Clipmarks | invictus's Energy collection

Europe fuel protests spread wider

Fri, 30 May 2008 16:36:15 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: Say hello to the upcoming global crisis of the century.

Fuel protests triggered by rising oil prices have spread to more countries across Europe, with thousands of fishermen on strike.

Union leaders said Portugal's entire coastal fleet stayed in port on Friday, while in Spain, 7,000 fishermen held protests at the agriculture ministry.

French fishermen have been protesting for weeks, with Belgian and Italian colleagues also involved.

UK and Dutch lorry drivers held similar protests earlier this week.

The strike reflects anger at the rising cost of fuel, with oil prices above $130 (83.40 euros; £65.80) a barrel.

Tags: oil, energy, oil prices, economy, global crisis, world

Solar Power, At Last?

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 12:57:06 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: discovermagazine.com

For years physicists have sought a revolutionary approach to solar energy. Instead of working on ordinary solar cells, which require many photons to produce a single electron, they have focused on quantum dots, which need only one photon to produce multiple electrons. This process, called multiple exciton generation (MEG), has so far worked only in toxic materials like lead. Now Arthur Nozik at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory has proved that MEG works in silicon, the material that constitutes most solar cells. The next step: Prove that MEG can be scaled out of the lab to become commercially viable.

Tags: solar power, alternative energy, science

The Problem with Solar Energy

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 15:33:33 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: scienceblogs.com

A couple of weks ago, we had a colloquium talk by Peter Persans of RPI, who is working on developing new types of solar cells using amorphous silicon and "quantum dots."

In order to meet the energy needs of the US entirely with solar power, we would need to cover 0.2% of the land area of the United States with photovoltaic cells, roughly equal to the area of paved roads in the US. And that's using solar cells with an efficiency of 50%, not too far below the theoretical maximum for a single-layer device.

But efficiency isn't the only problem: He pointed out that in order to build that sort of solar energy infrastructure, we would need to produce and install 2,000 square kilometers of solar cells a year for twenty years.

it wasn't entirely downbeat: he did note that great strides have been made in the production of solar cells, and described some intriguing possibilites using "quantum dots" embedded in silicon as a means of increasing the bandwidth of light that produces useful electricity.

Tags: energy, solar power, alternative energy, science

Energy Search Goes Underground

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 22:20:30 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: dsc.discovery.com

Energy Search Goes Underground

Aug. 6, 2007 — A magnitude-3.4 tremor on Dec. 8 in Basel, Switzerland, was no ordinary act of nature: It had been accidentally triggered by engineers drilling deep into the Earth's crust to tap its inner heat and thus break new ground — literally — in the search for new sources of energy.

After more, slightly smaller tremors followed, Basel authorities told Geopower Basel to put its project on hold.

But the power company hasn't given up. It's in a race with a firm in Australia to be the first to generate power commercially by boiling water on the rocks three miles underground.

On paper, the Basel project looks fairly straightforward: Drill down, shoot cold water into the shaft and bring it up again superheated and capable of generating enough power through a steam turbine to meet the electricity needs of 10,000 households, and heat 2,700 homes.

Tags: energy, geothermal energy, alternative energy, science

Boeing Unveils 'Green' Jet

Fri, 06 Jul 2007 22:46:04 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: dsc.discovery.com

Boeing Unveils 'Green' Jet

July 6, 2007 — The eyes of the aviation world will be fixed on Boeing here Sunday when the U.S. aircraft giant unveils its 787 Dreamliner, the "green" passenger jet it hopes will revolutionize air travel.

The mid-sized plane, which seats up to 330 passengers and is capable of flying long-haul routes using up to 20 percent less fuel while pumping out fewer greenhouse gases, will be rolled out for 300 gathered media.

The 787 — Boeing's first new model in 13 years — will make its maiden test flight later this year before going into commercial service with Japan's All Nippon Airways (ANA) in 2008.

The new aircraft boasts several revolutionary design features, most notably the use of high-tech plastic composites instead of aluminum.

Up to 50 percent of the primary structure of the plane — including the fuselage and wing — will be made of composites such as carbon-fiber.

Tags: energy, environment, green, aircrafts, boeing, science

Europe burns its wine lake

Wed, 04 Jul 2007 02:20:11 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: www.nature.com

Europe burns its wine lake

Up to 45 million litres of European wine are distilled into ethanol each year.

Getty

The European Commission is putting out to tender the opportunity to turn its excess wine into bioethanol. But if the commission gets its way, this will be the last time the European Union subsidizes such a move.

In a world where everything from Britain's left-over cooking fat to Florida's orange peels are being used to make energy, it seems a logical step to do the same for Europe's excess wine. But, says Michael Mann, commission spokesman for agriculture and rural development, it would be better to stop the excess wine from being made.

Tags: energy, alternative energy, bioethanol, wine

Analysis: world's largest oil field in decline

Fri, 18 May 2007 18:12:49 GMT

clipped by: jklugman
clipper's remarks: Stuart Staniford, a physics PhD, has been analyzing publicly available data on Ghawar, the world's largest oil field, which is in Saudi Arabia. His conclusion is that the oil in Ghawar has been depleted, which means that production from that field is permanently on its way down.

If this is true, "we have just entered a new phase of history".

Clip Source: www.econbrowser.com

If Stuart's analysis is correct, it seems very likely that production from the northern part of Ghawar must have already entered a period of sharp and irreversible decline, which would account for the otherwise unexplained drops in Saudi Arabian oil production over the last two years.

The Saudis have been deliberately concealing the data that could settle this speculation quite conclusively. And yet, accurate information about what is ahead is absolutely vital in order to help us all make the adjustments and adaptations necessary for what is to come.

After Stuart's monumental research, I really think the burden of proof is on those who claim that Saudi Arabian production can continue to increase. At this point, we need not the conclusions of experts nor the reassurances from Aramco, but hard data to support the claims.

If Saudi production is permanently on the way down, we have just entered a new phase of history.

Tags: oil, energy, saudi arabia

In search of "Wind Power" in the Southeast

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 22:03:18 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks:

"These are tenuous times for energy in the United States that offer the opportunity for clean renewable energy to become a viable and sustainable reality. The potential for alternative energy sources has never been greater."

Clip Source: www.eurekalert.org

CLEMSON -- What is the viability of wind power in the southeastern United States off the coasts of Georgia and the Carolinas? Clemson University researchers, along with scholars form Georgia Institute of Technology and North Carolina State University, will attempt to answer the question when they host the Southeast Regional Offshore Wind Power Symposium Feb. 26-27 in Charleston.

"These are tenuous times for energy in the United States that offer the opportunity for clean renewable energy to become a viable and sustainable reality. The potential for alternative energy sources has never been greater," said Nicholas Rigas, director of the S.C. Institute for Energy Studies. "Wind energy is a fast-growing, clean, renewable energy source with its capacity doubling every three years. The symposium will increase awareness of offshore wind potential off the coasts of all three states that have in common similar wind characteristics, coastal communities and regional politics."

Tags: energy, alternative energy, wind power, america

Australia to Change Lightbulbs to Curb Warming

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 21:26:00 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: www.climateark.org

Australia will be the world's first country to ban incandescent lightbulbs in a bid to curb Greenhouse gas emissions, with the government saying on Tuesday they would be phased out within three years. Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull said yellow incandescent bulbs, which have been in use virtually unchanged for 125 years, would be replaced by more efficient compact fluorescent bulbs by 2009.

"By that stage you simply won't be able to buy incandescent lightbulbs, because they won't meet the energy standard," Turnbull told local radio.

Australia along with the U.S. has refused to sign up to the Kyoto Protocol setting Greenhouse Gas reduction targets, calling instead for an agreement requiring energy-hungry developing countries like India and China to help combat climate change.

Turnbull said the banning of incandescent bulbs would help trim 800,000 tonnes from Australia's current emissions level by 2012 and lower household lighting costs by 66 per cent.

Tags: climate change, global warming, environment, australia, lightbulbs, energy

"Harmful Hunt for Extra Oil"

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 17:41:04 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: If you have been thinking that all these were "war for oil", then it means you haven't seen nothing yet. Carola Hoyos writes what the real situation is in oil industry and what kind of future waits for the countries with oil-dependant economies. An interesting read, originally published on Financial Times and clipped from Common Dreams:

Clip Source: www.commondreams.org

All the world’s extra oil supply is likely to come from expensive and environmentally damaging unconventional sources within 15 years, according to a detailed study.

This will mean increasing reliance on hard-to-develop sources of energy such as the Canadian oil sands and Venezuela’s Orinoco tar belt.

A report from Wood Mackenzie, the Edinburgh-based consultancy, calculates that the world holds 3,600bn barrels of unconventional oil and gas that need a lot of energy to extract.

So far only 8 per cent of that has begun to be developed, because the world has relied on easier sources of oil and gas.

Only 15 per cent of the 3,600bn is heavy and extra-heavy oil, with the rest being even more challenging.

The study makes clear the shift could come sooner than many people in the industry had expected, even though some major conventional oil fields will still be increasing their production in 2020. Those increases will not be enough to offset the decline at other fields.

Tags: energy, oil, economy, environment

View From the Future

Mon, 25 Dec 2006 15:02:06 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: Rebecca Solnit takes the long view on 2006, from the year 2025: The end of oil and the rise of warming seas reveal a world made small: less food, fewer species, less land and fallen dinosaurs, from SUVs to an American President serving a sentence in Falluja for his war crimes.

Clip Source: www.thenation.com

View From the Future

Rebecca Solnit


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	For Solomon Solnit (b. October 18, 2006). This essay was originally published on TomDispatch.

I've been writing the year-end other-news summary for TomDispatch since 2004; somewhere around 2017, however, the formula of digging up overlooked stories and grounds for hope grew weary. So for this year, we've decided instead to look back on the last twenty-five years of the twenty-first century--but it was creatures from 60 million years ago who reminded me how to do it.

The other day, I borrowed some kids to go gawk with me at the one thing that we can always count on in an ever-more unstable world: age-of-dinosaur dioramas in science museums. This one had the usual dramatic clash between a tyrannosaurus and a triceratops; pterodactyls soaring through the air, one with a small reptile in its toothy maw; and some oblivious grazing by what, when I was young in another millennium, we would have called a brontosaurus. Easy to overlook in all that drama was the shrewlike mammal perched on a reed or thick blade of grass, too small to serve even as an enticing pterodactyl snack. The next thing coming down the line always looks like that mammal at the beginning--that's what I told the kids--inconsequential, beside the point; the official point usually being the clash of the titans.

Tags: climate change, environment, war, world, futurism, future

Rich Nations Put Global Warming Burden on Africa

Wed, 06 Dec 2006 17:13:06 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: www.alternet.org

Rich Nations Put Global Warming Burden on Africa

The African continent is already straining from the effects of global climate change, while some of the world's biggest polluters -- the U.S., Australia, and Canada -- are doing nothing to help clean up their own mess.

The effects of the Great Warming are not fairly shared. Fourteen percent of the world's population lives in the 57 countries on the African continent. However, because the majority of Africans live with little to no access to electricity and personal transport usage is among the world's lowest, Africans contribute only 3 percent of the global greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming.

The United States, conversely, with only 5 percent of the world's population, contributes nearly 25 percent of worldwide greenhouse gas pollution annually. In the United States, with our consumption of electricity, our ecologically harmful industries and our 230 million passenger vehicles, we are literally fueling the destruction of the planet's environment.

Last month, at the United Nations Climate Change summit in Nairobi, Kenya, climate change experts from around the globe reported to 165 countries on the impacts of global warming, which will be felt most harshly by poor developing countries. If that weren't bad enough, the former World Bank chief economist Sir Nicholas Stern recently released a report that suggests that global warming could shrink the global economy by 20 percent over the next 50 years. From the report and the summit, it is clear that climate change is as much a humanitarian, security and economic issue as an environmental one.

Tags: climate change, ecology, global warming, greenhouse gases, africa

The Revolution Will Be Solarized

Mon, 04 Dec 2006 15:53:40 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: www.alternet.org

The Revolution Will Be Solarized

Author Travis Bradford says that solar energy will eventually break the hold that centralized power companies have on our energy grids.

Solar power has been the Next Big Thing for decades now, yet it remains a niche player in the energy world. The problem of intermittency is unsolved, up-front capital costs remain high, and surging demand for polysilicon, a key component of solar panels, has recently outstripped supply, stifling production.

So when someone claims that within decades solar photovoltaic technology will come to dominate the world's energy portfolio -- with or without subsidies, with or without rising fossil-fuel prices, with or without new environmental legislation -- one could be forgiven a degree of skepticism.

But Travis Bradford is no hippie idealist. The author of Solar Revolution: The Economic Transformation of the Global Energy Industry spent the early years of his career in corporate acquisitions and private equity funds -- not fields that reward irrational exuberance. His book is based on research and analyses done at his Massachusetts think tank, the Prometheus Institute for Sustainable Development, working from what he claims are conservative assumptions about market and capital trends.

Those trends, he says, are inexorable: Just as revolutions have transformed the information and communication sectors, solar power will break the hold of sclerotic, centralized power companies.

Solar is different from other energy technologies in that it delivers energy at the point of use, directly to the end user. That allows it to circumvent the entire supply chain. It's not another option for a utility, it's a competitor to a utility -- the first time utilities have really had a competitor.

Tags: solar power, alternative energy, capitalism, market economy, corporates, energy revolution

Australia will build the biggest solar power plant

Thu, 26 Oct 2006 03:58:13 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: www.climateark.org

Australia faces blackouts, builds major solar plant

Australia will build the world's biggest solar power plant amid warnings of blackouts within five years unless it can increase electricity generation to meet growing demand for air conditioners.

With climate change becoming a major issue in Australia as a severe drought eats into economic growth and cities impose water restrictions, the government has begun to support alternative forms of energy.

Besides the new $420 million ($318 million) solar power plant, the government also announced on Wednesday a A$360 million pilot project to produce cleaner energy through brown coal drying and carbon capture and storage.

Australia, one of the world's biggest producers of greenhouse gases per capita, refuses to sign the Kyoto Protocol aimed at lowering greenhouse gases which cause global warming.

Tags: energy, climate change, environment, australia, solar power, alternative energy

Work begins on largest wind farm

Mon, 09 Oct 2006 01:08:33 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks:

"Some 16% of Scotland's electricity already comes from these sources, compared to 4% for the UK as a whole, and Whitelee will save a further 250,000 tonnes of harmful CO2 every year."

The wind farm, which is being constructed by Scottish Power, will take three years to complete.

Good news for the Brits.

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Work begins on largest wind farm

The development will take three years to complete

Work is set to begin on constructing what will become the largest onshore wind farm in Europe.

The £300m Whitelee project will see 140 turbines built on the Eaglesham Moor, south of Glasgow.

It is claimed that they will generate 322 megawatts of electricity - enough to power 200,000 homes.

The project will be launched by the Trade and Industry Secretary Alistair Darling, who will also begin a UK-wide consultation on renewable energy.

The government is seeking views on how it can reach its target of generating 20% of the UK's electricity from renewable sources.

Tags: wind power, alternative energy, britain, scotland