Author: Big Gav

Inhabitat has a post on new offshore wind turbines from GE – GE’s Gigantic Offshore Wind Turbine is 25% More Efficient.

The next gen wind turbine by GE will only be 4 MW, which isn’t too big compared to the 10 MW turbine Norway is building, but it will have two significant design changes: a simpler and more efficient drive train as well as longer blades. A direct-drive mechanism will do away with the gear box, which is used to ramp up the RPMs to generate more electricity. Doing away with the gear box simplifies the system greatly, reducing need for maintenance and oil, both costly during the lifetime of the turbine. Additionally, permanent magnets will replace the electromagnets, which require starter brushes, coils and power from the grid every time the turbine starts up. The new drive train and generator are currently being tested in Norway.

Meanwhile the blades, which are being tested in the Netherlands, have been lengthened by 40%, and made even more aerodynamic and lightweight, all in order to capture more of wind. These new 176-foot long blades are also designed to twist as they are bent from the force of the wind, which means they’ll bear less of the gusts’ brunt yet still be able to capture a large part of the energy. With the help of the new drive train and more efficient blades, the wind turbine will be able to create more power when it is turning at slower wind speeds, which means that the turbine will be able to operate more often at its max 4 MW potential and power up to 1,000 homes with renewable energy.

Danwei has an article speculating that Google might be getting out of the internet business in China but they could be concentrating on clean energy – particularly geothermal energy – there instead – Google to develop geothermal energy in China.

From the time of Google’s January announcement about their “new approach” to China until Tuesday’s service disruption apparently caused by the Great FireWall, the press has been left guessing about both Google and the Chinese government’s intentions and the state of their presumed negotiations.

But thanks to a source at Ha’erbin Institute of Technology, Danwei can reveal what Google now plans to do with their Beijing and Shanghai offices, and the engineering talent that they have spent the last four years recruiting and developing: the the tech giant plans to stop or radically cut funding for all Internet, advertising and mobile businesses in China, and turn their R&D teams exclusively over to Google’s clean energy development projects.

Our source at Ha’erbin Institute of Technology insisted on anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the news, but revealed that Google’s new direction was satisfactory to both the Chinese government and Google itself.

“This allows Google to feel they are contributing to bettering the lives of the Chinese people, while removing itself from the information business, an industry that the Chinese government will not give up controlling,” the source said.

A former researcher at Ha’erbin Institute of Technology, Professor Wang Badan, now of the Peking Information and Electronics Center of Engineering, told Danwei that his former employer in the northeastern city of Ha’erbin had been working on geo-thermal power technology for many years. Geo-thermal power refers to the use of energy from the earth’s molten core to produce electricity. Google has already invested substantial sums of money in research on such technology in the United States.

Cryptogon points to a Guardian article quoting James Lovelock saying that we may need to suspend democracy in order to deal with global warming – Lovelock: Authoritarian System Needed to Deal with Global Warming. Of course, given that he thinks humanity is doomed to collapse to a few remnant breeding pairs in the arctic, it would seem that politics wouldn’t be high on the agenda in future if his predictions are true, so maybe he should just shut up (or at least be ignored from here on in).

We need a more authoritative world. We’ve become a sort of cheeky, egalitarian world where everyone can have their say. It’s all very well, but there are certain circumstances – a war is a typical example – where you can’t do that. You’ve got to have a few people with authority who you trust who are running it. And they should be very accountable too, of course.

But it can’t happen in a modern democracy. This is one of the problems. What’s the alternative to democracy? There isn’t one. But even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.

In spite of the occasional rumour that The Falklands have a lot of oil offshore (and that the tussle between the English and the Argentinians over them is about more than a few cold, sheep infested islands), drilling programs aren’t coming up with much so far – Desire drill disappoints, Falkland explorers slump.

British oil explorer Desire Petroleum said it had found poor quality oil in the first well to be drilled in the Falkland Islands for a decade, sending shares of explorers in the islands lower.

Desire on Monday gave an initial update for the first well in a controversial drilling campaign planned for 2010 by British explorers in the Falkland Islands, off the coast of South America. Oil exploration in the islands has sparked protests from Argentina, which claims the British territory.

Shares in North Falkland basin-focused Desire were down by 44 percent at 0808 GMT after the company said logging operations at its Liz 14/19-1 well showed oil may be present in thin intervals but reservoir quality is poor.

Inhabitat reports that Dubai is looking to break its own “world’s tallest building” mark with a novel new design more in keeping with their straitened financial circumstances – People-Powered Skyscraper to Claim New “World’s Tallest” Crown in Dubai.

It’s been just three months since the Burj Khalifa took the title of “world’s tallest building”, and already the shifting sands of Dubai have spawned a successor! A paragon of modern architecture, the iconic ICARUS tower is currently soaring towards the sky to become the next “World’s Tallest Building”. Designed by Daedalus Architects, the timeless skyscraper blends seamlessly into its surrounding environment and harnesses a nearly inexhaustible resource to provide for 100% of it’s energy needs: human labor.

An unforgettable structure sure to inspire emotion, the ICARUS tower is currently aiming for LEED Platinum certification. The entire surface of the building’s envelope is decked out in a new breed of hyper-efficient solar cells and the roof features a sophisticated rainwater catchment system that will harvest water from the region’s frequent downpours.

The skyscraper is expected to create thousands of new construction jobs, many of which will continue as indentured employment opportunities in the building’s engine room. The skyscraper’s on-site power plant is powered a sophisticated system of levers, pulleys and counterbalances that produce enough human-generated kinetic energy to illuminate the structure’s 100,000,000 LEDs.

Dynamic Business News has an article on a new transmission line proposed for northern Queensland – Renewable energy transmission lines planned for Queensland.

The Queensland Resources Council (QRC) claims it will cost $1 billion to construct transmission lines linking Mount Isa to Townsville, but will create 1,800 jobs in the region.

BIS Shrapnel has prepared the report Developing a Resource Corridor jointly commissioned by North Queensland regional development group MITEZ, Townsville Enterprise, Queensland Resources Council and local governments across the region.

The BIS Shrapnel report concludes that constructing the transmission line would enable North Queensland to become a renewable energy corridor for the state with significant potential.

Queensland Resources Council chief executive Michael Roche was confident that the proposed transmission line is a viable investment that will not only provide for the state’s renewable energy needs in the future, but will create a much needed boost to jobs in the corridor.

“The report’s key finding is the jobs dividend to north Queensland of the region’s renewable energy potential,”

“A transmission line from Townsville to Mount Isa would open opportunities for a host of renewable energy resources including wind, solar thermal, geothermal, bagasse and biofuels, along with coal seam gas and shale oil.” Mr Roche Said.

With the corridor ripe with opportunity to exploit renewable energy resources, it is seen as necessary to link this corridor to the rest of the network to allow the state to meet its commitment to reduce its carbon footprint by one third by 2020 as well as assist in the Federal Government’s commitment to a 20 percent renewable energy target by the same year.

Technology review has an article on the use of drone planes to gather additional data on the atmosphere – Robotic Planes Chase After Climate Data.

For the first time, NASA has begun flying an unmanned aircraft outfitted with scientific instruments to observe the Earth’s atmosphere in greater detail. The agency has partnered with Northrop Grumman to outfit three aircraft, called Global Hawks, which were given to NASA by the U.S. Air Force. Unlike manned aircraft equipped with Earth observation tools, the Global Hawks can fly for up to 30 hours and travel for longer distances and at high altitudes; they can also gather more precise data than satellites and can be stationed to monitor an area for extended periods of time.

“There are certain types of atmospheric and earth science data that we are missing, even though we have things like satellites, manned aircraft, and surface-based networks,” says Robbie Hood, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Unmanned Aircraft Systems program. NOAA has formed an agreement with NASA to help construct the scientific instruments and guide the science missions for the Global Hawks. Hood will evaluate the aircraft to determine how they could be best used. For example, she says, they could fly over a hurricane to monitor its intensity changes or fly over the arctic to monitor sea ice changes in higher detail.

The Global Hawks’ first mission launched last week–an aircraft flew from NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base in California over the Pacific Ocean. The project scientists will launch approximately one flight a week until the end of April. The drone is outfitted with 11 different instruments to take measurements and map aerosols and gases in the atmosphere, profile clouds, and gather meteorological data such as temperatures, winds, and pressures. It also has high-definition cameras to image the ocean colors.

“The first mission is mostly a demonstration mission to prove the capabilities of the system,” says Paul Newman, co-project scientist and an atmospheric physicist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD. The aircraft will also fly under the Aura Satellite, a NASA satellite currently studying the Earth’s ozone, air quality, and climate, to validate its measurements, making a comparison between its readings and what the new aircraft can do. “Satellites give you global coverage every day, but they can’t see a region very precisely. The aircraft can give you regular observations and very fine resolution,” says Newman.

The robotic airplanes operate completely autonomously–scientists program the plane prior to departure with the intended destinations, and the plane navigates itself. However, scientists can change the aircraft’s flight path once in route or remotely pilot it in an emergency. Because a Global Hawk flight can last 30 hours (compared to 12 hours for a manned flight), the aircraft can travel to regions, such as the arctic, that are typically too dangerous for manned missions.

Arundhati Roy has a column in The Guardian on the Avatar style Naxalite rebellion underway in India – Gandhi, but with guns.

There are many ways to describe Dantewara. It’s an oxymoron. It’s a border town smack in the heart of India. It’s the epicentre of a war. It’s an upside down, inside out town.

In Dantewara the police wear plain clothes and the rebels wear uniforms. The jail-superintendent is in jail. The prisoners are free (300 of them escaped from the old town jail two years ago). Women who have been raped are in police custody. The rapists give speeches in the bazaar.

Across the Indravati river, in the area controlled by the Maoists, is the place the police call ‘Pakistan’. There the villages are empty, but the forest is full of people. Children who ought to be in school run wild. In the lovely forest villages, the concrete school buildings have either been blown up and lie in a heap, or they’re full of policemen. The deadly war that’s unfolding in the jungle is a war that the government of India is both proud and shy of. Operation Green Hunt has been proclaimed as well as denied. P. Chidambaram, India’s home minister (and CEO of the war) says it does not exist, that it’s a media creation. And yet substantial funds have been allocated to it and tens of thousands of troops are being mobilised. Though the theatre of war is in the jungles of Central India, it will have serious consequences for us all.

If ghosts are the lingering spirits of someone, or something that has ceased to exist, then perhaps the National Mineral Development Corporation’s new four-lane highway crashing through the forest is the opposite of a ghost. Perhaps it is the harbinger of what is still to come.

The antagonists in the forest are disparate and unequal in almost every way. On one side is a massive paramilitary force armed with the money, the firepower, the media, and the hubris of an emerging superpower. On the other, ordinary villagers armed with traditional weapons, backed by a superbly organised, hugely motivated Maoist guerilla fighting force with an extraordinary and violent history of armed rebellion. The Maoists and the paramilitary are old adversaries and have fought older avatars of each other several times before: Telengana in the 1950s, West Bengal, Bihar, Srikakulam in Andhra Pradesh in the late 60s and 70s, and then again in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and Maharashtra from the 80s all the way through to the present. They are familiar with each other’s tactics, and have studied each other’s combat manuals closely. Each time, it seemed as though the Maoists (or their previous avatars) had been not just defeated, but literally, physically exterminated. Each time, they have re-emerged, more organised, more determined and more influential than ever. Today once again the insurrection has spread through the mineral-rich forests of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, and West Bengal— homeland to millions of India’s tribal people, dreamland to the corporate world.

It’s easier on the liberal conscience to believe that the war in the forests is a war between the government of India and the Maoists, who call elections a sham, parliament a pigsty and who have openly declared their intention to overthrow the Indian state. It’s convenient to forget that tribal people in Central India have a history of resistance that pre-dates Mao by centuries. (That’s a truism of course. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t exist.) The Ho, the Oraon, the Kols, the Santhals, the Mundas and the Gonds have all rebelled several times – against the British, against zamindars and against moneylenders. The rebellions were cruelly crushed, many thousands killed, but the people were never conquered. Even after independence, tribal people were at the heart of the first uprising that could be described as Maoist, in Naxalbari village in West Bengal (where the word Naxalite – now used interchangeably with “Maoist” – originates). Since then Naxalite politics has been inextricably entwined with tribal uprisings, which says as much about the tribals as it does about Naxalites.

This legacy of rebellion has left behind a furious people who have been deliberately isolated and marginalised by the Indian government. The Indian constitution, the moral underpinning of Indian democracy, was adopted by parliament in 1950. It was a tragic day for tribal people. The constitution ratified colonial policy and made the state custodian of tribal homelands. Overnight, it turned the entire tribal population into squatters on their own land. It denied them their traditional rights to forest produce. It criminalised a whole way of life. In exchange for the right to vote, it snatched away their right to livelihood and dignity.

Having dispossessed them and pushed them into a downward spiral of indigence, in a cruel sleight of hand the government began to use their own penury against them. Each time it needed to displace a large population – for dams, irrigation projects, mines – it talked of “bringing tribals into the mainstream” or of giving them “the fruits of modern development”. Of the tens of millions of internally displaced people (more than 30 million by big dams alone) – refugees of India’s “progress” – the great majority are tribal people. When the government begins to talk of tribal welfare, it’s time to worry. …

When a country that calls itself a democracy openly declares war within its borders, what does that war look like? Does the resistance stand a chance? Should it? Who are the Maoists? Are they just violent nihilists foisting an outdated ideology on tribal people, goading them into a hopeless insurrection? What lessons have they learned from their past experience? Is armed struggle intrinsically undemocratic? Is the Sandwich Theory – of “ordinary” tribals being caught in the crossfire between the state and the Maoists – an accurate one? Are “Maoists” and “tribals” two entirely discrete categories, as is being made out? Do their interests converge? Have they learned anything from each other? Have they changed each other?

The day before I left, my mother called sounding sleepy. “I’ve been thinking,” she said, with a mother’s weird instinct. “What this country needs is revolution.”

An article on the internet says that Israel’s Mossad is training 30 high-ranking Indian police officers in the techniques of targeted assassinations, to render the Maoist organisation “headless”. There’s talk in the press about the new hardware that has been bought from Israel: laser range finders, thermal imaging equipment and the unmanned drones so popular with the US army. Perfect weapons to use against the poor.

The Business Spectator has a look at the prospects for wave power in Australia – Bringing cheap power to our shores.

As guests and dignitaries gathered under a marquee to celebrate the launch of the third iteration of Oceanlinx’s wave technology – the MK3PC – the question of the barge-like structure was this: Yes, it looks great, but will it work? …

Coastal wave power could, in theory, provide twice the world’s energy requirements. In reality, it will provide a good deal less than that, but will still be an important component of the global energy mix, particularly in wave rich regions such as England and Ireland, Spain and Portugal, and the coasts of Africa and much of the Americas. And, of course, Australia.

Right now, the problem is how best to harness that energy. The sector is unique in that there is no technology standard. The prototypes on offer range from machines that resemble giant sea-snakes to oysters, and upturned Apollo space capsules, to those – like Australia’s Carnegie and BioPower Systems – that seek to mimic the action of the sea by having forests of underwater buoys driven by the ocean’s movements.

Oceanlinx’ technology uses a series of oscillating chambers in a large structure that allows water to enter, compress the air and drive a turbine, and do the same as air is sucked back in as the water recedes. The 170-tonne demonstration model is 8m high, 12m wide and 30m long – the commercial model will be three times the size. A facility with numerous modules could create a 50MW power plant.

Baghaei, a former nuclear plant boss who was brought in to turn the ideas of a ‘bunch of enthusiasts’ into a viable commercial venture, expects his technology to be competitive with offshore wind by the middle of next year, and with onshore wind within three years. “This is a significant day,” he said. “It is actually doing what it is supposed to be doing.”

Oceanlinx is backed by Australian clean energy venture capital investor Cleantech Ventures, along with Espirito Santo, the largest private bank in Portugal, and the Swiss-based Emerald Technology Ventures.

The involvement of the European investors is crucial because the big leaps in wave energy will likely occur overseas, even if Australian technologies rank among the most advanced in the world. Earlier this month, the UK’s Crown Estate announced the successful tenders for a $6 billion program to trial 10 different wave technologies. The UK believes one quarter of its energy could be supplied from marine sources. Elsewhere in Europe, countries are offering significant feed-in-tariffs and other measures, such as multiple renewable energy certificates, to attract developers to their coastlines. Spain and Portugal are in the forefront, as are some US states on the western seaboard and countries like Chile.

Environment Minister Peter Garrett said wave energy was an ‘under-recognised’ part of the renewable energy mix, both here and abroad, and seemed to admit, at least tacitly, that that could continue to remain the case in Australia, as he talked of the significant opportunities for development overseas.

But it is not the lack of R&D or wave energy resources that holds Australia’s wave energy producers back, or pushes them to find expansion projects overseas: quite the contrary, it’s the lack of government incentive, a legacy of the thrall that most politicians still have for the fossil fuel industry, and the lack of influential lobbying support for renewables – apart from wind – from Australia’s established industries.

There’s no reason why Australia could not do the same as the UK or the Iberian nations. But as we’ve seen in solar, and more recently in the allocation of the one commercial scale wave energy farm that the government has promised to back, this government much prefers to export the ideas, import the finished product back from what is now a foreign-owned entity and pay an Australian company to screw the thing together.

Technology Review has an article on “renewable rubber” – Rubber from Microbes.

Working with Goodyear, biotechnology company Genencor has been engineering bacteria that make isoprene–the chemical used to make tire rubber–from sugars derived from biomass. But ramping up microbial production of isoprene to such a scale that it can compete with petroleum-derived rubber has proven to be a major challenge.

Yesterday at the American Chemical Society meeting in San Francisco, researchers from a Palo Alto, CA-based research division of Genencor described further modifications to the metabolic pathways of the microbes that improve the yield of bioisoprene. The company will decide on plans for building a bioisoprene pilot plant next year.

Microbes including E. coli naturally make small amounts of isoprene as part of their metabolism, but not nearly enough to be used on an industrial scale. To improve the yield, bioengineers at Genencor, which began working on bacterial systems for producing isoprene in 2007, initially made changes to two metabolic pathways that converge to create an isoprene precursor. But yields were still low because the bacteria’s existing genetic machinery takes a meandering path to create isoprene from this precursor. In the most recent results, the company added to the E. coli a plant gene coding for isoprene synthase, an enzyme that converts the precursor directly into isoprene.

Isoprene, which is a gas at room temperature, bubbles out of the cells without damaging them, then out of the fermentation broth. Genencor senior director of business development Rich Laduca says that with no refinement, this system can produce 99 percent pure isoprene gas. Purity is critical because trace contaminants can foul the catalysts used to polymerize isoprene to make synthetic rubber. Goodyear has used Genencor’s bioisoprene to make synthetic rubber, which it then used to make several prototype tires.

“We’re looking for renewable resources to reduce our dependence on foreign oil,” says Jesse Roeck, director of global materials science at Goodyear. Roeck says the isoprene work is still a research project, but that the chemical may be in tires on the market in three to five years.

Fast Company has an discussion with Amory Lovins and FiberForge CEO Jon Fox-Rubin about the benefits of making cars using strong, lightweight materials – In an Intense Time for Hybrids and EVs, Fiberforge Lightens Up.

Amory Lovins: CEO & Co-Founder of Rocky Mountain Institute: A typical car today uses everyday a 100 times its weight in ancient plants inefficiently converted into gasoline. What happens to that fuel energy when it goes into your tank, 7/8th of it gets lost before it even gets to the wheels, of the 1/8th that gets to the wheels half of that either heats the air that your pushing aside or heats the tire and road. Only the last 6% of the fuel energy actually accelerates the car and then heats the breaks when you stop. And yet 95% of the mass you’re accelerating is the car not the driver, so 6% of 5%, that’s about 0.3%, of the fuel energy ends up moving the driver. This is not very gratifying after 120 something years devoted to engineering effort.

Jon Fox-Rubin: President & CEO Fiberforge: Anything that needs to be moved from Point A to Point B would use less fuel and less energy to accelerate it, move it and decelerate it if it were lighter. And that’s really where the Fiberforge process is aimed at creating affordable structures that are lighter in weight.

Amory: We use carbon composites in military and aerospace where cost is almost no object, it’s worth $700 present value to take a lb out of an airplane so they’re willing to pay a lot to do that. But to move into automating you need to make these composite structures in a thousand times higher volume and lower cost then now.

Jon: Our main goal for any particular market is really affordability. And so the way we do that is we try to automate the process and turn the carbon fiber into a finished product that can be stamped, just like a steel part today. In an automobile you can stamp a thermoplastic tailored blank that’s made by the Fiberforge process.

The parts are typically designed in industry standard CAD tools, computer aided design tools designed for composites in the 3-D shape they’re intended to be, and then we take that and flatten it into a 2-D shape and translate that into a Cad-Cam system. So computer aided design, computer aided manufacturing software system that makes the tool path for the tailored blank. That is the automatic layout system that makes the tailored blank. What you’re seeing is a motion table that’s moving XY, and rotates under a fixed head that’s part of our patented process. And it’s laying up the tape a strip at a time next to one another. And we can layup a blank on the order of a few minutes.

Amory: This has 14 layers that are laid down kind of like plywood with carbon fibers pointing in different directions so you get the strength in the directions you want and not otherwise. And then since this is thermoplastic you can heat it up until it softens, stick it on a hot dye and mold it into the shape you want.

Jon: The heater heats the blank with infrared energy and once the resin is fully molded it shuttles it into the system and then essentially it gets compressed and frozen in place.

Amory: You end up with an amazingly strong material; this particular one is tougher than titanium, and really stiff as you can tell from the sound. So plastics have changed since The Graduate. And you can make this in thirty or sixty seconds and stamp out the parts just like steel, except you need about 10 or 20 times fewer parts to make the auto body, the parts snap precisely together for gluing, no hoist no jigs no robots no welders. And lay color in the mold you can make whatever color you want so you get rid of the paint shop, that’s another half-billion dollar investment. So very different way to make cars, it’s what’s called a disruptive technology. Of course it’s smart for automakers to adopt something like that right away before their competitors do and sell them their steel stamping equipment to slow them down.

Jon: I think the first automaker that really gets serious about light weighting and either licenses our technology or comes up with its own competitive technology will really own a key piece of the next generation of transportation.

Amory: An automaker will be smart to spend its own money making the cars lighter rather than try and make the fuel cells cheaper and tanks smaller. You’ll get to the same place but with much less time, money and risk.

The LA Times has a report on Chinese investment in clean energy is now double that of the United States – China takes lead in clean-power investment.

China overtook the United States for the first time last year in the race to invest in wind, solar and other sources of clean energy, according to a comprehensive new report that raises questions about American competitiveness in a booming global market.

U.S. clean energy investments hit $18.6 billion last year, a report from the Pew Charitable Trusts said, a little more than half the Chinese total of $34.6 billion. Five years ago, China’s investments in clean energy totaled just $2.5 billion.

The United States also slipped behind 10 other countries, including Canada and Mexico, in clean energy investments as a share of the national economy.

Although part of the U.S. investment decline last year can be attributed to the deep recession, the Pew report pointed to another factor constraining U.S. competitiveness: a lack of national mandates for renewable energy production or a surcharge on greenhouse gas emissions that would make fossil fuels more expensive.

The report warned that the current U.S. approach, in which states make varied efforts and the federal government’s efforts have been sporadic, has produced a “comparatively weak clean energy economy” — and that the nation risks losing out on economic growth and job creation.

“It’s certainly the case that the countries and areas with higher investment in clean energy will be able to produce more jobs,” said Chris Lafakis, an economist at Moody’s Economy.com, which is working with Pew in tracking the green economy and jobs. Lafakis said investment was the No. 1 factor in green job growth.

Worldwide, the report found clean energy investment more than doubling since 2005. Investment levels have already rebounded from the financial crisis and are projected to grow 25% this year, as nations increasingly seek energy sources that do not emit the heat-trapping gases produced by burning fossil fuels.

Crikey has a rumour that Inpex’s proposed Ichthys LNG project has been delayed once again – Gas project on hold … again.

For the second time six months the Japanese group, Inpex, has postponed a final decision on the huge Ichthys LNG project off the Northern Territory coast. Inpex announced Darwin as the base for the project in late 2008, a year later it delayed the final decision until late this year or early 2011. Now according to reports from the recent Australian Oil and Gas Conference, it is now delayed until late next year.

The first delay was ostensibly due to rising costs of construction, but oil industry analysts say it was more to do with the rapid emergence of an LNG glut in Asia thanks to the impact of the recession in Japan, Korea and Taiwan. The Inpex project is huge, media estimates put it at $A20 to $A24 billion, which would be the size of the North West Shelf. An industry informant says announcement of the delay is being held back until May to coincide with the presentation of Inpex’s 2009 results in Japan.

Tom Raftery has a post on the enduring “baseload fallacy” (pdf) beloved of the nuclear power zealots – Is there really any need for baseload power?.

The electricity grid may not need “baseload” generation sources like coal and nuclear to backup the variability of supply from renewables.

Jon Wellinghof is the Chairman of the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). FERC is an independent agency that amongst other things, regulates the interstate transmission of electricity, natural gas, and oil – for more on FERC’s responsibilities see their About page. Chairman Wellinghoff has been involved in the energy industry for 30 years and appointed to the FERC as a commissioner by then president Bush in 2006.

Last year, shortly after being appointed as Chairman of the FERC, Mr Wellinghoff announced that:

No new nuclear or coal plants may ever be needed in the United States….

Wellinghoff said renewables like wind, solar and biomass will provide enough energy to meet baseload capacity and future energy demands. Nuclear and coal plants are too expensive, he added.

“I think baseload capacity is going to become an anachronism,” he said. “Baseload capacity really used to only mean in an economic dispatch, which you dispatch first, what would be the cheapest thing to do. Well, ultimately wind’s going to be the cheapest thing to do, so you’ll dispatch that first.”…

“What you have to do, is you have to be able to shape it,” he added. “And if you can shape wind and you can effectively get capacity available for you for all your loads.

“So if you can shape your renewables, you don’t need fossil fuel or nuclear plants to run all the time. And, in fact, most plants running all the time in your system are an impediment because they’re very inflexible. You can’t ramp up and ramp down a nuclear plant. And if you have instead the ability to ramp up and ramp down loads in ways that can shape the entire system, then the old concept of baseload becomes an anachronism.”

… However, a study published last week by the Maryland-based Institute for Energy and Environmental Research backs Chairman Wellinghoff’s assertion. In a study of North Carolina’s electricity needs it concluded backup generation requirements would be modest for a system based largely on solar and wind power, combined with efficiency, hydroelectric power, and other renewable sources like landfill gas …

With larger and more inter-connected electricity grids, the requirement for baseload falls even further because the greater the geographical spread of your grid, the greater the chances that the wind will be blowing or the sun shining in some parts of it.

So, is there really any need for baseload power any more, or is this now just a myth perpetuated by those with vested interests?

The New York Times has a look at Chevron’s interest in solar PV and their “Project Brightfield” test bed for powering an oil refinery (also referencing their involvement in Brightsource‘s solar thermal power project at Ivanpah and Chevron Mining’s recent implementation of a CPV system at a molybdenum mine in New Mexico) – Chevron Testing Solar Technologies.

The oil giant Chevron has transformed an old refinery site in California into a test bed for seven advanced photovoltaic solar technologies, which the company is evaluating for use at its facilities worldwide.

On Monday, Chevron is unveiling 7,700 solar panels installed on 18 acres in Bakersfield, the capital of California’s oil patch. Called Project Brightfield, the plant will generate 740 kilowatts of electricity to power nearby oil operations.

Any excess electricity will be fed to the power grid.

“We were looking for the next-generation technology that we believe could well be the low-cost solution — not just in terms of panels but in total cost of ownership,” said Des King, president of Chevron Technology Ventures, the company’s venture capital and technology development arm. “It’s one of most comprehensive side-by-side tests in shear numbers of panels.”

Mr. King said Chevron collected data on 180 solar companies, visited 38 of them and narrowed the list to 19 before choosing seven finalists.

Six of the companies make thin-film solar panels that deposit or print solar cells on glass or flexible metals. Though less efficient than traditional crystalline photovoltaic technology, thin-film solar panels typically do not use much expensive silicon and can be manufactured at a lower cost.

Chevron has installed panels from Abound Solar of Colorado; MiaSolé, a Silicon Valley start-up; Schüco, a German industrial company; Solar Frontier, a subsidiary of Japan’s Showa Shell Solar; Sharp; and Solibro, a division Q-Cells, a big German solar module maker.

Project Brightfield’s sole crystalline panel maker is Innovalight, a Silicon Valley start-up that has developed a “silicon ink” that it uses to make photovoltaic modules. “We hope this is a boost to new technology providers,” Mr. King said.

For MiaSolé, Brightfield is the start-up’s first commercial project and the company will supply solar panels that will generate about a third of the facility’s electricity.

Greentech Media reports that Italy has taken over from Germany and Spain as the hot European solar power market – On Italy, PV, and Overheated Markets.

The Italian PV market has been exploding with project announcements over the past two weeks. Among them is a 25 MW project to be constructed by Prime Sun Power, a 5 MW project that is already the largest using Evergreen Solar modules, a 9.8 MW turnkey project to be developed by Siliken for Fotowatio Renewable Ventures, and a 72 MW project by SunEdison that will become the largest PV project in Europe. In February, SunPower acquired SunRay, a Malta-based project developer with a 75 MW+ Italian pipeline, in no small part to gain better access to the Italian market. And that is without mentioning the continuous stream of just-under-1 MW project announcements that arrive daily (more on that later). Most importantly, all of these projects are intended for completion this year.

If the market keeps up this pace throughout 2010, Italy will experience triple-digit growth and could install a gigawatt of new PV capacity. But in doing so, Italy risks becoming the next victim of the PV gold rush. Over the past two years, this has happened in Spain (2008), the Czech Republic (2009) and, to a lesser extent, Germany (2009). Each of these countries had a national feed-in tariff without a hard cap, which enabled demand to expand far beyond the government’s expectations within a single year. And in each market, the government responded drastically, either by slashing rates (Germany), instituting a strict program cap (Spain), or placing the program entirely on hold (Czech Republic).

Greentech Media has a look at the emerging market for bioplastics – Beyond the Age of Innocence In Bioplastic.

Are bioplastics ready for their coming out party?

The potential and need for plastic alternatives has become more acute in the last decade. The SPI Bioplastic Council anticipates that the bioplastics market will exceed $1 billion by 2012. Today it is half that. BASF, the German chemical giant, estimates that bio-based products already account for some $470 million in sales of such things as ‘chiral intermediates,’ which give the kick to its pesticides.

Scientists have also devised novel techniques for cutting down the costs. Opxbio, for instance, has genetically engineered a microbe to secrete acrylic acid, a precursor to the absorbent polymer in baby diapers. Meanwhile, Cereplast produces more traditional bioplastics, but at relatively low temperatures to save energy. Then there are plastic recyclers like Axion International making railroad ties out of old milk jugs.

Still, bioplastic remains “a sector that is not yet mature but will be growing fast in the coming years,” says Frederic Scheer, CEO of Cereplast and the so-called ‘Godfather of Bioplastics.’

If anything, lawmakers are prodding the market. France, Germany and Italy are trying to phase out polyethylene bags and other regions are cracking down on styrofoam. Currently, the bioplastics sector is led by Europe, with Japan in second place (very active in packaging and bioplastics), followed by the U.S.

McKinsey, a consultancy firm, reckons industrial biotech’s global sales will soar to $100 billion by 2011, by which time biofuels will have reached only $72 billion. Why has plastic not attracted as much attention? First, the price of oil was very low in the late 1980s and early 1990s. But even with the rise in prices, the incumbent technology is cheap.

“Bio-based plastics will not substitute for oil-based polymers in the near future for several reasons. These include low oil prices, high production cost and restricted production capacity of biomass-based polymers. These factors limit the technically possible growth of these plastics in the coming years.” So wrote Patrick Navard, Chairman of the Governing Board of EPNOE (European Bioplastics and the European Polysaccharide Network of Excellence) in a 2009 forecast that sees enormous potential for bio-based plastics.

Nonetheless, substituting and gaining a foothold in the market are two separate things. Based on recent announcements from Cereplast, the production capacity of bio-based plastics is projected to increase from 360,000 tons in 2007 to about 2.3 million tons by 2013, an annual growth rate of 37%.

Michael Pascoe at the SMH has some notes on the case for taking real action on global warming instead vs staging publicity stunts or pretending there isn’t a problem – All is not what it seems in being green.

As part of his presentation, Dornan showed a photograph of a fairly standard desk and asked the audience what was different about it. The answer was the power points on top of the desk instead of somewhere deep below it among the dust and cobwebs.

On Friday night, many city workers made a once-a-year effort to brave the dust and dirt by crawling under their desks to turn off their computers/mobile phone rechargers/electric nasal hair clippers/whatever at the wall.

IAG whacked power packs on top of the desks in one office and saved $10,000 on its electricity bill.

There also is the broader contrast between the enthusiastic Earth Hour hype and the general outrage that greeted the suggestion that electricity prices will soar under any rational sort of carbon reduction policy. If we decide carbon has a price, it will have to be paid. Besides, make electricity expensive enough and folks will tend to use less of it. We want to feel nicely green, but we like cheap power more.

The naiveté of much of the greenhouse noise, from both the alarmists and denialists, tends to distract from attempts to get serious about it. In its usual rational fashion, the lead editorial in last week’s Economist magazine made the case for action on climate being justified not because the science is certain, but precisely because it is not. That’s a concept the more simple-minded jumping on the sceptics bandwagon might find hard to grasp.

After dealing with several facets of the issue, including making some criticism of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Economist reminded its readers:

“The ambiguities of science sit uncomfortably with the demands of politics. Politicians, and the voters who elect them, are more comfortable with certainty. So ‘six months to save the planet’ is more likely to garner support than ‘there is a high probability—though not by any means a certainty—that serious climate change could damage the biosphere, depending on levels of economic growth, population growth and innovation’. Politics, like journalism, tends to simplify and exaggerate.”

The magazine was scathing about a particularly alarmist UK government advertising campaign that seems more interested in scaring silly children than reducing carbon. The leader, perhaps with a view to being serious like IAG rather than jumping on any bandwagon, makes its case in the final two paragraphs:

“Plenty of uncertainty remains; but that argues for, not against, action. If it were known that global warming would be limited to 2°C, the world might decide to live with that. But the range of possible outcomes is huge, with catastrophe one possibility, and the costs of averting climate change are comparatively small. Just as a householder pays a small premium to protect himself against disaster, the world should do the same.

“This newspaper sees no reason to alter its views on that. Where there is plainly an urgent need for change is the way in which governments use science to make their case. The IPCC has suffered from the perception that it is a tool of politicians. The greater the distance that can be created between it and them, the better. And rather than feeding voters infantile advertisements peddling childish certainties, politicians should treat voters like grown-ups. With climate change you do not need to invent things; the truth, even with all those uncertainties and caveats, is scary enough.”

Inhabitat has a post on the seeming ease with which non-energy efficient products can get an energy star rating – Fake Gasoline-Powered Alarm Clock Secures Energy Star Label.

Apparently, it’s a piece of cake to get Energy Star-certified — just ask the Congressional auditors who received approval for a number of ridiculous fake products, including a gasoline-powered alarm clock and an air purifier consisting of a space heater with a feather duster on top. Other fake products, including a dehumidifier, dishwasher, and computer monitor, were accepted into the program with no questions asked about fake qualifications (i.e. energy efficiency data).

Does this mean we should question all Energy Star labels? No — most companies aren’t in the business of submitting fake products to the Energy Star program — but the auditing process does indicate that Energy Star officials accept qualifications without doing background research. The New York Times noted that the “ease with which the auditors had fooled the program suggested that consumers and agencies that rely on the logo were paying extra for products that might not actually save energy“.