Two good news stories, energy efficiency, and solar thermal....

Today's post: Wednesday, 2-24-2010

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.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Further, it’s extremely clear that the most supported and economically beneficial solution to add energy that does not use oil nor burn fossil fuels to release more CO2 into air that already has too much is to build massive amounts of new renewable energy production, particularly those that generate electricity & to dramatically increase energy efficiency and reduce the amount of energy that is now wasted.

And, of those, the more important long range solution is to build massive amounts of new renewable energy generation.

Today’s post:

Perhaps the second most important long range solution is to create and deploy an extremely large list of effective technologies, products, and services that are much more energy efficient than what we have now.

And, since the politicians seem too grid-locked and road-blocked by other politicians to be as effective as some of us had hoped, building massive amounts of new renewable energy generation and massive amounts of new renewable energy generation and creating and deploying an extremely large list of effective technologies, products, and services that are much more energy efficient than what we have now -- without any more government or political help than is already available is critical.

The really good news is that this is beginning to happen in part thanks to the venture capital community.

And the two stories in today’s post are great examples of progress in these two areas.

1. Bloom Energy recently rolled back the curtain on their technology and product. They now are getting into production with a commercial product that can make electricity from natural gas or methane and perhaps other fuels onsite and cost effectively enough to save enough in reduced bills from grid distributed energy in 7 to 8 years to pay for their system.

It would be nice if that could be lowered to 2 to 4 years in the future; and it may be.

The key is using a fuel cell that does not require hydrogen or platinum or dangerous acids to work but which works as well or better as fuel cells that do. They apparently have such a technology that works.

See http://www.bloomenergy.com for more details.

Also, their initial product for the commercial market produces enough power for 100 homes. But the technology IS adaptable to make fuel cells of perhaps a three hundredth that size that will be sold for various sizes of homes and much smaller businesses. And, since their email list sign up leaves a place to check if you have an interest in a residential system, they likely do have in mind making those.

That means that a well to do homeowner in an area that burns coal for electricity will soon be able to afford to stop relying on that power which will help increase the economy while avoiding the need for more coal fired plants.

Apparently, that is already true for businesses or soon will be as Bloom Energy rolls out their commercial product and increases production.

Even better, in areas like the Silicon Valley where the reliability of the supply of electricity is important and for which, despite the threat of earthquakes that disrupt both natural gas and electricity, most outages of electric power are from airplanes hitting power towers or wind storms taking out power lines or summer blackouts from excess demand overloading the grid – while at EVERY ONE of those times, natural gas continues uninterrupted.

So even if a business didn’t set up for all of their power needs to come from solar, wind, and Bloom’s fuel cells, they could have enough from some Bloom’s fuel cells alone if they were set up properly to keep the critical things running at slightly reduced levels when the grid provided electricity goes down.

2. The second story is that we are possibly beginning to enter a time when enough solar thermal is installed in the appropriate places to add huge amounts of renewable energy to our overall supplies.

By combining all the appropriate sites in the Southwestern and Western United States and close to all of the Northern two thirds of Mexico, most of the country, and the power lines to transport it, solar thermal electricity could provide all the electricity now used by Canada, the United States, and Mexico.

Further, as Mexico is developed, the problem of its citizens fleeing North to the United States for jobs will mostly disappear.

But this won’t happen until we begin to build large scale solar thermal plants the size of existing plants to make electricity by burning natural gas or coal.

The news is that this quite possibly will happen soon.

Yesterday, 2-24-2010, there were a multitude of news stories saying that the U.S. Department of Energy has conditionally awarded $1.37 billion in loan guarantees to BrightSource Energy of Oakland, California.

If the permits from the US Bureau of Land Management and the State of California are issued in time, these funds will enable BrightSource Energy to build a 400 megawatt solar power facility in three parts in the Mojave Desert in Southern California. This is comparable to a small to medium sized plant burning natural gas or coal.

In addition, Pacific Gas and Electric and Southern California Edison have agreed to buy the power once it is online.

The money that will be provided to BrightSource Energy is part of the Department of Energy's Title XVII loan guarantee program.

The bad news is that while some environmentalists see the value of renewable energy replacing fossil fuels with the resulting air pollution in Ozone, particulates, acid rain, etc and helping reduce global warming, some are worried about the animals in the Mojave desert that might be impacted by this project; & they are trying to block it.

There are two solutions to this.

The immediate one is to go ahead and permit three sites where this impact is likely to be the least and work with BrightSource Energy to pioneer ways to build their plants while eliminating or lessening such impacts.

To get the solar thermal available and that we so badly need, I sincerely hope that happens and happens in time for this project to be funded.

The second one is to begin to work towards constructing solar thermal plants in Mexico. Some of the best sites are just South of their border with the United States; and some of the electricity can be exported to and sold to companies in the United States in addition to making new jobs possible in Mexico.

They have a larger incentive, fewer restrictions, AND a good bit more solar thermal potential than the United States!