Why Oil Will Be With Us for a Long Time

In a remote village beyond an unnamed hill, where the last road ended miles ago, a man picks up an earthenware bowl. He pours some refined oil into it – maybe vegetable oil, maybe palm oil. Into the oil he inserts a cotton wick, then puts a match to the wick.

That lamp will shine all night long.

That villager could never have gotten the same result with solar or wind – not yet, anyway. Until we find a source of energy that combines the convenience, cost and potency of oil, we'll never give up on the black gold.

Yes, I understand oil has its drawbacks. But society has decided that oil's pros outweigh its cons. The scales will continue to tip that way for quite some time.

Using Solar and Nuclear Energy Won't Cut Our Oil Bill

A few days ago I heard a radio talk-show host say we should cut our dependence on foreign oil by using more wind, solar and nuclear power. While this is a popular notion, increasing our use of these sources will do extremely little to reduce our oil consumption.

Reason: Oil-fueled power plants generate less than 1% of U.S. electricity. Most of our power is produced from domestic fossil fuels like coal and natural gas.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, in the 12 months ending March 2010, about 45% of our electricity came from coal, 23% from natural gas, 20% from nuclear plants, and 7% from hydroelectric sources.

Renewable sources like wind, solar, biomass and others contributed nearly 4% of our power.

So where does the oil we drill or import go?

Once again, the EIA to the rescue. In March 2010, finished gasoline accounted for 46% of our oil usage. The rest is used in the manufacture of diesel oil, jet fuel, heating fuel, asphalt, plastics, etc., etc.

Which means if we want to reduce our dependence on oil, we need to severely curtail our use of gasoline-powered cars.

Fuel cells, anyone?

Clean Energy R&D Funds Should Be Tripled in U.S.

When the CEOs of 7 companies like GE and Microsoft talk with one voice, people should listen.

The American Innovation Energy Council, a council of corporate leaders, urged Congress and President Obama to triple funding for clean-energy related R&D from $5 billion to $16 billion per year.

As reported in the Times, GE's CEO Jeff Immelt said, "The world is not going to wait for the United States to lead. This is about innovation; this is about competition; this is about energy security."

We're not leading — that's a given. But not only are we not following, we're looking in the opposite direction.

Or is it that our only hope of being competitive is waiting for Chinese goods to become more expensive?

Micro Hydro Power From the Flipwing

A Seattle-based company called Hydrovolts has been winning awards for its miniature turbine that you can drop into streams, canals, and pretty much any place that has a steady flow of water.

The turbine, brand named Flipwing, will be produced in three sizes. The smallest will be about the size of a 2-drawer filing cabinet and the largest will be about 2 x 2 x 6 meters. It can be installed in the water stream vertically or horizontally.

The Flipwing's blades swing open on the reverse upstream stroke, presenting their edge to the current. Thus the kinetic energy of the water flow is used almost entirely in turning the blades in the downstream direction.

Hydrovolt's website is a bit opaque about the amount of electricity the Flipwing produces. Using an average market price of electricity of $0.11 per kWh, the site says the turbine can generate, in a 2m/sec current, $1,400 worth of electricity per year. By my calculations, that means it can make 12.7 MWh of electricity annually.

Here's a video of a small Flipwing unit in operation in a stream. Hydrovolt has several more videos on its YouTube channel:

Marines Target Solar Energy Development on Front Lines

In remote battle locations, electronic devices used for communications and targeting run on electricity from generators. Transporting fuel to these places is risky and expensive. The Navy is therefore focusing on renewable energy to power computers in the field.

During the first quarter of this year, the Navy will start procuring renewable power systems made up of solar panels and rechargeable batteries. Known as the Ground Renewable Expeditionary Energy System (Greens), it can provide an average continuous output of 300 watts of electricity, with peaks of up to 1 kW.

According to the report in Defense Systems, that's enough to power most of the essential communications and targeting electronics that Marine forces would need in remote locations.

Last October, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus announced five energy goals through the year 2020. One of the goals is to ensure that by the end of the next decade, at least 40% of the Navy's total energy consumption comes from alternative sources.

Renewable Energy Industry Groups Urge Stronger U.S. Renewable Energy Standard

CEOs representing renewable energy companies in the U.S. released on Feb. 4, 2010, a study (pdf) that showed increasing our renewable electricity standard to 25% by 2025 would support 274,000 jobs.

The study was released by RES Alliance for Jobs, a coalition of businesses and organizations that support Congressional enactment of a strong federal Renewable Electricity Standard (RES).

Wood Burning Power Plants in Massachusetts -- Doubts Creep In

Massachusetts had embraced wood-burning power plants in a big way, investing $1 million this year in power plants in the western part of the state.

The Boston Herald now reports that the state is rethinking its emphasis on wood-burning plants. Critics of the wood-burning plants say supplying the plants with sufficient wood would cause deforestation in the surrounding areas. And the plants would emit more carbon dioxide than coal-fired plants.

Massachusetts's Patrick Administration is seeking more information into the adverse effects of generating electricity from wood-burning plants. The state Environmental Affairs Secretary is ordering a 6-month study of the issue. Meanwhile, the Department of Energy Resources is developing new regulations for biomass power plants.

This is the kind of news one has mixed feelings about. On the one hand, it's gratifying to note the government is taking environmentalists' concerns seriously and ordering a review of the greenhouse-gas and deforestation effects of the wood-burning plants.

On the other hand, shouldn't they have done this before spending $1 million on the plants?

On balance: better to reconsider late than never. And it's not like the $1 million was a total waste. I'm sure it did a lot of good for many state residents.

Carbon Emissions Expected to 9% Decline Since 2007

The Guardian's Grist website reported this week that carbon emissions in the U.S. had dropped 9% since 2007.

While part of this drop is due to the recession, Grist says part of it is from "efficiency gains and from replacing coal with natural gas, wind, solar, and geothermal energy."

The "efficiency gains" claim sounded too good to be true. As I reported in a previous post, America's energy-efficiency improvement from 2007 to 2008 was less than 0.1 percentage point.

So I did some digging.

This month, the Energy Information Administration released a report (pdf) titled "Understanding the Decline in Carbon Dioxide Emissions in 2009." In it, the EIA said it expected CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels in 2009 to be 5.9% below the 2008 level.

70% of the decline in emissions was from:

• Lower energy consumption by the industrial, commercial and residential sectors because of the poor economy
• Utilities switching from coal to natural gas to take advantage of lower natural gas prices -- which had dropped because of the weak economy
• Increased electricity production by non-CO₂-emitting sources like hydropower and wind (these two sources accounted for only 8.3% of electricity generation in 2009)

The other 30% of the drop in CO₂ releases came from declines in petroleum consumption for jet fuel and distillate fuel oil (which includes diesel fuel oil and heating oil). The EIA attributed over two-thirds of this contraction to "economy-related reductions in consumption."

Regarding fuel efficiency, this is what the EIA had to say (emphasis mine):

The data are not yet available to reliably allocate consumption to end-use sectors or the decline in jet fuel, distillate fuel, and other transportation fuel consumption between economy-related declines in demand for transportation services and increases in fuel efficiency, which may be permanent due to technology-related improvements in equipment or transitory because of higher load factors.

In other words, it's too early to declare victory in the drive to fuel efficiency.

Drawing the Line at Clotheslines

Outdoor clotheslines are forbidden for a majority of the people who live in America's 300,000 private communities, according to an article in the New York Times. Anti-clothesliners think they scream "Here be poor people" and lower property values.

Lined up on the on the other side are homeowners who say drying clothes outside is the environmentally right thing to do, since dryers account for at least 6% of household electrical usage.

When homeowners and community associations clash, lawmakers step in.

In the last year, says the Times, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine and Vermont have passed laws that protect the right to hang clothes on outdoor clotheslines. Florida and Utah already had such laws, and Maryland, North Carolina, Oregon and Virginia are considering similar bills.

Environmental concerns and the state of the economy may be driving more residents to string up clotheslines. The U.K.'s Daily Mail reported in August 2009 that sales of outside airers and clothes pins had risen 20% in the past year.

Still, the lure of drying your clothes with Nature's free dryer runs into the inconvenience of being unable to control the sun and the rain. Modern life leaves no time for the homemaker to stand by the window, hanging and pegging clothes one by one, pushing the clothesline out bit by bit, hiding underwear among larger clothes and offering thanks you don't live in an area with frequent weather changes.

People find it much simpler to toss wet clothes into a dryer, go about their business and pick the clothes up after about an hour. As a bonus, your neighbors won't know about your discount-store clothes with their labels snipped in two.

World's 10 Largest Renewable Energy Projects

From Scientific American, a slideshow of the world's 10 largest renewable energy projects.

The world is going to need 2 TW (terawatts, or million megawatts) of electricity in the next 40 years. The projects shown in this slideshow are producing electricity right now. They are:

1. Horse Hollow Wind Energy Center, Taylor and Nolan Counties, Texas (currently overtaken by the Roscoe Wind Complex 220 miles west of Dallas)
2. Lynn and Inner Dowsing Wind Farm near Skegness, Lincolnshire, England (now in second place behind the Horns Rev 2 project off Denmark)
3. Rance Tidal Barrage in Bretagne, France
4. SeaGen Turbine in Strangford Lough, Ireland
5. Solar Energy Generating Systems in Southern California
6. Olmedilla Photovoltaic Park in Olmedilla de Alarcón, Spain
7. The Geysers in Sonoma and Lake Counties, Calif.
8. Oy Alholmens Kraft in Pietarsaari, Finland (dry biomass-fired power plant)
9. Aguçadoura Wave Farm near Póvoa de Varzim, Portugal
10. China's Three Gorges Dam
11. (Bonus) Puente Hills in Whittier, Calif. (landfill gas recuperation plant)

Fossil-Fuel Subsidies Will Be Phased Out, Say G-20 Leaders

Leaders of the G-20 nations, who met in Pittsburgh last week, pledged on Friday to phase out subsidies for fossil fuels in the "medium term."

It's a small step, outlined in vague language, but it indicates a desire to cut dependence on fossil fuels over time.

The G-20 agreement protects aid from rich nations that help developing countries pay for conventional energy, subsidize renewable energy and combat the effects of climate change.

Environmentalists welcomed the pledge. They look forward to more concrete language on financial aid in the next round of G-20 climate talks in Copenhagen in November, when a climate-change treaty will be negotiated.

Oil and natural gas industry executives in the U.S. said reducing subsidies would raise costs on consumers.

Decisions by the G-20 countries carry much weight, as the council represents economies that account for 85% of the world's GDP and 66% of its population. G-20 nations are:

• Argentina
• Australia
• Brazil
• Canada
• China
• France
• Germany
• India
• Indonesia
• Italy
• Japan
• Mexico
• Russia
• Saudi Arabia
• South Africa
• South Korea
• Turkey
• United Kingdom
• United States
• European Union, represented by the rotating Council presidency and the European Central Bank.

The G-20 will replace the G-8 as the world's leading economic council.

Renewable Energy Bill in California Faces Veto by Schwarzenegger

On Friday Sept. 11, the California legislature passed bills that would require the state to get 33% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020.

On Saturday, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said he would veto the bills.

The governor said he plans to implement the changes through executive order. Among his reasons for rejecting the legislation:

• It was tying up the renewable-energy industry in regulatory knots.
  
  
• It set limits on how much renewable energy could be bought from out-of-state suppliers.
  
  
• It would have killed the solar industry in California (because of curbs on where solar power plants could be sited), and raised prices.

We'll see how this plays out. I have a feeling the governor will prevail.

Wood-Burning Plants Generate Energy in Massachusetts

Massachusetts has 3 million acres of underutilized forestland. They aim to utilize it to produce energy.

The state's Sustainable Forest Bioenergy Initiative seeks to burn wood to make electricity. Even if half the state's annual supply of woody biomass of 4 million tons was used for electricity, it would generate as much as 150 MW. That's enough to power about 75,000 homes.

The state has already invested $1 million in 4 wood-burning plants in the western Massachusetts towns of Russell, Greenfield, Springfield and Pittsfield.

At first, igniting wood seems a bad idea. Burning wood produces carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, heavy metals, volatile organic compounds and other disagreeable discharges.

But modern wood-burning plants are different from your ancient residential wood stove, according to this report from the Bioenergy Initiative (pdf):

...with proper design, operation, maintenance and emission control devices, modern biomass energy systems can produce little or no visible smoke and low emissions.

Besides, wood combustion releases almost the same amount of CO₂ as that absorbed by the tree during its growth. Thus, the net addition of carbon to the environment is close to zero.

By contrast, the carbon in fossil fuels has been isolated from the atmosphere for millions of years. When fossil fuels are burned, they emit "new" CO₂ into the air, increasing the total amount of carbon in the environment.

Tidal Power Projects Advance in Maine

Boats at low tide at a dock on the Bay of Fundy. Photo © Arun Sinha.

What better place to build a tidal power project than the Bay of Fundy?

The bay is home to the highest tides in the world, which generate fast, massive currents. Wolfville, Nova Scotia, located on an inlet near the apex of the bay, boasts tides of 52 feet (16 meters) every 12 hours 25 minutes! A 5-story house on the beach would be completely under water twice a day at high tide.

Tides in the U.S. portion of the Bay of Fundy aren't as dramatic, but they're not too shabby either. The swing from high to low tide at Passamaquoddy Bay, an inlet of the Bay of Fundy on the eastern tip of Maine along the U.S.-Canadian border, averages about 18 feet (5.5 meters).

That's more than enough to make the region extremely attractive to tidal power producers. Ocean Renewable Power, a Maine-based company that generates electricity from tidal power, holds a permit to produce electricity from Passamaquoddy Bay's tides.

The lure of plentiful tidal power has drawn several development projects to Maine. In addition to its high suitability for the waterways of the state, tidal power is clean, requires fewer turbines than wind to create the same amount of electricity, and poses no threats to boats.

Now, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the state of Maine have agreed to cooperate to bring more tidal power projects to the state. More turbines in the water will mean more opportunities to study their environmental impact, which could lead to faster regulatory decisions.

Maine is just about my favorite state to visit. And having enjoyed a couple of boat rides on the Passamaquoddy Bay many years ago, I can't think of a better body of water in which to place the tidal turbines.

Where to Site Power Lines for Renewable Energy in California

California is going to need new power lines. The state is a leader in generating clean energy, with an ambitious goal of getting 33% of its electricity from renewable source by 2020. That's about 115 TW of clean energy, based on a University of California at Davis projection of baseline demand for electricity that year (pdf).

The existing infrastructure doesn't have the capacity to carry all that energy to consumers. New transmission lines will have to be built.

The problem is, just about everyone except utilities objects to new power lines. We've written about tensions between homeowners and power companies in the past -- in both Northern and Southern California. In fact, a proposed new 600-mile power line that would have carried renewable electricity to parts of central California was canceled last month.

Now a new report by the state's Renewable Energy Transmission Initiative, a group consisting of utilities, state agencies and other parties, points out places where new power lines are needed most and will cause the least environmental damage. It takes into account areas where large renewable power installations have been or will be proposed.

But it stops short of recommending actual routes for power lines.

It looks like a step in the right direction.

New Building Energy Label Hopes to Nudge Industry Toward "Net Zero"

The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) will this fall introduce a new energy rating system that will rank buildings from A+ to F.

A+ will be reserved for buildings that are "net zero" -- those that produce as much energy onsite as they consume. At the other end of the scale, F will be applied to "unsatisfactory" facilities.

The system is called Building Energy Quotient, or Building EQ. According to ASHRAE, Building EQ will expand upon the information available from the EPA's Energy Star program. Energy Star gives buildings a single pass or fail rating.

Building EQ focuses more on energy than does the Green Building Council's LEED rating system, which looks at a building's entire environmental profile. This includes "energy savings, water efficiency, CO₂ emissions reduction, improved indoor environmental quality, and stewardship of resources and sensitivity to their impacts."

Building EQ will be voluntary. ASHRAE admits it is an aggressive standard, with the lofty goal of pushing the building industry toward net zero.

U.S. Energy Use Dropped Over 2% in 2008; 57.5% of Energy "Rejected"

Americans used 99.2 quadrillion BTUs (known as “quads”) of energy in 2008, according to a report from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. In 2007, we used 101.5 quads, which means our 2008 use fell by about 2.3%.

(A BTU or British Thermal Unit is a unit of measurement of energy, and is the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of one pound of water by one Fahrenheit degree. Click here for a longer definition.)

We consumed more energy derived from natural gas and renewable sources in 2008 than in 2007, while use of energy from coal and petroleum fell. Energy used for industrial and transportation purposes fell, which the Laboratory attributes to the rise in oil prices in 2008. Both these sectors depend heavily on petroleum.

Did that "rejected energy" mentioned in the headline pique your curiosity? A.J. Simon, an energy systems analyst at the Laboratory, explains the concept below. Simon creates the annual flowchart that shows the amount of energy generated by various sources and its distribution to different sectors.

Energy services, he says, refers to "the energy that makes your car move and that comes out of your light bulb.” That's "good" energy.

The remainder is rejected energy. “For example, some rejected energy shows up as waste heat from power plants,” Simon says.

The ratio of energy services to total energy is the country's energy efficiency. Ours stands at 42.48%. Put another way, we reject more than 57.5% of the energy we use.

Another reason to improve our collective energy efficiency.

Update on 7/30/2009:
Anne Stark, Public Information Officer at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, provided a flowchart summarizing the 2007 estimated energy use in the U.S. It shows that last year, we rejected 58.47 quads or 57.6% of the energy used.

Which tells us that the nation's energy-efficiency improvement from 2007 to 2008 was less than 0.1 percentage point.

It's small, but we'll take what we can get.

Compressed-Air-Powered Car Coming in 2011

If powering a car by compressed air sounds a little strange to you, consider this: Every vehicle with an internal combustion engine runs on compressed air. An internal combustion engine operates by drawing air into its chamber, then compressing and exploding the air with the help of gasoline. The power of the explosion turns the wheels of the car.

But what if the air entering the engine were already compressed? You wouldn't need an explosion, which means you wouldn't need the fuel to create the explosion.

Motor Development International, a French company that has licensed air-powered engine technology to some carmakers, figured out a way to get compressed air into a car. An on-board compressor that plugs into a wall outlet sucks in air from the surroundings and compresses it to 4,500 pounds per square inch. The air is stored in tanks under the car and slowly released to provide automotive force.

Watch a video on MDI's technology and air cars here.

One of the companies that has licensed the technology from MDI is Zero Pollution Motors, based in New Paltz, N.Y. The start-up expects to start selling its air car in the U.S. by 2011. The air car carries MDI's compressed-air engine and a small conventional engine. It travels about 20 miles on air alone, after which the engine takes over.

The engine also works the compressor, so the conventional-fuel-to-air-power cycle keeps repeating itself, enabling the car to travel hundreds of miles before needing its compressed-air supply replenished.

Detractors of the technology point out two main drawbacks: compressors release only about 25% to 30% of the energy required to compress the air, and it takes too much electricity to fully load the air car's compressor.

Undaunted, ZPM is forging ahead. Says its CEO: "We've got a lot of people who wanted the car yesterday."

600-Mile California Renewable Energy Transmission Line Canceled

The Transmission Agency of Northern California (TANC) has dropped plans to build a 600-mile transmission line from northern California to the Sacramento area. Three of the largest utilities backing the project had pulled out earlier this month, causing TANC to cancel all development plans.

The line would have carried energy from renewable sources like solar, wind and geothermal systems.

As we reported earlier, several communities along the transmission corridor had opposed the line's installation.

Air-Fueled Battery Stores 10 Times the Energy of Batteries Available Today

More news from the battery front. Researchers at St. Andrews University in Scotland are developing a new type of battery that draws oxygen from the air as its fuel. It has the potential to carry up to 10 times the energy of today's rechargeable batteries.

The oxygen replaces a chemical component used in most batteries, reducing size and weight. The battery costs less too, because it replaces expensive lithium cobalt oxide with the far more economical porous carbon. The interaction of carbon and air can be repeated, thus setting up a charge and discharge cycle.

All of which makes the new air-fueled battery a perfect find for electric car makers, which have long struggled to reduce the bulk and weight of conventional rechargeable batteries.

Known as the STAIR (St. Andrews Air) cell, the battery could be ready to go to market in about 5 years.