Block’s Indicator of Sustainable Growth

by Ray Block

Climategate in November 2009 is the name global warming sceptics gave to the theft of 61 megabytes of material from the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK. The cache contained hundreds of files, code and documents from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Centre, which Russian or Chinese hackers had stolen and subsequently leaked around the world.

The sceptics rubbed their hands with glee. Embarrassing as the leaks were, they showed exaggeration, and possibly some manipulation of the scientific data. The Telegraph London was a major recipient of the sceptics having a field day. It had the atmospherics of an English foxhunt, with the sceptics on horseback.

Glaciergate in December saw concerted attacks on the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) peer group reports, particularly that of 2007. The sceptics cast their greatest censure on Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the IPCC. Sceptics whipped up calls for Pachauri’s resignation.

One claim in the 2007 report from an obscure Indian scientist that the Himalayan glaciers, so vital to the Indian and Chinese river systems, could melt to the stage of vanishing by 2035, was itself subsequently disowned by the IPCC.

Treegate is my idea, but who knows the sceptics may be hot on the scent.

There were three separate reports in recent months from the science media that global warming is causing some tree species growing faster.

Four researchers from the Tree-ring Research Lab of the University of Arizona say that ancient pines close to treeline have wider annual growth rings for the period from 1951 to 2000 than in the previous 3,700 years. Regional temperatures have increased, particularly at high elevations, during the same 50 year time period. The tree stands in eastern California and Nevada are separated by hundreds of metres.

The original report is from “Recent unprecedented tree-ring growth in bristlecone pine at the highest elevation and possible causes.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 2009. Co-author Matthew Salzer said, “Only trees within 150 metres of treeline showed the surge in growth. In general, those trees were at or about 3,300 metres in elevation. This tree species is said to be the oldest on the planet.

“You can come downslope less than 200 vertical metres and sample the same species of tree, and it won’t show the same wide band of growth, said Salzer.”

Co-author Malcolm Hughes said, “Something very unusual at high elevations is happening.  The higher you go, the faster it’s warming.”

The second case study from four scientists at the University of Wisconsin- Madison and the University of Minnesota at Morris (UMM) (Global Change Biology December 4 2009) reported a new study of 919 quaking aspen trees in Wisconsin. The tree study subjected to tree-ring analysis showed that “elevated levels of atmospheric CO2 during the past 50 years have boosted aspen growth rates by an astonishing 50 per cent.”

Aspen and their poplar cousin is a dominant tree in mountainous and northern forested regions of the US and Canada. “We cannot forecast ecological change, said Don Waller, professor of Botany at UW-Madison. It’s a complicated business.”

The third case study, (Science Daily (February 2 2010) involved the growth of 55 stands of mixed hardwood forest plots in Maryland, which has been tracked by forest ecologist, Geoffrey Parker for more than 20 years at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Centre in Edgewater. As in the two other case studies, the trees are growing at an accelerated rate. The science report is in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Something unusual is happening, and the scientists can’t really understand it. But perhaps the sceptics will discover another sinister plot. Let’s wait and see.

Posted under Climate Change, Global Warming, Renewable Energies

by Ray Block

It’s becoming readily accepted in the community that energy efficiency is important. But it isn’t really understood that the No1 priority on the road to a low carbon economy is achieving energy savings.

Investment in energy savings in buildings, industry and transportation ranks above investment in new energy sources including wind, solar, biomass and biofuels. The International Energy Agency (IEA), in its World Energy Outlook November 2009, says that end-use efficiency is the biggest contributor to the cutting back of CO2 emissions.

The agency also said that energy efficiency investment has a short payback period in fuel cost savings. Expressed as a fuel source in its own right, the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), says in its report on the cost of saved energy September 2009, that energy efficiency would cost the equivalent of 1.6 cents/kilowatt hour (kWh) to 3.3 cents per kilowatt hour kWh, averaging 2.5 cents/kWh.

This compared with pulverised coal at 7 cents/kWh to 14 cents/kWh, combined cycle natural gas 7 cents/ kWh to 10 cents/kWh, and wind energy 4 cents/kWh to 9 cents/kWh.

This led the authors of the ACEEE report to say that “energy efficiency is by far the least cost resource option. They went on: “it appears to be a resource that continues to renew itself- the more energy efficiency opportunities we look for, the more we find.”

The biggest area for energy savings is in buildings, adding together industrial, commercial and residential, which collectively amounts to 38 per cent of energy use.

This is one and half times energy use in transportation. The figures are derived from a four year international survey by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD.

Energy codes and standards are largely ineffective, and safety standards are not much better. So how do you bring about change? A price on carbon, with appropriate tax incentives helps. There is a big role for research and development. But no matter how much is achieved in R & D, both with new technology and incremental change, the biggest problem remaining is the overwhelming tendency of inertia, clinging to traditional ways of doing things.

George David, chairman of the privately funded Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington (September 2009) said that “higher carbon costs and improved efficiency technologies will increase the attractiveness of investments and lessen the economic drag of otherwise lower returns. But we still need the stimulus of regulation to get us started”

Two ways of achieving energy savings provide a transformational way of approach.

The first example comes from George David. He quoted the example of newer elevators, which recapture and make available for re-use the energy on descent that was expended on ascent. Reducing energy consumption by 75 per cent for the same speed and load, compared to older models, with non-regenerative elevators.

The other example comes from Green Inc, the environmental blog of the New York Times. It involves the installation of a stationary fuel cell in a 69,000 sq ft supermarket in upstate New York, which has largely supplanted the electricity grid supply for the store’s lighting, heating and cooling requirements.

As the fuel cell supplier, UTC Power says fuel cells don’t have the energy waste of traditional power generation, where more than half of the energy goes up the stack as greenhouse gas. By contrast, fuel cell systems convert heat exhaust into cooling and heating, turning potential waste into usable energy, with an energy conversion efficiency exceeding 85 per cent.

 

 

 

 

 

by Ray Block

Posted under Carbon Abatement Scheme, Climate Change, Economies, Global Warming, Low Carbon Economy, Renewable Energies, World Inflation

by Ray Block

When Arthur J Goldman, the founder of Luz abandoned the parabolic trough for his new start up BrightSource Energy, the dominant feature is a 143-metre central power tower.

On top of the tower, 1600 double tracking heliostats (small mirrors) reflect sunlight on to a boiler to produce high temperature steam.

The company has contracts with the two largest utilities in California- PGE and SCE to deliver 2.6 GW of solar power from 2013 onward. It will start with a 100 MW unit at Ivanpah, with construction commencing in 2010. A new company Ivanpah Solar, bringing in the large specialist construction group Bechtel, as an equity partner will later be expanded to 440 MW, with the addition of three further solar plants.

BrightSource also intends to install 900 MW of solar power at Coyote Springs, Nevada, largely to fulfil contract agreements with the Californian utilities. Other expansion plans are for solar plants in Arizona and New Mexico.

With a much smaller area of land and less water usage, the power tower has cost advantages over the solar trough, and the energy efficiency can be as high as 34 per cent. But there is one major difficulty still to be overcome. The Andasol plants in Spain are fitted with thermal storage capability of 7.5 hours, which allows the operators of the power grid to rely on the solar plant to deliver power for at least two hours, irrespective of the cloud cover. BrightSource doesn’t have thermal storage capability at this stage.

Another company using the power tower concept is eSolar. Little more than two years old, founder Bill Gross, an entrepreneur in computer software has moved very quickly into CSP, with a power tower concept and thousands of small flat mirrors similar to BrightSource. A man in a hurry, Gross’ company already opened a demonstration plant in August 2009 with capacity of 5 MW in Lancaster, CA to prove that the technology produces cost effective electricity, and can be replicated.

The main cost of the plant is the steel and the actuator for controlling the small flat modular mirrors. The steel holds the mirror in shape without distorting, to stay in a perfect parabola. “Because we use a one square meter mirror, we use half the steel of a solar trough,” says Gross.

The eSolar system has computer controlled 24,000 individual mirrors, all pointing in slightly different directions to project on one spot, with each mirror having its own microprocessor to control movement. Software is made up of 50 people in a company of 135 staff. Bill Gross estimates that the build and install cost of a modular 46 MW plant will be between $2.50 and $3 per watt.

eSollar has inked in contracts for 245 MW with SCE in Southern California and one of 92 MW with El Paso Electric in New Mexico. This is quite modest compared to the latest step announced in January 20l0.

A deal with China Shandong Penglai Electric, brings eSolar into the big time. Involved is an almost certain technology transfer involving 2 GW of solar power in a $5 billion deal. The project will start off with 92 MW, with development starting in 2010.The magnitude of the whole contract is exceptional, given that the eSolar basic plant design is for 46 MW of generating capacity.

The Irish renewable energy investment company, NTR, which bought control of SES Systems and its sister company Tessera Solar in 2008 for $100 million has moved forward quickly, with an initial 1.5 MW plant in Peoria Arizona, and a 27 MW plant in San Antonio Texas, involving a 20 year power purchase agreement with CPS Energy.

SES, formerly Stirling Energy Systems, with a then struggling capital base had saddled itself in 2005 with big Californian contracts. These comprise the 900 MW Imperial Valley 1 and 2, and the 850 MW Calico 1 and 2 purchase power agreement in Southern California, with San Diego Gas & Electric and SCE. There have been difficulties with environmental lobby groups holding up regulatory approvals.

It is ironic that the SES technology is the most economic of all CSP systems in the amount of land utilised and in water usage. Yet the Calico project in the Mojave Desert, if it were to gain regulatory approval would still require 34,000 solar dishes, each 40ft high and 38ft wide on 8,230 acres.

The SES CSP system doesn’t have a parabolic trough, or a power tower. But the SunCatcher solar power collection dishes, which has been re-designed with the research of Sandia National Labs’ National Solar Test Facility is now ready for commercial production. Although, there is no capability for thermal storage, it may become a winner in some markets.

The modular SunCatcher uses precision mirrors attached to a parabolic dish to focus the sun’s rays onto a receiver, which transmits the heat to a Stirling engine. The engine is a sealed system filled with hydrogen. As the gas heats and cools, its pressure rises and falls. The change in pressure drives the piston inside the engine, producing mechanical power, which in turn drives a generator to make electricity.

The new SunCatcher is much lighter than the original model, it is round instead of rectangular to allow for more efficient use of steel, has improved optics, there are 60 per cent fewer engine parts, and fewer mirrors- 40 instead of 80. Automobile manufacturing techniques have been used. To reduce costs, the reflective mirrors are formed into a parabolic shape using stamped sheet metal.

Sandia National Labs test measurement of solar to grid conversion efficiency of the SES system made in February 2008 was 31.25 per cent.

Posted under Carbon Abatement Scheme, Climate Change, Economies, Global Warming, Low Carbon Economy, Renewable Energies

 by Ray Block

The accepted view is that wind energy electricity per kWh is almost competitive with natural gas and coal, but solar energy is much more expensive. In turn, concentrating solar (CSP) in utility scale plants, is cheaper than solar PV

However, there is a concerted effort among CSP producers to bring down costs to more competitive levels. The then largest CSP developer in the world, the Israeli company Luz International, founded in 1980 designed and constructed for Southern California Edison (SCE), nine parabolic trough solar systems in the Mojave Desert.  The technology  consists of rows of curved mirrors focussing heat onto a tube filled with oil, which boils water to make steam for the turbine.

 Known as SEGS 1-9, California for the first time had concentrating solar generating capacity of 349 MW, the two final units each of 80 MW being installed in 1990. Although Luz planned more CSP plants, the company was bankrupted mainly because of dwindling levels of subsidies for this pioneering company.

 Considerable improvements in design enabled Luz to bring down electricity costs per kilowatt hour (kWh). The first two plants produced electricity at an uneconomic 24cents per kWh. The next five installed plants had reduced electricity costs to 12c per kWh, and the final two plants achieved an electricity cost down to 8c per kWh.

 The company aimed to enable new plants to generate electricity at 6c per kWh, which based on the first two plants would have allowed for a 75 per cent cost reduction. Each of the SEGS plants were configured as hybrids to use natural gas on cloudy days, or after dark.

 A great deal of ground has been made up in the last two years. At December 2009, there were 25 CSP projects under development in the US. These involved contracts for 6.2 GW, made up of 21 in California, two in Nevada, and one each in Arizona, Florida, New Mexico, and Hawaii.                           

 Today, parabolic trough systems are the most numerous in the CSP market, with the dominant suppliers Solar Millennium of Germany and Abengoa and Acciona of Spain. Solar Millennium’s three 50 MW plants in Andalusia, Spain (the third plant to be completed in 2011) is to be followed by a fourth 50 MW plant in the Spanish Extremadura region.

According to the suppliers, energy efficiency for each of the identical plants peaks at 28 per cent, with an average efficiency of 15 per cent. Each of the plants requires a ground area, equal to 70 soccer playing fields (195 hectares), and uses an immense amount of ground water. Given that CSP is most suitable in arid and desert conditions with large sun cover, the excessive water usage often leads to hostility among local landowners.

 Each of the Andasol plants has 209,664 large curved mirrors, each mirror being anchored at four points to a steel structure, with a laser scan checking each mirror’s curve at 1,000 measuring point per mirror. The parabolic trough system is about twice as expensive as other technology platforms on the market.

 Solar Millennium’s latest development is a contract of up to 726 MW with SCE in Southern California, with at least two solar trough plants each of 242 MW beginning construction in 2010. A third plant is also contemplated in the future.

 A likely solution to the cost of the traditional parabolic trough design comes from SkyFuel of New Mexico. With the collaboration of the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL),. Skyfuel is demonstrating its SkyTrough, where the traditional glass mirrors are replaced with lightweight glass-free highly reflective polymer mirror film reflectors. This is to be tested out at the site of Luz’s original SEGS 1 and 11 near Daggett, Southern California. Sunray Energy, a division of Cogentrix Energy  operates the SEGS plants supplying 43 MW of solar power to SCE. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

.

Posted under Economies, Global Warming, Low Carbon Economy, Renewable Energies

by Ray Block

Being a movie actor must have something about it to qualify as a politician. Ronald Reagan, the one time movie actor changed overnight from liberal to conservative, and having become the darling of the Right, became the successful 40th President of the US.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, another movie actor and one time bodybuilder, who enjoyed his roles as a super hero, but whose most endearing movie was Kindergarten Kid, retires from his two terms as governor of California in January 2011. He can’t stand again, a requirement of the state constitution, as amended in 1990. This could give concern that a future governor might want to slow down the march to renewable energy. For example, is front running Republican, Meg Whitman, the highly successful ex-CEO of eBay as committed to renewable energy as the Terminator?

California’s fiscal position is dysfunctional with a large structural debt, unemployment is at a record 12.5 per cent, and massive savings have to be made in budget programs. Schwarzenegger has been a crusader of renewable energy and the low-carbon fuel standard in the seven western states. With these states and four western Canadian provinces, he has been the leader in the Western Climate Initiative to set up a cap and trade scheme for the region.

The state has been a long time pioneer in tighter environmental laws, establishing its own air pollution standards as early as 1966. Under Schwarzenegger in 2006, landmark legislation AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act gave the California Air Resources Board (CARB), the lead agency role in implementing the act. The law requires that by 2020, the state’s greenhouse gas emissions be reduced to 1990 levels by 2020. This is about a 25 per cent reduction under “business as usual” conditions, and to  a 80 per cent reduction by 2050.

At the same time, California’s renewable portfolio standard (RPS), which the Governor signed into law in September 2006 imposed mandatory obligations on the state’s three major electricity suppliers to produce at least 20 per cent of their electricity using renewable sources by 2010.

The Terminator went even further in September 2009 by Executive Order directing CARB to adopt regulations increasing the state’s RPS to 33 per cent by 2020. The executive order allows renewable energy imported from the other western states through the western interconnection to count towards the 33 per cent goal.

The RPS will apply to all load serving entities, including investor owned utilities, publicly owned utilities, direct access providers and community choice aggregators. The ARB is directed to adopt these regulations by July 31 2010. Even with the allowance to include other western states’ renewable energy sources, this is an exceptional target for the largest state in the nation.

With the shock loss of Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat to a Republican and the tide turning strongly back to the conservatives, liberal Republicans like Arnold Schwarzenegger are a dying breed. There are already calls for AB 32 to be repealed. An economic analysis prepared for the California Small Business Roundtable in June 2009 concluded that small business, the dominant employment force in the state would be “likely to result in loss of more than $182.6 billion to gross state output.”

In the meantime, there is a record level of new development proposals in renewable energy projects in the state, which will make 2010 an extremely interesting year. I will write on these projects shortly.

Posted under Climate Change, Global Warming, Low Carbon Economy, Renewable Energies