Glaring truth!

Energy consumption continues to grow. The costs of generation and transmission of energy must come down for the increased consumption to be sustainable. Energy must be generated without depleting resources, without causing pollution, and without incurring waste. Transmission of energy too must be efficient. Big challenge. But experts insist it can be an easy solution - onsite generation of electricity using the photovoltaic (PV) method of converting solar energy directly into electrical energy.

Nothing new in that but more and more scientists are focusing on the advantages of solar PV instead of the disadvantages like intermittency, storage, etc. For instance, silicon is the second most abundant element in the earth’s crust. Then consider the power saved. The creation of local DC power grids can save power being lost in the transmission and unnecessary conversion from DC to alternating current (AC) and then back to DC. Most electronic appliances and electric loads operate on DC and by transmitting and converting AC power to DC about 30% of the total power generated is lost.

The use of thin films of semiconductors such as cadmium telluride, amorphous silicon and copper indium gallium arsenide is still to make a major commercial impact. PV modules comprising organic and dye-sensitized solar cells shall not play a role in bulk power generation, without fundamental breakthroughs in material synthesis and performance.

Researchers at Penn University have proposed a new multi-terminal multi-junction architecture for inexpensive PV electricity generation. Efficiency will exceed the currently feasible 25%. The proposed architecture is based on the use of currently commercial crystalline solar cells and thin-film solar cells made of materials (such as copper oxide) that are abundant in Earth's crust. However, the additional manufacturing costs to be incurred thereby remain unknown, according to the researchers.

Empa scientists have developed a new technique for manufacturing high-efficiency, flexible, thin film solar cells from CIGS (copper indium gallium di-selenide) semiconductors. This has enabled them to achieve an efficiency of 20.4% for the conversion of sunlight into electrical energy. As the solar cells are deposited onto plastic foils, they could be produced on an industrial scale using cost-effective roll-to-roll manufacturing. The researchers are presenting a new manufacturing technique for CIGS solar cells, in which tiny quantities of sodium and potassium are incorporated into the CIGS layer.

All the research points to the sun as the future source of energy. More reason why we should be thinking of local micro grids rather than centrally generated power with potential for huge losses in transmission!

Revenue from pricing carbon emissions can exceed loss for plant owners

Stabilizing global warming at around 2 degrees Celsius by cutting greenhouse-gas emissions from fossil fuels would mean to leave much of coal, gas and oil unused underground. Yet the instrument of pricing global CO₂ emissions could generate a revenue of 32 trillion US dollars over the 21st century, exceeding by far the 12 trillion US dollars reduction of fossil fuel owners' profits, according to a study now published by scientists of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

"Implementing ambitious climate targets would certainly scale down fossil fuel consumption, so with reduced demand their prices would drop," says Nico Bauer, lead-author of the study. "The resulting profit loss would be overcompensated by revenues from auctioning emissions permits or taxing CO₂, which are two of the possible instruments of climate policy."

The distribution of revenues from emissions pricing depends on how climate policies are implemented on a national and international level. "Moreover, revenues from pricing carbon cannot be simply seen as a compensatory fund for the loss of income from fossil fuels," says Bauer. "This is because climate policy results in higher energy prices for households and companies, which lead to a -- rather small -- reduction of economic output. So there might be many appetites for the money raised from CO₂ pricing."

We know that fossil fuel owners will lose out on profits, but the big question is who will benefit from the new revenues generated by climate policy? It will fall to policy makers and society at large to decide this, adds Elmar Kriegler, project leader and co-author of the study. "It would be interesting to ask for the effect of using the revenues from carbon pricing to finance infrastructure investments in developing countries."

Powered from Space

India’s ambitious Mars Mission saw a successful launch today. The 1350 kg satellite was placed in an elliptical earth orbit from where it will be transfered into a heliocentric one and from there to Mars will be the last leap. The 400 million km odyssey will take around a year roughly, if everything goes smoothly.

The craft carries 850 kilograms of propellant and oxidiser. Propellant is the chemical mixture burned to produce thrust in rockets and consists of a fuel and an oxidizer. By controlling the flow of propellant to the combustion chamber, the engine can be throttled, stopped, or restarted. The main engine uses the bipropellant combination monomethyl hydrazine and dinitrogen tetroxide for orbit insertion and other manoeuvres. But the craft is largely powered by solar cells.

Some of Nasa’s deep space probes have relied mostly on a certain type of plutonium, plutonium-238. It powers these spacecraft with the heat of its natural decay. But plutonium-238 isn't found in nature; it's a byproduct of nuclear weaponry and tough to lay hands on! Solar power is preferable to plutonium because it is cheaper and has fewer safety concerns, but obviously will not work as the craft moves away from the sun. Fuel cells, devices that transform the chemical energy of hydrogen into electrical energy through their reaction with oxygen and feed the electricity to run an electric engine, were first employed in space missions in the 1960s. Due to their high efficiency and their water vapor emissions (no CO₂), hydrogen fuel cells have triggered global research efforts to reduce greenhouse gas and air pollutant emissions. But they are costly and global research at present focuses on the automobile sector.

That is all about fuel for man’s ambitious space ventures. However, a by-product of the space missions throws up energy potentials for the energy-starved earth. For instance, with space shuttles becoming as risk-free as any flight, we could think of setting up solar arrays in space. Without the obstacles like rain, clouds and nighttime, these would receive more concentrated solar rays than they would on Earth. The panels also wouldn't be subject to the seasonal fluctuations that are unavoidable on Earth. Solar energy becomes ever present!

Solar panels would either be attached to orbiting satellites or stationed on the moon and the electricity created would be converted into microwaves and beamed down to Earth. Rectifying antennas on the ground would collect the microwaves and convert them back into electricity. Communications satellites already do something very similar when they transmit your cell phone conversations. Some people have even suggested that the solar panels could piggyback on communications satellites. Space-based solar power is a hot favourite as all of the necessary equipment and technology is already developed and understood.

Recent proposals talk of small satellites fitted with solar arrays circling the Earth continuously. They would be more manageable than huge ones and still produce considerable energy output. A satellite less than 1,000 feet (300 meters) across orbiting 300 miles (540 kilometers) above Earth could potentially power 1,000 homes. The major obstacle right now, as with any new technology, is cost. Launching, setting up and maintaining a solar farm on the moon would require vast amounts of manpower and money.

But just as space missions were once the subject of fiction, so also any new technology will seem tough. Not impossible. And energy is what the Blue Planet needs desperately, after food and water.

Making the search for gas easier

Gas and oil deposits in shale have no place to hide from an Oak Ridge National Laboratory technique that provides an inside look at pores and reveals structural information potentially vital to the nation's energy needs. Researchers were able to describe a small-angle neutron scattering technique that, combined with electron microscopy and theory, can be used to examine the function of pore sizes.

Using their technique at the General Purpose SANS instrument at the High Flux Isotope Reactor, scientists showed there is significantly higher local structural order than previously believed in nanoporous carbons. This is important because it allows scientists to develop modeling methods based on local structure of carbon atoms. Researchers also probed distribution of adsorbed gas molecules at unprecedented smaller length scales, allowing them to devise models of the pores.

While traditional methods provide general information about adsorption averaged over an entire sample, they do not provide insight into how pores of different sizes contribute to the total adsorption capacity of a material. Unlike absorption, a process involving the uptake of a gas or liquid in some bulk porous material, adsorption involves the adhesion of atoms, ions or molecules to a surface.

This research, in conjunction with previous work, allows scientists to analyze two-dimensional images to understand how local structures can affect the accessibility of shale pores to natural gas. Together, the application of neutron scattering, electron microscopy and theory can lead to new design concepts for building novel nanoporous materials with properties tailored for the environment and energy storage-related technologies. These include capture and sequestration of human-made greenhouse gases, hydrogen storage, membrane gas separation, environmental remediation and catalysis.

Meanwhile, after 10 years of production, shale gas in the United States cannot be considered commercially viable, according to several scientists presenting at the Geological Society of America meeting in Denver on Monday. They argue that while the use of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling for "tight oil" is an important contributor to U.S. energy supply, it is not going to result in long-term sustainable production or allow the U.S. to become a net oil exporter.

Pollution kills more than accidents!

Automobile pollution kills more people than automobile collisions do. A recent study on the subject done by researchers at MIT says that the 34,080 American lives that were ended in 2012 by automobile collisions are completely eclipsed by the number of people who died as a result of the pollution from those same automobiles — 58,050. Authored by five researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the study found an estimated 200,400 premature deaths attributable to combustion emissions in the US last year. Of those, a bare majority were due to either road transportation or electric power generation.

The study primarily focused on fine particulate matter, or particles with a diameter of 2.5 micrometers or less. These minuscule particles are most likely to cause illnesses like lung cancer and premature deaths more generally.

The researchers found 52,800 yearly premature deaths attributable to emissions related to road transportation, with a similar number — 52,200 — due to electric power generation. They also looked at ozone exposure, but found much lower numbers: 5,250 due to motor vehicles, and another 1,700 caused by electricity production. These represented just more than half of all premature deaths caused by fine particulate matter, with other large contributors being industry (40,800 deaths in 2005) and commercial and residential buildings (41,800 deaths).

The new research was just published in the journal Atmospheric Environment. You can find the abstract here.

E Asia cities at risk from rising sea levels

About 12 million people in 23 East Asian cities are at risk from rising sea levels, severe storms, and more intense drought caused by climate change that could jeopardize $864 billion in assets, a new report from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) warns.

Economics of Climate Change in East Asia notes that while climate adaptation investments can be large, the aggregate cost to protect the most vulnerable sectors -- infrastructure, coastal protection, and agriculture -- would be less than 0.3% of East Asia's gross domestic product every year between 2010 and 2050. The report recommends the People's Republic of China (PRC), Japan, the Republic of Korea, and Mongolia together to invest an annual average of $22.9 billion for climate-proofing in the infrastructure sector, $4.2 billion for coastal protection, and $9.5 billion for the agriculture sector.

The report projects that severe weather related to climate change will intensify, with one-in-20-year flooding predicted to occur as frequently as every four years by 2050. When combined with rising sea levels, this is expected to cause massive swaths of land to disappear, forcing millions to migrate, and wreaking havoc on infrastructure and agriculture. Since 1970, economic losses to the four countries from climate-related natural disasters have amounted to more than $340 billion.

Why is CCS not taking off?

Four large-scale carbon capture projects were launched this year, but regulatory and cost barriers for the technology threaten the world's ability to prevent temperatures from rising to dangerous levels, a new report warns. The annualreport of the Australia-based Global CCS Institute cited a few signs of progress in 2013 -- the four new projects, along with eight existing ones in operation, are preventing 25 million metric tons of greenhouse gases from reaching the atmosphere annually. Yet all of the world's existing and new projects are on natural gas processing plants or other facilities that separate CO2 as part of a normal industrial procedure.

There still are no carbon capture projects operating in the power sector, and there is little movement toward implementing the technology on big industrial emitters like cement manufacturers. Since last year's report, 12 projects were either canceled or put on hold, largely because of the high cost of the technology.

The report noted, for example, that the current CO2 pipeline network will need to be expanded 100 times to carry enough captured greenhouse gas to hold global temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels by the end of the century. Countries that are not members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) will account for most of the growth in primary energy demand through 2035, according to the IEA, but there are few projects far along in the planning stage in many of those countries.

Meanwhile, funding support for CCS globally has fallen by more than $7 billion from 2009, "reflecting either changing government priorities or a reliance on carbon price support that has subsequently collapsed," the institute said. In Europe, there have not been new operational projects since 2008.

Cost is not the only challenge. Siting new pipelines to carry CO2 is a "phenomenally difficult" task in many countries, including India. India emits roughly 6 percent of the world's carbon dioxide, according to U.S. EPA.

To boost the number of projects, the report recommends additional financial support for both construction and research, to reduce the cost of CO2 capture. It says there is no one-size-fits-all option -- capital grants, subsidies and ratepayer cost recovery agreements all have been used effectively to boost the technology.

Detractors of CCS say the technology is far too energy intensive to be feasible. The jury is still out on that!