Planet Forward Blog

Energy and Environment News Roundup – 5.24.12

by Silvio Marcacci | 9:14 am May 24th, 2012 | Be the first to comment! »

This post was originally published on Marcacci Communications, a clean energy public relations firm, which provides a daily roundup of energy and climate news and opinion. Inclusion of articles does not mean endorsement. Client relationships are disclosed where applicable.

CLIMATE/EMISSIONS

Global CO2 emissions hit record in 2011 – IEA (via Reuters)

Greenhouse gas gap grows as climate pledges fall short (via Bloomberg)

Climate change will more than triple annual US heat-death toll (via Mother Jones)

More than 150,000 methane seeps appear as Arctic ice retreats (via Scientific American)

Kyoto Protocol emissions cuts review could boost climate ambitions, EU director claims (via Huffington Post/Reuters)

Germany puts deeper carbon cut back on EU agenda (via Reuters)

NATURAL GAS/FRACKING

European fracking bans open market for US gas exports (via Bloomberg Businessweek)

Shale boom has led to lower US carbon dioxide emissions (Houston Business Journal)

PJM says it is handling “massive” shift from coal to gas (via Facts of the Day)

Chesapeake raises big bet in Ohio shale gas (via Wall Street Journal)

Fracking boom seen slow to develop in New York, regulator says (via Bloomberg)

RENEWABLES

China rules US clean energy support violated free-trade rules (via Google News/AP)

Morocco to start work on 500MW solar plant in 2012 (via Reuters)

US Army and Air Force planning to develop 1GW of renewable energy on installations by 2025 (via Green Car Congress)

Continue reading Energy and Environment News Roundup – 5.24.12

Hydrogen Energy Generation from Sunlight

by The Energy Blog | 1:20 pm May 23rd, 2012 | Be the first to comment! »

By Raymond Orbach

Is it possible to create synthetic photosynthesis?

Elementary school children are taught that photosynthesis is the basis for life on Earth. Plants take carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere, water and sunlight, and produce useful chemical energy – their “fuel” for growth and reproduction. But is it possible to create synthetic photosynthesis?

Scientists at the University of Texas at Austin believe it is. The “Fuels from Sunlight” team hopes to show how to efficiently absorb sunlight and split water into clean hydrogen (H₂) fuel without production of CO₂, a greenhouse gas responsible for global warming.

The UT Austin team, headed by chemistry professor Allen Bard and chemical engineering professor Charles Mullins, lead the University’s Center for Electrochemistry, a multi-faculty collaboration devoted to research on fundamental and applied aspects of electrochemistry. The Center previously has received research support for work on electrochemical energy sources such as batteries and fuel cells, solar energy research and new materials.

The current industrial process for hydrogen generation using natural gas produces a molecule of CO₂ for every four molecules of H₂, while the production of hydrogen through photo-electro-catalytic splitting of water generates no CO₂. This is significant, because the typical petroleum company uses large amounts of hydrogen for fuel production – up to one billion cubic feet/day. Carbon-free production of H₂ would reduce emissions of CO₂ from refineries by as much as 40%.

In addition, coatings for turbine blades used in electricity production have been developed that can withstand the very high temperatures associated with H₂ combustion. This means H₂ could be used to generate electricity in place of coal or natural gas (which generates about half the CO₂ from electricity produced from coal).

Photomaterials are central to the development of any system for the conversion of sunlight to other forms of energy (chemical or electrical), and much of the UT Austin team’s effort is devoted to such discovery. The photomaterial has the function of efficiently capturing sunlight under irradiation and creating local electrical currents (reduction and oxidation sites) that split water into H₂ and oxygen (O₂) at reduction and oxidation sites.

In addition to suitable photomaterials, a commercially viable solar-hydrogen process would encompass energy capture, conversion and, to some extent, storage, in a single device. The key components in the development of such a system also include device architectures, and electrocatalysts. Although optimal materials remain to be found, there are no fundamental barriers to their discovery, and much has been learned from past work.

Hydrogen from sunlight is not 20–30 years off. Indeed, the UT Austin team believes there is a good chance that the discoveries of efficient photomaterials and electrocatalysts can be made within the next five years.

Click here for more details about this research:

http://energy.utexas.edu/research/sunlight/

Raymond Orbach, Ph.D, is Director, the Energy Institute at UT Austin.

Energy and Environment News Roundup – 5.23.12

by Silvio Marcacci | 9:15 am May 23rd, 2012 | Be the first to comment! »

CLIMATE/ENVIRONMENT

Trees absorb less carbon in warming world than experts have assumed (via InsideClimate News)

Seagrass holds more carbon per square kilometer than forests (via Yale e360)

Bioenergy from cleared forests a climate killer (via Earth Techling)

Rivers are largest source of mercury in Arctic Ocean, study finds (via Yale e360)

Sea-level rise poses expensive questions for New York City (via ClimateWire)

TRANSPORTATION

EU appeals to China to help reach global emissions agreement to end airline dispute (via Washington Post/AP)

Survey says fuel economy is #1 factor when buying a car (via Autoblog Green)

Midwest cities planning for electric vehicles (via Midwest Energy News)

RENEWABLES

Foreign dominance of US clean energy market spells trouble for America (via Renewable Energy World)

Global geothermal market grew substantially from 2011 to 2012 (via Energy Central)

Solar insurers turn kingmakers over panel survival doubts (via Bloomberg)

Continue reading Energy and Environment News Roundup – 5.23.12

Sustainable Hydropower: A New Flow of Ideas

by The Energy Blog | 9:00 am May 23rd, 2012 | Be the first to comment! »

By Daniel Kammen

What can be done to diversify our clean energy technology options? In recent years we have seen a number of seemingly “old” technologies undergo a reassessment, and a reinvention. Geothermal power, once assessed as “an excellent source of baseload energy, but likely limited in commercially exploitable capacity” has undergone a renaissance.

Here’s the new view in the latest IPCC Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources:

In 2008, global geothermal energy use represented only about 0.1 percent of the global primary energy supply. However, by 2050, geothermal could meet roughly 3 percent of the global electricity demand and 5 percent of the global demand for heating and cooling.

That dramatic expansion of scope – a factor of 15 on a global scale – is a function of new technology options and forecasts for higher fossil fuel prices. But it is only one example.

Another technology undergoing a dramatic expansion of options is that of hydropower. Conventional dams, large and small, use either a natural, or more commonly, an artificial “head” or drop to harness energy.

Thus, the energy available is increased with higher dam, and thus a larger flooded reservoir for conventional dams. Therein lies the problem of big dams that inundate ecosystems, displacing people and wildlife, and in some cases – ironically — generating large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions from the decomposition of flooded, submerged, biomass.

Some dams have even caused earthquakes.

Enter so called “hydrokinetic” energy technologies. Conventional dams alter the river, creating artificial lakes. In hydrokinetic power plants, the energy does not come from falling water, but by extracting the kinetic (movement) energy from the water.

This is very exciting because new turbines, nozzles and indeed innovations in everything from jet engines to ocean craft to the design of pipes can come into play to extract energy from flowing water. Hydrokinetic systems are applicable in both river and ocean currents, and can reduce the need for reservoirs and disruption of waterways dramatically, because no- or minimal- storage of water is needed. The array of hydrokinetic options is dizzying, and is a wonderful and promising field of innovation. A recent survey published in Applied Energy noted no fewer than ten promising options:

Turbine Systems:

- Axial (Horizontal): Rotational axis of rotor is parallel to the incoming water stream (employing lift or drag type blades)

- Vertical: Rotational axis of rotor is vertical to the water surface and also orthogonal to the incoming water stream (employing lift or drag type blades)

- Cross-flow: Rotational axis of rotor is parallel to the water surface but orthogonal to the incoming water stream (employing lift or drag type blades)

- Venturi: Accelerated water resulting from a choke system (that creates pressure gradient) is used to run an in-built or on-shore turbine

- Gravitational vortex: Artificially induced vortex (via funnels) effect is used in driving a vertical turbine

Non-turbine Systems:

- Flutter Vane: Systems that are based on the principle of power generation from hydroelastic resonance (‘flutter’) in free-flowing water

- Piezoelectric: Piezo-property (charge accumulation or current generation in response to mechanical force in some specific materials) of polymers is utilized for electricity generation when a sheet of such material is placed in the water stream

- Vortex induced vibration: Employs vibrations resulting from vortices forming and shedding on the downstream side of a bluff body in a current

- Oscillating hydrofoil: Vertical oscillation of hydrofoils can be utilized in generating pressurized fluids and subsequent turbine operation.

- Sails: Employs drag motion of linearly/circularly moving sheets of foils placed in a water stream

There is a still a great deal to do in terms of technological reliability, cost, and how to scale these to be megawatt, or tens of megawatts, or more. Large conventional dams can be anything up to many giga-watts in scale. In an earlier blog (“Building a New Nation and New Energy in South Sudan”) I described the Fula Rapids on the White Nile, a location as powerful as it is beautiful, where energy production and river conservation may be a great candidate for this technology.

It is nice to see evolving technology, particularly one thought of by many as mature and unchanging, up for a wave of innovation.

Daniel Kammen is the World Bank’s chief technical specialist for renewable energy and energy efficiency. He is an adviser to National Geographic’s Great Energy Challenge initiative.

Iceland Volcano’s Molten Rock Could Become Source of High-Grade Energy

by National Science Foundation | 1:26 pm May 22nd, 2012 | Be the first to comment! »

Geologists drilling an exploratory geothermal well in 2009 in the Krafla volcano in Iceland met with a big surprise: underground lava, also called magma, flowed into the well at 2.1 kilometers (6,900 feet) depth.

It forced the scientists to stop drilling.

“To the best of our knowledge, only one previous instance has been documented of magma flowing into a geothermal well while drilling,” said Wilfred Elders, a geologist at the University of California, Riverside, who led the research team.

The scientists received $3.5 million from the National Science Foundation (NSF), and $1.5 million from the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program, to conduct their research.

Elders and his team studied the well within the Krafla caldera as part of the Iceland Deep Drilling Project, an industry-government consortium, to test whether geothermal fluids at supercritical pressures and temperatures could be exploited as sources of power, said Leonard Johnson, program director in NSF’s Division of Earth Sciences, which funded the research.

“We were drilling a well designed to search for very deep–4.5 kilometers (15,000 feet)–geothermal resources in the volcano,” said Elders.

“While the magma flow interrupted our project, it gave us a unique opportunity to test a very hot geothermal system as an energy source.”

Currently, a third of the electric power and 95 percent of home heating in Iceland is produced from steam and hot water that occurs naturally in volcanic rocks.

“The economics of generating electric power from such geothermal steam improves the higher its temperature and pressure,” Elders said.

“As you drill deeper into a hot zone, the temperature and pressure rise. It should be possible to reach an environment where a denser fluid with very high heat content–but also with unusually low viscosity occurs–so-called ‘supercritical water.’”

Although such supercritical water is used in large coal-fired electric power plants, he said, “no one had tried to use the supercritical water that should occur naturally in the deeper zones of geothermal areas.”

Elders and colleagues report in the March issue of the journal GEOLOGY, published by the Geological Society of America, that although the Krafla volcano, like other volcanoes in Iceland, is basaltic (a volcanic rock containing 45-50 percent silica), the magma they encountered is a rhyolite (a volcanic rock containing 65-70 percent silica).

“Our analyses show that this magma formed by partial melting of basalts within the Krafla volcano,” Elders said.

“The occurrence of minor amounts of rhyolite in some basalt volcanoes has always been something of a puzzle.

“It had been inferred that some unknown process in the source area of magmas, in the mantle deep below the crust of the Earth, allows a silica-rich rhyolite melt to form–in addition to the dominant silica-poor basalt magma.”

Elders said that in geothermal systems water reacts with and alters the composition of the rocks, a process termed “hydrothermal alteration.”

“Our research shows that the rhyolite formed when a mantle-derived basaltic magma encountered hydrothermally altered basalt, and partially melted and assimilated that rock,” he said.

In the spring of 2009, Elders and colleagues progressed normally with drilling the well to 2 kilometers (6,600 feet) depth.

In the next 100 meters (330 feet), however, multiple acute drilling problems occurred.

The drillers determined that at 2,104 meters (6,900 feet) depth, the rate of penetration suddenly increased and the torque on the drilling assembly increased, halting its rotation.

When the drill string was pulled up more than 10 meters (33 feet) and lowered again, the drill bit became stuck at 2,095 meters (6,875 feet).

An intrusion of magma had filled the lowest 9 meters (30 feet) of the open borehole. The team terminated the drilling and completed the hole as a production well.

“When the well was tested high pressure dry steam flowed to the surface with a temperature of 400 degrees Celsius or 750 degrees Fahrenheit, coming from a depth shallower than the magma,” Elders said.

He and colleagues estimated that this steam could generate 25 megawatts of electricity if passed through a suitable turbine–enough electricity to power 25,000 to 30,000 homes.

“What makes this well an attractive source of energy,” said Elders, “is that typical high-temperature geothermal wells produce only 5 to 8 megawatts of electricity from 300 degrees Celsius or 570 degrees Fahrenheit wet steam.”

He believes it should be possible to find reasonably shallow bodies of magma, elsewhere in Iceland and the world, wherever young volcanic rocks occur.

“In the future these could become attractive sources of high-grade energy,” said Elders.

The Iceland Deep Drilling Project has not abandoned the search for supercritical geothermal resources. The project plans to drill a second deep hole in southwest Iceland in 2013.

Elders was joined in the research project by scientists at HS Orka hf (HS Power Co.), Iceland; University of California, Davis; Stanford University; Iceland GeoSurvey; Landsvirkjun Power, Iceland; U.S. Geological Survey; New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology; and the University of Oregon, Eugene

-NSF-

Energy and Environment News Roundup – 5.22.12

by Silvio Marcacci | 9:02 am May 22nd, 2012 | Be the first to comment! »

This post was originally published on Marcacci Communications, which provides a daily roundup of energy and climate news and opinion. Inclusion of articles does not mean endorsement. Client relationships are disclosed where applicable.

ENVIRONMENT/EMISSIONS

France floats carbon tariff plan for EU imports (via BusinessGreen)

Methane sources found bubbling up from melting ice caps (via Yale e360)

Canada axes green business advisory board (via The Guardian)

Bristol Bay mining would harm Alaska salmon habitat, EPA analysis says (via Washington Post)

ENERGY EFFICIENCY

Businesses reducing energy use by 25 percent as recession lingers (via Houston Chronicle)

Gas industry aims to block 2030 zero-carbon building goal (via InsideClimate News)

RENEWABLES

Which countries produce the most wind energy? (via Greenbang)

India plans to add almost 30GW of renewable capacity by 2017 (via Recharge)

Have wind, CSP, and PV turned against each other? (via Greentech Media)

Continue reading Energy and Environment News Roundup – 5.22.12

Fracking battle rages as NY legislative session ends

by Tom Wilber | 11:53 am May 21st, 2012 | Be the first to comment! »

The influences that distinguish New York’s approach to Shale Gas from Pennsylvania’s were again on full display this week in Albany.

I visited the Capitol on Tuesday, the day that New Yorker’s Against Fracking held a rally on the Million Dollar Stair Case, the structure rising through the soaring arches, pillars, and buttresses of the Capitol building. With the rally leaders directing action to the protesters clustered in the open space on and between the landings and adjoining hallways, the protest could be felt and heard on several floors at once. The chants and cheers echoed through the chambers, forcing several staffers to close the doors of nearby offices of both Assembly and Senate quarters.

Rallies are not uncommon in Albany of course – and both those against and for hydraulic fracturing have been working to make their voices heard here. But the spirit of this rally was especially intense, and so was the star power. It was, in effect, a prelude for the day’s main event – a three-hour performance at The Egg featuring a host of New York celebrities railing against fracking. They included Natalie Merchant, Joan Osborne, Mark Ruffalo, Melissa Leo, among other actors, authors, and public figures working with a coalition of groups seeking a permanent ban on shale gas development in New York. Part concert, part rally, part speech making, it reminded me of events iconic of the No Nukes movement of the 1980s, lead by a host of celebrities contributing hugely to public disfavor of nuclear power.

Frackers proponents rally, too, of course, and they are also engaged on battles on other fronts. Industry groups like Energy In Depth are attacking the credibility of high profile activists, like Julie and Craig Sautner, who have been among the most visible residents of Dimock, Pa., trying to hold Cabot Oil & Gas accountable for pollution of water wells in the Carter Road area. There are companies like Chevron, who are battling public perception with full-page adds in the New Yorker Magazine touting the social consciousness and morality of drilling companies. And some farmers and landowners – mostly from the drilling fairway in Broome and Tioga Counties — have gone to Albany themselves to rally in favor or shale gas development, which they portray as nothing short of economic salvation.

Still, when it comes down gauging the reach of grass roots activism, landowners in Broome, Tioga and other parts of the Marcellus and Utica drilling fairway desirous of leases tend to be outnumbered by activists who don’t want to see their state become like Pennsylvania or Texas, with long and mixed legacies of mineral extraction. Both Pennsylvania and Texas have readily welcomed the industry’s push to exploit shale reserves with the controversial practice of fracking, and Pennsylvania governor Tom Corbett has campaigned to minimize regulations and taxes on the industry.

Between New York’s pro and anti-fracking groups is a large bunch of people yet to take a firm stance. And if the issue were somehow left to a popular vote, polls suggest it would be too close to call. According to a recent poll by Siena College Research Institute, 37 percent of the respondents were in favor of allowing fracking on private lands outside of zones that provide drinking water to Syracuse, New York City and other urban areas, while 36 percent opposed. (It’s worth noting that in September, 2011, the poll found 44 percent in favor and 40 percent opposed, suggesting a growing degree of uncertainty.)

And while the future of fracking will not be left to referendum, it’s an issue that might effectively be determined in the next general election. Rally goers in Albany were calling for an outright ban in New York, like the one recently enacted in Vermont. There is no chance of that happening with this legislature session, even if it didn’t end next week. My sources in Albany tell me there is little expectation that the DEC will begin permitting shale gas wells in coming months due to the amount of work the agency has left to finalize its environmental review through the Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (SGIES). Beyond that, any legislative action now on the table to ban or further delay permitting pending review of the health impacts would depend on the outcome of the DEC’s pending environmental review. When that comes – and don’t be surprised if it’s after elections — legislative legal battles will quickly intensify.

If the issue were to come before lawmakers tomorrow, however, the Democrat lead Assembly would likely have the votes for a moratorium. But the measure would be hard pressed to pass in the Senate. That’s because Deputy Majority Leader Tom Libous, a Republican who represents landowners in Broome County desirous of gas leases, and Libous’s many political allies, would present formidable hurdles. The only way this would change is if Democrats gained control of both chambers. The other factor, of course, is Andrew Cuomo, who has proven to be a powerful and popular governor who could break the gridlock if he got behind one side or the other. (The governor was the main target of the anti-fracking rally.) So far, Cuomo has publically deferred to the DEC, lead by Joe Martens, a land-preservationist who appears in no hurry to rush the process along. The political winds could quickly change, of course, if the price of natural gas rises, along with the corresponding money staked to development.

In the meantime, events like Tuesday’s concert continue to raise the profile and position of anti-frackers another notch coming into the meat of the election year. And they continue to raise money for their cause – Concert tickets to the 1,000-seat venue sold for between $40 and $150. Anti-frackers will need it to keep the fight close. They are up against an opponent with deep pockets and a long history of know-how to get things done both in Albany and Washington.