Reverse engineering for fuel

Making carbon dioxide by burning hydrocarbons is easy. A pair of novel catalysts recently made by researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago could make it far more practical to do the reverse, converting carbon dioxide and water into fuel.

Because running this reaction normally requires large amounts of energy, it has been economical only in rare cases. But if the process could be done commercially, liquid fuels could be made from the exhaust gases of fossil-fuel power plants.

The new work, described this week in the journal Nature Communications, improves on a pair of catalysts discovered last year that more efficiently turn carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide, which can then be made into gasoline and other products. Those catalysts produce carbon monoxide slowly, however, and one is made of silver, so it’s expensive.

But the Illinois researchers have demonstrated that it’s possible to replace the silver with relatively inexpensive carbon fibers while maintaining about the same efficiency. And the technique produces carbon monoxide about 10 times faster. It may be possible to incorporate the catalysts into an “artificial leaf.” Right now, if the process were to run on sunlight, it would require at least two pieces of equipment: a solar panel to generate electricity, and then a reactor to form the carbon monoxide. A leaf-inspired system would absorb energy from the sun and use it to drive the chemical reactions directly, rather than making electricity first!

The piggy box is never full!

The world is losing its forests at a rate of 13 million hectares (32 million acres) a year, contributing one-third of the world's atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions. The share is higher in developing countries where forests are being razed to make way for agriculture. However, this is inevitable as demand for crops keeps increasing. The challenge has been to make the developed world compensate in ways which could limit the deforestation.

REDD+ finance, the money needed to set up and implement a system that pays countries to leave forests standing, has followed a long road since the 2007 U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change meeting in Bali, Indonesia, where nations pledged to take meaningful action to reduce emissions from deforestation. A 2008 study found it would cost between $17.2 billion and $28 billion per year to cut the global rate of deforestation in half.

According to a recent policy brief from the Overseas Development Institute, $2.72 billion has been pledged for REDD+ since 2007 through five multilateral funds and two bilateral funds, more than half of it to Indonesia and Brazil. About one-tenth of the pledges have been disbursed to projects on the ground. But it has just not been substantial enough.

At the Warsaw meet, the U.S. State Department pledged $25 million last week as part of a major new $280 million funding initiative aimed at slowing deforestation and stemming its effect on world carbon emissions. The United States joined Norway, the United Kingdom and the World Bank in launching the "BioCarbon Fund Initiative for Sustainable Forest Landscapes." The fund will provide incentives to developing countries that are taking steps to limit the chopping and razing of trees under the United Nations' Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation program, or REDD+.The United States will be the new fund's smallest national donor, compared with Norway's $135 million and the United Kingdom's $120 million. The fund will be administered by the World Bank's BioCarbon Fund, a public-private initiative aimed at finding ways to sequester carbon.

But some observers expressed disappointment that the U.S. and its partners didn't put forward a more substantial sum.

Since the 2009 climate conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, there haven't been any substantial pledges to fund REDD+ past 2012. Although Norway has said it will fund REDD+ through 2020, a concrete commitment has been absent.

REDD+ negotiators expect diplomats in Warsaw this week to approve text on five scientific and technical decisions that will lay the groundwork for finance. These include: human rights and environmental safeguards; the definitions of drivers of deforestation; ways for measuring countries' reference levels, or the base line upon which to measure forest loss; monitoring, reporting and verification of emissions reduction; and the creation of a national forest monitoring system.

Besides the BioCarbon Fund, the World Bank houses two other major coffers for REDD+, the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility and the Forest Investment Fund. The FCPF is divided into two funds, one to help countries get ready to implement a REDD+ program and another to pay for verified emissions reductions.

Forests constitute what is known as the planet's lungs, and when they disappear in chunks, it is the health of the whole biosystem that suffers. Not limited to the area or nation that applies the axe, deforestation affects everyone. That is why it is imperative that initiatives must go beyond rhetoric and mere symbolism.

Making energy truly accessible

A creative way of selling solar energy is gaining traction in sub-Saharan Africa: customers can pay as they go.

Only one in six rural inhabitants in sub-Saharan Africa has access to electricity. For households living off the grid, kerosene lamps are the primary lighting source. The World Bank estimates that breathing kerosene fumes is the equivalent of smoking two packs of cigarettes a day, and two thirds of adult females with lung cancer in developing nations are nonsmokers.

Some observers rightly point out how the poorest people in the world are not just paying a bit more for their energy, they’re paying a disproportionate amount! Across the U.S. and U.K. electricity from a utility costs between 10 to 15 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh). A villager in rural Kenya or Rwanda, however, pays an equivalent cost of $8 per kWh for kerosene lighting. Often 30 percent or more a family's income is spent on kerosene. Charging a mobile phone is even more expensive. That same villager would pay nearly 400 times more to charge a mobile phone in rural Kenya than in the U.S.

Solar-powered charger kits are a promising alternative, but many rural families cannot afford the up-front cost of these systems, which start at $50.

With a Pay-As-You-Go model (PAYG) for solar kits, on the other hand, customers can instead pay an up-front fee of around $10 for a solar charger kit that includes a two- to five-watt solar panel and a control unit that powers LED lights and charges devices like mobile phones. Then they pay for energy when they need it—frequently in advance each week—or when they can (say, after a successful harvest). In practice, kits are paid off after about 18 months and subsequent electricity is free to the new owner. PAYG customers are finding that instead of paying $2 to $3 a week for kerosene, they pay less than half that for solar energy.

A US company has integrated an analog modem into their solar charger that “talks” with the customer’s mobile phone to authenticate a transaction.  Companies report that the PAYG business model replicates well from country to country. They reach rural communities by working with local distribution partners within each country, who also make money from each solar kit sale.

Yet challenges remain. Many PAYG start-ups are running into limits of working capital; companies front the initial cost of these solar kits and are not fully reimbursed for 18 months. This leads to cash flow constraints that intensify when customers default. 

But for now, the advantages are more, in terms of energy accessibility and reducing pollution from burning kerosene and firewood!