He was hauling mahogany across the Atlantic from the Congo during World War I).
He would have gotten a chuckle out of seeing the MV Beluga SkySails, a 400-foot container ship that departed Bremerhaven, Germany, Tuesday night bound for Guanta, Venezuela, carrying components of a particle-board factory for the worldwide shipper DHL.
On the way out of the harbor, it lofted a kite-like sail that will be deployed any time the winds are right, cutting 10 or 20 percent or more off the fuel use for the trip, possibly saving as much as $1,500 a day in fuel costs, according to officials at Beluga Group, the owner of the vessel. Of course, this would also reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Some video of a test “sail” is below.
I know this has been posted elsewhere before, but I wanted to post it again here. I like it. It's a working technology to save freighter fuel. _________________ Now why didn't I think of that?
Joined: Mar 04, 2005 Posts: 2655 Location: New Zealand
Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2008 9:02 pm Post subject: Re: Future Energy Technology News
Drifter, Thanks very much for your post! It was Lorenzo who first posted the SkySail concept here. _________________ Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. H. G. Wells.
Fatih Birol's motto: leave oil before it leaves us.
This really isn't 'future' technology. Rather it's available for purchase right now on the market. But at $32,000, it is way overpriced in my opinion. Probably so expensive because it is hand-made by a small European company. Maybe with mass production, the price could be brought down to around $8,000- $10,000 per unit. I think this type of technology along with bicycles, buses, trains, and walking is the future of personal transportation. Not heavy, full-sized hydrogen or hybrid cars. Electric power with pedal assist is the way to go. Car companies need to start focusing more on this type of stuff.
No electric heater or A/C, but oh well. _________________ Now why didn't I think of that?
Joined: Mar 04, 2005 Posts: 2655 Location: New Zealand
Posted: Sat Jun 14, 2008 8:40 pm Post subject: Re: Future Energy Technology News
Scientists find bugs that eat waste and excrete petrol
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He means bugs. To be more precise: the genetic alteration of bugs – very, very small ones – so that when they feed on agricultural waste such as woodchips or wheat straw, they do something extraordinary. They excrete crude oil.
Unbelievably, this is not science fiction. Mr Pal holds up a small beaker of bug excretion that could, theoretically, be poured into the tank of the giant Lexus SUV next to us. Not that Mr Pal is willing to risk it just yet. He gives it a month before the first vehicle is filled up on what he calls “renewable petroleum”. After that, he grins, “it’s a brave new world”.
Mr Pal is a senior director of LS9, one of several companies in or near Silicon Valley that have spurned traditional high-tech activities such as software and networking and embarked instead on an extraordinary race to make $140-a-barrel oil (£70) from Saudi Arabia obsolete. “All of us here – everyone in this company and in this industry, are aware of the urgency,” Mr Pal says.
However, to substitute America’s weekly oil consumption of 143 million barrels, you would need a facility that covered about 205 square miles, an area roughly the size of Chicago.
That is the main problem: although LS9 can produce its bug fuel in laboratory beakers, it has no idea whether it will be able produce the same results on a nationwide or even global scale.
“Our plan is to have a demonstration-scale plant operational by 2010 and, in parallel, we’ll be working on the design and construction of a commercial-scale facility to open in 2011,” says Mr Pal, adding that if LS9 used Brazilian sugar cane as its feedstock, its fuel would probably cost about $50 a barrel.
This week's issue of Newsweek features an interview with Craig Venter, the "bad boy" of science whose work developing new bacterial strains capable of eating CO2 and producing fuels we've chronicled in recent months, in which he reveals more about his Maryland lab and the innovative processes it's pioneering.
As we've described before, Venter's overarching goal is to produce microorganisms that are able to "convert things like sugar or sunlight or carbon dioxide into fuels that people are very familiar with, like diesel fuel and gasoline," as he himself put it. These would constitute not only the fabled second- and third-generation biofuels we keep hearing about (like cellulosic ethanol and other plant biomass-derived fuels) but even so-called "fourth-generation" biofuels -- those produced directly from CO2.
Venter hopes his bugs will supplant the need for carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technologies by making CO2 a commodity, instead of a byproduct to be disposed of. According to Venter, large, bacteria-processing fermenters, similar to those used to make beer and wine, would replace traditional refineries. He expects the first generation of his engineered bacteria to be commercially available within the next year or two years. He made it a point to stress that he and his colleagues were thinking "in terms of years, not decades."
Those concerned about how these bacteria-produced fuels will integrate into our present energy infrastructure need not worry, Venter explains; in fact, they won't even require the type of adjustment that even corn ethanol needs. This is because Venter's fuels can be produced with very little water, which minimizes damages to car engines.
Of course, those familiar with Venter and his work know that any of his statements should be taken with a heavy grain of salt. He isn't called the "bad boy" of science for nothing, after all. Regardless of one's views about his outsize personality, one certainly can't deny he is a visionary in many respects. Here's how he describes some of the impacts he foresees his inventions will have:
The fuel-and-oil industry is a multi trillion-dollar industry, so I think there is room for dozens to a hundred solutions, each of which could create trillion-dollar industries. The same oil that gets burned as fuel is also the entire basis for the petrochemical industries, so our clothing, our plastics and our pharmaceuticals all come from oil and its derivatives. There are multiple billion- or trillion-dollar industries out there that new inventions will help spawn.
Right now oil is being isolated around the globe, and there is a major effort in shipping, trucking and otherwise transporting that oil around to a very finite number of refineries. Biology allows us to make these same fuels in a much more distributed fashion. I envision maybe a million micro-refineries. Companies, cities and potentially even individuals could have a small refinery to make their own fuel. This would eliminate a lot of the distribution problems and associated pollution.
It could all yet come apart, of course, but now, more than ever, we need ambitious individuals like Venter out there working hard to tackle climate change and our energy crisis.
treehugger _________________ Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. H. G. Wells.
Fatih Birol's motto: leave oil before it leaves us.
Last edited by Graeme on Fri Jun 20, 2008 12:07 am; edited 1 time in total
Joined: Mar 04, 2005 Posts: 2655 Location: New Zealand
Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2008 10:19 pm Post subject: Re: Future Energy Technology News
Trouble ahead for the electric car industry?
Japanese firms cast doubt on electric car
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In a comprehensive report published recently by Japanese daily "Nikkei", Toyota officials are quoted as saying they do not believe that the current battery technology, and the technology that will follow it in the next few years, is reliable enough to power an electric car on its own without a back-up gasoline engine, with a level of efficiency and usefulness approaching that of a hybrid car.
Japanese battery producers quoted in the report also cast doubts on whether the necessary technology will become available over the next 20 years. "Lithium ion technology still faces several serious problems," said a senior official from one of the battery makers. "One of them is overheating during regular use to the point where there could be a risk of fire breaking out. It will also take quite a long time to build a recharging infrastructure for widespread use."
globes _________________ Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. H. G. Wells.
Fatih Birol's motto: leave oil before it leaves us.
Joined: Mar 04, 2005 Posts: 2655 Location: New Zealand
Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2008 10:42 pm Post subject: Re: Future Energy Technology News
How biofuels are like drugs
Posted by Vinod Khosla (Guest Contributor)
Quote:
Currently we are faced with an energy crisis, an environmental crisis, a food crisis, and a terrorism crisis, and all are related to oil. High cost options like hybrids and electric cars may sound good, but are unlikely to materially reduce carbon emissions. To make a meaningful impact, we have to ensure that at least 500-800 million of the next billion cars we produce on this planet in the next 15 years be low carbon cars. The only cost-effective option likely to get broad market acceptance is cellulosic fuel cars in the next decade or two.
Sufficient biomass exists as waste from forestry operations alone to meet all of the 21 billion gallons of cellulosic fuels mandate established in the 2007 energy bill. All 36 billion gallons of the mandate could be produced, at prices approaching $1.00 per gallon within ten years, if we include agricultural crop waste, municipal organic waste, and sewage.
By some agronomists' estimates winter cover crops could produce 450 million tons of biomass within ten years and over 750 million tons of biomass by 2030 on 150 million acres of winter crop land. That is sufficient biomass to replace much of our imported gasoline. All this could be accomplished without an additional acre of land used for biofuels production. At the same time, winter cover crops will improve the ecology of traditional annual food crops during their summer growth period.
Work has started on the planting of a 1,000-acre switchgrass field in the Oklahoma Panhandle that researchers plan to use in the production of cellulosic ethanol.
The field is being touted as the world's largest for switchgrass, a drought-resistant perennial plant that grows even on marginal lands. Scientists at the Noble Foundation in Ardmore are overseeing the project and hope that switchgrass proves to be a viable substitute for corn in ethanol production.
Hitch Enterprises, a Panhandle-based company, began planting the field earlier this month. Smaller fields of switchgrass also will be planted in central Oklahoma near Chickasha and Maysville.
The crop from the field will be cut and sent to a new biorefinery that will be built by Abengoa Bioenergy of Hugoton, Kan., just across the state line from Guymon. The biorefinery should be ready for use by 2010.
"The whole goal is to displace 30 percent of the oil we import," he said.
msnbc _________________ Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. H. G. Wells.
Fatih Birol's motto: leave oil before it leaves us.
Joined: Mar 04, 2005 Posts: 2655 Location: New Zealand
Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2008 7:22 pm Post subject: Re: Future Energy Technology News
Another sign that peak oil is near.
'Tipping Point' for Renewable Energy
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Renewable energy is approaching a "tipping point" and should expand dramatically in the next decade, further narrowing the gap between alternative forms of energy and fossil fuel use, said environmental and economic experts at a forum here Monday.
"Increasing market demand, policies, and investment trends are creating a perfect storm for the growth of renewable energy across the world," said Christopher Flavin, moderator of the forum and president of the Worldwatch Institute. "We are at a point where all of these factors will allow renewable energy to move into the mainstream."
Worldwatch fellow Eric Martinot and Michael Liebrich, CEO and founder of the investment analysis firm New Energy Finance, presented an optimistic picture for the future of renewable energy as global investment in the sector continues to expand.
Sixty-six countries have set policy targets to increase their investment in renewable energy, including 22 developing countries and all 27 EU countries, said Martinot, lead author of Worldwatch's "Renewables 2007 Global Status Report."
yahoo _________________ Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. H. G. Wells.
Fatih Birol's motto: leave oil before it leaves us.
Joined: Mar 04, 2005 Posts: 2655 Location: New Zealand
Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2008 9:06 pm Post subject: Re: Future Energy Technology News
Synthetic biology aims to solve energy conundrum
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You can power laptops - and, potentially cars - using hydrogen extracted from water. The trouble is that it takes a lot of electricity. A simpler way would be to do it naturally, using enzymes - proteins which catalyse reactions - and bacteria. These do exist: certain green algae and "cyanobacteria" can split water using photosynthesis to produce molecular hydrogen.
But to create a generation of cars that would run on water with some sludge in the back, we need to learn how to design our own bacteria and enzymes that can co-opt natural processes for our ends.
But the ultimate aim of schemes such as BioModularH2 is to go beyond ethanol and use sunlight to power the production of hydrogen from water. Perhaps only then the arguments over biofuels - frequently criticised for taking up land that could be used to grow food - will be settled.
In the meantime, cellulose-derived fuels will be first to benefit from designer proteins. But there remains a question mark over the sustainability of using biomass for fuel, no matter how efficiently it can be produced. "They are using so-called agricultural waste. From a sustainability point of view, there is no such thing: it gets ploughed back into the land," says Jim Thomas, research programme manager at the Canada-based ETC Group, which is pushing for a moratorium on the commercialisation of synthetic biology.
Clearly, our need for designer enzymes is growing urgent.
guardian _________________ Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. H. G. Wells.
Fatih Birol's motto: leave oil before it leaves us.
Joined: Mar 04, 2005 Posts: 2655 Location: New Zealand
Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2008 9:56 pm Post subject: Re: Future Energy Technology News
MIT prototype solar dish passes first tests
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A team led by MIT students this week successfully tested a prototype of what may be the most cost-efficient solar power system in the world--one team members believe has the potential to revolutionize global energy production.
The system consists of a 12-foot-wide mirrored dish that team members have spent the last several weeks assembling. The dish, made from a lightweight frame of thin, inexpensive aluminum tubing and strips of mirror, concentrates sunlight by a factor of 1,000--creating heat so intense it could melt a bar of steel.
Someday soon, Ahrens hopes, the company he and his teammates have founded, called RawSolar, will produce such dishes by the thousands. They could be set up in huge arrays to provide steam for industrial processing, or for heating or cooling buildings, as well as to hook up to steam turbines and generate electricity. Once in mass production, such arrays should pay for themselves within a couple of years with the energy they produce.
"This is actually the most efficient solar collector in existence, and it was just completed," says Doug Wood, an inventor based in Washington state who patented key parts of the dish's design--the rights to which he has signed over to the student team.
As Intel Joins the Solar Sector, Is There Room for Everyone?
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That said, as I've warned multiple times - while the trend is clear for the industry, ultimate winners and the marketplace holds many uncertainties.
The announcement by Intel (INTC) highlights these "long term" risks - as did the foray by Applied Materials (AMAT). Solar dreamers will tell you there is room for many many winners because the opportunity is so huge. I do agree the opportunity is huge, but I've never seen any business sector where there are 30 or 40 winners. In the end, this will be a high volume, low margin business - almost equivalent to the semiconductor business unless/until a different technology breakthrough comes down the road.
I would say JA Solar (JASO) is a key solar cell supplier so this move by Intel, onto what appears to be their turf could be a danger sign. Now, at this point in the solar cycle - when any 1 company reports something good, they all trade together as if competitors doing well is a great thing.
seekingalpha _________________ Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. H. G. Wells.
Fatih Birol's motto: leave oil before it leaves us.
Joined: Mar 04, 2005 Posts: 2655 Location: New Zealand
Posted: Thu Jun 19, 2008 8:26 pm Post subject: Re: Future Energy Technology News
I posted this story from a news article quite sometime ago. Now it appears in Scientific American. In case some of you missed it earlier, I like to repeat it here because I like this pioneering effort.
Inside the Solar-Hydrogen House: No More Power Bills--Ever
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Mike Strizki has not paid an electric, oil or gas bill—nor has he spent a nickel to fill up his Mercury Sable—in nearly two years. Instead, the 51-year-old civil engineer makes all the fuel he needs using a system he built in the capacious garage of his home, which employs photovoltaic (PV) panels to turn sunlight into electricity that is harnessed in turn to extract hydrogen from tap water.
"The ability to make your own fuel is priceless," says the man known as "Mr. Gadget" to his friends. He boasts a collection of hydrogen-powered and electric vehicles, including a hydrogen-run lawn mower and car (the Sable, which he redesigned and named the "Genesis") as well as an electric racing boat, and even an electric motorcycle. "All the technology is off-the-shelf. All I'm doing is putting them together."
"I'm a self-sufficiency guy," he adds. Strizki, a civil engineer, has been interested in alternative energy sources since 1997 when he began working on vehicles fueled by alternative means during his tenure with the New Jersey Department of Transportation.
The Strizki's personalized home-energy system consists of 56 solar panels on his garage roof, and housed inside is a small electrolyzer (a device, about the size of a washing machine, that uses electricity to break down water into its component hydrogen and oxygen). There are 100 batteries for nighttime power needs along the garage's inside wall; just outside are ten propane tanks (leftovers from the 1970s that are capable of storing 19,000 cubic feet, or 538 cubic meters, of hydrogen) as well as a Plug Power fuel cell stack (an electrochemical device that mixes hydrogen and oxygen to produce electricity and water) and a hydrogen refueling kit for the car.
sciam _________________ Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. H. G. Wells.
Fatih Birol's motto: leave oil before it leaves us.
Joined: Aug 03, 2007 Posts: 3804 Location: Boston Suburbs
Posted: Thu Jun 19, 2008 8:43 pm Post subject: Re: Future Energy Technology News
Graeme wrote:
Trouble ahead for the electric car industry?
Japanese firms cast doubt on electric car
Quote:
In a comprehensive report published recently by Japanese daily "Nikkei", Toyota officials are quoted as saying they do not believe that the current battery technology, and the technology that will follow it in the next few years, is reliable enough to power an electric car on its own without a back-up gasoline engine, with a level of efficiency and usefulness approaching that of a hybrid car.
Japanese battery producers quoted in the report also cast doubts on whether the necessary technology will become available over the next 20 years. "Lithium ion technology still faces several serious problems," said a senior official from one of the battery makers. "One of them is overheating during regular use to the point where there could be a risk of fire breaking out. It will also take quite a long time to build a recharging infrastructure for widespread use."
No, trouble ahead for Toyota because they are too stupid to know about the new safe lithium chemistries. _________________ Paranoia is demonstrated to be an infectious disease, and stupidity plus the internet its major vector.
Joined: Mar 04, 2005 Posts: 2655 Location: New Zealand
Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2008 6:44 pm Post subject: Re: Future Energy Technology News
Big Oil's Hydrogen Future
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How's this for irony: The clean fuel of the future could end up being developed by the oil titans of today.
While the headlines are filled with talk of solar, wind and ethanol, the oil and gas industry is quietly gambling billions of dollars that natural gas and its controversial liquefied counterpart will replace oil and coal in the energy economy of the future. And not just for burning. Increasingly, experts see natural gas as the only economically feasible way to build a new, less-polluting, hydrogen-based economy--a vast market allowing the oil industry a second act at the center of a transportation revolution.
In the U.S., the capacity of pipelines exporting natural gas produced in the Rocky Mountains to markets in the Midwest, East Coast and West Coast rose more than 40% between 2001 and 2006. In addition, several transcontinental pipelines connecting U.S. markets with natural gas fields in Canada are under construction. The most ambitious project is the 3,600-mile Alaskan pipeline, which will run from the North Slope along the Alcan Highway through the Yukon and British Columbia.
As those projects mature, new players have begun to pursue pieces of the action. One of the more ambitious acquisitions was made by Warren Buffett's Mid-American Energy, which purchased the Kern River pipeline in 2002. New England has also seen a surge in large natural gas projects. NiSource, DTE Energy and National Grid sunk $684 million in a 424-mile pipeline system stretching from the U.S.-Canadian border to Westchester County, N.Y. Meanwhile, New England plans to import natural gas supplies from foreign markets and has started construction on nearly a dozen shipping terminals for liquid natural-gas imports.
The international boom in natural gas dwarfs the American boom. Royal Dutch Shell, Europe's largest oil company, and Qatar Petroleum have partnered in new Qatar-based projects that will ramp up natural gas production more than 1 million barrels per day by 2030. Shell will spend more than $20 billion developing liquefied natural gas plants in Russia. Statoil will spend $9.5 billion on a LNG plant in Stavanger, Norway, nearly 50% more than originally anticipated in 2002. Chevron, the U.S. oil company, is developing natural gas fields in Australia estimated to hold $400 billion of natural gas. Finally, Exxon is developing natural-gas projects in Russia, Nigeria and Qatar, which should help to boost production.
Another irony: like crude oil, a small number of countries--Russia, Iran, Qatar and Saudi Arabia--control the vast majority of the world's natural gas reserves. Many have begun referring to this possible gas cartel as OGEC. In other words, here we go again.
forbes _________________ Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. H. G. Wells.
Fatih Birol's motto: leave oil before it leaves us.
Joined: Mar 04, 2005 Posts: 2655 Location: New Zealand
Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2008 7:17 pm Post subject: Re: Future Energy Technology News
Revealed: UK's blueprint for a green revolution
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One in four British homes could be fitted with solar heating equipment and 3,500 wind turbines could be erected across Britain within 12 years as part of a green energy revolution to be proposed by the government next week.
The long-awaited renewable energy strategy, a copy of which has been seen by the Guardian, will say Britain needs to make a £100bn dash to build up its clean power supply if it is to reach its EU-imposed target of producing 15% of the country's energy from renewable sources by 2020.
The UK could cut its greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 20% and reduce its dependency on oil by 7% within 12 years if it conducts the massive overhaul of energy production and consumption outlined in the strategy document, according to the government.
But at a time of mounting consumer anger over rising fuel prices, it also concedes that greening Britain's power supply will push up energy bills and increase fuel poverty.
The proposals include:
· New powers to force people to improve the energy efficiency of their homes when they renovate them;
· A 30-fold increase in offshore wind power generation;
· New loans, grants and incentives for businesses and households;
· An area the size of Essex to be planted with trees and other crops to produce biomass energy;
· Forcing people to replace inefficient appliances such as oil-fired boilers.
guardian _________________ Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. H. G. Wells.
Fatih Birol's motto: leave oil before it leaves us.
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