Category: Energy

The Obama Administration announced this week new biofuel rules for a Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS2). The EPA will calculate greenhouse gas emissions from biofuels in the following way:

– Corn-based ethanol with international indirect land use included: 21 percent reduction.
– Corn-based ethanol without that land use included: 52 percent.
– Cellulosic ethanol: between 72 and 130 percent reduction, depending upon feedstock and conversion process.

According to the EPA rules, by 2012, “at least 7.5 billion gallons of renewable fuel must be blended into motor-vehicle fuel sold in America.”

image source: Danish center for biofuels

via autobloggreen

A Long Island family was nearly incapacitated after a local energy company mistakenly delivered oil into a disconnected pipe on the front of their house, dumping nearly 50 gallons of heating oil into their basement.

The house filled with nauseous fumes and the father rushed himself and his pregnant wife and four and a half year old daughter to a nearby relative’s. The intake valve was a leftover from when the house was converted from oil to natural gas. The fire department recommends filling these pipes with concrete or removing them entirely to prevent these types of incidents.

Liability for the accident lies with the driver, but good lucking finding him. All they have is that it was a “white truck with blue lettering” that sped away from the scene.

L.I. Home Heated By Natural Gas Gets Oil Delivery! [wcbstv] (Thanks to William!)

Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:

While venture investments in cleantech startups declined last year, technology advances in renewable energy remain a hot area of interest for both cleantech innovators and investors. In an effort to gain a better understanding of the solar energy market, especially in the photovoltaic segment of the industry, I sought insights from Mike Hall, the CEO of El Cajon, CA-based Borrego Solar Systems.

Borrego is a fast-growth company that finances, designs, and installs grid-connected photovoltaic solar systems. Much of Borrego Solar’s business is concentrated in New England and California. Before getting to our Q&A, however, a little background is in order.

Borrego Solar Systems was a dormant, 20-year-old business when Aaron Hall, a senior at Northwestern University, developed a venture business plan for the small solar company as part of an undergraduate entrepreneurship class. A Hall family friend, San Diego State University physics professor James Rickard, had started the company in 1980, in part to install a solar system on his off-the-grid home in Borrego Springs, a small desert town east of San Diego. Rickard liked Hall’s business plan so much that he sold half the business to Hall, who took over at Borrego shortly after his 2001 graduation. They each put in $20,000 to restart the company.

Since then, Hall says the company, which is based in the San Diego suburb of El Cajon, CA, has grown into one of the nation’s top five contractors specializing in designing and installing grid-connected photovoltaic solar systems. With more than 165 employees in seven offices nationwide, Borrego Solar says it has installed more than 1,000 photovoltaic systems.

Last year, Inc. magazine named Borrego Solar to its list of “Fastest-Growing Private Companies” for the third year in a row. Inc. ranked Borrego Solar at No. 321 in the magazine’s 2009 list of 500 fastest-growing companies, based …Next Page »

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From Green Right Now Reports

Photo: SunEdison.com

Residents in Davidson County, N.C. will be getting more of their power from the sun after SunEdison activated the first phase of a 16-megawatt solar farm there.

The initial phase is comprised of 14,000 solar panels designed to produce four megawatts of generation capacity. Over six million kilowatt hours of electricity are expected in the first year of operation.

Duke Energy is buying the farm’s entire output with a 20-year contract. Over the length of the agreement, the farm is expected to generate 115 million kilowatt hours of electricity, enough to power 10,000 average homes for a year. That production should offset more than 225 million pounds of carbon dioxide that otherwise would have been introduced into the environment by a traditional coal-burning plant.

“This first phase represents a major milestone in our overall plan to develop 16 megawatts of solar energy at this site,” said SunEdison President Carlos Domenech. “Having financed and completed this initial installation, we have mobilized resources for the next phase of the solar farm.”

The farm is one of several North American utility-scale power plants that SunEdison has financed and developed, and now operates. In all, the company lists 322 operational sites in the U.S., mostly in California and on the East Coast.

Copyright © 2010 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

A new study released today suggests that 274,000 additional jobs can be added to the U.S. economy if the country sets a goal of having 25 percent of its electricity generated from renewable energy sources such as biomass, hydropower, solar, waste-to-energy and wind. An industry coalition that represents the largest renewable energy industries in the U.S. commissioned the “Job Impacts of a National Renewable Electricity Standard (RES)” research, which was conducted by independent firm Navigant Consulting, Inc. Traditional manufacturing states –- and states in the Southeast that have traditionally leaned toward coal for power generation — stand to benefit the most, the study found.

The RES Alliance, which includes GE among its members, says a stronger national standard would support hundreds of thousands of new American jobs and prevent a near-term collapse in some industries. With a 25 percent Renewable Electricity Standard, or RES, by 2025, every state will see renewable electricity supported job growth, the study found. Click on the image to enlarge it and to view the footnotes.

As USA Today reports in its story today, “Unlike three dozen other countries, including China, the U.S. doesn’t have a national standard to drive use of renewable energy, although it’s being debated in Congress.” Although 30 states have renewable standards, the alliance told the paper that “state standards are often unenforceable and lack the punch of a national standard that would more forcefully drive use of renewables. That would entice companies to put manufacturing and operations in the U.S. as opposed to other countries, they say.”

The chart above show’s the study’s analysis of job creation in renewables industries if a 12 percent, 20 percent, and 25 percent standard were adopted. Job growth in the biomass, waste-to-energy and hydropower industries would particularly benefit the Southeastern U.S., the study found. Click the chart to enlarge it.

* Read the full study
* Learn more about the RES Alliance
* Read “Renewable energy commitment could double jobs” in USA Today

The study found that direct jobs in the renewable electricity industry are focused in construction and manufacturing, but span many sectors. Click the chart to enlarge it.

The release of the study results come just as GE officially dedicated a $45 million Renewable Energy Global Headquarters in Schenectady, New York this week. The new facility spurred the creation of more than 650 new jobs in Schenectady, 150 more than originally anticipated and a year ahead of schedule.

Green hornet: A 48-kilowatt GE solar system installed nearby helps to power the building. It also meets federal Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green building standards. Victor Abate, vice president, renewable energy for GE Power & Water, said the new HQ is “an important symbol of the rapid growth and success of our renewable energy business. When we entered the wind energy industry in 2002, it was a $200 million business for us. Today it has grown significantly, with revenues topping $6 billion.”

The big board: A state-of-the-art Remote Operations Center at the headquarters is one of two global facilities that provides continuous monitoring and diagnostic services for GE’s installed base of wind turbines and solar power electronics. As the local Daily Gazette described it: “The heart of the facility is its operations center, where employees monitor far-flung wind turbines from computer stations 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Each employee is responsible for some 750 wind turbines. Generally, an employee can troubleshoot a turbine problem from the work station. For more complex problems, ‘we can pull in 150 engineers here to diagnose it,’ Abate said. In some cases, GE sends in mobile engineers to the site, which are often remote locations, to fix problems.”

Look familiar? GE Reports readers surely recognize this giant wind turbine blade, which is now permanently installed at the new HQ. We chronicled the massive blade’s highway journey across the U.S. from its Iowa construction facility in our “Blade Runners” video series. The dedication ceremony also marked the installation of GE’s 13,500th wind turbine globally. Together, they generate enough electricity to power nearly 6 million U.S. homes. GE is the largest supplier of wind turbines in North America, and the company’s 1.5-megawatt wind turbine is the most widely used wind turbine in the world.

* Read the Renewable Energy HQ announcement
* Watch “Blade runners: How 134-foot wind blades are born” on GE Reports
* Watch “Blade runners: GE’s wind blade breezes into town” on GE Reports
* Watch “Took a whole lot of trying, just to get up that hill” on GE Reports
* Read more GE Reports stories about our energy business

Greenwire: NRG Energy Inc., one of Delaware’s largest industrial polluters, struck a deal with state regulators that will require it to shut down three of its four Indian River Power Plant generating units by 2013 in exchange for being allowed to continue to use one of its turbines without air emissions scrubbers for three more years.

A 2009 court order had mandated the shutdown of two of the plant’s turbines by 2011 and required the scrubber installation on a third turbine.

In return for being allowed to operate the third unit for three more years without the added cost of scrubber installation, NRG agreed to shutter the third unit in 2013 and focus on modernizing its newest turbine, which would be the only one operating after that date.

The old generating units withdraw thousands of gallons of cooling water — as well as fish and crab larvae — each day. The new unit operates with a cooling tower, so large volumes of water won’t need to be extracted daily from area waterways.

The closure of the three older generating units is also expected to improve the air quality in an area that one study concluded had a 30 percent higher incidence rate for lung cancer. Researchers still have reached no firm conclusions about the cause of the apparent cancer cluster.

The closures are “probably going to be one of the greatest improvements in the health of the Inland Bays in 50 years,” said Collin O’Mara, secretary of the state Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (Molly Murray, Wilmington News Journal, Feb. 2). – DFM

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Wade Roush wrote:

Powerhouse Dynamics, a home energy usage monitoring startup in Newton, MA, raised $225,000 last spring and let slip to journalists in November that it was raising more. Now there’s confirmation of that: the company has closed a $1.02 million financing round, according to a February 2 regulatory filing. According to a Powerhouse announcement, The round was led by Lexington, MA-based CommonAngels, whose managing director, Chris Sheehan, has joined the board. Also joining the board is Data General founder Edson de Castro, and the company has hired sales veteran Gene Cornfield as vice president of marketing and business development and longtime engineering and manufacturing executive Ben Sprachman as vice president of engineering.

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If you want to “green” your news reading, just go online, right? Ditch that dirty, landfill-clogging paper. Not so fast, argues Sarah Westervelt, environmental expert and activist. In a recent article on The Dead Tree Edition, Westervelt said that she was “too informed about what’s going to happen to my computer when I’m done with it” to feel good about reading Web news and gave a number of compelling reasons that newspapers are actually the greener choice.

Among her reasons for rejecting e-news, as reported by The Dead Tree Edition, the toxic materials contained in electronic devices and a complex waste cycle (including more than a dozen plastics in each), combined with not enough value in re-use to make recycling the parts non-economical. Paper, on the other hand, comes from a renewable resource, doesn’t contain the toxic materials, and is highly recyclable.

The post is a great read, and it certainly makes you think about the consequences of our wired world. (Some of the arguments that have been made against Apple’s new iPad.)

At the same time — and while I cannot disagree with Westervelt’s facts — this argument really only works if it’s an either-or proposition. (more…)

Erin Kutz wrote:

1366 Technologies, a Lexington, MA-based company developing more efficient photovoltaic panels, has raised a $5.2 million Series B round from North Bridge Venture Partners and Polaris Venture Partners, says company president Frank van Mierlo. An SEC filing puts the total offering amount for the round at $6.2 million, but van Mierlo says the round closed at $5.2 million, with $5 million coming from the venture firms and the remainder coming from investments by 1366 management. He says investors were spurred by funding 1366 received from the U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Projects Research Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) program, which looks to fund innovations in energy efficiency.

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The so-called Great Recession hit crude markets hard because with industrial activity slowing down, the need for massive amounts of energy dipped. Now a recovery is emerging, but the oil markets may not recover in sync with the overall markets.

Global demand for crude in 2009 ended 0.3% over its 2008 level, but compared to 2007, it was down about 2%, according to Dina Cover, an economist at TD Bank.

“With consumption still quite weak, there is plenty of oil to go around,” the number-cruncher said. Total global production increased by 1.6% in the fourth quarter, and was 1.3 million barrels per day greater than demand. “In fact, after showing great improvement through most of 2009, the supply-demand balance shot up dramatically during the last two months of the year.”

Global inventories are at 95 days supply, compared to the five-year average of 86 days. 

“What's more, OPEC [the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries] spare capacity jumped from 1.5 million barrels per day to 4.4 million barrels per day in 2009, and is expected to continue to increase through 2011 to nearly 6 million barrels per day as new capacity comes online.”

Put it all together and despite a rebound in demand for oil, the excess supply, coupled with increasing capacity, will keep the lid on crude prices. TD predicts oil to stick around $80 per barrel in 2010, and climb to U$85 in 2011.

Carrie Tait

Shares in Suncor Energy Corp. fell almost 6% on Tuesday after the oilsands giant, struggling with its Petro-Canada merger, reported a big fourth quarter earnings miss.

Now down 11% in 2010, the stock is ripe for picking, says UBS analyst Andrew Potter.

"[The] pullback creates good opportunity to own [Suncor] at a discounted valuation," he said in a note to clients.

Despite Suncor's guidance for weak production in 2010, Mr. Potter said oil sands volumes will ramp-up to 340,000 bbl/d by the end of the year. That will set the stage for big growth in 2011.

At the same time, he thinks high cash costs this year will be lower next year due to the higher volumes.

He maintained his Buy rating and cut his target price to $47 from $48 to $47.

"SU is now trading at less than 10x 2011E EPS – in-line with Global Integrateds notwithstanding its significantly higher growth and free cash potential," he wrote.  

David Pett

A drive for cleaner energy is revving up in Brazil. In the Amazon, an ambitious project aimed at replacing power plants running on heavy fuel-oil with new, cleaner-burning natural gas engines from GE’s ecomagination line of more energy efficient technologies is underway. While near the eastern coast, two new power projects will mark the debut of GE’s wind turbines in the country.

Going with the flow: The natural gas will be delivered by a new pipeline connecting the oil and gas fields of Urucu in the north with Manaus, northern Brazil’s second-largest city, pictured above. The goal of the Amazon project is to create a more reliable energy source for the country’s northern regions while at the same time helping Brazil to reach its goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by between 36.1 and 38.9 percent from projected amounts in 2020.

Breitener Energética will install 46 of GE’s low-emission Jenbacher gas engine generator sets — 23 units at each plant site. The power company cited GE’s expanded gas engine manufacturing center in Jenbach, Austria, for having the engine production capacity needed to meet the power company’s delivery and construction schedules — which call for the units to arrive in April.

Meanwhile, in the Brazilian states of Rio Grande do Norte and Bahia, both near the country’s northeastern coast, commitments have just been made to use GE’s wind turbines — marking the ecomagination technology’s debut in the country.

Big fans of Brazil: Both energy developers, DESA and Renova, chose GE’s 1.5 megawatt class of wind turbines – of which more than 13,500 are installed globally. They’re expected to be in commercial operation by July of 2012. “This is Renova’s first move into the wind business and we were concerned about reliability and efficiency in our choice of technology,” said Vasco Barcellos, CEO of Renova Energia. “GE understood our needs and brought its technical teams to work close with us in the final steps of development of our projects.” Added Lindolfo Zimmer, CEO of DESA, “Wind farms are relatively new to the Brazilian energy market. We built a partnership with GE focused on getting the best technology matched with our technical needs.”

Brazil has relied heavily on hydropower for its electricity supply. But the country has vast, untapped wind resources, thanks in large part to strong wind conditions along the country’s 4,600-mile coastline.

Meanwhile, further north, Mexico City is also jumping into cleaner energy in a big way by using GE’s gas turbine technology, which is also part of the ecomagination portfolio, to convert a conventional power plant into the first large-scale cogeneration plant in Mexico. Cogeneration is the simultaneous production of electricity and heat using a single fuel such as natural gas. The process harnesses heat that would otherwise be wasted – and it also results in what’s known as higher thermal efficiency, which in turn allows carbon dioxide emissions to be substantially reduced.

Cleaner and meaner: GE Energy will supply two Frame 7FA gas turbines to a plant in the state of Tabasco, Mexico. The latest version of the turbine is pictured above. In addition, GE has signed a 20-year Contractual Service Agreement to provide a full range of plant services.

The Mexico City operation will not only offer increased efficiency, but will supply process steam to one of the country’s most important natural gas complexes. In 2008, the Mexican Congress passed legislation that calls for reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent below 2002 levels by the year 2050.

The government is promoting combined heat and power, or cogeneration, as an energy efficient option to help meet the country’s energy goals.

* Read the Amazon power project announcement
* Read the Brazil wind turbine announcement
* Read the Mexico cogeneration plant announcement
* Read “GE Helps Brazilian Amazon Go Green” in Forbes

Learn more about GE in Brazil in these GE Reports stories:
* “Brazil’s turbines sweetly hum with sugar-based ethanol”
* “The sugar-land express: Brazil orders 50 locomotives”
* “Brazil’s new Azul airline inks $1B services deal with GE”
* “GE wins $250 million offshore drilling contract in Brazil”

Wade Roush wrote:

Somerville, MA-based XL Hybrids, formerly known as Entergem Ventures, has collected $850,000 out of a planned $1.2 million in capital in a sale of warrants and convertible promissory notes, according to a regulatory filing published yesterday. Founded by a group of MIT-affiliated cleantech entrepreneurs, the two-year-old startup is focused on helping organizations acquire and manage fleets of hybrid or electric vehicles, according to its website. XL Hybrids president Tod Hynes, contacted by Xconomy, declined to share additional information or to name the company’s investors. Bill Aulet, a senior lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and an Xconomist, is a member of XL Hybrids’ board.

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Eternal Remont comments on a Wall Street Journal interview with the Nabucco gas pipeline director, who claims that the Nabucco project will serve as merely a complement to Russian gas flow to the West, and not – as previously envisaged – a substitute for it.

Lituanica reports that the old Mazeikiu oil refinery may be up for sale again, and that Russian interests are among key prospective buyers. In 2006, the sale of Mazeikiu Nafta caused bilateral crisis between Lithuania and Russia.

From Green Right Now Reports

Turbines spin on the Texas Panhandle (Photo: Sandia National Laboratories)

The 9,922 new megawatts (MW) installed in the U.S. last year expanded the nation’s wind plant fleet by 39 percent and brought the total wind power generating capacity in the U.S to over 35,000 MW, according to the American Wind Energy Association. U.S. wind projects now generate enough to power the equivalent of 9.7 million homes.

America’s wind power industry will avoid an estimated 62 million tons of carbon dioxide annually, equivalent to taking 10.5 million cars off the road, and will conserve approximately 20 billion gallons of water annually, which would otherwise be consumed for steam or cooling in conventional power plants.

Based on AWEA data, you can only conclude that Texas blows. A lot. The state dwarfs all others with 9,410 of installed wind power. But in 2009, Washington pulled ahead of Minnesota in the ranking of the top five states by wind power installed (in MW):

1. Texas — 9,410
2. Iowa — 3,670
3. California — 2,794
4. Washington — 1,980
5. Minnesota — 1,809

Source: American Wind Energy Association

Greenwire: Profits at Exxon Mobil Corp., the world’s largest publicly traded oil company, dipped 23 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009, the company said today.

The company reported net income of $6.05 billion, or $1.27 a share, for the previous quarter. The company posted net income of $7.82 billion, or $1.54 a share during the same period last year.

For the full year, Exxon’s profit dropped 56 percent to $19.4 billion, compared with $44 billion in 2008.

Still, while much of the industry was retracting, Exxon expanded. The company increased its capital spending plan for the year by 4 percent to $27.1 billion. Its production of oil and gas went up 2 percent from the same quarter a year ago.

But the company’s global refining business, hurt by weaker oil prices and lower refining margins, lost $189 million in the fourth quarter.

The company continues to make investments for new contracts. It announced its $31 billion purchase of XTO Energy Inc., a top U.S. shale producer, in December. Exxon also was the first U.S. company to gain a toehold in Iraq’s oil fields after it won a bid for the West Qurna Phase 1 field with Royal Dutch Shell PLC. The companies plan to boost the field’s output to 2.325 million barrels a day, up from 279,000 barrels a day (Jad Mouawad, New York Times, Feb. 1). – DFM

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Sandeep Giri describes how after confronting with energy problem while running a project in Kathmandu led an entrepreneur like him to commit to a solar energy project that provides solar electricity as a viable backup option for urban homes and businesses in Nepal.

Eco Factor: Flywheel system to help renewable energy plants store power efficiently.

Beacon Power is constructing a unique power plant in Stephentown, N.Y., near Albany, which will store energy in flywheels. Storing energy in flywheels isn’t anything new, but Beacon Power claims that their system feature new materials that include carbon fiber as well.

(more…)