!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> NewEnergyNews: 12/01/2006 - 01/01/2007

NewEnergyNews

Gleanings from the web and the world, condensed for convenience, illustrated for enlightenment, arranged for impact...

WALL STREET JOURNAL'S Environmental Capital selected NewEnergyNews as one of the "Blogs We Are Reading" in March, April and May of 2007 and quoted NewEnergyNews on June 5, 2007

MOTHER EARTH NEWS' Energy Matters selected NewEnergyNews for its "What We're Reading" list in September 2008

--------------------------- --------------------------

Anne B. Butterfield of DAILY CAMERA, a biweekly contributor to NewEnergyNews

-------------------

  • Selfishly seeking clean energy
  • Anne B. Butterfield
  • July 12, 2009 (Daily Camera)

    It's the cocktail banter of Boulder: We're so selfish in Boulder, because we're seeking to convert or retire the Valmont coal-fired power plant so it will no longer burn coal. Other communities, like the city of Commerce are more deserving of relief from the emissions of their local coal plants, and those other plants are older. So the banter goes.

    On the City Council's hotline Web site, Ken Wilson has written up how other coal plants around Xcel's service territory would have to produce more power if Boulder succeeds at knocking out the coal-fired power from Valmont. He adds, with fine ethics if not complete analysis: "Reducing carbon emissions is not something we in Boulder can feel good about 'winning' if it means pushing our problems to other communities."

    If Xcel's generating capacity weren't overbuilt in the next few years due to the addition of 750 megawatts of new coal starting this fall in Pueblo, Wilson's view would have more merit, mathematically and ethically. But facts are stubborn things -- and a new coal plant changes everything: it means that every coal plant in Xcel's system is now on the chopping block for parents fighting night and day for their children's world.

    Many also lean on the notion that Valmont is one of Xcel's most efficient coal plants. This is a little like referring to thin Sumo wrestlers, or gentle Mafia men. Coal plants just are not efficient enough to warrant the adjective, especially for a plant such as the Valmont coal unit that provides under 5 percent of base load generation for the area.

    The reason Valmont is on the hit-list is that our town has an informed, active populace, which has imposed a carbon tax on itself and whose utility franchise is coming up for renewal. This is a rare moment of leverage that combines with a moment in history when utilities everywhere are committing to coal plant conversions.

    In Ohio, First Energy decided this year to convert 312 MW of coal power to burn fuel crops grown for the purpose. Three years ago, the Public Service Commission of New Hampshire decided to convert 50 MW of coal capacity to burn biomass. DTE Energy of Wisconsin agreed to buy a 50 MW coal unit with plans to convert it to burning wood waste. A 24 MW coal plant in Pepeekeo, Hawaii, is being converted to burn biomass, and Georgia Power has announced a plan to covert a 96 MW coal unit to run on wood fuel.

    Here in the West, we have wood. Lots of beetle-killed timber that can be brought into plants on the trains that typically carry coal from Wyoming, returning there with our hard-earned dollars. In the past few months. Valmont itself is burning lower-grade, dirtier Wyoming coal. Instead, we could make power and carbon-sinking bio-char with beetle-kill trees.

    Also, here in the West we have sun. Matching our solar sensibilities, Xcel Energy itself has committed to a pilot project of augmenting the 39 MW of coal power of the Cameo plant near Grand Junction with the steam of a new concentrating solar assembly. Even more bravely, the Electric Power Research Institute is partnering with Tri State Power and Transmission to integrate concentrating solar power into the 245 MW Escalante coal plant in Prewitt, N.M., and with the legendarily pro-coal Southern Company to do likewise for the 742 MW Mayo plant in Roxboro N.C.

    According to EPRI, these hybrid power plants will demonstrate a near-term, reliable, cost-effective way to use solar energy at commercial scale for power that is greatly cleansed of the emissions that threaten public health and climate.

    In Boulder, ironically, we often have worse air quality than Denver due to the bowl effect of our valley, in which our air is tainted with heavy metals and ozone. The American Lung Association has given Boulder a grade of "F" for ozone, which contributes so much to asthma and other chronic ailments. This Tuesday evening at the Boulder County Courthouse there is a hearing for Valmont's air permit, which is an important chance to speak to regulators about these toxins impacting our community unnecessarily as cleaner options exist.

    There is nothing exotic about converting coal plants now. It's a matter of political will and we have a chance with Valmont. The plant is a great candidate, Boulder is the right town, and Xcel is the right utility.

    -------------------

    Anne's previous NewEnergyNews columns:

  • Selfishly seeking clean energy (July 12, 2009)
  • The big ka-ching in our health care wallet (June 19, 2009)
  • It takes a Governor (May 24, 2009)
  • Want a job? Think Wind. (May 10, 2009)
  • Just Say No to Xcess Energy (April 28, 2009)
  • NREL’s history of fickle funding (April 12, 2009)
  • Wagons firmly circled: Governance at REA’s and Tri-State (March 26, 2009)
  • A new migratory pattern: Colorado youth go to Washington (March 12, 2009)
  • Even coal is in for a revolution (February 22, 2009)
  • High Flyers and the Commons (February 11, 2009)
  • Come on Baby, Sit by Me (January 25, 2009)
  • A return on investment (January 3, 2009)
  • Mr. Secretary, we're watching you (December 28, 2008)
  • Canary in the Coal Mine (December 13, 2008)
  • Crash test dummies (November 16, 2008)
  • Needless markup (November 2, 2008)
  • The flap about 58 (October 19, 2008)
  • Hip towns and a clever measure (October 7, 2008)
  • Are we afraid of change? Still? (September 21, 2008)
  • Cheney in a chignon (September 7, 2008)
  • Don't tick off the blonde (August 10, 2008)
  • Buying us time on global warming (July 27, 2008)
  • Hint from Heloise - It's the pH, Stupid! (July 13, 2008)
  • Nukes: the position ridiculous and the expense damnable (June 29, 2008)

    -------------------

    NOTEWORTHY IN THE MEDIA:

  • Young, Green Entrepreneurs Flock to Carbon Market, from NPR's Morning Edition: "...climate change and a billion-dollar carbon market that trades in carbon credits — as if they were pork bellies — have created a new career niche."

  • Ethical Markets TV: A remarkable TV series showcasing people who “…illustrate the triple bottom line, respecting people and the environment while earning a profit…” Part of Ethical Markets: “Your gateway to cleaner, greener 21st century economies.”

  • Energy Security and Global Warming, from Warren Olney's TO THE POINT at KCRW in Santa Monica: "US energy demands are rising as the price of oil goes through the roof...Canadian tar sands and domestic coal would provide energy security, but at the risk of increased global warming. Can renewables be developed in time?"

  • Designer Biofuels, from KQED Radio in San Francisco: "...making a gasoline alternative to run our cars has great promise but there are huge problems...The next answer [may come]...from a UC Berkeley lab, a Silicon Valley start up or...the jungles of Costa Rica."

  • HELEN’S WAR: Portrait of a Dissident, showing periodically on the Sundance Channel (click title for listings), profiles the medical doctor turned anti-nuclear activist as she continues her nearly 4-decade-old campaign to educate the public on the serious drawbacks to the development of nuclear energy.

  • A CRUDE AWAKENING: The Oil Crash, showing periodically on the Sundance Channel (click title for listings), studies the implications of world dependence on oil and declining availability of it.

  • Lee Iococa predicts the Plug-In Hybrid will be the next big thing in cars NPR’s Morning Edition: Thursday, April 26, 2007.

  • Robert Redford Presents "the GREEN": A weekly block of New Energy and Environmentally-Friendly programming. Check local listings.

  • John Rabe's OFFRAMP, Saturdays at noon (and podcasts) via NPR-affiliate KPCC-FM. A radio magazine show about Los Angeles, sometimes covering energy issues but frequently featuring John telling anybody he can about his vegetable oil-burning, converted Mercedes.

  • NOW: PBS's David Brancaccio talks with Laurie David, a producer of the Oscar-nominated documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" and a major environmental activist.
    • Stream it at your convenience here.

  • Living with Ed, an HGTV tons-of-fun reality/comedy show about the trials, tribulations, hilarity and rewards in the marriage of environmentalist Ed Begley, Jr., and his appearance-oriented actress-wife Rachelle Carson. Click here for listings

    • -------------------

  • My Novels: OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The American Decades & OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The Story of Our Addiction
  • Review of OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The American Decades by Mark S. Friedman
  • OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The American Decades, the second volume of Herman K. Trabish’s retelling of oil’s history in fiction, picks up where the first book in the series, OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The Story of Our Addiction, left off. The new book is an engrossing, informative and entertaining tale of the Roaring 20s, World War II and the Cold War. You don’t have to know anything about the first historical fiction’s adventures set between the Civil War, when oil became a major commodity, and World War I, when it became a vital commodity, to enjoy this new chronicle of the U.S. emergence as a world superpower and a world oil power.
  • As the new book opens, Lefash, a minor character in the first book, witnesses the role Big Oil played in designing the post-Great War world at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. Unjustly implicated in a murder perpetrated by Big Oil agents, LeFash takes the name Livingstone and flees to the U.S. to clear himself. Livingstone’s quest leads him through Babe Ruth’s New York City and Al Capone’s Chicago into oil boom Oklahoma. Stymied by oil and circumstance, Livingstone marries, has a son and eventually, surprisingly, resolves his grievances with the murderer and with oil.
  • In the new novel’s second episode the oil-and-auto-industry dynasty from the first book re-emerges in the charismatic person of Victoria Wade Bridger, “the woman everybody loved.” Victoria meets Saudi dynasty founder Ibn Saud, spies for the State Department in the Vichy embassy in Washington, D.C., and – for profound and moving personal reasons – accepts a mission into the heart of Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe. Underlying all Victoria’s travels is the struggle between the allies and axis for control of the crucial oil resources that drove World War II.
  • As the Cold War begins, the novel’s third episode recounts the historic 1951 moment when Britain’s MI-6 handed off its operations in Iran to the CIA, marking the end to Britain’s dark manipulations and the beginning of the same work by the CIA. But in Trabish’s telling, the covert overthrow of Mossadeq in favor of the ill-fated Shah becomes a compelling romance and a melodramatic homage to the iconic “Casablanca” of Bogart and Bergman.
  • Monty Livingstone, veteran of an oil field youth, European WWII combat and a star-crossed post-war Berlin affair with a Russian female soldier, comes to 1951 Iran working for a U.S. oil company. He re-encounters his lost Russian love, now a Soviet agent helping prop up Mossadeq and extend Mother Russia’s Iranian oil ambitions. The reunited lovers are caught in a web of political, religious and Cold War forces until oil and power merge to restore the Shah to his future fate. The romance ends satisfyingly, America and the Soviet Union are the only forces left on the world stage and ambiguity is resolved with the answer so many of Trabish’s characters ultimately turn to: Oil.
  • Commenting on a recent National Petroleum Council report calling for government subsidies of the fossil fuels industries, a distinguished scholar said, “It appears that the whole report buys these dubious arguments that the consumer of energy is somehow stupid about energy…” Trabish’s great and important accomplishment is that you cannot read his emotionally engaging and informative tall tales and remain that stupid energy consumer. With our world rushing headlong toward Peak Oil and epic climate change, the OIL IN THEIR BLOOD series is a timely service as well as a consummate literary performance.
  • Oil history journal articles by Dr. Trabish: Oil Stories and Histories
  • Review of OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The Story of Our Addiction by Mark S. Friedman
  • "...ours is a culture of energy illiterates." (Paul Roberts, THE END OF OIL)
  • OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, a superb new historical fiction by Herman K. Trabish, addresses our energy illiteracy by putting the development of our addiction into a story about real people, giving readers a chance to think about how our addiction happened. Trabish's style is fine, straightforward storytelling and he tells his stories through his characters.
  • The book is the answer an oil family's matriarch gives to an interviewer who asks her to pass judgment on the industry. Like history itself, it is easier to tell stories about the oil industry than to judge it. She and Trabish let readers come to their own conclusions.
  • She begins by telling the story of her parents in post-Civil War western Pennsylvania, when oil became big business. This part of the story is like a John Ford western and its characters are classic American melodramatic heroes, heroines and villains.
  • In Part II, the matriarch tells the tragic story of the second generation and reveals how she came to be part of the tales. We see oil become an international commodity, traded on Wall Street and sought from London to Baku to Mesopotamia to Borneo. A baseball subplot compares the growth of the oil business to the growth of baseball, a fascinating reflection of our current president's personal career.
  • There is an unforgettable image near the center of the story: International oil entrepreneurs talk on a Baku street. This is Trabish at his best, portraying good men doing bad and bad men doing good, all laying plans for wealth and power in the muddy, oily alley of a tiny ancient town in the middle of everywhere. Because Part I was about triumphant American heroes, the tragedy here is entirely unexpected, despite Trabish's repeated allusions to other stories (Casey At The Bat, Hamlet) that do not end well.
  • In the final section, World War I looms. Baseball takes a back seat to early auto racing and oil-fueled modernity explodes. Love struggles with lust. A cavalry troop collides with an army truck. Here, Trabish has more than tragedy in mind. His lonely, confused young protagonist moves through the horrible destruction of the Romanian oilfields only to suffer worse and worse horrors, until--unexpectedly--he finds something, something a reviewer cannot reveal. Finally, the question of oil must be settled, so the oil industry comes back into the story in a way that is beyond good and bad, beyond melodrama and tragedy.
  • Along the way, Trabish gives readers a greater awareness of oil and how we became addicted to it. Awareness, Paul Roberts said in THE END OF OIL, "...may be the first tentative step toward building a more sustainable energy economy. Or it may simply mean that when our energy system does begin to fail, and we begin to lose everything that energy once supplied, we won't be so surprised."
  • Oil history journal articles by Dr. Trabish: Oil Stories and Histories

    • About Me

    Name: Herman K. Trabish
    Location: La Crescenta, CA

    *Doctor with my hands *Author of the "OIL IN THEIR BLOOD" series with my head *Student of New Energy with my heart

    View my complete profile

    -------------------

    CONTACT: herman@newenergynews.net

    -------------------

    -------------------

      A tip of the NewEnergyNews cap to Phillip Garcia for crucial assistance in the design implementation of this site. Thanks, Phillip.

    -------------------

    Pay a visit to the HARRY BOYKOFF page at Basketball Reference, sponsored by NewEnergyNews and Oil In Their Blood.

  • -------------------

    • Sunday, December 31, 2006

    2006: GREEN TOP TEN

    The happiest of New Years and warmest gratitude to New Energy News readers who have helped us get this newsblog up and running into 2007!


    We Got Our Kicks In 2006; The Top Ten Green Stories of the Year
    David Roberts, 22 December 2006 (Grist Magazine)

    10. A Stern reminder…In October, venerable economist and senior U.K. government adviser Sir Nicholas Stern released a major report on global warming. Its claims were explosive…he smashed once and for all the myth that our choice is between spending money fighting global warming and saving money doing nothing. It turns out doing nothing will cost far more.

    9. Takings is leaving…When Oregon voters passed Measure 37 in 2004, supporters of sustainable development despaired…Oregonians have a serious case of buyer's remorse, lamenting the erosion of some of the nation's most progressive land-use policies. Voters are wising up to the fact that takings measures tie a community's hands…

    8. Carbon neutrality is the new black…New Oxford American Dictionary chose "carbon neutral" as its word of the year…sudden ubiquity of the idea…the Pearl Jam tour…Al Gore's movie…the private sector surged to meet the demand, with a new carbon offset company springing up every five minutes…Colleges are doing it. Weddings. Vacations. Big companies. Small companies. Movie stars. The Olympics. Your Aunt Mabel. Pretty soon we'll all be carbon neutral…
    http://www.greencoast.org/node/10970

    7. Grist officially out of punny California headlines…California has always kicked the rest of the nation's ass on environmental policy…its groundbreaking clean-car bill, its groundbreaking Million Solar Roofs plan, its groundbreaking greenhouse-gas targets…In 2006…it outdid itself. Assembly Bill 32 authorized the California Air Resources Board to start setting real, actual, tangible, measurable, pinch-me-I-must-be-dreaming emissions limits on specific industries…AB32 probably saved Arnold's ass. More Republicans like this, please.

    6. Roadless! No, roadful! No, roadless!…The Roadless Rule was one of President Bill Clinton's last, best, and, ahem, only substantial environmental legacies. It put some 58.5 million acres -- nearly a third of national forest land -- under protection…In 2005, President Bush replaced it…In September 2006, U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Laporte…claimed the administration had not conducted proper environmental studies before yanking it ... almost implying that -- are you sitting down? -- they didn't really care about protecting forests. Dang activist judges.

    5. Hi. My name is the United States of America, and I'm an addict…halfway through his January State of the Union speech…President Bush said…"America is addicted to oil."

    …The oil-reduction goal he offered alongside it was flaccid…He's spent his time since cutting spending on conservation, energy efficiency, and alternative energy, pushing to drill every-damn-where, and hyping biofuels and hydrogen…And he's still BFF with Saudi Arabia…But still. His words almost instantaneously made conventional bipartisan wisdom out of what had long been a predominately progressive critique…Perhaps next year he'll mention peak oil…

    4. God v. Dobson…In February, a group of 86 prominent leaders…signed the Evangelical Climate Initiative, which called on the federal government to take urgent action against the threat of global warming…pitting the old guard, which plans to keep flogging gay marriage until the checks stop coming, against the new guard, which is pushing to broaden the agenda to issues that involve fewer clear villains but actual, widespread suffering: global warming, poverty, and AIDS…The old guard includes such veterans as Chuck Colson and James Dobson…The new guard includes Jim Wallis, Rich Cizik, and kajillion-selling author and mega-church pastor Rick Warren. The old guard is losing members, while the new guard snagged Pat Robertson…

    3. America takes Dick out of resources committee…The 2006 mid-term elections…Enviros lost a few long-time allies on the right side of the aisle…But they lost many more nettlesome pains in the ass…Perhaps the greatest source of green schadenfreude in a decade came with the defeat of Rep. Richard "Dick" Pombo, who used his perch atop the House Resources Committee to wage unremitting war on environmental regulation…Pombo was beaten by Jerry McNerney, a wind-turbine engineer…After six years of bleak news on the environmental front, Democratic committee control in both houses of Congress now opens the way for serious action on global warming and energy security…
    2. Wal-Mart: America's leading source of cognitive dissonance…Wal-Mart's astonishing, almost comically ambitious goal -- to produce zero net waste and run entirely on renewable energy -- was announced late last year…it has been plodding steadily toward its sustainability goals, improving the fuel efficiency of its truck fleet, pressuring suppliers to reduce packaging, and filling its shelves with organic food…Wal-Mart's core business model -- importing cheap plastic widgets from overseas to sell in massive stores plonked down in the middle of Nowhere, Suburbia -- is inherently unsustainable in an energy-constrained future. But its open embrace of sustainability was just the latest in a string of ambitious corporate initiatives from biggies like Dupont and GE…to say nothing of the astonishing infusion of private venture capital in green industries like clean energy…going green is not a drag on the economy. It's the 21st century's biggest moneymaker.

    1. An inconvenient yet bizarrely popular truth…it's difficult to overstate the amount of credit that goes to one man: Al Gore…An Inconvenient Truth…has become the third-highest grossing documentary of all time, with the highest per-screen average of any documentary ever. It looks likely to win an Academy Award…The movie…opened the floodgates. There were news specials, congressional hearings, Jay Leno appearances, Oprah appearances, Daily Show appearances, public debates, and kitchen-table conversations…"skepticism" about climate change retreated…the debate over what to do about it got started…Thanks, Al.

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 8:09 AM 1 comments

    2006: FINIS

    Energy’s Winners and Losers In 2006
    Steve Hargreaves, December 27, 2006 (CNN Money)
    - Even with oil prices little changed from the end of 2005, 2006 was still a very good time to be an energy investor.

    - The AMEX oil and gas index is up nearly 14 percent in the year to date, while the electric utility index on Baseline is up 17 percent, and the Wilder Hill clean energy index is up about 6 percent…
    - In the oil and gas sector, the big integrated oil companies turned in stellar performances…ExxonMobil is up 35 percent in 2006,Chevron has gained 28 percent and the stock of ConocoPhillips has risen 23 percent…Smaller oil companies like…rose 49 percent this year, while Occidental is up 22 percent…partially explained by the fact that the price of oil fell…investors jumped into the safer stocks...
    - The fall in oil's price has, however, hurt more specialized companies, the stock of which tends to depend more directly on the price of crude.
    - The stock of refiner Sunoco…lost 20 percent…unable to take advantage of the price difference between heavy and light grades of oil…Exploration and production specialist Anadarko fell 10 percent in a year during which it made big acquisitions, including the $21 billion outlay for Western Gas Resources and Kerr-McGee Corp…

    - Looking ahead, a similar trend is expected to continue in 2007, as the price of oil is seen trading in a fairly narrow range…between $55 and $70 per barrel…
    - In the renewable field, 2006 was the year of ethanol. Several companies went public this year, including the nation's No. 2 producer VeraSun, which debuted near the peak of the ethanol craze in June at around $28 a share…
    Yet, VeraSun fell steadily for several months after its IPO, and most other ethanol stocks have cooled…as the challenges surrounding the product - producing it cheaply, shipping it, finding enough raw materials - sink in…
    - companies specializing in making enzymes for ethanol production - a critical step where there is room for big cost cuts essential to commercialize cellulosic ethanol, which promises the ability to replace gasoline on a much larger scale - have made astounding gains…Diversa and MGP Ingredients are two of the best performers on the Wilder Hill clean energy index, a 43-company index that covers all types of clean energy firms. Diversa stock is up 108 percent, and MGP has risen 81 percent…Other top performers: MEMC Electronic Materials, which makes solar panel components, and OM Group, which supplies specialty metals for batteries…the push to renewable energy is helping…they may also have benefited from silicon and commodity prices…

    - At the bottom end of the index lies hydrogen companies. Hydrogenics lost 60 percent…Quantum Fuel Systems has fallen 37 percent…having trouble as they attempt to commercialize an expensive product with hardly any distribution system…
    - Utilities also turned in a solid performance in 2006… the sector, considered a defensive play, benefited as the economy slowed…Low interest rates, high wholesale power prices and approval for capital expenditures (which can be passed on to ratepayers) all contributed to rising share prices…Allegheny Energy and FPL Group were among some of the years top performers…with stock gains of 45 and 32 percent respectively…Edison International and Southern Co. brought up the rear…But the outlook for 2007 may not be as good…

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 7:48 AM 0 comments

    2007: GOVERNMENT FORECASTS

    Short Term Energy Outlook
    December 12, 2006 (Energy Information Administration)
    - Highlights

    Oil Prices: Production cuts by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) that began in November, combined with the recent erosion in surplus U.S. product inventories and the expected increase in petroleum demand during the winter heating season drove spot prices for West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil spot prices above $60 per barrel in the last week of November. OPEC oil production is expected to be reduced by about 0.8 million barrels per day (bbl/d) in November and December. WTI crude oil prices are projected to average about $66 per barrel in 2006 and $65 per barrel in 2007…

    Natural Gas Prices: Due to projected colder weather for the first quarter 2007 compared with the same period in 2006, natural gas spot prices are expected to average $8.58 per thousand cubic feet (mcf) in the first quarter of 2007, about $0.65 per mcf higher than in the first quarter of 2006…Spot Prices are projected to average $7.06 per mcf in 2006 and increase to an average of $7.87 per mcf in 2007.
    Household Heating Prices: Average household heating fuel expenditures are projected to be $938 this winter compared to $948 last winter…
    - See also: Summaries on Global Petroleum Markets, US Petroleum Markets, US Natural Gas Markets, Electricity and Coal.

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 7:48 AM 0 comments

    2007: PELOSI’S DREAM, OIL’S NIGHTMARE

    Democrats Seek to use Oil Cash for Renewables
    December 27, 2006 (AFX News via RIGZONE)
    - House Democrats in the first weeks of the new Congress plan to establish a dedicated fund to promote renewable energy and conservation, using money from oil companies. That's only one legislative hit the oil industry is expected to take next year as a Congress run by Democrats is likely to show little sympathy to the cash-rich, high-profile business.

    - Whether the issue is rolling tax breaks -- some approved by Congress only 18
    months ago -- pushing for more use of ethanol and other biofuels instead of gasoline, or investigations into shortfalls in royalty payments to the government, oil industry lobbyists will spend most of their time playing defense.
    - Details of a renewable fuels fund…the initiatives the House will take up during its first 100 hours in session in January…At least some of the money -- revenue gained by rolling back some tax breaks -- will go to a program to support research into making ethanol from sources other than corn…
    - The Interior Department has been trying to get more than 50 companies to rework 1998-99 drilling leases that allow the companies to avoid paying billions of dollars in royalties because of a government mistake in writing the leases…Pelosi calls the royalty avoidance from the 1998-99 leases the biggest oil industry subsidy issue she intends to tackle early. Congressional estimates have put the potential royalty loss at as much as $10 billion over the life of the leases…

    - House Democrats also are targeting a handful of oil industry tax breaks for repeal. Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers say there is unlikely to be an attempt to push more sweeping measures such a new tax on the oil industry's windfall profits…At the top of the hit list is a tax break that was aimed at promoting U.S. manufacturing but has provided a windfall for the oil industry as well. The provision reduces the corporate tax rate on profits from products made in the United States…Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash…estimates that oil companies are saving as much as $700 million in taxes a year because of it.
    - Democrats also are targeting other benefits for refinery investments and for expenditures for certain types of oil and gas exploration. Those measures, passed by Congress last year as part of a broad energy bill, are estimated to cost the government about $1.3 billion over 10 years…Executives of the largest oil companies have said they don't need those tax breaks and do not oppose their repeal…Oil lobbyists, however, are preparing to fight another proposal that would raise taxes on their inventories, a change that could cost oil companies billions of dollars…

    - The White House is not opposed to rolling back some of the tax breaks that Congress approved last year…But the administration is opposed to tinkering with some of the other tax rollbacks…
    - Oil industry lobbyists also expect a Democratic push to further expand production of ethanol as a gasoline additive and don't see that as a threat to their business. A more contentious issue will be attempts to require large oil companies to make available…E-85…

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 7:38 AM 0 comments

    Friday, December 29, 2006

    ONCE MORE AROUND THE BARNYARD: COW POOP ENERGY

    Laugh if you will but Americans have a lot of cows and cow poop may be the best way to make ethanol, carbon neuitralizing a big global warmer.

    Burnt Cow Patties New Source of Energy
    Pachatta Pope, December 28, 2006 (KBTX3.com)
    - Most people already know that cow manure makes a great fertilizer for lawns and crops. Now it's being used to produce energy. Sounds revolutionary, but according to Texas A&M biological and agricultural engineer professor, Cady Engler, the idea isn't new…

    - Microgy is a renewable natural gas company based in Colorado. They are currently building a plant in Stephenville. The company already has similar plants up and operating in Wisconsin.
    - The plant takes manure from dairy cows and extracts the innate energy it contains to produce gas and electricity. However…the amount of energy produced at most dairy cow manure recycling facilities is only enough to operate the dairy itself. However, the facility in Stephenville will be unique.
    - "They're producing pipeline quality gas which will be put into the natural gas pipelines," Engler said.
    - The Lower Colorado River Authority in Austin has already agreed to buy the natural gas which is enough to power 6,000 homes. Cow manure's potential is promising, Engler said, but he offered that it's a long way from making a dent in our national energy consumption.
    - Perhaps down the road, cows will not only provide the beef, they could possibly supply the energy needed to cook it.

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 10:01 AM 0 comments

    ONCE MORE AROUND THE BARNYARD: ENERGY HOGS

    Big TVs are big energy hogs
    December 28, 2006 (CBC News)
    - An energy expert warns that big-screen televisions and the equipment they are hooked up to can use as much power as a refrigerator, but most consumers don't realize it until the electricity bill arrives…

    - Anne Wilkins, manager of the federal government's Energy Star program: …We have seen an increase of energy use in homes, and a lot of it has to do with this type of equipment..
    - Big-screen TVs are often connected to other equipment that gobble up power, such as DVD players, satellite boxes and home theatre systems…
    - Wilkins says plasma TVs tend to hog the most energy, but how much juice a TV uses depends on its make, model and style, so she recommends researching before you buy.
    An Energy Star sticker on a TV means it uses less than three watts of power when it's turned off, but still plugged in and technically on standby. Conventional sets can use up to 12 watts. Technology has evolved so rapidly, however, Energy Star doesn't yet offer information about how much power those TVs use when they are turned on…
    - Andrew Kenyar in Calgary sells high-end TV systems: …"Flat-screen LCD is certainly the way to go. It is the most environmentally friendly to build and dispose of at the end of its lifecycle, and it will also use the least amount of energy…"

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 9:58 AM 0 comments

    ONCE MORE AROUND THE BARNYARD: HOT CHICKEN RANCH


    Solar Energy Could Power Chicken Houses
    December 20, 2006 (WBOC16)
    - The University of Delaware is experimenting with solar energy in chicken houses.
    - The university is working with three companies to test the economics of using solar panels to provide electricity…to lower the expense for growers…
    - Poultry farmer Wesley Betts of Milton said cutting cost is always a priority…
    - The pilot project will last for several years and cost about $500,000.

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 9:54 AM 0 comments

    Thursday, December 28, 2006

    BOOK: HOW TO LOSE FIVE THOUSAND POUNDS

    A Grass-Roots Push for a Low-Carbon Diet
    Moises Velasquez-Manoff, December 28, 2006 (The Christian Science Monitor)
    - David Gershon's book guides readers through a series of behavioral changes to reduce their 'carbon footprint.'

    - In 2000, Mr. Gershon created a step-by-step program, à la Weight Watchers, designed to reduce a person's carbon footprint…But since then, Americans witnessed the catastrophic fury of hurricane Katrina, which, if nothing else, showed them what a major city looks like underwater. A substantial body of evidence supporting the idea of human-induced global warming accumulated. And, of course, Mr. Gore made his movie.
    - Attitudes toward global warming had shifted considerably…
    - Gershon put his nose to the grindstone, and a slim workbook titled "Low Carbon Diet: A 30 Day Program to Lose 5,000 Pounds" was the result. Replete with checklists and illustrations, the user-friendly guide is a serious attempt at changing American energy-consumption behavior…The book guides participants through a month-long process of behavioral change. Each participant calculates his or her footprint - the average US household emits 55,000 pounds of carbon dioxide annually, the book says - and then browses a list of emissions-lowering actions. The goal is to reduce that amount bit by bit. Replacing an incandescent bulb with a fluorescent, for example, counts for a 100-pound annual reduction…the key to the program's success, say those who've participated, is in forming a support group…Like Weight Watchers or Alcoholics Anonymous, the formation of a group encourages follow-through…

    - Gore's group, The Climate Project, which recently began training 1,000 volunteers to give Gore's now-famous slide show, is handing out 600 copies of the book at the end of the session…a handful of environmental and religious groups are recommending the book to its members…

    - This growing interest in measurably reducing one's footprint is a textbook case of how new ideas spread throughout society, say sociologists, and how new movements are born…if a problem is to be acted upon, it has to be recognized as a problem…In the case of global warming and faith networks, the past year has seen some important steps in this regard. In February, evangelical leaders around the country broke with the Bush administration and, in an open letter called the Evangelical Climate Initiative, said something had to be done…Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson said that, because of the summer heat wave, he was a "convert" to the idea…Once important figures in social groups adopt an idea, others in the group are much more likely to follow…
    - U.S. homes account for 8 percent of the world's emissions, with the average household contributing 55,000 pounds of carbon dioxide annually…Here are a few of his book's recommendations and how much carbon he says participants can subtract from their footprints by following through:

    • Together, washers and dryers generate five pounds of carbon dioxide per cycle. In warm or hot water loads, 90 percent of the required energy goes to heat the water. Using cold water saves two pounds per load. Front-loading washing machines cut the amount of water used in half. Drying clothes on a clothesline further diminishes emissions. All in all, using cold water once per week shrinks your carbon footprint by 275 pounds each year; not using the dryer once a week gets you another 200. Replacing an old machine with an Energy Star front-loading washer saves 500 pounds a year.
    • A 10-minute shower generates up to four pounds of CO2. A 5-minute shower cuts that in half and a low-flow showerhead drops it further. In a household, each person who reduces their shower to five minutes cuts emissions by 175 pounds per year. A low-flow showerhead saves you another 250.
    • Request to be removed from junk mail lists, which needlessly contribute to waste. If you can reduce your weekly waste by 60 gallons, credit yourself with 2,650 pounds yearly.

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 8:34 AM 0 comments

    GM: DIET OR GREENWASHING?

    To whom much is given, much is expected. When they start selling that plug-in hybrid they say they’re going to bring to market, THEN they’ll really be part of the solution.

    GM Says It Cut Energy Use by 25 Percent Over the Past 5 Years
    December 14, 2006 (AP via Yahoo Finance)
    - General Motors Corp. said Thursday it reduced energy use by 25 percent and added solar and landfill gas as energy sources at its North American facilities over the past five years.

    - GM said it has cut its energy use in the region from 94 trillion BTUs in 2002, to a projected 72.5 trillion BTUs by the end of 2006…the automaker's distribution center in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., uses a lining of solar panels in its roof to help keep costs down and reduce its environmental impact…

    Maybe they’re feeling the heat of the competition like this (sent by Forbes Bagatelle-Black):

    Largest Electric Car Plant Under Construction in N. China
    People’s Daily Online (December ,2006)
    - A factory capable of producing 20,000 electric powered vehicles a year is now under construction in the northern port city of Tianjin.

    - The plant will produce cars powered by battery, hybrid power and fuel cells…covers an area of 16.5 acres…a production base, a research and development center and a testing center.
    - The Tianjin Qingyuan Electric Vehicle Co. Ltd. (QYEV) will invest 165 million yuan (21 million U.S. dollars)…expected to be completed at the end of 2007.
    - The QYEV exported 112 battery-powered minibuses to the United States in 2005…more than 500 to the United States in 2006…annual exports will reach 5,000 electric cars to the U.S and another 5,000 to European and Asian markets within three to five years.

    Forbes adds: I wonder if they will be building toys for rich Americans, or real vehicles for the population of China. From the article, it looks like they will build a mixture of both.

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 8:28 AM 0 comments

    HYBRIDS: Smarter AND Cheaper

    And think how much smarter and cheaper they will be when they are RECHARGEABLE:

    Hybrids, Fuel-Efficient Cars Still Appeal to Americans, Even With Lower Gasoline Prices
    Michelle Helias, December 18, 2006 (Fox News)
    - Gasoline prices in the United States may be well below their summer highs, but that doesn't mean that Americans are abandoning new fuel-efficient cars and technologies.

    - Despite an ease in gas prices, more and more U.S. consumers base auto purchase decisions on fuel economy and energy efficiency, as they did when gas prices peaked at $3.03 a gallon nationwide this past August…The evidence is in the results of this year’s auto sales.
    - In the first 10 months of the year, Toyota Motor Corp. — which has led the industry with fuel efficient cars like the Prius — expanded its share of the U.S. market by 2 percentage points, to 15.2 percent, while General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Daimler Chrysler’s Chrysler unit all lost share, as buyers continued to choose smaller and more fuel-efficient vehicles…

    - Sales of hybrids, which combine gasoline engines with battery-powered electric motors, also continued to rise in November with 18,283 units sold, an increase of 13.5 percent over last year…
    - [T]he compact crossover segment, which offers consumers SUV functionality, a car-like ride, plus good fuel economy, is one of the fastest growing in the industry…Owners in every non-luxury segment, except large vans, have been switching to compact crossovers at a greater rate in the third and fourth quarters of this year…In October and early November, more than four of every 10 compact crossover owners traded for another one, up more than 15 percentage points…

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 8:26 AM 0 comments

    CANADIAN WIND

    Aside from another misguided experiment in waste (using wind to make electricity to make hydrogen: see EXPERIMENT IN GREED? and HYDROGEN--NOT) this is an exciting project. A little bit of every kind adds up to a whole lot of energy:

    Canada’s Cutting-edge Energy Model; Prince Edward Island aims to generate 30 percent of its energy needs from its own renewable resources by 2016.
    Colin Woodard, December 21, 2006 (Christian Science Monitor)

    - …Ten wind turbines stand along the trail, each 26 stories tall, with blades as long as 125 feet. When workers finish the last one this month, the new Eastern Kings Wind Farm will generate 30 megawatts of electricity - 7.5 percent of the province's power…the wind farm is part of an ambitious plan to enable Prince Edward Island (PEI) - which has no significant coal, petroleum, natural gas, or hydro resources - to meet most of its electricity and 30 percent of its total energy needs from its own renewable resources by 2016. If successful, government officials say, this remote rural province will find itself at the cutting edge of the world's fastest growing energy sector…
    - In addition to the Eastern Kings project, PEI's government is backing the creation of a hydrogen-powered village as well as expansions to existing wind farms on the northwestern tip of the island. Private companies, meanwhile, are building plants to produce ethanol from locally grown sugar beets and residential heat from forestry and farming waste. Hydrogen-powered buses and boats may follow, whisking passengers around the island with fuel cells charged by wind-power…
    - PEI may seem an unlikely venue for an energy revolution. It's a tiny place, an island the size of Delaware, with fewer people than Arlington, Va., or Eugene, Ore.

    - But PEI's small size is exactly what makes it appealing for the emerging renewable-energy industry to conduct pilot projects…
    - The electricity-generating potential of the island's greatest energy resource - the wind - was recognized decades ago, and in 1980 Canada built its national wind test center on the island's northwestern tip. When the provincial government adopted its renewable energy strategy in 2004, expanding wind power was the first priority…three new wind farms are nearing completion - two built by a private firm, the other by the public utility, PEI Energy Corp…wind will provide 15 percent of PEI's electricity, reducing the province's carbon dioxide emissions by 90,000 tons each year. The island's overall wind potential is about five times that…
    - The government is working on a range of incentives for a range of potential wind farm owners…
    - To convert some of that wind to other uses, PEI Energy Corp. and Ontario's Hydrogenics Corp. are overseeing the creation of a $10.3 million "wind-hydrogen village" at North Cape…will use energy from turbines…to split hydrogen from water, store it in special tanks, and use it to power fuel cells…

    - When the wind isn't blowing, the fuel cells will be used to power area buildings…It is, however, a demonstration project, and the fuel cells will have little impact in terms of meeting PEI's 2016 energy target, particularly in regards to transportation, which accounts for about 40 percent of the island's energy consumption. Petroleum will clearly remain the primary fuel source for most vehicles…[supplemented with] ethanol made from local sugar beets at a $2 million plant now being built by a local company…
    - Other plans include the construction of a biomass plant that will burn wood wastes from provincial forests, and treating used cooking oil and other waste fats so they can be used to power diesel-engine tractors…

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 8:26 AM 0 comments

    Wednesday, December 27, 2006

    PAY CARBON’S REAL PRICE (OR DON’T BURN IT)

    Think about it: Global warming changes are going to cost--who pays?

    Panel urges U.S. "carbon price" to fight warming
    December 14, 2006 (Reuters via Yahoo News)
    - The United States needs to urgently set a "carbon price" as the first step in cutting emissions of carbon dioxide contributing to global warming, a panel of environmental and energy experts [such as Dan Reicher, former Energy Department official & president of New Energy Capital, Stanford University climatologist Stephen Schneider, Sierra Club President Carl Pope, Duke Energy Chairman Paul Anderson] said…

    - Whether in the form of a tax on carbon dioxide emissions or a system of caps as under the Kyoto Protocol, putting a firm monetary value on the greenhouse gas would spur businesses to implement new technologies and energy-saving techniques…
    - U.S. President George W. Bush's administration has consistently rejected capping greenhouse gas emissions as bad for business and U.S. workers…Bush withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement aimed at cutting greenhouse gases by setting limits on emissions from industrialized nations. He offered an alternative plan offering incentives for voluntary emissions cuts…

    - Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, who has become a vigorous campaigner in the fight against global warming, endorsed the panel's findings…Earlier…Gore urged more than 4,000 scientists at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union scientific group to become more active in explaining the dangers of global warming to the public…
    - [Duke Energy Chairman] Anderson said the lack of a clear signal over what form government action may take could delay plans among energy companies to invest in new technologies…a company was unlikely to build a power plant with a 50-year life span if it did not know whether the plant would face onerous new taxes…

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 8:13 PM 0 comments

    CARBON TRADING: WHAT IT IS

    Q&A: Europe's carbon trading scheme
    December 20, 2006 (BBC News)
    - Europe's Emissions Trading Scheme unites the 25 states of the European Union in an attempt to cut emissions of the gases fuelling climate change.

    - What is carbon trading?
    - Since the beginning of 2005, about 12,000 energy-intensive plants in the EU have been able to buy and sell permits that allow them to emit carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere.

    - Companies that exceed their individual limit are able to buy unused permits from firms that have taken steps to cut their emissions.
    - Those who exceed their limit and are unable to buy spare permits are fined 40 euros (£27) for every excess tonne of CO2.
    Industries included in the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) include power generation, iron and steel, glass and cement…about 40% of the EU's total CO2 emissions.

    - Why is it needed?
    Under the UN Kyoto Protocol, a legally binding global agreement…The EU is required to cut its emissions by 8% from 1990 levels by 2012. The ETS is Europe's main mechanism to achieve this…

    - Has it been successful?
    - …Organisations such as the UN and the World Bank have praised the ETS, and say it can form the basis of a global system…in practice, the ETS has had a rough ride. Nations have issued more permits to pollute than required in the first phase, which runs until the end of 2007….carbon prices [fell] as low as eight euros (£5) per tonne. This means that it has been cheaper for firms to buy spare permits than pay the 40-euro fine, or take steps to reduce their emissions…Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas has said the EU had to show leadership if it was to convince other nations, especially Australia and the US, that carbon trading schemes worked.

    Why is aviation now being included in the ETS?
    - EU emissions from the international air transport sector are increasing faster than any other sector…an 87% increase in CO2 since 1990…taking a return flight from London to New York will generate about the same amount of CO2 as an average person heating their home for a year…the ETS will cover commercial flights within the EU from 2011, and all flights to and from the EU in 2012. Domestic flights (eg. London to Manchester) are already subject to national limits set by the Kyoto Protocol.
    - Airlines favour carbon trading rather than taxes on fuel or emission charges.
    - The Commission says it expects any increase in ticket costs to be limited, and much lower than rises resulting from soaring oil prices…

    - What happens next?
    The European Commission is currently negotiating with national governments over the limits to be set in the second phase…2008-2012…In January, the Commission is…to call for a 30% reduction from 1990 levels by 2020…
    - Australia's Prime Minister John Howard has set up a task force to look at carbon trading…Such a move could pave the way for an international carbon trading scheme to form the central pillar of a post-2012 Kyoto agreement.

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 8:11 PM 0 comments

    EXPERIMENT IN GREED?

    Wind energy is a GREAT idea—but to use like this? Read, then see HYDROGEN--NOT below.

    Project doubles up on renewables; Wind energy will produce hydrogen fuel
    Steve Raabe, December 16, 2006 (Denver Post via Houston Chronicle)
    - Amid gusting winds and spinning wind turbines, officials last week unveiled a $2 million research project to use wind energy to produce hydrogen fuel.

    - The technology proposes to take clean energy to a new level, using a renewable resource, wind, to make a nonpolluting fuel, hydrogen, in one of the nation's first attempts to combine the two energy resources…Electricity from wind turbines is used to break down water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen is captured and stored, then used to generate power or as fuel…
    - The research is a joint project of Xcel Energy and the Golden, Colo.-based National Renewable Energy Laboratory…may not be commercially feasible for at least another eight years…

    - The research project is expected initially to generate only relatively tiny amounts of hydrogen — about 17 kilograms a day…roughly the same energy content as [17 gallons] of gasoline…used to generate small amounts of electricity. In the future, if commercial-scale production can be achieved, scientists say hydrogen's most economical use will be as a vehicle fuel, for internal combustion engines or fuel cell-powered cars.
    - Fuel cells use a chemical process to convert hydrogen to electricity. Energy lab and Xcel officials said initial hydrogen production costs are expected to be about $8 per kilogram, making the process more than three times as expensive as using gasoline to run a car. But by 2020, or perhaps earlier, they expect costs to drop to $2 to $3 per kilogram.

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 8:03 PM 0 comments

    NUCLEAR PROSPECTS

    IMPLODING INVESTMENT RETURNS:

    More outages at British Energy's nuclear plants
    James Moore, 21 December 2006 (UK Independent)
    - Just as the market was beginning to think that British Energy was finally turning the corner, the company has come out and dashed everyone's hopes again after admitting yesterday that it faced a "worst case scenario" at two of its ageing nuclear power stations that will wipe £100m from its profits.

    - The troubled nuclear operator was forced to admit that units at its ageing Hunterston B and Hinkley Point power stations would not be back online until March of next year. That date represents the costliest of three possible scenarios…outlined…when it emerged that cracks were appearing in boiler pipes at the stations.
    - British Energy also revealed that further inspections had revealed a small number of defects on boiler tailpipes…
    - The upshot of all this is that the company will lose nine terrawatt hours of electricity output in the current financial year…
    - The shares responded by tumbling 35.5p to 538.25p as investors' hopes were brought back down to earth with a painful bump…
    - The two plants will still only be operating at 70 per cent efficiency when the work is completed. The company will then have to decide whether the most cost-effective option is to undertake further work…or whether simply to continue running them…

    - High energy prices bailed British Energy out when it reported last month, as production fell well short of targets…The company is hoping that it will be able to capitalise on the Government's controversial decision to "go nuclear" to help cut Britain's spiralling carbon emission levels, but the benefits are likely to be a long time in coming, and it is likely to take at least 10 years before any new plants are brought online. Most of British Energy's existing plants will have reached the end of their useful lives by 2023.

    YET STILL:

    Toshiba-Westinghouse Takes China Nuclear
    Kenji Hall, December 19, 2006 (Business Week)
    - Toshiba CEO Atsutoshi Nishida had little time to savor his victory in nabbing Westinghouse Electric. Within hours of the handover from British Nuclear Fuels in October, analysts were grilling Nishida about his plans for Westinghouse. Most of the comments criticized him for agreeing to a whopping $5.4 billion price for the 77% stake in Westinghouse and for his optimistic 17-year plan to recoup the investment.

    - But the Nishida-bashing may ease up a bit after Westinghouse's multibillion dollar deal in China. On Dec. 16, Westinghouse said it won a contract to build four 1,000 MW nuclear plants for China, edging out France's Areva, the world's biggest nuclear engineering outfit. The facilities are part of China's plan to supply energy to an industrializing beltway that runs along the coast…
    - Nuclear power accounted for less than 2% of the country's power supply last year…By 2020, China expects to spend $50 billion on more than 30 new reactors, adding to nine 1970s-era ones operating now and quadrupling power generation from nukes…

    - China would spend upwards of $8 billion. That's a huge coup for Toshiba…The Japanese company's expertise lies in boiling-water reactors…One reason Toshiba went after Westinghouse was to get at the Pittsburgh-based company's pressurized-water-reactor technology as a way of expanding business overseas…
    - By 2020, Toshiba expects 130 orders for new power stations worldwide, and estimates that the Westinghouse unit alone can win at least 20. In addition to the four in China, they're counting on 16 coming from the U.S…Toshiba is also hoping to ride a nuke buildup that's likely to gain speed in fast-growth economies such as India, Brazil, and Romania. Adding Westinghouse to its books could allow Toshiba to rake in nearly $6 billion in sales in the power-generation business by 2015, from around $3.4 billion…

    - Having both technologies has another benefit: It gives Toshiba more flexibility in bidding for jobs. As prices of natural gas, coal, and oil rise and calls for green energy sources grow louder, more countries are expected to view nuclear energy as an attractive option. Those countries won't likely want to depend too heavily on any one type since that could leave them at risk of a blackout if problems or defects surface…
    - Investors applauded news of the deal in China, nudging shares of Toshiba Plant, the nuclear unit that trades separately from the chipmaking and consumer-electronics giant, 3% higher in Tokyo trading on Dec. 18…
    - The truth is, Toshiba's earnings will likely benefit almost immediately from Westinghouse's business…While Toshiba won the first big gig in China, there's plenty to do in order to ensure it keeps the winning streak going.

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 7:41 PM 0 comments

    Sunday, December 24, 2006

    FROM FRIEDMAN:

    A lot of colleagues think this guy has jumped the shark, gone too establishment. They fail to see how he speaks simple universal truths.

    Going Balmy and Green, Not Just for Christmas
    Thomas Friedman, December 24, 2006 (NY Times via Husdson Valley/Catskills Times Herald-Record)

    - …had I been editing Time magazine I would not have opted for the "you" in YouTube as Person of the Year — although that was very clever. No, I'd have run an all-green Time cover under the headline, "Color of the Year." Because I think that the most important thing to happen this past year was that living and thinking "green" — that is, mobilizing for the environmental/energy challenge we now face — hit Main Street.
    For so many years the term "green" could never scale. It was trapped in a corner by its opponents, who defined it as "liberal," "tree-hugging," "girly-man," "unpatriotic," "vaguely French."
    - No more. We reached a tipping point this year — where living, acting, designing, investing and manufacturing green came to be understood by a critical mass of citizens, entrepreneurs and officials as the most patriotic, capitalistic, geopolitical, healthy and competitive thing they could do…"Green is the new red, white and blue."

    - … the Pentagon has given birth to "Green Hawks," who are obsessed with powering our army with less energy…
    - And now, Wal-Mart... has opened two green stores where it is experimenting with alternative building materials, lighting, power systems and designs, the best of which it plans to spread to all its outlets. I just visited the one in McKinney, Texas. From the big wind turbine in the parking lot and solar panels on key walls, which provide 15 percent of the store's electricity, to the cooking oil from fried chicken that is recycled in its bio-boiler and heats the store in winter, to the shift to LED lights in all exterior signs and grocery and freezer cases — which last longer and sharply reduce heat and therefore the air-conditioning bill — you know you're not in your parents' Wal-Mart…

    - Hey, the more energy-saving bulbs Wal-Mart sells, the more innovation it triggers, the more prices go down. That's how you get scale. And scale is everything if you want to change the world, but to achieve scale you have to make sure that green energy sources — biofuels, clean coal, and solar, wind and nuclear power — can be delivered as cheaply as oil, gas and dirty coal. That will require a gasoline or carbon tax to keep the price of fossil fuels up so investors in green-tech will not get undercut while they drive innovation forward and prices down. The U.S. Congress has to stop running from this fact.
    - Because while our embrace of green has finally reached a tipping point, the tipping point on climate change and species loss is also fast approaching, if it's not already here. There's no time to lose. "People see an endangered species every day now when they look in the mirror," said the environmentalist Rob Watson. "It is not about the whales anymore."

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 1:18 PM 0 comments

    HOW TO GO SOLAR

    Now do like Tom says:

    California regulators issue solar energy guide
    December 21, 2006 (Reuters)
    - The California Pubic Utilities Commission..,issued requirements and other details for a new energy program that aims to make the state one of the world's biggest producers of solar energy…a 92-page handbook to guide California's investor-owned utilities, customers, contractors, and solar equipment sellers through the rules for installing and operating solar photovoltaic projects.

    - The state's goal is to install 1 million rooftop solar panels on homes, businesses, farms, schools and public buildings over the next 10 years to produce 3,000 megawatts, or the equivalent of six large power plants…
    - The program has a budget of $2.2 billion that will pay incentives for solar projects beginning on January 1, 2007…performance-based incentives linked to the number of kilowatts of electricity generated by the systems.
    - Management of the program will be shared by PG&E Corp.'s Pacific Gas & Electric utility, Edison International's Southern California Edison, and the San Diego Regional Energy Office for customers of Sempra Energy's San Diego Gas & Electric unit.

    California Solar Initiative Handbook

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 1:16 PM 0 comments

    PLAY THE GAME!

    Board Game Helps Students Make Energy Choices
    December 19, 2006 (Newswise)

    - …Energy Choices, a new board game created by Clarkson University, is helping upstate New York middle schoolers…[learn] about the country's energy situation and the impact their own personal decisions have on energy conservation. Clarkson is hoping the game will help develop the next generation of energy-smart consumers by getting them to think about how energy choices are made, the role economics plays in these decisions and how to determine which trade-offs are acceptable and which are not.
    - With a role of the dice, the players confront challenges and must make energy decisions that balance environmental consequences with economic considerations…
    - The game was developed as part of the University's award-winning National Science Foundation-funded K-12 Project-Based Learning Partnership Program…

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 1:14 PM 0 comments

    Friday, December 22, 2006

    GREEN HANUKKAH?

    The Post fact-checker flubbed here. The story dates to the 2nd century B.C., not the 4th. But this blog is forward-looking:

    The Festival of (Energy-Efficient) Lights; Dreidels, Latkes, Compact Fluorescent Bulbs: A Holiday Environmental Push
    Michelle Boorstein, December 21, 2006 (Washington Post)
    - Jewish environmentalists want to know: "How many Jews does it take to change a light bulb?"

    - Ba-da-bum. Although this sounds like the start of a corny joke, it's actually the name of a campaign engaging hundreds of synagogues across the country this week as Jews mark Hanukkah, the festival of lights. The campaign is organized by the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life.
    - At least a dozen synagogues in the region are among 500 nationwide that are adding a tradition to this holiday dating to the 4th century B.C.: replacing regular light bulbs with energy-efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs.
    - Hanukkah, an eight-day holiday that ends at sundown Saturday, marks the Jewish rebellion against forced assimilation by the Greeks. The central tale of the holiday involves a lamp in a liberated temple burning for eight days when the Jews had enough oil for only one day…Jews light a nine-armed candelabra, often called a hannukiah or menorah. Eight arms represent the days, and the ninth is for a symbolic candle used to light the others.
    - The past year has seen an unprecedented environmental push in the U.S. faith community, which sometimes has been wary of a movement seen as liberal, possibly pantheist and without scriptural roots…synagogues this Hanukkah are celebrating the light-oriented holiday by launching energy audits, giving out CFL bulbs to congregants and chanting a newly written "installation prayer" for the changing of the bulbs…

    - There have long been environmentalists in the faith community who saw pollution and recycling as sacred subjects, part of their vision of caring for God's Earth. But the past year or two has seen this philosophy take off, particularly with many evangelical Christian leaders for the first time calling global climate change a concern. The Regeneration Project, a faith-based environmental advocacy group with branches in 20 states, showed the global warming documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" in 4,000 congregations this year, according to the group's founder, the Rev. Sally Bingham, an Episcopal priest in California…
    - Using CFL bulbs, which last up to eight times as long as standard incandescent bulbs, has become a rallying cry, according to the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life. The group says that if every U.S. household switched a single bulb, it would have the same impact as taking 1.3 million cars off the road…
    - “Change is hard…but changing a light bulb is easy."

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 7:08 AM 0 comments

    Thursday, December 21, 2006

    HOT CHICKEN RANCH


    Solar Energy Could Power Chicken Houses
    December 20, 2006 (WBOC16)
    - The University of Delaware is experimenting with solar energy in chicken houses.
    - The university is working with three companies to test the economics of using solar panels to provide electricity…to lower the expense for growers…
    - Poultry farmer Wesley Betts of Milton said cutting cost is always a priority…
    - The pilot project will last for several years and cost about $500,000.

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 6:48 AM 0 comments

    MORE THAN CHICKENS

    Sanyo to Spend Y19 Billion to Boost Solar Cell Capacity
    December 20, 2006 (Reuters)
    - Sanyo Electric Co. Ltd…will spend 19 billion yen (US$161 million) to more than double its solar cell production capacity to better compete with larger rivals such as Sharp Corp.

    - Solar cells are one of the core businesses of the struggling consumer electronics maker, which also focuses on rechargeable batteries, digital cameras and mobile phones.
    - [Osaka-based] Sanyo…competes with Sharp and Germany's Q-Cells…will spend about 9 billion yen in the business year starting next April and 10 billion yen in the following year to boost its annual capacity to 350 megawatts from the current 165 megawatts…aims to boost its solar cell sales by 18 percent to 56 billion yen (US$474.9 million) or more in the year to next March 31….2.5 percent of its group sales forecast…
    - Global solar cell sales are rising rapidly due to higher oil prices and growing demand for renewable energy sources…

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 6:45 AM 0 comments

    MORAL REALISM?

    Vice President Cheney famously characterized conservation as little more than an empty insignificant gesture. Sir David Attenborough differs:

    Attenborough urges 'moral change'
    13 December 2006 (BBC News)

    - "What we can do is make the situation deteriorate less than it's going to."
    Sir David said "a general moral view" that wasting energy was wrong - such as there had been over wasting food during the Second World War - was needed…
    - Sir David, whose series include Life on Earth, The Blue Planet and Planet Earth, said: "I'm hopeful that there's a real change taking place in moral attitudes that it's not to do with saving pennies here and there but it's morally wrong to waste energy because we are putting at risk our grandchildren…People do look at 4x4s in central London and curl a lip already."
    - Sir David also told [the House of Comons environmental committee]: "I grew up during the war and during the war it was a common view that wasting anything was wrong…It wasn't that we thought we were going to defeat Hitler by eating a lot of gristle in our meat but it was actually wrong not to eat our food."
    - There needed to be a similar "general moral view that wasting energy is wrong", Sir David added…
    - Sir David told MPs he had had doubts about climate change until attending a lecture by a US expert which proved that recent climate change was man-made, rather than part of the cycle of nature…

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 6:42 AM 0 comments

    HOW TO BE A CARBON DEALER

    Trading Carbon: The Developing Market For CDM CERs
    Andrew K. Burger, December 15, 2006 (Resource Investor)
    - It’s taken more than a decade…but a multi-billion dollar global market has grown up around the issuance, verification and trading of Certificate of Emission Reduction credits (CERs) under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and Joint Implementation (JI) programs.

    - The primary market for carbon credits is expected to reach 30 billion to 40 billion euros during the 2008-2012 period, while estimates for secondary market activity are an order of magnitude higher…CDM carbon trading schemes have emerged in regions around the world…the European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) has grown quickly into the world’s largest market for carbon emissions reduction credits.
    - As the debate and controversy concerning the CDM's issuance, validation and valuation methodologies, as well as its fundamental premise, continues, private sector intermediaries…have stepped in and picked up where the World Bank left off and are now driving carbon trading markets…

    - New York-based Ecosecurities lays claim to being the largest company in the Kyoto Protocol’s CDM carbon emission reduction credit issuance and trading sector. Placing itself at the nexus of a web of organizations involved in CDM CO2 [Carbon Dioxide] and GHG [Greenhouse Gas] emission reduction and renewable energy projects, the company has been a central force in the issuing, purchasing and sale of CERs accounting for the reduction of approximately 150 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions…
    - The company’s business can be distilled down into three essential components, CEO Bruce Usher told Resource Investor: Identifying and putting together potential CDM GHG emission reduction projects and participants, moving projects through the CDM registration, verification, and CER issuance process, and fixing the price of income streams for CDM project developers.

    - On the investment side of its business, Ecosecurities acts as a principal, using its capital to acquire CERs from project developers that can then be resold to companies in need of credits to meet government mandated CO2 and GHG emissions reduction targets.
    Cargill and Marshall Street, a private equity investment house, were the company’s first two investors…
    - With offices in 20 countries, located primarily in developing countries, Ecosecurities has now amassed a portfolio of some 280 CDM projects around the world…
    - Focusing on genuine GHG emissions reduction, renewable power and energy generation projects, Ecosecurities has avoided the type of sharp criticism that plagued some of the World Bank’s early CDM financings…
    - The U.K. Environment Agency on Dec. 8 announced that it was levying civil penalties totalling £750,000 against four companies - Alphasteel, Scandstick, Daniel Platt and Mars (U.K.) - which failed to meet requirements and abide by the rules during this first year of the EU's ETS.
    - New York State on Dec. 6 announced plans to auction all of its permits to emit greenhouse gas emissions as part of a seven-state [New York, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Vermont] plan to develop a regional market that will help freeze and then cut CO2 emissions at electrical power plants. The EU last year gave away all the permits businesses needed, sending carbon credits prices crashing…

    - With…the ETS in Europe…exchange and OTC (over-the-counter) markets in the U.S. and the Asia-Pacific region, the market for carbon emissions reduction credits is widespread, diverse and a bit complex…still very much a work in progress, and prices are very volatile…
    - Ecosecurities removes the market risk for project managers and developers…When Ecosecurities purchases the CO2 equivalent tonnes of emissions reduction credits from project developers, it is “buying a stream of credits that stretch out to 2012, when Kyoto Protocol, Phase One is due to expire. We then turn around and sell portions of those cash flow streams…We lock in the price over the entire project term and for the entire income stream.”
    - Ecosecurities has been…guiding a variety of companies, including engineering project management firms, multinational agricultural, power and energy and industrial chemicals companies and banks, through the lengthy and complicated CDM registration, verification and CER issuance process. More than half Ecosecurities’ staff of around 185 people is involved in such work…
    - Ecosecurities’ CDM origination efforts thus far focus on developing GHG reduction and renewable energy and power projects in three sectors: landfill gas collection and utilisation (ecomethane-power generation) as part of a joint venture with Biogas Technology Ltd. and the EnerG Group, biogas development projects in partnership with Cargill that make use of systems for anaerobic digestion of liquid livestock waste streams, and N2O abatement systems projects, examples of which are now in the works at more than 20 nitric acid factories in China.
    - In partnership with Mexico’s Granjas Carroll de Mexico and Cargill, which recently vested a series of warrants, Ecosecurities last month registered 18 methane recovery and electricity generation projects in the Mexican states of Pueblo and Veracruz. An additional four in the Philippine provinces of Bulacan and Tarlac were developed by Ecosecurities and Philippine BioSciences Co.

    - Ecosecurities in 2005 issued a Deed Poll granting Cargill warrants…dependent upon Ecosecurities signing agreements with companies introduced by Cargill that have the potential to achieve a number of Agreed Emissions Reductions, which in aggregate total 5 million gross metric tonnes of Carbon Emission Reductions (CERs)…
    - Ecosecurities announced cooperation agreements with Standard Bank South Africa and Singapore’s UOB Kay Hian…to work with the banks’ clients to identify potential CDM GHG emissions reduction projects and jointly develop them…
    - Defending the Kyoto Protocol and the Clean Development Mechanism, Usher said, “The Kyoto Protocol’s objective is to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, and virtually all CDM projects reduce emissions. Another objective is less well understood: To experiment with what works and what doesn’t [in terms of developing market-based emissions reduction mechanisms]…I think it’s a very small part of the whole process,” he concluded.

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 6:36 AM 0 comments

    Wednesday, December 20, 2006

    HYDROGEN—NOT

    Big news because it comes from somebody who has been consistently touting hydrogen:

    Why a hydrogen economy doesn't make sense
    Lisa Zyga, December 11, 2006 (PhysOrg.com)
    - In a recent study, fuel cell expert Ulf Bossel explains that a hydrogen economy is a wasteful economy. The large amount of energy required to isolate hydrogen from natural compounds (water, natural gas, biomass), package the light gas by compression or liquefaction, transfer the energy carrier to the user, plus the energy lost when it is converted to useful electricity with fuel cells, leaves around 25% for practical use — an unacceptable value to run an economy in a sustainable future. Only niche applications like submarines and spacecraft might use hydrogen…

    - While scientists from around the world have been piecing together the technology, Bossel has taken a broader look at how realistic the use of hydrogen for carrying energy would be. His overall energy analysis of a hydrogen economy demonstrates that high energy losses inevitably resulting from the laws of physics mean that a hydrogen economy will never make sense…
    - “There is a lot of money in the field now,” he continues. “I think that it was a mistake to start with a ‘Presidential Initiative’ rather with a thorough analysis like this one. Huge sums of money were committed too soon, and now even good scientists prostitute themselves to obtain research money for their students or laboratories…But the laws of physics are eternal and cannot be changed…”
    - Even though many scientists, including Bossel, predict that the technology to establish a hydrogen economy is within reach, its implementation will never make economic sense, Bossel argues…
    - When delivering hydrogen, whether by truck or pipeline, the energy costs are several times that for established energy carriers like natural gas or gasoline. Even the most efficient fuel cells cannot recover these losses, Bossel found. For comparison, the "wind-to-wheel" efficiency is at least three times greater for electric cars than for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles…
    - “About four renewable power plants have to be erected to deliver the output of one plant to stationary or mobile consumers via hydrogen and fuel cells…Three of these plants generate energy to cover the parasitic losses of the hydrogen economy…”

    - Economically, the wasteful hydrogen process translates to electricity from hydrogen and fuel cells costing at least four times as much as electricity from the grid…
    - To Bossel, this means focusing on the establishment of an efficient “electron economy.” In an electron economy, most energy would be distributed with highest efficiency by electricity and the shortest route in an existing infrastructure could be taken. The efficiency of an electron economy is not affected by any wasteful conversions from physical to chemical and from chemical to physical energy. In contrast, a hydrogen economy is based on two such conversions (electrolysis and fuel cells or hydrogen engines)…
    - “In a sustainable energy future, electricity will become the prime energy carrier. We now have to focus our research on electricity storage, electric cars and the modernization of the existing electricity infrastructure.”
    - Citation: Bossel, Ulf. “Does a Hydrogen Economy Make Sense?” Proceedings of the IEEE. Vol. 94, No. 10, October 2006.

    Great to read but it leaves me feeling a little suspicious. Like if Marc Geller were to suddenly offer to help President Bush:

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 7:14 AM 0 comments

    SAVING PRESIDENT BUSH

    Just like Private Ryan, saving him means saving us.

    Wind Beneath his Wings: How Green Power and Plug-in Cars Can Save Bush's Legacy
    Marc Geller, December 15, 2006 (Plugs and Cars)
    - Thomas Friedman of the NY Times has been on his geo-green kick for a while now…Going green is necessary, and it can get the US out of the pickle of the Mid East. Agreed. Ending our dependence on foreign oil is essential if we are to eliminate its perverting influence on our foreign policy…

    - Friedman [recently suggested] a way to achieve the impossible - save George Bush's ass, I mean legacy…
    - Thanks in part to Bush's support of a nascent wind industry during his tenure in Austin, much of that wind is being turned into electricity. Renewable energy is hot…Since Bush already seems to consider plugging in a car to be a no-brainer plugging it in to renewable, nighttime Texas wind should be doubly appealing. If Bush grabs Friedman's concept, he's got a positive agenda to focus on…
    - I can't say I expect Bush to be the leader to bring the good news of renewable electricity and plug-in cars to the masses. After all, what would his pals in the oil and gas industry say? But the politics of plug-ins makes strange bedfellows...

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 7:10 AM 0 comments

    Monday, December 18, 2006

    WAVES OF ENERGY

    Energy from the motion of the ocean; A former surfer designs a buoy that can convert wave motion into electricity
    Dan Drollette, December 16, 2006 (Fortune Small Business Magazine via CNN Money)
    - If you wanted to choose the perfect location for capturing the ocean's energy, you couldn't do much better than the Oregon coast…Starting in 2007, those massive, ceaseless waves will help light homes and businesses along the West Coast…

    - A former surfer who grew up in Australia, [entrepreneur George]Taylor, now 72, studied electrical engineering and spent the past 40 years as a small-business owner in the U.S. His most recent invention is a buoy that can convert a wave's up-and-down motion into electricity, which can be carried ashore by undersea cables and fed into the national power grid…
    - [buoys] deployed a mile or so offshore, either individually or linked together in a field of a dozen or more covering 30 acres of the ocean's surface…an environmentalist's dream - barely visible from the beach, drawing on an abundant, renewable energy resource, with little or no impact upon marine life and emitting no gases that contribute to global warming…
    - A handful of competitors are designing similar wave-power systems, but Taylor's company,Ocean Power Technologies, based in Pennington, N.J., is the furthest along, say experts, with working prototypes in the water and generating power off several countries…no other U.S. company is close to matching OPT's progress…

    - researchers at Oregon State University say that only 0.2 percent of the ocean's untapped wave energy could power the entire world…about 60 percent of the world's population lives within 40 miles of a coast.
    - The buoys Taylor plans to install off Oregon in 2007 will generate electricity at rates competitive with that produced by coal - currently the cheapest, most abundant, most commonly used (and dirtiest) source of energy, at about 4.5 cents a kilowatt hour. Future generations of the buoys could conceivably produce power more cheaply than that…
    - Ocean Power Technologies illustrates the saying that it takes 20 years to become an overnight success…initially considered wind power, which at the time was the most mature proven technology and is still considered highly promising. But they foresaw a number of problems with wind, especially on the scale needed to generate commercially significant electricity: Wind is unpredictable and often intermittent, and generally requires big, unsightly turbines…By comparison, waves are abundant and predictable…

    - The company has tried to perfect its technology on a small scale and then make it bigger. Ocean Power launched its first experimental buoy off the New Jersey coast in 1997…
    - Last year Ocean Power installed a 40-kilowatt version in 100 feet of water nearly a mile off the Hawaiian coast to provide supplemental power for the U.S. Navy. That project - a contract worth about $7 million - is still expanding. Five more buoys are to be installed, each progressively larger, in a field that will ultimately generate as much as one megawatt of electricity, or enough to power as many as 1,000 homes…
    - The Navy enlisted an outside firm, Honolulu-based Belt Collins (beltcollins.com), to assess the environmental impact of the buoys. It found that the problems environmentalists had feared - marine mammals getting entangled in the mooring line, or electrical faults disrupting sea life - did not occur. If anything, the undersea cables and anchors provided a place for coral to grow and attracted fish, much like an artificial reef. Similarly, there were no effects upon currents or wave patterns, no electromagnetic disturbances, no heat generation, and no undersea noise to disturb sea creatures.
    - The buoys used in the Reedsport, Ore., project will be Taylor's biggest yet - 30 feet wide, weighing 50 tons and capable of generating 150 kilowatts each - but they work the same way…
    - It sounds simple enough, but the key lies in the buoy's sophisticated sensors. No two waves are identical, so sensors measure each wave in the first tenth of a second as it passes, and an onboard computer "tunes" the buoy, adjusting the travel and resistance of the piston mechanism to capture as much of the wave's energy as possible. The system can even automatically lock and unlock the piston, protecting the buoy during storms. OPT holds 28 patents on the technology, with 16 more pending…

    - one Reedsport fisherman gives Ocean Power's buoys a cautious endorsement…
    - Taylor is still thinking bigger. By the year 2010 he plans to have a 100-ton, 37-foot-wide buoy that could generate 500 kilowatts, a size that he calls the "magic number," because that's the point at which substantial economies of scale kick in. An array of 40 buoys that size, linked together, could generate electricity at prices significantly less than that of a typical coal-burning power station, and far less than the price at plants that burn more expensive fuels such as natural gas. Clean electricity that cheap could be used to desalinate seawater, split water molecules to make hydrogen for fuel-cell cars, or provide inexpensive power for other ambitious, energy-hungry projects. Taylor's voice drops off as he dreams of the possibilities. "It's a very exciting thing to come late in one's career," he says "It keeps me young."

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 5:08 PM 0 comments

    IF YOU WASTE ENERGY…

    UK Teenagers’ Gadgets are Big Energy Wasters—Survey
    December 8, 2006 (Reuters via Planet Ark)

    - Teenagers in Britain who leave computer games and other gadgets on standby mode are wasting over 100 million pounds worth of energy a year, enough to power London's underground train system for 12 months…
    - "Almost a third of all the electricity used by teenagers is wasted through leaving appliances on standby," Lois Hedg-Peth, Energy Director at British Gas, said…
    "Because of their low power consumption, these devices are often overlooked when households look for ways to save energy."
    - Total energy consumption of all teenagers' gadgets exceeds the annual output of the average UK nuclear reactor, or all the country's wind turbines…
    - The wastage could be reduced by a third if teenagers were to switch appliances off rather than leave them on…

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 5:06 PM 0 comments

    …GO PLANT A TREE?

    Turns out you might have to go a long way to plant one. Maybe it would be better not to cut them down in the first place?

    Care needed with carbon offsets
    Jonathan Amos, December 15, 2006 (BBC News)
    - Planting forests to combat global warming may be a waste of time, especially if those trees are at high latitudes, new research suggests.

    - Scientists say the benefits that come from trees reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide can be outweighed by their capacity to trap heat near the ground.
    - Computer modelling indicates that trees only really work to cool the planet if they are planted in the tropics…in the so-called mid-latitude region where the United States is located and majority of European countries are located, the climate benefits of planting will be nearly zero…[In] the seasonally snow-covered regions [at even higher latitudes], planting new trees could be actually counter-productive…
    - three key factors are involved:
    [1] forests can cool the planet by absorbing the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide during photosynthesis
    [2] they can also cool the planet by evaporating water to the atmosphere and increasing cloudiness; a deck of white clouds reflects incoming solar radiation straight back out into space
    [3] trees can also have a warming effect because they are dark and absorb a lot of sunlight, holding heat near ground level

    "Our study shows that tropical forests are very beneficial to the climate because they take up carbon and increase cloudiness, which in turn helps cool the planet," explained [one of the research team’s leaders]…The further you move from the equator, though, these gains are eroded…planting more trees in mid- and high-latitude locations could lead to a net warming of a few degrees by the year 2100…"The darkening of the surface by new forest canopies in the high-latitude boreal regions allows absorption of more sunlight that helps to warm the surface…"
    - The study finds little or no climate benefit when trees are planted in temperate regions.
    The scientists warn that many schemes designed to offset emissions of carbon by planting trees may not be appropriate…

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 5:01 PM 0 comments

    CARBON CONSUMER REPORTS, FIRST DRAFT

    Carbon Neutrality: A Shopper's Guide
    December 17, 2006 (Boston Globe)
    No one is truly carbon neutral -- even the most environmentally conscious among us has to exhale…Here are a few ways you can shrink your carbon footprint (though whether that will reduce overall emissions is an open question):

    - Customers can now buy offsets for the carbon dioxide emissions released by air travel (the fastest-growing source of greenhouse gases) when they buy their tickets on the travel websites Expedia and Travelocity…the nonprofit Conservation Fund, puts the money toward preserving forests…
    - Many companies and nonprofits offer offsets for cars. Native Energy, for example, which funds only Native American-owned renewable energy projects, allows customers to offset the emissions of a particular car trip, or simply pay to offset a car's estimated emissions over the course of a year of driving ($36 for a hybrid, $96 for an SUV)…
    - Many sites also offer the option of offsetting an individual's entire "carbon footprint." For $99, Carbonfund.org offers a "zero carbon" option, an offset not only for a year's worth of fossil fuel combustion…all of the emissions…
    - Starting this spring, the company Bright Planet will offer a credit card that rewards carriers with offsets based on how much they spend. Apply for it before the next holiday season and shop your way to carbon neutrality.

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 4:54 PM 0 comments

    Saturday, December 16, 2006

    HOT SUN IN THE MIDDLE EAST

    Better late than never...

    Massive growth in the Middle East's new and renewable energy sector anticipated
    December 13, 2006 (AME Info)
    - Drastic increases in oil prices and increased awareness of the limited availability of traditional fossil fuels is giving the new and renewable energy sector enormous momentum, with many of the world leaders in the field of photovoltaics (solar power), wind power and other environmentally friendly energy schemes accelerating product innovations that are being embraced across the region…

    - The landmark Bahrain World Trade Centre towers will be the first of their kind in the world to use wind energy. Wind power will be harnessed by the building's three massive turbines, which are supported by bridges between the two towers, and will provide around 11-15% of the electricity needs…
    - US$1.3 billion Bahrain Financial Harbour development will be fed by the innovative North Shore District Cooling Network…It will provide about 30,000 Tons of Refrigeration (TR)…District cooling is gaining popularity because it…will reduce peak power demand in Bahrain by over 400 MW by 2020…
    - District cooling…can use seawater to directly cool the chillers, or incorporate water treatment plants for producing cooling tower make-up water. Alternatively, irrigation water or other non-potable water can be used. The end result is a win for the environment as well as for district cooling customers…

    - The Government of Dubai recently announced its adoption of a 'Sustainable Development Policy', a unique new initiative that applies world-class social and environmental standards to the organisation's activities. A new Renewable Energy Division will be responsible for 'green' buildings, energy and water conservation and management, value-added real estate and 'green' power generation, and intends to set an example for other Dubai-based organisations in developing sustainable development practices. It is creating an in-house team of experts in 'Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design' (LEED®), the world's premier certification programme for sustainable buildings.

    - The International Energy Group (IEG), the region's first international strategic alliance to promote clean and renewable energy, also recently announced a new initiative to support the ongoing efforts to rebuild Lebanon by providing sustainable infrastructure know-how. Lebanon imports around 97% of its energy needs, which has adverse economic and environmental effects. This initiative is designed to help create easy access to know-how, world-class expertise and project development in the utilisation of advanced energy technologies and sustainable design principles…
    - property investors in Jordan and the UAE have expressed their satisfaction concerning the implementation of energy-efficient solutions in buildings and various premises which drastically reduce energy costs…at a time when they were witnessing an escalation of energy costs…
    - Jordon's energy demands during the next decade is expected to be about 2,399 MW, costing in the region of $USD 3.1 billion. These figures underline the importance of increasing public-private partnerships to formulate a national strategy to reduce energy consumption…the implementation of energy efficient systems is capable of saving energy even in existing buildings…

    - Countries throughout the region are actively looking to implement energy efficient systems…in the field of renewable energy resources, the implementation of energy saving systems in street lighting, water pumping stations and for electricity generation.
    - 'Typical of the huge growth in the new and renewable energy sector is photovoltaics…the Middle East, with a virtually unlimited source of sunlight, is ideally placed to take full advantage of solar power.' …

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 12:01 PM 0 comments

    GRAND VISION IN THE HEARTLANDS

    Renewable energy doubters lack vision
    Keith Dittrich, chairman, American Corn Growers Association, December 12, 2006 (AG Weekly)

    - I am compelled to write in response to a recent Omaha World Herald report regarding the future of ethanol and renewable energy potential in the state. The report cited possible actions by the Nebraska Cattlemen’s Association to eliminate the Renewable Fuels Standard, the ethanol tax incentive and the import duties on non-American ethanol. I strongly feel that the group’s actions reveal a lack of any vision…
    - There are many of us that can see…an unprecedented economic and societal potential for all of agriculture as we enter one of the most significant revolutions in our 220-year history as a nation…
    - If there were truly a free market, without any governmental involvement in energy production, we might be faced with $200 to $300 per barrel oil today! …The Nebraska Cattlemen shouldn’t think for a moment that the fuel they put in their trucks isn’t subsidized. In fact, it is probably the most subsidized commodity on the face of the earth…

    - For many years, they have been buying their feed stuffs at heavily subsidized levels, given the system of farm programs in place that encourages high volumes of cheap commodities…
    - Cattlemen need not fear for their businesses because of renewable energy. They will have access to huge amounts of distiller grains…They will have lower energy costs and will benefit from the fact that grassland will be worth more as all biomass becomes more valuable…In the end, anything produced on the farm or ranch will be worth more as the demand for our production increases…
    - What we all must embrace is an imagination to see what is possible, and to reach out for it…And possibly because of the vision of some organizations, we may end up having more of our rural sons and daughters serving our nation by producing food and fiber in the Midwest instead of serving up bullets in the Middle East.

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 11:48 AM 0 comments

    GOOD MONEY IN NO CAROLINA GOING GREEN

    Report backs renewable energy requirements
    John Murawski, December 13, 2006 (The News & Observer)
    - North Carolina has significant potential to develop wind and other alternative energy without drastically increasing customer bills, a study prepared for the N.C. Utilities Commission says…renewable energy could provide as much as 1,800 megawatts of power, the equivalent of two power plants the size of Progress Energy's Shearon Harris nuclear plant in Wake County.

    - The study comes at a time that Progress Energy and Duke Energy are planning to build nuclear plants and Duke Energy is also planning to build coal-fired power plants…renewables would offset the need to build some power plants…reducing pollutants, greenhouse gases and radioactive nuclear waste…
    - However, if the general assembly adopted a renewable energy requirement, the time required to develop and establish the program would not likely be sufficient to cancel the coal and nuclear plants that are being planned now…

    - Utilities in North Carolina have resisted past efforts to require the use alternative energy, most recently lobbying against a bill proposed in 2005 that would have required utilities to make renewables 10 percent of their energy mix…Progress and Duke contended that renewable energy is not sufficiently available here, and not always reliable…Solar energy is expensive and is not considered feasible without substantial subsidies. Wind power is coming down in price and increasingly practical, but not available when the wind isn't blowing.
    - One of the biggest obstacles to renewable energy in North Carolina has been the state's cheap electricity rates…
    - The…state could generate 5 percent of their electricity from renewables and as much as 10 percent if they expanded their energy efficiency programs. Currently, almost all the state's electricity comes from nuclear power plants and coal-fired plants…
    - A 5 percent renewable energy requirement would double renewable use in the state and result in rate increases of less than 1 percent…A 10 percent requirement, implemented over 10 years, would raise rates by 3.6 percent at most…If energy efficiency were included…rates would go up by less than 1 percent, but actual bills would be lowered because energy use would decrease…

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 11:42 AM 0 comments

    LOW WIND IN BRITAIN

    Wind farms 'are failing to generate the predicted amount of electricity'
    Charles Clover, December 10, 2006 (UK Telegraph)
    - The claimed benefits of wind energy are called into question…The first independent study to rate farms according to how much electricity they produce shows that wind farms south of the Scottish border are not generating as much as the Government assumed when it set the target of producing a tenth of Britain's energy from renewables by 2010 and 15 per cent by 2015…
    - The [Renewable Energy Foundation], a charity that aims to evaluate wind and other forms of renewable energy on an equal basis, based its study of more than 500 turbines now in operation on data supplied by companies to Ofgem, the energy regulator.

    - The study shows that even wind farms in Cornwall on west-facing coasts, which might be expected to be the most efficient, operated at only 24·1 per cent of capacity on average. Turbines in mid-Wales ran on average at only 23·8 per cent. Those in the Yorkshire Dales ran at 24·9 per cent and Cumbria 25·9 of capacity. The only regions with turbines operating at or above 30 per cent of capacity were in southern Scotland, which averaged 31·5 per cent, Caithness, Orkney and Shetland at 32·9 per cent and offshore (North Hoyle and Scroby Sands on opposite sides of the country), which came in at 32·6 per cent…the most effective place to site the turbines is at sea near major cities where they can harness the greater power of off-shore winds without losing much of the electricity generated in transmission through the National Grid from remote areas such as the north of Scotland…The foundation's report found some real "turkeys" in lowland England…Worst of all is the turbine close to the M25 at Kings Langley, Herts at the HQ of Renewable Energy Systems, the green energy division of Robert McAlpine group. This produces 7·7 per cent of the electricity it would if there was enough wind for it to run continuously at full power…the turbine at GlaxoSmithKline's pharmaceutical plant at Barnard Castle, Co Durham, which is in a built up area and uses second-hand turbines, operates at 8·8 per cent of capacity…

    - The foundation says that too much subsidy…has encouraged wind development in poor sites…Dr Ian Mays, managing director of Renewable Energy Systems, whose turbine scored lowest in the report, said: "Situated in low wind speed Hertfordshire, the RES turbine was never intended to generate huge amounts of electricity. But each unit it does generate is zero-carbon and you can't get much better than that."
    - A spokesman for the British Wind Energy Association accused the Renewable Energy Foundation of having an "anti wind agenda" and said it was "deeply suspicious" of the findings…

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 9:26 AM 0 comments

    HUGE MONEY IN OIL

    Energy Billionaires
    December 7, 2006 (Forbes)
    - Energy is a big industry…12 oil and gas companies and six utilities in the top 100 of Forbes' list of the world's 2000 largest public companies. Oil giants Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell and BP are in the top ten…dwarfed by the state-owned oil companies of Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Venezuela and China.

    - To find billionaires who have made their fortunes from energy, look beyond the giants to the few remaining wild frontiers of the industry--Russia and the U.S. Those two countries accounted for 38 of the 45 energy-related billionaires…
    - [First] At…$18.2 billion, is expatriate Russian Roman Abramovich. He made money in a series of controversial oil-export deals in the early 1990s…his fortune took off in 1995 when he teamed up with Boris Berezovsky to take over oil giant Sibneft at a fraction of its market value.
    - When Berezovsky fled Russia in 2000 to escape fraud charges, he sold out to Abramovich, who in turn in 2005 sold his 72.6% stake in Sibneft to state energy giant Gazprom for $13 billion. He, too, decamped to London…
    [Second] The next…billionaires, brothers Charles and David Koch…$12 billion apiece…

    - Their father, Fred C. Koch, was an MIT grad who invented a way to turn heavy oil into gasoline. He took the technology to the old Soviet Union, became disillusioned with Stalin and returned to the U.S., where he joined the conservative John Birch Society.
    - Charles became chairman of Koch Industries after his father's death, expanded into chemicals, pipelines, asphalt and commodities trading. A $21 billion take over of Georgia-Pacific added lumber and paper and made Koch Industries the U.S.'s largest privately held company…
    [Third] Vagit Alekperov is the highest ranking active oilman on our list. Fifteen years ago he was the Soviet Union's deputy minister of fuel and energy. Now he is the president and one of the biggest shareholders in Lukoil…with a fortune of $11 billion.

    - He is a noted Putin loyalist at a time when much of Russia's oil and gas industry is being renationalized under state energy giant Gazprom.
    - Lukoil has growing interests outside of Russia, including refineries in Eastern Europe and the Getty gas station chain in the U.S. Lukoil closed the biggest deal in its history in the fall of 2005 when it bought Nelson Resources in Kazakhstan for $2 billion.
    [Fourth] Viktor Vekselberg…$10 billion…another Russian who built his fortune in the 1990s after the break up of the old Soviet Union. Ukrainian-born Vekselberg, through his management company, Renova, orchestrated Russia's first successful hostile takeover, of the Vladimir Tractor Factory, in 1994. He later bought medium-size aluminum smelters and bauxite mines and united them into Sual Holding, Russia's second-largest aluminum company.

    - Vekselberg made the bulk of his fortune when he and Mikhail Fridman's Alfa Group took over TNK, which merged with BP in 2003…Like Lukoil's Alekperov, Vekselberg maintains strong Kremlin connections. A former subordinate serves as a political adviser to Putin…

    - A harbinger of the future, if a distant one, is Tulsi Tanti…number 562 overall…$1.4 billion. This former textile trader from Pune, India, turned to alternative energy when escalating power costs threatened to put him out of business.
    - He started a wind power venture in 1995. Last year, he listed his Suzlon Energy, which has built Asia's largest wind farm in southern India and is expanding into the U.S., China and Australia…

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 9:19 AM 0 comments

    ZERO CARBON IN UK HOMES

    Britain sets sights on "zero carbon" homes
    Jeremy Lovell, December 13, 2006 (Reuters via Yahoo News)
    - Britain set out plans on Wednesday to help tackle global warming by making all new housing "zero carbon" within a decade.

    - From 2016 green new homes should generate from renewable or low carbon sources at least as much electricity as they use…
    Homes produce some 40 million tonnes of carbon a year or about one quarter of Britain's greenhouse gases, making them the third largest emitter after business and transport…

    - There are a number of definitions of "zero carbon" ranging from using renewable building materials and transport fuel to sharply reducing emissions from usage -- including recycling household waste…[For this government initiative] the term "zero carbon" meant all emissions from power generation after construction and did not include…the "embodied" carbon in the building materials or transport to the site…
    - Former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern said in October that urgent action on global warming was vital, and that delay would multiply the cost 20 times.
    - Britain, a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol on curbing carbon emissions, has pledged to go even further and cut its own greenhouse gases by 60 percent by 2050 -- a target that is proving elusive and which environmentalists say is too timid.
    - top rated houses would be energy efficient and use renewables like solar panels, rooftop wind turbines, wood pellets, mini combined heat and power stations…regulations would be tightened to ensure all new buildings were environmentally friendly…tax breaks [would] encourage home buyers to opt for green homes…Environmentalists welcomed the move, noting that although new homes now accounted for a fraction of the housing stock they would constitute about one-third of the total by mid-century.

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 9:15 AM 0 comments

    YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK

    $800M will benefit renewable energy
    December 4, 2006 (UPI via EARTHtimes.org)

    - More than 600 renewable energy projects are being funded by $800 million from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service…allocated in the form of Clean Renewable Energy tax credit bonds that replace interest payments in tax-free form. Applicants are in the process of being notified by the IRS…they are getting interest-free loans…
    - Local governments might use their own money to build the project. But if they can borrow the money interest-free, they'd be crazy not to. The money is being allotted to government and co-ops specifically because they are considered not-for-profit groups and do not qualify for the federal Production Tax Credits or solar investment tax credits.
    - Out of more than 700 applicants from government and electrical cooperatives, 610 qualified to receive the grants. Facilities that will benefit from the funding include: solar, wind, landfill gas, hydro power, biomass and refined coal…selected projects were proposed in California, New Mexico, New Jersey, Montana, Colorado, Massachusetts, New York and Ohio. The cost of the projects ranges from $23,000 to $80 million…The 2005 Energy Policy Act required that $500 million be given to state and local governments and $300 million should go to co-ops.

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 9:12 AM 0 comments

    Thursday, December 14, 2006

    FUTURE CARBON: CREDIT CARDS

    Ministers moot carbon credit cards
    December 11, 2006 (Yahoo News UK/Ireland)

    - People could be issued with personal carbon allowances which they would spend through a "carbon credit card", under plans being considered by…the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)…such cards, which would be used every time someone bought food, petrol, flights or paid for gas and electricity bills, could be in use within five years.
    - Environment minister David Miliband told The Guardian that the details of the scheme still needed to be worked out, but stressed that "bold thinking is required because the world is in a dangerous place"…
    - a study by the Centre for Sustainable Energy for his department…points to supermarket loyalty schemes, which log billions of transactions a year, as proof that people's actions could be tracked in a way that would allow a carbon scheme to work.

    - Each citizen would be issued with a set amount of carbon emissions they could emit, which would be used up when going on holiday, buying energy and so on. Any credits left over could be sold off, and bought by someone who needed more than their quota…

    AND, the Financial Times reported this:
    - Some experts doubt the viability of an individual cap-and-trade scheme but Mr Miliband told The Guardian it had a "simplicity and beauty that would reward carbon thrift".

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 9:46 AM 0 comments

    FUTURE WIND & SOLAR: BATTERIES

    For Solar:

    Chemists shed light on solar energy storage
    December 8, 2006 (PhysOrg)
    - Chemistry's role in bridging the gap between solar energy's limited present use and enormous future potential was the topic of a recent article by MIT Professor Daniel G. Nocera and a colleague…The sun's vast energy could be an ideal power source. More energy from sunlight strikes the Earth in one hour than is consumed by the planet in one year. Yet in 2001 solar energy accounted for less than 0.1 percent of total electricity.
    - The major hurdle to overcome is developing a cost-effective method of storage. "We need energy when the sun doesn't shine," said Nocera, the W.M. Keck Professor of Energy and professor of chemistry.

    - Nocera and Nathan S. Lewis of Caltech suggest that we borrow from nature and store solar energy in the form of chemical bonds, as plants do in photosynthesis. The mechanism would involve splitting water to generate oxygen and storable fuels such as methane or other hydrocarbons.
    - In the October 24 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences…They note, however, that advances in chemistry such as the development of suitable catalysts for water-splitting are crucial for solar energy to reach its full potential.
    Source: MIT

    For Wind:

    Maxwell Technologies Gets Largest Order to Date for Ultracapacitors From Wind Energy Company
    December 6, 2006 (AP via Yahoo Finance)

    - Maxwell Technologies Inc., a maker of capacitors used to extend battery life in electronic devices, said Wednesday that a European wind energy company placed an order for 3 million ultracapacitors….the order, which will be filled over two years, is for double the quantity of its previous largest "D cell" order…The ultracapacitors are used for backup energy storage and power delivery in wind turbines…

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 9:39 AM 0 comments

    FUTURE NUCLEAR: NO WASTE, NO MELTDOWN

    This is as exciting as the idea of the Hydrogen Society. When will it happen? Dunno.

    Sustainable nuclear energy moves a step closer
    Frank Nuijens, 11 december 2006 (EurekAlert)
    - In the future a new generation of nuclear reactors will create energy, while producing virtually no long-lasting nuclear waste, according to research conducted by Wilfred van Rooijen, who will receive his Delft University of Technology PhD degree based on this research…

    - van Rooijen's research, conducted at the Reactor Institute Delft, focused on the nuclear fuel cycle and safety features of a Gas-cooled Fast Reactor (GFR), one of the so-called 'fourth generation' nuclear reactor designs. These designs have a sustainable character: they are economical in their use of nuclear fuel and are capable of rendering a great deal of their own nuclear waste harmless. The ability to actually build such reactors is however still in the very distant future.
    - The fourth generation GFR uses helium as a coolant at high temperatures…to create a closed nuclear fuel cycle, in which only natural uranium is used as a raw material and in which the resulting waste consists of only nuclear fission products. Uranium and heavier isotopes, such as plutonium and americum, are recycled in the reactor and ultimately burned up (fissioned). In the reactors in use today, these heavy isotopes determine the long-term radioactivity of the nuclear waste. A closed nuclear fuel cycle therefore allows for maximum use of the raw materials, while at the same time substantially reducing the life-span of the waste.

    - This PhD research showed that it is possible to obtain a closed nuclear fuel cycle with a GFR. It also revealed that the GFR could use the waste materials of other light water reactors (LWR). The Gas-cooled Fast Reactor can therefore serve as an 'incinerator' of nuclear waste. To increase the GFR's safety, special elements have been designed to automatically shut down the reactor during incidents…the reactor is capable of withstanding incidents without damage to the nuclear fuel.

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 9:37 AM 0 comments

    FUTURE CHINA: BOOM

    A how-to for getting into China:

    China's Energy Boom: Where Are the Opportunities?
    Michael Keating, 05 December 2006 (ResourceInvestor.com)
    - It’s no secret that China’s exploding economy has an energy needs component riding on its vapor trails. Between 1980 and 2000 China’s GDP quadrupled. The good news from a conservation and environmental perspective is that during that period actual energy consumption only doubled. Nevertheless, when you discuss anything regarding China the numbers instantly become huge and the energy sector is no different…

    - Upstream, downstream, extraction, refining, construction, logistics and pollution control – all these sectors of the Chinese energy economy are poised for growth and each will present Western firms with an opportunity to create partnerships, to share technology and to invest in deals that will offer both exceptional financial value and opportunities to cement long-term relationships….
    - There are basically two factors that are driving policy. The first is the fact that China cannot produce enough domestic oil, gas and uranium (as well as several other strategic minerals and energy sources)…
    - The second concerns pollution. Right now sixteen of the twenty most polluted cities in the world are in China. By some accounts, over the next twenty-five years, China’s output of global-warming emissions will exceed that of all other industrialized countries combined…every week another coal fired power plant opens in China…
    - China’s near absolute dependence on coal based electricity is an economic boon because of China’s vast reserves but it is also an environmental disaster that the Chinese government-- as well as the rest of the world -- are only now starting to get a handle on…

    - the Chinese government, along with select state-owned and semi-private companies, have embarked on a world-wide hunt for oil, gas, copper and iron-ore that is particularly focused on Africa but also spills over to Southeast and Central Asia, the Middle East as well as Latin America. There have even been attempts to buy into the North American oil market…China has recently signed strict ‘non-military’ usage treaties with Australia in order to secure its supply of uranium and now Canadian producers are asking their government to engage in similar negotiations so they don’t get shut out of China’s aggressive nuclear energy program…
    - the Chinese government is increasingly interested in attracting companies that will either provide new technological and managerial competence, access to markets, or access to new reserves…
    - Coal…is king in China and will remain so throughout this century. The numbers tell the tale. Right now coal provides almost 67% of all China’s electrical power needs but an additional 550 Gigawatts of coal fired electricity will have to be brought on line over the next twenty years…hundreds of new power facilities and accompanying transmission and monitoring facilities…as energy efficient as possible…built to international standards…
    - Anglo-American…is conducting a feasibility study regarding a joint venture coal project in Shaanxi province that might result in an overall investment of several billion dollars…The scope would include open pit mines, power facilities and chemical plants…a Chinese investor has bought an $800 million share of the Oppenheimer family’s own share of Anglo-American…a leading indicator of the power and interest of Chinese capital on the world stage…
    - the Chinese have also expressed tremendous interest for foreign help in developing coal liquefaction and gasification technologies…coal is also an essential element in the continuing development of the Chinese steel industry which has recently become the largest in the world…

    - Oil…demand…will double by 2025 reaching approximately 14.2 million barrels per day, of which 10.9 million barrels will be imported…China’s current domestic reserve could be depleted within 20 years…the prime reason China has moved so heavily into places like the Sudan, Angola and other global trouble spots…
    - international pressure may move China more into a market approach…it will buy oil directly from suppliers rather than drilling and draining from its own wells…Chinese partners have witnessed an uptick of 50% in productivity which is a clear message to the Chinese that its time to open the doors to foreign players.

    - Nuclear…will quadruple by 2020 with consumption rising from 16 Billion kilowatt hours in 2000 to 66 Billion kilowatt hours in 2015…32 new nuclear power plants at an estimated cost of $35 billion. Currently China uses facilities that have largely been imported from France, Canada and Russia but there is still a question of whether the Chinese National Nuclear Corporation will adopt ‘heavy-water’ or ‘pressurized water’ technologies for the extensive construction projects on the drawing boards.
    - Natural Gas…domestic supplies will fall short of demand by 120 million cubic meters in 2010 and 200 billion cubic meters by 2020. The Chinese government has announced plans to develop 16 LNG receiving terminals, 10 of which might be operational by 2010 and will require extensive foreign inputs regarding materials, designs and technologies.
    Tar Sands and Shale Oil…China’s unconventional reserves may be as much as 16 times greater than conventional ones…by 2015 some 1000 kilobarrels of crude will be coming from shale oil and 800 kilobarrels from tar sands…Canadian firm Enbridge is pushing ahead with a plan to build a $2.5 billion pipeline from the tar sand regions closest to Edmonton to British Columbia, with the majority of output headed for China…a Chinese company may take a substantial financial position in the facility…the exploitation of these unconventional reserves will require extensive use of foreign technologies and know-how that the Chinese seem willing to invest in.
    - Renewables…The Chinese government has set a target for renewable energy to contribute to 10% of the overall energy mix by 2020, a huge increase from the current 1%…wind generated electricity will increase from 560 MW to 20,000 MW while Hydro will move from 8000 MW to 31,000 MW…China leads the world in terms of the total amount of energy being produced both from solar [and] hydro…but nevertheless these supply just a fraction of China’s needs. Due to the problems associated with coal and the uncertainty of a reliable oil supply, the development of advanced renewables is certainly a priority of strategic importance…
    - How to Succeed in China…opportunities for foreign firms: Joint E&P ventures in minerals, coal, gas and oil…Gas pipeline construction…Refinery construction…Tar sand production…Nuclear power plant development…Renewable technologies…Coal gasification and liquefaction technologies…

    - Over the course of the next decade [price controls on fuel supplies and limitations on foreign involvement] may persist in some parts of China, but in others there will be a huge opportunity to apply the leading technologies as well as substantial amounts of foreign capital to exploit these opportunities…get in early, find reliable partners, bring money and know-how to the table, be willing to part with control over technology, study the global situation from the Chinese perspective, and stay committed for the long-term…
    - Chinese state-owned oil companies have undertaken over 130 joint ventures around the world…are clearly demonstrating a willingness to open up substantial opportunities for foreign investors.
    - China’s national animal may be the cuddly Panda, but from the energy angle it looks much more like a raging bull.

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 9:35 AM 0 comments

    FUTURE BIODIESEL/ETHANOL: GLOOM

    Some of the many reasons we aren't going to grow our way out of this:

    Alternative-energy boom roils Asian environments
    Patrick Barta and Jane Spencer, December 05, 2006 (The Wall Street Journal via The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
    - Investors are pouring billions of dollars into "renewable" energy sources such as ethanol, biodiesel and solar power that promise to reduce the world's reliance on petroleum. But exploiting these alternatives may produce unintended environmental and economic consequences -- fallout that could offset many of the expected benefits.

    - Here on the island of Borneo, a thick haze often encloses this city of 500,000 people. The cause: forest fires that have blazed across the island, some of which were set to clear land to produce palm oil -- a key ingredient in biodiesel, a clean-burning diesel fuel alternative…
    - Seasonal rains have helped quell the fires over the past few weeks. Even so, the miasma of smoke from Borneo and the island of Sumatra -- an annual phenomenon that blankets large parts of Southeast Asia in smog, including Singapore and Kuala Lumpur -- underscores a troubling dark side of the world's alternative-energy boom. Among other problems, the fires set to clear forest land spew millions of tons of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, experts say. In doing so, they exacerbate the very global-warming concerns biofuels are meant to alleviate…
    - In Indonesia and Malaysia, forests are being slashed for new energy-yielding crops or other unconventional fuels. In India, environmental activists say, water tables are dropping as farmers try to boost production of ethanol-yielding sugar…
    - Some experts are also concerned that crops for biofuels will compete with other farmland, possibly driving up global costs of basic food production. It isn't clear how serious these problems will become -- or whether they eventually will be resolved…
    - The alternative energy field "is almost like the Internet in terms of the pace of how fast all this is changing," and new technologies could help resolve some concerns over collateral damage, says Chris Flavin, president of Worldwatch Institute…

    - [Cornell University professor of environmental policy David Pimentel] has long held doubts about [corn ethanol]'s value. He argues that expanding corn production for biofuels would deplete water resources and pollute soils with added fertilizer and chemicals. It would also require huge volumes of traditional energy for farming equipment and ethanol-conversion facilities -- a toll that could nullify gains from the less-polluting fuel produced…Other studies, including one by researchers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, have reached more optimistic conclusions and have criticized Mr. Pimentel's methodology…
    - Last year, investors globally poured a record $49 billion into energies such as solar power, ethanol and biodiesel…a 60 percent increase from the previous year.
    But commercializing many alternative fuels relies on political support in the form of government subsidies or tax incentives…
    - In October, a European Parliament committee recommended that the European Union ban all biofuel made from palm oil, citing fears that the crop encourages deforestation in tropical countries. In Indonesia, activists helped block an $8 billion Chinese-backed project that would have created one of the world's largest palm-oil plantations.
    - And last month, one of Britain's largest power companies, RWE npower, a subsidiary of the German power giant RWE AG, said it would abandon a project that was to use several hundred thousand tons of palm oil a year to generate power. An environmental group, Friends of the Earth, had complained that the project would contribute to unsustainable global demand for palm oil, contributing to rain-forest destruction in Southeast Asia….
    - [Palm] oil is squeezed from bunches of red fruit that grow on oil palms, primarily in Malaysia and Indonesia, where climactic conditions are ideal for large plantations…processed to make fuel…mixed with conventional diesel to form a hybrid energy source -- for instance, 80 percent regular diesel and 20 percent biofuel…
    - Biodiesel offers lots of upsides. Renewable crops like palm oil reduce the need for fossil fuels such as petroleum…It also burns more cleanly…
    - As oil prices have surged, a number of companies, including Chevron Corp., have announced plans to build or invest in biodiesel plants…creating demand for even more plantations…
    - Borneo -- which is divided between Indonesia and Malaysia -- is considered by environmentalists to be one of the last great tropical wildernesses. It is home to rare and unusual species, including the wild orangutan, the clouded leopard and the Sumatran rhinoceros.

    - It is also home to some of the world's last headhunters. The indigenous Dayaks resurrected the grisly practice as recently as the late 1990s in interethnic clashes. Some Dayaks still live in villages that can only be reached by river and sleep in wooden "longhouse" buildings on stilts…
    - Today, only a little more than half of Borneo's once-ubiquitous rain-forest cover remains…Now, the palm-oil boom threatens what is left…
    - The arrival of new palm-oil plantations has meant jobs and opportunities for many Dayak families, and some have even taken ownership stakes in the operations.
    As residents are discovering, though, the spreading plantations have deleterious effects. They can alter water-catchment areas, destroy animal habitats and contribute to the months-long bouts of haze that spreads hundreds of kilometers across Southeast Asia.
    - As fires burn deep into the dry peat soil beneath Indonesia's forests, centuries of carbon trapped in the biomass are released into the atmosphere…Indonesia is the world's third-biggest carbon emitter behind the U.S. and China, when emissions from fires and other factors are considered…

    - One new oil-palm plantation, four hours by dirt road from Pontianak, offers a glimpse of the fallout from the flames…The plantation stretches across some 1,000 hectares and features a series of blackened and largely bare hills. Charred stumps stick up from the soil and blistered tree trunks litter the ground. In the distance, a wall of misty jungle marks the border of the property…smoke and flames from fires at the site destroyed fruit and rubber trees that [villagers nearby] relied on. They also made many people in the area sick…
    - Untad Dharmawan, director of environmental impact assessment for West Kalimantan, says Indonesian authorities are investigating nine palm-oil companies for illegal burning…But they are hamstrung by tight budgets and the enormous logistical difficulties of policing such a vast area with few roads…
    - Back in Borneo, Tony Hartono, head of a local plantation association in West Kalimantan, says he still believes palm-oil-derived biodiesel will play a big role in solving the world's energy problems. After all, "it's a renewable energy," he says. "It's our future."

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 9:32 AM 0 comments

    FUTURE EXXONMOBIL: MORE ACCOUNTANTS

    Some things aren't changing so fast:

    Exxon Mobil predicts steadily rising energy demand; Analysts say need to be equivalent of about 325 million barrels of oil per day
    David Ivanovich, December 12, 2006 (Houston Chronicle)
    - World energy demand is likely to climb an average 1.6 percent per year to reach the equivalent of about 325 million barrels of oil a day by 2030, Exxon Mobil Corp. predicts…global energy demand will be up about 60 percent from 2000 levels…

    - Much of that growth will be spurred by heightened demand for cars and light trucks in developing parts of the world…consumers in the world's poorer countries are expected to own about 500 million cars by 2030, up five times from the level in 2000…
    - [ExxonMobil] Experts calculate that a trillion barrels of oil have been used since the start of the Industrial Age…[and] the world still holds at least 2.2 trillion barrels worth of oil which can be recovered through conventional techniques…And new technologies which enable producers to tap reserves from more difficult deposits such as heavy oil and oil shale may add another 800 billion barrels.

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 9:30 AM 0 comments

    FUTURE COOLING: MASS EXCHANGERS

    Seems like a great product...Looking forward to the Consumer Reports eval:

    Delphi Offers 'Green,' Cost-Effective Way to Cool with New Heat and Mass Exchangers
    John Shea, November 15, 2006 (ThomasNet)

    - Delphi Corporation has begun production of the Delphi Heat and Mass Exchanger (HMX) -- the "engine" behind new water-fueled, high-efficiency air conditioners that can cool homes, office buildings and industrial spaces across the globe for significantly less operating cost than traditional cooling systems without generating greenhouse gas emissions…
    - Delphi signed an agreement last year with Cooler Air Systems LLC (CAS) of Arvada, Colo., to be the world's exclusive manufacturer of heat and mass exchangers. The Coolerado series of residential products, marketed by CAS affiliate Coolerado Corporation, is the first product line developed around this groundbreaking technology…recognized in 2004 by R&D Magazine's 100 Awards program as one of the year's most technologically significant products…
    - The HMX capitalizes on a thermodynamic cycle known as the Maisotsenko Cycle or M-Cycle…cool air is produced via the water-fueled M-Cycle without adding a drop of moisture…The cooling capacity and Energy Efficiency Ratio (EER) of an HMX application increase along with the temperature outside, a feature which dramatically reduces power consumption during peak demand when power costs the most…

    - Because it is an evaporative technology, the Delphi HMX is most effective when used in stand-alone cooling solutions in hot, dry climates -- but it can also be used in concert with direct expansion systems, energy recovery systems, dehumidification systems and more to yield applications of all shapes and sizes suited to any environment…
    - "Systems that include the HMX do not require a compressor, which should dramatically reduce noise versus direct expansion systems," said Steve Slayzak, senior project manager, Center for Buildings and Thermal Systems, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy research laboratory. "Taken together with the fact these systems use only a fraction of the electricity and no ozone-depleting chemical refrigerants, the benefits are as obvious as they are compelling."

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 9:26 AM 0 comments

    Wednesday, December 13, 2006

    ENERGY WARS?

    Not much about sun and wind to fight over, but oil and gas? That's another story:

    NATO Prepares For Energy Wars
    Roman Kupchinsky, December 5, 2006 (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty)

    - During the recent NATO summit in Riga, U.S. Senator Richard Lugar urged the alliance to declare that an energy boycott of any member be seen as an act of coercion against all members of the alliance and one that requires a collective response…
    - The senator used Russia's brief cutoff of gas to Ukraine in January as an example of the dangers that could lurk ahead…"The Ukrainian economy and military could have been crippled without a shot being fired, and the dangers and losses to several NATO member nations would have mounted significantly," Lugar said…The day before pressure was reduced in the pipeline that supplied Ukraine (and Europe) with natural gas, NTV, which is controlled by the state-controlled gas monopoly Gazprom, aired long news segments showing Gazprom technicians preparing for the cutoff. The scenes, which were aired globally, resembled a wartime propaganda operation…

    - Such a tactic could have been Russia's way of showing that it…would limit its energy subsidies only to pro-Russian leaders…[and] a warning to the West to stop its support for "colored revolutions," as seen in Georgia in 2003 and Ukraine in 2004…Lugar's words at the NATO summit did not go unnoticed in Moscow…
    - Energy cutoffs have been used as a geopolitical tactic before…in July 1941, the United States declared a de facto oil boycott on imperial Japan by freezing all of its financial assets in the United States, which were then being used to pay for [80% of its] oil…Three days later, Japan launched an invasion to grab Royal Shell Petroleum's southern Indonesian oil fields…had the oil boycott been proclaimed years earlier, critics have said that the devastating war in the Pacific might have been avoided…

    - When the United States announced a $2.2 billion emergency aid package to Israel [during the 1973 Yom Kippur War] in October 1973, Saudi Arabia responded by announcing it would cut off all shipments of oil to the United States. The other Arab oil producers followed suit. Daniel Yergin, in his Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the petroleum industry, "The Prize," quoted [Henry Kissinger, the architect of U.S. foreign policy at the time] as saying the decision to use oil as a weapon was "political blackmail."
    Despite the economic damage and disruptions caused by the embargo, the United States never officially regarded it as an act of war by OPEC. It was, however, the beginning of a new era…
    - Most world leaders…are painfully aware of the importance energy plays in international politics…But the question remains as to what exactly an organization like NATO can do…Political strategists will likely be busy trying to find the answers…

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 10:27 AM 0 comments

    EVEN THE POPE IS WORRIED

    Race for energy sources threatens world peace: pope
    December 12, 2006 (AFP via Yahoo News)
    - Pope Benedict XVI issued a strong warning on the environmental impact of the global race for energy supplies, saying it was a threat to world peace…
    - "How can we fail to see in all this an attack on peace?" Benedict XVI said…

    - The Catholic church has consistently condemned what it perceives as attacks on the sanctity of individual human life, but the pope's statement linking the use of fossil fuels with world peace was his strongest on the subject…
    "What injustices and conflicts will be provoked by the race of energy sources? And what will be the reaction of those who are excluded from this race?" the pope asked. "The destruction of the environment, its improper or selfish use, and the violent hoarding of the earth's resources cause grievance, conflicts and wars, precisely because they are the consequence of inhumane concept of development," he said…
    - The pontiff also insisted on the importance of religious freedom as a critical factor for peace, pointing specifically to "some countries" in which Christians were persecuted.
    He condemned what he called the transformation of religion "into an ideology," and said that "a war in the name of God is never acceptable."

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 10:26 AM 0 comments

    A CASE IN POINT

    E.U, Kazahkstan Pact Aims To Bypass Russia
    Marc Champion, December 4, 2006 (Dow Jones Newswires via Rigzone.com)
    - In the European Union's growing struggle to break Russia's grip on the bloc's gas imports, all roads are leading to Kazakhstan.

    - Today, the EU signs a memorandum of understanding with Kazakhstan on energy aimed at binding this vast country -- which stretches from the Caspian Sea to China -- closer to Europe.
    - Yesterday, EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs signed an accord on nuclear cooperation, with a view toward increasing Kazakhstan's share of uranium sales in the EU to 20% from 3%…
    - Last week, Mr. Piebalgs, a Latvian who speaks fluent Russian, attended an EU-inspired meeting in Kazakhstan of regional energy ministers that produced a road map toward integrating their countries' energy grids and regulatory systems with the EU's.
    - Yet in all this flurry…the thing Mr. Piebalgs and many EU countries want most -- the construction of a gas pipeline across the Caspian Sea that would connect the gas-rich countries of Central Asia directly to Europe -- isn't mentioned.

    - Kazakhstan is critical to building the home stretch of a new southern energy corridor that would carry gas from the Caspian and beyond to the EU, via the Caucasus and Turkey. Such a corridor for the first time would allow the countries of Central Asia to sell gas directly to the EU, rather than to Russian gas monopoly OAO Gazprom, which can then re-export the gas at a high profit, as it does currently. Russia accounts for 44% of EU gas imports, a proportion that is expected to rise significantly, especially after Russia builds a northern gas corridor directly to Germany, under the Baltic Sea…
    - A raft of pipelines to make this new East-West energy corridor are either in planning stages or under construction. A gas connector from Turkey to Greece and from there to Italy…Another…Nabucco…is planned to take gas from Turkey north to Central Europe, Austria and beyond. Another…promoted since Gazprom cut off gas supplies to Ukraine in a price dispute last winter, would take gas across Georgia and directly to Ukraine and Romania via the Black Sea.
    - But…there has to be gas to fill them. Russia is offering to expand its pipeline…but that would only increase the EU's dependency on Gazprom.

    - Iran, with the world's second-biggest gas reserves, after Russia, could hook up to Turkey's grid and send gas to Europe, but relations between Tehran and the EU are poor…Connections to bring gas from Iraq and Egypt to Turkey also are possible but equally uncertain.
    - Gazprom, at least, is skeptical about the EU's pipeline ambitions…
    - The EU itself remains divided over pipeline routes…
    - Mr. Piebalgs is eager to secure a new southern gas route as soon as possible. Kazakhstan could choose to pipe its gas to China instead of Europe, even if the cost and distance involved would be far higher than crossing the Caspian. But Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who visits Brussels this week, is proving cautious. Closely allied to Moscow, the Kazakh government is wary of inviting the kind of retribution that has met Georgia's snubbing of Russian power…Nine oil- and gas-pipeline projects…were all taken out, largely for fear of angering Russia over the trans-Caspian issue…

    - The EU made an earlier feasibility study for a shorter trans-Caspian gas-pipeline route from Turkmenistan to Azerbaijan, but that has since been abandoned because of Turkmenistan's refusal to get involved…Mr. Piebalgs is hoping to get the Russians involved…When the EU created its regional energy integration initiative in 2004, Kazakhstan declined to sign, as did Russia. This weekend, Russia still attended as just an observer…
    - When a U.S.-backed consortium built an oil pipeline from Azerbaijan to Turkey against fierce Russian opposition, Kazakhstan again refused to get involved. But in June, with the pipeline completed against all expectations, Kazakhstan signed up and is now building capacity to ship oil across the Caspian and feed it into the BP PLC-operated pipeline, which can carry one million barrels of oil a day from Baku in Azerbaijan to Ceyhan on Turkey's Mediterranean coast, via the Georgian capital Tbilisi…

    - The EU only got serious about gas-supply routes this year…after Russian supplies to Ukraine and Georgia were cut off in January, and a Russian pipeline to Lithuania's oil refinery shut down in the wake of Lithuania's decision to sell the refinery to a Polish, rather than a Russian, buyer in the summer.
    - Russian officials insist the loss of gas supplies to Western Europe in January was due to Ukraine's theft of transit gas; that the pipeline to Georgia was blown up by Chechen or other terrorists; and that the refinery hitch is technical…

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 10:25 AM 0 comments

    ANOTHER? CONFLICTING REPORTS

    Deal...

    Gazprom’s Medvedev: Sakhalin-2 Deal with Shell ‘Close’
    December 12, 2006 (Deutsche Presse-Agentur via Rigzone)

    - Russian gas monopoly Gazprom is close to a deal with Royal Dutch Shell to allow the state-owned natural gas giant to enter the Sakhalin-2 oil and gas venture, Gazprom board chairman Dmitry Medvedev said…
    - Sakhalin-2 has come under fire from Russian ecological officials, who on Tuesday said it had caused a preliminary US$10 billion dollars in environmental damage. Medvedev's announcement and the damage bill came amid media reports Netherlands-based Shell had offered Gazprom, which has made clear its interest in entering the project, control over the US$20-billion Sakhalin-2 venture…

    - A Shell representatives told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa Tuesday that talks were ongoing and had been "constructive and positive."
    - Russia's largest energy project is currently 55-percent owned by Netherlands-based Shell, and 25 and 20-percent, respectively, by Japan's Mitsui and Mitsubishi. Shell 100-percent subsidiary Sakhalin Energy is the project's operator…
    - Many observers have called the environmental citations, which have hounded the project throughout the fall, a means to improve Gazprom's bargaining position.
    Gazprom, the world's third-largest energy firm, has made aggressive inroads in recent months into all areas of power creation, with officials saying it could become the biggest company on earth…

    - Shell signed a so-called production-sharing agreement (PSA) with Russia in 1994, allowing the firm to develop an estimated 500 billion cubic meters of gas and 150 million tons of oil reserves around Sakhalin. Under the terms of the PSA, Russia would begin to collect a share from sales only after Shell recouped its construction costs [which]…have since ballooned to US$20 billion, from earlier estimates of US$10 billion--keeping Moscow from accessing oil and gas revenues…

    …Or no deal?

    Russia Seizes Control Of $20 Billion Gas Project, Forces Shell Out
    December 12, 2006 (African News Dimension)
    - Shell is being forced by the Russian government to hand over its controlling stake in the world's biggest liquefied gas project, provoking fresh fears about the Kremlin's willingness to use the country's growing strength in natural resources as a political weapon. After months of relentless pressure from Moscow, the Anglo-Dutch company has to cut its stake in the $20 billion Sakhalin-2 scheme in the far east of Russia in favor of the state-owned energy group Gazprom…
    - Russian authorities are also threatening BP over alleged environmental violations on a Siberian field in what is seen as a wider attempt to seize back assets handed over to foreign companies when energy prices were low.
    - The moves will alarm many investors…
    - [T]he news will also increase government ministers' concerns about Britain's energy security.

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 10:21 AM 0 comments

    Tuesday, December 12, 2006

    CARBON CARBON, WHO’S GOT THE CARBON?

    Americans try to shift into 'carbon neutral'
    Gregory M. Lamb, December 6, 2006 (Christian Science Monitor via Yahoo News)
    - Are you living "carbon neutral" - or better yet, "carbon negative"? Have you gone on a "carbon diet"? Are you shrinking your "carbon footprint" on the earth or aiming for a "net zero" lifestyle?

    - …Americans have been shutting off lights, stuffing insulation into attics, and carpooling to save gas at least since President Jimmy Carter pulled on his cardigan…In the 21st century, though, the conservation message has changed: While fossil fuels such as oil and coal continue to dwindle and become more expensive, burning them now has an almost certain link to the warming of the planet's atmosphere, creating a rapidly changing climate that could wreak havoc.
    - People [including celebrities, sports teams, airlines, moviemakers, tour operators, and at least one college] are eager to help, and going "carbon neutral" has become a popular answer. The New Oxford American Dictionary recently proclaimed "carbon neutral" as its Word of the Year for 2006…Americans now say climate change is the country's most pressing environmental problem…

    - Becoming "carbon neutral" involves two steps…The first is to reduce carbon emissions through familiar conservation measures: replacing incandescent light bulbs with fluorescent bulbs, using public transit, and so forth. Many online "carbon calculators" help individuals or businesses assess how much carbon they are emitting…To get to zero, they'll need to buy "carbon offsets" by sending money to projects that replace fossil fuels with renewable energy sources, such as solar or wind-power generators, or to projects that remove carbon dioxide from the air, such as tree farms…
    - the idea of going "carbon neutral" could be detrimental if it leads to people only buying offsets and not changing their lifestyles…

    - Offsets alone aren't going to achieve the greenhouse-gas reductions that are needed…
    - influencing what China and India do about their growing carbon emissions will be much more significant than the feel-good efforts of Americans to become carbon neutral…
    - On a grander scale, the Kyoto Protocol has committed countries to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It has also stimulated a growing worldwide market for carbon-emission permits that are bought and sold between businesses. As a result, some observers say, awareness of the need to cut carbon emissions is higher in participating countries such as Canada and Britain than in the US, which has not signed onto the deal…But Americans are beginning to catch up…

    - Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai, who won a 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, recently urged what might be the grandest plan yet to offset carbon emissions at last month's international meeting on climate change in Nairobi, Kenya. Ms. Maathai proposed that the world's citizens commit to planting 1 billion trees, which would absorb about 250 million tons of the carbon dioxide now warming the atmosphere.

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 7:12 AM 0 comments

    OIL ATTACKS CHILDREN?

    Science a la Joe Camel
    Laurie David, November 26, 2006 (Washington Post)

    - At hundreds of screenings this year of "An Inconvenient Truth," the first thing many viewers said after the lights came up was that every student in every school in the United States needed to see this movie…So the company that made the documentary decided to offer 50,000 free DVDs to the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) for educators to use in their classrooms. It seemed like a no-brainer.
    - The teachers had a different idea: Thanks but no thanks, they said…they expressed concern that other "special interests" might ask to distribute materials, too; they said they didn't want to offer "political" endorsement of the film; and they saw "little, if any, benefit to NSTA or its members" in accepting the free DVDs…But there was one more curious argument…Accepting the DVDs, they wrote, would place "unnecessary risk upon the [NSTA] capital campaign, especially certain targeted supporters." One of those supporters, it turns out, is the Exxon Mobil Corp…

    - And Exxon Mobil isn't the only one getting in on the action. Through textbooks, classroom posters and teacher seminars, the oil industry, the coal industry and other corporate interests are exploiting shortfalls in education funding by using a small slice of their record profits to buy themselves a classroom soapbox.
    - NSTA's list of corporate donors also includes Shell Oil and the American Petroleum Institute (API), which funds NSTA's Web site on the science of energy. There, students can find a section called "Running on Oil" and read a page that touts the industry's environmental track record -- citing improvements mostly attributable to laws that the companies fought tooth and nail, by the way -- but makes only vague references to spills or pollution…
    - Along with propaganda challenging global warming from Exxon Mobil, the curricular offerings included lessons on forestry provided by Weyerhaeuser and International Paper…and the benefits of genetic engineering courtesy of biotech giant Monsanto…

    - So, how is any of this different from showing Gore's movie in the classroom? The answer is that neither Gore nor Participant Productions, which made the movie, stands to profit a nickel from giving away DVDs, and we aren't facing millions of dollars in lost business from limits on global-warming pollution and a shift to cleaner, renewable energy.
    - It's hard to say whether NSTA is a bad guy here or just a sorry victim of tight education budgets. And we don't pretend that a two-hour movie is a substitute for a rigorous science curriculum. Students should expect, and parents should demand, that educators present an honest and unbiased look at the true state of knowledge about the challenges of the day…

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 7:11 AM 0 comments

    OIL REPLIES

    Support for Science and Math Education
    Kenneth P. Cohen, Vice President of Public Affairs, ExxonMobil Corp., December 2, 2006 (Washington Post)

    - Laurie David's Nov. 26 Outlook article, "Science a la Joe Camel," attacked the National Science Teachers Association, corporate America, education budgets and Exxon Mobil Corp.
    - Exxon Mobil has no view on the National Science Teachers Association's decision not to share a DVD of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" with its members. It is an independent organization and acts accordingly. We do, however, object to Ms. David's unfair criticism of Exxon Mobil's longstanding support for math and science education.
    - America is experiencing a crisis in this field of education…statistics should alarm teachers, parents and the wider society…
    - Exxon Mobil has a long history of supporting math and science education programs from preschool to college. Our recent $10 million commitment to New Orleans public schools is one example…

    - Ms. David grossly misrepresented our company's position on climate change and ignored the breadth of activities we are undertaking to address it. The irony of her position is that by attacking the National Science Teachers Association and its supporters, she risks undermining the progress of scientific knowledge, which is essential to tackling climate change and many other issues challenging America today.

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 7:09 AM 0 comments

    DEEPENING SCANDAL?

    The scandal at the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) just keeps getting worse.

    - New evidence flatly contradicts statements NSTA has made in defense of its suspect partnerships, and efforts appear to be underway to wipe out online evidence showing that what the oil industry got in exchange was the group's imprimatur on classroom videos, teaching guides, and other "educational" materials that play down threats like global warming and play up the glories of continued oil dependence.
    - We also learned that NSTA is willing to sell direct access to America's schoolteachers…
    - And…NSTA Executive Director Dr. Gerry Wheeler - a top figure in the world of science education, remember - confessed to at least one reporter this week that he hadn't actually bothered to see the acclaimed film before he turned it down.
    - Now NSTA is arguing that distributing An Inconvenient Truth to teachers would violate their 2001 policy against endorsements. But that policy didn't stop them from shipping out 20,000 copies of a whopping 10-part video funded by ConocoPhillips in 2003… Wheeler says this is OK because NSTA had editorial control of the project. If that's true, then maybe he can explain why the only scientist cited in the largely dismissive global warming section appearing in chapters six, nine and ten of the teaching guides is Dr. Robert Balling - a well known global warming skeptic who has acknowledged taking more than $400,000 from the fossil fuel industry… (others say the figure is higher).

    - NSTA now says it is no longer partners with the American Petroleum Institute, asserting that the project ended five years ago. Yet it looks as if the curriculum was alive and well until reporters started asking about it…As of November 26 - the day the Post article appeared - both NSTA and API were promoting the course materials they produced together on their web sites. Immediately after the article appeared, however, we noticed that references to the joint "Science of Energy" program were quickly disappearing from the web…

    Try this one.

    - NSTA released a statement claiming it had offered us "many options" for "publicizing such programs" as An Inconvenient Truth to their members. In fact, Wheeler had promised by phone just the day before that he would meet with his board and come back with possible ways to get the disks into teacher's hands. Instead he went straight to the press, claiming I had turned down an offer I never received…
    - This story goes far deeper than a truckload of DVDs. What it's really about is NSTA's big money relationships with oil companies…

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 7:08 AM 0 comments

    Monday, December 11, 2006

    ALTERNATIVE CAR AND TRANSPORTATION EXPO

    If you were there, you know you saw a new world opening up. If you weren't there, you don't want to miss the next one.

    Random observations:

    Sherry Boschert was the Belle of the Ball.


    Her book was everywhere, like a manifesto for a new age dawning.

    Speakers

    Former CIA Director James Woolsey is serious about energy and knows what he is talking about. AND he pluggged ARCHITECTURAL WIND.

    Edwin Black was full of enthusiasm and historical insight.

    AutoBlogGreen has all the pictures and interviews.

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 6:06 PM 0 comments

    HYDROGEN NEED TO KNOW

    One of Yahoo!’s features last week:

    Hydrogen Myths
    - 1. Hydrogen fuel is abundant and free.

    - There is hydrogen in fossil fuels, alcohols-even in water…Hydrogen is everywhere-it just needs to be captured and used…Capturing hydrogen, however, is not as easy as it sounds…hydrogen must be separated from whatever it's attached to, a process that requires energy…making a kilogram of hydrogen from water through electrolysis requires 45-70 kWh of electricity…
    - 2. Hydrogen fuel produces no emissions-just drop of clean water.

    - Depending on where that electricity comes from, hydrogen can be clean and efficient or anything but…Burning coal to generate electricity-and then using that electricity to make hydrogen-is not such a good idea…However, if the electricity used to make hydrogen comes from renewable sources, such as hydroelectric, geothermal, solar, or wind, then hydrogen can be extremely clean…This is what appeals to hydrogen's supporters: the prospect of a fuel that is abundant, non-polluting, and safe for the world's climate.
    - 3. The hydrogen highway is under construction and will be opened soon.

    - According to the Department of Energy, there are just 15 hydrogen stations in the United States, and 10 are in California. Hydrogen is hard to store onboard a vehicle, and it's also hard to store in tanker trucks, rail cars, and other equipment traditionally used to distribute liquid fuels. So we'll probably need to rethink our fuel distribution infrastructure in order to supply hydrogen effectively…hydrogen infrastructure will take significant amounts of time and financial investment to develop…Hydrogen has great promise…we should be careful not to focus exclusively on hydrogen at the expense of other solutions that can be implemented today.

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 5:56 PM 0 comments

    CLINTON CLIMATE INITIATIVE

    Better to light one energy-saving light bulb than to curse global weirding.


    Former U.S. President Bill Clinton received an energy saving lamp at the Soestdijk Palace in Soestdijk, the Netherlands December 7, 2006. Clinton receives a 1 million euro cheque from the Dutch Postcode Lottery for the Clinton Climate Initiative.

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 5:52 PM 0 comments

    GETTING INTO SUN

    Puget Sound Energy plans solar power plant
    December 4, 2006 (Bloomberg News via The Seattle Times)
    - Puget Sound Energy, the state's biggest utility, is seeking proposals for construction of a 500-kilowatt solar-powered generating facility…near the site of the Wild Horse Wind Project under construction in eastern Washington…

    - When the sun is shining, it will have the capacity to power 300 homes…That would roughly double the state's entire solar-powered electricity generation and be four times bigger than any solar facility now in existence in the Northwest.
    - The Wild Horse wind farm will produce up to 230 megawatts in a strong breeze, or enough to supply about 184,000 typical homes…

    Even Chavez is doing it:

    Venezuela Takes Steps Towards Solar Energy
    Michael Fox, November 29, 2006 (Venezuelaanalysis.com)

    - Highlighting one of the first initiatives of the recently launched Mission Energy Revolution, 73 new solar-powered lamp posts were installed last week along Bolivar Avenue in downtown Caracas. Venezuela has plans to multiply the pilot project around the country…President Hugo Chavez…announced that he saw the solar panel project in action when he was in Vietnam and ordered Energy and Petroleum Minister, Rafael Ramirez to set it up in Venezuela…the Vietnamese are going to help Venezuela set up a solar panel manufacturing plant…
    - [T]he Energy Ministry hopes that this particular initiative will also cut down on the common occurrence of electrical cable robbery from the country’s lampposts, for the resale of the used copper wires…
    - The solar initiative is part of the new Energy Revolution Mission, which was launched on November 17th in the Venezuelan state of Nueva Esparta, with the goal of changing 52 million light bulbs across the country for energy-savers…by the end of December…they plan to have changed 17 million bulbs in six states…

    By the way, why didn’t the Middle East oil powers do this a long time ago?

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 5:47 PM 0 comments

    INVEST IN WIND?

    They say yes:
    Is Goldman's Wind Power Sale a Sign of a Peak in Alternative Energy?
    December 4, 2006 (BullMarket.com via Yahoo Finance)
    - After buying what was then known as Zilkha Renewable Energy in 2005, Goldman Sachs is already intent on cashing out of the wind energy market. The company recently announced that it is intent on selling the firm, now known as Horizon Wind Energy. According to one industry publication, Goldman could fetch up to $1.5 billion for the company, which is projected to generate $400 million in interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) by 2011. That upbeat forecast begs the question: why is the firm selling?

    - The easy answer is that the firm sees a peak in valuations in the alternative energy sector. We see the "peak" argument as too simplistic an explanation…
    - The more likely reason that Goldman is selling is because there's a great deal of interest from buyers…wind energy probably hasn't peaked, but the pace of asset appreciation could be nearing its pinnacle…the political environment is a long-term plus for the industry, and…a more favorable regulatory situation should drive the value of alternative energy assets…
    - [T]he company is already set to make a strong investment return on the business…
    Like all winning investors, the firm isn't getting too greedy…Goldman also stands to book a considerable fee on the sale as Horizon's advisor…Goldman is "the house," winning on multiple sides of one transaction…
    - As far as speculation about alternative energy peaks, we consider it simply that, speculation.

    And they say yes:

    Wind Energy Stocks - A Quick List
    Stockerblog, December 6, 2006 (SeekingAlpha via Yahoo Finance)
    - The following are a list of the pure plays and semi-pure plays in the wind energy field… 1. Americas Wind Energy Corporation manufacturing and marketing of medium sized (500 - 1,000 megawatt wind turbines for the North American market.
    2. Babcock & Brown Wind Partners An Australian based specialized investment fund focused on the wind energy generation sector
    3. Gamesa Corp. 18% of the world's share of the wind turbine market. Based in Spain.
    4. Kore Holdings A power provider and marketer of alternative energy from wind farms, hydro and distributed power facilities.
    5. McKenzie Bay International Ltd. Develops wind powered alternative energy systems.

    6. Mass Megawatts Wind Power Inc. Develops prototype wind energy production equipment.
    7. NaiKun Wind Energy Group Inc. Wind energy developer in the Haida Energy Field off the coast of British Columbia since 2001.
    8. Scottish Power plc A leading developer and operator of renewable energy in both the UK and the US. It is one of the largest providers of wind energy in the US.
    9. Shear Wind Inc. Provider of wind-generated energy in Atlantic Canada.
    10. Sea Breeze Power Corp. Developer of large-scale windfarms and underwater electricity transmission lines in British Columbia.
    11. Tower Tech Holdings Inc. Involved in the engineering, manufacture, and sale of wind turbine extension towers and monopiles to the wind energy industry
    12. Vector Wind Energy Inc. developer of wind energy projects in Canada.
    13. Vestas Wind Systems 34% of the world's share of the wind turbine market. Based in Denmark.
    14. U.S. Wind Farming The federal court in Chicago entered a Final Judgment as to U.S. Wind Farming on October 20, 2006.
    15. Western Wind Energy Produces clean renewable electrical energy from over 500 wind turbine generators located in Tehachapi and San Gorgonio Pass (Palm Springs), California.

    The ayes take it.

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 5:38 PM 0 comments

    OBSTACLES TO NUCLEAR

    Nuclear Power Revival Could Encounter Hurdles; Tight Uranium Supplies, Scarce Processing Facilities May Hurt Bush Energy Plan
    John J. Fialka, December 5, 2006 (The Wall Street Journal)
    - The Bush administration's plan for a "renaissance" in nuclear power may be crimped by tightening world-wide supplies of uranium and a lack of enrichment facilities to turn the uranium into fuel for power plants…an accident in October flooded the world's largest uranium mine, which was set to open in Canada next year. That nudged prices for processed uranium ore, already up more than 800% since 2001, even higher…

    - [E]nrichment facilities, which turn uranium into fuel for nuclear power plants, have already pledged their services because of growing interest in nuclear fuel by other countries. The result is that the U.S. is relying more than before on Russia…
    - Uranium is extracted from mines and processed into a form called "yellowcake." The yellowcake, in turn, is processed at enrichment plants, into fuel for nuclear-power plants. A far more time-consuming process is required to turn yellowcake into fuel for nuclear weapons.
    - Spurred by President Bush, who for years has touted nuclear power as a clean, safe way to generate electricity, the owners of U.S. utilities have made plans for at least 30 new U.S. nuclear power plants…[reviving] a domestic industry that has been dormant for decades…[with] tax breaks the administration is offering for the first six plants…
    - the "Ad Hoc Utility Group," an industry collective that represents 85% of the utilities involved in producing nuclear power is nervous about securing adequate fuel supplies for nuclear power plants over the next 10 years…[More Russian enrichment] could interfere with its plans to finance and build a new enrichment plant in the U.S…
    - Thomas L. Neff, a senior researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says the supply issues mean that "it will take heroic efforts to fuel the expected growth in nuclear power by 2015…"

    - Mr. Neff, who has followed the nuclear fuel market for 30 years, blames the tightening uranium supply on a failure to open mines in the U.S. and elsewhere…The accident at the Canadian mine highlights the supply problem…The mine could eventually supply 17% of the world's uranium demand…
    - The dwindling supply of uranium enrichment plants began after two U.S. facilities, built after World War II, shut down, leaving power-plant owners more dependent on the Russians. Natural uranium has less than 1% of the unstable isotope U-235, which must be concentrated to a level of 4% to 5% to make fuel for nuclear power plants. The concentration required to make nuclear weapons is closer to 90%…a $2 billion enrichment facility near Piketon, Ohio, [is] scheduled to open around 2009, but it still must obtain the financing…
    - The Russians say they could supply more enriched uranium to the U.S., but they are blocked by an agreement with the Commerce Department that restricts their imports…
    - Getting more fuel from U.S. enrichment wastes…might require the Russians to enrich them…

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 5:34 PM 0 comments

    THE SERENDIPITY OF COAL

    State regulators set standards for renewable energy sources
    Lisa Sorg, December 6, 2006 (Independent Weekly of North Carolina)
    - You have to appreciate the serendipity: On the heels of Duke Energy's announcement that it will cost $3 billion—not $2 billion, as originally projected—to build its two proposed coal-fired power plants, the state is unveiling its renewable energy study…

    - According to the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, 23 states and the District of Columbia have a Renewable Portfolio Standard, although if North Carolina adopted one, it would be the first southeastern state to do so…
    - States adopt these standards for environmental and economic reasons…Economically, the N.C. State Energy Office estimates renewables could create 3,000 jobs, while decreasing the $15 billion the state spends to import energy.
    - Several state environmental groups, including the N.C. Sustainable Energy Coalition, are urging the state to adopt a renewable standard…the utilities are expected to oppose it…
    - Duke Energy has made few inroads into renewable energy, and its efforts pale in comparison to many utilities. CPS Energy, a municipally owned utility in San Antonio with 640,000 customers, provides more than 260 megawatts of renewable energy, primarily wind…Duke Energy, with more than 2 million customers in North Carolina, buys biomass-generated and hydroelectric power. Total megawatts: 19.

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 5:28 PM 0 comments

    Thursday, December 07, 2006

    ENERGY 2030: ONLY THE CONSUMER KNOWS FOR SURE

    What they read in Detroit:

    Hybrids, flex-fuel cars not likely to impact energy use
    Justin Hyde, December 6, 2006 (Detroit Free Press)
    - Many of the U.S. auto industry's environmental efforts, including plug-in hybrids and flexible-fuel vehicles, will have little affect on the nation's energy use or output of greenhouse gases if the latest government forecast of energy trends through 2030 holds true.

    - While sales of flexible-fuel vehicles are expected to rise, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) says E85 will barely get off the ground over the next two decades. More electricity will come from burning coal, which increases greenhouse gases, raising questions about the benefits of plug-in hybrids. And U.S. dependence on foreign sources of energy is expected to increase, despite more fuel-efficient vehicles…
    - The EIA projects only a small increase in the price of oil before 2010, with some decline in the years after that as new sources come on line…
    - [T]he EIA boosted its estimates of U.S. ethanol consumption by 21% to 14.6 billion gallons by 2030…200 million gallons would be sold as E85, a mix of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline…based on distribution bottlenecks and a lack of a clear price advantage for E85 over regular gasoline.

    - Detroit automakers have backed E85-capable vehicles as a relatively pain-free way to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign energy and support renewable fuels…“It's very hard to imagine a world where oil prices stay at $50 a barrel, and we don't see a more aggressive introduction of advanced fuels and technology," [Jason Mark, director of the Clean Vehicles Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists] said.

    What they read in Cleveland:

    Energy forecast for 2030 mixed; U.S. sees natural gas, oil, coal as still dominant
    John Funk, December 6, 2006 (Cleveland Plain Dealer)
    - More than a quarter of the new cars purchased in 2030 will use alternative technologies, including electric hybrid systems, diesel or flex-fuel engines that can burn gasoline or mixes containing mostly ethanol, the U.S. Energy Department's statistical division said… - [A]n early version of its "Annual Energy Outlook 2007"…assumes no major policy or regulatory changes and steady economic and technological growth over the next 23 years…

    - In addition to an increase in the purchase of high-tech vehicles from about 8 percent of sales today to 28 percent in 2030, Tuesday's report projects steady if conservative growth in ethanol-based fuels from corn and grasses, biodiesel from vegetable oils and super clean diesel from coal.
    - Ethanol production is expected to grow from today's 4 billion gallons per year to nearly 15 billion gallons in 2030 -- about 8 percent of the total gasoline consumption.
    - The use of unconventional sources for diesel and other distillate fuels such as heating oil and jet fuel is expected to grow from less than 1 percent of supply today to more than 7 percent by 2030…
    - [T]he Energy Department thinks oil, coal and natural gas will still account for about 86 percent of the nation's primary energy supplies in 2030 -- the same as in 2005.
    - [The agency] expects…nuclear's share of total power generation to fall as more coal-fired plants come online.
    Carbon dioxide emissions…will increase by about 1.2 percent annually…assuming new regulations don't curtail the use of coal….Mandatory limits on carbon dioxide emissions, called for by environmentalists but rejected by the Bush administration, could dramatically change this scenario…
    - Total energy demand will increase by 1.1 percent a year, assuming the nation's economy grows at an average rate of 2.9 percent.

    - Crude oil prices will decline gradually through 2015 as new supplies are developed, but then increase as global demand continues and higher-cost supplies are brought to market. The bottom line? Oil in 2030 will cost about what it does today, adjusted for inflation…
    - Natural gas consumption won't grow as fast as previously believed, because the fuel has become relatively expensive compared with coal and utilities are planning to build new coal-fired rather than gas-burning power plants… Wholesale [natural gas] prices, now averaging $7 to $8 per 1,000 cubic feet, are expected to dip a little over the next several years before bouncing back…
    - The average delivered price of electricity is expected to dip slightly in the next couple of years but return to today's prices by 2030…

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 4:11 PM 1 comments

    LITHIUM ON WHEELS

    Test drive technology like this at the ALT CAR EXPO in Santa Monica this weekend. FREE!

    Lithium Technology Corporation Powers European Hybrid Electrical Vehicle Project
    Allyson Curtis, December 5, 2006 (BusinessWire via Yahoo Finance)
    - Lithium Technology Corporation ("LTC"), a global provider of large lithium-ion rechargeable power solutions, announced that its battery system was integrated into a four-door demonstration hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) launched today in London. The battery system is the result of collaboration with Zytek, one of the world's leading suppliers of expertise in automotive control systems, powertrain management and HEVs.

    - LTC subsidiary GAIA Akkumulatorenwerke (GAIA) developed the battery for the vehicle based on the smart forfour (manufactured by DaimlerChrysler), which has an output of 288 V, a capacity of 7.5 Ah (or about 2.2 kWh of energy) and a capability to deliver 25 kW of power. The battery can be charged by either the internal combustion engine (ICE) and by regenerative braking or by household mains (plug-in hybrid). The vehicle has a fuel economy of over 84 mpg and an all-electric range of 20 miles which compares very favorably to the range of HEVs currently on the market…
    - Zytek was awarded GBP 1.8 million by the Energy Saving Trust to develop the new HEV. The vehicle utilizes a hybrid power train based on a 1500cc, 3-cylinder turbo charged diesel engine coupled with two high-efficiency permanent-magnet electric motors. This car is part of the "Ultra Low Carbon Car Challenge" project…
    - The vehicle has…an advanced Battery Management System (BMS)…equipped with additional safety features to control the charging of the battery from the mains. The BMS has been designed to communicate with the vehicles' energy management system to ensure enhanced efficiency and control…

    - Lithium Technology Corporation (LTC) is a global provider of large format rechargeable power solutions for diverse applications, and offers the largest lithium-ion cells with the highest power of any standard commercial lithium ion cell produced in the western hemisphere…LTC manufactures the GAIA® product line of large, high power hermetically sealed rechargeable lithium-ion cells and batteries. The Company's product portfolio includes large cells and batteries from 10 times the capacity of a standard laptop computer battery to 100,000 times greater…LTC headquarters are located in Plymouth Meeting, PA and R&D in Nordhausen, Germany…
    - Zytek is at the forefront of automotive technology, being active in the fields of electronic control systems, high performance engines, concept electric and hybrid vehicles and electro/mechanical services…
    - The Energy Saving Trust was set up by the UK Government after the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and is one of the UK's leading organizations addressing the damaging affects of climate change. It… is a non-profit organization funded by government and the private sector…Funded mainly by the Department for Transport, the Scottish Executive and the Welsh Assembly Government, it works in partnership with the transport industry, corporate fleet sector and the public sector…

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 4:06 PM 0 comments

    OVSHINSKY: THE NEW EDISON?

    The Edison of our age? Stanford Ovshinsky may not be a household name, but his inventions have the power to change the world
    December 6, 2006 (Financial Express of India via AutoblogGreen)
    - “The ages of mankind have been classified by the materials they use—the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, the Age of Silicon. We are at the dawn of the Hydrogen Age.” So proclaims Stanford Ovshinsky, co-founder of Energy Conversion Devices (ECD)…

    - [S]cepticism is certainly in order…President George Bush and the big carmakers have been trumpeting hydrogen fuel cells—electrochemical devices that turn hydrogen into electricity and water vapour—as the replacement for the internal-combustion engine. But the date of commercialisation seems forever slipping just beyond the horizon.
    That has prompted a backlash from advocates of rival technologies (such as ethanol-based engines and novel batteries) and from greens, who argue that hydrogen is just a cynical long-term diversion used by Mr Bush and Detroit to avoid short-term action on fuel-economy standards, plug-in hybrids and other here-and-now options…
    - Three things set Mr Ovshinsky apart from the hydrogen hypesters. First of all, he is no newcomer. He first outlined his vision for what he calls a “hydrogen loop” some five decades ago…second…Mr Ovshinsky’s green credentials are impeccable. He and his wife Iris, who died recently, founded ECD in 1960…[predicting]…the world’s addiction to oil would have unacceptable side effects, from resource wars to climate change…

    - But what lifts Mr Ovshinsky into the league of genius inventors is something rather less common: success. He is the inventor of the nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) battery, which is used to power everything from portable electronics to hybrid cars; around 1 billion such batteries are sold every year. He has also made advances in information technology (he calls information “encoded energy”) and holds critical patents relating to thin-film solar cells, rewriteable optical discs, a new form of non-volatile memory and flat-panel displays. These technologies are being commercialised through deals with Intel, Samsung, STMicroelectronics, General Electric, Chevron, United Solar Ovonic, and others.
    - What all these apparently disparate inventions have in common is that they rely on Mr Ovshinsky’s path-breaking discoveries in the field of disordered or “amorphous” materials, since named “ovonics” in his honour. Such materials can be used for energy generation (in fuel cells and solar cells), for energy storage (in batteries), for computing (to store data on discs or in chips) and to create custom materials with novel properties…
    - ECD has even “hacked” a Toyota Prius hybrid car so that it runs on pure hydrogen rather than petrol, which he says proves that “we don’t have to wait for fuel cells to move into the hydrogen economy.”

    - All this makes it tempting to compare ECD’s co-founder with Thomas Edison, the great inventor from another age who founded General Electric. Both established themselves early on…Both arose from humble roots…Edison, like Mr Ovshinsky, straddled the fields of energy and information technology…both thought of their inventions as entire systems…
    - Mr Ovshinsky’s vision for a hydrogen loop was just a blackboard exercise five decades ago. But since then he has produced the inventions needed to make it work…
    - The best evidence of Mr Ovshinsky’s systems approach at work is his shiny new solar factory in Michigan…for producing miles of thin-film solar material…So does he see ECD as the GE of the 21st century? “Oh, ECD will be much more than that…”

    - Inspired by the family’s links to the peace and civil-rights movements, the Ovshinsky motto is “with the oppressed, against the oppressor”, and ECD retains the feel of a family firm with those values. What is more, ECD is visibly committed to clean energy—and Mr Ovshinsky is clearly not motivated by money…
    - The loss of his wife, collaborator and co-founder has clearly devastated Mr Ovshinsky, but do not expect to see him retire anytime soon. He may be 84, but he evidently has plenty of unfinished business to attend to…He has worked out how his next generation of solar films will be produced not at 2.5 feet per minute, he says, but 100 times faster. He is convinced he can radically improve the efficiency of fuel-cell electrodes. He thinks he will be able to scale up his firm’s hydrogen-storage system to megawatt scale, thus enabling grid storage of renewable power. And so on…

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 3:48 PM 0 comments

    EVEN GENIUSES GOOF

    RAND TO REVIEW RENEWABLE ENERGY STUDY AND WILL ISSUE CORRECTED VERSION
    - The RAND Corporation today announced that it is revising a study on renewable energy expenditures issued Nov. 13 after learning there were some inadvertent errors in the computer model and numerical assumptions…
    - “Impacts on U.S. Energy Expenditures of Increasing Renewable Energy Use”…examined total energy expenditures if a requirement was imposed that 25 percent of electricity and motor vehicle fuels used in the United States by 2025 would come from renewable resources.

    - RAND Vice President Debra Knopman, who is director of the RAND Infrastructure, Safety and Environment division, said the errors “may have an effect on the results of the study, but exactly what that effect will be is uncertain at present…our studies failed to detect inadvertent errors in the treatment of existing subsidies for biofuels and the availability of existing hydropower capacity in the computer code, as well as some other details relating to how the renewable requirement is met and at what cost.”
    “We deeply regret these inadvertent errors, accept responsibility for them, and are announcing them to set the record straight,” Knopman said. “We will redo our analysis and issue a corrected version of the report in early 2007.”

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 3:45 PM 0 comments

    Wednesday, December 06, 2006

    COMPARING LIQUID FUELS

    The numbers behind ethanol, cellulosic ethanol, and biodiesel in the U.S.
    Maywa Montenegro, December 4, 2006 (Grist)

    - America devours oil like no other country…140 billion gallons of gasoline and 40 billion gallons of diesel…But rising prices, climate change, and seemingly endless crises in the Middle East have sparked a reckoning…
    - [T]hree fuels have emerged to lead the U.S. biofuels pack…corn ethanol, cellulosic ethanol, and biodiesel…
    Corn ethanol
    - [A]mong environmentalists, however, the growing consensus is that corn-based ethanol is more fool's gold than eco-treasure…
    - Conventional agriculture relies on fertilizer and pesticides derived from fossil fuels. Diesel powers the tractors and other machinery that plow, plant, and spray crops, as well as the vehicles that haul away the final product (due to ethanol's tendency to absorb water, it must be transported in special containers on trucks or trains instead of in the cheaper pipeline system used for oil and gasoline). Figure in the fuel -- mainly coal and natural gas -- burned in the distillation process, and experts reckon each gallon of ethanol takes the energetic equivalent of roughly three-quarters of a gallon of ethanol to produce…
    - After accounting for the coal and natural gas burned to process it, the nitrous oxide -- a greenhouse gas hundreds of times more potent than CO2 -- generated from fertilizer production, and other factors, a recent study in Science found that ethanol use reduces greenhouse-gas emissions by just 13 percent compared to gasoline use…

    - [D]omestic ethanol draws plenty of help from Washington… Since 1978, the fuel has qualified its producers for a [51 cents/gallon] federal tax credit…Ethanol producers also benefit from a 54 cent-per-gallon tariff on sugarcane ethanol imported from Brazil…

    - U.S. automakers, also with a boost from Washington, are jumping on the ethanol bandwagon…the federal government's "dual-fuel loophole" provides automakers a 1.5 mile-per-gallon credit toward meeting fuel-economy standards -- without requiring that flex-fuel vehicles actually run on alternative fuel…flex-fuel vehicles run on ethanol blends less than 1 percent of the time…
    Cellulosic ethanol
    - Cellulosic ethanol, a fuel chemically identical to the conventional kind but instead derived from "biomass," a term encompassing everything from waste materials like corn stover and paper pulp to fast-growing plants like switchgrass, willow, and poplar. Roughly two-thirds of this cellulosic matter is complex carbohydrate, which can be broken down into fermentable sugars, and from there, into ethanol. Lignin makes up the remaining dry weight and carries an energy content similar to that of coal. Most models of cellulosic ethanol production, in fact, use lignin combustion to power the process, thereby closing the energy loop…

    - [C]orn-based ethanol provides 26 percent more energy than is required for its production, while cellulosic provides 80 percent more energy. And while conventional ethanol reduces greenhouse-gas emissions 10 to 20 percent below gasoline levels, the reductions with cellulosic range from 80 percent below gasoline to completely CO2 neutral…
    - A perennial prairie grass native to North America, switchgrass requires little water or fertilizer to grow and thrives in places unsuitable for most crops, ranging from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada and from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Some five to nine feet tall, this gangly weed also yields twice as much ethanol per acre as does corn…as many as 100 million acres of cropland and pasture will need to be devoted to switchgrass to produce enough ethanol to offset 25 percent of petroleum use. Currently, U.S. farmers have about 80 million acres in corn…
    - [T]he U.S. is on track to consume 290 billion gallons of gasoline for transportation in 2050. By boosting fuel efficiencies and reigning in urban sprawl…we could feasibly cut this figure down to 108 billion gallons…the number of gallons of ethanol produced per ton of dry switchgrass could jump from 50 gallons to 117 gallons by 2050…current averages of five dry tons of grass per acre could easily double under a standard breeding program…switchgrass could be grown on a reasonable chunk of land to produce 165 billion gallons of ethanol by 2050. And because one gallon of ethanol contains 66 percent of the energy content of gasoline, 165 billion gallons of ethanol equates to -- you guessed it -- 108 billion gallons of gasoline…

    - [I]t demands radical cuts in fuel usage…an infrastructure of pipelines and pumps specially designed to transport the hygroscopic fluid…an acidic or enzymatic digestion that splits it into simple sugars…In short, the shining promise of cellulosic is still just that…
    Biodiesel
    - [S]ome very American icons, ranging from Willie Nelson and Neil Young to Julia Roberts and Morgan Freeman, are hoping to lessen the impacts of our four-wheel love affair by championing biodiesel -- a fuel usually derived from soybean, palm, or oil-seed plants like canola and mustard, but also acquirable from waste animal and vegetable fats, and even, surprisingly, algae…Nationwide consumption of biodiesel tripled from 25 million gallons in 2004 to 75 million in 2005, and was expected to quadruple from that in 2006, reaching 300 million gallons…50 new larger-scale plants are under construction…
    - [N]early 90 percent of all global biodiesel is produced and consumed [in Europe]…
    - Over its lifetime, pure biodiesel emits about 78 percent less CO2 than conventional diesel. Burning biodiesel also reduces emissions of smog-forming hydrocarbons and particulate matter by about 50 percent, and emissions of sulfur oxides and sulfates by 100 percent…
    - On the downside, all diesel engines -- whether fueled by conventional diesel or biodiesel -- still spew more toxic soot and smog-forming pollutants than gasoline engines, and this will likely remain true until cleaner "Tier 2" diesel emission standards go into full effect in 2009. So making the switch to biodiesel makes great environmental sense for the current fleet of diesel cars, buses, trucks, and heavy-duty equipment. But for individuals deciding on their next car purchase, a gasoline-powered hybrid (one that will soon be able to utilize cellulosic ethanol) remains the better choice…
    - biodiesel production is highly efficient, generating 93 percent more energy than is required to make it…biodiesel reduces greenhouse-gas emissions by 41 percent compared with fossil fuels. When Tier 2 emissions standards bring biodiesel up to par with gasoline and ethanol for air pollutants, biodiesel seems like it should be a no-brainer for green energy.
    And the Winner Is ...
    - It is tempting, almost instinctive, to jump toward the most visible and abundant source for that energy -- in this case, corn…

    - When it comes to biodiesel, limitations on the scale of production may be the greatest weakness…Ramping up worldwide cultivation of biodiesel crops is a possibility, but that will mean deforestation and the concomitant loss of biodiversity…
    - Experts say that cellulosic ethanol stands a real chance to displace significant amounts of oil. But they also say this won't happen without great financial support from both the public and private sectors. It won't happen unless our political leadership implements greater efficiency standards and other incentives for companies to "go green." It won't happen unless we as individuals are willing to cut back on how much energy we consume, bottom line. And most important, it won't happen unless we call for a change…

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 5:15 PM 0 comments

    ALT CAR EXPO DEBUT

    Plug-in full-electric car to be demo’d this weekend
    - While everyone else may be filing into the shopping malls this weekend to get started on the holiday gift-giving season, there will be a fairly enthusiastic and dedicated crowd gathering at the Alternative Car and Transportation Expo in Barker Hanger at the Santa Monica Air Center…

    - Universal Electric Vehicle will be showcasing their Electrum Spyder. This full-electric car gets juiced up from a wall plug overnight, meaning that you can start "with a full tank every day without going to a gas station."
    - There's no need for a special generator or a propriety jack, because the Universal Electric Vehicle (as its name implies) can plug into any standard 110 or 220 volt outlet. This all-electric "freeway flyer", as you'd expect, gives off zero emissions…where electricity is generated in an environmentally-friendly way…this really is a true "green" transportation solution…
    - "The Electrum Spyder provides an effective range of up to 150 miles at a top speed governed at 80 miles an hour on a full charge using nickel zinc batteries. The Spyder is available with optional lithium ion batteries with a range of up to 300 miles on a single charge…"
    WATCH THE SPYDER ON YOUTUBE

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 5:02 PM 0 comments

    INTRODUCING: GREEN ENERGY TV

    GreenEnergyTV.com to Share Green Energy Success Stories With Viewers Worldwide; Projects Include Solar Energy, Wind Power, Hydro Power, Hydrogen, Biomass, Biofuels, Geothermal, Hybrid Vehicles
    December 4, 2006 (PRNewswire)
    - GreenEnergyTV.com is passionate about exposing Green/Alternative/Renewable/Clean Energy to the world via video clips from those who have pioneered success. The company's launch last week has already exceeded initial expectations on click-thrus, garnered video submissions and received interest from the U.S. Department of Energy.

    - The goal of the clearinghouse is to allow Participants to easily submit their videos of green energy projects…underway or completed…accessible to anyone with internet access at no cost…companies, inventors, colleges and universities with existing or breakthrough green energy technology that is waiting to be discovered and marketed…
    - Green Energy TV will develop revenue streams through advertising opportunities…
    - Participants can upload videos at no cost to http://www.greenenergytv.com/ or mail.

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 5:00 PM 1 comments

    FOR COMPUTER USING ENERGY FREAKS LIKE ME: AMD & DELL

    AMD Drives Next Generation of Energy-Efficient Computing with 65nm Technology Transition
    December 5, 2006 (BusinessWire India via ZD Net India)

    - Launching the next generation of energy-efficient computing, AMD today announced the transition to 65nm process technology, beginning with the immediate availability of energy-efficient AMD Athlon(TM) 64 X2 dual-core desktop processors. The move to 65nm process technology enables AMD to produce more processors on a 300mm wafer, for increased production capacity, while continuing to aggressively scale performance and reduce power consumption. AMD processors built with 65nm line-widths are designed to deliver exceptional performance when running multiple applications, as well as enable small form factor PCs that complement both home and office environments. By mid-2007, AMD expects to be fully converted to 65nm production at Fab 36. With the rapid conversion to 65nm process technology, AMD is scaling capacity intelligently to meet growing demand worldwide for x86 processors…
    - Energy-efficient AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual-core processors can deliver improved performance-per-watt and reduced power consumption. AMD will continue within the 65nm technology generation to enhance both AMD64 processors and process technology, to offer even more energy-efficient processors that demonstrate AMD's commitment to an improved global environment. The next generation of energy-efficient processors complement AMD's award-winning Cool'n'Quiet(TM) technology, allowing a system to match processor utilization to the performance actually required…

    - In March 2005, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) awarded AMD's Cool'n'Quiet technology special recognition for the advancement of energy efficient computer technologies. As a company committed to environmental stewardship, AMD supports the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other worldwide organizations that promote the development and delivery of energy-efficient technologies. Based on energy consumption data from AMD, AMD expects that systems built with our desktop and mobile processors can meet, and in many instances, exceed the EPA's newly announced ENERGY STAR Version 4 computer specifications revised on October 20, 2006 and effective July 20, 2007…
    - AMD64 processors are ready and capable today to provide users with the foundation needed to experience the power of Windows Vista…
    - Pricing for the 65nm AMD Athlon 64 dual-core processors 5000+, 4800+, 4400+, and 4000+ are $301, $271, $214, and $169, respectively in 1KU PIB…

    Dell sells premium energy-efficient servers
    Stephen Shankland, December 4, 2006 (CNET News.com)
    - Dell on Monday announced a premium "Energy Smart" line of servers that consume less power than regular models, becoming the latest company to jump aboard the energy efficiency bandwagon…The company began with two rack-mountable systems: the 1.75-inch thick PowerEdge 1950 and the 3.5-inch-thick 2950…The systems use higher-efficiency Intel processors, power supplies and fans, Dell said. They also include components to increase air flow in the chassis and have system settings to increase efficiency…

    - The company said the models will cost about $100 more than mainstream Dell servers, arguing that they'll earn their keep by saving about $200 per year in energy costs. The initial price difference is steeper, though, with a regular 1950 starting at $1,749, compared with $2,449 for the bottom-of-the-line Energy Smart system…
    - Energy efficiency has risen to the top of the agenda for server makers, given the increasing electricity demands of processors and other computing components, combined with rising power costs. IBM and Hewlett-Packard have programs to reduce data-center power consumption, and the U.S. Congress has urged customers to buy efficient servers.
    - Sun Microsystems, meanwhile, touts the low power consumption of its UltraSpare T1 “Niagara”-based servers while offering "rhymes with hell" advertisements that lampoon the power consumption of Dell products. Dell's more recent servers use new Intel processors that consume dramatically less power, however…[Del] is working on reducing power consumption of its business-oriented Optiplex desktops…

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 4:52 PM 0 comments

    NEW ENERGY CHRISTMAS LIGHTS

    Energy Adviser: LED lights economical way to brighten holidays
    Bruce Carter, December 03, 2006 (The Columbian)
    - Your choices in holiday lights have expanded significantly over the last several years. From the old C-7 and C-9 incandescent lights to mini lights to the new light-emitting diode lights, homeowners have never had more variety.

    - LED lights are the latest entry into the holiday lighting market. These lights use a solid-state semiconductor to convert electricity directly into light. LED lights use less than one-tenth of a watt, produce virtually no heat and have an extremely long service life -- up to 100,000 hours in some cases. The color of the light is determined by the chemical makeup of the bulb, with red, green, blue, white and yellow currently available. The color also determines its cost, with white and blue LEDs being the most costly.
    - Brightness can be an issue with LED lights. When viewed from the front the lights appear bright, but can appear dim when viewed from the side. To compensate for this, multi-faceted flame- or ball-shaped lenses cover the LED to catch and reflect the light, making it appear brighter when viewed from the side…
    - LED Christmas lights…use a miniscule amount of electricity, they last virtually forever and the new, larger refractive lenses make them nearly as bright as the old incandescent lights. With many homeowners installing larger displays every year, LED lights [seem] the perfect choice…
    - The cost of operation and longevity are the major advantages of LED holiday lighting. Running 20, 100-LED light strings for 10 hours per day for 35 days during the holidays will cost $2.16! Running 20 strings of icicle lights will cost $38.64.
    - The price of LED holiday lights has dropped over the years as more competition has entered the marketplace. However, while they are less expensive than they were several years ago, expect to pay more than traditional holiday lighting. A string of 35 lights retails for $8 to $10, while a 100-LED string will cost $10 to $15…

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 4:50 PM 0 comments

    Monday, December 04, 2006

    THE ALTERNATIVE CAR AND TRANSPORTATION EXPO

    WHAT: World's Largest Alternative Fuel Car & Transportation Show


    ADMISSION IS FREE!


    WHEN: Saturday, December 9, and Sunday, December 10, 2006, 9 am to 4 pm
    WHERE: Santa Monica Air Center, The Barker Hanger, 3021 Airport Avenue, Suite 203, Santa Monica, CA 90405-6101, Phone (310) 390-9071 / Fax (310) 391-8824

    WHO: A world class array of speakers and seminars



    - PLUS:
    *ALTCAR EXPO ON-SITE CAR CONVERSION
    *ALTERNATIVE FUEL SPORTS CAR DEBUT AT ALTCAR EXPO
    *ALTERNATIVE TRANSPORTATION RALLY
    *SUPER HIGH MILEAGE DISPLAY
    *NEW TECHNOLOGIES RIDE & DRIVE...



    - AND:
    *TAKE ACTION AT THE EXPO
    - The AltCar Expo "New Car Lot" will feature vehicles for sale...attendees can put their money where their heart is...Sustainable Bamboo Skateboards...the latest in bicycles...scooters...a wide array of new cars...available to test drive and purchase...used alternative fuel vehicles will be auctioned both days...


    See you there.

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 4:23 PM 0 comments

    Saturday, December 02, 2006

    RUSSIAN POWER PLAY

    Corporate merger, mob peace settlement or Kremlin stratagem?

    Russian energy giants sign vast partnership deal
    Dario Thuburn, November 28, 2006 (AFP via Yahoo News)

    - Russian state-controlled energy giants Gazprom and Rosneft signed a massive partnership deal that aligns two bitter rivals and could squeeze foreign firms out of the Russian energy market.
    - The heads of the two companies "signed an agreement on strategic cooperation" for joint work in oil, gas and electricity production, as well as combined bids on energy contracts…
    - Gazprom, one of the largest energy companies in the world, has a monopoly over Russia's vast natural gas extraction and transport network. Rosneft is Russia's second largest oil producer…controlled by powerful Kremlin officials, [both] have risen in influence in recent years because of high global energy prices.
    - Gazprom and Rosneft have engaged in fierce competition for energy projects, seen as reflecting a battle for power between Kremlin factions, and a proposal to merge the two was scrapped last year…
    - The main aim of the partnership agreement announced on Tuesday was to avoid "confrontation" between Gazprom and Rosneft…The state wanted "that the two giant not compete any more both on the external and internal market", and the agreement could encourage "joint foreign purchases" by lowering operational risks…until 2015, after which it could be renewed in five-year periods…

    - The deal also foresees cooperation between the two firms in gas production in far eastern Russia -- a region seen as vital to Russia's ambitions to become a major energy exporter to booming Asian economies…
    Under the agreement, Rosneft has also agreed to sell gas to Gazprom from its fields in western Siberia and the two companies added that they will make joint bids for contracts on a 50-50 basis.
    - The purchase of gas in western Siberia could enable Gazprom to ensure steady export supplies to Europe, amid fears that ageing infrastructure and slow development of new supplies could hamper production levels…
    - The deal follows an announcement earlier this month that Gazprom and Lukoil, Russia's biggest oil producer and a privately-owned firm, would form a joint venture to acquire new assets in Russia and abroad.
    - Ultimately "we are likely to see some sort of super energy holding structure," but not a merger, bringing together the Russian state's stakes in oil, gas and electricity firms…

    Anybody who got in the way of such plans might be enough of a nuisance to poison.

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 8:40 PM 0 comments

    THE DARFUR-SUDAN OIL ANGLE

    Whenever you find starvation and genocide, you often find oil in the mix.

    Sudan Rebels Attack Oilfield, Moving Outside Darfur
    November 27, 2006 (Dow Jones Newswire via Rigzone)
    - Darfur rebels have attacked an oil field in Southern Kordofan, making a rare eastward extension of their campaign toward central Sudan, the rebels and government said…

    - The National Redemption Front said its fighters had seized the Abu Jabra oil field on the edge of South Darfur and Southern Kordofan…"The government garrison guarding the oil field was totally destroyed," the NRF said…"Numerous soldiers, including high ranking officers and generals, have surrendered."
    - But the Sudanese military said its forces had repelled the attack and were in full control of the field…The army "inflicted heavy causalities on the rebels, who withdrew from the area," said a military spokesman.
    - The NRF, a rebel alliance that opposes the May peace agreement, also said it shot down a military helicopter and captured a "substantial amount of weapons, ammunitions, anti-aircraft missiles and military vehicles."

    - But the government forces denied this, saying the rebels had tried to extend Darfur's violence to other parts of Sudan but had failed…
    - The NRF stronghold has traditionally been in Northern Darfur, and its conducting a strike [across] the border [of] South Darfur and Southern Kordofan shows a considerable leap in range…the state-owned Abu Jabra field produces up to 10,000 barrels per day - a relatively small output…"The capacities seem to have been significantly damaged, but it won't affect Sudan's production overall," [a Sudanese official] said…Sudanese officials say the country produces about 500,000 b/d and that oil revenue should be at least $4 billion this year, more than half of the government's income.
    - Most of Sudan's oil reserves are in the south of the country, which is now semi-autonomous under a separate peace agreement that southern rebels signed with the government in January 2005.
    - Sunday's raid on the oil field came amid heightened violence in Darfur, where pro-government janjaweed militia have been accused by the U.N. of forcing 60,000 people to flee their homes this month.

    - After the Abu Jabra attack, South Darfur officials accused Minni Minnawi, the one rebel chief who signed the May peace accord and subsequently took a government position, of having ceded terrain to the NRF to facilitate attacks.
    - But the NRF's head of strategic planning, Abdullahi el-Tom, denied this, telling The Associated Press his group had occupied Minnawi's territory in South Darfur by force.
    - In July, NRF rebels ventured east of Darfur and attacked the Northern Kordofan town of Hamarat Sheikh, killing over a dozen people.

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 8:30 PM 0 comments

    THE NIGERIA OIL PROBLEM

    Nevermind kidnapping and death, what matters is the price of oil:

    Nigerian strife raises crude prices
    Sam Fletcher, November 27, 2006 (Oil and Gas Journal)

    - [O]il prices were up [over the Nov. 23-24 for the US Thanksgiving holiday]…because of renewed militant attacks on crude supplies in Nigeria that disrupted production of 60,000 b/d.
    - Eni SPA declared force majeure at the Okono-Okpoho offshore oil field. "Nigeria has suffered anywhere between 600,000 to 800,000 b/d loss in production due to the continuous militant attacks that have plagued the oil rich Niger delta," said analysts in the Houston office of Raymond James & Associates Inc…"Continuous geopolitical turmoil provides a support to crude prices near the $60/bbl level."
    - On Nov. 22, militants kidnapped seven foreign oil workers in a raid on oil facilities operated by Eni subsidiary Nigeria Agip Oil Co. In a rescue by the Nigerian military, a British worker was killed, an Italian was gravely wounded, and five others were freed safely.
    Venezuela said it would propose another cut in production by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries at the group's scheduled Dec. 14 meeting in Nigeria. Venezuela President Hugo Chavez wants to keep futures market prices close to $60/bbl for benchmark US crude. Venezuelan officials said they've already cut 138,000 b/d of production from the Orinoco heavy-crude area as a result the October agreement to reduce OPEC output by 1.2 million bbl.

    - Iranian officials said OPEC members are leaning towards another production cut. Saudi Arabia's oil minister has said his country might support another production reduction.
    - "…It seems obvious that the cartel seems determined to continue its quest of defending $60/bbl as the price floor for crude," said RJA analysts…"We come to the conclusion that a substantial increase in drilling rigs will be needed to offset the rising gas well decline rates and declining production per new well."…
    - The average price for OPEC's basket of 11 benchmark crudes climbed by 31¢ to $55.29/bbl Nov. 24. So far this year, OPEC's basket price has averaged $61.42/bbl, up from an average $50.64/bbl for all of 2005.

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 8:27 PM 0 comments

    IRISH WAVES

    Irish firm eyes wave energy park off Bandon
    Susan Chambers, December 2, 2006

    - Another alternative energy company is following the wave of harnessing the ocean's power by planning for an energy project off the coast near Bandon.
    - Finavera Renewables Ltd., a private Irish renewable energy company with offices in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, has filed a preliminary permit application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission…Finavera is one of several international companies seeking to generate electricity from ocean wave action using various designs of buoys anchored to the ocean floor. FERC already has issued more than 10 permits to companies operating wave energy parks off of Florida; in San Francisco Bay; in East River, NY; and in Puget Sound, Wash. Another nearly 40 permits are pending…
    - If FERC accepts Finavera's preliminary permit application, the company has three years to develop and test technology exclusively in one area and set up a process for gathering public input…

    - Finavera is very interested talking with local communities, fishermen and other stakeholders…
    - Finavera already has selected a target area of about 20 square miles near Bandon…[T]he company could figure out the best placement for the buoys to ensure that they're close to a substation on shore which, in turn, would help Finavera keep its costs down and compete in the market…
    - [A Finerva spokesman] said he was excited about the potential for generating clean energy from the ocean off of Bandon…

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 8:25 PM 0 comments

    MINNESOTA ENERGY

    Brings back memories of hanging out at the Daily offices and making late night layout runs to the printer on my motorcycle in 1980.

    Energy a hot topic at IREE symposium; Transitioning from fossil fuel energy sources is no longer a choice, but a need.
    Bryce Haugen, November 29, 2006 (The Minnesota Daily)

    - Take one part crops, a splash of wind, a hefty dose of entrepreneurial spirit and one esteemed public research university to create a recipe for Minnesota…to become energy independent - if it harnesses them effectively…the University's Initiative for Renewable Energy and the Environment hosted its third annual research symposium…
    - Transitioning from fossil-fuel energy sources isn't a choice, but rather a necessity… "Our economy is toast if we don't do it right," [Lanny Schmidt, a University chemical engineering and materials sciences professor] said. "This is the major challenge of the century."
    - Since 2003, the Initiative for Renewable Energy and the Environment has distributed nearly $20 million for more than 110 projects involving about 275 University faculty, scientists and students.
    - The initiative brings together several disparate University entities and takes a several-pronged approach…hydrogen power…solar power and…energy from biofuels…At the IREE symposium, University researchers displayed the fruits of their labor…

    - Developing renewable energy could help revive Minnesota's struggling rural economy by creating new industries and jobs…The corn-based ethanol industry has already pumped more than $1.5 billion and 5,800 jobs into Minnesota's economy…
    - Minnesota politicians from both parties strongly support the research efforts - including Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who has set a goal of having 25 percent of the state's energy come from renewable sources by 2025…

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 8:23 PM 0 comments

    Friday, December 01, 2006

    EXXONMMOBIL FINALLY GETS IT?

    U.S. faces energy challenge: Exxon Mobil CEO
    John Spence, November 30, 2006 (MarketWatch)

    - The U.S. needs to diversify its energy sources away from a reliance on oil to close the gap between supply and demand, but current limitations in alternative energy such as ethanol will make the transition difficult, Exxon Mobil Corp.'s chief executive [Rex Tillerson] said…
    - Tillerson estimated that by 2030 the world's energy needs will be 50% greater, driven largely by expected population and usage growth in developing countries…[T]he U.S. should continue to study the effects of energy exploration and consumption on the environment, and look for ways to make sources of alterative energy more efficient…

    - Substitute resources such as wind and solar power and ethanol should see double-digit growth in the next few years, boosted by government incentives, but the head of the world's largest publicly traded company said there are scale, cost and technological barriers that need to be overcome to break the U.S.'s reliance on fossil fuels as its primary energy source…
    - Tillerson estimated the U.S. now uses about 13% of its corn crop to produce ethanol, but that meets only 2% of the country's energy needs. Meanwhile, the gap between U.S. consumption and supply of energy is about 15 million barrels of oil a day…about 85% of the growth in carbon-dioxide emissions will come from developing economies in the future.

    Talking about U.S. ethanol production is greenwashing.

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 3:54 PM 0 comments

    GOVERNMENT ACTS: TAX BREAKS FOR CLEAN COAL

    Here's a question a patient raised today: How clean can clean coal be, no matter how it is refined, considering how it is mined?

    Energy, Treasury Departments Award $1B in Tax Credits for Clean Coal Technologies
    November 30, 2006 (AP via Yahoo Finance)

    - The Departments of Energy and Treasury on Thursday announced $1 billion in federal tax incentives to nine companies to rapidly deploy clean coal-based power generation technologies.
    - The Energy Policy Act of 2005 authorized Treasury to provide tax credits as incentives to move advanced technologies -- which are hindered by cost, integration and reliability issues -- to the marketplace.

    - The first round of tax incentive winners include: Duke Energy Corp. projects in Edwardsport, Ind., and Cleveland and Rutherford County, N.C., which received a combined total of $258.5 million; a Tampa Electric Co. project in Polk County, Fla., that received $133.5 million; and Southern Co.'s Mississippi Power Co. in Kemper County, Miss…

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 3:51 PM 0 comments

    THORIUM?

    But does it make a good poison?

    Thorium poised to meet world's energy needs: Commercial applications now available for clean energy
    Mia Ousley, November 30, 2006 (EurekAlert.org)
    - At a forum held today at the National Press Club, a group of leading nuclear scientists examined the potential of thorium, a substance similar to uranium but environmentally safer and more plentiful, which could help meet the entire world's growing energy needs.

    - The forum—sponsored by DBI, a California-based aerospace company that has been conducting secluded research and development on thorium-fueled reactors for the past 30 years—explored the environmental benefits, safety and national security aspects, economic benefits and commercial applications of thorium…
    - Emphasizing a critical need for expanding energy sources and the unique requirements to move to a hydrogen economy, DBI has evaluated nuclear power options and has developed an innovative concept to exploit the benefits of a thorium fuel cycle…
    - Thorium, which is plentiful in North America, can produce fewer environmental and human health hazards in its fuel production than the conventional uranium fuel cycle. Most significantly, the new technologies being developed take advantage of thorium's energy potential to reduce the volume and toxicity of waste…
    - [T]horium fuel cycles produce much less land disruption, chemical and radiological hazards, and chemical toxicity than the conventional uranium fuel cycle…

    - The forum also explored the role of thorium in national security…to stop the production of weapons-suitable plutonium and eliminate existing plutonium stockpiles…
    - [A] 2000 report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)…examined the benefits of thorium over uranium, including fewer problems disposing of highly radioactive and long-lived waste, and fewer stockpiles of plutonium that could be diverted for weapons proliferation…
    - The forum concluded with participants urging the federal government to play a more aggressive role in the development of thorium by funding thorium research and helping companies that have commercial applications to bring their research to the marketplace.

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 3:49 PM 1 comments

    HAPPY JACK WIND

    Tierra Energy to build Wyoming wind farm
    November 29, 2006 (Austin Business Journal)
    - Tierra Energy LLC announced today that it has secured a contract to build a $55 million wind farm that will supply a Wyoming power company with renewable energy.

    - Austin-based Tierra Energy's subsidiary, Happy Jack Windpower, will provide Cheyenne Light Fuel & Power with wind-generated energy over a 20-year period…
    - When the Happy Jack project becomes operational in 2008, it will generate about 100 million kilowatt-hours of wind energy a year for the city of Cheyenne and surrounding communities…
    - The Happy Jack project will be constructed on roughly 750 acres of land just west of Cheyenne that is owned by the city. The city will receive royalty payments on the use of the land.
    - Since launching in Austin in January 2002, Tierra Energy has grown to include a diverse portfolio of wind and natural gas fired power projects in Wyoming, Texas, Idaho and California. The company currently has a total of eight employees.

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 3:48 PM 0 comments

    SOLAR SAILING

    Solar energy to power trans-Atlantic voyage
    Renwick McLean, November 28, 2006 (International Herald Tribune)

    - More than 500 years after Christopher Columbus first sailed to the Americas, a Swiss catamaran is scheduled to depart from southern Spain on Wednesday in an attempt to make the first trans-Atlantic crossing in a boat powered entirely by solar energy.
    - The journey, conceived by Marc Wüst, a manager at a Swiss manufacturer of solar-powered boats called MW-Line, is intended to promote the commercial potential of solar energy in water travel…
    - The boat, called Sun21, will not set any speed records. It is expected to arrive in New York only in May, after making several stops to promote the project. Its average speed, four or five knots, or seven to nine kilometers an hour, is slower than that of most sailing yachts, although it has the advantage of traveling in a straight line rather than tacking back and forth to harness the wind.
    - Solar power is scarcely used in boat travel today, and the technology is not yet advanced enough to be commercially viable for trans-Atlantic voyages…[but] solar power could replace the gasoline-powered engines used by sailboats for inland navigation in rivers, canals and marinas, where winds are often insufficient…
    - Solar power could also eventually be used in commercial shipping…
    - Weather permitting, the Sun21 is scheduled to depart Wednesday morning from Seville…

    - The boat, which measures 14 meters, or 45 feet, long and 6.5 meters wide, is topped with a canopy containing 62 square meters, or 667 square feet, of solar panels.
    - Half of the energy will be stored in batteries, enabling the craft to travel at night. The panels should produce enough energy for the boat to continue traveling through prolonged periods of cloudy weather, albeit at a reduced speed…
    - The boat is well-equipped to handle the high waves and strong winds it may encounter at sea, and should have no trouble completing the trip…The crew of five includes a physician…
    - The use of solar power in water travel today is limited to some recreational boats, a few ferries and a handful of cruising boats capable of traveling longer distances…the engines are very quiet and do not pollute…
    - The estimated cost of the project is about €450,000, or about $590,000. It is being financed entirely by a group of private sponsors…
    - The boat began its voyage of 7,000 nautical miles in Basel, Switzerland, on Oct. 16…

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 3:47 PM 0 comments