Block’s Indicator of Sustainable Growth

by Ray Block

Think Big (1) was about the Desertec concept, where concentrating solar thermal power arrays in the Sahara regions of Algeria and Morocco would supply potentially 15 per cent of Europe’s energy needs by 2050.

The Sahara was the first of the Desertec plans. But equally it could apply to other deserts in the tropical zone between the tropics of cancer and capricorn, as the potential epicentre of electricity production for the world.

But suppose you could use the vast energy in outer space as the means of generating electricity, which would allow for 24/7 the whole year of cheap renewable base power on planet earth to replace the use of coal fired, or combined gas power plants.  

As communications satellites orbit the earth, why not satellites fitted with solar photovoltaics panels generating energy and using microwaves to an earth station, which would convert it into direct current for connection to the grid.

If you look up the NASA website, you will see that space solar power or SSP was first conceived by Dr Peter Glaser, a Czech born American in 1968. He  suggested that a large “solar power satelllite” could be placed in geostationary earth orbit (GEO) to collect sunlight, and use it to generate an electromagnetic beam and transmit energy to Earth.

NASA will also tell you that the original idea of space solar power can be sheeted home to our old friend Nikola Tesla, the discover of wireless radio.

Tesla, in an address to the American Institute of Electrical Engineers in 1881 said, “Throughout space there is energy. If kinetic, it is a mere question of time when men will succeed in attaching their machinery to the very wheelwork of nature.”

John C Mankins, NASA’s then manager of advanced concepts studies at the Office of Space Flight gave evidence to a Congressional subcommittee in September 2000 describing their preliminary technology research on SSP over previous years.

So far the only action that has happened is that the International Space Agency is generating more than 100 kilowatts of electric power through solar PV panels, which are mounted on a metal framework of 380 feet(109 metres).

A US National Space Office Study in October 2007 concluded that SSP has “enormous potential for energy security, economic development, improved environmental stewardship, advancement of general space faring, and overall national security for  those nations, who construct and possess a SSP capability.” Some $80 million had been spent by the US in efforts to study solar generation in space.

 Fast forward to April 2009, when the Californian start up Solaren Space secured a Power Producing Agreement with PG&E, the largest energy utility in the golden state to supply 200 megawatts (MW) of electricity back to Earth via microwaves to a receiving station near Fresno. The contract is for 15 years from mid 2016.

Solaren Space has been lobbying for a space based solar power station since 2001, and should it finally come to pass, it is difficult to see how they will ever become profitable? 

   Gary Spirnak, the CEO of Solaren has said his team consists of satellite engineers and space scientists, and with their proposed space station,  will be able to generate and distribute electricity at competitive prices.  

Given the very large costs involved in space programs, it is difficult  to see how Solaren will be competitive in their power deal. So far, the company has raised only very small capital.

What gives some degree of measurable support to this start up is the news that a Japanese consortium of 16 Japanese companies will join a 2 trillion yen (US$21 billion) project to build a giant solar power generator in space and beam  1 GW  (1000 megawatts ) of electricity using microwaves to earth. 

Bloomberg in a news item (August 31 2009) quotes Kensuke Kanekiyo, managing director of the Institute of Energy Economics in Tokyo saying, ” it sounds like a science-fiction cartoon. But solar power generation in space may be a significant alternative energy source in the century ahead, as fossil fuel disappears.”

The Japanese trade ministry and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, which are leading the project plan to launch a small satellite fitted with solar panels in 2015, and test beaming electricity from space through the ionosphere, the outermost layer of the earth’s atmosphere.

The Japanese are conscious that transporting the solar panels to the solar station 36,000 Km above the earth’s surface will be “prohibitively costly, so Japan has to figure out a way to slash expenses to make the solar station commercially viable,” said a Tokyo based space and defence policy consultant. ”These expenses need  to be lowered to a hundredth of current estimates.”

by Ray Block

For over 30 years, visionaries in the Club of Rome have thought and dreamed of powering up the Sahara, the world’s biggest non-polar desert to supply renewable  energy to Europe, Middle East and North Africa.

This is the Desertec initiative, which has the support of both the German Chancellor,  the President of the European Union, and important sections of  European, mainly German industry. Dr Gerhard Knies of Hamburg is the eminent grise of Desertec.

The concept is that by far the largest technically accessible source of energy on the planet is to be found in the deserts around the equatorial regions.

Here, the air is very dry with little cloud cover, with the sun shining for more than six kilowatt hours per day per square meter. Concentrating solar thermal power (CSP) is designed to be used in desert and other arid areas.

The Desertec consortium of 12 members includes the world’s biggest reinsurance company, Munich Re, Deutsche Bank, HSN Nordbank,and two German utilities in RWE and E.On (the latter having just completed the world’s biggest wind farm, 627 wind turbines to generate  781.5 MW in west Texas.

Along with two electrical engineering firms in Siemens of Germany and ABB of Switzerland and Sweden, the international contracting company M+W Zander, there are three solar firms directly involved and one indirectly through Siemens.

These are the concentrating solar power groups MAN Millenium of Germany amd Abengoa Solar of Spain, along with the solar photovoltaics firm Schott of Germany.

The most recent solar entrant to the group comes through Siemens’s recent  acquisition of the Israeli concentrating solar power group, Solel at a cost of US$418 million.

Both Solel and Abengoa have a lot of experience in setting up CSP plants in desert conditions- with Solel in Israel and California, and Abengoa in Spain, Nevada and shortly in Arizona. Abengoa is also developing a CSP and combined-cycle gas plant for generating energy in Morocco and Algeria.

Also in the group are Cevital, the Algerian conglomerate, and indirectly the Moroccan Renewable Energy Development Centre, which buys in 96 per cent of its energy supplies, and is desperate for renewable energy.

The Desertec solar plan costed at $ 564 billion has no immediate start date at this stage, although it proposes to supply 15 per cent of Europe’s electricity supply by 2050.

Hermann Scheer, the german parliamentary member, who heads the European Association for Renewable Energy says “Sahara power for Northern Europe is a mirage- those behind the project know themselves that nothing will ever come out of this.”

Scheer  is a proponent of solar photovoltaics (PV), and there is a role for that technology. But CSP is more suitable in the desert, than in dense population  areas, where there are plenty of rooftops. 

With the European Union commissioners intending to allocate 16 billion euros ($23.5 billion) to the solar sector, it’s time for the Desertec consortium to get on its bike and start to move forward quickly.

by Ray Block

A study of electric vehicles- hybrids and all-electric by the consultancy Lux Research says that even if crude oil prices hit US$200 a barrel in 2020, hybrids and all- electrics would still make up only about 4 per of vehicles world wide. 

The report “Unplugging the hype around electric vehicles” says that the price barrier of hybrids and all-electrics is due to the high cost of lithium-ion       (li-ion) battery cells.

Lux Research, says while Li-ion battery technology is a “clear winner,” cell prices will drop from “over $720 kWh today to between $405/kWh and $445/kWh in 2020, depending on oil prices. That is still very dear.

The researchers say that regardless of oil prices, hybrids like Toyoto’s Prius with an electric motor and internal combustion engine should reach sales of 3 million units annually by 2020.

By comparison, plug- in hybrids, that is hybrids with batteries capable of being recharged would require oil prices around $200/barrel and all-electrics “will be a factor of ten smaller” even with  oil at $200/barrel.

I may be barking up the wrong tree, but I think the market  for electric vehicles will be a lot larger than the researchers suggest.

Impeding the market growth is not only the cost of batteries per kWh, but also the infrastructure required for a nation- wide network of battery-charging stations to encourage volume sales.

The AFP press agency (October 1 2009)  said that France intends to take up the challenge of encouraging volume sales of electric cars, by committing to invest 1.5 billion euros (US$ 2.2 billion) on infrastructure for the 2 million electric cars and hybrids  it wants on the road by 2020.

900 million euros of the total is expected from a state loan due to be launched in 2010. Under the plan, a million battery-charging stations will be built by 2015, 90 per cent of them in private homes, but also in car parks and at roadside sites.

From 2012, all new apartment blocks with parking lots will have to include charging stations. The French government will contribute 125 million euros from its strategic investment fund to the overall cost of 625 million euros for a Renault battery plant at Flins, near Paris. Another 100 million euros will be made available to other vehicle makers, such as Peugeot or Daimler’s Smart division.

AFP says that joint purchases by state authorities and major private companies will see orders for 100,000 electric vehicles by 2015, according to the plan.

By 2030,French ecology minister Jean-Louis Borloo, said that “no player can take the risk alone, but if all the actors take it at the same time, that works.” The minister said that the aim is to “make the French  energy and car industry a world leader.”

The aim is to build eco friendly vehicles to help reduce CO2 emissions. The project cost covers everything from industrial research, making batteries, producing clean cars and building a network of battery-charging stations.

The electric car plan comes after the Sarkozy Government’s green plan to spend more than seven billion euros ($10 billion) to develop freight transport by rail and reduce road traffic.

If the ambitious French plan is driven jointly by industry and the government, which looks fairly certain, it isn’t difficult to imagine Germany also taking up the cause of the electric car, once the French scheme is off and running.

And with both the US, Japan, China and South Korea all charging into the race, the multipliers in the market will make the Lux Research report findings somewhat irrelevant.

By 2030, the emissions-free vehicle sector is projected to be worth some 15 billion euros in France alone, representing 27 per cent of the total market.

Renault and its leading competitor Peugeot-Citroen, which share the same ambitions of the government are enthusiastic about the likelihood of having electric vehicles on the market by 2012. The two companies see electric cars making up more than 10 per cent of the market by 2020.

Whether there will be enough lithium for hybrid and all-electric vehicle batteries is debateable. The Car Tech blog (September 22 2009) thinks there is enough-”oodles of the stuff- at least for the next decade. Beyond that, though opinions differ.”

Bolivia, the dominant supply source, currently doesn’t produce lithium, but holds almost 40 per cent of known reserves. Chile produces 39 per cent of annual production,  China 13 per cent, Australia and Russia each around 11 per cent, Argentina 10 per cent and  United States 8 per cent.

Given that lithium is an expensive, relatively scarce metal, the rush to lithium-ion batteries may be somewhat unwise, given the large potential investment by a number of battery companies in Li-ion.

 But if the emphasis is to reduce demand for oil in transportation, on grounds of reducing carbon emissions,  it is essential that electric vehicles need to quickly become affordable to the mass market. It is hard to see how Li-ion batteries are ever going to fit into the category of becoming affordable.

There are a number of alternative batteries which could be used, but the most practical would seem to be in the development of zinc air batteries, where the raw materials are cheap and easily abundant.

Two companies are jumping into the zinc air space. One of these is ReVolt Technology LLC, a spinoff of Norway’s SINTEF, the largest independent research group in Scandinavia. Other investors include the German energy group RWE, NorthZone Ventures(Sweden), Sofinnova Partners (France), TVM Capital (Germany), Verdane Capital and Viking Venture, both of Norway.

The other company in zinc air is PowerAir, a start up from the US government research arm Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

A 2007 research paper by William Tahil of Meridian International Research of  France says that zinc air batteries have the “highest specific energy and lowest cost of any electric vehicle rechargeable battery technology.”

The researcher also adds that “zinc is the cheapest and most abundant battery metal, and the only metal which can sustain large battery production in the volumes required by the global automotive industry.”

Toyoto is said to have investigated zinc air as a possible replacement for lithium-ion in future auto battery production. It will be interesting to see when the world’s largest auto company starts releasing its all-electric car in 2012, whether zinc air is part of the package.

US headquarters and manufacturing centre for ReVolt will be in Portland Oregon

by Ray Block

You may have heard of a new technology called WITricity, also the name of the company developing the MIT technology of wireless electricity.

At first sight, it would seem a game of magic, where you can transmit power through the air. The reality is that you will soon be able to throw away the electrical cords to keep a mobile phone or laptop battery perpetually charged. Disposable dc batteries will eventually be a thing of the past.

The technology goes back to the end of the 19th century, where Thomas Edison and Nicola Tesla were fighting for supremacy in the beginnings of the  electricity market. Edison was supreme in direct current, in which a whole string of identical Edison companies were set up in each of the major American cities to light up the streets.

By comparison, Tesla,  having been initially employed by Edison, teamed up with Westinghouse,  and later on in his own laboratory developed alternating current. He conceived the rotating magnetic field principle in 1882, and  then used it to invent the induction motor.  Together with the alternating current, Telsa made possible the  transmission of electricity over long distances. This was in 1888. 

Telsa, a Serb born American physicist and electrical engineer had the spark of genius. He was  the true inventor of radio (rather than  Marconi), and created the fundamental principles and machinery of wireless technology.

Marin Soljacic,  Croat born American physicist is the inventor of WITricity. An assistant professor of physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology at Cambridge (MA),  he was one of 25 recipients of  a genius fellowship from the John D MacArthur and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation. This was in 2008.

Soljacic, now 35, is developing in the Telsa tradition of wireless technology. Like Tesla,  he has been excited by aspects of electromagnetic waves with implications for fundamental principles of optical physics. This has now led to devices such as switches for optical computers and wireless power transmitters.

MIT says the optical switch is a major breakthrouugh, and is analogous to the transistor in current day microprocessors. In July 2007, he published a paper revisiting Tesla’s concept that electrical power can be transmitted wirelessly.

Soljacic demonstrated that strongly coupled magnetic resonances can wirelessly transfer 60 watts of power over two metres with reasonable efficiency and low electrical field emissions.

The aim of WITricity the company is to develop wireless power transmission to a commercial scale, so that devices in homes, offices and hospitals that use significant amounts of power won’t need batteries or wallsocket connections.

When you think about it, saving significant amounts of power is a major step forward in reducing carbon emissions in the new world, where renewable energy will one day rule the world. In the US, and most other advanced countries, buildings consume 40 per cent of all energy and over 7o per cent of electricity consumption.

WITricity Corp was founded in 2007, and has a long way to go before becoming profitable. But when you conceive that a heart by pass patient, with a pacemaker may one day potentially have the battery recharged, without a further surgical procedure, you know you’re on a winner.

The intellectual property is based on the magnetic field of two properly designed devices, with closely matched resonant frequencies, being able to  couple  into a single continous magnetic field. This allows the transfer of power from one device to the other at high efficiency.

The publication Fast Money (Issue 132 February 2009) says that at this stage the dominant player in this niche market is Fulton Innovations, a  subsidiary of Amway.

Being a a high tech fan, my bet is on the MIT spin off.

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by Ray Block

Did you read as a kid any of the Doctor Dolittle stories by Hugh Lofting, or possibly read the  stories to your own kids, or grandkids.

Doctor Dolittle a medical doctor, bored with treating human patients preferred to treat animals, with whom he could speak in their own languages.

The rarest animal in the Lofting jungle was a pushmi-pullyu, no tail but a head at each end, and sharp horns on each head. No matter which way you came towards him, he was always facing you, said the story teller.

One of the animals tells the Doctor to take the pushmi-pullyu, the rarest animal in the jungle  back home. “Your fortune’s made. People will pay any money to see him.” 

In the US Senate, where a round of hearings on the Climate Bill will start  October 27 , we see the ‘pushmi-pullyu’ in action. In the ‘Yes We Can’ column, Environment and Energy Daily, up dated to September 25, 2009, says there are 32 committed climate change senators. All these senators are   Democrats.

Then there are 13 senators, Environment and Energy Daily say, are ‘Probably Yes’ voters.  There are 2 Republican Senators in this group-Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, both of Maine in New England, flanked by 11 Democrats.

In the ’No We Can’t column, there are 22 climate skeptics. They are joined by 12 other senators in the ‘Probably No’ camp, making in all 34 senators, all Republican.

In the ensuing tug of war, the ‘Yes’ and Probably Yes’ number 45, and at the other end, the ‘No’ and ‘Probably No’ are a collective of 34, making for a stalemate.

This leaves the crucial ’Fence Sitters,’ with 21 in this assembly. This motley group consists of 15 Democrats and 6 Republicans. If they all joined the climate changers, the result would be 66 ‘ayes’ and 34 ‘noes. No filibuster,and the Senate and the House bills would go into the Conference stage, where the two bills would be blended together.

If  such a miracle was to happen, with the US  able to present legislation on climate change and energy to the Copenhagen COP 15  meetings in December, it would lead in 2010 and 2011 to the beginnings of real change in international commitments on climate change.

But will such a miracle really happen? Much has been made of an apparent softening of  one of the Fence Sitters, the moderate Republican, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who started the beginnings of a breakthrough with the Democratic majority.

The New York Times OP-ED of October 11 2009 with Senators John Kerry of the liberal Democrats, and Lindsey Graham joining together, say  ”we refuse to accept the argument that the United States cannot lead the world in addressing global climate change. ”

“We are also convinced that we have found both a framework for climate legislation to pass Congress and the blueprint for a clean energy future that will revitalise our economy, protect current jobs and create new ones, safeguard our national security and reduce pollution.”

They outline a five point challege. The first is an acceptance of “aggressive reductions” in carbon emissions.

Second, while investing in renewable energy, “nuclear power needs to be a  core component of electricity generation, if we are to meet our emission reduction targets…….We need to jettison cumbersome regulations that have stalled the construction of nuclear plants in favour of a streamlined permit system.”

Third, the United States “should aim to become the Saudi Arabia of clean coal. For this reason, we need to provide new financial incentives for companies that develop capture  and sequestration technology. In addition, we are committed to seeking compromise on additional onshore and offshore oil and gas exploration.

Fourth, a border tax on items produced in countries that do not accept US environmental standards.

Finally, the creation  of a floor and ceiling price for the cost of emission allowances to safeguard important industries making investments necessary to join the clean energy era.  

The 15 Democrat ‘Fence Sitters’ are from a mix of farm, manufacturing and coal states, where the Climate Bill provides a great deal of incentives. The emphasis on trade imposts on imports from Asia and elsewhere to protect American jobs is a prerequisite to get these senators on board, irrespective of how the measure would be seen internationally.