Big companies getting into renewable energy....

Today's post: Wednesday, 7-15-2009

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

Two ways to achieve this are:

1. … to use very large solar thermal plants in very sunny desert locations to generate electricity. Once set up, they generate close to zero carbon emissions while generating very large amounts of electricity. And, since they can store the heat efficiently for several hours, they can deliver some of their electricity at night!

2. … to bring large amounts of biofuels online to replace fossil fuels and do so in ways that do NOT conflict with food production or cause forests to be cut down to “grow” the biofuels. While such biofuels do release CO2 they also remove most of the CO2 first so they are close to carbon neutral. And, they can be blended with existing liquid fossil fuels &/or to replace such fuels as a way to make much of our current transportation economy more carbon neutral and lower CO2 levels.

Just this week I learned that some of the world’s largest companies are beginning to bet serious money on these two efforts exactly.

Of the two, the first may have the most potential for reducing CO2, particularly as we get more plug-in hybrids and all electric vehicles. But the need is so great and the transport part of our economy using liquid fuels is so huge, the second one is clearly much needed also.

1. I had heard of the idea of installing solar thermal plants across the deserts of Northern Africa and using undersea cables to deliver the electricity generated to Europe.

The recent news is that the two huge engineering firms, ABB and Siemens, Deutsche Bank, & 9 other companies have formed a consortium to do just that with a target of providing 15% of the electricity used in Europe by no later than 2050. And, their plans include seeing to it that the host countries also get large amounts of this electricity for their own use allowing them to get economic growth without fossil fuel use!

I’d prefer to have seen the announcement say 30% by 2035 since that might be doable. But the fact that such huge and well managed companies are doing the deal suggests strongly it will happen. That’s extremely good news indeed.

I particularly like that this project has the potential to benefit the economies of Morocco, Jordan, and Egypt which do not have huge oil deposits. It also will provide Saudi Arabia a lifeline when they run out of commercially extractable oil and improve its economy before then. And, it will increase the co-operation and dialogue between these countries and Europe.

(So, far that has not happened in the United States for sending solar thermal from our desert Southwest and Southern Rocky Mountain states to our population centers. Nor has such an idea been proposed to send solar thermal electricity from Mexico to the United States while giving Mexico carbon free electricity, economic growth and jobs. And, since that sector of the United States can almost provide 100% of current nationwide demand while the potential in Mexico is at least three times larger, that these two projects don’t yet have such development consortiums in place is extremely unfortunate.

Hopefully the North Africa – Europe project will cause some copycat efforts here.)

2. It was just announced yesterday that Exxon Mobil will invest $600 million in a partnership with Synthetic Genomics Inc, a biotech company from La Jolla, California to develop biofuel transportation fuels from algae.

If this preliminary work appears viable as a way to mass produce biofuels from algae Exxon Mobil will likely make additional, multibillion-dollar investments to put this into mass production.

Algae can be grown using land and water unsuitable for crop and food production. And the biofuels can be mixed with or replace the fossil fuels Exxon already provides. It also means Exxon will be able to use its current refineries, existing pipelines, and tanker trucks to get these biofuels to consumers.

$300 million will go to Exxon's internal costs and $300 million or more to Synthetic Genomics, if research & development milestones are met successfully.

The other good news is that there are other entries into competing biofuels from startups such as Solazyme in South San Francisco, California that is also working with algae as a feedstock.

Other large companies are also in the race.

Royal Dutch Shell is working with Iogen Corp in Canada to produce ethanol from wheat straw and with Choren Industries of Germany to develop a biofuel from wood residue. (Their other decision to stop backing solar and wind energy looks as if it may be a serious mistake.)

And, BP expects to work with Verenium Corp to build a $300 million cellulosic ethanol plant in Highlands County, Florida.

Neither these massive solar thermal installations nor cost effective biofuels that do not compete with food or forests on a very large scale will work at all soon.

But since large companies are backing them -- and the two projects have such large scale promise, they each are very good news and may well happen.