UK's offshore wind energy up

Statistics for the third quarter of 2011, released by the Department of Energy and Climate Change, show that renewable sources generated 9 per cent of the UK’s electricity from July to September. That represents an increase of nearly 1 per cent on the same quarter last year.

DECC highlighted the fact that the amount of electricity generated from offshore wind has increased “substantially” compared to the same quarter in 2010, partly because of increased capacity, and partly because it was the windiest September for at least ten years.

When the overall figures for the first three quarters of 2011 (Jan – Sept) are taken into account, the statistics show a 64% increase in the amount of electricity generated by offshore wind on the same three quarters for last year (up from 4865 gigawatt hours to 6618GWh), and a 36% increase for onshore wind (up from 1943 GWh to 3189 GWh).

DECC also highlighted the growth in the UK’s installed capacity to generate electricity from renewable sources of 400 megawatts in the third quarter of the year – a 12 per cent increase on Q3 a year earlier. Nearly two-thirds of that increase (240MW) came from onshore and offshore wind, with the first turbines of the Ormonde and Greater Gabbard offshore wind farms beginning operation.

The UK now has enough installed capacity to supply more than 3,300,000 homes from wind energy.

Keeping wind turbines safely operating however is becoming increasingly important as more windmills are built. Manufacturers of wind turbines face challenges such as reducing downtimes and maintenance work. Some of the demands placed on turbine components include extreme temperature conditions, vibration, oscillation and aggressive offshore air composition. These are challenges that need to be tackled.

Melting peaks

A new study in the Journal of Glaciology shows that the glaciers in Peru's Cordillera Blanca mountain range are melting so quickly that the water they supply to the arid region is being threatened 20-30 years earlier than expected.

Lead researcher Michel Baraer, from McGill University, told IPS News that the time needed for the region to adapt to the coming water shortages, previously thought to be decades off, "those years don't exist."

Baraer said that the glaciers feeding the Rio Santo watershed are now too small to maintain past flows of water. During the dry season water availability is expected to be 30% lower than historic levels.

In a global context, the World Glacier Monitoring Service recently has said that 90% of the glaciers studied in its latest Glacier Mass Balance Bulletin are losing mass. In the Himalaya, 75% of the glaciers there are melting; the US Geological Survey fully puts the blame on this on global warming and not other factors.

Dimming prospects for solar

Things have not been looking good for the solar energy industry, what with some infamous companies and unpopular policies!

According to EnergyTrend, 2012 will be the year for the global solar industry to face an arduous challenge and weed out the weak. The policies will focus on the total installation volume control and decreasing subsidies. Additionally, policies for the emerging markets have been mapped out, but it will require some time for them to take effect.

On the other hand, the spot prices from wafers to modules remain low, and the slim margin has caused most manufacturers to hang by a thread.

Based on EnergyTrend’s estimate, the 2011 global solar installation capacity will reach 19GW, but the overall inventory amount, including semi-finished and finished products, will reach as high as 10GW. Therefore, the market is still severely oversupplied.

EnergyTrend forecasts that the demand in the solar market will amount to approximately 19GW for 2012; the stagnant demand is due to the decreasing demand in Italy , Germany and the United Kingdom , which are caused by the subsidy policies changes in Europe.

As for the Asian markets, benefiting from the subsidy policies, China , Japan , Malaysia and Thailand will see slight demand surges in 2012. EnergyTrend expects no rapid growth for the solar market until 2013.

The Indian market will depend on the government’s efficiency and financial health together with the enforcement of the Local Content Requirement policy, which do not look good!

Nuclear ambitions

Amidst all the brouhaha over the Kudankulam nuclear project, the Indian government is seeking to dismantle the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, proposing to abandon the long-standing independent regulator in favour of a new body directly controlled by the central government.

Critics have condemned the move, arguing the new regulator will be captive to government and unable to properly pursue safety concerns.

Presently, India has 20 operating nuclear power reactors, built, owned and run by the state-owned Nuclear Power Corporation. They provide about 3 per cent of the country's energy. But 44 more reactors are either slated for construction or already being built, and India is keen to attract foreign investment.

On the plans is the creation of five massive ''Nuclear Energy Parks'', each capable of producing 10,000 megawatts of electricity, three times the power used by India's biggest city, Mumbai. India plans to treble its nuclear output by the end of the decade, and to get a quarter of its energy from nuclear sources by 2050.

A group of eminent Indian citizens are challenging the new legislation in the Supreme Court, arguing a diminished and capped liability ''puts to grave and imminent risk the right to safety, health, environment and life of the people of India''. On another front, the law is also controversial over discriminatory compensation to be awarded to the poor or female victims of any nuclear disaster.

The opposition from certain sections of public to the Kudankulam plant arises out of the fears from the Fukushima disaster in which the emergency cooling system itself was damaged by the earthquake. But proponents say the plants in Kudankulam have a double contaminant system which can withstand high pressure and over Rs 14,000 crore has been spent already.

Is nuclear the way? When a nation like Germany sets out to shut down all 17 of its reactors, should India be looking to expand nuclear energy? is there a comparison?

Good, bad and ugly

Here is some good and bad news. Germany is that the country got 20% of its electricity from renewable energy sources in 2011, and that it’s energy consumption dropped 4.8%. On the contrary, we have a Canada which not only refuses to do its bit to mitigate climate change but is bullish about going on the fossil fuel rampage!

Canada formally notified the world that they were withdrawing from the global warming pollution targets they had taken on under the Kyoto Protocol. Canada has unleashed on the world the dirtiest oil on the planet in the form of tar sands. Back in 2002, Canada formally ratified the Kyoto Protocol and committed internationally to reduce its emissions to six percent below 1990 levels for the period 2008-2012.

Oil from tar sands emits three times as much global warming pollution as conventional oil. Since 1990, Canada’s global warming pollution has increased by over 23 percent and is projected to continue to skyrocket driven by the expansion of tar sands.

More bad news comes from Shell in Nigeria where an oil spill that is likely to be the worst in the area for a decade, saw up to 40,000 barrels of crude oil spilt while it was transferred from a floating oil platform to a tanker 75 miles off the coast of the Niger delta. Satellite pictures obtained by independent monitors Skytruth suggested that the spill was 70km-long and was spread over 923 square kilometers (356 sq miles).

And solar woes for firms continues as BP bowed out of the solar market saying it “simply can’t make any money from solar.” One of the reasons for these global solar struggles is thanks to Chinese solar manufacturers, which flooded the market with low-priced solar cells and created an oversupply. Global solar makers are having to sell solar below cost to just survive. But of course, for buyers this is the best time!

Go ahead and pick your good, bad and ugly.

Making wind energy predictable

Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are studying ways to better forecast the sharp increases and decreases in wind speeds so that electricity generation from wind farms can be more effectively integrated into the grid.

Besides the environmental concerns of bird kills and noise pollution often cited, the variability of wind power is a challenge, especially to utilities; surges in wind power generation, for example, can overload the grid at certain times. Now, researchers at the California-based Lawrence Livermore lab are using advanced computer software and sensors to determine what meteorological conditions in various regions are likely to cause so-called “ramp events,” when winds rise or fall sharply.

The project, called WindSENSE, is using wind energy data from two regions where wind power generation is increasing rapidly — the Tehachapi Pass in Southern California and the Columbia River Basin in Oregon. In such windy regions, ramp events can cause wind energy generation to fluctuate by more than 1,000 megawatts an hour.

The work identified important weather variables associated with ramp events and will help people in the control room at the utilities determine when ramp events may occur and how that will affect the power generation from a particular wind farm.

Let the wind sing its song.

Solar deadline advanced

India has firmly embraced solar power, advancing the target date by five years for selling solar-generated electricity at the same rate as electricity generated by fossil fuel plants, from 2022 to 2017.

The reason for moving the date forward is plummeting tariffs in the latest solar development projects, a trend expected to continue.

Some big names from India have proved that a large investment will soon be possible in solar projects, as huge as 2,000 megawatts, according to the ministry of new and renewable energy. There are other reasons as well. Internationally, the price of solar cells has come down and with improved technology, the cost of operation as a whole has been reduced, thereby increasing the efficiency.

All is not yet completely sunny for India's solar energy drive, however. Several solar projects benefiting under a state program offering favorable tariffs to build 20,000 megawatts of capacity have already been delayed.

Experts believe solar has the same potential as personal computers had in 1970s.
Support for India's solar ambitions comes from some heavyweight fiscal analytical groups. Ernest and Young has noted that the extent of price reduction since 2008 has been very sharp.

India being an emerging market and one of the few countries where solar energy is encouraged at such a massive level has clearly been a reason for the surge. There is also the National Solar Mission whose objective is to establish India as a global leader in solar energy, by creating the policy conditions for its diffusion across the country as quickly as possible.

The program aims to boost the nation's solar capacity by the equivalent of about 18 nuclear power plants by 2022, and that has now been brought forward by five years.

Durban durbar churns some hope

Durban has seen some success. Negotiators will start work on a new climate deal that would have legal force and, crucially, require both developed and developing countries to cut their carbon emissions. The terms now need to be agreed by 2015 and come into effect from 2020.

Developing countries, including China, the world's biggest emitter, have agreed to be legally bound to curb their greenhouse gases. Previously, poorer nations have insisted that they should not bear any legal obligations for tackling climate change, whereas rich nations should.

Durban saw nations agreeing that what has been done is not enough. The Durban agreement explicitly refers to the "emissions gap" – the difference between the aggregate impact of commitments that countries have made, and the upper limit of emissions required to have a chance of meeting the globally agreed goal of no more than two degrees of global warming. That gap is large, and countries have now agreed that their targets will need to be strengthened to try to close it.

At the heart of the Durban deal is the extension of the Kyoto Protocol, the legally binding treaty signed in 1997. It has also set up a roadmap towards a new treaty to succeed Kyoto in 2020, which for the first time will require the big emerging economies such as China, India and Brazil, to make legally binding commitments too.

However, the deal did little to address the scale of emissions cuts needed, and environmental groups felt this was a huge failing.

CFL dilemma

Are CFL's as good as they have been portrayed to be? Not really, if you go by what some experts are saying.

Typically the published life of CFLs is not achieved. Consumers are led to believe the lamp will last from 10,000 to 15,000 hours or more. Unfortunately these numbers do not take into account the lumen depreciation over time, and leads the customer to believe that when half of the interior walls of the lamp are dark, and light is still coming out, it is still ok to use.

More importantly however, these published numbers do not take into account the fact that these numbers are usually based on a minimum 7 hours of operation per start. As a result, if the lamp is turned on and off at a frequency less than 7 hours (which seems to be the typical application for compact fluorescents) the useful life of the CFL is dramatically less.

Clearer notes on the packaging, life based on lower on/off cycles, and life based on 70% of initial lumens would result in more accurate information.

That is what some experts say. However, some argue that it all depends on the kind of chokes used - whether internal or external. the latter is said to be better in performance.

care to share your experiences with these new-age light fluorescents that have taken over our homes?

Emissions down, but per capita footprint up

Looks like the human race might just have lost yet another chance to survive, going by the Durban impasse. Some want no legally binding deals, some want equal 'share' of the atmosphere (or right to pollute!), some want to simply continue with the 'good life'. For how long? The only suspense will be how much time will the new polluters have to enjoy the old-timers way of life!

Meanwhile,as some have pointed out, it is not just emissions we must be measuring but the carbon footprint. That is where even some of the role models in bringing down emissions are seen in a new colour.

In addition to emissions originating within a nation's borders from electricity generating, transportation, agriculture, industry, in assessing progress on mitigating a nation's climate impact, as with personal impact, the emissions of all goods consumed, whether produced domestically or abroad, need to be included.

A number of studies have shown that roughly one-third of China's greenhouse gas emissions are tied to goods produced there but destined for export. Under most carbon emission tallies, all these emissions are allocated to China and not the nation's consuming these goods.

Industrial countries document CO2 savings but in reality emission have only been shifted abroad, leaving total world emissions about the same...From 2002 to 2007 France reported stagnant or slightly decreasing CO2 emissions. In contrast, its per capita footprint increased continuously over the same period.

In essence the poor countries will be paying for the ways of those in rich nations! Can we hope for a fair world? Not at Durban anyway.

2 deg won't do!

Talks to limit global temperature rises to 2C will not prevent the possibility of dangerous climate change, says James Hansen, director of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. He was trying to tackle the widespread misconception among international climate negotiators meeting in Durban that 2C was a safe target.

He believes carbon dioxide concentrations – now at nearly 389 parts per million (ppm) – should be no higher than 350ppm to stop catastrophic events such as the melting of ice sheets, dramatic sea level rises and methane being released from beneath the permafrost.

"The target of 2C... is a prescription for long-term disaster," he said. "You can't say exactly what long term is but we are beginning to see signs of slow [climate] feedbacks beginning to come into play.

The emissions have to stop soon, Hansen maintains, if we want the planet as we know it.

Well, as the bargains continue at Durban, carrot sticks are being offered as tokens of climate consideration, but the seriousness of the challenge is simply not there.

A quarter of global land 'highly degraded'

A UN report released this week says that 25% of all land on earth is “highly degraded” making it unsuitable for agriculture.

The implications of this finding are enormous; the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that farm output must increase by 70% by 2050 to accommodate the food needs of an estimated 9 billion humans.

That translates into another billion tons of grain foods and 200 million tons of livestock meat (note: as standards of living rise in developing nations, the demand for high-quality meat also rises).

Primitive or unsustainable farming practices like over-tilling can lead to soil erosion, loss of surface water and loss of biodiversity.

Consequently, the UN report, ‘State of the World’s Land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture’ calls for “sustainable intensification” of agricultural productivity on existing farmland. To meet world water and food needs by 2050, the report recommends more efficient irrigation systems (most are currently below capacity), new farming practices (e.g., “integrated irrigation” and increased fish-farming [aquaculture] to meet protein demands), and more investment in agricultural development.

Nuclear sees negative growth

Due to increasing costs of production, a slowed demand for electricity, and fresh memories of disaster in Japan, production of nuclear power fell in 2011, according to the latest Vital Signs Online (VSO) report from the Worldwatch Institute. Despite reaching record levels the previous year, global installed nuclear capacity—the potential power generation from all existing plants—declined to 366.5 gigawatts (GW) in 2011, from 375.5 GW at the end of 2010.

Not surprisingly, this drop in installed capacity corresponds with a decline in global consumption of nuclear energy. Nuclear’s share of world commercial primary energy usage fell to around 5 percent in 2010, having peaked at about 6 percent in 2001 and 2002. Only four countries—the Czech Republic, Romania, Slovakia, and the United Kingdom—increased their share of nuclear power by over 1 percentage point between 2009 and 2010.

Much of the decline in installed capacity is the result of halted reactor construction around the world. Although construction on 16 new reactors began in 2010—the highest number in over two decades—that number fell to just two in 2011, with India and Pakistan each starting construction on a plant. In addition to this dramatically slowed rate of construction, the first 10 months of 2011 saw the closing of 13 nuclear reactors, reducing the total number of reactors in operation around the world from 441 at the beginning of the year to 433.

“It’s too early to conclude that nuclear energy is beginning a long-term decline, but these numbers can hardly encourage the industry,” said Worldwatch President Robert Engelman. “The high cost of nuclear electricity generation and the widespread public perceptions that it poses unacceptable safety risks make it unlikely this form of power will help slow human-caused climate change or offer an attractive alternative to rising fossil-fuel prices any time soon.”

China is an exception to the global slump in nuclear electricity generation, in terms of both the number of plants being built and installment capacity levels. The country accounted for 10 of the 16 reactor construction starts in 2010, and that year it initiated the installment of nearly 10 GW of capacity, representing 62 percent of capacity construction worldwide. China currently is home to 27 reactors and has some 27 GW of capacity under construction.

The United States, too, does not appear to be abandoning nuclear power just yet. In 2010, the Obama administration approved $8.3 billion in loan guarantees for construction of nuclear reactors; in February of 2011, the administration’s budget proposal upped that amount by an additional $36 billion.

Although many factors are behind the decline, it is largely the result of high costs, slowed electricity demand, and lower natural gas prices in recent months. The reactor meltdown at Japan’s Fukushima plant seven months ago also likely added to the severity of the decline. Only 10 of Japan’s 54 reactors are currently connected to the grid, China froze construction on 25 reactors immediately after the Fukushima explosions, and both Germany and Switzerland announced plans to phase out nuclear power following the disaster.

Although nuclear power remains an important energy source for many countries, including Russia and France, it is likely that its prominence will continue to decrease.

Up, up and up

Global CO2 emissions were up 5.9% in 2010 reaching record levels and are expected to increase by 3.1% this year, according to new research.

The findings by scientists working on the Global Carbon Project (GCP), published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Climate Change, indicate that the burning of fossil fuels, cement production and deforestation have contributed to atmospheric concentrations of CO2 at 389.6 parts per million – the highest recorded level for at least 800,000 years.

Last year saw emissions rise above the average rate of 3.1% over the last decade, led by China (up 10.4%), the US (up 4.1%) and India (up 9.4%). China now accounts for nearly a quarter of global CO2 emissions (24.6%) and the US 16.4%.

Although governments have pledged to make reductions to CO2 emissions and keep temperature rises to 2°C, one of the report authors warned that the action is not enough.

The solar pie - big or small?

The International Energy Agency, known to be conservative on projections for renewable energy, has of late been toeing the clean energy line to address climate change and peak oil. In fact, the renewable energy head at IEA says we could get up to one third of our global energy supply from solar photovoltaics, concentrating solar power, and solar hot water by 2060!

That's no small leap considering solar constitutes a mere 3-4 percent of the global energy mix.

According to Paolo Frankl the strength of solar is the incredible variety and flexibility of applications, from small scale to big scale. Economic activity will shift toward the sunnier zones around the equator by 2050, making solar energy a viable power source for most of the global economy, quoted a Bloomberg report.

Those regions will be home to almost 80 percent of the human race by the middle of the century, compared with about 70 percent today, and their energy needs will be higher as living standards in countries such as Brazil and India approach those of the U.S. and Europe.

But as a climate change expert notes, these areas will be wilting under global warming making them unsuitable for habitation. So?

Ironically, the IEA in its World Energy Outlook published this year does not give solar much attention. The organization predicted fairly modest growth in the solar PV and CSP sector through 2035, with a projection that it would only make up 4.5% of electricity supply.

Perhaps one neds to read the difference between 'could' and 'would' in such discrepancies!

Corporate mission

Over 340 companies from 38 countries have signed up to the Corporate Leaders’ Group on Climate Change 2°C Challenge Communiqué, to be presented at COP17 in Durban.

The Communiqué calls on governments around the world to take urgent action on climate change to limit average global temperature rises to less than 2°C.

“If we do not act, climate change risks seriously undermining future global prosperity and inflicting significant social, economic and environmental costs on the world. If we take the right steps, we can secure a low carbon?emission economy that is more resilient, more efficient and less vulnerable to global shocks,” states the Communiqué.

Such a communique was issued last time too, but this time the Communiqué has secured support from some of the world’s largest companies, including Alstom, AVIVA, BAA, BP, BT, Shell, Diageo, Unilever, Cisco and Tesco.

European companies dominate the line up, totalling some 195, followed by 54 from the Americas, 71 from Asia Pacific and 22 from Africa. Still fewer than the 900 odd firms that signed up to the Copenhagen Communiqué.

Still, it is a worthy drive.

Cloud computing can help cut emissions

Major companies could reduce their carbon emissions by as much as 50 percent and significantly increase energy efficiency by shifting to cloud computing, according to a new report.

In an analysis of UK, French, and U.S. firms that have used cloud computing for at least two years, the Carbon Disclosure Project calculated that by 2020 U.S. companies with annual revenues of more than $1 billion can save $12.3 billion in energy costs and achieve carbon reductions equivalent to 200 million barrels of oil a year if they shift to shared data networks.

The report said that large UK companies could achieve annual energy savings of £ 1.2 billion if they move to cloud computing.

Cloud computing — in which data can be stored, managed, and processed on external servers as needed — allows companies to buy less hardware and also improves efficiency and flexibility. According to the report — which was conducted by the independent firm Verdantix and sponsored by AT&T — large companies plan to accelerate their adoption of cloud computing from 10 percent to 69 percent of their IT spending by 2020.

More warnings!

A week before delegates arrive at Durban to take up what was left hanging at Copenhagen, UNEP has sounded another warning. By 2020, greenhouse gas emissions could rise exceed the level needed to limit global warming to 2°C by 6-11 gigatons of CO2 equivalent (GtCO2e), it says.

According to the latest report Bridging the Emissions Gap, keeping global warming to 2°C requires emission levels to be kept to around 44 GtCO2e in 2020. UNEP warns that if global governments’ weakest pledges are implemented, emissions are likely to reach around 54.6 GtCO2e. Even with more ambitious pledges it will only touch 50.

The report says that cutting emissions by 2020 to a level that would keep the global average temperature rise to 2°C is technologically and economically feasible. In particular, action is needed on aviation and shipping emissions, which currently fall outside of the Kyoto Protocol, and could account for up to 2.5 GtCO2e by 2020.

For a week or two, the media will be abuzz with Durban heat and dust. But will anything come out of it? Besides even more warnings??

Resource Revolution

Why do we humans need revolutions to wake us up? Sadly, we do. And now, going by what most of us know, but vindicated time and again, and now by a report from McKinsey, without a resource revolution, we all face the prospect of damage to global growth, welfare, and the environment.

Not to despair, the new McKinsey report Resource Revolution: Meeting the world’s energy, materials, food, and water needs shows that the resource challenge can be met through a combination of expanding the supply of resources and a step change in the way they are extracted, converted, and used. Such resource productivity improvements, using existing technology, could satisfy nearly 30 percent of demand in 2030. Just 15 areas, from more energy-efficient buildings to improved irrigation, could deliver 75 percent of the potential for higher resource productivity.

Meeting the resource-supply and productivity challenges will be far from easy—only 20 percent of the potential is readily achievable and 40 percent will be hard to capture. There are many barriers, including the fact that the capital needed each year to create a resource revolution will rise from roughly $2 trillion today to more than $3 trillion, with additional capital requirements to pursue climate change and universal-energy-access agendas.

Policy makers should consider action on three fronts: unwinding subsidies that keep prices artificially low and encourage inefficiency; ensuring that enough capital is available and that market failures are corrected; and bolstering society’s resilience by creating safety nets to help very poor people deal with change and educating consumers and businesses to heed the reality of future resource constraints.

Some questions

Let us have your thoughts on a puzzle. Will rising energy prices have an effect on consumption, or will the public absorb the same, till a point of no-go?

Some point out to show that rising oil prices have not seen many people abandon private travel. In fact the data from last two years actually show a rise of consumption. Well, this could be simply that more people have come into the bracket rather than the same lot have increased consumption. It stands to reason that any savings will draw buyers. So should fossil fuel based power be made more costly, or at least show its real price?

And when talking of oil, one can't avoid talking of diesel and how one segment that uses this susidised fuel is the one that owns high-end vehicles. Should such costly cars be running on subsidised diesel? Should diesel cars be taxed heavily?

Should energy tax be the lone tax in times so heavily dependent on energy? Will that be enough to cater to public services?

Efficient motors can rake in millions

As we have been saying, simple measures go a long way in tackling complex issues. Sometimes it can be so simple as to be tough to discern!

Electric motors and VSDs account for two-thirds of industrial electricity use in the UK and 40% of all electricity consumption globally and can cost ten times as much as they cost to run every year.

But two new guides from the Carbon Trust show businesses how to make reductions to their annual energy bills. A medium-sized business spending £50,000 a year on electricity could save 10% on its costs by installing VSDs and higher efficiency motors.

Motors often don’t need to be working at 100% capacity, so VSDs help save energy by slowing motors down by 20%, for example, which can cut energy use by half. Timers can also be used to switch off motor-powered equipment when not in use.

According to the Carbon Trust, the UK food and drink industry could save up to £70 million a year through such measures, while more energy intensive sectors like plastics, rubber and chemicals could save up to £270 million annually.

Extreme weather will wreak havoc

Sorry if this sounds repetitive, but just days after IEA's dire warning about inaction in the face of climate change, comes a report from IPCC.

Rising sea levels will increase the vulnerability of coastal areas, and the increase in "extreme weather events" will wipe billions off national economies and destroy lives, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Scientists have warned of these effects for years, but today's report – the "special report on extreme weather" compiled over two years by more than 100 scientists – is the first comprehensive examination of scientific knowledge on the subject, in an attempt to produce a definitive judgment.

The report contained stark warnings for developing countries in particular, which are likely to be worst afflicted in part because of their geography but also because they are less well prepared for extreme weather in their infrastructure and have less economic resilience.

Increases in population density and in the value of property at risk, rather than changes in the climate, are the likeliest explanation for rising disaster losses in many countries, the report said. It called on governments to do a better job of protecting people and heading off catastrophes before they strike.

The report was timed just ahead of crucial talks taking place later this month in Durban, South Africa, where the world's governments will discuss a new global agreement to tackle greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. Will these dire warnings be enough to get governments to come out with a solid plan of action? Or have we got used to such dire warnings?

Wind energy to become cheap soon

Wind is catching up on solar, and how! A new analysis says that wind will be as cheap as natural gas in a couple of years!

The best wind farms in the world are already competitive with coal, gas, and nuclear plants. But over the next five years, continued performance improvements and cost reductions will bring the average onshore wind plant in line with cheap natural gas, even without a price on carbon, according to analysis from Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF).

After analyzing the cost curve for wind projects since the mid-1980s, BNEF researchers showed that the cost of wind-generated electricity has fallen 14 percent for every doubling of installation capacity. These cost reductions are due to a number of factors: more sophisticated manufacturing, better materials, larger turbines, and more experience with plant operations and maintenance. Those improvements, combined with an oversupply of turbines on the global market, will bring the average cost of wind electricity down another 12 percent by 2016.

In the next few years the mainstream world is going to wake up to wind cheaper than gas, and rooftop solar power cheaper than daytime electricity. Add in the same sort of deep long-term price drops for power storage, demand management, LED lighting and so on.

Welcome claen energy!

Nano-antenna solar panel

Tel Aviv University's Department of Physical Electronics and its innovative new Renewable Energy Center are now developing a solar panel composed of nano-antennas instead of semiconductors. By adapting classic metallic antennas to absorb light waves at optical frequencies, a much higher conversion rate from light into useable energy could be achieved. Such efficiency, combined with a lower material cost, would mean a cost-effective way to harvest and utilize "green" energy.

Traditionally, detectors based on semiconducting materials like silicon are used to interface with light, while radio waves are captured by antenna. For optimal absorption, the antenna dimensions must correspond to the light's very short wavelength. Initial tests indicate that 95 percent of the wattage going into the antenna comes out, meaning that only five percent is wasted.

The solar spectrum is very broad with UV or infrared rays ranging from ten microns to less than two hundred nanometers. No semiconductor can handle this broad a spectrum, and they absorb only a fraction of the available energy. A group of antennas, however, can be manufactured in different lengths with the same materials and process, exploiting the entire available spectrum of light.

When finished, the team's new solar panels will be large sheets of plastic which, with the use of a nano-imprinting lithography machine, will be imprinted with varying lengths and shapes of metallic antennas.

Solar sees innovations every day, and that despite disappointing news like the cut in feed in tariff in UK which has many householders vexed about their plans to generate energy at home.

Impasse

Following the release of a European Commission report on critical raw materials in 2010, scientists at the Joint Research Centre (JRC) highlighted in a new report that five metals, essential for manufacturing low-carbon technologies, show a high risk of shortage. Reasons for this lie in Europe's dependency on imports, increasing global demand, supply concentration and geopolitical issues.

The JRC has now carried out an in depth analysis of the use of raw materials, especially metals, in the six priority low-carbon energy technologies of the Commission's SET-Plan: nuclear, solar, wind, bio-energy, carbon capture and storage and electricity grids.

It reveals that five metals commonly used in these technologies -- neodymium, dysprosium, indium, tellurium and gallium -- show a high risk of shortage. A large-scale deployment of solar energy technologies, for example, will require half the current world supply of tellurium and 25% of the supply of indium. At the same time, the envisaged deployment of wind energy technology in Europe will require large amounts of neodymium and dysprosium, (about 4% of the current global supply each) for permanent magnet generators.

Almost over 90 percent of rare earths are imported from China which sits on the world's deposits of these. The dilemma for manufacturers the world over will be the same. And considering yesterday's blockbuster report from IEA on the crisis we are sure headed into unless we shuft to low carbon lufetsyle, this is grim news.

Is there a way out? Is energy conservation and using less of limited resources the answer?

IEA warns of irreversible change

If fossil fuel infrastructure is not rapidly changed, the world will 'lose forever' the chance to avoid dangerous climate change. We must start aggressively deploying clean energy now through myriad policies, including a price on carbon. Waiting for breakthrough technologies are urging us on a path that is unsustainable, irreversible, potentially catastrophic, and economically indefensible, according to the IEA.

For every $1 of investment in cleaner technology that is avoided in the power sector before 2020, an additional $4.30 would need to be spent after 2020 to compensate for the increased emissions

"As each year passes without clear signals to drive investment in clean energy, the 'lock-in' of high-carbon infrastructure is making it harder and more expensive to meet our energy security and climate goals," said Fatih Birol, IEA Chief Economist.

The WEO presents a 450 Scenario, which traces an energy path consistent with meeting the globally agreed goal of limiting the temperature rise to 2 degrees C. Four-fifths of the total energy-related CO2 emissions permitted to 2035 in the 450 Scenario are already locked in by existing capital stock, including power stations, buildings and factories. Without further action by 2017, the energy-related infrastructure then in place would generate all the CO2 emissions allowed in the 450 Scenario up to 2035.

The IEA has created an intermediate scenario between 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) and 6 degrees C (10.8 degrees F) warming -- "the WEO's central New Policies Scenario, which assumes that recent government commitments are implemented in a cautious manner": In the New Policies Scenario, world primary demand for energy increases by one-third between 2010 and 2035 and energy-related CO2 emissions increase by 20 percent, following a trajectory consistent with a long-term rise in the average global temperature in excess of 3.5 degrees C [6.3 degrees F]. A lower rate of global economic growth in the short term would make only a marginal difference to longer-term energy and climate trends.

Demand will peak, says study

Forget Peak oil that refers to peaking of oil supply, now a new study suggests that global oil demand will peak before 2020. With participation of some of the world's leading energy and technology companies and organizations, the research challenged the concept that "Peak Oil" will be a supply side phenomenon and predicts that the demand for oil may well peak before 2020 and then fall back to levels significantly below 2010 demand by 2035. It underlies a general underestimation of the future impact of government policies to improve fuel efficiency and promote alternatives to oil, according to the study.

The study findings suggest that there is a strong chance of oil demand reaching its peak before 2020, at no more than about 4 percent above 2010 levels, before falling into a long-term decline trend, with demand in 2035 back down to some 3 percent below 2010 levels.

The study predicts significant changes in future demand patterns, strongly influenced by global energy security policies, the technology change that they promote, and demographics. Evolutionary changes in automotive technology is predicted to bring revolutionary changes in fuel demand. The increasing disparity of demand between fuel types, diesel volumes are buoyed by heavy duty transportation use while gasoline declines due to increasing powertrain efficiencies and higher pump blends of bio-ethanol.

The study also predicts improved supply prospects for natural gas likely to lead to decoupling of oil and gas market.

That sure is a welcome trend if we can move with the reality of fossil fuels running out. But there are the cynics who do not believe any significant improvisation on vehicle efficiencies nor that biofuels will make any big impact. Time will tell.

Green Pilgrimages!

The newly formed Green Pilgrimage Network, of which the Sikh holy city of Amritsar is the only member from South Asia, has pledged to take a series of steps to turn pilgrim cities green.

A presentation on the Golden Temple and environment initiatives by SGPC and Amritsar city covered plantation drives, solar energy use and future water recycling programmes.

Among the initiatives agreed to by the group at its first convention in Assisi, Italy, are a ban on cars on pilgrimage routes, solar panels for cathedral roofs, provision of fresh clean water for pilgrims and planting of thousands of trees around sacred sites.

Now wouldn't that be great if more of the pilgrim cities and towns do a clean up? Especially in India, most of these places are ridden with plastic waste, bottles and cups and plates clogging streams and roadsides. Solar panels would be a good option while ban on cars would make it a real pilgrimage.

Puffing away

The world pumped about 564m more tons (512m metric tons) of carbon into the air in 2010 than it did in 2009, an increase of 6%, according to the US department of energy.

That amount of extra pollution eclipses the individual emissions of all but three countries, China, the US and India, the world's top producers of greenhouse gases. Extra pollution in China and the US account for more than half the increase in emissions last year.

In 2010 people were travelling more, and manufacturing was back up worldwide, spurring the use of fossil fuels, and hence emissions.

In 2007, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its last large report on global warming, it used different scenarios for carbon dioxide pollution and said the rate of warming would be based on the rate of pollution. But the latest figures put global emissions higher than the worst case projections from the climate panel.

There is something 'good' in recent emissions figures. The developed countries that ratified the 1997 Kyoto Protocol greenhouse gas limiting treaty have reduced their emissions overall since then and have achieved their goals of cutting emissions to about 8% below 1990 levels. In 1990, developed countries produced about 60% of the world's greenhouse gases, now it's probably less than 50%.

Well, Durban is to happen and will it rove just another exercise in 'shadow-boxing'? Just another mega event that produces its own emissions?!

UN seeks high-profile drive for clean energy

The UN has called for a high-profile initiative to promote universal access to power such as electricity in developing countries based on a global advocacy campaign and investments on the ground for clean energy.

In its annual Human Development Report, the UN Development Progamme (UNDP) said the time is right for such a drive as the UN has designated 2012 as the international year of sustainable energy for all. This year's report, Sustainability and Equity, published on Wednesday, focuses on environmental degradation and its potential impact on human development. Environmental trends over recent decades show deterioration on several fronts, the report says, with adverse repercussions for human development.

As to the cost in moving to clean energy, the report cites estimates of total annual mitigation and adaptation costs by 2030 as ranging from $249bn to $1,371bn. While the amounts are large, the UNDP points out they are below current spending on defence, on recent banking bailouts and on "perverse" subsidies.

It points to "innovative" sources of financing such as a currency transaction tax – an idea it first mooted in 1994, which is gaining traction. The EU backs such a tax, although it is opposed by the UK which fears that such a move would undercut London's status as a financial centre. A tax of 0.005% would yield around $40bn a year worldwide, according to the report, while even a unilateral currency transaction tax limited to the euro could raise $4.2bn to $9.3bn in additional financing.

The report also puts particular emphasis on the need to empower women as a way of meeting the world's environmental challenges.

The multiplication table

It's official. The 7 billionth human has just entered the race. And chances are you will find the talk centred around this arrival, whether in energy circles or environment. For, the 7 billion holds big consequences to the way ahead.

More than 200,000 people are added to the population each day, and we're expected to keep growing for years to come, reaching anywhere from 8 billion to 11 billion mid-century.

Now comes the important question: who or what is to blame for the world's problems - the total number of people, or the amount of water, food, mineral ores or clean air each demands?

An extra child born today in the United States, would, down the generations, produce an eventual carbon footprint seven times that of an extra child in China, 55 times that of an Indian child or 86 times that of a Nigerian child, said a Oregon university research.

Slowing population growth could provide 16 per cent to 19 per cent of the emissions reductions suggested to be necessary by 2050 to avoid dangerous climate change.
In other words, it can make a contribution. But the other 81-84% will have to come from reducing consumption and changing technologies.

Across time and geography, countries that have reduced birth rates have got richer and so more consumptive. The CIA World Factbook data for countries' birthrates and average purchasing power of each person shows a pretty strong correlation between the two. At the same time, study after study shows environmental damage rises with income, and often more steeply as developing countries begin to industrialise.

Environmental degradation can be helped by reducing the number of people and equally by what they use.

White roofs heat the planet!

Once it was thought that HFCs were better than CFCs till HFCs came up with their own plate of woes! White roofs are the simplest solutions in hot cities, and one would have thought that reflecting back sunlight would reduce global warming. But no!

Mark Jacobson’s (of MIT) computer modeling concluded that white roofs did indeed cool urban surfaces. However, they caused a net global warming, largely because they reduced cloudiness slightly by increasing the stability of the air, thereby reducing the vertical transport of moisture and energy to clouds. In Jacobson’s modeling, the reduction in cloudiness allowed more sunlight to reach the surface.

The increased sunlight reflected back into the atmosphere by white roofs in turn increased absorption of light by dark pollutants such as black carbon, which further increased heating of the atmosphere!

There is no solution to all our problems, it seems. When one is solved, another pops.

UK schools to cut energy use

Hundreds of schools across England have signed up to take part in the Carbon Trust’s recently announced energy saving challenge.

The Trust’s Collaborative Low Carbon Schools Service will help over 400 schools in 52local authorities tackle the sector’s £543 million annual energy bill.

Through the implementation of simple, cost-effective energy saving measures like switching off lights when not in use and installing more efficient heating systems, the initiative aims to save up to £40 million in costs and 270,000 tonnes of carbon.

The pilot programme will run for 10 months, with the aim of saving schools up to 25% on their energy bills. The Carbon Trust will offer an expert advice on installing measures like energy efficient lighting and heating.

On average, a typical secondary school could save £21,500 a year in energy costs – almost as much as employing a newly qualified teacher.

“The Carbon Trust’s work with local authorities shows that schools can play a pivotal role in helping the public sector to save millions of pounds while slashing carbon emissions,” says Richard Rugg, director of Carbon Trust Programmes.

Behaviour psychology and energy

"The most efficient light bulb is one that is switched off...Behavior is messy, motivations are messy, but they're still a crucial part of the puzzle."

That is how Jon Bird sums up his attempts to make people change their ways. A senior research associate at University College London who divides his time between the computer science and psychology departments, he recently enlisted a group of 17 households on Tidy Street in Brighton, a seaside town south of London, who agreed to record their electricity use over time. To make their progress (or lack thereof) plainly visible, he enlisted artists from the nearby Goldsmiths College to stencil a giant graph down the street.

When they started, the residents of Tidy Street were about average for Brighton, but within three weeks, they had reduced their electricity use by 15 percent. Bird credits the change to the fact that residents were 1. Paying attention 2. getting some public notice for their efforts, both from the press and from inquisitive passersby. Each time their performance improved, they felt a little community pride. When they slipped back, the giant public display gave them a variation on the magic buzzer treatment.

But… three weeks later a few households bowed out, but 80 percent agreed to carry on. Six weeks into the experiment, however, they were down to just 50 percent participation. And now, six months in, only three households are checking their meters each day. Of those, only two have kept their electricity use down. How to sustain changed behaviour is a challenge still unsolved.

Bird's work falls within a growing body of what is known as "nudge" theory, which looks at ways to use behavioral psychology to encourage citizens to make smart choices. Social norms marketing" -- providing people with the data to compare themselves to their neighbors -- can inspire change, yes, but soon people fall back on old ways.

It's tough but .. well, it's needed. Perhaps the nudge will have to become a push?!

Place them panels below power lines!

Instead of building new infrastructure or searching for land, how about using existing ones? That is what energy experts are thinking out in the US.

Transmission right-of-way, providing 20% of U.S. electricity from solar, is just one piece of the puzzle, with another 20% possible using existing rooftops and a solar potential of nearly 100% from solar on highway right-of-way.

What if the U.S. could get 20 percent of its power from solar, near transmission lines, and without covering virgin desert? It could.

Transmission right-of-way corridors, vast swaths of vegetation-free landscape to protect high-voltage power lines, could provide enough space for over 600,000 megawatts of solar PV. These arrays could provide enough electricity to meet 20% of the country’s electric needs.

There are 155,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines in the United States(defined as lines 230 kilovolts and higher). According to at least two major utilities (Duke Energy and the Tennessee Valley Authority), such power lines require a minimum of 150 feet of right-of-way, land generally cleared of all significant vegetation that might come in contact with the power lines.

That’s 4,400 square miles of already developed (or denuded) land for solar power, right under existing grid infrastructure. But given that the lines would amke for some shading, and assuming that half of transmission line right-of-way is unsuitable for solar, even then it leaves 2,200 square miles of available land for solar.

With approximately 275 megawatts (MW) installed per square mile, over 600,000 MW of solar could occupy the available right-of-way, providing enough electricity (over 720billion kilowatt-hours) to supply 20 percent of U.S. power demands. Howzatt??

Now that should apply for many places the world over. Pronto, you have the place you have been searching for to set up panels, right?

Food for 7 billion

An international team of scientists has unveiled a plan that they say would double food production by 2050 while reducing the global environmental impact of agriculture.

Reporting in the journal Nature, scientists from the U.S., Canada, Sweden, and Germany said that the only way the world community could sustainably feed the estimated 9 billion to 10 billion people expected on the planet later this century would be by taking the five following steps:

halt expansion of farmland into tropical forests and wild lands; more efficiently use large swaths of underutilized farmland in Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe, boosting current food production by nearly 60 percent;

make more efficient use of water, fertilizers, and chemicals, which are currently overutilized in some areas and underutilized in others;

shift diets, especially in the developed world, from excessive meat consumption;

and reduce the amount of food that is discarded, spoiled, or eaten by pests, which currently amounts to about a third of the food supply.

The University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment which came out with the study has summarised it well as the world prepares to welcme its 7 billionth homo sapien. Increasingly, sustainability will become more than a fancy word used at all forums. It will mean the only way we can carry the race forward. Optimisation of resources and minimisation of waste will play a big role.

2 million lives at stake due to inefficient stoves

What is the most primal need of energy for? Cooking. And when it comes to that, millions still do not have access to electricity. Nearly half the world's population uses biomass (wood, crop residues, charcoal or dung) or coal as fuel for cooking and heating.

Rural and poor across the world's developing nations still use smoke stoves that are bad for the environment and health. Indoor air pollution from such inefficient stoves affects about 3 billion people -- nearly half the world's population. In addition to respiratory disease caused by smoke, the fuel needed by inefficient stoves leads to deforestation, and environmental degradation. Women and children are at greatest risk for the adverse health effects posed by inefficient stoves.

An international effort to replace smoky, inefficient household stoves that people commonly use in lower and middle income countries with clean, affordable, fuel efficient stoves could save nearly 2 million lives each year, according to experts from the National Institutes of health.

The study authors cited a recent report by the World Bank, which noted that, in addition to improving public health, clean, efficient stoves could have benefits to the environment and the climate, by reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

In recognition of the problem, the United Nations launched the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves. A public-private partnership, the alliance seeks to create a global market for clean and efficient cookstoves and fuels in the developing world. To succeed, strategies for replacing the world's inefficient biomass stoves with clean, efficient stoves must be market driven, the researchers rightly noted. Equally important is the need for awareness among the people on the need for a clean stove, right?

Solar on top of the world!

Here's a question for you: which is the best place to capture solar energy?

Desert? Right, for obvious reasons. But wait, a recent study has found another more optimal place and that's the mountains!

It concludes that some of the world's coldest landscapes -- including the Himalaya Mountains, the Andes, and even Antarctica -- could become Saudi Arabias of solar. The research appears in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology.

Many hot regions such as the U.S. desert southwest are ideal locations for solar arrays. However, they also found that many cold regions at high elevations receive a lot of sunlight -- so much so that their potential for producing power from the sun is even higher than in some desert areas.

The team found, for instance, that the Himalayas, which include Mt. Everest, could be an ideal locale for solar fields that generate electricity for the fast-expanding economy of the People's Republic of China. Chances are that the Chinese, on hearing this will start building a massive solar array for the Himalayas! The roadways and railways are almost in place anyway (in fact, the holy Kailash will soon see motorised parikrama!)

Drops make the ocean

More than 1 billion people in poor countries around the world could have access to electricity within 20 years, if the international community is prepared to make the effort, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Monday.

Giving poor people access to electricity – more than a century after it became available to the rich – would cost about $48bn a year, and would have huge advantages in terms of health, education and economic growth, a global study for the IEA concluded. Moreover, it would not require a leap in greenhouse gas emissions, as low-carbon energy could make up a large part of the new energy sources to bring the poor into step with the modern world.

If done properly, providing electricity access to those who lack it would increase carbon dioxide emissions by about 0.7%, according to the IEA report, which it said would be "equivalent to the annual emissions of New York State but giving electricity to a population more than 50 times the size".

People with access to electricity suffer far less from indoor air pollution, mostly caused by cooking over traditional wood fires. Close to 3 billion people around the world currently have no access to clean cooking facilities, and indoor air pollution is one of the world's biggest "silent killers", causing millions of deaths and many more cases of respiratory illness every year, mostly in women and children, who are more exposed to the pollution.

The IEA calculates that of the money needed, $18bn could come from multilateral and bilateral development sources, $15bn from the governments of developing countries and $15bn from the private sector.

The United Nations has declared 2012 the International Year of Sustainable Energy for All and what better than to take up such a noble cause?

Battle lines re-drawn

The Kyoto Protocol was once again in focus at climate negotiations in Panama last week, indicating that a fight is brewing ahead of Durban's COP17 climate change talks. The Panama talks are the last round of official United Nations climate change negotiations ahead of COP17 at the end of November in Durban.

In Panama, old battle lines were redrawn when Japan, Russia, Canada and the United States insisted they would not sign up to a second commitment period for Kyoto when it expires at the end of next year.

But many developing countries that have rallied behind the Group of 77 and China insisted that Kyoto should not die.

The chairman of the least developed countries group, Pa Ousman Jarju of Gambia, stressed that poor countries needed the financial mechanisms embedded in Kyoto to help them cope with climate change. Meanwhile, the EU is discussing proposals that would extend Kyoto without dealing directly with the protocol in name, providing the financial mechanisms developing countries want.

Industrialised countries have pledged to provide $30bn of fast-start funding between 2011 and 2013 to support climate adaptation and emission-reduction projects in developing countries.

However, there have been consistent complaints from developing countries that not all the money has been awarded, and there has been absence of transparency over how the cash has been distributed.

Poorer nations are also increasingly concerned that there are no firm commitments on funding for post-2013 beyond a pledge delivered in Cancun to investigate providing up to £100bn a year in funding from 2020.

From such indications, it is clear that Durban will not make a big change!

Costs play dampener on CCS

After the brake on the US FutureGen project and closure of a CCS unit in West Virginia, now it is the turn of UK to face some truths in the area.

A major carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) project planned in Scotland may soon bite the dust. The project, slated for the Longannet coal power station, to the northeast of Edinburgh, has been heavily supported by the government, but apparently the price tag might be too high in current economic and political conditions.

The Longannet station owned by ScottishPower, has a massive generating capacity of more than 2300 megawatts. The idea was to capture some of the CO2 emissions and bury them under the North Sea. But the report in The Guardian noted: "The investment case for CCS remains uncertain due to the absence of a firm timetable and a clear roadmap for how these demonstrations will enable and form part of a large scale deployment of CCS in the UK."

The report also notes that most likely 20 to 30 gigawatts of CCS-fitted power plants must be in operation by 2030 in order to meet emissions targets and a growing energy demand.

Perhaps CCS is an idea before its time, at least for now!

Riding merry on fossil fuels

Global fossil fuel consumption subsidies rose in 2010 despite a pledge by G-20 nations to take steps to reduce them in coming years, according to a new analysis.

The International Energy Agency estimated that subsidies that artificially lower fuel prices reached $409 billion in 2010, an increase of almost $110 billion above 2009 levels.

The changes “closely tracked the sharp rise in international fuel prices,” according to the IEA.

The IEA’s top economist told reporters in Paris that subsidies could reach $660 billion in 2020 absent better reforms, according to Reuters.

The Paris-based IEA and the OECD released a joint analysis that follows the G-20’s 2009 pledge to phase-out subsidies that encourage waste, hinder energy security, and impede development of renewables and climate change initiatives.

Tech boomerangs

China with its aspirations may have overtaken the US in emissions but the US continues to be bullish about fossil fuels and emissions. Climate change deniers and a populace unwilling to let go on a carbon rich lifestyle have fuelled a feeling that life simply has to go on, in the same track.

Hence the new interest in geo-engineering. The idea being, let us pollute and then clean up the atmosphere. A panel is recommending that the government begin researching the possibility of directly manipulating the Earth’s climate to lower the temperature. This despite the fact that a few days ago, the UK-based Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering project, or “SPICE,” a project aimed at cooling the earth’s climate, was delayed due to environmental concerns.

Not only is geo-engineering a distraction from climate change mitigation, it also presents ethical and political challenges. But more important, it presents the problem of unintended consequences. For instance, sulphate clouds could alter weather patterns and cause droughts. We have enough instances of technology turning the trigger backwards.

In early last century, Thomas Midgley helped stop engines from “knocking” by adding lead to gasoline. This was good for the engines, though highly toxic to humans and the environment. Advocates called for regulation, but catalytic converters ultimately came to the rescue. The converters couldn’t handle the lead, and so the lead was dropped.

Midgley went on to help solve the refrigeration problem presented by the highly flammable and/or toxic refrigerants of the day – ammonia, sulfur dioxide, methyl chloride and butane. He worked his way through the periodic table to discover that CFCs which were then used till found to affect the ozone layer. They were replaced by HFCs till it was found that HFCs are greenhouse gases!

When using sulphate to cool, we do not know the consequences besides the theoretical and lab based cooling.

Is it wise to continue on a carbon rich energy path or shift? What do you think?

Gadgets in the times of scarcity

Go visiting a friend and chances are that the talk will veer around to some new acquisition, a gadget. Guest and host will discuss the new models, the tricks it has up its sleeve, the price, and so on. Very rarely will the discussion touch on the aspect of efficiency or power use!

In developed countries this is more so, but developing nations with fast rising aspirations are catching up on their electric toothbrushes, smartphones, big fridges, flatscreen TV, tablet PCs. In the UK, a report from the Energy Savings Trust has warned of the nation falling below meeting its target on reducing emissions if this gadget craze continues.

The number of domestic gadgets and appliances in the average UK household increased by three and a half times between 1990 and 2009, according to the report, and overall energy consumption from consumer electronic goods rose by more than 600% between 1970 and 2009.

The new report finds that despite householders' efforts to switch to energy-efficient products, we are actually consuming more energy than five years ago, with almost a third of all the UK's carbon emissions coming from the home.
The proliferation of new gadgets such as laptops, tablets and powerful desktops shows no sign of abating, however. Between 2000 and 2009 electricity use from home computing more than doubled, and the number of devices in Britain's homes rose from 30,000 to 65,000!

This could well be the truth for most cities across the globe. The cost of running gadgets is often forgotten given the cheap and subsidised rate of fossil backed power. This awareness must be strengthened if homes are to stop being energy guzzlers.

A third industrial revolution?

Noted American economist Jeremy Rifkin has some food for thought in his new book on what he calls The Third Industrial revolution. Check out:

'The Third Industrial Revolution is the last of the great Industrial Revolutions and will lay the foundational infrastructure for an emerging collaborative age. The forty year build-out of the TIR infrastructure will create hundreds of thousands of new businesses and hundreds of millions of new jobs...

'In the coming half century, the conventional, centralized business operations of the First and Second Industrial Revolutions will increasingly be subsumed by the distributed business practices of the Third Industrial Revolution; and the traditional, hierarchical organization of economic and political power will give way to lateral power organized nodally across society...

'The Third Industrial Revolution offers the hope that we can arrive at a sustainable post-carbon era by mid-century. We have the science, the technology, and the game plan to make it happen...

'The five pillars of the Third Industrial Revolution are (1) shifting to renewable energy; (2) transforming the building stock of every continent into micro-power plants to collect renewable energies on-site; (3) deploying hydrogen and other storage technologies in every building and throughout the infrastructure to store intermittent energies; (4) using Internet technology to transform the power grid of every continent into an energy-sharing intergrid that acts just like the Internet (when millions of buildings are generating a small amount of energy locally, on-site, they can sell surplus back to the grid and share electricity with their continental neighbors); and (5) transitioning the transport fleet to electric plug-in and fuel cell vehicles that can buy and sell electricity on a smart, continental, interactive power grid.

For more, read on

Future technology

So, are electric vehicles going to be as widely feasible as we would like it to be?Nearly every major automobile manufacturer in the world appears ready to market some flavor of plug-in vehicle with in the next few years. So the odds are piled high for sure.

A recent study concluded that together these manufacturers have committed to producing some 840,000 electric vehicles by 2013. The demand for lithium-ion automobile batteries is projected to increase from 2.4 gigawatt hours (GWh) this year to 18 GWh by 2013 - a seven fold increase. The rapid increase in lithium-ion battery production -- 20 new plants are under construction -- is expected to drive the cost of these batteries down from $800-1000/kWh today to the vicinity of $350 by the end of the decade.

Good news. But, where is the research on batteries heading? On small short-term batteries or bulky long-term ones?

Tom Whipple writes in Energy Bulletin, quoting a study by Carnegie-Mellon that for the immediate future electric cars with small battery packs and limited electric range offer more benefits to society than larger packs that attempt to substitute completely for conventional fuels.

Not only do the smaller shorter range battery packs such as those found in conventional hybrids or the newer plug-in electrics cost far less, they also weigh much less. Large electrical batteries become a lot more dead weight that has to be carried around after discharged than do smaller batteries. In the long run cheaper, long-lived, longer range batteries will of course prove superior. But it will take time for research to fructify and allow scalability.

Meanwhile, another major laboratory announced that its technology could lead to electric cars with a 300 mile range, while another says its titanium dioxide microspheres will allow batteries to be charged to 50 percent of capacity in 6 minutes.

Work is underway to standardize wireless recharging systems that would eliminate the need to actually plug-in a vehicle to recharge its batteries. Simply parking an appropriately equipped vehicle in an appropriately equipped parking space would allow the recharging of the batteries to take place! fancy and more about comfort than going green!

Cynics still insist that research apart, such technology will be too costly for 7 billion to afford anyway. Well, even if 3 billion could, that would be a welcome relief for the environment, right?

Slow uptake on efficiency scheme

The Mayor of London Boris Johnson urged Londoners yesterday to take up the energy efficiency RE:NEW programme, which is being rolled out to homes in nine more boroughs, according to Energy Efficiency News.

The programme, which was originally targeted at improving 200,000 homes in the capital by 2012 through measures such as low-energy light bulbs, stand-by switches and more substantial measures like cavity wall and loft insulation, has had a slow start with only around 9000 homes helped to date.

Last month, new funding enabled the programme to be rolled out to 1742 homes in Barking and Dagenham, Lewisham, Newham and Waltham Forest. Now, it is being expanded to Wandsworth, Croydon, Brent, Ealing, Harrow, Hillingdon, Redbridge, Tower Hamlets and Hounslow.

The programme involves a full home energy survey, which includes identifying whether loft or cavity wall insulation can be installed and whether homeowners are eligible for any grants. Participants receive a tailor-made report and can have a range of free energy saving measured installed.

“Retrofitting London’s homes and buildings has a multiplicity of benefits for all of us. It makes sound economic sense by saving you money on your fuel bills, it reduces the pumping out of CO2 and it creates much-needed jobs. I would urge Londoners to take advantage of this free service,” said Johnson.

Homes taking part in the programme can typically save around £154 on their annual energy and water bills, but the latest round of price rises could now put this figure at £180.

The programme is being delivered by London Councils and the Energy Saving Trust and all 32 of the capitals boroughs have signed up to participate.

Melting peaks

The ghost of the glaciers is once again rising! In the Himalayas, the ice is melting as evidenced by dozens of swelling milky blue lakes that threaten to burst down on to villages when their ice dams melt. A quarter of the world's people rely on Himalayan meltwater, which helps feed the great rivers that plunge down into Asia.

However, this is not scientific research as much as what has been seen and described by the local sherpas and natives. Perhaps there is a big knowledge gap about the Himalayas as there is little beyond satellite imagery as satellite proof. But if local evidence is enough, the glaciers are melting.

Between them the mountains of the Himalayas, the Hindu Kush, Karakorams, Pamirs and Tien Shan store more ice than anywhere outside the north and south poles. There are believed to be about 15,000 glaciers across the Himalayas – 3,800 or so in Nepal alone, according to the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, in Kathmandu.

Last week saw the annual summer minimum of the Arctic ice cap, which has now shrunk to the lowest level satellites have ever recorded. The ice at the roof of the human world is faring little better: mountain glaciers are diminishing at accelerating and historic rates. The lower glaciers are doomed. Kilimanjaro may be bare within a decade, with the Pyrenees set to be ice-free by mid-century and three-quarters of the glaciers in the Alps gone by the same date.

Are we changing the face of the planet irretrievably?

Get your panel ready

Global PV prices seem to be crashing every day. Innovations too are picking speed.

Incorporating the latest research into how plants, algae and some bacteria use quantum mechanics to optimise energy production via photosynthesis, scientists have set out how to design molecular "circuitry" that is 10 times smaller than the thinnest electrical wire in computer processors. Published in Nature Chemistry, the report discusses how tiny molecular energy grids could capture, direct, regulate and amplify raw solar energy.

Solar fuel production often starts with the energy from light being absorbed by an assembly of molecules. The energy is stored fleetingly as vibrating electrons and then transferred to a suitable reactor. In natural systems energy from sunlight is captured by 'coloured' molecules called dyes or pigments, but is only stored for a billionth of a second. This leaves little time to route the energy from pigments to the molecular machinery that produces fuel or electricity.

The key to transferring and storing energy very quickly is to harness the collective quantum properties of antennae, which are made up of just a few tens of pigments, notes the team.The basic components of the antenna are efficient light absorbing molecules. These photo-energy absorbers should be appropriately distributed to guarantee that there is an even probability of converting sun energy into vibrating electrons across the whole antennae.

There soon will come a day when all the sun's energy falling will be converted to usable energy. Almost 100 percent efficiency. Isnt that exciting too?

Time to dash into the past?

There never is dearth for exciting news on the planet. A NASA satellite may come crashing down tonight. If you are lucky you may be hit! But then maybe you can go back to the past and become your parent if what scientists at CERN think they see is true – a neutrino traveling faster than light! And then there is the Arctic sea route opening up thanks to shrinking ice (!) and bringing trade prospects to a world still caught up in consuming!

In a world struggling to lay hands on rare earth, so far confined to China mostly, it turns out Afghanistan may be loaded with the stuff. And the UK has discovered huge shale gas deposits in its northwest in Lancashire. Fracking concerns are not an issue when you are sitting on fuel, right?

Forget that global carbon dioxide emissions increased by 45 percent between 1990 and 2010, reaching a record high 33 billion tons last year, according to a report by the European Commission’s Joint Research Center.

The report said that increased energy efficiency, renewable energy, and nuclear power are not compensating for a surge in emissions from developing countries, most notably China — with a 257 percent increase in CO2 emissions from 1990 to 210 — and India, whose emissions increased by 180 percent.

By contrast, the European Union’s emissions declined by 7 percent from 1990 to 2010, and Russia’s dropped 27 percent. U.S. emissions increased by 5 percent from 1990 to 2010. After a slowdown in CO2 emissions at the height of the recession in 2008 and 2009, global emissions saw a record-breaking increase of 5.8 percent from 2009 to 2010, the report said.

Maybe it's time for a mass exodus to the past, on the wings of some superfast neutrino. The present seems to be getting unlivable.

Demand much ahead

Oil prices have been down and up recently. Let's look at what the prospects are. According to the International Energy Agency's Oil Market Report for September its preliminary estimate for world oil production in August was 89.1 million b/d despite the loss of 1.6 million b/d of Libyan production. The Agency, however, maintains that the demand for oil has been running ahead of global production since the second half 2010 when the demand for oil surged.

The difference between supply and demand, which for a while amounted to 1.4 million b/d, has been coming out of global stocks which have been slowly falling in recent months. It is this imbalance between supply and demand that is likely the root of our high oil and gas prices. If demand growth continues at its present or even somewhat reduced pace, demand should be pushing up against 92 million b/d by the end of next year. Any further increase in demand would come from stockpiles at much higher prices and probably much economic disruption, notes the Energy Bulletin.

There are a number of countries that will be critical to what happens in the next two or three years. The most important of these is China where demand is now approaching 10 million b/d and is forecast to grow at about 6 percent this year and next after surging to 11 percent in 2010. India which is consuming about 3.5 million b/d continues to increase its demand at about 4 percent per annum. Demand from the Middle Eastern oil producers is also an interesting story. Although Saudi oil production is now pushing 10 million b/d, much of the increase this summer is being burned domestically to produce the power and water.

Rethinking the wheel

Sometimes, a villain ends up being the hero, and not only in a suspense thriller! Take the incandescent bulb we grew up with. It has a poor repurtation when it comes to lighting efficiency. But as they say, it all boils down to perception! Look at the bulb as a heat bulb and it becomes an efficient device.

It can be used in passive houses to provide the very small amount of additional heating well-designed buildings require. It can also be used in combination with heat pumps to provide that required extra bit of heating during the coldest and darkest winter days. The devices are extremely cheap, easy to install, and they fit into any E27 socket. Moreover, they are totally scalable: you can install as many as you want anywhere in the house, and each of them can have a heating power ranging between 25 and 300 W.

Unlike heaters, these do not disturb the power quality on the grid nor do they transmit disturbing electro-magnetic waves. A German engineer has decided to capture this market!

So, would you say the bulb is a hero or villain??

Climate and the corporate world

Sustainability may still be a fad, but going by a recent study, many companies are taking serious note of climate change.

The 10th annual Carbon Disclosure Project, which analysed responses from 396 of the 500 largest companies in the world, found more than two-thirds (68%) now say they put climate change central to their business, compared with 48% last year.

Almost half (45%) are now reporting they have cut their greenhouse gas emissions as a result of steps they have taken to tackle carbon, up from less than a fifth (19%) in 2010.

The Carbon Disclosure Project report, written by PwC, also said there was a link between higher stock market performance and action on climate change, with those that have a strong focus on the issue providing investors with approximately double the average return over the period 2005 to 2011.

The CDP report suggests that rising oil prices, risky energy supplies and growing recognition of the returns on investment in cutting emissions have made climate change a more important issue in the boardroom.

It says that 59% of companies reported that the cost of schemes to reduce emissions such as energy saving projects in buildings, installing low-carbon power and changing the behaviour of staff, were recouped within three years.

Sure looks like we are in changing times.

The long-term view

If there is one word that has raced up the popularity charts with anyone and everyone, it is the word 'sustainability'. Everyone sprinkles a dash of sustainability to whatever they do, sell or recommend. And now it is catching the fancy of the corporate world, thanks to the efforts of the late Ray Anderson, the carpet-tile philosopher and corporate guru of sustainability.

It was a chance reading of Paul Hawken's Ecology of Commerce that turned Anderson from top carpet maker to eco-carpet maker. A chapter on extinction of species. He decided that his company Interface would leave no print on the blue or green carpet of the planet. No emissions, no waste! And he did it. Renewables rather than fossil fuel; carpet tiles out of carbohydrate polymers rather than petroleum; and recycling old-carpet sludge into pellets that could be used as backing were some steps.

By 2007 the company was, he reckoned, about halfway up “Mount Sustainability". Greenhouse-gas emissions by absolute tonnage were down 92% since 1995, water usage down 75%, and 74,000 tonnes of used carpet had been recovered from landfills. The $400m he was saving each year by making no scrap and no off-quality tiles more than paid for the R&D and the process changes. As much as 25% of the company’s new material came from “post-consumer recycling".

A serious business can be defined by the sutainable practices it follows. Simply because it shows the business has a long term vision too.

Back in 1983, the Brundtland Commission convened by the UN, defined ‘Sustainable development’ as development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Also for businesses.

Sustainable goods and services may cost a little more if viewed from narrow, short-term perspective. But, over the long term, sustainability is proven to be financially attractive.

Forests of life

Sometimes, studies seem ludicrous given that they endorse what is generally accepted by common sense. But still, an academic verification of sense seems to be the way of our times.

Decades of forest destruction, we are told, have turned once-productive lands into desert across the Horn of Africa, worsening a devastating famine that has killed tens of thousands of people in Somalia and elsewhere, forestry experts say.

A new study by the Center for International Forestry Research, conducted in 25 countries, shows that forests provide about one-quarter of household income for people living in or near them, offering a critical defense against poverty.

In parched regions like the Horn of Africa, forests help retain moisture and soil nutrients, providing a defense against wind erosion and a source of food and energy.

According to an international coalition, the clear-cutting of forests and degradation of land across the region have done more than the drought to convert once-productive grazing areas into a barren landscape.

The group, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, has called for increased investments in reforestation and agroforestry projects across the region, saying similar efforts in Kenya and Niger have revitalized forests and provided critical food and other resources.

Positives of burning coal!

Natural gas has been recommended as the best transition fuel as the world moves into clean energy in a phased manner. But natural gas has not been without its own share of woes.

Although the burning of natural gas emits far less carbon dioxide than coal, a new study concludes that a greater reliance on natural gas would fail to significantly slow down climate change. While coal use causes warming through emission of heat-trapping carbon dioxide, it also releases comparatively large amounts of sulfates and other particles that, although detrimental to the environment, cool the planet by blocking incoming sunlight.

The situation is further complicated by uncertainty over the amount of methane that leaks from natural gas operations. Methane is an especially potent greenhouse gas.

A worldwide, partial shift from coal to natural gas would slightly accelerate climate change through at least 2050, even if no methane leaked from natural gas operations, and through as late as 2140 if there were substantial leaks. After that, the greater reliance on natural gas would begin to slow down the increase in global average temperature, but only by a few tenths of a degree.

The burning of coal releases more carbon dioxide than other fossil fuels, as well as comparatively high levels of other pollutants, including sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particles such as ash. Since natural gas emits lower levels of these pollutants, some energy experts have proposed greater reliance on that fuel source as a way to slow down global warming and reduce the impacts of energy use on the environment.

But the effects of natural gas on climate change have been difficult to calculate. Recent studies have come to conflicting conclusions about whether a shift to natural gas would significantly slow the rate of climate change, in part because of uncertainty about the extent of methane leaks.

The study which used computer simulations that an increase advantage in shift to natural gas is offset by the loss of cooling due to particulates! Remember these particulates are bad for health, but have this effect on climate. Just goes to show we are far away from mastering our environment!

Arctic ice melting faster

New data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center shows that extent of Arctic sea ice in August melted off to the second lowest amount for the month on record. Throughout the month sea ice was near levels witnessed in 2007, when the yearly record low was set. It's expected that sometime by mid-September the annual minimum will be set.

On August 31, 2011 Arctic sea ice extent was 4.63 million square kilometers (1.79 million square miles). This is 100,000 square kilometers (38,600 square miles) higher than the previous record low for the same day of the year, set in 2007. As of September 5, ice extent had fallen below the minimum ice extents in September 2010 and 2008 (previously the third- and second-lowest minima in the satellite record). If ice stopped declining in extent today it would be the second-lowest minimum extent in the satellite record.

Not only will the melting ice spell doom for the polar bears and other life, but it will also add to global warming. This is because the white colour of ice reflcets sunlight back but once melted the darker waters will absorb heat. Well, there are some who will heave sighs of relief as drilling in the Arctic will not need special ice-breaking ships, etc!

Solar PV fastest growing industry

In 2010, the photovoltaic (PV) industry production more than doubled and reached a world-wide production volume of 23.5 gigawatt (GW) of photovoltaic modules, according to the tenth edition of the JRC PV Status Report.

Since 1990, photovoltaic module production has increased more than 500-fold from 46 megawatts (MW) to 23.5 GW in 2010, which makes photovoltaics one of the fastest-growing industries at present.

In 2010, the world-wide photovoltaic production more than doubled, driven by major increases in Europe. For 2010 the annual market volume of newly-installed solar photovoltaic electricity systems varies between 17 and 19 GW, depending on estimates. This represents mostly the grid-connected photovoltaic market, as there are no reliable estimates available for the non grid-connected market.

The report, published by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) shows that with a cumulative installed capacity of over 29 GW, the European Union is leading in PV installations. By the end of 2010, European photovoltaic installations provided more than 70% of the total world-wide solar photovoltaic electricity generation capacity.

Current solar cell technologies are well established with sufficient efficiency and energy output for at least 25 years of lifetime. This reliability, in addition to the increasing potential of electricity interruption from grid overloads, and the rise of electricity prices from conventional energy sources, add to the attractiveness of photovoltaic systems.

A special feature is the dramatic price reduction for solar modules by almost 50% over the last three years. This can be explained by the evolution from a supply to a demand-driven market and the resulting over-capacity for solar modules. Business analysts predict that investments in PV technology could double from € 35-40 billion in 2010 to over € 70 billion in 2015, while they expect prices for consumers to continuously decrease.

Tried and tested

A recent study in the US looked at a comparison of CFLs and LEDs. The claim has been that LEDs are more efficient than CFLs. LEDs also cost more than CFLs but they last longer, so you’ll make up the initial cost over the lifetime of the bulb. Are these facts really true?

What the survey found was that lab conditions differed from 'real world' conditions. In a lab, which can be controlled for the best possible conditions, light can be generated at optimal efficiency. Because manufacturers are able to utilize components that are made to work together, they can claim to produce results with greater efficiency.

For instance, a leading LED-chip manufacturer announced they had achieved an efficiency of 231 lumens per watt in an LED chip. However, this was conducted in a lab where technicians were able to use lighting fixtures capable of producing such high output. In the “real world,” this LED-chip manufacturer does not sell a LED lighting fixture with a claimed efficiency over 75 lumens per watt.

Therefore, among other factors, consumers would not be able to produce as high efficiency in their own homes.

For the study, they used two roughly equivalent CFL and LED lamps that would commonly be used in the home. When comparing the two on paper, the efficiency of the bulbs is nearly identical, within 0.5 lumens per watt. However, with the “real world” being taken into consideration, there are certain environmental and consumer factors that make a case for both.

One factor is cost. If your primary concern is price, the CFL would be a better choice. Although the CFL has a shorter lifespan, even if you replaced the CFL three times to achieve an equivalent lifespan to the LED, you’d still have spent lesser than on the LED.

The bottom line is that in a household setting, where optimal components and ideal conditions cannot be controlled, the LED and CFL light bulb are very close competitors. The decision for one over the other should be made based on the need.

But in terms of quality of lumens delivered, ask any electrical engineer and he will tell you that the good old T5 FTL (or tubelight) is the best! While a CFL gives 50-65lumen/watt, the T5 or T8 gives up to 95 lumen/watt. Lamp life too is lesser for CFLs.

Then why are organizations connected to energy efficiency promoting CFLs? Any idea?

Less leads to more

Is the Jevons Paradox true? Is energy efficiency really a dud?

Let's look at what the Paradox says. Jevons Paradox is named after William Jevons, who observed in the 19th century that an increase in the efficiency of using coal to produce energy tended to increase consumption, rather than reduce it. Why? Because, Jevons argued, the cheaper price of coal-produced energy encouraged people to find innovative new ways to consume energy.

Jevons paradox, is really an extreme statement about an effect economists commonly observe called "rebound": some of the gains from energy efficiency are lost because people's consumption rises in response to lower prices.

For instance, when government requires more fuel-efficient cars, aggregate demand by cars for gas is less. So prices tend to decline, and (to a limited effect) that lower price motivates a few people to drive a little more than they might have, perhaps taking advantage of the lower prices to take an extra weekend trip.

Thus the gains from efficiency is lost in increased consumption. A classic example is lighting, which has gotten vastly cheaper per unit as the world has moved from lamp oil to candles to incandescent bulbs to fluorescent bulbs. Yet people now use more resources for lighting than we ever have in the past, since we have chosen to put lights almost everywhere.

Some opponents of the paradox say this is just a convenient theory that allows governments not to do anyhting about efficiency. Perhaps. But surely there is a truth in the theory. Human tendency has been to consume more of what is saved. Once your spending budget is fixed, any amount released from one product inevitably ends up in another basket, right?

Write in your views, while we bring you another post on efficiency.

Fuel from paper!

While on cars and fuels, Tulane University scientists have discovered a novel bacterial strain, dubbed "TU-103," that can use paper to produce butanol, a biofuel that can serve as a substitute for gasoline.

TU-103 is the first bacterial strain from nature that produces butanol directly from cellulose, an organic compound.

Cellulose is found in all green plants, and is the most abundant organic material on earth, and converting it into butanol is the dream of many. In the United States alone, at least 323 million tons of cellulosic materials are known that could be used to produce butanol are thrown out each year.

TU-103 is the only known butanol-producing clostridial strain that can grow and produce butanol in the presence of oxygen, which kills other butanol-producing bacteria. Having to produce butanol in an oxygen-free space increases the costs of production.

As a biofuel, butanol is superior to ethanol (commonly produced from corn sugar) because it can readily fuel existing motor vehicles without any modifications to the engine, can be transported through existing fuel pipelines, is less corrosive, and contains more energy than ethanol, which would improve mileage.

So, pick your choice, hydrogen or butanol?

Hydrogen filling stations soon

Germany will become the first country completely accessible to fuel cell vehicles in 2015, when carmaker Daimler and the Linde technology group will build 20 new hydrogen filling stations.

The result will quadruple the number of public stations available and make it possible for a fuel cell vehicle to reach any location in the country. Installation of the hydrogen refueling pumps will begin next year at existing gas stations currently operated by various oil companies.

Fuel cell vehicles are essentially a different kind of electric car. Fuel cells generate electricity in a chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen, which yields only pure water vapor. In a battery electric, the electricity is already stored in the battery. In both cases, the electricity powers the vehicle's engine.

Daimler is building 200 cars for Germany, Norway and the United States this year. Seventy of those will be Mercedes-Benz B-Class F-CELL vehicles going to California. Daimler began manufacturing a small series of this model in late 2009, then quickly decided to make it the first fuel cell passenger car it would mass-produce.

So who said fuel cells are topics of fiction and james bond movies?!