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Renewed energy
Jeremy Leggett
February 26, 2008 9:00 AM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/jeremy_leggett/2008/02/renewed_energy.html
One of the loudest arguments of those who profess that traditional energy is needed even if renewables markets grow large is that modern nations cannot be powered properly without it. In particular, they say, renewables cannot meet baseload demand.
Late last year, a German economics ministry experiment showed that distributed power can indeed produce reliable baseload in a secure and reliable manner. Thirty-six decentralised renewable plants - a mix of biogas, wind, solar (photovoltaics, or PV) and hydropower - were linked by three companies and a university in a nationwide network controlled by a central computer.
Schmack Biogas AG, Enercon GmbH, SolarWorld AG and the Institute for Solar Energy Supply Systems (ISET) at the University of Kassel conceived and ran the experiment with 13 other partners, aiming to show in miniature via a "combined power plant" what could be done, if the will can be summoned on a national scale, to replace both fossil fuels and nuclear power.
The experimental network, capable of producing about 50 megawatt hours of electricity a year - 61% from wind (12.6MW of peak power), 25% from biogas (4MW peak), and 14% for PV (5.5MW peak) - was scaled to meet 1/10,000th of the electricity demand in Germany. It was equivalent to a small town with around 12,000 households.
The system met both continuous baseload and peakloads round the clock and regardless of weather conditions. During the day of the press conference to announce the results, there was no wind at all in Germany and the country was covered by cloud. Such intermittency of solar and wind, of course, means that bioenergy has to play an important role.
Four biogas plants were used along with three wind parks and 20 PV installations. The current cost of generating electricity from the combined power plant is currently 13 eurocents per kWh, twice as expensive as conventional electricity. But then the price of conventional polluting electricity is rising fast in Germany, as everywhere else.
If peak oil hits us in a few years, and if rising concern about climate change forces governments to avoid a dash for coal-to-liquids and coal use without carbon capture, the question then becomes how quickly renewables can rise from their current low level of global electricity production - alongside maximal energy efficiency - to meet the challenge.
There, sadly, the news is not good. We have been held back for too long after all the years of the great addiction. We can grow far faster than nuclear, but there would still be a sizeable gap, otherwise known as the third energy crisis.
February 28, 2008
In search of the 'green' car
According to IMS Research, the biggest single technical challenge facing the automotive industry is making cars that use less fuel.
A new report from IMS Research entitled 'The Green Car' finds that in the next ten years, one solution alone is unlikely to be the answer; instead, a range of technologies will be employed. The need to improve fuel economy is driven by rising fuel prices, environmental considerations and a desire to reduce dependency on imported fuel. Report author Jon Cropley comments: “These issues are political hot potatoes. Car manufacturers will not be merely asked to improve fuel efficiency: they will be forced to by legislation.”
Manufacturers in the USA must already follow standards for fuel economy based on Cafe (corporate average fuel economy). This is the weighted average fuel economy in miles per gallon (mpg) of a manufacturer's fleet of cars. Cafe for model year 2007 is 27.5 mpg (8.55 litres/100 km). Proposals are being considered to raise thisto 35 mpg (6.72 litres/100 km) by 2020.
It is not just American automotive executives that are facing the heat; similar legislation is being proposed elsewhere. For example, the EU is currently debating a higher target of 120g of CO2 per km by 2012. As CO2 is directly linked to fuel consumption, this equates to above 40 mpg (5.88 litres/100 km) on average for new gasoline cars.
If proposed fuel economy legislation is not enough of a challenge, legislation on emissions is also getting tougher. The EU has already proposed a new set of standards called Euro V, which is scheduled to apply from September 2009. These are substantially more demanding than the current Euro IV standards. The USA, Japan, China and many other countries are also planning to introduce stricter standards.
What can car makers do? Well, electric cars, plug-in hybrids and cars powered by hydrogen have all been receiving attention in the press. However, the IMS report finds these are likely to be longer-term solutions. In the next ten years, technologies that are likely to be increasingly used include cylinder deactivation, variable valve timing, diesel engines, turbochargers, piezo diesel injection, gasoline direct injection, hybrid engines, stop-start systems and flex-fuel engines.
Different approaches will be taken in different regions: cylinder deactivation is forecast to have a higher fitment rate in North America; hybrid engines in Japan; diesel engines in Western Europe. However, all regions will employ a variety of the advanced engine technologies analysed in the report.
How can manufacturers make cars that use less fuel? IMS Research believes there is no single perfect solution; instead, there is a range of valuable solutions. Which of them are used will depend largely on the type of car and where it is made.
IMS Research
From 'The Engineer'
Features January 26, 2008
Marine energy: Europe is leading the way
Wave energy sources are not only available in plenty, but are also consistent, predictable and have the highest energy density among all renewable energy sources. The best resource is found between 40-60 degrees of latitude where the available resource is 30 to 70 kW/m, with peaks of 100 kW/m. The potential worldwide wave energy contribution to the electricity market is estimated to be of the order of 2,000 TWh/year, about 10 per cent of the world electricity consumption.
The marine energy sector is set to grow faster. However, as it happened for the wind energy, government support, financial investment and technological advancement are needed to see the marine energy sector reach commercialisation.
“Wave energy technology” explains Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst Gouri Nambudripad, “is being developed in a number of countries such as Canada, China, Chile, India, Japan, Russia and the US. However, Europe is leading the way in innovative technologies, pilot projects as well as pushing the existing technologies towards commercialisation including countries such as UK, Ireland, Portugal, Norway and Spain. In tidal energy, Canada, Argentina, Western Australia and Korea possess the resources, but here again Europe is a frontrunner, with the UK and France seemingly promising.”
“The UK – having some of the best wave resource in the world - is targeting 40 per cent of its energy from renewables by 2050 of which 20 per cent is to be sourced from wave and tidal energy,” continues Gouri Nambudripad.
“The UK is estimated to possess the capacity to generate approximately 87TWh of wave power annually equivalent to 20-25 per cent of current UK demand. Moreover, the UK has committed GBP 25m since 1999 towards the wave and tidal programme.”
Wave energy devices can be divided into three main categories: shore-line, near-shore and offshore devices. Shore-line devices are devices on the shore. Near-shore devices are ones that are within 12-25 miles off the shore.
Finally, offshore devices are those placed in waters of more than 50 metres in depth and/or more than 25 miles from the shore.
“About 1000 patents for wave energy converters are currently in the market and broadly fall under the above-mentioned categories. With so many technologies around there is no clear consensus on which technology will prevail over the others or which ones will be successful,” concludes Frost & Sullivan Analyst Nambudripad.
There are two main research centres in Europe focusing on the development and commercialisation of ocean energy technologies. The first is the European Marine Energy Centre located in Orkney, Scotland. It provides developers with sites to test their prototypes. Government and other public sector organisations have invested around GBP 15 million in the creation of the centre and its two marine laboratories. The other is the Wave Energy Centre in Portugal. It provides strategic and technical support to companies, R&D institutions and public organizations. It also looks for international cooperation helping foreign companies test their devices in Portuguese waters.
The marine energy industry has a long way to go, but ongoing research and government support should lead to improvements making these technologies more economically attractive in the future. Combined with intensifying company activity in this field, Europe is poised to be the place to watch in the marine energy arena of the future.
World's largest solar array exceeds performance goals
The world’s largest solar power system – located in Bavaria, Germany – is exceeding performance expectations since the solar photovoltaic array went live over a year ago.
Bavaria Solarpark has a total of 10 MW of power capacity and consists of three solar parks – in Muehlhausen, Guenching, and Minihof – and the data accrued thus far indicates that PowerLight’s PowerTracker system is performing as designed.
“The performance of the 10 MW Bavaria Solarpark has been very strong,” noted Janine Schellhorn, Chief Managing Director of Deutsche Structured Finance (DSF). “Based on the consistent performance of this groundbreaking solar installation, we look forward to working with PowerLight and our other partners to develop additional large-scale systems at other sites throughout Europe.”
“PowerLight is pleased to report that our solar power system —featuring our patented solar tracking technology – is reliably producing clean renewable energy,” said PowerLight’s CEO Tom Dinwoodie. “The scale and quick success of this deployment validates the market leadership of our PowerTracker system.”
“Good planning and system design, high quality components and careful monitoring have resulted in the terrific yield that is being realised by this milestone solar power system – now, and for decades to come,” added Mr. Klaus Kiefer of the Fraunhofer Institute of Solar Energy Systems, which is involved in the monitoring and quality control of the installations.
Bavaria Solarpark was designed and provided by PowerLight Corporation, using its patented PowerLight PowerTracker system. This innovative tracking system follows the sun as it moves across the sky throughout the day, producing more electricity than conventional fixed systems. PowerTracker’s single-axis design is optimised to be reliable, cost-effective and efficient, thereby optimising project economics. With 6.3MW of solar PV in Muehlhausen and 1.9MW each in Guenching and Minihof, Bavaria Solarpark is comprised of a total of 57,600 photovoltaic panels.
PowerLight served as the turnkey solar power system provider, leading the project’s development, design, deployment, and service. The photovoltaic modules were produced by Sharp Electronics. Siemens AG provided electrical construction and equipment, such as inverters.
The solar power plant was built on fallow fields formerly used for agricultural purposes.The area provides ecological benefits; herds of Moorland sheep graze the pastures and keep the grass short under the solar electric panels and extensive vegetation areas were planted to enhance the integration of the project site into the surroundings.
Bavaria Solarpark was financed by Deutsche Structured Finance and the Solar Energy Fund Bavaria, a closed fund.
Together with PowerLight and Siemens, regional companies K&S Consulting, Max Boegl Group and Klebl GmbH worked on the development and construction of the solar parks.
All three solar power plants began producing clean energy during 2004. Interconnection to the electrical grid was secured by the regional German utility E.ON Bayern and E.ON Netz. The German EEG guarantees a 20-year power purchase for electricity produced from renewable energy sources.
“During its anticipated lifetime –at least 20 years– the solar systems of Bavaria Solarpark will produce hundreds of millions of kilowatt hours of clean electricity,“ noted Dinwoodie.
For more information. visit www.powerlight.com
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Is he right?---or the article beneath that? Whatever, Mr. van der Meer emphasises the impact of wasted and lost energy which occurs every time the central heating clicks in and when you turn the key in the ignition
June 25, 2007
When it comes to the future of energy, the world needs a reality check. Contrary to public perceptions, renewable energy is not the silver bullet that will soon solve all our problems. Indeed, in the decades ahead, three hard truths will generate turbulence in the global energy system.
We all know that global demand for energy is growing, but the reality of how fast hasn’t really sunk in. The first hard truth is that demand is accelerating. Energy use in 2050 may be twice as high as it is today, or higher still. The main causes are population growth, from six to more than nine billion people, and higher levels of prosperity. China and India are entering the energy-intensive phase of their development. This is the point when people buy their first television or car, or board a plane for the first time, and start to consume much more transport fuel and electricity. And most people in China and India have never boarded a plane yet! The pace of change is startling. Last year, China enlarged its electricity capacity by roughly the equivalent of Great Britain’s entire stock of power stations.
The second hard truth is that the growth rate of supplies of “easy oil”, conventional oil and natural gas that are relatively easy to extract, will struggle to keep up with accelerating demand. Just when energy demand is surging, many of the world’s conventional oilfields are going into decline. The problem is not the availability of resources as such. Overall, the International Energy Agency believes that there could be roughly 20 trillion barrels oil equivalent of oil and natural gas in place. This includes both conventional and unconventional resources, such as oil shale and sands. In theory, this is enough to keep us going for about 400 years at the current rate of consumption. In practice, though, less than half can be recovered with existing technology. The world now produces 135 million barrels oil equivalent a day of oil and natural gas. We could still raise that number with new technologies, but only gradually and certainly not indefinitely.
The third hard truth is that increased coal use will cause higher CO2 emissions, possibly to levels we deem unacceptable. The IEA believes that coal use could grow by around 60 per cent in the next 20 years. The main reason that countries turn to coal is energy security. China and India will continue to exploit their domestic coal reserves to be less dependent on oil and gas imports. So will the United States, which even now generates more than half its electricity with coal. But burning coal for electricity generates twice as much CO2 as burning natural gas. Gasifying coal, instead of burning it, reduces emissions, but still this is not enough to solve the problem.
In our battle against greenhouse gas emissions, taking the CO2 out of fossil fuels, especially coal, is crucial. It will be a huge challenge: to keep greenhouse gases in the atmosphere well below 550 parts per million, the upper most bound of where science tells us we should be, Shell works with models that assume carbon capture and storage is installed at 90 per cent of all the coal and gas-fired power plants in the rich countries by the year 2050, and at 50 per cent in nonOECD countries. Time is short: it will take a decade to test the technology in pilot projects before we can move to larger-scale projects.
So what about renewables, such as wind and solar energy? The share of renewables in the global energy mix could go up from its existing very low base of about 1 per cent to about 30 per cent by the middle of the century. The number of wind turbines, for instance, may grow from about 30,000 today to one million and their capacity will be significantly larger than the ones we have built so far. This assumes that the hunt for technological breakthroughs to make renewables cheaper will be successful. But even then, fossil energy will still make up most of the remaining 70 per cent. However, this is out of sync with what opinion polls show that most Americans and Europeans believe – that renewable energy will have replaced most fossil energy by 2050. As the hard truths make clear, this simply isn’t going to happen.
That is why energy efficiency is so important. More than half the energy we generate every day is wasted. In an average car, about 20 per cent of every unit of petrol goes into moving a car forward, the rest is lost as heat. For an aircraft during take-off, the figure is 8 per cent. Only 35 per cent of burnt coal in a power plant becomes electricity; the rest, again, is lost as heat. What’s the point of producing ever more energy if we continue to waste most of it? Instead, we should aim to become twice as efficient in our use of energy by the middle of the century. That is entirely feasible, provided that the will is there.
The world’s energy system is entering a turbulent phase, and the only question is: how turbulent? A cooperative world will respond more effectively than a fragmented one. Provided governments create the right rules and incentives, and don’t throw up barriers, the global market will direct money and brainpower to the best solutions. The alternative is a global market failure, and future generations would pay the price.
The author is chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell
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....and now for a counter point of view.......
Report sees energy mix turning greener sooner -- 'Great news' but 'still peanuts', says Greenpeace
Terry Macalister -- Thursday June 21, 2007
The Guardian
A gold rush of new investment into renewable power over the past 18 months
has led the United Nations to conclude that clean energy could provide
almost a quarter of the world's electricity by 2030.
More than £35bn was injected into wind and solar power and biofuels in
2006, 43% more than the preceding year. Sustainable energy accounts for
only 2% of the world's total but the UN says 18% of all power plants under
construction are in this sector.
The findings, outlined in the Global Trends in Sustainable Development annual review, represent a challenge to the received wisdom among energy experts that green power is likely to play only a marginal part in the energy mix until at least the second half of the century.The International Energy Agency in Paris, which recently argued that renewables could account for barely 9% of power production by 2030, said the figures needed further examination. Greenpeace described them as "great news - if true". Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN environment programme, said in a foreword to the review that bankers and other fund managers have ignored government dithering over climate change and started to shift the whole balance of the sector by pumping money into technologies that tackle global warming.
"The increasing investments in clean energy also point to deeper change - a tipping point where sustainable energy technology is the fundamental component of the global energy system," he explains. "Indeed, as Globa Trends in Sustainable Energy Investment suggests, that point may already be here."
Including money spent on company mergers and acquisitions, the total amount of cash injected into renewables last year was $100bn (£50bn), with 70.9bn on new projects. On the basis of the investment levels so far, new investment will rise to $85bn this year. Venture capital and private equity have joined in the scramble, raising their contributions by almost 70% to $8.6bn in 2006.
Nearly three quarters of the new investment is going into companies and projects located in the US and European Union but 21% was aimed at the developing world, with China and India leading the field.
"This is full-scale industrial development, not just a tweaking of the energy system, where growth is underpinned by a widening array of clean energy and climate policies at the federal state and municipal levels," says Mr Steiner. "The challenge now for governments, energy planners and policy makers is to build off of this positive market development."
But Greenpeace was sceptical, pointing out that global energy investment was in the region of $1 trillion a year and that BP and Shell spent 5% or less of their money on supporting renewables and 95% on oil and gas schemes. "There are lots of encouraging signs here but $100bn a year is still peanuts and while we do believe renewables hold the key to tackling climate change we are slightly sceptical that we have reached some kind o tipping point," said Charlie Kronick, head of climate and energy campaign at Greenpeace.
There were also concerns about the 20% increase in investment in biofuels, mainly in the US, with Greenpeace pointing out that corn-based fuels of this kind could not be considered sustainable.
The UN accepts that there are "significant challenges" ahead, pointing the way investment continues to be unevenly distributed and still almost absent from areas that desperately need it, such as sub-Saharan Africa. It is a recognition that the vast bulk of investment is driven by tax incentives and other schemes.
The wind sector attracted nearly 40% of the new money with solar on 16% and biofuels on 26% - a rise that can be largely attributed to US government interest in the sector.
The WilderHill New Energy Global Innovation Index, used by the UN to track publicly quoted renewables stocks, began 2006 at 220 points, ended the year at 288 and has since risen to 360 - up 64% in 16 months to April.
Research at Oxford shows how renewables can plug Britain's energy gap, says Oliver Tickeil
For years, nuclear power has looked expensive, dangerous and dirty. That opinion may be about to change. Britain is facing a power gap of up to 2,000 megawatts (MW) of generating capacity—almost 40% of peak national demand — by 2020 as ageing, unreliable and inefficient nuclear and coal-fired power stations are shut. There is a growing consensus that only new nuclear power can plug that gap without contributing to global warming.
Renewable electricity technologies that harness wind, wave, tide and sun are all very well, the thinking goes, but their output is too variable and unpredictable to provide more than a small part of our electricity needs. Meeting the government's target of 20% renewables by 2020 could mean getting as much as 15% from wind and other intermittent sources, with the balance coming from "firm" renewables such as biomass and landfill gas. And that, say critics of renewables, is as much intermittency as the system can take. Any more and we will need huge reserves of expensive, polluting backup capacity, ready to cut in whenever the wind stops blowing.
Convinced? Think again. Research at Oxford University shows that intermittent renewables, combined with domestic combined heat and power (dCHP) could dependably provide the bulk of Britain's electricity. "By mixing between sites and mixing technologies, you can markedly reduce the variability of electricity supplied by renewable's," says Graham Sinden, of Oxford's Environmental Change Institute. "And if you plan the right mix, renewable and intermittent technologies can even be made to match real-time electricity demand patterns. This reduces the need for backup, and makes renewable's a serious alternative to conventional power sources." In particular, it puts renewables ahead of nuclear power, which runs at the same rate all the time regardless of fluctuations in demand.
Sinden initially looked at just three generation technologies: wind, solar and dCHP — in effect, hi-tech domestic boilers, which produce electricity as they heat water. He ran computer models of power output based on
weather records going back up to 35 years, and found that electricity production could be optimised by creating a mixture of 65% wind, 25% dCHP, and 10% solar cells. The high proportion of wind is because the wind blows hardest in the winter, and in the evening — when demand is highest. The dCHP also produces more at peak times, when demand for hot water and heating is also strongest. Solar makes a smaller contribution, and produces nothing at night. But it is still important to have it in the mix as it kicks in when wind and dCHP production is lowest.
It is also essential to disperse the generators, whether wind turbines or rooftop solar cells, as widely as possible. By increasing the separation between sites, you can be sure that power is always being generated somewhere and so smooth out the supply curve. This goes against current practice, which is to put wind turbines where the wind is strongest.
Sinden's approach is remarkably effective in reducing the need for standby capacity. If offshore wind power alone were to provide an average 3,500MW of electricity — 10% of electricity demand in England and Wales — it would need to be backed up by an extra standby generating capacity of 3.135MW —90% of average production. But using Sinden's proposed mix of technologies, only 400MW of new standby capacity would be needed — just 11%.
In his latest work, commissioned by the Carbon Trust, Sinden has been researching the roles for wave and tidal power. Wave power output is concentrated into autumn and winter, when demand is greatest: 75% of wave power is produced between October and March. Tidal power output is predictable, but variable: at any site it drops to zero four times a day on the turn of the tide; and output is three or four times greater on the spring tide than on the neap tide. "A marine-based renewable system works best when it includes both tide and wave," says Sinden. "The combination has lower variability, is better at meeting demand patterns, and makes better use of expensive transmission infrastructure."
Putting these figures together with estimates of Britain's available renewable resources, wind (onshore and offshore) could realistically provide some 35% of the UK's electricity, marine and dCHP each 10-15%, and solar cells 5-10%. In other words, more than half the UK's electricity could ultimately derive from intermittent renewables.
"In the next year or so, the UK is going to have to decide how to meet its electricity needs for the next half-century," says Sinden. "It's an incredible opportunity for renewables but my fear is that it may be missed."
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From Hugh Richards
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