Energy efficiency acts fast....

Today's post: Wednesday, 9-16-2009

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.

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.

The bad news is that it’s going far to slow -- both beginning to charge fossil fuels and the businesses that produce them more of their true costs to make them less competitive & slow their use -- and adding the massive amounts of renewable energy, new transmission lines; & some nuclear it will take to use less fossil fuels without harming the economy.

The good news is that energy efficiency can act to help solve this because it acts so much faster.

Two examples are that:

1. It’s been found that a complete energy systems overhaul for many if not most commercial buildings can slash their annual energy use AND to such an extent that the cost savings per year once it’s done will be as great as the initial investment needed to do it.

Adobe in San Jose, California did exactly that. They invested about a million dollars in it for their headquarters building and then found they realized a million dollars a year in savings.

2. The highest peak electric demand in areas that have air conditioners in commercial and residential buildings is on the hottest days each summer.

But as much as 90 % of that electricity demand is removable by better heat proofing of buildings; better insulation; and by running the airconditioning if still needed early in the morning when there is less competing demand and the efficiency of the air conditioning is greatest due to the lower outside temperature.

We almost eliminated the need for air conditioning in a house we once owned by adding more intake vents around the base of our peaked roofs and installing convection powered turbines that enabled the solar heat in our attic to escape. Since that heat no longer came into our house, we had no further need to remove it by using air conditioning to remove it and use electricity to do so.

Now I’ve found a company in San Jose, California, NuLight Solutions, Inc. that makes a solar powered attic fan for the same purpose.

(Since this peak demand occurs when there is robust solar thermal and photovoltaic energy available, the other way to avoid the need for adding fossil fuel plants to provide for it, is to add more solar energy installations that produce peak electricity at the same time as this peak in demand.)

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you have an innovative program to save energy in similar ways that you would like funding or publicity for, check this out soon.

(The deadline to apply for one of them is 9-28-2009, just 12 days from now.)

From the CEN Weekly Intelligence Update for 9-15-2009 see http://www.cleaneconomy.net/

1. Yesterday, the Department of Energy announced a $450 million Retrofit Ramp-Up Program. Funded under the Recovery Act, the program will support innovative models for rolling out energy efficiency technologies to homes and businesses on a large scale. DOE envisions an energy upgrade that will save up to $100 billion annually in household and small business utility bills.

DOE issued a Request for Information, seeking local energy efficiency projects. Applications are due September 28, 2009.

For additional information, see http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/news/progress_alerts.cfm/pa_id=237.

2. On September 14, DOE announced more than $354 million in awards to 22 states to support energy efficiency and conservation activities under the Recovery Act-funded Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant Program. For additional information, see http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/news/progress_alerts.cfm/pa_id=238.

Mostly good news for renewable energy....

Today’s post: Wednesday, 1-14-2009

The news on renewable energy lately is mostly good.:

1. Yesterday, AP online news reported that Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Chu was “warmly received” at his Senate confirmation hearing to be Energy Secretary.

And, he “confirmed as energy secretary he will aggressively pursue policies aimed at addressing climate change and achieving greater energy independence by developing clean energy sources.”

He “appeared before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee where he received immediate support from both Democrats and Republicans.”

“Chu, …. told senators that climate change is "a growing and pressing problem" and the nation's dependence on oil represents a threat to the U.S. economy and security.

Of the risks from global warming, Chu said: "It is now clear that if we continue on our current path, we run the risk of dramatic disruptive changes to our climate system in the lifetimes of our children and grandchildren." “

So, if the Senate’s initial response is any indication, Chu will be confirmed; and renewable energy and a variety of means to improve our energy efficiency throughout our economy, and a commitment to reducing CO2 emissions will get a huge boost when he takes office.

Specifically this article quotes Chu as saying.: “ "Improvements in energy efficiency is the one single factor that can most reduce our dependency on foreign oil,"”

My main concern when he was appointed is that he would get derailed by the traditional energy industries due to his seeming lack of political background. But, between his experience running the Lawrence Lab and his preparation for the job, he seems to have the ability to deal well with that.

He is apparently willing to allow some offshore drilling in less environmentally sensitive areas which will keep the representatives of the oil industry from voting against him now or derailing his programs later.

(He is following the lead of President-elect Obama in so doing.) And, despite it not being the very best choice for global warming, it will slightly improve our ability to be energy self-sufficient and pay less to import oil which many help our national security which he knows is also important.

And, since the Lawrence Lab he ran is and was involved in nuclear matters, he is aware that it will likely remain part of our energy mix.

“Chu said nuclear energy produces a fifth of the nation's electricity and 70 percent of the carbon-free electricity and "is going to be an important part of our energy mix." “

I still have safety concerns about nuclear power; but I like that he is aware that it DOES provide” carbon-free electricity.” And, he clearly made points with those senators who back it.

He realizes that we are now dependent on burning coal for electricity now and that so are China and India. Plus he was aware that senators from states where coal is a key part of their economies will be voting on his confirmation. So, as a near term solution, he strongly favors work on developing effective methods to burn coal but to retrofit some kind of devices that prevent CO2 from entering the atmosphere.

As an optimistic scientist, he has more faith than I that this is doable at all, let alone soon enough or inexpensively enough. But within 10 years, there may be breakthroughs that do the job. And, in the near term, he keeps the support of coal state senators and of India and China.

(As regular readers of this blog know, I favor turning coal into substitutes for natural gas and for gasoline and diesel fuel that we would burn anyway, which would help us wean our economy from its unsafe dependence only on natural gas and petroleum and improve our energy self-sufficiency. And, I favor replacing ALL coal burning plants for generating electricity with renewable sources or at worst nuclear power instead. So I hope those approaches also make progress.)

But I still find it very reassuring to see that Steven Chu is politically sound and looking for global warming solutions that will avoid short term harm to our economy. So my expectations of his performance have gone from liking his support for renewable energy and fighting global warming but fearing he would be ineffective to now believing he will be quite effective as well once confirmed and in office.

2. And, which will fit right in with new Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s emphasis on renewable and sustainable energy research and research to fight global warming, also in the past few days, Stanford University added a new $100 million donation to an earlier $75 million dollar donation by one of Yahoo’s founders to create a new research group on renewable and sustainable energy research, which in addition to doing new research will also plug in ALL related work done at Stanford AND begin to help train new young people into experts in this new field.

Since I live near Stanford and am affected by the economy of the Silicon Valley, I’m personally very please with this announcement. But it looks to be easily as important to the developing field of renewable and sustainable energy research and research on fighting global warming. In addition to the short term benefit we get from the research, in the longer run, & starting in just a few years, the new experts in the field developed at Stanford will also be hugely positive.

3. And yesterday, Massachusetts governor, Deval Patrick announced he has set a goal for Massachusetts to produce2,000 megawatts of wind electricity annually by 2020, which is enough to provide 10 percent of the state's current energy needs.

Massachusetts only produces seven megawatts of power annually now.
And, the entire United States now only produces a bit more than 21,000 megawatts a year now. Texas, thanks in part to T Boone Pickens, now produces 6,300 megawatts a year from wind, which is the most of any state.
So, for Massachusetts to put a new 1993 megawatts of wind power electricity generation in place is a significant increase by comparison.

And, governor Patrick has a start on his goal because there are already
300 turbines in various planning and permitting stages in Massachusetts, which will generate an estimated 420 megawatts of power.

4. Lastly, as a fan of cost-competitive solar photovoltaic power, I’ve liked the upbeat and accurate supporting scientific facts the CEO of Nanosolar periodically posts on Nanosolar’s blog. (They print thin film photovoltaic cells on something like a high speed continuous roll printing press to help speed manufacturing and bring costs down.)

About 4 weeks ago, as I recently discovered, he posted this.:

"1kg CIGS = 5kg Uranium
December 16, 2008
By Martin Roscheisen, CEO

The notion of a kilogram of enriched Uranium conjures up an image of a powerful (amount) of energy. Enough to power an entire city for years when used in a nuclear power plant, or enough to flatten an entire county when used in a bomb - that's presumably what many people would say if one asked them about their thoughts.

In our new solar cell technology, we use an active material called CIGS, a Copper based semiconductor. How does this stack up against enriched Uranium?

Here's a noteworthy fact, pointed out to me by one of our engineers: It turns out that 1kg of CIGS, embedded in a solar cell, produces 5 times as much electricity as 1kg of enriched Uranium, embedded in a nuclear power plant.

Or said differently, 1kg of CIGS is equivalent to 5kg of enriched Uranium in terms of the energy the materials deliver in solar and nuclear respectively.
The Uranium is burned and then stored in a nuclear waste facility; the CIGS material produces power for at least the warranty period of the solar cell product after which it can then be recycled and reused an indefinite number of times."

To be fair, nuclear power also has a breeder reactor version that allows for a lot more of the energy in the Uranium to be used. But I like Martin Roscheisen and the way he thinks and thought this an upbeat way to end this post.

Extra Effort on getting to Renewable Energy soon......

Today’s post: Wednesday, 12-10-2008

Just a few weeks ago, Al Gore said we should move to 100 % renewable energy in 10 years or by 2018.

In a report called “Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World”, various experts & analysts in the US Intelligence organizations and from other places state that renewable energy will NOT be commercially viable by 2025.

And, this report was supplied to President-elect, Obama recently a current news article said.

If we don’t take action, massive coordinated action on several fronts to come much closer to Al Gore’s goal than this new report suggests is likely, we are in very serious trouble. Costs from global warming will begin to destroy our economy while our economy starves for energy at reasonable costs. For example gasoline prices of more than $5 a gallon in today’s dollars will return as the world’s economy tries to recover from the current recession.

Given that we may already have more CO2 in our air than is safe, the status quo of simply drilling for more oil and building more coal fired plants world wide is extremely dangerous.

Yet, a prosperous economy needs more usable, effective, energy to achieve that prosperity and keep it – not less.

That’s why we need not just an effort comparable to the Manhattan Project; but an effort comparable to the entire United States effort to win World War II to start immediately to begin to tax coal and oil use commensurate with their real economic costs; & to regulate their use; AND to use the funds generated plus further investments to increase energy-efficiency and add renewable energy on a huge scale as quickly as we ramped up war production in World War II—or faster.

1. Wind power is already competitive in costs with fossil fuels.

That’s why T Boone Pickens’ plan, or at least the part that adds lots of wind powered electricity generation and new transmission lines to transport it needs to be immediately expanded and implemented in every place that has enough wind.

2. Large solar thermal farms are very close to being competitive with fossil fuels. And there are huge areas in the United States and even more in Mexico (and in other parts of the world) that work well to build them. Plus we also need to add the new transmission lines to these solar thermal farms to deliver their electricity.

We need to have the United States government act in some way to make immediate financing on favorable terms available to build these plants and the transmission lines.

And, we need to have every utility reachable by those lines be required to get perhaps as high as 60 % of their electricity from that source alone by 2030.

This is because the energy is there NOW on that large a scale to be harvested; and the heated media can be efficiently stored to deliver power for several hours after the sun heats it and sets.

3. We also need to increase the incentives enough and drive down the costs enough over the next few years to build both solar photovoltaic farms in favorable locations AND to add roof top solar to virtually every usable rooftop of every building standing AND to build roofs over most of our parking lots that also have solar photovoltaic cells on them.

4. We need to begin to scale up the successful experiments that produce usable biodiesel, ethanol, and jet fuel and chemical feedstocks from algae or other methods that do NOT compete with growing food so that most liquid fuels can be made from processes that remove CO2 in addition to adding it back to our air.

5. We need to stop burning coal for fuel and to convert the coal we have into cleaner burning liquid fuels and gas that can be added to biofuels or used to replace petroleum.

In the near term this will prevent the coal businesses in the United States from a collapse immediate enough to dislocate the economies of the communities where they now are. And, it will provide these fuels while biofuels are just beginning to ramp up.

6. We need to start planning to replace all the coal burning plants we have now with renewable sources such as wind or solar or with plants that burn biofuels and cleaner burning fuels made from coal.

(It may be possible to sequester the CO2 and other pollutants 100 % that burning coal releases. We should certainly research that.) But meanwhile we should be winding down our use of the kinds of coal burning plants we have now towards zero.

And, both here and in the rest of the world, we should act NOW to prevent new coal burning plants from being built and used.

It’s clear in China and everywhere immediately downwind from China that the air pollution alone from burning coal on a very large scale costs almost more in added medical costs than the value of the electricity it generates. And, adding lots more CO2 to our air instead of less makes ZERO sense. So absolutely NO new coal burning plants should be built anywhere.

7. One of the backers of the CleanTech for Obama group has pointed out that many already cost effective steps to energy efficiency can be taken throughout the United States to lower our energy use without harming our economy such as adding insulation, heat proofing buildings with peaked roofs, and weather stripping windows all of which can be done by people in the United States needing jobs.

This would provide a huge number of jobs if it were to be done in every community in the United States to every building that now needs it.

We should definitely come as close to making that happen as possible in the next 4 to 8 years.

We need the jobs now. And, it will save more in energy costs than the money to do it will cost our economy.

This can also be accomplished by raising the money to replace and properly dispose of energy-inefficient refrigerators; and to give all our homes and businesses an energy management system that will safely power down TV’s, video game players, and other devices that now use energy while they are NOT in use.

8. We need to set up national prizes and funds for the kind of venture capital that rolls out new technology that works; and we should do this to incentivize the development and rapid deployment of new energy technology generally.

This will create jobs here. And these companies can bring money here by selling these products to the rest of the world.

In particular, we need to do this for LED light bulbs that are available at the cost today of fluorescent light bulbs or less and which will fit all the sockets that have been used for incandescent bulbs. Such bulbs use even less electricity than fluorescent light bulbs, perhaps a full third as much in fact. And, they won’t poison our homes, businesses, and planet with mercury as using fluorescent light bulbs looks likely to do and very likely IS doing now.

GE is developing a kind of wallpaper that lights up walls and ceilings with an ideally dispersed light source that uses LED’s. That’s a superb idea. But for now, the glaring need is for cost effective and readily available LED light bulbs to replace incandescent light bulbs and fluorescent light bulbs in the light bulb sockets people have now. (Pardon the pun.)

Again, this is an energy efficiency method that will save huge amounts of energy that both creates jobs and continues to give us the light we need.

It does NOT sacrifice our prosperity or quality of life like purposely living in dimly lit rooms to save energy would do.

I believe each of these goals is doable by 2030. But they will only happen and make the intelligence community report look timid and incorrect if we take massive action to achieve them all.

Renewable Energy Arrives

Renewable Energy Arrives is our name & theme in this blog.

Our first post: Weds, 1-23-2008

Here's why we think it IS arriving & why a good deal of focused effort will also be needed to make it happen soon enough.

Here's the bad news.:

The world's economy today is almost exclusively based on burning carbon based fuels.

This involves cutting down trees which both adds CO2 to the air & removes these trees as free CO2 removal agents.

And, it involves burning coal, natural gas, & petroleum in various forms.

Unfortunately, this is no longer safe or sustainable. It most certainly is not in the United States. And, it is definitely not safe anywhere in the world.

Unless we switch quite soon to renewable fuels, we face a global economic collapse that will make the depression of the 1930's seem like a fun time in the park by comparison. This is on course to happen. The only question is how soon. Better technology & effort may make this more like 60 years from now than 30. But the risk is quite real regardless of the timeline.

Unfortunately, there are several worse problems from this dependence -- some of which are already here or beginning to arrive in force.

As the world population grows & the economies of the world's nations grow -- & as long as we depend on these energy sources, the costs will continue to rise with the increased demand. This will act as a brake on economic growth & also on the current level of our economies.

This is already happening.

Also, it already is making the world unstable & dangerous politically by intensifying the competition between nations for this kind of energy reserves & empowering unstable governments who happen to have reserves.

This is already severely threatening the security & safety of the United States, its economy, & its people.

Then there is the really dangerous problem that is even more of a grave concern.

We may have already put more CO2 into our world's air than is safe. And, in most places, the amount of CO2 we are adding each year is rising rapidly.

This is definitely changing our weather in economically damaging ways. That is still in the early stages but is already threatening our economy.

Even worse, though I've not seen a timeline on it, the time will come when people who have evolved as we have will not be able to breathe the outside air. That would solve the population problem. But the survivors would only care about that if there are any.

The good news is:

that by using large solar thermal & solar photovoltaic energy generation in large & appropriate places and dispersed solar photovoltaic on roofs all over the world, we have the ability to completely replace our dependence on burning carbon as a driver of our economy.

& that this is becoming massively more doable as technologies already online & in development are used.

& that this is, albeit MUCH too slowly, already beginning to happen.

Adding wind power & vastly improved battery technology & other safe, renewable sources will make this more doable & reliable.

The other thing is that we desperately need to make our use of energy much more efficient.

This will make it sooner that we can do everything with renewable energy. And, it will help us buy time to get enough solar generation in place.

This too is beginning to happen; & new technologies are coming online. So far, it's been too little too late.

Our blog & upcoming website are dedicated to acting as an extra catalyst to accelerate these positive trends.

Both of us live in the Silicon Valley of California. And, many of the companies that are already providing the technologies & tools to make this happen are here.

So we see hopeful signs. But we need badly to pick up the pace & accelerate these changes.