Monday, November 26, 2012

Jobs galore in renewable sector


India’s renewable energy sector create up to 2.4 million jobs by 2020, according to a report jointly commissioned by environmental group Greenpeace, the Global Wind Energy Council and the European Renewable Energy Council. To date, the sector employs 200,000 people, but this could jump 14 times by 2030 with the right policies and investments in place, stated India Energy [R]evolution report.
By 2050, about 92 percent of India’s energy infrastructure will be based on renewable energy sources. Renewables such as wind, solar thermal energy and photovoltaic, will comprise 74 percent of electricity generation.
The study projected that the country will experience immediate market development, with high annual growth rates achieving renewable electricity share of 32 percent already by 2020 and 62 percent by 2030. Moreover, the installed capacity of renewable energy will reach 548 gigawatts in 2030 and 1,356 by 2050.
Meanwhile, the radical shift to renewable energy and energy efficiency on a long-term basis will deliver savings of about one-fourth of the country’s energy spending. Given that renewables have no fuel costs, India could save as much as 285 trillion Indian rupees ($ 5,500 billion) to 7.1 trillion Indian rupees ($ 138 billion) per year under the Energy [R]evolution scenario.
The total average yearly investment in fossil fuels will be offset by the growth of renewable energy, stated the report. Thus, India would shift roughly 97 percent of the overall investments in renewables along with cogeneration, of which the average renewable energy investments annually will reach 6.1 trillion India rupees ($ 117 billion) between 2011 and 2050.
“Future of India’s growth lies with massive expansion and deployment of renewable energy technologies through key policy reforms and significant investments, without putting any negative impact on its pristine forest and dependent marginalized communities,” stressed Greenpeace.
Renewable energy development will also help India reduce its carbon emissions, which is now crucial in the face of climate change. The report stated that the country will decrease its emissions from 1.7 million tons in 2009 to 426 million tons in 2050. Additionally, annual per capita emissions will drop from 1.4 ton per capita to 0.3 per capita. By 2050, India’s carbon emissions will be 72 percent of 1990 levels, noted the report.
The India Energy [R]evolution report, which focuses on the socio-economic impacts of renewable and proposes the pathway to ensure India’s energy security in the long run, “comes at a critical time when the country is facing massive power shortage due to the inability of fossil fuels to meet its economic aspirations,” said Greenpeace.

Friday, November 23, 2012

Green cannibal algae rings hope

A carnivorous island may still be a figment of imagination from a recent Ang Lee film but research has just found that there are plants that eat their own kind. Photosynthesis we know is the way plants manufacture their quota of energy. Some plants do this by eating other plants! Members of the biological research team at Bielefeld University have made a groundbreaking discovery that one plant has another way of doing this. They have confirmed for the first time that a plant, the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, not only engages in photosynthesis, but also has an alternative source of energy: it can draw it from other plants. This finding could also have a major impact on the future of bioenergy.

Until now, it was believed that only worms, bacteria, and fungi could digest vegetable cellulose and use it as a source of carbon for their growth and survival. Plants, in contrast, engage in the photosynthesis of carbon dioxide, water, and light. In a series of experiments, the team cultivated the microscopically small green alga species Chlamydomonas reinhardtii in a low carbon dioxide environment and observed that when faced with such a shortage, these single-cell plants can draw energy from neighbouring vegetable cellulose instead.

The alga secretes enzymes (so-called cellulose enzymes) that 'digest' the cellulose, breaking it down into smaller sugar components. These are then transported into the cells and transformed into a source of energy: the alga can continue to grow.

'This is the first time that such a behaviour has been confirmed in a vegetable organism', says Professor Kruse. 'That algae can digest cellulose contradicts every previous textbook. To a certain extent, what we are seeing is plants eating plants'. Currently, the scientists are studying whether this mechanism can also be found in other types of alga.

This property of algae could also be of interest for bioenergy production. Breaking down vegetable cellulose biologically is one of the most important tasks in this field. Although vast quantities of waste containing cellulose are available from, for example, field crops, it cannot be transformed into biofuels in this form. Cellulose enzymes first have to break down the material and process it. At present, the necessary cellulose enzymes are extracted from fungi that, in turn, require organic material in order to grow. If, in future, cellulose enzymes can be obtained from algae, there would be no more need for the organic material to feed the fungi. Just when it seems like everything that is to be disocvered has been, nature throws another surprise. And mankind grabs each discovery to turn it for its own benefit. The game goes on... 

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

UK serious about energy efficiency

UK government has launched a new strategy entitled the ‘Energy Efficiency Strategy’ that aims to save the equivalent of 22 power stations-worth of energy by 2020. Published by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), the Strategy “is aimed at changing the way energy is used in sectors such as housing, transport and manufacturing over the coming decades.”

The Strategy also includes immediate actions that the government hopes will help “kick start a revolution in UK energy efficiency.” Some aspects of the strategy include: £39 million to fund five centres examining business and household energy demand. The five End Use Energy Demand Centres, funded by the Research Councils UK and project partners and led by leading universities, will look at what drives energy demand and how to change future behaviour. 
An energy efficiency labelling trial with John Lewis. DECC and John Lewis will introduce a product-labelling trial next year that shows the lifetime running costs of household appliances. A similar trial in Norway showed that this information led to consumers purchasing goods that are more energy efficient.
A drive on financing energy efficiency for business and the public sector. As well as a guide to help public sector organisations cut their energy use, the government will fund a nationwide rollout of RE:FIT, the Mayor of London’s award winning programme to improve public sector energy efficiency. The government is also working with ENWORKS in the North West to understand how best to finance and upgrade to more energy-efficient equipment in commercial and manufacturing businesses.

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Super solar steam

Can water be boiled in a totally new way? Yes, and in the process provide much needed energy to so many industrial processes and sanitation!

Rice University scientists have unveiled a revolutionary new technology that uses nanoparticles to convert solar energy directly into steam. The new "solar steam" method from Rice's Laboratory for Nanophotonics (LANP) is so effective it can even produce steam from icy cold water.

The technology has an overall energy efficiency of 24 percent. Photovoltaic solar panels, by comparison, typically have an overall energy efficiency around 15 percent. However, the inventors of solar steam said they expect the first uses of the new technology will not be for electricity generation but rather for sanitation and water purification in developing countries.

The efficiency of solar steam is due to the light-capturing nanoparticles that convert sunlight into heat. When submerged in water and exposed to sunlight, the particles heat up so quickly they instantly vaporize water and create steam. 

A solar steam demonstration showed a test tube of water containing light-activated nanoparticles submerged into a bath of ice water. Using a lens to concentrate sunlight onto the near-freezing mixture in the tube, the scientist showed she could create steam from nearly frozen water.
Steam is one of the world's most-used industrial fluids. About 90 percent of electricity is produced from steam, and steam is also used to sterilize medical waste and surgical instruments, to prepare food and to purify water.

People in developing countries will be among the first to see the benefits of solar steam. Rice engineering undergraduates have already created a solar steam-powered autoclave that's capable of sterilizing medical and dental instruments at clinics that lack electricity.

"Solar steam is remarkable because of its efficiency," said Neumann, the lead co-author on the paper. "It does not require acres of mirrors or solar panels. In fact, the footprint can be very small. For example, the light window in our demonstration autoclave was just a few square centimeters."

Another potential use could be in powering hybrid air-conditioning and heating systems that run off of sunlight during the day and electricity at night. Halas, Neumann and colleagues have also conducted distillation experiments and found that solar steam is about two-and-a-half times more efficient than existing distillation columns.

As we go on, wonder what exciting discoveries remain to unfold! 

Phone audits!

Could smartphones be used in energy 'audits', designed to help householders adopt energy conservation measures (ECMs) to reduce emissions, conserve resources and reduce operating costs? Yes.

Traditionally, energy audits are undertaken by trained staff who travel from house to house, burning lots of petrol on the way. Their audits tend to focus on heating and cooling, and ignore other energy-thirsty devices, such as appliances. The vast majority of homes will also never have such an audit.

If suitable software could be created, householders could perform their own with their smartphones. Much of the technology needed already exists: phone sensors can take pictures for reports, act as crude light meters or confirm a variety of measurements; GPS data is already available for a wide range of applications. Even existing technology could analyze users' appliances, provide the energy-efficiency rankings of similar homes, and give breakdowns of current energy use.
An intuitive tool can be developed with which an untrained user would be able to choose their house type, energy source and payment method, choose an ECM and input data as instructed. For example, a user might provide the type and number of light fittings in their home, then receive suggestions for energy-saving replacements in real time; as technology developed, the range of tasks that could be performed by smartphone would grow.

A smartphone could also 'push' users to make changes when conditions are right, for example, when a rebate or cheaper tariff was available. Unlike the traditional 'one-off' audit, this system 'has the potential to keep users actively involved and constantly engaged with the energy efficiency of their homes'.

The biggest advantage of the smartphone-based energy auditing system is the high potential for accelerated energy and emissions savings. In their Southern Ontario case-study area alone, the researchers estimated that it would take auditors 55 years to cover all 157,000 dwellings in the current fashion. With smartphone technology, all the homes could, in theory, be audited simultaneously, cumulative carbon-dioxide savings from smartphones would surpass those from traditional audits in 13 to 17 years, even with conservative assumptions.

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Of things to come...

Some glaciers of the Himalayas will continue shrinking for many years to come, despite anything! This forecast by Brigham Young University geology professor Summer Rupper comes after her research on Bhutan.

Published in Geophysical Research Letters, Rupper's most conservative findings indicate that even if climate remained steady, almost 10 percent of Bhutan's glaciers would vanish within the next few decades. What's more, the amount of melt water coming off these glaciers could drop by 30 percent.

Rupper says increasing temperatures are just one culprit behind glacier retreat. A number of climate factors such as wind, humidity, precipitation and evaporation can affect how glaciers behave. With some Bhutanese glaciers as long as 13 miles, an imbalance in any of these areas can take them decades to completely respond.

Snowfall rates in Bhutan would need to almost double to avoid glacier retreat, but it's not a likely scenario because warmer temperatures lead to rainfall instead of snow. If glaciers continue to lose more water than they gain, the combination of more rain and more glacial melt will increase the probability of flooding -- which can be devastating to neighboring villages.

"Much of the world's population is just downstream of the Himalayas," Rupper points out. "A lot of culture and history could be lost, not just for Bhutan but for neighboring nations facing the same risks." To illustrate the likelihood of such an outcome, Rupper took her research one moderate step further. Her results show if temperatures were to rise just 1 degree Celsius, the Bhutanese glaciers would shrink by 25 percent and the annual melt water would drop by as much as 65 percent

Friday, November 16, 2012

US could beat Saudi to top oil position!

The latest IEA report predicts that a relatively new technology for extracting oil from shale rock could make the United States the world’s leading oil producer within a decade, beating the current leader, Saudi Arabia. The International Energy Agency estimates that US production could reach 11.1 million barrels per day by 2020, almost entirely because of increases in the production of shale oil, which is extracted using the same horizontal drilling and fracking techniques that have flooded the U.S. with cheap natural gas.

As of the end of 2011, production had already increased to 8.1 million barrels per day, almost entirely because of shale oil. Production from two major shale resources in the U.S.—the Bakken formation in North Dakota and Montana and the Eagle Ford shale in Texas, now total about 900,000 barrels per day. In comparison, Saudi Arabia is expected to produce 10.6 million barrels per day in 2020. The shale oil resource, however, is limited. The IEA expects production to start gradually declining by the mid-2020s, at which time Saudi Arabia will reclaim the top spot.

Shale oil is creating a surge in U.S. oil production in part because it’s easy to find, says David
Houseknecht, a scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey. The oil is spread over large areas, compared to the relatively small pockets of more conventional oil deposits in the United States.

Just how much shale oil can be produced—and how fast—depends heavily on two factors: the price of oil, and how easy it is to overcome possible local objections to oil fracking, says Richard Sears, a former executive at Royal Dutch Shell and a visiting scientist at MIT.

Oil shale costs significantly more to produce than oil in Saudi Arabia and many other parts of the world, so for oil companies to go after this resource, oil prices need to stay relatively high. Concerns that fracking will contaminate drinking water have led to objections in some areas, as have concerns that shale oil requires far more drilling wells than conventional oil production.

The IEA does conclude that the United States will nearly be energy self-sufficient by 2035, but that’s after offsetting oil imports with exports of coal and natural gas. To be truly energy independent, the United States would have to invest in technology for converting natural gas and coal into the liquid fuels needed for transportation, or have other technical breakthroughs, such as improved batteries or biofuels, that would quickly reduce the demand for oil.

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Carbon tax or Sin tax?

The National Electricity Policy-2005 had promised: Access to Electricity - Available for all households in next five years; Availability of Power - Demand to be fully met by 2012. Energy and peaking shortages to be overcome and adequate spinning reserve to be available; Supply of Reliable and Quality Power of specified standards in an efficient manner and at reasonable rates; Per capita availability of electricity to be increased to over 1000 units by 2012; Minimum lifeline consumption of 1 unit/household/day as a merit good* by year 2012. The 2011 Census shows 9 crore households lack access to electricity!
There is not much hope that above promises can be met even in the 12th five year plan unless certain urgent and strong measures are taken under the provisions of the Energy Conservation Act, 2001, the Electricity Act, 2003 and other relevant Acts & Policies.

In economic parlance, a demerit good is a good or
service
whose consumption is considered unhealthy, degrading, or otherwise socially undesirable due to the perceived negative effects on the consumers themselves. It is over-consumed if left to market forces. Examples include tobacco, alcoholic beverages, recreational drugs, etc. Because of the nature of these goods, governments often levy taxes on these goods (specifically, sin taxes), in some cases regulating or banning consumption or advertisement of these goods.
Some energy experts have an interesting thought process: Considering the fact that 34 % of the households in India are still living without electricity, should over consumption/inefficient use/abuse of electricity be considered as 'Demerit Good' and be taxed heavily as 'Sin Tax' ?! What do you think??

Shades of grey light

Just when you have flushed out the last incandescent at home, researchers in Japan have modified the blackbody radiation of an incandescent bulb, demonstrating the possibility of 95% electric power to visible-light conversion and paving the way for luminous efficiencies beyond 400 lm/W.

Because visible radiation is typically 10% of the output from an incandescent bulb, with the remaining 90% being infrared (IR) radiation, an emitter should be designed with high visible emissivity and low IR emissivity. Using Kirchhoff's law, modeling shows that a material with high reflectance in the IR wavelength region and low reflectance in the visible region displays a reverse trend in emissivity. By imposing a step-function-like reflectivity onto the surface of the heating material, IR radiation is reduced. The researchers fabricated such a thin-film structure (emitter) by co-sputtering 50 nm thick chromium metal and 50 nm thick chromium oxide onto a copper substrate.

The problem with incandescents was that only 2–5% of total input electrical power is converted to visible light, translating to low luminous efficiencies of 15–20 lm/W. Now that seems like being tackled. So is it worth pursuing this line? Why?

Unlike LEDs, incandescent lamps require no external regulating equipment, are inexpensive to produce, and work on either alternating or direct current over a wide range of applied voltage values. So perhaps we must take another look.

Almost 200 years have passed since the creation of the first incandescent light; however, there is ample scope for new discoveries and new applications in incandescence. Comes down again to, no black and whites only greys in life!

Monday, November 5, 2012

Spinning out of control

It is no more about how to check climate change. No more about 2 and 3 and 4 degrees. The scenario has shifted to how we plan for a warmer world. A much warmer world! This is because it is inevitable. We have crossed the tipping point.

Going by a latest study, it will now be almost impossible to keep the increase in global average temperatures up to 2100 within the 2C target that scientists believe might avert dangerous and unpredictable climate change.
The study by the accountancy giant PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) sees the world as destined for dangerous climate change this century – with global temperatures possibly rising by as much as 6C – because of the failure of governments to find alternatives to fossil fuels!

An analysis of how fast the major world economies are reducing their emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels suggests that it may already be too late to stay within the 2C target of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, it found. To keep within the 2C target, the global economy would have to reach a “decarbonisation” rate of at least 5.1 per cent a year for the next 39 years. This has not happened since records began at the end of the Second World War, according to Leo Johnson, a PwC partner in sustainability and climate change.

Even doubling our current rate of decarbonisation would still lead to emissions consistent with 6C of warming by the end of the century.

This could well end up as another reason why not to do anything at all!

Friday, November 2, 2012

Learning from Sandy

Sandy is the power of Nature over man, man in all his technological might. But more important Sandy shows human failure: our failure to listen to those who understand far better than most of us do the impact of human behavior on the atmosphere, our climate system, and the ecosystems that surround us.
While it is true that no singular weather event can be directly linked to human-caused global warming, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has reported with increasing confidence that weather extremes will become more frequent, more widespread, and more intense with rising greenhouse gas emissions. The IPCC’s assessments have led to many prominent people term global warming as this century’s greatest threat.
Sandy reveals our refusal to take responsibility for our actions and our skepticism that real change (of natural systems as well as of our own behavior) is possible, as Worldwatch Institute. (Read the excerpts from the institute's note.)
The storm devastated the Caribbean before heading up the East Coast of the United States, then turned inland and finally crawled all the way up to Canada, reminding us that climate change is a shared threat that knows no national boundaries. It is well accepted now that in order to prevent a warming of more than 2 degrees Celsius (considered the absolute maximum of temperature increase without major disruptions to the climate system and many ecosystems), human-caused greenhouse gas emissions need to peak well before 2020, possibly 2015. There is no action towards this.
Sandy illustrates what we cannot tire of emphasizing: if we don’t want our climate system to spin out of control entirely, to the point of no return, then efforts to change must be made in all sectors and on all levels of human activity and interaction. From the individual to the local, from states and provinces to nations, from the regional to the global: we need change—political, technical, and behavioral change—wherever it can be achieved, as quickly as it can be achieved.
Sandy also whos how those communities that have begun to prepare for higher sea levels and stronger storms are faring better than those that didn’t believe this would be necessary. And despite our rapid nearing of the 2°C threshold, we should not forget how much worse the impacts of climate change might already be without the many actions that humans have taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This can—and should—make us believe that, after all, change is possible.