QUICK NEWS, 5-3: CORRECTING LIES ABOUT NEW ENERGY; SUNEDISON TO ITALY; THE EV AND THE CARBUYER; BEYOND ALGAE

CORRECTING LIES ABOUT NEW ENERGY
Mistakes about green energy myths
Eric Casey, April 29, 2010 (Letter to Washington Post)

"Robert Bryce's April 25 Outlook commentary…contained several misleading arguments.

"First, the fact that it takes relatively more space to generate wind or solar energy is irrelevant. A large solar farm has exponentially less environmental impact than the same land allocated to an oil or gas refinery. One need only look at the recent oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico to understand that energy produced per square meter is not a particularly useful way to compare…"

click to enlarge

"Second, Mr. Bryce asserted that in spite of Denmark's extensive use of wind power, it has only managed to keep carbon dioxide emissions flat since 1990. In fact, Denmark Energy Agency data show that carbon dioxide emissions per capita have dropped by roughly 25 percent.

click to enlarge

"Finally, his claim that alternative energy simply exchanges dependence on one set of unsavory regimes for another mistakenly confuses production capacity for production potential. The United States has the world's second-largest reserves of rare-earth elements (after China) used in alternative energy technologies. Should China's control of production prove problematic, the United States could simply ramp up production…"


SUNEDISON TO ITALY
SunEdison Expands in Italy with 12 New Solar Parks; Completes 47 Million Euro Financing Deal
April 30, 2010 (Business Wire via MarketWatch)

"SunEdison, a division of MEMC Electronic Materials, Inc…plans to complete 12 one-megawatt (MW) solar energy plants in the province of Lecce, Apulia in Italy…[through] a 47-million-euro financing deal…

"SunEdison earlier announced a 72 MW photovoltaic solar plant to be built in northeastern Italy near the town of Rovigo as the largest solar energy plant in Europe…To develop the Apulia projects, SunEdison signed a 47 million euro financing deal with NORD LB - Norddeutsche Landesbank -- a leading bank in Germany…"

1.6 megawatt project operating since 2008 in Lleida, Spain. (click to enlarge)

"The SunEdison Lecce solar parks will generate power for more than 3,300 homes during their first year of operation while reducing carbon dioxide emissions that are equivalent to taking 2,000 cars off the road. Besides the dramatic environmental advantages, the new solar plants will also create construction and plant operating jobs in the region.

"Seven of the Lecce plants are already fully operational and were grid connected and sold in the first quarter of 2010. The other five plants are under construction and expected to be completed and operational by the third quarter. The 47-million-euro financing deal with Nord LB covers the majority of the one-megawatt plants…"


THE EV AND THE CARBUYER
Electric-Car Shoppers: Get Ready To Be Tested
Joanthan Welsh, April 30, 2010 (Wall Street Journal)

"Buying a car has gotten complicated for people considering electric vehicles. Instead of asking themselves if they can afford it, or what color suits them, prospective buyers are wondering, “Can I pass the test?”

"Car makers rolling out electric cars, including BMW, Chevrolet and Nissan, aren’t just handing them over to anyone…[C]ar companies say they want to make sure they find the right kind of buyers. There will be questionnaires and interviews. It gets personal…your driving habits…a garage, the right kind of electrical service and a fair bit of patience."

click to enlarge

"Nissan says it wants to make sure people buying its new Leaf sedan have driving routines that suit the car’s capabilities, plus enough power to charge it…[Y]ou may have to call an electrician. Chevrolet…[may talk] some buyers out of its electric Volt and into something more conventional. The company wants people who buy the Volt to be able to make the most of its 40-mile battery-powered range.

"…[BMW says people] might not be ready for the demands of electric cars. People who want one of BMW’s electric 1-Series coupes will be able to charge it using a standard 110-volt household outlet, but it will take up to 24 hours. A special charger can do it in four to six hours, but you’ll need a heavy-duty circuit for that. You may have to rewire your house before getting an electric car."


BEYOND ALGAE
Getting the Bugs Out, a New Approach to Renewable Fuels
Gayathri Vaidyanathan, April 30, 2010 (NY Times)

"The Geobacter bacterium could be the biofuel-generating machine of the future, producing energy-rich butanol costing as little as $2 per gallon…A project seeking to accomplish this, headed by Derek Lovley and colleagues at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, received $1 million in funding…from the Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E)…[one of] 37 projects receiving $106 million to further their research…

"The Geobacter project is part of a new wave of biofuel generation experiments that feed electricity into tiny critters and generate valuable ‘electrofuels’ as a product…They replace an older generation of research in which the power of photosynthesis is processed into biofuels, either directly from plants like sugar beet or indirectly from organisms such as algae."

The apparatus to perform miracles. (click to enlarge)

[Jeffrey Way, scientist, Wyss Institute/Harvard Medical School:] "This is so novel that it doesn't even have a name, but let's call it a reverse fuel cell…"

"A Harvard project using the bacterium Shewanella oneidensis got about $4 million of the federal stimulus money. It hopes to generate the energy-rich fuel octanol…[O]n a rooftop at UMass, the researchers grow bacteria on the surface of a graphite electrode. A nearby solar panel captures energy and delivers it to the bacteria-laden electrode…"

From Umas via YouTube

"Geobacter and Shewanella are uniquely constructed, in that they generate electricity…[Protein molecules] conduct electricity from inside the bacterium to the outside…[R]esearchers reverse-engineer these [bacteria] to make…[into] tiny fuel cells. A little genetic modification to assemble a photosynthetic pathway within the organism makes them take in carbon dioxide to produce the right-sized fuel, such as butanol or octanol.

"Such engineering is at the frontier of synthetic biology…Even on a sunny day, light-harvesting pigments don't capture light very efficiently. And in the subsequent enzymatic steps of photosynthesis, much of the energy is lost as heat. The efficiency of capture is only about 1 percent…A solar panel is 100 times more efficient at capturing the sunlight…[so] a bacterial system can be used to convert electricity to 'electrofuels.'"