EES PAN Alternative and Renewable Energy

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"The greatest obstacle to implementing a renewable U.S. energy system is not technology or money, however. It is the lack of public awareness that solar [or other renewable] power is a practical alternative—and one that can fuel transportation as well. Forward-looking thinkers should try to inspire U.S. citizens, and their political and scientific leaders, about solar [and other renewable] power’s incredible potential. Once Americans realize that potential, we believe the desire for energy self-sufficiency and the need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions will prompt them to adopt a national solar [renewable] plan."

- Scientific American. 8 Jan 2008 (see 'Grand Solar Plan' below)

Source: http://www.sciam.com/media/inline/DF70132A-BE4C-22CF-EB36B17E9531756C_3.jpg

Global and US Wind resources

As shown on 'The Pickens Plan' website.

Renewable Energy

In order for energy to be 'renewable', it by definition has to come from a (virtually) never-ending, though not limitless/infinite source. Generally, most renewable energy is 'solar', in that it is initially derived from the sun. The sun creates the light and heat we associate with 'solar energy', but also the wind which creates wind and wave power, the light that allows plants to grow to produce bio-fuels, and weather which helps drive rain for hydroelectric power. On the other side of the 'celestial coin', the moon's gravitational force drives tidal power.

The following types of energy (and the ways to convert them to 'power') are considered to be renewable:

  • Solar photovoltaic - light to electricity
  • Solar thermal - turning light to heat for water/space heating, or to drive a turbine to produce electricity
  • Hydroelectric - dams on rivers, tidal power, wave power - again, using water to drive a turbine to produce electricity
  • Wind - to drive a turbine to produce electricity
  • Biomass/fuels: at least those grown without massive fossil fuel inputs, and those that do not destroy the water & topsoil to a degree that they cannot be grown for long or deforest to such an extent as to exacerbate climate change. These are used as a liquid fuel along the lines of fossil fuels, or can be burned in power generation to create steam to turn a turbine.
  • Geothermal - via the production / extraction of steam to turn a turbine. Obviously, this is very specific to a particular regions geology. More importantly, this also includes the potential for space-heating/cooling via natural temperature exchange using ground-source heat-pumps.

Fossil fuels (oil, gas and coal) are indeed stored solar energy in that biological matter that got their energy from the sun initially were buried under ground and over hundreds of millions of years became fossilised, trapping the carbon chains that we use. That does NOT make them 'renewable' in any sort of useful timescale.

‘Alternative’ Energy

Defining 'alternative' energy is a bit of a mug's game. One would suppose it includes anything that is out of the norm of our current energy mix, but that doesn't mean an awful lot. Technically we use all sorts of energy available to us (fossil fuels, renewables, nuclear, etc), but to greater and lesser degrees. For ease of definition, 'alternative' will include anything other than conventional fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal) and renewables as defined above.

So generally, that will include:

  • Nuclear fission and fusion - even though the latter doesn't exist yet, and won't for many years to come if ever
  • Unconventional fossil fuels - Canadian tar sands, US oil shales, Venezuelan heavy crudes
  • Biomass - again, a tough one to discuss. There is a whole section on biofuels below. Given the HUGE amount of spin and obfuscation of objective examinations of them, it is worth reading some of the discussion on them below.
  • Hydrogen: hydrogen is not an energy source in and of itself, but more accurately understood as a form of storage in a fuel-cell. Where the hydrogen comes from is the key to determine if it can ever be a ‘renewable’ fuel / battery, or just an inefficient way to use existing fossil fuels (as its current proponents suggest)

The topics covered below are:

Supply-side:

  1. Solar
  2. Wind
  3. Biofuels / Biomass
  4. Hydrogen
  5. Nuclear
  6. Geothermal
  7. Energy Storage

Demand-side:

  1. Conservation and Recycling
  2. Agriculture
  3. Transport - General, Automotive, Rail, Air, Marine

Resources for each topic are at the bottom of the page.

Intermittency and Energy Storage

A criticism often used to dismiss renewable energy is that it's unreliable. 'What happens when the sun doesn't shine, or the wind doesn't blow, or the tides aren't coming in / going out, or there are no waves' and so forth. Perhaps the greatest challenge with most renewables (especially wind, solar, tidal, wave, etc) is how to match the times of demand with the availability of supply.

A mistake many people make when looking at renewable sources of power is that they often look at each one in isolation. Critics will say, 'the wind doesn't always blow'. This is true. The sun doesn't always shine (even in the desert). This is true. The tide isn't always going in or out. True. There aren't always waves. True. The rivers are always flowing. Sort of true. Whilst any one of those statements is true, they can be misleading. By having a diverse portfolio of renewables connected by good electrical transmission technology, modal or regional intermittency issues can be balanced. And of course, this ignores the geothermal resource which is quite steady. An ideal solution to intermittency problem is the ability to store energy.

Currently, storage technologies are not particularly efficient, they are very costly, and in some cases quite resource intense (advanced battery materials). However, battery technology has indeed made significant advances in the last twenty years, largely driven by demand from the consumer electronics industry.

It should also be noted that various other types of energy storage are already available, such as Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES). For solar thermal power, it is possible to use molten salt to store the heat generated that can be released when needed, thereby balancing supply. These may surpass battery storage given their scalability and cost advantages.

    SCIAM - Solar Energy Storage

    Source: http://www.sciam.com/media/inline/DF70132A-BE4C-22CF-EB36B17E9531756C_7.jpg

    Powering the World

    Renewable energy can power the world, though it's certainly no easy task. One must consider the land-area requirements, the energy input requirements to build the power generation technologies (be they photovoltaic or solar thermal, wind turbines, micro-hydro, etc), the infrastructure to transport the energy to where it's needed, the embedded systems energy of devices that currently run on fossil fuels that would be transitioned to electric power (primarily cars, trucks, some trains, ships), the reliability of the power and of course, the cost.

    But from a land-use perspective, one must consider how much land is already used for coal mines, oil fields and refineries, power plants, nuclear waste facilities, and so forth. Many of these facilities are measured in square kilometres - some quite a few square kilometres - and there are many, many hundreds of them in the world. Certainly food for thought! Interestingly, according to Scientific American (see below), the land area required to generate 1GW (1 billion watts) of electricity from solar photovoltaics in the US Southwest is less than for a comparable coal plant when factoring in the area used for coal mining. Another key thing to consider is whether land already in use for other things can be used for solar power. The answer is 'yes': roof-tops (homes and businesses), parking lots and even roads.

    The latter - cost - is always a subject of debate. Scientific American's estimate are that subsidies of $420 billion would be needed to implement their 'Grand Solar Plan' by 2050. Whilst this is a large sum of money, they note that the annual cost would be less than the current U.S. Farm Price Support programme, and less than the tax subsidies provided over the last 35 years to build the high-speed telecommunications network. It is also signficantly less than the cost of the Iraq war, or one year's U.S. military budget.

    However it is useful to take a step back from discussions around cents per kilowatt-hour of solar vs. coal vs. hydro vs. nuclear vs. wind, and just consider what is gained by transitioning a society, or the world, to renewable energy (including transport). Such a transition would cover the lion's share of the effort needed to address the issue of Climate Change / Global Warming, Peak Oil / Gas / Coal / Uranium, local pollution and associated health problems, and of course many geopolitical issues (http://www.daukpan.org.uk/node/10 ).

    What are the costs of those issues in comparison to the incremental costs of renewable energy?

    Al Gore's made a speech on 17 July 2008 calling for the US to transition to 100% renewable electricity production in a decade (see below). This is perhaps the most ambitious plan put forth by a public figure (for more information, see http://www.wecansolveit.org/ ).

     

    Whether or not this is possible in this time frame will certainly be a subject of debate. A preliminary analysis and discussion has started at TheOilDrum.com.

    Solar

    Solar Land Area requirements to power the globe using PV (photovoltaics)

       

      Area of the Sahara needed to power the world or the EU

      Area of the Sahara desert needed to generate electricity for the World or the EU-25 using CSP (Concentrated Solar Power). Taken from TREC (see below). Obviously, building such ‘mega-plants’ is not the most practical solution due to transmission distances, ‘eggs in one basket’ concerns, and EROEI

         




        A few good primers on CSP (concentrated solar power), including debates around the pros and cons, can be found here and here.

        CSP Heliostat

         

        CSP - Heliostat (TheOilDrum.com)

        Scientific American published a report in January 2008 entitled 'A Solar Grand Plan: By 2050 solar power could end U.S. dependence on foreign oil and slash greenhouse gas emissions'. This short outline is well-worth a read. One should consider, however, that a 'cocktail' of various renewables - including hydro, wind, wave, tidal, geothermal, biogasification of waste, and any others available - could be more effective in terms of balancing demand, diversifying supplies and reducing transport distances. The article does mention this in passing, but perhaps underestimates the contribution that other renewables can make.

         

        Wind

        Other than hydro-electric power, wind is probably the most advanced of the industrial renewable energy supplies. It is becoming an integral part of the energy generation mix in Europe, and in the US and China (the latter planning to become the single biggest wind power market in the next 5-10 years). Like solar, the potential for wind power is enormous, especially in off-shore locations (like the UK) and in the Midwest plains of the US.

        Germany is currently the largest wind market in the world, with over 20 GW of installed capacity (roughly the same as 20 coal or nuclear power plants). The actual energy generated from this varies enormously depending on the wind on any given day, but it's significant enough to alter natural gas prices significantly. It affects gas more than coal prices because wind normally displaces gas electricity production as gas turbines can be turned on and off more easily than a coal or nuclear station. For every megawatt-hour of wind produced, that much gas is displaced. In markets with a lot of installed wind power, this is signficant.

        Though Germany is the largest wind market, its potential wind resource is nowhere near that of the US. As the American Wind Energy Association notes, North Dakota has a greater wind resource than all of Germany (though that makes sense given the size of North Dakota!). Much like solar, much of the US's energy needs could be met with wind power. Developing this resource in conjunction with solar (and geothermal, wave, tidal and river hydro power) helps address the issue of intermittency of power.

        Some common criticisms of the wind farms, not just from the NIMBY (not-in-my-back-yard) or BANANA (build-absolutely-nothing-anywhere-near-anyone) crowds, but from environmentalists often include:

        1. The turbines may kill birds - indeed, some birds do get killed by flying in to the towers or hit by the rotating blades. Of course, one could ask how many birds die because of the smoke stacks in conventional powers plants, or from the pollution they spew. Or one could look at the number of birds that die from flying in to tall glass buildings as well, though they don't seem to raise the same ire as wind farms.
        2. The noise - the turbines do make noise, and the decibal levels have to be checked at all times. That being said, the noise is hardly deafening and often would be sited in more remote areas or offshore. But if you stand in a wind farm near a highway, you can certainly notice the sound of the cars going by!
        3. They 'pollute' the visual landscape - this argument has been raised quite a bit in areas deemed to be of notable natural beauty, such as in Cape Cod in Massachussetts. It is probably fair to ask which view is preferable, those of the proposed Cape Wind offshore wind farms or those of mountain-top removal strip coal mining and a coal-fired power station:

        The proposed view from Nantucket These images are from the Cape Wind project itself, so of course on should take them with a grain of salt. However, in debates about this offshore wind project, the author has not heard criticism that the images are misleading or not to scale. Indeed, one only needs to stand on a beach and try and identify something 5+ miles offshore.

        Or Cotuit (5.6 miles from the turbines)

        Mountain-top mining in West Virginia, also a place of notable [former] natural beauty.

        Drax Power Station, a coal-fired power station in England

         

         

         

        Biofuels

        Often touted as America's route to energy independence, biofuels are finally coming under some much-deserved criticism. Whilst biofuels certainly have some potential, one must consider the following questions / issues with regard to biofuels:

        1. EROEI – Energy Return on Energy Invested. Biofuels have an extremely low (if not negative) energy return.
        2. Fossil-Fuel displacement – industrial agriculture (aka ‘factory farming’) is very fossil-fuel intense. Fertilisers come from natural gas; herbicides, pesticides and fungicides are derived from fossil-fuels; tractors and farm equipment use large amounts of diesel fuels, etc. There is little evidence that biofuels do nor will actually displace / replace any significant amount of fossil-fuel use.
        3. Soil erosion – the increased intensity of factory farming is already severely damaging topsoil across the world. Mass production of transport biofuels would accelerate a process that needs to be reversed.
        4. Run-off from fertilisers that contaminate water
        5. ‘Food or Fuel’ – protests in poorer countries against massive increases in staple food prices (such as maize/corn in Mexico), stemming from competition from the fuel sector, are already happening. The very real potential to starve part of the world’s population in order to ‘feed’ US or European cars cannot be ignored. Within the US, higher prices are also being seen, especially through higher prices for livestock feed. Even growing non-food crops can still impact this as the land used to grow the biofuels is not being used to grow food.
        6. Fresh-Water Availability – increased farming will only increase the use of a precious, and scarce, resource.
        7. Exposure to famine, drought or floods – not only for food, but for energy as well.
        8. Habitat destruction – expanding agricultural land into areas that are not currently used for this will inevitably destroy existing ecosystems.
        9. Global Warming – destruction of rainforest to plant palm oil, for example, is an enormous contributor to global warming. In fact, Indonesia is now one of the top emitters of greenhouse gases per annum largely due to the slash and burning of rain forest to plant palm oil. Whilst planting of jatropha (see D1 Oils) or other crops that can be used for biofuels on marginal land that might actually help the local environment, many of the ‘best’ crops for biofuels are grown in tropical environments and destroy the existing vegetation and soil that do a far better job of sequestering CO2 and producing oxygen (See studies reported in the Washington Post ).
        10. Local air-pollution – some critics have claimed that ethanol actually increases local pollution and ozone.
        11. Cellulosic or ‘Next Generation’ Biofuels – much research is going into the potential to take ‘waste biomasss’ or non-food biomass to convert it into fuels (sewage, waste wood, switch grass, etc). These are interesting technologies and certainly merit more research. However, one must always keep in mind EROEI and the above factors.
        12. Total capacity / Scalability - unlike other renewable energy sources, the potential of biofuels seems significantly more limited. David Fridley's presentation, 'The Myth of Biofuels' (see below) addresses this quite well.

         

        Hydrogen

        The ‘hydrogen economy’ is largely a farce and a red-herring. As we’re repeatedly told by advocates, hydrogen, ‘the most abundant element in the universe’, can be used in a fuel-cell to create electricity and only gives off water. This is certainly true. But a key question to ask is, ‘where do you get the hydrogen’? Whilst incredibly abundant in the universe, it’s nowhere to be found as a separate compound. Its bonds with other elements, like oxygen (H2O) or carbon (CH4) have to be broken, and that takes energy.

        Most hydrogen in use to today is derived from natural gas, using a LOT of energy. There are then serious concerns around storage and safety (let alone cost), not to mention the availability of natural gas which is a finite resource (and one struggling to keep up production in North America).

        One of the holy grails of energy research is to use renewable electricity to generate hydrogen from electrolysis (separating the H from H2O). This could be then used in industrial-sized fuel-cells that could provide storage for said renewable energy

            Nuclear

            Nuclear power is certainly one of the more contentious topics to discuss, and therefore, rational discussions rarely seem to take place. Many people concerned with resource depletion and with climate change (such as Sir David King, the UK’s former Chief Scientist and noted environmental pundit George Monbiot) have recently come out in favour of nuclear power as a sort of fix for or alternative to a ‘carbon economy’.

            A few general points should be considered in any of your research on nuclear power.

            • ‘Low Carbon’? – nuclear power is NOT a zero carbon form of electricity generation (nor are solar, wind nor hydro for that matter). The mining / enriching / transporting of uranium are extremely carbon-intense processes. The construction of nuclear plants involves a lot of concrete and steel which create a lot of emissions. The guarding and storage of nuclear waste (for a few millennia) will certainly emit a lot of CO2. However, nuclear power even at a life-cycle basis probably has lower CO2 than natural gas and coal, though most studies put it much higher than solar (especially solar thermal), wind or hydro.
            • ‘Peak Uranium’ – uranium is a finite resource, and the high-grade ores of uranium are already precious commodities. If nuclear is to be the panacea of all energy problems as many of its proponents claim, then the issue of just how much uranium is available MUST be addressed (See resources section below for reports on this topic). In order to replace coal-generated electricity production, nuclear capacity would have to increase many orders of magnitude.
            • ‘Too Cheap to Meter’ – back in the 1950s, claims were that nuclear energy would be ‘too cheap to meter’. Alas, that has not been the case anywhere in the world. Recently, the UK government has been forced to admit that the bill to tax-payers for dealing with existing nuclear waste (excluding any future waste from existing or proposed plants) is at least GBP 75 BILLION. This is in addition to subsidies supplied to the industry for 50 years.
            • ‘Waste Heat and Efficiency’ – much of the energy generated in a nuclear plant is lost in the form of waste heat (the huge amount of steam you see coming from the cooling towers). It would be possible to capture this heat to use for district heating or other purposes. However, one of the blockers to this is distance, as most people are not too keen on building nuclear reactors in the middle of towns and cities. See ‘safety’ below.
            • ‘Safety’ – nuclear power is statistically quite safe. There have only been a few accidents in history, though of course the potential for an accident in nuclear power could conceivably destroy whole cities and regions, and kill millions of people. The one ‘serious’ accident was Chernobyl where safety standards were quite lax compared to the ‘advanced procedures’ in the west, excluding Three-Mile Island, of course and leaks in the UK’s Sellafield plant and others.
            • ‘Terrorist Target’ – Greenpeace ran a rather provocative campaign showing a family on beach near a nuclear reactor when a Boeing 747 comes roaring out of the sky and crashes into said reactor. Many have debated the likely impact that such an attack would have, but it certainly goes without saying that it is a scenario worth considering, especially in a political environment obsessed with terrorists getting access to WMD.
            • ‘Rising Seas?’ – many of the world’s nuclear reactors are near coasts that are threatened by rising sea levels due to global warming. How easy is it to pick and up move a working nuclear reactor, remembering that these plants have 40-60 year working lives?
            • ‘Consistent base-load power? – indeed, nuclear energy does provide very good base-load energy to the grid (i.e. – they don’t get shut-down / turned-on easily, but can keep producing known quantities of power rateably). However, recent events in Europe have raised an interesting concern regarding this base-load, when water temperatures in Spanish rivers, owing to above-average temperatures, meant that the water that the reactors relied on for cooling was too warm. Therefore the reactors had to be shut down for some time. A similar outcome can be brought on by severe drought affecting the level of those rivers.
            • ‘Waste’ – when planners consider coming up with hieroglyphic languages for use at waste sites because the waste will be highly radioactive longer than any language on Earth has been spoken, one must stop to consider the sorts of timescale involved when considering nuclear waste. Within the life-span of a half-life of waste we generate, many of the proposed sites for storage of waste were formerly covered in glaciers that carved out mountains. Some proposed reactors would use spent nuclear fuel as the fuel, thereby recycling the waste, reducing its final amount. The downside, of course, is that the waste one ends up with is weapons-grade plutonium. See 'Proliferation' below.
            • ‘Proliferation – Friend or Foe?’ – If nuclear power is necessary to combat climate change and resource depletion, then won’t everyone need access to it? But if nuclear power is not related to proliferation of nuclear weapons, then why are the US and the EU so worried about Iran having nuclear power for electricity generation? In fact, back in the 1960s, the US planned to build nuclear reactors for Iran. In the 1970s, under the Ford administration (which included Rumsfeld and Cheney), Kissinger signed National Security Decision Memorandum 292 (aka ‘US-Iran Nuclear Cooperation’) to do just that (see Columbia Journal of International Affairs, Vol 60, Number 2, ‘Tackling the Iran-U.S. Crisis). This, of course, was when the Shah, who the US and UK installed into power in Iran was still in power. It is fair to question the long-term prospects for any country’s political climate and their potential threat to neighbours using nuclear technology when looking at 40-60 year time frames. Incredibly, until recently, US company Powered Corp had plans to help build five nuclear reactors in YEMEN, the same country in which the USS Cole was attacked. This plan was scrapped by the Yemeni, and not the US government, mainly because of the inexperience of Powered Corp in this field.

             

            The Demand Side

            Conservation and Recycling

            Conservation, conservation, conservation…it is just about self-evident that reducing the use of something is generally easier and more efficient than producing more of something. One word of caution however on ‘efficiency’ that rarely gets talked about is the idea of the ‘efficiency dividend’. Whilst technologies such as internal-combustion engines, refrigerators and televisions are all much more efficient than they were 30 years ago, this has not necessarily led to ‘conservation’. Instead, we just have heavier, faster cars. Our refrigerators are simply much bigger, or we have several of them. And televisions are now 50+ inches across.

            So though mandating ‘efficiency’ may help, one must consider total energy cost of products in their construction and use, and how those efficiency gains will be re-invested. New lighting standards prohibiting incandescent light-bulbs will certainly lead to more efficient lighting technologies such as CFLs or LEDs, but will that encourage us to use more and more lighting? Will we do the same with less, or more with the same, or more with more?

              (Re)Localisation

              The concept of localisation, or re-localisation, seeks to address the issue of food-miles, as well as the transport distances of all other goods and services. The 'Transition Town' movement started in the UK (Totnes, Devon) and seeks to prepare for a world with less energy availability, where our networks will be much more local. This idea has spread around the world (including the USA) at the community level.

                 

                Agriculture (specifically for food production)

                Modern industrial agriculture is one of the greatest contributors to global warming and one of the most resource-intensive practices around. Think of all of the energy used to clear land and pump water for irrigation, or of all the natural gas and oil used to make fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and fuel for tractors and the trucks / planes / boats that ship agricultural goods all over the world, and for the plastic in which they’re wrapped.

                Certainly no-one will argue that growing food is a fundamental requirement, but certainly what we grow, the way we grow food it, and how (far) we transport it has to be questioned.

                Modern, or industrial agriculture lead the massive increases of food production in the middle of the 20th Century. But this was driven by huge amounts of fossil-fuel based chemicals and machinery. Food that we eat is now so energy-intensive that most estimates put the number of calories (of energy) that we put in to making the food at around ten times the calories we get from it. That means that for every one calorie you get from the food you eat, ten calories of fossil-fuel energy went in to producing it. Clearly, the EROEI (LINK) of this is problematic in a world with declining fossil fuel availability, and in a carbon-constrained world.

                Organic farming helps reduce the energy input by removing the chemical inputs, though it may still use tractors, and will certainly have to be transported once the crops are harvested (see (Re)Localisation above). A recent study from the Univ. of Michigan examined the potential of organic farming, ‘Organic Farming Can Feed the World’ – Univ. of Michigan study (10 Jul 2007). Another good starting point are two recent presentations given to the UK's All-Party Parliamentary Group on Peak Oil and Gas, looking at Food Security after Peak Oil.

                Paul Roberts, journalist and author of 'The End of Oil' and 'The End of Food' gave a very good talk at the Commonwealth Club on the latter.

                Transport

                General

                ‘Electrification of Transportation as a Response to Peaking of World Oil Production’ Alan. S. Drake (2005). http://www.energybulletin.net/14492.html

                 

                Road Transport

                THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A GREEN CAR!!! A ‘fuel-efficient’ car isn’t ‘green’; it’s just less dirty than a Hummer. An electric car isn’t ‘green’; it’s just less dirty than an internal combustion equivalent, and certainly uses less oil once built. But it still has to be built (including all of the metal and plastics and embedded energy), the roads for it still have to be built and maintained (with a lot of bitumen and concrete), and the electricity has to come from somewhere. Try walking, cycling, public transport, reducing necessary trips, car-pooling, etc.

                However, for times when you do need a car, by all means, you must consider its overall energy and environmental impact in relation to the alternatives. And in that assessment, electrification of transport is probably the most promising route, certainly in terms of reducing oil demand (and associated issues around Peak Oil and the geopolitics of oil), and quite possibly in terms of the environment (though that is not necessarily guaranteed).

                EVs and PHEVs

                PHEVs (Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles) – these are effectively hybrid electric cars, such as the Toyota Prius, that allows you to plug-in the car to charge an enlarged battery power pack, with an all-electric range of 20-60 miles (average American daily driving <40 miles). But unlike a ‘pure EV ' (Electric Vehicle), you can continue to drive across the continent after the battery power pack is used.

                Prototypes built in the back of garages in the US and Japan are getting well over 100 mpg. Several companies are now trying to offer a service to convert existing hybrids (or possibly even older cars). – See below.

                These have the potential to be a 'killer application' that increases the viability of renewable electricity generation, especially if they utilise V2G (Vehicle-to-Grid) technology. As cars are only used for several hours a day, and can be plugged-in in the garage or office parking lot for the rest of the time, their battery packs can be used during the day to store renewable electricity generation (say from solar, wind, tidal, wave, etc) and put it back in the grid when needed.

                NOTE: One must be carefully, though, and consider the energy it takes to build new cars (though one could argue they’ll be built anyway, just with Internal Combustion Engines (ICEs) instead of EV ‘engines’), AND the amount of raw materials available for battery construction and embedded energy in the production of the batteries (and their disposal).

                It is also important to consider the source of the electricity generation; is it coming from renewables, less-dirty gas, or really dirty coal? The answer to this question is not straightforward, and would largely depend on where you’re located, and whether or not you’re using micro-generation (i.e. – solar panels on your home’s roof) to power it. The GristMill, a good environmental site, recently did a good article on this with links to some current studies.

                 

                Sherry Boschert, a writer on PHEVs gave an interesting talk in California in March 2007:

                 

                Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute giving a talk on 'The Oil Dependence Dilemma' and potential vehicle efficiency gains:

                 

                Shai Agassi, formerly the number 2 at software giant SAP has founded 'Project Better Place', a venture designed to electrify transport at a national level. He gave a very good talk that is available here:

                Part 1 http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=VUKrVD9UL-4

                Part 2 http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=s3f23Rptmik&feature=related

                Part 3 http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=6hkbBczfxes&feature=related

                 

                 

                 

                Rail Transport

                James Howard Kuntsler, the polemical writer on energy and planning in the US once said that the US had a rail system that the Bulgarians would be ashamed of. Apologies for any offence caused to Bulgaria.

                However, the US used to have a quite good intercity and light rail system, only to be destroyed and neglected over time as it was replaced with the highway system, and car-driven suburban sprawl. There are real challenges to the US being able to re-introduce rail transport due to the low population of its suburbs. But with peaking of oil production, the incentives may just be there.

                For a very good overview of the cost/benefit of electrifying rail transport in the USA, see Alan Drake's article on TheOilDrum.com here.

                Below is a map of Europe's high-speed rail network, taken from The Economist.

                Economist - 5th July 2007

                 

                Whilst many Americans envy the European rail network, and rightfully so, there are at least proposals for similar developments with the USA.

                Taken from Wikipedia

                 

                Air Transport
                Disclosure – the author has worked in the aviation industry as an airline fuel buyer, jet fuel trader and marketer and advises airlines (and many other industries) on emissions trading. The author’s employer is also working on alternative fuels for aviation, though the author is not involved in that area of business.

                 

                The likes of Sir Richard Branson (head of Virgin Atlantic) has admitted that he believes a global peaking and decline of global oil production could happen within six years (interview available at http://globalpublicmedia.com/branson_acknowledges_peakoil ). In that case, flying may end up being only for the rich once more unless alternative fuels can be found.

                However, unlike road (or even marine) transport, that is not as straight-forward in air travel. Changes in fuel specification can take many years in the aviation industry given concerns around safety and testing. As is often said in the aviation industry, if there’s a problem with your engine (or your fuel) you can’t pull off to the side of the road at 40,000 feet. Recently, a small percentage blend of biofuels have been used on a Virgin Atlantic flight, though the issues of scalability remain (see Biofuels above).

                Other means for reducing fuel demand in aviation include alternative engines and different designs of planes.

                • Fuel Cell Aircraft Project: ENFICA-FC (Environmentally Friendly Inter City Aircraft powered by Fuel Cells). Partially funded by the EU, this is simply a research / demonstration project. The likelihood of fuel-celled powered aircraft is quite slim in the medium-term due to the lower energy-density of hydrogen versus conventional jet fuel or avgas (aviation gasoline).
                • Plane design and technology – whilst there is potential for significant improvements in future aircraft design, the turnover time for the global aviation fleet is measured in decades.

                 

                Marine Transport

                Marine transport is huge, and dirty. Most tankers around the world burn residual fuel oil, the very dirty, bottom-of-the-barrel (literally) fuel. Various emission / fuel consumption reduction technologies are currently being looked at including switching to diesel fuel - though the global productive capacity of diesel would not be enough for a complete switch, biomass fuels (see discussions of biomass above), sky sails, electric engines with solar panels, and so on.

                However, the marine industry does not have quite the same price incentive to reduce consumption as aviation as fuel is not as high of a percentage of their total operating costs.. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                References

                Renewable Energy - General

                • ‘Energy Systems and Sustainability: Power for a Sustainable Future’ – Godfrey Boyle, Bob Everett, Janet Ramage. A great text book for those that want to delve in to a host of energy sources, and for those that want to go through the basics (various units of energy measurement, what does renewable actually mean, etc).
                • ‘Power Generation Technologies’ – Paul Breeze
                • ‘Renewable Energy’ – Godfrey Boyle
                • ‘Renewable Energy Resources’ – John Twidell and Tony Weir
                • UK Energy Research Centre: http://www.ukerc.ac.uk/
                • NREL (National Resource Energy Laboratory): http://www.nrel.gov/
                • Rocky Mountain Institute: http://www.rmi.org/
                • US Dept of Energy’s ‘Energy Information Agency’ – Renewable Section: http://www.eia.doe.gov/fuelrenewable.html
                • ‘reFocus – The international Renewable Energy Magazine’
                • Energy Source Guides (include company listings): http://www.sourceguides.com/index.html
                • UK DTI Energy White Paper ‘Our Energy Future, Creating a Low-Carbon Economy’ – 2003. http://www.dti.gov.uk/files/file10719.pdf
                • ‘25x25 (25% Renewable Energy by 2025) - Technical Report: Impacts on U.S. Energy Expenditures of Increasing Renewable Energy Use’ – Mark A. Bernstein, Jay Griffin, Robert Lempert, RAND Corporation 2006. http://www.energyfuturecoalition.org/pubs/RAND.pdf
                • ‘Powering London Into the 21st Century’ – Mayor of London and Greenpeace. March 2006. http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/MultimediaFiles/Live/FullReport/7474.pdf
                • ‘Tackling Climate Change in the U.S. – Potential Carbon Emission Reductions from Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy by 2030’: Charles F. Kutscher, Editor.
                • American Solar Energy Society (Jan 2007) http://www.ases.org/climatechange/
                • ‘Energy [r]evolution’ - European Renewable Energy Council and Greenpeace: Jan 2007. The energy [r]evolution is a practical blueprint for how to halve global CO2 emissions, while allowing for an increase in energy consumption by 2050 http://www.energyblueprint.info/fileadmin/media/documents/energy_revolut...
                • ‘25x25 – America’s Energy Future’ – This is a programme in the US advocating 25% renewable primary energy production / use in the US by the year 2025. Oregon recently (June 2007) signed in to law a similar requirement: http://www.25x25.org/
                • ‘Role of Electricity: A New Path to Secure and Competitive Energy in a Carbon-Constrained World’ – EurElectric (Union of Electricity Industry). May 2007. - This is a good overall view of some of the practical solutions / mitigation strategies to many of the energy and environmental issues discussed in this list. Obviously, they have a bias towards electricity, but few would disagree that electrification is indeed ‘the way forward’ for many uses (including transport). http://unfccc.meta-fusion.com/kongresse/SB26/downl/16_SE_wind_1300/2_RoE...

                Storage

                Solar

                • Solar Land Area requirements to power the globe: http://www.ez2c.de/ml/solar_land_area/
                • Area of the Sahara desert needed to generate electricity for the EU or the World using CSP (Concentrated Solar Power). Taken from TREC (see below): http://www.trecers.net/ Obviously, building such ‘mega-plants’ is not the most practical solution due to transmission distances, ‘eggs in one basket’ concerns, EROEI, etc. But from a land-use perspective, one must consider how much land is already used for coal mines, oil fields and refineries, power plants, nuclear waste facilities, etc. Many of these facilities are measured in square kilometres (some quite a few square kilometres) and there are many, many hundreds of them in the world. Certainly food for thought!
                • TREC (Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation) – layout of a renewable energy grid to power Europe and the Mediterranean basin: http://www.trecers.net/
                • International Solar Energy Society: http://www.ises.org/ises.nsf!Open
                • ‘Solar Generation: Solar Electricity for Over 1 Billion People and 2 Million Jobs by 2020’ – Greenpeace and European Photovoltaic Industry Association. October 2004.
                • Solar Century – founded by Jeremy Leggett (author of ‘Half Gone’), one of the biggest solar companies in Britain: http://www.solarcentury.co.uk/
                • Citizen Re – fascinating business model in the US whereby they pay to put solar panels on your house, and you just sign up to a fixed-price electricity contract. This idea could have real legs at a municipal level: http://renu.citizenre.com/

                Wind

                Biofuels

                 

                Biofuels Industry Groups / Providers / Advocates

                Biomass (for heating and petrochemicals):

                • Potential of firewood for the US – A good overall study of the potential of firewood for home-heating use in the USA. Contains a lot of useful information (from industry sources such as the EIA, the US Forest Service, etc) about residential heating and electricity use in general. http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2683#more
                • CHP – see projects in Scandinavia mixing biomass in CHP plants
                • ‘Living Without Oil: How civilisation will survive once the black god runs out’. – New Scientist (7 July 2007).

                Hydrogen

                Nuclear

                • ‘Energy Security and Uranium Reserves’. Oxford Research Group. A ‘factsheet’ summary of a larger paper by J.W. Storm van Leeuwen, available on the ORG’s website. It is imperative to understand that uranium is not an infinite resource, and ‘energy-return-on-energy-invested’ applies to all technologies, including nuclear, and that nuclear power is NOT a zero carbon fuel (though is certainly a lower carbon one). As reserves deplete and downgrade overtime, ‘energy return’ decreases, and carbon emissions increase. http://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/publications/briefing_papers/pdf/e...
                • David Flemming's 'Lean Guide to Nuclear Energy: A Life-Cycle in Trouble' - http://www.theleaneconomyconnection.net/downloads.html#Nuclear . Flemming is a well-known academic and creator of the 'Tradeable Energy Quotas' or TEQs idea. This lean guide takes a look at available uranium, and the net energy gains (or losses) over the course of a full life-cycle.
                • 'Uranium Resources and Nuclear Energy' - Energy Watch Group (EWG). http://www.energywatchgroup.de/fileadmin/global/pdf/EWG_Report_Uranium_3...
                • Tackling Climate Change Without Nuclear Power: A report detailing how climate targets in the power sector can be met without replacing existing nuclear capacity – Friends of the Earth
                • ‘Assessment of Nuclear-Hydrogen Synergies with Renewable Energy Systems and Coal Liquefaction Processes’ – C.W. Forsberg, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, August 2006.
                • Greenpeace page on nuclear issues, including safety records, security concerns, etc, which is quite good. http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/campaigns/nuclear
                • Federation of American Scientists’ nuclear page: http://www.fas.org/programs/ssp/nukes/index.html

                Conservation

                Agriculture

                (Re)Localisation

                Road Transport

                Current EV/PHEV Designers and Initiatives:

                Rail Transport

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