Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Blinding energy

Scientists at LHC early on Tuesday watched the first images of collision of a pair of protons traveling at a third of the speed of light! That is an achievement for physicists.

The protons had been travelling in opposite directions around the collider's 17-mile track since ten days and on collision released 7 trillion electronic volts (7 TeV) of energy—three times more than the previous record.

Dubbed the world's largest scientific experiment, scientists hope the machine can approach on a tiny scale what happened in the first split seconds after the Big Bang, which they theorize was the creation of the universe some 14 billion years ago.

CERN used powerful superconducting magnets, cooled to almost zero temperatures, to force the two beams to cross, creating collisions and showers of particles. When collisions become routine, the beams will be packed with hundreds of billions of protons, but the particles are so tiny that few will collide at each crossing.

LHC operators plan to run the $10 bn collider almost continuously over the next 18 to 24 months. Fears of the earth and more being swallowed by any black holes created in the process of the collisions have been rubbished as the blackholes are very small and exists for a fraction of a second.

Why do particles weigh? If the Higgs particle is responsible, can we see it? Or will it, like God, remain unseen??! The answers provided by the discoveries of the LHC will revolutionize our understanding of how the universe works, and eventually tap yet another source of energy. Just try imagine what could be done with 7 TeV at hand! If we could harness it, store it and use it! That will take time. For now it is the world of physics that awaits ‘breaking’ news.

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Sense or Nonsense?

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), has conducted a study of the international business community with regard to climate change. Titled Appetite for Change, the world’s most comprehensive survey of its kind reveals that 84% of corporate executives believe global warming will change the way they do business over the next two to three years.

PwC has an extensive program of measured carbon emission targets to meet the impending changes to the international business landscape and it showed its commitment to climate action during Earth Hour by engaging its offices (located in more than 150 countries) to switch off their lights for one hour for the event and also encouraging its 163,000 staff to participate in the humungous global event.

Currently, corporate support for Earth Hour is coming from a wide range of large, mainstream companies, such as Canon, Coca-Cola, HSBC, Nokia Siemens Networks, Price Waterhouse Coopers, Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics and Wells Fargo.

Are these companies really concerned about the environment, or are they just looking for good, easy publicity? Will their involvement in energy conservation and green policies go beyond the Earth Hour event? Will their support make a difference to public awareness?

What do you think? Are such events a mere fad to ease the conscience? Or do we need them?

Water beats wars

A new study commissioned by the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) demonstrates that unclean water for drinking as well as for sanitation services is responsible for more deaths than all forms of violence, including war.

There are two primary challenges surrounding water: quantity and quality. The study titled “Clearing the Water: A Focus on Water Quality Solutions” plunges into the latter challenge as fulfilling cleaner water standards is currently the more achievable goal.

Much of the water that is available in developing but also developed economies is polluted and contaminated to varying levels. Distressing. Add to this the unavailability of water in many regions and then the picture of a few decades of unmanaged water scenario is driven home. Will it take a few more million deaths for governments to take action?

Here are some thought-provoking facts from the report:
· 2 million tons of untreated sewage and industrial and agricultural waste are dumped daily
· 1 child under the 5-years-old dies every 20 seconds from water-related diseases
· $20 million worth of water technologies, such as drip irrigation and treadle pumps, could lift 100 million farming families out of extreme poverty
· Over 50% of treated water is lost to leaks
· 900 million people around the world do not have access to clean water
· 2.7 billion others lack sanitation facilities

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Where does that empty bottle end up?

A plastic soap bottle tossed in a Manhattan recycling bin took several twists and turns around the city before crossing the river to Kearny, N.J. So, who has been following the trash? No one, but a simple tracking device. A 5-year-old group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has spent the last year attaching thousands of tracking devices to pieces of garbage in Seattle and New York City. The devices send out pulses to signal where they are. The signals go to MIT's SENSEable City Lab for analysis.

Most cities today face problems of congestion, pollution and inefficiency problems. New technologies, like iPhones, social networking and wireless communication, can inform city dwellers and make cities "smarter."

The aim of project "Trash Track" is to study where recyclables go. As the world consumes at a faster rate than ever before, it becomes important to track trash, and see how it degrades, if at all it does.

Trash companies follow their own haul, for example. But once they separate the aluminum and sell it to a collector, their records end. No single database tracks a soda can through its cycle. Trash Track may be a useful tool with e-waste too.

But of course this calls for coordination and acting together based on the inputs from the tracking.

Or else the power of networks in general and the Internet will simply be an exercise in showing the many things that “can be done” but don’t get done!

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Hacking Nature

Is nature to be left alone? Or should it be hacked? Yes, hacked. That is the term used by those advocating geo-engineering as a means to tackle the many problems. This is the culture addicted to technological fixes to all issues. They call themselves rationalists in a subtle way and in a bold language, the ‘gods’ who have to take things into their hands. Geo-engineering is practical, pragmatic, etc etc they say. We can’t sit and do nothing but wait for calamity. No doubt it was a calamity of our making, but that’s not important now, is it?

On a hot August day in 2008 a team of Russian scientists set up an experiment to block the Sun and cool Earth. The experiment was to be carried out over a 2-square-mile area of farmland near the city of Saratov on the Volga River, roughly 300 miles southeast of Moscow. But it wasn’t cutting Russia’s greenhouse gas emissions that was proposed. Instead, it was to burn hundreds of thousands of tons of sulfur-rich aircraft fuel in the upper atmosphere, which studies suggested would lower the temperature of Earth by as much as 4°F.

Cloudy conditions made it difficult to detect which changes in the brightness of the Sun were a result of the experiment, but close analysis of the data suggested the smoke had scattered up to 10 percent of the Sun’s rays at different points in the experiment. In a paper published in a Russian meteorology journal in May 2009, Izrael and his colleagues concluded that the trial showed “how it is principally possible” to add chemical droplets to the sky “to control solar radiation.” That summer, scientists conducted a more successful follow-up experiment in which they released smoke from a helicopter at an altitude of roughly 8,000 feet.

Alexey Ryaboshapko, an atmospheric chemist in Izrael’s institute, said that they hoped to soon conduct even larger experiments, using airplanes, perhaps over an area roughly 10 kilometers long.

If we opt for these experiments, eventually the sulphur will cause another kind of problem. For which we will need another fix. Isn’t it much simpler to live by the laws of nature and sustainability?

Can we control and ‘tame’ the planet? Can we be the gods? Will it not be an excuse to keep blundering on the assurance that someone can fix the problem anyway?

Monday, March 22, 2010

Doors to hell


China plans to exploit the large reserve of “combustible ice” on the tundra of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau which was discovered last year. The new reserves found in China reveal a very large supply equal at least 35 billion tonnes of oil, enough to supply China with 90 years worth of energy.

“Combustible ice” is essentially frozen natural gas – a natural gas hydrate. Natural gas hydrates are essentially just frozen methane and water and can literally be lit on fire bringing a whole new meaning to fire and ice. Researchers still need to get a better understanding of how best to handle the fuel, for it to be commercially exploited.

Researchers expect that the hydrate will have to go through a phase change and melt it into methane and water before it can be efficiently combusted. If left to melt on its own as the earth warms though, methane could be released into the atmosphere, and it could cause even more damage than if it were just burned. Which is why it is so essential to keep the Arctic permafrost from melting (it has tons of hydrate buried).


Meanwhile, for just an idea of how inflammable natural gas found in the earth’s belly can be, check out the picture above. The glow that can be seen from miles around in the desert of Turkmenistan is natural gas afire.

Dubbed by locals the "Door to Hell" this seemingly natural wonder is actually man-made. Apparently, during the 1970s, when Turkmenistan was part of the USSR, Soviet geologists were sent into the desert to explore for natural gas, which can often be detected seeping through the sand. While drilling in one such spot, the geologists happened upon a large, cavernous space full of poisonous gas, which promptly swallowed their equipment. Hoping to burn off the excess gas, (not expecting the kind of reserve), the geologists set it ablaze--and 35 years later, it's still burning. Fuel wasted, plus emissions!

Serves as a reminder of how little we still know of our home planet even as we set out to find new energy sources.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Cities may bear the brunt

Does it matter where carbon dioxide is emitted? No, will be the global chorus. Every tussle on the climate change front has been on the premise that emissions from any place will affect the world at large. But a new study just published in Environmental Science and Technology by Stanford's Mark Jacobson adds a slight twist to this standard view.

Older research has found that local "domes" of high CO2 levels can often form over cities. What Jacobson found was that these domes can have a serious local impact: Among other things, they aggravate the effects of localized air pollutants like ozone and particulates, which cause respiratory diseases and the like. As a result, Jacobson estimates that local CO2 emissions cause anywhere from 300 to 1,000 premature deaths in the United States each year. And well yes, the problem's much worse in developing countries where emissions are on the rise.

In the US, the new evidence adds another hurdle to the cap-and-trade plans by suggesting that it matters where pollution happens. Cap-and-trade rests on the assumption that a ton of carbon has the same impact regardless of where it’s emitted. If Jacobson’s study is strengthened, this could also pit cities against their rural parts.

Of course, one aspect of this is that governments may take their emissions a bit more seriously, but globally will this mean a brake to cooperation? Not necessarily, as this does not in any way negate the overall effect of carbon emissions, but merely tags on the local consequences.

Do we need baseload?

Fossil fuel has been clinging on for survival using many claims, among them one being the need for steady baseload power. But now experts in the US are questioning this claim.

The electricity grid may not need “baseload” generation sources like coal and nuclear to backup the variability of supply from renewables. Renewables like wind, solar and biomass can provide enough energy to meet baseload capacity and future energy demands. Nuclear and coal plants are too expensive, they aver.

Baseload capacity was more apt in an economic sense to mean that you dispatch first, what would be the cheapest thing to do. Given that wind’s going to be the cheapest thing to do, that will take over. So, all it requires is proper management of the renewable mix. Most plants running all the time in your system are more an impediment as they’re very inflexible. (You can’t ramp up and ramp down a nuclear plant.)

A study published last week by the Maryland-based Institute for Energy and Environmental Research notes how North Carolina’s electricity needs can be met with a modest back-up based largely on solar and wind power, combined with efficiency, hydroelectric power, and other renewable sources like landfill gas.

Solar and wind energy are complementary in most places and can be used in tandem to make an efficient system contributing a major part of the power demand, said the study.

Drawing wind power from different areas — the coast, mountains, the sounds or the ocean — reduces variations in generation. When hydroelectric and other renewable sources are added, the gap to be filled is surprisingly small.

So, is there really any need for baseload power when looking at a change to renewables?

When stoves generate power!

Everyone knows black carbon is bad for human health and the planet’s too. And developing world is where black carbon is generated most. But two scientists have come up with an idea to turn this adversity into a boon. The Third World may well win the race to reduce emissions!

Burning of biomass is how more than a half of the population of Asia meet their energy demands. Indoor air pollution kills about 1.6 million women and children every year, according to WHO.

The smoky cooking fires could be replaced with low-cost stoves which convert rice husks or other biomass to a clean gas. A cheap and simple stove to do this job is ready. Fuelled by unwanted waste – the 150 million tonnes of husks discarded in rice-growing regions each year – the stove turns this free, low-energy fuel into a greenhouse-neutral gas that burns with a clear blue flame.

However, a key to the efficiency of the stove is a small electric fan that drives a stream of air through the smouldering rice husks. This produces the gas mixture which the stove then burns, just like a normal gas cooker. To drive the fan you need electricity, and where does on get that in villages that still are outside the grid?

An idea tested before in fridges but working in reverse was put to test. Turn the heat from the stove into sound waves that could in turn be used to produce enough electricity to run the fan. The stove became the electrical power source! This also means the stove can be used to light up these homes!

Read more about the amazing scientists here.

All the world needs is a few such simple, brilliant ideas and climate change and energy paucity could be things of the past, right? So, what's your big idea?

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

High-tech road

For tech-worshippers, here’s some exciting news. A prototype of a road that generates electricity when vehicles move and uses this to display signals, illuminate roads, etc is ready. The Solar Roadway is being touted as fresh air for the US economy by way of the jobs it will generate and manufacturing it will require!

With some quick calculations they’ve estimated that installing the Solar Roadway on every road in the US will employ 2.5 million people full time for 10 years. It will take just over 5 billion panels to cover all the US roads and each panel requires 6192 LED lights, a special glass covering and a circuit board.

Is this the best way to help economy recover? Funds and material are big requirements for the high-tech project. We pose the same question again – is it wise to pursue tech for the sake of tech? Can we afford to ignore the larger implications?

No looking down

Levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have risen to new highs in 2010 despite an economic slowdown in many nations. Carbon dioxide, measured at Norway's Zeppelin station on the Arctic Svalbard archipelago, rose to a median 393.71 parts per million of the atmosphere in the first two weeks of March from 393.17 in the same period of 2009, extending years of gains.

Recent entrants on the emission charts are China and India. In 1994 China and India accounted for 14 and 4 percent of the world’s emissions from fossil fuels and now they account for 22 and 5 percent, respectively -- both country’s emissions essentially doubling over that timeframe.

Meanwhile, we better do something and hold on to the ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland. A new study shows microbes (methanogens) living under ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland could be churning out large quantities of the greenhouse gas methane.

In recent years scientists have learned that liquid water lurks under much of Antarctica’s massive ice sheet, and so, they say, the potential microbial habitat in this watery world is huge. If the methane produced by the bacteria gets trapped beneath the ice and builds up over long periods of time — a possibility that is far from certain — it could mean that as ice sheets melt under warmer temperatures, they would release large amounts of heat-trapping methane gas.

Looks like we can not be sure which direction danger will spring from!

Monday, March 15, 2010

Tapping the higher self

Will money-based incentives help make people change lifestyle habits? Or simply appeal to their altruism? This is not so much about going spiritual and talking of the collective consciousness of the race as much as about behavioral science.

There have been innumerable failed attempts of rallying people to a cause, but a pertinent question is: have incentives worked? Not always.

So, if you are asked to reduce air travel, eat less of meat and dairy products and use paper responsibly, as part of your shared responsibility to the planet and other inhabitants, will you consider it?

One of the fundamental insights of behavioral economics is that people are not merely the rational, self-interested beings of Economics 101, but also emotional creatures, capable of altruism and influenced by the behavior of others. Is it better to appeal to the better nature in us, rather than pursue the ‘what’s in it for you’ approach? Formulating policies that tap into our social and genetic heritage of cooperation offers the best hope for success, feel experts.

Simple and inexpensive changes could reduce global warming emissions by one billion tons. A three-day symposium on Climate, Mind and Behavior, sponsored by NRDC and the Garrison Institute, a nonprofit organisation in the US, showed that simple and inexpensive changes by Americans could reduce emissions by one billion tons!

Some of its recommendations included flying once less every year -The average one-way commercial flight from London to Los Angeles produces more greenhouse gas emissions per passenger than the average British commuter produces yearly by car, train, and subway combined!

Consume less red meat and dairy: while the average pound of beef consumed in the United States is responsible for 20 pounds of emissions, a pound of chicken is responsible for less than two. Today’s average American consumes a prodigious quantity of red meat: the equivalent of one McDonald’s Angus Bacon and Cheese Burger per day. Replacing two days’ servings of red meat with poultry will reduce emissions by more than 70 MMtCO2e in 2020. Dairy cattle similarly produce vast quantities of greenhouse gas emissions. Dropping dairy two days per week in favor of plant-based foods is not only healthy but will save more than 35 MMtCO2e in 2020.

Consume paper and plastics more responsibly: Buying recycled paper, stemming the flow of unwanted catalogs by two-thirds, and reducing printer paper consumption by one-third (easily achieved by printing doublesided) will save more than 50 MMtCO2e in 2020. Dropping bottled water consumption by 50 percent in that same timeframe will save another 8 MMtCO2e.

So, are you willing to take on responsibility for the planet?

Just can't wish it away

A report released today by Australian scientists shows the continent experienced unprecedented warming over the past 50 years. Not only has Australia’s mean temperature increased by 0.7 degrees Celsius since 1960, the continent is experiencing sea level rise and higher sea surface temperatures.

The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Organization (CSIRO) and the Bureau of Meteorology put together the report, entitled “State of the Climate.” Using 100 years-worth of monitoring and research data, scientists found that Australia’s mean average temperature had increased by 0.7 degrees Celsius since 1960, with some parts of the continent warming by as much as 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius. Scientists also projected that if global warming continues unabated, Australia’s average temperature is set to rise by 0.6 to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2030.

In India’ southern state Kerala, an unprecedented heat wave has set off this March with temperature at an all-time high of 42 deg C!

Well, the extreme cold experienced in the northern hemisphere set tongues wagging on ‘global cooling’, but what about this latest news? The answer is what scientists have been trying to say: climate change will be seen not so much in soaring temperatures alone but in extremes of climate and rainfall. Of that, there is already enough evidence.

And you thought wind energy was carbon-free?

Here’s a thought to chew on: wind energy has a carbon footprint! Surprised? Don’t agree?

The experience of wind energy from the US where wind is generating more and more energy is proof. Consider that there must be a backup source to wind power at all times to ensure uninterrupted electricity. The more wind power put on line, the more backup power is needed. Often that backup energy comes from coal or natural gas.

In some places like the Pacific Northwest, hydroelectricity stands proxy. Here wind power is just offsetting another renewable energy source. But such instances are few.

In that region, more than 2200 megawatts of wind energy is connected to the various plants and flowing through the Northwest at times, which is enough electricity to light Seattle and Portland for one hour.

But as wind power continues to exceed expectations in the amount of electricity it is creating, the Northwest is running out of hydro reserves in order to back this power up. Which means the more power you generate the more fossil backed fuel power is required to match during backup!

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Explosive stuff


A team of scientists at MIT has discovered a new way to generate power with carbon nanotubes. In a paper titled "Chemically driven carbon-nanotube-guided thermopower waves" published in Nature Materials, they describe how they made "thermopower waves" flow through the nanotubes, generating a significant amount of power relative to the size of the nanotubes.

In the new experiments, each of these electrically and thermally conductive nanotubes was coated with a layer of a reactive fuel that can produce heat by decomposing. This fuel was then ignited at one end of the nanotube using either a laser beam or a high-voltage spark, and the result was a fast-moving thermal wave traveling along the length of the carbon nanotube like a flame speeding along the length of a lit fuse.

Heat from the fuel goes into the nanotube, where it travels thousands of times faster than in the fuel itself. As the heat feeds back to the fuel coating, a thermal wave is created that is guided along the nanotube. With a temperature of 3,000 kelvins, this ring of heat speeds along the tube 10,000 times faster than the normal spread of this chemical reaction. The heating produced by that combustion, it turns out, also pushes electrons along the tube, creating a substantial electrical current.

What's surprising about this is that the amount of power released is much higher than what standard thermoelectric calculations predict. Something is going on with carbon nanotubes when they are heated up that isn't happening on the same scale with other semi-conductors. But if the fuel is toxic and the nanotubes are hard to re-coat, do we want this on a large scale?

Shut down time

New research out of Kuwait, using a new method of calculating the crude oil production potential of 47 of the world’s largest oil producing countries, has found that peak oil will come much sooner than expected… 2014!

The scientists’ new method for evaluating world peak oil timing stems from the well-tested, popular and generally accurate Hubbert method — which was the first model to accurately predict when oil supply would peak from United States oil fields in the 1970’s. However, the Hubbert model has been scrutinized as not accurately depicting individual, widely-varying, country-specific items such as changing technology and politics.

To address these criticisms, the researchers modified the Hubbert model to calculate oil production trends that also include individual variations from country to country, and then applied it to the 47 largest oil producing countries in the world.

Not only did the researchers find that world crude oil production would peak in 2014, they discovered that the world is already depleting its oil reserves at a rate of 2.1% per year.

The planet, or rather the human race, seems like it is hurtling towards catastrophe of one form or the other. The deniers may well close their eyes and enjoy the present moment, but 2014 is too close for comfort!

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Whose emissions?

Up to one third of China's emissions come from manufacturing goods destined for consumption abroad being most prominent. Now, a new study by scientists at the Carnegie Institution reaffirms that. The researchers studied trade flows of 57 industrial sectors, from 113 countries and regions and were able to determine the net emissions imported and exported for specific countries.

They found that for most European countries, over one third of emissions linked to goods and services consumed domestically were emitted in another country. In Switzerland, often held up for it's comparatively low per capita carbon emissions, these outsourced emissions actually were higher than domestic emissions. The United States turns out to outsource a total of 11% of consumption-based emissions, mostly to developing nations.

So when a study says that global carbon emissions are rising, the source of those emissions is shifting towards Asia, what does that mean?

In 1992 the world’s major emitters of CO2 were, in order of emissions: the United States, China, Russia, Japan and India. Since 2008, estimates suggest that India passed Japan in 2002, China became the largest emitter in 2006, and India is poised to pass Russia soon.

Is that reason to cap emissions in developing nations or penalize the nation benefiting? Benefits? Well, both are, actually. One by consumption, and the other by production linked growth. So then how does one apportion the emissions?

LEDs win top grades

Light-emitting diode (LED) streetlights perform best overall in terms of energy efficiency, lifetime, environmental impact and costs, according to the University of Pittsburgh. The team compared the lifecycle – from extraction of raw materials through fabrication and assembly to electricity consumption during use and finally disposal – of LEDs, high-pressure sodium (HPS) and metal halide lamps and the gas-based induction bulb.

LEDs though the most expensive options for streetlighting, consume only half the electricity of HPS or metal halide installations, last up to five times longer and produce more light. The analysis concurs with critics of LEDs that they do need considerable energy to produce and can be difficult to recycle, but they contain no mercury and fewer toxins such as iodine and lead.

The greatest impact of LEDs, however, comes when electricity consumption during use is considered – which is much more significant than that required for production. LEDs require much less energy than HPS or metal halide lamps.

The potential savings could be huge. The city of Pittsburgh, for example, could save $1 million a year in energy costs and $700,000 in maintenance by replacing HPS lamps with LEDs. That’s no small amount.

Thursday, March 4, 2010

India to tap the tides

Atlantis Resources, a British firm, has inked a deal with the western state of Gujarat, under which the privately owned company will establish the feasibility of developing tidal power projects capable of generating more than 100 megawatts of power — enough to supply about 40,000 households.

The Gulf of Kutch and the Gulf of Khambhat in the Arabian Sea will be two sites - renowned for extreme daily tides – to be studied.

Tidal power is the only form of energy which derives directly from the relative motions of the Earth–Moon system, and to a lesser extent from the Earth–Sun system. The tidal forces produced by the Moon and Sun, in combination with Earth's rotation, are responsible for the generation of the tides.

The potential for power generation by an individual tidal turbine can be greater than that of similarly rated wind energy turbine. With the higher density of water, being 800 times the density of air, means that a single generator can provide significant power at low tidal flow velocities. Tidal power plants have been in operation since 1960s.

India has more than 4,500 miles of coastline and yet lacks a single tidal power project. The move to explore the untapped resource comes ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, an event where India will strive to demonstrate that it is doing its utmost to limit emissions while refusing to cap economic growth.

India, which imports 70 per cent of its oil and relies on modest coal reserves to generate most of its electricity, is on course to become the third-largest user of energy by 2030, behind the US and China.

Atlantis’s backers include Morgan Stanley and Statkraft, the Norweigan state utility.

The company is also hoping to establish a £400 million project to build one of the world’s biggest tidal power plants in the Pentland Firth, off the Scottish coast.

Of course one needs sturdy systems and also transport the energy from the sea to the site. But given that tides are generally well predicted, and regularly, a pretty reliable source of renewable energy. (Hey, but did you know the tides have been gradually slowing the earth's rotation speed?!Just like earthquakes have a way of making your days longer or shorter according to the way the mass is redistributed!)

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Hey, presto!

It has been in the news, rubbing shoulders with Sachin Tendulkar’s two tons and controversial Twitterspeak! The magic energy box that generates power for a few thousand homes from a small fuel cell box.

Several major companies, including Google, eBay, and Walmart, have already bought Bloom Energy's technology, and in the few months these fuel cells have been in operation, they've generated 11 million kilowatt hours of electricity (about enough to power 1,000 homes for a year).

The technical details of it is still unknown besides the fact that this is a kind of fuel cell. According to Bloom, the technology is based on planar solid oxide fuel cells that Sridhar developed as a professor at the University of Arizona. A type of solid-oxide fuel cell (SOFC), which unlike hydrogen fuel cells, can operate at high temperatures (typically well over 600 ºC) and can run on a variety of fuels, these are more efficient than conventional turbines for generating electricity. Cost and reliability problems associated with these have been tackled by the company.

Bloom sells 100-kilowatt modules. They're made of small, flat 25-watt fuel cells that can be stacked together. A complete 100-kilowatt module, with multiple stacks and equipment for converting DC power from the stacks into AC power to be used in buildings, is about the size of a parking space. The company says each module can power a small supermarket.

A 400-kilowatt system powers a building at Google that contains an experimental data center.

The company's founder and CEO, KR Sridhar, says the technology--when it's powered by natural gas--can cut carbon dioxide emissions in half compared to the emissions produced conventional power sources, on average..

The long-term goal is to use the technology as both a way to generate electricity and to store it. It's possible to run the fuel cells in reverse, pumping in electricity to generate fuel. The system could then be used to store solar power generated during the day as a fuel for use at night. More work is required for this.

Definitely things looked poised for renewable power. Time to invest more there, right?

Coal tax

The Indian government has proposed a coal tax aimed at creating a fund for promoting clean energy. Indian Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said a clean energy tax of $1 per metric ton would be applied to domestic and imported coal. The minister also proposed tax incentives to boost investment in solar, wind and geothermal power generation.

The National Clean Energy Fund is being created to fund research and innovative projects in clean energy technologies. Mukherjee did not specify a target for the fund but experts say the tax could raise about $543 million.

Mukherjee, in his annual budget speech to Parliament in New Delhi Friday, noted that coal is the "mainstay of India's energy sector" and 75 percent of the country's power generation is coal-based.

The country's demand for coal in 2008-09 reached about 550 million tons. While India achieved 5.4 percent growth in production in the last 35 years, production needs to increase to more than 7 percent. India's coal demand is expected to exceed 2 billion tons by 2031.

To implement the government's ambitious National Solar Mission launched in January, Mukherjee proposed to slash customs and excise duties as well as service taxes on a range of solar-related projects. This includes a concessional import tax rate of 5 percent on machinery and equipment needed to set up solar power plants.

Solar power in India costs about 2 1/2 times more than power from coal.

Is the coal cess enough or is it too much? Depends on how you view it. Write in to us. Also, do you think the solar incentive is encouraging enough?