Category: Energy

When I first read about Solar Roadways—super-tough solar panels with built-in LED signs designed to turn roads into power plants—I thought that they were never going to happen. Well, here’s a prototype. [Solar Roadways via GadgetReview] More »

From Green Right Now Reports

Image: Governors' Wind Energy Coalition

While there is no shortage of hot air swirling around various plans to harness wind energy to power our homes and businesses, a group of United States governors has hammered out a plan and is ready to take it all the way to the top.

On Tuesday, Iowa Governor Chet Culver and Rhode Island Governor Donald L. Carcieri released Great Expectations: U.S. Wind Energy Development, the Governors’ Wind Energy Coalition’s 2010 Recommendations. Culver and Carcieri are the chair and vice chair of the 29-state organization, which is attempting to shape a national policy to make wind power both viable and cost-effective.

The group formed over a year ago and began work on recommendations in December. The next step: Lobbying efforts to get a bill into Congress and on to President Barack Obama’s desk as soon as possible.

“We need all the clean and cost-effective resources we can generate. And we will only get there if we work together,” Culver said during a press conference called in conjunction with the report’s release. “Continued uncertainty will potentially cause the nation to surrender the industry to other countries. If China gets the job of supplying the U.S. wind industry, (jobs) could be lost forever.

“The good news is that we have increased wind generation dramatically over the past few years, but continued growth hinges on a more stable market. Given the immense advantages wind power provides to industry, consumers and the environment, it is clear that Congress must pass a strong federal renewable electricity policy so investors, developers and state policy makers are working together to achieve a common goal.”

Among the recommendations in the report:

• Adopt a renewable electricity standard (Known as  a RES, it sets benchmarks for the nation to reach a certain level of clean energy production by specific dates. Many believe that having a strong RES is the only way that clean energy technology can promise lenders and investors a measure of security, to show that the industry will not be buffeted by politics in the coming years.)
• Develop new interstate electric transmission system infrastructure as needed to provide access to premier renewable energy resources both on-shore and offshore
• Fully support coastal, deep water, and offshore wind energy technology and transmission research and development
• Streamline permitting processes for both offshore and on-shore wind energy development projects
• Expand the U.S. Department of Energy’s work with the states and the wind industry to accelerate innovation
• Extend the Treasury Department Grant Program in lieu of the Investment Tax Credit — providing immediate capital, and adopt a long-term renewable energy production tax credit with provisions to broaden the pool of eligible investors

“These recommendations could not be more timely,” Carcieri said. “Congressional action on the energy bill seems to have stalled. It is our hope that these recommendations — and the national bipartisan consensus they represent — will advance the energy deliberations now under way in Congress.”

Belarus Digest reports that Belarus plans to start importing oil from Venezuela to substitute for the country's oil dependency on Russia, which recently has caused strained relations between Minsk and Moscow.

Eco Factor: Energy-efficient way to produce hydrogen from waste energy.

Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have developed a novel way to generate hydrogen by breaking bonds of water using waste energy in the form of noise and stray vibrations. The scientists grew nanocrystals of two common crystals zinc oxide and barium titanate and placed them in water. When pulsed with ultrasonic vibrations, the nanofibers flexed and catalyzed a chemical reaction to split a water molecule into its constituents.

(more…)

What’s happening and what will happen in the water world in 2010. A look ahead as citizens, companies and nonprofits jockey for position.

Photo © Brent Stirton/Reportage for Getty Images/Circle of Blue

SALTON SEA, CALIFORNIA, AUGUST 2009: This slowly drying sea recedes as farmers save water, and and runoff levels drop. By 2030 people worldwide will withdraw more water than the planet can replenish.

By Andrew Maddocks
Circle of Blue

March 22, 2010 marks World Water Day, a 24-hour observance held annually since 1993 to draw attention to the role that freshwater plays in the world. In recent years it has focused global concern on the dwindling supply of clean water.

With governments from Australia to India feeling the heat of dryness like never before, multinational corporations pledging to become better global water citizens, and a multitude of nonprofit organizations gaining position in the councils of influence worldwide, the global freshwater crisis is steadily becoming a top public priority.

In January, global business and elected leaders assembled in Davos at the World Economic Forum learned one more striking fact that underlies international concern. By 2030, WEF experts said, people will withdraw 30 percent more water than nature can replenish. Unless practices for using and conserving water shift dramatically, shortages will hit communities and businesses, especially agriculture, which uses 70 percent of the world’s fresh water.

Here is some of what we expect in what promises to be a busy year in the world of water:

Contents

• Awareness and action
• Business of water
  1. Bottled Battles
  2. GE: One company’s approach, inside and out
  3. Water Disclosure Project
  4. United Nations CEO Water Mandate
• Water and Global Health

Awareness and Action

A team of researchers and advocates that includes the Global Water Partnership, Global Public Policy Network on Water Management, Stockholm International Water Institute and the Stakeholder Forum, have been working with hundreds of smaller groups to rally support for water’s role in international climate change negotiations this year.

The work was prompted by the disappointing outcome of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in December, when water was left out of the Copenhagen Accord. The non-binding agreement calls for modest action on global warming.

If the international climate treaty doesn’t better emphasize the water-climate intersection, people living in vulnerable coastal nations, such as the island of Maldives, and farmers facing volatile rainfall, such as those in Australia, will be unprepared to face major catastrophes, Stakeholder Forum Policy Coordinator Hannah Stoddart told Circle of Blue.

At the international level, Stoddart and her team work directly with UN officials, and also are coordinating an unofficial international water day in Bonn, Germany in June. They are arranging high-level round table discussions that will rally more support for water issues in the months leading up to the next climate change summit in December, in Mexico.

“The eventual goal is for a recognition on an international level that there are currently no operational international treaties addressing water issues specifically,” Stoddart said. “We’re at the beginning of quite a long journey.”

Garnering local support is an important component of making sure the issue gains global prominence, according to marketing experts who work on environmental issues.

“It’s so hard to make people realize that they have a connection to the issue, to the sources of the problem,” said Joel Finkelstein a senior vice president and head of the environment team for Fenton Communications, a U.S.-based firm.

Water offers an even bigger challenge in some ways, he added. It’s still extremely difficult to illustrate the consequences of our current water consumption in countries like the U.S., where citizens can turn on the tap without thinking twice.

But the consequences of water scarcity are more powerfully conveyed through emotional stories than statistical reports. And Finkelstein believes that social media promises new ways to humanize water and environmental issues.

“Geography’s going to mean a different thing,” Finkelstein said. “It’s really important to tell local [water] stories with local impacts.”


Business of Water


Bottled Battles

A drop in industry sales and the greening plans of Olympics host cities like Vancouver and London indicates that the battle between bottled water and tap water may be on the verge of greater international attention.

The battle is the subject of the upcoming book, “Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water,” by Pacific Institute President and Circle of Blue contributor Peter Gleick. Grassroots efforts like Food & Water Watch’s Take Back the Tap campaign, and a trans-Pacific voyage in a boat built entirely from plastic beverage bottles, raised awareness.

Water has become one of the highest earning commercial products of the last 100 years, earning tens of billions of dollars in annual sales, according to the publisher’s Web site. Millions of plastic bottles are thrown away almost as quickly as they’re produced each year; 86 percent are not recycled.

According to the consumer rights group Food & Water Watch, plastic bottle production requires 17.6 million barrels of oil and 2.7 million tons of plastic annually. Incinerating the bottles releases toxic byproducts.

Gleick’s columns and Pacific Institute reports have consistently addressed the environmental, cultural and cost concerns of a bottled water lifestyle. In a recent column, Gleick highlighted consumer revolts curbing the rise of bottled water sales. A Worldwatch Institute report released in late February found that the growth rate of bottled water consumption in 2008, while still positive, had dropped.

GE: One company’s approach, inside and out

Many of the world’s largest companies face a tug of war over water use internally and within their communities. This trend will expand, predicts Jeff Fulgham, chief marketing officer at General Electric. GE, a company that earned $30 billion last year and whose business units run the gamut from coal-fired electricity turbines to a water infrastructure division, is looking at water efficiency system-wide.

In the past few years the world — and many of its largest companies — has reached a tipping point over water, Fulgham said.

Global demand is exceeding supply. That imbalance is greater in some parts of the world than others.


Graphic courtesy UNEP
Pictured above: A 2007 graphic of global water availability. Deep blue regions have the most freshwater available per person per year, orange regions have the least. Click to Enlarge

The numbers are numbing — at 4,500 billion cubic meters, global demand for water already exceeds supply. By 2030 demand for water will grow to 6,900 billion cubic meters, leaving 40 percent supply gaps in some areas, according to a 2009 McKinsey report.

GE, only one of the companies aggressively assessing future water supply risks, addresses this gap in its internal water use and interactions with a spectrum of clients that need home appliances, jet engines or nuclear power plants. The company aims to reduce its water use by 25 percent by 2015.

As GE tries to reduce its overall water consumption, two other key issues further define the company’s approach to water management — quality and pricing.

“It’s the same basic factors we were looking at four years ago, but on steroids,” Fulgham said. Some industries are using poor-quality water, while others are facing more stringent regulations, especially on the discharge side, he added.

“They’re pinched in the middle,” Fulgham said.

At the same time some companies and consumers aren’t paying enough for their water, Fulgham said, to reflect how scarce the resource is.

“Customers aren’t feeling a cost for water, so it’s tough to get them to spend any money to improve their situation,” he said.

Meanwhile weak government regulations have let water quality deteriorate in some places, such as Eastern Europe and the developing world. Multiplying demand, deteriorating quality, and disconnected pricing are draining major water reserves.

Fulgham said GE is using a three-pronged approach to respond internally and through its customers: conservation, water re-use technologies and desalination.

Desalination, which until recently was cited by many as a panacea for supplying drinking water in dry nations, may be reaching the limits of practicality. It is energy intensive and expensive. Since newer technologies can’t guarantee success, GE is emphasizing conservation measures and clean, efficient water re-use.

GE, like other corporations, is upgrading its appliances, water re-use and treatment equipment. It’s also updating its manufacturing, energy, appliance and real estate holdings.

Fulgham said he’d like to tackle excessive water use in agriculture. Minimizing the flow of water through farms could intervene directly in what he calls the “vicious cycle” of water, reducing consumption and pollution at the same time. His company also cultivates talent in Ivy League and top engineering school programs related to water, the environment, and business.

Human rights related to water are a “huge deal,” Fulgham said. GE is working with its own foundation, global peers like the Gates and Tata Foundations, entrepreneurs and appropriate technologies for water-deprived areas to build sustainable programs in the neediest areas.

Read more from Circle of Blue’s conversation with Fulgham here.


The CDP Water Disclosure Project in 2010

——— February – March	Companies review and sign water disclosure questionnaire.
——— April 1	Questionnaire sent to approximately 300 of largest corporations in water-intensive sectors globally.
——— July 31	Deadline for companies to respond to questionnaire.
——— October – December	Findings launched through CDP Water Disclosure.

In a measure of global corporate attention on freshwater issues, 300 corporations in water intensive industries and high-risk areas have pledged to release detailed information about their water usage through the Carbon Disclosure Project. CDP is an independent British non-profit founded ten years ago to help organizations measure and disclose their greenhouse gas emissions. It also creates strategies to help deal with climate change. Now CDP is applying its emissions model to water.

The first stage of the new program starts April 1 when CDP will survey 300 member companies. The results, which CDP plans to release by the end of 2010, will give the companies and their investors new tools to analyze water-related risks and bottom line opportunities.

Marcus Norton, head of the water disclosure program, said the survey’s broad acceptance is a sign that companies are beginning to understand water is an important part of their supply chain.

“Companies will need to operate in a water-constrained world,” Norton said. “Investors will be very interested in knowing that it’s a part of their long-term planning.”

The questionnaire has three general categories: water management and governance, water-related risks, and metrics. The first group of questions asks how companies deal with various parties, from governments to local groups, connected to a water supply. Investors, Norton said, want to know companies are anticipating the dangers of operating in water-scarce regions.

Metrics is the most challenging category to survey because there’s no global standard for water measurement. Gathering exhaustive data could put an overwhelming burden on companies.

Norton said CDP designed the survey to collect meaningful data that doesn’t create an excessive reporting burden. While it’s a “rocky” process that will develop over many years, companies have no incentive to mislead shareholders, Norton said.

Useful data is harder to gather about water than greenhouse gases. Carbon emissions have the same affect on London as they do on Michigan. Water information is most valuable when localized down to the watershed level because conditions can be so variable.

“Until you look at that I don’t think the data is truly meaningful,” Norton said.

Norton will use the survey’s first year to explore ways the survey should expand. He wants to prioritize two additional categories: the largest, most water-intensive companies and the regions with the worst water scarcity.

“This is an iterative process of improvement,” Norton said. “We’ll be developing modules for different industries and sectors.”

Norton thinks this project will advance global awareness of the water crisis in the coming years.

“I’ve heard people describe us with water as where we were with carbon and climate change five years ago.”

United Nations CEO Water Mandate

Started by the United Nations in 2007, the voluntary CEO Water Mandate is designed as a public-private venture to help companies develop, implement and disclose water sustainability in their supply chains. In the long term, the CEO Water Mandate hopes its efforts will help mitigate the effects of the global water crisis.

Companies that sign the mandate pledge to analyze and reform six key water management areas:

* Direct operations
* Supply chain and watershed management
* Collective action
* Public policy
* Community engagement
* Transparency

Beverage industry giants PepsiCo, Coca-Cola and Nestlé have signed on, along with more than 50 others. The Pacific Institute, Circle of Blue’s parent organization, manages the program.

But not everyone supports the mandate. An active community is skeptical of corporate involvement.

Corporate Accountability International, a grassroots watchdog organization, calls the CEO Mandate — among other corporate initiatives — a public relations effort by for-profit corporations to gain control over the world’s water resources and services.

“Corporations like Coca-Cola, Suez and Nestlé are trying to turn water into a high-priced commodity, the oil of the 21st century,” said CAI in a statement. “This presents a grave threat to people’s access to water. The United Nations needs to stand up for public, democratic control of a resource that is essential to life.”

In addition, more than 125 organizations in 35 countries urged UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to withdraw the UN’s support for the mandate. Tony Clarke of the Polaris Institute, a Canadian-based political think tank, noted during a side event to the World Economic Forum earlier this year that the CEO water mandate is a “thinly veiled public relations effort by for-profit corporations to gain greater control over water resources and services around the world.”

Pacific Institute Program Director Jason Morrison told Circle of Blue he objects strongly to the assertions.

“There’s a lot of evidence we’re shown that this is not a public relations exercise,” Morrison said. “In fact, I would challenge anyone to find an initiative, focusing on the private sector, that has done more in the last two years to define what corporate water stewardship means in practice than the UN CEO Water Mandate.”

The mandate has been unusually successful, Morrison said, in pushing companies to identify water-related impacts and risks throughout their operations. It also places a major emphasis on transparency of water-related data in companies.

Morrison pointed to a study called “Murky Waters? Corporate Reporting on Water Risk” by the Ceres investor coalition, Bloomberg and UBS Financial Services as an independent measure of success. The study ranked companies’ disclosure of water data across different sectors. While the mandate did not cover all the sectors, its companies ranked among the highest in the study.

The mandate also defends human rights and the democratic water regulatory process, Morrison said. The Pacific Institute helped draft a responsible engagement and public policy document for companies that’s undergoing a month-long public review. It pushes companies to consider a range of groups its water policy affects, and guides company relationships to serve their best interests.

While Morrison believes the mandate’s success in reforming the private sector is unparalleled and has ongoing potential, he pointed out that some groups would rather not deal with the private sector at all.

“There are others, myself included, that hold the view that because industry uses such a large amount of water, it would be to everyone’s benefit if they were better stewards of that water,” Morrison said.

It’s nearly impossible to get through a day — especially in America — without using an industrial, water-intensive product. Morrison sees that as a call to action and a validation of the mandate.

Water and Global Health

While companies assess risks and look for ways to conserve, scarce and polluted water supplies remain one of the world’s greatest public health challenges. More children die every day from a lack of clean water, sanitation and hygiene than from AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined, while 20 other potentially fatal diseases can be reduced if water access was better, according to the World Health Organization.

Such widespread fatal illness could severely limit the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, which form the pillars of the UN’s sustainable development program and are widely seen as benchmarks by which world progress or decline is measured.

A study by the Japan Water Forum in 2005 found that seven of eight U.N. goals heavily depend on access to clean water for success. According to the study, up to 50 percent of the success rate depends on access to clean water.

“We can’t accomplish these goals if people are sick repeatedly, or if women are out hauling water two to three hours every day,” said David Douglas, founder and executive director of Water Advocates, a Washington-based nonprofit group focused exclusively on raising funds and awareness for water-related health issues.

Douglas says he’s motivated by the staggering number of deaths tied directly to water, and the broader, indirect threats limited resource supplies pose to development.

Water Advocates, which will dissolve this year, is hoping for several pieces of its advocacy work to fall into place before it closes.

“Whatever the outcome of this year, we’ll have plenty of voices to keep going,” Douglas said.


Photo © UN Water

The research, he says, offers no other interpretation: Water and sanitation-related diseases must be on par in global attention and funding with AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis. Right now they are barely mentioned in government spending negotiations, Douglas said, adding that he hopes the U.S. will allocate $500 million in 2011 to tackle water-related health problems in the developing world.

The immensely diverse global water challenges — health, business sustainability, climate impact, agriculture, gender equality, human rights, infrastructure development and repair, to name just a few — form a swarm of intersecting complexities that, says Douglas, will define the success or failure of development in the coming years.

Andrew Maddocks is a reporter for Circle of Blue working from the Traverse City, Michigan newsroom. Reach Maddocks at [email protected]

Form, meet function. The 42-story Strata Building—also known by its much cooler nickname, “The Razor“—will get 8% of its energy from three wind turbines built into its façade. Hope no one builds a 43-story building next door. More »

Over the past three years, the idea of using silicon in lithium-ion batteries to greatly increase energy storage capacity has been an on-again, off-again proposition. But some new announcements by different groups of researchers working on silicon-based lithium-ion batteries indicate that silicon may well be a viable charge-holding battery material.

If so, electric cars with a thousand miles of range are in striking distance.

(more…)

From Green Right Now Reports

Image: Chevron Energy Solutions

Difficult times call for innovative ideas, and the San Francisco Bay Area may be a cleaner place as a result. Faced with dwindling revenues and budget cuts, the San Jose Unified School District once again turns to renewable energy, breaking ground March 11 on a 3.7 MW solar project to be installed over six school sites.

When the sites come online later this year, the district anticipates saving more than $1.5 million in electric utility costs the first year, $7.6 million over five years and $36 million over the life of the project. Those figures are based on lower electricity costs, state incentives and sale of renewable energy credits.

The project also is expected to reduce carbon emissions by some 3,100 metric tons per year.

Chevron Energy Solutions will build and maintain the system, which could employ about 100 local union contractors. Previously, Chevron and the district worked together on a 2008 project that produced a 5.5 MW installation at 14 district sites.

“Our schools will all benefit from these savings, especially in these tough economic times when they’re needed most,” East Side Union High School District Interim Superintendent Dan Moser said in a press release. “Also, this project reduces our carbon footprint and allows us to incorporate solar into our teaching curriculum so our teachers and students can learn about renewable energy technologies firsthand.”

The installation also will help students learn about solar energy, as teachers use hands-on solar kits and activity guides in the classroom.

BP's new deal with Devon Energy to bring its dormant Kirby oilsands project to life, will help BP fill up its Whiting refinery and result in oil sands production of more than 200 thousand barrels per day by 2020, says UBS analyst Jon Rigby.

Last week, BP acquired Devon Energy's international assets in Brazil,
Azerbaijan and the deepwater Gulf of Mexico for $7-billion, but Devon also agreed to acquire a 50% stake in BP’s dormant Kirby oilsands acreage in Athabasca for $500 million, with Devon becoming the operator.

BP and Devon have also agreed to enter into a longterm off-take agreement for heavy oil production from the Kirby development as well as a portion of the production from some of Devon's other oil sands assets. Kirby lies near Devon's existing Jackfish development.

"BP’s ongoing upgrade at its Whiting refinery (due for completion in 2012) will significantly increase the refinery’s capacity to process the heavy crude from these projects and BP’s strategic aim is to achieve a balanced portfolio of upstream and downstream interests covering the Canadian oil sands (but not mining) and the two northern refineries Whiting and Toledo," Mr. Rigby said in a note clients.

He said there are likely to be further deals by BP to fill up the Whiting refinery.

David Pett

Something "momentous" is expected to happen at when EnCana Corp. hosts its investor day in Calgary on Tuesday, with one analyst predicting a new natural gas play to be introduced.

"As signaled on its year end conference call, we believe it is likely that EnCana will reveal another emerging natural gas play," Greg Pardy with RBC Capital Markets said in a note to clients. "The whereabouts remain unknown, but we would wager western Canada."

The company currently holds US$4.3-billion in cash and equivalents, with the potential for anywhere from US$ 500-million to US$1.5-billion worth of investment opportunities in the pipeline, Mr. Pardy said.

He also expects EnCana to cut its Henry Hub natural gas price, which is at US$6.50 per thousand cubic feet, by as much as US$1/mcf. Henry Hub is the delivery point for natural gas futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Mr. Pardy said this would be necessary to maintain a cost structure advantage while dealing with headwinds caused by "abundant" shale gas growth. 

He maintains an Outperform rating with average risk and target price of US$39 for EnCana.

Eric Lam

Tonight at 2am, remember to set your clock an hour forward. Look forward to both more sunlight at the end of the day and unfortunately, an earlier rise to work. Wikipedia explains why: More »

Luke Timmerman wrote:

There’s a billion-dollar-a-year research operation in the middle of Washington state, with 4,600 staff, working on some of the biggest energy challenges in the world. Yet very few of the locals know a thing about it. And while it hasn’t solved the world’s energy woes, people should start counting on breakthroughs to emerge from there, according to one of the lab’s leaders.

“You should have some high expectations of us,” said J. Michael Davis, the associate laboratory director in the Energy and Environment Directorate at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, WA. “If you were to pull people over driving along I-5 and ask them about PNNL, they’d say, ‘What’s PNNL?’ But we spend a lot of tax dollars. We should have some high expectations.”

Davis made his remarks this morning during a wide-ranging talk at the Technology Alliance’s Science & Technology Discovery Series at the Rainier Club in downtown Seattle. This was not the usual fundraising commercial I expected from a senior manager at a government agency. It was more like a sobering, hour-long reminder of what a lousy job the country has done over the past three decades to meet energy needs, along with an update on some of what the lab is doing to make a difference.

At the most basic level, everything is going up—demand for energy, U.S. dependence on imported oil, and carbon emissions around the world. While this has been happening over the past 30 years, national labs like PNNL have allowed a lot of researchers to pursue their curiosity independently, without really being mobilized together in a strategic way.

J. Michael Davis

“It’s the ‘let 1,000 flowers bloom model,’” Davis said. “We were not focused on large challenges. Everybody would do their own thing. Did some good things come out of it? Surely. But we’re not solving the big problems fast enough.”

There are some daunting barriers in the way. The U.S. has 3,200 utility service areas with distinct physical and regulatory boundaries, Davis said. This isn’t, as you might imagine, a very efficient way to collect broad, real-time information about power supply and demand around the country. To make real progress, capital, technology, and policy all need to be rowing together in the same direction, and to hear Davis talk, they aren’t all in sync yet. (You can hear him talk about this a little more in this clip on YouTube.)

“What if you had 3,200 Internets?” Davis said. “We’re trying to improve the system without a consensus of what is needed, and where to focus.”

One of the big issues is with managing the demand side of energy. The public utilities of generations ago established a mandate to provide an abundant supply of reliable electricity, without much regard to managing the demand side of the equation from consumers. That’s where the “smart grid” comes into play. The concept is that if consumers could get real-time information on their energy usage, and pricing, they’d probably be more likely to run the dryer at, say, 9 or 10 pm so they could save money by using cheaper energy at non-peak times. This is going to take a lot of getting used to for many consumers, as my San Diego colleague Bruce Bigelow pointed out earlier this week.

So what kind of progress is coming from the PNNL on the smart grid? Davis didn’t say anything to knock me out of my chair. But the lab is part of a five-year, $178 million smart grid demonstration project that includes Bonneville Power Administration, a dozen utilities, and 60,000 customers in five states.

Energy storage is one of the lab’s priorities of late, Davis says. While a traditional coal or nuclear plant can churn out a steady, continuous stream of electricity to meet demand, renewables like wind and solar are naturally bound to fluctuate a lot more when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing. That’s where storage can even out the peaks and valleys, to make renewables more reliable. “We need to know how to integrate those resources, and even them out,” Davis said.

Toward the end of his talk, Davis referenced how the lab has the ability to carve out $50 million out of the overhead portion of its $1 billion budget, and set it aside for projects with breakthrough potential. It’s like a venture capital fund that researchers at the PNNL compete for internally, but “you don’t have to walk far to get,” he said. But he made it sound like researchers will be awarded for projects that think big, and are focused on the big ideas that could make a difference for the average citizen driving down I-5 every day.

“Our job is not to make things 10 percent better,” Davis said. “We have to take new risks, and try breakthrough approaches. A national lab is the perfect place for this.”

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From Green Right Now Reports

Image: Pike Research

With Americans focusing more and more on streamlining their energy consumption and reducing costs, microgrids may become an increasing part of the solution. Smart integration that can allow communities, companies or institutions to operate “off the grid” is not only attractive, but is rapidly becoming a genuine alternative.

Microgrids are “islanded” power generation and distribution zones that operate autonomously from the larger electrical grid. A new report from Pike Research predicts that more than 3 GW of new microgrid capacity will be come online globally by 2015 at a total investment of $7.8 billion. The firm expects more than 2,000 sites to be operational worldwide by 2015, up from fewer than 100 in 2010.

Pike sees North America as the biggest player, accounting for 74 percent of industry capacity. Researchers anticipate that most of that will come in the form of institutional microgrids, followed by commercial/industrial and community grids.

In Europe and Asia Pacific, community microgrids are forecast as the largest categories.

As the current top-down system becomes increasingly unreliable and insecure and isn’t always friendly to renewable power generation, microgrids may gain appeal, with the potential to be part of a larger effort to create a Smart Grid that can add intelligence and automation while giving customers greater control over consumption.

“The distinguishing feature of a microgrid is the ability to separate and isolate itself from the utility’s distribution system during brownouts and blackouts,” says Pike Research managing director Clint Wheelock. “This degree of localized control is compelling for many microgrid proponents during this time of increasing concern over grid reliability.”

Each year, senior energy policymakers and industry leaders from over 55 countries convene at CERAWeek — which concludes today — to gain insights into the future of energy. Yesterday, Steve Bolze, President and CEO of GE Power & Water, was part of the Climate Change, Environment and Technology panel at CERA — which is the acronym for the sponsor, IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates. Stressing the need for strong policies to drive clean energy markets, Steve told the group there’s a clean energy technology economy that’s emerging — and that countries that move quickly to seize the opportunities will reap the rewards. In the video interview immediately below, Steve discusses the new economic environment.

The clean energy economy: Click on the image above to watch a video interview with Steve on CERA’s website.

As Steve says, right now China and the EU are leading the global race, because they have government policies and standards in place to promote the adoption of clean energy technology. These countries, he explained, have aligned policy with innovation to drive clean energy on a large scale — which in turn is helping to create jobs. The reason? Because strong policy targets help to signal the market that long-term investments in clean energy technologies are sound investments.

Steve — who also called in from the conference in Houston last night — also provides a recap of the meeting in the audio clip below:

The focus on clean energy is certainly timely — and a subject that lands GE on the coveted cover of the April issue of Popular Science magazine.

A gutsy view: Click on the cover image to see the two-page spread on GE’s next-generation offshore wind turbine that’s featured in the “How it Works” story in Popular Science. Photos courtesy of Popular Science

The magazine split open “13 amazing machines” to explain the technologies, which also include an electric bullet, a robotic moon rocket, “a drill to the center of the earth,” and GE’s new offshore wind turbine. The “gearless turbine” can “slash the need for costly repairs at sea,” the writers note. The technology is also combined with blades that are 176-feet long — which is over half the length of an American football field and about “40 percent longer than the average.”

Click on the cover image to see the detailed cutaways and explanations. You can read about the other 12 “amazing machines” when the issue hits newsstands on March 16.

Learn more in these GE Reports stories and videos:
* “GE’s offshore technology expands with ScanWind buy”
* “Blade runners: How 134-foot wind blades are born”
* “Blade runners: GE’s wind blade breezes into town”
* “Took a whole lot of trying, just to get up that hill”

* “Renewables study: 274,000 jobs can be added”
* “Europe’s largest onshore wind farm expands with GE”
* “Builder of largest US wind farm inks $1.4B turbine deal”
* “GE’s giant wind turbines set to debut in Sweden”
* Watch Steve Bolze’s talk at the “From Used to Useful” water summit
* Read more GE Reports stories about our energy business
* Read more renewable energy stories on GE Reports

Filed under: Health, Healthy Eating, How I Stay Fit

You might think your fridge and pantry are stocked with healthy items, but are you eating enough “real food.” We asked Dana Joy Altman, founder of the blog Real Food Rehab, to explain how eating real food changed her life and to dispense some advice on how to eat better.

Q: Why did you start Real Food Rehab?

A: I started Real Food Rehab with a desire to help people make a pleasurable transition from processed foods back to real foods and do it in a way that didn’t feel oppressive. I wanted to approach it without judgment and without “shoulds.” I also had a strong desire to write in my own voice. I had been doing PR and writing branding copy for years – essentially furthering other people’s creative projects, when what I really wanted to do was further my own. It was liberating to finally be able to do that. Over time, I also decided it was important for me to write about my own process in discovering how to be the most authentic version of myself that I could be, so I incorporate lots of ideas on how to live a richer and more fulfilling life.

Q: What do you mean when you say “real food”?

Continue reading Are You Eating Enough ‘Real Food’?

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Via ClimateProgress:

China finds itself awash in wind turbine factories

China’s massive investment in wind turbines, fueled by its government’s renewable energy goals, has caused the value of the turbines to tumble more than 30 percent from 2004 levels, the vice president of Shanghai Electric Group Corp. said yesterday.

There are now “too many plants,” Lu Yachen said, noting that China is idling as much as 40 percent of its turbine factories.

The surge in turbine investments came in response to China’s goal to increase its power production capacity from wind fivefold in 2020.

The problem is that there are power grid constraints, said Dave Dai, an analyst with CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets, noting that construction is slowed because of that obstacle. Currently, only part of China’s power grid is able to accept delivery of electricity produced by renewable energy. “The issues with the grid aren’t expected to ease in the near term,” he said. Still, they “should improve with the development of smart-grid investment over time.”

The constraints may leave as much as 4 gigawatts of windpower generation capacity lying idle, Sunil Gupta, managing director for Asia and head of clean energy at Morgan Stanley, concluded in November.

China has the third-largest windpower market by generating capacity, Shanghai Electric’s Yachen said.

It’s tempting to say that the grid capacity is a typical coordination failure of centrally planned economies. Maybe so, but there are certainly similar failures in market economies – Montana gas producers are currently pipeline-constrained, and the rush to gas in California in the deregulation/Enron days was hardly a model of coordination. (Then again, electric power is hardly a free market.)

The real problem, of course, is that coal gets a free ride in China – as in most of the world – so that the incentives to solve the transmission problem for wind just aren’t there.