Vampire energy

Americans consumed about 3.7 trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2009, about 72% from buildings. About half came from coal-fired power plants. This accounted for approximately 2.5 billion metric tons of CO2 emission, which is equivalent to the emissions from 400 million cars–many more than the roughly 250 million cars on U.S. roads.

A developing nation like India is fast racing to catch up.

Of the energy generated, quite a lot is lost in generation, transmission and distribution, and then there is waste heat resulting from inefficient use of electricity. Then there is also vampire energy, the energy used by any device when the intended audience/purpose of the device is not being served. Look around you, at home and on the streets. Check out ways in which energy can be saved.

Electronics retailers have a wall of demo TVs that are on all day. It does not matter if anyone is watching; they are part of the ambience. Vampire energy!
See all those buildings at night all lit up. How many people are in there working, you guess? Hardly a handful. Want to calculate the energy wasted? The CO2 emissions from vacant office space in Bay area of California was calculated to be equivalent to those made by 8000 cars. Not to overlook habits that sees people switching on lights when sunlight is plenty.

Make a list of ways we can plug energy leak and send it to us. Let us spread the message, and ‘make’ energy in the process out of nothing!

Share a taxi when in NY

Starting this week, a taxi ride in New York City might get a little cheaper. The NYC Taxi & Limousine Commission just announced that they are launching a taxi share program where riders will be able to pay a flat fare to be picked up and dropped off at designated taxi share stops.

The city used GPS data from cabs to determine heavily trafficked routes and is hoping the share will reduce congestion and emissions by lowering the number of vehicles driving during rush hour.

In little bursts here and there, we are inching towards energy conservation. Here in Bangalore, we have the Bus Day in some routes when commuters are being encouraged to leave personal vehicle behind and take the bus. How many of you out there have given it a try? Write in to us if it is a good idea or not.

Search for storage

A new agency in the US called Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy has mechanical engineer Arun Majumdar, in charge. The agency awarded $400 million in stimulus-act funding to 37 projects. More is expected. In an interview, Arun spoke, among other things, about what excited him most in energy tech. Storage. ‘Let’s say we create battery technology that improves hybrid electric vehicles. You can then use electricity to run our cars, and that becomes part of our energy security. Storage in general is a huge missing piece in the grid today. If you can get it cost effectively, that’s a game-changer.

For those interested in the technical details, Sandia National Lab has just published a study of energy storage applications for the electric grid: “Energy Storage for the Electricity Grid: Benefits and Market Potential Assessment Guide”. The technologies, the opportunities and challenges are all there.

‘The other part is carbon-capture technology for coal.’

Storage has long been seen as the missing link in the energy transformation plan. But coal? In the US (and elsewhere) one of the unresolved burdens haunting the coal sector, in addition to the emissions of CO2, is what to do with the coal ash—the remnant of burning coal—that is accumulating in 194 landfills and 161 holding ponds in 47 states. This ash is not an easy material to dispose of since it is laced with arsenic, lead, mercury, and many other toxic materials.

Yet, governments cannot let go of coal. It is after all cheap and abundant (so far) and the technology is tried, tested. Perhaps, we can place a ban on coal once other cleaner technologies start spinning energy to demand. Or is that a chicken-egg fix? Will clean tech really take off as long as coal is burning bright?

That aside, what advanced research in energy is happening in developing countries? Is it tailored to the need and resource availability? Should multiple agencies work together on this rather than leaving it to technocrats alone?

oh-oh!

A new modeling released by the United Nations today paints a very disturbing picture – the emission cuts pledges made by the 60 countries who signed the Copenhagen Accord will not be enough to keep the average global temperature rise low enough to avoid devastating climate change.

Unfortunately, the new study shows that even if every country that promised to cut their greenhouse emissions does so at the levels agreed to (and who knows if that will even happen?), the total amount of emissions produced would still be gigatonnes over what scientists view as tolerable.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) says that annual greenhouse gas emissions should not be more than between 40 and 48.3 gigatonnes of CO2-equivalent in 2020 and should peak between 2015 and 2021.

The report, which was based on modeling by nine research centres, also said that if we stay inside that range and slash global emissions by between 48 and 72 percent between 2020 and 2050, Earth will have a or 50-50 chance of staying within the 2 degree limit. However, the report went on to say that based on the vows made in the Copenhagen Accord, “the expected emissions for 2020 range between 48.8 to 51.2 gigatonnes of CO2-equivalent, based on whether high or low pledges will be fulfilled.”

Which means the promised cuts will still result in emissions that are 0.5 and 8.8 gigatonnes over what scientists see as the cap.

Achim Steiner, UNEP’s executive director says that we should take the study as a wake up call and reason to make even more extensive cuts.

So if it is all anyway irreversible, do we just wait for the waters to rise? Or as Steiner says look at do-able options. Like investing in reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD), which pays poor countries to preserve and enhance their forests.

Is there some danger there in sending the wrong signals - that you can keep puffing carbon out, as long as you pay to keep forests intact, which can absorb your carbon?

Hairy solar panel!

California Institute of Technology has come up with cheap, flexible and efficient solar panels. Instead of making the wires with exotic materials like "indium gallium phosphide", they made them mostly out of plastic with a bit of silicon (2% silicon, 98% is polymer).

These solar cells have, for the first time, surpassed the conventional light-trapping limit for absorbing materials, said the team. The light-trapping limit of a material refers to how much sunlight it is able to absorb. The silicon-wire arrays absorb up to 96 percent of incident sunlight at a single wavelength and 85 percent of total collectible sunlight. A record so far.

Each of the silicon wires (30 and 100 microns in length and only 1 micron in diameter) is a good solar cell on its own, and the light that isn't absorbed is scattered and then hits other wires.

The flexibility of the panels is also important because it means that they can be manufactured using roll-to-roll processes, reducing production costs compared to non-flexible panels.

So far only a few square centimeters of cells have been made, but the Caltech team is already working on making new demonstration panels. The race is certainly hotting up.

Plants show the way

University of Central Florida professor Henry Daniell has developed a groundbreaking way to produce ethanol from waste products such as orange peels and newspapers. His approach is greener and less expensive than the current methods available.

Daniell's breakthrough can be applied to several non-food products like sugarcane, switchgrass and straw.The technique uses plant-derived enzyme cocktails to break down orange peels and other waste materials into sugar, which is then fermented into ethanol.

Producing cellulosic ethanol -- ethanol that comes from wood or the non-edible parts of plants, is tricky. Depending on the waste product used, a specific combination or "cocktail" of more than 10 enzymes is needed to change the biomass into sugar and eventually ethanol. Orange peels need more of the pectinase enzyme, while wood waste requires more of the xylanase enzyme. All of the enzymes Daniell's team uses are found in nature, created by a range of microbial species, including bacteria and fungi.

This finding is significant as it is cheap and also results in lesser emissions than conversion of corn starch into ethanol (which produces more greenhouse gas emissions than gasoline does.)
It also makes good use of abundant waste.

Tobacco was chosen as an ideal system for enzyme production for several reasons. It is not a food crop, it produces large amounts of energy per acre and an alternate use could potentially decrease its use for smoking.

Meanwhile, scientists in France have transformed the chemical energy generated by photosynthesis into electrical energy by developing a new biofuel cell.

Photosynthesis is the process by which plants convert solar energy into chemical energy. In the presence of visible light, carbon dioxide (CO2) and water (H20) are transformed into glucose and O2 during a complex series of chemical reactions.

Researchers at the Centre de Recherche Paul Pascal (CNRS) developed a biofuel cell that functions using the products of photosynthesis (glucose and O2) and is made up of two enzyme-modified electrodes.

The cell was then inserted in a living plant, in this case a cactus. Once the electrodes, highly sensitive to O2 and glucose, had been implanted in the cactus leaf, the scientists succeeded in monitoring the real-time course of photosynthesis in vivo. They were able to observe an increase in electrical current when a desk lamp was switched on, and a reduction when it was switched off.

Furthermore, the researchers showed that a biofuel cell inserted in a cactus leaf could generate power of 9 μW per cm2. Because this yield was proportional to light intensity, stronger illumination accelerated the production of glucose and O2 (photosynthesis), so more fuel was available to operate the cell. In the future, this system could ultimately form the basis for a new strategy for the environmentally-friendly and renewable transformation of solar energy into electrical energy.

Remember, after two billion years of evolutionary improvements, photosynthesis only converts about one percent of the solar energy falling on leaves into chemical energy and even taht depends on soil quality, water and nutrients availability. Will technology beat Nature in this game? Any bets?

Flying on waste energy

British Airways has announced plans to source a part of its fuel supplies from waste municipal waste to fuel plant. The company plans to procure 16 million gallons of green jet fuel annually from the Solena plant that would come up in London.

The plant which is expected to come online in 2014 would convert 50,000 tonnes of municipal waste into jet-grade fuel. The volume of fuel supplied initially would be 2percent of the total fuel consumption of British Airways. This would cut down on the carbon emissions that is generated due to the conventional jet fuel, kerosene.

British Airways aims to obtain 10 percent of its jet fuel waste-to-energy processes by 2050. London produces 3 million tonnes in organic waste every year.

Waste to energy process provides a three-pronged advantage. One, it helps in the management of the ever increasing waste in the cities, two, it converts the methane an efficient fuel and a greenhouse gas) which is produce from the decomposition of municipal waste and, third, its use results in reduction in carbon emissions.

Yet another waste to energy plan was announced by Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL) last year. DIAL in partnership with two other companied will build a Rs 1.4 billion ($28.6 million) plant that generates energy using municipal waste.

The plant, to be built on 5.7 acres, is expected to be commissioned in late 2010
With about 4,000 MW of generating capacity, Delhi still has a shortfall of about 400 MW. In addition, Delhi's landfill sites are running out of capacity. The proposed plant would need 1,300 metric tons of municipal waste a day, which is 100 metric tons more than what Delhi produces each day. That could be the pitfalls of such plants, as waste quantities and moisture content are crucial for the operation of the plant.

The world needs more such ventures, not only to optimize on energy waiting to be tapped but also to tackle the alarming waste problem. If you have heard of individuals or groups undertaking such projects, write in to us. Let us share the success stories and scale them up.