THE NEXT NEW ENERGY

Note 1: Oregon Iron Works has so many proposed New Energy projects coming in they had to hire a special “alternative energy manager.” How many other ironworks and machine shops and factories and manufacturers will New Energy spawn?

Note 2: Matt Simmons, champion of Peak Oil, discusses in All the Canaries Have Stopped Singing his serious advocacy of wave-tide-current energy.

Beyond Wind and Solar, a New Generation of Clean Energy
Juliet Eilperin (w/Steve Mufson), September 1, 2007 (The Washington Post)

WHO
Oregon Iron Works (Chandra Brown,VP); Finavera Renewables (Jason Bak, CEO); Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.); Iceland America Energy (Magnus Johannesson, CEO)

The worldwide potential of ocean energy is worth working at seriously.

WHAT
Among what are described as “lesser known” renewable energies, some recent developments in wave energy and geothermal energy are described.

WHEN
- Iceland Amerca Energy will provide Pacific Gas & Electric with 46 megawatts of electricity from geothermal energy by 2010. By reinjecting the drilled hotwater, the geothermal resource can last “20, 30, 50 years.”
- MIT’s study of US geothermal potential projected through 2050.
- The Finavera aquaBuOY may be installed by the end of the first week in September 2007. 2 wave parks are planned by 2010/2011.

WHERE
- Rep. Inslee’s home overlooks Puget sound and he is, therefore, acutely aware of wave energy’s potential.
- Finavera wave parks will be off Bandon, Ore., and off Trinidad, Calif. Another is planned off British Columbia.
- There is also a working tide energy installation in New York City’s East River.
- Iceland Amerca Energy is drilling in California’s Salton Sea.

WHY
- Other renewables described as “lesser” are biofuels via algae metabolism and landfill methane.
- Oregon Iron Works is building Finavera’s AquaBuOY. 72 feet tall, 12 feet in diameter. It will use the wave’s force to drive water through a tube to power a turbine. Finavera wave parks will each be 2 to 3 square miles and produce 100 megawatts of electricity.
- There is 900 times the energy in a cubic meter of moving water as in a cubic meter of moving air.
- Iceland Amerca Energy is drilling for geothermal energy.
- The US is the world’s largest geothermal producer: 212 plants, 3119 megawatts. An MIT study says the US could produce 100 gigawatts of geothermal, 10% of today’s total output.
- Bottom line: All energies in. Oregon is developing solar projects on the eastern side of the state and biomass energy culled from Oregon's forests to get 25% of electricity from renewable sources by 2025.

U.S. geothermal resources. (click to enlarge)

QUOTES
- Brown: "In the last year, it's just exploded with ideas out there…We like to build these creative new things."
- Inslee: "There's just such an enormous power out there [in the ocean’s waves]…I was wondering how we could capture that."
- Bak: "[Wave energy] is the new source of power…It's the highest-energy-density renewable out there. Wind is like light crude oil, and water is like gasoline."
- Johannesson: "There's huge potential for geothermal energy in this country, especially on the West Coast…"
- Jefferson W. Tester, chemical engineering professor, MIT: "That [predicted level of potential for geothermal in the US] would make it comparable to the current capacity of all our nuclear power plants or all our hydroelectric plants…"
- Democratic Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski’s sustainability policy adviser David Van't Hof: "Wind's going to continue to be the king, both in Oregon and the nation, for the next five years…[but] people are already asking, 'What's next after wind?' " (NewEnergyNews: The question isn’t “What’s AFTER wind?” – The question is “What goes WITH wind?”)