ALTERNATIVE FUELS: Green Crude

A one year-old company in San Diego, Sapphire Energy, uses algae, sunlight, carbon dioxide, and non-potable water to make "green crude" that it contends is chemically equivalent to the light, sweet crude oil.

Chief Executive Jason Pyle said that the company's green crude could be processed in existing oil refineries and that the resulting fuels could power existing cars and trucks. It has the potential to be the great 'silver bullet' that creates the environmental paradigm shift that many people claim will be required to combat global warming.

Sapphire Energy expects to introduce its first fuels in three years and reach full commercial scale in five years.

While each acre of corn produces around 300 gallons of ethanol per year and an acre of soybeans around 60 gallons of biodiesel, EACH ACRE OF ALGAE THEORETICALLY CAN PRODUCE 5,000 GALLONS OF BIOFUEL EACH YEAR!

The company's Chief Executive wouldn't cite the price tag for producing a barrel of green crude, but he described the expected cost as competitive with extracting oil from deep-water deposits and oil sands. In other words, it won't be cheap - but they expect it to be clean in the refining process and cleaner from the tailpipe. Independent studies on the content of its emissions are ongoing.

There are plenty of companies working toward producing oil from algae. The idea isn't new, but interest and research have grown so significantly that websites such as Oilgae.com are devoted to the topic.

Technology Smooths the Way for Home Wind-Power Turbines

Wind turbines, once used primarily for farms and rural houses far from electrical service, are becoming more common in heavily populated residential areas as homeowners are attracted to ease of use, financial incentives and low environmental effects. No one tracks the number of small-scale residential wind turbines — windmills that run turbines to produce electricity — in the United States. Experts on renewable energy say a convergence of factors, political, technical and ecological, has caused a surge in the use of residential wind turbines, especially in the Northeast and California.

“Back in the early days, off-grid electrical generation was pursued mostly by hippies and rednecks, usually in isolated, rural areas,” said Joe Schwartz, editor of Home Power magazine. “Now, it’s a lot more mainstream.” “The big shift happened in the last three years,” Mr. Schwartz said, because of technology that makes it possible to feed electricity back to the grid, the commercial power system fed by large utilities. “These new systems use the utility for back up power, removing the need for big, expensive battery backup systems.”

Some of the “plug and play” systems can be plugged directly into a circuit in the home electrical panel. Homeowners can use energy from the wind turbine or the power company without taking action. Federal wind energy incentives introduced after the oil crisis of the late 1970s helped drive large-scale turbine use. But the federal government does not currently provide a tax credit for residential-scale wind energy, as it does for residential solar applications, according to the American Wind Energy Association, a trade group for wind-power developers and equipment manufacturers.

A number of states, however, have incentive programs. In New York, “we have incentive levels for different installations, but a homeowner could expect to get approximately $4,000 per electric meter for a wind turbine,” said Paul Tonko, president of the New York State Renewable Energy Development Authority, which administers the state’s renewable energy incentives. “That would cover about 30 to 40 percent of the project cost.”

Click here to read the full NY Times article.

Sizing Up the Utilities, if Carbon Caps Take Hold

FUEL prices and dividends are usually big drivers of the share prices of utilities. Now there is a new variable to consider: how much carbon their power plants emit. Federal regulations over the next few years could limit the carbon emissions of these companies, and Wall Street analysts have begun compiling lists of potential winners and losers, based on that possibility.

All of the leading presidential candidates say they favor such measures, and some kind of legislation affecting utilities is likely at some point after the November election, Citi Investment Research said in a January report.

If “carbon caps” — limits on carbon emissions — eventually become law, the winners may include operators of nuclear power plants (which don’t emit carbon), while the losers may include power companies that mainly burn coal, analysts say. Beyond that, who wins and who loses will depend on the details of possible future regulations, which can’t be predicted with certainty. Still, a cottage industry on Wall Street has begun to evaluate these questions.

“I think the time when you can keep your head in the ground is just over,” said Hugh Wynne, a senior analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company.

Some analysts have begun to evaluate the potential impact of carbon caps on stock prices.
“Carbon has been an ongoing issue for the investment community for the last three or four years,” said Brian Chin, an equity analyst at Citi Investment Research.

Federal carbon rules might be similar to regional efforts in the Northeast and California. These plans are to place emission limits on plants that emit carbon dioxide, and, in the case of California, on other greenhouse gases as well. Allowances or credits to emit a certain level of greenhouse gases are either auctioned or granted free.

Under such a system, called “cap and trade,” utilities that stay below emissions quotas can hold credits for the future or sell them on the open market. In Europe, the cost of one credit has averaged $25 a metric ton of carbon dioxide since January 2005, when the European Union's emissions trading plan began.

Companies like the Exelon Corporation, the Constellation Energy Group and the Entergy Corporation, which operate nuclear power plants, would benefit from cap-and-trade plans under consideration, like the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, which is pending in Congress, Mr. Chin said.

“They all potentially get a very large benefit from higher power prices being pushed up by carbon,” he said.

Click here to read the full NY TIMES article.

ENERGY: Current biofuels create a 'Carbon Debt'!!

Two studies released February 7, 2008 (by the University of Minnesota and the Nature Conservancy; and Princeton University) determined that almost all biofuels produced today (particularly corn-based ethanol) produced more CO2 emissions than conventional petroleum when all production factors, especially land-use changes, are taken into account. Even though biofuels emit 50 to 95% less CO2 than conventional petroleum.

Holy rain forest destruction, batman!

Basically, many acres of farmland are being converted to products like corn for ethanol instead of for food and the slack has to be picked up somewhere. The studies suggested that the slack is picked up in places like South America and Asia where rain forest, peatland, and grasslands are being converted to crops.

Here's the kicker - the carbon, which is stored in the original plants and soil, is released as carbon dioxide. So much so that the carbon reduction benefit of the CO2 reduction can take hundreds of years to offset!!!

This "carbon debt" must be paid before the biofuels produced on the land can begin to lower greenhouse gas levels and have a positive effect on global warming.
The analysis calculated that a U.S. cornfield devoted to producing ethanol would have to be farmed for 167 years before it would begin to achieve a net reduction in emissions.

The conversion of peatlands for palm oil plantations in Indonesia ran up the greatest carbon debt, one that would require 423 years to pay off.

Researchers did note that some biofuels do not contribute to global warming because they do not require the conversion of native habitat. These include waste from agriculture and forest lands and native grasses and woody biomass grown on marginal lands unsuitable for crop production.

Some European countries (and Canada) are trying to fashion laws that restrict biofuel imports to those that were grown in an environmentally friendly manner. We'll be talking about the pros and cons of these laws later.

(classic Bacsik)

ENERGY: Chevron Energy Solutions promotes solar energy in California

This appears to be a week of solar energy news, especially here in California. This article appeared in the Cable Directory, and highlights Chevron Energy Solutions commitment to advancing renewable energy sources. Some of the energy saving numbers are remarkable - hence the remarks!

Chevron Energy Solutions, a unit of Chevron Corporation, and the Contra Costa Community College District (CCCCD) today announced the completion of the first phase of the largest solar power installation ever constructed for an institution of higher learning in North America. The project is the highlight of a multi-facility energy efficiency and solar program that is expected to save CCCCD more than $70 million over 25 years.

The first phase is a 3.2-megawatt solar power generation system comprised of photovoltaic panels mounted on 34 parking canopies in six parking lots at Contra Costa College, Diablo Valley College and Los Medanos College (the project’s first phase, at 2.65 megawatts, is completed; the final phase will add 534 kilowatts in 2008).

The solar installation is expected to generate about four million kilowatt-hours of power each year, supplying up to half of CCCCD’s peak electricity needs.

This renewable power will offset the production of about 5.6 million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions annually – equivalent to removing 629 cars from the road or planting 636 acres of trees.

Additionally, the project will reduce grid power purchases of 7.4 million kilowatt-hours per year, enough to power about 1,200 homes.

(classic Bacsik)

ENERGY: Solar as power - lagging; Solar as electricity - promising!

At some PNL Superfund sites we have researched the use of solar panels - for onsite use and/or for attachment to the grid. Here is some interesting solar news that might affect the applications we've researched.

The US Government's Energy Information Administration (EIA) graph shows solar energy's role, compared to other renewables, in the 2005 US energy equation:

While solar energy lags other renewables in the US, there is promise in new technologies. US sales of thermal collectors and of photovoltaics are steadily going up!

Large scale solar - Thermal Collectors: There have been no applications for large solar power plants approved in California for 18 years (there are currently 10 operating plants in the state). There is no one agency that oversees this approval process, and that is part of the complicated problem with getting an application approved (see Little Energy Behind State Solar Plant Efforts), economics is another.

In 2002, California adopted a program to encourage renewable energy with the goal that 20% of the portfolios of investor-owned utilities be renewable by 2010. A recent audit said only about 11% of electricity generated in California comes from renewable sources, with less than 1% from solar. Solar is currently the most expensive to build.

Small scale solar - Photovoltaics: Most photovoltaic cells are made from crystalline silicon, but the technology for thin-film is starting to catch up. Couple this with the increased cost of silicon and thin-films could be the future of solar energy. Thin film is cheaper to produce, more durable and less unsightly than bulky solar panels.

The exciting part of thin film is it can serve as facades for skyscrapers and house roofs, where they turn sunshine into energy (see New Approach May Power Future of Solar). The EIA reports thin-film shipments are catching crystalline silicone (see graph below).

However, for now, in terms of the percentage of power produced from captured sunlight, thin film modules average around 6%. That is less than half the 15% of traditional crystalline silicon cells.

Currently, thin film is 7% of the world's solar cell power, but industry analysts predict it can reach 30% by 2010!

(classic Bacsik)