Author: Big Gav

I was sorry to see the WSJ’s Environmental Capital blog close its doors recently (I occasionally feel that the quality blogosphere is slowly dying – though maybe I’ve just grown out of touch with the more vibrant sections) but I enjoyed Keith Johnson’s last post – Who’s Afraid of a Clean-Energy Future ?.

Two years ago, when we launched Environmental Capital, we set out to chart the tectonic shift in the global energy landscape, affecting everything from what keeps the lights on to what’s under the hood of your car.

A big part of that shift was—and still is—environmental concern. The world’s (half-hearted) efforts to rein in greenhouse-gas emissions were meant to spur (and might yet) the development and deployment of a whole new world of cleaner energy.

But we also noted another rationale for a shift in the way the world produces and uses energy: the bottom line. Whether it’s a big-box retailer changing the way it packs and ships goods or the growing conviction that energy efficiency and “negawatts” are the cheapest, cleanest source of energy available today, the cleaner way of doing things is very often the smarter way of doing things.

That it isn’t always the case is less of an indictment of clean energy than of the current energy system itself.

To take a single example: The price that American drivers pay at the pump, frightening as it is these days, does not reflect the cost of oil and gasoline. There are additional costs to the reliance on oil that simply don’t show up in the twirling numbers at the gas pump, whether they are the environmental costs of oil extraction, transport and combustion, or the cost of U.S. military engagement to protect oil supplies and keep vital sea lanes open.

For economists, all these hidden costs are called “externalities.” They’re as real as they are hard to spot, from the Fifth Fleet’s operating expenses to the pernicious health costs of a coal-fired electricity sector.

For policymakers, these externalities represent an opportunity as much as a headache. For all the worries that a bigger role for government in the energy business—from cap-and-trade schemes to solar-power subsidies—represents a retreat from free markets, that’s hardly the case. Energy markets aren’t “free” today, and the playing field is anything but level.

New energy policies that seek to redress those problems, and unleash rather than further stifle a genuine market for energy, will point the way toward a new energy future that makes sense, both environmentally and economically. That’s because, if new policies set out to tackle those externalities once and for all, the environmental answer will quite often become the economic answer. Everything has its price—and its cost.

Anthill magazine has a look at an ambient energy collection device being trialled in the UK – Switched-on innovation converts pedestrian footsteps into energy.

There’s an interesting post over on Springwise about Pavegen slabs, an eco innovation by UK-based Pavegen Systems, which harvest the kinetic energy from pedestrian footsteps and converts it into electricity.

They look a little bit like floodlights embedded in an astroturf tennis court, but they are designed to be prominent in order to encourage pedestrians to step on them. As Volkswagen demonstrated last year, simple environmental incentives can dramatically alter pedestrian behaviour. Five percent of the energy Pavegen harvests from each step is expended on lighting up its LED — affirmation for the pedestrian that the energy transfer was successful.

The energy can be used to power traffic lights, safety signs and other outdoor ambient items that require electricity. Pavegen slabs have already been trialed in East London, with the developers now seeking investment.

Technology Review also has a look at harvesting energy from motion, in their case via a piezoelectric material called PZT – Flexible Sheets Capture Energy from Movement.

Researchers at Princeton University have created a flexible material that harvests record amounts of energy when stressed. The researchers say the material could be incorporated into the soles of shoes to power portable electronics, or even placed on a heart patient’s lungs to recharge a pacemaker as he breathes.

The energy-harvesting rubber sandwiches ribbons of a piezoelectric material called PZT between pieces of silicone. When mechanically stressed, a piezoelectric material generates a voltage that can be used to produce electrical current; a current can also be converted back into mechanical movement.

The rubber material can harness 80 percent of the energy applied when it is flexed–four times more than existing flexible piezoelectric materials.

Flexibility could prove vital if energy-harvesting technology is to take off. For example, the military tested stiff-soled piezoelectric shoes as a power source, but soldiers complained of foot pain. And previous flexible energy harvesters–based on piezoelectric polymers, nanowires, or other types of crystal–put out little electrical current.

PZT is the most efficient piezoelectric material known, but its crystalline structure means that it must be grown at high temperatures, which normally melt a flexible substrate. The Princeton researchers, led by mechanical engineering professor Michael McAlpine, got around this by making PZT at high temperatures and then transferring thin ribbons of the material onto silicone. …

Proof-of-concept tests described this week in the journal Nano Letters show that the rubber-encased PZT ribbons maintain their high power-conversion efficiency. McAlpine says the simple printing process should readily scale up to make larger sheets; he has filed a patent on the process.

Vibration related energy harvesting also appears prominently in an article about unusual energy technology at Cleantech.com – Renewable energies you don’t hear about every day.

Mechanical energy from piezoelectric generators

Israel-based Innowattech has developed a new alternative energy system that harvests mechanical energy imparted to roadways, railways and runways from passing vehicles, trains and pedestrian traffic and converts it into electricity by installing generators beneath a road’s asphalt layer.

The company says it ran a successful trial along a ten metre stretch of road and plans to expand the trial to several one-kilometre stretches of road in Israel.

It’s not alone. Washington D.C.-based New Energy Technologies claims it’s developed something similar (see New device for capturing kinetic energy from vehicles).

Piezoelectrics that recoup energy from spinning auto tires are also being investigated by Silicon Valley-based EoPlex (see Printing up cleantech, towards the end of the story). …

Motion energy harvesting

Researchers are working to harness energy from movement — such as from walking and natural vibrations in the environment — by using “tunable” devices.

While some devices already exist for converting kinetic energy to electrical energy, they’re limited to a narrow range of motions, or frequencies. But what about technology that could convert a range of vibrations instead of just a narrow band?

Research in this area is going on at Duke university in North Carolina.

Their technology is basically a small cantilever that releases power when strained. It is several inches long and a quarter inch wide, with a magnet on one end that interacts with nearby movable magnets. By changing the distance of the movable magnets, the researchers were able to “tune” the interactions of the system with its environment, and thus produce electricity over a broader spectrum of frequencies.

Motion is also harnessed by M2E Power of Idaho, which is pursuing a batteries for the military that charge themselves by the movement of troops’ bodies (see M2E captures $8M with kinetic energy). The objective: Generate power throughout the day so soldiers don’t have to carry as many heavy batteries.

Reuters has an update on Origin Energy’s proposed coal seam gas to LNG project – Origin seeks environmental nod for A$35bln LNG project.

Australia’s Origin Energy Ltd (ORG.AX) reported a small rise in quarterly output on Friday and said it had sought formal environmental clearance for its gas export project with U.S. ConocoPhillips (COP.N).

Origin, the country’s largest producer of coal seam gas, said the lodging of the draft environmental statement with the Queensland state government advances the A$35 billion ($31.3 billion) project towards a final investment decision by December this year and first LNG shipments by late 2014.

Origin posted a 2 percent gain in its second-quarter output and a 16 percent rise in revenue, helped by higher commodity prices.

Production for the three months ended Dec. 31 was 24 petajoules equivalent (PJe), bringing its half year output to 49.8 PJe. Sales revenue for the quarter was A$135.4 million.

While the lodging of the environmental statement is a key project milestone, investors are still looking for firm gas sales before validating the project, analysts say.

There are four other projects racing to start exporting Australian coal seam gas and the Origin/Conoco development is seen by some analysts as a falling behind the rivals as it was yet to lock in any gas sales.

Origin’s project, also known as Australia Pacific LNG, will produce between 3.5-4 million tonnes per year (mtpy) of LNG in the first phase in 2014, before progressively expanding up to 14-16 mtpy.

Cryptogon points to an article on municipal intolerance of people trying to go off-grid – City Condems House Because Woman Was Trying to Save Money By Using Solar Panels and Batteries Instead of Utility Power. Plus a couple more interesting snippets – Pentagon Report Calls for Office of ‘Strategic Deception’ and Howard Zinn Dies At 87. RIP Howard.

An Avondale woman who spent 11 days sleeping in her car said the city treated her unfairly when her home was condemned in December for lack of electricity.

But city officials said Christine Stevens violated building codes, a health and safety concern because Avondale homes are required to have heating systems and a running refrigerator.

Stevens, 47, was trying to make ends meet by powering her home with solar panels and batteries for several months before Avondale code enforcement officials visited her on Dec. 10.

“We explained to her that the panels weren’t enough to sustain a quality of life there,” said Pam Altounian, code enforcement manager for Avondale.

Stevens said she was not given adequate notice before officials gave her 24 hours to contact Arizona Public Service Co. to reconnect electricity or her home would be condemned.

Avondale said a code enforcement officer, Carlena Jones, inspected the property in the 2300 block of North 123rd Lane on Oct. 21 and Nov. 4 and left a notice of violation hanging on the door. According to case reports, both notices went unanswered.

I’ve recommended Dr Seuss’ excellent book “The Lorax” previously (and some of you actually bought it) and no doubt the good Doctor is turning in his grave as he watches his fable being butchered by a bunch of grimy coal merchants – Andrew Leonard has the story (“Unspeakable blasphemy: Dr. Seuss gets repurposed for a fossil fuel start-up company” – The Lorax: “I speak for clean coal”.

In these days of relentless political absurdity and unending economic travesty, you may sometimes feel as if your disgust meter has completely maxxed out. There’s nothing left that will shock you, you might imagine, as you take a jaded swig of your martini and shrug wearily at the world’s gaunt tapestry of injustice.

And then you learn that a coal-gasification start-up has — without authorization — named itself after Dr. Seuss’ environmental icon, the (“I speak for the trees”) Lorax, in the deluded belief that if Dr. Seuss were alive today, he’d be a crusader for clean coal. And suddenly, your disgust meter goes to 11!

Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson brings us the word, via MassHighTech.com:

The company, whose principals include Michael Sununu, the son of former New Hampshire governor John Sununu, has raised over $1 million in seed capital to build a high-sulfur coal factory. The name choice was a deliberate attempt to cloak their coal-and-chemical company as an eco-friendly venture:

And, yes, the name is inspired by the Dr. Seuss story, Farina said. “The Lorax is the protector of the truffula trees,” he said. “We think this is the greenest use of coal.”

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. And the Lorax endorses clean coal.

There seem to be plenty of jitters about the Chinese economy, but for now it is sucking in coal rapidly – Long queues at port as demand for coal soars.

THE queue of ships at the world’s biggest coal port, Newcastle, is near its longest level since before the financial crisis and waiting times are at a one-year record.

In a sign of the booming demand for coal, figures published this week show 58 ships were waiting on Monday, just shy of the pre-Christmas peak of 60, which was the longest queue since mid-2007.

Average waiting times for vessels at the port have also blown out to a fresh one-year high of 17.86 days, the Newcastle Port Corporation figures show.

The trend, mirrored at key ports around the country, points to the soaring demand from coal buyers in China and Europe, after severe winters caused a surge in demand for electricity.

Most of the coal shipped through Newcastle – used by Xstrata, Rio Tinto and Centennial Coal – is thermal coal used by power stations. Its price jumped to more than $US100 a tonne earlier this month amid subzero temperatures in key markets.

The growing queues are a positive sign for export industries, but they also highlight the increasing strain on port infrastructure as the global resources boom gathers pace.

This month Macarthur Coal announced a delay to its Middlemount expansion plan, after it was unable to secure access to third-party rail and water infrastructure.

Over-reliance on China is also seen as a risk for the industry. China has come to the rescue of coal exporters in the past year, but recent market fears that its economic growth could slow this year sent a shiver through share prices in the sector.

Off topic but I liked it – What a croc!.

Amory Lovins has an article in Foreign Policy on how to solve the myriad problems associated with fossil fuel consumption – On Proliferation, Climate, and Oil: Solving for Pattern.

The problems of proliferation, climate change, and oil dependence share both a nuclear non-solution that confounds U.S. policy goals and a non-nuclear solution that achieves them.

The first four months of 2010 offer a unique opportunity to align the United States’ foreign-policy goals with domestic energy policy and new market developments, and thereby to stem what the Pentagon’s Nuclear Posture Review will reportedly rank equally with great-power threats — the spread of nuclear weapons.

Epistemologist Gregory Bateson and farmer-poet Wendell Berry counseled “solving for pattern” — har­nessing hidden commonalities to resolve complex challenges without making more. President Obama’s speech at the recent U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen hinted at such an approach by linking an efficient, clean-energy, climate-safe economy with three other key issues: prosperity, oil displacement, and national security. Keeping proliferation, climate, and oil in separate policy boxes has in the past stalled progress on the first two issues over North/South splits that the third issue intensifies. Yet these three problems share profitable solutions, and seem tough only because of a wrong economic assumption.

One false assumption can distort and defeat policies vital to paramount national interests. The Copenhagen climate conference proved again how pricing carbon and winning international collaboration are hard if policymakers assume climate protection is costly, focusing debate on cost, burden, and sacrifice.

That assumption is backwards: Business experience proves climate protection is not costly but profitable, because saving fuel costs less than buying fuel. Changing the conversation to profits, jobs, and competitive advantage sweetens the politics, melting resistance faster than glaciers. Whether you care most about security, prosperity, or environment, and whatever you think about climate science, you’ll favor exactly the same energy choices: focusing on outcomes, not motives, can forge broad consensus.

For instance, a January 2009 study by McKinsey & Company demonstrated how it was possible to cut projected 2030 global greenhouse-gas emissions by 70 percent at a trivial average cost: $6 per metric ton of CO2. Newer technologies and integrative design, which often makes very large energy savings cost less than small or no savings, turning diminishing into expanding returns, could make even bigger abatements cost less than zero­ dollars.

This can be done fast enough. Consider that from 1977 through 1985, U.S. oil intensity (barrels per real GDP dollar) fell 5.2 percent per year. Today, cutting global energy intensity at an annual rate of about 3-4 percent, vs. the historic 1 percent, could abate further climate damage. The United States has long achieved 2-4 percent cuts each year without paying attention; China achieved more than 5 percent reductions from 1976 through 2001 and is on track for 4 percent reductions from 2005 through 2010. Individual firms have been able to achieve 6-16 percent reductions. So why should 3-4 percent be hard, especially with most of the global economic growth in China and India, where making new infrastructure efficient is easier than fixing it later?

Since energy efficiency consistently makes money (billions for many firms), why should this be costly? And why should climate negotiators adopt economists’ assumptions about cost rather than business leaders’ experiences of profit? The climate conversation gets vastly easier and less necessary when it’s shifted from shared sacrifice to informed self-interest.

Many policymakers likewise assume U.S. oil dependence and imports must be permanent. Yet a 2004 Pentagon-cosponsored independent study showed how it was possible to eliminate U.S. oil use by the 2040s at an average cost of about $15 per barrel, led by business for profit. Implemen­tation was launched in 2005 by “institutional acupuncture,” then spurred by the 2008 price shock, 2009 policy shifts, and military innovation.

That effort now looks to be on or ahead of schedule: In 2009, “peak oil” emerged, but on the demand side. U.S. gasoline demand reached its apex in 2007. Cambridge Energy Research Associates doubts OECD oil demand will regain its 2005 peak. Deutsche Bank forecasts light-vehicle electrification (at one-third China’s planned rate, and without counting the other revolutionary innovations underway) will turn world oil demand downward from 2016 — reaching, by 2030, 8 percent below 2009. Suburban sprawl is reversing. Just in 2008, government-mandated “feebates” cut inefficient cars’ sales in France 42 percent and raised efficient cars’ sales 50 percent. Thus oil is becoming uncompetitive even at low prices before it becomes unavailable even at high prices.

Yet with oil as with climate, official assessments ignore these solutions as too detailed, disruptive, novel, or integrative to contemplate. When offered cramped old choices, policymakers all too often perpetuate largely incremental policies. Private firms are more likely to innovate, while governments play catch-up. And intergovernmental negotiations learn slowest of all.

The Boston Globe has an article on the idea of leasing products rather than buying them (a topic related to cradle-to-cradle manufacturing) – The leased life.

In June 2008, when Punsri Abeywickrema was working on his backyard in San Mateo, Calif., he found himself in need of a wheelbarrow. He didn’t own one, but his neighbor did, and he had borrowed it the previous weekend; due to space constraints, he preferred not to buy one himself. Yet he hesitated to impose on the neighbor again.

He ended up renting a wheelbarrow from a store. But then he wondered, what if he had instead offered to pay his neighbor a small fee to borrow the wheelbarrow? Abeywickrema would have fulfilled his need without acquiring a cumbersome object or feeling like a freeloader. The neighbor, meanwhile, could have reaped a modest windfall. This thought led to an inspiration – wouldn’t it be great if a whole network of residents in his area could conduct similar transactions, with locals they didn’t even know yet?

Thus was born Rentalic.com. Like so many other websites, it connects mutual beneficiaries – in this case, people who own things they don’t use much with people who want to use things without owning them. Members can post either belongings they have to offer or goods they are hoping to find. Items recently listed include a body fat scale ($5 a week), a bread maker ($1.75 a day), and a cupcake transporter ($3 a week). The site was launched last October with limited membership, and opened to the public earlier this month.

Rentalic is an example of what is sometimes called (rather awkwardly) a “product service system.” The essential insight is that in many purchases, we don’t want the thing per se – we want what it can do for us. You don’t crave a lawn mower, you want shorter grass; the desire is not for a refrigerator but for cold, unspoiled milk. And according to an emerging line of thinking, there are great benefits in meeting the customer’s needs in creative ways that don’t necessarily entail ownership.

The concept has long been familiar in certain sectors – if you’ve rented a car, joined a gym, or registered at Netflix, you’ve taken part in a product service system. But now, advocates hope to expand the principle to many

other contexts where owning is currently the norm. If these systems were to catch on, we would rent, borrow, or lease a variety of things, ranging from tools to textbooks to snow blowers, from individual owners or from companies with revamped business models. Other firms, while continuing to sell their products, would address customers’ underlying needs more directly – selling warmth or “comfort services,” for instance, rather than oil or gas – which would presumably lead to enhanced efficiency. …

The prospect of such a change is intriguing. Not only could it mean more savings and less accumulation of stuff for the relatively wealthy; for poorer people, especially in developing countries, it could mean access to goods that would be otherwise unattainable. The other major promise is environmental. Under the current ownership ethos, manufacturers face perverse incentives: If their wares last a long time, they undermine their future marketing opportunities. But if a company retains ownership itself, the argument goes, it will be motivated to make products that are truly durable – or easy to upgrade or recycle into new ones. And if a single product serves multiple users, fewer goods would need to be manufactured and ultimately discarded. All of this would mean diminished resource extraction from the earth and less trash dumped into landfills.

This link is a little old (from back in December) but its worth noting what the Australian Energy Market Operator (combining Nemmco’s old electricity market operator role with that of the gas market as well) views as the outlook for the eastern states natural gas supply – Rise and fall of the gas provinces.

THE gas market will see a fundamental shift over the next two decades as gas-fired electricity generation expands under the Federal Government’s carbon reduction scheme. Victoria’s gas reserves will plunge and Queensland will become the dominant gas supplier on the east coast.

The forecast is contained in the first so-called ”Statement of Opportunities” for gas released today by the Australian Energy Market Operator, which took over the running of the electricity market from the National Electricity Market Management Company earlier this year, and also took responsibility for the gas market.

By the end of the two decades Victoria could be down to 10 years of gas reserves – or less – forcing it to consider sourcing gas from other states for the first time, which will boost its gas price significantly.

NSW is likely to be forced to turn increasingly to Queensland for gas, although the wild card is locally sourced gas, as the exploration push for coal-seam methane gas gets under way in earnest in this state.

According to the AEMO, NSW will experience a doubling in gas reserves from 2025, largely thanks to an anticipated rise in gas reserves around Camden, to Sydney’s south-west, as less gas is available from Victoria. Reserves from other regions such as Narrabri and Casino, in the state’s north, are not yet significant.

The forecast suggests Queensland’s domestic annual gas demand will treble to 458 petajoules by 2029 from 166PJ, and export demand for liquefied natural gas will reach 1302PJ by 2029. Victoria’s annual demand will almost double to 403PJ by 2024.

But the big change will come from an expected 55 per cent drop in Victoria’s gas reserves to 4344PJ by 2029, equal to just 10 years of production. But strong economic growth between now and then could reduce it to just seven years of reserves by then.

This anticipated decline will result from a rise in demand in Victoria, and elsewhere, coupled with falling reserves as Bass Strait’s large oil and gasfields near the end of their life.

At the same time, South Australia’s reserves are expected to fall by a quarter to 1075PJ, equal to 14 years of production.

Under these forecasts, NSW will need extra pipeline capacity from 2012, as well as Victoria, marginally at first but more significantly from 2017.

”All of the pipelines in Queensland … will be exceeded from between 2010 and 2013,” the AEMO said.

NSW will need additional gas pipelines linking to Queensland, which may result in the long-mooted Hunter to Queensland pipeline proceeding.

In total, domestic gas demand in the eastern states will double to 1205PJ a year by 2029 from 626PJ now.

Over this period the NSW annual gas demand will reach 199PJ, up from 130PJ now, but well below Queensland and Victoria, largely due to the lack of sizeable gas reserves in NSW, coupled with its higher price relative to other states.

Technology Review has an article on LS9’s second generation biofuel production process using engineered E. coli bacteria – Bacteria Make Diesel from Biomass.

Engineered bacteria have been rewired with the genetic machinery necessary to convert cellulose into a range of chemicals, including diesel fuel. The bacteria, developed by South San Francisco company LS9 in collaboration with researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, make the necessary enzymes for every step along the synthesis pathway and can convert biomass into fuel without the need for additional processing. LS9 has demonstrated the bacteria in pilot-scale reactors and plans to scale the process to a commercial level later this year.

Jay Keasling, professor of chemical engineering and bioengineering at UC Berkeley and one of LS9’s founders, and scientists at LS9 report engineering E. coli bacteria to synthesize and excrete the enzyme hemicellulase, which breaks down cellulose into sugars. The bacteria can then convert those sugars into a variety of chemicals–diesel fuel among them. The final products are excreted by the bacteria and then float to the top of the fermentation vat before being siphoned off.

Using these methods, it’s possible to create a range of fuels from biomass, but LS9 is focusing on diesel rather than fuels similar to gasoline for the time being, says Stephen del Cardayre, the company’s vice president of research and development. Diesel specifications are easier to meet and the market for diesel is growing by 2 to 4 percent a year, while that for gasoline is flat. Last May, LS9 partnered with Procter & Gamble to develop fuels as well as commodity chemicals.

Recharge News has a report on a novel form of energy storage being implemented in southern California – Ice Energy begins 53MW storage project with SCPPA.

Rather than building a new power plant to address peak electricity demand needs, Southern California Public Power Authority (SCPPA) will move some 64 gigawatt hours of demand a year to off-peak times using Ice Energy storage systems.

The systems, which connect to existing building air conditioning (AC) units, use off-peak energy overnight to freeze 450 gallons (about 1,700 litres) of water in an insulated tank. The resulting stored energy, in the form of ice, is used to cool buildings during hot afternoons when electricity demand spikes to run traditional AC systems.

Over the next 24 months, SCPPA will pay Colorado-based Ice Energy to install its systems on some 1,500 government, industrial and commercial buildings in the service territories of its member utilities. The project is equivalent to a 53 megawatt capacity peaking power plant. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

SCPPA and Ice say the project – which is an example of demand-side management – will contribute to grid stability, lower rates for customers, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and allow the integration of more renewable energy by providing additional load to balance off-peak renewable supplies.

Reuters has some choice energy related quotes from the World Economic Forum in Davos – Highlights from Global Energy Outlook debate at WEF.

ILHAM ALIYEV, PRESIDENT OF AZERBAIJAN

“We are planning to increase (gas production) maybe two or three times, maybe more — to do that we need much bigger capacity of pipeline.”

THIERRY DESMAREST, CEO, TOTAL

“The problem of peak oil remains … it will be very difficult to raise the oil production worldwide above 95 million barrels per day.”

TONY HAYWARD, CEO, BP

“None of us will sell more gasoline than in 2007 (to developed markets).”

“We are cautiously optimistic about the potential that Iraq can play in providing a new source of supply to global oil markets. BP is involved in a major contract to redevelop a local field … the field is producing 1 million bpd and we have a plan to take it to 3 over the next 10 years or so.

“If all of us who are participating there are reasonably successful in delivering on the commitments we have made, it is quite likely we will see Iraq increase its production to perhaps around 10 million bpd within about 10 years. It won’t be faster than that although if you added up the contractual obligations you could draw that conclusion. The realities of the challenges of execution on the ground and the need to build capability on the ground mean things will happen a little slower than all of us are perhaps planning for today.

“The reality is absent any unforeseen political events … the resources there are relatively easy to bring onstream and there is no reason to believe that Iraq can’t be producing 10 million bpd by 2020 or so.”

I normally only ever come across the Canada Free Press (I’m not sure what is “free” about a Canadian publication that worships America, but whatever) when people are spouting conspiracy theories about global warming and the apparently baleful influence of Canadian Maurice Strong. Today however I came across an article on Hubbert and the Technocrats and how their ideas about an energy based currency may be slowly coming to fruition via carbon credits – Carbon Currency: A New Beginning for Technocracy ?.

Critics who think that the U.S. dollar will be replaced by some new global currency are perhaps thinking too small.

On the world horizon looms a new global currency that could replace all paper currencies and the economic system upon which they are based.

The new currency, simply called Carbon Currency, is designed to support a revolutionary new economic system based on energy (production, and consumption), instead of price. Our current price-based economic system and its related currencies that have supported capitalism, socialism, fascism and communism, is being herded to the slaughterhouse in order to make way for a new carbon-based world.

It is plainly evident that the world is laboring under a dying system of price-based economics as evidenced by the rapid decline of paper currencies. The era of fiat (irredeemable paper currency) was introduced in 1971 when President Richard Nixon decoupled the U.S. dollar from gold. Because the dollar-turned-fiat was the world’s primary reserve asset, all other currencies eventually followed suit, leaving us today with a global sea of paper that is increasingly undesired, unstable, unusable.

The deathly economic state of today’s world is a direct reflection of the sum of its sick and dying currencies, but this could soon change.

Forces are already at work to position a new Carbon Currency as the ultimate solution to global calls for poverty reduction, population control, environmental control, global warming, energy allocation and blanket distribution of economic wealth.

Unfortunately for individual people living in this new system, it will also require authoritarian and centralized control over all aspects of life, from cradle to grave.

What is Carbon Currency and how does it work? In a nutshell, Carbon Currency will be based on the regular allocation of available energy to the people of the world. If not used within a period of time, the Currency will expire (like monthly minutes on your cell phone plan) so that the same people can receive a new allocation based on new energy production quotas for the next period.

Because the energy supply chain is already dominated by the global elite, setting energy production quotas will limit the amount of Carbon Currency in circulation at any one time. It will also naturally limit manufacturing, food production and people movement.

Local currencies could remain in play for a time, but they would eventually wither and be fully replaced by the Carbon Currency, much the same way that the Euro displaced individual European currencies over a period of time.

Sounds very modern in concept, doesn’t it? In fact, these ideas date back to the 1930’s when hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens were embracing a new political ideology called Technocracy and the promise it held for a better life. Even now-classic literature was heavily influenced by Technocracy: George Orwell’s 1984, H.G. Well’s The Shape of Things to Come and Huxley’s “scientific dictatorship” in Brave New World.

This paper investigates the rebirth of Technocracy and its potential to recast the New World Order into something truly “new” and also totally unexpected by the vast majority of modern critics.

Background

Philosophically, Technocracy found it roots in the scientific autocracy of Henri de Saint-Simon (1760-1825) and in the positivism of Auguste Comte (1798- 1857), the father of the social sciences. Positivism elevated science and the scientific method above metaphysical revelation. Technocrats embraced positivism because they believed that social progress was possible only through science and technology. [Schunk, Learning Theories: An Educational Perspective, 5th, 315]

The social movement of Technocracy, with its energy-based accounting system, can be traced back to the 1930’s when an obscure group of engineers and scientists offered it as a solution to the Great Depression.

imageThe principal scientist behind Technocracy was M. King Hubbert, a young geoscientist who would later (in 1948-1956) invent the now-famous Peak Oil Theory, also known as the Hubbert Peak Theory. Hubbert stated that the discovery of new energy reserves and their production would be outstripped by usage, thereby eventually causing economic and social havoc. Many modern followers of Peak Oil Theory believe that the 2007-2009 global recession was exacerbated in part by record oil prices that reflected validity of the theory. …

Conclusion

If M. King Hubbert and other early architects of Technocracy were alive today, they would be very pleased to see the seeds of their ideas on energy allocation grow to bear fruit on such a large scale. In 1933, the technology didn’t exist to implement a system of Energy Certificates. However, with today’s ever-advancing computer technology, the entire world could easily be managed on a single computer.

This article intended to show that

* Carbon Currency is not a new idea, but has deep roots in Technocracy
* Carbon Currency has grown from a continental proposal to a global proposal
* It has been consistently discussed over a long period of time
* The participants include many prominent global leaders, banks and think-tanks
* The context of these discussions have been very consistent
* Today’s goals for implementing Carbon Currency are virtually identical to Technocracy’s original Energy Certificates goals.

Of course, a currency is merely a means to an end. Whoever controls the currency also controls the economy and the political structure that goes with it. Inquiry into what such a system might look like will be a future topic.

Technocracy and energy-based accounting are not idle or theoretical issues. If the global elite intends for Carbon Currency to supplant national currencies, then the world economic and political systems will also be fundamentally changed forever.

What Technocracy could not achieve during the Great Depression appears to have finally found traction in the Great Recession.

The Long Now Foundation recently hosted a talk by one of my favourite authors, Wade Davis – The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World.

What does it mean to be human and alive?

The thousands of different cultures and languages on Earth have compellingly different answers to that question. “We are a wildly imaginative and creative species,” Davis declared, and then proved it with his accounts and photographs of humanity plumbing the soul of culture, of psyche, and of landscape.

He began with Polynesians, the wayfinders who mastered the Pacific ocean in the world’s largest diaspora. Without writing or chronometers they learned 220 stars by name, learned to read the subtle influence of distant islands on wave patterns and clouds, and navigated the open sea by a sheer act of integrative memory. For the duration of an ocean passage “navigators do not sleep.”

In the Amazon, which used to be thought of as a “green hell” or “counterfeit paradise,” living remnants may be found of complex forest civilizations that transformed 20 percent of the land into arable soil. The Anaconda peoples carry out five-day rituals with 250 people in vast longhouses, and live by stringent rules such as requiring that everyone must marry outside their language. Their mastery of botany let them find exactly the right combination of subspecies of plants to concoct ayahuasca, a drug so potent that one ethnobotantist described the effect of having it blown up your nose by a shaman as “like being shot out of a rifle barrel lined with Baroque paintings and landing in a sea of electricity.”

In the Andes the Incas built 8,500 miles of roads over impossibly vertical country in a hundred years, and their descendents still run the mountains on intense ritual pilgrimages, grounding their culture in every detail of the landscape.

In Haiti, during the four years Davis spent discovering the chemical used to make real-life zombies, he saw intact African religion alive in the practice of voodoo. “The dead must serve the living by becoming manifest” in those possessed. It was his first experience in “the power of culture to create new realities.”

The threat to cultures is often ideological, Davis noted, such as when Mao whispered in the ear of the Dalai Lama that “all religion is poison,” set about destroying Tibetan culture.

The genius of culture is the ability to survive in impossible conditions, Davis concluded. We cannot afford to lose any of that variety of skills, because we are not only impoverished without it, we are vulnerable without it.

Technology Review has an article on a “Antireflective film which helps solar cells maintain their energy yield” – A Safer Way to Coat Long-Lasting Solar Cells.

In the solar photovoltaic market, even the smallest improvement in efficiency can have a meaningful impact on manufacturers’ bottom line, which is why antireflective coatings are so important. These thin coatings, which cause solar cells to appear blue, maximize how much sunlight is absorbed and reduce surface defects that can lower performance.

However, the most popular coating method–the vapor deposition of a silicon nitride film using saline gas–comes with major risks. Silane can ignite when exposed to air; the gas is costly to transport, and silicon cell manufacturers must invest in special storage, ventilation, and other safety measures to prevent accidents. …

Rohatgi and his team of researchers at Georgia Tech have spent the past 18 months working with Montreal-based Sixtron Advanced Materials on a new silane-free process for applying antireflective film to solar cells. During their work they discovered that the coating–a silicon carbide nitride material carrying the trade name Silexium–also reduces light-induced degradation by up to 88 percent.

Crystalline silicon wafers, which are usually doped with boron, also contain oxygen. When sunlight first hits a new cell it causes boron and oxygen to combine, resulting in a 3 percent to 5 percent degradation in cell efficiency. The researchers found that when the Silexium film is added, some of the carbon in the coating ends up diffusing into the bulk of the silicon wafer. They believe the carbon competes with the boron to make a bond with oxygen. Because there’s less oxygen for the boron to bond with, light-induced degradation is largely avoided.

The Jakarta Post reports that Indonesia has lowered its target for geothermal power production – Govt reduces geothermal energy contribution.

Indonesia has revised downward the planned capacity for geothermal-fired power plants under the second 10,000 megawatt (MW) crash program by about 700 MW as some of the initially proposed projects cannot be finished within the program time frame.

The government initially planned to produce as much as 4,733 MW under the second 10,000 MW power program from geothermal power. But in its latest report, state power utility PLN said the electricity supply to be generated from geothermal energy will be reduced to between 3,975 MW and 4,077 MW.

“After evaluation, we conclude some of the geothermal power plants will be difficult to complete by 2014, because the working areas are still green field sites. Therefore some units will be taken out of the program,” Electricity and Energy Utilization director general J. Purwono told reporters Tuesday.

The 10,000 MW electricity project is planned to make up for the lack of investment in power plants in the last decade which has contributed to the power shortages across the country.

The Australian reports that Chevron are continuing their run of success selling LNG from the north west shelf – Chevron signs $18bn North West Shelf natural gas deal with Japanese utility.

US oil major Chevron continues to pull in more deals and equity partners in its two big West Australian liquefied natural gas projects, announcing it has agreed to sell LNG potentially worth $18 billion to Japan’s Kyushu Electric over the next 20 years in two separate deals.

The two heads of agreements announced yesterday come as Queensland’s LNG hopefuls, who want to export coal seam gas through Gladstone, have struggled to lock in buyers for projects they hope to approve this year.

Chevron says Kyushu has agreed to buy 300,000 tonnes of LNG a year for 15 years from the recently started $43bn Gorgon project on Barrow Island.

The power utility also agreed to take 700,000 tonnes of LNG a year for 20 years from the yet-to-be approved Wheatstone project planned for Onslow.

“The agreements with Kyushu Electric further demonstrate our ability to attract large and experienced LNG buyers as we develop these two legacy gas projects in Australia,” Chevron Asia-Pacific exploration and production president Jim Blackwell said

On top of the gas sales, Kyushu, which is a customer of the Woodside-operated North West Shelf LNG plant, has agreed to take an equity stake in Wheatstone.

Reuters reports that on the other side of the country, Arrow has made a large upwrd revision to their coal seam gas reserves – Arrow upgrades gas reserves, eyes LNG opportunities. More at Gas Today.

Australian coal seam gas firm Arrow Energy Ltd (AOE.AX) sharply raised its gas reserves and said that the increase would help boost its ability to supply gas to more liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects.

Arrow, a coal seam gas supplier of Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) in Australia, said it may be able to add up to 1.5 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of gas reserves per year to its gross proved and probable (2P) reserves over the next three years, up from an earlier goal of 1 tcf per year.

The firm’s 2P reserves, defined by the industry as having 50 percent chance of recovery, jumped by 50.3 percent from a year ago to 6,150 petajoules (PJ), while reserves by the widest estimate increased by 18.6 percent to 11,042 PJ.

“This acceleration of reserves additions will ensure that we are well placed for future commitments to further growth opportunities in the domestic market, the Fisherman’s Landing project or (Shell’s proposed) Curtis Island,” Arrow’s Managing Director Nick Davies said in a statement.

Total uncontracted 2P gas reserves from its operated tenements now stand at 5,379 PJ, the firm said.

PhysOrg has an article on an electric powered, NASA designed personal aircraft – Puffin: the one-person electric aircraft.

The 3.7-meter-long craft has two wings with a combined wingspan of 4.1 meters. Each wing is has a 2.3 meter wide propeller. Flaps on the wings direct the air from the rotors upward while the aircraft is on the ground, and then direct it downwards allowing the Puffin to rise, and then hover as it leans over to begin its flight with the craft (and pilot) horizontal.

The aircraft was designed by NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, in collaboration with the National Institute of Aerospace, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Georgia Institute of Technology, and M-DOT Aerospace. It is designed to be manufactured from carbon fiber composites and would weigh only around 135 kg, plus 45 kg of rechargeable lithium phosphate batteries.

The Puffin’s electric motors produce virtually no emissions, and can lift its payload of one person with only 60 horsepower. The motors are up to 95% efficient, while internal combustion engines the same size would only rate at around 20% efficient, and electric motors are up to 20 times more reliable than piston engines because they have fewer moving parts.