Following IPCC report, here is some good news. Renewable energy should be able to make a major contribution to the decarbonisation of the UK economy over coming years, the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) has said.
The influential Committee’s Renewable Energy Review, which was commissioned by the Coalition Government last year, concludes that renewables could generate around 30% of the UK’s energy – or up to 45% if costs fall – by 2030.
The review highlights wind and marine energy as among the most promising renewable technologies, as well as air and ground source heat pumps and the use of bioenergy for heat generation. But committee chair Lord Turner adds that the UK Government should be committing support to less mature technologies now and putting in place incentives to drive increased investment in renewable heat and power generation over the next decade.
Well, we better start hurrying up! Rising global temperatures have reduced yields of wheat and corn in some countries, a decline that probably has contributed to the rise in agricultural commodity prices in recent years, according to a study in the journal Science. Researchers from Stanford and Columbia universities said that from 1980 to 2008, temperature increases of several degrees Fahrenheit in key growing regions — including Russia, India, China, and France — had cut into yields of corn and wheat compared to expected yields had growing season temperatures not risen.
Monday, May 9, 2011
Policy is the key
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has issued the summary of its first report on the potential role of renewable forms of energy, from dams to wind turbines and solar panels, in cutting emissions of greenhouse gases in coming decades. Does it say anything new? No. It only reiterates that without sustained and focused climate and energy policies by governments around the world, the potential of renewable energy technologies to compete with fossil fuels remains deeply limited.
As some experts say, the report fails to spell out how exactly the world will chart its clean energy route amidst clashing personal, corporate and national interests.
Anyway, some of the key points in the report are:
- Of the around 300 Gigawatts (GW) of new electricity generating capacity added globally between 2008 and 2009, 140 GW came from renewable energy.
- Despite global financial challenges, renewable energy capacity grew in 2009—wind by over 30 percent; hydropower by three percent; grid-connected photovoltaics by over 50 percent; geothermal by 4 percent; solar water/heating by over 20 percent and ethanol and biodiesel production rose by 10 percent and 9 percent respectively.
- Developing countries host more than 50 percent of current global renewable energy capacity.
- The technical potential of renewable energy technologies exceeds the current global energy demand by a considerable amount—globally and in respect of most regions of the world.
- Under the scenarios analyzed in-depth, less than 2.5 percent of the globally available technical potential for renewables is used—in other words over 97 percent is untapped underlining that availability of renewable source will not be a limiting factor.
- A combination of targeted public policies allied to research and development investments could reduce fuel and financing costs leading to lower additional costs for renewable energy technologies.
Challenges are huge but not unsurmountable as Germany shows. Against what is clearly anti-growth (in the usual sense!) and against popular opinion, chancellor Merkel has taken firm steps. Early in march, she announced an accelerated phasing out of all 17 German nuclear reactors as an immediate reaction to the Fukushima disaster in Japan. The chancellor now says she wants to slash the use of coal, speed up approvals for renewable energy investments, and reduce CO2 emissions drastically.
Germany wants to double the share of renewable energy to 35 percent of consumption in 2020, 50 percent in 2030, 65 percent in 2040, and more than 80 percent in 2050. At the same time, the chancellor vows to cut CO2 emissions (compared to 1990 levels) by 40 percent in 2020, by 55 percent in 2030, and by more than 80 percent in 2050.
The new course is a huge challenge in terms of cost and feasibility. Of the current 82 gigawatts of peak demand, about half comes from coal, 23 percent from nuclear, 10 percent from natural gas, and 17 percent from renewables. That means three quarters of Germany’s electricity sources will have to be replaced by green technology within just a few decades, if the nuclear phase-out and the CO2 goals are to be accomplished.
Since the 1990s, the Renewable Energy Sources Act has paved the way for billions of Euros flowing to consumers and investors for green power projects. Besides solar energy, the recent announcement of Baltic 1, an offshore project involving 21 offshore wind turbines, is seen as big steps in the right direction.
Experts agree that the transition will be costly and carry economic risks. Already, consumers in Germany pay about 5 U.S. cents per kilowatt hour as surcharge to finance the feed-in tariffs. Plus there is the usual opposition to the mushrooming wind turbines all over the landscape, and new fears of toxins from cadmium used in photovaltaics.
But that is not the issue here. It is simply that where there is political will, much can be done.
As some experts say, the report fails to spell out how exactly the world will chart its clean energy route amidst clashing personal, corporate and national interests.
Anyway, some of the key points in the report are:
- Of the around 300 Gigawatts (GW) of new electricity generating capacity added globally between 2008 and 2009, 140 GW came from renewable energy.
- Despite global financial challenges, renewable energy capacity grew in 2009—wind by over 30 percent; hydropower by three percent; grid-connected photovoltaics by over 50 percent; geothermal by 4 percent; solar water/heating by over 20 percent and ethanol and biodiesel production rose by 10 percent and 9 percent respectively.
- Developing countries host more than 50 percent of current global renewable energy capacity.
- The technical potential of renewable energy technologies exceeds the current global energy demand by a considerable amount—globally and in respect of most regions of the world.
- Under the scenarios analyzed in-depth, less than 2.5 percent of the globally available technical potential for renewables is used—in other words over 97 percent is untapped underlining that availability of renewable source will not be a limiting factor.
- A combination of targeted public policies allied to research and development investments could reduce fuel and financing costs leading to lower additional costs for renewable energy technologies.
Challenges are huge but not unsurmountable as Germany shows. Against what is clearly anti-growth (in the usual sense!) and against popular opinion, chancellor Merkel has taken firm steps. Early in march, she announced an accelerated phasing out of all 17 German nuclear reactors as an immediate reaction to the Fukushima disaster in Japan. The chancellor now says she wants to slash the use of coal, speed up approvals for renewable energy investments, and reduce CO2 emissions drastically.
Germany wants to double the share of renewable energy to 35 percent of consumption in 2020, 50 percent in 2030, 65 percent in 2040, and more than 80 percent in 2050. At the same time, the chancellor vows to cut CO2 emissions (compared to 1990 levels) by 40 percent in 2020, by 55 percent in 2030, and by more than 80 percent in 2050.
The new course is a huge challenge in terms of cost and feasibility. Of the current 82 gigawatts of peak demand, about half comes from coal, 23 percent from nuclear, 10 percent from natural gas, and 17 percent from renewables. That means three quarters of Germany’s electricity sources will have to be replaced by green technology within just a few decades, if the nuclear phase-out and the CO2 goals are to be accomplished.
Since the 1990s, the Renewable Energy Sources Act has paved the way for billions of Euros flowing to consumers and investors for green power projects. Besides solar energy, the recent announcement of Baltic 1, an offshore project involving 21 offshore wind turbines, is seen as big steps in the right direction.
Experts agree that the transition will be costly and carry economic risks. Already, consumers in Germany pay about 5 U.S. cents per kilowatt hour as surcharge to finance the feed-in tariffs. Plus there is the usual opposition to the mushrooming wind turbines all over the landscape, and new fears of toxins from cadmium used in photovaltaics.
But that is not the issue here. It is simply that where there is political will, much can be done.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Solar thermal power
MIT researchers and their collaborators have come up with an unusual, high performance and possibly less expensive way of turning the sun's heat into electricity.
Their system, described in a paper published online in the journal Nature Materials on May 1, produces power with an efficiency roughly eight times higher than ever previously reported for a solar thermoelectric device — one that produces electricity from solar heat.
It does so by generating and harnessing a temperature difference of about 200 degrees Celsius between the interior of the device and the ambient air. While solar thermal electricity systems aren’t a new idea, they typically involve vast arrays of movable mirrors that track the sun and focus its rays on a small area. The new approach uses flat, stationary panels similar to traditional solar panels, eliminating the need for tracking systems.
Like the silicon photovoltaic cells that produce electricity when struck by sunlight, the new system is a solid-state device with no moving parts. A thermoelectric generator, placed inside a vacuum chamber made of glass, is covered with a black plate of copper that absorbs sunlight but does not re-radiate it as heat. The other side of the generator is in contact with ambient temperatures. Placed in the sun, the entire unit heats up quickly, even without facing the sun directly.
The device requires much less material than conventional photovoltaic panels, and could therefore be much less expensive to produce. It can also be integrated into solar hot water systems, allowing the expenses of the structure and installation to serve two functions at once. Because it can be piggybacked onto the existing solar hot-water industry, the thermoelectric device could be a relatively inexpensive addition, with no subsidies required, says the team.
Their system, described in a paper published online in the journal Nature Materials on May 1, produces power with an efficiency roughly eight times higher than ever previously reported for a solar thermoelectric device — one that produces electricity from solar heat.
It does so by generating and harnessing a temperature difference of about 200 degrees Celsius between the interior of the device and the ambient air. While solar thermal electricity systems aren’t a new idea, they typically involve vast arrays of movable mirrors that track the sun and focus its rays on a small area. The new approach uses flat, stationary panels similar to traditional solar panels, eliminating the need for tracking systems.
Like the silicon photovoltaic cells that produce electricity when struck by sunlight, the new system is a solid-state device with no moving parts. A thermoelectric generator, placed inside a vacuum chamber made of glass, is covered with a black plate of copper that absorbs sunlight but does not re-radiate it as heat. The other side of the generator is in contact with ambient temperatures. Placed in the sun, the entire unit heats up quickly, even without facing the sun directly.
The device requires much less material than conventional photovoltaic panels, and could therefore be much less expensive to produce. It can also be integrated into solar hot water systems, allowing the expenses of the structure and installation to serve two functions at once. Because it can be piggybacked onto the existing solar hot-water industry, the thermoelectric device could be a relatively inexpensive addition, with no subsidies required, says the team.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Multiplying at a brisk pace
What's more scary than the dangers of terrorism spreading its tentacles around the globe? Population! Don't agree?
The population of the world, long expected to stabilize just above 9 billion in the middle of the century, will instead keep growing and may hit 10.1 billion by the year 2100, the United Nations projected in a report released Tuesday.
What's worse, most of this will be in under-developed Africa. Growth there remains so high that the population there could more than triple in this century, rising from today’s one billion to 3.6 billion, the report said.
The projections were made by the United Nations population division, which has a track record of fairly accurate forecasts. In the new report, the division raised its forecast for the year 2050, estimating that the world would most likely have 9.3 billion people then, an increase of 156 million over the previous estimate for that year, published in 2008.
As the UN population division director said, should the funding nations focus on programs that encourage family planning? Conservatives have attacked such programs as government meddling in private decisions, and in some countries, Catholic groups fought widespread availability of birth control.
But unless we do somehting fast, feeding 10 billion will be an impossible task!
The population of the world, long expected to stabilize just above 9 billion in the middle of the century, will instead keep growing and may hit 10.1 billion by the year 2100, the United Nations projected in a report released Tuesday.
What's worse, most of this will be in under-developed Africa. Growth there remains so high that the population there could more than triple in this century, rising from today’s one billion to 3.6 billion, the report said.
The projections were made by the United Nations population division, which has a track record of fairly accurate forecasts. In the new report, the division raised its forecast for the year 2050, estimating that the world would most likely have 9.3 billion people then, an increase of 156 million over the previous estimate for that year, published in 2008.
As the UN population division director said, should the funding nations focus on programs that encourage family planning? Conservatives have attacked such programs as government meddling in private decisions, and in some countries, Catholic groups fought widespread availability of birth control.
But unless we do somehting fast, feeding 10 billion will be an impossible task!
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
The bad ones get bigger
Before the 'late' bin Laden took over the headlines, there was a week of real bad tornadoes that lashed parts of the US in what was the worst season since early 70s. Does this say anything at all? Is this to do with climate change or is it simply part of a natural swing in the climate?
For decades, scientists have predicted that if we kept pouring increasing amounts of heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, we would change the climate. As far back as 1995, analysis by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center showed that over the course of the 20th century, the United States had suffered a statistically significant increase in a variety of extreme weather events, the very ones you would expect from global warming, such as more — and more intense — precipitation. That analysis concluded the chances were only “5 to 10 percent” this increase was due to factors other than global warming, such as “natural climate variability.”
Since then, many scientific studies have found that indeed the weather has become more extreme, as expected, and that it is extremely likely that humans are a contributing cause. They suggest systematic influence on all of these weather events now-a-days because of the fact that there is this extra water vapor lurking around in the atmosphere than there used to be say 30 years ago. It’s about a 4% extra amount, it invigorates the storms, it provides plenty of moisture for these storms.
The basic driver of thunderstorms is the instability in the atmosphere: warm moist air at low levels with drier air aloft. With global warming the low level air is warm and moister and there is more energy available to fuel all of these storms and increase the buoyancy of the air so that thunderstorms are strong.
Whether you believe climate change is the villain or not, there is no slaying of this big baddie possible in the near future, not the way we continue to live. Uncontrolled population and near-beserk consumption have written the recipe and cooked the dish already.
For decades, scientists have predicted that if we kept pouring increasing amounts of heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, we would change the climate. As far back as 1995, analysis by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center showed that over the course of the 20th century, the United States had suffered a statistically significant increase in a variety of extreme weather events, the very ones you would expect from global warming, such as more — and more intense — precipitation. That analysis concluded the chances were only “5 to 10 percent” this increase was due to factors other than global warming, such as “natural climate variability.”
Since then, many scientific studies have found that indeed the weather has become more extreme, as expected, and that it is extremely likely that humans are a contributing cause. They suggest systematic influence on all of these weather events now-a-days because of the fact that there is this extra water vapor lurking around in the atmosphere than there used to be say 30 years ago. It’s about a 4% extra amount, it invigorates the storms, it provides plenty of moisture for these storms.
The basic driver of thunderstorms is the instability in the atmosphere: warm moist air at low levels with drier air aloft. With global warming the low level air is warm and moister and there is more energy available to fuel all of these storms and increase the buoyancy of the air so that thunderstorms are strong.
Whether you believe climate change is the villain or not, there is no slaying of this big baddie possible in the near future, not the way we continue to live. Uncontrolled population and near-beserk consumption have written the recipe and cooked the dish already.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Reinventing transformers
These are times of immense upheavals, not only political. Change in the way we think, change in the way we work, innovate and build. Leading this movement are researchers innovating technology. People like Alex Huang who is working to revamp aging power grids into something more like the Internet—a network that might direct energy not just from centralized power stations to consumers but from any source to any destination, by whatever route makes the most sense.
Huang, a professor of electrical engineering at North Carolina State University, is reinventing the transformers that currently reduce the voltage of the electricity distributed to neighborhoods so that it’s suitable for use in homes and offices.
Conventional transformers handle only AC power and require manual adjustment or bulky electromechanical switches to redirect energy. What he wants is a compact transformer that can handle DC as well as AC and can be electronically controlled so that it will respond almost instantaneously to fluctuations in supply and demand.
His first transformer had silicon-based components, but silicon is too unreliable for large-scale use at high voltages. So Huang has pioneered the development of transformers with semiconductors based on compounds of silicon and carbon or gallium and nitrogen, which are more reliable in high-power applications. He expects to have a test version of the silicon-carbon transformer ready in two years.
Huang’s transformers would make connecting a solar panel or electric car to the grid as simple as connecting a digital camera or printer to a computer. Isn't that what renewable dreams are made of?!
Huang, a professor of electrical engineering at North Carolina State University, is reinventing the transformers that currently reduce the voltage of the electricity distributed to neighborhoods so that it’s suitable for use in homes and offices.
Conventional transformers handle only AC power and require manual adjustment or bulky electromechanical switches to redirect energy. What he wants is a compact transformer that can handle DC as well as AC and can be electronically controlled so that it will respond almost instantaneously to fluctuations in supply and demand.
His first transformer had silicon-based components, but silicon is too unreliable for large-scale use at high voltages. So Huang has pioneered the development of transformers with semiconductors based on compounds of silicon and carbon or gallium and nitrogen, which are more reliable in high-power applications. He expects to have a test version of the silicon-carbon transformer ready in two years.
Huang’s transformers would make connecting a solar panel or electric car to the grid as simple as connecting a digital camera or printer to a computer. Isn't that what renewable dreams are made of?!
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Advantage small
Large still holds sway over most folks. And large plants are part of this obsession. Well, we need large to address the kind of demand there is for power. But when you look at things close, decentralised and small seems the more sensible way.
Take solar. A decentralized solar collection scheme is far more energy efficient than a centralized one. More than 30% of our electricity is lost in transmission in our current system, and a centralized solar plant is no different than the current system in this way. A decentralized system can supply power to where it is needed directly most of the time, only using the grid to offload surplus power.
A decentralized solar system will be far more resilient to natural disasters, as there will be no single points of failure that can bring down the whole grid. A decentralized solar system utilizes unused space on rooftops and in yards to generate power, whereas a centralized system requires the development of new land, destroying habitats while generating no more power. Rooftop systems shade the structure underneath, cutting energy usage in the summer months.
A decentralized solar strategy provides market space for lots of technologies to compete directly, without the generally anti-competitive nature of big monolithic construction contracts crowding out the small players.
The secondary costs of a centralized power system, like beefed up transmission lines, large ugly transformer stations, and so on are rarely calculated into the cost of concentrating lots of megawatts in one place. All this is done away in decentralised.
Of course, there are issues of storage needed, and the associated costs. But going by the above points it would be wise to agree decentralised wins. Right?
Take solar. A decentralized solar collection scheme is far more energy efficient than a centralized one. More than 30% of our electricity is lost in transmission in our current system, and a centralized solar plant is no different than the current system in this way. A decentralized system can supply power to where it is needed directly most of the time, only using the grid to offload surplus power.
A decentralized solar system will be far more resilient to natural disasters, as there will be no single points of failure that can bring down the whole grid. A decentralized solar system utilizes unused space on rooftops and in yards to generate power, whereas a centralized system requires the development of new land, destroying habitats while generating no more power. Rooftop systems shade the structure underneath, cutting energy usage in the summer months.
A decentralized solar strategy provides market space for lots of technologies to compete directly, without the generally anti-competitive nature of big monolithic construction contracts crowding out the small players.
The secondary costs of a centralized power system, like beefed up transmission lines, large ugly transformer stations, and so on are rarely calculated into the cost of concentrating lots of megawatts in one place. All this is done away in decentralised.
Of course, there are issues of storage needed, and the associated costs. But going by the above points it would be wise to agree decentralised wins. Right?
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