Hope and wisdom in 2011

Plant life in a small pool on a rock face

The year 2010 started inauspiciously with the failure of the climate talks in Copenhagen in December 2009. Fortunately, the Cancún Adaptation Framework, that resulted at the end of the year, will hopefully enable actions that are already being undertaken in many vulnerable developing countries to get further impetus and support.

The year's Human Development Index (HDI) was full of good news and celebrated the fact that over the past 40 years average life expectancy rose from 59 to 70 years, primary school enrollment grew from 55 to 70 percent, and per capita income doubled to more than $10,000.

However the report cautioned “the main threat to maintaining progress in human development comes from the increasingly evident unsustainability of production and consumption patterns. .... The continuing reliance on fossil fuels is threatening irreparable damage to our environment and to the human development of future generations.”

The warning bells set ringing about plummeting populations of tropical species as humanity's demands on natural resources go sky-rocketing to 50 per cent more than the earth can sustain. The 2010 edition of WWF's Living Planet Report shows that our demand on natural resources has doubled since 1966 and we're using the equivalent of 1.5 planets to support our activities.

In northern Ireland all it took was a thaw in icy conditions that caused water pipes to go burst leading to a water shortage like never before. With three million people affected by the floods in Pakistan during the first week of August, the year was also the warmest one on record.

Breakthroughs came in the field of materials like graphene and carbon nanotubes in generating cheaper energy. Ultracapacitor research took energy storage a bit closer to the ideal. However, the technology much banked upon by the coal industry - CCS – was shown to be costly and requiring more space than realised.

Efficiency of the solar cell crossed 40 percent. Photovoltaic module prices, plummeted by about 30 percent over the past year thanks to an oversupply of modules and the rise of low-cost Chinese manufacturers. The smart grid caught the fancy of developing countries like India, China and Brazil. While China has committed huge finds for the same, Indian utilities are still looking at pilot projects.

India forged ahead in nuclear power – two French reactors worth $10bn are expected to be built at Jaitapur in Maharashtra. The clean energy "cess" announced by the Indian government has raised the price of each ton of coal by Rs. 50. India also announced a voluntary goal to reduce its carbon intensity by 20 to 25 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels. New regulations announced by the Indian government reward the renewable energy producers not only for the generating power but also for preventing emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

The first set of projects under India's ambitious National Solar Mission went under the hammer in 2010. Meanwhile, the market for clean energy products likes solar lanterns, clean stoves, small-scale hydropower, saw a surge.

The business as usual scenario saw coal production rise in 2010, with new coal-fired power plants taking off in China, India, and the United States.

The energy demand continues unabated. Emissions too. Human race is inching towards a climate catastrophe, but refusing to take adequate action. Change was mostly the result of government action. Will the individual initiate action in the coming year? Remains to be seen. But hope remains. That energy and water will be conserved. Wasteful ways curbed. Recycling become a part of life. That we take cognizance of the gift of life on this beautiful planet and mend our ways. Happy, wise new year to you all.

No laughing matter this

Scientists report in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), river and stream networks are the source of at least 10 percent of human-caused nitrous oxide emissions to the atmosphere. That's three times the amount estimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Human activities, including fossil fuel combustion and intensive agriculture, have increased the availability of nitrogen in the environment.. Much of this nitrogen is transported into river and stream networks. Atmospheric nitrous oxide concentration has increased by some 20 percent over the past century, and continues to rise at a rate of about 0.2 to 0.3 percent per year.

The global warming potential of nitrous oxide is 300-fold greater than carbon dioxide. Nitrous oxide accounts for some six percent of human-induced climate change, scientists estimate. While more than 99 percent of denitrified nitrogen in streams is converted to the inert gas dinitrogen rather than nitrous oxide, river networks are still leading sources of global nitrous oxide emissions, according to the new results.

Irreversible damage on the ecosystem, in whatever activity we involve in. That is the anthropogenic era for you!

Thirsty days ahead

With over 50 percent of the population poised to shift to cities in the coming decades, it is time our city planners take serious note of vital resources, like water.

Catering to water requirements of millions living in dense regions will be a challenge. Already groundwater is fast receding, and what natural water bodies are left are being encroached upon most unscrupulously by land developers. In the rush for homes and offices, very few are stopping to think about the vital ingredient to life.

"Lake 2010," a symposium on "Wetlands, Biodiversity and Climate Change" held in Bangalore saw scientists at Centre for Ecological Sciences (CES), IISc, caution against blatant exploitation of groundwater and poor maintenance of lakes. If trends continue, in a few years from now, Bangalore will neither have groundwater or river water left, they said.

The study found that the built-up area in the city had increased by a whopping 466 percent between 1973 and 2007. Due to this, the City's temperature shot up by at least two degrees. Creating more wetlands, the study revealed, was the right solution. The IISc had shown a way to raise the water table through plantations and creating a water body in the campus.

Surprisingly, for a city of technocrats that once boasted to be India's Silicon Valley, the literacy level about ecological conservation among Bangaloreans is just 3.5 per cent! Speaks a lot about why we the Garden City has turned Traffic City?!

Water has been pouring from our taps since years, and nobody believes this water is fast disappearing. Unlike food which we can still try grow on our own, we cannot manufacture water. Any ideas?

Surya namaskar!

Many countries around the world are experiencing a boom in roof-top solar panel installation on residential premises. In Australia, for example, the Clean Energy Council has reported in their “Clean Energy Australia Report 2010” that 105,520 solar power systems were installed between the start of January and the end of September of 2010.

In this context, here is what a review says, comparing solar and nuclear energy in terms of resource required to produce same energy. In terms of how much power is packed into each gram of its respective material: cadmium telluride, versus uranium. CdTe thin film solar power (using cadmium telluride) takes ten times less PV material to make 1 kilowatt hour of electricity, than nuclear uses of uranium, to make an identical 1 kilowatt hour of electricity.

Goes without saying that solar doesn’t burn up fuel. You can get electricity from the same grams of PV material for at least thirty years, and then the material can be recycled and still used again. By contrast, the equivalent grams of nuclear uranium must be replaced with newly mined uranium once the first has yielded its energy.

But the comparison comparison to coal is something else! Even assuming just thirty years use, then tossing the solar, the thin film photovoltaic material uses just five millionths of the weight of coal needed to make the same kilowatt hour of electricity.

Question is of recycling. How well can PV cells be recycled, given their toxicity?

What to do with waste

If there is one thing the world citizens have in abundance, it is waste. So, why not turn it into energy like so many are doing?

European countries have embraced Waste to Energy (WTE) as a way to reduce landfill growth as well as dependence on imported fuels. Today, about 400 WTE facilities are operating in Europe, using municipal solid waste as their primary fuel source. In Denmark alone, 29 WTE plants are currently in operation with 10 more on the way. In Sweden, the city of Kristianstad has essentially weaned itself off of fossil fuels in just ten years by replacing these energy sources with the city’s own waste.

If deployed across a nation like US, WTE facilities could reduce the volume of the more than 250 million tons (PDF) of material being thrown away each year by up to 90 percent. If burned properly, the remaining 10 percent would be mostly inert ash. With proper filtering systems in place, WTE facilities can meet and even exceed federal air emissions standards.

Yet, in the US WTE is being adopted in some regions while in many places it faces flak from environmentalists. Why? The problem is with the manual sorting and filtering required. The technology is safe – IF you can separate out hazardous materials (like batteries) in the incoming fuel (trash).

But like in any technology, there are trade-offs between cost and environmental costs. It would be foolish to look for something which does not have any negative fall-out. This is where we need to balance the positives against the negatives. With so much waste generated, time may not be far off when the waste starts spilling into our lives. More so when the use and throw culture seems to be spreading.

100 % sustainable?

San Francisco has set its sights on becoming the greenest city in the country by turning 100% sustainable by 2020.

Announced at the completion of the Sunset Reservoir Solar Project, the project which is the largest municipal solar facility in the state, and covers an area said to be the size of 12 football fields the mayor announced a $250,000 grant from the Sidney Frank Foundation to assess how to meet the city’s 950-megawatt peak power demand with nothing but renewables by 2020. (While the plant has tripled the amount of solar energy made available to the state.)

San Francisco already has an impressive renewable record, including 10 MW of distributed solar and 3.5 MW of biogas. Firstly the state is expected to increase the amount of wave-derived energy from 30 MW to 100 MW, with local officials set to launch a 1 MW to 3 MW wave pilot project next year.

San Francisco has also signed into effect the nation’s first law mandating that all residents and businesses separate their recycling and compost material from normal trash. While many other cities in the US require recycling, no other city requires separation of food scraps and foot material to be composted. The measure, which will take effect this fall, is intended to help increase landfill diversion rates to 75% by 2010 as well as reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

We surely need more such role models.

No risk coverage for this one

Are we simply fooling ourselves? Appears so.

Governments have so far based their calculations for cutting emissions on only a 50:50 chance of holding temperature rises to 2C, the point that many scientists consider to be the threshold for catastrophic climate change which, once passed, will leave millions exposed to drought, hunger and flooding. This constitutes an unacceptable risk, says a report from Friends of the Earth.

It suggests that to have any reasonable chance – 70% rather than 50% – of avoiding dangerous climate change emissions will need to fall 16% by 2030 worldwide, based on 1990 levels.

If the maximum amount of global emissions the world could allow – what is called the remaining "carbon budget" – were shared out equally on the basis of average populations between now and 2050, the US would need to slash its emissions by as much as 95% by 2030, the EU by 83%, and the UK by 80%. Just a week ago, the government's climate advisers said the UK should aim for a 60% cut by 2030.

If historical, cumulative emissions are counted, the US and EU have already used more than their share of the global carbon budget. Emissions in these countries would need to cease immediately! Fat chance, especially in the US with the Republicans poised to take over!

If the world had cut emissions by just 1.5% a year even 15 years ago, a year after countries ratified the UN climate change convention, there would have been a good chance of avoiding a 2C rise in global temperatures, the report says.

We sure seem to be headed for a runaway warming scenario with no one wanting to make amends. Bleak future. But, who cares?!

The devil in the details

India's environment minister is being seen as a villain back home but praised abroad for helping make a near-deal possible at Cancun. Making committments legally binding was a change in India's stance for which he won wrath back home, but it could have brought some agreement between the US and China in suggesting that international monitoring be allowed (but not the penalty!).

Often the fact lies in the details. Another case in point is the Indian solar mission - very laudable and ambitious. But who will it benefit, is the hidden detail that some experts point to. Will it benefit the milions still denied basic needs of energy? Perhaps not.

Writing at the world economic forum, Harish Hande says: It attacks the very fabric of a sustainable model for reaching the poor with high-quality, need-based systems, deserved doorstep service and affordable financing. The very incentives needed have been ignored and trampled upon - by infusing unsustainable subsidies, under-designing prescribed products, and forcing low pricing and poor financing suggestions.

He goes on to say that the mission is an 'extremely well-intentioned programme that has been in the planning stages for a couple of years has become anti-poor, anti-innovation and anti-small enterprises. It is a document that has trashed democratic systems, insults the decision-making of the poor and disregards all the work done by rural energy enterprises over the last two decades'.

'The mission specifies the type of product, the price and a confused financing structure. By defining the product configurations, it is killing innovation and choice for the poor. The design of most of the prescribed 11 products are heavily under-designed - a consequence that will be borne by the poor'.

What do you think? Do write in.

CANcun couldn't

From Copenhagen to Cancun to South Africa, the nations hop in a bid to avoid taking firm decisions on the most compelling issue of the century - climate change. At every step, everyone agrees that action needs to be taken but none are willing to 'sacrifice' development for mitigation plans. This short-sighted view that refuses to acknowledge resource crunch will perhaps delay action till inevitable. For now, let's hear what Cancun concluded.

In the 1992 U.N. climate treaty, the world’s nations promised to do their best to rein in carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases emitted by industry, transportation and agriculture. In the two decades since, the annual conferences’ only big advance came in 1997 in Kyoto, Japan, when parties agreed on modest mandatory reductions by richer nations.

But the U.S., alone in the industrial world, rejected the Kyoto Protocol, complaining it would hurt its economy and that such emerging economies as China and India should have taken on emissions obligations.

Since then China has replaced the U.S. as the world’s biggest emitter, but it has resisted calls that it assume legally binding commitments -- not to lower its emissions, but to restrain their growth.

UN talks in Cancun have reached a deal to curb climate change, including a fund to help developing countries. The Green Climate Fund is intended to raise and disburse $100bn (£64bn) a year by 2020 to protect poor nations against climate impacts and assist them with low-carbon development.

Nations endorsed compromise texts drawn up by the Mexican hosts, despite objections from Bolivia. Debate on a larger pact was deferred to the 2011 conference in Durban, South Africa.

The draft documents say deeper cuts in carbon emissions are needed, but do not establish a mechanism for achieving the pledges countries have made. The new agreement creates “building blocks” for a new global pact and, unexpectedly, gives recognition to the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from industrial countries by 25 to 40 per cent from 1990 levels within the next 10 years. Current pledges amount to about 16 per cent.

Bolivia has protested that the weak pledges condemned the Earth to temperature increases of up to 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 F), which was tantamount to “ecocide” that could cost millions of lives.

The deal is a lot less than the comprehensive agreement that many countries wanted at last year's Copenhagen summit and continue to seek. It leaves open the question of whether any of its measures, including emission cuts, will be legally binding. Developing countries will have their emission-curbing measures subjected to international verification only when they are funded by Western money - a formulation that seemed to satisfy both China, which had concerns on such verification procedures, and the US, which had demanded them.

Underscoring what’s at stake in the long-running climate talks, NASA reported that the January­-November 2010 global temperatures were the warmest in the 131-year record. It's data indicated the year would likely end as the warmest on record, or tied with 2005 as the warmest.

Perhaps the mercury will rise higher before world nation leaders arrive at South Africa next year,

Broadband connectivity - the great leveller

Spare a thought to the energy you use as you download the next byte of info from the Net. And keep downloading, but only what you can read!

Assuming that the average westerner's media consumption moves fully online but does not rise substantially beyond current levels, and the global middle class reach western levels of consumption, researchers at Bristol University estimate the overall demand to be 3,200 megabyte (MB) a day per person, totalling 2,570 exabytes per year by the world population in 2030.

The academics found, based on two independent sources of data, the current energy demand for bandwidth to be four watt-hours (Wh) per MB. They conclude that the average power required to support this activity would be 1,175 gigawatts at current levels of efficiency, and that a factor of 60-performance improvement would be needed if infrastructure energy is to be provided by one per cent of renewable energy capacity in 2030. By looking at historical trends in energy efficiency, they observed that this would be reached around 2021 if these trends continue.

Dr Chris Preist, Reader in Sustainability and Computer Systems in the Department of Computer Science, said: "This research suggests that in a future which is increasingly environmentally constrained, there is still a good chance that broadband connectivity can be provided equitably to the majority of the world. This contrasts significantly with other aspects of western lifestyle, such as aviation, which could become increasingly the preserve of the wealthy."

Happy surfing!

Global monitoring: will it do?

Let's harp a bit on Cancun before moving on...

India is pushing a global emissions monitoring system in Cancun talks that could become the centerpiece of a compromise with the United States if other developing countries sign on. Jairam Ramesh, India's environment leader, has however placed conditions on such transparency - money and technology assistance to developing countries and the extending of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol beyond its expiration date in 2012.

How to establish a system for use by developing countries to monitor, report and verify their emission cuts has emerged as the most contentious issue in the talks and the main sticking point between America and China. The latter resists international monitoring of its steps while the former refuses to part with funds unless this happens.

Under Ramesh's plan, a global monitoring system would be constructed "on the strict understanding that it is a facilitative process for transparency and accountability, and that it will not have any punitive implications of any sort." Countries would do their own reporting to the United Nations, and a panel of experts chosen by a variety of countries would review the submissions.

The proposed system would be applicable to all countries that emit more than 2 percent of global greenhouse gases, but there will still be a distinction between developed and developing nations. Industrialized countries like the United States will report on the progress of their emission reduction commitments, while developing countries will report on their mitigation actions.

Will this make a difference? More important, will the two nations agree?

Emissions performance

The UK Coalition Government should move ahead with its pre-election commitment to introduce an emissions performance standard (EPS), according to the Energy and Climate Change Committee.

An EPS would effectively prevent new coal-fired power stations being built without adequate carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology.

However, the Parliamentary Committee cautions that plans for an EPS should be carefully considered in light of existing policies, including the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS), the Renewables Obligation and the CCS demonstration programme.

The Committee welcomes the Government’s plans for an independent review of the electricity market, potential reforms and how this would work with an EPS.
But the report urges the Government to consider what a UK EPS should be intended to achieve – faster emissions reductions from the power sector? Stopping the building of new high-carbon infrastructure – as EPS has been used in California and other US states? Or stimulating the development and deployment of CCS?

"There is a range of options to be considered in designing an EPS for the UK, including the way in which the limit is expressed, the facilities to which it applies, when it should come into force, whether and how it should be made more stringent over time and whether there should be any exceptions to the regulation,” says the report.

Boggling chemistry

Venus has lessons for earthlings, and lessons of an unromantic kind!

It was the detection of a sulphur dioxide layer at 90-110 km by ESA's Venus Express orbiter in 2008 that posed a complete mystery and finally has been solved with some thinking. In the process throwing some darts at geo-engineering.

Venus is blanketed in sulphuric acid clouds that block our view of the surface. The clouds form at altitudes of 50-70 km when sulphur dioxide from volcanoes combines with water vapour to make sulphuric acid droplets. Any remaining sulphur dioxide should be destroyed rapidly by the intense solar radiation above 70 km. So, how did the layer form at 100 kms?

Some sulphuric acid droplets could have evaporated at high altitude, freeing gaseous sulphuric acid that is then broken apart by sunlight, releasing sulphur dioxide gas.

Nobel prize winner Paul Crutzen has recently advocated injecting artificially large quantities of sulphur dioxide into Earth's atmosphere at around 20 km to counteract the global warming resulting from increased greenhouse gases. The proposal stems from observations of powerful volcanic eruptions, in particular the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines that shot sulphur dioxide up into Earth's atmosphere. Reaching 20 km in altitude, the gas formed small droplets of concentrated sulphuric acid, created a haze layer that reflected some of the Sun's rays back into space, cooling the whole planet by about 0.5°C.

But now the Venus story shows that we cannot predict some things yet, like how quickly the initially protective haze will be converted back into gaseous sulphuric acid. The gas unlike the droplets is transparent and so allows all the Sun's rays through.

All the more reason why geo-engineering can only be the very last resort.

Fuel cells advance

With advances in nanostructured devices, lower operating temperatures, and the use of an abundant fuel source and cheaper materials, a group of researchers at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) are increasingly optimistic about the commercial viability of the solid-oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) technology.

Electrochemical fuel cells have long been viewed as a potential eco-friendly alternative to fossil fuels -- especially as most SOFCs leave behind little more than water as waste. The obstacles to using SOFCs to charge laptops and phones or drive the next generation of cars and trucks have remained reliability, temperature, and cost.

Fuel cells operate by converting chemical energy (from hydrogen or a hydrocarbon fuel such as methane) into an electric current. Oxygen ions travel from the cathode through the electrolyte toward the anode, where they oxidize the fuel to produce a current of electrons back toward the cathode.

The team has reported critical advances in SOFC technology that may quicken their pace to market. Lesser materials used, no platinum, low operating temperatures make it less costly and more reliable. High-performance solid-oxide fuel cells that operate in the 300-500°C range could allow their use in transportation vehicles and portable electronics, and with different types of fuels.

The use of methane, an abundant and cheap natural gas, in the team's SOFC was also significant. Until recently, hydrogen has been the primary fuel for SOFCs. Pure hydrogen, however, requires a greater amount of processing.

Thinking ourselves out of a tight spot has been mankind's strength. But will there ever be unlimited energy?

What's news? Climate, naturally

The talk everywhere (besides the various scams which have become an established part of our lives) these days is about Cancun in Mexico. It is time again to talk climate. That's it - TALK is the catchword. No action.

The two-week negotiating session started yesterday. Is there hope? Not really, but at least there will be ideas, new suggestions, etc. Accepted or not!

After two weeks of deliberations that at times grew rancorous last year, Obama and leaders from Brazil, India, South Africa, and China hammered out an eleventh-hour deal that came to be known as the Copenhagen Accord. It was more a statement of intent than an actual plan, and it left quite a few countries unsatisfied.

But the Copenhagen Accord at least solidified some basic commitments. Countries agreed that they would aim to keep planetary warming to under 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees F), and would each put forward domestic plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In the months since then, 138 countries have either formally signed on to the accord or signaled that they would -- and combined they are responsible for more than 86 percent of global emissions.

Industrialized nations also committed to raising $10 billion each year for the next three years for so-called "fast-start" funding to help developing nations cut emissions and adapt to the changes already taking place. There was an additional agreement to establish a long-term fund of $100 billion per year by 2020 to meet those goals. Specifically, there will need to be progress on how countries will formalize the commitments they made last year, and how to keep track of what each country is actually doing when it comes to cutting emissions.

We better hurry up. Going by a fresh report from British scientists, if the Earth's temperature rises by 7 degrees Fahrenheit the rest of this century -- and some researchers think that could happen as soon as 2060 -- up to a billion people would have to be relocated. And another 3 billion could end up without access to water supplies.

Tighten belts to fill more!

In the developing world, reducing greenhouse gas emissions is often seen as being in conflict with alleviating poverty. A clean energy development initiative in rural Nicaragua, however, demonstrates that there are cost effective steps developing nations can take to reduce carbon emissions and at the same time help the rural poor reduce their energy expenses, according to researchers from the University of California, Berkeley.

The villages of Orinoco and Marshall Point are off the nation's electric grid and obtain their power from diesel generators. Until last year, however, the homes had no electricity meters; homeowners were billed according to the appliances they owned. This encouraged indiscriminate energy use, with lights, televisions and radios remaining on, even when not being used.

After the government installed meters, however, energy use dropped by 28 percent, and many people's electric bills also dropped.

Villagers were offered two efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFL) in exchange for two incandescent bulbs. This program reduced household energy use by an additional 17 percent, on average.

The net result was less diesel burned, even allowing for the fact that the community's reduced energy needs allowed the local energy supplier to run its generators two extra hours each day, providing longer service to customers. In the month after the conservation campaign, electricity bills dropped in 37 percent of the households in Orinoco.

Microgrids like the one in Nicaragua, often powered by diesel generators, are found by the thousands around the world, particularly in India and China. They're dirty, have high emissions, high energy costs and questionable reliability, so targeting these microgrids has the potential for improving access to energy services for those communities while at the same time, for the money invested, getting greater reductions in carbon emissions than you might get investing in similar measures where the cost of energy is cheaper, such as in the cities.

There are two arguments to this kind of scenario. Should we remove the subsidies for the poor to discourage wastage? Or is there better way to monitor the same?

Base bias

We all pay much heed to baseload power and the need to have some source catering to that need. But some people like David Mills believe baseload can be dispensed with. The eminent solar energy technology developer, has dreamed of creating a new model for an energy system that does away with the conventional design of massive baseload infrastructure. Using hourly data for energy use of the entire United States economy in 2006, Mills will demonstrate how it could have been powered almost exclusively by wind and solar.

The traditional paradigm of flatline baseload does not exist in Mills' scenario, but the replacement for baseload power is not another baseload, it’s a system of flexible and inflexible energy mechanisms based around wind and solar and other sources.

The first premise was that there was enough solar and wind that, in combination, could run the US economy. The second was that solar and wind would be connected with a new electricity transmission system, using high voltage direct current lines for the spine of the network, which will allow more flows and result in considerably reduced transmission losses.China is installing more HVDC lines than any other country in the world – looking to link coal plants with the Three Gorges dam and wind and solar from the north and west of the country!

Any opinions?

Right to access

Looking for efficient or power saving devices may be a prerogative for the world's haves, but for millions who do not have access to electricity, these are irrelevant. When basic healthcare is denied due to lack of power facilities, when schooling is a gruelling task by candle lights, discussions on smart meters and power losses seem meaningless.

So what can be done? Do you think it is time access to power is declared a basic human right? Can we urge governments to take on this job of providing basic minimal power to these areas still in the dark? Should that not be top on the priority of governments?

What do you think? How can this be done? Where government funds are the problem, should private public partnerships be the way forward?

Joint solar plants

If you live in a hot place, what better way than to tap solar energy? But things are not that easy. How amenable are the rooftops to place panels on them? How about trees which end up being cut to allow more sunfall?

beating this impasse is an innovative idea from a San Francisco company, CleanPath Ventures. The firm is promoting a solution to allow homeowners to keep their trees and go solar at the same time. CleanPath plans to expand its existing solar farm on the city’s outskirts and then sell “garden plots” to homeowners who would own the electricity generated by their patch of photovoltaic panels. Apartment dwellers and other residents whose homes are not suitable for rooftop solar arrays would also be able to own a piece of the power plant.

If you moved down the block, you’d take the electricity production with you just like if you make an investment in a community garden, wherever you live you’ll benefit from what’s grown in the garden.

Community solar power plants are seen as a way to expand the availability of renewable energy while taking advantage of the economies of scale that result from installing thousands of solar panels in a central location rather than scattered on thousands of individual homes.

Look at energy or waste or water, the future holds promise for community initiatives rather than solo initiatives.

Just not enough

As attention turns to next week's climate change meet at Cancun, Mexico, UN research shows that the pledges and promises made last year by 80 countries to reduce climate change emissions fall well short of what is needed to hold the global temperature rise to 2C and avoid the worst consequences of global warming.

The findings by 30 leading scientists suggest that if countries do everything they have promised, there will still be a 5bn tonne gap per year between their ambition and what the science says is needed. This gap, said the UN, is the equivalent of the emissions released by all the world's vehicles in a year.

Many countries have committed themselves to holding temperature rises to no more than 2C (3.6F) by 2080 but to achieve this global emissions must be reduced from 56bn tonnes annually today to 44bn tonnes by 2020.

If only the weakest pledges made last year in the Copenhagen accord are implemented, emissions could be lowered to 53bn tonnes a year by 2020, leaving a gap of 9bn tonnes. In the best case, says the report, emissions could drop to 49bn tonnes, reducing the gap to 5bn. But if nothing is done, then the emissions gap would rise to 12bn tonnes by 2020 – roughly what all the world's power stations emit.

The report will be a key document at the meet, for sure.

The last frontier crumbling

Global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions have continued to rise according to a new study led by the University of Exeter.

Eight ice shelves have fully or partially collapsed along the Antarctic Peninsula, and the northwestern Antarctic Peninsula has warmed faster than virtually any place on Earth. The question now, is not whether Antarctica will begin to warm in earnest, but how rapidly.

The melting of Antarctica’s northernmost region — the Antarctic Peninsula — is already well underway, representing the first breach in an enormous citadel of cold that holds 90 percent of the world’s ice. No place on the fringes of Antarctica has warmed with the swiftness of the Antarctic Peninsula, which has seen winter temperatures rise by 11 deg F.

The most important link in the Antarctic food chain — ice-dependent Antarctic krill, on which just about every seabird or marine mammal in Antarctica feeds — also appears to be in decline. If global temperatures rise by 2 deg C, Adélie and emperor penguin colonies north of 70° South — comprising half of Antarctica’s 348,000 pairs of emperor penguins and three-quarters of the continent’s 2.5 million pairs of Adélies — are in jeopardy of marked decline or disappearance, largely because of severe decreases in pack-ice coverage and, particularly for emperors, ice thickness.

UK on track

The UK is on course to meet its 2020 renewables target, according to a new report from National Grid. According to the Transmission Networks Quarterly Connections Update, 31,950 MW of existing and proposed renewable energy generation capacity has connection agreements over the next decade.

Currently 4950 MW of renewable generation capacity is connected to the transmission network, with proposed projects as of the end of October this year totalling a further 27,000 MW. Together this will be sufficient to power over 20 million homes and would surpass the 29,000 MW estimated by the National Grid to be needed to meet the 2020 target of 15% of the country’s total energy demand from renewables.

However, the report cautions that the figures are only a step in the right direction and a complete reform of the market is the only way to ensure the right conditions for investment in future projects.

Scotland meanwhile is on course to achieve a 42% cut in emissions by 2020, based on 1990 levels, and is calling on the UK and EU to toughen up their emissions targets.

Europe is moving towards 100 percent renewables by 2050. It already has over 200 GW of installed renewable power.

Can this transition be effected in time and with the EROI one would like to have? That is the big question. Investment is important but not difficult to find once policy steers energy supply that way.

India to heat up sooner than later?

A new report forecasts that average temperatures in India could climb 2 degrees C within two decades, with even higher temperatures projected for some coastal regions. According to the Indian network for Climate Change Assessment, a group of more than 100 scientific organizations, the nation could see temperatures jump 1.7 to 2.3 degrees C by the 2030s compared to temperatures in the 1970s.

That temperature shift will likely mean more extreme weather, the study projects, with increasingly intense downpours but fewer days of rain overall, which would likely mean a greater likelihood of flooding and drought.

Meanwhile, another study recently had warned that some of the world’s fastest-growing economies — including India and Bangladesh — are also the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. The nations at the most extreme risk are those already dealing with high poverty levels, dense populations, exposure to climate-related events, and a reliance on flood- or drought-prone agricultural lands, according the Climate Change Vulnerability Index.

While India is already one the world’s largest economies, its vulnerability to climate-related events could scare off foreign investment in the coming decades, the report says.

Juxtapose that with the prime minister's acknowledgement that India's rapidly growing economy and automotive industry could lead to a 40 percent increase in demand for hydrocarbon fuels in the next decade, and you have big trouble ahead.

In an era of energy security concerns and climate change immediacy, the wise thing would be to look at ways to conserve energy, especially fossil fuel based energy. Instead developing nations are galloping away with big, impractical solutions that invariably revolve around huge infrastructure projects that eat not only energy but also resources.

Local decentralised and small units would seem the sensible way ahead. Any thoughts?

More research on CCS needed

Leaks from carbon dioxide injected deep underground to help fight climate change could bubble up into drinking water aquifers near the surface, driving up levels of contaminants in the water tenfold or more in some places, according to a study by Duke University scientists.

Storing carbon dioxide deep below Earth's surface, a process known as geosequestration, is part of a suite of new carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies being developed by governments and industries worldwide to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions entering Earth's atmosphere. The still-evolving technologies are designed to capture and compress CO2, emissions at their source -- typically power plants and other industrial facilities -- and transport the CO2 to locations where it can be injected far below the Earth's surface for long-term storage.

But the technology involves many hurdles besides the aspect of a chemical unit next to a power plant! Will the areas chosen hold the gas or leak it eventually? How do we handle the loss of efficiency of plants when CCS is implemented? And like this study says, water contamination is another concern.

This shows that CCS will have to be studied more in detail before it becomes a way out. The study identified four markers that scientists can use to test for early warnings of potential carbon dioxide leaks. Along with changes in carbonate concentration and acidity of the water, concentrations of manganese, iron and calcium could all be used as geochemical markers of a leak, as their concentration increase within two weeks of exposure to CO2.

For now, we have to live with CO2 in the atmosphere!! Better be sure before we open yet another Pandoras box.

Just a second, let's think

Should costly electricity from the grid be used to run the ACs or some other fuel be used for such heating and cooling purposes? What kind of energy should be used for what activity - this should be a well thought out process, feel experts. For instance, in Germany where it is transport followed by residential sector that takes the biggest pie out the energy cake, how will renewable energy fit the bill, asks Prof Edgar Shicker of the Georg Simon Ohm University of Applied Sciences.

Which demand should be met with which source should be amongst the focus of planners instead of an en masse adoption of a new technology, feel many like him.

Simply because the solar intensity is high in India, should the nation go for solar PV power? Setting up huge infrastructure because land is available will be a lost cause if the same power has to be transmitted over large distances, incurring costs. Instead, one needs to study what kind of demand exists and what source fits the demand best. Right? This is also so for offshore windpower. Setting up the turbines in sea is fine, but what about the cost of bringing the power home to cities where the demand is most? Is it economically viable?

Subsidies that have good intentions will be exploited in the process. The story in EU where biofuels are given huge subsidies have seen huge transportation and carbon costs in importing the biofuel. Subsidies in India, both for water and power, have often resulted in scant respect for the dwindling resources. Should power be as subsidised as it is? But then which government is going to take an unpopular step? Bell the cat!

Seeing through the romance

Coal fired plants and nuclear will not be going away in a hurry... It will not be possible for clean energy to displace fossil fuels before 2050... The romance with clean energy has to be tempered with practicality...

These were the messages that emerged from an interesting workshop organised by the Goethe Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan in Bangalore this week. Dealing with 'towards a substantial green energy supply for urban Karnataka' the seminar saw a lot of seemingly contradicting statements from its eminent speakers.

Prof J Srinivasan from the Divecha climate change centre pumped for solar PV given the solar intensities in the country. He however felt that policy must drive this thrust. The BERI spokesperson pushed for biomass, and Kredl noted its successes with water mills and gassifiers. However, Prof Edgar Schicker, Georg Simon Ohm University of Applied Sciences, Germany, had a different view. He urged caution before adopting any new clean technology that could end up 'ruining the environment'

For instance, he noted the production of PV modules involves the simultaneous generation of large amounts of toxic waste like sulphur hexafluoride. Sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) is one of the most potent greenhouse gases.It is estimated that a ton of SF6 equals a greenhouse effect of 25,000t of CO2.

The production of crystalline silicon cells (c-Si), creates silicon dust waste known as kerf. Rinsing of wafers is estimated to result in the loss of 50% material in air and water. This can create inhalation issues for labourers. Silicon dust is harmful for inhalation. c-Si production involves refining silica at high temperatures to remove oxygen and make metallurgical-grade silicon. c-Si produces a highly explosive gas called silane gas, which can be highly dangerous. SO on...

The bigger issue according to the professor is the lack of planning which does not look at where the demand is before rushing in to set up plants. More of that in our next post...

Simply unwilling!

The International Energy Agency's annual World Energy Outlook, released yesterday promises :) that oil, coal, and natural gas will continue to dominate world energy consumption, whether we conduct business as usual, adopt greener policies, or make heroic efforts to keep carbon concentrations in the atmosphere below 450 ppm so as to prevent temperatures from rising more than 2 more degrees celsius in this century.

The agency still expects world energy consumption to grow sharply, with fast-developing countries accounting for the lion's share of additional energy demand. Among fossil fuels, reliance on natural gas will grow the most strongly, an estimated 44 percent by 2035--more than a third of that increase being "unconventional" (shale) gas. Though consumption of coal and oil decreases in the advanced industrial countries according to the IEA's intermediate "new policies" scenario--the one it seems to consider most probable--demand for oil and coal in China, India and other developing countries increases by a significantly greater amount.

It once again reiterates the efforts required to restrict warming by 2 deg this century - between now and 2035, China would have to account of 32 percent of CO2 abatement and the United States 18 percent.

Things are not really changing are they?! Reminds one of what Darwin said: it is not the intelligence or strong species that will survive, but the one most adaptable. Well, we humans are resisting change. Make your own inferences!

Ecological deficit

This year's Human Development Index (HDI) came out last week and it was full of good news. The HDI started out 20 years ago to provide a way of indexing development and progress that gives a fuller picture of human well being than GDP's shallow economic calculations. This year's report celebrates the fact that over the past 40 years “average life expectancy rose from 59 to 70 years, primary school enrollment grew from 55 to 70 percent, and per capita income doubled to more than $10,000.”

The main threat, which haunts the report, is climate change. And it is the poor south that will be affected most.“The main threat to maintaining progress in human development comes from the increasingly evident unsustainability of production and consumption patterns. .... The consequences of environmentally unsustainable production are already visible. Increased exposure to drought, floods and environmental stress is a major impediment to realizing people’s aspirations. .... The continuing reliance on fossil fuels is threatening irreparable damage to our environment and to the human development of future generations.”

It notes how cities will play a significant role, being directly dependent on external supplies of food, potable water, and energy. With over 40 percent reductions in staple grain crops, conflicts will rise. Increasing energy use in cities will aggravate the situation. The US and China are prime examples of how there is no attempts at change.

Reports like the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment show that the capacity of the world's ecosystems to provide key services are in decline. Going into a century of rapid climate change with already depleted ecosystems is a frightening prospect. Can we effect a change in our urban systems to make it less dependent on ecosystems?

Honeycomb conductors

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory have fabricated transparent thin films capable of absorbing light and generating electric charge over a relatively large area. The material, described in the journal Chemistry of Materials, could be used to develop transparent solar panels or even windows that absorb solar energy.

This means less material used and increased efficiency.

Under carefully controlled conditions, the material self-assembles to form a reproducible pattern of micron-size hexagon-shaped cells over a relatively large area (up to several millimeters.

Such honeycomb-patterned thin films have previously been made using conventional polymers like polystyrene, but this is the first report of such a material that blends semiconductors and fullerenes to absorb light and efficiently generate charge and charge separation.

The material remains largely transparent (hence does not render the window dark) because the polymer chains pack densely only at the edges of the hexagons, while remaining loosely packed and spread very thin across the centers. The densely packed edges strongly absorb light and may also facilitate conducting electricity,while the centers do not absorb much light and are relatively transparent.

Well, fabrication as solar panels is the next step. Materials research and design is one area to watch out, and not only in the solar arena.

Evergreen agri

Doubling food production by mid-century, particularly in Africa and Asia, will require non-conventional approaches, particularly since so many of the continent's soils are depleted, and farmers are faced with a changing climate. Experts feel the urgent need to reinvent agriculture in a sustainable and affordable way, so that it can reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases and be adapted to climate.

The world has to develop a concrete action plan for linking agriculture-related investments, policies, and measures to transition agriculture to lower carbon-emitting, climate-resilient growth. Step in Evergreen Agriculture.

Fertilizer trees draw nitrogen from the air and transfer it to the soil through their roots and leaf litter, replenishing exhausted soils with rich sources of organic nutrients. The trees bolster nutrient supply, increase food crop yields, and enhance the production of fodder, fuel and timber.

These systems also provide additional income to farmers from tree products, while at the same time storing much greater amounts of carbon than other agricultural systems. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has already noted that transforming degraded agricultural lands into agroforestry has far greater potential to store carbon than any other managed land use change.

Evergreen agriculture has already provided benefits to several million farmers in Zambia, Malawi, Niger and Burkina Faso. For example, farmers in Malawi have increased their maize yields by up to 280 percent when the crop is grown under a canopy of one particular fertilizing tree, Faidherbia albida. Unlike most other trees, Faidherbia sheds its leaves during the early rainy season and remains dormant during the crop-growing period. This makes it highly compatible with food crops. In Niger, there are now more than 4.8 million hectares of millet and sorghum being grown in agroforests that have up to 160 Faidherbia trees on each hectare.

A word of caution: what fits Africa may not be best for Asia. There is already a lot of hype on endophyte (a micro-organism) based agriculture that helps do away with a large part of chemical inputs. However, one needs to be careful not to overdo it, and upset the ecosystem balance.

Thermo chemical way to solar

Back to solar! Currently we depend on the photovoltaic cells that transform light energy into electricity. Thermo-chemical technology on the other hand traps the solar energy and stores it in the form of heat in molecules of chemicals. This heat energy can be converted and utilized by humans whenever the need arises.

What happens in a conventional solar system is that heat gets leached away over time but when, heat is stored using the thermo-chemical fuel it remains stable. cCemical-electrical process makes it possible to produce a “rechargeable heat battery” that can repeatedly store and release heat gathered from sunlight or other sources.

Fulvalene diruthenium can absorb solar energy. After trapping solar energy it can achieve a higher-energy state where it can remain stable ad infinitum. If a stimulus can be given in the form of heat or a catalyst, it reverts to its unique shape, releasing heat in the process.

Professor Grossman states, “It takes many of the advantages of solar-thermal energy, but stores the heat in the form of a fuel. It’s reversible, and it’s stable over a long term. You can use it where you want, on demand. You could put the fuel in the sun, charge it up, then use the heat, and place the same fuel back in the sun to recharge.”

The MIT team has to tackle the challenges lying ahead. First they have to find out an easy way to synthesize the material in the laboratory that can absorb and trap heat inside it and secondly they have to search for a good catalyst that can release the trapped heat energy without problem.

Citi-smokes

With half the world population living in cities, it is well that cities gear up to meet climate change challenges. London, New York and Toronto have signed up to report their carbon emissions as part of the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP)’s new cities programme.

In partnership with the C40 and Clinton Climate initiative (CCI), CDP Cities is asking the world’s largest cities that have committed to tackle climate change – the 40 member cities and 10 affiliate members – to start voluntarily monitoring and reporting their carbon emissions.

New York has monitored its greenhouse gas emissions and made the data public since 2006 and is already seeing a reduction in emissions, according to Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

CDP has also released a report, The Case for City Disclosure, that discusses how releasing emission data can help cities reduce carbon, improve operational efficiency and drive clean tech investment. (Incidentally, Enzen brought out an inventory for the pollution control board of greenhouse gases arising from transport in Bangalore and surrounding cities. This was the first of its kind in the country.)

An exhibition on in London paints a rather grim picture of climate change and the city. Sometimes one needs to exaggerate to catch the public eye. "Postcards From the Future," a new show at the Museum of London, is an artistic and apocalyptic vision of how climate change could affect London. Not entirely true, it is close to fact.

It's a chilling and scary sight. London after global warming: a square turns into a rice paddy, ice skating down the Thames, Buckingham Palace surrounded by a sea of shanty housing and camels across a park.

It's now or never as we have been told so many times, and still ignore. To change.

New production paradigms

Every bit of energy that is saved goes a long way in securing the needs of present and future generations. So also every bit of material that necessitates more mining of some metal or ore. Finally, any innovations to production processes that reduce wastage and minimise energy and material is welcome.

Flexible circuits can be found in many devices where space and weight considerations are dominant in the design of electronics: in cars, in cameras and video equipment, in mini-computers or in inkjet printers. According to the business consultancy Frost & Sullivan, sales in this area will grow to more than $16 billion by the year 2014.

No wonder research in this area is leaping in bounds. A new reel-to-reel technology for the production of flexible circuits and biosensors, known as "P3T," which is shorthand for "Plasma Printing and Packaging Technology" involves considerably fewer process steps than existing processes, and it conserves raw materials.

During production of circuits for an RFID antenna, you often have to etch away between 50 and 80 percent of the copper used. This results in considerable amounts of copper scrap that either has to be disposed or reprocessed using relatively elaborate methods. The IST approach is different: there, scientists use the additive process to apply the structures they want directly to the substrate sheeting.

Researchers are currently working very hard to improve the individual processes involved in the manufacture of flexible circuit boards and biosensors. They are closely scrutinizing all of the P3T production steps -- from plasma printing to assembly and coordinating all of the processes with one another in a production line.

Technological improvisations are headed in the right direction, what is lagging is the change in attitudes, especially when it comes to individual lifestyles. We still are used to a season of plenty.

Going extinct

Even as a deal to protect the world's biodiversity remained elusive in the closing hours of crucial UN talks as a typhoon approached the conference centre in Nagoya, a new study has warned that one-fifth of species face extinction.

The study, published in the October 28 issue of Science, says that the number of threatened species has grown dramatically in the past four decades, exceeding the normal "background rate" of extinction by a factor of two or three. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species currently lists 25,780 vertebrates as threatened, and an average of 52 species become more threatened (based on the IUCN's categories of risk) every year.

There is small amount of good news accompanying this study: The wide range of conservation efforts around the world has actually slowed this rate of extinction.

But current conservation efforts are far from adequate. According to a second study, also presented at the conference and published in the same issue of Science, the world would need to spend 10 times as much as it currently does on conservation in order to halt the pending extinction of many species.

If species are dying out, it is an indication of the long-term health of our own species, and we need to be aware of the impact we are having on our own ecosystem.

CFL is the winner

Researchers with Swizerland's Empa have investigated the ecobalances of various household light sources. In doing so not only did they take into account energy consumption, but also the manufacture and disposal processes. They also evaluated usage with different electrical power mixes. The clear winner is the compact fluorescent lamp.

In order to evaluate the total effect of a lamp on the environment over its entire life the researchers prepared a life cycle analysis for each kind. This takes into consideration the raw material and energy consumption of a lamp during its complete life cycle, from the production and usage to final disposal. The total point tally is a measure of the sum of all the damage the product in question inflicts on human health and the environment, as well as the usage of resources incurred during its manufacture.

For those wondering about the mercury aspect of CFLs, the environmental effects reduce by as much as 15 per cent when they are recycled instead of being incinerated. But even when they are incinerated in a waste disposal facility the much criticized mercury release is quantitatively insignificant.

This is because the overwhelming proportion of mercury in the environment is emitted by fossil fuel burning power stations. Depending on whether it uses brown or anthracite as fuel, a power station emits some 0.042 to 0.045 milligrams of mercury for every kilowatt-hour of energy it produces. A plant generating 1000 megawatts of power therefore releases 42 to 45 grams of mercury into the atmosphere every hour.

Any disagreements?

Energy hungry sector

A team of scientists at Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs have examined the energy consumption trends of communications equipment in use today and determined that gains in energy efficiency are not keeping pace with traffic growth. One consequence is that energy is going to become an increasingly important problem for communication networks.

The scientists estimate that power consumed per user could increase by seven-fold over the next 10 years.

More important, recent efficiency improvement rates of 20 percent per year are falling to roughly 10 percent. The findings also showed that optical transmission gear consumes more than a factor of 10 less than other network technologies such as cellular base stations and packet routers.

With communication the by-word of tomorrow, shows how more thought needs to be put into the efficient use of energy in this sector.

New small-scale hydro plant

In a number of newly industrialized nations, huge dams are being discussed that would flood settled landscapes and destroy ecosystems. In many underdeveloped countries, the funds and engineering know-how that would be necessary to bring hydroelectric power on line are not available. Smaller power stations entail considerable financial input and are also not without negative environmental impact. Until now, the use of hydroelectric power in connection with a relatively low dam height meant that part of the water had to be guided past the dam by way of a so-called bay-type power plant -- a design with inherent disadvantages.

Researchers at Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) have developed a small-scale hydroelectric power plant that solves a number of problems at the same time: The construction is so simple, and thereby cost-efficient, that the power generation system is capable of operating profitably in connection with even modest dam heights.

Moreover, the system is concealed in a shaft, minimizing the impact on the landscape and waterways. Their approach incurs very little impact on the landscape. Only a small transformer station is visible on the banks of the river. In place of a large power station building on the riverside, a shaft dug into the riverbed in front of the dam conceals most of the power generation system. The water flows into a box-shaped construction, drives the turbine, and is guided back into the river underneath the dam. The core of the concept is not optimizing efficiency, however, but optimizing cost.

Shaft power plants could play a significant role in developing countries. Distributed, local power generation by lower-cost, easy-to-operate, low-maintenance power plants is the only solution. If turbines are not financially feasible, it is possible to use a cheap submersible pump and run it in reverse -- something that also works in the new power plant.

Any thoughts on the new technique?

Extreme risk

Some of the world’s fastest-growing economies — including India and Bangladesh — are also the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, according to a new report. The nations at the most extreme risk are those already dealing with high poverty levels, dense populations, exposure to climate-related events, and a reliance on flood- or drought-prone agricultural lands, according the Climate Change Vulnerability Index compiled by a UK-based consulting group.

While India is already one the world’s largest economies, its vulnerability to climate-related events could scare off foreign investment in the coming decades, the report says. Among the 25 nations characterized as most at risk, 12 are located in Africa. Among the nations considered “low risk” are Norway, Finland, and Iceland.

Perhaps, some semblance of seriousness has come into the scene going by the fact that Indian government has pledged to publish an account of the nation’s natural wealth.

A valuation of such resources as forests, wildlife, and freshwater supplies that international officials call critical to avoiding the financial costs of biodiversity loss, it coincides with the release of a UN-backed Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity report that warns that failure to account for the value of nature to humankind — from clean air to healthy fish stocks — will contribute to increases in species extinction and the consequent financial costs.

Natural capital is a massive asset class, and developing nations’ biggest asset, as pointed by Pavan Sukhdev, an economist and lead author of the study. Time we finally set that right. It is hoped that other nations will follow suit.

Running out of a planet

New analysis shows populations of tropical species are plummeting and humanity's demands on natural resources are sky-rocketing to 50 per cent more than the earth can sustain, reveals the 2010 edition of WWF's Living Planet Report -- the leading survey of the planet's health.

The biennial report uses the global Living Planet Index as a measure of the health of almost 8,000 populations of more than 2,500 species. The global Index shows a decrease by 30 per cent since 1970, with the tropics hardest hit showing a 60 per cent decline in less than 40 years.

The Ecological Footprint, one of the indicators used in the report, shows that our demand on natural resources has doubled since 1966 and we're using the equivalent of 1.5 planets to support our activities.

If we continue living beyond the Earth's limits, by 2030 we'll need the equivalent of two planets' productive capacity to meet our annual demands.The top 10 countries with the biggest Ecological Footprint per person are the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Denmark, Belgium, United States, Estonia, Canada, Australia, Kuwait and Ireland.

The 31 OECD countries, which include the world's richest economies, account for nearly 40 per cent of the global footprint. The report also shows that the steepest decline in biodiversity falls in low-income countries, with a nearly 60 per cent decline in less than 40 years.

However, the Living Planet Report also shows that a high footprint and high level of consumption, which often comes at the cost of others, is not reflected in a higher level of development. The UN Human Development Index, which looks at life expectancy, income and educational attainment, can be high in countries with moderate footprint.

Making clean energy cheaper

In the war between reducing emissions and economic growth, the winner so far has been the latter. The reason is simple - too many people are far below the development index to ignore. As Yu Quingtai, China’s top climate negotiator through the Copenhagen climate conference, said during a recent speech at Peking University’s School of International Studies: “There are 600 million people in India without electricity — the country has to develop and meet that need. And if that increases emissions, I say, ‘So what?’ The people have a right to a better life." (Chinese champion for India!)

An analysis on the emissions scenario notes how climate policies should flow with the current of public opinion rather than against it, and efforts to sell the public on policies that will create short-term economic discomfort cannot succeed if that discomfort is perceived to be too great.

Any policy focused on decarbonizing economies will necessarily have to offer short-term benefits that are in some manner proportional to the short-term costs. In practice, this means that efforts to make dirty energy appreciably more expensive will face limited success. So, why not look at the alternative tomake clean energy cheaper, asks the author.

How can that be done? Consider that a $5-per-ton carbon tax or a $3-per-barrel oil tax would each raise about $100 billion per year worldwide, funds that could be invested in energy innovation. Some of the money raised could be spent in countries such as India on energy infrastructure deployment, with the result being expanded access to energy and potentially driving down costs through scale.

Governments must foster competition, pursue energy innovation using a public works model, and recognize the crucial role of demonstration projects. Governments should also become a major consumer of innovative energy-technology products and systems.

Efficiency know-how lacking

Many governments are hindered in their efforts to improve energy efficiency by a lack of technical capacity and know-how, says the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Two years ago, the IEA made a series of energy efficiency policy recommendations that could save 8.2 Gt of CO2 per year by 2030 – equivalent of twice the European Union’s annual emissions. To date, however, only around 40% of the 25 recommendations have been implemented, says the organisation.

In a bid to change that, the IEA this week launched Policy Pathways: Showing the way to energy efficiency implementation now, aimed at helping government implement energy efficiency policies.

The initiative provides practical ‘how to’ guides for designing, implementing and evaluating energy efficiency policies. The first Policy Pathway in the series deals with policies covering the performance standards of appliances.

Appliances currently account for around 15% of the total electricity used in IEA countries and is growing apace in developing nations. But the sector offers the potential to make significant savings in the short-to-medium term.

Key to achieving savings in this area is implementing monitoring, verification and enforcement (MVE) policies, says the IEA.

A rare wisdom

We have written quite a bit about rare earths, perhaps making our readers wonder if they really rare! Well, the rare part is actually that which allows for economical extraction. And why this attention on rare earths (RE) is simply because the world of tomorrow we plan to build on clean energy will lean a lot on these rare elements. Whether it be wind farms or CFLs and LEDs, or electric vehicles, they depend on REs.

A massive wind turbine has 40-meter-long blades made from fiberglass, towers 90 meters above the ground, weighs hundreds of metric tons, and relies on roughly 300 kilograms of a soft, silvery metal known as neodymium—a rare earth. This element forms the basis for the magnets used in the turbines. The stronger the magnets are, the more powerful the generator.

An interesting article in Scientific American looks at the whole laborious process of extraction of rare earths. Found with other ores, Chinese companies supplying them employ acid to dissolve them out of ore rock that often also contains radioactive elements like thorium, radium or even uranium.

Intensive boiling with strong acids—repeated thousands of times because the elements are so chemically similar—finally separates out the neodymium, dysprosium or cerium. The whole slew of rare earth elements are a challenge to separate because of their chemical similarity—and they are never found alone. Processing costs are high and water and energy intensive.

Geologists have found deposits in Australia, Canada, Mongolia, Vietnam and even Greenland. Perhaps it is wiser before opening up pristine places to look at recycling options given the mountain loads of electronics we discard today. So also, research is working at how best to use as little of these REs or maybe even some alternatives. Whatever it be, recycling will have to be part of the solution.

The human hand pollutes...

Humans are overloading ecosystems with nitrogen through the burning of fossil fuels and an increase in nitrogen-producing industrial and agricultural activities, according to a new study.

Ecess nitrogen that is contributed by human activities pollutes fresh waters and coastal zones, and may contribute to climate change. Appearing in the October 8, 2010edition of Science and conducted by an international team of researchers, the study notes how human activity has led to skyrocketing of nitrogen cycle.

The nitrogen cycle--which has existed for billions of years--transforms non-biologically useful forms of nitrogen found in the atmosphere into various biologically useful forms of nitrogen that are needed by living things to create proteins, DNA and RNA, and by plants to grow and photosynthesize. This nitrogen fixation is doen mostly by microorganisms like bacteria.

Since pre-biotic times, the nitrogen cycle has gone through several major phases. The cycle was initially controlled by slow volcanic processes and lightning and then by anaerobic organisms as biological activity started. But the start of the 20th century, human contributions of nitrogen into ecosystems come from an 800 percent increase in the use of nitrogen fertilizers from 1960 to 2000.

Much of nitrogen fertilizer that is used worldwide is applied inefficiently. As a result, about 60 percent of the nitrogen contained in applied fertilizer is never incorporated into plants and so is free to wash out of root zones, and then pollute rivers, lakes, aquifers and coastal areas through eutrophication.

The Earth's population is approaching 7 billion people, and so ongoing pressures for food production are continuing to increase. There is no way to feed people without fixing huge amounts of nitrogen from the atmosphere, and that nitrogen is presently applied to crop plants very ineffectively.

What can be done? The team suggests systematic crop rotations that would supply nitrogen that would otherwise be provided by fertilizers; Optimizing the timing and amounts of fertilizer applications, using traditional breeding techniques to boost the ability of economically important varieties of wheat, barley and rye to interact favorably with the microbial communities associated with plant root systems and do so in ways that enhance the efficiency of nitrogen use, etc

Makes one wonder: is there any one thing we humans have done to impact the planet positively??!

Green innovation for ICT a must

While on computers, here's another recent report. According to the 18-month analysis by the Institute for Sustainable and Applied Infodynamics (ISAID) in Singapore and Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy in Houston, the ICT industry in the US is on course to grow its carbon emissions at twice the rate of its contributions to gross domestic product (GDP).

Hence, it must adopt energy efficiency technologies over the next decade to stay profitable in the face of limits on carbon emissions.

The researchers looked different devices in use, how much energy they use and how that consumption will be affected by growth in demand.

Although the items in question, like PCs, laptops, smart phones and games consoles, do not emit CO2 per se, the researchers looked at the electricity used to power them and factored in the potential effects of cleaner production in future.

The study calculates that emissions related to PCs and laptops, which currently account for around 48.5% of global ICT emissions, could quadruple by 2020, while those arising from data centres, games consoles and mobile phones could triple.

Going beyond recycling

The global energy consumption of the Internet is estimated at 3-5%, but growing very rapidly. The entire global transport industry takes around 25%, by way of comparison. However, the production of computers and module devices is one of the most energy-intensive in the world, as Low Tech Magazine explains. All of the precision engineering, in large complex fabrication plants, means that the energy required to make each device (known as the “embedded energy”) is HUGE.

The magazine calculates that the energy required to make just the memory chip in a laptop exceeded the amount of energy consumed by the computer in its entire lifetime, typically three years. Each successive generation of fabrication plants is significantly more energy intensive than the last.

Add to this the fact that most of the materials used for such devices are scarce and we have a big problem. What can be done is to look at it bottom up. Reducing sustainability impact alone will not be enough.

New materials, less rare ones, will have to be tried out. An even bigger change of thinking will have to come in designing things to make them reusable, not simply recyclable. Much like Lego, equipment will be made of parts which can be removed, replaced, or extended. It will call upon a rethink of the entire production process and service model.

Central storage with batteries

Is storage capability the holy grail of renewable energy, or is there more to it? In the US, grid operators believe the challenge is not so much in storing energy where generated but building energy storage centrally.

There is a system of regulation service purchased by independent system operators in a specialised marketplace. For instance, an additional twenty megawatts of regulation service could support the adoption of the more than 4,000 megawatts of wind power in the New York queue.

Grid operators use regulation services to handle unplanned drops in supply or spikes in demand, like when air conditioning use goes sharply up on a hot afternoon or a power line goes down. Regulation services must be instantly dispatchable. System operators do this by throttling power plants up or down. They believe batteries could do this too, and betteries could do this too, and better, as storage is faster and more flexible than the plants.

The technology to store energy for regulation services is a new tool but is not just theory. It has been deployed in places like Chile where power variability is high. As more renewable energy is added to grid, more such regulation services will be needed to address the variability. Excess renewable energy can be used to charge batteries and balance system variability

This is why the focus has shifted from merely storage to storage centrally. That is where batteries like lithium ion are very efficient.

By force or voluntary?

When it comes to energy conservation, the big question that divides experts is whether the approach should be that of regulation or marketing. Government organisations associated with energy often tend to spen a lot of money on advertisements and marketing campaigns. Critics believe this is a waste of money. There should be a way of making conservation mandatory, they insist. For instance in India, we have the EC Act which has remained largely on paper. If implemented in earnest, the nation stands to save and hence produce much needed energy.

Another way of thinking believes that force is not the way, but persuasion and education. Or marketing!

A recent study by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that what really gets people engaged when it comes to slashing energy use is aggressive marketing campaigns. After a hot summer, the average person is getting back into routines of school and work, not tracking energy savings. (The US is celebrating energy conservation month now.)

While buying a new EnergyStar appliance at Home Depot on a MasterCard means that 10 percent will go to Habitat for Humanity during Energy Awareness Month, most US consumers are more likely to wait for Black Friday or post-holiday sales to replace a washing machine. Experts believe a better strategy would be for utilities around the country to have marketing pushes to let people know about home energy audits, rebates and tax breaks for retrofits -- or to host series of neighborhood meetings about how to save energy in the home, as suggested by LBNL in its study.

One comment on an energy website had this comment from a reader: ‘The way to inspire people might be to show the difference between before and after energy bills. American culture is slowly transitioning from the mindset of energy as a disposable resource. Up to this time we havent given it much thought, just plug it in and it magically works, cheap. Now that energy costs are going up we are re-thinking that slowly but surely. My combined electric, gas and water bill is under $100 a month, I know some people that are half of that. It doesnt take much to make it happen other than a few minor house upgrades and more importantly, a revised mindset in regards to energy use conciousness.’

Besides the glitz of advertising, how many of us (whether in the US or India) would really buy a product simply beause of the marketing? But again, will we change voluntarily unless we are pushed into it, by way of a steep energy price rise?

New kid on the block grows up

The 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics goes to Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, now both at the University of Manchester, for studying single atom-thick sheets of carbon, called graphene. And what may that have to do with energy or environment??

Plenty.

Graphene sheets, thin enough to be called "two-dimensional" they exhibit quantum mechanical properties, and conduct electricity as well as copper, conduct heat better than any other known material, and are so dense that they can block helium atoms.

Among applications are ultracapacitors which use graphene fins for even more speed, since the fins let charge on and off faster than other carbon tangles. This speed could allow portable electronics to shrink in size and weight.

A UCLA team built the fastest graphene transistor yet, a proof-of-concept device that switched twice as fast (300 gigahertz) as similar devices. Some hope graphene might prove a faster alternative to silicon chips in future circuits.

New ways of thinking, new materials, new sources will be the touchstone of an energy secure green world.

Off target again

Targets for limiting the global temperature to less than 2°C above pre-industrial levels shouldn’t be considered ‘safe’ according to new research from climate change experts at the University of Exeter.

In a comprehensive study of the Last Interglacial, a period of warming some 125,000 years ago, the team found data that suggest sea levels will rise significantly higher than anticipated and that stabilizing global average temperatures at 2˚C above pre-industrial levels may not be considered a ‘safe’ target.

Emission targets will have to be lowered further still.

Their analysis looked at conditions when sediments and ice were laid down during the Last Interglacial, giving them a look at the global conditions as the ice spread.

Temperatures appear to have been more than 5˚C warmer in polar regions while the tropics only warmed marginally, closely resembling conditions today. With temperatures only 1.9˚C warmer compared to preindustrial temperatures, it resulted in global sea levels growing to 6.6 to 9.4 metres higher than today, with a rate of rise of somewhere between 60 to 90 centimetres per decade.

Kind of gives one the feeling we are sitting ducks, given our complacence and total lack of preparedness.

27 pc food produced in US wasted

Stretching the Occam's Razor (principle that simplest explanation is often the most correct one) and applying it to the problem of energy, one can say that the simplest solutions are often the simplest ones. You don't have enough energy? Simple - conserve. And how best to conserve? By reducing your waste!

A new study is reported in the ACS’ semi-monthly journal Environmental Science and Technology and states that the United States could immediately save the energy equivalent of about 350 million barrels of oil a year simply by being careful about how much food they produce and consume.

The analysis of wasted food found that the US wasted about 2030 trillion BTU (British thermal unit) of energy in 2007, the equivalent of 350 million barrels of oil or about 2 percent of the countries annual energy consumption. And if that astounds you, wait. The wasted energy calculated here is a conservative estimate both because the food waste data are incomplete and outdated and the energy consumption data for food service and sales are incomplete!

The study found that it takes the equivalent of about 1.4 billion barrels of oil to produce, package, prepare, preserve and distribute a year’s worth of food in the United States. This totalled between 8 to 16 percent of the nation’s energy consumption in 2007.

But despite this massive allocation of energy, 27 percent of the food prepared and distributed is wasted each year

Awareness the key

Whether it is energy conservation or water management, or whatever, often the problem is awareness. Even if the technology is available, people are often unaware and even if aware, do not know how to use it.

Take for instance, smart meters. Touted as the key to effective energy management, it has failed to take off simply because of lack of awareness. The smart meter is a key to managing two-way information flows, and new research shows that smart meters are technically up to the challenges of the future. At the heart of the change they bring is information: information about the energy we use, how we use it, and the real value of that power. Data will flow in a two-way conversation between homeowners using electricity—and maybe even producing it, too—and the energy companies managing the electricity grid.

And yet... Research just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that consumers have only minimal knowledge of how to save energy, and this knowledge is critical to them getting the full benefit of the information smart meters provide. In each case it is clear that the technology is powerful but to put these tools to the most effective use more work needs to be done to effectively engage consumers, communities, and advocates as well as build the back-end systems for utilities.

Technology per se will not solve problems unless the end user uses it, and more important, knows how to use it. Take for instance, satellite imagery. There is loads of information availabel to land users and policy makers but as space departments will tell you, takers are few. New technology is resisted because it is scary. It is very important for agencies involved to break down the technology and make it easy to understand and use it.

Polluted rivers

More than 5 billion people — nearly 80 percent of the planet’s population — live in regions where water security is threatened because of mismanagement and pollution of rivers and watersheds.

This degradation of the planet’s waters also threatens the existence of thousands of freshwater species, according to the study published in the journal Nature. The study, which examined the effects of numerous factors on the planet’s limited freshwater supplies — including pollution, agricultural runoff, dam construction, and the introduction of invasive species — found that significant deterioration in water quality was not limited to poorer nations but was common in the rivers of Europe, the U.S., and other industrialized countries.

While rivers represent a small percentage of our water supply worldwide (most humans are reliant on groundwater), ailing rivers mean altered migration routes, fewer defenses against flooding and erosion, and other issues that directly impact humans.

While rich countries can afford to throw money into alleviating symptoms of sick rivers, the study shows that localized efforts at treating the problems -- such as smarter dam infrastructure, and water management that incorporates both the needs of humans and local wildlife -- is a far better solution for all countries, especially developing countries that lack financial resources. Treating symptoms is what we have been doing rather than tackle the root of the problem. (That goes for most problems in today's scoiety!)

Thin films hold promise

This is not a blog dedicated to solar PV and if we have been covering more of this area, it is simply because there is so much technological advances happening here.

The concept of light-trapping has been played with for decades as a way of keeping a photon within the confines of a solar cell for longer periods of time, but there has always been upper limits of what energy the technique can wring from incoming light. By reducing the thickness of the cell to far less than the actual wavelength of light, though, appears to have a dramatic effect.

According to a paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the ultrathin-film cells could improve on the macro-scale limits by as much as 12-fold.

By sandwiching the solar film between layers that act to keep light trapped for longer periods of time, chances that a photon will be absorbed are increased and increased significantly to boost efficiency. True, the technology is way off from commercial deployment, but it joins a growing array of new materials and methods that might soon dramatically increase solar power's potential.

Clean energy market on a high

The market for clean energy products is growing among India’s rural poor, a massive segment that consists of 114 million households and more than 60 percent of the nation’s population of 1.15 billion. Since 2004, this market has grown at an average rate of 36 percent a year and could eventually grow to more than $2.1 billion annually, according to a report from World Resources Institute.

Cean energy services and products will require an upfront investment three to ten times greater than that for conventional energy sources such as kerosene and firewood, which often are subsidized or free to India’s rural consumers. Yet despite these and other drawbacks, the average annual gross revenue of the companies profiled in this report has grown 36 percent since 2004.

The report examined a representative selection of companies selling solar lanterns, solar home systems, energy-efficient cookstoves, and electricity generated from decentralized sources, including small hydro power plants and biomass gasifier systems. The potential market for the four sectors studied in this report is INR 97.28 billion (US$2.11 billion) per year, including INR 94.06 billion (US$2.04 billion) for decentralized renewable energy services and INR 3.22 billion (US$70.1 million) for energy products per year.

Good news for the poor, corporates and the planet.

Scotland aims big

California took a big step in requiring that utilities must source 33 percent of their energy from renewables by 2020. Scotland has pushed the ceiling higher - it will be producing at least 100% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2025.

That was what its First Minister Alex Salmond declared recently. 'Scotland has unrivalled green energy resources and our new national target to generate 80% of electricity needs from renewables by 2020 will be exceeded by delivering current plans for wind, wave and tidal generation,” he says.

The predictions are based on an Offshore Valuation study, which estimates that by 2050 Scotland could be producing as much as 68 GW – or seven times its power needs – through offshore renewables.

By harnessing just a third of the region’s practical offshore wind and marine resources, Scotland could become a net exporter of clean energy. But enabling this transformation will be investment on a massive scale. The Offshore Wind Industry Group’s Route Map estimates that £200 billion in private finance will be necessary.

Now that is what we call leapfrogging, right?

Artificial leaves to make power

Any new technology always brings in fresh demand for metals or rare earth elements. Even solar technology with its reliance on silicon is not without its disadvantages. Perhaps when looking at alternatives, we also need to look at non-solid state technologies.

Like biologically inspired 'soft' devices for generating electricity! A team led by a North Carolina State University researcher has shown that water-gel-based solar devices -- "artificial leaves" -- can act like solar cells to produce electricity.

This can render the technology less expensive and more environmentally friendly than the current standard-bearer: silicon-based solar cells. The bendable devices are composed of water-based gel infused with light-sensitive molecules - the researchers used plant chlorophyll in one of the experiments - coupled with electrodes coated by carbon materials, such as carbon nanotubes or graphite.

The light-sensitive molecules get "excited" by the sun's rays to produce electricity, similar to plant molecules that get excited to synthesize sugars in order to grow.

Of course we cannot keep making leaves, hence why not look to how plants self-regenerate? And to look for something other than water-based gel and light-sensitive molecules to improve the efficiency of the solar cells.

New power saving technique

A new magnetic device being tested promises peak power saving of 39 percent. The device not only conserves electricity, but produces far less heat and produces less electromagnetic interference than conventional technologies.

Designed by the Tokyo Institute of Technology and fine-tuned by researchers at MERSTech in partnership with the ONR Global's office in Tokyo, the Magnetic Energy Recovery Switch (MERS) harnesses and recycles residual magnetic power that is produced by electrical current.

After working with several overhead fluorescent lights that require 24-hour power, scientists proved that the MERS technology significantly reduced lighting energy consumption.

Running out of fresh water

In the last few decades, the rate at which humans worldwide are pumping dry the vast underground stores of water that billions depend on has more than doubled. Not only are we running out of fresh water but also adding to sea-level rise!

In the new study, which compares estimates of groundwater added by rain and other sources to the amounts being removed for agriculture and other uses, the team taps a database of global groundwater information including maps of groundwater regions and water demand. The rate at which global groundwater stocks are shrinking has more than doubled between 1960 and 2000, increasing the amount lost from 126 to 283 cubic kilometers (30 to 68 cubic miles) of water per year.

The new assessment shows the highest rates of depletion in some of the world's major agricultural centers, including northwest India, northeastern China, northeast Pakistan, California's central valley, and the midwestern United States.

Today, people are drawing so much water from below that they are adding enough of it to the oceans (mainly by evaporation, then precipitation) to account for about 25 percent of the annual sea level rise across the planet, the researchers find. The team estimates the contribution of groundwater depletion to sea level rise to be 0.8 millimeters per year, which is about a quarter of the current total rate of sea level rise of 3.1 millimeters per year. That's about as much sea-level rise as caused by the melting of glaciers and icecaps outside of Greenland and Antarctica.

Groundwater represents about 30 percent of the available fresh water on the planet, with surface water accounting for only one percent. The rest of the potable, agriculture friendly supply is locked up in glaciers or the polar ice caps. This means that any reduction in the availability of groundwater supplies could have profound effects for a growing human population. Especially since we have no idea of how much groundwater exists!